Online Marketing Blog

Upgrading to a newer version of WordPress isn’t to complicated, however some precautions should be taken. The list below is a bit more detailed that WordPress provides, but I’m just trying to line item out everything.

Prerequisites:

• FTP access.
• Blog admin access.
• 10-30 minutes for most blogs. This is also dependent on how big the blog is and how many plugins the blog has. Webhosting and internet connection speed can also play a big part.

Notes:

• No other authors should be in the blog during the upgrade. If they are, it probably won’t hurt anything, but they’ll be confused as it won’t work correctly.

The day two Media Relations Summit lunch keynote is given by Mike Moran, a distinguished engineer from IBM, who starts out with a question: Did Robert Scoble make you feel technologically stupid this morning and now you’re thinking you have to listen to an engineer? Mike admits he can’t be Robert and neither should we.

“You have permission to sip from the new web 2.0 world, rather than drink from it like a fire hose”. Give yourself permission to do a little bit of this. What I don’t want is for you to feel overwhelmed by all of this. Also, “I’m going to count clips and thats it”. Don’t retreat to what you’re comfortable with. Be willing to experiment.

This session at Media Relations Summit includes Tac Anderson from HP, Jennifer Cisney from Kodak and Robert Scoble from Fast Company.

First up is Tac Anderson from HP, who shares a specific example of a tactical execution of a blog. HP has had bloggers for 3 years. 60+ blogs.

Example of using a business blog as a competitive response. Xerox announced a change in pricing. Charging more for the printer and less for the consumables – ink and paper.

The next day, HP blogger Vince Ferraro responded followed by analyst responses. Ensuing media coverage became more about HP’s response than the original Xerox announcement. HP was able to instantly get their viewpoint into the coverage by using a blog.

Our client visit to San Francisco last week fell right next to the Media Relations Summit conference happening this week at the Westin St. Francis on Union Square. The near crossover meant a weekend in one of my favorite cities.

As one of the largest conferences dedicated to media relations, this event attracts an array of public relations practitioners including the top PR agencies in the world, large and small corporate PR staff and academics from PR programs at major universities. Overall theme seems to be looking to the future.

I am joined by media relations specialist, Kevin Sawyer who will be blogging the event over at Media Relations Blog. Today was made up of pre-conference intensives and workshops. Monday and Tuesday sessions are filled with high level and practical how to programming.

Overall new look and feel for the post screen. Cleaner, more colorful and simplified. Everything is still there, but the layout is different. Getting use to it may take a minute or two, but you’ll end up loving it.

Here are a few of the modifications made to the post screen. Under the image is a listing that describes each number call out.

1. New menu layout. Main menu options are bigger and on the left. Secondary options smaller and on the right. They are all still there though.
2. The post window is basically the same, however they did add in a media bar. The media bar lets you post audio, video, images and other sorts of media. The image uploading is now up here too which makes it much more convenient. This is a great addition for all content publishers.

I discovered several of the blogs on this week’s BIGLIST SEO blogs update via all the new Twitter followers we’ve been getting at the leeodden and the BIGLIST accounts. Welcome to all of our new friends! 70% of the blogs queued up for review this week didn’t make it to the list, but what we do have is a nice mix of social media, SEO and online marketing topics for you to choose from:

• Jacob Morgan – A nice mix of social, viral, SEO and marketing strategy from the founder of the SF Search Marketing Salon.

• Audette Media Blog – Adam Audette has a new blog for his internet marketing consulting business and while it’s a very new blog, we’re adding it to the BIGLIST because if it evolves into anything like what Adam does on LED Digest, it’s sure to be a hit. Check out the link building primer.

It’s pretty common in the interactive, advertising and PR agency world to outsource components of an engagement where the lead agency does not have specific domain expertise. Those scenarios are often structured by the client who is already working with other vendors or the lead agency bringing in outside expertise.  For the most part, it’s pretty transparent what is outsourced and what is not.

Is this the same in the search marketing and especially, the SEO industry?  The variety of creative, technical and social expertise required to excel and succeed with today’s online marketing programs makes it a formidable challenge for any search marketing agency to staff accordingly. The “cowboy” mentality prevalent in the SEO world makes employing some of the best at their craft unlikely.