I’m a traveling kind of guy and in just a few weeks I’ll be traveling to a meeting of the marketing minds (aka SES London) in the very heart of Westminster.
And what will these marketing minds be focused on? The future of digital marketing of course.
And the topics? Owned, Earned, Paid and Integrated Marketing – each represented in presentations and workshops over four days.
And who will be dispelling these buckets of knowledge? Some of the top digital marketers in the UK, Europe and abroad.
After workshops covering Web Analytics, SoLoMo, PPC and SEO, the regular conference kicks off with a keynote from Bruce Daisley @brucedaisley, UK Managing Director at Twitter. Then the next 3 days of breakout sessions are segmented into Paid Media, Owned/Earned Media, Business Intelligence and Integrated Marketing.
After checking out the schedule, it was great to see familiar sessions still running:
- Spy vs Spy: Competitive Analysis
- Beyond the Last Click: Smart Multi-Touch Attribution Modelling
- Breaking Down the Borders: International SEM
- Assess. Diagnose. Fix: How to Become a Leading SEO Mechanic
- Creative Content Marketing
- Filthy Linking Rich: Driving the Right Traffic to your Site
as well as new sessions (at least new to me) like:
- Understanding Your Online Customer: Using Segmentation to Analyse Behaviour & Optimise Performance
- Preaching to the Almost Converted: Smart Retargeting/Remarketing
- Google Changes A lot! Hummingbird, Not Provided, Enhanced Campaigns: The Update
- Unlocking the Secrets of Mobile Video: YouTube, Instagram and Vine
- Big Data Uncovered: How to Gather, Analyse and React to Customer Behaviour
- Ad Optimisation in Multi-Channel Digital Advertising
I’ve presented at this conference in London several times over the past 5 years and I really try to make it each time it happens. There’s a ton of great information and also a lot of networking going on during and after the event. In fact, if you’re as motivated as I am, then here’s something that might help you along: £400 Discount Code for the All Access, Platinum and Single Day Passes: SESL14013
It’s funny, you often hear online marketers from the UK and Europe say they’re 2 years behind the U.S. But when you actually hear about what some of these folks are doing, especially the UK SEO and paid search people, they’re really some of the more advanced marketers in the world. I always learn something new, that’s for sure.
The structure of the SES London conference agenda across media types (paid, earned, owned and integrated) looks like a great format to me. I don’t know if that was Mike Grehan or Laura Roth’s doing, but I think it’s a great direction for this event.
Back to the “who is sharing all this great advice”, there are plenty of brands and experts you’ll find on the stage including: Adobe, MediaCom, Salesforce, SAP, Expedia, Google, American Express, Lyris and many regional and global digital marketing agencies ranging from iCrossing to SEOGadget.
So with all this other knowledge being dropped by online marketing smarties, what is TopRank Marketing going to be doing at SES London?
For a start, I’ll be moderating a few panel sessions. Then I’ll be giving a solo presentation. In fact, the presentation I’ll be giving at SES London on Co-Creating Content with Influencers is all new – stuff I haven’t presented on anywhere else before. That means some of the crazy successful stuff we’ve been doing at TopRank regarding influencers and co-created, social content will be shared at this event in London first. More about that in a bit. But first, here are some preview insights into the two sessions I’m moderating:
Tuesday 11, Feb – 11:45am to 12:45pm
From Strategy to Execution: Creative Content Marketing
Businesses have grasped the notion that they need to be producing content as a cornerstone of their marketing, but many still struggle with it. Attend this session to learn how to create the kind of content that truly engages an audience; how to create content in a way that’s sustainable and repeatable for enterprise; and how to leverage content all across the social web. The main focuses will be:
- How to create content that is truly worth sharing
- How to get the most value for your money
- How to best match the message to the medium
Here are some tips from co-presenter Matt Roberts of @Linkdex Linkdex:
- Minimum viable content is not OK. Set the bar higher. Much higher. Great content creates brands, gets shared and ranked.
- Content marketing is about a long-term sustained effort not occasional tactical bursts.
- Understand your audiences. Know who you’re marketing to and learn what they need and how to talk to them.
- Content can be valued and is hugely valuable. The right measurement increases investment in bigger and better content plans and generates a huge ROI.
- Plan to become a topical influencer – invest in authorship now.
And a few more tips from co-presenter Lisa Myers @LisaDMyers of Verve Search:
- Think like a Creative not an SEO, care about the quality of the content!
- Create content that a site needs, instead of pushing content that you have made and trying to place it, find the most relevant and authoritative site you can think of and figure out what they need, how you can help them!
- If everyone is drawing crosses you need to draw circles!
- Writing content isn’t for everyone, don’t force a techy to write, hire great writers! Even better, hire great creatives! People that has ideas and angles coming out of their ears are worth gold!
That’s great advice I think – plus it’s really just the tip of the iceberg. You can’t do search OR social without great content and the bar continues to raise on the quality and creativity required in order to stand out. In this session Matt and Lisa will help delegates do just that.
Later on in the afternoon on Tuesday, I’ll be giving my solo presentation. Here are the details on that.
Tuesday 11, Feb – 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Influence the Influencers: The Magic of Co-Created Social Content
In an age of information overload, standing out requires huge budgets and resources. But what if you could hack your way to the spotlight by helping everybody win?
Learn how to identify, romance and engage influencers to co-create and promote incredible content that delivers for your audience and your brand. Through best practices and examples you will learn:
- Topics and being the best answer for your category
- Influencer content opportunities
- How to identify, qualify and engage influencers
- The mechanics of co-created content
- Inspiring participation and promotion
- Performance measurement and optimization
Here are some advance tips from me @leeodden:
- Identify the people you want to connect with by the value of their content, communications and community. When they “speak” do people act? Or not? Fans, friend and follower counts should be much lower on your priority list.
- Start connecting with influencers at least 2-3 months before you actually intend on publishing a thought leader eBook. The time to stir up an army of support isn’t the first day of the war. Personalize communications and emphasize the value participation brings to them, NOT to you. Make it easy and fun to get involved.
- Creative and quality count more than quantity x 100. No one is going to read a 100 page eBook. If they do, they’ll think they know it all and won’t call you anyway. Focus on the quality of content and the aesthetic. It’s important to inform your buyer and influencers, but it’s even more important that they feel something. Make an emotional connection and then provide the data to support logical justification.
In this solo presentation, I’ll be talking about the types of things we’ve been implementing for companies like Dell, LinkedIn and for conferences like Social Media Marketing World and MarketingProfs. In many ways, this presentation is an extension of what I wrote about in Optimize, so to make sure those in attendance have the groundwork set, I’ll have free copies of Optimize to give away to the first 40 attendees. Pretty ace isn’t it?
Next up is a session on Wednesday that I am moderating which covers a topic that is near and dear: blogging! Trust me, after 10 years of blogging I’ve seen a lot. But this one looks pretty good, and as moderator, I have the inside scoop.
Wednesday 12 Feb – 11:45am to 12:45pm
Brilliant Blogging: Best Practices to Enhance Your Customer Reach
Learn the secrets of the blogging pros, and get a behind-the-scenes look at some top blogs and learn how to transform your stale corporate blog into a content powerhouse. This session will examine:
- Proprietary research—analysis of tens of thousands of blogs that reveals why some perform better than others.
- Tools—the platforms and plugins.
- Targeting—how to research keywords for the right new customers.
- Curation—how to greatly increase your productivity by generating fresh, relevant content.
Here are some insights from presenter and long time marketing blogger, Bas van den Beld @basvandenbeld of StateofDigital.com
- When it comes to knowing what you want to write about, it is all about understanding your audience first. That means you will have to find out what they want to read. A good way is to analyse the things people share on Social Media. For this I’ve created several different Twitter accounts which follow specific types of audiences. For example, CMO’s or SEO’s. I analyse what they share and say the most and try to adapt my content to that.
- Another tip I will look at is how to make sure your writers will deliver the best possible content for you. For example at State of Digital we have a Private Facebook group in which we talk about the site but also help each other, which gives being part of the State of Digital Team a little bit extra.
This blogging session will be an information packed one for sure. Do I hear standing room only?
Of course there are multiple tracks and many more presentations besides these, so if you’re in the market to get paid, earned, owned and integrated marketing smart, I guess I’ll see you there.
If you’re on the fence and within traveling distance to London mid-February, just remember there’s a £400 Discount Code you can use for the All Access, Platinum and Single Day Passes: SESL14013
Visit the SES London site to get more info.
