The Greater Baltimore Technology Council put on another great event today focused around building, managing, and measuring results for digital media strategies. I attended the conference today as my interest was peak. Typically speaking our firm is engaged to handle all aspects of the web when it comes to websites, blogs, micro-sites, etc.

Being a regular partner of marketing firms throughout the country I thought it would be important to take the time and further immerse myself in the world of marketing. It's not uncommon for me to advise clients on creating an effective digital strategy but I was mostly interested in how they prepare detailed planning for their clients in releasing these online campaigns. A small list of presenters included:

• r2integrated (Case Study Presentation)
• GKV Communications (MD Lottery - Ravens Scratch Off Campaign)
• MindGrub Technologies (Voice of America Case Study)

Other presenters included:

• RightSource Marketing (Creating an effective Blogging Campaign)
• BlueSky Factory (E-Mail: The Backbone of Digital Marketing)
• 1st Mariner Bank (Utilizing Social Media to Better Serve Customers)

The reason I highlighted the first three separately is because they we're the presentations I was most interested in. I didn't get to attend all of the presentations as you can imagine and the initial feedback for each of the sessions was terrific. The first three focused on particular contracts or campaigns that had obtained an outstanding response rate with measurable metrics for success. All three shared a very common theme, they didn't rush into social media deployments and initiatives without extensive planning on the target market, supporting campaigns, baselines for success, and resource allocation decisions. It's without a doubt that my clients with the most success have a succinct plan that's either developed with Unleashed Technologies, LLC or built with the internal/external marketing team first.

Your most important metric when measuring the success of your social media based campaigns is the engagement of the community that's viewing your presence across your micro-sites, blogs, facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn presences. Two way communication is a must focusing on both context and content. Perhaps the most engaging part of this conference was the overwhelming fact that because many of the social media platforms are "free" doesn't mean that expertise isn't required in launching a successful campaign.

I'll be offering the presentations online as they become available to the attendees and members of the GBTC for you to review the case studies and presentations. Thanks to the GBTC for another terrific event and I can't tell you how excited I was to avoid the normal boring conference surrounding digital media strategies where professionals in the industry are forced to listen to the same boring song and dance of common sense like "this is important" and "you need a blog". Keep up the good work GBTC!