On November 7, 2014 the Laurel Highland Visitors Bureau held the 4th annual Interactive Marketing Summit at the Fred Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College. This summit was attended by many businesses and organizations throughout the Laurel Highlands region. Throughout the event the Laurel Highland Visitors Bureau hosted a Twitter event featuring #LHSummit as their unique event hashtag. The Interactive Marketing Summit included presentations from four presenters throughout the interactive marketing field.
The presentations started off with John Meck of LunaMetrics. The topic of Meck’s presentation was the importance of Google Analytics and how to use it to your benefit. Google Analytics is a tool to track information from your website. You can track how many visitors you have, how long they stay, and what links they click on. Utilizing Google Analytics can help you determine your market as well as determine the usefulness of items on your website. You will be able to see what links are doing well and which ones could be edited or removed. Google Analytics can be daunting to use but Google as well as LunaMetrics offering training.
Following a short networking break, Phil Laboon of Eyeflow Internet Marketing discussed “How to Climb to the Top of Search Results”. The way that your website is constructed can impact how you rank on search results. Laboon dives further into what search engines, such as Google are looking for. He mentions that Google does not want web pages with little or no content. Now that does not mean the more content the better you rank on search results. The content on your website needs to be quality content. The content on your webpage needs to be information that draws people in and current. Any older content on your website should be removed. By utilizing Google Analytics you will be able to tell which content your users are viewing when on your webpage. Another website tip is having a responsive design. This type of webpage works on multiple devices and allows a better experience for tablet and mobile users.
The final presentation prior to lunch featured, Chris Vendilli, from ProFromGo Internet Marketing. Vedilli starts of informing the attendees about today’s consumers. Consumers are utilizing the Internet to become more knowledgeable and are very mobile. The content that is featured on your website needs to be geared towards your customer. One feature Vendilli discussed was blogs. Blogs should link to a lot of content, downloadable content, contain pictures, videos, or graphics. This helps makes blogs more appealing and links the users. It is also best to link your blogs back to your social media pages.
Following lunch our final presenter, Shannon Baker of Gatesman+Dave, presented social media strategies. One shocking statistic she shared was regarding women being the dominant force on social media and that they influence 80% of all purchases. Social media should be used to create a relationship with your customers. A warning that Baker gave was not jumping to join every social media page. Learn your demographic first then choosewhich ones to join. Once you join various social sites Baker stressed creating a social media policy. A social media policy verifies anyone that manages the pages maintains the same voice and content of your brand. One aspect you can create for social media is an editorial and promotional calendar. This will help you plan out your social media campaigns for certain events and holidays that your organization or business focuses on.
The 2014 Laurel Highlands Interactive Marketing Summit provided the information needed for organization and businesses to have a quality presence online. The summit concluded with giveaways from the Laurel Highlands Visitor Bureau and the announcement of the 2015 Interactive Marketing Summit for November 5, 2015.