Online Marketing Blog

It’s a near nightmare situation really. A client sends an email on Friday saying, “We’re launching a new web site on Monday, can you take a look at it to make sure our site optimization is ok?”.

The Account Manager asks for a URL and upon receiving, clicks to find a “pretty” home page with 90% images and/or Flash, “cool web 2.0″ navigation using Ajax and as a result of a new content management system, a URL syntax that is completely different than before. Oh, and all title/meta descriptions are now hard coded and there are 50% less pages because the VP of Marketing heard at an executive marketing seminar that “less is more”.

Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well.

Over the past 3 years we’ve been focused on search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR. We’ll continue that trend the rest of this year but with more conferences outside of search as our online marketing agency evolves.

Conferences that I’m attending in the coming months include:

• May: ACCM in Florida
• Jun: PRSA Digital Impact in NYC

There are a few additional photos from Web 2.0 Expo that I wanted to share and so I took some creative license with the timing of some of the events to tell the story of a typical conference day.

The first day of a conference for me typically starts out with registration:

A stop by the speaker/press/blogger room then rolls into keynote presentations from industry leaders and news makers like these:

Jonathan Schwartz CEO of Sun and Tim O’Reilly

Matt Cutts from Google

and Matt Mullenweg co-founder of WordPress

Social media evangelist Brian Solis of Future Works, PR2.0 blog and bub.blicio.us during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Brian took a few minutes to share his insights into what’s hot in Web 2.0 and the interplay of technology and communications.

While in the blogtropol.us blogger lounge today, I caught up with a dapper Dave McClure of 500 Hats who took a few minutes before a PayPal reunion dinner to talk about his work helping co-chair the Web 2.0 Expo event, a little something about “AARRR” for startups and thoughts on marketing with Facebook.

When registering for Web 2.0 Expo I ran into Robert Scoble, famous blogger and Managing Director of FastCompany.tv, whom I had just met 2 weeks ago in San Francisco at Media Relations Summit. He a agreed to do a quick video interview on what’s new in the Web 2.0 world and offered a few tips on how to get more out of attending conferences.

After finding out my new camera’s SDHC card wasn’t recognized by my Sony Vaio laptop, I was stuck taking lots of photos but not posting to Flickr as I normally would. After checking several stores I finally found a card reader and below are a few photos from the Web 2.0 Conference here in San Francisco this week.

Dave aka “PayPal Mafia” McClure

Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester

Geoff Livingston, Brian Solis and Rohit Bhargava

Facebook Marketing Panel

Audience Questions

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff @ Groundswell Book Launch

After the keynote frenzy this morning, the session that stood out for me was “Facebook Marketing: Best Practices” with Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research as moderator, Evan Mager from AKQA, Holly Liu from Watercooler, Brett Keintz of 750 Industries and Stanford GSB and Kevin Barenblat of Context Optional.

Some of the key takeaways from this session were:

• Be clear with your objectives
• Test spending money on Facebook marketing even if you aren’t sure about the return. Hey, 1,000,000 visits can’t be wrong!
• Understanding the ROI of Facebook requires a new kind of mindset

Nothing smacks more of ADD in a Web 2.0 world than micro blogging and microcontent. “Flow Apps” as Stowe Boyd calls them. As such, the last session I’m blogging on day two of Web 2.0 Expo is appropriately named: “Short Attention Span Theater: The Birth of Microblogging & Micromedia”

The cast of characters in this session includes: Greg Narain of Blue Whale Labs who moderated, Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research, Brian Solis from Future Works and PR 2.0 and Stowe Boyd of The /Messengers.

Follow these guys on Twitter and you may learn an awful lot about this space:

The first session for me on day two of Web 2.0, “Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business” with Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester, was one I’ve been looking forward to since I first read Groundswell. See my previous interview with Charlene Li on Groundswell.

In this session, both Li and Bernoff emphasize the importance of not jumping into social technologies and applications just because the competition does, but to have specific objectives and measurement. With defensible results, a social technology will be in a much better position to survive slimming budgets. The focus is on people, not technology with social technologies and applications.

Sessions on day two begin at 8:30 PST and while I appreciate that, it’s aggressive in my book. So, I’ll be attending, Twittering and blogging the following sessions at Web 2.0 Expo today as well as visiting blogtropol.us:

• 9:40am Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business Charlene Li (Forrester Research), Josh Bernoff (Forrester Research)

• 10:50am Consumer 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Changing Moods, Metrics, & Monetization Rafe Needleman (CNET), Konrad Feldman (Quantcast), Erin Hunter (comScore, Inc.), Garrick Schmitt (Avenue A | Razorfish), Murtaza Hussain (Peanut

Now comes a tough call. Three sessions in the 1:30 slot that I’d really like to attend at the same time.

The second workshop of the day at Web 2.o Expo, “Startup Metrics 101: Product & Marketing Workshop” provided attendees a glimpse into the vast depth of knowledge from Dave McClure of 500 Hats who offered some pirate speak, “AARRR” to help delegates remember his model for building web businesses.

Hiten Shah of CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics provided practical examples and Vanessa Fox of Ignition Partners and Nine By Blue offered a combination of SEO centric tips, analytics and examples.

First up was the Web 2.0 Pirate, Dave McClure with his “AARRR” model:

• Acquisition - Where users come to your site from the web