Yesterday I was at the Online Marketing and Media 08 show in London. Sam McArthur and I have been going to these shows for quite a few years now, and to be honest I usually come away disappointed. This year was a bit different though, lots of interesting stuff.
First of all, we had booked to hear Adriana Lukas speak about 'new tools for marketers', and although most of the tools she showed us were familiar to me it was very helpful to have some of the functionality explained and demonstrated. It made me realise there's a LOT still to be done on this blog, and in fact I've a LONG way to go in social media generally! I liked Adriana's style, clearly a bit of a guru and a prolific blogger.
We also sat in on a session given by Katy Howell of Immediate Future, again an impressive presentation with a lot of freely shared info about how they monitor and measure online conversations. Good to get a decent seat at it was standing room only at the back - no prizes for guessing what the hot topics were at this show.
Something I noticed about the trade show was that although many of the stands were the same-old, same-old, interestingly there were a number of firms there operating in apparently quite niche markets: German SEO services, online marketing for retailers, email marketing for charities. Could that be how the industry is going, or is it just a case of starting up as a niche company and then being bought out by one of the big boys?
Speaking of which, prize for the most entertaining stand must go to Steak Media, although I'm not sure what the vegetarians thought of it!
