I thought about attending the event months before SMX Social Media NYC was to begin. I had never been to a search marketing conference and was somewhat wary of laying down the loot. However I was reassured by Marty Weintraub (aimClear) that attending would be well worth it. Thank you Marty, you were right!

So why was it worth it? Did I learn anything? Will I go again?

I think the major value was the networking. I literally have a pile of 60 – 70 business cards from attendees across all different industries. I met some really great people who are all in it for the same reasons. Everyone is there to learn and to explore leveraging new technology to increase social awareness. It’s really quite exciting, new, fun, and when you leverage these sites successfully for yourself or clients…it’s an incredible rush.

For decades huge media companies have owned the dissemination of information. Corporations like FOX, NYT, NBC, CBS, Viacom, etc. I would have to say that the influence of a Digg power account is comparable if not more effective than traditional media. When in history has so much power been given to masses? Exciting stuff to be a part of.

People Who Made An Impression

Marty Weintraub – aimClear, Search Marketing Firm
Marty convinced me that attending SMX would be a good idea and he was right. Thank you.

Brian Wallace – Nowsourcing, Search Marketing, IT, CMS, System Architecture,etc
I met Brian at the very end of the SMX conference. While the Wikipedia clinic was running we were in the back cheering-on his Digg submission, hoping for it to go popular…and it did!

Kimberly Krause Berg – Cre8pc, Website Usability Services
Kim was really cool. I met her first at the pre-party and then talked with her more throughout the event. On Tuesday night during the after-conference networking at Elmo, she invited me out to dinner with about 8 other folks. It was a great time. Thank you Kim!

Eric Lander – Search Engine Journal, Blogger
I met Eric during dinner on Tuesday night. Eric’s a good dude and a good writer. I’m sure I’ll be seeing him around the hood.

Matt McGee – Marchex, SEO Manager
I met Matt at dinner as well. Guy’s got a great sense of humor and really knows his answering services. I still reference Matt’s blog post about ‘How to Optimize A Site in 60 Minutes’

Eric Enge – Stone Temple Consulting, President
I sat across from Eric during dinner. A good dude that loves the Red Sox. I couldn’t believe how much SEO related writing he’s been contracted to do. The man is an SEO original gangsta.

Tamar Weinberg – Blogger
I met Tamar late in the second day. She had some advice for me on one of my live blogging posts. Thank you! Tamar is extremely passionate about what she does and an undoubted power user.

Or Darom –  888.com, Marketing
I met Or during the pre-party. She and her husband had flown all the way from Israel just to attend SMX. Like me, she had never been to a conference before and was excited to network and learn.

Liana Evans – KeyRelevance, Director of Internet Marketing
I met Li during dinner. I never knew someone could love Twitter so much. Li was taking pictures throughout the event and leading some interesting/hillarious dinner conversation. It was a pleasure to meet you Li!

Chris Winfield – 10e20, President
I talked with Chris briefly at the pre-party. He made an excellent suggestion to change my Sphinn username from my company name Squareoak to my actual name BrendanPicha. A good call. Good presentation btw Chris. Loved the linkbait ideas.

Jason Falls – Doe Anderson, Account Manager
Jason is more on the marketing side of things and was attending, like most, to learn more about social media. Jason flew up from Kentucky. I think you should definitely post that article idea you were talking about.

Rob Key – Converseon, CEO
I didn’t actually talk with or get to meet Rob but I thought his presentation was the most captivating. He compared marketers to anthropologists and how we’ll enter these online worlds without a clue about how they operate. He used an analogy about a television show where these two British guys try to get themselves adopted by a remote tribe. What they must do is:

Make friends with community elders
Understand and respect community mores
Lead with altruism and come bearing gifts
Discover what a community needs
Learn the linguistics
Value and cultivate the relationships
Leverage the opportunities

He then applied this to online communities. Applying these same techniques in order to leverage a marketing campaign within Second Life. The campaign turned out to be really successful. I really love when people mesh disciplines, theories, or industries and come to a conclusive understanding or solution. Very interesting stuff. Thanks Rob.

So will I be attending conferences in the future? Well if they’re anything like SMX you bet. I had a great time, met some fantastic people, and learned quite a bit.

It was nice to meet everyone and hopefully we’ll cross paths again soon!

Speakers
Lise Broer – “Duova”, Administrator, Wikipedia
Jonathan Hochman, Founder/President, Hochman Consultants
Matt McGee – SEO Manager, Marchex
Stephan Spencer – Found/President, Netconcepts
Don Steele – Director of Digital & Enterprise Marketing, Comedy Central

Matt McGee is speaking first

Matt is going to discuss Yahoo Answers
More about expertise and knowledge, not so much for selling products
It is a simple and incredibly busy Q&A site
There is a constant stream of questions and answers, very busy
there are friending aspects
you can create a profile page with a link to your own website
links are no followed
Yahoo answers is for traffic building not link building
21 million users in the US
95 million users Globally
Yahoo Answers condones marketing your products or services
As long as you provide a helpful answer, all is well
Spam is not okay

Benefits of Yahoo Answers
referral traffic
lowest bounce rate through Yahoo Answers
your answers will be indexed
crawl depth is great

How to use Yahoo Ansers?
find questions you want to answer
They have RSS feeds for every category on the site
They have a search box on Yahoo Answers
You can filter your search by the number of answers or date
make sure you sign your name when you are leaving a question or an answer
Lastly, do not Spam

Next up is Jonathan Hochman

Jonathan is a Wikipedia admin
The amount of wiki traffic is huge
Use wikipedia as a poll media

Marketers…please do not spam the system (don’t be a dick…exact words)

Top newbie mistakes are:
don’t use promotional usernames
don’t make copyright violations – pictures and content
no conflict of interest editing, don’t write about yourself or things you are close to you

You can get blacklisted for spamming Wikipedia
all domains that are blacklisted are made publicly available
SEs use the data to tweak their algos
A Google employee actually spammed Wikipedia and their IP was recorded
The IP recorded will not be from the company’s firewall but actually the specific computer within the network

Your audience does the marketing for you
content spreads virally because of loose copyrights
participating within Wikipedia can improve your reputation

Next to speak is Stephan Spencer

Getting your wiki edits to stick
develop a profile that has street cred
add edits that are cleaning up spam not creating it
fix typos
practices that are clearly non-commercial are best
you can receive barn star awards for doing a good job at moderating
age and histroy of your account matter
over time you could become an admin
incorporate content edits when adding a link. It makes it harder to revert your edit
communicate with the main editor of the article before adding an external link that you think is valuable but could be looked at with suspicion and removed
when you add links, if you add them as references instead of adding them to the external links section they are more likely to stick

Creating brand new entries
be logged in with an account that has a solid contribution history
make sure there is no connection between you and the article’s subject
have the subject of the article weigh in via the talk page rather than making edits themselves
watch the page so you can be alerted to an AfD nomination or reversion of your work
use lots of references, particularly ones that are from mainstream media sources
references serve two purposes
1. external links that will stick
2. establish notability, you have to have great articles in the media that you can reference in the Wiki

Getting over the notability hurdle
press release mentions do not help establish notability
use google’s new archive search for finding reference articles
an article with just a passing quote isn’t good enough
get your PR firm to help you land an article even if it is with a small newspaper that profiles your company

Protecting your investment
when admins and the new page partol see new usernames and page creation which are blatantly commercial, they are ordered to “shoot’em on sight” – Brad Patick, Wikipedia
make firends, you’re going to need them
Watch the pages you have an interest in
Don’t just rely on the wikipedia watch function; use a tool that emails you when changes are made (trackengine.com, changenotes.com, urlywarning.net, changedetect,com)

Playing the game
internal politics, reversion wars, ego trips, indiscriminate removal of commercial content
www.wikitruth.info can detect changes
There are other tools that can detect edits. Wiki scanner is one of them.

Next to speak is Don Steele

“Comedy Central and Wikipedia, a match made in heaven”

How we execute digital marketing
DVDs & other biz
Mobile
Wikis
Social Networks
Podcasts
Email
Viral

South Park has 185 Wikipedia pages
Bono was mentioned in a Wikipedia edit pertaining to a recent South Park episode
Bono’s Wikipedia page is now referencing South Park

Traffic volume is great
Content is highly referenced and referred to on Wikipedia
Wikipedia has become a relevant traffic driver to comedycentral.com

Comedy Central started editing pages
Wikipedia warmed them not to
Comedy Central editing was a conflict of interest
Now Comedy Central has a great relationship with the Wiki administration
Follow the rules and don’t be a dick

Next to speak is Lise Broer – Wikipedia Admin
Suggests that all companies should handle Wikipedia entries the way that Don from Comedy Central does
Lise has 18,000 edits and has been working with Wikipedia for around a year
Lise sees a lot of people making wikipedia mistakes
15% of what people say on Wikipedia can ruin careers
Wikipedia is not Facebook or MySpace
She’s now talking about Virgil Griffith who created the Wiki Scanner

Lise is talking about a commercial Wiki edit that went awry
Some guy from Idaho Falls was spamming Wikipedia over and over and denying it
He was selling Tea Tree oil
He tried to login using a new ip and new username
However the new user name was IdahoFallz
Lise references Wikipedia: WikiProject Spam

People are constantly trying to spam Wikipedia
Said something about angry mastodons

Speakers
Liana Evans – Director Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance
Rand Fishkin – CEO & C0-Founder, SEOmoz

micro communities are vertical portals
people in micro communities are able to funnel their interests and network with people
so…what’s the point of going micro? The user count is relatively tiny.
it’s traffic vs relevance. You have a higher chance for a conversion
contributing on a regular basis will build brand recognition

How do we discover micro communities?
web search engines are the right way
search for terms that are related to your industry
another way to find good communities is through a social media discovery blog
there are usually a lot of lists out there that will help you to discover more micro communities

How do I determine if a community is right for my business?
look at membership numbers
use the Google operatives i.e. (condo rentals site:trulia.com) to find micro communities right for you
look for features that you can leverage

Micro communities mentioned:
Care2 – connects non-profits to other non-profits
WebMD – Medical community
LibraryThing – Let’s you share and review books
Yelp – Local reviews community, you can take control of your listing inside Yelp
Trulia – Real estate community, site is getting large, on the uptake
Peer Trainer – Fitness network, runners, bikers, climbers
Donor Choose – Find organizations to donate to
ThinkVitamin – Blog launcher
Minti – For parents
RealEstateVoices – real estate community
Deviant Art -Digital art community
Sports Shooter – Network for sports photographers
Threadless – Fashion Networking
Cork’d – Wine enthusiasts site
Imbee – Social networking for kids
Virb – creative community, video, music, art
Wayfaring – secondary tool for social media, shared maps
CouchSurfing – Put up your couch for rent or for people to crash at (um..what?)
WikiHow – How-to content, does really well with the SEs
Helium – Broader how-to, writers can contribute content
Etsy – handmade goods
Avvo – community for lawyers
Urbis – creative community
BakeSpace – Food blog, centered around baking
FoodCandy – Foodie network
Sphinn – search marketing community
TheStranger – Seattle newspaper community
Ebay – Auction shopping/selling community

Liana Evans is now speaking

Search marketers need to put a new spin on their strategies
Go to where you audience is
Looked all over to see where we could place our client. Where they would be accepted.
They first identified bloggers that they wanted to talk to to spread the word about their product.
They started small and then ramped-up in case of possibly receiving negative feedback
Kept a database of comments from bloggers
Gave a special offer to the community through bloggers. Worked well.
Followed Womma, word of mouth guidelines before proceeding
A blogger that was featured on MSN’s front page was talking about the product. This blew open the front doors for sales.
You have to take the good comments with the bad comments. You’ll get both.
98% of bloggers ended up trying the product
traffic incresed
SEO benefits
Boost in brand exposure

You need to factor SEO + PPC + Social media into your campaign equation

Speakers
Sarah Hofstetter – Vice President, Emerging Media and Client Strategy, 360i
Rob Key – CEO, Converseon
Adam Sherk – Search/PR Strategist, Define Search Strategies

First to speak is Rob Key

They provide end-to-end social media solutions
specialize in distribution channels
community has become the heart of the web experience
the issue is there are dozens and dozens of communities
each has an emerging culture associated with it
it’s about shared experiences
some of these networks aren’t built for marketers
the challenge is that these communities are developing their own environment
different languages are evolving and different norms
we as marketers are walking into unknown lands
as marketers we are cultural anthropologists walking into these communities
conflict in Second Life – digital revolutionaries took American Apparel owners hostage
When you think of social media you need to think differently…as marketers
You need to start thinking of ROI as what can I give back to the community

Participate and learn
make friends with community elders
Understand and respect community mores
Lead with altruism and come bearing gifts
Discover what a community needs
Learn the linguistics
Value and cultivate the relationships
Leverage the opportunities

We did an initiative in Second Life
Second Life is the beginning of the 3D web
Second life hates marketers
Created 5 second life residents in 2006
Made friends with elders
Environmentalism is very important in the real world and Second Life
They started a group called Second Chance Trees for America Express (YouTube Video)
Accolades came in and the Second Life community embraced it
Be prepared to lose control of your campaign and let people own it
Main stream media picked this up, won the OMMA award for best use of virtual worlds

Now speaking is Adam Sherk

They are owned by the New York Times
SEO Consultative work for major brands
You need to be flexible when dealing with social media
When dealing with big brands you’re dealing with big ships that turn very slowly
Every department in the company is thinking about different ways to promote and build
When you have 100,000 pages it might take a lot to change a site
When you’re dealing with publishers you dealing with people thinking about ad revenue

common pitfalls include:
no strategy
lack of support/resources
poor coordination
inappropriate content
lack of understanding
hiding your affiliation
being overtly promotional

A lot of these networks are designed for individuals and not incorporate branding

Paths to success
selling upper management on the concepts
getting buy-in from all key departments
instilling a “give to gain” philosophy
finding the right people to mange the efforts
giving them what they need to be effective
testing
oversight
measuring results

The way you have to market is to give back to the community
You need to let your employees have the needed time to evolve within communities in order to leverage them

More to consider:
how will you sustain your efforts over the long term
what if your brand ambassador leaves the company?
what about employees that have their own profiles?
how will you deal with negative responses?

Fully advocate full transparency…make it known who your work for
you want to have a corporate policy in place for employees who have personal social media profiles

Finding what works:
The Daily Green – owned by Hearst. Similar to Hugg from Treehugger
Daily Green went out and found green top Digg users

TV Guide
full-time brand ambassador hired
regular monitoring and participation on social sites
full transparency within communities
network of “partner” sites developed for publicity efforts
efforts tied into SEO online and print marketing

Next to speak is Sarah Hofstetter

How can marketers influence the influential?

(running through the slides too fast…can’t transcribe)

Building awareness for show Living with Ed
Reached out to bloggers, group admins, forums
Generally speaking we were able to figure out what blogger’s interests were and befriend them
the response was fantastic and hundreds of people linked back to the HGTV website

Stressing how important it is to reach out to bloggers to build awareness of television shows
Utilize Assests:
widgets
video
unique information
photos
DVDs
contests

You can get some nice coverage if you just take the time to read and know your blogging audience
Give bloggers freebies to give away to their fans

What worked best in show promotion? Listed by most traffic to least:
Myspace
NBC Contest
NBC Rewind
NBC Heros
NBC Downloads
NBC Auction
ARG Link
NBC Widget
NBC Theories

It’s about developing intense relationships with bloggers
These guys are always looking for things to write
Contacting bloggers poorly can really ruin your reputation
Do not use interns for this task

Make sure you have something worth while to give to bloggers
Find the right bloggers to write about you
Write them a customized message
Make sure you keep an updated contact database
Don’t hope that whatever you have is blog worthy
work with your team
don’t mass email press releases

Speaking
Guillaume Bouchard – CEO, NVI
Michael Gray – President, Atlas Web Services
Neil Patel – CTO, Advantage Consulting Services

Guillaume Bouchard is speaking first

Social bookmarking, most of the links in the sites are no followed
However, some aren’t and this can help
Tagging is the new form of the keyword
Social bookmarking helps you index better
Achieves a high amount of incoming links
Creates a presence in online communities
increases brand awarness
builds traffic from alternate sources
influences traditional media

Tagging effectively
check how other people are tagging things
pick the tag that is most relevant and most popular in the tag clouds
don’t separate your tags with commas (your tags could be indexed with the commas)
co-ordinate your efforts to establish tagging standards for consistency
be original with your tags
tagging works great with images

Michael Gray is now speaking

talking about del.icio.us
subscriptions allows you to subscribe to other user’s tags
people can send you links with the ‘links for you’ option
del.icio.us is more of a broader audience than other social bookmarking/news sites
there is no right or wrong tag but you’ll want to find the one most people are using
utilize the tag cloud to see which categories are most popular
add people to your network who are active users
tailor your content to fit the tags
add bookmarking widgets and buttons to your pages
delicious’ most popular page is updated every 4 hours
time your bookmarking updates to take advantage of update times
use your friends to help influence the suggested tags
don’t create multiple sock puppet accounts, they will get discounted

Neil Patel is now speaking

Covering StumbleUpon
make sure you add friends
StumbleUpon doesn’t drive too many links but it does drive traffic
Great source for branding
StumbleUpon, on average has more males than females
The age group is actually more 45 – 55 year olds
200 is the maximum amount of friends you can have
Title is not so important, place keywords where the title goes
Absolutely use the ‘send to’ feature to make your friends view your Stumbled content before they view anything else

Speaking
Niel Patel – CTO, Advantage Consulting Services
Chris Winfield – President & Co-Founder, 10e20
Tamar Weinburg – Blogger, Rusty Brick, Inc.

Neil’s speaking first
Introduction to Digg

Average story that made the front page gets 129 links
Over 10,000 visitors in 1 hour
Great branding

Requirements
Content/pictures
Video
Audio

Does not recommend submitting a podcast to Digg

Important factors
Number of votes
Time you submit
Subitter – people who have been active in the community for a while have more clout
Number of friends

Unwritten Rules
No self-promotion
Can’t pay for votes
No spamming
No SEOs Allowed

Fun Facts
.7% of stories make the homepage
Top 100 users control 56% of the homepage’s content
You can’t control what people say

Tamar Weinberg is now speaking

Viral Content
Lists
Games/Quizzes
Controversy
Breaking News
Videos
Pictures (digpicz.com – all the Digg pictures that have made the main page)
Technology/Science

A solid title and description are critical
Be careful when you’re marketing your content. People are quick to point out mistakes.
Make youself identifiable and create an avatar
Provide all of your contact information, email, blog, name, Skype, etc.
Befriend users and Digg your friends stories
Comment on stories, snarky comments win on Digg
Promoting your posts in private is safest. Most Diggers will bury you if you’re trying to promote. Pownce, Twittter, Facebook are good to use. You can use Digg shouts but use sparingly if at all.
Enhance your Digg experience with extra tools (Smart digg buttons, a Digg alerter, Social media for Firefox)
Tools are found at www.techipedia.com/2007/digg-api-tools/

Diggers hate seo
Be aggressive when networking but be professional about it
You don’t want the same people Digging your story all the time
Get a diverse amount of people to Digg your story
About 20 Diggs takes about 2 hours, not always, but it’s more natural than 20 minutes
Push up what’s in front of your story
The initial boost is critical
It’s impossible to get unburied once you’ve been buried

Subscribe to Digg’s RSS for good content ideas
Focus on the categories when submitting
The sports section isn’t too popular. Getting visibility here is relatively easy.
The science section is pretty easy too.
Digg places a handicap on top submitters.
New users takes 30 – 40 Diggs to make the front page

Chris Winfield from 10e20 is now speaking

You can get between 10,000 and 100,000 visitors in a 24hr period
People look for Diggable content
When you get onto the homepage of Digg there’s a social media snowball effect
Getting on the homepage leads to sales
Diggers have thier own language (FTW for the win, i can has, RTFA – read the f*cking article)
Digg users love the ipod/iphone, Ron Paul, technology
Diggers don’t like Fox news or George Bush
Do not submit press releases to Digg
Overtly selling products is frowned upon
Diggers don’t like faking it

What works?
Diggers love chuck norris, video, things blowing up, being destroyed
Dove video – progression of average woman being made-up for a supermodel shoot
List – They’ve worked very well. Life insurance company posted a 19 Things you didn’t know about death. Did very well.

When creating content to post to Digg, 10e20 stripped out the sidebar navigation of the site’s page
Use numbers instead of writing out the number. Making the title simple is best.
The description needs to be opinionated and highlighting key points. Start the conversation here.
Choose the right topic. This is very important.

Case Study (travel industry – worlds best subways)
After it makes the homepage of Digg, the snowball effect starts to happen with ebaumsworld, nowpublic, influential blogs, etc
Over 100,000 visitors in 24 hours
Over 200 new email lists sign-ups
12 new bookings from blog referrals

Common Forms of Linkbait
Informational
Controversial
Humor
News
Tools

Benefits of Linkbait
Links – duh!
Link profile
Traffic
Branding
Bookmarks
Media Publicity

If you are looking to spread the word about a relatively boring industry then search Digg, Reddit, etc. to find what’s worked on these sites in the past pertaining to this industry.

Throw out ideas. Get them up on the whiteboard. Brainstorm.

Once your content is published you have to submit it to the social bookmarking and news sites.
Make sure you tag the story properly. Relevance and popularity are essential in choosing categories.

Keys to Promotion
Power account
Good titles & descriptions
Proper category & tags
Targeted sites

Top 10 lists
How To’s – Be Helpful and make sure your guide is easy to read
Current Events – In my opinion the best way to get instant results. Relaying accurate info is very important.
Offbeat or Extreme – Hardest to get your clients to approve but can be very succesful
Images – Use within a post and be unique

Crafting Social Linkbait
Research is extremely important
With the current events you need to know what’s happening
With the how-to guides you need to research what’s effective and working

Title & Description
Title’s and descriptions are where we see the most errors
Needs to be simple, strong, and focused
Once you have a title you need a story to back that title up
Make sure you capitalize the first letter of each word
Avoid spelling out numbers

Interact & Share
You need to have buddies to add comments and promote your story
Make friends on the social media sites that you use
Get you friends to vote on stuff
Return the favor when they ask

Social Media Tips
Relate to the community
Use images
Limit Ads
Offer a summary
No spelling errors, jargon mistakes, or bad information
Is it duplicate?
Check what worked before
Digg effect
Be link worthy
Submit at the right time

Introduction to social media, social news, social bookmarking. Rand’s and Neil’s presentations were excellent. I personally didn’t take away too much from this but it definitely had value for those who are less involved in the social arena. I did learn about Memeame which is a Spanish social news site that is really taking off. Word is that Guy Kawasaki’s site Truemors is also gaining momentum. Listening to Rebecca Kelly speak now about Linkbait. Will report more in a bit.