There’s only two weeks left to get your early-bird tickets for one of the newest Search Marketing conferences in the country – ionSearch.
Taking place on Wednesday 18th April, ionSearch is a chance to get up to speed with the latest search updates and developments, and to network with some of the most influential and leading professionals (and myself) in the search and social media industry.
The Carriageworks in Leeds is hosting the event, with three suites dedicated to one-to-one sessions and workshops, as well as a large theatre for the main talks.
I’ll be talking in the main auditorium at 11am on ‘Link-building in competitive industries’, where I’ll be covering a wide range of strategies, including social media techniques and manual link-building.
You can also catch me a bit earlier on at 9:55am in the Expert Panels Suite, where I’ll be joining Daniel Bianchini, the Senior SEO Consultant of SEOptimise; Stu Owens, Bloom Agency’s Head of SEO; and Jonathan Alderson, the SEO and Data Insight Manager at Twentysix; to talk about SEO for E-commerce.
With in-depth presentations, master-classes, and a chance to speak to top SEO professionals; ionSearch should be perfect for anyone wanting to learn more about the industry, or perfect their search strategies.
I’ll be around all day in-between talks to chat to you about your SEO needs or answer any questions you may have. Register for your place now to book the early-bird tickets and get £20 off the price.
Branded3′s Head of Search – Tim Grice – gave an interesting talk this morning at the TFM&A event in London. Take a look at Tim’s presentation slides below for some valuable tips and insights into using social media to help your SEO campaigns.
Don’t miss Branded3 tomorrow at the TFM&A event in London, where CEO Vin Chinnaraja, Head of Search Tim Grice and Search Expert Matthew Jackson will be available to offer insights and tips for your campaigns.
Tim will be taking to the stage twice during the event at Earls Court 2 tomorrow, to deliver some expert talks. Firstly, if you get to the event early enough you can catch Tim talking in the Social Media Theatre on ‘How to use social media to improve your SEO’.
This talk is essential for any search enthusiasts wondering how social media affects SEO, and the following topics will be covered:
Maximising link potential through social media
How Social Media & SEO are joined
What is Social Link Building?
Using Twitter to build links and followers
Social media tools and services
And last but not least, our very own award-winning social media phenomenon, Twitition
Head to the Search Marketing Theatre later on tomorrow afternoon at 4pm, to hear Tim’s talk on ‘Advanced SEO Strategies for 2012’.
Tim will cover the following in this talk:
Developing natural link signals
Developing ROI from your SEO campaigns
International SEO
Plus much more…
Come and talk to Branded3 in the VIP area tomorrow, or if you can’t make it – get in touch with us for any SEO or social media advice, or if you’d like to receive the presentation slides.
The next 6 weeks are super busy for Branded3 and I will be speaking at 3 really great conferences in London.
First up is A4U Expo on the 18th & 19th of October where I have an hour to talk about “How to SEO like a super affiliate” which should be great as we have worked and run training for quite a few of the UK’s biggest super affiliate SEO teams so we really know how they work.
At A4U I’m also doing a clinic in the afternoon where you can come along and discuss how to do SEO analysis & link analysis etc.
Then on the 24th & 25th is the excellent Distilled SEOmoz SearchLove event which quite honestly is the most cutting edge SEO event you will ever attend. I’m going to be talking about how we do large scale link-building campaigns.
Finally Conversion Conference on 30th November & 1st December where I’m talking on day 1 with Richard Baxter about SEO and SEM vs. CRO – Tactics for Optimising Both Search & Conversion and then later on in a panel discussion entitled CRO, SEM & SEO – Find the synergies, find the potential! with Stephen Pavlovich & Prashant Puri.
The Conversion Conference are offering 15% off if you use the code BLOGSTORM011
Come and say hello if you are at one of these events!
For anybody interested in attending the excellent SMX Advanced London in May, I have a 15% discount code BLOGSTORM011
This conference has a very interesting session on day 2 where some top SEO’s are given 3 months to transform a site and then present their results. Should be a great session.
Extreme Makeover, The SEO Edition – Is it really possible to take a site from nowhere to top rankings in 3 months? That’s the challenge we issued to each intrepid speaker on this panel, who volunteered to work on a small business or charity website, each in a different niche, that was ranking on page 5 (or worse) on Google for the site’s main search term. The speaker had 3 months prior to SMX Advanced London to work with website and improve SEO rankings, traffic and revenue. Our speakers will reveal what advice was offered, the changes made—and most importantly, the end result.
According to a recent survey from eConsultancy, no less than 83% of in-house marketers said they expected their social media spending to increase over the next year.
And yet at the same time, only 41% of inhouse marketers said they have a strategic plan in place according to this report from Digital Brand Expressions.
It’s a worrying statistic, and it lays bare the struggle that big companies face when it comes to incorporating social media into their marketing and communications strategy. Companies understandably want to get involved in this burgeoning space, and reap the benefits of engaging with current, and potential, consumers through social media.
The risks attached to a poor social media plan
And yet a badly thought out (or non-existent) strategy can do far more harm than big brands realise.
Look at Habitat, who decided they wanted to use social media, but didn’t want to spend much money on it. They tasked an intern with looking after the company’s social media presence. The intern promptly created rather a PR disaster by ‘hashtagging’ a post about Habitat’s current sale with #iranelection. A popular hashtag at the time, but not particularly relevant. The company looked opportunistic and foolish.
However, far more often a company starts out using social media – setting up Twitter accounts, creating Facebook pages, writing company blogs – and then either forget about it or don’t really know what do from there. Apparently, only 25% of corporate twitter accounts actually respond to other peoples’ Tweets. And only 38% of brand Facebook pages actually feature any interaction with or from consumers.
This is still a very new area for large (and perhaps inevitably, slow moving) companies. There will be plenty more unused Twitter accounts set up, and plenty more Habitat-esque faux pas before this is over.
The solution to your problems…?
And that’s where a new conference from a company called Useful Social Media comes in. It is aimed at large brands, and is designed to help them use social media for better marketing and communications. It’s called the Corporate Social Media Summit, and is the first European conference from the company.
In June of this year, they put together a US-version of the show which was enthusiastically welcomed by the corporate social media community:
“I normally find social media events frustrating – they don’t provide content on my level. This event was different. I learned new things…because of the real world experience and expertise.”
Kelly Feller, Senior Social Media Strategist at Intel.
The ‘difference’ that Ms Feller alludes to is in the speaker line-up and focus of the agenda. Every speaker invited to contribute is a senior practitioner working for a large business – these are all corporate speakers, not ‘social media gurus’ and experts from the brand side. Nick Johnson, founder of Useful Social Media, believes this is what made the event so popular in the States
“If you’re a practitioner working within a big business, you’re not neccessarily going to want to hear from agencies and consultants all the time. It is tremendously useful to hear from your peers, from people working in other big brands – who understand where you’re coming from, and have made this work at their own companies. Getting best practices you can use in your own job is really very useful. And that’s exactly what we try to offer.”
Some of the companies sending expert speakers include Dell, Vodafone, Toyota, PepsiCo, Nokia, Honda, First Direct and the airline BMI.
It seemed to work in the US – with a huge 95% of attendees confirmed that the conference had taught them useful strategies and best practice they could take back to the office. The European version of the event is set to deliver just as valuable best practice, insight and assistance for big brands on setting up a social media strategy that will work for them. Some of the companies coming along to learn and network include Diageo, Shell, Royal Bank of Scotland, PokerStars and SEB Bank.
If you would like to learn more about Corporate Social Media Summit – sponsored by Fleishman Hillard and Visible Technologies – then download a brochure. Your brochure will set out the agenda, give you detail on every speaker contributing, and lay out who you’re likely to meet in the audience. You can download one now at http://usefulsocialmedia.com/europe. As an added bonus, Useful Social Media will also send you a free mp3 recording from Samsung’s presentation at the US conference – focusing on how to use Twitter as part of your marketing strategy.
If you would like to reserve your place at this industry-leading event, then you can do so online at http://usefulsocialmedia.com/europe. There is a £150 ‘early bird’ discount available on all bookings made before Saturday 16th October.
For more information, contact Nick Johnson on nick[dot]johnson[at]usefulsocialmedia.com.
