Online Marketing Blog

The digital and interactive marketing space moves fast and as both companies and individuals scramble to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage, it can be a challenge to find resources and likeminded individuals to help make that happen. Associations offer education, networking and in some cases, advocacy for members and sponsoring companies. The question is, where can you find interactive marketing associations are in your area?

We’ve listed regional Interactive Marketing Associations in the past and thought it would be time for an update. This post will be a work in progress, so please share in the comments the name and working URL of other interactive marketing associations that we’ve missed.  We decided not to include groups and meetups that are primarily dedicated to SEO/SEM or social media.  You can find a list of local Social Media Club chapters here and a list of Social Media Breakfast cities here.  You can find abundant internet professional meetups here.

Incorporating a company blog into your social media and marketing mix can be a tug of war, finding both supporters and defeaters within the organization.

At the MIMA Summit (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) this afternoon, I attended a session discussing the pros and cons, along with the challenges a corporate blogger must overcome to represent the company and still make a connection with the blogging community.

Valeria Maltoni is a blogger at Conversation Agent and Director of Marketing Communications for SunGard. Valeria kicked off the session with a discussion around how an organization can get started with social media and a company blog.

As a business and marketing professional, we are tasked to find different ways to make a profit, find new customers, and build the company brand.

The annual MIMA (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) event kicked off this morning with Rebecca Lieb as the opening keynote.

In a nutshell, the sessio

n was funny, insightful and not without the inevitable internet issues which seem to plague all search conferences (ironic, yes?).

Rebecca got Minnesota online marketers thinking about the following 3 items:
1. Informative (be the content)
2. Entertaining (let people play)
3. Viral (make something people want to share)

From Jerry Seinfeld to French maids to Sarah Silverman’s video about Obama, everything Rebecca shared with the audience centered on the above 3 items.

The first is be the content. It isn’t enough, and hasn’t been for awhile, to publish product or service content. Rather, content that is compelling to your audience needs to be created for them.
No one wants to read standard brochure information. No one.

We live in some interesting times with the economy, the war, natural disasters and the uncertainty that comes with a Presidential election. It’s enough to keep marketers on their toes that consumer online behaviors and technology change so often, but economic uncertainty makes it even more “interesting“.

The interactive marketing show will go on but in what forms?  Marketing budgets are often the first cut during a recession. Yet many online marketers have reported increases in client spending. Factors such as the health of the company and market, as well as tactics need to be considered.

There are many, many ways to market online, giving companies a highly measurable, high impact and low cost option to expensive and often unaccountable traditional advertising.  Which leads me to the following Reader Poll:

One of the fun things we get to do on Online Marketing Blog is interview interesting people we meet and get to know by being involved with the industry. This interview is with Rebecca Lieb, Editorial Consultant to ClickZ and former Editor for the past 7 years. In addition to previously offering sage advice on getting more out of marketing conferences here on OMB, Rebecca works as a consultant, is writing a book on search marketing and is often retained as a speaker for industry events.

In this interview Rebecca shares tips on selecting interactive marketing vendors, shares her insights into upcoming marketing strategies and talks briefly about her upcoming book on search marketing as well as the MIMA Summit here in Minneapolis where she’s the keynote speaker.

Your journalism and editorial background has taken you many places topically and geographically. What are some of your favorites?

Facebook recently deployed an applications programs interface allowing users to create widgets or share applications within their network.

One application in particular caught my interest as it allows you to turn your virtual self into a zombie and “infect” other people by biting them (through email invitation of course). Your zombie gains points as you infect more and more people. In the 3 days that I have had the application up and running, I have infected 6 people who have infected others as well.

After accumulating a certain number of zombie points by infecting others, your virtual self reaches the next level after which you are able upgrade to another type of zombie. In all, nearly 400,000 Facebook users currently subscribe to the zombie application.

The local interactive marketing association I’m involved with here in Minneapolis, MIMA, has launched a new interactive marketing blog that covers some industry news and particularly the good things happening in the midwest interactive marketing space.

Yesterday we had the annual MIMA Summit which went off very well. There were great speakers, a sold out venue, great networking, the best bag of schwag I’ve seen at any conference-anywhere, super food, tons of giveaways from companies like Target and of course some drinking, a bit of electronic-performance art from Popular Front, more networking and libations. A good time was had by all and the feedback has been excellent.

Next year it may need to be a two day event and will certainly need to move to a larger venue. If you’re a marketer working in the midwest, I highly recommend checking out MIMA.

The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association annual Summit starts in about an hour. This year’s event is sold out and there’s an excellent mix if speakers. With lots of sponsors this year, there are a ton of giveaways as well.

One of our pr firm clients, The Web Marketing Association and Web Award will have their CEO, William Rice start things off with the morning keynote presentation. Bill has run the Web Award competition for 10 years and the program has reviewed over 9,000 web sites in that time. His presentation will offer insight into what makes an award winning web site and he’ll also present industry vertical data compiled over the past 10 years.

Day two of ad:tech Chicago rounded up with a sigh. With all the parties Monday night, I think some of the attendees were looking forward to the end of the day. Lots of good sessions and a few duds, but that’s the way it goes with most conferences. Luckily, the two sessions I covered went pretty well. There were quite a few folks covering the conference so I’ve assembled a list of all search marketing and related posts below:

Coverage by the ad:tech blog:

This session, “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark – Persuasion Architecture – Persuading Customers When they Ignore Marketing” with Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now is titled after the book of the same name. Basically this session was about marketers getting poor results because they are using old Pavolovian rules of marketing and that consumers buy differently than in the past. Customers are less like compliant dogs and more like finicky cats. Hence the title.

Marketers are concerned customers ignore marketing. Mass market media are under performing. Marketing execs are burning out. Not getting results. They’re using outdated formulas. Current marketing models are simply not working.

The first day here at ad:tech Chicago was pretty good. I covered 3 sessions over at Online Marketing Blog and at the ad:tech blog.

Link Building
Big Brands and Podcasting
Warm and Cozy SEO

Also, Carlen Lea Lesser covered: “Managing Ultra-Complex Search Campaigns”

In the morning I had the chance to briefly meet keynote speaker, Fay Ferguson and chat a bit with fellow ad:tech blogger David Berkowitz of 360i and contributor to Media Post Search Insider. I also had a most enjoyable conversation with Mickey Alam Kahn, Senior Editor of DMNews.

Later in the day I bumped into Dr. Amanda Watlington, my partner in crime on the DMA Search Engine Marketing Council blog and fellow speaker at the DMA06 Annual conference. We’ll be presenting with Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts about blogs, RSS and podcasts.

Next week is the next installment of the most popular event for interactive marketers, ad:tech. This year’s Chicago conference promises outstanding keynotes on multicultural marketing, creativity and new ways for marketers to reach customers. Sessions range from search marketing to word of mouth to the development of personas.

The event will be covered on the ad:tech blog by Steve Hall of Adrants, David Berkowitz of 360i, Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing (me) and Carly Lesser from CDG Solutions. The sessions I plan on blogging include:

• Organic SEO Fireside Chat with the Experts – Monday 10:30
• Blogging / RSS / Podcasting / Vidcasting – Monday 11:45
• Linking and Optimization for Better Rankings and More Traffic – Monday 2:00