We are bringing BizCom back for its second annual marketing conference! And we couldn’t be more excited. We’ve been behind the scenes working for months on this year’s upcoming summit, and we are so excited to spill all the details with you now!
For the last two years, we have been hosting monthly workshops at our office. We started these workshops because, to be honest, we were running out of time, and we didn’t want to deny people coffee dates to “pick our brain.” So instead we just started inviting all the people to our office once a month to answer any business, blogger, marketing, and what other questions they had.
Here’s what’s going down at this years BizCom Summit on October 10th.
P.S. you can click HERE to grab your ticket NOW.
And if you were wondering the vibe last year, here’s a full recap of all the fun we had and knowledge we absorbed.
What BizCom Summit is about?
Are you a business owner? Ever struggle with your online presence? What social media channels are the best to invest time in? How do you promote yourself and get brand recognition on TV and print media? What is SEO and how do you set up a strategy to attract PAYING leads? Or how do you deal with your success?
These are all questions (and more!) that will be answered at the BizCom Summit, by some of the Twin Cities most savvy influencers and online marketing gurus.
Join us for a unique conference to learn from industry professionals in and around the Twin Cities area about marketing, social media, and so much more.
Sponsorship Opportunities are available! Email emmy@altaeventsco.com for more information!
Breakout Session #1 | A Quickstart Guide to Building Successful Brand & Influencer Partnerships with Christine Scherping from A Friend of a Friend
Whether you’re a brand looking to partner with influencers, or an influencer looking to partner with brands, there are key tips to build successful partnerships. We’ll cover how to find your ideal partners, pitching tips, contract negotiations, best practices and more!
Christine Scherping is the founder of Friend of a Friend, a boutique PR agency dedicated to building meaningful relationships between brands and their target audience, via a combination of influencer marketing, media relations, and events.
Christine spent the majority of her 15 year PR career on the agency side, collaborating with some of the best known and most beloved brands in the country, including Bath & Body Works, Land O’Lakes, Sherwin-Williams, Caribou Coffee, and Red Baron. The industry’s most celebrated awards, including PR Week, SABREs, Silver and Gold Anvils, have recognized her PR and influencer work. Christine was also named one of the Women Champions of PR in PR week.
Breakout Session #2 | Content that Converts with Hook Agency
Hook Agency is a boutique digital agency out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our specialty is where visual design and SEO combine. Started as ‘Tim B Design’ in 2012 – we’ve been serving clients from the nationally recognized Mall of America to small business heroes Deneen Pottery. We love helping companies represent themselves better online with our professional web design services and get them more traffic and business with SEO.
- Content that solves the problem for a prospect if they were trying to do it themselves. One of the examples of this: We got a lead today from a blog: “How long should a blog post be” This was successful because it gives people who are trying to do it themselves tools to do so, and then we can be there when they decide they don’t actually want to do it on their own.
- Content that talks about a competing solution, and also tells them ‘there’s another way!
- Content that helps them at an earlier point than you’d normally help, but introduces your solution.
- Content that explains the entire strategy in detail, but also demonstrates all of the work to do it right.
- Content that lists the 5-10 solutions they could use (including your competitors) and sells your specialty within it.
Breakout Session #3 | Pretty, Practical and Performance, A session all about Pinterest with Alyssa Greve from Cambria
Alyssa is a dear friend of ours in which sprouted by her taking our initial branding photography to launch our c2s business! Within that time she started working at Cambria and has worked her way up to be one of the biggest faces behind their social media team.
She has coached us over the years on our own social and shown us at c2s what opportunities there are. Alyssa is surrounded by some of the top thought leaders in the US and has seen firsthand how the power is untapped. The opportunity for businesses in the Pinterest world is wide open. And any business, no matter who you are, Pinterest is where it’s at.
Through her position at Cambria, Alyssa has been able to partner directly with Pinterest to strategically use the platform in the most efficient way. In this session, she will share pro tips, best practices and the opportunity available in Pinterest for businesses today. So many users are searching in the platform and there is market share awaiting to be captured! We’ll start high level and then dig into the details. Get ready! Let’s explore!
On October 10th, Alyssa Greve from Cambria will be walking you through some of the most practical tips and how performance is the title.
Breakout Session #4 | How to Deal with Your Success with Mercedes Austin from Mercury Mosaics
Mercedes Austin is the Owner/Founder/Mover & Shaker of Mercury Mosaics.
Originally from Minneapolis and having grown up in an architecturally-significant home, Mercedes has always had a passion for unique interiors. An artist all her life, she was always experimenting, but never with one focus. Combining a passion for math, architecture, design & painting – mosaic tile and all of the possibilities within the medium presented a perfect match to hold her attention. Mercury Mosaics started as an answer to a personal goal of being an artist full-time.
Coming from the service industry, Mercedes has always made great service and taking care of people an extremely high priority – period. It began with a focus on small-batch-made home accessories – accent mosaic tables and colorfully tiled mirrors – with commissions locally. Soon, clients getting small home accessories wanted things for their kitchens, bathrooms, and fireplaces, installed permanently. Seventeen years later, it has grown to work with clients nationally and internationally: B2C & B2B!
One thing led to another, and Mercedes has transformed from a solo-artist to full-blown creative entrepreneur leading a company that services clients all over the world.
To sustain this success and continue the level of care that is her standard, Mercedes has curated a group of some of the finest craftspeople and humble hard workers who are known as the tile elves. It is with this passion that fulfills her to now create jobs for other artists and be a part of their journey on their way to create art as their full-time job.
Mercury Mosaics is like a bakery for tile. It’s a special factory, studio, and showroom located in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District and is one of the fastest-growing companies in the US.
Panel | Jason DeRusha from WCCO, Elizabeth Ries from Twin Cities Live, Kelly Kegans from Mpls.St.Paul Home&Design magazine and Jill Miller fromProjects in Person.
I am BEYOND excited about this years panel, filled with people who are not only super nice and brilliant humans, but also work in this PR and marketing business in the day to day grind.
We really wanted to bring in a mixture of individuals from our favorite human circle that have breathed new life into us! Some of which are TV anchors, news editors, business owners, PR firms, know what they’re doing and still are always trying to figure it out. I am really excited about this panel. I already know that you will not be disappointed by what you take away from this.
So, here’s a little bit of background about each of them…
Jill Miller launched “Pip,” Projects in Person, a DIY Workshop in 2016. Located on Mainstreet in Hopkins, the workshops guide attendees to build a variety of projects from cutting boards to headboards. Snagging her first media appearance three months after opening, Jill has now had 30 live TV appearances covering all major networks and has been featured in Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, the Star Tribune, and more.
Jason DeRusha is more than the morning news anchor at WCCO-TV: he’s the chief restaurant critic for Minnesota Monthly magazine, he’s a social media innovator on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Jason’s been at WCCO since 2003; he was the first reporter to blog for the TV station’s website; he’s also an active volunteer in community hosting and emceeing fundraisers.
Elizabeth Ries is a television and radio personality in the Twin Cities. She co-hosts Twin Cities Live weekdays afternoons from 3-4:30 on KSTP and delivers celebrity news and pop culture updates during her Dirt Alerts on myTalk 107.1 at 8:20 and 12:20. She also co-hosts a podcast called “Best to the Nest” focused on making your home a happy and healthy sanctuary. She grew up in Apple Valley but now lives in Minneapolis with her husband Jay, daughter Bernadette and son Franklin. They also share their home with a German Shorthair Pointer named Gracie Lu and a flock of chickens in the backyard. Elizabeth is passionate about cooking with as much home grown produce as possible and wants to add a hive of bees to her yard next!
Kelly Ryan Kegans is a writer and editor who specializes in producing home and design content. For the past 25 years, Kelly worked on staff and in a freelance capacity for daily newspapers and magazines at the local, regional, and national level, including serving as Senior Deputy Home Editor for Better Homes and Gardens magazine, where she worked for 12 years prior to moving to Minneapolis. Four years ago, she relocated to the Twin Cities and is the editor of Mpls.St.Paul Home&Design magazine and a field editor for BH&G and Midwest Living. Kelly’s work has also appeared in The Dallas Morning News, Magnolia Journal, Traditional Home, Do It Yourself, Country Home, and others. Kelly enjoys the ebb and flow of scouting homes and gardens, writing and editing stories, formulating stories, planning photo shoots, assembling creative teams, visually packaging stories, and prop styling for photo shoots. At home, she tends to go overboard buying garden and design books, collecting too many houseplants, attempting to purge an overabundance of magazines, and creating and recreating vignettes.
