I keep hearing horror stories about SEO companies ripping off the very people they are meant to help. While there are some excellent search companies out there dedicated to helping customers and going above and beyond, there are others who, like cowboy builders, want to take the cash and run. This can often leave the client out of pocket but also unsure of who to turn to for help when something of this nature happens.

When I attended SES London some six or so years ago, I remember hearing the story of a charity who had paid an SEO firm five-figures and gotten nothing for it. Whether this was their perception or reality is always difficult to know but it left them thinking the whole industry was crooked. I continued to hear of agencies charging for Google Analytics (free), purporting to run PPC with no proof of any spend and continued hearing of SEO companies taking money and doing nothing at all.

If this wasn’t bad enough, the shoddy work produced by some led to sites being dropped down the rankings or worse – banned. Link buying is one example of a practice that can harm the client as well as the agency and as recently as March 2011 I have heard of companies continuing to buy links in competitive, but not extremely so, verticals. JC Penny and Overstock are just two examples of companies harmed by blatant link manipulation.

How do you know if you choosing a good agency? With no industry body and anyone able to set themselves up as an SEO, how do you know that they are acting in your best interest and in a professional way? I gave a talk on just that (and how to survive the zombie apocalypse) at the London Affiliate Conference.

With only 6% of companies ready to engage with customers on a regular basis and 82% of consumers actively wanting to engage with brands, the recent Alterian survey revealed a huge disconnect between businesses and consumers.

Social media reports may seem to be a dime a dozen at times and while there are lies, damn lies and statistics, this report casts a frightening light on marketing departments all over the UK and US.  No matter how nicely you try and spin the numbers, the Alterian report “Brands At Risk” is a damning indictment of the inability of brands to keep up with the rapid pace of change in the current marketplace.

The internet is essential to business.  Whether looking at the over 10 billion searches performed in March 2010 in the US alone, or the fact that 81% of the people surveyed for this study saw the internet as the ‘first port of call’ to compare products or services, the internet is an essential part of marketing.  Social media, with its requirement for engagement and response in an often public forum to sometimes embarrassing mistakes, can seem like an unnecessary time overhead and yet the Alterian study reveals it is as important a marketing channel as any other.

Only a tiny 5% of people surveyed trusted the advertising from an organisation, and yet 75% said it would have a positive impact on their experience as a customer if companies took the time to find out more about their needs.  While the time overhead involved in social media is greater than the time involved in traditional media, for the cost of an average TV campaign a much more effective and longer lasting social media campaign with a higher impact could be launched if this report is to be believed.

Social media is a relative newcomer on to a marketer’s radar but email marketing, a much more mature marketing channel should have a higher utilisation rate for customer management.  While 75.3% of companies taking part in a different survey said they received customer feedback by e-mail, only 23.1% said they tracked and measured the volume and nature of these messages.  These companies don’t know if they have a problem, let alone how bad the problem is.

New Media Age published survey results in January 2010 indicating that just 14% of marketers believe social media has a significant impact on their brand and 60% do not currently have a social media strategy for their business.  That is a serious disconnect between what marketers believe and that customers believe.  If the customer is always right then in this spells a disaster for many brands with a marketing department completely out of touch with the modern marketing age.

The Alterian and related reports makes for pretty depressing reading both as a marketer and as a consumer.  There is a serious disconnect between what marketing departments believe to be important and what consumers want.  This disconnect is serious enough that it is putting a number of large, well established brands at risk as smaller, more agile brands respond to this type of sentiment and move rapidly into social media for sales, marketing and customer service support.

Marketing departments need to take a look at this report and decide if they can afford to continue to ignore social media and the internet as a significant marketing channel.  While reach may be measured differently, the internet is vital for all brands, regardless of size or marketing spend.

Scared? Need to find help?  I have ONE FREE TICKET to the Monitoring Social Media conference to give away to the tenth person to tweet “I’m scared and *need* that free ticket to Monitoring Social Media from @JudithLewis STAT!” on Tuesday November 9th after 11:30am GMT (judge’s decision final. No cash alternative. It’s a free ticket, nothing more).  Missed getting a freebie? Get a 10% discount with code JL10

A few weeks back, I spoke at a small conference in Las Vegas for the Forex market called the Forex Affiliate Conference, which is run by the guys from the Casino Affiliate Conference. It was the smallest conference I ever spoke at (about 20 people) but it ended up being one of the most productive. I made some really great connections and was able to target my presentation to what information would be most useful for the attendees. From speaking there, I came up with some conference tips that are appropriate for any upcoming event you may be attending.

Lucky 7 Conference Tips

1. Reserve judgment for the end. Just because a conference has 5,000 attendees doesn’t mean that you will get anything out of it.  A conference is about who you meet and what you learn and if it is too crowded and overwhelming for you to meet anyone or learn anything, than it was probably a waste of money. On the other hand, just because there are only 20 people there, doesn’t that these aren’t the right 20 people and best leads you can find.

2. Network regardless of your mood. Just because the conference isn’t exactly what you expected is not an excuse to sit in your hotel room or bail on your presentation. Talk to other attendees or presenters, don’t be shy just strike up a conversation over a beer.

3. If nothing is planned, plan it yourself. If there are not parties, dinners or events planned for that night, get everyone together and plan and time and meeting location yourself. DK planned the Pubcon Poker Tournament, the least you can do is plan dinner.

4. If you are presenting, gear your presentation to your audience. A smaller conference gives you the benefit of meeting everyone and asking them what they want to learn. It also leads to more audience participation. If you are in the audience, ask questions and participate.

5. There is always something you can learn, so sit in on a couple of sessions. No one knows everything, so sitting in on a couple of sessions can be really beneficial.  I don’t do a lot of affiliate marketing, so the nuggets of information that I gathered will definitely be helpful for my own sites.

6. Don’t tell people overly specific information. Just because someone asks you a direct question face to face about one of your clients site doesn’t mean you have to tell them your clients best keyword/conversion tactic/seo tactic etc.

7. Don’t stick to just hanging out with people you know. I am sure your coworkers are great people, but this is your chance to broaden your horizons and meet new people.  Go up to someone you don’t know and just start a conversation. The vast majority of the time, people at your conference will be very friendly and responsive.