Dallas’s 5th annual Rocks Digital Marketing Conference was a spectacular 3-day celebration to honor Social Media Day and the 1st annual Local Search Day. This event held in Addison, Texas is organized by Lissa Duty and Bernadette Coleman.
Attendees included business owners, digital marketing agencies and enterprise level service providers.
Click here to meet all the Rocks Digital 2016 speakers. Click here to access the LIVE blogs. Click here to tour the photo highlights from the 2016 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference.
June 29 – Pre-Conference Workshops
The 2016 conference kicked off with five pre-conference workshops. Presenters were:
- Lissa Duty
- Byron Ingraham
- Brian Sullivan
- Justin Liles
- Beth Kahlich
Click here for full speaker bios and workshop descriptions.
June 30 – Social Media Day Celebration
The day kicked off on June 30th with a warm welcome from conference organizer Lissa Duty, and then immediately went into the opening keynote. This day featured the following:
- Opening Keynote – “What You Need To Know About SEO” by Barry Schwartz
- Rocks Talks High-Energy High-Impact Digital Strategy with 5 experts
- 15 Break-Out Sessions, spanning 5 Tracks: Local Search and SEO, Mobile and Web, Social Media, Content and Biz Development
- Rocks Digital Marketing Q & A Panel with moderator Lissa Duty
- Closing Keynote – “Opportunism and Being Holistic: What it Takes to Win in Digital Marketing in 2016” by Eric Enge
Click here for the full speaker bios and presentation descriptions.
The Break-Out Sessions were divided into tracks by topic.
Content Creation Track
The Emcee for this track was Mitch Todd, co-founder and co-organizer of Podcast Movement, and the speakers were Randy Krum, founder and president of InfoNewt, and Neil Lemons who is the founder of ILiveInDallas.com. This track also included a panel discussion on Podcasting. The panelists included Erin Smith of The Starters Club, Gary Leland from Podcast Movement, and Caz Gaddis from Self Crafted Media.
Click here for full speaker bios and presentation descriptions.
Business Development Track
Heather Nichols, founder of The Bizz Fizz, was the Emcee for this track and the speakers included Judy Hoberman with “Marketing Gets You Known, Sales Gets You Paid,” Amy Kinnaird taught us “Marketing for People Who Are Not Marketers,” and Tanya Smith’s presentation was “Snack Size Everything: Micro Content to Capture Attention.”
Click here for full speaker bios and presentation descriptions.
Social Media Track
Laurie Shook from Social Media Dallas was the Emcee for our Social Media track and the speakers were John Sparks, “How to Make Money & Grow Big on Twitter,” Litany Bergeron with “7 Tips to Maximize Engagement for Brands,” and Roxanne Roark on “Social Search: The Impact of Social Media on SEO.”
Click here for full speaker bios and presentation descriptions.
Mobile and Web Track
This track Emcee was A.J. Wood from Adobe Systems, Inc. and the speakers included Mark Traphagen speaking on “MobileRocks! Why Mobile is the Game & How to Play,” and Taylor Bare who brought us “10 Things Every WordPress Website Must Have.”
This track also included a return of the popular Geek Chat session, which included the following techy and self-professed geeks: John Nosal of NosalCentral, Robin Moss of ribit and Jeff Whitfield from Soulcraft Group.
Click here for full speaker bios and presentation descriptions.
Local SEO and Search Track
Joe Youngblood of Digital X Dallas was our Emcee for this track, and the speakers included Ruth Burr Reedy with insights on “SEO for the Customer Journey,” Mike Stewart and “Rising Above the Rest for Local Search Success,” and David Daniels brought us “The Common Misconceptions about Technical SEO.”
Click here for full speaker bios and presentation descriptions.
Rocks Digital Marketing Q & A Panel
Once again the conference included a Q & A Session for all attendees to participate in, moderated by Lissa Duty. The panel featured: DeAndre UpShaw from Standing Dog, Bill Hartzer, and Heather Steele from Blue Steele Solutions.
We closed out the day on June 30th with the Social Media Day Tweetup sponsored by Spyfu and a VIP concert with Sir Earl Toon of Kool & the Gang. Special thank you to our sponsors Spyfu and Advice Local for both of these exciting after-events.
July 1 – Local Search Day Celebration
This was the first year for the Local Search Day celebration and it went off with a bang. The day opened with the Mayor of Addison, Todd Meier, presenting conference organizer Lissa Duty with the Local Search Day Proclamation. This day featured the following:
- Opening Keynote – “The Mad Mad Mad Mad Future of Local Search” by Greg Sterling
- Local Search SMB Panel with panelists Saffie Farris, Ben Killmer and Joe Youngblood
- Special Presentation by Bill Leake
- Local Search Brand Panel with panelists Greg Gifford, Rachel Morgan and Karen Platt
- Closing Keynote – “The 2016 Local SEO Ranking Factors: Reverse Engineering Google’s Local Search Algorithm” by Andrew Shotland
Click here for the full speaker bios and presentation descriptions.
You can check out all the fun everyone had while getting important information about Digital Marketing over the 3-day conference by reading the LIVE blogs, touring the photo gallery and reading up on all the speakers that were in attendance.
Haven’t attended before? Now is the time, mark the dates on your calendar and register.
