Read all of my IMC posts and view my Flickr photos

The last two days at the Internet Marketing Conference have been great. I learned that companies are using their websites and what most of their goals might be, that many marketers do not yet know the value of social media and SEO (or they do, they just don’t know how to implement it), and that the staff at the Coast Plaza on Denman are extremely nice and accommodating.

I really enjoyed the panelists and workshops today, as well as yesterday’s speakers. They all seemed to have that ideal blend of “corporate suit business talker” mixed with “having an actual grasp on the value of the internet and social media.” Coming from the blogging, podcasting, and social media consulting realm myself it was definitely an education for me as well – just being able to live on the other side of the corporate pond for the past two days.

Update: Final thoughts from John Hossack, Chair of the IMC Vancouver Conference:

- Conversion rates don’t tell the whole story
- The importance of testing (from Tom Leung’s talk)
- Invest more of your people, have a playbook

Update: Final thoughts from James Carter:

“I don’t know how many of you guys are anti-Twitter, but I have gone to the dark side and found out how to use it for business.” James signed up for Twitter during Darren and Julie’s session and what really got his head around it was that you can integrate it with your blog, Facebook etc.

Update: Final thoughts from Jon Husband and the rest of the panel:

Optimize your 404 page (a note I picked up on in the last session about SEO).

“Connect to eco-systems of conversation,” is a note from William’s session.

“Engagement” has been a key message at the conference.

Update: Shout out to Fundfinder.tv and there is also a Flickr group for photos taken at the conference.

On a personal note… Corey and Monique have been posting content on Techvibes and I have been blogging here in almost-real-time. We’ve included links, we’ve promoted speakers and companies, and we had a great time. Thanks to John Hossack at the closing session for giving us a mention (and giving me the chance to give us a shout out). Hopefully those who attended, and those who didn’t, will get some value out of these posts.

Continuing my live blog coverage of the International Internet Marketing Association’s conference, the IMC, we’re now onto tool demos.

First up is the SEO Browser, developed by two Calgary companies, which helps you optimize your website for search engines. Jeff Nelson of Anduro is presenting. Simply go to SEO Browser, enter the URL of a page, and you’ll see the search engine results.

Jeff first enters a site and the SEO Browser hardly picks up a thing. The reason being, the sample website is mostly flash and images – which is NOT good for search engine optimization. [Editor's note: Yes, you need text! If I see one more image with text in it on a site that's trying to be optimized I'll go nuts - that, and it looks really bad.]

I just typed in my site and you can see this live blog in the results, meaning Google is capturing all of this – which is a very good thing.

You can also see some stats, the style sheet, how many pages are listed in Google, and for my results, you could still see all of the page links and sidebar information. It also uses Google shortcuts to optimize search results (see shortcut cheatsheet or some favourites shortcut options).

Update: Up next is HubSpot’s Website Grader, presented by Erin Colbert. She’ll be using this conference’s website as an example.

Results include: On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Blogosphere, Social Mediasphere, Competitive Intelligence, Report Link. Just browsing their website they also have a badge you can display on your site to show off your score.

My score includes… “Google Indexed Pages: 2,520″, “Too Many Images Found!”, “Your website has an Alexa rank of 191,375 which is in the top 0.62 % of all websites”, “This blog currently has a Technorati rank of 15,021, which puts it in the top 0.02% of blogs tracked by Technorati”, “del.icio.us bookmarks: 68″. But enough of the vain searches (or those that turn out well and make me wonder why I’m not making more money off my site)…

Update: ProtoShare is up next, presented by Blake D. Johnson of Site9. “It’s how you quickly build and refine clickable, working website prototypes, with real-time collaboration. It’s how you get your clients actively involved at an early stage.” It’s like mixing up a wiki with a WordPress dashboard. You can have discussions online about header placement, where images should go, uploading files, and all elements of design.

Even though the builder/collaborator is wysiwyg you can still add/edit style sheets and there are drag ‘n drop elements as well.

The morning sessions are done so it’s time for lunch. The Coast seems to be cooking up some great buffets so far (and the croissant at breakfast just wasn’t enough) so I’m really looking forward to it.

Update: 12:47 – Just getting ready to live blog the next set of panels. I’m going for Track 1 – Search Engine Optimization.

Panelists: Alexandre Brabant of eMarketing101.ca, Omar Al-Hajjar of Magnet Search Marketing, Ellerton Whitney of Earthbound Media Group, Gary R. Beal of Stickyeyes, Lyn Wilson with 6S Marketing, and Bill Barnes, Enquiro. Rodney from Reachd will be the moderator.

Gary Beal (whose blog can be found here) starts off and comments that Google webmaster is a great starting point for SEO diagnostics. Duane had a post up about it a few months ago (and there’s a WordPress plugin) so I’ve been using it for a while now.

Bill Barnes says the biggest mistake people make is looking for the next big thing. There are so many basics that people need to grasp and apply first ie. URL structure, before taking any bigger steps. Bill is a strong supporter of having a good, solid website with great content and achieving great search engine results organically through that backbone.

Before the panel started we were all given a handout which this one contains “12 SEO Tips for 2008″ from Stickyeye (although no matter how helpful, the image on their website is slightly disturbing).

A few of the tips that stand out to me are:

Ellerton reaffirms the general sentiment of the panel which is, “content is king” – and that actually makes me really happy. Sure, use all of these tools and tips to optimize your site (optimize being the word of the day) but still need to have the content that’s going to grab your audience (through search or direct referral) and have them come back day to day.

Alexandre says it’s important to be user-centric. There are so many tools and so much online help that is free, it’s not hard to take a few steps to become more searchable. “Stick with the basics!”

Omar mentions that the top three search marketing trends are “PPC” pr0n, pills, and casinos. Link farms, paid search, and other services may not add value to your content or website although they may string in different types of traffic.

Question from the audience: Does the URL really matter? ie. clean URLs or having .aspx or .html?

Answer from the panel: If you have these keywords in your URL they’re going to be highlighted, especially in a “PPC” market (now that’s Pay Per Click, not… the other PPC mentioned earlier). Another answer from the panel: Absolutely you should have keyword-rich URLs, it’s been proven over and over again that it helps so much.

Having an internal search function is a good way to find out what keywords are searching when people are already on your site.

They have now collected websites submitted by attendees and will discuss their mission, SEO, and offer tips from the panel. The first sample site from the audience is Araxis, and Alexandre notes immediately that the title tags for the links on the side should be more precise. They also note that you can’t really tell what the company does – someone from the audience says they can’t spot a single instance of the word “software” anywhere. Rodney says you need to make Google’s job easier.

Apparently there are some frustrated marketers in the room who are trying to get their message out but feel backlash from other levels of their organization. It seems pretty clear however, you need to get the right words on your site and make it searchable otherwise people won’t be able to find it.

The Drum Cafe is up next and Rodney opens up the “view page source” to spot a few errors and things that could be tweaked.

Monique submitted an example and asks – since the panel also mentioned finding the right CMS is key ie. WordPress, Drupal, ExpressionEngine – how do you find a liaison between an SEO expert/consultant and the IT department so that you can get the right CMS for the website in order for it to be optimized. Also, how can you find and recommend good SEO specialists? Rodney says that the marketer or person in charge of the project should stay involved, be at the meetings, and make sure things are working and being effective.

Read all of my IMC posts and view my Flickr photos

I walked to the conference this morning, meandering through the quiet West End streets, dodging bicycles and being dusted with the scent of fabric softener from the laundry vents of the walk-ups.

The Coast Plaza on Denman is rustling this morning; the scent of bacon sizzling at Brasserie Bistro is making its way to my nostrils as I setup camp in the Denman Room for day two of the IMC.

There are three tracks today with panels, lightning talks, and product demos so things may get a little scrambled. We’re just starting the “Speed Networking” and at 9:00am we can choose to attend one of the following: Track 1 Panel – Writing for the Web, Track 2 Panel – Conversion Optimization, Track 3 Panel – Online Advertising.

I’m interested in the “writing for the web” from a business and marketing perspective so I’ll check that one out to start.

Panel members: Crawford Kilian, author of “Writing for the Web 3.0″, Elizabeth Southall of Powerhouse Copy, Jim DeLaHunt of Jim DeLaHunt & Associates, Tom McNamara of McNamara Communications, and Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing.

Update: 9:00am – After some quick intros, Monique is up first to talk about how to write effective newsletters and the value of an email newsletter. Here are a few of her tips:

Update: 9:12am – Elizabeth Southall is up next to talk about killer landing pages that pull leads and sales from the internet like a vacuum cleaner on steroids!.

“You don’t get a second change to make a first impression,” your website is the entrance point to your online sales funnel, notes Elizabeth who shares six elements that every successful landing page must have: Headline, Sub Headline, Product shot/image, Body copy, Opt-in Box, Call to action (avoid using the word “submit”).

Elizabeth is now showing some examples of good / bad landing pages and how they can be improved. You can mix things up like putting the sub headline above the main headline.

Update: 9:20am – There are so many factors that lead you to a purchase, according to Tom McNamara. “The bigger the purchase, the more likely here will be more decisions to make and more influencers.” With your business, you need to figure out what all of those factors might be and focus on meeting those needs for customers through targeted information on your website. Make sure you address your target audience in order to enable the selling process.

Update: 9:30am – Crawford is up next: “When you’re writing for a website you’re dealing with three issues: Orientation (where am I?), Information (why did I surf here anyway?), Action, (now that I know what you have to tel me what am i going to do about it?)”

Think about the text you put on your site. Write long, then cut short. If you have 100 words you can fit into a screen without scrolling, write 150. Then, slash back to 75 and see if you’ve got the right message. “Say what you have to say with the fewest possible words.” [Editor's note: This reminds me of Tim Bray's advice from Open Web - #6 of the commandments, "be brief"]

“Maximize the hot spots,” notes Crawford, stating that the first part of a paragraph and the last are where readers will go first – don’t bury important and information.

Make sure your article or content is readable. Crawford suggests Readability.info, where you can upload your text or offer a URL and it will scan it for you. He said he submitted a story to The Tyee and it was at a 10th grade reading level. He was disappointed since he was aiming for 8th. (I just tested Miss604.com and it’s at a 7th grade reading level)

Update: 9:40am – Jim is the final panelist to present and his topic is “internalization”. What’s the navigation or your site? The flow? The technology translations for your audience? How do you deal with landing pages, influencers, readability all in multiple languages?

[Editor's note: Apologies to Jim, I navigated away from the edit panel in WordPress and hit the dreaded "Back Button" to discover my latest updates had not been applied. I exited the dashboard, went back in to edit the post and WP alerted me saying there was an auto-save and would I like to restore. All of my updates were restored. I (heart) WordPress although I missed pieces of Jim's talk.]

Update: 9:50am – We have all been handed an exercise sheet where we’re supposed to shorten 15 sentences without changing their meaning. Here’s the first example: “This is a subject that usually holds much interest for engineers.” The group in the conference room suggests, “Engineers want to know…” or “Engineers love this.” Crawford is leading this session and man he IS concise!

More examples from the exercise sheet:

“There’s a deplorable tendency in this room to go right to the sentence fragments.” This is awesome! Crawford is schooling us all on being concise, precise, and using proper English. I’m going to have to read more of his blog.

Final exercise: “Needless to say, recent events have vindicated our predictions.” All suggestions from the crowd were turned down. “Too long,” said Crawford, followed by, “Needless to say – If it’s needless then why are you saying it? That’s an expression that should be stood up against a wall and shot!”

Update: 10:00am – Monique is now leading a mini-workshop about email subject lines and is handling several questions about writing, subject matter, authors etc. One question is about finding a web writer or blogger that can find a balance between keyword optimization for the web and truly captivating writing. Monique says it’s important to keep your voice and not to sound “spammy”. I agree, it’s hard to determine if you’re writing for Google (in the business realm) or writing for your audience. It is possible to meld the two – it’s a fine balance.

Jim says the SEO expert will know what visitors are looking for (through search results) whereas the writer will know what they want to read. Crawford says you should give the visitor what they wanted as well as offer them something else – one-upping their search and discovery.

Read all of my IMC posts and view my Flickr photos

Afternoon sessions are kicking off here at the IMC with Anil Batra: “Learn what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are, how they’re defined, what the difference between a KPI and a metric is, and how to effectively present KPIs.”

From wiki: “Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are financial and non-financial metrics used to help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goal.”

Anil is saying marketers need to determine business goals, have a road map to anywhere. What is the purpose of your site? What do you want users to do with your site? Who are the visitors? What do you want them to do once they leave the site? Have a clear vision and be accountable.

When analyzing the effectiveness of a web presence, look beyond visitor numbers. Success needs to be measured in so many different ways.

What is the business and what are you trying to drive? You could get 100,000 impressions on your website but the bounce rate is 90% – would this fit your goals?

“All KPIs are metrics but NOT all metrics are KIPs.” KPIs provide a view into the business and are tied into business goals.

I’m just reading up on Anil via his blog and have found some interesting white papers he/his company have produced.

Anil’s focus is on doing more with stats; how to manage numbers and information that you gather with analytics and what you need to grasp as good data for a campaign. Cost per visitor? Percent of new visitors? Ratio of returning visitors? Conversion rate? Try not to be blinded simply by certain numbers.

Read all of my IMC posts and view my Flickr photos

After another coffee break, a chat with Darren and Julie, and some conversations about blogging and how it can help business (excellent chances to plug sixty4media) I’m now at the front of the room for the next session with William Azaroff of Vancity.

Update: 11:00am – “I don’t think we’re in the money business, we’re in the trust business.” William will be speaking about ChangeEverything, social marketing, and engaging community.

“We want to show you messages on an emotional level as well as a practical and financial level,” noted William as he features ChangeEverything, “the site for people in Vancouver, Victoria and the Lower Mainland who want to change themselves, their communities or their world.”

Examples of participation are EnviroWoman who lived plastic-free for a year and blogged the whole way on ChangeEverything. The next is an example of a snowy day in Vancouver where community members launched a campaign spontaneously to effect change by collecting clothing for homeless in Vancouver. William brings up the point of (essentially) – how does this help a bank? – well through marketing and PR after these campaigns, they got mainstream media coverage of their blog and online community (he’ll talk about solid numbers and conversions at the end of his talk – but those were essentially advertising dollars they didn’t need to spend / media value).

Overall, the mission is to do good in the community through enabled online communications and efforts. However the end result for Vancity as a company is that it gains a solid, trusted, and caring reputation around the region – and with this being a marketing conference, it’s pretty stellar advice.

William says there are authentic and real ways to drive participation in the community and this generates “media value” while helping the environment, those less fortunate, and other worthy causes.

Three takeaways: All social media is inherently authentic, first 500 community members set the tone (including a quote from Rob @ Social Signal – “think concierge, not security guard”), think of community engagement – not social media.

Update: 11:30am – Jon Husband is up next to talk about Enterprise 2.0 – speaking to how organizations used to be fortresses of information (including moats) but now there are so many ways to engage outside of the fortress.

Jon posted a quote that I was able to also find on Wired:

“Companies used to assume that details about their internal workings were valuable precisely because they were secret. If you were cagey about your plans, you had the upper hand; if you kept your next big idea to yourself, people couldn’t steal it. Now, billion- dollar ideas come to CEOs who give them away; corporations that publicize their failings grow stronger. Power comes not from your Rolodex but from how many bloggers link to you – and everyone trembles before search engine rankings.”

“Talking, listening, interaction,” “Your brand is what Google says it is,” Jon drives home the thought that blogs are more effective than other SEO tactics.

What DOESNT work with blogs: blatant self-promotion, press releases, corporate “talk”, online brochures or smoke and mirrors.

What WORKS with blogs: Point, passion, personality and perseverance.

Jon says that no matter which tools you use, it’s all about the people. People in a community, people online, people are your audience (and they’re driving your campaigns). “Humanize Your Organization.”

If your company is thinking of blogging make sure people will be interested and that your business can support it. Credit link sources, read other blogs, comment on other blogs – be a person too.

Blogs can be internal as well – “inside the firewall” – you can use them for project management, marketing, and community in your organization.

Question from the audience: “Specialization yields better efficiency”
Answer from Jon: There are just as many stories of terrible results because the specialist didn’t know what they were doing in this environment.

TIME FOR LUNCH!

Read all of my IMC posts and view my Flickr photos

After this morning’s keynote we’ve migrated into another conference room to see Darren and Julie of Capulet and their presentation: “The Many-Armed Starfish – Social Media Marketing Success Stories”.

I’ve had to park myself at the back of the room since my MacBook is going to lose power but hopefully I’ll still be able to catch the slide that I’m (apparently) on.

Julie is up first, outlining five social media marketing success stories.

The first being: Blogs and the Brother Printer campaign (in which John and I participated). Darren and Julie outline their unique approaches, from snail mail campaigns to bloggers, to their unique comic book pitches. 17 of 20 of those pitched, agreed to participate.

Update: 10:10am – The next is success story involves Twitter and we’re treated to a CommonCraft In Plain English video. Julie gives some examples of businesses that are using Twitter for marketing purposes. The example given is Carnival Cruise Lines. [Editor's note: Grouse Mountain and Whole Foods are two other companies I know of that are using Twitter]. Julie’s next example is Magnolia, that uses Twitter for tech support and status issues. Twitter can also be used for news channel updates.

Update: 10:20am – The next case study uses YouTube and EA Sports’ engagement with clever ads in response to user videos online. “Go where the users are,” suggests Darren.

The fourth case study is Flickr and Julie uses DeSmogBlog as an example. They helped them run a “greatest photo ever” campaign using Flickr as a platform. It allowed for many user-submitted entries, tags, comments, and already had its own sort of community.

The final (fifth) case is Social Networks with Gretsch Guitars who wanted to celebrate their anniversary. They created a MySpace network, held contests etc. without any advertising, and by simply ‘adding friends’ and aggressively using social media, they had thousands of entries. Since so many bands are listed on MySpace it really made sense for the guitar company to launch their campaign in that online realm.

Final notes of wisdom: Go where your users are, do you research, be original. Also, Darren and Julie wrote an eBook (check the back pages for a shout out to the Bollwitts on that big list woo!) which you can get at SocialMediaReady.com.

Read all of my IMC posts and view my Flickr photos

Read all of my IMC posts and view my Flickr photos

This will officially be the earlier live blog I have done and also probably the longest. The eight annual Internet Marketing Conference is taking place in Vancouver today and tomorrow, featuring keynote speakers, panels and many talented people in the realm of business on and offline. I announced this week that sixty4media is a media partner and as such I’ll be covering as many sessions as I can with a live blog.

At 9:00am the IMC will begin with a welcome by John Hossack (IMC Vancouver Chair), Lennart Svanberg (IMC’s founder), and Lars Johansson (IMC director). You can check out my blog post on sixty4media for a small interview with John Hossack, who offers some insights into the International IMC.

Today I’m looking forward to many of the presentations including the chance to see Darren and Julie of Capulet again, Jon Husband of Wirearchy, Tom Leung of Google, and Jonghee Jo of Victoria’s Secret.

The live blog will begin around 9:00am on this post although I may start new live blog posts throughout the day.

Update: 9:10am – After coffee and a croissant (and discovering the wifi password thanks to Monique), John Hossack welcomes the group and gives a quick overview of the IIMA, the International Internet Marketing Association.

Side note: Monique will be liveblogging for Techvibes today, you can head there for her coverage and I also ran into Rodney from Reachd who will be taking some video at the conference.

Update: 9:15am – Keynote with Eric T. Peterson, “Web Analytics Demystified.”

“If you’ve ever struggled with your digital measurement efforts, either because you didn’t trust the data, didn’t understand the data, couldn’t get the data you actually needed, or couldn’t use the data you had been given, come see Competing on Web Analytics.” Eric’s talk mentions a lot about data, analytics and information that a lot of people collect but have no idea how to use – or how to take action using that information for their business.

“Businesses can create a sustainable and strategic competitive advantage online by investing in web analytics.” Eric backs up a little to explain what exactly web analytics are and shows off a few (big name) case studies. “It’s not about the data – it’s about how you USE the data.”

He offers various tips to managing web analytics in your company. The first, is to have a “playbook” – you need to have a game plan and figure out your objective and how to obtain it. This point includes “the teenage years,” nurturing your plan and also “how NOT to screw up,” which is a fabulously blunt tidbit of useful information.

Another tip is “Manage your talent,” how to have a team, drive awareness, know what questions to ask ie. what’s our conversion rate for that widget? Have a point person, a real pro that management, marketing etc. can turn to at the helm of analytics.

Being aware of the right data and the right systems is key.

After many case studies and examples Eric also busts a myth that these numbers and success in tracking can only be managed by large mega companies. “Small business can compete.”

Eric closes out his presentation by giving a shout out to social media and mentioning his Twitter info (so of course I just added him and sent a tweet his way).