*Updates*

• Nice Wrap up of Ad:tech by Gavin.  I like the comprehensive presentation evaluating social media monitoring tools. 
• Laurel Papworth’s presentation on relevance of twitter in business 

On Tuesday, 10th March I visited Ad:tech Sydney (Event for Digital Marketing).  As a visitor my access was limited to the keynotes and expo, could not attend any of the panel discussions or conferences. However, good work done by official twitter moderators (Nicely consolidated by Neerav ), also available at  relevant # TAGS . Here is my summary of my experience of the event

Kodak Moment

I started day 1 with a video “winds of change, Kodak is back”  this was part of Stephen Green’s session on the  digital transformation of Kodak – It was an interesting story with confessions on how they changed  in 4 years and whatever exists at Kodak now, never existed 4 years back. Here’s the video he played -

After that i roamed around a bit at various stalls of exhibiting companies, stopped at couple of them for demo on how they are promising to solve the mysteries of social media for their clients.  Or how to build optimized websites to get more traffic and eyeballs. Seems like everybody knows SEO expect me! You come here and you would realize about the importance of having your “digital identity” and then optimizing it so that you are visible!  Everything which we love to do is also quickly happening in a parallel second or virtual world. Before I get carried away 0n virutal Vs Real let me come back to this real post in virtaul world…

Tweet Tweet

So, now I chose a place outside conference rooms and started following tweets. So, what if i could not attened the sessions, I have collected couple of relevant tweets, its worth going through them once

@servantofchaos 10 key lessons from social media

1. Don’t believe the hype
2. Use subtle branding i.e. you don’t want to appear lame
3. Social media is not free … You are putting your reputation on the line
4. Learn from other people’s mistakes
5. Be quick ..New ideas are only unique for a short time … It’s the zeitgeist baby!
6. They won’t come. You have to use social media
7. Constantly reinvent … Your social media beast develops a life of its own. Sounds like a teenager!
8. Keep path to trial simple
9. Understand how your audience uses social media
10. Be brave … Social media is not for the faint hearted

Tweets on Banking

@ Charispalmer

• @montyhamilton says a positive interaction about your brand in an online community is “advocacy we don’t have to touch” #atsyd3
• UBank did a brand recognition study and found success of impressions on facebook was a big surprise #atsyd3
• UBank measures YouTube channel page views, comments, facebook fans, twitter followers. Lense is interoperabilty with UBank site #atsyd3
• myfuturebank learnings: Monty from UBank says most important thing is to give people a feedback process and make the biz accessible #atsyd3
• UBank sees social media as an opportunity to differentiate and have conversations at arms reach says @montyhamilton #atsyd3
• UBank considers Facebook a way to target mass markets. Twitter is still early adopter phase but bank has been in it since launch #atsyd3
• “Follow their life rather than force them into your path to purchase” #atsyd3

@ Monty Hamilton

• Really enjoying this J&J session #atsyd3 #atsyd – great point “don’t create something to impress other marketers” SPOT ON!!!
• Over 1m winks sent by Acuvue @facebook app, very cool, and awesome reach figs too (correct me if wrong but) 36% of Aust popn #atsyd3 #atsyd
• “Needed to get customers to try before buy” says Mandeep as “60% who try product stay with it” (J&J Acuvue Contact Lenses) #atsyd3 #atsyd
• “Ultimately its the premium price brands that suffer” says Mandeep on why J&J could not start a price war with contact lenses #atsyd3 #atsyd
• Charis Palmer says “as UBank has a 24×7 call centre, leveraging it for Twitter servicing could be resource efficient” #atsyd #atsyd2
• Charis Palmer says “banks still think they control their brands” maybe the logo and the tagline hehe… I agree with her #atsyd #atsyd2

I would also like to thank Monty for the quick catch up after the session and also introducing me to charis Palmer..

Finally

Then I had to rush back to office for work and thus i missed the drinks party after the day 1. I planned to meet couple of new found tweet friends, however thanks to office i could not even make it on second day!! However thanks to live tweets i followed the relevant bits