Recap: Connect, Collide and Communicate

By Jennifer Cole  Proud  supporter of the @WichitaFlag and #ILoveWichita Jennifer is a Content and Community Manager at Sullivan Higdon & Sink and a member of Digital Wichita, a group of local marketers working to do great things in the world of Wichita's social media. We are thrilled to have her as a guest blogger as she recaps last week's Connect, Collide, Communicate luncheon that was held in conjunction with Exposure. Last week, Wichita was graced with the presence of a brilliant visual marketer, and many of us had the opportunity to listen to him speak! Wait, you weren't there? Then you get the Jen-condensed version: First off, our speaker was none other than Jeff Sieh! Jeff is the founder of the Manly Pinterest Tips Blog and a contributor to Social Media Examiner. He brought some fascinating insight with him and presented his materials in a highly-captivating way, a way that I can't do justice solely with a LinkedIn post. (so you should just be sure to check out his website to get a better grasp on his style) Jeff Sieh talking digital marketing to a group of 100+ Wichita marketers. Speaking of style -- style and branding is precisely what Jeff came to Wichita to speak about! Jeff provided us with excellent examples of marketers such as Rebekah Radice and Peg Fitzpatrick who have their own personal branding down to an art. Do you follow either of these ladies on Pinterest? If you do, then you know exactly what Jeff is talking about. If you don't, then you should go to Pinterest and follow them both right now and start soaking in the visual consistency that they both strongly demonstrate. According to Jeff's presentation, the brain processes visual information 60K times faster than the time it takes for the brain to decode text. Intriguing, but not necessarily surprising. What are things that you can pay special attention to when establishing your own visual content? Jeff provided 5 things to consider:

1. Real (Is it authentic/genuine? Is it straight to the point?)
2. Relevant (Does it matter to your follower? Will they find it to be valuable?)
3. Relational (Are you available to your followers? Do you answer their questions and engage with them?)
4. Repurpose-able (Can it be used in different ways across all of your channels? i.e. Blog, Pinterest, Website, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
5. Rare (Is it unique? Are you the only place that your followers are seeing what you have to offer? Are you serving up your knowledge in an original way? Don't be a copy-cat. Find your true self and your true style.)

One thing that you DON'T want to underestimate is the growing power of video. Did you know that Instagram is now allowing advertisers to use 30 second spots? (I'm thrilled!) One of the stats that Jeff provided was that 74% of internet traffic will be video by 2017, and I don't doubt that.  Personally, I've noticed that I spend a lot of time viewing videos on Facebook alone lately. What's one of my favorite take-away from Jeff's presentation on Thursday? I really appreciated when he showed us the evolution of his art from when he started his blog to the art he currently produces. The transition and learning experience was very evident when he was going through the slides and it just goes to show that we're all learning and growing. It's the only way to get any better as a human and as a professional. You can connect with Jennifer on Twitter and LinkedIn, and much thanks again to her for sharing her recap with us!