Yes, we haven’t gotten together in a while.The plans after PubCon 2009 just didn’t ever work out.
January 26th, 2010 February 1, 2010 – Write it down. Happy Hour for the New Year.
More details to come, but it’ll be some place in Austin, with drinks, and food, and search marketers kicking back.
UPDATE: We will be at Chuy’s on 183 after work on Monday Feb 1. Come join us!
Update: Those that have RSVP’d have been emailed directions. If you didn’t get it, email us ASAP and we’ll get that sent out again. Come back for pictures later on!
It’s almost that time!
The AustinSEM BBQ/Potluck will be held at Jack Leblond’s house on October 24th at 11am. Time to be determined once the Longhorn’s determine when they are playing Missouri that day. Remember that families are welcome! Just be sure to let us know how many are coming.
If you are planning on attending, sign up for what you are bringing ASAP. It’s first come, first serve. We will email you with a total head count a few days before.
Can’t wait to meet everyone!
Alright, to start with is the September plans. On September 29th we will be meeting at NXNW in North Austin off of Loop 360. You can find more information on their site (directions, menu, etc.). Be there around 6pm! I’ll update the site when I get there with our location. Check out twitter as well.
We had a great idea. Socials are always after work. So we are doing a BBQ at Jack Leblond’s house on October 24, 2009, weather permitting. More details to come, but if you want to be updated personally, shoot me an email that you are interested. katemorris at gmail dot com
For November, we will be having our “What Happened at PubCon” Social. There are tons of people going this year. If you are interested in going and need help convincing a boss or something let me know. There are tons of members that can provide proof of this conference’s value. Taylor Pratt and myself are speaking too! If you can make the trip to Vegas, it’ll be a great time. If not, we’ll keep ya updated on events and news.
Tentative Date: November 17th, 2009
Not calling it a Christmas party, but we’ll so something special for that time of year. If you want to help plan, please let me know! katemorris at gmail dot com
Tentative Date: December 29th, 2009
We all know school traffic begins on Monday, even more Tuesday. It’ll be time to grab a drink and let the traffic roll by. Join us at Opal Divine’s Marina location. We are planning to talk about SES San Jose, some Caffeine talk, and anything else we can come up with. Can’t wait to see you!
Where: Opal Divine, Marina – 12709 Mopac & Parmer Lane
When: 6pm-ish, Tuesday, August 25th
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Join us around 6pm at Third Base for good times, good drinks, and great people!
Place: Third Base
1717 West 6th Street
Austin, TX 78703
(512) 476-2273
Please note that we welcome all Austin area search marketing professionals. We want to keep these events to those working in the space, no salesmen, etc.
Following up my last blog post recapping the events of the Video Marketing Expo 2009 (VMX), in this entry I interview the event organizer, Chris Justice of Sparksight, on the opportunities and future trends in video.
I know a lot of you are looking for avenues for your talents so I asked Chris questions regarding opportunities in the video industry. Being that my own company’s expertise is in technology forecasting and trend analysis, I found Chris’ answers to be particularly interesting. To get an idea of what is on the tape, my questions include:
Carrie Vanston, Technology Futures, Inc., cvanston at tfi.com
When Kate, our fearless AustinSEM leader, asked me if I’d be willing to write a blog about the Video Marketing Expo (VMX) May 13, my first thought was, “I’ve never written a blog and I’m too busy.” But then it occurred to me, why am I attending such events if I’m not going to jump in and do what I learned. So, here I am writing my first blog entry! And then, I thought, “Well, if I’m going to a video expo, I should do a video.” So I interviewed the event organizer, Chris Justice of Sparksight, on opportunities in video. Chris was great and Kate has helped me put up the blog entry, as well as the video. So far, so good!
VMX Video Marketing
The expo opened with Ingrid Venderveldt who gave encouragement with saying “Yes, it is worth finishing, it’s not stupid!” The overarching theme of this show seemed to be that businesses needed to not be afraid of video, but embrace it.
Brigette Dale and Lan and Vu Bui talked about the future of entertainment and TV. They said the most important things are that videos should teach you something and, ideally, end with a smile. They suggested www.Freevlog.org and www.thebuibrothers.com as having tons of stuff on how to get going. They all made the point that what your audience really wants is to see you are a person.
Next I attended Track 2 with Troy Lanier and DadLabs on the essentials for producing online video. One nugget that jumped out was www.tubemogul.com allows you to put your video out to 15 plus social sites.
Then we went on to learn about online video marketing strategies with Jim Warren from Infomercial.com and Giovanni Gallucci with The Agency Blog.
Jim’s 3 steps for successful video marketing:
Giovanni says Google owns YouTube and therefore it is very valuable to your overall marketing presence to optimize your videos.
Next up was producing and syndicating online video from the Bui Brothers. Being a super neophyte regarding internet and video, I had no idea how video even got onto websites. Now I know they get there by living on a host site and then being embedded onto a website. Some of these sites are free–if your content is non-commercial–and some are kind of lax even if the video could be considered commercial.
Their favorite was blip.tv, but they agreed that for low quality video, the product isn’t that great. Blip does let you encode information about your own company. Vimeo.com was 2nd favorite and better with lower quality video, but more picky about commercial content. The brothers had experienced being cut off without notice on one of their ads. They mentioned that having YouTube host your video on their website gives them a lot of rights that you may not feel comfortable with. You can always have it hosted somewhere else and just put it on YouTube. For a tutorial on getting a video shot and up, go to http://thebuibrothers.com/store/.
Brian Rutledge from GetPageOne says the nice thing about video is the search engines might pick it up if it’s optimized. Video transcribing (putting video text onto the page) can help with rankings. He suggested maybe putting a little of transcript on the page and then putting “more” leading to the rest of the transcription. His favorite metric tool is tubemogul.com. He said seomoz.com has a lot of useful information.
Hank Jones talked about copywriting, legal compliance, and rules of ownership. He suggested to
We finished up the day with Brian Brushwood with Scam School giving a fascinating presentation about branding. He recommended a book entitled “Origin of Brands” by Al and Laura Ries. How to win:
Brian of the wild hair used the techniques to successfully become “the magician of the internet.”
Awards followed with a great reception of Japanese food. Wow, the food was great all day!
Several sessions and interviews from the day are available at VMX2009, including the session by Chris Justice about live streaming and webcasting that I wasn’t able to attend. I also interview Chris about his thoughts on the opportunities and future trends in video on a separate, upcoming post.
Carrie Vanston, Technology Futures, Inc., cvanston at tfi.com
Just a quick update so everyone can get their June calendars set! We are looking at a June 23rd date at perhaps Iron Cactus downtown? Voice any opinions or suggestions in the comments. We are open to place or topic.
It’s Social Time in Austin – Join us for a few drinks and a lot of fun!
We had a fantastic time last month at Third Base doing the Table Topics (thanks Nadia!), and now it’s time to kick back and relax. There is graduation going on, Summer Break, and school is out. Let’s celebrate spring (already feels like summer) in style with a good old fashioned social. Hope to see everyone there with some search marketing friends.
Where: Cool River Cafe, Austin (Thanks for the suggestion Matt!)
When: 6pm-ish, Tuesday, May 26th
RSVP: Email katemorris at the Google mail … if you are attending please, or comment.
(And be sure you are signed up with the group to get all emails and reminders!)
Please pass this along to everyone you know in Austin in the search marketing industry. Just as a reminder, this group is for search marketing professionals. We welcome everyone from beginners to advanced, but try to keep it to those who perform search marketing related tasks. Invite in-house people you know … and agencies, grab your specialists. We want them to learn, we want to learn from them. This is a group just for those of us that are tackling the exciting world of search marketing!
So we have been going since August, and things are in full swing, so I am looking for help. I need a few good search marketers in Austin to step up to the plate and help out in a few areas.
If you are interested in helping in any of these areas, even for a small time, please let me know! I’ll give anyone a login to the WordPress account that wants to write a few blog posts now and then.
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