Certainly one of the best cities in the U.S. for a conference is San Francisco and in a little over 2 weeks the famous ClickZ Connected Marketing Week returns with 5 days of deep dive online marketing education, networking and knowing SEOs, plenty of fun. A big part of the week is the SES San Francisco conference for which I sit on the Advisory Board. Online Marketing Blog is also a media sponsor for SES )the original blog media sponsor actually(.

One of the practical opportunities for companies that acquire and engage customers through a sales force, is through social media content and participation. In fact, many corporate marketing departments have found their field sales reps active on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even YouTube before headquarters has. Such "rogue" social media activity might be proactive,

This is the second of my "workation" blog posts this week, so I hope you enjoy the brevity My oldest son is a relatively new fan of skateboarding and I've noticed some interesting comparisons with his advancement of skills to the experience of many social media marketers - or any new discipline for that matter. To be clear, I don't know much about skateboarding beyond the games of suicide and smear we played as kids, skateboarding down the hill by my childhood home.

Recently I spoke with Content Strategist, Margot Bloomstein , who was conducting research for an upcoming publication about Content Strategy intended for a variety of audiences. In particular, we discussed productive interactions and exchanges between Search Engine Optimization and Content Strategists. Organizations advance their reach and engagement goals through content and Strategists work to audit, develop strategy, plan, create and maintain that content.

Bringing insights about content marketing to light often involves the importance of understanding what topics and pain points customers care about. Creating content for business communications with customers, peers, employees and the industry is an essential part of doing business. Creating content alone isn't enough to ensure intended audiences will read it,

At Intel's first Social Media Conference in Portland this week, 100+ Intel social media practitioners from all over the world came together with about 20 industry subject matter experts to share and engage social media best practices. One of those speakers was Lionel Menchaca , the Chief Blogger at Dell and a real pioneer in the world of blogging and social media for the enterprise.

My friend Bob Knorpp has a good piece on AdAge this week:" Why Marketers Should Break Free of the Digital Content Trap " about the fallacy of content. He makes some good points about companies going through the motions of creating and promoting content on social channels with motivations of retweets, likes, shares and links over real engagement. I have to agree where he says, "content alone is a dead end for ongoing engagement".

Need to learn more about smartphone and mobile SEO best practices? Let's start with a few statistics: According to an infographic from Microsoft Tag, 51% of smartphone users are more likely to buy from a retailer with a mobile specific web site, however: only 4.8% of retailers have a mobile web site. A recent study by Google, " The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users " reports 77% of smartphone users visit search engine websites followed by social networks.

I received an invite to CrowdFactory's "Driving Social Media & Customer Acquisition Throughout the Customer Lifecycle" with Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group, and decided to sign up and liveblog it. Presenting along with Jeremiah was Sanjay Dholakia , CEO of CrowdFactory. Jeremiah has pioneered a lot of the social media thinking found in progressive companies today and his blog, Web Strategist , is known to senior business and agency marketing executives world-wide.

With nearly 50% of consumers reporting that both search and social media influence purchases, Social Media and SEO are hot topics for most online marketing firms. But there's a world of difference between the notions of social dominance, super-powered with search ubiquity and the ability to successfully implement - especially in large companies. Once of the most common issues is that social media efforts themselves are often uncoordinated activities,

In the course of providing expertise and advice, I've really come to believe that it's more important now than ever for Public Relations professionals to accelerate their knowledge of SEO and Social Media. The storytelling business is a competitive one and great messaging isn't realized until it connects with influencers and those in a position to propagate it. Both SEO and Social Media facilitate discovery of news and information,

Wordle Cloud Using the Text of This Article I recently had an interesting discussion with Ron Jones who is writing a book specifically on using keywords for online marketing called " Keyword Intelligence ". He was researching for the content marketing portion of the book and we talked about where keywords fit. These kinds of discussions are great for blog posts so here are a few ideas for you on keywords, SEO, Social Media and content.

Engage or Die 1. Our opportunity with social media is to do something more meaningful than just "marketing". 2 . Social media is not here to save you. It's not here to make your business matter again. That's your job. Social media are the tools to help you connect and engage . 3. Each social platform is its own community. What we do on the social web isn't about social media at large, but cultivating community within each distinct platform. If this was easy,

The "Smart Mobile Marketing" session is a panel discussion, moderated by TopRank CEO Lee Odden. To begin the discussion, Lee opens with a question for the room of 80+, "how many people in the room have developed a mobile version of a site?" 3-4 hands slowly raise. And with that, the stage is set: There is a lot of learning to do surrounding mobile marketing. The session panel consists of 2 leaders and veterans of the mobile marketing industry,

WARNING: This post is based on a Marty Weintraub presentation. If you have seen Marty present, then you understand the warning and are probably smiling. For those of you who have not, just remember you were warned, although this text doesn't do justice to Marty IRL. All kidding aside, Weintraub, CEO of aimClear, is a talented presenter that has a passion for his subject matter, Facebook. In "Killer Facebook Targeting Tactics" at SES Toronto,

Really, truly understanding the competitive landscape can help pave the way for a successful search engine marketing program. Chris Boggs led a panel discussion at SES Toronto on Competitive Analysis - What tips and tools can get you the vital competitive information that every SEO needs. According to Boggs, "Competitive analysis is one of the most exciting and important tactics )SEOs( can do. The session was segmented into 3 areas of focus: on site research,

Moderated by Jonathen Allen , the SEO is Dead. Long live SEO! session included a number of "salty dog" SEO experts: Terry Van Horne , Jim Hedger and Garry Pryzklenk . Essentially, the key questions discussed in this panel centered around what is it that we're doing as marketers that could be considered as SEO vs. Marketing. Other topics included: Google +1, personalization, evolving nature of SERPs, "Trust Rank",

In my preview post for SES Toronto , I counted John Alexander's Keyword Forensics session as one of my "Must See" presentations for the 2011 conference. The promise of really digging down into keyword discovery and keyword analysis techniques sounded far too good to pass up. After all, keyword research is an essential part of any SEO process .

Last year I created a list of 25 Women That Rock Social Media for 2010 which was well received and appreciated. Most of the women listed I've come to know through involvement in the Public Relations and Search Marketing industries and also through blogging. Others I knew of through online channels. For 2011 I decided to create a similar list based almost entirely on recommendations from the 2010 list. 18 of the original 25 responded, providing over 60 recommendations.

B2B Marketing Best Practices 2011 We've been fans of MarketingSherpa reports, guides and handbooks for many years, recently reviewing their SEO Benchmark Report for 2011 . As passionate B2B Marketers, we're always on the lookout for qualitative information to improve our B2B client marketing as well as our own. That's why I'm pretty motivated by the new 2011 B2B Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook from MarketingSherpa. Led by Senior Research Analyst, Jen Doyle,