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9 Networking Tips To Use at SES NYC or Any Conference

By Li Evans

Everyday we're all caught up in the world of online marketing, that we tend to forget about that real, face to face type of marketing.  Alex (my analytics guru/friend and writer here at SMG), called me the "consummate connector" in his article this morning, I never thought of it that way - however, I guess that's what I'm always striving to do.  I'm always trying to make a connection, so maybe one day I can help someone out, perhaps give someone a hand, make someone smile.

Any of the conferences are great for that.  Whether its rounding up a group of friends to go out for dinner or grabbing a bite to eat for lunch, or heading off in a group to one of the many search events, it's great to see new people "connecting" or networking - for real, and face to face.  Don't get me wrong, I love social media, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and forums, but nothing replaces that face to face connection you can make.

So if you're an online marketing professional and you are thinking "Man, I've seen these sessions 100's of times before, what am I going to do at SES NYC this time around?"  Well, maybe I can help you with a few tips to use at SES NYC:

• Take a good look at the schedule, seriously, I mean it.  There's some new sessions on tap, and there's NEW SPEAKERS.  That means new content, new points of view, nuggets of information from another person's perspective.  It also means, the chance to go up and meet/connect with/introduce yourself to these new speakers.  Just as Gab Goldenberg what I did at his session at SMX West.

SES London: 5 Great Reasons to Attend

By Li Evans

Greetings from Merry Ol' England! 

I landed in London yesterday morning, and made my way to Islington to the site of SES London.  It was still quite early in the morning, so I got to hang out in the lobby with a bunch of friends here.  After we got our rooms we headed out for some "discovery" of London that I didn't get to do last year.

I have one piece of advice, don't take the stairs at the Covent Garden underground station.  Seriously, unless you run 20 flights of steps 10 times a day, you could not be prepared.  I believe I got my elliptical work out for 2 days done yesterday!

As always, I consider myself extremely lucky and grateful when I get to spend time with my friends from the industry.  It's even better when it a great mix of people as who's here in London.  After a great afternoon with Marilyn, Stewart, Jackie and Kevin Newcomb (one of the 3 Kevins!), it was off for an awesome dinner at a Brazilian restaurant around the corner from the Hilton.  As usual we all wandered back to the bar where we started talking about the upcoming conference. 

As you know my pal Mike Grehan is the chair of the event.  He's got an amazing lineup of speakers.  Seriously, Mike's pulled out all the stops and is pulling no punches with the sessions he's got lined up.  So, here's 5 reasons you should come to SES London:

1. Mike Grehan's the Chair - come on, that alone is worth it's weight in gold.  You know that what ever Mike's got planned has to be chock full of great and valuable information.
2. Dr.Ralph Wilson  - I love Ralph's interviews he puts on YouTube.  This has me excited to see what he has in store for the Introduction to Search Marketing session.  Getting to see Ralph's take on this session will be something anyone new to search should do!
3. Dave Naylor gets to tell the audience what he really thinks of Paid Links & Google
4. Fantomaster - if Mike isn't reason enough, Ralph Tegtmeier is.  This guy is just fascinating.  It really doesn't matter what "hat" you call yourself, the chance to be able to talk with Ralph makes this conference well worth the price.  If you are into very tough markets, it's amazing what Ralph's software can do.  The chance to pick his brain to help your own efforts along - priceless.
5. Organic Listing Forum:  Fantonmaster, Naylor, Grehan and a Google consultant who isn't Matt Cutts..... can we say bring out the popcorn?

I even have two bonus reason for you to attend!

6. No Keynotes that include JC!  Mike loves this industry enough not to torture us yet again with the same useless dribble.
7. You'll get to meet new Search Marketing Gurus writer SEOIdiot (Paul Madden).

If you can't make it to the conference, check out all the fun we're having through the photos of SES London 2008 that I post to Flickr.

Happy New Year!

By Li Evans

Here's wishing to you and yours the best wishes for a prosperous New Year in 2008!  From the Search Marketing Gurus team we hope you enjoy the celebrations that will be had this evening! :)

Just a quick side note, the Political Reviews will continue tomorrow, unfortunately I've come down with a rather nasty cold (just in time for New Years'!) and have been battling that since Friday night. :(

Be safe folks and see you in 2008!   

Vote for SMG in the Search Blog Awards - Vote for Us in the Photo Coverage Category!

By Li Evans

For the past three years, Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal runs the Search Blog Awards.  For the past two years now, Search Marketing Gurus has had the honor of being nominated.  Last year we came in quite close in one of the categories, we were #2 for one category and #3 for another.

This year SMG is up for 3 groups.  Best Blog of 2007, Best Overall Search Marketing Blog and Best Search Conference Coverage in Photos (Listed as Li Evans). 

I'd like to first thank the folks who nominated Search Marketing Gurus.  We are all very flattered that you think so much of SMG to include us in these categories.  From the women's series, to conference coverages and then articles on tips and strategies, and our photos we try to bring it all to you.

There is one category, that I'm rather proud of the nomination, and that's the Photos group.  If you didn't know, I'm a shutter bug.  As Danny Sullivan told me "you have a 'Man Camera'" - of course I laughed, but regardless, it's rare for me to be without my camera.  I love taking photos and capturing all pieces of the events.  I try to be as inclusive as I can be with my photos and that's why there's so many! 

Just so you can get an idea of everything from the past year, over 1400 photos of search marketing related events have been captured by my camera, here's the run down.

• Delaware Valley Internet Marketers Meetup 1/2007 - 14 Photos
• SES London 2/2007 - 97 Photos
• SES NYC 4/2007 - 238 Photos
• Delaware Valley Internet Marketers Meetup 5/2007 - 15 Photos
• SES Latino/Miami - 48 Photos
• Virginia Internet Marketers Meetup 7/2007 - 32 Photos
• SES San Jose 8/2007 - 543 Photos
• Philly Podcamp 9/2007 - 42 Photos
• SMX Social NYC 10/2007 - 143 Photos
• PRSA in Philadelphia - Blogger Dinner 10/2007 - 11 Photos
• SES Local in L.A. 11/2007 - 77 Photos
• Pubcon 12/2007 - 82 Photos
• SES Chicago 12/2007 - 99 Photos

If I take it back to all my photos before 2007 of Search Marketing Events, there's over 1800 pictures:

• SES San Jose 8/2006 - 105 Photos
• PhIMA Event at Lucky Strikes in Philly - 10/2006 - 11 Photos
• SES Chicago 12/2006 - 268 Photos
• SES San Jose 8/2005 - 19 Photos

Photography is my way of capturing the world I see around me, folks from all walks of life, different areas of the globe and different perspectives on life fascinate me, and I love capturing that through photos.  I actually don't limit myself to just Search Marketing Events, I've got over 4,000 photos in my Flickr account, so stop by and take a look at what else I've been a shutterbug about, but before you do that, please take a moment and vote for SMG!  (Remember give us a "5"!)  Voting ends January 4th. :)

Update On Political Marketing Series

By Li Evans

Due to prior engagements on my part, I was unable to get the next two reviews out for 12/27.  We'll be picking right up tomorrow morning (12/28) with 2 more reviews!

Sometimes, real life tends to grab hold and doesn't let you back at the keyboard in time! :)

SMX Social Media in New York City

By Li Evans

While Alex and Mike are at eMetrics and bringing you coverage from there, I'm heading to SMX Social in NYC.  I'll be bringing you some over views and photos of what's happening at that conference, since I'll be there to speak on Micro-Communities.

If you are attending and have Twitter, add me to your Twitter, I'll return the favor and maybe we can use Twitter to meet up.  I've got Search Marketing Gurus schwag, too, so stop me and I'll give you some!

Due to eMetrics and SMX this week and time schedules, there will not be a Women of Internet Marketing article this week.  It's just way too tough to fit it into the schedule of time I have this week.  We'll be back though on the 24th of October with our next installment!

We're Live Blogging eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington D.C.!

By Li Evans

So you're thinking, "Dang! My boss won't let me go to eMetrics!  I'm going to miss out on a ton a great information!"  Well, fear not, Search Marketing Gurus and eMetrics are teaming up to bring you overviews of some of the sessions at the eMetrics conference on marketing optimization in Washington, D.C. that's taking place Monday October 15th to Wednesday October 17th.

Search Marketing Gurus' analytics blogger Alex Cohen and new writer (and my boss) Mike Churchill will be covering the session and posting their high level recaps of the sessions shortly after they are over, here on Search Marketing Gurus.  These will be brief overviews of what went on during the sessions, key points of discussion and some tidbits and take-aways.

It'll get you as close as you can get to eMetrics with your computer and an RSS Feed.  Hopefully it will help you sell your company or boss on letting you actually attending the conference in the future.  There's a lot of sessions going on during eMetrics with up to 5 tracks running simultaneously, we can cover most of the search & internet related sessions but there's a lot that you miss unless you are there yourself.

So if you are actually going to eMetrics, please stop and say "Hi" to Alex and Mike.  Both of them have cameras ready to snap too, and will have Search Marketing Gurus schwag, so it doubly benefits you to say "Hi!"  If you're in the D.C. area tonight for dinner you might even see me with my camera too! :)

Touring Google with Avinash Kaushik

By Li Evans

While I was at SES last week in San Jose,I along with Bill Slawski and Kim Krause Berg had a very unique opportunity to get a tour of Google.  Our wonderful and gracious tour guide was none other than Avinash Kaushick, who's famous for his great analytics blog Occam's Razor and he new book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.

Kim did a great write up of our time there called: Another Side of Google, but I wanted to add a bit of my view of the tour.

First we got a ride up to Google from Keri Morgret from Morgret Designs, and she played tour guide on our way there.  Pointing out Yahoo's buildings, Microsoft's, and all the other landmarks and important players in the industry.  For those of you who don't know, Keri's the person that won the Bruce Clay contest that invited people to enter by helping a non-profit agency with their Search Optimization.

After Keri dropped Kim, Bill and I off, it was on to building 41 to meet with Avinash.  We were greeted by probably the most friendly security guards I've ever encountered, who graciously pointed us confused visitors in the right direction.  The Google campus, during the day, looks a lot different than it does at the dance!

Amazingly it was hard to even tell that Google Dance 2007 was even held there the night before, very little signs of the festivities remained.  All of the regular Google lunch tables with umbrellas were back in their normal locations, gone were the dunk tanks, milk shake stands, food tents and pool tables (and thankfully karaoke stations).  I think Google must have employed hundreds of people to manage the transformation.

Li's Got A Few Announcements

By Li Evans

Yesterday I alluded to the fact that I was looking at some opportunities and I'd be ready to tell you all about them next week.  Well I got a permission to let the cat out of the bag, actually it was let out yesterday on the Daily Search Cast, which I co-hosted with Danny Sullivan.

If you didn't listen yesterday or haven't downloaded the podcast, you wouldn't know that I am now the Director of Internet Marketing for KeyRelevance.  However, that's not all, Christine Churchill extended offers to join KeyRelevance to both myself and Bill Slawski.  I am very excited to be joining Christine, Mike, Jim, Bill and the rest of the team, probably one of the most experienced Search Marketing firms in the industry!  Christine, Jim and Mike also run SEM Clubhouse, if you haven't checked it out you should!

Now you are probably wondering what else I have up my sleeve?

Well they involve a few things around Search Marketing Gurus.  In the next few weeks there might be a few new faces helping to liven up the blog.  Y.M. Ousley - better known to you as SEO Fangirl is going to start contributing to SMG.  I asked her waaaaaaay back in February, finally her time has permitted her to start contributing.  We'll likely be seeing things from her around social media and also - at least I'm hoping some European / International Search Issues.

Next up, podcasting!  Yep, you read right.  I must thank Robert and Jennifer for this opportunity to start a podcast show for Search Engine Guide.  Within the next few weeks the podcast is going to be launched, and I'll be putting links up here at SMG to it for easy access.

Wait, wait ... there's more.

The Women of Internet Marketing series will be returning!  I'm working on getting it set for next week, but with the Labor Day holiday (here in the states), it just might be the following week when I launch it back up.  The summer proved to be a tough time with vacations and conferences and trying to get articles out every week just really couldn't be done.

So, that's it in the way of announcements... at least for today. :)

Daily Search Cast - Guess Who's Co-Hosting?

By Li Evans

Many of you know I'm a fan of the Daily Search Cast, with Danny Sullivan on WebmasterRadio.fm.  I love the rants, I love the news and I even love it when Danny sings! :)

If you have some free time today at 11:30 EST, pop on into the chat room or just plug in and listen, because yours truly has the honor of co-hosting with Danny today.  Thankfully my voice has fully recovered from SES last week (yes, I lost it again!).