The Affordable Leading-Edge Conference for Search Marketers and Webmasters  is Not Just a Simulacra

Whether you’re new to online advertising or you’re a seasoned search marketing pro, WebmasterWorld’s Search & Internet Marketing Conference (“PubCon”), to be held next week at the Las Vegas Convention Center, is almost a guaranteed win.

For four days, in the hyper-real, postmodernist splendor of Vegas, PubCon will feature engaging topics to those interested in search marketing, Web 2.0, SEO, affiliate programs, domains, online video, multimedia and more.

Writing about Las Vegas, the French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, once wrote:

The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert, and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them: the mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.

But there’s no need to worry about being in the dark about search marketing and web publishing, because Yahoo! will be there to help shine a light on the way. For more information, check out the complete schedule. Be sure to visit the Yahoo! booth No. 502 on the conference floor, too. 

Vegas, as Baudrillard said, is the ultimate American simulacra of a city. Why go to Paris when you can gamble at the Paris, Las Vegas? Why visit the pyramids of Giza, when you can witness the wacky prop comedy of Carrot Top or watch an IMAX film about the Nile at the Luxor? Can’t decide whether to play blackjack, see priceless works of art in a casino lobby or spend $4.99 for a prime rib dinner (salad and dinner roll included)? No matter—you can do it all.

Take a break from chasing the ever-fleeting jackpot and get some real, practical takeaways for your search marketing efforts from the Yahoo! search luminaries at PubCon 2007.

When: December 4 to 7, 2007
Where: Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas

—Roger Park, Hipster of Hyperreality

Blogging Comes of Age

There were five basic lessons I learned at the Blogword 2007 conference in Las Vegas last week, the fabulous and seminal Las Vegas trade show hosted by the redoubtable Dave Taylor. Here are lessons one through three:

1. Blogging has gone beyond pastime and into prime time.
How else to explain the hundreds of participants, speakers and exhibitors willing to pay top dollar to hob-nob with their fellow bloggerati? How else to explain the star-studded line-up? A few years ago, who would have thought that A-listers like radio talk show hosts Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved, or Dallas Mavericks owner and dot-com billionaire Mark Cuban, would have lined up to schmooze with a bunch of “little bloggers” like us? Well, it appears that the long tail is finally beginning to wag the dog.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

2. The first rule of blogging is to develop your audience.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise? Who cares? No one heard it, so it doesn’t matter. Sure, you may want to keep an online diary just for friends and family. It saves on stamps. But chances are you’re blogging for dollars, which is why you’re reading this. A small audience means little opportunity for revenue. Begin developing your audience by finding your niche, and make sure that that niche is monetizable (i.e., that there’s gear or other goods or services involved that advertisers and merchants can offer through your blog).

3. The other first rule of blogging is to concentrate on your content.
This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many bloggers think they can throw just anything up, slap a few contextual ads on it, and the money will come pouring in. You can’t hope to build an audience if you don’t offer compelling, targeted content that offers information or entertainment that users are unlikely to find elsewhere. This applies to your headlines, as well. Write snappy headlines that explain what an article is about. Most of your new users will come to you via some kind of search or other. By offering concise headlines, you increase the chance of a searcher clicking on you in search results. And remember, people like lists, like “Five Things I Learned at BlogWorld.” Lastly, when writing headers, people tend to search for problems (i.e., “leaky faucet”) not solutions (”fix my faucet”).

Stay tuned for lessons four and five—the 7 1/2 ways to monetize and why it’s wise to analyze.

—Michael Mattis, Blogster-in-Chief

Join us at BlogWorld 2007 in Las Vegas Next Week

Sometimes publishing and blogging can feel like a bit of a crap shoot. You can’t always tell which plays are going to come up a “natural” and which are going to “crap out.” So it’s appropriate that the BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2007 conference is being held in the crap shoot capital of the universe, Las Vegas.

Publishing and blogging may sometimes be a gamble, but attending BlogWorld might just help you even the odds. It’s pretty much the biggest tradeshow, conference and media event dedicated solely to blogging and new media, with more than 50 seminars. There are tracks for beginning and advanced bloggers, podcasters, entrepreneurs and executives. There are even tracks on sports bloggers, military bloggers and political bloggers. Lastly, there’s my favorite, a special track that focuses exclusively on—cha-ching!—monetization!

For more information, take a look at the complete schedule.

So next Thursday and Friday, Nov. 8 and 9, come on down to the Las Vegas Convention Center and BlogWorld 2007. Anf feel free to swing by booth 325.

—Michael Mattis, Chief Croupier 

Editor’s Note: We all want to go to the SMX Social Media confab in New York next week. But good conferences don’t come cheap, especially if they’re in the Big Apple. But not to worry. We know people. Like Rand Fishkin, who is giving a talk on Social Media Marketing Essentials. As one of the smarteratti, Rand knows that driving more visits to your site can mean more clicks on your ads from more qualified prospects. Driving more visits is a good thing. Driving more visits for no money is even better. In his SMX conference presentation, Rand will discuss how to get more clicks via Social Media. He offers a preview here (for no money).

The buzz about social media has reached a crescendo. Naturally, this has sparked a good deal of debate and trial and error around the practices of marketing across social media on the web. Results, from successes (which we often don’t hear much about) to failures (which seem to get the most press) dot the landscape of social media marketing and inspire both curiosity and fear in website owners and marketers.

Today, I’d like to act as Sergeant Joe Friday and present, “Just the facts, ma’am.” Social media marketing may be a bit of a minefield, but it’s also an exceptional opportunity for marketers to reach a traditionally tough-to-penetrate demographic—early adopters. This is the fundamental reason that social media marketing is so exciting—those who are active in social networks are powerful people—they’re influencers, bloggers, journalists, thought leaders and publishers. They can help to spread your message, so reaching them can have a remarkable impact.

So… How does social media marketing work? In many, many different ways. You can use social media marketing to:

• Create profiles on social media sites to conduct reputation management and control (You can see what others say about your brand and actively prevent your brand name from being abused—i.e. the John McCain MySpace scandal)
• Participate in social media networks to earn credibility and mindshare from other members of those communities
• Share stories, links and content that the community will find valuable, which sends either a positive branding message or direct traffic to your company
• Build links to your website to help with traffic and organic search rankings by building content on social media sites
  Control the search results by using profile pages to fill up the search results (and push down potential negative results)
  Distribute viral content you’ve created to help attract links, traffic and attention (see this post on linkbaiting for more)

Each of these unique activities requires considerable effort, know-how and experience. It also requires that you know where to go to engage in social media marketing. These are the top 10 sites we engage with and get value from:

StumbleUpon—With more than three million regular users, StumbleUpon drives terrific traffic and has social options that help to make it even more powerful
Wikipedia—Incredible visibility in search engines and a powerful brand make participation valuable
Yahoo! Answers—with three million users and growing, Answers is a natural fit for any company seeking to build its brand and expose its experts to the curious
Digg—The Digg home page drives tens of thousands of visitors and considerable visibility to the larger blogosphere
Reddit—Similar to Digg, but with an older, somewhat more mature audience focused on politics & offbeat news
del.icio.us—Tag pages, the home page and the popular page are all valuable for driving traffic and branding
Flickr—One of the best sources on the web for sharing images and a highly participatory community as well
Newsvine—Recently picked up by MSNBC, Newsvine allows for unrivaled levels of participation and content generation
Yelp—The current leader in local reviews and listings
YouTube—The powerful, highly visible video site has millions of active users and allows for incredible brand reach when a video becomes popular

The best recommendation I can give is to spend time in these social communities, learn the ins-and-outs of the people and participants and jump in only when you feel comfortable engaging. For many publishers, this may require a social media specialist (either in-house or contracted) or someone who can dedicate the time to learning the landscape of social media. If you’d like to learn more, a good recommendation would be to stop by the SMX Social Conference in New York City next week, and be sure and look in at my presentation on social media marketing essentials as well Patrick McGee’s  session on Yahoo! Answers.

Best of luck on all your social media adventures!

—Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz

Do Want to Know More?
So do we. That’s why we’ve been running an ongoing series on low-cost traffic drivers to help our publishers get more users and help increase qualified clicks. Check out these previous posts:

Optimizing for Social Media

SMM in Depth

Working the Media

Boost Your Buzz

Optimizing for Relevancy

Leveraging Linkbait

It’s Who You Know at “SMX Social Media”

If you happen to be feeling sociable in Manhattan next week, drop by Danny Sullivan’s SMX Social Media conference Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct, 16 and 17, at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

This intimate little conference will offer convivial sessions on many aspects of the emerging social media space, including social media marketing essentials, bookmarking and tagging, linkbaiting, micro-communities and more. Be sure and look in on the keynote, Tuesday afternoon at 4:40 p.m., as Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us and Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon spill the social media beans.

Also of note, Marchex SEO manager, Matt McGee, will be offering a case study on Yahoo! Answers in the session, “Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing” at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

“I’m going to introduce Yahoo! Answers and show how it can be a beneficial marketing tool to build credibility and positive brand image, get into some best practices and tips on how to make the most of it,” says Matt, who also notes that Yahoo! Answers is consistently among the highest sources of traffic for his blog.
 
Hey, it’s New York—if social media can make it there, it can make it anywhere!

—Michael Mattis

Image courtesy danhellers.com via Flickr

We will of course be attending this summer’s Search Engine Strategies spectacular in San Jose, Monday, August 20 through Thursday, August 23. It promises to be a good show with lots to do and learn for both online publishers and advertisers alike. If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area next week, look us up at booth 101.

For more detail on the sessions we’ll be paneling, click over to our sister pub, the Yahoo! search Marketing blog.

—The Team

Ultimate Connection final-list

Though they may never be mentioned by name on the financial news networks, small businesses have a huge impact. In fact, according to the Small Business Administration, a U.S. government agency, small businesses were responsible for more than half of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) of $11,712,500,000,000 in 2004.

That’s not chump change.

We like the kind of gutsy people who take a chance in small biz, because that’s how Yahoo! was born. Jerry Yang and David Filo originally started this little enterprise called Yahoo! Inc., now 13,000-odd (very odd) Yahoos strong, out of a trailer on the campus of Stanford University in Northern California.

The Big Five
Our passion for small businesses is one of the reasons that we got into the Small Business business to begin with—yes, we sell shovels to gold miners—and it’s one of the reasons we’re sponsoring the Ultimate Connection.

The five finalists for the Ultimate Connection have been chosen, and we want you to have a part in deciding the winners. Here are the five small businesspeople who stood out from the thousands of entries we received:

Glen Halliday, who builds custom “crooked houses” that make children smile.

Chris Pratt, a start-small entrepreneur with a big sweet tooth.

Melissa Belland, who has brought the fantasy world of the fairies to real life.

Elena Neitlich, who offers help for hard working moms, by hard working moms.

Mike Willner, an inventor who has taken typing to a whole new level.

Each one of these entrepreneurs shows a passion not just for the business of business, but for what their businesses share with their customers. Now it’s up to you to decide which three of these five will get the proverbial Golden Ticket to New York to meet with Ivanka Trump, enjoy a power lunch high above the city, and receive a $25,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing budget.

Go to the Ultimate Connection website and vote for your favorite.

—Michael Mattis

SMX Advanced wasn’t just for Search Marketers 

We attended the inaugural SMX Advanced conference in Seattle last week and came away impressed with Danny Sullivan’s ability to mount a quality confab. While most of the sessions were geared toward pro-SEOs and SEMs, the main thrust—how to get more users to visit your site—was definitely useful for publishers as well. Especially noteworthy for publishers on a budget was the session on SMM, or social media marketing, which offered many low-cost and no cost tips on how to promote your site through social media services like Flickr, Yahoo! Answers, del.icio.us and many others.

Skip over to our sister site, the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog, and get the skinny.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Cap’n

Ultimate Connection Entry Deadline next Wednesday, May 30 

If you’re like me you’re always waiting until the last minute. In fact, if I hadn’t spent so much time straightening my paper clips and refilling my Swingline stapler, I’d have posted this blog entry two hours ago and could’ve gone home early.

Sadly, the deadline for entries for the Ultimate Connection Contest is not as flexible as my deadline for getting this post live. You remember the Ultimate Connection, right? That’s where you could be one of three lucky small business owners who will win:

• An executive meeting with Ivanka Trump
• A $25,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing budget
• A power lunch with your marketing mentor in New York City
• Access to your marketing mentor and a Yahoo! Search marketing mentor throughout the year
• A web site makeover from Yahoo! Small Business and FastPivot

The deadline for your 500-word essay on what your business needs to succeed and how the Ultimate Connection can help you achieve it is May 30, 2007 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. So, unless you want your life to feel like a scene in “Little Miss Sunshine,” you might want to think about getting started on your essay now.

For more details, check out the Ultimate Connection website.

—The Team

Danny Sullivan’s SMX Advanced conference looks to raise the bar

Long-time search engine guru and former Search Engine Watch editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan has been working the panels at SES for as long as anyone can remember. (Which, in Internet time, translates to about five years.) With his new ventures, Search Engine Land and Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Danny’s working to bring himself, and—by proxy—your search knowledge, to the next level. It’s good for publishers as well as advertisers.

Next month, Danny kicks off his first SMX confab, SMX Advanced, in Seattle, June 4 and 5. Don’t let the “expo” in SMX fool you… SMX Advanced promises to be one tight little summit, where attendees will have direct access to some of the best minds in the search world.

Session highlights include:

Monday, June 4
Paid Search Roundtable
Get the latest direct from the major paid search providers, and then grill them mercilessly in an extended discussion period. Stewart Easterby VP, Sales Operations, Yahoo! Search Marketing, will be on hand.

SEO, Meet SMM
Danny Sullivan moderates this panel on the new phenom, SMM, or “social media marketing.” Getting your content into social media can help generate links or provide rankings that you might not be able to tap into with your own site. Among the panelists is linkbaiting champ and sometime YPN Blog contributor, Rand Fishkin.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Networking Reception
The drinks and nosh are on us, but it’s strictly BYOI—”bring your own ideas.”

Tuesday, June 5
Pump Up Your Paid Search!
Learn tips and techniques designed to help pros like you get more out of their paid search campaigns.

Paid Search: The Giant Focus Group
Now’s your chance to tell representatives from the major search ad providers what they should fix, what new features they should provide, and so forth. Come share your ideas with John C. Kim, Senior Director, Advertiser Product Marketing, Yahoo! Search Marketing, among others.

Give It Up!
In this session, a panel of noted SEOs, including occasional YPN blog contributor Jen Slegg, share some of their favorite and largely overlooked SEO tips. Shhh! No blogging allowed from this session!

Finally, be sure to visit us at the Yahoo! Search Marketing team at booth number 23. Hope to see you there!

—Michael Mattis. Blogonator