This week I'm at SES San Jose covering the conference for SEOmoz. I'm a one woman show so I'm putting my multi-tasking skills to the test! Obviously I can't make it to every session, or cover every track. Plus there are many others live blogging the event (Check out Bruce Clay's coverage and Search Engine Roundtable). So, how can I make sure the SEOmoz community gains as much information as possible from this conference? Reuse other people's content, that's how!People are tweeting from the conference sessions using either #SESSJ or #SES hashtags and giving up some great information they're learning. Now, you could fish through the results yourself or you can read through the tweets below and learn some great, actionable information. I looked for tweets that gave us something new or reminded us of things we often forget.
So here goes...
(These are more or less in order by time but a few may be out of order... don't shoot me. :))
Overheard at SES San Jose on Tuesday, August 11, 2009
imeldak: Theme already developing at this year's #SESSJ conf: It's not about the tools & technology. It's about understanding the users & peopSearch: Where to Next?
Pabu01: #sessj PevanLI: From our research for Toyota it shows that adding mobile to your online campaign provides more than 40%lift on branding.
BrentDPayne: Go Stephan Spencer!! Just touched on the point of needing critical mass to get proper inbound links. He kicks ass. #ses
SearchQueen: Interesting that the discussion about the future of search keeps coming back to the enormous impact of social media. #sessj
How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community
The Next Wave for Online Video
waworld: Video SEO Tip, take one of your best ranking pages and add embed a YouTube video to receive additional benefit #sessj
michaelbonfils: YouTube reports 1700% increase in mobile video uploads. There is a hidden opportunity here! Think about it. #sessj
coreyperlman: nobody makes it to the end of a video. don't put call to action at the end. Gregory Markel #SESSJ
The View From the CMO's Office
matthiasblume: "50% of today's CMOs were brought in to fix a broken marketing machine." - Liz Miler, VP, CMO Council #quote #sessj #sescmo
Creating a Web Analytics Culture
How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine
aspeyer77: Conversions > site > sale are more important than impressions. do what it takes to turn an impression into a conversion. #SESSJ
matthacker: From Avinash... Bounce Rate = I came, I puked, I left #sessj
AdvertisingGeek: @avinashkaushik is hilarious. First rule of paid search: Don't suck! #SESSJ
Turning the Social Web Into Real ROI
Garrett66: Best facebook ads have questions and/or are written in the third person. From facebook's @tkendall. #sessj
aspeyer77: FB Fan page can be as successful as websites, ignoring social media is not an option #sessj
Don't Call it a Comeback: Semantic Technology and Search
SEO Tools of the Trade: What's in YOUR Toolbox?
leeodden: @graywolf: use SEO/social tools that automate & fit w/in your workflow, enable multiple accts & are SE compliant #sessj
JohnWEllis: Quarkbase.com, ChangeDetection.com, CrazyEgg, BackType, Twitter Hawk and Google Alerts - recommended by @graywolf #sessj
JohnWEllis: "Big difference between data and wisdom" - @bruceclay #sessj
Extreme Makeover: Conversion Edition
shawnafennell: Make sure to test your website on Safari! Its gaining usage with the Iphone expansion from @thegrok #ses
CopperConf: #sessj - Extreme site makeover - Don't confuse your customers, make the process of buying clear and easy. - https://bit.ly/VahSH
warpdesign: Leverage the "statistics and Data" tab on others YouTube videos to gain insight on how/when they go viral #SESSJ
belasco: Lots of talk about conversion attribution and assist keywords at #sessj
The Adaptive CMO: A New Paradigm for Digital Marketing
schachin: Brian Featherstone's 4 P's Price, Place, Product, Promotion - Changes now to Experience, Every Place, Exchange, Evangelism #SESSJ
Launching a Global Website
michaelbonfils: in some situations, English translated content does not make sense, according to @turbotodd. For example, technical manuals. #sessj
schachin: Google is always asking for your permission when using your location for local search - WILL NEVER auto do it without permission. #SESSJ
Whew!! That's a lot to take in. There were tons of retweets, promotional tweets and fun/goofy tweets that I left out. Perhaps I'll put a compilation together of the fun tweets. For example, the biggest drama going on today was the fact that Matt Cutts got a new haircut and no one recognized him for quite a while. Not necessarily actionable information, but definitely fun to stay on top of.
Please let me know if there are any specific tweets I may have missed. See you all again tomorrow!
PS. Please say hi if you see me! I can sometimes be shy. Unfortunately I don't have yellow shoes or anything like that, so it will be like picking a needle out of a haystack. :)
I'm glad that you included some tweets that actually give out actionable advice: My overriding memory of many of the SEO events I've ever been to is basically summed up here.
It's so easy to disguise fluff as good advice. To pick on one example here, what exactly does 'do what it takes to turn an impression into a conversion' mean? A thirteen year old can tell you that there's a difference between knowing that his mother is home and has £10, and convincing her to give it to him. I hope this advice wasn't handed out in a CRO session, or that it was expanded upon: you show up at things like this for experts to tell you a) how best to turn impressions into conversions, and b) how to properly track them. You shouldn't be in marketing if you don't already know the difference between visits and sales.
Believe me, as the person who's responsible for the former rather than the latter, I know the frustration: Once I've made sure the kid's mum is home, I rely on someone else to convince her to give up her £10, and I hope that person is hearing better advice at marketing shows that just this.
I've simply been to too many marketing conferences where the level of depth would have stopped right here. Can't say, obviously, whether it did in this case.
Sometimes I wish I were a marketer or a SEO proper. Being a project manager, no one will ever have any budget to send you to these types of events. I'll just sit here, read about an awesome event and update my project plan. Sniffle.
while following @mattcuts i saw
"
Heading into #sessj now. Just let you know, my hair's a little... different. I lost a bet with some other Googlers. :)
"
so twitpic us a picture of the hair when you find him
its like actually being there, for those of us stuck in London :(
(just without the good weather).
thanks for all these gems.
any tips for how to convince the boss to pay for trip to ses next yr ? :)
right? i never get to go to these things.
lame :(
I'm dizzy now... restructuring my whiteboard and keeping track of the tweets. Thanks for putting this together
Hi Jennita, Thank you so much for the round up, been wanting to catch up on whats going on there. Wish I could have made it, but it was just to pricy to fly from Australia...
Cheers again!
What a great post Jennita. I'm a bit overwhelmed right now trying to keep up with the flow of SEO info in my RSS feed much less on twitter, and you just saved me a bunch 'o time.
Thanks!