5 Things I Learned at SXSW
My time spent in Austin at SXSW was terrific. I met some interesting new friends (both domestic and abroad).
Here's the top 5 things I took away:
1. Everyone hates social media experts.
While we can all agree social media is changing the way we communicate with consumers in the advertising world, the parasites that circle the fringe of marketing gaming conversations are giving modern marketers a bad name. I was in a few panels where people named themselves as social media experts and got laughs and boos.
Lesson: Teach your clients to use social media. Don't use it for them.
2. Publishing content people want to read will make it easier to find ways of charging someone for it.
The talk around how to "monetize" is universal in the interactive business. The people who seemed to have the biggest range of options were the ones serving their audience.
Lesson: If people find your stuff valuable there will be a way to get money for it. Focus on your audience.
3. Google's push into mobile goes beyond selling phones.
Google wants to index everything. You can see it in their maps, web search, images, video – everything. It occurred to me when I was at a panel about Google in China and the potential for Android came up. They know people are looking things up everywhere, and they want to be the one to look things up on.
Lesson: This is the 11th hour for thinking about mobile. If you're not considering mobile now you're about to fall behind.
4. You're not using e-mail well.
Talking with folks from Campaign Monitor was interesting. They believe in e-mail like no one else. And they should, they make the best mail system out there. They pointed at good use of email: what's new, we're still here messages. I was surprised that email crafted as a conversation did so well, since I've always looked at email deployments like a one-way medium.
Lesson: Email is a privilege your customers give you. Make it worth it.
5. Failure is a viable option.
At some point we all fuck up. Knowing what kind of failure you're facing is a skill a lot of people don't realize they lack. I learned about the two kinds of failure: recoverable and unrecoverable.
Recoverable failure is the kind where you can still correct your course. These are the kind of situations like not hitting targets in your campaigns, or having a critical error in your application.
Unrecoverable failures are the kind where you accidentally email your client and call them a cunt. There's no recourse.
Lesson: Know when you cut the loss and walk away. Sometimes recovery isn't worth it for anyone.
I'll definitely head back to SXSW next year. Probably just with an interactive badge though. And with health insurance this time.
