Ideas for Business

Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well.

Over the past 3 years we’ve been focused on search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR. We’ll continue that trend the rest of this year but with more conferences outside of search as our online marketing agency continues to evolve.

The conferences that I’m attending in the coming months include:

• May: ACCM in Florida
• Jun: PRSA Digital Impact in NYC
• Jul: ad:tech in Chicago
• Aug: Search Engine Strategies in San Jose
• Sep: Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas
• Oct: DMA08 in Vegas
• Oct PRSA International Conference in Detroit
• Nov: Pubcon in Vegas

Personally, I try my best to limit conferences to one per month and those that I am speaking at. The above list is not comprehensive for the TopRank team of course, since we do typically blog most SES and SMX conferences. We’ll definitely be at SMX Advanced this year as well as SES Chicago in December. It just won’t be me that attends. There are several other events that I may attend or speak at, I’m just not confirmed that far out.

There are many other great conferences with programming that touches on search, social, interactive and PR the rest of this year. What conferences are you attending in the coming months and remainder of 2008?

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What Conferences Are You Attending? was orgionally published at http://www.TopRankBlog.com

Did you know that, as popular as blogging is with search engines, most blogs are not search engine optimized? I´m not talking about the content, but the hidden parts of the blog that you simply don´t see. Here are a few things that could be messing up your search engine rankings, despite careful keyword blogging.

• Sidebars are often placed above the content in the blog code, meaning that despite great post optimization, your links and sidebar text are appearing first.

• Meta-tags are not usually filled in automatically. If you are using Wordpress, you can find plug-ins to make this easier, or simply write it into the template.

• Tags are also something that many bloggers forget to fill in. Using tags can really help boost your search engine rankings and make it easier for people to find the content they´re looking for.

If all that sounds confusing to you, then it might be a good idea to hire a professional to help you set up your blog so you will be blogging in a fully SEO friendly manner. That will really help your business and it is often faster and easier to outsource this job rather than learn how to do it all yourself!

This is worth coming out of hibernation. A nasty .ASP/.ASPX exploit has been found that allows a SQL injection. More from F-Secure.

But the real issue is that this is already affecting Irish sites:

Infected Pages From Ireland

If you are running MS SQL on IIS servers be aware that this seems to be spreading quickly.

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There are a few additional photos from Web 2.0 Expo that I wanted to share and so I took some creative license with the timing of some of the events to tell the story of a typical conference day.

The first day of a conference for me typically starts out with registration:

A stop by the speaker/press/blogger room and then rolls into keynote presentations from industry leaders and news makers like these:

Jonathan Schwartz CEO of Sun and Tim O’Reilly

Matt Cutts from Google

and Matt Mullenweg co-founder of WordPress

Some keynotes are worth blogging and many others are not. The challenge is to pick the right mix of blogging and photos that best represent the conference and reader interests.

Before you know it, it’s lunch time - one of THE best times to network for prospective clients, marketing partners, vendors and new employees. Hopefully the food doesn’t suck too bad. Otherwise, you schedule client or hot prospect meetings at a proper restaurant.

Once the exhibit hall opens, of course you have to walk through it to get to the lunch area which was mysteriously served elsewhere before exhibitor booths were on display. No matter, visiting exhibitors provides a great way to learn about new technologies, prospect future clients and of course, conduct competitive research.

After lunch there’s more sessions where attendees sit patiently through a mix of presentations ranging from entertaining to informative to sales pitches. In between sessions you do your best to stay on top of email, phone calls and possibly sneak in some friendfeed.

Some presentations include very in-depth graphics and explanations which further reinforce the ideas being presented and in some cases, guide the audience into a state of, “This is fantastic, but I can’t possibly do this all on my own. I need outside help.” Other presentations will disappoint and many truly inspire.

One of the great things about conferences is that you run into other people that share your interests you wouldn’t normally see in person. As Robert Scoble said in our interview, some of the best parts of a conference come from interactions in the hallways.

At the end of the day, there are private dinners and after conference events where people gather to meet like-minded professionals and have conversations,

meet friends

listen to and maybe dance to some music

and in some cases, watch Unicorns run wild.

At the end of the festivities it’s time to go home and do a few hours of work, making notes of all the contacts met that day, prime blog posts and organize notes from sessions covered, compress/upload videos, upload and tag photos, answer emails and schedule the next day’s sessions before the next wake up call to start all over again.

I truly enjoyed the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco because of the technology focus (geeks galore!) and the optimism. Albeit, it’s a bit of over-0ptimism in many cases, but all the same, it’s a forward looking, intellectual and hopeful perspective towards possibilities, collaborations and building things of value. Hats off (pun intended) to Dave McClure, Techweb and O’Reilly for a great event.

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A Web 2.0 Conference Day - Wrap Up was orgionally published at http://www.TopRankBlog.com

Viral marketing is a phrase you´ll hear tossed around a lot online, but rarely explained. What exactly is viral marketing, how can it help you and what makes something viral? These are all questions that plague anyone who is getting started in internet marketing for their business.

First things first, viral marketing is simply marketing that spreads itself. It is something, often an ebook or video, that catches people´s attention and they pass it on to friends and clients. You start the process and it then continues on its own . . . it´s a great way to market for anyone!

It should be pretty obvious by now how viral marketing can help you. You´ll be getting plenty of attention and hits on your website, simply by putting an article or video out there. It will have your link in it and everyone will be coming by to see what else you have to offer.

So, what makes something viral? It really depends, but there are a few common factors among viral marketing campaigns.

• The item to go viral is free
• It is extremely useful or funny
• It makes people go, “Oh, of COURSE!”
• There is anticipation
• It´s seen everywhere at once

You can probably figure out the first few on your own, so we´ll just look at the last two points here. Anticipation is huge when you want something to go big. Let people know ahead of time what you´re planning. Get your business networking contacts to talk about it to their clients. Basically, create a bit of hype before the product is even released, people will be chomping at the bit to get their copy!

You can ensure that your ebook or other viral marketing item is seen everywhere at once, giving it the instant impression of being immensely popular. The best way to do this is to send copies ahead of time, along with a press release, to popular blogs and websites. These people will then hopefully give you some publicity. It doesn´t hurt to offer them something, like a mention in the book or make the book brandable so they earn any affiliate commissions from the people who download it from them.

Viral marketing takes work. Very rarely will an ebook go viral without the forethought necessary, so make sure you think it through and plan your viral marketing campaign carefully. Then go for it. It could be the best thing to ever happen to your business.

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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