The Digital Ripple Day 2- Engage One, Engage Many

August 20, 2010, Day 2 of “The Digital Ripple” 4^th Internet and Mobile Marketing Summit 2010, was yet another successful long day. Just as the subtitle of this event say “Engage One, Engage Many”. This day was all about how important engaging your consumers to your brand is. Engaging someone would engage many people in a short span of time. That’s the power of social media.

Speakers for this day were kind of serious with the way they speak. Since we can’t do anything about their accent, we just have to catch up and adopt as quick as we can. But nonetheless, great points stressed about engaging consumers to your brand and tips on how to do it.

Throughout the day, there was something that got stuck in my mind, it was “Activating you Brand Through the word of Mouth”. Not only does it save a lot of money for a brand, but it is way faster than doing magic with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Before something becomes a word of mouth, there must be something really really amazing, funny or outrageous. A video I remembered presented on screen was a piano stairs. This was a perfect example of something cool that created a buzz around the area, thus people started taking picture of it and spread in the internet. How about that for saving a lot of money in marketing? The people who have experienced this amazing stairs were the one who spread the buzz using social media.

Another video presented was about a marketing genius that created quite a buzz in the web (I can’t find the video, so I posted some pictures instead). Since Japan had numerous vending machines, marketers thought of putting a smart car in a vending machine too. It was a very creative marketing move as the display became a tourist destination. People took pictures of it out of amazement and spread it all over the internet.

What does this mean? This means that in the coming years, all business “should” shift to social media, if not, their business wouldn’t last long. Say for example the LEGO Group, makers of LEGO toys. Due to rapid decline in sales, they were desperate of reviving their company. And guess what, they turned to social media. They created an interactive website where anyone can build LEGO toys of the design they want. Once finished, you can purchase the design right then and there and you can assemble it physically once delivered.

Everyone should be engaged to social media even if your company isn’t into technology or web service because social media could get you closer, faster and cheaper to your consumers. Say you have a sugar cane company. Yes you do have a lot of valued clients but imagine you have an online presence and you have utilized social media, this could generate you more consumers. Transactions would be fast, as well as feedbacks that you could use to adjust to provide better service.

Before the day ended, I got the chance to talk to Abe Olandres (YugaTech). The number 1 tech blogger in the country was so kind when I approached him for some advice. It was a good 20-ish minute chat which was really enlightening and encouraging. When it comes to blogging, he reiterated “content is king, always have, always will”.

Also during a panel discussion together with representative from Google Asia and Yahoo Southeast Asia, Abe fared very well in answering questions about search. What I picked up from the panel discussion was the algorithm of search is a mystery and that search will continue to evolve. Soon our search would greatly depend to what our networks have.

All in all, this was a perfectly prepared and executed summit. If it wasn’t for this summit, I wouldn’t have known that this is a rapidly rising industry with only few certified digital marketers. I only noticed mobile advertisements when the summit began. Kudos to IMMAP (Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines) for organizing such a very informative summit!