Dublin Web Summit - Best Of Day 2

By Alan Coleman on 20 Oct 2012

Hello and welcome to our Day 2 favourite speakers guide. Thursday kicked off another fine day of talks from some of the brightest minds in the tech industry right now. Here at Wolfgang, we’ve compiled our 5 favourite talks from Day 2 of the event. We hope that you enjoy them and be sure to let us know who your favourite speakers were over the 2 days. Joanna Lord @JoannaLord Joanna had the task of kicking off the Digital Stage on Day 2 where fatigue was prominent due to people’s late night antics the previous evening. However she did a wonderful job of grabbing the audience’s attention through a thorough 13-minute presentation packed with information. Joanna talked about how we live in a world of “social consumers” nowadays. It’s no longer just about e-commerce and completing a sale but much more than that. It’s about building engagement, loyalty and brand communities. It’s about extending the value of a consumer than a once off purchase. Coming from a background of Lading Page Optimization she follows this new method of thinking to improve the CRO at SEOMoz. She specified 4 areas that need to be focused on.

Your Story: A fundamental problem with marketers is that they are not focusing on the why of their product. A simple “to make money” is not the why for your organisation. It is the fundamental backbone of why your company exists and should tell your story. Joanna borrows this theory from Simon Senek’s Golden Circle Theory, which can be seen, on TedX here.
Your Relationships: Build your company relationships. If you’re happy with your partners and you trust them, show it. Place them on your websites and create special offers for them to enjoy.
Your Triggers: Marketers currently focus too much on words as triggers however Joanna argued how human beings think in many more ways. We now think deeper than the best or cheapest and rely on social interactions when choosing a brand to check out.
Your Thank You: This is the first chance for companies to turn a consumer into a long-term investment. A good thank you page can help to build up brand loyalty and a sense of feeling for your brand.

Bas Van Den Beld @BasVanDenBeld Here at Wolfgang, we were very excited to hear what Bas had to say and he didn’t disappoint. Bas has a very unusual background in that he is a former history teacher, quite possibly the most opposite subject matter to which he deals with nowadays. Bas uses these skills to his benefit however. As a former historian, he was thought to question the work of which he read. Google is doing the same now. Gone are the days where you can be your own authority regarding your business, this will no longer suffice. Google doesn’t care about your message; it cares about your authorities message. Much like in real life, we like to trust what people tell us. Google is working this belief further and further into its search algorithm as to give the most relevant results back to its users. Bas recommends exploiting this factor to your advantage and using social tools particularly Google Plus. Google Plus offers distinct advantages over other social tools. Firstly and most evidently, this can be attributed to the fact that it is Google’s personal social network! On top of that Google Plus allows both a face and author name to be associated with websites on the SERP. This gives the social and reliable factor of authority that Google wishes to replicate on its search engine. Bas finished with a very important point regarding it. Google Plus is a data mine, not a Facebook killer. Maya Baratz @MBaratz There is very little to say on the subject of Maya’s talk other than it was quite an inspiring and thought provoking speech. Her unique delivery (Maya prepared a 13 minute piece without slides) really reached down inside of people to make them think. Maya spoke on the growing trend in society today to outsource our memories to digital means. I know most of us are guilty of this in the office, relying on photos uploaded on Facebook or videos posted to remember past memories. Equally we rely on tools such as Google Maps and emails to run our life and our offline activities. In a bizarre turn of events, we now give away our memory in turn to remember better. Cindy Gallop @CindyGallop Cindy came to the Web Summit and she had a few things that she wanted to get off her chest. She felt that the online community was not doing anything to help her or her business. As a female startup founder, there is little in terms of support. Equally due to the nature of her business, she found it very difficult in certain areas. She suffered payment issues with several big name brands such as Paypal, Amazon and Google Checkout due to the title of her business. She finished with 2 controversial but lasting messages. Firstly the tech insutry needs to get over sex. Secondly the people of Ireland need to upload videos of themselves having sex to her website (Yes I did just say that). Cindy’s passionate speech received easily the biggest applaud and was the most talked about on the day. Ryan Holmes @Invoker If you've ever doubted yourself and your abilities to become something in the tech industry, Ryan is a fascinating story that you should read. Ryan grew up on a 40 acre farm in the 1970's where his parents decided to take themselves off the grid and live the simple life. This was a problem for a young boy fascinated with technology and computers. In order to get around this, he woud hook a cable up to his mothers car and work off that power source. This was the birth of something special for Ryan. Nowadays he is the CEO of Hootsuite, a social media dashboard that allows companies to manage several accounts in one place. Ryan spoke of 2 things during his talk. Firstly we live in an era of "Social Disruption". He spoke about the honour that he felt from the role that Hootsuite played in the Egyptian Revolution. After access to Facebook and Twitter was blocked in Egypt, revolutionaries turned to Hootsuite to spread their message. His second message was to engage your employers. Using the example of McDonalds, they have a total of 500,000 followers/fans equating to a reach of 500,000. If they, however, aim at engaging with their employees, they they have 400,000 employees with an average of 124 fans/followers each. This equates to a reach of 500 million people. We hope you enjoyed our favourite speakers. Of course we highly recommend checking out the web summit website here for more in-depth analysis and to watch all the speaker's videos. Til next year Web Summit, we'll miss you! Paul