One of the highlights of my week was spending the day with my good friend Mark Robertson, Founder and Publisher of ReelSEO, at the Search Engine Strategies San Jose Conference & Expo in San Jose on Tuesday, August 11th. ReelSEO was a media sponsor and I was part of Mark's ReelSEO press team and helped cover the events of that day.Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2009 took place from August 10-14 and covered topics from local search to universal search to social media, SEM techniques designed for both beginners and veterans to search. Mark spoke on the SES panel session, "The Next Wave for Online Video," which focused on optimizing online video for search and other strategies. The session was moderated by Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board & Principal, Page Zero Media and other panelists included Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC, Erin Bouchier, Business Lead, Google / YouTube Advertising and David Burch, Director of Marketing, TubeMogul. Mike Sachoff of WebProNews has a nice write up on the session, Tips of Online Video Optimization, in which he summarized the message conveyed by all the panelists to consider all angles. This includes keywords and tags and all the elements surrounding the video and apply the same strategy for ranking high on Google to YouTube which is now the second largest search engine in terms of search queries, according to data presented by Mark.
A few of the highlights we caught were the keynote by Clay Shirky, Author, Here Comes Everybody which explores how organizations and industries are being upended by open networks, collaboration, and user appropriation of content production and dissemination. Shirky is an adjunct professor at New York University in the graduate interactive telecommunications program, where he teaches courses on the interrelationships of social and technological networks, particularly how they shape culture and vice versa.
In this video he recorded with Byron Gordon of SEO-PR, Shirky provides a great afterword to an excellent keynote which he discussed the change in user behavior as a result of the internet. Bringing up HSBC's penalty free checking account fiasco, in which targeted college students, and when the students went on summer vacation, reneged on the deal. Students angered by the unfulfilled promise, used Facebook to protest the changes, as a result of which HSBC reinstated the deal. Shirky also touches upon the Josh Groban non-profit group using social media to further their cause, and the importance of citizen journalism in a Web 2.0 world, improving Journalism even if major newspapers shrink. He dazzled the crowd when he revealed he was wearing The Mountain Men's Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee, the viral hit and best-seller on Amazon.com.
Other highlights included sessions from the day-long track held in conjunction with SES on Social Media & Video Strategies, which was put on by the teams at ClickZ, YouTube & Google. Industry leader Nate Elliott, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research set the stage with a presentation on Groundswell, based on analysis by Forrester Research Social Media & Video. A few other sessions we caught were What Works: Best Practices / Case Studies for Online Video, which was moderated by Dan Greene, Head of TV Ads, Online Sales & Operations, Google and featured Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder, SEO-PR, Chris Sams, Internet Marketing Specialist, ZAGG Inc, Lisa Abourezk, VP, Marketing, ooVoo and Shattuck Groome, Co-owner and Managing Director, Gotham Direct who shared best practices for incorporating video and social media into their marketing efforts.One of the not-to-miss presentations of the day was by Michael Fischer, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Coldwell Banker, who presented Coldwell Banker's successful viral marketing campaigns. He showed how their YouTube Channel energized their network by showcasing what video can do for them through geo-targeting and local search.
Look for more coverage on these sessions along with several on camera interviews that Mark and I conducted that day with Nate Elliott of Forrester, David Burch of TubeMogul and Kristin Kovner of YouTube which will be featured here and on ReelSEO in the coming weeks.
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