Online Marketing Blog

Search Engine Strategies San Francisco is upon us and marks a watershed year for this event.  For the first time the annual August conference hosts in San Francisco and integrates with Connected Marketing Week, boosting an already large happening to an all-inclusive digital marketing experience.

In addition to TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden presenting on several sessions as both speaker (Content Marketing Optimization & Blog SEO) and moderator (Selling Search to the C-Suite), TopRank team members (myself and Mike Yanke) will be out in force liveblogging the event.

During the 2009 conference we put together the “Search and Social Media Puzzle“.  Our 2010 conference coverage will be no different.  Online Marketing Blog readers won’t miss a thing.  We’re all familiar with such phrases as “content is king” and “context is queen.”  So this year, we’ll be helping you outsmart competitors, think strategically and “make the right moves” with expert advice from industry thought leaders.

Now, more than ever, marketing companies and consultants need to get competitive for client dollars and what better way than advancing your knowledge and your network?

There are many options for companies and agencies to train digital marketing teams and to keep tenured employees up to date including conferences such as: this week’s WebmasterWorld Pubcon, Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, numerous regional and niche events and an increasing number of web based offerings including SEMPO Institute and the DMA Search Engine Marketing Certification program. I would be remiss not to mention the upcoming “Social Media Smarts” workshop in NYC covering all aspects of social media marketing including a strategy exercise and tips on building a business case for a social media effort in your organization.

Wow, what a conference! Search Engine Strategies is near it’s end and what better way to wrap up our series on internet marketing conference tips than with the following super-tips from super smart Michael Brito, Social Media Program Manager at Intel.

Michael worked with HP then moved on to Yahoo and is now with Intel practicing his adept social media stylings. Be sure to check out Britopian and the social media practitioner blog, Conversations Matter, for more of his insights.

Not all marketing conferences are created equal and from a content perspective, some are much better than others. Last month I attended SMX Social in Long Beach, California; and the content seemed to be more aligned with SEO than Social Media. Nonetheless, there were plenty of really good takeaways from the conference, but the true value for me was networking and meeting others who work in the same space as I do. Here are some other things to consider to prepare for conferences:

SES San Jose week is nearly over one might say we’ve saved some of the best internet marketing conference tips for last with the ever enthusiastic and insightful Heather Lloyd-Martin.

Heather is Chair, DMA’s Search Engine Marketing Council and President of SuccessWorks. She also blogs about copywriting at SEO Copywriting.

Attend all the “search marketing site labs” or “search marketing clinics” you can find. During a site lab, a panel of experts review Web sites on the fly and discuss how to improve them for search positioning and conversions.

Here’s why they are so cool:

It’s hump day during SES San Jose week and it reminds us there are many avenues for interacting with marketing conferences. It’s one thing to focus on programming events like our last few tipsters, it’s another thing to have spent numerous conference hours in the shoes of an attendee, speaker and conference programmer.

David Berkowitz is Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy at 360i and Programming Chair of MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit with a short but very important tip:

Make time for the activities and dinners. The [SIS] Summit has far more shmooze time than time in sessions, and that’s for a reason. As excited as I am about the program and the speakers, the lasting relationships come during the downtime, as do the most meaningful conversations.

Figuring out how to get the most out of internet marketing conferences takes experience with plenty of conferences, including events like Search Engine Strategies happening in San Jose this week. So it seems fitting to follow up on Danny Sullivan’s advice with the insight of fellow Minnesotan, Chris Sherman.

Chris is co-founder of Third Door Media as well as the SMX conferences, has a search marketing consulting business and has been as involved with the details of conference programming, moderating and speaking as anyone you can find.

When torn between going to one session over another, go to the one that has fewest attendees. With so many people live blogging conferences these days, the odds are good that someone (or many) will be covering the popular session, so you’ll effectively get a two-fer even without personally attending both.

We’re really picking up steam with our tips on Iternet Marketing Conferences, appropriately enough, during SES San Jose. Our next tip comes from Robert Scoble, Managing Director of FastCompany.TV and blogger extraordinaire.

I caught up with Robert at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and he agreed to play along and answer a few conference tip questions. The insights below are transcribed from the video interview I did with him during the event.

It’s tough because I’m the guy who likes to hang out in the hallways. I hate being stuck in a conference session unless I know I’ll learn something. To me the hallways are great because that’s where I do my networking and find out what’s really going on.

We’re on a roll this week during SES San Jose 2008 with our next tip in a series of how to “Get the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences“. Previously a Vice President and Editor in Chief at ClickZ for 7 years, Rebecca Lieb serves as an Editorial Consultant to the ClickZ network as well as a public speaker on interactive marketing and advertising.

She’ll be keynoting the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Summit this October. She can be found many places online including Twitter.

Get organized. Plan in advance. Make a conference calendar grid with all the sessions you want to attend, as well as the parties you’re going to. Set up meeting around all that stuff. Color code it, if you’re anal. Now that you have a perfectly framed agenda, rest assured portions of it will go straight to hell. Relax. Accept it. Spontaneity’s good. Go with the flow!

Our third set of internet marketing conference tips come on day one of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose and are appropriately from Kevin M. Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch.

Kevin Ryan has been involved with numerous conferences over the years working for various interactive and internet marketing agencies before starting his own and now as head of the SES conferences in the U.S. and abroad for Incisive Media.

1. Events are a great place to meet with clients, vendors and potential partners.

a. If you have a relationship with who you’re meeting with, begin scheduling meetings about a month prior to the event. Less time than that and your choices will be limited. More time than that, and they are going to forget you.

Here’s our second tip in a series of posts during the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose on “Getting the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences“. This one is from Brad Berens, Global Content Director for the esteemed ad:tech conferences and iMedia Connection.

Brad also blogs about culture, new media, marketing and community over at Mediavorous.

First, accept that you can’t do everything– believe me I’ve tried! I’ve gone to events where I’m speaking, networking AND covering things up for a publication. That’s a 20 hour day and it shortens your life in a hurry. It’s important to think — before you get on that plane – about why you’re going and why you aren’t and make choices accordingly.

With Search Engine Strategies San Jose just around the corner, I thought it timely and appropriate to share insights on how you can get the most out of marketing conferences.

TopRank is very active attending, speaking and blogging a variety of internet marketing events, conferences and workshops. These aren’t the only reasons to attend a marketing conference though and the next 9 posts will offer some excellent insights from TopRank as well as a incredible mix of industry thought leaders that may just compound the value of your staff already attending plus motivate you to send more.

Recession or not, look no further than the headlines in any business publication and you’ll see increasing numbers of articles offering advice on how companies can best deal with tighter marketing budgets.

Since attending, blogging and speaking at industry conferences is a big part of my own search marketing agency’s marketing, I get to attend a good number of events in a variety of cities. One of the nice things about having events in the same city is that you get to know the city better each time. For example, you can never go to New York City too many times (as far as I’m concerned).

The venue for a conference certainly matters but so does the city and that leads me to this week’s reader poll about favorite cities for conferences. The list of cities is based on places I’ve been to personally for conferences as well as a few locations that have held search conferences, but I did not attend.