BlueGlass LA & Raven Tools

One thing I’ve learned about event sponsorship is that companies tend to plan out their marketing budgets far in advance — which really did not sync with our conference planning of old. So when I talked to the good folks at Raven Tools last fall and presented an experiential conference sponsorship to them, the stars aligned and a partnership was born. Note: At BlueGlass we use Raven internally and absolutely love the way that data, tools and reporting are all under the same hood.

Raven Tools has signed on to be the premier sponsor of BlueGlass LA 2012 and will be representing in full force at the show with amazing demos and previews, conference signage, bar and party sponsorships, and a mid-afternoon surprise for all attendees. Raven has been a long supporter of our conference series and they are a company we feel that we have always paralleled in the pursuit of giving excellent service and ongoing innovation to their client base.

Synergy in Marketing Visions

If you have noticed, our conferences are not heavy in one discipline of online marketing. At BlueGlass we endorse the sustainable convergence of SEO, social media and content marketing. And this lineup for BlueGlass LA mirrors our ideology. Raven Tools is also not limiting itself to just an SEO or Social Media tool — it’s a toolset of multiple options, perfect for today’s climate.

At BlueGlass conferences, we cherish the involvement and participation of our audience as much as we do our presenters (and we’re pretty picky about sponsors and have turned some down) — but bringing on Raven Tools in this sponsorship role will help us make that experience all the better for our participants; helping with the open bar and making sure each and every small detail is covered to make this the best experience imaginable for every one involved.

I’d like to take the time to thank Brannan, Jon and the team at Raven Tools! If your company is interested in sponsoring BlueGlass LA (we only have one spot left!) please feel free to drop me a line at lbaker@blueglass.com and if you haven’t registered; do it today!

“What’s it like?”

“What makes it different?”

“Why should I go?”

Here’s the best way I can answer those questions….

Want to be part of the next Internet Marketing Experience? Find out more about BlueGlass LA 2012 taking place on April 23rd & 24th in Los Angeles, CA. But act quick, there are less than 50 tickets remaining…

This is the earliest (by far) that we have ever had everything ready and we are sparing no expense with this conference. We call our conferences ‘Internet Marketing Experiences’ because we want people to get more out of them than the typical conference.

Having the best, hand-picked speakers, amazing sessions and a great venue is really important to us. Limiting the size of our conferences (only 125 tickets for BlueGlass LA)  lets everyone really get to know each other and form (or strenghten) relationships (and have fun doing it!) is even more important.  That is the experience part.

What to expect from BlueGlass LA:

You will leave smarter. With killer sessions like “How the Evolution of Content is Changing (Again!)”, “The Secrets of Successful WordPress Sites,” and “Mastering Buyable Media”, you will walk away full of new ideas and knowledge .

You will build long-term relationships. This is often cited as the BIGGEST benefit to our conferences.

You will be well fed. We include ALL meals and it’s food you will actually want to eat (and go back for seconds!).

You will never pick up the tab. Our cocktail receptions both nights of the conference are open bar!

We hope you can join us at BlueGlass LA 2012 on April 23rd & 24th, 2012. If you’re ready for the EXPERIENCE, don’t wait:  register now!

We will be traveling to LA on April 23rd and 24th and hosting our conference at The Standard Hotel in Downtown LA.

Located approximately 30 minutes from LAX, the Standard is an amazing location for all attendees. It is a quick walk from many well-known places, including:

• LA Financial District (0 Blocks)
• Walt Disney Concert Hall (4 Blocks)
• Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (5 Blocks)
• Staples Center (8Blocks)

The many amenities of The Standard in downtown LA include:

The conference and all meals will be held in the Bigger Loft on both days, which will not disappoint! The Bigger Loft is unique in its size and decor, offering three full walls of windows with city views. With the amazing content, phenomenal speakers, and beautiful views, these sessions are going to be out of this world!

We will host a cocktail reception both nights of the conference (did someone say open bar??!!) in the Big Loft, which also has two full walls of windows and is adjacent to the mezzanine that overlooks the lobby.

Overlooking The Lobby

On the evening of the 23rd, be prepared for quite a party! The reception will be held on the Pool Deck, complete with retro red astro turf, swimming pool, lounge and bar, all looking at the LA skyline.

The Rooftop At Night

The Pool Deck with Lounge Chairs and Pods

The second night’s party will be brought back inside to the Lobby Lounge, complete with pool table, oversized pink Vladimir Kagan sofas, and DJ Booth.

Following in the footsteps of our other conferences, we will once again be providing all meals to attendees on both Monday and Tuesday. We think it is our best food selection yet!

We hope you are as excited about this venue as we are! If you would like to book a room for the duration of the conference, we have a block set aside for attendees. This is a limited block, however, so be sure to book early, as rooms will run out! The rate will be $215 for both single and double rooms. Book your room online here. If you would prefer to call, just mention BlueGlass to the representative.

You don’t want to miss BlueGlass LA 2012, The Internet Marketing Experience.

***Tickets go on sale this Tuesday (January 12th, 2012) at 11am PST.  There will only be 125 tickets available and all our conferences have sold out, so be sure to sign up to be notified as soon as tickets go on sale.***

BlueGlass LA 2012 * The Internet Marketing Experience * April 23rd & 24th, 2012

For our next conference, BlueGlass LA 2012, we decided to do things differently (i.e. plan way ahead!).  Over the summer, we hired a dedicated Events Coordinator and right after BlueGlass TPA – we secured the venue and dates for BlueGlass LA 2012.  So here we are with almost 5 months to go until the conference and we already have 95% of the speakers and agenda set.

Tickets for the conference don’t go on sale until January 11, 2012 at 1pm EST but we want to start sharing some of the awesome things we have planned in the meantime.  So today, in celebration of the holiday season, we are launching our own take on the advent calendar.  In this calendar we will be revealing a speaker or two each day.  It will be a great way to get to know a bit more about each speaker. We always try to make our speaker lineups as diverse as possible.  You will find: really well known people but also people you might have never heard of.  You’ll find inhouse’ers along with solo consultants or agency folks.  It doesn’t matter who you are, it just matters what you can deliver…

So head on over the BlueGlass LA 2012 page and see who our first announced speaker is….

We will be announcing the new speakers each day on our Twitter, Facebook and Google +  pages so be sure to connect with us there.

Chris Winfield

• Session: Social Media, Press Relations, and Brand Management
• Track: Social Media Marketing
• Date: Wednesday, November 9th
• Location: Salon C
• Time: 3:15pm – 4:20pm

Greg Boser

• Session: SEO: Hot Topics and Trends
• Track: SEO Conference
• Date: Tuesday, November 8th
• Location: Salon A
• Time: 11:30am – 12:45 pm

• Session: Interactive Site Review: Focus on Organic
• Track: Interactive Site Review
• Date: Thursday, November 10th
• Location: Salon I
• Time: 3:15pm – 4:20pm

Loren Baker

• Session: Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk
• Track: Linking Conference
• Date: Thursday, November 10th
• Location: Salon A
• Time: 10:15am – 11:30am

• Session: Interactive Site Review: Organic Focus
• Track: Interactive Site Review
• Date: Thursday, November 10th
• Location: Salon I
• Time: 11:30am – 12:45 am

The rumors are true… We are going to be holding our next BlueGlass Conference Experience in Los Angeles on April 23rd & 24th, 2012.  Save the date and don’t be late for BlueGlass LA 2012.

The bar was set high last year at BlueGlass LA 2011.  The bar was then set even higher with BlueGlass TPA in September.  We are going to make sure that this event surpasses all expectations and is the best Internet marketing event you have ever been to.

“BlueGlassLA didn’t just attract a top-notch speaker lineup, but it filled the room with people that are making waves in our industry. I was literally shocked to see all of those faces in one room, and even more shocked to see them all meeting each other, hitting it off, trading biz cards, clinking glasses. I mean wow…just…wow.”
– Joanna Lord 

We will be announcing all of the details over the next month but you can be assured of a few things:

* Amazing speakers (each speaker is personally invited & vetted) who know what they are talking about

* Unparalleled networking (our goal is for you to leave with new connections, opportunities and friendships)

* Everything included in one place (all meals, parties, drinks and much more are part of the experience)

* You will leave with a head full of knowledge (new ideas, new strategies and a new outlook on Internet marketing)

* SOOOO much more….

Click here to learn more and to sign up to be alerted as soon more info becomes available & tickets go on sale.  We sold out last time and we will sell out this time as well…

See you in Cali!

It’s been an amazing few days in Tampa- and now that the conference is over, we’ve really had time to reflect and absorb everything that we learned and the relationships that were made.

If you’ve been following our hashtag (#BGTPA) as well as the daily recaps and live blogging, you’ll know there were Red Bull packed days and OH (overheard) filled nights.

The thing I absolutely loved about the sessions and speakers we had was the mix of information, from team building to SEO theory, to killer content strategies and how social is affecting (and working together with) search.

I highly recommend you check out all the sessions, but if you’re looking to stick with reading a particular topic (For now. Right? You’ll be back to look at everything) here’s a quick topical breakdown so you can find your faves. Sorry, but there were just some things we weren’t allowed to share.

Search

If you were sitting in these sessions, I’m pretty sure your mind was blown. And if it wasn’t, you weren’t paying attention. The panels for these were absolutely amazing.

There was a disturbance in the force…Panda 1.0 – William Sears

• Taking SEO Theory Into Practice featuring Dennis Goedegebuure, Greg Boser (moderator) and William Sears.
•  Advanced SEO Clinic – Rae Hoffman-Dolan and Greg Boser
• Link Building in a Post Panda World - Dave Snyder and Ross Hudgens
• The Localization of Search and Its Impact on Online Businesses - Danny Dover and Greg Boser

Content & Publishing Strategy

Content is (pretty much) king. With how quickly search and internet marketing is evolving, having a strong content and publishing strategy is key to reader retention, engagement and social signals. What I loved about this was having Brian Clark (@Copyblogger), Jeremy Schoemaker (@Shoemoney), and Loren Baker (@Lorenbaker) together. It was like watching a discussion of geniuses.

Learning to write great headlines on your day to day blog posts is key – Brian Clark

• Blog & News Optimization: How Publishers Can Dominate Google & Beyond - Jeremy Schoemaker, Brian Clark and Loren Baker (moderator)
• Content Marketing: Squeeze the Most Organic Juice Out of Your Content Strategy – Jon Henshaw and Marty Weintraub

SEO & Social Media

Please don’t say SEO is dead. I beg of you. Social signals are becoming extremely important, as is human engagement, to search and how your brand is viewed by the search engines. Ben and Simon gave excellent presentations on leveraging social, being genuine, and grabbing your audience.

In social media, if you’re not sincere or honest, it’ll be pretty obvious. Lying’s bad, mmmkay? – Ben Cook

• Social & Search – Ben Cook and Simon Heseltine

PPC

There was a lot of talk about stalking in these presentations. PPC is all about targeting, and retargeting, the right audience. This panel was excellent and had some great tips for those new to the game, and those who have been playing for a while.

You control how much you stalk people – Pamela Lund

• Advanced PPC and Conversion Driving Tactics - Pamela Lund, Tim Mayer,  Kunal Das and Annie Cushing (moderator)

 Analytics

Is your data ugly? Annie tells me mine is all the time. These two turned analytics intricacies into digestible tidbits of information.

Datagasm! – Annie Cushing

• Turn Web Analytics Data into Conversion Driven Gold -  Brian Cosgrove and Annie Cushing

Team Building & Leadership

Everybody knows that a great agency or business can’t run without happy, fully involved staff. There are some excellent takeaways on making your office feel like home and building a thriving and growing team for both client and staffing retention. This was a great session with the charming Melanie Mitchell and Richard Zwicky.

Without accountability nobody can succeed. Nobody is responsible. – Richard Zwicky

How to Grow Your Agency or In-House Team to be Amazing - Richard Zwicky  and Melanie Mitchell

Hellos, Goodbyes, and Everything in Between

One thing that can’t be captured in writing is the hilariousness and shenanigans that ensued during the conference- including trays of Red Bull, chiropractic adjustments, corn hole and other fun things.

While we can’t recap everything you didn’t see (but definitely overheard), there were many late nights of talking about the industry, sharing knowledge, laughing and bonding. Something we got here was the intimacy of a small (and extremely knowledgeable) group of people that genuinely enjoyed sharing their passion and work.

And now… I’ll leave you with this.

OH Rampancy

Combing through all the OHs from the conference, I realize that all of them can’t actually be shared (if we had the “no blogging or tweeting this sign during these conversations, it would have been held up about 90% of the time), but just to give you an idea of the hilariousness, here’s a few OHs that were caught:

OH: “Come fix me. Please.”

OH: Didn’t we have a furry party? No we never did.

OH: I know Jon loves tools

OH: I was talking about corn-holing earlier…

OH: Make sure you’re clean and flushed when you do it.

…. and you can always stalk the other ones by searching #BGTPA.

All in all, it was an awesome 2 days. We hope you’ll join us next time!

And remember… Charlie likes YOU.

I wasn’t involved in the late night shenanigans (I’m secretly 100 years old), but you can look back through the #bgtpa stream to draw your own conclusions about the hilarious after hours antics outside of the sessions (pretty sure I saw something about streaking?!)  I do know no one fell in the bay on either day of the conference… so kudos to everyone for that notable feat.

Selena will be posting a full overview of the entire conference tomorrow, but until then, here are some highlights from Day 2…

Session 1: SEO in a Social Media World

Ben Cook and Simon Heseltine

Some key takeaways:

• 23% of social media messages include links to content and 27 million pieces of content are shared every day.
• Social media recognition can get you organic clicks even if you don’t rank on a term.
• Peer opinions in the SERPs (for example, via Facebook or Google+) bring other URLs into the search and make search results more personalized. Because of this, even a link on the fourth page can get clicks.
• Ben highly recommends everyone reads “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini, citing this as changing the way he views almost all marketing.
• When it comes to social sharing buttons, less is more. Cut down your buttons and only use those that fit your audience.
• Take advantage of the concept of scarcity. Offering exclusive content to different social communities and creating deadlines promotes urgency.

Read more about this session in the full overview here.

Session 2 : Turn Web Analytics Data into Conversion Driven Gold

Brian Cosgrove and Annie Cushing 

Some key takeaways:

• 4 quick tips from Brian: segment your engines, categorize your engines, compare your landing pages for identical keywords, and create campaigns for organic search.
• Brian says distinct pages on your site shouldn’t be showing up in your reports more than once. Clean up your URLs and make sure they’re what your canonical tags should be.
• 5 search analytics mistakes Annie often sees: duplication in goals set up, obsessing over pet metrics (especially rankings), lack of an alert system (no excuse for this since all analytics packages offer alerts), not understanding how to do A/B testing (Google Website Optimizer and Optimizely are Annie’s recommended tools for A/B testing), and sucking at Excel/not making your data sexy.
• Annie also gave a shout out to Luna Metrics as a must-read analytics blog (and all of Annie’s BlueGlass posts, of course )

See the full coverage on this session here.

Session 3 : Content Marketing: Squeeze the Most Organic Juice Out of Your Content Strategy

Jon Henshaw and Marty Weintraub

Some key takeaways:

• Jon recommends using Facebook comments on a blog to eliminate spam and ensure quality comments. According to him, Facebook comments result in “99% less crapulence.”
• Another awesome tip from Jon: treat infographics like videos. Transcribe the content in html so search engines can find it.
• Not that we needed even more of a reason to pay attention, but Marty kept everyone on their toes with some of the pictures he stuck in his slides, including a gerbil (just because), cuddly bunnies and a lady holding an uzi.
• Marty encourages using clichés in your titles: they work because everyone knows them.
• SEO success is less about home runs and more about creating post after post that solve people’s problems.

Check out the full rundown from this high energy session here.

And Jon posted his awesome “Smart Content” presentation here.

Session 4 : How to Grow Your Agency or In-House Team to be Amazing

Richard Zwicky  and Melanie Mitchell

Some key takeaways:

• Accountability should be across the board. This is the only way organizations succeed.
• Great point from Richard: don’t sell what you can’t do. Customers will see through it, and your team won’t be able to connect with you and they’ll move on.
• If you can’t afford to hire new staff when building out your business, two alternatives are bringing in advisers and/or creating an independent board. This also gives great outside perspective.
• Richard advises leaders stay involved without micromanaging. Don’t hire rockstars and then control them – trust your employees to succeed.
• Don’t forget to sell recruits on your company during the hiring process.
• On the agency side, the client on-boarding process involves 4 phases: discovery — understand the brand goals, the target and the competition;  assessment — decide your measurement plan and how you’ll determine success; strategy — finalize strategies and forecast success metrics; implement and measure — project management for on-time execution, then keep measuring and adjusting.
• Melanie stressed how important the small things are, like treating your team to coffee or celebrating birthdays. It’s easy to forget these things, but this is what builds a loyal, happy team.

Read more about this session in the full coverage here.

Session 5 : The Localization of Search and Its Impact on Online Businesses

Danny Dover and Greg Boser

Some key takeaways:

• The first step in executing your local strategy is taking a NAP: Business Name, Address and Phone number. Make these consistent on every listing.
• Use getlisted.org for help locating/claiming your listings and to get listed where you want.
• For small businesses, use a title tag with a city name, neighborhood and zip code. Try to include locality in the h1, if possible.
• Greg demonstrated how signals on a page tie a site to geolocation, using an L.A. Times article as an example. This article ranks on page 1 for “online dating” in Los Angeles, which gives huge insight into how Google weighs domain and content when tying sites to a location.

For more about this session, see the full rundown here.

Stay tuned for a full conference recap tomorrow!

Can’t get enough? Look back through the @blueglass stream or #bgtpa on Twitter. 

This panel features Danny Dover, Senior SEO Manager at AT&T, and Greg Boser, the President of  Products and Services at BlueGlass Interactive.  They will be discussing the localization of search and its impact on businesses. Loren Baker will moderate.

How does local SEO fit into your overall online marketing strategy?

Local affects absolutely everything. He doesn’t think of local as a vertical because of his perspective as a business owner. These channels are for broadcasting your local message.

Make sure to take the time to plan. What is your local message? What are you trying to say about your company?

Five questions to ask yourself:

1. What do you provide for potential customers? (relevancy)
• Identify the actual product/service, do keyword research and use the results on anything that is input through a keyboard.
2. What are you the best at? (differentiate)
• Identify what people fear with your product/service, identify what your competitors are not good at and craft your difference into an easy-to-spread message.
3. What locale are you relevant for? (where)
• This is everything! What cities do you offer services for? What neighborhoods to you offer services for? If you don’t provide a product, what limitations on location do you have?
4. Why should I trust you? (reviews)
• Trust metrics for humans are very different than trust metrics for search algorithms.
• For humans you need reviews to prove you are trustworthy and useful.
5. How do I contact you? (NAP, which is explained below)

How can you use review incentives? Add notes to Wifi cards with review suggestions. Their laptops will be in front of them when they read the mini advertisement. He doesn’t know how it works with the terms of service, though.

Business that say, “Follow us,” makes him wonder, well, why? What’s in it for him? He’s all for promoting social things, but if you’re a small business owner, you have to realize it’s not about just getting fans but about utilizing your fan base.

Other ideas include a raffle for email (that includes suggestions to review) and telling employees to promote the specific review site when customers ask how they can help. Give your teams a heads-up about deals and have them on their game.

Okay, so now that we’ve planned, how do we execute?

Take a nap? Ah, NAP: Business Name, Address and Phone number.

If you can get consistency on these, it’s more than half of your battle.

Manually claim listings on search engines. Entering data manually gives you the ability to update it later and has the added benefit of providing search engines with a trust signal for ranking.

Go to getlisted.org, a free website tool that helps you get listed where you want.

For small business, have a title tag with a city name, neighborhood and zip code. Try to include locality in the h1, as well. Be certain to include your address and phone number on the page and try to have the local area code.

It’s Greg Boser’s turn now, and he’ll be talking about some of the stuff BlueGlass is working on.

If you’re going to do SEO, you have to find out what it takes to be the person who sits above the localized rankings — there are only a couple of people who get that spot.

Google’s focus on geolocation is changing the way search results are returning. For example, when you search for “online dating” in Los Angeles, an LA Times article will show high in the results when you’d expect online dating websites.

It doesn’t show up in national “online dating” searches, but because they keyword tag it with the search terms and it gets crawled with the location connected to it, it ranks in LA. While it only ranks in one city, it’s a large city with a lot of people searching, so it definitely matters.

Keep this in mind when thinking about your own content and how it’s searched. Take advantage of local results.

The way Google treated the LA Times article gives us insight into how much it’s weighing domain and content when tying websites to a location. 

You can actually find a significant source where you can get your page to rank if you take the time to explore it.

Many sites are getting more traffic just because of how their data is being collected. You can identify what it is that’s going on and what’s triggering those results.

Spend time in your analytics and look to see if you have multiple entry points for the same key word and see if it relates to city connections.

There’s a strange correlation with behavior and what scope of area you’re allowed to rank in. But these things are opportunities to develop your content in a way that will work with a subdomain structure linked to location.

If you’re struggling with the Panda situation and you have regional content, you can come up with a logical way by state or city to group a tightly focused batch of content all about that city.  Go out and see how links are being built about that city and try to put your content back metro-by-metro.

Well, that about wraps up BlueGlass TPA 2011. I’ve loved blogging throughout this amazing conference. Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ve learned as much as I have!