Online Marketing Blog

After finding out my new camera’s SDHC card wasn’t recognized by my Sony Vaio laptop, I was stuck taking lots of photos but not posting to Flickr as I normally would. After checking several stores I finally found a card reader and below are a few photos from the Web 2.0 Conference here in San Francisco this week.

Dave aka “PayPal Mafia” McClure

Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester

Geoff Livingston, Brian Solis and Rohit Bhargava

Facebook Marketing Panel

Audience Questions

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff @ Groundswell Book Launch

After the keynote frenzy this morning, the session that stood out for me was “Facebook Marketing: Best Practices” with Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research as moderator, Evan Mager from AKQA, Holly Liu from Watercooler, Brett Keintz of 750 Industries and Stanford GSB and Kevin Barenblat of Context Optional.

Some of the key takeaways from this session were:

• Be clear with your objectives
• Test spending money on Facebook marketing even if you aren’t sure about the return. Hey, 1,000,000 visits can’t be wrong!
• Understanding the ROI of Facebook requires a new kind of mindset

Nothing smacks more of ADD in a Web 2.0 world than micro blogging and microcontent. “Flow Apps” as Stowe Boyd calls them. As such, the last session I’m blogging on day two of Web 2.0 Expo is appropriately named: “Short Attention Span Theater: The Birth of Microblogging & Micromedia”

The cast of characters in this session includes: Greg Narain of Blue Whale Labs who moderated, Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research, Brian Solis from Future Works and PR 2.0 and Stowe Boyd of The /Messengers.

Follow these guys on Twitter and you may learn an awful lot about this space:

The first session for me on day two of Web 2.0, “Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business” with Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester, was one I’ve been looking forward to since I first read Groundswell. See my previous interview with Charlene Li on Groundswell.

In this session, both Li and Bernoff emphasize the importance of not jumping into social technologies and applications just because the competition does, but to have specific objectives and measurement. With defensible results, a social technology will be in a much better position to survive slimming budgets. The focus is on people, not technology with social technologies and applications.

Sessions on day two begin at 8:30 PST and while I appreciate that, it’s aggressive in my book. So, I’ll be attending, Twittering and blogging the following sessions at Web 2.0 Expo today as well as visiting blogtropol.us:

• 9:40am Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business Charlene Li (Forrester Research), Josh Bernoff (Forrester Research)

• 10:50am Consumer 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Changing Moods, Metrics, & Monetization Rafe Needleman (CNET), Konrad Feldman (Quantcast), Erin Hunter (comScore, Inc.), Garrick Schmitt (Avenue A | Razorfish), Murtaza Hussain (Peanut

Now comes a tough call. Three sessions in the 1:30 slot that I’d really like to attend at the same time.

The second workshop of the day at Web 2.o Expo, “Startup Metrics 101: Product & Marketing Workshop” provided attendees a glimpse into the vast depth of knowledge from Dave McClure of 500 Hats who offered some pirate speak, “AARRR” to help delegates remember his model for building web businesses.

Hiten Shah of CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics provided practical examples and Vanessa Fox of Ignition Partners and Nine By Blue offered a combination of SEO centric tips, analytics and examples.

First up was the Web 2.0 Pirate, Dave McClure with his “AARRR” model:

• Acquisition - Where users come to your site from the web

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.