ProductCamp SoCal, Nov. 6, 2010
I attended ProductCamp SoCal at California State University Fullerton’s Mihaylo College of Business on Saturday. What a rich experience! With timely topics, generous speakers, enthusiastic participants and a top-notch volunteer team of organizers, ProductCamp SoCal was an “unconference”.
An “unconference” works like this: a bunch of great people propose interesting topics for presentation and discussion. (Emphasis on discussion!) Then all attendees vote for their favorites and topics that get the most votes get a spot on the schedule.
We voted on the topics when we arrived at ProductCamp SoCal on Saturday morning. Somehow the organizers put together a great schedule within about 40 minutes.
Top sessions included, Social Media Panel: Social Strategies for Both Large and Personal Brands, and Social Intelligence: Cutting Through the Noise to Learn from Your Customers in Social Media by Eric Forst of Visible Technologies.
Generally the information and topics were geared to larger businesses with product management functions. However, I still found lots of insights and ideas that apply equally to small business.
Write a Job Description for Your Business Website
Among the excellent presenters were Sean Van Tyne and Jeofrey Bean (photo above) with “Go ‘Beyond SEO’ with Customer Experiences that increase customer conversions on your web site!” My favorite insights from this session of website best practices were:
- If your small business website was a person you’re hiring, what would be its job description? Is its job to attract prospects? To help buyers post-sale?
- Your business website must contain content for each of your buyer personas. Personas include everything you can possibly know/learn about your prospects. In addition to demographics (age, gender) and psychographics (why a buyer wants to purchase your product/service) a complete persona includes: What do they read? Where do they go on vacation?
- What are the “do-for’s” of your business website? What does your website “do for” your visitors and prospects?
- Have you spelled out the “WIIFM” for your website visitors? The “What’s In It for Me?”.
You can view the complete article originally published in Pragmatic Marketing Journal by Sean and Jeofrey on this topic here.
Jeofrey Bean’s blog is here.
Sean Van Tyne’s blog page on this topic is here.
Huge thanks to all of the many, organized, fun, professional, wonderful ProductCamp SoCal volunteers!!!
And a big thank you to ProductCamp SoCal sponsors! Pragmatic Marketing, Cal State Fullerton’s Mihaylo College Sales Leadership Center, ZigZag Marketing, Central Desktop, The Buddy Group, Visible and many more.
Thanks for posting this write-up. ProductCamp SoCal 2 was a great event because so many energetic people showed up and engaged. Hopefully, ProductCamp SoCal 3 will attract even more great participants on October 15th at CSU Fullerton’s Mihaylo Hall!
If you have any feedback about what you liked or thought could be improved, please don’t hesitate to share. We’re in planning mode for ProductCamp SoCal 3 and want to make it the best pcSC yet. Take care.