10 Things I learned at Lift: The Social Commerce Summit

Last week, Alayna Oram and I journeyed to Atlanta to attend Lift: the Social Commerce Summit in hopes of bringing home all kinds of great new social media and marketing ideas for Davidson Realty and our Jacksonville Realtors. Not only did we come home with staggering statistics about the use of social media AND got some awesome new ideas, we even had a little time to enjoy dinner at a Top Chef’s restaurant (Woodfire Grill and IT’S AMAZING)! All and all this trip was a success!

We had a full day of learning from an impressive statistician from Wharton Interactive Media Initiative to one of the nation’s leading innovators in digital advertising and optimization. There was a lot of interaction, learning, and fun going on all day long. I’d like to share some cool things we learned:

• We all know that people buy across multiple channels. For example, consumers use catalogs, the internet, and will walk into your store to shop and purchase your product. But, did you know the channel in which you acquire your customer shows you the quality of your customer?
• 88% of people use social media to make business decisions
• Customers want how tos, to connect with someone like them, and to save money!
• One of the biggest mistakes you can make in social media is assuming that activity = progress. You can’t measure your success on Facebook just by seeing how many “fans” or “likes” you have. You need to look at content. Are people interacting on your page about your product or not? 
• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest.
• US Dept of Education study revealed that online students out performed those receiving face to face instruction
• Every minute 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Only 14% trust ads.
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US

Obviously, I’m not going to give away everything! We did have a great time though and would love to keep attending these types of events to push Davidson Realty, Inc. and Relay Marketing, Inc. forward!