Online Marketing Blog

After a much deserved blogging vacation last week, I thought I’d start this final week of 2009 with wishes of appreciation for the readers of TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog and the fantastic team of writers we have. It was 6 years ago today, that TopRank started an agency blog as a way to publicly save and comment on industry news.

We’ve been through and observed many, many changes in the internet marketing industry over the past 6 years. Of course, Online Marketing Blog isn’t the only internet and SEO focused blog celebrating a 6 year birthday this year. There are several others listed here including a few that are still very active: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal and SEO Book.

The TopRank team loves to have fun – for holidays, on team outings, at conferences, etc. Because tomorrow is Halloween, a few members of the TopRank team decided to dress up for a costume contest. And it’s up to you to decide the winner! Winning includes at least $50 worth of coffee, so be sure to share this post and get your friends to vote too.

We have a winner – Congrats goes to Dana Larson:

Winner! Dana as Minnesota Strawberry Shortcake

Safari Thomas

Bad Angel Julie

Michelle the Football Star

Monkey Audrey and Veterinary Nurse Amie

Mike as Zombie Soupy Sales

Sue After Being Attacked by Scooby Doo

There are many ways for company marketers to advance their knowledge in the digital marketing and PR space. A big part of TopRank’s consulting services are to provide clients with education so they can better implement recommendations and promote the advantages of SEO, Social Media and Optimized PR in house. We’re also active participants towards industry education on these topics through speaking at conferences.

September is the calm before the storm of speaking events for TopRank but October and November are packed with opportunities to learn strategy, hear case studies and understand specific tactics for implementation on the topics of Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing and Online Public Relations. Here are our upcoming events. We hope to see you there:

Oct 5, 2009 – MIMA Summit, Hilton Minneapolis

Client focused, dynamic, challenging, rewarding, did I say fast paced? Those are some of the words I would use to describe our agency at TopRank Online Marketing.

TopRank has continuously evolved over the past 8+ years to become a well known and authoritative brand in the Search, Social and Online Public Relations space.  Our clients include an engaging mix of companies ranging from start-ups like Marketo, a marketing automation software company, to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), to the Fortune 20 such as McKesson, a $100 billion healthcare services company.

As one of the leading internet marketing agencies in the Midwest, TopRank Online Marketing has a fantastic opportunity for an experienced Search Marketing Account Manager to join our team of dedicated, client-focused internet marketing professionals.  While plenty of advertising, public relations and interactive agencies are downsizing, TopRank is growing smarter with new team members. Could you be our next Superstar?

[Note from Lee:] What do you get when you mix two parts “practice what you preach” with a focus on clients and a passion for the digital marketing industry? New clients, renewals and expansion of many client online marketing programs. Working with a great mix of clients is complimented by a fantastic team at TopRank which we’re continuing to grow.

I’m happy to announce that Adam Singer has joined TopRank as an Account Manager.  At Adam’s previous position as a Digital Strategist with a PR firm in FL, he championed many social media, SEO and online PR programs providing client executives with strategic guidance on their digital strategy. Adam is a savvy blogger at FutureBuzz and we’re looking forward to his social media smarts as a welcome addition to the TopRank Online Marketing team. Please read Adam’s first post and welcome him. Watch for his regular contributions to Online Marketing Blog in the weeks and months ahead.

Over the next 2 weeks several staff from TopRank be hitting the road for multiple SEO/Social Media/PR speaking and training events. We invite you to attend and would love to meet up with readers of Online Marketing Blog.  

Topics during these events will emphasize the practice areas of our agency: Search Marketing, Online Public Relations and Social Media Marketing. Locations will range from New York to San Francisco to Minneapolis.

May 19: Media Relations Summit, Crowne Plaze Hotel in NYC (event info)

4:30 pm: Mastering SEO, Google AdWords and Other Search Tools to Increase Visibility
If you’re ready to vault your website, landing pages, corporate videos, blogs, press releases, and online newsroom into the top of the search rankings, take in this one-hour bootcamp. You’ll learn all the latest tools, tips and tricks for making Google and Yahoo love you.

Today we’re doing a webinar (2:00 pm EST) with PRWeb on the topic of leveraging search engine optimization and news content for improved search engine marketing performance.  Registrations for this webinar were capped at 2,500, so if you didn’t make it in time, please visit the comments for this post as we’re contining the conversation there after the webinar.

The bottom line for the presentation is that there are opportunities to gain advantage from optimizing content according to it’s purpose or goals. In the case of news content, make it easy for consumers and journalists alike to find your message on the channels and in the format they prefer. That means understanding the difference in search behaviors for consumers vs journalists and analysts doing research on companies/individuals.

I am happy to say that this weekend, December 28th  marks 5 years of blogging at Online Marketing Blog. From the infamous “Florida Update” of December 2003 to current, practical advice on social media strategy December 2008, TopRank has been a trusted source of information for thousands of readers.

The entire TopRank Blogging team wishes a sincere Thank You to everyone that has commented, subscribed and linked to us over the years.  TopRank’s blogging efforts have been recognized in many ways including being one of the top 50 favorited blogs on Technorati, ranked a top marketing blog on Advertising Age and endorsed by fans from The DMA, PRSA, Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo and many others.

The entire team at TopRank Online Marketing would like to wish our valued readers a very happy holidays and a fantastic new year. We sincerely appreciate all our subscribers and all the amazing insight, comments and connections you’ve helped us make over 2008 and hopefully between each other.

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TopRank Online Marketing is pleased to announce a parternship with The Direct Marketing Association to develop and present a series of 2 day workshops on social media marketing for direct marketers. 

On December 4th in New York the new course entitled: “Social Media Smarts: An Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Strategies” will introduce participants to the marketing and communications channel opportunities of social media through practical demonstration of social media tools, case studies and exercises. The first 3 workshops will be held in New York, Chicago and then again in New York.

Decreasing marketing budgets and increased consumer skepticism towards traditional advertising is driving many companies to new ways of attracting and engaging customers.  At the same time, new communication channels such as social media represent the most significant change in marketer/advertiser communications with customers in the history of marketing.

Over at Junta42 Joe Pulizzi has announced the quarterly update of his Junta42 list of content marketing blogs. I’m happy to say Online Marketing Blog was again included in the list. This time in a slightly improved position as you can see below. I must say, being included on a list with Brian Clark, Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis and David Meerman Scott is very humbling.

Lists are always controversial by nature as they exclude and include based on criteria that rarely satisfy everyone. But we’re happy to be included all the same and a BIG THANKS goes to the TopRank team that’s been liveblogging conferences over the past two months of consideration for this list.

Here’s the complete list of 42 top content marketing blogs:

Online Marketing Blog readers may remember a while back that our blog was shut down by a previous host with no warning because of too much load on the shared server. When they did finally respond/contact us it was to sell an upgrade while web requests for our site returned a 404 not found message.

We turned to a local web hosting company, VISI, for a dedicated server and things have been running smoothly ever since. Our experience with VISI is documented on this post, “VISI – A Web Hosting Company That Rocks“.  We’ve been hosting with VISI for over 1 1/2 years and we’ve had very rare if any reason to contact them. When it comes to hosting, that’s a very GOOD thing.