Since my last post over a month ago a lot of changes have happened both professionally and personally. I don't like to get into my personal life especially on my blog (intended for marketing folks only) but this personal change effects my professional life.
I had every intention to post several blog posts over the weeks - I even had a set strategy in place:
1) Post a recap of Media Post's Search Insider Summit May 2009
2) Post a review of SMX Advanced after I was so kindly given a pass by Bruce Clay himself (even though I dissed him)
3) Post a summary of my move from Director of Marketing for Winshuttle to VP of Interactive Marketing at Obvio.us
4) Post how the team at Obvio.us launch segment marketing projects and their successes
But that's a lot of posting and I don't have that kind of time...
So rather than 4 long posts I am going to summarize the Summit, the Conference, my move and the work Obvio.us does in one big post.
Search Insider Summit by Media Post May 2009 on Florida's beautiful Captiva IslandMy favorite line to clients, friends, and even children is that a person or event can "set the tone" for the friendship or the remainder of the event. In this case the event kicked off with me arriving a few days early to catch the Email Insider Summit put on by Media Post 2 times a year just before the Search Insider Summit. My first day was spent working on the deck of my room overlooking the canal that spilled out into the beautiful waters off of the Island. I was primarily responsible for launching the Winshuttle Community site that week and had some last minute work that was sprung on by the
VP of Marketing. I heard some random splashing in the waters below and finally got up to look when I saw a dolphin playing around just below me. I quickly grabbed the camera and shot up nearly a whole CF card before I finally got a half way decent pic.
Thus the tone for my time on Captiva Island was set. A combination of work and play with a pause here and there to enjoy the beauty of the Island and the wildlife that surrounds it.
The evening of the Search Insider Summit that May of 2009 was kicked off with Media Post hosting cocktails on the beach at sunset. I reunited with old friends (
David Berkowitz,
Aaron Goldman,
Gord Hotchkiss,
Dan Perry, and Media Post Chairman and Publisher Ken Fadner) and met some new ones (
Topher Kohan,
Maria Perez,
Erik Engman, and many more). As the sun set we all walked up to the edge of the beach and paused for a moment (just enough for me to grab a shot) once again setting the tone.
The next few days were spent in a packed house full of In-House Search Marketers from major corporations as well as representatives of the search engines themselves (Google, Yahoo, and Live/Bing) and agency folks looking to absorb all the information and cutting edge search marketing tactics that the Summit has to offer. From
Gian Fulgoni's extremely informative talk on the economy and how search marketing will play a role to the eye tracking brought for the week in which we chose a select few websites to track and analyze at the end of the Summit we all walked away with our minds full of new ideas and thoughts as we pursue our careers in this ever growing industry.
So many people walk away from the Summit feeling they were on vacation (shhhh... don't tell the boss) but when they get back to the office they are surprisingly full not only of a higher understanding of search marketing but also their contact list full of people in the industry they can call on whenever they need. I personally have my initial walk on the beach with Gord Hotchkiss a long time ago during the dolphin tour in which we talked about the struggles of in-house people and how the Conferences don't really cater to the topics we need (from working with agencies, championing work through, analyzing data, etc) and thus In-House Day was born and my involvement with the Summit grew from speaker to Board Member.
So when talking to your boss about wanting to go to Park City Utah this December 2009 for the Search Insider Summit or even hitting my favorite Captiva Island for the Search Insider Summit in May of 2010 don't only show him/her the topics you are most interested in, but mention the networking you will be doing with some of the major players in the industry.
SMX Advanced Seattle, WA June 2009I know I swore
I would never go to another SMX but my reasons this time are justified (and kind of funny). As you all know (or maybe you don't) I live in Seattle and have lived here my entire life (I'm even a 4th generation daughter of a
pioneer) so when SMX Advanced arrived to town I had to at least meet up with my search industry friends. I attended Pub Crawl arranged by
Jeremiah Andrick (my roomate at SIS and now Office Nomands coworker) and while sitting next to
Todd Friesen (whom I hadn't seen since his deathly illness keeping him away from SIS in May) this old guy comes walking up and says "Hi" I smiled back and said "Hi". He looked at me for a moment and he said "You don't know who I am do you?" I replied,"Should I?" when Todd quickly jumped in with "That's
Bruce Clay." I laughed and said "Oh yeah, I've heard of you..."
We talked for a bit and after having a lengthy conversation Bruce and Todd began saying something about a pass and I got a text from todd the next morning saying that Bruce had arranged for me to get an all access pass (Thank You again Bruce!)
Most of my time was spent hanging around the SEOmoz booth drinking Link Juice and watching people leave testimonials for video while catching up with Kris Fenrich (who worked for me at Classmates now with Microsoft) at the Bing booth and following Jeremiah around like a groupie. I did howver manage to quickly see a couple of the panels and was quite overwhelmed. The rooms were large and the audience was small while panelists talked at them rather than engaging them in conversation. Yep, it was a conference.
Perhaps I am getting spoiled with the Search Insider Summit or that I am reaching that point in my career that I have just been there done that so much I am not for conferences anymore.
I got to hand it to him though - Danny Sullivan is definately doing something right with 3x the amount of attendees than SIS and a vast array of speakers and keynotes.
Moving from In-House to AgencyAfter nearly 5 years as an In-House search marketer I am back with an agency once again. After being such an advocate of the Search Insider Summit's in-house day and working with other in-house search marketers on building relationships, championing work, analyzing data, reporting to executives, etc I am now back on the other side.
Have I turned to the darkside?
I hope not...
I left Winshuttle after launching the
Winshuttle Community site on May 11, 2009 after being tasked with the project in my initial hiring as the VP of Marketing had an idea but didn't know how to execute exactly and with my background at Classmates.com and my own side projects (Savethebreakfastsandwich.com) my experience was much appreciated. I have been working for Obvio.us for some time now helping with SEO and the occasional design where needed and after talking with the powers that be decided to take a full time position as their VP of Interactive Marketing.
So what does the VP of Interactive Marketing do? Basically I am responsible for not only Obvio.us' online marketing (Paid and Natural Search, Social Media, Website, etc) but I manage the online marketing through segment that Obvio.us is known for. In most large companies there is a person responsible for each type of marketing. One for paid search, one managing banner ads, one managing natural search, a team responsible for parts of the website, a team for emails (newsletters, nurturing campaigns, etc) and so on. Unfortunately not only does the user suffer as they click an ad that has one type of messaging and design and lands on a page that has different messaging and design and then once the acquisition is made the flow is not easy to go through and the emails following aren't in line with the original message.
Obvio.us solves this break in the flow. Their team analysizes the existing campaigns and suggests a plan that they not only can execute but can help companies do themselves to save the cost of outsourcing what they can do in-house.
I am also excited to work across from Jeremiah Andrick who recently left the live search team now reffered to as Bing. He has some great insight into how the engine works crawling and parsing out the data and what items are priority when ranking. We are already excited to apply some of the techniques to Winshuttle and hope to be able to do more SEO for new and exciting prospects.
It is all a process I am highly excited about and an opportunity to not only continue to work for Winshuttle, but on other fun projects such as redesigning and applying the segment marketing to
Chaggle, launching the new twitter app
Twitlingo, redesigning and applying local search marketing to
Amore and more.
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