Posts Tagged "education"

Web 2.0 Expo: Optimize Your Organic Search Results Leveraging Social Media & Blogging

Posted on Apr 21, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: I’m all a Twitter ‘Cause your MySpace hurts my Facebook when I’m Linked-in – Learn how to leverage social media and your current website to DOMINATE search engine results and improve your organic rankings! Sponsored by Verio.

Industry expert and published author Heather Lutze gives you the rundown on her social media strategies from her new book, The Findability Formula. This breakout will give you actionable tactics you can implement immediately to get your website ranked higher in search engine results. Social media is HOT and delivers results if you know how to use them to their fullest potential. Learn how to use keywords effectively with Twitter, Linked-In, Youtube, Facebook, as well as your own company website to increase your search engine rankings. It is all about knowing and understanding the Findability Formula – and that is what you’ll learn in this workshop!

This session took place Thursday, April 2, 2009. The speaker:

• Heather Lutze, Lutze Consulting

Heather had a lot of great things to say; it was a shame that she didn’t have enough time to really go over it because of such a long pitch by Verio, the sponsor of the session.  One thing Verio did that was annoying but I can’t really fault them for, was parking someone at the door and using the leads scanner to scan the name badges of the people coming in.  Annoying, but since they were sponsoring the session, I can’t really fault them for it.

Bullet Point Review!

• Social media gives you a platform to position yourself as an expert in your field.
• Strategy:
  • Connect with the right search keywords.
  • Edit your social media profiles and elements with keywords.
  • Track the results in Google search results.
• Know how users search:
  • 15.2% are 1 word search phrases
  • 31.9% are 2 word
  • 27% are 3 word
  • 14.8% are 4 word
  • 6.5% are 5+ words
• The longer the keyword, the faster you’ll show up.
• Longer search terms are looking more to purchase, less informational or shopping.
• Resources: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.
• Tool: Google External Keyword Tool
• Tool: Keyword Discovery
• Connect with the customer when they’re ready to take decisive action.
• Misspellings can rank highly (sometimes they convert higher).
• Look at the pages and be sure you actually want to show up amongst that company.
• Anything over 100 searches, long tail.
• Open tool, whats most targeted keyword, then write blog post (put the keyword at the front).
• Recommends All in One SEO Pack, ShareThis for WordPress.
• On LinkedIn, when you put your last name in put a dash and your keyword.
• Start on the long tail and work your way backward.
• Do it for your name, do it for misspellings, rank the whole page to push out the “sucks” terms.

Because of the 20 minute pitch for Verio at the beginning of the session, there was zero time for questions, which was a shame.  I was hoping for some more real-world examples that weren’t just about Heather.  There was time for one where a woman who is a voice-over talent was looking at it from her standpoint and Heather walked through the practical application, which was pretty cool.

Overall it was a good session once Verio was done talking, and I wish she’d shared her slides with the Web 2.0 Expo folks, but alas it’s not on their website.

Web 2.0 Expo: Smart Work: Embrace Change & Empower Your Teams to Drive Growth and Innovation

Posted on Apr 20, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: In today’s global business environment, the only constant is change. Organizations who can respond quickly by leveraging agile business models and dynamic business processes are uniquely positioned to win. IBM Web2.0 software can help your organization be more effective and innovate in challenging times. IBM also understands first-hand that connecting with customers takes personalization, collaboration, community and co-creation. Come learn from and ask questions of our IBM experts that support enterprise mashups, social media software and Web 2.0 application development and learn how you can provide a truly collaborative real-time working environment for your employees, partners and suppliers and leverage your customer community. Sponsored by IBM.

This session took place Wednesday, April 1, 2009. The speakers were all from IBM:

• Kathy Mandelstein
• Ryan Boyles
• Brendan Crotty
• Tom Deutch

Okay, usually I think of myself as a smart cookie.  But this session was way over my head, probably since I’m not an IT person or developer.  I walked away with some interesting factoids, but no way to apply this to what I do.  Maybe this will help you more than it helped me.

Bullet Point Review!

• 1 billion transistors for each person on earth.
• $11.5 billion worth of produce is wasted in India because of outdated post harvest infrastructure.
• US health care system loses more than $100 billion per year due to fraud.
• Up to 22% percent of total port volume is empty containers in North America.
• Cost optimization + agility = success.
• CxOs confirmed priorities:
  • Processes
  • Collaboration
  • SOA Adoption (Service Oriented Architecture)
  • Business Model
• Lotus live web conferencing, collaboration, and email.
• Jazz is an open collaborative environment.
• A mashup is a light application.
• IBM mashup center WebSphre sMash.
• Resources: Lotus Greenhouse, ibm.com/web20, Project Zero, Jazz Community Site (developers).

Developers will probably be better for reading this, so check out the slide presentation and I hope it’ll benefit you.

Web 2.0 Expo: Darwinism on the Web- Surviving and Thriving in a Web 2.0 World

Posted on Apr 8, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: Keeping up with what’s new is enough of a challenge, learning what to embrace and adopt, and how to do so cost effectively is the key to leading the pack. Learn how to prepare your organization up to keep pace with the new speed of innovation. Sponsored by CoreMedia.

This session took place Wednesday, April 1, 2009. The speaker:

• Sören Stamer, CoreMedia

This was one of my favorite sessions.  Sören was a wonderful, engaging speaker, and his accent was not a hindrance in the least.  While the other sponsored sessions were often big commercials for the sponsored company, I really appreciated that Sören left the CoreMedia plug for the end and kept it relatively short.  I enjoyed sitting through this session!

Bullet Point Review!

• You need to remain agile in this environment.
• Example: RateMyCop.com
• Cirsis is much bigger.  Some say we get collectively smarter, but we probably get collectively dumber.
• Web 2.0 is fundamental change.
• 10 patterns that might be useful:
  • Websites Evolve: Content used to be king but it’s all about engaging people
    • Harley Davidson did a good job of creating a tribe.
    • The feedback loops rule.
  • Engage in Conversations
  • Be Personal
  • Make Your Ideas More Contagious
    • Personal resonance counts
    • iPhone is an example – you touch what you like
  • Use Established Paradigms
    • Open & focused wins (Amazon)
  • Open Up and Do Less
    • Evolution is hard to predict
  • Let It Go
    • People pay for attention
  • Provide Ways to Earn Attention
    • Yelp is a good example.
    • The web withough websites
  • Enable Multiple Touch Points for your Service
    • Making money because of… (because of search, not with search)
    • As soon as you start charging, it’s a barrier of entry and people will go to a free verion
  • Find Smart Ways to Offer a Great Service for Free
    • Skype
    • Don’t be surprised that some things change dramatically

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Video will be the next big thing.

All in all this was great.  Rather high level, and left some people questioning at the end, but I really enjoyed it.  It was almost more of an entertainment piece than an educational piece.  Bravo.

Web 2.0 Expo: Transforming IT with Cloud Computing

Posted on Apr 7, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: Running your business in the Cloud is becoming mainstream and offers enormous advantages. Hear how companies are taking advantage of the Cloud to increase IT output while simultaneously reducing infrastructure, application development and deployment costs. Learn how this new approach is enabling IT to do more with less by focusing on innovation, not infrastructure.

This session took place Wednesday, April 1, 2009.  The speaker:

• Trae Chancellor, CIO,  Salesforce.com

Unfortunately a lot of this kind of went over my head.  I guess the term IT in the title didn’t signal to me that this might not be the best session for me to attend.  The notes are kind of short since I didn’t really get a lot of value myself out of this.  Sorry!

Bullet Point Review!

• This transformation will touch the entire organization; everything has to be rethought.
• Gives you a competitive advantage.
• Cloud computing is able to deliver true innovation.
• Goals: improve productivity and innovation, improve efficiency, reduce costs.
• Implement CRM>customize>extend>commit>iterate
• Created their own dashboard and integrated that into their client offerings.
• Gets the whole business involved.
• Leverage the cloud.

There wasn’t really any useful Q&A time, and in reality most of this session was an advertisement for Salesforce, which is to be expected considering it was a sponsored session.  The presentation was more tailored towards being a case study rather than a how-to.

They didn’t share the presentation on SlideShare.net so I can embed it, but you can download it here: Transforming IT with Cloud Computing (PPT).

Affsum Session: Advanced Optimization for Landing Pages

Posted on Jan 26, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 1 comment

Date: Tuesday, January 13th, 2009.  Session 8b, 2:00pm.
Session Description: Learn how to optimize your landing pages and increase conversion rates by 50-500% using simple techniques and technologies.  Get that competitive edge by increasing margins and return on marketing spend. The panel consisted of:

• Olivier Chaine, CEO & Founder, magnify360 (Moderator)
• Trevor Claiborne, Product Marketing Manager, Google
• Lisa Crossley Hunter, Senior Director of CJ Search, Commission Junction
• Beth Kirsch, VP of Marketing and Business Development, uAmplify

I was expecting some gems in terms of site optimization, and boy was I not let down!  I’d heard Lisa and Olivier speak last September at CJU, so I knew I was in for good stuff from them.  I mentioned this session as one I planned on attending before leaving and Trevor stopped by to say hi.  I had a chance to chat with him briefly in the bloghaus after the session and let him know what a great job they did as well.

Bullet Point Review!

• 98% of your traffic is wasted.
• 2% is the average site conversion rate.
• Copy heavy pages perform better later hours.
• There isn’t one magic answer.
• Ask yourself these questions about your visitors:
  • Why are they here TODAY?
  • How do they THINK?
  • How do they BUY/STICK?
  • What kind of dialog is best?
• Google’s website optimizer is a free tool to do this for you.
• A/B testing is your friend.
• So is multivariate.
• Best practices: start now, test often.
• Resource: Google Website Optimizer
• Share search channels.
• Cooperate with other departments with
  • Ad copy
  • Natural listings
  • Trademarks
  • Display URL Usage
• After testing, what works for affiliates is often different than what works for search.
  • One page tested, search conversions went up 60% but affiliate went up 454%!
• You could be losing tremendous amounts of revenue by not optimizing.
• Don’t start without a plan.
• Don’t just copy what someone else did, it probably won’t work the same for you.  TEST!
• Don’t assume an optimized page today is going to be optimized 6 months from now.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Just make sure you’re sending the most qualified traffic to the merchant page; you can’t really optimize their site or spend your time trying to help them that much.
• How much data is needed?  Generally speaking 100 impressions per change, but really, use a tool – they’ll tell you when enough data has been collected to pick a winning optimization.
• Is there a hierarchy of what to test?  Not really, just pick a few things and go small first.  Multivariate is complicated so start with something more manageable.

In the end, I really enjoyed hearing more from Lisa and Olivier – their expertise seems to know no bounds!  Trevor also nailed it with the information about the Google Website Optimizer – my fellow attendees and I speculated that he was why most people came, to learn about the free Google tool!  Unfortunately I wasn’t impressed by Beth – her speaking was really mumbled so I couldn’t quite pick up everything she said, and most her slides related to case studies and not a lot of tactics.  Maybe at a smaller venue or had I been closer to the front I might have been able to hear her better.  Ultimately these tidbits did well, but the slides will really tell you the background behinds these notes, so here they are!

Affsum Session: Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?

Posted on Jan 25, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 4 comments

Date: Monday, January 12th, 2009.  Session 5d, 2:00pm.
Session Description: How are videos being used by affiliates and merchants?  A detailed look into how and where they are performing best with suggested hints and tips to drive better click through and conversions. The panel consisted of:

• Marty M. Fahncke, President, FawnKey & Associates (Moderator)
• Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage
• Melissa Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com
• Jonathan Stefansky, EVP Sales and Marketing, Qoof

This wasn’t the panel I had planned on going to, but I’m glad I went and checked it out.  There was some interesting factoids dropped and I enjoyed the Twitter going in the background with the anonymous admirer of Melissa asking if she was in the videos.

Bullet Point Review!

• There’s tremendous potential.
• Consider your site when trying to figure out what will work.
• Besides person to person, video is the second highest sales driver.
• ML looked at 2008 as the year of infrastructure.
• Big marketers have taken note of online video.
• In 2007, 59% of internet users watched video online.  In 2008 that skyrocketed to 77%.
• With banner blindness there’s a need for a new type of creative.
• Banners are the lowest performing; video overcomes even the success of text links.
• Give the affiliate a better way to convert.
• Low cost for affiliates – no streaming costs, no hosting costs, widgets are interactive.
• Attention spans are around 3 minutes.
• Content must be engaging and capture the user within 15 seconds.
• Networks and merchants wouldn’t invest in video if it didn’t work.
• Affiliates are very eager to receive the best content for the least work.
• People who are in video now are in it for it’s potential, not the actual of today.
• 77 million unique visitors on YouTube (my notes might be wrong on that, and I didn’t write down if that was per day or per month, but I think it was per day.)
• MLTV raises brand awareness, bloggers talk about it.
• Companies are very sensitive to UCG (User Generated Content).
• DO: think about the shelf life of a video.  Videos about how to do something instead of a hot trend or product will be relevant longer.
• DON’T: set your videos to auto play with sound.  It’s incredibly intrusive, especially if someone’s at work, which is where most people view videos due to faster broadband connections.
• DON’T: go over 3 minutes.
• DO: grab attention within the first 15 seconds.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Where are things with .tv domains?  They’re increasing in popularity, but they still don’t get near the traffic a .com domain does.
• How do you track this?  Qoof embeds links with the AID and PID for tracking.  Others use view time, page views, how long people stay on the page, etc. to track success.

Once again, Michael Buechele of 11|15 Media blogged about this session for the official Affiliate Summit Blog.  Check out his recap for anything I may have missed while tweeting ;): Affiliate Summit West 2009 Session Recap – Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?