Posts About ‘conferences’

How Phone Data Might Change Your Search Strategy – #brightonseo

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Ali White from T W White & Sons, a car dealership business, took to the Corn Exchange seat next at the jam-packed full BrightonSEO conference, providing real-business examples on how phone data meant his entire SEO and PPC strategy altered.

To start us off, Ali walked through what Visitor level call tracking actually was; as one of the many who weren’t really sure, he explained that T W White & Sons used visitor level call tracking to provide a unique phone number to each site visitor so the business can better track who is calling to give stronger actual conversion data as well as a better customer profile. (more…)

Turning Google Analytics into a Webmasters Toolbox – #brightonseo

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We are back from the first break at BrightonSEO and I am blogging from within the Corn Exchange in the Data Track. There are four speakers on stage for this session and I am covering the presentation from Anna Lewis, looking at Turning Google Analytics into a Webmasters Toolbox.

This is the second time we have seen Koozai’s Anna Lewis speak at BrightonSEO and her presentations are always packed full of actionable insights and tips for using Google Analytics. Let’s get started!

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Ask the Ex-Googlers Anything – #brightonseo

Ask the ex Googlers Anything - BrightonSEO 2013

Welcome to State of Search’s coverage of the wildly popular BrightonSEO conference! We’ll be posting session write-ups throughout the day from our bloggers on the scene.

The first session of the day at BrightonSEO 2013 in Dome Concert Hall was ask the Ex-Googlers anything. With Ex Google employee speakers:

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Content Marketing for Conferences: How to Stand Out from the Crowd

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Content Marketing for Conferences: How to Stand Out from the Crowd & Deliver Value to Those that Weren’t There…

Live blogging and/or writing summary blogs for conferences is a way in which it is common in our industry to exchange value and share our experiences. Online marketing, and more specifically social media and SEO, are ever-changing fields that arguably warrant the huge amount of conferences that happen across the world every year. Many individuals and companies liveblog at these events, or summary posts to attempt to summarise and share the key takeaways from the speakers. However, I believe that many don’t stop and question why you are covering these events? Is it just because everyone else is doing it? In this post I will explore some of the reasons why I believe we should cover events and also provide my top 4 tips on how I approach covering events. (more…)

Fighting Sexism at Digital Conferences

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There is no doubt that the technology sector is more than averagely sexist. The reasons for this are multitude and too complex to explore in this blog post, but suffice to say that the technology sector – and the digital marketing sector, as a subset of the tech industry – is infused with a laddish attitude and enjoys pervasive and embedded sexism.

I find this rather unpalatable. I think the tech industry needs more women, and more participation from women. We shouldn’t abide by companies and conferences using objectified women as enticements and attention grabbers. We’re not stone age cavemen any more.

If you attend tech conferences – and I include digital marketing events among these – there are a few things you can do to help encourage the industry to become more female-friendly, which in turn will encourage more women to join the tech industry and enable the entire industry as a whole to grow and mature. (more…)

How To Promote Your Conference Using YouTube

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It’s ‘Event Week‘ here on State of Search and there’s going to be a tonne of information from our bloggers about how to get the best of a conference/industry meet up/convention over the next few days. A lot of the posts are going to be of benefit to attendees (I for one cannot wait to hear some brilliant tips and suggestions) but I’d like to take this opportunity to show how those that are organising the event can use video to promote it, before, during and after. (more…)

On Going to Industry Events: A Personal Account of the Good (and Bad)

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State of Search covers a host of events across the globe and this week, we are showcasing our experiences of them.

What is it about SEO and social Industry Events? We hear about them almost daily, their numbers are always growing and it’s difficult to know what to go to, how to afford it and how to make the most out of it. Rather than give tips and thoughts, I’d thought I’d actually put forward my own personal experience of events and the impact they’ve had on my education, career and experiences. (more…)

State of Search Conference Update – November and December 2012

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With conference season well underway, the last two months have been packed full of great content, tips and tricks from industry thought leaders around the world. If you have been lucky enough to attend one of the events, I am sure you have come away with a number of actionable insights so would love to hear what your number one takeaway was for any of the following events:

Please feel free to add your top takeaway in a comment at the end of this post. If you click on any of the above links, you will be taken to our write ups from each of the events in case you missed them previously.

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5 Ways to help Bloggers help you look good at your conference or event

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If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been on a mission of late to cover as many SEO conferences as possible. Not only is it a great way to visit different countries, it is a good way to meet UK and international SEO’s and online marketers, and of course a fantastic way to network in the industry.

In the last 8 weeks alone, I’ve been lucky enough to visit London and New York for SES, Iceland for the RIMC, Think Visibility in Leeds, SMX Munich, the International Search Summit, Brighton SEO and IonSearch. I’ve met some amazing people, and I’ve written more blog posts than I care to mention!

With all the travelling and blogging, I’ve learned a lot about how to get the best out of conferences, blogging in different time zones, the pitfalls of live blogging, and the challenges of covering events, so I thought that for this post, I would share with you a few hints and tips for bloggers, speakers and conference organisers with a view to helping us to help you get the best coverage possible.

Blogging Essentials

Wi-Fi Connection

There have been a few events that I’ve been to, where the Wi-Fi drops in and out, or that the reach is just not enough for coverage in every room. There have also been some conferences with no Wi-Fi at all.
I know that there is never going to be 100% uptime, but not being able to use Wi-Fi effectively prevents us from being able to live blog effectively, and for people like me that are also running a business from the conference, not being able to work whilst listening to the speakers, makes for a much more difficult day.

Not all bloggers and attendees can make the start of a conference, so making the connection password visible from the moment we step into the building and at the start and end of every slide means we don’t have to tweet the inevitable ‘does anyone know the #wifi #password’

We Need More Power Captain

Two words – plug sockets!

Most large conferences I have been to have a large venue, often with plug sockets at every turn. Some conferences also provide a selection of sockets in the front few rows so that attendees can re-charge when they need to.

Larger conferences also have different pathways, so it is easy to nip out and charge up in the corridor as you head to the next talk. However, I have also been to conferences that run with a single programme from start to finish, with 10 minute breaks for coffee and lunch – really excellent programme and a great way to take in the information, but when you are running low on power, it is impossible to charge enough in 10 minutes to last for the entire day

I have learned that I need to bring a spare battery for the laptop and the phone, and cover myself with an old fashioned notepad and pen for when I can no longer type, but it makes life easier if I can plug in.

Photo Opportunities

In order to cover your event, or your speaker session, it’s great to post a selection of photos to show non delegates what they are missing! Help us to help you look good, by giving us something different to photograph. Much as it is great to listen to speakers stood behind a lectern, pictures look loads better if you are pointing at something interesting, showing us an area on your slide, making hand gestures, (not rude ones!!), or have something on your slides other than lines and lines of text.

However, don’t move about too much as otherwise rubbish photographers like me can’t get the shot :-)

In my experience, the best photo ops have come from the little events like ThinkVis, and Brighton SEO, where entertainment is put on in some of the breaks but I realise that this is not always possible at the larger events.

I also understand that constant clicking and flash photography can put speakers off, so invest in a camera that takes decent shots without the use of a flash – I know that my camera could do with having a silent shutter, but I’m working on that.

Slides

More and more, I see speakers putting the links to their Slideshare versions at the start of their session. This is fantastic, BUT if you don’t give us enough of a chance to catch that address, or you are using a long URL, or shortener we haven’t heard of yet – we can’t always write it down!

Many conferences suggest that slides will be available after the event, but if you are blogger that needs to get a post out that day or the next day, it helps to have instant access to slides.

If you are submitting slides to the organiser, put it on Slideshare or better still, your own website, and we can drop you a valuable link ;-)

I have taken to bringing a non-flash camera to take pictures of all of the slides so that I have a record, just in case, we never get sent the link…

I understand that some speakers, prefer a more visual approach so this is not always feasible, but every little helps.

Speakers Corner

Be visible

Not picking on you guys, as you after all, are what we come to see at conferences and events, however, of late it seems that many speakers, turn up 20 minutes before they are due on, and some then leave straight afterwards.

I know your gig slot is your gig slot, but it really helps us to network and get to know you better, if you hang around! I only say this as not everyone can get to networking drinks, and some people save all year, to be able to come to some of these events, so being visible for more than the 10 minutes after your slot for questions, could just make someone’s day!

Help the Live Bloggers

Some of the more recent events have been so fast paced, it is impossible to take pictures of slides, let alone live blog it, so if you have a rapid fire list of handy hints or tools, give us the slides, so we can at least try to share your knowledge on the day!

I would be interested in any feedback on how we can make our blogs posts better for conference organisers or speakers, as I’m sure there are ways we can all improve to get the most out of all events.

 

How to Organise, Market and Promote a Successful Meetup Group

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Back in January, I decided to start my own meetup group with a view to finding more females that work in the Digital Marketing Industry. This was based on my own experiences with the leading SEO conferences in the UK being extremely male dominated.

Arranging meet ups is a great way to help increase awareness of a brand in any industry and if done correctly in the first instance, can be fairly easy to maintain moving forwards.

In this post I want to share some of the things that I learnt from this and provide you with a little checklist to help you create a successful meetup group in whatever niche you are looking to target.

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Honest SEO Conference Advice

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After another busy year packed with SEO conferences I thought it would be a good time to lay out some tips to organisers, speakers and attendees alike from my personal experiences with conferences over the last two years.

The aim here is to be as constructive as possible, but to do so it’s important also to provide as much honest advice as is possible as well.I hope that this will be constructive and useful in some fashion for anyone that has anything to do with conference organisation, speaking or attendance… and hopefully won’t preclude me from ever speaking at a conference again! (more…)

Think Visibility 6: Lessons Learned and Top Takeaways (It’s not all about search…)

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Six months ago, I was travelling up to Leeds for the Think Visibility conference preparing myself as a speaker to convince an audience that KPIs and reporting can be, will if not sexy, at least pretty fascinating and certainly useful. This weekend I was back up for Think Visibility 6 (and my 5th time at the conference) ready to sit back and enjoy someone else’s hard work and insights.

This is now my 3rd write-up of one of my favourite conferences in the calendar, and I’d say that alone pays testimony to its interest, increasingly amazing organisation and the loyalty of its fanbase. Many others are far more diligent than me and have written full conference write-ups. (See Pete Handley’s, Koozai and our very own Bas’ among others).  I’ve decided to take a wider angler, continuing on the Top Takeaway theme I used in my last write-up, and considering some of the specific things I’ve personally learned at ThinkVis. (more…)

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