Online Marketing Blog

Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well.

Over the past 3 years we’ve been focused on search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR. We’ll continue that trend the rest of this year but with more conferences outside of search as our online marketing agency evolves.

Conferences that I’m attending in the coming months include:

• May: ACCM in Florida
• Jun: PRSA Digital Impact in NYC

[Note from Lee: This is a perfect session for Jolina because she manages one of the largest enterprise SEO projects for any agency our size - over 2o different business units for a Fortune 20 company.]

SEO for the enterprise requires a very different approach, than SEO for an small or medium business (SMB).

Deploying the same approach at the enterprise level, as you would for an SMB, would be like trying to clean a wine spill with Windex. You’ll end up making a bigger mess.

Google hosted a party last night at SMX West, entitled Google Groove. And groovy, it was.

Andy Beal and other SMXers enjoying the party

Main bar, all in Google Colors

SMXers playing Rockband

SMXers enjoying drinks, notice the colorful Google cups, which people went crazy over

Blinky Google spheres, also very popular

Check out all of the photos at TopRank’s SMX West Flickr set.

Just as with Leverage Your Brand Lovers, the “Branding and Search” session gave the SMX West audience much to think about.

Bob Tripathi, Search Marketing Specialist at Discover Financial, reinforced the need to understand your brand as it relates to SEO/SEM.

Brand Recognition: Do searchers recognize your brand?
–ex. McDonalds’ arches are recognized worldwide

Brand Perception: Do searchers know what you do?
–ex. Discover Financial doesn’t just offer credit cards, but they offer a slew of other financial services

Brand Loyalty: Are searchers loyal to your brand?
–ex. Google and its VERY loyal followers

The Wonder Twins Track at SMX West: SEO and Blogging, provided the audience with information on how to best launch and promote a blog.

Here are 8 tips, from Aaron Wall of SEOBook, on how to gain traction for your blog.

Own a Niche

• Owning a smaller niche is an easy way to starting building personal brand
• #1 player gets more play in the media

Make Formatting a Priority

• Ensure you have a clean appealing design
• Highlight best practices
• Include an “About Us” page
• Make it easy for press to contact

Sitting in the SEO & Social Media session, Barbara Boser the Social Media Director for 3 Dog Media, shared some great tips on marketing with social media:

Be prepared & Commit to Social Media

• Know that it is time consuming
• Read and learn what is popular
• Look for tools you can use on the sites and on the web

Your Profile

• Research to be sure that your profile isn’t the same as any of the other top users on the site
• Be anonymous if you’re promoting your own site

In the Branding & Search session today at SMX West, panelists gave the audience many, many items to consider regarding their own brand or their client’s brand.

Let’s start by discussing the people that the brand is ultimately trying to influence.

Edwin Wong, Director of Customer Insights Organization - Yahoo!, touched on this by explaining that people love brands that love what they love. A mouthful right?

He labeled these folks, “Passionistas”.

Let’s use me as an example. I love food and cooking, so I love the Food Network because they share my passion. The theory holds true so far.

The Expo Hall at SMX West opened today. Take a peak.

Strolling the floor

Folks chatting with Google

Folks chatting with Live

More SMXers

Check out all of the photos at TopRank’s SMX West Flickr set.

Day 1 of SMX West wrapped up with a tailgating party and the SMX Search Bowl which pinned the search engines, the search marketers and Microsoft against one another in a game of industry-related trivia.

Tailgating party at SMX West

More tailgating

and more tailgating, but this time people were paying attention

The SMX Search Bowl contestants, with host Danny Sullivan

Matt Cutts getting ready to play

A packed house for ‘kick off’

Look - I’m one of the contestants!!!….sort of

The personas session, today at SMX, reminded me so much of psychology classes in college. A large group of people discussing why other people behave the way they do.

Gord Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro, kicked things off by helping the audience understand the factors impacting how humans make decisions, including:

• explicit, implicit memories
• past interactions with a brand
• current interactions with the brand
• emotions

Additional panelists included:
Brian Bond, VP Marketing and Products, Future Now, Inc
Ian Lurie, President, Portent Interactive

As Ian put it, personas are our brand’s imaginary friends.

SMX West, in Santa Clara, kicked off today with a keynote from Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land.

Danny started off the conference by talking about the different generations of search, of which many of us have experienced, the generation we’re in now and where he thinks the industry might go next.

Here’s a quick rundown:

Search 1.0 – Keywords - All about the keywords on the page and what ended up as keyword stuffing for the large part.

Search 2.0 – Links – Search results followed the democratic process and ranked websites based on the number of links (votes) the website was receiving.

As part of our media sponsorship of the SMX series of conferences, I’ve been picked as the TopRank blogger to visit the Bay Area next month for SMX West - Feb 26-28, 2008 in Santa Clara, CA.

Looking at the agenda for the 3 day conference, one can tell that there are big shifts taking place in the search industry, specifically the transition from ‘old SEO’ (i.e. the optimize and wait approach) to ‘new SEO’ (i.e. optimize, then promote promote promote approach). Validating this transition, many session titles include topics such as ‘Search 3.0′, ‘Search 4.0′ and the ‘Blended Search Revolution’.