Scotland's new eCommerce focus

Intro: This post is the second in my series on the future of Scottish eCommerce, with the previous post here

Scottish Enterprise has recently pledged on its website:

"to increase focus on the e-commerce opportunity for Scotland and in particular, to focus on international e-commerce awareness, advice and support."

To support this focus and the Scottish Government's commitment to Scotland's Digital Future, it is now running a new programme to raise awareness of the eCommerce opportunities for Scottish companies and to help businesses north of the border to capitalise on digital commerce processes and technologies.

One parts of this programme was event run today labelled 'Effective e-Commerce: Reaching new markets online' and held in The Sheraton Hotel in Edinburgh. I went along to listen, to meet potential prospects, see the types of people attending and listen to the range of presenters giving their insight. The attendees seemed to range from one-man operations who have yet to properly venture into online sales, through to large companies who wanted to understand 'what happens next'... and everyone else in between.

What was clear from today's event was the obvious determination of many of the participants to make the most of the emerging eCommerce opportunities in Scotland. Yes, there was a lot of jargon and TLA's (three letter acronyms) being used at various points, but there was also a lot of useful advice given out, especially in the breakout session I attended in the afternoon.

On the downside though, I'm not convinced that these sorts of mixed-bag events are all that is required to move Scotland into a leading online retail region. What is also needed is other business support such as: eCommerce mentoring, a better skilled workforce and the ability for company eCommerce people to share and learn from each other in a positive environment.

Additional note:
I forgot to mention in this post that all attendees were given a copy of 'E-commerce Get It Right!'
http://www.amazon.co.uk/E-commerce-Get-Right-Strategies-Simplified/dp/0956526209
This has now been added to the company 'library' for future reference.

Using social media at conferences

My friend Mark Hillary yesterday wrote an article for Computer Weekly that raised an interesting point about the measurement of social media and in particular how not to use it at an event (e.g. by running a competition based purely on the number of times a particular hashtag was used by the same person).
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/social-business/2011/04/how-do-you-measure-social-media-value.html

I've often mentioned that quantity is not the same a quality when Social Media & platforms are concerned and to measure your activity purely in this quantitative way is like

judging the best driver of a car race by how loud their engine is.

But there are other ways of using modern communication technologies at events that can make a difference. These include:

1. Monitoring mentions of the hashtag to give instant feedback to vendors & participants 
2. Creating a dialogue with attendees who do tweet at the event (either during or afterward for feedback)
3. Sending out digital vouchers to those who ‘check-in’ whilst at the venue This may be to encourage them to participate in an activity or engage in a specific way (e.g. come to this stand / presentation for the latest information on...)

Hopefully conference organisers will learn how to use the digital 'back channels' such as Twitter to understand more about their attendees. They way even find there is additional value created by engaging with them once they have left the event....