Social Media Marketing World is here! As I sit sleepily at Dulles Airport in Washington, waiting to catch my connecting flight to sunny San Diego, the only thing keeping me awake is my pre #SMMW16 excitement… and a little caffeine.

With an opening party held on the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier, this year’s SMMW is kicking off with a bang. But apart from this once in a lifetime networking party surrounded by social media pros and warplanes, SMMW 2016, also has some really interesting sessions in store. The Synthesio team will be camped out at our booth with our strategic partner, Ditto Labs. We’ll also be doing what we do best, monitoring and sharing the social activity around the event, with our #SMMW16 command center. Stop by and check it out, or follow our twitter channel for stats and insights.

However, between manning our booth and talking Social Intelligence to fellow social media lovers at SMMW, we won’t get to attend every awesome session. So, we’ve put together a list of our top “must attend” sessions, to make the most of our SMMW experience. Enjoy!

Monday

How to Perfect Your Personal Marketing: Insider Tips on Social Media and More

10:30am April 18 – Room 28ABCD
Guy Kawasaki
Chief Evangelist
Canva

Of course, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to attend a wisdom packed session led by Guy Kawaski (author, The Art of Social Media and many other books). In this session, Guy will explain how to use social media and visual marketing to rock your personal marketing. Guy has perfected his own personal marketing by working with companies like Apple, Canva, Mercedes Benz and UC Berkeley.

7 Blogging Tools to Improve Your Process and Results
10:30am – Room 30A
Syed Balkhi
Founder
Wordpress Beginner

Who doesn’t want to increase their blog’s traffic, subscribers and revenue? In this session, Syed Balkhi, blogging expert and founder of multiple seven-figure businesses, will show the tools and techniques that you can use to grow your blog’s traffic, subscribers, and revenues.

Strategies and Secrets for Business Growth in the Age of Distractions
11:30 am April 18 – Room 29AB
Chris Brogan
CEO
Owner Media Group

I bookmarked this session because I find this concept particularly interesting. These days most brands share the same challenge when it comes to cutting through the noise, as social media has become the #1 marketing and advertising tool. If people can buy from anyone, why buy from you? Chris Brogan, CEO of Owner Media Group, will deliver a unique blend of inspiration as well as tangible performance-improving insight necessary for rising above the noise.

How Big Brands Are Using Social Influencers to Gain Massive Reach
11:30am – Room 30DE
Matt See
Director of Social Media
HSN
Martin Jones
Sr. Marketing Manager – Social Media & Content Marketing
Cox Communications
Jay Baer
President
Convince & Convert
Karianne Stinson
Social Media Manager
Priceline.com

Are you using social influencers in your marketing? Do you wonder how it works day-to-day, and if it really pays off? Influencers are the new media, and nowhere is that truer than in social, where large companies are running sophisticated programs to get Youtube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter and Pinterest celebs to talk about them. Join social media experts, Jay Baer and Matt See from HSN, Karianne Stinson from Priceline and Martin Jones from Cox Business, as they discuss the ins and outs of influencer marketing at full scale.

How to Optimize, Segment, and Deliver Content
2:00pm – Room 33ABC
Pat Flynn
Owner
Flynndustries, LLC

Have you noticed that many businesses treat their customers and prospects as if they are created equal, having the same interests, likes, and goals? That’s a BIG mistake. In this session, Pat Flynn, author of Will It Fly and host of the SPI podcast, will teach you the principles and tactics you need to learn to better segment and understand your audience types. You’ll learn how to make them feel like you know them better than they even know themselves.

How to Organize Cross Functional Marketing Across the Business
3:00pm – 3:45pm Apr 18
Sandy Carter
General Manager, Cloud Ecosystem, and Developers
IBM
Bernie Borges
CEO
Find and Convert
James Moat
Global Digital Communications
Avery Dennison
Konnie Brown
Lead Social Media Communications
Dell

Do you struggle to build consensus with execs and other departments as you lead efforts to humanize your brand through social media marketing? Join moderator Bernie Borges in a discussion with marketing professionals from three leading brands that explain how to get buy-in from execs to expand social media marketing across business functions.

Testing, Hustling and Outrageous Transparency in the Digital Age
5:00 pm April 18 – Hall D
Gary Vaynerchuk
Owner
VaynerMedia
Marcus Sheridan
Founder
The Sales Lion

Do you wonder how transparent your business should be on social media? Have you considered starting your own daily show? Join Marcus Sheridan, founder of The Sales Lion, as he hosts Gary Vaynerchuck (author of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook and #AskGaryVee) for a frank conversation about the future of social media and whether you should get in on the live content trend. If you’re looking for some seriously fun, frank and enlightening conversation about all things social, this is clearly a keynote you will NOT want to miss.

Tuesday

Measure, Manage and Attribute: Practical Social Media Analytics
10:15 am April 19 – Room 29CD
Ian Lurie
CEO & Founder
Portent

If you know us at Synthesio, then you know this session is right up our alley. In this session with Ian Lurie, CEO and Founder of Portent, learn the existing and custom reports you need to measure and attribute social media performance. You’ll create the reports that matter and find out how to use traffic and conversion reports to understand what’s working on your site. You’ll finally be able to measure more accurately the things that matter to your business’s success.

How to Create a World-Class Social Care Program: 8 Building Blocks
10:15 am April 19 – Room 30DE
Dan Gingiss
Head of Digital Marketing

Have you wondered how big and small brands have scaled social customer service? Most of them follow a similar process. In this session, Dan Gingiss, (co-host of the Focus on Customer Service Podcast) will teach you the 8 Stages of Social Care Maturation that he’s learned from interviewing more than two dozen brands, as well as managing social care programs at major brands themselves. You’ll learn about defining your brand’s philosophy, choosing the right technology, training your team, developing processes, and reporting – plus a bonus section on integration for more advanced practitioners. You’ll be able to return to your company with the confidence to move forward with a world-class social care program.

9 Essential Tools for Every Social Media Marketer’s Toolbox
11:15 am April 19 – Room 28ABCD
Ian Cleary
Founder
RazorSocial

If you follow Synthesio, you know that we love discussing the top tools that every Social Marketer needs, so this session was a no-brainer for me!  At this session, we will join social media tools expert Ian Cleary and he’ll share the best tools available that will save you a lot of time and deliver you amazing results. You will leave with a clear picture of which tools will best help you to build your business, grow your community, and engage your audience for your business. Ian’s sessions are always popular for being lively, entertaining and informative, full of actionable tips and tools.

7 Qualities of Outrageously Successful Companies Using Content Marketing
2:30 April 19 – Room 31ABC
Marcus Sheridan
Founder
The Sales Lion

In this session, Marcus Sheridan (founder of TheSalesLion.com), will bring his engaging and enthusiastic style back to San Diego to help you discover critical qualities shared by the most successful content marketing organizations and the secret to identifying content that will actually “resonate” versus content that never gets noticed. You will learn how to get cross-organizational buy-in for your content marketing, and how to integrate content into the sales process to dramatically increase quality leads, closing rates, and company revenue. Whether you’re a B2B, B2C, big or small– this is a session you’ll immediately be able to apply to your company to get great results in 2016 and beyond.

These are the sessions that we will definitely be attending, but we would love to also see everyone at our booth. We are sharing a space with our strategic partner, Ditto Labs, and we can’t wait to discuss Social Media Intelligence, visual data or anything related to Social Media Marketing with our fellow social media marketing enthusiasts at #SMMW16. So come stop by, and take a look at our Social Media command center to see what people are saying about the show.