Online Marketing Blog

If you are part of the online marketing or content marketing industry you have undoubtably heard of Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) and his company the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).  Joe has been a member of the content marketing community for over a decade, and has made it his mission to help brands create quality content and distribute that content through multiple online channels.   This was my first time seeing Joe speak and he made it a great interactive experience, and was of course wearing his trademark Orange.

I enjoyed the history that Joe shared with the audience as well as his practical tactical tips that can be implemented by an organization of any size.  However, I think the true takeaway is determining a way to differentiate yourself from your peers and your competition.

"Google taught us how to search." - Paul Vallez

Paul Vallez admits that when he started at HP less than a year ago he had just come from Ask.com and was pretty cocky about what he knew.  Vallez also shares that he wasn’t very open to new ideas and wanted to step into his new position at a big brand and immediately demonstrate value. What was his approach?

• 75% Cocky
• 25% Open to new ideas

In Vallez’s presentation he identified what he called “3 Key Learnings” that he shared with the audience for improving the way that your search strategy is implemented for improved engagement.

I’m headed to (hopefully) sunny San Diego today for the annual Online Marketing Summit conference where I’ll get to present on one of my favorite topics: Optimization. Of course, if you read Online Marketing Blog very often, you’ll know my definition of optimization is a bit different than traditional SEO.  My post last Thursday “Are You Optimized?” touched on this.

The competition for attendance during the breakout sessions at OMS is really tough during the time slot I’m scheduled for. SAP, Wider Funnel and SAP are all presenting at the same time as I’m giving the all new “Optimize THIS: Integrating Social, SEO & Content presentation”. This post is a bit of a preview on the presentation so if you’re at OMS this week, make sure you check it out.

This post is about Congratulations, Convergence and Content.

First off, congrats to Aaron Kahlow on his great news, I’m sure UBM TechWeb will be pleased with OMS, it’s an impressive event with a great following. Speaking of OMS, despite the wimpiest Minnesota Winter in years, February is a fine time to go somewhere warm and luckily, OMS and SES Search & Social Accelerator in San Diego are coming up fast Feb 6-9, 2012.

Online Marketing Summit has grown quickly and the annual event in San Diego boasts an impressive roster of topics, training opportunities and speakers. The conference kicks off with an Online Marketing Bootcamp, then 3 days of OMS sessions on every topic under the Online Marketing sun.

This year was my 5th attending the SES conference in Chicago. While smaller than SES New York or SES San Francisco, the Chicago show serves a significant number of client side marketers, agencies and consultants in the Midwest and according to Incisive Media who run the event, attendance at this year’s SES Chicago was the best ever.

This was the first SES for our new Marketing Manger at TopRank, Ashley Zeckman, who stepped up to the plate and liveblogged the event for us. She did a great job and her posts were well received by Online Marketing Blog readers as well as other online publications that picked up her posts. Below is a summary of her blog posts, an embedded TopRank Online Marketing presentation on Social, SEO & Content Marketing, responses on Twitter and a few of my favorite photos from the event.

As SES Chicago reaches its final sessions the audience is still alert and ready to learn at TopRank CEO Lee Odden’s afternoon presentation on “Content Marketing & Optimization.”  According to Google’s Eric Schmidt, every 2 days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of time to the year 2003.  With so much information being shared what can we do as marketers to make our content easy to spot and easy to consume?

Can Customers Find Your Content?

Content creation is so much more than marketing, it is a way of engaging and enticing potential customers to take action.  Optimized content can make sure that customers interact with your brand.  There are many types of content that companies publish and many different audiences that a company should interact with.  Content creation is one of the most effective form of online marketing, it also happens to be the most difficult.

Proper execution of a local and social media strategy is still a head scratcher for many internet marketers.  The session on “Local + Social: the Future of Promotion” featuring Gregg Stewart and Benu Aggarwal at SES Chicago was a must see to answer several important questions.

A Best Practices Approach with Gregg Stewart

Did you know that roughly 20% of all Google searches have local intent?  When you look at mobile data that number is even higher.  These statistics alone should show us as marketers how important a online local strategy is for improving engagement.

Checking the Box Won’t Work

While website All Facebook says that 96% of small businesses are on Facebook, Mashable.com says that 64% of small businesses think that social media is unnecessary.  Part of what this data tells us that many companies are simply checking the box, but aren’t sure how to properly utilize social media marketing channels.

Wednesday morning’s panel discussion on search, social, and content was flush with information that was easy to digest and provided helpful tips for implementation. The session was moderated by Anne Kennedy from the SES Advisory board and featured speakers:

• Aaron Kahlow, Chairman & Founder, Online Marketing Summit & SES Advisory Board (@omconnect)
• Arnie Kuenn, President, Vertical Measures (@arniek)
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing & SES Advisory Board (@leeodden)

Kahlow Presents the What, Why, How, and Who of Search, Social, and Content

Aaron Kahlow focused on some very basic but essential areas that all marketers should focus on when creating a campaign either online or offline. In regards to search, social, and content he had this to share:

Michael DeHaven’s presentation at SES Chicago on “User Generated SEO” started with some actual user generated content from the audience. Before the session DeHaven gave 5 volunteers a bite sized Ghirardelli chocolate bar. In exchange for the treat he asked that each of the volunteers write a review of the chocolate and then share it with the rest of the audience.

What Was the Response?
The chocolate was called everything from waxy, to too sweet, messy, and melt in your mouth goodness. In contrast the packaging created by the Ghirardelli marketers was quite different, “take time to slow down and feel yourself melt with each bite.” As you can see the professional marketers took a much different approach than the consumers.

Mikel Chertudi, Senior Director, Global Media & Demand Marketing at Adobe Systems, presented Tuesday morning’s opening keynote at SES Chicago. The goal of his presentation was to take a deep dive into:

• How the value of what marketers do is often viewed incorrectly
• Mistakes that many marketers are guilty of
• What questions marketers should ask themselves in order to invest marketing dollars appropriately

Changing the Marketing Conversation
Often times, as marketers we talk too tactically

Many marketers today still refer to marketing dollars as “spend”, “budgets”, or “cost centers”. One of the things that Chertudi urges online marketers to do is change the conversation. What does this mean?  Organizations should begin considering marketing costs as an investment and not just a cost. Instead of focusing on the “burn rate” we are urged to focus on determining if our investment is large enough to fuel the growth of the company. This will enable marketing to be properly viewed as a means of growing the organization instead of being perceived as a cost center.

I’m going to be visiting the windy city for SES Chicago this week and have been trying to figure out where to explore if I can find some time while I’m there. I always enjoy a great meal so turning to search engines and social media platforms was an obvious answer for me to find great restaurants.

Understanding how end consumers use search and social to find and discuss your business online is key in creating an effective online marketing strategy.  The more that you study and adapt your strategy to positively impact new customers, the more successful your social media strategy will be.

The closing keynote on Wednesday at ad:tech New York was presented by Christian Oestlien the Head of Social Advertising Products at Google.  The opening of Oestlien’s presentation featured an example of Google+’s new Hangout feature shot live at a Black Eyed Peas Concert.  Fans were given an opportunity to interact with the music sensations in real time.  Black Eyed Pea’s frontman will.i.am is noted as saying “This isn’t behind the music, this will become the music.”

Since launching in June, Google+ has already acquired over 40 million active users.  Users have also uploaded over 3.5 billion photos in those short months.  According to Oestlien the goal of Google+ for enable marketers to interact with their fan base in a way that they never have before.  When developing Google+ the team set out to see how they could influence and impact as well as improve that way that marketers are utilizing Online Marketing today.