On Tuesday, February 8th, a few Overdrivers traveled to Bentley University for the NEDMA ROI Acceleration Summit for a day filled with industry leaders speaking on digital marketing tactics and technology. With several sessions going on simultaneously, all attendees had a filled itinerary to pick and choose from – two of which were Overdrive‘s CEO, Harry Gold, and Director of Analytics and Media Services, Jeff Selig. For live coverage of the event, a few Overdrivers were live-tweeting during each session while posting photos of speakers.
Kicking off the event was keynote speaker, David Meerman Scott, speaking on the importance of real-time marketing. As he shared video clips about businesses responding to negative publicity with real-time responses, he pressed one of his key points that “real-time is a mindset and the Chief Real-Time Officer is you”.
Our very own Harry Gold, CEO of Overdrive, followed with his “Socializing Advertising and Marketing” presentation. With many case studies to provide the audience with, he covered different tactics in social media that will guarantee increased traffic and more user engagement. From chiclets to whitepapers to YouTube overlay ads, his main point he shared was “don’t over mystify these sites: they are websites, add something cool”. As Gold discussed content development, he said “push good content out and embed it in good places, such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs”.
Speaking on behalf of Google, Steve Kraft discussed the Evolution of Video for Marketers. Starting from where television and video began, he brought the audience through a timeline of the evolution of this technology. While speaking, Kraft introduced the term “Addressable TV” for the ability to send the right message to the right person; admitting to the concern that marketers may still be unsure of who is actually controlling the remote. One of his points that seemed to resonate best was the suggestion that television could one day become “clickable” by allowing users to purchase an item directly on their screen instantly.
To kick off the afternoon sessions, Cameron Burnham from Twitter spoke on where Twitter came from and where it is going. To begin, he shared a video from one year ago with the CEO, Evan Williams, discussing the real-time platform and explaining how it came to be. From there, he spoke about how with the “real-time aspect, the world suddenly became a lot closer”. To show how Twitter has evolved in the social space, a Jimmy Fallon Show clip shared its “hashtag segment” where viewers could actually submit their tweets surrounding the previously decided hashtag. To date, this is the first and only example of how television shows have taken advantage of the benefits Twitter has to offer, and has had great success. Burnham also addressed new Twitter Promoted Products that the platform has been launched for businesses. To view a presentation of Twitter advertising options, visit the Overdrive SlideShare presentation.
Citing the new-found prevalence of blended search results in the world’s largest search engines, Google and Bing, Jeff discussed the increased importance of optimizing social media content for search. In his rapid fire presentation, Jeff covered the basics of search engine optimization for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, SlideShare, DocStoc and more. Download Jeff’s presentation on SEO and Social Media platforms.
As the day was wrapped up to a close, attendees met with speakers of interest and received valuable resources to take along with them. A very well-attended event with dedicated and intriguing speakers, the NEDMA ROI Acceleration Summit event was one of great success.
