In June, BlueWire Media hosted the Social Media Down Under (#SMDU2012) event at the Maritime Museum, Sydney. It was an event that couldn’t have come at a better time, with Australian businesses lagging in adopting social media, specifically in financial services.
The event featured international keynote speaker and co-host Melissa Rowley and some of Australia’s most influential social media bloggers and online pros. With notable social media panellists such as Jeff Bullas and Valerie Khoo, attendees were taken on a journey to discover social media’s current impact on businesses.
While we learned that Australia is generally a little behind the rest of the developed world in using social media for brand promotion, a number of Australian businesses presented on how they are effectively using it for business development, sales and recruitment.
A key discussion during the event was online content generation, in which the latest hype around ‘SEO’ (Search Engine Optimisation) was debated. The consensus was that, while it is important to update blog and web content consistently to ensure continued search visibility, content is still king. Sourcing cheaper content is a false economy if it does not reflect your brand voice and tone or fails to engage. To make sure you have a professional who is familiar with your brand or you will lose out in the long run.
Of course, no social media event would be complete without Twitter. With the 50-odd guests tweeting on the event all day (and yes, there were awards for the best tweeters), #SMDU was soon trending around the world.