What a Ride!

In the past few months, MIMA has grown to more than 1100 members, and then some! It’s been a fast and furious growth curve for MIMA which started just over 10 years ago as a small salon gathering. See the timeline developed in conjunction with the 2008 MIMA Summit for a little retrospective on MIMA’s growth and evolution.

He’s Not Just a Number, He’s MIMA Member #1000
The MIMA Membership Committee dropped in for a surprise presentation to MIMA member #1000, Brian Haugen of Priority. See the video and See photos.

Brian’s number came up as part of Priority’s group membership earlier this year. With the help of several Priority players, including Brian Bierbaum and Dan Humiston, the MIMA Membership committee surprised Brian with the announcement. In thanks for his monumental membership, the MIMA presented Brian with a one-in-a-thousand t-shirt designed just for him and a highly-coveted pass to MIMA Summit 2009 (which opened for early-bird registration).

The 1000th member event was captured on video, with special thanks to Priority’s Dan Humiston for shooting/editing and to Buzz Cutz for contributing the music. The Priority team helped assure it was done in style, tiara and all.

Thanks to Brian Haugen, and to all MIMA members, for making MIMA a vibrant, 1000+ strong community.

Sincerely,
Ben Wallace
MIMA Membership Director

So where are you reading this blog post from? Your home in Minneapolis. Your office over the River in St. Paul? Or a coffee shop in Mexico?

You know they call it “the world wide web” for a reason. And as the infrastructure to support it expands around the globe – and as the technology to access it becomes more affordable and readily available – the Internet truly is facilitating communication across widely dispersed geo-political boundaries. So visitors to your website could be coming from anywhere on earth, really.

Lots of smart interactive marketing professionals recognize the Internet’s burgeoning capability to facilitate international transactions. Recently, 200+ members of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (and guests) met at W Minneapolis for our July event, featuring a presentation by Joe Kutchera an expert in online marketing and building sales in Latin American markets and founder of dotGlobal, an international e-commerce and media consultancy.

Joe spoke to the group about concepts related to localization and internationalization, using Latin American markets as an example. Here are select highlights from his full presentation.

Localization trends
Joe gave us some examples of how geographic boundaries can affect shopping behavior.

Price. According to Joe, who lives in New York City, many people in Manhattan cross the Hudson River to save on groceries and gas, because prices are less expensive and taxes are lower in New Jersey. Or compare the prices for the same products available on Dell’s U.S and Mexican online stores (both prices given in USD).
• Inspiron 13” – Dell.com: $499; Dell.com.mx: $665
• Studio Slim Desktop – Dell.com: $399; Dell.com.mx: $702
• Dell V305 Printer – Dell.com: $99; Dell.com.mx: $132
(Sources: Dell.com and Dell.com.mx, July 2009)

Availability. Joe shared several anecdotes about Latin American friends who frequently seek out U.S. sources to buy products because they often have greater selection and better quality. For a local example, who among us as creative and enterprising MIMA members have not crossed the St. Croix River on a Sunday afternoon at least once to replenish the liquor cabinet after a rollicking party the night before, because of Minnesota blue laws prohibiting alcohol sales on Sunday?

Internationalization trends
Joe provided a variety of figures verifying what we already know: the Internet is an increasingly international space. A look at the top 50 ostensibly U.S. websites shows that many are getting more traffic from abroad than from U.S. visitors. The New York Times web edition gets 42% of its readers from abroad, Twitter 51%, YouTube 81% and Facebook 82%.

Where could these visitors be browsing your website from? According to Internet World Stats, the top five most used languages on the Internet are: English (430.8 million), Mandarin (276.2 million), Spanish (124.7 million), Japanese (94.0 million) and French (68.2 million).

Indeed. For those of you who think visually — or for you verbal people like me who need context to put large numbers into perspective — try this on. The Minneapolis Star Tribune print edition reported two days after Joe’s presentation that China now has more people who are online than the entire population of the United States.

Opportunities for marketers
How are Latin Americans and Spanish-speaking people in the United States finding your website? By typing Spanish terms into their favorite search engines. Joe suggests making sure your SEO strategies include optimizing your site for Spanish (and other important international languages).

Look at your media plan. Joe said to think about your audience’s international language needs or professional interests horizontally across the vertical media channels in your strategy.

Target your messaging. Joe said there are a lot of ways to deliver messages to international audiences.
• By IP address or geographic region
• Re-target (follow up)
• Behavioral/linguistic
• Contextual (by subject)
• Profession/company/social network
• Country

Explore emerging g-commerce best practices. Joe said there is tremendous opportunity for marketers in the United States who make it easier for customers from around the world to buy their products.
• Give your visitors a choice of geographic denominations to transact in and make your offers available in multiple denominations.
• Give your visitors a choice of geographic locations to pick up products they order. If you do not have a physical presence in a foreign market where consumers are looking for your product or service, partner with a business there who can serve as a distributor for you.

I bet that got your attention. I hear that comment from a lot of people. They tell me that search engine optimization doesn’t work anymore, search engine marketing is the new “SEO”, it’s all about social marketing now, and PPC is a better use of a company’s money than SEO.

Like all black and white thinking, there’s some truth in all of these statements but they all “throw out the baby with the bath water”. It’s foolish to rely on just one form of marketing. And yet a lot of businesses do exactly that. A better approach is a multi-faceted marketing plan that utilizes two or three of these online methods.

And search engine optimization is the perfect backbone or adjunct to any of these other forms of online marketing. Search engine optimization does work. It isn’t just about utilizing the right keywords or making certain that all the HTML is clean or eliminating dead links or regularly creating appropriate content or even using the right URLs. SEO requires a wholistic approach to web design, maintenance, and strategy.

However, I’d like to address the people who say keywords are dead or are a waste of time in search engine optimization, especially with Google. To them I say two things:

1) Any way you want to slice it, Google and all the other search engines really only have one criteria they can use to determine if a website deserves the attention of their clients: words. Yes, they look at incoming links for votes of confidence because, to a certain extent, it is a popularity contest. But in the final analysis of whether a site gives their searchers what they are looking for, it still comes down to the words in the title, description, and the page copy. If this weren’t true, no amount of tweaking of meta tags and copy would affect placement. And my successful work with client’s websites contradicts that.

2) Adwords. Adwords is probably one of the best analysis tools out there to figure out what your keywords should be. Adwords ads are short, tasty and to the point (at least the good ones are). Even the change of a single word can have a huge effect on results. That same power can be used to create an incremental effect on your website placement. Because SEO is about incremental improvements, not a “big bang”.

Lastly, if you analyze the copy of the top placing websites for your client’s keyword phrases, it gets pretty obvious pretty quick, that there really is a relationship between copy, keywords, and search engine placement. And the competitive analysis and resulting recommendations are what my clients are paying for.

Search engine optimization is not dead. Nor is it the “be all, end all” of online marketing. It is just a potent tool that should be the springboard for all other online marketing approaches.

Did you know that 62% of Internet users do not look any further than the first page of search engine results?

Lance Loveday’s breakout session on SEO reconfirmed the need for high search engine rankings and provided tips on how to get there.

Traditional SEO (keyword research, on-site optimization and link building) is still as important as ever, but with the evolution of the digital landscape, there is an increasing need to think about search engine optimization in terms of video, images, blogs and RSS Feeds.

Video Optimization

In today’s YouTube age, optimizing video is crucial. Here are some tips.

• Keyword optimize video meta data
• Include the word “video” in the file name so that search engines recognize that the file is a video
• Make sure you allocate one URL per video

Image Optimization

• Embed keywords in the file name, directory and alt text
• Make sure images are not blocked by the robots.txt file

Blog Optimization

Just like optimizing a web site, blogs need to have keyword optimized meta data and on-page content.

• Make sure your blog has tags and categories created with keywords in mind
• Set up your blog to notify (ping) search engines when you add new content. You can use services such as pingomatic. Note: You still have to ping Google separately.
• “Claim your blog” in Technorati, the leading blog search engine

From a usability standpoint:

• Make sure users can easily subscribe to your RSS Feed by adding popular feed reader chiclets
• Offer email-based subscriptions as well as RSS
• Add links to popular social bookmarking sites

RSS Feed Optimization

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a great way to maximize distribution of content and subsequently, also maximize your online visibility.

• Optimize your RSS Feeds with unique titles
• Use a full text feed for the best user experience
• Validate your feed using a service such as feedvalidator.org
• Enable “auto-discovery” so that the user can see that an RSS Feed is available (indicated by the presence of the orange RSS chiclet in the web address bar)

Lance Loveday is the Founder and CEO of Closed Loop Marketing, an online marketing company that helps companies maximize return on their web investments.

We are lucky to have so many knowledgeable and friendly Online Marketers here in Minnesota and Ward Tongen is a perfect example. I am pleased to introduce Ward to you in this interview which is our latest in our Meet the MIMA Members Interview Series.

Q: As Senior Online Marketing Analyst with Medtronic, what are your responsibilities?

Ward: I like to think of myself as an online marketer that saves lives.

Medtronic produces state-of-the-art medical devices and Medtronic employees worldwide share a common goal – to “alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life”. Every 5 seconds, the life of someone somewhere in the world is improved by a Medtronic product or therapy. As a search marketer I help Medtronic strategically place our product and therapy information in front of people searching online for healthcare information.

My primary responsibilities include ‘evangelizing’ the value of search marketing and web metrics/analytics to the marketers at Medtronic. I’m attached to a very talented group of people. We act as an internal interactive agency to the various Medtronic business units.

Q: How can a large company’s (such as Medtronic) approach to search be similar and different than a small mom and pop’s?

Ward: Small entrepreneurs can be quick and nimble in the online market place. Medtronic is a very large medical device manufacturer. So we develop systems and processes to help us react more quickly to online marketing opportunities. Medtronic operates in a highly regulated environment, so our content faces extra steps and much scrutiny before it is allowed to be published. This sometimes affects what we can and cannot do with regard to search marketing. It’s tough environment for SEO.

Q: You do a fair amount of speaking about search marketing at conferences and with private groups, are there any differences between preparing and speaking for a private group vs larger and more general audiences of a conference? What is your favorite part of speaking?

Ward: Yes. My professional speaking developed in just the last few years. It started out when Jimmy Poole invited me to speak to the James J. Hill Library staff on the topic of search marketing. That experience gave me the confidence to step up and do more. Since then I have been fortunate enough to be invited to speak at the MIMA Summit and several Search Engine Strategies Conferences among others.

I find that with the smaller niche audiences I can tailor my presentation to be more audience-focused. This is harder to do with a larger, more general audience.

I am very passionate about what I do so the favorite part of speaking for me is when someone gets to that “Aha!” moment – when they find insight into the paradigm shift that search marketing represents.

Q: What do you think of Google’s Universal Search and how do you think it will evolve? How can a search marketer take advantage of it?

Ward: Basically, Google is trying to read your mind, and they are getting better and better at it. Google’s Universal Search is a landmark step in that direction. Search marketers and savvy Web surfers know lots of techniques to get relevant results from the search engines.

However, your average searcher needs assistance making the most out of their queries without getting overwhelmed with the number of different search indexes available on Google.

At first glance it would seem that this new interface could potentially reduce traffic to the Web page index as other indexes get more real estate on the search engine results page. This isn’t necessarily bad for search marketers. Now, instead of having all their eggs in one basket, search marketers have a greater opportunity to extend their reach and relevancy into image, blog, video search, etc. The long-term value of well-written content in the vernacular of your target audience may very well increase.

Q: How long have you been a member of MIMA and what are the beneficial aspects of being a member for you?

Ward: I’ve been a member of MIMA for about five years I think. I remember earlier on, I was a bit of a wall flower at the social functions, but I soon got to know a few people and things warmed up quickly after that. Now networking at MIMA is a permanent part of my professional development. MIMA functions are now full of familiar faces. The speakers they get are usually dynamic and the venues MIMA selects are outstanding. I often encourage people to join.

Q: Music, sport or passion: What do you like to do, read or listen to when away from work?

Ward: My tastes in music are eclectic. I enjoy a good hard science fiction novel. I love Asia, especially Thailand. Like many others I share some of these topics on the social networking sites such as iLike, Flikr, Facebook, etc.

I also collect what I call “National Geographic moments”. Moments like my first glimpse of Edinburgh Castle, an early morning visit to the Tsukiji Fish market in Tokyo, a night dive with manta rays in Hawaii. Bertrand Piccard once said “Life is not governed by chance but by encounters.”

Most people are surprised to hear that I was also formerly a geologist. I still have an appreciation for unusual or rare rock and mineral specimens.

Q: Do you have a tip or a couple of your favorite search marketing resources you would like to share with the MIMA folks?

Ward: I highly recommend Rand Fishkin’s SEO Tools on SEOmoz.org. I use quite a few of the Firefox search tool extensions. Also, we have started to use the foreign language datasets in Keyword Discovery.

My tip – Leverage online web metrics to provide business insight to your clients. This will logically lead them to develop search marketing opportunities.

Thanks Ward!

Do you keep up to date with the latest search engine marketing news? If you do, you most likely frequent at least a couple of these sites. If you don’t you should check these out. These are my current 5 favorite sites that I follow for search news.

• Search Engine Land
• Marketing Pilgrim
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Web Pro News

Danny Sullivan with Search Engine Land has in my opinion improved on what he previously had with Search Engine Watch. Search Engine Land pumps out loads of search engine news daily, announcing the breaking news and providing in depth commentary and opinion. He has a top-notch staff and a stable of writers that cover all aspects of the field. Danny also has the Daily Search Cast where you can catch the daily news with a live podcast on Webmaster Radio or download the archived version. If you want only one source for search news, Search Engine Land is it.

Andy Beal has built The Marketing Pilgrim into a first class search marketing news and analysis source. The Marketing Pilgrim covers all the top stories of the day with the help of a fine collection of writers. A great hook for the Pilgrim is a job board and the recently reintroduced search marketing weekly podcast. Andy does a great job sharing his knowledge and can be hired for his expert search marketing services.

The Search Engine Journal by Loren Baker also dishes out the top daily search news items. Loren delivers the goods on search marketing with high-performance style and substance and I like to read the stuff he writes. The Search Engine Journal also carries a cast of reporters to make sure all the deserving stories are covered.

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable is a blogging madman. I don’t know how he has time for his Rusty Brick web design business with all the reading, research and writing he does for Search Engine Roundtable(seroundtable) and Search Engine Land. With seroundtable.com Barry and his comrades pick out and show you the most interesting search marketing threads from the top webmaster forums. Consider this the search marketing word on the street with Barry and CO cutting through the BS and delivering the worthwhile stuff.

Web Pro News by iEntry has a less personal feel with a network presentation of the news. The hook I keep going back for are the video clips and interviews. When a major conference is going on Mike McDonald does a great job with video interviews on the current issues in search marketing.

Of course there are many other blogs out there that deliver great news and articles on search marketing. I don’t mean to leave them out but here I wanted to focus on the news sites, the sites that are about getting the news out on a daily basis and are often some of the first to report on it. If you have a favorite search marketing news site you want to share please let us know with a comment. I’ll get to sharing other groups and categories of sites down the road. Til then,… later!

The Direct Marketing Associaton national DMA-06 pre conference sessions started this weekend with the new Search Engine Marketing Certification program. Saturday morning started off with Jeannette Kocsis, VP of Digital Marketing at Harte-Hanks,  presenting on "Introduction to Search Engine Marketing" and MIMA boardmember Lee Odden from TopRank Online Marketing following up with "Search Engine Basics".

Here’s the description of Jeannett’s module:

Introduction to Search Engine Marketing: Explore search engine marketing and what it takes for a marketer to achieve search engine marketing results. Learn how to identify ethical search engine marketing practices and how search engines define spam. Learn how to shape the business case for search marketing for your business, and how to staff this valuable marketing function.

Lee Odden’s session:

Search Engine Basics: If you have ever wondered how a search engine builds its database, adds new sites to its index or chooses which results to show, this is the session for you. Learn to identify paid from algorithmic search listings and where search listings appear beyond the search results page. You will also learn how the search marketers’ efforts can impact what the user sees on the page.

Michael Bloom (born and raised in Minnesota!) from the DMA Washington DC office did a short introduction and then Dr. Amanda Watlington presented information about the details of the certification program.

All of the modules were recorded so participants in the certification program will have access as well as to the presentations.

Sunday morning Matt Bailey of Site Logic Marketing presented his module:

Site Indexing Challenges and How to Fix Them: Is your site beautiful to behold, but invisible to search engines? This program focuses on the specific page elements and design technologies that can prevent a site from being included in a search engine database. You will learn how to identify the barriers and what must be done to overcome them.

Which was followed up by Detlev Johnson of Position Tech with:

Search Engine and Directory Submission/Inclusion Tactics: Want to know how to get your Web site indexed in the search engines using the newest and best practices? This session will outline the newest tactics available for ensuring rapid and complete site submissions. Learn how to get your site included in Google using Sitemaps and explore the many features of Yahoo! Site Explorer as well as other highly effective methods.

Find out more information about the DMA’s new Search Engine Marketing Certification program.

Welcome to the official blog for MIMA, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association.

Here you will find updated news about MIMA, events, projects and activities as well as interactive marketing industry news. We welcome and encourage your readership and interaction.