Online Marketing Blog

Editor’s Note: Wednesday this week was the annual MIMA Summit held downtown Minneapolis. With our current workloads and schedules, I wasn’t planning on having TopRank staff attend, but received some last minute encouragement so I had Thomas and Dana attend the whole day and was able to slip in for the last 3-4 hours myself. The attendance nearly doubled over last year to 700+ attendees (an estimate I heard at the event). Hats off to MIMA members for a great job spreading the good interactive marketing word.

The following are wrap-ups from MIMA Summit veteran attendee Thomas McMahon and first-timer Dana Larson.

The local interactive marketing association I’m involved with here in Minneapolis, MIMA, has launched a new interactive marketing blog that covers some industry news and particularly the good things happening in the midwest interactive marketing space.

Yesterday we had the annual MIMA Summit which went off very well. There were great speakers, a sold out venue, great networking, the best bag of schwag I’ve seen at any conference-anywhere, super food, tons of giveaways from companies like Target and of course some drinking, a bit of electronic-performance art from Popular Front, more networking and libations. A good time was had by all and the feedback has been excellent.

The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association annual Summit starts in about an hour. This year’s event is sold out and there’s an excellent mix if speakers. With lots of sponsors this year, there are a ton of giveaways as well.

One of our pr firm clients, The Web Marketing Association and Web Award will have their CEO, William Rice start things off with the morning keynote presentation. Bill has run the Web Award competition for 10 years and the program has reviewed over 9,000 web sites in that time. His presentation will offer insight into what makes an award winning web site and he’ll also present industry vertical data compiled over the past 10 years.

That time of year is here again and the annual event held by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association called “The Summit” promises to be even bigger and better.

There’s a fantastic lineup of speakers and sessions including two keynote presentations: One from William Rice of the Web Marketing Association and Michelle Collins, a blogger for VH1‚Äôs, Best Week Ever. Other sessions include:

• Web Writing
• Web Analytics
• Brawny Academy
• Making the Grade
• Ask the Email Experts
• E-Commerce Opportunities
• Site Architecture
• Consumer Generated Media
• Paid Search
• Online Advertising

If you’re looking for sources of information on search marketing, conferences can be a great resource. Or. if you’re a conference junkie like me, then you’ll find the SEOBook “Must See SEO Events” calendar exceptionally useful.¬† Some disclosure here, I am editing the calendar along with Aaron.

Some of the conferences listed include:

• Search Engine Strategies
• WebmasterWorld Pubcon
• ad:tech
• DMA conferences
• MIMA
• eMetrics Summit
• eTail
• Shop.org Summit
• Search Insider Summit
• OMMA
• Affiliate Summit
• SEO Roadshow
• SEO Bash
• And more

One of the organizations I am involved with is MIMA, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association. It’s been a great experience working with so many talented individuals. There really is an abundance of interactive marketing talent here in the Twin Cities.

Over the past few years MIMA has grown tremendously and this year the size of the board of directors has nearly doubled. Below is a press release:

MIMA ANNOUNCES BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Interactive marketing association changes leadership for 2006

(MINNEAPOLIS) – The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA.org) welcomes 15 local interactive professionals to its board of directors.

I just returned from the 4th Annual MIMA Summit and it was another record breaking crowd, almost 200% more than last year. Fantastic venue at the U of M Alumni Center, which has really amazing architecture.

The keynote speaker was Shar VanBoskirk from Forrester which was excellent. Her presentation on what integrated marketing is and really should be, especially the notion of creating personas was enlightening.