Conference Buddies

PubCon Las Vegas 2010
November 8-11, 2010
Las Vegas Convention Center
Las Vegas, Nevada
http://www.pubcon.com/

PubCon, the premier search and social media conference and expo will hold its multi-track Las Vegas event on November 8 – 11, 2010 at the Las Vegas Convention Center South Hall in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Some of the best SEOs in the game will be on this panel. This is an expert-level session. There will be brief coverage of on-page items such as titles, tags, text and URLs. But the focus will be on the real money of SEO: off-page criteria. Links, links, links.

Moderator: Carolyn Shelby

Speakers:
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc. @BruceClayInc
Scott Polk, Director of Operations, Search & Social Media, LLC @scottpolk
Jill Sampey, Director of Search Marketing, Blast Radius @uberjill
Jill Whalen, CEO, High Rankings @jillwhalen

Bruce Clay:

Key Points to Linking:

• Unidirectional = inbound links
• Direct links = followed
• Aim for supplemental / complementary content sites
• Do NOT go for javascript links
• Do NOT go for flash links (at least not yet)
• Paid Links – should be kept under the radar
• Link life – should be random  (1mo, 1yr, but if all links last exactly 6 months, then must be bought, vary up your footprint). If most of your links last exactly 6 months, then they must be bought, vary up your footprint
• PageRank – should be natural
• Random IP – should be varied
• Link Begging is a waste of time
• 100:1 link magnets vs. link begging (100 more links per hour of work with link magnets)
• Link Magnets – should be content that attracts links
• Social media – indirectly results in links
• International – ccTLD specific links
• Local – local region specific links
• Sequence matters – First link on that page anchor text counts, text over image – ALT, first counts, nofollow kills target, link stop words (next, back, home).   All other links on the page becomes nofollows.    Robots.txt can disallow iframe or other sections as nofollow.
• Make sure you have the right anchor text first on the page.

Jill Sampey @uberjill

Leveraging current assets

1. Logfiles

• 301/302 strings (find the one that don’t lead to a 200 response)
• 404 Pages
• Links without traffic

2. Optmizing for Conversions

• If it doesn’t convert, you don’t need it – generally ;-)
• Test before optimizing

3. Re-Use Past Sucesses

• Seasonal
• Revolving Product Line
• /2009-Holiday-Specials/   -> Use this instead /Holiday-Specials/
• /Madden08/ /Madden09/  -> Use this Madden-NFL (Archive under this)

Develop New Assets:

1. Listen and Learn

• Set-Up Listening Tool  (radian 6, google alerts, blog search engines, etc.)
• Engage in Industry
• Engage on Brand
• Engage on Competitors

2. Link Opps

• Twitter
• Domains  (buy links, acquire small sites)
• Partnering

3. New Social Strategies

• Off-Site, Unbranded, Comical, Satirical  (create microsite)
• i.e. GetyourBasketBallon.com
• Theleroysmith

Jill Whalen @jillwhalen

Who Checks Rankings?

• Users are served different content depending on some of the following:
• If they’re logged into google/yahoo/msn or not
• Their previous search history
• Their browser settings
• Their location
• Chrome and IE8 – whether or not if they use an incognito window (for less tracking)

What does this mean?

• Everyone sees something different
• Must know your target market
• Cater your site to them
• Go above and beyond others in your niche
• Use analytics
• Learn which words convert
• See where your buyers are located
• Measure success on more targeted visitors and conversions

Misc/Q&A

Bruce:

• If you nofollow 1 URL on a page, and have the URL 5 times, all 5 will automatically be treated with nofollow.   If you have 5 same URLs it will still be in the denominator and lower your score slightly (but not add value).
• First in first out, as encountered by the spider
• You can buy links for traffic / advertising, don’t buy links for SEO
• If you buy a link that is suspect, then all your links may be in jeopardy in being suspect or scrutinized – you’ll lose score and not know it
• Social Media works: The Will It Blend Video using the iPhone, outranked ATT for keyword iPhone

The Value of Blogs To Hospitals, New Organizations, and Industry

Speakers: Gary Schwitzer, HealthNewsReview.org, http://blog.lib.umn.edu/schwitz/healthnews/
Bob Stern, MedPage Today, http://www.medpagetoday.com/Blogs/
Paul Levy, Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center, http://runningahospitalblogspot.com
Marc Monseau, Johnson & Johnson, http://jnjbtw.com
10/15/2009, 4pm – 5pm

Notes:

• Represent what you and your institution stands for. Why would anyone not do that?
• People like seeing posts of medical institutions, statistics, new medical breakthroughs
• Everyone else is talking about us, why aren’t we? Large Corporations might have legal & regulatory constraints, but they can give out new info, respond to customers, address issues
• Listen, respond, and develop relationships
• People trust others like themselves rather than large institutions and companies
• How do we ensure that medical information available online is accurate? Reach out to the community by blogging about the topic. Use it as a way to deal with product issues. Use twitter to complement the blog posts
• People were proud of the fact that their boss blogged about them.
• Fosters greater confidence in their organization
• “The Terry Schiavo Case” – Blogging about the case gave people the real world insight into what was going on exactly.
• J & J sued the Red Cross for infringement of their logo, became a big news story. People questioned why anyone would want to sue the Red Cross? J & J saw blogging as a way to address the situation. Detailed reasons for doing so, how the trademark laws work, and opened up the screen for people to see what was behind running their organization.
• “Only a fool has to learn from losing, only a bigger fool who doesn’t learn from it”
• Preview comments before they are allowed on the blog, such as discussions about the off-label uses of certain medications, threats, non-topic related comments
• Tap into resources about healthcare on YouTube
• If people come to your blog, it’s because they care about that topic
• ROI on healthcare blogging? Blogging doesn’t cost anything, just time. Can use tools to chart number of visitors, but the value is more important than dollars & cents.
• What is the risk of not being involved? It is more about trustworthiness and source of good information.
• To get around regulatory restrictions and legal issues, blog in baby steps. Start small.
• Blogging about ways to relieve side effects of powerful meds. Although the medical manufacturers refuse to acknowledge the post, at least the information is out there by people who use those meds.

State of the Medical Blogosphere

Speakers: Kerri Morrone Sparling: www.sixuntilme.com
Kevin Pho: www.kevinmd.com
Nicholas Genes: www.medgadget.com, www.blogborygmi.com
Kim McAllister: www.emergiblog.com
10/15/2009, 9:45am – 10:45am

Evolution of the Medical Blogosphere

• 60% of patients use the internet as their first source of information
• Doctors need to get on board to connect with their patients, answer questions about medical news and new medical info
• Patients are blogging about their experiences as a way to find other people like them
• People are leaving the Blogosphere due to privacy and employer issues
• Issues with patient privacy when doctors blog, new parameters as to what doctors can and cannot share emerged
• Social media presence is essential for all doctors stay relevant and credible
• Patient blogging can help other patients with managing their diseases (shared experiences, what to expect, medication reactions doctors didn’t mention but many people experience, how to administer your meds in the least painful way)
• Social and mainstream media will someday merge into one entity
• Very few people read medical blogs, blogging is a way to get into mainstream publications
• FTC is looking at blogging and full disclosure, bloggers must share whether they are being compensated for writing their blog
• If you are only on Facebook or Twitter, you might not be connecting with your audience. Being on different social networks allow you to connect with people who might be interested in you but does not participate in all the social networks
• Being a patient blogger allows you to connect with other people who have the same condition as you do

Questions & Answers

How can medical companies blog without violating FTC and FDA regulations and still get the word out on their products?
Independent bloggers have more freedom to say what they feel without worrying about that. They can link to the medical devices pages, or the companies can get the blogger to link to them

How Twits Lay Golden Eggs:
The Art of Social Engagement for Business

Speakers: Nicole Nicolay, “Nic Nic“, author: Twitter for Real Estate Twits
Jodee Rich, @wing dude, peoplebrowser.com/wingdude
Chris Brogan, President, New Marketing Labs
Nick Halstead, @nickhalstead, Tweet Meme
Laura Fitton, @pistachio, author: Twitter for Dummies
10/17/2009, 4:15 – 5:15pm

Key Twitter Tips and Advice:

• Put a link to your site on Twitter, put your Twitter on your site so people know that your Twitter account is authentic (one forty.com)
• Look to see what your competitors are doing, see who is following them. Research keywords in Twitter, see who comes up.
• Always follow people back, or they’ll get mad at you
• Listen, learn, care, serve.
• Google: Grow Bigger Ears. Use search.twitter.com
• Use seesmic.com or TweetDeck to manage your account
• If you keep seeing the same question to you more than once, don’t keep tweeting the answer, post the answer on your website under your FAQ
• Where to find good content if you don’t have any? Do searches for tweets that contain links. Rank them by influences. See what those tweets are saying, use the Twitter Advanced Search. Play around to see what you can find
• Don’t think in terms of Google searches, do research on conversational things
• Planning Tweets, is it a good idea? Chris Brogan – this is no place for robot behavior, be human
• TweetMeme: Counts unique retweets, if content is good, it will go viral. Tweetmeme analytics gives you stats
• If there is an ad in your tweet, people are less likely to retweet you
• Using Twitter as a Customer Service channel: It’s not “turn it on and it runs”. Think ahead on how it’s going to work, the size of your company, ability to process the requests, use DM to make it a public message, will your response help more than just that one person?

Questions & Answers:

1) The follow back: should you always?
No

2) How do you communicate with people outside your niche? Find out what they are doing?
Ask them about themselves, people like to talk about themselves.

3) How can brands scale their customer service to everyone?
Companies need to invest their money on customer service, the public should demand that and expect great service

4) Managing customer expectations, how can you answer their concern when you might not have the time?
Respond privately, I’ll address you soon, as opposed to trying to solve their issue immediately. (If Zappos can do it, so can you)

Building A Sustainable Online Community: ChicagoNow

Speaker: Tracy Samantha Schmidt
10/16/2009, 3pm – 3:30pm

Tracy Samantha Schmidt wrote for Time magazine. They wanted her to get a student eyewitness at the Virginia Tech shooting. She reached out to people through the Virginia Tech group on Facebook and found a survivor. She beat out 800 other journalists to get an exclusive interview. She believes in using social media to get facts and to reach people.

On Creating ChicagoNow.

The idea behind ChicagoNow is for people to find out what’s happening on their block, things that are happening that affect them, news, and entertainment.

Some key tactics that were used:

• To populate quickly: used an existing community, like bloggers.
• Brought people into the site by funneling all blogs into different categories.
• Hired bloggers by offering them contracts, but the bloggers still owned their content, unedited.
• Remained unnoticed until a massive launch with a marketing campaign.

ChicagoNow has 115 blogs, but no neighborhood blogs. So they created a summary of blogs on paper to distribute to neighborhoods with neighborhood ads.

10 Ways to Build Your Audience
Speaker: Nicole Simon, Social Media Mentor & Consultant, @nicolesimon
10/17/2009, 12:45 to 1:15pm

Four different types of visitors:

• Subscribers, (people who already love you)
• Search engine traffic, (they don’t know you)
• Life stream (people come for specific reasons, people pointed others to it)
• Social bookmarking (people who find you interesting)

Other traffic:

• People who want to contact you (journalists)
• People who want to offer you something (other bloggers)
• People who want information from you

Big Questions:

• What do each of these segments want from you and your site? They are all different!
• What do you have to do to help them get what they want?
• What makes me happy?
• What helps me to get what I want?
• What can I do to make me happy?

Learn and Transfer:

• Switch mindset
• Start thinking, “what can I get out of it”
• Know what you don’t know
• Build a support group
• Use examples from BlogWorld sessions, look through the classes offered, try to guess what would be discussed
• Get inspired: learn from others and take notes

1. Think Professional Media:

• If you write like you are advertising something, no one would read it
• Use an editorial calendar: have a plan that helps you to prepare content
• Can you do partnerships? Do you have something to offer them?

2. Cover the Basics:

• Is your blog in the search engines?
• Use a sitemap, use Webmaster tools

3. Work Like a Professional

• Use tools of the trade
• Research and use what works for you
• Buy books and information to learn in the shortest amount of time

4. Think Work Flow & Procedures

• Make a list of things you need to work through without thinking
• What can be outsourced?
• How much time does it take?
• Can you optimize?
• Which tools work for me? Not all tools work for everyone

The Conversation Prism

• theconversationprism.org, get the rough idea of what others are doing
• Engage with your audience, be where your audience are

5. Think Stumble Upon:

• If I see something for the first time, why should I give you a thumbs up or tweet about you?
• Use other pages to gather what you like when you stumble them yourself
• If people come to your article on StumbleUpon, what do they see? What would they know about your blog? Exponential potential for growth.

6. Think Twitter:

• Think in titles which are re-tweetable
• 120 is the new 140. Stop at 120 so people can retweet you without having to edit it
• Can I easily see your twitter name?
• What is your content about?
• Will others have a reason to point to your blog?
• Think landing page, see what people link to so you know what people are interested in
• Think research, networking, and what other people click on

7. Think Offline:

• Look at people next to you & around you, how can you connect with them?
• Point to offline material

8. Think Newsletter:

• What can you provide to newsletter authors?
• What content do you deliver in exchange for visibility and feedback?
• How can I contact you?
• What are you best articles?
• Search for your niche

9. Think Facebook:

• Doesn’t work for everyone
• Think of it as another professional tool
• Know how to use the Fan Page and how it can connect to the rest of your blog or site
• Put HTML pages and images into it
• FBML pages

10. Stop Thinking A-Listers:

• Like “Dancing with the Stars”, they are not A-Listers, but the show is successful
• Learn mechanisms, they teach you the steps, but you need to learn the music
• Trust in yourself: learn & evolve

Bonus: Pay It Forward

• Get in the habit retweets, relink, & Bookmarks
• Forward interesting information to others
• Honor others who make your life easier
• Give feedback & state what you like and missed
• If I make others happy, they will make me happy
• Think of one person you can send information from BlogWorld, if you can explain it, then you understand it
• Give freely from your heart and not brag about it

Facebook & Twitter Fortunes: How To Strategically Grow Your Business Using the Top Two Online Social Networks

Panelist(s): Mari Smith
@marismith

Facebook:

Facebook Mission: To help the world connect & communicate more effectively.

For social media, it is important to know the difference between a Facebook personal page and a Facebook fan page. Facebook personal pages have a limit of 5000 friends but fan pages do not have such a limitation. Fan pages are also fully indexed by Google. Personal pages do not have any requirements to get a shortened vanity Facebook URL. However, fan pages require at least 25 fans (initially it was 1000, then 100) in order to register for one.

Twitter

When it comes to Twitter, who you follow is as important as who follows you. One rule of thumb to go by is, follow people that have “passion”. Also, it is important to always thank people who retweet your content.

Social Media and What It’s About

It’s about people who are looking for connections. It’s not what you say, it’s the intent of what you say. An important aspect for companies is to remember is to let people be heard, seen, engaged (like Zappos, Comcast, and Virgin).

Changing Interactions

Social media has altered the way companies interact with customers and the community.

1. From : Controlling Our Image” to “being Ourselves”

Personal and Professional lines are blurring

2. From “Hard to Reach” to “Available Everywhere”

300M active members

Facebook = 2nd most trafficked website in the world
70% of FB users are ouside us
Average age of more than 35
50% more active on mobile

90% of social media is about showing up. Make content available to your fans and your fans will do all the rest.

Social Media Barriers

Even though social media has grown signficantly, there are still some barriers for marketing. Mainly, there is a lack of an easy method to measure ROI (from Marking Sherpa).If you can’t measure your Social Media results, you don’ have a proven strategy.

Mari’s Four-Part Formula

Quality NETWORK
High influencial in your industry
+
Quality CONTENT
Relevant, frequency, and focus
+
Consistency

Social Media ROI: What, How, Why

Panelist(s): Rob Hahn, Jim Marks, Sherry Chris, Mike Simonsen, Dan Green
@mikesimonsen
@BHGRE_Sherry
@jimmarks
@mortgagereports

What is an ROI?

Traditional ROI = Return on Investment
Social Media ROI = Return on Influence

ROI is a measure on traffic, clicks, and dollars. The basics of ROI is that, how much money you put in is how much you get in return. It can be summed up as such:

Time invested and sphere of influence put into Social Media => Return on Influence => Return on Investment

Time Spent on Social Media

To give a perspective on how social media works, Dan Green provided his background on his foray into social media. When he first started social media interactions, it took 18 months to get the first lead. Now he spends on average: 132 minutes per day or 13.5 hours per week on blog, twitter, facebook (essentially equating to about 1/4 of a week on social media). The pay off is that he’s closed over 100 real estate deals via social media contacts.

Another one of the panelists stated that it took 6 months of blogging before receiving his first lead, and now he’s gotten 4 real estate deals of $300K each.

The success isn’t to say that you make your conversions on social media. It’s a way to market yourself, gain access, garner contacts, and eventually close the deal. Traditional means such as a phone call or a face-to-face meeting are still necessary in closing the deal.

Structure Strategy, and Direction

Jim Marks states that for a successful social media effort, you need a structure, strategy, and direction. If you don’t know the direction you’re going in everyday, you have to change your strategy. Blogging works, since a byproduct of blogs results in traffic and conversions. Aim to bring online clients offline. Create relationships.

Corporate Blogging and Social Media

Sherry Chris says that getting approval for a Corporate Blog maybe difficult. However, the payoff could be substantial. For example: using BHGRealEstateBlog.com and through “tweeting”, it resulted in closing a $13M business deal.

Some tips for Twitter :

• When retweeting, use a teaser
• Give a reason to click on the link
• Lead them towards a means to close the deal

Social Media in the Enterprise – Seminar Notes
June 17th, 2009 12pm -5pm
Palace Hotel, San Francisco

First Speaker: Alex Blum, KickApps

• Social Media creates channels for new revenue and deeper insight into potential clients
• 93% of Americans believe a company should have a social media presence
• Key to Success: Create a community around your content
• Widgets: A key for viral integration and for viral syndication of activity and content
• As powerful as SEM or SEO
• Social Media compels people to share, which provides lots of data results and informs us of marketing strategies
• Social media gets people talking in the context of your brand
• Can allow you to respond to feedback, and in turn, gain customers’ loyalty
• Must take full ownership of your membership
• Blum’s Law of Website Development: As soon as you launch it, you’d want to change it

Second Speaker: Jerimiah Owyang, Forrester

• Power is shifting to communities
• Marketers to increase Social Media Marketing spending (even during a recession)
• Marketers to shift budget to Social Media Marketing
• Budgets for Social Marketing remains miniscule (under $100K)
• Fragment and “pollinate” to communities
• Apps are more important than actual websites
• Shared ID can be used all over the world via mobile devices
• Expect Social Media to aggregate activities
• Traditional marketing moving towards Social Media
• Activity feeds, GPS and Bluetooth will be used to find friends and their locations
• Facebook already allows users to surf the web within their site
• Customer trust other customers rather than marketers
• Social browsers allow users to bypass registration and lower spam rates
• Get Glue: aggregates all consumer opinions (used in IE or Firefox) (semantic web)

Future of the Social Web (the 5 Eras)/Five Eras of the Social Web

• 1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
• 2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
• 3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
• 4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
• 5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and service
  • Relationships = connections (join the conversation)
  • Functionality = becoming like operating systems (fragment websites to communities)
  • Colonization = everyone has an entourage (focus on aggregating the conversation)
  • Social Context = content where I want it, when I want it (increase content and make your website flexible)
  • Commerce = communities define products (involves customers in R &D)

• Social contracts (opt-in options)
  • Consumers will share information in exchange for discounts
  • Social Marketing is informational instead of interrupting
  • Is social TV in our future? (only broadcasts shows that you like)

• Challenges
  • Privacy issues
  • Legal issues
  • Consumer burn-out
  • Extremism (consumers less exposed to new ideas)

Third Speaker: Sandy Carter, IBM

• Analyze and ensure strong market understanding
• Nail the relevant strategy and story
• Go to Market Plan
• Energize the channel and community
• Leads and revenue
• Scream!!! Don’t forget the Technology!
• Acronym is ANGELS
• Sandy provided ROI case studies for Social Media efforts based on her work with IBM
• Social Media often used in conjunction of with other marketing mix
• She will test out performance by turning up or down each marketing effort in the marketing mix
• She used Social Media before, during, and after events
• One of the most success product launch included using blogs to gather product requirements during the product development phase. When the product was released, many people were already Angels (advocates) for the product and helping to spread the news

Listening Tools

• TweetDeck
• Google Alerts
• Radian6.com

Marketing 2.0

• Profit generation
• Foster intimate relationships
• Leverage power of Web 2.0
• Understand influencers’ value
• Tune marketing mix
• “Bot” ads were surprisingly effective in delivering company’s message and provide information
• Communities define companies
• Collective opinion and desires give companies opportunities to build specific products
• Power is shifting to communities
• Social networks will become next-generation CRM systems

Fourth Speaker: Dylan Boyd, eROI

• 2/3 of marketers who have never used social marketing say that they are knowledgeable about social marketing
• 64% of companies using community insight said that it helped make better product selections

Fifth Speaker: James Masten, Blue Rain Marketing for Microsoft OneNote

• Building online communities: IHeartOneNote.com
• Create an off-brand community
• Off-brand communities have less constraints on content
• Must have robust content
• Social Media is user-generated marketing
• Traditional Media is marketer-generated
• Found success in social media using a fictional character to do all the correspondence (tweets, Facebook, etc.)
• Much more casual approach than on-brand companies