The Public Media Conference in Boston proved to be one of the most unique audiences I've ever spoken to. Rather than webmasters and business owners, the crowd consisted primarily of reporters, station executives and public media contributors. These folks share the interests and goals of traffic, branding, influence and connection, despite the difference in focus (profit vs. relevance & funding opportunities). In addition to sharing some words on SEO, traffic building and blogging, I also learned quite a bit from sitting in some sessions.
- The first session I attended discussed election coverage and how several media organization have had success using non-traditional formats to make election coverage relevant and valuable to their audiences.
- I heard from a former political consultant to Gerald Ford about a movement called Unity '08 that seeks to draft a bi-partisan President/Vice-President combination for the White House in 2008. It's certainly a noble effort, and one that will be interesting to follow - the speaker himself, Doug Bailey, certainly had an exceptionally insightful view of politics and media, a rare quality.
- Possibly the most interesting session I saw was on "Gaming the News" - creating online games that would entice audiences and invite viral sharing - sounds a lot like linkbait :) There's a few examples that are worth mentioning - Games from the Gotham Gazette, the Airport Security game from Persuasive, Minnesota Public Radio's Fantasy Legislature - a great concept, well executed.
Sadly, I didn't get to see more as I had to run to catch a plane shortly after my session. I did, however, make the acquaintance (and, I hope, made a friend) of Henry Copeland from Blogads.com. Henry's a very smart guy - someone who "gets" the web and is impressively self-effacing about his network's strengths and weaknesses, which makes him a very easy to like fellow. If I can get some of his time, I might ask him a few relevant questions for the blog in the near future.
BTW - Many thanks to Kevin Dando of PBS for the invitation to speak; I hope that my participation was valuable.
UPDATE: For those seeking a copy of my presentation, you can find it here - https://moz.com/2007/bostonseo.ppt (right click and "save as" to download).
Rand,
sounds like it was a very interesting time. While I'm sure you were happy to be heading back west, too bad you didn't have more time to sit in on some more sessions.
Seems like the traditional media has followed the typical response to the web as most businesses do to new things....
But now it also seems like the traditional media is starting to wake up to the fact that the web doesn't have to merely be an online version of what they have already, that it doesn't have to be a threat, and that they can actually become even stronger by using the web as an additional tool... offering unique, extended coverage and community elements.
Rand, next time you're in Beantown let me know.
I was very close by but looks like you needed to catch aplane afterwards anyways.
Very interesting. I really wish I could attend more of the conferences out there. I knew when I was three and people asked what I wanted to be when I grow up that I should have said "I want to be Rand!" Plus that whole Astronaut thing never panned out for me.
Nice Rand looks like it was a good conference. Can't wait to hear about Rebecca's first presentation. :)
Actually, I think her presentation is coming up for a different event....
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The Airport Security game is hilarious. I am intrigued to watch the way that traditional media has been interacting with the web sphere. I recently watched an entire episode of “Heroes” directly off the ABC site. They cut it into 6 parts and had one 30 second commercials at the divisions – it was a surprisingly transparent process. Or the New York Times with their “Times Select” abstracts to bait online subscriptions.
We are likely coming into a period where offline media companies are going to increase their online content and distribution.
I went for almost 2 years with no tv. I still had shows I wanted to watch, lost for instance, that at first I downloaded, then watched on dailymotion, then the networks opened up to the idea and I could watch on their site. I didn't mind the ads at all -- I got to watch the new episodes a day after they aired, which is about as quick as you could find them through not so legal channels anywhow.
My gf just moved in with me and brought along her big tv, so now I could watch my shows as they air, but I'm stubborn -- I like watching when I want, not when they schedule it. I've always thought that the networks should be (and probably are) testing people like me to see how they can best reach me.
I don't know if I'll ever go back to watching tv. Though having it there does mean I can open up my box of dvd's, including my extensive westerns collection.
Any one know how much is spent on SEO for elections? Does this get reported? It'd be interesting to see if there's a topic out there like "pro life" or "border fence" that a candidate wanted to be ranked no 1 for...
My guess would be not much (I am making this up, but it's probably true :). From my limited experience with a candidate in 2006 - SEO was not even on their to-do list. Part of it was the lack of budget (believe it or not), part was lack of education about it. But I think it heavily depends on a campaign manager. I just don't think there are too many of the managers out there that have funds and/or inclanations to invest in SEO. I hope I am wrong.
Many of the politicians that intend to run for President '08 are probably already looking into reputation management and fire control for their image on the web.
Exellent point. At the "bigger" levels, I'm sure there is a much greater, active participation.
Whether we are there yet or not may be up in the air, but I think in the near future, especially big money campaigns, we'll start to see a monitoring team that keeps an eye on any news or references online, an optimization team that works to develop content to pull key searches or as damage control.
No doubt, especially at the "street team" level, we'll probably see more "guidance" as to building links, link baiting, as they tap into key online supporters to hit the forums, blogs, as well as any sites or blogs they themselves have.
Local, smaller campaigns are just challenging due to more limited budgets as well as shorter time frames or having existing sites to work with.
Actually, my latest client was running for an open state Supreme Court position. This was primarily a design/hosting project, but we also ran some AdWords for a couple weeks.
Due to the nature of the content, everything was placed on the site directly with no "SEO" tweaking. So the focus on the actual site for SEO was primarily limited to good, SEO focused design, rather than direct SEO.
This was of course very challenging due to the short timeframe... fairly new domain and an entirely new website. Both of the other candidates had websites that were older and more established to much older and much more established.
As for SERPs ranking though, I felt we did excellent coming up for what we felt were "important" search terms. Was even getting some good placement for searches that didn't include anything about my client, but referenced one of the other candidates. But those searches were also much more volatile in movement, not surprisingly.
There was also no direct link building in the project.
I would say, as eSherpa mentions, budget is a tough issue. Most of the focus is on more traditional means... flyers, radio, print, and just in person expenses.
That isn't to say that there aren't huge expectations. There was certainly a fair amount of educating on search ranking. I think, with no offence intended to anyone outside the industry, the general public is a long way from truly understanding how ranking works. There is definitely a sense of "We want to rank for this. And why aren't we ranking for that? How soon will we be showing up?"
Not surprisingly, this was a real quick reminder that there is an expectation of rank in many people's minds. It is very challenging for those outside of SEO to grasp why it may take awhile before they see results and how some other site could rank instead of or above them for a search that they feel should be "theirs."
For all that was achieved in less than two months time, I really couldn't have expected better and was even surprised at some of the placements achieved.
That said, I wouldn't say that the other candidates sites were overly well done or optimized.
Would I did feel was done really well, and ties into the general media convergence, was how we used the site as an extension of other efforts. The candidate was going to be somewhat limited on to how much meet-and-greet and personal connecting was going to be possible in a limited amount of time, so a big focus was made in all media and appearances to drive people to the website where they could get far more information than we could ever deliver through any other medium.
I do not know any dollar amount, but after speaking with my friend who ran the Political Google Bombing campaign over the 2006 elections, he mentioned that very little money was spent, and that which was, was spent only through PPC.
I think it would be a bit difficult and somewhat ineffective for most candidates outside of those running for President, Senate or Congress because most of the time, it is a very short period between announcing their intentions of running for a position and then the election itself. Unless you get started early, say a year or more, you may not really have the time for SEO to properly kick in. I imagine some politicians already do it, but not sure if it would have its own budget. Probably just snuck in inside of a "Campaign Website" budget. Interesting question though BudC!
It's surprising how under utilized organic SEO is -- well, as far as I can discern. With today's voting blocks and more and more people voting based on a single issue, why wouldn't you go online and try to rank for anti-abortion, anti-immigration and become THE candidate in that manner. I'm sure more and more people are using the internet to learn more about a candidate, so why not try this (I'm sure because I FEEL it's true, not because I looked it up anywhere, thanks Colbert)?
Hey, if any candidates out there want to try this out, shoot me an email! We'll get you all the gun toting yahoos, overprotective moms, religious zealots, anti-religious zealots, spankers, huggers, left-wingers, right-wingers, right-right-wingers, pinko's, fascists, well you get the picture -- we'll get them on your site!
The Rimm-Kaufman group looked at the use of paid search in close US Senate races for 2006:
The study didn't report total spending, but it did indicate there's plenty of room for more sophistication. We'll likely see that with the 2008 race.