Blog World & New Media Expo’s inaugural event in New York City is underway, and I was privileged enough to attend this year’s conference as a representative of my employer, Fleishman-Hillard.*
Fresh from my quick jaunt from D.C. up to the Big Apple, I spent my morning commute today reviewing the notes I took while at Blog World. Though the topics covered in the panels ranged from mobile marketing to blogger outreach to Facebook, I found recurring themes scrawled on each of the pages:
- user experience = driving force
- knowing what the user wants
- relevancy
- understanding the community
- who is the audience and what are they looking for
In notes from one session, I emphasized this statement (with a star and underlining so you know it’s important!):
User experience should be a guiding force; relevancy is integral to success
While this thinking seems straight-forward enough, it’s always nice to be reminded of the core concepts that should drive any communications campaign. With so many new, shiny technologies available to marketers, it can be easy to lose focus of how these tools actually fit into the active lives of end users, or – you know – your or your client’s customers.
Yes, innovation is a good thing. The digital era is providing seemingly limitless opportunities for PR professionals and marketers to interact with consumers in a variety of ways, but the customer experience should never be sacrificed in the name of innovation.
As industry professionals, we need to be asking the right questions before jumping in:
- Is this easy for the target audience to use?
- Is it relevant to their lives first and our campaign goals second?
Over the next few days, I’ll be highlighting how these concepts popped up in the Blog World panels I attended, which focused on mobile marketing, location-based services, Facebook News Feed optimization, blogger relations, and content creation.
[...] Attend a professional conference or workshop – Accomplished! I attended Blog World Expo New York. [...]