Marketing Monster

Photo: Jerome Paradis

Last week, I spoke at webcom Montreal 09 along with Shel Holtz, Sean Moffitt and a host of other great speakers. This bi-annual conference features topics aimed at decision-makers and professionals in marketing, internal and external communications and those who want to understand and master the Internet.

I delivered my session, Twitter Tools for Strategic Marketing, with the aim of helping marketers who represent brands to get more out of their Twitter experience. It highlighted which 3rd party applications they could use to add real value and market intelligence to their Twitter efforts.

Because having the right tools to do your job is essential to success, I presented applications that were a selection of what is available to help manage corporate tweets, analyze sentiment, track opinions, conduct market research, find influencers, monitor brand mentions, track trends in real-time and more.

Shel Holtz gave the keynote Tactical Transparency: The Value of Access to Information and then followed up with a second  session on how Your Employees are Your Brand. Here’s a brief excerpt (apologies for the itty bitty jiggy cam):

One of my favourite sessions of the day was Sylvain Grand’Maison’s rapid-fire presentation The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Traditional Media’s Web Experience. In it, he highlighted how francophone mainstream media in Quebec are failing to deliver a good online experience.

Another highlight of the day was discovering WebCamp. In its 4th year, it was held upstairs from web  com and got back to basics. The concept of Praized co-founder, and well-known Montreal developer, Sylvain Carle, the un-conference was a circle discussion of issues important to the community. I was only able to stay for a short time but was excited by a concept that Sylvain had – a networking event similar to speed dating, but for Marketers and business people to meet developers and programmers. (Coincidentally, I’d had this very thought several days earlier!) This led into a discussion about self-branding for techies and IdentityCamp. I’m always impressed with the level of creativity and commitment to innovation that the Montreal development community has. If you want to view some of the discussions (mostly in French), they are here on Laurent Lasalle’s Qik. <link to Laurent’s Qik>

My thanks to Claude Malaison for inviting me to speak at webcom 09 and congratulations to him for holding another successful conference.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Praized Media News: Introducing TwitArea, the Easy Way to Share Places on Twitter (afroginthevalley.com)
• Social Media Marketing is Good for Branding, But What About Business Development (myventurepad.com)