This post originally appeared on the PNConnect blog.
The PNConnect team has been working together for a while now, delivering some truly compelling work for our clients. But while we were Yammer buddies and Facebook friends, many of us still hadn’t met in person.
That all changed last week when 40 Connectors from around the world came together in Orlando, Florida at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort, where we talked about our approach to brand publishing, shared examples of best practices and brainstormed new ideas. There was a lot of excitement and enthusiasm across the four days, coupled with a ton of practical collaboration.
Here are three of the topics that got delegates talking:
1. Brand publishing platforms deliver long term benefits.
We heard many examples of how brand publishing can deliver significant business results for our clients, in large part because the content has a lifespan beyond a tweet or Facebook update and so is visible to search engines. My colleague Josh Hallett wrote about this eloquently in his recent post on content decay, and we are increasingly seeing clients adopt this approach because they see business value in owning their communications channels and then amplifying that content via social media.
2. Inspiring ideas + interactivity = Charity 2.0.
We were lucky enough to hear from Paull Young of charity: water, who talked about the organization’s mission to bring clean drinking water to African villages. Digital has been smartly integrated throughout this young charity’s work, including an innovative feedback loop with donors. Drilling trucks tweet their location and activity, while simple Web tools make it easy for people to raise money and then see how it has been spent. The power of the mission – coupled with great storytelling, a strong brand identity and ease of getting involved – made for a compelling discussion. Learn more at www.charitywater.org.
3. In global social media, one size doesn’t fit all.
With colleagues from the United Arab Emirates, India, Mexico and many other countries in the room, we shared some fascinating international insights. For instance, Saudi Arabians are super-sharers who enthusiastically embrace social media to swap news and views (often using one of their three cellphones). Germans tend to question information they pick up through Facebook and Twitter, rather than take it at face value. And in India the sheer scale of a population of 1 billion with widely varying income levels means the market is impossible to categorize neatly. All of these points are important considerations when developing smart digital campaigns to build in-country engagement.
We’ll be sharing more on PNConnect’s innovative approach to digital marketing on our blog, so stay tuned.