Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

Internet Marketing Conference Tips: David Berkowitz Search Insider Summit

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.


Internet Marketing Conference Tips: David Berkowitz Search Insider Summit

How Many Conferences Can You Attend in 30 Days?

Audience

Conferences are a big part of TopRank’s marketing and content promotion strategy and it looks like a busy summer is ahead of us. Numerous events are coming up quickly – enough to make your head spin. Here is a summary of our involvement with PRSA, DMA, PUSH, SIS, SES and SMX events over the next 30 days:

05/14/08 – MIMA: Duality Reality – Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise?
The local interactive marketing association along with inspiration and motivation from Doug Pollei, there will be a very interesting panel of in-house Interactives discussing how large companies (General Mills, Best Buy, Target, Fingerhut and OptumHealth) are adopting and measuring social media programs. If you’re in the Twin Cities this week and involved with social marketing now or in the future, this is a MUST ATTEND event.


How Many Conferences Can You Attend in 30 Days?

SIS Session: Microsoft New Keyword Services Platform

Microsoft adCenter

The sponsored lunch today at Search Insider Summit comes from Microsoft adCenter which included a demo of their new Keyword Services Platform and add-in to Excel 2007.

Stacy Harris from Microsoft adCenter

Stacy Harris:
Feedback from marketers is that traffic is good, but they want more of it. Marketers also want AdCenter to be easier to use.

Natala Menezes Microsoft adCenter

Natala Menezes is up next and promptly announces Stacy was engaged last night!

Key points for current and future development of adCenter: Quality, Transparency and Simplicity.

What does this mean to keyword research, optimization and analysis? Access to real data, not just graphs including demographic and geographic information. It also means easy to use tools including keyword libraries and an adCenter add-in for Excel 2007 which focuses Keyword research, forecasting and monetization data.


SIS Session: Microsoft New Keyword Services Platform

SIS Opening Remarks Gord Hotchkiss

Gord Hotchkiss

Opening remarks: Gord Hotchkiss, CEO & President, Enquiro —Emcee of the Search Insider Summit

Where is search at? This year was the first time seeing a major change to what users see via universal or combined search, as well as the beginning of personalization and search term suggestions or query refinement.

Gord recently talked to usability people at the major search engines via a webinar which can be found at enquiroresearch.com

The “holy grail” of search is disambiguation, i.e. understanding user intent.

Four things that came out of the webinar.

Personalization holds promise, but in 2008 it’s not going to impact user experience that much. Engines like Google will continue to play with personalization in the coming year, but don’t expect much.


SIS Opening Remarks Gord Hotchkiss

David Berkowitz & Gord Hotchkiss – Search Insider Summit Utah

A whirlwind conference schedule winds up this year with Mediapost’s Search Insider Summit being held in Park City Utah at the Stein Eriksen Lodge Dec 12-15, 2007.  As part of our media sponsorship duties, I caught up with conference chair, David Berkowitz from 360i and the host/MC, Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro for a quick interview:

david-berkowitz.jpg gord-hotchkiss.jpg

Please tell us a little about yourself – a mini bio if you will.

David: I’m Director of Emerging Media and Client Strategy with 360i, the search-focused digital agency. I’ve been writing a weekly Search Insider column for MediaPost since it launched in mid-2004. For fun, I have my own blog at MarketersStudio.com, and I do a fair amount of speaking at industry events. It’s a great gig, especially with the clients I get to work with.


David Berkowitz & Gord Hotchkiss – Search Insider Summit Utah

Reader Poll: Can SES, SMX and Pubcon Coexist?

SES New York Audience

A lot has changed in the search marketing conference industry in the past year. The biggest news being the addition of Kevin Ryan to oversee Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies along with the departure of Danny Sullivan from SES to start his own venture, Third Door Media and the Search Marketing Expo or SMX series of conferences.

Additional news includes the success of new conferences like MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit, programmed by David Berkowitz as well as the reduction in conference dates for Brett Tabke’s WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon down to one (albeit, temporarily) in Las Vegas. With the number of new and niche conferences popping up it begs the question as to whether the market demand can support so many events?

reader poll


Reader Poll: Can SES, SMX and Pubcon Coexist?

Gord Hotchkiss on Connection and Community

As Media Post’s Search Insider Summit opened up, everyone fresh with coffee and battles with the bagel toasting machine, the smell of change in the search industry was in the air. Of course we know that change is a key component of search marketing and it’s what makes this industry so interesting and challenging.

Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro, who was tasked as the event emcee, kicked off the Summit with opening remarks about search as a connection to social change. While innovations with search features and functionality are occurring every day, Gord reminds us that technology changes much faster than people do.

As an agent of change the internet has the potential of having a far greater impact than something like TV. However, we won’t see the real impact of the internet on society for 10-15 years, just like it took many years for TV to change society.


Gord Hotchkiss on Connection and Community