Online Marketing Blog

At Online Marketing Summit held in Minneapolis and hosted by ClickZ, Caitlin McCabe of Sway Inc spoke to the audience about Social Media and had these insights:

1. For people who think Facebook is just for kids, go search for groups relevant to you and you will find them!  Facebook offers many targeted marketing opportunities.

While there are hoards of people, both professional and not, look for niche social sites where you can reach 100% of your target audience as well as an audience that is more engaged than perhaps the average Facebook user.

People with more friends aren’t necessarily more valuable. Do they know all their friends and who are they? However, on a niche social network like BakeSpace.com, the friends are much more targeted than a big brand like Sara Lee.

Over the next 2 weeks several staff from TopRank be hitting the road for multiple SEO/Social Media/PR speaking and training events. We invite you to attend and would love to meet up with readers of Online Marketing Blog.  

Topics during these events will emphasize the practice areas of our agency: Search Marketing, Online Public Relations and Social Media Marketing. Locations will range from New York to San Francisco to Minneapolis.

May 19: Media Relations Summit, Crowne Plaze Hotel in NYC (event info)

4:30 pm: Mastering SEO, Google AdWords and Other Search Tools to Increase Visibility
If you’re ready to vault your website, landing pages, corporate videos, blogs, press releases, and online newsroom into the top of the search rankings, take in this one-hour bootcamp. You’ll learn all the latest tools, tips and tricks for making Google and Yahoo love you.

Last weekend SXSW Interactive was abuzz everywhere you looked from the sessions to the halls, to the Techset blogger lounge and certainly the after conference festivities on 6th Street.

Out of all that buzz came new connections, insights and renewed connections such as the one I had with Ogilvy 360’s Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy & Marketing, Rohit Bhargava. I’ve known Rohit online and off for a few years and finally had a chance to capture a conversation on video.  Watch the interview below regarding the opportunities of attending SXSW including knowledge and networking as well as a few thoughts on his popular book, Personality Not Included, which TopRank has reviewed in the past.

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Readers of Online Marketing Blog may know that after last week’s WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference, I stayed over the weekend in Austin for the Interactive portion of SXSW. I’ve heard up to 9,000 people were registered for the SXSWi event and by looking at the conference sessions, hallways and restaurants/bars, it was undoubtedly the place to be. Below is a summary of my brief time at SXSWi in picutures where search marketing, social media and public relations people converged, networked, talked and listened.

If there were baseball cards for internet marketing and social media superstars then these three would be Upper Deck Premium: David Berkowitz of 360i, Frank Gruber from AOL and Brian Solis, owner of FutureWorks PR

Note from Lee:  GasPedal and the blog council have partnered to deliver another BlogWell event (this time in Chicago) focusing on case studies from large companies on the topics of blogging, social media and online community building. I am pleased to introduce a guest blog post from Tonja Deegan, winner of a free pass from TopRank, who was a media sponsor of the event. Enjoy! 

A common thread that wove through the case study presentations at BlogWell was that the majority of the time, someone within a company took a chance, started something small online to make a connection and watched it grow.

TopRank Online Marketing is pleased to announce a parternship with The Direct Marketing Association to develop and present a series of 2 day workshops on social media marketing for direct marketers. 

On December 4th in New York the new course entitled: “Social Media Smarts: An Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Strategies” will introduce participants to the marketing and communications channel opportunities of social media through practical demonstration of social media tools, case studies and exercises. The first 3 workshops will be held in New York, Chicago and then again in New York.

Decreasing marketing budgets and increased consumer skepticism towards traditional advertising is driving many companies to new ways of attracting and engaging customers.  At the same time, new communication channels such as social media represent the most significant change in marketer/advertiser communications with customers in the history of marketing.

Several of the TopRank Online Marketing team attended a Social Media Breakfast last Friday, along with about 150 local business leaders, code warriors, internet marketers, agency peeps and social media enthusiasts, to hear a presentation by David Meerman Scott, author of “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”. TopRank CEO Lee Odden posted a short write up and video interview with Scott as well.

David started his presentation with an impromptu survey, asking the audience to respond with a show of hands to questions like:

• How many of you have been to a tradeshow as a participant, not an exhibitor, in the last year? (very few people in the room raised their hands)
• How many of you have responded to a Direct Marketing piece in the last year? (very few people in the room raised their hands)

This morning the 8th social media breakfast meeting (started by Rick Mahn) was held at the Deluxe HQ here in the Twin Cities.  In a very short time this meeting of a few social media enthusiasts at a coffee house has grown to over 125 people hosted by the likes of  Best Buy and PartnerUp, a company acquired by Deluxe.

The main speaker at this morning’s event was David Meerman Scott, popular author of several books including, “New Rules of Marketing and PR” which I recently recommended to a crowd of about 400 at the PRSA International conference earlier this week.  Graeme Thickins was able to convince Scott to stay an extra day for the smbmsp event from another speaking engagement, much to the benefit of the MSP social media crowd.

Thank you to Jonathan Dingman, who writes the Google News, Inside blog, for attending the DPAC II conference in New York this week and blogging the session, “SEO: Is Finding Your Inner DAO the Answer?” which included: Ron Belanger, Vice President, Agency Development at Yahoo!, Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner at Beyond Ink, Jolina Pettice, Senior Account Manager at TopRank Online Marketing and Noah Elkin, Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Steak as moderator.

Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) is something that any publisher, of any kind, ought to be doing on a regular basis. Alright, so if you should be doing it, what exactly is DAO?

DAO is, essentially, optimizing what you own as an asset, digitally. It’s pretty straight forward. Whether it’s a video, an image, presentation, or a podcast, as a few examples, those are your digital assets. A video is an asset which should be optimized for maximum exposure.

As much has been publicized about brands using social media to better connect with their customers, extend brand reach and increase sales, there’s still a high demand for practical insider advice and case studies.

To preview the upcoming BlogWell event Oct 28 on How Big Companies Use Social Media, Online Marketing Blog brings you this first ever group interview with 4 speakers from some of America’s best known brands to share their insights on defining, justifying, testing, outsourcing, measuring and continuing to learn about social media for the enterprise.

Tim Collins, Senior Vice President of Experiential Marketing, is a eleven year veteran of Wells Fargo.  He manages sponsorships, events, virtual worlds, social media, etc.  He also has “Only at Wells Fargo” responsibilities including History Museums and an active Stage Coach Appearance program.

Blogs are undoubtedly a big part of the social media world and that’s why the topic of social media was approached at Blog World Expo from many different angles from monetization and marketing to social media and blogs in corporate public relations.

This interview with Ford’s head of social media, Scott Monty touches on a few things large companies (or any size company for that matter) should be thinking about when evaluating social media as a communications, marketing and community building channel.

You can read plenty more of Scott Monty’s insights on his blog, The Social Media Marketing Blog and on Twitter at @scottmonty.

Blog World Expo in Las Vegas this weekend is by far the most social, friendly and generally “buzzing” conference I’ve been to in a while. Bloggers are opinionated, natural networkers. Many bloggers might not be as open in other situations, but here amongst several thousand other like-minded individuals, people open up. Plus, it’s Vegas baby.

Here are a few of my favorite photos so far from Blog World Expo:

The audience during the “Blogs and PR” panel I was volunteered to join at the last minute. Fun!

Blog World Expo Founder Rick Calvert and Programming Chair Dave Taylor

Beautiful people blog too: Valerie Combs and Brian Solis

Chris Brogan aka ‘Jones Soda Famous” and moi

Woot Woot for the Blog Team! Geoff Livingston and David Berkowitz