Rain in NYC makes for good shots like this via my Instagram. For many years search has been the backbone of the internet marketing. While effective on its own for a range of marketing objectives, namely product sales and lead generation, it's the integration with other digital marketing tactics that can really elevate marketing program effectiveness.

The closing keynote on Wednesday at ad:tech New York was presented by Christian Oestlien the Head of Social Advertising Products at Google. The opening of Oestlien's presentation featured an example of Google+'s new Hangout feature shot live at a Black Eyed Peas Concert. Fans were given an opportunity to interact with the music sensations in real time. Black Eyed Pea's frontman will.i.am is noted as saying "This isn't behind the music, this will become the music.

[ Note from Lee: Our Wednesday Guest Post Series from digital marketing experts has been very well received and today's post from my friend Heidi Cohen will not disappoint. Heidi is a long time and very popular Columnist at ClickZ and Content Marketing Institute, Adjunct Professor at NYU, an active marketing blogger as well as President of Riverside Marketing Strategies.

As part of my November cross country efforts to share search, social media and content marketing insights, I've switched from BlogWorld Los Angeles last week to ad:tech New York this week. I'm really looking forward to a great group of Search Marketing sessions at one of the the largest Interactive Marketing conferences in the world. In the past year I've been to London, San Francisco, Barcelona and many other great cities )even Cleveland!

Amazing sunset outside of the TopRank office. The agency ) TopRank Online Marketing ( that I started with Susan Misukanis celebrated it's 10th Birthday this year and in my all my time as an Internet Marketer, no other combination of marketing tactics has yielded results like the combination of Search Engine Optimization and Content. Over the past 5 years Social Media has entered the mix as an even more powerful amplifier to the effect of optimized content.

October 28, 2011 marked my first attendance at the Minneapolis chapter of Social Media Breakfast )#SMBMSP(. I arrived at 514 Studios around 7:45am and to be honest, I was surprised at the number of people already in the audience. I grabbed my seat in the second row and had an opportunity to to meet the featured speakers Lisa Grimm and Meg Knodl right before they took their seats at the front of the room. Did You Know?

[ Note from Lee: This week's guest post is from someone I've known from the Search Marketing world for a long time. Bryan Eisenberg is a Wall Street Journal & New York Times Best Selling Author, popular keynote speaker and well respected guru in all things related to marketing and conversion optimization. We serve on the SES Conference Board of Advisors together and as he's elevated his status in the business world, has always been helpful and full of practical advice.

With over 70 sessions SES Chicago running November 14-18, 2011 is a virtual smorgasbord of information for Marketing and SEO professionals alike. Many topics will be covered including: PPC, keyword research, SEO, social media, local marketing, mobile marketing, link building, content, optimization, usability, and so much more. With so many sessions to choose from where should you begin?

This Halloween do you think social media will bring you tricks or treats? For some marketers, every day is Halloween when it comes to social media marketing . These marketers expect the bogeyman to be hiding behind every piece of consumer-generated content and assume their customers and the public only use Facebook and Twitter witchcraft to create bloodcurdling tricks. Yet the reality is that most of the social media conversation about your firm isn't scary.

I've been liveblogging conferences since about 2005. While I had personally liveblogged SES and Pubcon, the first time I ever liveblogged for a conference itself was ad:tech Chicago thanks to Steve Hall. I was then able further develop my liveblogging skills observing and sometimes working with Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable. Since then TopRank has liveblogged nearly 100 events from SES Hong Kong to Intel's first Social Media Summit.

As an Internet marketer I am always on the hunt for new content marketing tools that can increase my efficiencies and improve engagement with my audience. I cannot begin to express how valuable content curation can be if done right. It will allow you tap into and respond to what people are searching for, what they like to read and share, what influences their buying decisions and so on. In my search for a new means of marketing I came across a tool called Scoop.It.

[Note from Lee: The next in our series of Wednesday guest posts comes from no less than the Godfather of Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi . I've known Joe since he published his first book, Get Content Get Customers, and have been amazed at his relentless efforts to lead the charge towards better marketing. What I like best about Joe is that he's a "Walk the Talk" content marketer with Junta42 ,

Does Your Inbox Look Like This? We've all received them and we've all sent them. They can be given but they can't be taken back. It's a single action that can cause people to unfriend, unfollow, or unsubscribe. What are they? Emails! Emails can inspire, engage, or excite your prospects or customers but can have the opposite effect of what you were aiming for if you don't follow some simple rules.

After a successful Blog World Expo New York , I'm very much looking forward to BlogWorld Los Angeles in just under 2 weeks. Judging from the conference agenda , there's an impressive roster )275+( of experts, pundits and long time bloggers presenting on just about every relevant topic you can think of.

By you know I'm as sold as one can be on the intersection of Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing . It's the essence of the core principles of information Discovery, Consumption and Engagement that I talk about in Optimize and at conferences like PRSA International in Orlando this week. Information production, sharing and consumption is accelerating faster than marketers )or consumers( can keep up with.

[Note from Lee: Social Business is everybody's business when it comes to modern internet marketing . IBM's social business efforts are really at the forefront of this trend. Ben Edwards is the VP of Digital Strategy at IBM and leads the strategy, design and development of IBM's marketing and communications in the digital realm. Ben joins us today to share his insights into the journey of not only embracing the social web for external marketing,

There are some things that you can't take back: including what you release on the Internet. With over 93% of B2B marketers using social media , online sales has very much become a social business. As marketers we need to do our best to present as well online as we do in person )if not better(. Creating an effective online marketing plan amongst all the changes on the social web isn't easy, but here are a few things you may want to avoid.

[Note from Lee: While I fervently pursue the home stretch of writing my own book " Optimize ", I've asked a few friends to share their thoughts on topics such as Content Marketing, SEO and Social Media. This post comes from Rebecca Lieb , who I've known since her days at ClickZ, then Econsultancy and now she is digital advertising and media analyst at the Altimeter Group . Her new book,

In my quest to find a more efficient and effective way to leverage Twitter, I've come across a plethora of new and interesting social media tools . Recently, I've been testing two tools that surfaced in my research, Timely and Buffer, which I classify as tweet timing tools. Timely is a product of the folks at Flowtown and Buffer is from the co-creator of OnePage.

Photo from our interview with Avinash at SES Hong Kong The morning keynote speaker for the 2011 MIMA Summit was none other than Avinash Kaushik co-Founder of Market Motive Inc and the Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google. Avinash was a very funny and engaging speaker. Nothing was off limits during his keynote. Caught in the crosshairs of Avinash 's presentations were what he called "small" local companies )General Mills, 3M,