Confluence speakers look at human element of digital marketing
This year’s Confluence Conference will focus on the human element of digital marketing as well as looking ahead to the future of the discipline.
“Our speaker lineup is unique this year,” said Kaitlyn Bullard, Confluence Conference organizer. “We’ll have some speakers covering the same topics we’ve always covered, bringing fresh ideas, but we’re also welcoming speakers for topics we’ve never covered at Confluence, like analytics, email and branding. The world of digital is evolving, so we want to reflect that and educate on the most relevant topics.”
Confluenceis Sept. 14-15 at the Chevy Bricktown Event Center in Oklahoma City. The conference showcases best practices in everything from creative digital marketing, content and social media to paid search, SEO and advanced analytics, all presented by some of the best-known speakers in the industry.
Keynote speaker Ruth Burr Reedy is director of Strategy at UpBuild.
At home in Oklahoma City, she has spoken at conferences all over the world including MozCon, SMX Milan and Pubcon. However, Confluence is always a favorite for her.
“It’s a great regional conference, and I always enjoy connecting with other marketers in the area,” she said.
Reedy has been working in SEO since 2006, and served as the head of SEO at Moz, home to the web’s most vibrant SEO community. Even after years in the industry, she still loves the dynamic of the field.
“It’s an industry that’s constantly changing, in terms of what tactics you’re using and what tools and information are available,” she said. “Being successful in SEO long-term means consistently spending time learning new things and staying on top of changes in the industry. For someone who loves learning as much as I do, that means SEO is continually fresh and exciting for me, because there’s always more to learn.”
Her presentation “Why You Need to Invest in Technical SEO” will underscore why SEO is more relevant than ever.
“It’s easier than ever to get a website up and running quickly, but from a business perspective, it’s important to make sure that website is easy for search engines to find, crawl and understand,” she said. “Technical SEO is the foundation of your site’s performance.”
Keynote speaker Erik Deckers will highlight the role strong content plays in marketing. He is the owner and president of Pro Blog Service, a content marketing agency in Indianapolis.
Deckers has been blogging since 1997, making him an industry veteran by all standards, and has been a published writer for more than 27 years.
“I’m sometimes asked what digital marketing will look like in the future. Will it look any different from what we’re doing now? Basically no, it will look almost the same,” Deckers said. “Everything will still revolve around content and connections, even if the tools themselves change.”
Of course, he may be a bit biased.
“I’ve always been a writer, whether it’s newspaper columns, books, or online content,” Deckers said. “Everything I’ve done has been about storytelling, so that plays a big part in what I write for my clients. It also affects what I read on my own for pleasure: I want stories that move people or show people putting forth their best efforts or overcoming great odds to achieve the things they want.”
The amount of content on the web is massive. Some of it great and some of it mediocre. Like many content marketers, Deckers knows breaking through the clutter is key.
But he has high hopes for the future of content.
“I’m excited that longform content is coming back, and people are focusing more on storytelling,” Deckers said.
Matt Wallaert, a behavioral psychologist and entrepreneur, is also a much-anticipated keynote speaker this year. He has built a career focused on building products and programs that create behavior change to help people lead better, happier lives. He started in academia, built and sold two startups, then went to Microsoft to build products at larger scale.
As the former director at Microsoft Ventures, he has seen more than his share of creative ways to reinvent how things are done, and it is the shift from marketing as sponsor of creative to marketing as creative that he finds still thrilling.
“I read an article on Lifehacker the other day about how to make your own Jon Snow cloak out of an Ikea rug,” he said. “That, right there, is fascinating to me; the idea that the most interesting thing about a product might be not what it was intended for suggests a whole different way of making product, where flexibility is more important than intent.”
In the past, he has spoken about using data to build products and effecting change. Data is very dominant in digital marketing and marketers are always looking for ways to use data in better ways.
“I think data very rarely solves problems, but it can tell us what problem to solve, can point us in the direction of potential intervention,” Wallaert said. “And then sometimes, data itself can be the product. But very, very few companies do this effectively, in part because it requires turning away from a product process.”
He has spoken to audiences across the world and every one of his talks is different. Bullard said the diversity of the keynote speakers represents what makes Confluence great.
“You walk away with actionable tips that you can use the next day in the office, but you will also walk away inspired, pondering the opportunities that this really cool, ever-evolving industry holds,” she said.
Among the speakers are new faces and crowd favorites from the previous conferences. Among them is original founder of Confluence and longtime emcee David Christopher. As the director of marketing and growth at Tailwind, he will discuss how to organically grow your Instagram. Damon Gochneaur of Aspiro Digital Agency will also return to the Confluence stage to tackle funnel targeting through social media.
To register, visit confluenceconference.org.