Online Marketing Blog

The last session of the day for me was “Press and Public Relations Campaigns” with Robin Liss of Reviewed.com and Joe Beaulaurier from PRWeb. Moderation duties were scheduled to be handled by Brett Tabke but were switched at the last minute to Melanie Mitchell, VP of SEO/SEM at AOL. Sorry Brett, but I don’t think anyone had a problem with the switch.

Robin presented a case study for a promotion on the iPhone her site wirelessinfo.com did using multiple channels including Digg and a YouTube video that went viral. Joe presented the multiple media format press release options offered by PRWeb.

If someone has a better photo, please link in the comments

On day three, the last day of sessions at WebmasterWorld Pubcon here in Vegas, I participated on a panel called, “Search and Blogging Reporters Forum” with Rand Fishkin and Andy Beal.

Moderation duties handled by Mike McDonald. Basically, it was a round table-style discussion about blogging in the SEO industry as well as blogging as a marketing tool. There were some good points about using blogs as a public relations tool as well as some debate about hosting team blogs separately or all under the company domain name.

There was some nice back and forth with Andy and Rand plus great questions from Mike and the audience.

Since I arrived on the tail end of the DMA07 show, I haven’t taken as many photos as I’d like, but here are a few so far.

Welcome to DMA07

Matt Bailey, Heather Lloyd Martin, Detlev Johnson

Wrestling a microphone on the Link Building Panel

Daron Babin Glamour Shot

Exhibit Hall – Where are all the SEM vendors?

The DMA ECHO Awards included a search marketing category for the first time and I was a judge.

Upgraded room view at the W Hotel. Nice!

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Local NBC affiliate NBC11 covering Silicon Valley stopped by the Search Engine Strategies conference yesterday. I happened to be at the right place at the right time and news reporter Scott Budman asked if I would do a quick interview.

My pal Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal was nearby during the interview so I gave him my camera and he took a few shots:

It went pretty quickly and I didn’t think a lot of it afterwards until several people mentioned to me that they say me on TV during the evening news. I haven’t found an online version of the clip, but did get one forwarded to me that I could download but not share.

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I nearly missed mentioning this. Daniel over at Daily Blog Tips does an interesting form of interview where he asks two people the same questions and posts their replies as a sort of “face off”.

In the past he’s done this with Darren Rowse and Jeremy Shoemaker as well as John Chow and Matt Coddington. This week he did such an interview with Rand Fishkin and myself, which might have been better if it were with Rand and Danny or Rand and Matt Cutts, but hey I’m not complaining.
It’s not much of a faceoff since SEOmoz gets 10 times the traffic Online Marketing Blog does. Despite that, many of our answers are quite similar with the exception of the questions about reading just one blog and a one word description that describes the reason for blog success. Thank you Daniel for the exposure!

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When you attend conferences, read blogs or popular search marketing sites you’ll find plenty of subject matter experts in search marketing tactics ranging from search engine optimization to pay per click to local marketing and social media. It’s great to get those specific perspectives, but I get a lot of feedback from businesses that appreciate a more holistic approach to marketing online.

Recently, I was able to do an interview on the online radio show, Online Marketing with RSS Ray talking about an overall  approach to using social media, blogs and online public relations.

Below are links to the audio segments from the interview. All of the tactics discussed provide benefits for search engine optimization as well.

Renowned search engine optimization expert, Jill Whalen of High Rankings is bringing her traveling SEO experts roadshow to Minneapolis this coming March 15th and 16th. I am honored to say that Jill has asked me to participate in the training as well.

The Minneapolis High Rankings Seminar will feature some of the most experienced and talented search marketing trainers, most of which have spoken at major conferences such as Search Engine Strategies:

• Jill Whalen – High Rankings
• Scottie Claiborne – Successful-Sites
• Matt Bailey – Site Logic Marketing
• Christine Churchill – KeyRelevence
• Karon Thackston – Marketing Words
• Lee Odden – TopRank

Topics to be covered in the two day seminar include:

• Search Engine Optimization Overview
• Technical Design Issues

This Thursday I’ll be doing an audio conference as part of Bulldog Reporter’s PR University on search engine optimization and public relations. I did one of these in the Spring of 2006 and it went pretty well. I know a lot of practical, hands-on information was given out for the past conference. Attendees ranged from top 10 public relations firms in the U.S. to boutique shops and in-house PR professionals.

The panel this Thursday is very similar as last year and consists of:

• Sally Falkow from Expansion Plus
• Jamie O‚ÄôDonnell, SEO PR
• Lee Odden, TopRank
• Sarah Skerik, PR Newswire

The WebProNews video blog posted an interview Mike McDonald did with myself and Stephan Spencer during the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference where we talk about marketing and public relations issues with blogs and social media.

Congrats to Mike, Chris and Richard on a great job with these videos!

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Earlier this week Matt McGee of Small Business SEM blog did an interview with me about public relations for small businesses. Matt has had a lot of marketing experience so he asked some great questions that I think businesses small and large will benefit from.

Here are a few sample questions:

Are press releases better for traditional publicity purposes or for SEO purposes — or can the same release do both? How?

The same release can be used as an introduction to a publicity opportunity, but there is no substitute for human contact. Press release distribution alone rarely achieves media coverage. Contacting the media with a reference to a press release and unique story ideas can improve your chances of media coverage significantly. While a large percentage of journalists research press releases online, many continue to rely on press releases via email as a method of getting new story ideas.

I just noticed today that AllBusiness.com had posted the basic SEO videos from the shoot we did a month ago or so. Most of them are pretty short little snippets and turned out ok, but I think we’ll shoot some in our office so we can do multiple takes. I had very little sleep the night before and it appears my facial muscles have a mind of their own.

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Aaron Wall took some cool photos at the Boston Pubcon.

Here’s one with me and Mr. Ploppy aka Stuntdubl aka Todd Malicoat:

Yeah, I remember back in the day when I was skinny too. I was not, however, anywhere near as smart as this young man.

Here’s one with, “I’m makin a million from blog seo” Bill Hartzer

I’ve got a strange look on my face after hearing about some of Bill’s SEO projects. “Wow” is the word.

OK, this is the LAST time I will post on the Boston Pubcon. But you know, Vegas is coming up pretty soon!

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