Jim Tobin, with Ignite Social Media, Andy Beal, with Trackur.com, Tim Schigel, with ShareThis, Rick Klau, with Google, and Brad Hill, with Weblogs, talk about blogging at the Internet Summit on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009, in Raleigh. |
The second annual Internet Summit was held Nov. 4-5, 2009, at the Raleigh Convention Center.
The sold-out crowd of 1,200 heard from industry experts on Web-oriented technologies such as social media, online advertising, search engine optimization, mobile strategies, e-commerce, usability practices and viral video.
“It had a broad range of topics that are relevant to Internet businesses,” Erica Vandenberg, partner at Hall Strategic Solutions in Detroit, said of why she chose to attend the summit.
Vandenberg particularly enjoyed the panel session on blogging and personal branding.
Andy Beal, founder of social media monitoring tool Trackur.com, gave advice to session participants on how to increase the popularity of a blog.
Bestthinking.com was among the demo showcase companies at the Internet Summit. The Web site publishes content on a variety of topics. |
“Use your own voice, your humor, and then people will connect,” he said.
Brad Hill, director of AOL’s Weblogs, was also on the panel. He recommended people blog often to gain a loyal following.
Kevin Smith, senior designer at Consultwebs.com in Raleigh, enjoyed the social media panel session. His company deals primarily with law firm Web marketing and design.
Smith said lawyers can be reluctant to participate in social media.
“It is a challenge to try and bring the creativity (of social media) to a skeptical audience. They (lawyers) want to feel it out before jumping into it,” he said.
An issue that came up during the social media panel was whether or not people should be required to register before engaging in social media applications. The majority of panel experts favored registration.
TweetMyJobs.com was among the demo showcase companies at the Internet Summit. The Web site is the largest Twitter job board in the world. |
“With anonymous people, you have no accountability,” said Robyn Cobb, Cliqset marketer. “When people are accountable, you get more valuable information.”
Gian Fulgoni, with comScore, also talked about social media’s growing impact during one of the summit’s spotlight sessions.
“If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world,” he said.
Matt Van Horn, business development manager with Digg.com, followed Fulgoni’s state of the Internet presentation with social media integration advice for content producers.
He said over 20,000 stories are submitted to Digg every day. To increase the likelihood of your content making it to Digg’s home page, producers should submit a variety of content, not just their own. Van Horn also recommended that people comment and participate on the site.
Van Horn said Guardian.co.uk increased its site traffic significantly once a “Digg It” promo box was added on story pages.
Attendance for the summit was nearly double from last year, according Tech Media’s Scott Hedrick.
Tech Media and Raleigh-based Southern Capitol Ventures presented the event.
Thanks to CBC NMG’s Minnie Bridgers for this capcom story & these capcom photos.
