Jessika Phillips addresses the stage at Social Media Week Lima at the UNOH Event Center on Thursday.
Photo courtesy of NOW Marketing
LIMA — Social Media Week returned to on Lima Wednesday and Thursday at the UNOH Event Center. This year’s event had a heavy focus on changes in technology, such as AI and virtual reality tools.
NOW Marketing CEO Jessika Phillips said the event she organized brought in more than 22 speakers from across the world to address more than 300 people in attendance for both days.
“I hope that they took away that it’s more about technique and not just the tools, and that technology is going to change and advance all the time,” she said. “But it’s all about the environment that you create to learn and grow and to focus on out-caring the competition in regards to how you care for your team and in regards to how you care for your customers. Because relationships will always be more powerful than marketing.”
Brie Anderson, who runs Beast Analytics out of Wichita, Kansas, said the conference was a great opportunity for her to inform the crowd about the new iteration of Google Analytics.
“You’re not alone in what you’re doing if the new Google Analytics has been a really hard transition because it’s something everybody has had to do,” she said. “It’s another one of those reminders that even when you’re going through hard times, there are other people going through the same situation.”
Owen Hemsath, a creator of Youtube videos for business owners, said that Social Media Week in Lima is the only event like it that does things the right way. The reason he keeps coming back to it has to do with how Phillips understands the business owner.
“She does things that her competitors won’t do,” he said. “I see other CEOs sitting back and hoping the team does the work, while Jessika gets her fingers dirty and puts her hands in the pudding. And that’s the type of person that I want to work with.”
But Phillips was humble when speaking about the amount of work that went into hosting the event.
“Luckily I have a great team,” she said. “This is the one time a year that we all actually get together throughout the year because we live in 12 different states, so the amount of work that goes into it means that we’ve already started planning for next year.”
Phillips said that she intends to keep working and growing the event for the foreseeable future.
“I think this event just continues to bring back repeat attendees and speakers,” she said. “Next year will be our 12th annual event, and our theme will be ‘Roots.’ We’ve strengthened partnerships with other area businesses this year and have seen more of them sponsor and get behind it vs. us just closing out the hotel, but my hope is that we continue to get more local businesses involved who see the value, quality and talent of the speakers that we’re bringing in.”
Reach Jacob Espinosa at 567-242-0399.
