Harry Gold, CEO and Founder of Overdrive Interactive has given an enlightening presentation about the advanced social media marketing skills and how they can be so beneficial when running a business today. Here are some highlights right from the source.

The goal is to create brand connections versus just impressions. The lines are blurring in the digital marketing space — SEO, paid search, analytics, email marketing, online media, social media, creative website development — are all used in addition to  traditional marketing methods.

Architecting user flow is just as important asunderstanding the details. The trick to being a marketing engineer is to always be asking — “and then what?” Digital marketing is not a one step process, you should always be asking what is the next step in escalating a prospect through the sales process.

Once you bring a customer to your site, if you’re not engaging them to explore more, your missing opportunities and the potential to build that connection.

For social promotions and campaigns, you don’t need a million fans or followers to be successful, you can use social marketing strategy to add strength to your other programs. Overdrive’s work for Harley Davidson was a good example. You can read more about it here.

An excellent case study, also created by Overdrive Interactive, provides a great example on how to integrate various social media venues. You can check out this winner of the IAC Internet Award Competition here.

A third campaign that illustrates how to generate great content without having to rely on only your own resources, is this LogMeIn video.

SEO and social media work hand in hand to promote your message, so thinking about keywords is very important. Progress Software’s “operational responsiveness” took advantage of this by embedding the term into the presence of the online community and inviting bloggers to video record their input about the topic.

When weaving your social media platform (YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr) you have to ask, why would anyone want to be your “friend.” You really need to understand your audience which will in turn help you to determine the right content to create. The creation of a content bank is key for providing valuable content that your audience will want to share.

Socially enable your content with fun social sharing buttons. What’s most important is how others in the social media sphere are perceiving you, so get used to making these buttons your friends. Also start integrating “sharing” into your daily workflow. If you download a white paper, share it!

Creating light weight content and infographics is an excellent way to create more social awareness. I’m sure you’ve seen many examples of these over the past year. At times it can be difficult to create a visually interesting graphic, so agencies like CGI can add that professional style that helps your material look credible — increasing the chances that it will be passed around.

In order to measure ROI, source and create your content stream from your planned content. You can create a publishing schedule that takes advantage of your content stream as well as publish past the 9 to 5 workday. There are many tools that help manage this process as well as provide analytics that help you measure your ROI.

If you were at this event, what was your take-away?

Infographics are surprisingly not a new marketing trend, they just came back in style. Unlike the 8o’s fashion trends which most of us begrudgingly dug out from the back of our closets, bringing the infographic back is a great thing! An infographic, or information graphic, is a visual representation of complex information displayed in a quick and clear format. Infographics provide an excellent opportunity for the left and right sides of our brain to meet in the middle. By accompanying factual information with visual aids it helps the audience better understand the data.

Infographics have become popular in the marketing world recently because they put the data in plain sight. This approach virtually speeds up our decision time which is appealing to advertisers because of their audience’s shortened attention span. When you take complex information and explain it in an appealing format, such as an infographic, your data becomes more than just numbers and your message then resonates with people. An infographic is like the picture book of complex data, it is accessible to many people.

Check out this blast from the past, vintage infographics dating back to 1923. The infographic hasn’t changed much in the last 89 years, they are more accessorized but the general premise has remained the same. As every savvy marketer knows it’s all about repurposing vintage and delivering it in a way that feels new and trendy to your audience.  The recent popularity of the infographic can be attributed to the internet. As opposed to 1923, infographics now have the platform to go viral, which further contributes to their accessibility.

What can you do to make your infographic stand out?

-Create Interactive Infographics, using Flash, like this one Oil’d by Chris Harmon. An interactive infographic allows designers and developers to visualize multiple layers of data in a single interface, simultaneously providing rich information and a dynamic user experience.

-Utilize motion and animation to create Motion Infographics. These infographics are narrative-based, and combine illustrations, data visualizations, and kinetic text to share information on a particular topic. Check out this example of a motion infographic

-Bring your infographic to the iPad. Make the information interactive by creating hotspots for your reader to click on and learn more. The advantage to this interactive design is it eliminates clutter on your infographic and engages the reader. To provide further information consider including a hyperlink.

Infographics help communicate information in a digestible manner as they creatively present data in an understandable and engaging format. What are some of your favorite infographics?

As the digital world continues to grow, it’s difficult to keep up with the innovative and creative technology. The photography blog by Jamie Beck, From Me To You, has a collection of gorgeous photographs ranging from nature to fashion. Jamie is a style icon herself and was recently asked to photograph New York Fashion week at Bryant Park. Jamie’s posts on Fashion week included beautiful still images as well as a series of images with movement. In a recent post, Jamie explains how the images with movement work and coined the term “cinemagraphs.”

“We wanted to tell more of a story than a single still frame photograph but didn’t want the high maintenance aspect of a video” - Fast Company

According to the post, cinemagraphs are still images with movement that are created using “still and video equipment and use Adobe After Effects and Photoshop for editing.” Jamie uses  HTML5 instead of Flash when creating cinemagraphs because it is best for sharing on social media and for commercial or website graphics. Jamie states “the layers that HTML5 offers is also exciting and something we are eager to experiment with,” we’re eager for Jamie to experiment with them as well! The result is a beautiful image design with a life-like quality. Cinemagraphs help tell a story similar to the way a video or presentation would but in much simpler terms. The slight movement brings the image to life, whether it is a reflection of a moving car or windblown hair.

Jamie’s post on cinemagraphs discusses the importance of designing for Tumblr users and the differences between Tumblr and standard web design. The blog is full of great tips, interesting images, and inspiring content, check it out here! Good luck to Jamie in 2012 and we look forward to seeing what she produces next!