This past Wednesday, October 3rd, Moz invaded Milwaukee for a Mozcation. Our gracious host, Kyle Faber from Regal Creative helped set us up at that Harley Davidson Musuem and show us the best beer.
Here are some highlights:
1. Making New Friends!
Mozzers are truly the best people in the world. We love the opportunity to meet with all of you. Whether we're talking shop or sampling local brews, we couldn't ask for better company. You rock! Seriously, the photos say it all.
2. The Amazing Presentations!
First, we wouldn't have been anywhere without our wonderful emcee, Chiaryn Miranda, one of our Help Teamsters. She kept the event flowing.
Brittan Bright
Our first presenter of the night was iAcquire's Brittan Bright, Director of Client Strategy. Her talk, "From Mess to Success: A Case Study of Cross Discipline Collaboration Done Right," showed how much more successful we can be when we work together. As an Account Director for Organic Search at Mindshare, Brittan's team was brought in to collaborate with BBH & Edelman to essentially pull of an Online Reputation Management (ORM) campaign to help the term "Susan Glenn" appear to be an organic internet cultural phenomena.
Jamie Steven
Next up was SEOmoz's Chief Marketing Office, Jamie Steven. His talk "Technical Skills for Marketers" launched his newest endeavor, Technical MKTG. There's been a lot of talk of roles like Growth Hackers, Marketing Ninjas and Technical Marketers in the past year; regardless of if you subscribe to these labels, technical marketing skills are becoming a requirement to be a successful in online marketing. The marketers who know SQL, can write code or use PivotTables in Excel will be the most desirable and productive individuals in our industry. Jamie discussed the technical skills every online marketer should be developing along with strategies and resources on how to get there.
Luke Summerfield
Kicking off our Milwaukee community speakers was Luke Summerfield, Inbound Marketing Specialist at Savvy Panda. With his talk, Mobile Search Skyrocketing? Let's Optimize and Capture!, he dug into mobile search exploding in popularity (growing x4 times since 2010). Additionally, Google predicts that in 2013 more people will use their mobile devices to get online than PC’s. It’s critical that businesses do not ignore this growing trend and act now to position themselves above their competition in SERPS and with usability. Luke explored some key techniques and ideas for optimizing for both mobile search and the mobile user experience.
Victor Drover
Up next, Victor Drover, Founder and CEO of Anything Digital, dove into "How to SEO Optimize a CMS." He discussed the common SEO problems that many content management systems face and provide practical advice for the three most popular open source platforms, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
Tom Snyder
Our final Milwaukee community speaker was Tom Snyder, Founder, President, and CEO of Trivera Interactive. His talk, "How Social Media Impacts Your SEO," covered the latest updates to Google's Algorithms that base your SERP position on how much people like your site. Success in social media is based on how much people like you. Figuring out how to accomplish both provides you with a powerful combination to help both your SEO and social programs succeed.
Rand Fishkin
Last, but not latest, was our CEO, Rand Fishkin discussing "The Big Picture of CRO." He dove into how just testing a button might not be your conversion rate optimization problem. There's a lot more factors when a user buys something from you or does what you want them to on your website.
3. Roger Learned to Ride a Motorcycle
Mozcation Milwaukee took place at the Harley-Davidson Museum. So what better place to learn how to ride! (Poor Nick Sayers, who volunteered to join him.)
If you missed out on the fun, we recorded it just for you! (Sadly, we had some technical issues and missed the first few minutes.)
And there were a couple great wrap-up posts from the Milwaukee community:
#Mozcation in Milwaukee – A Fantastic Success! by Kyle Faber
What I Learned on SEO Mozcation in Milwaukee by Susan Spaight
For those of you who are interested in bringing a #Mozcation to your town, check out what Kyle and his Milwaukee compatriots built to lobby for their town. And I'd suggest starting to build your city's efforts in anticipation of 2013 nominations! See you soon in your city, Mozzers.
Oh man, this was a great event! We had 250+ people attend, the venue (Harley Davidson Museum) was just fantastic - and the community was truly buzzing!
Big thanks to the entire SEOmoz team who was instrumental in getting this setup. Big thanks to the Milwaukee community for "rocking the vote" and convincing Rand and the crew to come to the Midwest (it may have helped that Rand loves the Packers). And a big thanks to all who came and made the event what it was - which was awesome.
Maybe we can convince them to come back here again sometime soon... Who knows, we've got whole year to plan something epic :D
Cheers!
We're thrilled that the event was so successful, and hope that all you who met up can continue that vibe of togetherness for awesome SEO. :)
Thank you for being so instrumental in getting us there and lobbying for Milwaukee. We had a great time!
Amazing events I like that fist pic with Rand, thanks for sharing all slide-shares presentation with us and videos with us. Mobile SEO growing fast so this is bets to improve mobile traffic. Your all technical marketing tips and how to improving conversion rate is really good. Thanks this will sure help me to optimize my site and improving conversions.
I must admit I was missing the Rand's MozCation crazy expression :)
Mozcation face is the best!
Seriously guys. It was a great time. It really brought the Internet marketing community of Milwaukee together in a positive way. My favorite part was snapping pics with Rand, chatting with the husband and wife Model Battleship builders, and hanging with the moz crew at Bar Louie afterwards. ~ Scott Offord ~ @offordscott
It's always a pleasure and a huge compliment to SEOmoz to let us non-attendees "participate" through detailes blog posts with the presentations, links, videos ...
Thumb up!
Hah! Cool shot on first pic! :) I assume this event was very funny.
Go Packers!
Just makes me jealous most Mozzers are back home across the pond. Let's do Melbourne Moz. :)
Another vote for a Moz event in Australia, any state will do!
I think there would be a rush for all of us to come to Australia. :) You should definitely start working to lobby for Melbourne so you're ready when we open 2013 nominations.
This looked like so much fun, I wish I could have attended. I really really want you guys to come to Raleigh, NC or Virginia Beach, Virginia sometime soon!
When we open up 2013 nominations, you should lobby for #Mozcation in either of those places. I wouldn't object to visiting Raleigh. :)
(Not hating on Virginia Beach, I've just spent a lot of time there.)
I just loving Rand in a Packer jersey and Roger on a Harley!!! Woohoo! I'm originally from the Milwaukee area. I didn't know about the Mozcation, or I would've traveled down for it!
The Milwaukee Mozcation website is uber impressive: https://www.milwaukeemozcation.com. Well done, Regal Creative! It certainly makes for some hot competition to get a Mozcation in Minneapolis!
Kyle and the rest of the Regal Creative team did an amazing job on that site!
Great event! It was great to meet so many local SEOs and marketers. It was great to spend so much time talking with Kyle and Andrew from Regal Creative and also Scott Offord from the Orion Group. Thanks so much for putting the Mozcation site together and making all of this happen. Also, a special thanks to everyone else in the Wisconsin SEO community for supporting the drive for Milwaukee Mozcation. Thanks!
Glad to hear that you had a great time. We hope that your Milwaukee community can continue to meet up and talk about SEO and more. :)
Awww....Roger on a Hog, that's priceless! Wish I could have been there for this Mozcation. I lived in Milwaukee from 1992-95 and loved the city. Presentations were top-notch as always. I wish my town could get a Mozcation, but given that Olympia is only a couple hours away from Seattle, I doubt that's gonna happen. The up side is I will always get to go to MozCon :-)
Thanks for sharing the presentations and great job everyone.
You could come to MozCon. :)
We're not opposed to having a Mozcation in Olympia. You should lobby for it come 2013 nominations.
Really used that CRO slide by rand. neat work
I love the Roger on a Motorcycle pic :)
I participated in Mozcation contest and somehow lost it (no problem!) but this feature of putting in live on live stream is amazing… I literally stay up the whole night (my time) and was listening to every speaker and I must say the content was fresh and very very interesting…
I really like the presentation by Savvy Panda and Rand on CRO obviously…
Great stuff and waiting for more mozcations and planning to join all of their through live stream if possible :)
Glad that the streaming made you feel part of the action, even if you couldn't travel that far! We're definitely going to try it again at Portsmouth. :)
There's always 2013!
Hello everyone. I think all guys had great fun their. Keep it up friends.
In the first picture it seems like there is an energy which is coming from somewhere :)
Cool event I have never seen it before very well organized presentation.