Online Marketing Blog

Astronauts Tom Marshburn, Kevin Ford and Chris Hadfield chat live from the International Space Station with #NASASocial participants.

February 20th, NASA hosted a special event at their Washington headquarters in which a group of their social fans attended a day of tours, expert talks and even a livechat with astronauts on the International Space Station. My son and I are fortunate to have participated and on top of the insider look we had at NASA research, we learned a great deal about the power of social media advocacy, as well.

So what happens when an organization puts 150 of their loyal social media fans in one room for a fantastic, exclusive experience? Brand building and social reach magic, judging by the results of yesterday’s #NASASocial.

TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has partnered with Joe Pulizzi and the upcoming Content Marketing World conference to help promote the event and sessions by doing a series of interviews and creating an eBook: “The Secrets of Content Marketing and the Undercover Agents Who Shared Them”.

Successful content marketing that works efficiently, effectively and that can scale is a very big secret for a lot of companies. This series of interview posts and the eBook will shine a light on what some of the top brands (Intel, Kraft, SAS, Cisco, Ricoh, Kelly Services, SAP and more) and thought leaders (Jason Falls, Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose, Michael Stelzner, Ardath Albee, Ann Handley, Jim Kukral, Mark Schaefer and more) have up their sleeves (or on a microdot).

Grow your professional network both online and offline.

During the summer months it seems that there is always so much to do.  By the time the work day is done, meeting strangers and discussing what you do may be the farthest thing from your mind.  However, local networking events present a plethora of opportunities for individuals and organizations as a whole.

As of May 2012 Facebook had approximately 901 million active users on a monthly basis.  Think of your own Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn connections.  Of those connections how many of them are local?  On my own personal LinkedIn network for example roughly 65% of my contacts are local connections.  Many of which I hadn’t met in person until I started attending more local marketing events.

Over the past 2 months I’ve given book presentations in New York, the UK, Belgium and Toronto. And now, we’re finally going to have a proper book launch for Optimize in the great state of Minnesota.  Since summer is in full swing and people are already sharing that Optimize is their preferred lakeside reading material, why not combine great networking, food, drink and a little info-tainment with a beach themed book launch party?

TopRank Online Marketing along with Vocus, Digital People, MIMA, Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul, PRSA Minnesota, Minnesota AMA, IABC Minnesota and the Minnesota Blogger Conference are sponsoring a little get together on July 25th at Aria Jeune Lune in Minneapolis.  With that kind of sponsorship and promotional firepower, this will be one heck of an event.

Rick Wion (@rdublife) didn’t waste any time jumping in and telling the audience how tricky brand management can be for a large corporation like McDonald’s.  He opened his presentation by teasing that he was sure we had all eaten McDonald’s for lunch and drank a 16oz soda before the ban takes place and they are no longer available.

This post is a mixture of tactical tips shared by Rick, stories specific to McDonald’s and the way they have handled certain situations, as well as a few questions I was able to ask Rick myself.  So sit back, relax, & enjoy your McDonald’s Fruit & Maple oatmeal while I share some highlights from Rick Wion, Director of Social Media at McDonald’s.

On Saturday I participated on a SEO panel at the first Minneapolis TECHmunch food blogger conference put on by Babette Pepaj with the help of local foodies like Stephanie A. Meyer. As prep for the event, I outlined a few things that I thought food bloggers might find useful for helping to improve organic search traffic to their content. Of course these tips aren’t limited in their usefulness to food bloggers, they apply to anyone interested in creating awareness, attention, interest and engagement with themselves or their brand.

I will be giving a track keynote at BlogWorld this week on Thursday morning (9am) covering bigger picture topics and specific tactics to help attendees to better use blogs as content marketing tools. Here’s the presentation info:

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.

What happens on the internet in 60 seconds? 1,500 Blog Posts, 60 New Blogs, 98,000 Tweets, 20,000 Posts on Tumblr, 600+ New Videos Uploaded to YouTube, 6,600 Images Uploaded to Flickr, 79,000+ Facebook Wall Posts and over 695,000 Facebook Status Updates. What does all that activity have in common? It’s content, it’s social and presents a ripe opportunity for optimization.

Content Marketing is a hot topic and deservedly so.  According to an AOL Nielsen study in May 2011, 53% of all time on the internet is content consumption. In the U.S. alone, 27 million pieces of content are shared per day.  In the Junta42 and MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing study, it was reported that 90% of marketers use content marketing and 51% plan to budget more than the previous year.

I have great news this Friday morning, not only is Online Marketing Summit coming to Minneapolis next week June 6-8, offering a range of training and presentations from brands and expert consultants, but TopRank Online Marketing is giving away TWO free passes!

OMS Minneapolis is focused on practical advice for marketing practitioners with a promising agenda covering: best practices community management from Best Buy plus hot tips & tactics on mobile, display, re-marketing, PPC, video, email, affiliate, user experience from local and national experts.

Of course you can also tap into a Killer Social SEO Strategy with TopRank Online Marketing at 10:15am where you can learn how large and small brands alike have integrated Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing to increase sales and improve customer engagement. This “Killer” session will provide practical examples of both BtoB and BtoC companies overcoming the competition with an agile, customer focused content marketing strategy.

BlogWorld Expo is holding it’s first conference in New York this week and I’ll be presenting “Dominate Your Niche with Social SEO & Blogging” on Tuesday at 10:15am as part of the Social Business Track. This post is a light preview of that session and I hope to see you there.

Is blogging dead? A number of high profile bloggers and news media sites from Scoble to Wired to the New York Times have opined the demise of blogging as a consequence of growing social destinations like Twitter and Facebook.

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!

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.