Social Media Marketing World was a great conference organised by Mike Stelzner and the Social Media Examiner team.

#SMMW13 as it was known on Twitter was a professional development conference for me as I wanted to see how brands and internet marketers were using social media so we could adapt best practices for the world of sport.  The networking events were phenomenal and rather than checking the tweets I was connecting with speakers and attendees at every opportunity.  (On that fact I found the Bizzabo app great for networking at conference, once I told people they could easily connect on Linkedin using the app).

I took the advice of good friend Justine Bloome who recently attended SXSW but committed to each session rather than suffering from FOMO and checking the Twitter feed of other sessions.  I setup a Twitter Archive Google Spreadsheet (thanks to Martin Hawksey who built TAGS) and here is some of the brief insights from the tweets shared from #SMMW13.

Twitter activity on Sunday and Monday

With over 20,000 tweets fired off by speakers, attendees and jealous tweeps watching the stream the Google Spreadsheet was bursting at the seams by the time I got home from on Monday night.

Here are some key stats:

  • Unique Tweets – 5152
  • RTs – 4175
  • Total Tweets – 20,072
  • Tweets per person (using #SMMW13) 18.9

Look at the Google Spreadsheet here (please be patient there is a lot of tweets, check out Summary and Dashboard tab)

#SMMW13 Day 1 Tweets

What did Day 2 look like?

Here are some key stats from Tuesday:

  • Unique Tweets – 7386
  • RTs – 5493
  • Total Tweets – 14,283
  • Tweets per person (using #SMMW13) 7.65 (perhaps a few sore heads from Networking Cruise)

Look at the SMMW13 Day 2 Google Spreadsheet here.

With a little less data the TAGS Explorer developed by Martin was able to process all the tweets.

Closing speaker Dave Kerpen dominating with a great closing keynote (and a bottle of Crystale).

Tweets from #SMMW13 - Social Media Marketing World - Day 2

Check out the live TAGS Explorer here.

So what did I learn from Social Media Marketing World?

This is just a brief Twitter recap of what was a great couple of days in San Diego, I attended the following sessions and will be sharing my takeaways from the sessions over the next few weeks.

  • Larry Benet – Advanced Networking – 2nd time I've seen Larry, great advice for networking.
  • Jay Baer  – How to create customers for life – Great session by Jay, look forward to his book Youtility.
  • Jason Miller – How to optimize your social channels for lead generation – Great insight into showing ROI for social media activity.
  • Brian Carter – Turning Social Advertising into leads and sales – Loved the Perpetial (Pro)motion Machine.
  • Steve Spangler – Just Tube it! Your content will make you a YouTube rockstar! – I wish my school science teacher was like Steve.
  • Sally Hogshead – How to Fascinate with your social media message – 9 second world so true but didn't need advice for drinking later that night.
  • Cliff Ravenscraft – 15 Tips for creating a podcast people can't live without – Great tips on getting started which I plan to do very soon.
  • Pat Flynn – Podcasting for more exposure, more leads and more money – Pat was one of my fave speakers from the event – subscribed.
  • Panel – How to transform organisational culture with social media – Good to hear how Sharpie, Four Seasons and Caterpillar use social media.
  • Panel – Building thriving communities on Facebook – All industries have similar issues; edge rank, trolls, content planning.
  • Melanie Duncan – How to use Pinterest to promote your content and grow your audience – Some great community engagement tactics explained.
  • Dave Kerpen – Why it pays to be Likeable – Great keynote to finish the conference, look forward to reading Likeable Business. I was lucky enough to sit with Dave at lunch and he told the story of his time on reality television, as he told it I realised I watched it! Check out Paradise Hotel.

Links from attendees

Do you have any notes or blog posts from sessions you attended?