B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Is it Time to Make Google+ Your Plus One? 5 Key Problems Solved by Google+ Pages @adtech NY Keynote with Christian Oestlien

Christian OestlienThe closing keynote on Wednesday at ad:tech New York was presented by Christian Oestlien the Head of Social Advertising Products at Google.  The opening of Oestlien’s presentation featured an example of Google+’s new Hangout feature shot live at a Black Eyed Peas Concert.  Fans were given an opportunity to interact with the music sensations in real time.  Black Eyed Pea’s frontman will.i.am is noted as saying “This isn’t behind the music, this will become the music.”

Since launching in June, Google+ has already acquired over 40 million active users.  Users have also uploaded over 3.5 billion photos in those short months.  According to Oestlien the goal of Google+ for enable marketers to interact with their fan base in a way that they never have before.  When developing Google+ the team set out to see how they could influence and impact as well as improve that way that marketers are utilizing Online Marketing today.


Is it Time to Make Google+ Your Plus One? 5 Key Problems Solved by Google+ Pages @adtech NY Keynote with Christian Oestlien

ad:tech New York Search Marketing Masters

New YorkAs part of my November cross country efforts to share search, social media and content marketing insights, I’ve switched from BlogWorld Los Angeles last week to ad:tech New York this week. I’m really looking forward to a great group of Search Marketing sessions at one of the the largest Interactive Marketing conferences in the world. In the past year I’ve been to London, San Francisco, Barcelona and many other great cities (even Cleveland!) but New York is by far one of my favorite places for a conference.

Earlier this year the amazing Melanie Mitchell, SVP of Search at Digitas, was serving as a conference Marketing Master for the Search Engine Marketing track and she asked me to speak at my first ad:tech in San Francisco.  When I was asked to perform those same SEM track programming duties for the ad:tech New York show, I had to say yes!


ad:tech New York Search Marketing Masters

ad:tech SF – Social Media & The New Laws of Creativity with Brian Solis

Brian Solis

After a great opening keynote presentation by Arianna Huffington, I was drawn into the nearby speaker ready room and ran into the always inspiring Brian Solis. Brian’s Marketing Masters track at ad:tech San Francisco was on my list for live blogging and as always, he shared a great mix of insights and inspiration about business on the social web.

I haven’t live blogged in a while, so forgive the rough edges 🙂

How do we improve the game for social media in business?

Why have people begun to hate the term “social media”? It’s about what social media is not. Social media is neither one to many marketing or many to many. It’s about 1+1=many.


ad:tech SF – Social Media & The New Laws of Creativity with Brian Solis

3 Essential Social Media SEO Tips for Advertisers – ad:tech San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge San FranciscoToday I’ll be speaking at ad:tech San Francisco with one of my favorite people in the Search Marketing industry, Melanie Mitchell, who is a Senior VP of Search Strategy at Digitas. She’s tasked a panel including Simon Heseltine, Rob Snell and myself to talk about “Modern Search Engine Optimization”.

While SEO is a billion dollar industry, many companies focused on advertising are quite new to how SEO might fit within an online marketing strategy. With plenty of outdated and mis-information online amidst a fast changing industry, it can be a challenge to have confidence in what’s true and best practices. Few marketers want to invest in something they don’t quite understand. Or at least not understand where it fits for connecting the brand and customers to drive revenue.


3 Essential Social Media SEO Tips for Advertisers – ad:tech San Francisco

Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Brad Berens iMedia Connection

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.


Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Brad Berens iMedia Connection

Getting the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences

Josh Bernoff & Charleni Li @ Web 2.0 Expo

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.


Getting the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences

What Conferences Are You Attending?

Facebook Marketing Panel Web 2.0 Expo

Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well.

Over the past 3 years we’ve been focused on search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR. We’ll continue that trend the rest of this year but with more conferences outside of search as our online marketing agency evolves.

Conferences that I’m attending in the coming months include:


What Conferences Are You Attending?

ad:tech New York Keynote: State of the Industry

ad:tech Keynote

Topics for this morning’s keynote centered on the notion of the “new P” platforms, video advertising and random references to Gilligan’s Island and weird porn.

The panel was moderated by Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of IAB. Panelists included:

  • Suzie Reider, Head of Ad Sales YouTube.com
  • Michael Barrett, EVP, Chief Revenue Officer Fox Interactive Media
  • Arianna Huffington, c-founder and Editor in Chief Huffington Post
  • Matt Freeman, CEO Tribal DDB Worldwide

Randy Rothenberg of the IAB started out with a brief overview citing promosing industry statistics: The interactive advertising industry is near $20 billion, there are over one billion internet users world wide and 80% of adults use the internet.Despite that progress and good news, the interactive advertising industry is at risk due to possible regulation from “anti consumer advocates”. The FTC has raised the spectre of regulation not only of cookies but reccommendations to implement opt in requirements for all ads. The regulation advocates’ position is basically, “The time for fact finding is over, it’s time for us to regulate.”


ad:tech New York Keynote: State of the Industry

ad:tech NYC Day One Photos

Welcome to ad:tech NYC

Arriving at JFK was surprisingly un-eventful and smooth. Carry on is certainly the way to go. I walked right off the plane and to the taxi area where a town car agreed to take me to Midtown for the same price as a cab. There is no substitute for a ride with legroom.

Upon arrival at the Hilton where the ad:tech NYC conference was being held, I ran into Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads/Media Whiz. A great guy and very successful as well. I didn’t think to take a photo, but in case you don’t know him, he looks like that fellow on the show “The Bachelor”.

Bruce Clay ad:tech NYC


ad:tech NYC Day One Photos

ad:tech New York Blogger Bonanza

adtech-newyork.gif

Next week I’ll be attending my last “blogging only” conference of the year, ad:tech New York, and possibly for quite a while. I will be performing blogging duties for the adtechblog.com along with Sara Holoubek, Richard Cacciato, Craig Peters, Steve Hall, Angela Natividad and Robert Gorell. With that many bloggers and over 10,000 people registered for the event, that’s what I call a blogger bonanza!

Attending conferences purely to blog has been great the past few years but speaking and performing editor duties for our media sponsorships has taken a much higher priority. Of course, when I am fortunate enough to be able to speak at a conference there’s always some blogging that goes along with it. 🙂


ad:tech New York Blogger Bonanza

ad:tech Chicago Keynote: Building Brands in a Digital Age

Jolina Pettice
Jolina Pettice
adtech, Online Marketing

Note from Editor: TopRank Account Manager, Jolina Pettice recently attended the ad:tech conference in Chicago. Along with her formidable knowledge gathering and networking duties, Jolina is sharing notes and observations on a few of the sessions. Enjoy!

The second keynote speech at ad tech Chicago included a panel of leading marketing folks discussing how to build great brands in the digital age.

The panelists, including those below, shared their insight on building brands such as YouTube.com, Ponitac Sunfire, McDonalds and its recent collaboration with Shrek and the like:
Marc Landsberg, President, Arc Worldwide
Suzie Reider, Head of Advertising Sales, YouTube.com
Tor Myhren, Executive Creative Director, Executive VP, Leo Burnett Detroit
Robert Leverone, VP, Television, Dow Jones

An overarching theme of ad:tech this week was how to engage prospects and consumer in conversation with company and/or client brands.


ad:tech Chicago Keynote: Building Brands in a Digital Age

ad:tech Chicago – Keys to Removing Creativity Roadblocks

Jolina Pettice
Jolina Pettice
adtech, Online Marketing

Note from Editor: This week, TopRank Account Manager, Jolina Pettice is attending the ad:tech conference in Chicago. Along with her formidable knowledge gathering and networking duties, Jolina is also providing blog coverage of several sessions. Enjoy!

This morning I attended an absolutely fantastic session entitled: Aha! How to Ignite a Creative Spark at your Next Brainstorming Session presented by Jordan Ayan, CEO & Founder of SubscriberMail, LLC.

Creativity and the ability to be creative is a topic we have been discussing at TopRank quite a bit lately in order to provide the most effective campaigns and tactics for our clients.

However, we all run into creative roadblocks now and again. A common roadblock to creativity is what Ayan refers to as “Mental Models” and “Patterned Thinking”.


ad:tech Chicago – Keys to Removing Creativity Roadblocks