SES New York kicks off on Tuesday March 20, 2012, and I for one cannot wait. Along with TopRank CEO Lee Odden who is speaking at the event, myself as well as one of our rockstar Account Managers Brian Larson will be attending and live blogging many of the scheduled sessions.
Based on the speaker lineup this years conference is sure to be filled with stories, tips, and tactics that any online marketer can put to good use. This post is a combination of the sessions Brian and I plan on attending as well as a little bit about our take on the Big Apple. Hope to see you all there!
Ashley Zeckman: #SESNY Session Highlights
Tuesday March 20, 2012
Business Optimization in a Digital Age
Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist, Google
If you’ve been fortunate enough to see Avinash speak before you know you’re in for a treat. Late last year I attended his session at the MIMA Summit on Improving Engagement Through Innovation. Avinash’s keynote at SES NY will cover his perspective on finding the balance between multiple media channels, leveraging metrics, driving value, and leveraging the “Clear Line of Sight” model ensuring that you are properly optimizing accross the most important factors that drive business.
The Psychology of Social Commerce
Chad Childress, Michael Mothner, Dana Todd
Online marketing is a business driven by fact, gut feeling, and emotion. Understanding what it is that makes your customers tick is key to effectively engaging and moving prospects through the buying cycle. Some of the questions that will be answered in this panel presentation include:
- How do social rules and subconscious needs figure into the mix?
- How do you overcome the repeat “trusted brand” purchase?
- How do you capitalize on the consumer trend of sharing good deals within the community?
Wednesday March 21, 2012
Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues
Eric Enge, Jenny Halasz, Peter van der Graaf
TopRank CEO Lee Odden will be moderating this session which will answer questions related to best practices to avoid creating duplicate content across multiple sites. Also, be sure to listen for the options available such as:
- 301 redirect
- Canonical tag
- Rel next and rel prev tags
Thursday March 22, 2012
Email Can Drive Search, Social, and Mobile
Jeanniey Mullen, Sundeep Kapur
For anyone looking to use email campaigns more efficiently I recommend attending this session. We will learn how to leverage mobile marketing to improve email effectiveness through the case studies and best practices shared from personal experience by the speakers.
Content Marketing Optimization
Lee Odden CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
Content isn’t great until someone shares it. However, in an increasingly competitive industry what steps can you take to optimize your content for sharing? Odden’s session will provide insight into content optimization strategies as well as useful tactics for creating effective content on the social web.
My Top 3 Favorite Things About Visiting NYC
As you might have noticed from my previous conference posts I’m always looking for something fun to do or a great restaurant to try. What are my favorite things about New York City?
- Puglia: Little Italy is flush with excellent Italian restaurants.
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA): There is no substitute for some great artwork.
- O’Hara’s Pub on Cedar St.: This quaint little Irish pub is a mix of locals and business travelers.
Brian Larson: #SESNY Session Highlights
It’s about that time to head east for SES New York and download as much information as possible from some of the most respected and influential online marketers. For me, this trip is equal parts good and trepidation or excitement. The good is of course is the conference itself. I jump at any opportunity to learn marketing techniques and best practices from SEO and online marketing leaders. So what’s the exciting part? For me, that’s the city itself. More on that later, but let’s get started with the good.
The Good: SES NY
When I prepare for a conference, especially one of this magnitude, I like to ask myself “what do I want to learn?” Since the answer to that question is always EVERYTHING, I quickly move down my internal checklist and ask “as an Account Manager, what information can I pull away from this conference that can most benefit my clients?” That answer then informs how I go about picking the right mix of sessions to attend.
Before I jump into the sessions that made my must attend list (a prestigious honor for any presenter to receive), I want to add that while reviewing this year’s agenda I was struck by how well balanced the presentations were. From email marketing and paid search, to landing page optimization and offline marketing, there are sessions that can scratch any itch.
Wednesday March 21, 2012
Landing Page Optimization
Nathan Richter, Angie Schottmuller
You have to admire the singular focus of landing pages. Their job is to convert visitors. Whether that means obtaining event registrations, increasing fulfillment downloads or securing sales, they are evaluated on how well they convert visitors to take that next action.
Although there objective is easy to understand, the practice of testing and tweaking landing pages to achieve an optimal conversion rate is a little more complex. NY Times Bestselling Author & co-founder of Web Analytics Association, Bryan Eisenberg, will share how businesses can tune and refine their landing pages to get that conversion.
Next Gen YouTube Marketing
Greg Jarboe, Aaron Kahlow, Mark Robertson
Get it on YouTube! That sage advice has been shared in marketing offices across the world…and for good reason as the video sharing network is now the second most popular search engine. But how can one leverage YouTube to help their video stick out and reach largest audience possible?
TopRank CEO Lee Odden leads this panel discussion with SEO-PR’s Greg Jarboe, Online Marketing Summit’s Aaron Kahlow and ReelSEO’s Mark Robertson sure to help marketers elevate their video marketing efforts.
Thursday March 22, 2012
Link Building Essentials
Debra Mastaler
Building quality links is a crucial component to a successful SEO program. Debra Mastaler, President of Alliance-Link, hosts a solo presentation discussing:
- How links are influence search algorithms
- How to use free and paid linking tools
- Universal link building tactics
Winning! Measuring Social Media Success
Tami Dalley, Eli Goodman, Daniel Lemin
It’s easy to count your number of followers on Twitter or your number of ‘Likes’ on Facebook, but how do those figures translate to ROI? If it’s not followers and ‘Likes’, what metrics can be used to evaluate success? The panel session “Winning! Measuring Social Media Success” is designed to provide answers to these questions and more.
What Am I Getting Myself Into New York?
Let’s begin with an admission that’s going to start some serious eye-rolling: I have never been to New York. My knowledge of the city is derived from cinema, the Travel Channel & related stories from friends and family. My REALLY big city experiences pretty much consist of 3 dozen trips to Chicago and a handful trips to Los Angeles and Boston.
Here are 5 things that make me scratch my head about New York.
- Size: You know it’s a big city when you have to divide it up into boroughs. There’s approximately 20 million people in New York. Just saying that number makes break a sweat.
- Getting Lost: I’m directionally challenged. There I said it. I can and have gotten lost in places that are relatively familiar. Given my track record, I give my odds of not getting lost at approximately ZERO.
- Cost: I’ve just heard Anthony Bourdain say too many times how expensive X or Y is in New York. I’m half expecting that my cab fare will exceed my airfare.
- Traffic: I arrive in NY Wednesday morning and I’m deathly afraid that I’ll be sitting in traffic until Thursday morning.
- Attitude: I’ve been trained in the discipline of ‘Minnesota Nice’. How will that mix with the famed New York ‘tude’? TBD.
We look forward to seeing you all in New York! Some of you will be familiar faces and some first time attendees. The TopRank Online Marketing team will be live blogging sessions each day of the conference and you can find our Twitter coverage of #SESNY on: @toprank. If you will be live blogging any of the sessions that TopRank’s Lee Odden is participating in please let us know!
