We arrived quite early at Society M to set up – everything was made simple and easy by the staff, and the set-up there is warm, friendly and rather stylish. It’s the ideal venue for us. Wine, sandwiches and sushi are a great way to get everyone comfortable too before the talks begin, and it’s great to meet people and chat to all the attendees in a relaxed space.

Deana Burke – Making engagement happen

Deana Burke is on first. She’s the resident Community Manager at Blonde Digital in Edinburgh, originally from NYC. Her talk is about making engagement happen. What charms me the most about Deana is her bubbling enthusiasm for the topic. She talks about what people think engagement is and describes the two key paths for engagement – content and conversations. Having a conversation is relatively easy, but producing appealing and interesting content is a bigger challenge. What type of content goes viral really easily? Well, really awesome content that appeals to a wide range of people in different communities…and content that is so terribly bad, it might actually be good. She also talks about the value of getting offline. Talk to your fans, and treat your superfans’ really well – these are the best advocates for your brand.

@medeana

Elaine McVicar – Design as part of user engagement

It’s me next. I’m the Assistant Creative Director here at Equator. It’s always hard to tell if what you’re going to talk about appeals to your audience…my topic is a little different as I’m speaking about User Experience and User-centred design, rather that specifically about user engagement, but there were quite a few nods as I spoke so it must have been relevant. Our main aim is to bring what the user wants together with the client’s services and brand. We can do this by working with a user centred design process which ensures that we focus on the user, and then bring the business requirements and technical limitations together to make a great user experience that also satisfies the business objectives. This helps us create a good, solid base that will make it easier to get users more engaged as you continue to create interesting content and conversations.

@ElaineMcVicar | My presentation

Leanne Rinning – To engage or converse

Finally it’s Leanne Rinning, Head of Online PR at bigmouthmedia / LBi. Leanne has an excellent amount of experience working in social media and PR. She’s a great speaker too; confident and charming. She described how consumers have changed in the past few decades. Previously we were all passive consumers – TV, radio and newspaper ads were thrown at us. But now we are active consumers – we interact, share, converse in a wide variety of mediums. The media landscape has expanded now too – your earned, owned and bought media has grown many more tentacles! So the key message was to engage on all fronts, and aside from that be part of it, be interesting and be adventurous.

@lalrinn

Overall it was a successful and fun night. The venue was lovely and the atmosphere was lively. It’s great to meet so many enthusiastic people working in the digital and creative industries. The conversations were interesting and informative too, especially about how the online landscape will develop and grow in the future. Can’t wait for the next event!