Key Takeaways

Aaron shared his journey of starting Search Experiences and how he came up with the idea of TECHSPO Technology Expos. The technology technology landscape has changed drastically from 150 in 2011 to nearly 1900 companies today. Search Experiences has found opportunities to innovate in search and pioneered a Branded Search Solution.

• We currently have content controlled web results in mainstream search engines. What if I could make my own customizations and get unbiased results in a personalized search engine? Currently search engines are generic, bland, impersonal, ‘one-size-fits-all’ experiences. This is an opportunity to provide a branded search experience tailored to my interests.
• Traffic comes directly or indirectly. If the search engine was themed around the brand the user would receive custom branded search page and search results. Custom sidebar content. Browser toolbar. Web enabled site search widget that can replace any typical website site search bar.
• Through normal user behavior, branded search solution can be activated. Everyone exits. Where do they go next? Behavior is search engine to website to search engine. Activate your branded search solution when the user exists and extend the time they are engaging your brand.

Own your search results and your social profiles. Create a strategy and a balance around curating and creating content. Target specific people you want to follow, become an active fan, and use social media to creatively build relationships.

1. Own your personal brand. Own your search results create a website or blog. Who are you what makes you unique. Own your social profiles and secure vanity url’s. Own your face – have a recognizable profile picture. Name to face recognition. Own your reputation, voice & email address. Own the conversations about you, set up google alerts.
2. Build your personal brand. Grow your community. You have three choices. Curate: constantly source and share relevant content. Creation: consistently create and share unique relevant content with your audience.
   a. Hybrid: Create and Curate Mixture – 60/20/20 60 professional, 20 personal, 20 follow through with strategic. Create = find a niche do it better. Contribute = engage guest blog, comment. Compare = track progress. Commit. Jacob is known for social media tutorials, the social media minute.
   b. Build Relationships: Become a fan, pick two or three industry role models. Be patient, start small, be consistent. Become a friend, provide value, initiate contact.
   c. Building friends on Twitter: 1. Pick a target. Twtrland.com Talk with who that target engages with the most. 2. Secure your targets follow back. Find opportunities, comment, list them on twitter, attend their free webinars, support their latest podcast. 3. Convert your targets friend. Find them, engage them and get them to follow you. 4. Display social proof. Set up visual cues, pinned tween clear bio, professional pic, quality content sharing, mostly cosmetic. 5. Find targeted followers. Use follwerwonk.com, compare users, find overlap more likely to follow back. Find the overlap and not just random people. 6. Follow their followers.
3. Leverage it and generate results.

In sales, if I can get there first, I have a 1:3 to 1:2 chance of getting that business. We must adopt new technologies that allow us to redefine getting there first and provide the opportunity to influence their expectation.

• Proximity Technology is location based, provides real time engagement, and helps catch an inbound technology lead at near-zero point of decision making.
• luefield, Bluetooth RFID. – Some are very segmented. Very limited in adoption.
• Keep the adoption rate high. Qualcomm LTE Direct. 1. Universal application. In 2018 (similar to Bluetooth) it will be on all devices, 2. I can engage with others Wi-Fi independent 3. and no battery drain.
• This provides a new definition of responding first, provides potential to influence their expectation. Expect more competition. Generic messaging won’t be able to compete.
• Messaging should be relevant, have added incentive and a call to action.

We’ve always lived in a world where we could keep consuming more. How much can we consume? How do we maintain this mindshare with the connections we’ve worked so hard for? You have to be first and you have to be overwhelming. Find an unsaturated niche, create an aggressive strategy based on key words, and nurture an audience that ignites. As technology changes and becomes more mobile, we will have more options of bringing the audience into our world however we want. What does this mean to content, storytelling, and engagement with people? A new frontier will provide marketers without boundaries.

• Four digital revolutions. www, search, social media + mobile.
• Every time we get to the end of one of these cycles it gets really hard to be in marketing. If you’re the first it’s great until your competitors figure it out. Stuff today is getting mature and it’s much more crowded.
• The amount of info coming at you by 2020 will increase by 500%. Do you think it will be a little more difficult in marketing? 75% will be created by consumers.
• The bumps are associated with technological jumps. We’ve always lived in a world where we could keep consuming more. How much can we consume? Content Shock. Went from 26% of FB followers seeing your stuff down to 6% last year. On average our users can see 1,500 possible stories a day. Drop in organic reach. -30% in the last 12 months. It will have to continue to go down because the wave of content is going up. Epic shit is not a strategy! How do we maintain this mindshare with the connections we’ve worked so hard for? How do we find niche’s where we can maneuver?
• Mirabeau, only one with a digital presence. 230 videos. 600+ blog posts. This is a family struggling to create this product. Video 222 has over 10mil views. Greatest small business success stories in all of YouTube history. 2k percent audience growth. If you google how to open wine with your shoe you’ll find 6-7 videos made before this one. It wasn’t an original idea. Why did this ignite? The others were novelties. Steve had spent 2 years developing a passionate audience that loved him. It transcended SEO.
• Today a lot of conversation is built on traffic. SEO isn’t a strategy to get people to connect and share.
• The dilemma. People share content for intrinsic emotional reasons. Companies want you to share their content for economic reasons. You can trick them into clicking the link but you can’t trick them into sharing.
• The FOURTH circle… Wearable, augmented reality and advanced filters. Zite is like the Pandora for content. The more it learns about the stuff you like that is what it filters to you and it becomes addictive. Create immersive interesting experiences that invite people out. Through wearable technology where we don’t need an opener. We don’t have to worry about Wi-Fi or if we have the right app. It’s like the air we breathe. We can bring them into our world however we want. What does this mean to content, storytelling, engagement with people. Marketers without boundaries.