Online Marketing Blog

This morning I received a pleasant surprise email from the folks at Junta42 with congratulations to Brian Solis, Brian Clark, David Meerman Scott, Jay Baer and TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog on making the top of the first Junta42 Top Content Marketing Blogs list in 2011. It is more than a little humbling to be included amongst such talented and respected industry veterans.

Joe Pulizzi runs Junta42 and is the first person (that I know of) to really popularize the notion of “content marketing”. In that regard Joe and his team really walk the talk: He also runs the Content Marketing Institute, Chief Content Officer magazine and the upcoming Content Marketing World conference. The blogs and writers that make the Junta42 list also “walk the talk” with content marketing and serve as a great example for those that want to better understand how content fits within the marketing mix.

It’s safe to say 2009 and 2010 were breakout years for social media. Our last Digital Marketing poll showed 6 of the top 10 tactics as social media complemented by search engine marketing and email.  Slimmer marketing budgets and mass media attention have inspired a rush to many types social media marketing tactics bringing a certain over-optimism about what the social web can do for a company’s bottom line.

With the economy recovering slowly, what will 2011 bring? Are social media and content marketing the glue that brings multi channel marketing together? Is 2011 finally the year for mobile? Will companies focus on more holistic online marketing?

We’d love to hear your opinions in the 2011 TopRank Digital Marketing Poll.  Please take the poll here and share it, post it, bookmark it and help us reach over 200 responses:

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.

With Thanksgiving almost within reach, it’s hard to think of anything but turkey, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and warm homemade rolls. Actually, for me, my mind is on my aunt’s chocolate pie and my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese.

But regardless of the type of food item occupying your thoughts right now, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on what we have to be grateful for. I, for one, realize I have a lot to be grateful for, considering the people I interact with on a daily basis and the work I’m tasked with each day.

Michelle Bowles

Having been a part of the TopRank Online Marketing team for 4 months  now, I’m thankful for my fellow team members who have patiently shown me the ropes along the way and made me feel welcome.

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

2008 MIMA Summit at The Depot

UPDATE: We have a winner! Liz Giel was selected by a mysterious voting process contrived within the ranks of the TopRank staff and involving various secretive and hurried Account Managers. Suffice it to say, we appreciate all who ReTweeted, linked and commented.  Don’t worry, there will be liveblogging of the event here on Online Marketing Blog and live streaming of several sessions at MIMASummit.org. Congratulations Liz!

In just under a week the annual Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association Summit will be held downtown Minneapolis at the Hilton. With keynotes from Seth Godin and Jackie Huba as well as a collection of local and national subject matter experts ranging from Greg Swan of Weber Shandwick to Scott Monty of Ford, it should be a veritable vortex of interactive velocity.  I apologize, that alliteration was so bad.

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?

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.

Day one of the DMA / TopRankMarketing.com Social Media Smarts workshop kicked off covering a tremendous amount of information including defining social media, practical examples & case studies and blogging soup to nuts. Creating, marketing and measuring blog results was covered in 3 different modules.

Social media and making sense out of the social web is a hot topic and I applaud the organizations that sent people to New York this week for our workshop.

During the first day I asked attendees what their learning objectives were which I thought were consistent with most people entering the social media space:

• Build a social media strategy for our organization
• Learn what social media tools to pay attention to and which to ignore for a specific industry

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 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.

It’s a new month and a bloggy bloggy world I tell you. So many blogs and so little time, and yet you’re drawn to the BIGLIST each week, aren’t you? Who made it? Who didn’t?

Admit your BIGLIST addiction and we’ll send two lucky souls free access codes to the DPAC II Conference (The Next Wave of Digital Content & Advertising) in New York Oct 27 & 28.

Now on to the good stuff of this week’s SEO Blog Reviews:

• NVI Blog – You’ve got to love both the tag line, “professional, technical and a little bit twisted” and the RSS Icon (guy sitting on a toilet) of this Montreal based web design agency blog that also covers search and social marketing.