Four steps to Unlocking Online success aims to give communication and business leaders the insight into the power of online conversation. It provides the opportunity to hear from well-practiced professionals about four steps to unlocking online success. 

In the ever-changing industry of communications, it is essential that not only PR and marketing professionals know about the latest tools and skills that can be utilised, but business leaders too. 

The theme of the conference concentrates on engaging online, but also what to do with insights that are already at your finger tips – how to use them to your advantage.

STEP 1 – The End of Marketing and PR as Usual: ‘Be Social’

The title of this session has been adapted from the recent book by Brian Solis (2012), ‘The End of Business as Usual’ – rewiring the way you work in an era of constantly connected customers.

This session is led Dr Jim Hamill. With over 30 years International Management Development experience, Jim is widely recognised as a leading expert on social media strategy development for building sustained customer and competitive advantage. 

STEP 2 – How PR professionals can use website analytics to prove the value of what they do

Andrew Smith, Director of Escherman, will ask ‘Has the means to provide the ROI of public relations been sitting under our noses for the last few years and we didn’t even realise it?’

The ubiquity of Google Analytics in particular means that for most PR professionals - whether agency or in-house - an amazing free resource is busily collecting data that could easily provide a way to prove the true causal impact of communications programmes, without resorting to vanity metrics such as advertising value equivalence (AVE) or opportunities to see (OTS).

STEP 3 – Building online ‘communities’

Ian Dommett, Managing Director of Corr Agency

Since 2005 the Scottish National Party has been transformed from a political party in decline, having seen a 25% reduction in seats at the 2003 Holyrood election, into the party of government in Scotland. In 2011 the achieved an historic majority from a voting system designed to prevent such a thing happening. At the heart of their transformation and their victory has been their groundbreaking use of community and online tools, matching effective on-street activity with world-best web-based activation.

Ian Dommett created the marketing strategies for the 2007 and 2011 campaigns and is now Director of Marketing at Yes Scotland, which will be utilising the same techniques and tactics to win a Yes vote in the 2014 Referendum. Ian will show how online and offline communities can be recruited, galvanised and inspired through the use of web platforms such as NationBuilder, the heart of the campaign.

STEP 4 – The new era of work - a glimpse at future working

James Akrigg, Head of Technology for Parnters, Microsoft

The way people work is changing. To compete and succeed, businesses need to leverage technology to help drive business agility and market responsiveness, connecting processes across their business and extending out to external customers and partners. Microsoft is focused on helping customers build this real-time business approach by delivering modern business applications that bring together social, mobile, big data, and cloud technology to connect people and provide them with the information needed at the time needed to drive improved business performance. Join us in this session as we look at how the latest technology advances can help foster a culture of innovation, increase productivity, reduce costs, and grow your business.

There will be a question and answer session once each speaker has finished their presentation.