RIMC 2012 – The Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference – Iceland #RIMC12
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RIMC 2012 – The Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference – Iceland #RIMC12

13th March 2012

Having never been to Iceland, the RIMC (Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference) was a must on the agenda for the year, but I had no idea that I was going on a trip that would totally blow my mind!

Not only was the conference outstanding, the organisation of a series of events for speakers (and me as a very lucky guest) has ensured that Iceland now has a place in my heart, and I will always speak highly of this very special conference and very special country!

I will be writing a more personal account to cover the off conference events later in the week but I would like to thank Nordic emarketing for making this a weekend I will never forget with a personal thank you to Kristjan Hauksson for generosity beyond compare. A true ambassador for Iceland! Next year is the RIMC 10th Anniversary so I urge you to book your spot well in advance and stay for more than the day!

The RIMC Conference

Taking on the theme of ‘You are not in control’ – the conference was opened by none other than the President of Iceland! How do you top that? Well if you’re Kristjan you combine some of the best international marketers & SEO’s with some of the most creative content I have seen.

An impressive line up including Bill Hunt, Brent D Payne, Barbara Coll from the US, Mr Taster from Iran, Massimo Burgio representing Italy, Sepita Ansari from Germany, Icelanders Olafur Kr Olafsson & Bardur Orn Gunnarsson, the UK contingent of Chris Dowd from Facebook, Ben Chapman from the BBC, and Paul Madden (with his TwitterBot Army), and if that wasn’t enough, the day came to a close with the final ‘dark session’ – a black hat panel with Fantomaster, Mikkel DeMib and Peter Van Der Graaf.

Usually I have information overload at the end of a full day’s conference, but I didn’t want this to end. There was so much packed in to one day and so much great content, that it is impossible to put it all into one post or choose what to include so I have decided to cover all sessions in a series of posts.

I have not covered the keynotes as there will be a detailed write up from our own Nichola Stott at the Media Flow website later on today.

The Impressive RIMC Speaker Line up

Keynotes

  • THE PRESIDENT OF ICELAND!!!
  • Eli Pariser – The Filter Bubble
Social Media Marketing Track

Internet Marketing Track

  • Matt Neal – Bright Sparx
  • Massimo Burgio – SEMPO & Global Search Interactive
  • Ludvik Hoegh-Krohn – OMG
Search Engine Marketing Track –
PPC & More

  • Charles Dowd – Facebook
  • Phil Greenwood – Microsoft
  • Olafur Kr Olafsson – Nordic eMarketing
  • Bardur Orn Gunnarsson
Search Engine Marketing Track
Organic with a twist

  • Brent Payne – Tribune/BaldSEO
  • Barbara Coll – WebMama
  • Motoko Hunt – Adobe
  • Sepita Ansari – Catbird Seat
Search Engine Marketing Track
The Dark Session

  • Fantomaster
  • Mikkel DeMib
  • Peter Van Der Graaf

Social Media Marketing Track

Multi Channel Internet Marketing – Bill Hunt Back Azimuth

Search engines are increasingly trying to present information to us within the context of our search. For example if you search on Bing for ‘Reykjavik’ you get other related searches such as weather, nightlife, things to do, what people want to know about.

Bill suggests that we need to move to some sort of advance keyword modelling in order to stop missing ‘nuggets of opportunity’ and better understand the voice of the consumer and map your content with query intent – understanding this can help to identify new products and services and create and influence PR & Social Media opportunities.

Takeaways

  • Organic does not have the luxury of saying one thing and showing another, PPC does not use the power of relevant query
  • Look for keyword qualifiers (upper arm shaper, red mobile phone) and use them
  • Match keywords to top ranking pages or pages that are more likely to convert
  • Match search queries and create content to satisfy specific need
  • attract, engage and retain
  • Map search demand scores to social media

Streaming Media and Real Time Web – Ben Chapman – BBC

Ben Chapman is head of popular music at the BBC took us through a case study from the previous year considering ‘liveness’, ‘friendship’ and personalisation of content after the BBC realised that the old approach of ‘listen again’ but pushing this message was not really working, so the BBC realised that they needed to engage the user with social media and services.

Listeners have a friendship connection with their favourite DJ’s and artists, so the BBC have played this out by creating content where the talent engages with the user. This is not TV but given that real time web experiences are ever improving, radio is getting to a position where you can synch up content and clips enabling a greater connection with the listener and now essentially radio viewer.

You may not want to listen again, but you may want to listen again to the ‘clip of George Clooney’ or watch ‘Katy Perry bursting balloons’. Examples of Ellie Goulding and many other guest musicians holding up pieces of paper with fans names on to thank them or to answer their questions makes this experience much more personal.

There is not such a takeaway as a method of thinking in how to approach the organisation of a radio station (and the DJ’s) in order to take advantage of and promote the wealth of content across multiple platforms and sites to give the listeners what they want!

Building a Twitter Bot Army – Paul Madden – Automica

Anyone can build a bot, but it is much harder to build a person

With opening statements that of some of the stuff you are going to see is illegal in some jurisdictions – you know that you are going to learn some valuable dark side lessons about how to ‘appear to be human’.

A whistle stop tour in building trust and automating bots in order influence the social space.

So why would you want to build a twitter bot army?

  • Brand building
  • Broadcast method
  • Listening and directing conversations
  • For use with reputation management issues
  • To control social signals in organic search

Takeaways

  • Don’t be anti social
  • All conversations that you are going to have are human to human and relationships are important
  • To Drip feed messages over time as with any good advertising campaign!
  • Use real people – partly automated
  • Build bots, build trust, make friends
  • Don’t trick people
  • It’s not your tweets that count, it’s the tweets in your circle – projected re-tweets amplify the effect
  • People are nice, and if they trust you, they will do what you ask
  • Use a social media style sheet for outsourcing
  • Fake Facebook check ins are a revelation – no one clicks on the link!!!
  • Cartoons are detrimental to the trust of your account – use a real person in your picture!
  • Mechanical Turk!

There was so much in this presentation and it was very fast paced, so if I tell you I either have to kill you, or you can wait for the presentation download!

Personal Branding Online – Hubert Sepidnam (Mr Taster) – Kaspid

Hubert Sepidnam runs an agency in Tehran – a place where Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are banned yet somehow there are 17 million users from Iran. This session was an interesting take on what you can do and how you can still reach people regardless of constraint.

Kaspid were unable to promote effectively from main company accounts with corporate content so they created a persona called ‘Mr Taster’ – Hubert’s alter ego who likes to taste food and have adventures online and use fun and engaging content which has helped to promote kaspid via the persona.

A fascinating journey with amazing cartoon graphics and inspiring way to ‘find the gap’.

Takeaways

  • People like food – people like to take pictures of their food
  • People like funny photos
  • Use the same information but present it differently to stand out (in Mr Tasters case, cartoon pictures on a donkey, in a plane etc)
  • Mr Taster now has 50,000 likes, and all of those users know that Hubert owns Kaspid!
  • In a matter of months one of the videos has 13,000 views
  • Traditional press that would not be interested in Kaspid activity are championing Mr Taster on a regular basis

Next Up – Internet Marketing Track

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Written By
Jackie Hole is an Award Winning Search Marketing consultant specialising in Paid Search, Conversion Improvement and Organic Search / SEO for the USA, Canada and European markets. Starting out in Multimedia & Interface Design, Jackie has over 15 years experience in online marketing and was recently awarded European Search Personality...
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