Thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts – and hope this is helpful to others, not just me.

Got more to add? Something myself and others should do or checkout? Let us know in the comments!

Charlie O’Donnell – EIR at First Round Capital
Pace yourself… dont get trashed, because you’ll forget who you met. Do however stay out late. Put more work into scheduling meals than scheduling sessions…they’re great opportunities to get to know people better. Get the cell numbers of people you know that are running the bigger parties so they can sneak you in past the lines. Carry an extra phone battery around at night. Keep session and conference hashtag searches going on Tweetdeck and match twitter accounts to faces so you can talk someone up IRL who makes smart comments.

Danny Wen – Founder of GetHarvest.com
* Don’t plan. Use http://sxsw2009.sched.org/ and just be flexible. Go to whatever strikes your interest.
* Take time to chill out. Visit friends outside of tech if you have ‘em in Austin. Panel after panel and party after party, it’s easy to fill up your time with stuff to go to, but it can be overwhelming!
* iPhone/BB/Android battery charger. iPhones simply won’t last the full day when one’s down there.
* Upload badge photo in advance like they tell you to. Saves time.
* Have biz cards, twitter, 4sq. It’ll make it easy to stay in touch with your new friends.
* Be adventurous. Leave the comforts of downtown and convention center for events/parties that take a bit of effort to get to. It’ll be an adventure.
* Split a cab from the airport with other conf attendees. Everyone’s going to more or less the same locale, so make new friends and split the cab.
* Just enjoy yourself — don’t be there to sell or work. Just get to know people, famous or not famous.

Sam Huleatt – some ideas outside of the the SXSW activities…

… …go to Barton Springs (hot springs), grab a
breakfast burrito, visit Lance Armstrong’s bike shop (Mellow Johnny’s:
mellowjohnnys.com/), check out everyone favorite running shop:
(Runtex: runtex.com), check out the Whole Foods Headquarters (it’s
huge!), See some music at Stubbs (stubbsaustin.com)

What else?

Post from: Eric Friedman
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Advice from SXSW Pros

Passion for what you do everyday, your ideas, and overall being happy. Perhaps this meme was sealed by one of the Web 2.0 keynote speakers today Gary Vaynerchuk, who basically outlined that if you are not doing what you love, stop doing it and start doing something you are passionate about. Charlie is helping people do exactly that with Path 101, while folks like myself and Matt are still deciding on what path to follow. You cannot discuss this topic without sounding a little cheesy – but I appreciate the dialogue and hope the conversation continues.

I met a number of entrepreneurs and people today who are passionate about their companies and others who simply work at a startup. You can tell the difference immediately. Gary’s advice was that even if you do not like 1% of what you are doing – change direction and do something else. I tend to agree with him, and find that most people have trouble taking that first step. What follows may be some ups and downs (lets face it, some big downs) but in the end you will be much happier.

There may not be an easy answer to find that one passionate path to follow – but you have to start somewhere.

It was definitely great to meet a number of folks today for the first time while meeting others in person that I have connected with over the Intertron. I enjoyed the talk Albert gave on cloud computing which prompted a number of subsequent conversations with many of the cloud computer companies present. Some were interfaces for current cloud platforms – others were platforms themselves with apps deployed on them. The final keynote was also great.

In the end, definitely a great experience. Like many conferences you get out of them what you put into them.

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Passion + Web 2.0 Expo

Image via Wikipedia

My Agenda:
Looking forward to a number of Web 2.0 sessions – All Week
Will not miss the @ShakeShack event – 09/16/08
I will also be going to OMMA later this week.
+More

Post from: Eric Friedman
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Web 2.0 Expo Week

1. What is your background and what are you doing for Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc?

My background is as a serial entrepreneur. I got into Search Marketing about 5 years ago when I was looking for new and interesting work to learn. I was immediately attracted to the “game” of SEO and have been pretty much obsessed with it ever since.

I am a senior SEO at Blizzard doing research and development, creating best practices, training others and optimizing client websites. We specialize in the travel and hospitality vertical and concentrating in this niche has really allowed us to excel. We know what works for websites in these industries because we can test and measure results over a large number of similar businesses.

2. There has been a lot of discussion recently on the validity of a long tail strategy – what are your thoughts on marketing to the longtail?

Some clients have an enormously long tail of location-specific keyword terms that attract very qualified traffic to their websites. One example of this is Hilton Head Island South Carolina. The top 500 keywords for one client account for a little less than 50% of their traffic from organic search. That leaves 50% way out there on a very long tail.

For others, we use activity or attraction terms in their long tail marketing strategy. While these typically bring less targeted traffic that doesn’t convert as well, they still pay a relatively low cost for each conversion. It is usually quite easy to optimize for long tail terms. A well-optimized blog post about an upcoming concert, for example, can bring plenty of visitors to a nearby hotel’s website. At least a few of them are likely to convert into room bookers.

3. Should marketers always use secondary search engines? Why or why not?

I optimize for Google. When an agency is involved, that is where the client gets the biggest bang for their bucks. If I were working strictly on my own sites, however, I’d go after every opportunity I could find. Then I’d expand on what’s working and let go of what isn’t working.

4. What are some “best practices” when building out a long tail strategy?

Do very thorough keyword research and make sure you include the client in the process. They can help you to uncover many valuable terms that, as an outsider, you may not be familiar.

Building new pages is the easiest way to optimize for long tail terms, If a new page is well-optimized for a long tail term or two, it’s not unusual to have it ranking within a week, as long as your website’s internal linking is good.

5. What part does a global marketing plan play in developing a long tail strategy?

I don’t really have any expertise in global marketing. Sorry.

6. What is the latest “flash in the pan” meme in search marketing?

Being connected to everyone else all the time via sites like Twitter. Some people thrive on this kind of constant contact, but many early adopters have already tired of the noise and are filtering it out or even switching it off.

7. What are some SEM blogs and resources that you use?

I am very interested in Local Search and some of my favorite bloggers right now are:

David Mihm

Michael Blumenthal

Andrew Shotland

Greg Sterling

And writing my thoughts down in my own blog http://www.marybowling.com/ helps me to think more clearly about SEO.

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Interview: Mary Bowling SES 2008: San Jose

1. Can you tell me about your background and a little bit about LookSmart?

LookSmart is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising technology company that leverages and licenses its AdCenter platform to operate high-quality search and contextual advertising networks. LookSmart does not own or operate a consumer search engine, such as Yahoo! and Google. We provide companies like Ask, and eZanga with customized ad serving solutions via the AdCenter platform. The AdCenter is a fully white labeled ad serving platform delivered to global publishers and ad networks with managed services that collectively create opportunities for text-advertising revenue. Through our extensive, monitored ad network, which includes syndicated publishers and search partners like CNET’s Search.com, Kontera, Adhere Interactive, InfoSpace (Dogpile, Webcrawler) and many others, LookSmart offers advertisers the ability to engage more audiences. The company has been managing large, complex ad networks for 12 years and averages monthly search and contextual queries of 22 billion as of May 31, 2008.

As for me, I have been in the Internet and online advertising business for more than 10 years and have spent 26 years as an entrepreneur. I founded and built Network 1.0, which sold to Softbank in 1996, and formed Softbank Interactive Marketing along with Ziff-Davis Publishing Company and Interactive Marketing Inc. I also built RealNames, which worked very closely with Microsoft and provided direct address-bar navigation. As CEO and president of LookSmart, I have been very focused on building upon and growing LookSmart’s current position in the Search Advertising Network space.

2. Why should SEM’s look at alternative search engines?

Successful SEMs buy search advertising media for their clients in order to achieve a positive return on investment. In some cases, the SEM buys millions of keywords for a single campaign and measure the effectiveness of the price paid for each keyword on a daily basis. The major search engines provide SEMs with a significant amount of “inventory,” but often the prices required to win the auction are high, which affects the economics of the campaign. Alternative search engines are a logical way to expand those buys at more reasonable prices, but because those search engines have limited traffic, therefore, the time required to buy, manage and monitor campaigns on those engines is a significant drain on SEM resources. Search advertising networks, which aggregate niche search players into a single “one order, one bill” system, overcome the resource management hurdles and allow search marketers to spread traffic risk for their advertisers across multiple channels – to help manage risk in a consolidating market. At LookSmart, we work hard to take the pain away from the process and to deliver superior results. We do this through technology with our widely-adopted API and ability to quickly load millions of keywords into our system and through close relationships with SEMs, to manage their campaigns on our network with best-in-class, human-driven service.

3. What strategies and best practices can a marketer employ to get the most benefit out of using a multitude of different search engines to advertise on?

One of the best strategies for marketers to adopt is to keep an open mind and to not let the perceived challenges of “going beyond Google” dissuade them from exploring available options in the marketplace. From our perspective, the most successful marketers leverage their own search advertising technologies, by integrating those technologies into the search networks. Therefore, search marketers should look for search advertising networks that can make the integration easy for them. Search marketers should depend upon the search network to “do the heavy lifting” associated with campaign management and optimization. At LookSmart, we have been very successful in delivering an open API to the search marketer, so they can easily and quickly leverage our scale and results using their own proprietary tools. In addition, we have a commitment to continuous improvement of the customer’s results on our network. Our commitment is backed by a dedicated team of optimization professionals, who build “custom distribution channels” for the advertiser, and work closely with the advertiser to manage and optimize the performance of their campaigns.

4. What is the latest “flash in the pan” meme in search marketing?

The industry has been buzzing about various pricing models, including CPA (cost-per-acquisition) and Cost Per View (CPV). The CPA model is based on the advertiser only paying when a desired action is made by the user, typically a purchase. As budgets are tightening, the idea of a CPA has been bounced around to maximize campaign costs because the publisher takes most of the risk out of the equation for the marketer. While LookSmart adheres to a CPC (cost-per-click) model, it does provide a personalized approach for advertisers that allows SEMs to maximize the ROI of their campaign while allowing publishers to be fairly compensated for hosting ads. For its part, LookSmart will suggest keyword expansions and optimized keyword CPCs to increase performance and tailor traffic to custom-fit each campaign to help customers reach strong ROI.

5. What is LookSmart doing differently from other alternative search engines?

It is important to underscore that LookSmart is not a consumer search engine, but rather a search advertising network. As a search advertising network, LookSmart delivers quality results in an extensive, monitored environment for advertisers. What makes us stand apart is our long-standing commitment to the quality of our network. LookSmart is one of the five founding members of the IAB click measurement panel and has a continuing dedication to safeguarding against click fraud. In fact, LookSmart was one of the first ad networks to make a major move to root out click fraud in 2004. That was a major step for our company, but one that was worth taking to ensure the quality of our network. We have remained committed since that time, and have grown because our customers have grown and taken us with them. Battling click fraud remains an ongoing effort for us, and we have improved continuously over the past four years. We have continually refined our testing practices including cutting traffic from our network that doesn’t perform for the advertiser, while at the same time adding new partners to the network to ensure its quality and forward growth.

6. What is one area or vertical LookSmart is concentrating on?

LookSmart focuses on a number of areas, from travel and telecommunications to sports and entertainment, but no matter the vertical, LookSmart is focused on growing our share of paid clicks in the Search Advertising Network market. Our dedication to quality, something we are always focusing on, will help us in this endeavor.

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Interview: Ted West – SES 2008 San Jose

There are many ways to deal with the issue. Generally speaking, if there are multiple copies of a site or there are multiple copies of content you’ll want to suggest to them that while we can leave the content open to visitors, the search engines need to “see” only one copy of the content. So, you will want to use a robots.txt file or other means of disallowing the search engines from indexing more than one copy of the content.

That said, in very general terms, if I see someone about to launch a website that I know will hurt their SEO, I tell them NOT to launch until they’ve addressed any issues that could be less than “optimal” for SEO (redirects are not set up properly, URLs are horrible, pages are “invisible” to the search engines, or any other issues).

If you already have multiple sites with similar content, what steps (other than taking one down or developing completely new content for one of them) can you take to minimize the negative effects on your SEO?

Again, the “easiest thing” can be to make sure that the search engines can only index one copy of the content. There can be very legitimate reasons why you would want to keep multiple or similar copies available to human visitors, including having different versions for PPC landing pages. The best thing you can do, though, to minimize the negative effects on search engine optimization is to be aware of all of the duplicate content and to make sure that the search engine crawlers can only get to one copy. If it’s absolutely necessary to market each website separately, and there are many (thousands of?) pages of content, I would recommend that they – at a minimum – edit the first paragraph of content to be unique and ensure that Titles and Descriptions are unique.

As blogs become increasingly popular, many companies are developing unique domains for their company blog. If this content is syndicated through their homepage or elsewhere, will that have negative affects on their homepage’s SEO?

Generally speaking, most companies will tend have a “shorter version” of the content on their company home pages. It is typical for a home page to include the title (which is a link) and a brief description of the article or blog post. Having an RSS feed or other type of feed on a web page generally is not considered duplicate unless that content is the only content on the page. Most home pages generally have a lot more content on the page than one syndicated feed. In fact, we have seen that these small snippets of content on the home page, being regularly updated, can have a positive effect on SEO as search engines do like to see fresh content, rather than a home page that never changes.

Do micro-sites with completely original content, but which are affiliated/associated with the parent company/homepage, have a negative affect on SEO?

It really depends on the content of the micro-site on whether or not it has a negative effect on search engine optimization. If the micro-site has original content then it is a good thing. However, lately, we are recommending that a blog or micro-site be put directly on the main domain name rather than developing a completely separate site with a completely new domain name.

Does duplicating homepage content on social networks/profiles hurt your SEO? (E.G. if a company creates a myspace page and copies much of the content from their homepage onto their myspace page, will that be considered duplicate content)

Generally speaking, if you were to take content and text from your current website and put it on social network or a profile it typically is not considered to be duplicate. There is usually enough other text and enough other content on the social networking profile where duplicate content is not usually an issue.

How does a search engine identify that two sites are related/tied to one another? What if someone copies my webpage content to their page, but I have no association with them, do I get penalized?

In most cases, the page that gets crawled first will be the originator of the content. Any other pages that the search engines find (like someone who copied your web page and put it on their site) will be considered duplicates of the original. The same concept applies when you take copy from one of your web pages and put it on another; the first page crawled is the original; all others are duplicates. So, this illustrates the importance of trying to ensure that your original content, that exists on your website is crawled/indexed first.

For more information about Mark checkout his company website http://www.vizioninteractive.com/ or see him at SES 2008: San Jose

Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

More and more site owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content. If you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue? What happens if you syndicate content through RSS and feeds? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This session looks at the issues and explores solutions.

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Interview: Mark Jackson Organic Search SES 2008: San Jose

You are participating in a keynote roundtable this year at the SES 2008 show in San Jose about attributing sales to Search – How much credit does an SEM program deserve?

It obviously deserves its fair share but this is the problem we are trying to solve… That search should not be an island and should be collaborative with other marketing activities. Historically, Search Marketers have tried to compete with other budgets rather than trying to be complimentary. We are trying to get marketers to understand they should work together and how to play nice with other marketers.

How do you determine the success of a Search campaign? What are some benchmarks for success?

It really varies. There are two key things we look for in metrics:

Most people with their search campaigns are only interested in Response Oriented — this is where the goal was to provoke people to do something. They want to know how many clicks and people buy. We are doing these but starting to do more around Awareness Oriented metrics – how many people became aware of us or our products during this phrase and what was their depth of their engagement with us.

Too many people exclude generic words from their campaign because the ROI is not positive but if they measures the awareness lift similar to GRP’s it opens up a different perspective. The current brand recall studies show this has tremendous value to the business. Additionally, we look at the “why only x” in terms of clicks and conversions. I have never been happy with a 5% click rate which means that 95% did not connect. If our client is the market leader they should be getting more but too many marketers do not take the time to understand why they are not getting their fair share of that opportunity.

What are some examples (generic or specific) of companies doing search right or wrong?
There are many large and small companies doing search wrong. Just about any search you do you will see mistakes with both paid and natural search. I see a lot of big companies that still have not effectively integrated search into their marketing organization. Those doing it well are many of the brands on the panels at this next SES. I am impressed with what Intuit has done as well as Intel – both are examples of well integrated search programs.

What is the latest “flash in the pan” meme in search marketing?

Social Media optimization – I think there are a lot of hacks out there that are jumping on this bandwagon since it is hot now. We are seeing a lot of chatter about optimizing social media content. While a lot of this is good information it is done after the fact rather than anything strategic that creates continuity. There are some companies who have embraced it and have tied it into a larger traffic and messaging strategy.

What are next generation search marketers thinking about?
They are thinking about content optimization across multiple formats and how to maximize all intersections with searchers. They will also be looking for was to integrate search into the entire content creation workflow.

What is one area you would like to see people spend more time on when looking at SEM analytics?

Monitoring paid and organic search integration.

Please share some of your professional background and why enjoy being CEO/President of Global Strategies?

I am one of the pioneers of Search Marketing. I got started by sending requests for inclusion into Yahoo! Directly to Jerry Yang when they were just starting out. I helped Outrider grow into the largest search agency that was acquired by WPP in 2000. After taking a break from search and working on a few internal consulting projects I formed GSI to work with companies to integrate search into the workflow for scale. We have grown to be a leader in enterprise and global search marketing. Why I enjoy being the CEO? I get to oversee a great team of dedicated Search consultants and work with some of the biggest brands in the world. I get to travel the world to meet with clients and teams. Last year I logged over 300,000 miles and visted 20+ countries. The travel around the world gives me the opportunity to experience many different forms of search marketing techniques and opportunities.

For more information about Bill Hunt or his company checkout Global Strategies.

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Interview: Bill Hunt – SES 2008: San Jose

What is your background and what are you doing for Relevant Traffic?

I am part of what I would call the first generation of Europeans embracing cultural and language diversity. I was born in Denmark, travelled in my youth and studied in 4 different countries and in 4 different languages before beginning my career in France.

After having worked mainly in the French internet sector in various companies and functions, I became one of the founders of Relevant Traffic Europe, a Europe-wide Search Engine Marketing agency delivering technology solutions, search campaigns and consultancy in 11 languages and over 20 countries.

I today head a team of experts residing in various subsidiaries to accumulate and distribute know-how within client delivery and for tailor-made client solutions.

What are key issues to think about into the UK & Europe SEM market?

The key issues to think about for doing SEM in Europe are three-fold: user constraints, language preferences and cultural flavour.

User constraints are really about understanding the context the user will be in when doing a search. Mobile internet is more important in Europe due to a high equipment rate and although this is not as omnipresent as in advanced parts of Asia, this could be a good example of a user constraint. More relevant user constraints are those in relation with the buying experience: what are the most common means of payment or delivery of goods in the country – what is the currency used. Will there be problems with VAT or import taxes, what will be the connexion speed, will the keyboard lay-out work with the application. All of these elements of user constraints are quite essential as they could represent an completely blocking obstacle in the conversion funnel.

The second element to be dealing with can be equally blocking. It is of course the language factor. You will need to be addressing web users in their own language, that is, if you are not marketing entirely indispensable services (most people are of course not)… The language issue can be quite complex as it dictates the keywords and key phrases that you will be using in SEM. The language dimension not only important for the SEM efforts but more so on the destination web site. In some cases a language specific microsite explicitly stating that the remaining service will be in English language can be a solution. In most cases, however, if your web site is only in English, you might as well not market towards a specific region at all.

The third element is somewhat softer – it is the cultural dimension of your marketing campaign. Culture is often considered to be something difficult to grasp but in SEM the cultural dimension is very concrete. It furthermore ties into both the user constraints and language issues. As an example an English language Ad from a US campaign may not be efficient in the UK market because of both different word connotation and politeness. A message can be more or less direct and in this way be considered more or less aggressive by two different audiences in different cultural settings. Another dimension to the cultural context is the type of message used in other marketing channels both on and offline. The type of message your competitors are using will add to the cultural flavour. From our experience within Relevant Traffic, a higher cultural immersion into the local jargon and standards of communication will always give a higher return. The cultural dimension will allow you to tap into the long tail.

So to sum up, if you miss out on the user constraints you might as well not start marketing to a geographic area (sell in Euros to the UK where they will pay in Pound Sterling). If you have got the user constraints right you will get some initial marginal returns even if you haven’t fully managed the language dimension (you can get away with targeting the UK with a copy and paste US campaign). If you want to compete within high volume business areas, you need to also consider the cultural dimension. “When in Rome, do as the Romans”…

What are the hot issues surrounding international SEM at the moment?

The hottest issue around international SEM is an extremely boring one called organisation. According to the level of branding against conversion required in a Paid Search strategy, an entirely different set-up could be required. For highly competitive international SEM, it will be necessary to have feet on the ground in every major language/country segment and establish an efficient command line and an aggregate reporting. For a brand campaign with mainly visibility objectives a more centralized organisation and a stronger command line can be established with less feet on the ground. Major international organisations with multi-national presence are today struggling with a major headache issue of finding out how to organize international SEM internally as well as how to work with international agencies externally. For each organisation the setting could be different.

How do you decide which markets to move into next with your global marketing plan?

When building an international marketing plan, timing is often a problem so let’s forget that and just concentrate on how things should be: For each country/language segment, a comparison of adaptation costs with market potential would easily give a prioritized list of markets to target. For a US company, this equation will very often generate a prioritized list starting with something like this:

1) Canada/EN

2) United Kingdom

3) Australia NZ/EN

4) Mexico & Central America/ES

After that it get’s harder and the following markets will involve Asian (Japan, China) and Western European markets (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, …)

What are some international SEM resources on the web that you recommend?

I will mainly recommend e-consultancy.com which is a great resource with in-depth reports. I have also had great use of the European Interactive Advertising Association’s market information: http://www.eiaa.net/

What are some great non-US blogs to read for international search gurus?

I spend very little time on non-US blogs so I won’t recommend any.

What is the latest “flash in the pan” meme in search marketing?

There have been so many Flash in the pan meme’s out there both in paid and natural.I like the recent “Google can now index Flash” one. My feeling is Google always could and never really will index Flash in the way they should… but at least this will get the SEO industry more ways of making it all sound very complex

What is your blog or a place that people can get in contact with you?

Best place to hook up right now will be on Search Engine Strategies in San José where I speak on the 18th of August. Also happy to receive you in Paris or in one of our other European offices.

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Interview: Anders Hjorth – SES 2008: San Jose

Social Media has been a hot topic this year. Why should marketers enter this space and what is the key benefit?

Facebook just announced a year over year traffic increase of 40%. Any major brand would be so lucky to have this big of a jump to their site. Marketers should enter the social media space because you always need to fish where the fish are.

The key benefits are 1) could introduce your product to a new audience 2) low barrier to entry 3) valuable/real time customer feedback 4) helps differentiate your brand since some brands have been slow to move in this space 5) Social Media is here to stay so the sooner you start learning and adjusting the better off you will be in the long run.

Unlike SEM (or even SEO), SMM seems to be lacking in measurable metrics that marketers can tie directly back to ROI. What do you say to marketers who feel uncomfortable putting money into a form of marketing that they can’t prove is giving them a proper ROI?

Sometimes you need to look at the other side of the coin: What is the potential cost of not doing anything? How vulnerable are you to competition if you don’t do anything? There may still be hesitancy even if the competitors are embracing new technology, the key is to start small and get a few wins rather than trying to build the “perfect thing” from the start.

It seems like every week there’s a new “hot” social network that everyone raves about–what key factors should a marketer look for when deciding which social media properties to target?

Which properties align with your demographic and psychographic? If you sell walking canes then you probably don’t need to be on MySpace. Figure out which media has the best chance to be around for the foreseeable future. Also, figure out what assets you already have that you can leverage. Do you have a lot of original video content or do you have a huge user base that wants to connect. This will help you select the right medium. Also instead of trying to be on all social places at once. Start with the one that has the best chance for success for your product/brand and then grow channel by channel from there. This is very similar to search; everyone starts with Google then expands to Yahoo, MSN, Ask, Kayak, etc.

Facebook’s advertising platform seems to have fallen far short of expectations. Is it worthwhile for marketers to advertise on Facebook or are they better off spending their money elsewhere?

You should definitely test this as it is very easy to get up and running. From there you can determine your returns and go from there. Many brands have found more success sending their Facebook ads to a Facebook Fan Page rather than to their on site.

While we hear about many marketers making huge ground by marketing through social media (such as those addressed in the panel), far more fail than succeed. Is SMM really something that you can guarantee will be successful if “done right” or is it luck-of-the-draw to a certain extent?

Nothing is guaranteed – intelligence, enthusiasm and luck will take you a long way in life.

Twitter is becoming increasingly popular, despite its many troubles. Do you see Twitter as a viable platform for marketers in the future?

It already is a viable platform as JetBlue, Comcast, Whole Foods, etc. have proven. If you are a big brand and you aren’t already doing so, you should immediately start following what people are saying about your brand. In the past we had to pay research firms for this type of data on our customers – now it is free and real time! A good tool for this is found at http://search.twitter.com.

If you had to guess, what would you say is the “next big thing” in Social Media Marketing?

The two next big things in my mind are advancements in mircropayments and search results incorporating the social graph (socialommerce™).

#1: Micropayments will allow users to easily transfer money between each other even in amounts less than twenty cents.

This might introduce micro-branding. For example on Facebook users can send each other gifts. This typically costs the user a $1. 100% of this goes to Facebook. Today companies like Skittles often sponsor these gifts (Teddy Bear, Skittle). While it’s nice that the user receives a gift they would probably be happier if they also received fifty cents along with their gift icon. This will happen in the future. It’s similar to the concept that MSN is introducing with their Live Search Cashback.

#2: Here’s a real world example of what the future of socialommerce holds:

Jim and his wife just had their third child. With this addition, his two sedans won’t cut it anymore, so he’s in the market for a bigger vehicle. Having vowed to himself and his friends that he’d never own a minivan, he’s in the market for an SUV or a crossover vehicle.

Jim is dreading the hours of searching on the Internet to find a vehicle that suits his needs. He’s dreading even more having to leave work early to visit the car dealerships to test drive his array of selected vehicles and then begin the haggling process. Jim is also fearful that he may make a mistake even after all of his diligent research.

The majority of these pains will become things of the past with socialommerce. Here’s why:

Jim performs a search on his favorite social network – he types in “buying a car.” Rather than receiving a bunch of irrelevant ads for car trader sites he discovers the following:

* 23 of Jim’s friends have purchased a car in the last year
* 16 of his friends are married with two or more children
* 14 purchased an SUV or crossover
* 9 purchased the same vehicle

Jim respects the opinions of the nine people who purchased the same vehicle, so he clicks to find out more, and gets the following information:

“I test drove Crossover X and Crossover Y. Crossover Y was the much better feel and it was easier to get into the back seat. Couple that with the fact that it gets 3 more mph to the gallon and it was a no-brainer.”

Listed alongside the qualitative reviews are certain data points for each friend: price, vehicle, options, lease or finance terms, color, etc.

What does this mean for brand marketing? Well, it means that companies and marketers better start spending more time listening to their customers and potential customers and less time spending hours upon hours figuring out their next award-winning – but “no-customer-getting” – 30-second television commercial. Your power consumers are going to take ownership of brands, and their referral power is now on steroids.

Just as important as listening to the customer is acting on the information received and working with the product team to make quick adjustments. These certainly aren’t new constructs, but in the age of Web 2.0, your brand will experience a quick death if these constructs aren’t adhered to.

For more information checkout Erik at SES 2008: San Jose during the social media track;

Marketing to and through social networks means humans are hot again. Not as directory editors; it’s Web 2.0, and your customers are in control. The old-fashioned media buy has gone bye-bye. Social media marketing is fast emerging as a must-have in search strategies. Learn about the social search revolution, and hear case studies of how marketers have successfully promoted brands and products with it.

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Interview: Erik Qualman – SES 2008 San Jose Q&A

(Posted via blackberry live so excuse the mistakes and lack of links – edits to come)

NYU SCPS put on a speaker series this evening called “The Art of the Media Launch”

Moderator
David Carr – media columnist – NYTimes

Panelists
Arianna Huffington – editor and co-founder of The Huffington Post
Susan Lyne – president and CEO – Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc
Craig Newmark founder and customer service representative – craigslist.org
Laurel Touby – founder and senior vp – Mediabistro.com

Based around the success of the properties listed above the speakers were brought together to be moderated by Carr.

Keypoints from the discussion

Stay on track with your original idea
Toughest naysayers are in your own head

On Advertising
Advertising was brought up as an important part of what is happening now on the web. Craig Newmark believes in the effort of sites to be transparent. All panelists agreed that advertising should not interupt but rather accompany content.

Barriers to entry to start a business are at an all time low. Especially a media platform.

Lynn on discussing the traditional media launch-importance

Years ago polishing your pitch was important and developing your need and story. This is even more true today.

Touby – same question
Go out and get info from your possible audience. Have passion, have a set customer base (identify your users), excellence (have good materials and content)

Newmark – same question
Make sure people have/use the same values. Do what you say you will – follow through.

Audience Questions

Are you afraid of Google?

Huffington – No
Google pushes the limit and will continue to do so.

Lyne – No
Google (the) search is not working that well anymore.

My comments
She was looking for search results that included a single url only. Looking for filtered search. She is looking for site specific search results. I was surprised at this question as this feature exists currently. (Lyne is the CEO of MSL Omnimedia)

Startup Capital?

Get $ from friends and family.

Huffington on the next big thing – Disconnecting. Disco from online and reconnect with offline selves.

Touby – get and audience before going for advertising.

In closing I think this type of discussion like many appear to be a branding campaign for each respective company.

Some of my quick thoughts: there is no set strategy being discussed. Commonalities between these speakers are few. Putting together a panel such as this is difficult to stay on track with the original idea of “art of the media launch”.

Overall Great Panel.

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“The Art of the Media Launch” Panel Discussion at NYU