Matt Wilson: MIMA 2011 Speaker Highlight

Submitted by admin on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 / 0 Comments

We are counting down the days until the big event.... only 3 weeks to the 2011 MIMA Summit.  What does the former MIMA president, Matt Wilson, have to say about the upcoming MIMA Summit?

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You served as MIMA Board President from 2009-2010, how was the local interactive community changed?
We used to use the word “interactive” as a differentiator describing “our type of marketing”… ie., digital.  But everything’s interactive now and “our type of marketing” has just become “marketing”. 

So how has Minnesota’s “interactive” community changed?  Like the word itself, it’s broadened and permeated other areas.  Which is why MIMA serves a really important role to our region: as the marketing landscape continues to change and push people into new niches, MIMA is a great cornerstone to keep people connected.

How has your conversations around analytics change over the last 10 years?

Obviously, the digital analytics space has matured: the technology, the skills of the people working in it, and the processes used to identify insights.  Because of that, you’re seeing more organizations truly migrate across the digital data spectrum: from data access to data analytics to data action.

Also, data access and the tools facilitating it are becoming commoditized; thank Google Analytics for that.  Ultimately, people shouldn't be paying exobitant costs for data access, we should be spending our money on data analysis and data action.

What is the biggest mistake people make as the begin to apply analytics to their social media marketing efforts?

Before you dive head-first into your social marketing data, make sure you know what percent of your digital business’s mix is being driven by social channels or social actions.  I think a lot of people are sprinting to understand metrics like their “social ROI” when social channels aren’t driving a lot of their conversions (at least, not as a percent of the total).

Make sure you know your overall mix first (what % of your business is coming from organic, paid, owned assets, etc.), before you spend a ton of time and resources quantifying social.  If it is a big percentage, obviously, prioritize it.  But a lot of people still need to get their analytics blocking and tackling right before trying to understand the value of a fan.

What is next in the digital decade?
Data + design: Companies who leverage insights from their digital data to design better user experiences will win.

We're all hearing about "big data" and how the exponential number of digital interations across screens and channels is driving a digital data revolution.  (MIT/Sloan calls this the "second digital data revolution, with e-Commerce's initial boom driving the first.)  Designing holistic experiences across this fragmented landscape and tracking their performance is hard, and it’s going to get harder.  Most people’s digital data is siloed already… now, new silos are being built every day.

But having a proactive data strategy on what you want to collect at each experience (note: you don’t need to collect it all!) and a process to identify insights and get them back to your UX team (or, better yet… identify them alongside your UX team!) will enable you to understand how people are experiencing your brand or message across screens, channel, day parts, etc.

With your adjunct teaching efforts and past in higher education, how do think education will be influenced by the massive changes in digital?

I think there are obvious benefits driven by mobile and connected technologies; it takes seconds to pull up a news clip to put Libya or Afghanistan into perspective when my 6 year-old daughter asks about current events, and each day there’s a new story about iPads for students and remote learning.

But take it 10 steps further and ask how a mobile education system will impact a student’s sense of connection: to their peers, their teachers, and their physical location.  What will we lose without a physically connected learning environment?

Which MIMA Summit 2011 session are you most interested in? Outside of your own of course.

I’m really interested in hearing Boon Sheridan talk about the future of UX.  Also, because he has a huge beard.

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Learn more about Matt Wilson and social media metrics at this years summit.

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A special thanks to Jill Gutterman, a MIMA board member, for hosting this interview. Jill, is a Director of Interactive Marketing at Rasmussen College and a MIMA Board Director. Jill Gutterman’s philosophy in life is simple: Have passion for what you do and keep learning. It’s this philosophy that has been a driving force behind Jill’s forward-thinking 12 year professional career in digital marketing. Jill graduated magna cum laude from Wright State University, in Dayton, OH with a degree in psychology.