Look beyond Websites and start thinking, Integrated Digital Experience

My company, Ascentium, was named by Forrester Research, as one of the top web design agencies in the country last summer. It was an honor and I think a fair reflection of some great Web sites we’ve been building. But at the risk of diminishing the importance of Web site, I believe we’ve entered a new era, when producing a great web site is not enough to have an effective web presence and to keep up with your customer’s digital experiences.

The other week, I had the privilege of speaking at the first annual Integrated Marketing Communications conference in Kansas City. My topic was the introduction of the Integrated Digital Experience concept. Its premise is fairly simple and does not represent rocket science. But like most important concepts, its not the understanding that’s difficult, it’s the implementation that’s hard.

I’ve uploaded my slide deck to SlideShare and in future posts, will begin elaborating on what IDE means and what are some easy steps to making it happen. Check it out at http://www.slideshare.net/jkottcamp/the-digital-experience .

Social Media; The Battle between Hype and Reality

I had the opportunity to speak to the Forrester Research Technology Marketing Executive Council recently in conjunction with the Technology Forum in Chicago. The central theme of my talk was simply stated, as marketers, we need to start integrating social media into the rest of your marketing strategy and programs and stop treating Social Media as some magical new quasi religion.

I do not mean that there are not unique attributes of each of the various new channels, media and technologies that comprise social media; blogs, social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter that we must examine, learn how to use and take advantage of in creating dynamic and meaningful experiences for consumers and businesses alike.

What I do mean is that instead of starting off with the attitude of “I’ve got to get me some of that Social Media stuff,” and invariably jumping right into figuring out which technology you need to buy, install and staff up to support, marketers needs to go back to their overall marketing strategies and figure out how each of the facets of social media can be leveraged to support their strategies, not drive them.

At this Forrester Research event, I had the privilege of delivering my talk on the heels of a presentation by Peter Burris, a research director at Forrester and a really smart and articulate guy. Peter’s theme was based on his recently released piece, Turning Your B2B Web Site Into A Community Hub. His premise, which I completely agree with, is that you need to start looking at how you integrate social media into your corporate Web presence. It is also related to the presentation I did at the Integrated Marketing Communications conference in Kansas City (see my post entitled, It’s time to look beyond Websites and start looking at an Integrated Digital Experience).

I won’t go through my entire presentation here, I’ve uploaded it at SlideShare and I encourage you to take a look. http://www.slideshare.net/jkottcamp/marketing-and-social-media-tmec-oct09

Socialnomics Video – a fun “shift happens” style video for social media

I just looked at a very good short video making the case for the importance of Social Media in today’s world. it’s done ala the Shift Happens videos of a couple of years ago and you have to dig into the blog to find the sources of the some of the statements, not all of which appear to be as documented as I’d like to see. However it still is a good way to spend 4 minutes of your day and puts social media into a context most people haven’t grasped yet. check it out at http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/