Online Marketing Blog

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.

Please welcome guest blogger Jessica Rosenberg, a freelance writer and active social media user who blogs daily at It’s my life… and does product reviews at The Lemonade Stand. Jessica attended  BlogWell: “How Big Companies Use Social Media” event this week in San Jose.

As sponsors of BlogWell, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog also did a pre-event group interview with social media gurus from Wells Fargo, Home Depot, UPS & Graco who presented at the event.

Eight major companies gathered in San Jose, CA this week to demonstrate how they are using social media the “right” way.

The goal of the BlogWell conference, organized by GasPedal, specialist of word of mouth marketing, was to show corporations interested in entering this new and nontraditional field how to navigate the scary waters of social media marketing.

The dust has settled, mountains of email have been sorted through and most of this year’s attendees of MIMA’s Summit, branded “FEED” are back into the swing of things.

As you can tell from the photo above, it was a sold out event and a very big venue. Both keynotes were informative and entertaining. Rebecca Lieb’s presentation was covered by TopRank’s Jolina Pettice and while we didn’t post on Ze Frank’s amazingly entertaining presentation, you can pretty much get a feel for it from his presentations at SXSW last year and from what he’s presented at the TED conference.

Those whose interactive marketing interests extend to the boob and penis humor category were likely satisfied by both keynotes as they touched on everything from jiggly French Maid “how to” videos to crowdsourcing creative phallic drawings.

I must say, of all breakout sessions at the MIMA event today, “The Changing Face of Email” session was the one I was most excited to attend as it ties into what I love to do – email marketing. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long to dive right in as it was part of the Summit Kick-Off Breakout session: Deep Dive Discussion Series.

Jamie Schissler, Strategy Director at Avenue A – Razorfish, the presenter for “The Changing Face of Email” session shared with the MIMA audience that as the role of email evolves, so too will its impact.

So why will the email marketing strategies of yesterday not work for email marketing success today?

I wonder how many people reading this blog right now work for a company that:

1) Doesn’t have a blog
2) Has a blog but it’s on life support
3) Is considering blogging but not sure where to start
4) Has been blogging for a while, but wants to make it to the next level

Well, I’ve got some really good news.  On the heels of the OMMA New York conference Sept 18-19 comes Blog World Expo in Las Vegas Sept 20-21. What better place to have the world’s largest conference dedicated to blogging than the city that never sleeps because most of the active bloggers I know don’t sleep either.

You’ve probably picked up that this week is about SES San Jose from Dana and Ashley’s “15 Things Not to Miss at SES San Jose” followed by Jessica’s “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” post.  I am also headed out to sunny California next month. There’s plenty to take in on a trip to the Golden State including the beautiful weather, celebrities, good wine, and, of course the Search Engine Strategies Conference.

Here are a few of the sessions I’m planning on covering:

More Customers, Fewer Costs - Why Marketing to the ‘Long Tail’ Makes Sense
Who doesn’t want more customers and fewer costs? Isn’t that a business’ dream? This session will be interesting as there have been recent stories on how the long tail is not as effective as we once thought. I still believe in the long tail though.

Originally written by Burt Bacharach, the song Do You Know the way to San Jose, la la la la la… didn’t actually come to fruition until the lovely Dionne Warwick won her first Grammy for Best Contemporary Pop Female Vocal in 1968.

Although I wasn’t around in 1968, I understand the anticipation Burt must have had waiting for this song to hit the main stream. I have been chosen as a TopRank blogger at the upcoming SES conference in San Jose, CA, (and yes, I have been singing the song for days now ) and the anticipation has got me on the edge of my seat!

My first time in Toronto did not disappoint. It was brief but very busy with plenty of sessions to choose from during the day. Here is a collection of my favorite photos taken during SES Toronto this week:

Matt McGowan, Joe Dolson and Todd Malicoat enjoying some pre-conference conversation

Kevin Ryan getting the most out of Google’s Bill Tighe during the Advanced Paid Search Panel

Chris Silver Smith really gave up the goods during the Web 2.0 and Search Engines Panel.

SEO myth-buster Jill Whalen tells it like it is as Matt Van Wagner thinks, “Damn, she’s giving away my secrets!”

Jeff Quipp, Jennifer Osborne, Emily Spence and Richard Zwicky working the exhibit hall

Yahoo’s booth complete with Wii and a big push for SearchMonkey

Lee and Rob at PRSA International 2007

On the marketing conference circuit, online reputation management is a hot topic now more then ever. Whether it’s search marketing, public relations or direct marketing, companies are trying to make sense of how to monitor and manage the brand impact of online conversations and their visibility in search results.

Last Thursday I did a national PRSA teleseminar with Kami Watson Huyse, “Reputation Management in a Google World” and tomorrow in Orlando, Florida the DMA’s ACCM conference is hosting: “Reputation Management: Protecting Your Brand in the Search Engines“, a session with myself and Rob Key of Converseon presenting. Moderater duties will be handled by Heather Lloyd Martin of SuccessWorks.

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.

Josh Bernoff: Are you experiencing web 2.0 avoidance syndrome?

Symptoms:

• Obsessive interest in blogosphoere, etc
• Excessive salivation of successful corp applications

Yesterday proved to be an interesting kickoff to this year’s Search Engine Strategies conference here in New York. The Organic Listings panel was entertaining and informative as always and the Build Investment Interest in your SEO/SEM firm was an early indulgence for myself that offered great tips for those looking at the future liquidity and monetization for their agency.

Jolina weighed in with her posts on excellent sessions, Four Ways to Redfine the Customer and Three Tips for Successful Analytics. There was also a spontaneous goofball interview with Mike McDonald of WebProNews offering a few insights about the future of SES/SMX.

Here’s a roundup of photos from day two of Search Engine Strategies London 2008:

Anne Kennedy and Bryan Eisenberg

Jim Sterne and Andy Beal

Audience

Massimo does his magic as Amanda looks on

Competitive Intelligence panel

Blog SEO session

Lisa Ditlefsen and Rob Kerry

Chris Leggett and Jon Meyers

Post conference activities

Here’s a day SES London day one wrap up video from Incisive:

And here’s a wrap up of day two SES London blog coverage, images and video on Search Engine Watch

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