Many of us who are students of this space continue their learning throughout the year and not just at Affiliate Summit.  So it’s important for people like me to remember that just because I didn’t really learn anything new from this panel doesn’t mean there weren’t some newbies that learned volumes.  I can’t speak for them, of course. The panel consisted of:

• Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, IZEA (Moderator)
• Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
• Stephanie Agresta, InternetGeekGirl.com
• Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media

Hopefully you’ll learn some more things than I did.

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• 70% of people online last month watched a video.
• The top rated websites are the social media networks.
• There really are strategies to using social media.
• Seeing how the flow of conversation is going is hard to track, but when cross conversational tracking becomes available it will be exciting.
• This is a marketing channel just like any other; it can work well with other channels to a brand or company’s advantage.
• Tracking is coming soon… and will be immensely valuable.
• A comment on a blog or a good blog post as social value.
• Brands are starting to bring enthusiasts in to help market.
• FriendFeed could be taken more advantage of by affiliates.
  • It allows for more nuanced opportunities.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Personally I asked if there were any tools to help manage a social media strategy (knowing slightly that there weren’t any I knew of) and the answer was “don’t get caught up in tools”.  Fail.
• Social media may bring rise to a different kind of content.
• There are listening tools like Radian6, BuzzLogic, lots of deep dive listening tools for brands to hear what the conversation is.
• Twitter isn’t a good place to recruit affiliates but it’s good for conversions (no real expansion on that was given).
• Will we see a change in the code of ethics regarding transparency & disclosure?  Not sure but disclosure breeds trust.
• Interesting argument – more and more people are giving kudos to those that disclose affiliate links however no one in television bothers to disclose even blatant product placements so it’s a fine line & unresolved argument.
• Recognize the conversation AS a conversation – treating it like a traditional marketing venue doesn’t work.
• Look at social media like a picnic, says Chris Brogan.  Don’t just run up & start selling your product to people hanging around having a good time.
  • “Turn your stupid bullhorn into a party hat”.
• Give something to the social media community before you take – content + trust (+ conversions).
• Try to think just a hair outside your brand.
• Conversion rates coming through social media sites are 4 times higher than traditional channels.
  • Note: Since there’s no standard of tracking it’s very difficult to isolate this.
  • The social media forerunners are working on an open wiki to open up discussion on how to isolate.
• Many brands are worried about the affiliate channel cannibalizing other in-house channels like search.
• It takes a high level of comfort to let go of the brand & get into social media.
• There’s a big education process for merchants before jumping into the pool.
  • “We’re really afraid of this because we don’t want people pooing on the brand”.
• Listening to the conversations that are out there is the easiest “gateway drug” to get companies hooked on wanting to participate.
• If you’re going to disclose your affiliate links, at least do so on your about page and possibly at the end of every post.
  • At IZEA when they decided to make the disclosure banner mandatory, conversions surprisingly went up 20% – 15% of the clicks were on the “Sponsored by” button itself.

Overall it seemed like a lot of the conversation was “when we get tracking… ooh boy watch out!” and tried to steer away from the fact that there is NO real solid way to track any social media “strategy”.  I had an interesting conversation with Wil Reynolds, another speaker at Affiliate Summit who is an “SEO guy” later in the day about the pannel – tracking really is the KEY to having companies on larger scales start to really dig into social media.  Without it, they’re going to go spend their budget on an SEO firm instead of someone who’s talking to them about Twitter & Facebook.

As I mentioned… this may not have been the best session for me.  They didn’t talk much about just HOW social media is changing affiliate marketing, so name fail.  I’m pretty versed in social media at this point, so a lot of this was the same song & dance – but I really do hope that somewhere in the room there was a newbie who learned a lot.

So, like I said… overall, I only learned of a couple of new tools for “listening to the conversation” from this and I was actually pretty surprised that they didn’t mention Trackur.com, a really great tool touted as an “online reputation management” tool – really other than the name I can’t see how it couldn’t be beneficial for listening in on the online conversation about your brand.  But I hope you learned something from the recap!

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This week has been nuts – I’ve been on both coasts, in three time zones, and multiple states of mind. Yesterday, I admit, was really hard to get my head back into an “office” frame of mind. Which includes coming back to blogging. So here’s the easy post of the week – a wrap up of stuff you might have missed.

• PsPrint gets some ink in USA Today – woot! This is just plain a great article about print marketing, aside from what obviously lead me to this article. Kudos to author Rhonda Abrams!
• We also got a nod on InsideCRM.com, even though I wish we were higher up than #50. Give us some credit, man!
• Delivery.com came to my rescue in Boston. Seriously, it’s awesome!
• FeedFront, a new magazine being put out by Shawn Collins & Missy Ward, is coming to us soon! There looks to be some great articles. On the AffiliateThing podcast this week Shawn mentioned that it will most likely be a quarterly thing, and free! So go sign up – what do you have to lose?
• Affiliate-Karma.com has been launched by the internet geek girl herself Stephanie Agresta – not for nothing, but from what I can tell it’s just another outsourced program management firm.
• Remember that even the smallest of holidays, like the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, allow for great marketing opportunities!
• BuyTV, an online show hosted by Melissa Salas, is going national. G4 picked it up to run on their cable network. Just goes to show that great web content can take you places!

That’s about it for this week. I did have to declare feed bankruptcy and Digg shout bankruptcy to help weed through the stuff I missed at the beginning of the week, so if there’s anything I should have seen and didn’t, share it with me in the comments.

Have a terrific Memorial Day weekend!

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Twitter is alive with activity. The summit has set up a group twitter that tracks whenever someone uses the keyword asw08 in their twits. This is very cool, especially considering I didn’t know Twitter had this capability!

Everyone seems to be in a rush to get things done. Jim Kukral from ScratchBack.com is MCing the keynote on Monday. He’s twittered several times tonight about the video he’s working on for the presentation. At ASE07 in Miami the keynote was Ze Frank, a hilarious individual, so I’m hoping for no less at ASW08.

Stephanie Agresta from Stephanie Agresta Consulting is also a speaker and author of the Internet Geek Girl blog. She’s twittered off and on today about her flight information and getting ready for the trip from out east. Sam Harrelson from Affiliate Fortune Cookies has been twittering as well and he’s even had to change his flight because of inclement Northeastern weather.

Of course myself, I’m twittering here and there about getting ready. I’m not lucky enough to have a nice new company supplied laptop, so I’m on my own personal laptop this weekend. I do have a press pass, so I be working on keeping the interweb updated from the blogger’s room through this blog and Twitter. I’m committed despite my chunky clunky Dell Latitude laptop :p.

As a final note while I’m getting my laptop set up tonight, I encourage everyone associated with affiliate marketing in any way to check out this month’s issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine. Besides there being a keen write up of the PsPrint Affiliate Program, there’s a lot of great affiliate manager tips. I’ll be attending the whopping 10 hour Affiliate Classroom LIVE affiliate manager training on Saturday in Las Vegas before the summit. I’m eager to get in there and take notes… is it too much to hope for actual desks? :p I know that it’s at the Rio and from all the conference space I’ve seen at hotels in the last year, I’m sure there won’t be surfaces to write on readily available, so I’ll be taking my clipboard with me.

Hope to see you there! I’m considering bringing my camcorder with me to the exhibit hall, so if you’ve used PsPrint in the past, come on by for an impromptu video plug!

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