For me as somebody that is already working in the digital industry,  I find it very heartening that so many people from the traditional Marketing/Advertising/PR /Corporate sector is attending today, admitting the value of a conference like this, and are wanting to find out more. Maybe the South African companies are slowly coming around and are really starting to understand that ultimately the future lies in digital.

The first speaker Stafford Masie never disappoints, he just landed from a flight out of London, had a difficult time finding the venue but none of these factors gets him off his game. His presentation as always is interesting and his passion for the industry has a way to also inspire others to embrace it.

The previous post about Stafford written by my colleague Melt touches on the main points from his presentation, for me the best part that summarises it all, is his closing sentence:

“Don’t bet against the internet …”

A good start to the day – can’t wait for what is next.

In a nutshell, he covered the following

• online is supplementary to everything you do in marketing
• online allows you to engage with consumers directly
• online allows you to generate content more easily
• consumers have never been more powerful all because of freely available tools on the net

For Google two things matter most

1. Moment of Relevance – it has a search aspect to it – search results at the right time – ads displayed at the right time
2. Consumer Generated Content or End-User Generated Content – monetization prospects are huge

One example of User Generated Content is YouTube

• youtube makes up 14% of ZA’s traffic
• youtube makes up 12% of worldwide traffic
• 13 hours of video get published to YouTube every minute of every day
• 4th largest site in the world

End-user generate content is HUGE – over 86% of all internet traffic in the world is people giving content and not taking.

The driver of this is that people want to generate content, want to blog, want to engage, want to share, want to upload pictures, videos, etc and it is not stopping.

Another example of consumer generated content is CNN’s iReport – up to date news as it happens. People submit “home videos” to CNN that are low quality but more relevant, more real, unedited, unfiltered.

Everything that happens offline goes online. iReport is a perfect example of this. Another example is the xenophobia attacks that happened recently. To understand and get more information on this, consumers searched for this in Google – Stafford mentioned that 35 million searches were done in just 3 hours on the search term “xenophobia”.

People want to have information immediately and the quickest way is by turning to the Web. Marketers should capatalize on this by either engaging directly through various channels including video (YouTube), maps, mobile (mobile ads and universal seach results), etc and present relevant content, when required.

For Google, the Moment Of Relevance is essential when delivering results. This should be used on your site or blog and integrated into your marketing initiatives.

Finally, I’ll leave you with 5 key principles that Stafford mentioned that is most inportant for Google.

1. Simplicity
2. Speed
3. Relevance
4. Agility
5. Verbosity

Further to the above Stafford covered much of what I’ve blogged about on two previous occasions which will give you a lot of information. Please read Stafford Masie Presents Google South Africa’s Hot New Trends and Google’s Stafford Masie presents to Lowe Bull Group

Facebook, which has over 681 000 members, quickly became the most popular (most-accessed) social network site in the country, though it has been overtaken among younger users by MXit. Clearly, there’s a marketing opportunity.

One of the opportunities to get some insights into Social Media is the Tony Koenderman’s Cracking the Digital Code conference which kicks off today. In fact, it starts in just a few minutes.

I am here, as are most of the longtail team, and we are ready to take notes and blog about every little detail. So hold on to your seat.

About the first session
Stafford Masie will open this workshop with a scene-setting examination of the new media, followed by Vincent Maher’s discussion of how marketers can use social media. Ingrid Rubin wraps up the session by explaining the delicate question of how to manage your corporate reputation in a landscape where consumer generated content can make or break your brand.

Speakers and Topics on the menu

• The digital future is now – Stafford Masie of Google explains the threats, opportunities and relevance of digital media to South Africa
• Vincent Maher of Vodacom examines why social media has taken off – and how to use them for marketing
• How’s your online cred? – longtail founder Ingrid Rubin on Reputation Management