So the first TakeItOffline is now done, and in our opinion it was a success, bringing together digital marketers from across the entire spectrum, so much so that the after party went well into the night and I hope that everyone felt like they had made some new friends, the TIO team certainly did.
“The first Take It Offline was an awesome event to attend. Not only was there lots to learn, but the opportunity to meet some very interesting digital people and see what other people are predicting about the latest trends. Looking forward to the next one”
Hannah Thorpe – White.net
“Great first event with a room full of intelligent people chewing the fat over all things digital. And there was beer. I’ll certainly be back in January.”
- Ben Potter – new business & agency mentor
Content in 2017
The subject of the first one was Content in 2017, particularly focusing on how it is changing the two big topics of the night was video and voice.
Video
Video everyone seems knows is big and going to get bigger, Omi and Tom both said that was a significant part of their strategy but the was around if video is expensive does it provide a good enough ROI? Action videos from budget go-pros and UGC from mobiles is a thing.
Voice
The stats are screaming out that voice search is on the increase, but what is voice search and who really is using it – most of the 20-30 somethings in the room didn’t use it a huge amount but we believe that it is older people who struggle with the dexterity & younger people who to them it is a decent valid form of entry.
When optimising for voice, it is challenging because we can’t see how they are actually different, but one area to optimise for is the answer box. Hannah from White commented that this is something they are actively planning.
One question that did come up is that if apps are taking the voice input before it is being passed to standard search – should we be looking at apps first approach to capture it? Most of us agreed that wasn’t a good idea at the moment, it maybe increasingly important in the future. Between Android voice intents and Amazon Skills – there are opportunities for those jumping on it now but you need to offer something people are prepared to install, the future is in aggregators like SkyScanner or Just Eat
AMP
AMP was also talked about and the questions were as much focused around whilst it is new and shiny now, will Google be focusing on progressive web apps next week, if we invest in the development for it will Google drop it the same way it dropped authorship and other markup. Omi did mentioned that AMP is now far more versatile than ever before.
Thanks!!
Again massive thanks from the TakeItOffline team to everyone who came, and those who supported from afar including ScribbleLive, SEMrush and White.net
