Lessons learned from #SMMW18

Wrapup As of March 8, 2018 @marybethmccabe

Here were the top things that I learned from the SMMW conference:

1. The biggest takeaway for me at my 6th SMMW event was that the human factor is the most important part of social. My human interactions were by far the best ones and memorable. @briansolis drove that home to me deeply in his keynote.

2. The Chatbot is the tech toy of the year. It’s ‘ready-fire-aim’ messaging as millions of bots will be born through one or several vendors. This fadtrend will soon eliminate jobs for half of the people in the room. Make sure you’re on the side with the brains to push the customer care to the front of the discussion.

3. To answer the question, vertical or horizontal screen, the response was mostly vertical for this audience. And yes, it does matter. Don’t zoom in; Get the bigger picture if possible. Crop later from a richer image.

4. Two dudes from Australia talked about how to use Twitter like a list blog, and how Twitter slips in non-followers they think you will like. @AndrewandPete were the new guys who say don’t add a link in your tweet, give your value now, on the platform. Create your own gifs on @Giphy.

5. This was the first year that every presenter (nearly 100%) have a book, but there was no book table selling going on at the show.

6. How does one get a “Super Fan”? An army of them? @PatFlynn told us how, and showed us how.

7. Best response to a question of “What matters” was @ChristopherPenn saying that the San Diego Convention Center cared about how much toilet paper was used, not the customer experience. Only one square of paper per person indicates that they measure rolls installed more than user satisfaction.

8. No one mentioned GDPR. Maybe I missed that session.

9. I needed a better webinar experience. @Tim Paige. My New Idea: Podinar = podcast webinar.

10. Social media research says that more meaningful conversations will be in smaller groups. Thinking of a coffee table for your discussion. Ironically, @SMMW19 could be double in size.

11. I should buy a lavalier.

12. Best session was the Case Study by @michaelmelaro (Ashley Home Store), who spelled their plan out in detail, giving credit where it’s due, some internal, some to Blitzmetrics. That was a partnership to applaud.

In summary, this year’s event was meaningful in me meeting about half of the “speakers” listed in the program and getting to the next level of my journey in Social Media. Yes, I do want to speak next year and in order to do that, and with the 25 year anniversary of @DrMaryTravelbest, that is where I will focus. “How to re-launch your brand and make it shine.”