Online Marketing Blog

The first session of the day for me here at SES London is a topic I’ve been interested in for a very long time: video marketing and optimization. It’s a great panel featuring Jonathan Allen from Incisive Media, Paul Carff from Google and Will Critchlow from Distilled. All three speakers offered plenty of interesting tips.

First up is Paul Carff from Google who is a Developer Advocate that helps people learn about and use APIs.

YouTube is the #1 online video site with 2 billion streams per day. 70% of all online video viewing happens on YouTube. Online video is the fastest growing medium in history. 52% of people took action as a result of watching video online. 77% of Americans online watched a video last month. The amount of time people spend watching online video is growing. Their attention and engagement is higher than traditional broadcast.

Beautiful sunrise Lake Minnetonka. But COLD!

One of the greatest things about a good old fashioned, cold and snowy Winter in Minnesota is leaving for a few weeks to warmer weather. Add to that the opportunity to spend time meeting smart online marketers from around the world and it’s an even better season.

The next 30 days will be a whirlwind with speaking events in San Diego, London, Barcelona and Austin Texas.  Interestingly, one of the events I’ll be speaking at put up a video of me from about 5 years ago (03/06 Seminar in Minneapolis) as a preview.  The funny thing about the video is that the topics I discussed haven’t really “gone out of style” in the past 5 years:  Blogs, Social Media, Press Release SEO, Content Marketing.

In a little over a week I’ll be giving the opening keynote at a social media conference in Auckland, New Zealand called Social Media Junction. The topic? The answer to one of the most common questions asked about social media:  ”The Truth About Social Media ROI”.

New Zealanders aka “Kiwis” are an active bunch on the social web with more than 2 in 5 interacting with companies via social sites and 84% of mobile social networkers there having visited Facebook (Nielsen). The social media momentum is growing and companies are hungry for information and perspective.

I’ll follow up the keynote presentation with a workshop, aka Masterclass Programme, the following day focused on Social Media Content Strategy that drills down into the mechanics of social media marketing, content marketing and SEO.  Here’s a bit of a preview on what I’ll be presenting in the workshop:

A fine looking audience at PRSA International 2010.

There are several roles to be played at successful industry conferences. Most of my experience is specific to Search, PR and Direct Marketing events – assuming social media and interactive fit in there somewhere as well.

What roles? There’s the conference organizer and all that comes with the logistics of running the event, programming content and facilitating sponsors and advertisers.  That also includes an advisory board of some type. There are the paid and media sponsors, exhibitors, delegates, speakers and moderators.  There are also often various volunteers.

I’ve been attending WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon conference in Las Vegas for at least 6 years although I didn’t liveblog that first one for some reason. In fact I first interviewed Pubcon founder, Brett Tabke, in 2005.  By no means am I an “old timer” since the show has been running for a lot longer than I’ve been attending but I do have some history with it.

When people ask me about great conference options to learn practical SEO and PPC, Pubcon is always included in my recommendations.  Being held in Las Vegas lends a certain flavor to the event, as in there are plenty of after-event networking opportunities.  Sessions are great, but its the in person connections you make and develop that yield tips, tactics that aren’t always forthcoming during the day.

My final liveblogg session of SES Chicago is all about SEO for Blogs and Feeds aka blog optimization. This is a session I know a little something about, having presented on it at SES 4-5 times over the years.

Moderated by Adam Audette, the speakers included Sally Falkow and Michael Gray.

Sally opened things up to talk about Feeds. All blog platforms come with Feeds but there are many other things you can do with feeds. There are many types of feeds including a feed specifically for video. Sally says it’s pretty straightforward to create a RSS feed.

The second session on my liveblogging hitllist for SES Chicago is the “Duplicate Content and Multiple Sites” moderated by Adam Audette. Unfortunatley, Michael Gray was not able to be there, so things started up with Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst from Google, and Shari Thurow was added on the fly.

What is duplicate content? Identical or substantially similar content. Also multiple URLs with the same content. Google realizes that duplication can be deliberate or accidental.

Basically, duplicate content in the context of a search engine is publishing different URLs that present the same content. (My Example:)

www.domainname.com
domainname.com
www.domainname.com/index.php
www.domainname.com/index.php?sid=123

Why does Google care about duplicate content? Users don’t like to see 10 nearly identical results. Also, there’s no benefit in crawling multiple urls with the same content. It’s a waste of resources for Googlebot to do that.

My first liveblog for SES Chicago didn’t happen until day three. The lucky topic? Advanced Keyword Research presented by Ron Jones CEO of Symetri Internet Marketing. Ron and I are mutual retweet friends and while I’ve read many of his articles on ClickZ, I hadn’t seen him speak before.

Ron started things out by taking a poll to qualify the audience (smart) to see how many have done keyword research before. Most have.

The importance of keyword research:
Is keyword research strategic or tactical? When we use keywords we reinforce searcher expectations. As marketers, then we have the responsibility to deliver on that expectation. Picking the right keywords plus having relevant content to match equals conversion. As a result, the use of keywords and keyword research is a strategic function.

I’m here at the PRSA International conference in Washington D.C. and the conversations about social media are to be found everywhere. The halls, the exhibit floor, sessions and even at the fantastic dinner hosted by Shonali Burke last night.

Yesterday I gave a 4 hour workshop or, “SEO Bootcamp for Communicators” as it was titled.  I polled the attendees who came from a variety of companies and organizations ranging from a for profit private school to the Veteran’s Administration, on what their questions were about SEO. Most revolved around getting to understand how PR can get up to speed on the value of SEO and incorporate it into what they’re doing as Marketing has done.

Todd Forsyth, Vice President of Global Campaigns, Salesforce.com gave an energetic presentation at the Marketo 2010 User Summit (Marketo is a TopRank Online Marketing client) on how Salesforce aligns marketing and sales.  Following is a summary of the highlights of his presentation – which includes key takeaways for B2B marketing and sales teams:

Sales and marketing alignment are second nature at Salesforce.  Today, we’ll explore how as a brand, Salesforce integrates sales and marketing throughout all of our tactics and why this is also vital for your B2B brand.

Thriving in a rapidly shifting media landscape

Congratulations to our 2 winners of a free pass to the PRSA International Conference in Washington D.C.!

• Tia Peterson for “Is SEO the Missing Link In Your PR Strategy?“
• Catherine Lockey for “PR’s Kickin’ it “New School” with Social and SEO“

Thank you to everyone that entered! You will receive a copy of our eBook “Optimize: SEO for Public Relations.

With our roots in the public relations and media relations world, TopRank Online Marketing has a deep appreciation for the strategy, storytelling and networking skills that are essential for successful PR campaigns. We’ve also talked a lot here about the intersection of both SEO for PR and Social Media with PR.  It’s an incredible combination that increases reach, engagement and delivers even more value to business than Media Relations alone.

Snappy title eh? Here are a few others I was considering:  ”Fall Into Search & Social Media Smarts at SES Chicago”, “Leaf the Competition Behind at SES Chicago”, “No Cold Ideas at SES Chicago”, “Remember December SES Chicago?”.  You get the idea.  As a long time attendee, speaker and media sponsor, here’s the good news and more good news about the upcoming Midwest Search and Social Media Marketing conference held in the windy city.

First, the lineup of keynotes is pretty impressive and includes 3 TopRank Online Marketing Blog interview alumni:

Avinash Kaushik – Co-Founder of Market Motive Inc and the Analytics Evangelist for Google talked to us about Storytelling & Web Analytics. At SES Chicago Avinash will be giving an opening keynote presentation that promises to help attendees rethink their online marketing, better present analyses, and enthuse their peers.