Some of you know that The Realtime Report grew out of an event: TWTRCON SF 09, the first ever Twitter for business conference. With a lineup of speakers that included MC Hammer, Guy Kawasaki, and Brian Solis, along with marketing executives from brands such as Virgin America, Dell, Comcast, Intuit, eBay and the Phoenix Suns, the standing-room-only event helped define the way brands engage with their customers in realtime, and kicked off a series of 5 successful events over the next few years.
Then the field of social media conferences became over-crowded and over-saturated. We decided to focus our energies on building out our blog, and providing useful, smart information for businesses on the social, mobile and realtime. But today, we’re announcing our next event: the Realtime Marketing Lab, to take place on October 14 at the Altman Building in New York City.
It’s Time For A New Kind Of Social Media Conference: Fun, Hands On, Focused On Tools And Their Business Value
So what’s changed? The social media space has grown up. In 2009, there were some early management platforms, but most of the tools were simple apps designed to help manage a basic social media presence.
Today, there are hundreds of tools, technologies and platforms that enable brands to engage in a realtime conversation with customers and prospects, manage that conversation at an enterprise level, and collaborate across teams and departments to drive leads and deliver bottom-line business value. These tools can scale, and, increasingly, can integrate with your other digital marketing strategies. And they are becoming essential for managing conversations around your brand in realtime.
For marketing, communications and agency executives, this is an exciting time, full of new opportunities. But it’s also overwhelming: who has time to keep up with all these changing technologies? To figure out which are relevant to your company, or will work within your workflow? And – while they can deliver real value – many of them require an upfront investment of time, and require a monthly or annual investment of budget in order to work really well. Where to start?
Get Hands On At The Realtime Marketing Lab This October
That’s the premise behind the Realtime Marketing Lab. In one day, you’ll be able to explore the latest realtime tools and technologies in a fun, hands-on environment:
- Instead of a traditional exhibit area, we will have a Sandbox where you can schedule appointments to get personalized demos and test drive the latest tools yourself — analytics, realtime content creation, campaign management, engagement, influence marketing and more.
- The program will feature some keynotes and case studies, but is mostly built around a fun contest, the Realtime Marketing Challenge, in which vendors will present the business use case for their technology to a panel of CMO judges from brands like Citibank, JetBlue, Campbells, Xerox and more.
- Tap into the experience of our Realtime Marketing Help Desk, which will feature experts across a variety of digital marketing topics to answer your questions in one-on-one consultations, or simply walk up and see if you can stump ’em!
Most of all, we want to create an event that’s fun — where you can learn by doing, get up to speed and connect with other marketing and social media experts across industries.
And we’re keeping it affordable. Bring yourself (tickets are only $241 through the end of the summer!), or bring your team with our #RLTM 3-Pack Group Rate.
What do you think? Can you join us in October?
