Who owned it at Dreamforce 2010?

This week has been a blur, after attending the 8th annual Dreamforce.  It was nearly twice as big as last year with 30,000 registrants.  Wow!  I thought I’d recap with the winners and losers for this year’s event.

Let’s start with the losers:

Paper Show Guides
I am sure somewhere, someone had a physical booth map.  And a show guide.  But there definitely weren’t many floating around.  Especially compared with the number of registrants.  From the Dreamforce mobile app, and the full web portal, there was no need for paper.  The final test, the amount of trash floating around Moscone, was pretty minimal.  I only saw business cards and other card sized handouts.

Ineffective Booth Staff
Vendors who did not use every opportunity to maximize booth traffic.  I visited a few booths in hopes for prizes, sag or party invites.  Only about 10% of the time did anyone elevator pitch and scan me.  I found that puzzling, for 2 reasons.  One, no one should get something for nothing.  And two, you never know which contact will help you out in the future.  Too bad for one vendor since I had just finished chatting with someone looking for recommendations in their space.  They could have been on the list, if they bothered to tell me what they did.

PCs
Between Marc Benioff’s praise of mobile devices and iPads through out the show and poor wifi performance.  It looks like computers were the losers this time around.  Wifi was sporadic, and all of the attention was on Chatter Mobile.  Oddly, all of my Mac toting colleagues seemed to be able connect to the wifi more reliably than me and the PC toters.  Looks like I might need to add a prepaid 3g or 4g broadband stick to my conference esssentials kit.

Winners:

Salesforce
Well, of course SFDC should win at its own event.  But considering the huge turnout and the big social medial splash, things are pretty sunny in the cloud.  So sunny, SFDC has upped the levels of sponsorship to include Titanium.  At this rate, 2012 will have a Stratospheric level.

Actors, Performers, and DJs
There were a lot of actors in attendance this year.  Siverpop had an old Hollywood themed party on Monday, with people dressed up as Marilyn Monroe and other screen stars.  The Bill Clinton keynote had a George Bush impersonator.  There was a troupe of cloud contortionists, or something like that.  And as you entered each hall you were greeted with a DJ spinning dance and pop favorites or 70s style dance/funk/jazz.  Fun times for sure.  An unlikely gig, but great for non-card carrying actors.

Apple
Apple won big time this year.  With the new iPad apps and Benioff’s ringing endorsement of the product things started off pretty well for Apple.  But As I walked around the event, many people had iPad contests.  Many attendees were toting iPAds to the sessions and navigating SF, iPad in hand.  For some organizations, iPads were portable demo stations and sign up sheets.  It looks like 2011 will be the year of iOS.  Oh, and Benioff plugged iTunes to pick up the theme song of the event.

Dreamforce Attendees and Stevie Wonder
Dreamforce attendees got a double dose of Stevie Wonder at a Saasy concert and during the Day 2 keynote.  After an amazing concert at the Global Gala, the candid Q&A at the Bill Clinton keynote, made attending Dreamforce was a treat.  It was also refreshing to see Benioff’s candid conversation with Stevie, as the event was mostly staged and planned.

The biggest winner at Dreamforce 2010 is ……

Will.i.am and the Black Eyed Peas
BEP was the soundtrack of the show with “Own it” playing a prominent role in the opening keynote and Will.i.am appearances everywhere.  Snippets of “Own it” played no less than 10 times throughout the opening keynote.   Other BEP from the album played between keynote speakers, sessions and more.  Considering the album dropped last week, this was the ultimate promotional appearance.  Although I don’t want to “own it” and I am sure plenty of other people did and they added at least 10000 digital downloads by the show attendees.

Who were your winners and losers?

Do women need to be jerks to succeed?

This week I’m excited to be on TechnoGirlTalk‘s podcast!  And the buzz of the week, Clay Shirky’s post, “A rant about women.”  We all know how many people spew off nonsense day after day on the internet, but this post stuck a cord all over the place.

Shirky’s idea?  Women need to be more ballsy to get what they want.  And act like an arrogant jerk.  All successful men do this. (Sure.  All arrogant ones is probably more accurate.)

This post reminded me of a life changing incident early in my career.  I have never had an especially loud voice.  I tend to speak quickly, and quietly.  Some people possibly mistake this for being shy and soft-spoken, but the only accurate adjective here is soft-spoken.  As you can imagine, sometimes people might miss my comments during a conversation.

Anyway back to the story, one day in a company meeting we were brainstorming where to go next with a client.  I chimed in with a great idea.  No one heard my idea, so i started to speak up to repeat it, and my so-called “friend” repeated my idea word for word REALLY loudly.  Suddenly everyone was praising his awesome idea.  Fast forward a couple of weeks.  Suddenly everyone thought he was a “strategic thinker” and he landed the best projects and a promotion.  Oddly, I never noticed any exceptional performance or anything else to differentiate him from the other people on our team.  Was it because he was a guy?  A better employee?  Something else?  I’ll never know, but I learned a couple of important lessons after that meeting.

1. Get to your meetings early and sit near the important people.  If you sit right next to them they’ll always hear your comments. 
2. The best way to get your idea implemented is to be the #1 cheerleader.  But this doesn’t mean you have to be a traditional cheerleader.  One of my favorite approaches is find other cheerleaders.  Talk to other influential people about the challenges and problems you notice, and potential avenues to solve them.  You want them to espouse your message without the full details.  Then when you present your idea, they’ll chime in with messaging consistent with your reasoning.
3. Confidence is your #1 ally in selling your idea.  If you believe in it wholeheartedly, everyone else will.
4. Don’t be afraid to interrupt people trying to talk over you. You can do this in a polite and effective way.  And still get your point across. I used to err on the side of letting people finish their spiel, but tactful interruptions are sometimes the best defense.

These days I am know as the “idea girl.”  My co-workers come to me to brainstorm or help them figure out if their plan makes sense.  A role I’ve always wanted to have.    And lots of my ideas get implemented, no megaphone required.

And how about that rant? Every time I think we have all seen the many types of “role models” for women in business, another sad story about a girl who spends too much time letting her self image be influenced by someone else’s crazy ideas.

The best path for women to success at work: be yourself, and ignore all of the jerks out there with their unsolicited advice.

Try it: Twitter’s not just for trendy techies (and celebs)

So I wanted to call this post “to tweet ot not to tweet,” but that is clearly played out.

After being a pretty avid user for the past 6 months or so, I thought it was time to save some observations and tips.  I first joined Twitter to update my Facebook status without using a data plan from my cell phone.  (Yup, I’m cheap.)

Here are some upfront notes:  my tips are aimed at people who are using twitter for b2b marketing, market research, networking or personal branding the tips might not apply to you if you have different goals and objectives.

Let’s get started.  Here are my tips on using twitter effectively:

Choose your name wisely. With your online identity you have a couple of choices.  Use your real name, use your nickname, use your hacker name, or be random.  If you are trying to brand yourself, I’d stick to something that is a lot closer to your name and a lot further from Britneys1stfan.  But don’t forget that in Twitter characters count.  So if you have a 20 letter last name, please don’t follow the first_last format.  Considering that every reply or direct message much include your username, you don’t want to eat up 40 characters on the name alone.  Try to stick with something in the neighborhood of 20 characters or less.

Follow your interests, not the crowd.  There are zillions of “best people to follow on Twitter lists.”  They usually include celebrities:  tech, pop culture or business.  These lists are irrelevant if those people don’t discuss stuff you care about.  Seek out people that discuss the topics you are interested in.  Use Twitter search to look for conversations using keywords you are interested in.  Look at your favorite blogs, magazines, newspapers, organizations, and people to see if they are on Twitter.  That’s who you should follow — not the 100K+ follower-club members because they are on the list.

Webinars + Social Media = 75% more attendees

I wanted to follow up last week’s post on landing pages, webinars and social media with some final results.  Last week I focused on the improvements in landing page conversion. This time I will focus on actually event attendance and registrations.  The good news is social media leads to more leads.

Part one: overall stats

Here are the stats from last week updated with the final results from the event.  Plus a few bonus stats.

1. The blog and the email drew equivalent visitors and pre-registerants.
2. Email receivers > landing page visitors? 3% This seems to stack up in the average for B2B
3. Conversion rate of blog visitors > landing page visitors?  40% — 13X improvement in response rate
4. The conversion rate for blog readers > pre-registrations?  26%
5. The conversion rate for people who didn’t visit the blog, but went to the landing page was 22%
6. The overall conversion rate for the landing page was 34% (better)
7. People who clicked on the landing page from the blog registered 67% of the time
8. 50% of attendees came directly from reading our blog post
9. # of pre registrations vs. the previous, similar campaign? 75% more
10. 80% of new suspects were from the blog.  3% from paid search.  3% from Natural search.  The rest from our website.

Part two: profile of blog readers

After tallying up the results, here is the pattern from the blog readers.

1. They were likely to visit the landing page vs. people who received an email for the event.  (Email recipients were opt-ins that requested more info on the topic or to hear about our upcoming events)
2. It took 18X more impressions (email receivers vs. blog visitors) to get to the same number of pre-registered people
3. The social media efforts increased the number of pre-registered people by 75% Yes, I mean 75% more people (compared with a similar previous event)
4. Most of the new “names” came directly from our blog and had no previous interaction with us, or our website.
5. 50% of these newly acquired suspects attended the event

What I’d love?  A better way to connect blog traffic sources.  search.  incoming link.  The good news: we are getting much closer to end to end marketing analytics. Online, offline and social media.

Is it worth an extra 90-120 minutes of prep time to double your webinar attendance, by using social media?

You betcha. 

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400% increase in landing page conversions with blogging + social networks

We tried something new to promote our latest webinar.  More social media.  Less email.  The results so far are pretty interesting.  These additional activities added approximately 90 minutes to the typical time used to promote events.  And replaced multiple email invites so overall the time spent was probably pretty close to the typical amount.  We found out that social media efforts drove up pre-registrations for our upcoming webinar!

We had about 10 days to promote this event.  Here was the plan in a nutshell:

• Create a registration landing page to capture visitors (outside of the actual meeting tool — Go to Webinar, our marketing automation tool is Pardot’s Prospect Insight)
• Send an email to our lists: interested in news and events or that topic
• Blog about the upcoming event, with the appropriate tags
• We already tweet our blog posts, so we will continue as normal (using Hootsuite to schedule tweets and the like)
• Post a link to our posts in relevant LinkedIn groups we are members of
• Schedule a couple extra tweets right before the event

Here are the stats to date.  I’ll post some final stats after the event.  But the ones so far are really encouraging.

1. Blog post stats:  the traffic was pretty similar to a normal post, but the click-through rate was much better than usual
2. 18% of blog page views were from direct from Twitter — this is pretty typical for us
3. 40% of the blog post views were from Linkedin discussions (this was the first time we used LinkedIn this way.  One link was removed from the news section, but no big deal)
4. Typical click through rate on posts is about 20%
5. The conversion rate for blog readers to registrations?  22%
6. The conversion rate of blog visitors > landing page visitors?  30%
7. Typical landing page conversion rate for us?  15%
8. The conversion rate for people who didn’t visit the blog, but went to the landing page was 17%
9. The overall conversion rate for the landing page was 31% (better)
10. People who clicked on the landing page from the blog registered 75% of the time
    
11. 59% of attendees came directly from reading our blog post

And if you ask me, that’s proof that social media leads to leads. 

Take a look, 75% of the people who read the blog and visited the registration page registered for the event.

And 20% of the post readers registered for the event.  I wish I could convert 20% of my website visitors. 

Only time will tell how much revenue is created, but for b2b marketers getting qualified prospects is half the battle.

I really shouldn’t have posted these stats and tips, because now LinkedIn might get clobbered with webinar invites. Hopefully people will try to stay relevant.  Unlike this discussion I saw earlier this week:  a design company posted a link to their latest project.

Huh?  What does this actually have to do with the topic at hand? Wouldn’t it have been more targeted to post the pitch for design services on the Technology Marketers group?  My 2 cents.

OK back to social media.  I think this is proof it works.  What’s your take?  Do you have any social event marketing and lead generation strategies?

Lying on LinkedIn: Comedy or Career Suicide?

Are you using LinkedIn, the professional social networking site?  It is the go to place for your online resume and networking.

So one of the paramounts of LinkedIn, so I thought, was the fact that people were pretty real.  Since it is your professional life.  And well, pretty easy to verify.

Imagine my surprise yesterday, when I got a message from a co-worker pointing to the profile of one of our ex-coworkers.  This former co-woker worked at our company somewhere between 3-6 months.  I can’t recall, but it was closer to 3 than 6. I’ll call him Bobby (I don’t think I am connected to any real Bobby’s.   This is a pseudonym).

The current profile is actually the 3rd version of his job description I have seen on LinkedIn since he left over a year ago.

Rev 1:  He worked with us for about 9 months or a year. To keep the story up, he asked a few people to fib for him in case any reference calls came their way.  An exaggeration, yes.  But I know he was aiming to fill the gap in his resume.  Expected.  Almost.

Rev 2:  He started a new position in another company after a couple months of job hunting.  Same job title.  Suddenly the entry for my company changed.  His profile said he worked with us for about 3.5 years.  The end date was a full 2 years before he actually worked at our company.  He also took credit for the successes of that time.  Keep in mind half of his LinkedIn contacts from the company weren’t around during this fake tenure.

Rev 3:  The current version.  He has merged the ideas of version 1 and 2.  So he took the original start date from Rev 1.  And now says he is currently working at our company.  One fatal flaw?  His profile is still linking to the last company he worked for under the “my company” link.  Oops.  (Do you think the LinkedIn lies have any relationship to the change in employment status?)

So Bobby is a pathological liar.  That is the only reasonable explanation.  My current co-workers?  We all got a good laugh about the current profile (as with the 2nd).  I can’t say that we are shocked about the whole thing.  Do I want to be a reference for this person.  No way.  And I the main thing I wonder about now…if the entry for my company is a big lie, is the rest 100% B.S? Or just 50%.  I guess I’ll never know.

My motivation this week: getting to work and GTD

How I am feeling this week:

Inspired by Obama

Thanks Idea Sandbox.

Find inspiration in random places

Over the weekend I went to check out the Belly Dance Superstars show.  There were a few fusion performances with hip hop inspired music, latin music and even ballet dancing.   Pretty broader than the typical “Arab cultural dance” that we are used to.  Over the summer, during the AIDS walk I heard some women comment on the belly dance troupe and how “No brothers would be into me belly dancing at home” or something to that effect.  I thought that was puzzling, because all though Arabic music is “foreign” to the hip hop generation, if you look closely (or not that closely) you’ll see plenty of dance move cross over.  Ok maybe the finger cymbals won’t be in the next Ludacris video, but you know there is plenty of hip shaking in all modern popular music.

So here’s the point, as marketers sometimes we think that other techniques do not apply, because they companies are way different than we are (b2c techniques don’t translate to b2b.  Technology marketing techniques have no relevance to the manufacturing industry and so on)  You never know where your next influece will come from, so look at everything.  There are a good ideas lurking everywhere.  Even from the “homeless” Marin teenagers hanging out in the Haight.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the cheerleading movie, Bring it On, but their winning routine was inspired by looking at movement in martial arts, dance and everywhere else — exactly what we have to do!  And I bet you never thought that you’d learn a business lesson from a teeny bopper movie. 

So look to nontraditional influences for new ideas.

New to the workforce? Here are some tips for newbies

This post is dedicated to all of the interns and entry-level people entering the workforce.  (A few exist, we have some).

Anyway there are a few little tips I have for you to make your transition a lot easier.  And help you move up the chain higher.

1. Projects are tests.  But not the test you think.  Really everyone is testing how you think, and how you approach a project.  When it comes time to present your results or outcome, don’t forget your supporting information.  Your notes, your comparison charts.  And try to make it look pretty.  This will make you look detail oriented and well-organized.  Great for a new employee.
2. Your co-workers can be red lights or green lights, so learn how to appeal to them so the put your projects first.  A few tips.  Be sensitive to the fact they have their own projects.  Offer to help to take some tasks of their plate to help move your project up higher on the to do list.  Be sure to describe how the project benefits your co-worker (and their growth) instead of hoe much YOU need them to do it.  Unless you are their superior, they don’t care!
3. Be nice to everyone in the office.  Your first few months are meant for observation.  You need to figure out who the influencers are.  ANd there may be no relationship to job title and level of influence.
4. Get involved with as many types of projects as you can.  It will help you not get pigeon-holed and also help you make cross department allies.

These are my only thoughts right now, but I’ll repeat if I come up with more tips.

– Jame Ervin