TopRank Online Marketing
Lee Odden

7 Social Media Lessons from Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid

Lee Odden on Sep 8th, 2010     Guest Posts, Online Marketing, Social Media

social mediaNote from Lee: This guest post comes to us from Frank Strong, the director of Public Relations at Vocus & PRWeb, a client of TopRank Online Marketing.

When The Karate Kid was released in 1984, social media had yet to be conceived.  Even so, we can still learn a great deal from the way a character like Mr. Miyagi simplified what might otherwise be considered complex challenges.   He was a master, a student, a mentor and a friend – all characteristics that might have made Miyagi successful in social media.  To that end, I offer seven Miyagi insights we can apply to social media:


Lee Odden

Interview: Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising on Social Media

Lee Odden on Sep 6th, 2010     Interviews, Microsoft Bing, Online Marketing, Social Media, Spotlight on Search


Spotlight on Search Interview: Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising on How Microsoft Does Social Media and the Yahoo Bing Search Alliance

mel carson microsoft advertisingIf you attend Search Marketing industry conferences, you’ve no doubt run into the ever optimistic and charming Mel Carson from Microsoft.  When I was last in London, Mel connected me with an excellent Fish n Chips that the pubs around Trafalgar Square couldn’t get close to.  Mel is active as an advocate of Microsoft Advertising , especially via social media channels and at conferences to the Webmaster and search marketing community. His work is global and very interesting. With the Bing and Yahoo convergence, I thought it was time we did an interview – and he agreed.


Lee Odden

Win a Free Pass to MN Blogger Conference

Lee Odden on Sep 2nd, 2010     Blogging, Marketing PR Conferences, Online Marketing, Other Events

Update: Congratulations!
Rebecca Flansburg has won the free pass to the 1st Minnesota Bloggers Conference for her post:
Mama wants to go MN Blogger Bad

It was close, she won by just 2 votes over Josh Braaten and Patrick Garmoe.
Congratulations again Rebecca and thank you for a clever and compelling post!

Minnesota Blogger Conference

TopRank Online Marketing is proud to be a founding sponsor of the first Minnesota Blogger Conference. Tickets for this event “sold out” within a few hours and there are over 100 people on the waiting list. Thanks to conference founders Melissa Berggren, Arik Hanson, Suzi Magill and Katie Schutrop, it’s already one hot event.


Lee Odden

Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google

Lee Odden on Sep 2nd, 2010     Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from GoogleAaron Goldman is an accomplished digital marketer that I know through MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit conference. He reached out to me while writing his new book, “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google”, and asked if I’d like to contribute. Such a request is a great honor to me but unfortunately, I never did end up sending anything to Aaron even though he was incredibly patient and went out of his way to make it easy.

I know what you’re thinking: Smart AND nice guy? Yes indeed, that’s Aaron and now he’s on a blog tour to promote his new book, graciously stopping by Online Marketing Blog with a video recognizing how TopRank Online Marketing “Acts Like Content” (Chapter 7) as well as offering insights from the book on the value of content for marketing. Overall, the book offers 20 lessons “straight from Google’s playbook” that I think you’ll get a lot of value from. Check out the video:


Lee Odden

The Real Cost of Buying Links for SEO: $4 Million

Lee Odden on Sep 1st, 2010     Dark Side of SEO, Online Marketing, SEO

stack of moneyI was reading a copy of the Inc. 500 issue on my flight back from Dallas this weekend and came across an article about a seasonal online retailer that was “penalized” right before the Holidays for paid links. He estimated the revenue loss due to plummeting organic search visibility at $4 million in sales.  Now he’s “thanking” Google for the spanking because he’s mended his ways and is reborn as a social media enthusiast.

I’m not sure I buy the “social media has turned things around” story exactly, but I do wonder how many companies and consultants roll the dice and take shortcuts and loopholes to get ahead only to find out later it’s worthless? The notion of paid links is an old story (Paid Links Evil? Dec 2005) but many of the tactics used to shortcut results for SEO will always be a fresh topic of discussion.


Lee Odden

Social Media SEO Success with Blogging

Lee Odden on Aug 31st, 2010     Blog Marketing, Blogging, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, SEO, Social Media
Army Golden Knights

Army Golden Knights: SFC Dave Herwig (@gkdave), SGM Steve Young (@gksteve), LTC Joe Martin (gkjoe)

My presentation on how to leverage Social Media SEO to improve the reach and effectiveness of blog content for marketing at OpenCa.mp DFW this weekend ended up being a lot of information in a very short period of time. The use of a video interview I did with Brian Clark as the segue into my presentation ate into some of the 30 minutes I had to present plus I simply had too many slides.

(Thanks to Lt Colonel Joe Martin for the photo taken right after the presentation. His team were literally sponges for information at the event.)


Lee Odden

Brian Clark Interview: Copyblogger on Content Marketing with Blogs

Lee Odden on Aug 30th, 2010     Blogging, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Other Events, Video Interviews

Brian Clark CopybloggerOpenCamp’s Sunday schedule included presentations on blogging that included Chris Pirillo, Brian Clark and myself. I caught up with Brian before he gave his presentation to give us a little preview. John P. ended up using the video as the segue between Brian and I as we changed microphones.

Watch as Brian talks about the importance of planning content and understanding its purpose in order to be effective with blog copywriting. He also mentioned that traditional media is still doing some things right and we new media types would do well to identify what those things are and use that insight for our own publishing and content marketing efforts.


Lee Odden

Chris Pirillo on SEO & Social Media @ OpenCa.mp

Lee Odden on Aug 29th, 2010     Interviews, Online Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Video Interviews

chris pirilloAt the OpenCa.mp conference in Dallas this weekend I was able to re-connect with Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome and the Gnomedex conference (We’ve interviewed each other in the past). We both jumped out of the same airplane with the Army Golden Knights last week and are also speaking today about blogs at OpenCa.mp.

I caught up with Chris to talk about his take on SEO and social media.  He had pretty strong opinions about people who are too aggressive and not always relevant in the social connections they’re making.  This is what he had to say:

You can find Chris online by Googling “chris“. How’s that for the effect of links on search engine visibility?


Lee Odden

OpenCamp Blackhat SEO with Social Media

Lee Odden on Aug 28th, 2010     Marketing PR Conferences, Online Marketing, Other Events, SEO, Social Media

gio
The first content session I’m attending at OpenCamp is by Gio, aka Giovanni Gallucci, a longtime search and social media marketer based in Dallas. The topic is “Blackhat SEO” and the room is packed!
The session was cut a bit short due to technical difficulties with getting the conference started and Gio took it in stride and was both entertaining and informative – the right mix for a morning tech crowd.

Gio says “Black hat is simply another way to automate a time-consuming process. In other areas of marketing and life in general we encourage automation in order to maximize efficiency and get a leg up on our competitors”.

According to the conference session description, the nature of this session doesn’t allow liveblogging or tweeting, which i think is a load of crap, so I’ll liveblog it anyway.


Lee Odden

Army Golden Knights: Jumping in to Social Media

Lee Odden on Aug 27th, 2010     Online Marketing, Social Media

Lee Odden Jump Army Golden Knights
Army Strong Stories is a program to draw attention to the real life and experience of being in the Army through soldier stories communicated via media socially. Recently Greg Swan of the Minneapolis Public Relations firm, Weber Shandwick, that is behind the Army Strong Stories campaign contacted me with a compelling opportunity to create my own Army story: “Would you like to go skydiving with the US Army Golden Knights?”

Who are the Golden Knights? In 1959 13 men joined together to form the Strategic Army Corps Sport Parachute Team, to compete in the communist dominated sport of skydiving. The team performed so well that on June 1, 1961 the Army made them an official parachute team and the Knights (men and women) have been wowing audiences at air shows ever since.


Lee Odden

Video Interview: Dave Roth of Yahoo

Lee Odden on Aug 26th, 2010     Interviews, Online Marketing, Search Industry News, Spotlight on Search, Video Interviews

Dave Roth works as Director of Search Marketing at Yahoo. That means Dave is a Search Engine Marketer that works for a search engine. I’ve known Dave for several years and we finally decided to do a video interview. Watch the interview below to learn what a search marketer that works for a search engine does, especially the challenges and opportunities in communications on search marketing performance in a large company.

YouTube Preview Image

Of course, we couldn’t talk to someone like Dave at Yahoo without mentioning the transition of search results to Bing over on the Yahoo site. What does this mean for SEO? What does it mean for Paid Search?  What’s the fate of Site Explorer and where does it fit within Bing Webmaster Tools? Is SEO good or bad for search engines? How much of a signal does social media provide search engines? We discuss these topics and more.


Lee Odden

SES San Francisco 2010 Wrap-Up

Lee Odden on Aug 25th, 2010     Marketing PR Conferences, Online Marketing, Search Engine Strategies
SES San Francisco

QR code on the side of a building? Geek cool.

Last week the West Coast SES Conference and Expo moved from San Jose back to its roots in San Francisco. It was a well attended show (5,000+ in 2009 vs. 6,000 in 2010 registrations), despite the illusion created by the voluminous Moscone.

As part of Connected Marketing Week, SES included a great mix of sessions. In fact, there were quite a few new sessions and solo presentations such as the one by Andy Beal on Online Reputation Management and the one on Content Marketing Optimization by moi.


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