By Geoff Livingston, Capitol Communicator Media Strategist

One of the best ways to reenergize your communications strategy and overarching approach is to attend a conference. Speakers share their best practices, and it makes you consider how to innovate with your program.

Here are five of the many tips I picked up at last Friday’s Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit in Baltimore.

1) Remain Nimble

The first tip I picked up was from local microbrewing sensation Flying Dog Brewery. CMO Ben Savage showed many of the brand’s incredibly creative advertising campaigns. He said the secret to their success was keeping a start-up mentality.

Flying Dog always markets like the company’s immediate welfare was on the line, and with minimal decision layers internally. The company is not risk adverse, and willing to make mistakes. As a result, their marketing campaigns have an edge, and the company is now receiving pictures from customers who have tattooed the brand on their bodies.

2) Be a Work In Progress

Honest Tea founder & CEO Seth Goldman related how the brand thinks about social consciousness: “There is no such thing as a socially responsible company, only a company on the path to social responsibility.” Goldman said the brand is constantly evolving its approach to reach the ideal.

With a work in progress attitude, Honest Tea continues to innovate and grow. Goldman said that being socially conscious is not remarkable, rather the standard in today’s economy. Initiatives in the past few years include Honest Kids juices and the Honesty Index.

3) Be True to Your Creativity

Andy Malis, president of MGH, discussed how his agency has withstood the test of time. One approach is to not take on clients who won’t work with your team. Specifically, you need clients who are open-minded about marketing and creative campaigns. The second big take-away was to fight for good work. It’s too easy to accept a safer, watered-down campaign than one that will deliver a little punch.

4) Beacon Is Less Scary Than You Think

Everyone is scared about iBeacon and Beacon on smartphones to offer mobile-based payments and information sharing. Todd Marks, president & CEO of Mindgrub showed how the fear is pretty unfounded.

In reality, beacon revolves around permission and offers brands a great opportunity to interact with customers. Major brands like MLB are already using the technology to offer loyal customers coupons and other incentives in stores.

5) LinkedIn Offers More

Much has been made about LinkedIn’s new publishing capability. But did you know about Showcase pages on the social network? Lori Russo, managing director, Mid-Atlantic, Stanton Communications discussed how a business can highlight a unique offering using the Showcase page on its company profile. Who knew?