Online Marketing Blog

My first post from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco is the second half of “Free Traffic: SEO/SMO 101 (Search Engine & Social Media Optimization) with Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts and Muhammad Saleem of Advantage Consulting Services. Unfortunately, I missed the SEO portion and gauging by the crowd around Stephan, it went quite well.

Muhammad Saleem’s portion of the presentation focuses on Social Media Optimization and Marketing 101. I’ve not met Mahammaed in person before and he’s sporting a very cool goatee with a waxed moustache.

Saleem’s presentation focuses on 4 aspects of social media:

• Blogs

[Note from Lee: Please join me in welcoming Jessica Cameron-Ruud as a contributor to Online Marketing Blog. Jessica works as an Account Coordinator with TopRank's Online Marketing clients]

Over the past few months, MCAD and MIMA have hosted a series of events here in Minneapolis entitled ‘Conversations About The Future of Advertising’ (CATFOA). The most recent of which featured Joseph Jaffe, author of the new book “Join the Conversation”, who discussed conversational marketing as the next step for companies to connect with their customers.

M&O PR’s Kevin Sawyer and I are now finally back in the office after two jam packed days of Media Relations Summit. Public and media relations professionals, academics and business communicators from across the country gathered at what is known as the largest event for media relations in the world. Kevin blogged the event over at Media Relations blog and I made a few posts here and many more on Twitter.

Here’s a summary of the sessions we attended and covered:

The compelling morning keynote presentations were sandwiched by PR Technology updates and then followed by 4 tracks of sessions. Here are the sessions that Kevin and I blogged:

In the opening keynote at Media Relations Summit, the legendary TV journalist and interviewer, Charlie Rose, had the tables turned and became interviewee with the famous PR guru, Howard Rubenstein.

Rubenstein: Why are your interviews so revealing? How do you get your guests to reveal so much?

Rose: The thing about a story… Describes the recent news over the weekend about the Clinton campaign manager getting sacked. People that do what I do want to advance a story like that. Stories are about communicating the range of emotions that are important to people.

The day two Media Relations Summit lunch keynote is given by Mike Moran, a distinguished engineer from IBM, who starts out with a question: Did Robert Scoble make you feel technologically stupid this morning and now you’re thinking you have to listen to an engineer? Mike admits he can’t be Robert and neither should we.

“You have permission to sip from the new web 2.0 world, rather than drink from it like a fire hose”. Give yourself permission to do a little bit of this. What I don’t want is for you to feel overwhelmed by all of this. Also, “I’m going to count clips and thats it”. Don’t retreat to what you’re comfortable with. Be willing to experiment.

Our client visit to San Francisco last week fell right next to the Media Relations Summit conference happening this week at the Westin St. Francis on Union Square. The near crossover meant a weekend in one of my favorite cities.

As one of the largest conferences dedicated to media relations, this event attracts an array of public relations practitioners including the top PR agencies in the world, large and small corporate PR staff and academics from PR programs at major universities. Overall theme seems to be looking to the future.

The abundance of Online Marketing Blog coverage of SES New York slowed significantly by Wed afternoon but there was nothing slowing down the SES NY conference, which had record breaking attendance numbers. Despite my TopRank blogging compatriot Jolina having Thursday off and myself moderating and speaking that day, there was plenty of action documented during the sessions day 1, 2, 3 and 4, at the Microsoft party and the WebmasterRadio.FM SearchBash.

Social Media is an important, growing channel in the world of online marketing. Certainly indicated by the number of attendees crammed into this afternoon’s session at SES New York.

The panel for the session included moderation duties handled by Erik Qualman from EF Education and the following speakers: Jennifer Laycock, Liana Evans, Tamera Kremer and William Flaiz.

From the impromptu polling during the session, the majority of people are already leveraging social media as a marketing channel in some way.

The New Face o In-House Search included Ron Belanger as the moderator and Bill Hunt from Global Strategies International, Olivier Lemaignen from Intuit, Marshall D. Simmonds from New York Times, Bill Macaitis from Fox Interactive Media and Brendan Hart from National Geographic Digital Media.

First up is Bill Hunt to talk about what perspective companies should take when considering bringing search marketing in-house.

What are the best options?

• Outsource - Give everything to the agency
• InSource - Do everything in house. Few companies are actually doing this
• Hybrid - A mix

B2B Search sessions (both organic and paid) can be few and far between, so any time it exists I’m sure to plant myself in the front row.  The B2B Tactics session was moderated by Jeffrey Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget

Speakers included:

Patricia Hursh, President and Founder, SmartSearch Marketing
Barbara C. Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc.
Adam Goldberg, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, ClearSaleing
Karen Breen Vogel, President and CEO, ClearGauge

With B2B SEO being a sweet spot for the team at TopRank, hearing from other industry leaders about how they have effectively executed for such companies is certainly relevant.

On Thursday I’ll be presenting on a panel, “Beyond Linkbat: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online” with Chris Boggs and Sally Falkow. Sage Lewis will be moderating. I think this type of session is very timely as search engines begin to put more and more emphasis on higher quality and editorial link sources and less on sources that are easier to manipulate. Increasing competition online also means online branding and influence increase in their importance.

After gathering around the caffeine this morning for Day 3 of SES New York, attendees gathered to listen to a keynote from Gordon McLeod, President, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.

Gordon led the audience through the evolution of SEO within the Wall Street Journal organization, noting that they didn’t necessarily do things right the first or second time.

Since 1996, The Wall Street Journal has grown to incorporate SEO as a strategic business decision, not a grouping of tactics.

Here are some of the lessons they learned along the way: