ShareTweet With the noted exception of SES London 2010, (power points, tables and vaguely passable WiFi) every conference is the same. No power and no wireless. I’m sitting next to Kristofer Bjorkman, Founder of mynewsdesk. Kristopher managed to get onto the wireless early and he’s showing me the “Tweets of rage” prompted by the wireless #fail. Guy Clapperton, (@guyclapperton) Chairman is now on stage for the intro. He’s talkin about working in ’89 and using a modem for bulletin board updates as the precursor to social media.In terms of history of participation, public meetings, letter pages, radio phone-ins can also be seen as a limited precursor to social media. I think this is quite a journalistic point of view. Sure, [...]

ShareTweet Moderated by Mel Carson, this panel of presenters and social media marketers will be taking us through their approach to integrating social media. Panelists are Bas van den Beld of NetTraject and www.stateofsearch.com, Crispin Sheridan of SAP Marketing, Marco Cosaro Amadeo Guffanti of 77 Agency Ltd and Anders Hjorth of Outrider. Lisa’s lunch is still on the press table just next to me; and it’s actually looking better now than it did three hours ago. I’m trying not to look at it. Hope Mel starts soon. And we’re off… The room is looking a little sparsely populated, which is a shame as this morning’s session was packed. Mel sets the scene by talking about how marketing strategies incorporate more [...]

ShareTweet #SESKey I must admit, some of the sessions thus far have been a little bit “SEO-lite”. Knowing (some of) this next bunch, we should get some great insight and direction. I’ve put out a rallying tweet for some mobile questions, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about Universal and Personalised search without prompt. Moderator: Dixon Jones, Receptional LTD. Panellists: Lisa Myers, Verve Search & SEO Chicks. Maile Ohye, Google. Dan Cohen, MSN and Julian Shambles, Telegraph. (The panel all have head-set mics, which from the front row, looks a bit ‘Steps’.) Dixon starts with an intro, and a reminder of the hashtag – so that we can tweet questions to him for the panel (so I have)…(mobile)… (since y’asked).

ShareTweet Yeah! That’s right Y’all. Our very own SEO Chick Lisa Myers is making this morning’s social keynote. Microsoft’s Mel Carson: Advertising Community Manager is our MC. Mel sets us up for the session by explaining they like to think of social media not just as platform, but as marketing tool. It’s important to remember it’s not all just about Twitter and Facebook, but about finding your audience and where they hang out. Apparently 21% of FB traffic comes from IM. So shared content, is the pull and such stats act as carrot to businesses who often jump in, looking for an instant win. It takes dedication, committment for reward. Get the basics right! Lisa starts by stressing this is [...]

ShareTweet Hashtag #SESKey Our speaker Bryan is on the SES Advisory Board and is a NYTimes bestselling author. We should be getting some great benchmark data and insider tips on driving real conversion improvements. We start with a quick lesson in conversion – bribery works! (Bryan is talking about incentives). First premise – “Your Website Sucks” Why? Average site conversion rate is 3% Which has remained static over the past 5 years, despite improve,entts in design, usability, technology, access etc. Why settle for 3% when… Some top 10 online retailers convert from 10 to 65% – what are they doing differently? 1. These sites communicate UVPs and UCPs (unique value propositions and unique conversion props). E.g. “Over 10 million orders [...]

ShareTweet Moderated by Jon Myers, this panel of experts will be looking at what constitutes ‘meaningful’ SEO metrics. We’re going beyond volume and position. Panellists: Jeff Ferguson, SES Advisory Board & Local.com. Miles Bennett, Targetstone Limited and Brian Clifton, Author: Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. Jon starts by reminding us that search and SEO can be difficult to quantify and contains a lot of a times “obfuscating” (my paraphrase) terminology for outsiders. SEO is now at the forefront of every business marketing plan; so how do we take meaningful metrics to the board? Up first we have Jeff, who is looking primarily at how to make search metrics meaningful for board level execs. It’s important for us to get [...]