Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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Can You Still Afford to Ignore Blogs and Social Media?

by Mack Collier

So is all this blogging and social media stuff really just a fad?� Is it going away?� Or will most companies need to invest in the coming years in using these tools to better connect with their customers?� Thanks to many recent surveys and studies, the future of social media for businesses is becoming much clearer...

At SBMU last week during my Blogging for Business session, I referenced a recent survey by eMarketer that stated that blog readership AND blog creation by the US internet population would increase by 33% by 2012.

Read that again: Blogging and blog readership are predicted to grow by 33% by 2012.� According to eMarketer, over HALF of the US internet population are already reading blogs on a regular basis.�

More?� eMarketer also discovered that 55% of Millenials (aged 13-24) and 42% of Gen X-ers (aged 25-41) are reading blogs on a WEEKLY basis.

Ben points to a recent study by Cone Business that found that 93% of respondents believe a company should have a presence in social media, and 85% believe that companies should be using social media to interact with customers. Also, 56% of respondents say they feel better about brands that they interact with online via social media tools.

Finally, this new study from eMarketer finds that customers view company blogs as a better channel for customer service than they do a company website.

What does all this mean to your business?� If your customers are online, especially if they are in the 13-41 age group, they are going to be increasingly using social media tools in the future.� And here's the key takeaway: they are going to expect that you do so as well.� And not only that, they are going to expect you to use blogs and other social media tools to connect with them.

�

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02.10.2008 22:31:00 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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Bloggers Really ARE Talking About Everything...

by Jennifer Laycock

I've been having a grand time reading through Technorati's 2008 State of the Blogosphere. I absolutely love their annual release of information because as both a marketer and a communicator, I love to find out what sends people scrambling for their blog to share their thoughts. This year's report is pretty thorough and has a lot of juicy bits of info that give us insight into the communicators of the web. In this post though, I want to dive into the section that talks about what gets people blogging.

When I talk about blogging or social media in presentations, I tend to include a chart from one of the past Technorati reports.

What Sparks Those Blog Posts?

This image looks at the number of daily blog posts tracked by Technorati from the fall of 2004 to the winter of 2007. The team at Technorati has gone in and added markers to let you see what world events were taking place at different points in time. In some instances, the correlation between posting volume and topic is crystal clear.

During the fall of 2005, there's a sharp drop off in blogging activity. That drop took place in the days leading up to the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. With such a huge portion of the population either preparing for or fleeing from the storm, blogging activity fell sharply. There's then a huge burst in activity immediately after the storm came ashore and a second steep drop off when the levees break and things go crazy.

What really strikes me as telling about the chart though, is the enormous spike in the summer of 2006. Now chances are high if I'd asked you what the hottest blogging topic in 2006 was, you would NOT have said the Israel/Hezbollah conflict. In fact, I'd wager a great deal of you had even forgotten it happened. Yet there were more than 2.5 million posts made when that happened, over half a million more than any other event so far that year.

It's easy enough for us to write blogs off as the sites that talk about singular passions. The mother who blogs about her children, the consultant who blogs business advice, the gossip monger who blogs about celebrity romance. We see blogs as topical and focused...and to an extent they are.

What the latest Technorati data tells us though is that bloggers cover an average of five distinct topics. These topics tend to be related, but they still offer variation.

Here on Search Engine Guide, we blog about search marketing, blogging, social media, viral marketing and even a little bit of usability and site coding. On one of my hobby blogs, I blogged ONLY about bento lunches. On another hobby blog I covered topics like parenting, breast feeding, natural living, organic foods and my faith. While the most successful blogs still seem to focus on pretty tight niches, bloggers are growing and exploring and they're starting to broaden their horizons in order to hold the attention of their readers and themselves.

Bloggers Do Not Have One Track Minds

When Technorati decided to gather data on blog topics, they found further proof that blog topics are diversifying.

Both personal and professional topics are equally popular. Forty percent of bloggers consider their blogging topics outside of these categories. "Other" blog topics include: 2008 election, alternative energy, art, beauty, blogging, comics, communication, cooking/food, crafts, design, environment, Internet/Web 2.0, Jamaica, and media/journalism.

Three-quarters of bloggers cover three or more topics. The average number of topics blogged about is five.

While few people will be surprised to see topics like technology, politics, business, family updates and gaming on the list...there were a few categories that surprised me. I didn't expect to learn that nearly 20% of bloggers regularly blog about religion or that 30% regularly blog about music and film. I also didn't really expect to find personal topics outweighed technology and business, but that's likely just a reflection of the way I view the web.

Which serves as a good wake up call to those of us in marketing.

It's easy for us to focus in on our own little niches and the areas in which we're comfortable. Easy to forget just how many people are out there having conversations on their blogs the same way they'd have conversations around the water cooler or over coffee.

It's something we need to remember as we look to build relationships with bloggers. We need to remember they are real people with varied and in-depth interests. We need to learn to look for cross-over in topics and we need to learn how to approach complimentary blogs rather than limiting ourselves to purely "on topic" blogs when it comes time to seek coverage.

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02.10.2008 18:26:38 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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Radian6 Shines New Light on Social Media Monitoring

by Sage Lewis

After attending SBMU Columbus, Sage discovers the true value of Radian6, a social media monitoring tool. Radian6 provides a pervasive and in-depth picture of social media conversations happening across the entire web. It allows you to track and do analysis on whatever keywords or phrases you choose, so you can monitor your company, your brands, your products and/or your competitors' brands, products, etc. As a higher end tool, Radian6 is not free nor cheap, but Sage feels that it is absolutely worth the value.

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02.10.2008 17:35:26 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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Do SEO Guarantees Protect the SEO or the Client?

by Stoney deGeyter

Several years ago I hired an individual to be a copywriter for me. He'd never worked in the SEO industry before and we had to do quite a bit of training to get him to fully understand how SEO copywriting was different than traditional copywriting. Within three weeks I realized he just wasn't working out and had to let him go. He wasn't the first.

A few months later I noticed a new SEO company appear in our local area. After doing a bit of research I realized that this my former employee. What did he know about SEO? Well, not a whole heck of a lot. But who knows, maybe I was actually able to teach him a thing or two during his three week tenure.

His site offered an ebook he had written titled "19 days to #1", for sale for only $195.95. Yes, that is the actual ad he used to promote the book on his site. I never bought the book though curiosity almost got the best of me once or twice. But I figure that any book promising rankings on AltaVista, Excite and Lycos, even back in 2005, wasn't worth the digital paper it was written on.

But this was back when SEO "Guarantees" were quite commonplace. SEOs would offer ranking guarantees with tight controls to ensure that no matter what happens they can't lose. The client's rarely win, but that should never stand in the way of "success".

Over the last few years most in the SEO stopped offering guarantees. Mostly because they realize that they have no absolute control over the results and that anyone pretending otherwise is either fooling themselves or worse, their clients. An interesting aside, this person's "guarantee" page on the site today is exactly the same as the page that was up in 2005. The only difference is that the phone number changed.

Offering guarantees is kind of like guaranteeing an item will sell for a certain amount at an auction. Without the guaranteer bidding on the item himself it's out of his control... though if he sets the bar low enough the guarantee is certain to be fulfilled.

If you want to read more about why guarantees are lame, you can read my post from a few years agodebunking ranking guarantees. No need to re-iterate that here.

But I guarantee you'll keep reading...

The question for today is, if SEOs can't guarantee rankings, what can they guarantee? That's a tough question, especially if one is trying to be truly honest with their clients. The prospect of offering guarantees means that everybody must be in cahoots as to what that guarantee actually means, and who it really protects.

Let's explore a few different elements that can be offered as part of some kind of SEO guarantee.

Guarantee specific amount of time to work on campaign

The easiest guarantee to provide is one based on hours to be invested into the account. An SEO can charge on an hourly basis, or a fixed amount that is based on the time they feel is needed to optimize the website. In the latter case the SEO would likely not go over the expected number of hours without getting approval and additional payment from the client. The client would also understand that they are paying on a per-hour basis.

Advertising and marketing is more of a creative medium and typically isn't hours based. SEO combines creative with technical so it can make sense make your campaigns hourly based.

Risk for the SEO: The SEOs risk is limited because they are getting paid by the hour regardless of how well the campaign performs. The only thing they have to worry about is having upset clients and/or losing valuable repeat business if they under-estimate the amount of time needed for success and either under-perform or continue to go back to the client for more money.

Risk for the Client: The client is paying by the hour and they simply have to trust that the SEO's work will produce meaningful results. This is difficult at the beginning of the relationship, but once performance starts proving itself this is a good deal for the client as they can continue to expect improving results, so long as the SEO is investing the required time.

Guarantee performance improvements

Another semi-easy guarantee to offer is some kind of loosely defined improvements. These improvements can still be specific enough to satisfy a client, but not so specific that more work has to be invested in measurement than actual SEO. The idea is to assure the client that the SEO's work will help them bring increases to their site. These increases can be in the form of page views, traffic, unique visitors, conversions, growth in ROI, etc.

The guarantee, however, should be satisfactory to the client before signing on the dotted line. Are page views what you are really after? In some cases, yes. But if page views mean nothing and conversions mean everything, then the client will need to make sure that they are being offered improvements in conversions and not page views.

These guarantees are usually be loosely defined in the area of "how much". Often these guarantees provide little more than "more than what you're getting now." That may not be sufficient for the client, however if the SEO can show a pattern of growth in the guaranteed area month over month, then the client can continue to expect virtually unlimited growth.

Risk for the SEO: Some site's require a lot more work and are much more competitive. The SEO should have an idea on whether the improvements are enough to justify the cost and time the client is paying for. They'll also want to make sure that they don't under-budget or they can find themselves investing far more hours and losing money on the account.

Risk for the Client: The client needs to be sure that the expected improvements will be more valuable than the cost of the service. This is somethign they need to work out with the SEO and hope they can both agree. The return on investment must be more than the cost of the service.

Guarantee customer satisfaction

This is isn't always as easy to provide as one would think. Primarily because what satisfies one person will not satisfy another. A customer can be satisfied with results but not with the quality of work. They can be satisfied with the performance of the campaign but not with the customer/client interaction. There are many ways to determine satisfaction and it's all arbitrary and open to individual interpretation.

In order to guarantee customer satisfaction the SEO and the client must first agree on the expectations of the campaign. Without doing this the client is basically giving the SEO a blank check. On the other hand, depending on the expectations, the guarantee may not be much more or less valuable than guaranteeing some vague improvements.

Risk for the SEO: Every SEO wants satisfied customers but they are always afraid of customers who will refuse to be satisfied regardless of how well the campaign is performing. Open-ended customer satisfaction is a recipe for loss. And it's not as if the SEO can take back the service and sell it to another client.

Risk for the Client: The only risk to the client here is not knowing what being satisfied actually means. They need to know what constitutes dissatisfaction in the legal sense (based on the contract) and make sure that their dissatisfaction is justifiable.

Guarantee specific results

Specific results are the most concrete type of guarantee to make but they can also be the most difficult to adhere to. Specific results can be things such as rankings, percentage of growth in traffic or conversions, specific goals that need to be met in the same, or really anything else the client is looking for.

The difficulty in setting specific results is that the SEO must throughly analyze the client's current situation to understand what kind of results they are getting now. They must also analyze the competition thoroughly, the competitive nature of the keywords, the potential traffic volume of the keywords and the current "value" of the client's site in terms of how a search engine would analyze it.

Risk for the SEO: There is a lot of up front research that needs to be performed in order to make accurate predictions. The SEO is also putting their faith in some things that they simply have no control over. How search engines, and even customers respond can rarely be accurately predicted. Also, if the SEO is merely providing recommendations for the client to implement then the guarantee is often subject to all recommendations being performed exactly as specified.

Risk for the Client: If the expected results are clearly set in the contract, the client's risk is minimal. They just need to let the SEO do their job to get those results. One downside can be that once the expected results are achieved the SEO may stop working as diligently on the campaign until it comes time for contract renewal when new goals will be set. Another can be that the recommendations put forth by the SEO my boost performance in the targeted area while reducing performance in another.

Looking for the win-win

The key for both the SEO and the client to create a contract that provides a win-win solution. Many times clients look for the win and the SEO gives in to the client's demands in order to close the deal. But ultimately this leads to an unhappy SEO who may not be investing adequate time because they feel like they are in a money-losing situation.

On the other hand, the client needs to avoid any SEO looking for the win when clearly the client loses, such as those who offer guaranteed rankings. These so-called SEOs are just out to make a quick buck and will do so by duping businesses out of their hard-earned investment dollars. Unfortunately, these types are in every industry, not just SEO.

A guarantee is only as good as the details determined in the contract. We like to think that we are being guaranteed something of value but that isn't always the case. Businesses looking to invest in SEO must not get caught up in making sure they get a guarantee.

Those that don't offer any kind of guarantee whatsoever often do the best work. They understand the nature of online marketing. They do their best, set expectations and keep the client informed of the progress along the way. While not all guarantees are "bad" the client simply needs to know what any guarantee means and whether it's really a guarantee that protects them or the SEO.

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02.10.2008 17:31:28 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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In Blogging You Need Only Think Small to Get Big Results

by Karri Flatla

When I started a blog on my website a few months ago I felt overwhelmed by the sudden responsibility to post fresh content often. It was as if the minute I created a section on my website called "Blog" I was inaugurated into a writer's hell where I felt both stumped and compelled to write all at the same time, all of the time. Then I realized that I was missing the point of blogging, which is to keep a lively conversation going (even if it's sometimes only between you and the WordPress Dashboard). And if you're a decent conversationalist, you can get more than decent results.

For example, a few months ago I blogged a little ditty about my decision to outsource all of my company bookkeeping. The post was exactly 222 words of candid banter about how incredibly silly it was of me to have held on to a task as hideous tedious as bookkeeping for so very long. And how truly valuable it is to my business, and my sanity, to have talent to outsource such tasks to.

A journalist picked up that post about two weeks later while researching a story she was writing about small business outsourcing. She contacted me through my website and arranged to interview me by phone. The result? Some rather invaluable publicity in a highly regarded business magazine.

What's ironic is that the blog post took just minutes to write. I had something to say that I wanted to share with other entrepreneurs. Simple huh?

Okay, there is maybe a little more to it, but not much. If you want your own blog posts to get noticed by journalists, prospective clients or whomever, there a few blogging basics you should stick to:

• Post titles should become page titles. Most blogging platforms do this by default but make sure. And make sure your "blog name" or company name isn't at the beginning of the title tag but that the individual post title is.
• Per above, write descriptive titles for your posts using phrases that someone might use to find information on the topic you're writing about.
• Keep it conversational but proofread for brevity and clarity. Again, no need to be Hemingway here. Just get to the point and make sense doing it.
• Be concise. The most difficult part of blogging is writing with focus, even granularity. You can write about big picture stuff, but write about it in a series of blog posts as opposed to one gargantuan post.
  
• For goodness sake, make it easy to leave a comment and just as easy to find your contact information should someone want to send you an email or inquiry.
  

That's really about it. Sure, there are lots of nitty gritty things you will want to do to push your blog closer to your audience, but if you can't get a grip on a simple, easy to manage strategy for posting content that is audience aware and search friendly, nothing else you do will help much anyway.

It starts with you.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. Remember to be yourself. Don't be or try to be something you're not. That's boring and boring is bad. (And if you're a boring person, uh, it might be time to rethink some things, existentially speaking.) Being yourself is the most fundamental strategy for publishing a blog that people actually read and care about enough to act on.

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02.10.2008 06:45:46 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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A Great Little Tutorial on How to Search

by Jennifer Laycock

We spend a lot of time here on Search Engine Guide talking about how to reach your target audience via the web. We talk about search engine marketing, paid search advertising, social media, link building and everything else that's likely to help customers find their way to your web site. What we don't often do is give you a reminder of how to find information yourselves.

Since putting yourself in a searcher's shoes is often the best way to consider how to meet their needs, I thought it might be time for a little reminder.

Thankfully, the good folks at Common Craft just happened to have turned out a great little video explaining how to search the web.

Even if you think you know how to search, it's worth taking a minute or two to watch the video. Sometimes we make search engine optimization so much more difficult than it actually needs to be. Ultimately, it's about understanding what people are looking for and the fairly common sense way that engines try to serve up good results.

So get out there, play with your copy and get descriptive. Then go snag yourself some more links and keep rolling.

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01.10.2008 22:05:01 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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The Shortest, Simplest, Most Effective SEO Book You Can Buy for $25

by Jennifer Laycock

There are a million and one books and ebooks out there claiming to teach you the secrets of search engine marketing these days. Some are excellent, some are passable and some are downright bad. The best of these books are the short and sweet ones. The books that help you get moving instead of trying to teach you each and every bit of information you could ever care to know about SEO. My friend Matt McGee just launched his ebook this week and at $25, it's an absolute steal.

When Matt sent me out a copy of the ebook a few months back to preview, I only had a chance to skim through it. It's an expanded version of the fantastic blog post he made last summer called "How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes." The original post was one of my favorites last year, and the expanded version he's used for the ebook does an incredible job of fleshing out the points.

I've just finished rereading the book this morning. At 20 pages, it's a pretty quick read. While the book won't take you to the top of the rankings if you're in a competitive industry, it's about the best SEO primer I've come across in terms of helping you learn how to make basic changes to your site. If you're a small business competing in a niche, or a local company looking for a leg up, I can almost promise that following the advice in the book will earn you your money back ten to one hundred times over.

You can buy the book on Matt's site using a credit card or PayPal. Again, it's just $25. That's less than it will cost you to pick up a pizza and a movie this Friday night. Why not plan on peanut butter and jelly and a good hour of reading so the next week, you can pick up some prime rib?

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01.10.2008 21:02:18 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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A Giant Goody Bag of Internet News

by Sage Lewis

Sage packs this week's In the News video full of Google, Facebook, MySpace, Microsoft and more. You'll have to watch the video for the full scoop, but here's some highlights. According to Coneinc.com Americans not only expect companies to have a social media presence but 60% of Americans already interact with companys on social media websites. Marketing Pilgrim reports that MySpace is still number one with its 67.5% market share to Facebook's 20.56%, even though Facebook showed a 50% growth. Look for great conversation and information about Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter, dynamic vs. static URLs, audio indexing of videos and other Google innovations.

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01.10.2008 19:25:59 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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Making Site Search Work for Your You (and Your Visitors)

by Stoney deGeyter

Back in August of this year, while at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, I sat in a session where one of the speakers talked about site search. He said something that I fundamentally disagree with but it got me thinking about why you should or should not implement a search feature on your own site.

I believe that implementing site search is smart for large sites, but only if you can be sure it works nearly perfectly. On the other hand, the speaker in this session (and I completely forget who it is) said that, for analytical purposes, every site should implement site search, even if it doesn't do a good job. This is what I fundamentally disagree with.

I'll agree that there is a wealth of information you can get from analyzing your site search usage, but I don't think it's wise to trade usability for data. Data is wonderful--and necessary--to help improve site usability, but data has to be more than just data, it has to be used to improve what's wrong with your site, not just get information.

According to this presenter, site search provides good keyword data, and it does. But if your site search blows you're doing yourself more harm than good, unless you're using your site search data specifically to help you improve your site search function.

When do you need site search and when should you forget about it?

The problem with site search on a lot of sites is that they often don't really work all that well. They'll produce good results for some searches but not for others. I've been on a number of sites testing their search only to find that there are "no matches" for exact searches on products they clearly sell. This is a problem.

When site search is available on large sites, people tend to use them. That's good. But if they search for something you have but the search doesn't find it, they'll assume you don't carry it. What do they do from there? They'll move on to the next site. That's bad.

If a site search can't produce the correct results, you're better off just removing it so your visitors will find it the old fashioned way--through navigation. At least this way you know they'll find what they want.

The first thing to look for in terms of making sure your site search is up to par, is making sure it returns results for products or services you carry. If the search can't find what is there, then either scrap it or fix it. Next, you need to make sure it produces relevant results for slightly incorrect searches. This is means that searching for "winter boots" will return results even if all your products are "snow boots".

This is where keyword research comes in handy (and, yes, site search analytic data, too!) You need to know all the different ways that people search for things that you offer. Then you need to test your site search to make sure it produces results for all the different ways people search for what you offer. Site search can't be so rigid that if something isn't described perfectly that it can't be found. Flexibility is key.

The minimum performance barrier

If you can get your site search to do those two things on a consistent basis then I'd say, go ahead and put it on your site. But, and this is crucial, always be working on improving it. This is where you can really use the analytical data you get from searches being performed. On a regular basis test as many searches as possible and see what the results are.

If you find more than 25% of searches produced incorrect results then you might need to pull your site search down and retool it some more. If you're getting less than 25% failed results then keep tweaking your search feature and eliminate the failures.

This should be a continuous process. Always test using your analytics data, test using keyword research, and test for any new products that are added.

A few other points about what your site search should be able to do. You want to be very accommodating to misspellings. If people are searching for specific product names it's easy to make a mistake and spell it incorrectly. Again, keep an eye on this with your analytics data. And finally, if you don't carry a certain product that was searched, your site search should produce results recommending similar products. Never leave your searchers empty handed.

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01.10.2008 17:45:37 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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Recapping Fall Small Business Marketing Unleashed

by Jennifer Laycock

Just when you think something can't get any better, something sneaks in to surprise you. Back in April when we hosted our first ever Small Business Marketing Unleashed (SBMU) conference, we were astonished at how great the response was. The show was small, but the attendees ranted and raved about the quality of the speakers, the content and the networking.

We took those things to heart when we started planning our second show. While we knew it would be tough to top the environment of the first show, (you can't hardly beat a wooded forest retreat and a full scale replica of the Alamo) we were confident we could iron out the minor kinks, bring on a few more speakers and radically expand our list of workshops.

Bringing it Home

We hosted our first show in Houston, partly because it's Robert's home town. When it came time to decide on a fall location, it was only natural to suggest Columbus...the city Rachel and I call home. I've been wanting to show off my home town for ages, especially to those in the industry who lovingly refer to it as "Ohi-owa" and ask me if it's one of those "middle states." Yes, we're deep in fly-over country, but that's only because folks have no idea what they're missing.

Of course one of the top reasons to host the show locally was because we knew the perfect spot to kick off our Sunday night Charity Networking Event.

It's Pronounced Koh-Sye, not Koh-see or Cah-see

I must have said that phrase at least a dozen times on Sunday night. I also got to remind quite a few people that our own COSI (Center of Science and Industry) was around long before the popular COSI restaurant chain. No matter how you pronounce it, COSI was clearly the one and only perfect place in town for our show kickoff.

We rented out the Gadgets exhibit and offered up a picnic style dinner of burgers and brats to set the mood for nearly 100 local marketers, small business types and social media mavens to bump shoulders with each other and an inflatable kangaroo. During and after dinner, attendees chatted it up while playing with everything from a giant erector set to a giant ball launcher to a "prove your strength" style contraption that taught the value of the pulley system.

Halfway through the night, we shifted course and gathered everyone together for our second SBMU speed networking event. Even the most shy among us ended up telling me what a great time they had and how many wonderful connections they made. After all, with just 3 minutes to chat, almost everyone can come up with something to say.

We capped off the night with another hour or two of play and a frantic bidding war to win the silent auction items we all had our eyes on. When it was all said and done, everyone walked away happy and COSI's community access fund finished the night about $2250 richer.

Monday

Despite the last busses leaving COSI to head home at 11pm, we had a packed house Monday morning. Even better, everyone was awake and ready to go! Matt McGee, Stoney deGeyter and Matt Bailey kicked things off with a little perspective in their "Common Sense Approach to Online Marketing" session that morning. The goal here was to remind attendees of the basic building blocks of online marketing and to help them understand the need to balance good marketing techniques with the reality of the time and budget constraints faced by small business owners.

Day one was broken up into two tracks; one focused on search engine marketing and one focused on more general online marketing. Our dynamic blogging team of David Wallace and Diane Aull was cranking out recaps like mad. If you missed them, here's a second shot.

Track One

Site Architecture
Creating Great Content
Link Building
Pay Per Click Marketing
Universal Search

Track Two

Building a Community
Social Media Conversations
Blogging for Business
Big Impact Branding for Small Business
Understanding Analytics

While I didn't manage to make it into as many sessions this time around as I did at our spring show, I spent a lot of time listening in doorways. I managed to catch a fascinating conversation in Christina Kerley's Branding session that revolved around the challenges of a company that sells supplements for both people and animals.

I passed by the same room later that day to hear Matt Bailey saying "Ok, if you're an HP laptop user, I want you up here, if you're a Mac user, sit over in this row. Now I need Dell users in the back on the left." I laughed to myself as I realized he was practicing "audience segmentation" before continuing down the hall to listen to Michael Stebbins' brand new session on Universal Search.

While I don't think I made it through a full session (apart from my own) I heard quite a bit of chatter both in the hallways and while talking to attendees at dinner. Pretty much everyone was thrilled with what they'd learned.

On Monday evening, conference attendees strolled across the way to one of my favorite Columbus restaurants, The Polaris Grill. There they were treated to a fantastic sit down dinner, some sumptuous desserts and a variety of games and networking by Will Scott and the great team at Search Influence.

The weather was a sunny 70 degrees, which worked out great for us. Our crew had the grill's beautiful patio all to ourselves. After dining on yummy options like prime rib and grilled salmon, Rachel pulled some teams out of the crowd and let them challenge each other to "giant Jenga."

Tuesday

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends opened up Tuesday morning with the SBMU keynote presentation. Since Anita is one of the foremost experts on small businesses and how they "do their thing," we thought she'd have some great insight into balancing the need to market with the need to run your business.

As a self-proclaimed "one woman publishing empire," Anita knows how to balance. She offered up ten great bits of advice for pushing your business online. You'll find them recapped in Diane Aull's coverage of "How to Drive Business Without Driving Yourself Crazy."

Once Anita had wrapped things up, it was time to switch gears and open up the doors to more classrooms. On day two, we like to get down and dirty with our SBMU attendees and their marketing plans. That means offering up four different workshops at a time to help walk them through the process of building and find tuning their marketing plans.

Diane and David, our fearless bloggers were joined by attendees and Search Engine Guide bloggers Scott Allen and Jackie Baker to turn in coverage for most of the day's classes.

Session One

Local Search
Viral Marketing Workshop

Session Two

On Page SEO Workshop
Copywriting Workshop
Email Marketing
Connecting the Dots with Online Brand Management

Session Three

Blogging Workshop
Usability and Conversion Workshop

Session Four

Podcasting and Videocasting Workshop
Free and Low Cost Tools to Get the Job Done

We'd originally planned on ending the conference with a group Q&A that put all the speakers up on stage while the attendees fired questions at them, but the group was so relaxed and engrossed in conversation over their ice cream, we took a unanimous vote to continue with the mingling instead.

Overall, that's kind of how the conference went. We practiced what my father calls "rigid flexibility." When some Internet access issues caused morning delays, our speakers in the second time slot all agreed to give their audience the chance to go snag lunch and bring it back to the room to keep going.

In fact, I was astonished to see Michael Stebbins' entire email marketing class pause long enough to go pick up a plate of lunch before returning to the room and hunkering down for a session that ultimately lasted almost two hours. After the session I listened as Wayne Small said that session alone was worth the trip from Australia for the conference.

When Mack Collier and Christina Kerley couldn't do as many live blog reviews as they'd planned, they scheduled post-show phone consultations with attendees to make sure they still had time to get as much information as possible to attendees. Of course CK had already bribed her class by passing out chocolate, so she'd already built up brownie points.

Add in the fact that I practically had to pull Debra Mastaler and her class out the door so we could start the workshop after hers and it felt like a pretty successful show.

Doing it All Again

I'm not sure about Robert and Rachel and Vickie, but I'm personally finding our SBMU shows to be a bit addicting. We've got one of the best speaking teams on the conference circuit and every last speaker has commented on the innovative ideas and the fantastic conversation sparked by the crowd we draw. That means we're already in the planning stages for our next show.

For those of you who want to join us the next time around, look for April dates in Houston to be announced in the next month or so. We'll see you at the Alamo!

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30.09.2008 18:51:02 - Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing