#Optimize This: Online Marketing Summit 2012 Presentation
Posted on 06. Feb, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, content marketing, Marketing PR Conferences, OMS, Online Marketing Summit, Other Events, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
I’m headed to (hopefully) sunny San Diego today for the annual Online Marketing Summit conference where I’ll get to present on one of my favorite topics: Optimization. Of course, if you read Online Marketing Blog very often, you’ll know my definition of optimization is a bit different that traditional SEO. My post last Thursday “Are You Optimized?” touched on this.
The competition for attendance during the breakout sessions at OMS is really tough during the time slot I’m scheduled for. SAP, Wider Funnel and SAP are all presenting at the same time as I’m giving the all new “Optimize THIS: Integrating Social, SEO & Content presentation”. This post is a bit of a preview on the presentation so if you’re at OMS this week, make sure you check it out.
In Optimize THIS, I have about 45 minutes (including Q & A) to help attendees learn the principles and best practices of optimizing content and social media participation for better marketing performance. Most marketers and even consumers face a deluge of information as they look for answers online. Google has morphed itself into an entirely new type of social search engine and the state of flux has many businesses facing new challenges that are difficult to keep up with.
There’s plenty of speculation that businesses like Google that have attracted a huge user based because of their ability to organize and provide useful, relevant information see free or organic information as a problem to the advertising solution. In other words, SEO is aeen a bug, not a useful way to modify websites so search engines can crawl and index them more effectively to the benefit of all: user, brand, search engine.
Google Dominates search, but should they dominate your online marketing? What would happen if Google disappeared tomorrow? What if your business disappeared from Google tomorrow? What would that mean to your marketing? What would it mean to your business? There are numerous stories of companies devastated as collateral damage to algorithmic updates.
Google’s market position over-influences SEO practitioners to develop keyword glossaries, create, promote and optimize content solely focused on Google. That’s a reasonable approach, but I for one, am not a big fan of putting all my marketing eggs in one basket. The perceived reward of single stop marketing is also a risk.
Diversification or “Un-Googling” your online marketing isn’t just good for mitigating risk, it’s also a better approach to meeting customer needs, especially when optimization is viewed holistically with the way a business communicates digitally with its customers.
A more customer centric approach to online marketing is the catalyst for integrating content marketing, SEO and Social Media. The icing on the cake of customer centric online marketing diversification is even better organic performance on Google vs. focusing solely on traditional keyword popularity and links.
The road to Social, SEO and Content Marketing integration is through understanding the fundamental shifts in how consumers discover, consume and share information online. Search behaviors are not just inspired by a consumer need, but by paid, owned, earned and share media. The consumer journey online for solutions weaves its way through search and social interactions finding, interacting, reacting, buying and sharing.
Online commerce and content are increasingly a social experience and content is the key to helping companies Attract, Engage and Inspire their target audiences to act: purchase, interact and share with their networks.
What does a customer centric optimize content marketing approach look like? Start by identifying common customer characteristics. Segment that data and develop consumer profiles or personas that describe: Search Keywords, Social Topics, Pain Points, Triggers and Goals. Figure out what information would be most meaningful during the stages of your customer segments’ journey through the buying cycle. Essentially, find out what customers care about and leverage that data in a way that allows you to target your “best” customers as a group.
Translate what you now know about your customers into a content plan that addresses pain points, triggers and consumer goals with brand content optimized for search keywords and social topics. Implement website, blog, social content and engagement marketing to meet your target customers needs with the right context, relevant language and meaningful topics that will inspire them to take action.
Structure your content marketing plan with optimized and socialized channels of distribution. We like the hub and spoke model that can scale to a “constellation” of hub and spokes.
Monitor social channels for community response and engagement with socialized content. Use web analytics to monitor search and user experience impact of your content on engagement, fueling social network growth and of course, inspiring sales.
By formulating a content plan based on consumer segment information needs as they move through the buying cycle, optimization can be more in tune with customer interests than generic keyword popularity. Content is more helpful, usable and likely to be shared socially. For customers prone to use search, you’re visibile. For those that focus on social channels, you’re there too. For those that use both: even better.
There’s a lot more to say on this topic (as I’ve done in Optimize) but you can expect to see plenty of screen shots and some examples in my presentation tomorrow. If your’re ready to get optimized for 2012 and beyond, I hope to see you there.
2/7 OMS – San Diego
Hilton San Diego Bayfront
Optimize This: Integrating Social, SEO & Content
Learn the principles and best practices of optimizing content and social media participation for better marketing performance
11:45 AM–12:30
Room: Sapphire H
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
#Optimize This: Online Marketing Summit 2012 Presentation | http://www.toprankblog.com
#Optimize This: Online Marketing Summit 2012 Presentation
Posted on 06. Feb, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, content marketing, Marketing PR Conferences, OMS, Online Marketing Summit, Other Events, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
I’m headed to (hopefully) sunny San Diego today for the annual Online Marketing Summit conference where I’ll get to present on one of my favorite topics: Optimization. Of course, if you read Online Marketing Blog very often, you’ll know my definition of optimization is a bit different than traditional SEO. My post last Thursday “Are You Optimized?” touched on this.
The competition for attendance during the breakout sessions at OMS is really tough during the time slot I’m scheduled for. SAP, Wider Funnel and SAP are all presenting at the same time as I’m giving the all new “Optimize THIS: Integrating Social, SEO & Content presentation”. This post is a bit of a preview on the presentation so if you’re at OMS this week, make sure you check it out.
In Optimize THIS, I have about 45 minutes (including Q & A) to help attendees learn the principles and best practices of optimizing content and social media participation for better marketing performance. Most marketers and even consumers face a deluge of information as they look for answers online. Google has morphed itself into an entirely new type of social search engine and the state of flux has many businesses facing new challenges that are difficult to keep up with.
There’s plenty of speculation that businesses like Google that have attracted a huge user base because of their ability to organize and provide useful, relevant information see free or organic information as a problem to the advertising solution. In other words, SEO is seen as a bug, not a useful way to modify websites so search engines can crawl and index them more effectively to the benefit of all: user, brand, search engine.
Google Dominates search, but should they dominate your online marketing? What would happen if Google disappeared tomorrow? What if your business disappeared from Google tomorrow? What would that mean to your marketing? What would it mean to your business? There are numerous stories of companies devastated as collateral damage to algorithmic updates.
Google’s market position over-influences SEO practitioners to develop keyword glossaries, create, promote and optimize content solely focused on Google. That’s a reasonable approach, but I for one, am not a big fan of putting all my marketing eggs in one basket. The perceived reward of single stop marketing is also a risk.
Diversification or “Un-Googling” your online marketing isn’t just good for mitigating risk, it’s also a better approach to meeting customer needs, especially when optimization is viewed holistically with the way a business communicates digitally with its customers.
A more customer centric approach to online marketing is the catalyst for integrating content marketing, SEO and Social Media. The icing on the cake of customer centric online marketing diversification is even better organic performance on Google vs. focusing solely on traditional keyword popularity and links.
The road to Social, SEO and Content Marketing integration is through understanding the fundamental shifts in how consumers discover, consume and share information online. Search behaviors are not just inspired by a consumer need, but by paid, owned, earned and share media. The consumer journey online for solutions weaves its way through search and social interactions finding, interacting, reacting, buying and sharing.
Online commerce and content are increasingly a social experience and content is the key to helping companies Attract, Engage and Inspire their target audiences to act: purchase, interact and share with their networks.
What does a customer centric optimize content marketing approach look like? Start by identifying common customer characteristics. Segment that data and develop consumer profiles or personas that describe: Search Keywords, Social Topics, Pain Points, Triggers and Goals. Figure out what information would be most meaningful during the stages of your customer segments’ journey through the buying cycle. Essentially, find out what customers care about and leverage that data in a way that allows you to target your “best” customers as a group.
Translate what you now know about your customers into a content plan that addresses pain points, triggers and consumer goals with brand content optimized for search keywords and social topics. Implement website, blog, social content and engagement marketing to meet your target customers needs with the right context, relevant language and meaningful topics that will inspire them to take action.
Structure your content marketing plan with optimized and socialized channels of distribution. We like the hub and spoke model that can scale to a “constellation” of hub and spokes.
Monitor social channels for community response and engagement with socialized content. Use web analytics to monitor search and user experience impact of your content on engagement, fueling social network growth and of course, inspiring sales.
By formulating a content plan based on consumer segment information needs as they move through the buying cycle, optimization can be more in tune with customer interests than generic keyword popularity. Content is more helpful, usable and likely to be shared socially. For customers prone to use search, you’re visibile. For those that focus on social channels, you’re there too. For those that use both: even better.
There’s a lot more to say on this topic (as I’ve done in Optimize) but you can expect to see plenty of screen shots and some examples in my presentation tomorrow. If your’re ready to get optimized for 2012 and beyond, I hope to see you there.
2/7 OMS – San Diego
Hilton San Diego Bayfront
Optimize This: Integrating Social, SEO & Content
Learn the principles and best practices of optimizing content and social media participation for better marketing performance
11:45 AM–12:30
Room: Sapphire H
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
#Optimize This: Online Marketing Summit 2012 Presentation | http://www.toprankblog.com
Convergence & Integration of Content Marketing with Social Media & SEO
Posted on 09. Jan, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, content marketing, Marketing PR Conferences, OMS, Other Events, Search Engine Strategies, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
This post is about Congratulations, Convergence and Content.
First off, congrats to Aaron Kahlow on his great news, I’m sure UBM TechWeb will be pleased with OMS, it’s an impressive event with a great following. Speaking of OMS, despite the wimpiest Minnesota Winter in years, February is a fine time to go somewhere warm and luckily, OMS and SES Search & Social Accelerator in San Diego are coming up fast Feb 6-9, 2012.
Online Marketing Summit has grown quickly and the annual event in San Diego boasts an impressive roster of topics, training opportunities and speakers. The conference kicks off with an Online Marketing Bootcamp, then 3 days of OMS sessions on every topic under the Online Marketing sun.
OMS is probably one of the most hands on, practical and well-rounded events you could attend as an internet marketing practitioner. When client side marketers, who are often responsible for a range of disciplines within a company from Search to Social to Email, ask me about good events to attend, the OMS Annual conference is one I recommend.
In Avinash Kaushik’s post today, “The 2015 Digital Marketing Rule Book. Change or Perish” one of his 7 Rules for Digital Marketing Revolutionaries concerns the need for marketing practitioners (applies to professionals of all types) to extend their expertise beyond core skills. “You can no longer be good at just one thing, or two. It is a 10-thing world now (and maybe a 20-thing world soon).” Events like OMS and SES Search and Social Accelerator are excellent opportunities for marketers to expand their skill sets.
You’ll get to learn from brands like: HP, Bing, General Motors, Adobe, Salesforce.com, SAP, Caterpillar, AOL, NCR, BabyCenter and many more B2C and B2B marketing experts. There’s also great group of industry experts, too many to mention but they’ll cover everything from online marketing strategy to SEO, to PPC, to Social Media to Analytics and more.
My part of all this fun will include a solo session on strategic integration of SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing. Here are the details:
Optimize THIS: Integrating Social, SEO & Content
Learn the principles and best practices of optimizing content and social media participation for better marketing performance. Customer behaviors and expectations are shifting, platforms are continuously evolving and the moving target of SEO has just put a blindfold on you. You could keep optimizing for individual keywords and pages, or you could take a step back and look at the bigger picture of how consumers Discovery, Consume and Engage with content.
Optimize THIS will reveal an entirely new way to look at the notion of Optimization by presenting a model for Attracting, Engaging and Inspiring customers through optimized and socialized content marketing. The principles of this presentation come from my new book, Optimize, which will come out in March at SXSW.
The SES Search & Social Accelerator portion of OMS is a full day of advanced topics programmed by Andrew Goodman, aka the guy “Who wrote the book on Google AdWords” and Bill Hunt, one of the SMARTEST internet marketers on the planet. Really, he is. Sessions range from Marty Weintraub preseting on “The Art Of Data-Driven Social Marketing” to “Channel Surfing: Measuring Profit & ROI Across Channels” with Morgan Vawter. This is one of those events where you’ll definitely want to “bring your brain”.
For my part of SES Accelerator, I’ll be presenting on the convergence of social SEO and content with Arnie Keunn of Vertical Measures. Both Arnie and I have written books (Accelerate & Optimize) about this topic that is redefining what SEO really means. We’ll each provide practical ideas on how to develop a customer-centric “optimize and socialize” approach to attracting and engaging customers through search. We’ll be answering key questions about how to best leverage content as a search optimization asset as well as the role of social media and it’s impact on today’s consumer search experience. I’m biased, but it’s going to be a kick ass session. Here are the details:
Feb 9 – 9:50 am
The Convergence of Search, Social and Content Marketing
The Google Panda update just made great content critical. Social media is grabbing all the headlines. Search gets more powerful every year. But how do they all play together? How do you increase your odds of being found both in search and social media? How will you consistently create content your a will enjoy? Join this panel as they provide case studies and walk you through a step-by-step approach that any organization can follow to grow their business online.
If you’re considering OMS and SES Accelerator, I’d highly recommend it. When you register, use the code: TOPRANK10 and get 10% off.
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TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Convergence & Integration of Content Marketing with Social Media & SEO | http://www.toprankblog.com
A Content Marketer’s Guide to Social Media & Search Strategy
Posted on 06. Sep, 2011 by Lee Odden in Blog, content marketing, content marketing world, Marketing PR Conferences, Other Events, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, strategy
What happens on the internet in 60 seconds? 1,500 Blog Posts, 60 New Blogs, 98,000 Tweets, 20,000 Posts on Tumblr, 600+ New Videos Uploaded to YouTube, 6,600 Images Uploaded to Flickr, 79,000+ Facebook Wall Posts and over 695,000 Facebook Status Updates. What does all that activity have in common? It’s content, it’s social and presents a ripe opportunity for optimization.
Content Marketing is a hot topic and deservedly so. According to an AOL Nielsen study in May 2011, 53% of all time on the internet is content consumption. In the U.S. alone, 27 million pieces of content are shared per day. In the Junta42 and MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing study, it was reported that 90% of marketers use content marketing and 51% plan to budget more than the previous year.
To help businesses, strategists and practitioners make sense of the opportunity, the first Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland, OH this week will bring together an impressive mix content marketing smarties, strategists and practitioners. My little slice of this content marketing pie concerns the intersection of Social Media and SEO as assets for an effective Content Marketing Strategy.
Specifically, I’ll be covering:
The Importance of a Holistic Approach – Organizations are achieving certain levels of effectiveness by employing Search, Social Media and Content Marketing strategies independently vs. not at all. However, the opportunity to really master the ability to optimize for consumer/buyer content preferences for discovery, consumption and sharing is too significant to ignore. A holistic approach to Content Marketing leverages optimization of content for user experience that includes search visibility and social sharing as well as engagement that inspires business outcomes for marketing, public relations, customer service, human resources and other functional areas.
How Exactly Do Social Media, SEO & Content Marketing Work Together? – The possibilities are exciting when you think about how both search and social media optimization can elevate relevant content visibility, especially to target audiences that are actively looking. The path from research to purchase involves interaction with search and social influences at an increasing rate. A study by GroupM and comScore reports that 48% of buyers were led by a combination of search and social media to purchase. The effect of interacting with search and social influences can vary by topic, phase in buying cycle, geography and person. Companies that incorporate Social Media and SEO in their Content Marketing Strategy can amplify their ability to be the most visible and relevant resource throughout the customer lifecycle. Additionally, social content and links can be influences (directly but more likely indirectly or conditionally) on standard search visibility.
7 Step SEO Strategy - Understanding relevant customer preferences for topics, customer pain points, position in the buying cycle and behaviors helps content producers and marketers research keywords, plan, optimize and promote content with purpose. Integration with other departments can co-opt resources for common benefit and of course no marketing initiative is effective without measurement – KPIs to conversions. The specific 7 steps I’ll cover include:
- Audience
- Keywords
- Content
- Optimize
- Socialize
- Integration
- Measure
Tactical Best Practices and Examples – Rounding things up includes a few examples B2B and B2C that illustrate at a high level, the implementation of these 7 steps and the resulting outcomes.
Readers of Online Marketing Blog know how enthusiastic and persistent I’ve been at promoting Social Media SEO and Content Marketing. The number of companies operating these functions independently is simply astounding. The opportunity to amplify or “Optimize” online marketing effectiveness towards reach and engagement is too significant to keep Social, SEO & Content in silos. I greatly appreciate opportunities to share this perspective at events like CMW.
If you’re attending Content Marketing World, I do hope to see you Thursday, September 8th at 2:00 PM for my presentation, “A Content Marketer’s Guide to Social Media & Search Strategy”.
For a deep dive into the subject, you might also want to check out,”Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing” to be published by Wiley early in 2012.
Infographic from Go-Globe.com
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
A Content Marketer’s Guide to Social Media & Search Strategy | http://www.toprankblog.com
OMS Minneapolis & A Killer Social SEO Strategy
Posted on 03. Jun, 2011 by Lee Odden in Blog, Marketing PR Conferences, OMS, OMS Minneapolis, Online Marketing Summit, Other Events, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
I have great news this Friday morning, not only is Online Marketing Summit coming to Minneapolis next week June 6-8, offering a range of training and presentations from brands and expert consultants, but TopRank Online Marketing is giving away TWO free passes!
OMS Minneapolis is focused on practical advice for marketing practitioners with a promising agenda covering: best practices community management from Best Buy plus hot tips & tactics on mobile, display, re-marketing, PPC, video, email, affiliate, user experience from local and national experts.
Of course you can also tap into a Killer Social SEO Strategy with TopRank Online Marketing at 10:15am where you can learn how large and small brands alike have integrated Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing to increase sales and improve customer engagement. This “Killer” session will provide practical examples of both BtoB and BtoC companies overcoming the competition with an agile, customer focused content marketing strategy.
Sounds good, right? Here’s how you can win a free pass to the June 7 conference day, which is selling tickets at about $300 each.
Just write comment below offering one Killer Social Media Marketing and/or SEO tip. The best tips will be selected by TopRank Online Marketing staff and we’ll notify the winner after 5pm today. We’ll also mention the best tips during the presentation (with credit of course) during OMS Minneapolis.
We’re looking for great tips as well as which comments get “liked” the most too, so be sure to share your comment on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The 2 free passes are for the June 7 conference day and do not include any other expenses.
Winners will be notified via email, so you must include your email address when you write your “Killer Social SEO” tip below. So what are you waiting for? Show your Social & SEO smarts and leave a great tip below and win a pass to OMS Minneapolis!
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TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
OMS Minneapolis & A Killer Social SEO Strategy | http://www.toprankblog.com
Dominate Your Niche with Social SEO & Blogging – BlogWorld Expo New York
Posted on 23. May, 2011 by Lee Odden in Blog, Blog Marketing, Blog Optimization, blogworld expo, content marketing, Marketing PR Conferences, Other Events, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social SEO
BlogWorld Expo is holding it’s first conference in New York this week and I’ll be presenting “Dominate Your Niche with Social SEO & Blogging” on Tuesday at 10:15am as part of the Social Business Track. This post is a light preview of that session and I hope to see you there.
Is blogging dead? A number of high profile bloggers and news media sites from Scoble to Wired to the New York Times have opined the demise of blogging as a consequence of growing social destinations like Twitter and Facebook.
The reality is that like many other forms of media, blogging is evolving and with the right strategy, highly effective. Short attention spans are served by short form content like Tweets and status updates. When it comes to influence on business, longer form content like that found on blogs serves an essential purpose. Rather than displace the most valuable attention spent on blogs, social sites like networks, microblogging, media sharing, news and bookmarks facilitate awareness and engagement with blog content.
Smart online marketers see this and are putting their budgets and priorities where it matters. According to eMarketer, 1 in 3 businesses publish blogs for marketing and HubSpot’s recent 2011 State of Inbound Marketing reports that more companies rated blogs as “critical or important” (62%) than any other social channel. These investments are paying off: AdWeek’s “Changing Scope of Advertising” infographic cites blogs as the leading source of customer acquisition over any other social channel.
Key Messages of Your Niche Provide Focus for Content Promoted from the Blog to Networks and Channels of Distribution.
Blogs are perfectly suited as social media information hubs for companies or individuals that want to dominate their niche online. Blogs can play an essential role in an integrated search, social media and content marketing strategy that directly influences consumer information discovery, consumption and sharing. But with literally millions of blogs published online and mainstream media getting involved, how does a blog stand out, let alone dominate their niche?
The first step is to understand what your niche is. Formalize your unique selling proposition (USP): How is your content unique and how does it serve the needs of the people you’re trying to reach better than any other blog? What does your blog stand for? What specific can you focus on that represents demand (search keywords) and topical discussion (social)?
The mechanics of a coordinated blogging effort that leverage search, social and content marketing involves:
- Goals & objectives
- Key message and differentiator – USP
- Persona development
- Search and social keyword research
- Editorial plan mapped to search and social content
- Optimization
- Link analysis
- Social channel development
- Intersection with online PR, media relations, advertising
- Content promotion
- Real-time, adaptive
- Monitoring, measurement & refinement
Whether you’re frustrated with the performance of current blogging efforts or you’re starting a new blog and want to maximize effectiveness, following a coordinated online marketing approach with a focus, can force multiply the effect of a company’s ability to “Be where customers are looking” (search), “Be where customers are talking” (social) “Be a source of influence, trust and engagement” (content). The result? You dominate your niche because all signals of credibility point to your social hub whether it’s via search, social, media – push or pull.
For the full presentation, you’ll have too attend BlogWorld New York this week. Hope to see you there.
Sometimes I like to open presentations common questions people have on the topic. What questions do you have about making more out of your business blogging effort? What challenges do you have in your efforts to dominate your niche?
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Dominate Your Niche with Social SEO & Blogging – BlogWorld Expo New York | http://www.toprankblog.com
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