March has been a bit crazy so far as we’ve been rolling out an enormous SEO campaign for one Fortune 20 client and are in the final stages of signing another. On top of that, March will be a speakorama on blogs and public relations.
Last week I had the pleasure of presenting for the IABC chapter in Minneapolis at St. Thomas University with Sarah Bjelland, a VP from Wells Fargo. The event was called, “Delivering Insight into Business Blogs” and I presented on social media in general, trends with business blogging, applications for blog software in a corporate communications strategy and best practices for corporate blogs.
Sarah presented the story of how Wells Fargo began blogging and examples of their blog projects. Wells Fargo was the first major bank to start a blog and Sarah provided some very valuable insight into the logistics of public blogging in a regulated industry and how Wells Fargo measures their return on investment from blogging. Internal blogs were also discussed.
This week is when the real madness starts. We’ve been working hard promoting the High Rankings Search Engine Marketing seminar which runs this Thursday and Friday in Minneapolis. (Save 25% with discount code, TOPRANK) I am speaking on Thursday in a session called, “UnGoogle Your Search Marketing” and will be talking about alternative online marketing channels to standard search engines that also carry the secondary benefit of helping visibility in standard search engines.
I’ll have about 2 hours after I present at the High Rankings seminar before I get on a plane to Chicago where I am speaking Friday at Bulldog Reporter’s Advanced PR Technology in Practice in a session called, “Boosting PR Visibility with SEO and RSS”. My partner in crime for that session is Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR and it should be a good one.
Again, about 2-3 hours after I am done speaking, I hop on a plane back to Minneapolis where I’ll stay overnight and hop on another plane the next day to Sydney, Australia for the Search Engine Room conference which takes place March 20-21. I’ll have a few days to check out Sydney before speaking on a panel, “Blog Marketing and Optimisation” with Andrew Pascoe, Author, Under The Rotunda and Frank Arrigo, Evangelist, Microsoft. I will also be doing a solo presentation, “SEO and Public Relations” which should be fun. After the conference I have a few more days of off time before heading back to the states March 26th.
I guess I’d better get some time in at a tanning salon since it’s summer in Australia right now. I’d hate for the audience to get too distracted by my current pasty white Minnesotan skin tone.
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About Lee Odden
Hi Lee,
I remembered you had a busy March coming but I did not remember all the miles in the air. Hope you have some fantastic trips. Australia sounds like a great time. I won’t be attending the High Rankings sessions but may be able to hook up with some of the gang afterwards.
If your in Sydney on the 18/19th March it’s the 75th anniversary of the harbour bridge so the whole city will be packed! You should have a great time though 🙂
Hi. I’ve been subscribing for a while now and really enjoy your posts. I sat in on one of your bulldog reporter teleseminars recently and found it very helpful. Have you considered taking some of these presentations and putting them on a DVD? I think there are p.r. pros who would eagerly buy tutorials on online p.r., especially if you offered them a click through picture of how to post, what measurement tools look like, etc. It could be a simple way for you to make some money, and I’d be first in line! It’s also the sort of thing you could sell to IABC/PRSA chapters who may want to have you speak but can’t afford the expenses. Something to think about…
–Susan Gosselin
Gosselin Communications, Inc.
Louisville, KY
Hi Kevin, we get in early am on the 19th and depending on how much sleep I get on the way over, I’ll do my best to attend the harbour bridge festivities. I’ve received a number of “local” recommendations on what to do while in Sydney and am really looking forward to the conference and a bit of sightseeing.
Thanks Susan, online PR training is something we’ve been developing internally for our own staff as it’s been interesting keeping up with the demand. Providing a version to other PR firms sounds like something we should consider. Thanks for the suggestion!
Hi Lee,
I always enjoying reading your work. And, I’d love to have heard your business blogs presentation. ContextWeb has just launched its own blog and the ROI discussion is ever present. Does it all come down to page views and uniques? It’s a bit of a rhetorical question but perhaps we chat at SES in nyc if you plan on attending in April.
John