And first up for the morning is Jeff James who shall be delving / diving headlong into what all this new marketing stuff is all about. Here’s the brief overview of his overview:

• Today’s consumer conversation

• Today’s media world and how to tap its power

• Mapping your customer and competitive environment

• Rules of success for Next Generation marketing

Decline of trust – 50% of consumers regard price as more important than brand. Only 7% have trust in adverts/advertising

Disintermediation of media – saturation of Internet users aged under 44barring certain demos…the majority being in WV and Kentucky no doubt.

Broken Marketing Model:
Citibank 3000 media messages / adverts a day …..darn. And we’ll only take notice of 53 per day…..Panhandle cleaning and restoration springs to mind – only 4 of those 52 are remotely remembered.

WOM – buzz marketing…how do we find out about specific products etc. Here comes the influencers. Tv still dominating but WOM is the second most important method of finding products.

Good point how the internet has become the new polyfilla in terms of mistrust in marketing.

The power of the word of mouth or in other words – what is blabbed about the most online.

The Internet is the new Mr. Rodgers neighbourhood. Tis a global neighbourhood. Find those influencers. Influence those influence. Find Old Mr Jones who knows everything there is to know about lawn mower parts. Emotins more importion than functions. Exactly! People buy from people they like. No, really they do. Tell your story. Every business has one believe it or not and therein starts your conversation. Markets as conversations and the next thing you know you’re chugging along the old cluetrain.

Questions to CEOs or questionable CEOs? Or Cfos for that matter.

Very good start off. Very good indeed.

It takes time to rehabilitate one’s image: such a matter does not lend itself to a quick fix.

Many people hope that if they say the right thing at the critical moment all will be made good. That’s just not how the world works.

We, as human beings, form perceptions about other humans over time. This is the basis of reputation. If a person has made a major blunder, it equates to a big, negative hit against his or her reputation. This cannot be overcome with one press conference. No, the perfect statement at the perfect time will not wipe the slate clean. Instead, those in the audience will watch and observe, most likely in a cautious manner at first. Some will be inclined to forgive; others may become embittered permanently toward the person who made the major mistake. Over time, most people in the audience will adjust their assessments of the person in question.

So if the perfect words will not do the trick, what can rebuild a tarnished reputation? One word: actions.

As we’ve all heard, actions speak louder than words. Once a person has made the gargantuan gaffe, the best thing he or she can do is to consistently do good and do right. According to the laws of communication theory, 93% of the information that human beings process and learn from is related to non-verbal signals or cues. By contrast, words account for only 7% of that which we process and upon which we form perceptions. With this fact in mind, it is easy to see why actions are so much more important than words in regard to mending one’s reputation.

With the clear understanding that (1) rehabilitating a reputation takes time and that (2) actions speak louder than words, let’s shift the focus toward the public relations strategy. What are the right tactics to use in a situation where a person has made a career-threatening mistake?

I would advise my clients and anyone else to adhere to the following ABC principles:

A – Apologize. Admit your mistake and ask for forgiveness. Demonstrate that you have a contrite heart. This is done by speaking in a humble manner and expressing remorse.

B – Be genuine. Show some emotion. No one will forgive an over-rehearsed, stiff emotionless robot. Speak from the heart and use natural, appropriate hand gestures and other non-verbals. Obviously, we don’t want to see a blubbering basket case, but genuineness and emotion can be very helpful.

C – Compassion. Show compassion. The root of the word “passion” is “suffer.” To show compassion is to demonstrate that you are suffering with the person (or parties) who were affected. The audience will identify with compassion and respond favorably to it. Perhaps no one understood this better than Bill Clinton who repeatedly emphasized: “I feel your pain.”

Remember that non-verbal communication is crucial. People in the audience are watching, more than listening. Therefore, the speaker’s emphasis should be placed upon apologizing, being genuine and demonstrating compassion. It may be acceptable to speak briefly about one’s past track record (which may have been glowing and heroic) but only in the context of remarks about future plans to atone for this incident. Specifically, the speaker may want to briefly discuss specific plans about rehabilitating himself, through counseling, clergy, medical care, training or community service, to demonstrate that he is focused on atoning for his actions and preventing future blunders.

All in all, the majority of the positive impact, or image rehabilitation, will come in the weeks and months that follow the initial episode. Sorry … there simply is no quick fix.

Accordingly, we would work with our client to establish an ambitious, pro-active outreach plan to lead them through this subsequent phase. Ultimately, the key to successfully rehabilitating a reputation is consistently repeating good deeds, rightful and helpful acts, over an extended period, in a manner that reestablishes trust.

The conference is SEM II: Join the Evolution and is being hosted by eBizITPA.

The agenda:

* a review of his speech at SEM I back almost a year ago

* designing for success – we talked about this a little before hand and it should be really interesting for the crowd (great turnout today, btw, with a lot of walk ups in a very snowy Erie)

* social media

* helpful online tools

1st really good point: Web developers are really astute and great at their craft from a technical standpoint (mostly), but often they will benefit from working with seo or marketing folks.  Highly agree – both teams benefit from working together.

Good analogy for putting Web sites together: measure twice, cut once.  I remember my dad beating that into my head when I was younger.  Develop a plan.   Think about seo AND user friendly design, conversion, analytics, promoting, monitoring, managing.

Aah – a nice memory from my LA days – “ask for the order.”  It’s not just when a sales person speaks with a person – it’s important for your Web site to do the same.

Neal’s from Catalyst Connection, a great outfit for businesses that believes in lean and related management processes.  Going through the process for putting together an effective, seo friendly Web site.

Talking right now about businesses using keywords that THEY know.  Need to figure out what people are actually searching for.  Also talking about the different number of searches for singulars vs. plurals.

SEO basics – 2 steps:

1. Indexing pages; ranking is based on the content of the indexed page.
2. Ranking  = relevance; broken into 3 parts:
a. page content (keyword density)
b. organizing codes (meta)
c. link popularity

I usually break #2 into two parts when explaining to seo newbies, but this makes sense too, separating on screen page content out from meta.

Folders and root directories – how do you organize?  Name dropping with Jill Whalen, Danny Sullivan, etc. (all named are great industry sources)

Hits on one of my biggest pet peeves – frames.  Arrgh!  Going onto  div / layers instead of tables now.  He’s 100% right, but (don’t tell anyone – I still use tables for quick stuff just b/c it’s so much easier for me – don’t let me personally do any page layouts for your site).

CSS – this is all really good stuff for business execs, owners, small businesses, everyone who’s not doing this for a living.  Things that are more than they need to know from a ‘how do you do it perspective’, but can grasp fairly quickly and will help them be able to dictate how their site should be built.

Navigation – link structure – comparing it to a giant circuit board.

Social media – points out that it’s not just for kids (anymore) or goofy wedding videos.  bookmarking sites, media sharing sites, blogs, and content syndication.  Talks about a polyurethane (sp?) stamping company client of his – put the video of how it works onto youtube.  Great results.  I love examples from manufacturing companies!

On digg stuff now – touches on, but doesn’t really go into being wary of the strong backlash you should prepare for if you post the wrong type of article / press release / news story.  Some good strategy points, including the importance of participation, being real, and offering value.

Lists some helpful tools like keyword discovery and other keyword suggestion tools.  My favorite question (the one I’d ask) from the audience: “Is it free?”

Brought up another one that he said someone will kill him if they knew he brought it up.  I like Neal and don’t want to see him dead, so I’m not putting it in here.

Talking about analytics – going into Google Analytics right now.  I’m not linking to them – figure they have enough juice as is and might be able to survive without one from this blog post – maybe!

Another good one – Domain Tools.  I’m not as big a fan of alexa, but having that information along with the other info it provides doesn’t hurt.  Having a private conversation with Cathy von Birgelen about alexa right now.   Seems like a better tool for site owners to point to to try and sell ad space.

Onto site maps now – not the traditional one that you click on when you see sites, but xml ones.  VERY important.  robots.txt, too.  Neal’s saying not to list disallows anymore b/c they don’t work; instead, under disallow, use <sitemap_[url].txt>  Everything’s standardized among the major search engines.

Going into real world examples right now.  Ahh, now I know how to spell urethane.  Holy cow – I just looked up and it looks like I got it right.  He’s being very nice and trying not to offend me on behalf of tpaid search folks everywhere talking about cost reduction.  As I told him ahead of time, I’m always in for cost savings!  Be smart with budgeting, bidding, testing, keywords used and on and on.  I don’t want anyone to spend more than they have to to get great returns!

He brings up a great story about a company getting bought out.  Since their site seo ranked higher than the parent company they decided to ditch the old site.  Reminds me of one of our clients.  They do business all over the world and do stuff in Australia quite a bit.  There are some jobs that are too small for them to do the travel, so they turn it over to partners.  The CEO was grinning ear to ear in talking about how mad the other company gets that a US company gets the lead and not the company in the Aussie’s (remember, pronounce with a ‘z’, not an ’s’) on backyard.

Good speech all around, Neal.

–72.3 percent of Americans experience “search engine fatigue” (either “always,” “usually,” or “sometimes”) when researching a topic on the Internet.

–65.4 percent of Americans say they’ve spent two or more hours in a single sitting searching for specific information on search engines.

–More than three out of four (75.1 percent) of those who experience search engine fatigue report getting up and physically leaving their computer without the information they were seeking – either “always,” “usually” or “sometimes.”

The report discusses user frustration with clutter and the content of search results:

When asked to name their #1 complaint about the process, 25 percent cited a deluge of results, 24 percent cited a predominance of commercial (paid) listings, 18.8 percent blamed the search engine’s inability to understand their keywords (forcing them to try again), and 18.6 percent were most frustrated by disorganized/random results.

There was also a desire among many users that search engines be able to “read their minds”:

Kelton asked survey respondents whether they wished that search engines like Google could, in effect, read their minds, delivering the results they were actually looking for. . . That capability is something that 78 percent of all survey-takers “wished” for, including 86.2 percent of 18-34 year-olds and 85 percent of those under 18.

I have to confess, that if I can’t find something then generally it isn’t out there on the Web – I’m a pretty good searcher. There are certain mind-melding techniques to become one with Google, but if I shared them I’d have to kill you.

Kinda reminds me of this:

Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can’t Index

The videos were shot, edited and uploaded by the Network Learning Alliance:

The Network Learning Alliance is a virtual training environment designed to support the West Virginia Information Technology labor market which targets federal contracting opportunities. As an initiative of the West Virginia High Technology Consortium (WVHTC) Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Fairmont, W.Va., Network Learning Alliance is facilitating the education of the IT industry workforce through its partners; the Workforce Investment Board (WIB) One-Stop Centers, West Virginia University, Fairmont State University, West Virginia University Institute of Technology, and select private training providers.

This project is building the regional workforce development system’s capacity to meet the needs of a growing federal IT marketplace in north-central West Virginia. It focuses on the development of specific educational programming aligned to meet the needs of the region’s high-technology business sector.

Network Learning Alliance, through the assistance of its parent organization and partnerships, has identified a gap between the current workforce development system and the needs of the companies in the regional IT Industry. Economic analysts project that within the next 12 months an estimated 350 to 400 new technology-related jobs and support positions will be added to the regional economy. To ensure the long-term stability and growth of the region, these companies must consistently recruit and retain highly qualified employees, upgrade existing employee skills, and stay at the leading edge of technology.

To accomplish this goal, Network Learning Alliance is creating educational programming that aligns with the identified needs of the IT employers. By focusing on the latest instructional technologies, Network Learning Alliance is creating a unique educational model that will facilitate content and educational services to regional government contractors.

Hopefully, we’ll have a few clips to be able to show you before long that may entice a few of you who didn’t attend the conference to view proceedings from the comfort of your own computer chair. If you feel so inclined.

It’s a shame I can’t make an excuse to kick back myself and watch the whole thing in glorious technicolor as you don’t need to watch them all at once. You can take your time and view each presentation as and when you feel like it in chunks that are palatable to you or suit your particular schedule.

And whilst we’re on the subject of e-learning and West Virginia, Justin Seibert of Direct Online Marketing™, who gave a great presentation on New and Proven Uses for Search Marketing, has been published in the latest edition of the West Virginia Executive. I’d love to be able to point you in the right direction via a link, but it hasn’t been put up on the Web as of yet.

You’ll just have to go out and purchase a copy. (Or wait until I put the link up!)

Justin is the President of Direct Online Marketing™ a full-service internet marketing firm specializing in results-based internet marketing. Read Justin’s full bio here.
And here we have the highlight of the whole day/afternoon/year. Well I have to say that considering Justin is my boss. And what a great guy he is to boot. No, really.

Two distinct elements of search results – Natural or Organic Listings vs Paid Listings.

Reputation management is an interesting angle to explain how search engine results work. And don’t think reputation management isn’t something you don’t need to bother with. If you’re online you have an online reputation.

http://www.providianfinancialsucks.com/

Consider your online footprint on places such as Facebook and Myspace etc. Beware befriending big green frogs.

How to combat bad press in a Michael Vick stylee:

Setup an SEM campaign – buy your name/company employee names.

Comment on blogs etc.

Optimized Online Press Releases.

Ensure your site is updated – there are no rocks to hise under online.

Track online conversations such as Technorati and Google Alerts.

http://www.vickletthedogsout.com/ Push other sites out of the listings by creating positive sites to compete with them.

AFTER THE EVENT:

Buy certain keywords such as dog fighting in Vick’s case. Specialized landing pages. Check DMCA.

QUESTIONS:

How do you optimize Press Releases?

Can be used to increase natural search listings. Use keywords in press release and link back to the press release. FOLLOW UP – concentrate optimization efforts in top part of press release including title. Put it on Web site and distribute through newswires such as www.pr.com. Always worth it to pay a little more for links back.

What is local searching and how does it work?

Geo targetting. Choose where you want your ads to show in PPC. Can be done geographically or by points on a map. Natural search use geographical terms in site to be picked up by engines.

And don’t forget to take your free subscription to Search Marketing Standard.

Well we might as well just go ahead and cancel our conference as Sir Elton of the John has decreed that the Internet should be closed down.

According to an article in The Sun:

He claims it is destroying good music, saying: “The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff.”

“Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision.”

“It’s just a means to an end.”

“We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet.”

“I mean, get out there — communicate.”

“Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet.”

“Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging.”

“I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.”

“There’s too much technology available.”

“I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

Elton, Elton, Elton. I’ve never particularly held you up as an ambassador of musical or hair-piece decency, but it always comes across as a little bit sad when somebody dismisses everything related to the Internet wholesale.

The fact that people can now control their own means of musical distribution, marketing and production bypassing the big recording conglomerates is the best thing that has ever happened to music. Was artistic musical vision always supposed to be measured by the yardstick of some grumpy old tart who churned out Crocodile Rock?

Elton, you probably have a place somewhere in the vast musical cannon, and it’s most probably as its damp gunpowder, but I wouldn’t dream of wishing music to be closed down for a period of five years just to see what we’d come up with instead of Elton John.

It wouldn’t be so bad if you practiced what you preached. Your whole back catalog is available for download online and you also streamed your gig at Madison Square Gardens over the Internet. This is akin to you espousing vegetarianism and calling for meat to be banned then being seen pigging out on pork chops.

So you don’t like blogging, you think modern music sucks, and your last album wasn’t exactly a hot cake. Perhaps the latter explains your bitterness towards the Internet?

I come across people like Sir Elton quite often. I don’t mean chubby, be-wigged rock behemoths whose star is fading, but people who regard the Internet as being a complete and utter waste of time, effort and space.

For example, the number of people I’ve spoken to who’ve had a Website built only for them to subsequently dismiss the Internet out of hand when they receive no leads or hits is quite a few. The debate as to who is at fault can be left for another day. Imagine writing-off cars as a mode of transport because you failed to put in any gas.

Now, you can be forgiven if you didn’t know you had to put gas in the thing, but not if it’s been well and truly explained in advance that gas was a functional prerequisite.

The whole idea behind Online Marketing: Innovations that Work is to help you not only understand you need gas, but to show you what kinds of gas there are available and how each one can impact the running of your car differently.

Thankfully, Lee Odden has saved me the time and effort of taxing myself with any flickers of free original thought by already discussing his ten secret benefits of attending SEM conferences.

It’s geared more to people inside the industry so I shall cherry-pick just a few points.

Competitive intelligence – As you play the meet and greet game, you’ll undoubtedly run into employees from competing firms. Be sure to ask lots of questions. Smile, be friendly and engaging. Remember how important it is to be a great listener and remember: Loose lips sink ships! Also be sure to get PPTs from direct competitors, especially from their “new” speakers, who tend to want to impress and often include more information than they should. Also, some speakers don’t provide the conference organizer with copies of their PPTs. Don’t let that stop you! What do you think that pocket camera is for?

So it’s obviously quite easy for those of you not in the industry to tell those who are by their inane grins and furtive expressions. It’s similar to those sales folks at trade shows, armed with barcode scanners, whose first line of eye contact is to your nametag. I know that’s what nametags are for, but look me in the eye when you start talking to me. You’re not there just to prove to your head of sales that you’ve got some prospects.

Sales Training – Not really, but sorta. If you’re breaking into an aspect of search marketing that is somewhat new to you, pay attention to how your better versed competition explains themselves, their company and services, I mean advice, during presentations. The fact is, metaphors, analogies and a good story can go a long way towards explaining complex or unique SEM topics when you’re selling. Why bother making up your own when you can steal (argh, I mean borrow) them from the competition? (Reworked with your own information of course.)

Now you’d like to think you’re going to come away from a conference knowing slightly more than you did on arrival. And that goes for everyone. But I know how important it is to use stories and metaphors when talking about to the uninitiated about all that stuff that flies over their heads. Remember – your clients aren’t stupid because they don’t understand your gobbledygook. It’s our job to translate this stuff into understandable palatable chunks.

It’s a Vacation! – Convincing your boss that the next Search Marketing conference will infuse your brain with super secret SEO ninja knowledge might just get you closer to that partially all expenses paid mini-vacation to New York, Seattle, San Jose, Stockholm (don’t you have clients with Swedish sounding names?), Bejing or even London. Pull that off and you’re famous. At least until you get fired because you went to too many parties and didn’t pay attention during sessions.

I would never be so unkind as to ask where exactly Pittsburgh ranks on the vacate-ometer, but the Hilton Garden Inn looked mighty fine as I drove past on my way to Ikea last weekend. Personally, I’m more excited about this type of knowledge reaching slightly different areas. This kind of thing isn’t just for those coast-dwellers y’know.

If there are any other secret benefits you can come up with, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Looking at the iPhone as an alpha, it’s a heck of a feat. Gorgeous. Groundbreaking. Full of promise and a lot of delivery. Unfortunately, we’re paying for a full-release version.

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Obviously Google gets on with Apple a whole lot better than it does with Ebay, unless their last attempt at crashing a party left them smarting like a roundly spanked buttock. It seems everybody has managed to do everything with the iPhone this weekend apart from marry it or eat it. There’s also been an inordinate amount of mindless guff spouted about it; and all the while Google has been quietly going about its business building the mother of all telecommunications infrastructures.

As Apple changes the world one slogan at a time, Google does it in a state of denial. Here’s a few interesting snippets from an even more interesting article relating to what they’re putting together:

“They have enough potential capacity to compete in wholesale telecommunications or as an Internet service provider,” says Eric Schoonover, senior analyst at Washington, D.C.-based TeleGeography Research, a consultancy that tracks fibre holdings.

The company [Google] is estimated to have between 40 and 70 data centres filled to the brim with computing and storage power, with at least five new facilities under construction in the United States alone. By comparison, Canada’s second-largest telephone company Telus Corp., has eight.

The search company is building its data centres next to hydroelectric facilities in order to feed their huge power needs, he said. All that capability will soon be turned against telephone and cable companies, which is why firms such as Telus and Bell need to merge — they’ll need the extra girth to mount a defence against Google.

“They’re looking to come in and completely usurp the telcos at both the business level and the consumer level,” Mr. Entwistle said.

It’s quite obvious that Google are up to something and I’m presuming they aren’t acquiring all this infrastructure just to do a spot of telco-squatting. And have Google just bought out GrandCentral, a voice communications management solutions company, because they had a bit of spare cash lying about?

It could be said that if Apple is trying to change the world then Google is trying to take it over. I’m not averse to a universe dependent on all things Google and I’m sure they might even make quite a decent fist of being a telecommunications behemoth. I know that I’d rather sign with them than AT&T or Time Warner.

You must, however, question what is going on in principal.

We got a bit of a taste of the bitter pill that could be Google world domination over the Sicko debacle this week. They started by offering to counter Sicko searches with health industry ads, then they got called on it, then they went into full retraction mode sending employees off to watch Michael Moore’s film – I sincerely hope during work hours.

But, thinking on, Google world domination would have none of the three elements above. They’d simply be doing it all in secret and manipulating results to show the highest bidder. Google has every right to have somebody make a mistake on one of their blogs and retract it after other forces on the internet kick up a bit of a stink. So long as we have an internet along those lines then I think we’re going to be just fine.

I bet Google just wished they could hire somebody with a Phd in common sense.

Everything you ever wanted to know about internet marketing but you were way too afraid to ask (or just couldn’t be bothered) can be found lurking in this complete A-Z of internet marketing terms glossary.

Honestly, it really does have everything in there; and anything it doesn’t you can ask about in the comments.