2010-07-29T19:52:17Z

How to Give Your Video a Case of the Virals

You want your video to get viral. That means it has to touch a LOT of people. So, how do you take an innocent video and turn it into the life of the party? No, not through massive amounts of alcohol; through the right mix of charm and skill.

Viral, Diagnosed

What does it mean to go “viral”? In terms of the online video, it’s the ability of a video to “copy” itself through its spread across the Internet and/or to morph into other similar things (e.g., parodies and spoofs of the original video), both of which advance the impact of the original video.

Above: the common cold

Viral videos don’t always have a rhyme or reason; seems they either have a whole lotta strategy behind them (for example, those created by a company for marketing) or that certain “je ne sais quoi” that strikes a chord in people and spreads like wildfire with little planning. If we take a look at Visible Measures’ report of the 100 million views club, we see the members consist of a random conglomeration of user generated content, music videos and film clips.

What we can say for certain is companies like Visible Measures and a handful of others are making entire careers out of making a framework for viral video strategy. In fact, Visible Measures has mapped out a formula for studying and measuring the effects of videos, based on criteria like placements, views and sentiment analysis. Check out this graph of the company’s methodology:

TrueReach is trademarked by Visible Measures, used here for illustration purposes only.

Homemade vs. Agency-Made Videos

You might be surprised to know that many of the viral videos we see today are no accident. The Old Spice videos sweeping the Internet are courtesy of global ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, headquartered in Portland, Ore. Clients of this agency include other brand giants like Nike, Coca-Cola, Levis, Target and the list goes on.

On the other hand, you have videos that go viral accidentally simply because they make people laugh. A great example is the following clip of an extremely dramatic animal with a vengeance only a ninja can appreciate. And while this poor creature has been called everything from a hamster to a chipmunk; it’s actually a prairie dog. And it’s hysterical.

So regardless of your intentions and budget, don’t let anything hold you back from putting those videos out there and experimenting with what works. Luckily, there’s a wealth of information on the Internet about how to make videos that have the potential to go viral.

Tips to Make Videos Go Viral

Use the Resources You’ve Got
Don’t have a camera or a budget? It’s OK, you can still make videos with pictures and sound through Windows Movie Maker, or check out this service from xtranormal.com that allows you to create text-to-movie animation videos.

Cater to Impatient People
Adult ADD seems rampant these days; consider how long your video is going to be and understand when attention spans begin to wane. Theories exist that videos should be somewhere between 15 seconds and two minutes long.

Be Trendy
Viral videos have multilayer trends. One facet is the type of video (how it’s shot or created) and the other is the subject matter. So, you must be keen on pop culture to strike when it’s hot. Sharethrough recently reported the hot trends in viral video marketing included stop motion animation. To further your research, check out sites like What the Trend or use Google Insights for Search to see who is searching for what and where. Also, stay on top of current news and think about making video responses to what’s happening in the world.

Make a Series
Reports by Visible Measures on the viral video, “Evolution of Dance,” show that sequels can often raise the viewership of the original video. The Dentyne Pure video that recently went viral (you can find it in this top 10 viral video ads list) asks fans to send ideas on what the fate of the characters should be in the next video. Tactics like this keep people engaged and directly involved in the brand.

Ride the Wave of Someone Else’s Success
Go ahead, be a poser. Your video can go viral simply for copying someone else’s brilliant idea or adding a fresh take on it. Check out the 1 million plus views on Mike Relm’s Old Spice Remix:

Personalize Your Brand
Use humor to shed new light on your brand or a prominent figure within your company. But first, understand who your audience is and who you’re targeting. Sure, everyone loves a good laugh, but humor varies across populations. So, know what types of comedy your audience will respond to.

Take a Risk
What the wildest idea you have for a video? Don’t rule it out. It might take some negotiation for executive-level buy in, but bring stats and case studies of those that have taken a chance and found success. You might be pleasantly surprised with the outcome. And if not, you’re making progress through testing.

Choose Your Hosts
Find out where you’re going to place your videos. Of course, YouTube is a great choice but you might also want to look into sites like BuzzFeed and Metacafe. And of course, you’ll want to host the video on your own site, if possible.

Optimize the Title
With Universal Search being the norm these days in Google SERPs, take full advantage by using strategic keywords in your titles when uploading your video to sites like YouTube. Try the Google Adwords keyword selection tool, or we even have one here at Bruce Clay, Inc. that’s part of our SEOToolSet® called the Search Engine Optimization/KSP Tool. A post by Smart Blog on Social Media covering the SXSW Interactive’s “How to Create a Viral Video” track suggests if you’re making a parody, include the same keywords in the title that the original video has.

Spread the Word
Start sharing the video in your communities. Begin with friends and people in your industry. Use social networks and bloggers to get the word out. Promote it on your website and through newsletters, and any other promotional materials you might have. The key is to capitalize on every resource you have in the beginning and be relentless.

Build a Community
Ronald Jenkees has a loyal following because he knows the value of his community. And you can feel the loyalty of his fan base by reading their comments, which is just reinforced by his genuine appreciation for them. I’m super obsessed with Stay Crunchy right now, by the way. How can you not love this guy?

To build community, respond to your fans’ comments, get them involved in ideas for more videos and so on. Don’t have any comments on your video yet? Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, once suggested starting a controversial comment exchange between yourself and your colleagues to get things going.

And here’s some additional tips on garnering views and building community from a lad with a mask and an English accent, Scary Skelator. Tips one, two and four are most relevant to the community aspect.

Measure and Track Success
ROI from videos is a very real possibility; in fact, Old Spice sales are up 107% in the past month. And people like Ronald Jenkees are able to sell their music from viral videos they create – he was even asked to make the theme song for the podcast of Bill Simmons of ESPN. Maybe your success will be measured by driving traffic and conversions on your site. Whatever the goal, consider using tools to track your accomplishments. One service you might consider is from TubeMogul.

Now go forth and make those videos! And if you have any tips on what’s worked for you in the past, please join the discussion and share a comment below.

How to Give Your Video a Case of the Virals was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

2010-07-29T00:30:52Z

Connected Marketing Week: A Marketer’s Dream Festival — SEM Synergy Extras

SES’s summertime conference on the West Coast has always been a stunner. Formerly SES San Jose, the conference sits in the backyard of technology’s mecca and hosts respected search engine representatives and thousands of the Internet marketing industry’s foremost experts. While the conference already had one of the richest resumes on the conference circuit, it’s raising the bar this year. Incisive Media, producer of the SES conference series, is presenting a supercharged event with first-ever marketing festival.

Who doesn’t love a good festival during the summer? And the line up that Incisive Media has pulled together for Connected Marketing Week is pure rockstar.

On today’s episode of SEM Synergy, I talked to Neil Patel, co-founder of analytics companies Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics and author of the blog Quick Sprout. Neil mentioned the opportunities available through networking at conferences to learn about topics sometimes overlooked in the search community — everything from domaining to raising money for a startup to building up a site and a community.

It’s this inherent synergy, so vital to a rich and multi-faceted Internet marketing strategy, that will be covered at Connected Marketing Week. Along with the sessions, training workshops and networking events on the schedule for SES, you should look into the partnered events on e-mail marketing, social media, blogging, Twitter and display advertising, including:

• Blogging forum by ClickZ on day 1
• E-mail marketing toolkit workshop by the Email Experience Council on day 1
• Social media forum by OMS on day 2
• E-mail marketing campaign optimization forum on day 3
• Display advertising future forum on day 3
• 140 Character Conference on Twitter brand engagement on day 4
• Conversion Conference on landing page testing, design and conversion optimization on day 5
• International marketing forum by ClickZ and SEMPO on day 5

Bruce will also be presenting a one-day SEO training class on Monday, August 16, and on Tuesday Bruce will unveil the highly anticipated SEOToolSet v.5, highlighting the new interface, features, and project management capabilities. Plus you can find Bruce and the team in the expo hall at booth 406.

I know, that amount of information in one place is hard to believe, but it’s true. If you’re interested in this platinum caliber medley of the industry’s red-hot topics and cutting-edge tactics, sign up for Connected Marketing Week fast. The early bird registration deadline is this Friday! Use the discount code 20BRU for 20 percent off the cost of SES registration. We can’t wait to see you in San Francisco!

Connected Marketing Week: A Marketer’s Dream Festival — SEM Synergy Extras was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

2010-07-28T00:07:50Z

White Hat SEO Sans Smoke: All the Fun, None of the Filler

Everyone’s been raving about Mad Men for years now. I keep promising myself I’m going to rent the first season and get in on the series while the getting’s still good. Thanks to the good folks of Boing Boing, this week I got a brief introduction via scenes of people smoking cigarettes on the show.

Oh, cigarettes. You seductive sirens of failing self control. You heady temptresses of silky smooth delight. I will always be in your clutches, no matter how much I want to leave you. Even when I muster up the will to run away, thoughts of sweet smoky memories haunt me. You’re so bad, but oh so good…

Can you tell I’m a smoker? Was a smoker. Am a smoker. Who can even tell anymore…

I’ve quit too many times, always falling back into cigarettes’ softly glowing embrace. I know that in the long term there’s a chance that smoking will turn me black inside, alienate friends and family, and could be cause for some less-than-favorable judgments. [We are totally judging you. –Susan] But time and again I succumb to the easy availability, the instant gratification, the quick fix.

If you think about it, smoking cigarettes is a lot like doing black hat SEO. Sure it works now. It’s fast, sexy and cool. No one complains about the burn if it brings in the big bucks. But what about in time? Think you’ll look as hot when your smoker’s ways are banned from public places, kill your stamina or disintegrate your body? In SEO terms, that equates to being kicked out of the index, wrecking your site or brand’s longevity, and ignoring site quality while chasing the next clever exploit.

I’m not judging smokers here. We know that smoking is bad for health, and we’re entitled to make our own choice. Same goes for black hat SEO. If you’re aware of the potential consequences, it’s perfectly fine to take those risks. Just don’t expect the good times to last forever.

Now, there is an interesting alternative. At BlueGlass LA last week, Todd Friesen was firing up a safer option: the electronic cigarette. All the nicotine, none of the tar, chemicals and sticky smoke smell. Electronic cigarettes deliver nicotine in a puff of water vapor, meaning that you can smoke pretty much anywhere. Todd said he’d even smoked in the plane on the way over. Accepted in all the playgrounds and capable of delivering the same powerful jolt — like white hat SEO!

I advocate white hat SEO because most businesses and brands can’t afford the negative side effects of constant churn and burn, black listing and reinclusion requests. White hat SEO is a safer, more dependable method of boosting a site that reaches the heart of site quality. It can be a tougher road than the quick fix, but it’s less dangerous and just as effective in the long run.

White Hat SEO Sans Smoke: All the Fun, None of the Filler was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

2010-07-26T23:37:49Z

Is It Possible to be Successful and Suck? (And Tips to Avoid the Latter)

If Facebook has anything to show us, the answer to the question above is yes. As SEOs, we’ve seen our fair share of sites that suck come to Bruce Clay, Inc. for help. One thing I’ve noticed that always surprises me is that it can sometimes be hard to predict future success when there’s so much evidence to the contrary.

CC BY 2.0

The Globe and Mail has synthesized the issue of Facebook’s success-to-suckage ratio about as well as anyone. The latest news coming out of the social behemoth is that it’s reached 500 million users, putting its population on par with the third-largest nation in the world. It was a conveniently cheery outlook for Facebook considering current concerns regarding privacy and spam and fading consumer satisfaction.

(My favorite line: “[I]t’s hard to be unreservedly supportive of something so huge, so tentacled, so hungry for data, kind of like a blue Kraken owned by a pimply billionaire“. What a fun way to look at inevitable destruction!)

Even in the midst of unbridled growth, Facebook’s getting failing grades in Keeping Users Happy 101. (A tangential aside: 5 videos you should never post on YouTube is full of further examples that traffic, page views and popularity do not equal “good for the brand.” Important lessons learned at the expense of others. Sorry, dude. Sure 700k people have viewed your video. Too bad they’d never do business with you.)

As Facebook demonstrates, it’s certainly possible to rake in the bucks while alienating users and stirring up movements to boycott your service. But there’s got to be a less irksome way to steer your business toward success. At Bruce Clay, Inc. we’re all about helping businesses not suck. (Noble, right? You can thank us later. )

It turns out that people will put up with a wholotta nonsense if a service does even just a couple things right.

Be Useful

The Globe and Mail says Facebook’s satisfaction ratings are in line with airline and cable companies — two industries where it can be hard to pay a compliment other than we’d be bored and close to home without them. There just aren’t many alternatives because they fill a need few others can. Facebook is popular because it’s useful. It lets people connect, contact and share with friends and family online. Funny enough, it’s also useful because it’s popular; there’s no other social network where you can reach out to as many people in one place.

Come Original (or Early to the Party)

You don’t have to be the first out the gate if you have a unique offering. Facebook probably got a boost in the social space because it didn’t have to introduce the concept of a social network to the world, it just had to do it in a way that stood out from the other guys. In the case of Facebook, the closed network, granular privacy settings and clean interface sanitized and packaged social networking for the masses. While these distinctions seem to get lost in the shuffle today, once critical mass was achieved, Facebook was free to the change the rules as they pleased.

Keep Iterating

I suspect that Facebook often gets a pass from users for bad behavior because there’s an unspoken understanding. Today’s most innovative tech companies are constantly testing and tweaking their services. They’re looking for ways to enhance offerings, simplify design, answer emerging needs and avoid stagnation. They’re paying attention to the changing ways their users interact with the service (mobile devices), integrating trends (location-based services), and adding technologies (search and social plugins). If you’re up front about upcoming instabilities or tests, users are slower to anger if they expect their routine or features to be different.

Sure, your site might not yet have reached the ideal status you have in mind. If there are still areas you see for improvement, good! That means you haven’t given up on growth. Bruce Clay, Inc. is always available to help lessen the suck-quotient of a site. But no matter who you are, remember that usefulness, originality and progress can cover many flaws.

Is It Possible to be Successful and Suck? (And Tips to Avoid the Latter) was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

2010-07-23T18:13:17Z

Friday Recap: Positively Peachy Edition

Hi-ho! Welcome back to your favorite day of the work week. I can tell you’re crushing it in the hours left, but take a load off for a hot minute and savor some recap.

Or don’t and stay busy. Because busy equals happy, according to recent research. Unfortunately, our instinct is to idle. The researchers found that people report feeling happier when they’ve been busy, even doing tasks categorized as “futile busyness,” and yet we’re hard wired to try to save energy by doing nothing. Thanks a lot, evolution.

CC BY ND 2.0

Evolution seems to have missed the mark on that one, which makes you wonder, is that the only case? One scientist says the ecosystem would remain in balance if one major pest were eliminated completely: mosquitoes. Yup, those disease-ridden itchy buggers could disappear from the planet and everything could go on unaffected. No mercy!

Here’s another tricky joke played by Mother Nature. What do apples, barley, cassava root and lima beans have in common? Cyanide. Didn’t know that you were dodging death with that peach, did you? Now you have a good excuse to tell mom when you pass on the lima beans.

I’ll tell you something else I’ll take a pass on: Facebook games. Or at least the constant notifications in my News Feed. I feel like every time I block one, another takes its place. One clever developer decided we might as well make the most of it — with another Facebook game! Touché.

If you’ve been following the back and forth of the USDA, NAACP, Tea Party, Shirley Sherrod debacle, you’re probably as amazed as I am that the knee-jerk inducing media cycle has brought society to such a low point. (I know, it was a much simpler time when people would get all the facts before acting.) Just for a twist of added amusement, check out the opening line of Andrew Breitbart’s post that unleashed the video: “Context is everything.” Jaw, meet floor.

Hmm… that last paragraph probably came across as totally obscure if you haven’t been following the saga. Of course, if “saga following” is your thing, you’re probably at San Diego ComicCon right now! Susan’s there, taking it all in along with 120,000 other fans. Fans who may or may not look like this guy that Tony Adam turned me on to. Though maybe “turned me on” is too strong a phrase… I’m inclined to think ComicCon attendees are way more put together than that. Look how impressive their impromptu counter-protest was!

Keep on with your heartfelt positivity, ComicCon! Meanwhile, on Twitter, are we positive or negative? There’s some interesting sentiment analysis going on, seeking to judge the mood of the nation. Happy to report that on the West Coast, we’re generally a happy bunch. As for the East Coast, well, not everyone gets sunshine all the time.

Stay cool out there this lovely summer weekend! I recommend eating lots of watermelon because it’s delicious and hydrating. And kinda cozy, too.

Friday Recap: Positively Peachy Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

2010-07-22T19:29:14Z

Put on Spindex, Consume More Social Media

Ah, Spindex … just one tiny vowel away from spandex. If you haven’t heard of Spindex yet, it’s a Microsoft FUSE Labs service that was rolled out in beta and announced at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco in May.

Here is a quick video overview of how Spindex works via interview with FUSE Labs’ Matt MacLaurin, courtesy of Information Week (if you want to skip my review).

Since it’s an invite-only preview at this point, I went to Spindex.me to see if I could get in. The problem? You need a Hotmail ID to gain access. And since I let my Hotmail account go 10 years ago (your grandma uses Hotmail), I had to set up a new one for an invite to Spindex; déjà vu set in as the Thong Song played in my head.

The very next day I got an invite to Spindex.me courtesy of Jim Lewallen at FUSE Labs. I started toying around and since it’s in beta, that pretty much means, “Pshhh – good luck figuring it out on your own, sucka!”

A Scientific Half-Baked Explanation of Spindex by .Me

Spindex is what many people would call an aggregator. FUSE Labs disagrees. In the video posted above, we find out it’s a “personal search engine for social media” that actually analyzes the content within your networks to find out what’s trending and who’s who among your entire social audience. Presumably, it brings you the information you’d be most interested in with regards to only your communities online.

All right, so it’s not just an aggregator. In fact, FUSE Labs goes so far as to say, “Spindex brings you an overview of your entire social world in one page.”

And by “entire,” they mean only Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds (Oh, and Evernote, too, but not sure that counts). But, FUSE Labs ensures us there are more services on the way, and for those of you who can’t live without your intriguing Foursquare updates and such, you can still access some of those via the Twitter stream on Spindex for now.

Spindex Highlights and Features

Down to the nitty gritty. Here’s a screen shot of what the Spindex home view looks like. And since they just changed the layout in the past day, we can compare some of the updates they’re making in real time.

Here’s the home view before:

And here’s the home view after:

Click to enlarge

As you can see, the new layout is a lot easier on the eyes. The screen is more segmented with the use of gray and white backgrounds versus all white. And since they moved some functions around and added a couple new ones, I’ve been rewriting away; guess that’s the risk of reporting on something that’s in beta.

On the far left-hand side of the screen, you have your “trending” topics shown by keywords. These are the most talked about items across all your networks (depending on what community or communities your Spindex is set to).

Above that is your saved searches. Mine happens to be “double rainbow” because, well, you can never get enough of that. This feature allows you to save keywords you look up within your network of communities through Spindex, in case you don’t have time to check out the results right away or if you want to monitor topics regularly.

The white column to the right is your network updates rolled into one feed. You can select the “All” button to combine all your community feeds in one place, or filter it down to just one, like Facebook.

The next column over features pictures towards the top of the most active people in your community (those that are posting the most). If you click on one of the images, your feed on the left-hand side is updated with just that person’s posts via Twitter and Facebook.

Underneath the cluster of “Top Posters” is the most commented-on posts in Facebook (looks like it gathers posts from the entire week), right above recent pictures uploaded by people in your network.

Now, look under the images area and you’ll see Spindex’s search results for related material on the trending topics in your networks (if no specific keyword query is performed). The search results are pulled from Bing and other places.

One thing I wanted to figure out was how Spindex was pulling in the Bing results – was it based on recent news or top rankings in the SERP? Turns out, it’s both, depending on what you’re looking up.

I wanted to see if the Bing suggestions in Spindex matched that of a Bing SERP. To test it, I looked up “toast” in Spindex – because let’s face it, toast is tasty.

Click to enlarge

This screen shot shows the information pulled up for a search on toast. A new feature added in the past couple days is the ability to drill down into your community feed (middle white column) even further. In the upper right-hand corner of the column, you can select all mentions of the keyword “toast” either in the public community, just your circle of friends or both. Pretty neat.

Then, to test if the Bing results in the right-hand gray column mirrored a Bing SERP, I did a quick search. Turns out, it did:

(By the way, very impressed by Wikipedia’s scientific explanation of toast.)

Now, let’s take a closer look at the feed in the middle column in Spindex, where you can excavate your network of choice. Selecting only Facebook pulls up the most recent posts from that community, sort of like you would see on your Facebook home page. The right-hand column in gray next to the feed features Bing search results and trending topics based on that feed.

Click to enlarge

You can also participate directly in any of your social circles via Spindex. So if you want to read comments on a post in Facebook and comment directly from Spindex, you can simply select any post from within your feed:

Click to enlarge

And even though you can still participate in a community like Facebook via Spindex, some might feel like the experience falls short. I mean, you can’t directly stalk people’s profiles as easily; however, you can access Facebook at any time through certain entry points in posts – although it’s not always instinctive where.

Let’s look at some other features by applying the Twitter filter to your feed. Drill deeper into your Twitter community by selecting a person in your network to find all mentions of that person:

Click to enlarge

The middle column shows all mentions of the lovely @SusanEsparza in Twitter. You can dig further by selecting a person in the feed that mentioned Susan, for example, and the right-hand side of the screen in gray brings up information about that person that mentioned Susan and suggests other results based on “keywords” it finds in that person’s tweet. I like it.

One thing that’s lacking: no URL shortener or courtesy spell check for updates posted to your feed via Spindex. Both those features would make it more efficient. And it seems as though the updates in the stream are not as real time as they could be for a fast-moving service like Twitter. These are all things that will be worked out in time, I’m sure.

What Does It Mean?!

Unlike a double rainbow, does Spindex really have to “mean” anything? (By the way, check out this sick Deadmau5 version of double rainbow, courtesy of Ms. Virginia.) Some say Spindex will be the next big thing. I say it’s another step towards making social media work for us, not the other way around. So I applaud the concept.

For businesses, I see Spindex as an opportunity to make social media more efficient, allow companies to become part of the deeper discussion, manage the brand a little easier online and really get to know the community that follows that brand; seems like you can do a fair amount of data mining with this service, so I definitely see the potential. Is it going to dominate? We’ll see. But one thing is for sure, I smell yet another chance to capitalize on ad space.

You can ask for an invite to play for yourself by going to Spindex.me, seems like access is granted quite often lately. Thanks to FUSE Labs for letting me poke around in its latest creation.

Put on Spindex, Consume More Social Media was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

2010-07-21T23:52:06Z

5 Takeaways from Internet Marketing and Business Conference BlueGlass LA

I’m back from a two-day Internet marketing conference in the LA area. As I go over my notes, listen to our interviews, and wrap my brain around the exceptional liveblog coverage of BlueGlass LA Susan reported on the blog, I’m realizing that the question I’ve been getting all day is a fair one. Maybe you’re asking it, too. “So how was the conference?”

I had a chance to talk to Loren Baker, a managing partner at BlueGlass, and our interview aired today on BCI’s weekly radio show and podcast, SEM Synergy. Talking with Loren following the conference helped me metabolize the information I’d gleaned over the past days. I’m biased, of course, but you may want to listen to the show to find out about the direction the mega-agency/publisher/conference organizers plan to take the company and to get some unique perspective from a blogger, influencer and highly connected expert in the search industry.

Along with the distilled takeaways you’ll find in our interview, here are my five final thoughts following this week’s conference.

CC BY SA 2.0 by Dana Lookadoo

1. Passion Pays

The message came out loud and clear throughout the show. Passion + technology + connections = an equation for success, be it in business or in life. During the session Landing Killer Deals, it was obvious that it takes unyielding energy to land deals that grow. A similar message was that in biz dev, passionate people are the ones that get things done. During the session When to raise money and when to bootstrap, investors and entrepreneurs talked about what qualities are typically present in a successful idea. If you had any doubt, it’s emotion, passion and thoughtfulness. And when it comes to building communities people love? Fuggedaboutit. It starts with an idea born from passion and gathers momentum as a community’s passions are given room to thrive.

2. Keep Search Sexy

Sometimes it feels necessary to remind ourselves not to overlook search when every day shiny new platforms like location-based services, mobile apps, social networks and the next cool thing pop up. It’s a theme echoed in my interview with Loren, as well as in the session Marketing strategy: don’t forget search. On a related note, in-house SEO evangelist and consultant Jessica Bowman recognized that in the in-house SEO life cycle, there’s a period of courtship, then a honeymoon phase, until reality sets in and SEO initiatives lose steam within an organization. In the session InHouse SEO, Jessica shares ways to rekindle the honeymoon phase and bring back that spark of excitement for SEO. Once that energy returns, motivation and drive can be leveraged to make important SEO plays.

3. Ya-Bing Still Gives Goosebumps

The search industry has a vital drive behind it because we know the intoxicating joy of climbing rankings, growing traffic and increasing conversions. But the uncertainty of the search landscape can understandably make us nervous. I felt some uneasiness from the crowd during the session mentioned above, Marketing strategy: don’t forget search, when Dave Roth, director of search marketing at Yahoo!, shared details of the Microsoft-Yahoo! search partnership:

• Unified marketplace
• Quality transition
• No change in reps for publishers, advertisers or Domainers

Yahoo! has announced that up to 25 percent of its search traffic in the U.S. now sees both paid and organic listings from Microsoft as part of ongoing tests. As part of the test to see how users respond, some of these Microsoft results are shown with “powered by Bing” while others aren’t. The plan is to have the full transition from Yahoo! to Bing results completed by September. Display advertising, according to Roth, is not affected by the partnership. With questions answered, put your minds at ease.

4. Networking Remains Conference King

During the conference I took pictures of the panels while Susan typed. During one of the breaks, a fellow attendee asked who I was taking pictures for, and I explained that we were reporting on the conference for our blog readers. “I could have saved myself the money and just read the liveblogging!” was his reply. And while I happen to think that our liveblog conference coverage is the next best thing to being there, it’s still not the same. For instance, during David Szetela’s presentation in the don’t-forget-search session, he asked that the audience not blog or post about secrets he was going to share. Susan and other livebloggers respected David’s request, so even though a few Twitter updates found their way out of the room, there were secrets shared in that conference, no doubt.

At the same time, there’s no substitute for face-to-face networking. Look at that banner and the bright orange “networking” standing out among the rest of the conference offerings. Remember when I talked to Tony Adam in anticipation of BlueGlass LA?

“That’s what we are delivering in this conference that makes it special, an AMAZING mix of content with a DEEP dive of that content tied into the fact that we WANT people connecting with one another. [...] I’m all about [networking and connecting] and at the end of the day the people are the most important part of the conference. BlueGlass LA allows for some great opportunities to connect with others.”

Word.

5. There’s More Where That Came From

Finally, the informational goldmine that is BlueGlass hasn’t been exhausted yet. Loren Baker told me that LA’s premiere conference was just the first of its kind and that the search community can expect more fresh, original conferences from the team. Meanwhile, in the not-so-distant future, I had the incredible opportunity while at the show to interview some brilliant minds in the online biz. A series of interviews (including VIDEOS!) will be made available here at BruceClay.com and on SEM Synergy in the coming weeks. All the bright and reflective times ahead — they’re blinding!

5 Takeaways from Internet Marketing and Business Conference BlueGlass LA was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.