Monday, April 30, 2012

"The Latest Wave" Internet Conference a Success





Approximately 130 marketing professionals participated in "The Latest Wave" in Internet Marketing at NIU's Naperville Center on April 19. Included in the group were about thirty students from the Interactive Marketing Program, most of whom will be graduating in several weeks with our certificate in Interactive Marketing or another specialization that prepares them for a career in search, data analytics, social, etc. Check out our interactive marketing program and see how you can benefit by hiring students and interns.

The Opening Plenary Session featured keynote speaker Ron Jacobs, President, Jacobs & Clevenger and Co-Author of Successful Direct Marketing Methods. Ron shared his insights on measurement and the merging of digital and Interacitve. Ron claimed that marketers are drowning in data and that in fact:

  • 1 in 3 marketers make decisions without critical information
  • 1 in 2 marketers don't  have the information they need to perform their job
  • Knowledge workers spend 19 hours each week searching for information
Ron went on to talk about the benefits and weaknesses of Key Performance indicators and how to measure some of the newer media channels such as social and mobile.

The conference had a special track on social media and a general track with a B2B emphasis and topics such as search, analytics and mobile. We featured speakers from Dell, CDW, Walgreens and other leading Interactive Marketing practitioners. The conference web site is here for more information on The Latest Wave in Internet Marketing 2012.  Check out what happened by monitoring the Twitter feed at #niuinetconf.  There are some good comments and questions on that feed.

Over lunch, there were networking tables set up on various topics and facilitated by our board members. The picture above shows our students taking advantage of the networking opportunity provided by topics such as how to make the transition from school to work during the first year or how to successfully navigate through agency life.

Also over lunch, attendees could choose from a variety of hands-on workshops demonstrating the basics in Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and HTML. The best part is that these sessions were taught mostly by our current students, Jenny Yam, Tyler Miller and David Delaplane. Everyone seemed to get something out of the event and it was a successful day. I am sorry for those who could not attend.

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