Snippits from Search Engine Strategies 2009

From the Search Engine Strategies 2009 Conference, SearchEngineWatch.com featured these video interviews worth snipping.

Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR interviewed:

Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Creative Director, deMib.com
• Get a GOOD, professional photo to post on Twitter.

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz
• Yes, search engine optimization does have a future.
• In search social elements – direct methods of finding information like Yelp, Kayak, Facebook, Twitter – will be coming on strong.
• Expect a significant shake-up in the composition of search marketing firms (consolidation, acquisition, new people venturing forward).
• Some signals suggest that links are no longer the pac-Mac chunk of the pie chart of the algorithm or that social search is sharing space with classic SEO.

David Naylor, CEO, Bronco Internet
• Reputation management is a big thing and Twitter is big, so you need to keep ahead of it for yourself and for clients.
• Most people who have twitter also have and blogs. If they have issues with you, try to stop them on Twitter before they get to the blog side.
• Identify the negative things quickly. Take over the reputation management side of things FIRST, because it will control the negativity getting in there.
• Microsoft is the little guy, with Google as the monster; in fairness, Microsoft communicates better with consultants, and they are both business-to-business and business to consumer.

Guy Kawasaki
• Twitter is a great marketing tool for great content.
• The most objective measure is how much you’re retweeted.

Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing, ExactTarget
• The Twiteratti (those operate at the high end of content) will benefit greatly from Twitter.
• Nothing is immune to the rules of the web, and the web increasingly gives control to the consumers.
• I agree with Kawasaki: UNfollow me if you don’t like what I’m doing and saying.
• In the excitement of new medium, we need to keep our eye on good marketing practices.
• Twangst is the angst created when you are away from your iphone or computer and can’t twitter, or when you fear you aren’t tweeting enough.

John Mulligan of SEO-PR interviewed:

Aaron Lazansky-Oliva of Sohnup Industries
• In the next two years the mobile platform will be quite useful for marketing.
• Twitter is a great news aggregator.
• We’ll see great increase in connectivity and marketing ability through browsers on the mobile platform.
• In mobile it won’t be about a lot of content, but toward social media optimization.
• Educate the clientele as to what goods and services can get the word out through globalization and aggregation between different populations and cultures.
• Gain the valuable insights that let me, my company, my colleagues use social media platforms and tools to get the information out there.
• Speaking of hash tags, it’s all relevant that we aren’t putting out garbage.
• Bubbleguru @bubbletweet – tips and tactics for mobile marketing.
• blog@sohnUP.com

Eric Qualman, Global Vice President of Online Marketing for EF Education
• Where is the search world going? Google’s main competitors are Twitter and Facebook.
• Searching for the term “baby carriage” on Google would take about 15-20 hours; but in the future (future is now) with the Beacon tool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon I can search for baby carriages on Facebook and see that 30 of my friends have purchased a baby seat in the last year – and of those 30, 20 have purchased the same baby seat. And, I care more about what my friends think than what Google thinks.
• The best product will win because your friends will have the answer.
• With Twitter, Comcast and Jet Blue are answering frustration tweets within an hour.
• Some people speculate that Google might buy Twitter.
• I crowd sourced to find out which app was the biggest mover in social media, using Twitter and Facebook for voting.. Facebook was the overall winner; YouTube was second.

Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed:

Hollis Thomases, CEO of WebAdvantage.net
• Twitter is great way to communicate with potential and current buyers.
• If you represent the brand, you need to LISTEN.
• Whole Foods has been very informative; they have a reputation for doing good and for customer support and quality – perceptions they are reinforcing with Twitter.
• Be cautious: Twitter handles can be hijacked.
• Key twitter tools include url short names tools that give you deep metrics when used.

Brian Cray of Nearby Tweets
• Nearby Tweets is a new product designed to overcome the chaotic mess that is public Twitter, and which can reduce to a stream of nearby Twitterites.

Michael Evans of The Talent Magazine.
• People are staying home for a “staycation,” and Twitter is a big part of that
• Guy Kawasaki explains how to use Twitter as a business tool.
• Talent has a Twitter account, but is using it lightly for now.
• SEO is a big thing at our company, including landing pages and how to optimize.
• It’s difficult for clients to decide which SEO consultancy is the best.

Rebecca Lieb, eConsultancy, interviewed:

Michel Leconte, SEO Samba
• Syndication is huge in terms of getting the brand out there.
• RSS is good for slicing and dicing content.
• How much should you feed? Full post? Half post? You need a strategy for each blog you are posting; some should be full-feed, some not.
• Work to get technologies like Tweetfeed http://tweetfeed.com/in place.
• Make sure you use a service that gets you some analytics and measurements.
• Get in synch with the news cycle and engage in the discourse.

-- Scrubbed by Marketing Brillo