Net conferences on SMM, marketing and digital
I, like many readers of Thematic Media resources, have a great interest in the latest advances in information security. Since the release of the film “Hackers” (and I understand those who, as a teenager, found the era of personal computer development by enthusiasts), I imagined myself a kind of cyber-cowboy of a new virtual “wild west”. However, instead of studying the technology of the relevant profile, I went into the design, then into advertising, at the same time learning a simple stack of web technologies. The only outlet of the unfulfilled childhood dream was the introduction of the concept of growth hacking :
As you understand, such a proud title obliges to keep in the forefront of marketing thought. For example, what reports are prepared by information security experts for major conferences? Something absolutely insane: hacking a nuclear power plant from a mobile phone, intercepting the control of a cardio stimulator, de-anonymization into TOR, and the like (if I bend, it is not much). Breathtaking, isn't it? But let's imagine what the black-clad conference would look like if its program were designed in the manner of conferences on digital (excuse me - digital) marketing:
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Understand me correctly, I do not want to say that the topics of such reports would be completely useless. I am sure that a person with experience would be able to uncover non-obvious nuances or at least would make his presentation interesting and inspiring. However, getting to such conferences, you feel like a gold miner, sifting tons of sand in search of a gold grain. Why is that?
The conference is a product, and the manufacturer aims at the widest audience. Marketing conferences are probably the most advertised of all kinds of conferences. It comes to almost absurdity when you encounter advertising of a digital marketing conference in the St. Petersburg metro (if you don’t see the absurdity of this placement, or you live, for example, in a city where there is no metro, I’ll explain this because advertising products and services of the widest consumption and mostly high profitability For St. Petersburg now it is a mortgage, mobile communications, deposits, consumer electronics and food delivery). And the wider the target audience, the easier for perception should be the topic of the report. A highly specialized case may not affect the strings of the soul of the suffering.
The manufacturer also tends to spend less effort, with the expectation of maximizing profits (and therefore reducing risks). The creation of “content” is given to an “outsource”, and in fact, responsibility for quality is delegated. Possible claims will most likely be addressed to the speaker, and not to the manufacturer.
Reports of conferences on information security, one way or another, make the world more secure, explaining in detail what needs to be protected in existing systems, they require high qualification and many other restrictions to ensure that someone can reproduce what they heard in the report. But what does a speaker at a marketing conference get by disclosing his know-how? While the speech concerned traditional types of advertising, where it was difficult to reproduce the final result, but the speaker could easily try to copy the media itself, the speaker could describe the process of creating advertising in any way without any risk.
Let's rewind time a little backwards. Literally six months or a year before the term “muzzles” appeared in the environment of seo-shnik. Imagine, you notice that only a few links, installed on the main pages of third-party sites on yours, significantly raise you in the search results. You go to speak at the conference, talk about it - and thousands of satisfied seo-snik easily repeat your method that evening, thereby sharply devaluing its effectiveness.
Somehow, in a conversation with one comrade who had experience in organizing events, I was surprised that conferences were held on a weekday. To which he reasonably replied to me: “And who will spend their weekends on konfa? It is much more pleasant to take time off from work to the conference. ”
For conferences, parties, dances and dinner with speakers are now sold in the appendage. The entertaining character is strongly emphasized, is it any wonder that the topics of the reports are becoming more and more “casual”?
Are everyone satisfied with this state of affairs? Perhaps not, otherwise the organizers would not have attempted to convince us of the usefulness of their events. “Case studies” became the magic word, the final argument and the main reason to buy a ticket. There will be no water, there will be cases. From practitioners, not showmen. Thanks to the case studies, you will be able to find out that someone, advertising something, spent 3 rubles 80 kopecks for the transition and achieved a conversion of 12%, as well as the cost of advertising in the blogs of beginners youtube. You will expand your horizons in every possible way, becoming a mini-encyclopedia of someone's last year's recipes.
I do not deny the usefulness of cases as such, but this is not the concept from which, as if from bluetooth, everything automatically becomes better. Cases without analyzing the source data and the result obtained can only serve as a source of inspiration (they could, therefore I did), cases as the basis of the conference content should be outstanding and relevant, reproducible, they should illustrate the main idea of ​​the report, and not be its only content.
Once I was struck by a very interesting case. Imagine you receive a message on the eve of a football match, which says that such and such a team will win. The match passes and you understand that the winner was named exactly in the message. A week later, before the next match, you again get a message with the winning team. And again, the match ends with the predicted result. When the time comes for the next game, you are offered to buy a forecast to make a bet.
To those who are not familiar with this case, I explain. Fraudsters send a message to one group of recipients that team 1 will win, and another group of recipients - that team No. 2. The next time the message is sent only to those addressees for whom the forecast turned out to be true, exactly according to the same principle. As well as the final offer to buy the forecast, again, only to those who got the correct forecast both times.
The same algorithm can be used to create a factory of experts. Imagine that each prediction is signed by a unique first name and last name. If it turns out to be true, one of the following options retains the previous authorship. The chain of correct predictions for one expert cannot be infinite, but by setting a certain acceptable level of mistakes, you can get a certain number of first and last names that, being real people, would gain the authority of football experts. What could they say at the match prediction conference?
Well, if they were placed in an appropriate environment, future matches would be commented with a great deal of uncertainty, but they would willingly discuss the correct predictions for matches that have already taken place, I think it would be extremely difficult to guess the nature of their extraordinary competence.
Speakers known to me, in general, people with experience, professionals who are interesting to listen to. The right question at the time of the report, can save you time to find your own solution (if it resembles "the invention of a bicycle") or give the right direction. You can also enjoy the speaker's wit, his ability to find interesting examples or analogies. However, if you expect practical benefits, give preference to the speech of the speaker, who:
For any exceptions to these rules, please write in the comments. And see you at conferences :)
As you understand, such a proud title obliges to keep in the forefront of marketing thought. For example, what reports are prepared by information security experts for major conferences? Something absolutely insane: hacking a nuclear power plant from a mobile phone, intercepting the control of a cardio stimulator, de-anonymization into TOR, and the like (if I bend, it is not much). Breathtaking, isn't it? But let's imagine what the black-clad conference would look like if its program were designed in the manner of conferences on digital (excuse me - digital) marketing:
')
Understand me correctly, I do not want to say that the topics of such reports would be completely useless. I am sure that a person with experience would be able to uncover non-obvious nuances or at least would make his presentation interesting and inspiring. However, getting to such conferences, you feel like a gold miner, sifting tons of sand in search of a gold grain. Why is that?
Conference is a product
The conference is a product, and the manufacturer aims at the widest audience. Marketing conferences are probably the most advertised of all kinds of conferences. It comes to almost absurdity when you encounter advertising of a digital marketing conference in the St. Petersburg metro (if you don’t see the absurdity of this placement, or you live, for example, in a city where there is no metro, I’ll explain this because advertising products and services of the widest consumption and mostly high profitability For St. Petersburg now it is a mortgage, mobile communications, deposits, consumer electronics and food delivery). And the wider the target audience, the easier for perception should be the topic of the report. A highly specialized case may not affect the strings of the soul of the suffering.
The manufacturer also tends to spend less effort, with the expectation of maximizing profits (and therefore reducing risks). The creation of “content” is given to an “outsource”, and in fact, responsibility for quality is delegated. Possible claims will most likely be addressed to the speaker, and not to the manufacturer.
Zero-sum game
Reports of conferences on information security, one way or another, make the world more secure, explaining in detail what needs to be protected in existing systems, they require high qualification and many other restrictions to ensure that someone can reproduce what they heard in the report. But what does a speaker at a marketing conference get by disclosing his know-how? While the speech concerned traditional types of advertising, where it was difficult to reproduce the final result, but the speaker could easily try to copy the media itself, the speaker could describe the process of creating advertising in any way without any risk.
Let's rewind time a little backwards. Literally six months or a year before the term “muzzles” appeared in the environment of seo-shnik. Imagine, you notice that only a few links, installed on the main pages of third-party sites on yours, significantly raise you in the search results. You go to speak at the conference, talk about it - and thousands of satisfied seo-snik easily repeat your method that evening, thereby sharply devaluing its effectiveness.
Conference is a party
Somehow, in a conversation with one comrade who had experience in organizing events, I was surprised that conferences were held on a weekday. To which he reasonably replied to me: “And who will spend their weekends on konfa? It is much more pleasant to take time off from work to the conference. ”
For conferences, parties, dances and dinner with speakers are now sold in the appendage. The entertaining character is strongly emphasized, is it any wonder that the topics of the reports are becoming more and more “casual”?
It's all about cases
Are everyone satisfied with this state of affairs? Perhaps not, otherwise the organizers would not have attempted to convince us of the usefulness of their events. “Case studies” became the magic word, the final argument and the main reason to buy a ticket. There will be no water, there will be cases. From practitioners, not showmen. Thanks to the case studies, you will be able to find out that someone, advertising something, spent 3 rubles 80 kopecks for the transition and achieved a conversion of 12%, as well as the cost of advertising in the blogs of beginners youtube. You will expand your horizons in every possible way, becoming a mini-encyclopedia of someone's last year's recipes.
I do not deny the usefulness of cases as such, but this is not the concept from which, as if from bluetooth, everything automatically becomes better. Cases without analyzing the source data and the result obtained can only serve as a source of inspiration (they could, therefore I did), cases as the basis of the conference content should be outstanding and relevant, reproducible, they should illustrate the main idea of ​​the report, and not be its only content.
Statistical competence
Once I was struck by a very interesting case. Imagine you receive a message on the eve of a football match, which says that such and such a team will win. The match passes and you understand that the winner was named exactly in the message. A week later, before the next match, you again get a message with the winning team. And again, the match ends with the predicted result. When the time comes for the next game, you are offered to buy a forecast to make a bet.
To those who are not familiar with this case, I explain. Fraudsters send a message to one group of recipients that team 1 will win, and another group of recipients - that team No. 2. The next time the message is sent only to those addressees for whom the forecast turned out to be true, exactly according to the same principle. As well as the final offer to buy the forecast, again, only to those who got the correct forecast both times.
The same algorithm can be used to create a factory of experts. Imagine that each prediction is signed by a unique first name and last name. If it turns out to be true, one of the following options retains the previous authorship. The chain of correct predictions for one expert cannot be infinite, but by setting a certain acceptable level of mistakes, you can get a certain number of first and last names that, being real people, would gain the authority of football experts. What could they say at the match prediction conference?
Well, if they were placed in an appropriate environment, future matches would be commented with a great deal of uncertainty, but they would willingly discuss the correct predictions for matches that have already taken place, I think it would be extremely difficult to guess the nature of their extraordinary competence.
Practical advice to those who go
Speakers known to me, in general, people with experience, professionals who are interesting to listen to. The right question at the time of the report, can save you time to find your own solution (if it resembles "the invention of a bicycle") or give the right direction. You can also enjoy the speaker's wit, his ability to find interesting examples or analogies. However, if you expect practical benefits, give preference to the speech of the speaker, who:
- Does not write and does not sell books
- Is not the owner or the head of the "glamorous" agency
- Whose topic of the report is not generalized
- Whose topic of the report is not only buzzwords
- Works in a similar (your) or similar niche
- May have insider important services, platforms, applications
For any exceptions to these rules, please write in the comments. And see you at conferences :)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/300666/
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