A New Generation Marketer

This blog was originally posted by me on BostInnovation, a Boston-based blog shining the light on the local start up community and what it has to offer. We at BostInnovation discuss new product launches, social media and new marketing, entrepreneurs and lessons learned. You can follow us on Twitter @BostInnovation.

On Tuesday, Lenox-based ThoughtLead, led by our friends Steve Haase and Sam Rosen, organized the shortest virtual marketing conference ever — the Influencer Project.

This magical hour of online content, sponsored by HubSpot, Marketing Profs, Anne Holland’s Which Test Won, Rack Space, Winstanley Partners, and ReadWriteWeb featured 60 brilliant minds in the marketing field who spoke for 60 seconds each.

The Influencer Project was developed for a very interesting reason. When we talked to Hasse, he explained that the project was actually a bit of much-needed marketing for his company.

“It’s a funny thing, because it was born from a pretty high-pressure situation,” he admitted. “Basically, our business needed a hit. We needed to grow in a hurry, since we had only recently launched our web presence after spending lots of time and money on a software platform that wasn’t panning out. We spent time doing services after that, but had transitioned away from those as well. So we were in a tight spot, but endlessly optimistic.”

The Influencer Project was designed to inspire virtual attendees and empower them to grow their online influence. Haase and Rosen said, “We know so many people who are up to amazing things but aren’t getting the kind of traction or attention they deserve. So we created this event to deliver all the tools and perspective someone would need to make a big difference using the Internet.”

Many companies, including HubSpot and Rackspace, have created events, conferences and webinars featuring incredible content for the purpose of gaining traction in the market. These big content pushes can be very successful, and Hasse says he feels the Influencer Project was a hit for ThoughtLead as well. They knew they needed a cool idea to gain attention, and found the perfect means to do so.

This idea, while brilliant, came at a whim. “We let our imagination run wild and came up with the “60-in-60″ format. It tickled us when we first thought of it, so we knew we had to run with it,” Hasse continued. They didn’t want to mock the same formats that other companies were doing, such as hour-long lectures or sponsored events, so they worked outside of the box and came up with this intriguing event that attracted over 750 live listeners and 2,400 live tweeters.

To give you an idea of what this information-packed conference was like, it was similar to a college style ‘power hour.’ Instead of music, it was smart marketers and instead of alcohol, participants consumed tons of information and insights. In this short amount of time, listeners learned more about new marketing than they possibly could have in a week of reading through eBooks and watching webinars.

I entered the Boston marketing scene about eight months ago and have already learned many of the major concepts these people spoke of, but no webinar or book I read in the past could have summed up all of these ideas better.

In just a short amount of time, attendees learned the importance of community building, engaging with customers offline, helping others to succeed, and creating and sharing incredible content.

Here are a few of the key takeaways this amazing event produced:

David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing and PR explained how transparency helps build your company as a thought leader by sharing things with people that other companies may not be willing to.

Scott Porad, CEO of Cheezburger Network, stressed that we must not only make connections with people online, but offline too. This builds trustworthy, meaningful relationships.

Boston’s social maven Joselin Mane spoke of the importance of really making connections with people in person first and then developing a strong relationship online via social media. He also suggested that when you meet someone, you should make it a point to introduce them to someone new so they will remember you for that.

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb is naturally early in the news cycle on the web, being the lead writer for RWW. He advised us all to be early in the news cycle as well and to detect and articulate patterns. Content creators must find those early voices and figure out who is working on new things. Then, the content creator must add in their original thinking to the breaking news to add meaningful value.

Guy Kawasaki suggested marketers develop a digital impression. He says we must repeat our tweets several times a day; that will result in similar click throughs each and more impressions total. He has a large Twitter presence, and it is no wonder why.

Justin Levy, who unveiled his new book in Boston last week, stressed the importance of listening. We must listen to conversations going on around us since not all communities and markets are the same.

We were truly thrilled to tune into this intense marketing conference, and all of our current marketing ideologies were either reinforced or enhanced during this one-hour period. For those of you who missed this information packed event, visit http://influencerproject.com to download the MP3 and transcript of 60 in 60.

What were your thoughts of this virtual conference? Tell us some of your most valuable takeaways in the comments section below.

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