Share15 Wednesday Recap: Taking the Lessons Home

It’s hard to believe that another Share conference has come to an end. Wednesday was the final day of the event and it definitely ended on a high note.

Attendees started the day at opening sponsor labs with Jumpshot and Majestic carrying the enthusiasm and energy over from Tuesday night. The hotel was buzzing with excitement as people moved into the day ’s opening general session Digital Elevation: Transformation. Woodson Martin, SVP Marketing Cloud Operations for Salesforce and Clay Stobaugh, EVP and CMO of Wiley, took the stage to share how today’s leading organizations are taking advantage of data-driven marketing.

The rest of the day flew by in a flurry of insights, case studies, and rich discussions — everything from Adobe and Wiley’s take on the Hybrid Digital Marketer to a discussion about Data Learning and Decision Making with Ben & Jerry’s, HP, Movoto, and Western Union (during which Ben & Jerry’s surprised the audience with a very sweet treat!) We also saw more great news coverage of Share15 from publications like AdWeek’s SocialTimes and Martech Advisor .

Social engagement around #Share15 continued its momentum from Tuesday, with tons of feedback, insightful thoughts, and photos making their way to the ongoing social conversation. Check out a few of our favorite social moments from Wednesday:

Thanks to all of our amazing attendees, speakers, sponsors and organizers who helped make Share15 a success. We can’t wait to see everybody next year at Share16. Check out some content from Wednesday’s sessions below to continue the learning!

Digital Marketing

The digital marketers dove deeply into the human factor in digital marketing. Although algorithms and computers can help elevate your content and display it to users, it is only when those users click and engage with your content that you are on your way to success.

Content, Influence and Human Capital

Presenters:
Mel Carson, US Brand Ambassador for Majestic Delightful Communications
Peter Krmpotic, Sr. Product Manager for the Adobe Experience Manager
Travis Low, Vice President of SEO and Organic for Revana Digital

Attendees were treated to three exciting talks that explored how to incorporate people into digital strategy. This included creating brand advocates, personalizing customer experiences and influencing industry experts. This session focused on having a better understanding of human psychology and behavior to grow the brand.

The Hybrid Digital Marketing – Talent Management

Presenters:
Jay Middleton, Director of Global Search Marketing for Adobe
Dan Mooney, Director of Digital Analytics for John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Michelle Rife, Senior Director Global Talent Acquisition for BrightEdge

Hybrid marketers are becoming highly desirable as the marketing world becomes increasingly complex. Marketing silos are being broken down as roles become intermingled and techniques become more sophisticated. The need for hybrid marketers, who can work in more than one area, are becoming increasingly apparent and talent gaps are forming. These sessions focused on closing the gaps, learning how to build assets and how marketers can build their careers for the exciting future ahead.

From the BrightEdge presentation

Integrated Campaign Management

Presenters:
Mark Fiske, Vice President of Channel Marketing for Ancestry.com Operations, Inc
Alok Jain, Co-CEO and CMO and Padmini Murti, Co-CEO for eZdia
Allan Price, Global Director of Digital Marketing for Monster Energy

To engage with customers online, brands need to broadcast a consistent image across all platforms. Customers have now largely abandoned content silos and instead engage with brands in a variety of different ways before they make a purchase. For brands to successfully meet these needs, they need to have consistent marketing messages wherever the customer might be. This means taking a holistic look at marketing efforts, but a large gap remains between those who say they prioritize cross-channel marketing integration (67 percent) versus those who have an accurate understanding of their customers so that they can adapt accordingly (43 percent). This session addressed these challenges.

Content Marketing

Success in content marketing means knowing how to leverage content to work for you. It is not enough to just have countless pages of content on the website, that content must serve a purpose. Wednesday presentations worked to help attendees see how to make that happen.

Content & Competition: Creation & Curation

Presenters:
Brad Beiter, VP of Performance Content for Performics
Scott Lavelle, Director of Global SEO for OpenTable
Felipe Carreras, Director of Ecommerce for Best Western

For content marketers to see return from their content investments, they must produce material that outperforms the competition. You can only accomplish this goal when you take the time to understand who your competition is and where their strengths and weaknesses lie. This session looked at ways to size up the competition and gain an edge.

From the Performics Presentation

Content Convergence: Search, Social & Content

Presenters:
Richard Mastriani, Director of SEO for Wyndham Hotels
Michael DeHaven, Product Management and SEO for Bazaar Voice
Susanne Szostak, Brand Solutions and Content Merchandising lead for Google/YouTube
Deborah Carver, Content Marketing Manager for Nina Hale

Content can no longer be confined to one silo. Instead, it needs to be present and ready to engage customers wherever they might be. This session explored how content, search and social work together and why this is important for marketers.

Content Measurement Metrics; Pages & Performance

Presenters:
Chris Bennett, CEO and Founder of 97th Floor|
Kirill Kronrod, Senior Global SEO Manager for Adobe
Cade Burk, Search Manager for The Container Store

Metrics are critical for content to succeed. WIthout metrics, you will just be guessing about the types of content to which customers will respond best. You will not have the insights you need to know how you compare to your competition and what new avenues you can pursue to expand content reach. These presenters explored how to use these metrics and leverage the information for content success.

From the 97th Floor presentation

Search

Once you have all the other factors in place, visibility all comes down to search. You can have the best content in the world, but if no one can find it, then it will do you brand little good. Our Search sessions on Wednesday explored how to take search optimization efforts to the next level.

Scaling In-House – The Search Org Maturity Curve

Presenters:
Adam Souza, Senior Web Marketing Manager for VMware
Danielle Paske, Senior Digital Media Manager for Wellbiz Brands
Alex Volk, Director of Search Marketing for Microsoft

Organic search consistently remains the chief driver of traffic towards websites. As brands develop and cultivate the content they need to fuel this attention, they often find themselves encountering problems of scale. These presenters helped marketers see how to mature their production to meet search demand.

Data learning & Decision Making – Crawl, Walk & Run

Presenters:
Jay King, Senior Interactive Manager for Ben & Jerry’s
Sudhir Sharma, Director of SEO for Movoto
Stefan Zechner, Global SEO Manager for Western Union

By 2020, the digital universe is expected to contain an estimated 44 trillion gigabytes of data according to the IDC. This is beyond the capacity of the human brain to understand and compute. The data produced can hold tremendous insights for companies, but they must learn how to leverage it. These sessions explored hot topics like machine learning, how to use data to guide content production and how to better understand the intentions of the target audience.

From the Western Union presentation

Universal SERPs – Question, Quick Answers & Finding the Right Blend

Presenters:
Duy Vu, Global SEO Manager for Assurant
Vincent Wehren, Senior Product Lead for Bing
Eric Enge, CEO of Stone Temple

SERPs perpetually change as the developers try to find better ways to meet the needs of the users. The 3-pack, Google quick answers, the local carousel and other changes have greatly impacted brands’ visibility. This session focused on helping businesses see how to use a variety of different types of content to ensure that the site will show up well on SERPs regardless of future adjustments.

The day ended with our final general session, Digital Entrepreneurship and Leadership. It was an excellent way to conclude the conference, with some of the best minds from Silicon Valley providing key insights about the importance of innovation and how to find your path to success. Attendees were able to say their goodbyes filled with inspiration about what they can do with their own brands when they walk into the office on Thursday morning– and that is the impact we wanted to achieve.

We all had a fantastic time at Share15 this year, and we believe that the attendees enjoyed themselves as well. We already are throwing around ideas about how we could possibly top this year’s experience at Share16, but based on the feedback that is going to be very hard to do. Know that we will spend the next year planning Share16 to make it the most valuable and invigorating conference you attend all year.