MarketingProfs Web Marketing Conference – Register Today!

On June 8th-9th MarketingProfs is holding a 2 day business conference for business owners and decision makers to come and sharpen their online marketing skills. If you are an individual who either helps run an online business or is even looking to start one the MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum 2009 is an excellent value for any online marketeer. Whether you are a pay per click manager looking to learn more of what surrounds internet marketing or you are an individual that runs all aspects of an online business you can walk away with valuable information that could tighten your online marketing game. Strengthen your pay per click advertising and search engine marketing skills by learning how to integrate social media marketing and SEO into your daily web marketing tasks.

Each registrant will receive a complimentary copy of MarketingProfs latest research report “B2B Marketing 2009: Trends in Strategies and Spending”. Conference registrants will also receive a free premium plus membership allowing them access to unlimited and free archives of case studies, research reports and online seminars. Conference attendees also have an opportunity to have one on one time with an industry expert about topics likes SEO, social media, email marketing and much more to help with any issues that person might be having in this area. There will also be an unlimited amount of networking opportunities for attendees to either secure some new business relationships or expand on already existing ones. Aside from having free meals through this conference attendees will be listening to keynote presentations by industry leaders authors like Steve Berlin Johnson and Barry Schwartz.

MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum 2009 is a great place for all online marketeers to learn more than they already knew and strengthen their skills. The internet is always evolving and changing and conferences like these help key decision makers make the right decisions. There will be classes on everything from economic impact on B2B marketing practices to how to efficiently pull your outsourced online marketing efforts in house. The MarketingProfs Business-to-Business 2009 Forum is a great place to really take your online efforts to a whole new level.

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Four Paths to Success in a Tough Travel Economy

We’re in the vertical & B2B track for this one. Our moderator is Elisabeth Osmeloski, Director of Online Media, Adventures in Search. Our speaker line up is:

• Benu Aggarwal, Founder & President, Milestone Internet Marketing
• Michelle Stern, Client Services Director, iProspect
• Roger Wong, Product Manager, Bing Travel
• Carrie Hill, Director of Search Strategies & SearchEnigineWatch Expert, Blizzard Internet Marketing

Benu Aggarwal, Milestone Internet Marketing

Benu steps up first. She’s going to focus on the organic path. For a comprehensive e-marketing plan, start with market and customer analysis. Then think about the product and incorporate that in your marketing strategy. But before you start doing research, think about geo-targets, lines of business, USPs, niche travel words and attractions. Make a table with these headings as columns and you’ll have a table for focusing your plan.

If you have a travel package, be sure you’re including unique and valuable offers.

Site conversion factors:

• Offer exceptional value packages
• Lowest rates guaranteed
• Customer reviews
• Maps and directions
• Blog featuring local info
• Ad promotion on social media networks
• Search engine friendly two-minute video
• Offer trackable time-sensitive coupons
• Phone number, address on ever page
• Photo gallery
• Flat site architecture
• Reservation menu
• Crawlable community maps
• Printable ebrochures

Visitors are coming to your travel site because they want to find things to do, see photos, book reservations and get offers.

You should have an organic promotion strategy. First things first: own your local listing! Upload your profile, add pictures and videos. Also make sure your info on Internet Yellow Pages are correct. Then contact your local chamber of commerce. Add attractions to Wikipedia. The links aren’t followed by the traffic will come.

Ultimately, your goal is to rank high for your name and for relevant keyword phrases. Why your name? There are going to be travel sites that rank for your name. With an enhanced listing, with a map or a blog, they will get to know you.

If you have a duplicate local listing, combine them so you don’t nullify both because of the duplicate.

Final tips:

• Create comprehensive marketing plan
• Identify long tail keyword phrases and bundle it up
• Add conversion facts to your site
• Add coupons, time sensitive value added offers
• Track online and offline conversions such as calls, coupons
• Focus on enhancing and verifying local profiles, validating feeds
• Get links from authoritative local site in that area
• Identify relevant niche markets and create strategies to convert those
• Make sure key Internet Yellow Pages have accurate information

Michelle Stern, iProspect

Michelle is up next. She asks the audience to raise your hand if you have a rotary phone in your home. No one raises their hand. That’s because it doesn’t meet our needs. There’s a need for search marketing campaigns to evolve as well. But how to do that in a down economy? Let’s look at a case study. WTH is one of the nation’s largest leisure travel company, partnering with companies like Orbitz and Expedia.

This happened last December — the economy’s big dive and an important time for WTH. With the economic turmoil, conversions in December and January decreased. But people were still searching. They planned to improve conversions by looking at the 4 highest traffic terms in the campaign. They looked at search volume year-over-year. Three were steady but one, “cheap cruise”, had really spiked. This was insight into the consumer mindset. You may not want to negatively impact the brand by emphasizing cheap travel, but you may be able to mitigate any damage by balancing it with customer reviews and service.

They realized that not all travelers are created equal. They recognized four profiles and decided to test copy for each profile groups around the keyword. In tests they saw the new copy had a decreased cost per click and a higher conversion rate. Conversions increased 16 percent year over year for top ad groups.

Lessons learned:

• Integrate with other channels. Search is an opportunity to get a real-time pulse of consumers.
• Speak in the customers language, not yours. They will listen! It sounds basic, but it’s so often not applied.
• Create promotions and a sense of urgency. Give them a reason to buy now, creating promotions that set you apart from your competition. Capture contact information so you can remarket those who don’t convert at a later point.

Carrie Hill, Blizzard Internet Marketing

Carrie’s next and will focus on social media, touching on mobile and local marketing as well. She’s going to look at dealing with shrinking budgets, especially in the not-so-accountable social media space. But what happens if you ignore social media? You’re leaving opportunities for competitors and won’t know what’s being said about you or your industry.

How do you find out who your audience is? Use demographic keyword tools. Watch the bloggers that cover your area by searching your key terms In blog search. And look at your referral traffic. You can always ask as well.

Getting involved isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about being where the conversations are, which vary depending on who you are and what fits your client. Track the conversation with URL shorteners that track clicks. Correlate tweet and FB updates with spikes in site traffic (use this to sell the C suite). Alerts are useful, too.

What’s the ROI?

• Brand recognition
• Track revenue from social networks with Google Analytics event tracking
• Happy guests that talk about their experience
• What is the return on ignoring?

Facebook tips:

Be genuine, personable and always professional.
Set up a fan page and promote it on your Web site.
Don’t only post links and promotional material. Share videos, images and stories and answer questions.

Twitter tips:

• Grab attention with deals
• Offer exclusive deals and codes
• Answer questions
• Promote your presence on your site
• Don’t auto DM followers
• Don’t post a link in every single update — it looks contrived

Integrating your approach:

• Use a client to help you. She likes Hootsuite with Ping.FM
• Post to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn all at once
• Schedule tweets for future posting
• Save keywords searches
• Track link clicks
• Integrate in your staff’s email signature
• Don’t forget to tell the visitor where they can find you in social media

And finally, here are a couple mobile and local tips:

[David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors --Susan]

Roger is here to give us practical tips for Bing Travel. Online travel continues to grow. Most travelers still plan to take trips in the current economy. And many travel companies are reacting well to the environment. Information reported in June 2009 from PhoCusWright Inc. shows that boomers are being hit more than other generations. This means that marketers can target the user groups that aren’t as heavily affected by the recession.

Roger Wong, Bing Travel

Test ad copy optimized to target younger travelers expected to spend more on travel and are less impacted than boomers. Go beyond looking at just keywords to better understand what motivates different segments of the population to travel and what features/messages matter to them and tailor campaigns to target those users more effectively.
Expect future systems to incorporate more advanced segmentation.

Travel metasearch Web sites, travel guide web sites and social networking web sites are standing out as three typically used shopping travel sites. Some major SEM engines also provide text ad syndication to many travel sites. Ask your account manager where your ad could show up and find out what keywords these partners use to request ads.

Search behavior and the long tail is another area to pay attention to. They looked at travel research overall and found an increased sophistication in the way searchers look for travel info. There’s been a huge growth in the long-tail of car rental searches. They’ve taken advantage of these trends in Bing by building out pages that refine things like hotel info.

As for staycations, there’s evidence that people are taking shorter trips and staying closer to home. They’re helping travel clients build out local attractions and targets. One adCenter client increased hotel and vacation packages traffic significantly by targeting local attractions such as museums, national parks and tourist attractions.

Pay Per Click Journal – PPC Blog

Welcome to Pay Per Click Journal, a one stop shop for all your pay per click advertising questions. With the explosion of the internet pay per click has allowed businesses of all sizes to quickly thrust themselves in front of their targeted audience and compete in an arena or space they might have not had that chance to prior. Pay per click marketing however takes practice, patience and knowledge. It is important to really understand all angles and steps to actively execute a proper campaign that can help you build a business. This blog was created for visitors to be able to start and manage an effective pay per click campaign themselves in order to generate leads and sales for their business online. When done right PPC can be a very powerful tool to help grow any business. When done wrong a business can quickly burn through ad budget and find themselves at the starting line again.

Below are the various categories on this blog designed to help you with your PPC campaign:

Ad Copywriting – Ad copywriting is probably one of the most important aspects of a pay per click campaign. We go over various items you should focus on when launching a campaign and writing your ads. The wrong ad can create waste. The right ad can build you business.

Facebook PPC – With the power of social media only growing and the number of visitors on Facebook growing at an exponential rate this category has posts that will guide any business in the right direction to market their business on Facebook.

Google Adwords – This section covers everything an online business needs to know to effectively target an Adwords campaign to help their business grow through online channels. Learn the ABC’s of Google Adwords through various posts in this section.

Keyword Match Types – Keywords will play one of the most important roles in your campaign. The wrong keyword can cause your pay per click budget to burn through very quickly. This section will cover various keyword strategies all business should be utilizing.

Landing Page – You need to effectively drive each visitor that clicks on an ad to a page that is completely optimized to convert that specific visitor. Landing pages should have strategy so that the visitor is getting ready to see what they clicked on.

Local PPC – As a business it is important to not forget about your local community. Local PPC is just as important as national. This section will cover how to perform effective local pay per click advertising.

Microsoft Ad Center – Now Bing but Microsoft ad center still requires some knowledge on how properly use their marketing tools. Bing will become even more popular to use as a tool as time goes on.

Pay Per Video – Video will be playing a much larger role in many businesses. As more of our marketing goes digital a resource to help guide business through various video marketing is important.

PPC Bidding Strategies – Pay per click bidding is a vital component to any pay per click marketing campaign you and your business performs.

PPC Books – As you get further into your PPC strategy you might want to find some books to read. We have a comprehensive listing of many different pay per click books.

PPC Events – At some point in time you might want to visit some PPC events in order to further your education and networking.

PPC keyword Research – Conducting keyword research will be very important. You don’t want to miss any potential keywords or use some that don’t apply to your business.

PPC Launch – Launching a pay per click campaign comes with many challenges. We cover various different topics regarding the launch of a pay per click campaign.

PPC Management – Launching a campaign is half the battle. You need to be able to effectively manage your campaign to maximize every dollar spent on advertising.

PPC Opportunities – Find different ways some of the various tools around you can become opportunities to boost your pay per click campaign.

Yahoo Search Marketing – Yahoo search marketing will most likely be an important part of your pay per click campaign. Although similar to Google and Bing this one will have different strategies from the others.

Complete SES San Jose Liveblogging Coverage

Where was Virginia for the last week? Why up in San Jose, of course, at Search Engine Strategies. She covered 14 sessions over three days and still found time to record a radio show live for WebmasterRadio. Give her a hand, folks.

Tuesday, August 11

9:00 am	Opening Keynote: Clay Shirky, Author of Here Comes Everybody
10:30 am	How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community
11:45 am	In the Now: Conversational & Real Time Marketing (Social Media & Video Strategies Forum)
1:45 pm	Turn Brain Science into Bucks: Incorporating Persuasive Messaging into Your Content Strategy
3:00 pm	SEO Tools of the Trade: What’s in YOUR Toolbox?
4:30 pm	Performance Pricing Models: What Every CMO Must Know!

Wednesday, August 12

9:00 am	Credit Crunch: The Death of Last Click Attribution and its Impact on Paid Search Advertising
12:00 pm	Live broadcast of SEMSynergy with Mark Knowles and Wendy Roe of Pixelsilk.
1:00 pm	Afternoon Keynote: Nicholas Fox, Business Product Management Director, AdWords, Google
2:30 pm	Four Paths to Success in a Tough Travel Economy
4:00 pm	Social Media: White Hat vs. Black Hat

Thursday, August 13

9:00 am	Morning Keynote: How to Prepare for the Future of Search, Charlene Li, Co-Author, Groundswell, Founder, Altimeter Group
10:30 am	Electronic Contacts and the Long Arm of the Law
12:45 pm	The New Search ROI: Measuring More than Conversion
2:15 pm	Advanced SEO Roundtable: What is it Really? And Where is it Going?

SES SJ: White Hat Vs. Black Hat Social Media

Black hat techniques have long been criticized in search marketing. Some claim that these black hat practices have quietly been practiced in social media for years. Others claim that black hat and white hat are meaningless terms altogether.

With the rise in popularity of social media among larger audiences, the idea of black hat practices are being called into question. Where will the lines between white hat and black hat be drawn? Is it even possible to do this?

There are dangers for both companies and individuals who engage the social web with unethical or black hat practices, and can include such risks as loss of reputation, banning from web services/networks and even PR backlash.

Dave Evans, VP, Digital Voodoo moderates this panel (including TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden) which will draw conversation at SES and beyond:

• Beth Harte, Community Manager , MarketingProfs
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
• Dave Snyder, Co-Founder, Search & Social
• Chris Bennett, President & Founder, 97th Floor

Dave opened by talking about wanting to have a larger conversation surrounding the role social media plays in business. Dave believes social media is becoming a dominant channel that people make decisions in. With this said, ethics/authenticity and the idea of white hat and black hat will come into play more and more in the future.

Several classic examples were given of companies being inauthentic in the social web including Dell, Walmart, and others who suffered the wrath of negative fallout. Following were questions from the moderator as well as the audience, answered by the panel as a whole. I pulled together the conclusions from each answer, as the conversation went back and forth quickly:

What defines “black hat?”

The intention of being black hat is getting better results, faster. It’s a matter of managing risk: agencies and consultants are representing the brand’s marketing efforts, so representing the brand properly is key. Companies need to be ethical, honest, transparent and understand the risk if they are going to get involved in any tactics that may be pushing the envelope.

What defines “white hat?”

White hat is more a question of rules than best practices, and also must take into consideration the niche and community aspects. For example, one community might find something offensive where another wouldn’t have any issue with it. There is spam, there are people who use automation in both useful and ill-intentioned ways, there are people who influence conversations, there are people who are transparent, there are people who are secretive – but so many different factors are at play it is difficult to define specific items as a whole as “white hat” or “black hat” – it is application in action that makes them risky.

What are the rules?

It’s not what’s right; it’s not what’s wrong: it’s about who you are having a conversation with that defines engagement. It’s about each community and what that community defines what the unwritten rules are. Each site or service also has a TOS, but the community/culture are what end up shaping the content and appropriate engagement.

How to approach?

Create good content that gets links and attention. Don’t spam any of the social sites with news just to do it, it won’t work. Be honest and authentic and don’t go just for short term gain, be in it for the long haul. It’s the community that decides what it’s good or not at the end of the day.

How should agencies interact?

Get the actual product developer involved, don’t let marketing or advertising people ghostwrite forever – instead act as a consultant to help those experts. Empower and enable the company to succeed on their own. Ghostwriting may ultimately become unsustainable, whereas if you can foster a culture of participation and contribution, you will thrive.

What is the future of PR?

PR agencies need to evolve into the true counselors they should be and function from a strategic perspective. It removes them from purely tactical initiatives and elevates their value. PR people getting involved in social media properly will open up a new world of opportunity to function at a higher level than they currently are functioning. Put the people out front, and help them use the platforms articulately and correctly and continue to consult, coach and develop long term strategies.

How do you find someone internally that can function as a trusted, authentic brand advocate?

If you don’t have a brand that people want to engage in, don’t go into the social web. You have bigger problems than social media. Find talent that is interested in contributing from the start that is genuine. Find people who are passionate about the subject matter and put them out front. Show client results of what this can do tangibly to motivate them to put people out front in the first place and invest their time – if done properly they will see this is highly worth the effort. But never feel the pressure to be utilizing social media if you or your company aren’t very social.

What about the idea of automation?

Automating following/friending people for clients can potentially destroy their Twitter presence – they can potentially ban you for using auto-follow scripts. There is a risk involved. Automation is the crux of much of the white-hat black-hat issue, however there are always potential repercussions. Web services don’t want to see them.

Automation tools in the right hands can be effective, useful and add value. In the hands of the wrong people they can be spam. It is not the tools or technology that makes any strategy or tactic positive or negative, it is application.

What about social media spam?

Communities are surprisingly able to self-police and “vote down” the content that they see as spammy or over-promotional. In many communities, the users take care of spam naturally.

Should media and bloggers be submitting their own articles on content sharing sites?

Media and bloggers should spend time finding out what will work on the sites, rather than figuring out ways to game those systems. A potential strategy is to build a powerful account on those sites and a relationship with other site users. Then other users will be more likely to notice you as a member of that community. Of course, creating articles worth sharing is the best strategy in creating content that spreads organically.

Learn more search and social media marketing strategies from 2009 SES SJ coverage by TopRank Online Marketing

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SES SJ: White Hat Vs. Black Hat Social Media |
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Social Media: White Hat vs. Black Hat

Someone clever has set the stage for the black hat/white panel with some smooth jazz tunes over the speakers. I expect the panel will tackle this potentially controversial topic like the cool cats they are. Our moderator is Dave Evans, VP, Digital Voodoo. Our speakers are:

• Beth Harte, Community Manager , MarketingProfs
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
• Dave Snyder, Co-Founder, Search & Social
• Chris Bennett, President & Founder, 97th Floor

For clarity’s sake, when I say “Dave” I’m talking about panelist Dave Snyder. I’ll refer to our moderator by his full name.

On SEM Synergy last week, the hosts asked what’s considered black hat in the social media space. Prepare to find out.

Dave Evans welcomes the audience and gives us some background. This session is part of the ClickZ/Online Marketing Summit track and as such it goes beyond search. He hopes to enter the larger conversation of how social media plays into search and into business as a whole. Social media is becoming a huge factor in decision making. People are looking for ratings and reviews and it’s affecting the purchase process.

Plus, user generated content plays a role in search as well. So let’s look at how these things are used. He’s going to start with spam. There’s a notion of a war in the digital technology realm. Outrageous spam like the green card lottery in April 1994 is unfairly coloring the conversation. The real questions are focused on how to please the customer. Anything disingenuous or which deteriorates trust will work against your efforts.

There’s a new marketing cycle that’s based on the ideas of what a consumer says a bout a product has a greater affect than it did 15 years ago. There’s also an issue of trust. Basic trust with regard to marketing itself is at risk. Let’s look at some examples.

Paid reviews and the following apology is just dumb. Look at the case of the College Prowler. Profiles were set up under the guise of being a student. The brand was damaged when it was found out it wasn’t true.

If you look at Dell, who’s using Twitter as a pure commercial outreach channel, compare it to other channels like TV or email. In TV or email, ads are given to you as an interruption. But on Twitter, it’s purely opt in. Someone can just unfollow Dell and their experience is back to ideal. The full disclosure, transparency and opt-out measure makes for a great marketing channel.

Wal-Mart made a faux pas when they wrote an RV blog and pretended it was an independent writer. But now they’re smarter. They’re using Twitter the right way.

The questions:

What defines black hat?
What defines white hat?
It’s all about results right?
Who’s making the rules?
How’s the conversation impacted?
How does disclosure factor into this?
What about social media and SEO relationship?

Lee says that the intention of being black hat is to get better results faster. But the consequence is having to manage risk. He sees white hat as a silly distinction — it’s marketing and there are rules (again, who’s making the rules?) and that has to be factored in as you decide what tactics to use.

Dave says there’s no white hat/black hat. Black hat was a term used in SEO to define spamming. Unlike search where there’s a guideline set in front of you, the community guides the social ethics. Wal-Marting across America is not black hat, it’s stupid. It’s really important to understand how to utilize each platform. Each community has its own guidelines. There’s spam, then there’s automation, then there’s conversation. It’s different shades of gray. Look at how the community for each platform reacts to different marketing tactics.

Beth says the community isn’t just customers. It’s stakeholders, analysts, etc. Again, it’s not what’s right or wrong, but it’s what works for everyone involved. Chris says there’s a TOS for every platform. And like Dave said, you have to identify the communities’ preferences.

Dave Evans asks Dave Snyder to expand on the social ethics comment. Dave says that the biggest cross-over between search and social is link building. You’ll find a lot of poor content being submitted by some companies. You’ll all see really great content being submitted by companies. Polluting the platform means the effort won’t succeed. If it’s no good, there’s no way around the fact the community will reject it. Chris says social media isn’t the ends, it’s the means to traffic, community building and followers. It helps get your brand out there and get links. And people that just submit articles and press releases to Digg aren’t going to see any positive results.

Lee is interested in seeing how the tactics have changed in the last year. There were some short term gains early on, but it was hard to sustain. The sustainable model revolves around quality content. And he sees the difference between white hat/ black hat as stupid/smart.

Beth has an issue with ghost blogging and ghost tweeting. They don’t know enough about your company. Some products and services are very complex, and an agency will never know enough about the product to produce content that’s compelling to the community. And if you approach it as just putting in the buzzwords, the community will sense the BS.

Chris asks if that mean no agency can work for SMO? He understands the point, but he says he knows how to take a company and give it the social media twist so that it will resonate with the community. So who writes the piece? Beth says the company should. Chris says, “Then why hire an agency?” Dave Evans says he gets the concern of a client that they don’t have the time for social media marketing. How willing is the brand to give up to control not only to customers, but also to an agency on their behalf.

Beth says that when an agency takes on content creation for social media, the tactical effort is going to suffer. Agencies can fall into a trap if they write as someone else. If that someone else is ever asked about what they meant in that piece, the fact they didn’t actually write it becomes obvious.

Dave says that Twitter has to be very transparent. He looks at his relationship with clients as a bullhorn, allowing them to communicate appropriately. He sees his role as teaching people how to use the platforms to communicate. Also remember that social media isn’t only about communication. It’s also about information sharing. It’s not 100% conversation. If you took comments away from YouTube, it would still be there because it offers information sharing. Of course, each platform is different and you can’t leverage it unless you know it.

Dave Evans says that there’s new work and new opportunities for organizations. And somehow, someone has to talk on behalf of the brand with real technical knowledge.

We have four agencies represented on the panel, with an agency approach to social media marketing. That’s clouding the conversation about black vs. white. It’s quick for you to dismiss stuff that doesn’t work as not best practice. But there’s really a lot of stuff out there polluting the platform.

Dave says there’s definitely spam on social media. He has a lot of outrage over the actual platform because they provide all the tools to spam. As a social media user you get mad at the guy who sends you DMs about making $1 million dollars. But we don’t get mad at Twitter for their API that makes it easy for this spam to occur.

Lee asks, are you going to get mad at the telephone for interrupting your dinner? Dave says he does. He says the platform is as accountable as the user.

Dave Evans asks about the Burger King Facebook app that had people de-friend people. The app was shut down quickly because apps can’t let people know when they’re being de-friended. It doesn’t help the development of the community. Is that an issue?

Dave says you’ll get a reaction from the platform when you take away they’re ability to make money.

Beth and Chris seem to be at odds on the agency role in PR 2.0. How does a company help foster and create a PR rep for their brand?

Beth says the biggest problem is not knowing what different employees’ strengths are. Don’t put employees out there who aren’t social and don’t have a personality. If you don’t have a brand that someone wants to engage with, don’t get involved in social media.

Lee has a brick-and-mortar client who’s got a blog. People applying for jobs are actually tested on their writing ability. They’ve gotten tons of great content on the employees who contribute to the blog.

Chris says that he doesn’t disagree with Beth’s point about ghost writing for a client. But he would review it and make sure it communicates in the right way to the community.

What about automation with social media? I’ve been using automation on my personal Twitter account for a year and haven’t had any problems. I think my followers and I have an engaging relationship.

Dave says if you’re doing that with clients you better be aware it could cause your account to be banned. Sure you’re doing it on your personal account, but you’d never do it on your company account. It comes back to risk management.

When are we going to get rid of black hat, white hat terminology?

Chris says SEO doesn’t own the term. It came from programmers. Lee asks if there are any communities that are good at policing itself. Craigslist, Wikipedia and Reddit are mentioned as platforms with communities that organically police themselves. Lee thought years ago that communities would police themselves but today he’s not seeing that as much as he thought they would.

Should large media and news companies be submitting their own work to bookmarking sites?

Dave says it’s a good way to get banned. Chris says that even if it’s Digg worthy, it’s better that the company focus on ways to create great content. Focus on spending time figuring out ways to make stuff the community likes. Dave Evans says that publishers voting for their own stuff looks funny. Chris suggests that if your company model relies on it, find someone in your company who is truly involved in the social media site and has real relationships in the community.

What if you have employees are directly engaging with your customer through social media?

Dave says a company needs to consider what they’ll do if that employee leaves. He doesn’t have an answer and is waiting to see how it plays out. Lee says that there’s a lot of equity and brand that leaves when the employee leaves.

Name a brand that was damaged by a social media faux pas. It’s never happened. Nobody cares.

Lee says it’s less about customers than it is about industry analysts. Beth says you can just push messages, but it comes down to how effective it is. Dave says it comes down to building effective campaigns that get results for clients. Chris says if you want to catch a terrorist you hire Jack Bauer. If you want a successful online marketing campaign, it might get messy, but Jack Bauer’s going to get the job done.

Friday Recap – Relive the Magic Edition

Jinkies! Friday already?! Feels like just yesterday I was living the SEO good life at SES San Jose.

Bruce and me at the IM Charity Party. Photo by Dana Lookadoo.

There are some resources helping me relive the magic. At WebmasterRadio.fm you can download all three keynotes from the SES. And Yo Yo SEO founder, Dana Lookadoo, has posted awesome albums of pictures taken at the show and after parties. I think I’ll nab one of those pics. Zoink! —->

If you didn’t get a chance to go to San Jose because you were in, oh I dunno, Australia, there’s another great educational opportunity coming your way. Throughout October a one-day SEO training program will tour Australia led by Bruce Clay Australasia. Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney are the stops, so BC’s SEO training will be available to all interested throughout the continent.

Twitter has announced that a retweeting system is in the works for the microblogging site. And a new site, bingtweets.com, is Microsoft’s experiment with a hybrid social media search engine. Topics trending on Twitter, Twitter/Bing search, and keyword-related tweets are some of the features on the site.

Bing’s technology is also behind some cool new apps. Bing Maps is powering Ancestry.com’s location feature for the family tree generator.

And Real Live Search is a search engine that uses a Bing API to provide search results as the user types. Basically, every letter added to the search box will result in different results being listed on the page. For SEOs this can come in handy when comparing results for slightly different queries — the difference between singular and plural, for example. [Now if only Bing's results were better. --Susan]

In the Googleverse, AdSense will soon be rolling out enhanced contextual targeting. Be sure to click through to the gallery of worst contextual ads ever. Eesh. YouTube, meanwhile, has landed another big media content partner, Time Warner.

While we’re on the subject of online video, I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head all week:

Yes, I’ll date her avatar. Geeks are hot.

Uh, where was I? How about smart phones? Responding to controversy following Apple’s removal of Google Voice applications from the iTunes store, some iPhone owners have turned to fire arms and flames to express their disapproval at Apple’s decision to pull the apps. Ever wonder what five bullet holes in an iPhone looks like?

If you don’t plan to strap explosives to your iPhone anytime soon, you may enjoy this list of iPhone apps for SEOs and site owners. Then again, maybe you’re more of a BlackBerry person. If you’re not sure, here’s a quiz that might help you decide if RIM or Apple is best for you.

Whatever your smart phone preference, I bet I can guess your carnivore preference. Does bacon top you list of favorite meats? Endless Simmer’s 101 ways to use bacon is one tantalizing adventure into the world of bacon. There are recipes for bacon toffee, bacon marshmallows and bacon fudge, because in America we like to take liberties with our pork fat. Mm mmm!

MarketingSherpa charts email performance since 2001

There’s a new report on trends in email marketing performance since 2001. Efficiency seems to have dropped from a peak in 2002 to a low point in 2008 and is on the rebound this year. Emails that don’t follow best practices are hurting the worst.

Maybe these marketers aren’t playing to their strong suits. If you subscribe to astrology (or just enjoy reading horoscopes once in a while) Search Engine People has a fun take on SEO astrology, complete with that eerie feeling of being too spot on.

Earlier this week I wrote about the concept of the SEO development life cycle, and usability expert Craig Tomlin pointed out to me via Twitter that usability wasn’t mentioned. Luckily, Craig’s all over it and has posted an overview of usability testing.

In social media advice, Ian Lurie shared his tips on how to ask a blogger for a review. His four points are exactly what I’m looking for when I get requests. Take note! Also, a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com shows that almost half of employers are using social media sites to screen job candidates.

Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:

• As Susan put it, the annual “don’t you feel old?” list is back! [The answer is yes, I really do. --Susan]
• Every single fish tested in American rivers and streams has been found to be contaminated with mercury.
• Fiji Water isn’t just hard on the pocketbook. It might actually support a brutal military regime.
• Gallery of sculpted sandwiches. ‘Nuf said.

Making the Case for Social Media: A Roadmap

Earlier this summer I gave a presentation in Minneapolis at a ClickZ OMS event on building a social media roadmap with tips on blog marketing and using Twitter. It’s all very introductory if you work in the social media space, but if not, serves as a useful baseline for making a case for corporate social media participation.

Many companies are without confidence in how to use communication tools like blogs or Twitter and this presentation can serve as a good starting point for those tactics as well as for creating a social media strategy. There was good feedback at the event and I’ll do my best to turn it into a slidecast in the future.

I should mention for those that have a good feel for the basics of social media or SEO, TopRank has partnered with the Direct Marketing Association to offer a 2 day intensive workshop on social media strategy, tactics and SEO called “Social Media Smarts“. We focus on building a social media roadmap for participants as well as understanding various social media marketing tools and how SEO fits into the social media marketing mix. The next workshop is in New York, December 1 & 2 so be sure to check out the Social Media Smarts site and get signed up.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Making the Case for Social Media: A Roadmap |
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TopRank SES San Jose 2009 Wrap Up – Puzzle Solved

Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2009 turned out to be an energetic week of presentations, networking and positivity for the search marketing industry.

The puzzle that is the ever-changing search marketing industry was brought closer to a solution through sessions on SEO, PPC, Social Media, Analytics and many other digital marketing tactics. To tap into that insight via TopRank’s liveblogging of the event, put your mouse over the puzzle piece topics below and click:

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

SES San Jose was rich with interactions and interested marketers flocked from around the country (and around the world) to get social, connect and learn. It was clear from from attitude and attendance that the SEM industry is thriving.

While the event itself has come to a close – the tips, trends and presentations didn’t just stay at the conference. TopRank Online Marketing has put all the pieces together for you with coverage of panel sessions and presentations linked in the Flash movie above as well as in the Search Marketing Conference category going back to 2004.

Staying at the edge of the marketing industry and continued learning are integral for success, and we invite you to explore our coverage of the conference and see the bigger picture for yourself. With search engines and social media in a constant in a stay of flux, education is the key piece to success.

[Note from Lee: Thank you to Incisive Media for another memorable SES San Jose and also to Jolina and Adam for a great job covering the show.]

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
TopRank SES San Jose 2009 Wrap Up – Puzzle Solved |
One comment | http://www.toprankblog.com