Last week at the PRSA Digital Impact conference I met Steve Rubel, SVP Director of Insights from Edelman Digital and famous )sometimes infamous( PR blogger at Micropersuasion . He presented "2008 Digital Trends: Open Files" which talks about the framework Edelman uses )Faint Signals, Watch List and Hallucinations for tracking digital/social media trends.

This panel at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference includes Heidi Sullivan and Jay Krall of Cision and Jason Falls of Doe Anderson and who writes Social Media Explorer . Heidi starts out a with a poll: How many comments for media relations? and How many have created a social profile for a client? A small number of hands raise for each question. Jason: What are three things you want to know? Less tools and tactics and more to how you're applying this,

The TopRank team works really well together, bringing to each team meeting various areas of expertise and interest, which makes for a well-rounded environment here in our Lake Minnetonka office. We know how to play off of everyone's strengths and ensure our clients are fully serviced based on their needs and objectives by those who can best take on that role. Below is a list of our favorite online marketing tips , which - as a team - makes us stronger than each individual.

Innovation, creative problem solving and passionate interest in the subject matter are a big part of successful internet and social marketing - the topics of prime interest to readers of Online Marketing Blog . Those same characteristics apply to organizations and individuals working to make strategic business and marketing changes for the future. In particular, these values are reflected in the upcoming PUSH 2008 conference in Minneapolis June 15-17.

I guess you could call this the "International Edition" of the BIGLIST Update of search marketing blogs as we have multiple countries represented including SEOs and PR professionals from the UK, New Zealand, Netherlands and USA. There's plenty of flavorful writing, advice and tips so read on: Searchwritten - Netherlands based Ramon Eijkemans started this new blog as a study in content SEO, a topic that's near and dear.

With all the sessions, speakers, networking and photo-snapping going on in the last 2 days at SMX Advanced in Seattle, it's surprising any attendee got anything else completed at all. While I didn't attend every session )can't be in three places at once - just not possible for this girl :(( I managed to get to quite a few where I learned a lot of valuable information and got a feel for what everyone was talking about.

While there is still a debate over the effect of the recession we are in, or even if we are in a recession at all, it seems most companies and individuals are preparing for it the best they can. Talks of budget cuts and conserving resources are on everyone's minds these days. So where does search marketing fit in to all of this? Our expert panel this morning at SMX Advanced - consisting of Jon Miller from Marketo , Russ Mann of Covario ,

Day 1 at SMX Advanced has wrapped up quite nicely. Below are some of the session highlights and the gorgeous Bell Harbor Conference Center. Danny Sullivan opening the show this morning in Seattle. Everyone milling around, getting ready for the first of this mornings sessions Blow Your Mind Linkbuilding Tactics panel this morning B uilding Value for your SEO Business session,

Watch out link-and site-buyers alike! Matt Cutts is in town! For those of you know don't know )is there anyone out there who doesn't?(, Matt Cutts is the head of Google's web spam team; which means any secret we are hearing at SMX Advanced, Matt is making sure the shady tactics aren't working anymore next week. Beginning with a pop culture comparison, Matt states that risky link building behavior is a lot like Milli Vanilli.

Technical issues flavored the beginning of this session at SMX Advanced in Seattle. However, "oopsies" notwithstanding, Blow Your Mind Linkbuilding Tactics was informative with plenty of advice for gaining the authoritative inbound links web sites need to rank well in the search engines. The session was packed with link builders looking for new and cutting edge linking information. While we listened, Roger Monti,

The search marketing industry is rich with acronyms: SEO, SEM, PPC, ROI, SERPs )even LMAO( as well as buzz phrases such as "search engine optimization" and "social media optimization". Do we really need another? One of the few things to be counted on in search marketing is that there will be change. That change comes in many forms including search engine algorithm changes )albeit more gradual than large, single events(,

At the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, I'll be presenting along with David Snyder and Chris Winfield a hotly anticipated session called " Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool ?". With the fast growth and uptime growing pains, debates about Twitter are plentiful so let's settle it once and for all with a Twitter poll: Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

With over 100 million blogs tracked by Technorati, there is a tremendous amount of momentum and motivation for businesses to take advantage of all the marketing, PR, support and revenue opportunities that business blogs can bring. Sometimes it seems there are more "blog consultants" than there are business blogs due to the ease of using free blog software like Blogger or Wordpress.com/Wordpress.org.

SMX Advanced is less than a week away, and let me tell you, I am excited. Not only is Seattle one of my favorite cities in the country, but the agenda for the 2 day long search marketing event looks outstanding. Along with the keynote speakers - Kevin Johnson and Matt Cutts - here are a few other sessions I am really looking forward to. SMX Advanced Day 1 Blow your Mind Link Building Techniques - Want to learn how to build a database of high-value link acquisition targets?

Here we SEO again with a bi-weekly update of TopRank's BIGLIST of SEO blogs . The list must be hot because we've been receiving requests just about every day over the past few weeks. Of course, that's not the best way to get on the list if you've read the guidelines. Links are always a good way for us to find you or being listed on other SEO blogs' blogrolls is a good way too. This of course, your blog is about search engine optimization,

Companies large and small spend significant proportions of their revenue on branding efforts as well as those things that influence customer perception of brand like product development, support and customer service. While there is debate about who "owns" a brand, the company or it's customers, partners and employees, it can be agreed that there is tremendous value and equity in a company's brand.

Late last week, Lee, Jolina and I attended the event, Dual Reality: Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise , sponsored by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association )MIMA(. As we sat in the front row, eagerly awaiting the discussion panel to emerge, we reviewed the roster of panelists, including Interactive Directors )titles varying from one company to the next( from Fortune 500 Companies such as Target, Best Buy, General Mills, and Fingerhut.

Someone that I've wanted to interview as much as Robert Scoble is Guy Kawasaki. Guy is an enthusiastic promoter and marketer which are qualities Online Marketing Blog readers can appreciate a great deal. In this interview, he talks briefly about his most recent project, Alltop as well as changes he would make to Twitter, business blogging advice and a curious admission that he doesn't understand SEO.

Lee and Rob at PRSA International 2007 On the marketing conference circuit, online reputation management is a hot topic now more then ever. Whether it's search marketing, public relations or direct marketing, companies are trying to make sense of how to monitor and manage the brand impact of online conversations and their visibility in search results. Last Thursday I did a national PRSA teleseminar with Kami Watson Huyse,

The results of our poll on how Online Marketing Blog readers use Twitter are in. We had over 220 responses, which isn't a bad sample considering this blog is fairly niche with a modest sized )and very smart( audience. Below I've listed the poll results and a few comments on each. )39%, 87 Votes( Sharing links to items of interest to your network - Not surprising since the speed of reach on Twitter is so fast. As soon as you find something interesting that's linkable,