Engine Ready’s President and CEO, Jamie Smith, and Vice President Brian Lewis have been co-hosting a segment on Webmaster Radio called Best Search Strategies. A very concise name, don’t you think?

Along with co-host Jim Ledger, Jamie and Brian delve into topics like keyword monitoring, Google product extensions, the latest studies and observations from all of us on the Engine Ready team, our Conversion Critic software, and much more fun stuff. Their latest segment, in which they discuss competitive intelligence and keyword strategies, can be found here: Advanced Competitive Intelligence Tools.

Each (approximately) 30-minute show is aired monthly, and can be streamed online or downloaded as a podcast. They’ve been doing this since July of last year, so there are quite a few interesting shows in the backlog if you want to catch up. And their next broadcast is due any minute now, so make sure you stay tuned here: Best Search Strategies.

Conversion Critic, Engine Ready, Industry Events, Keywords, Webmaster Radio

A quick tidbit of information:

Engine Ready’s very own vice president, Brian Lewis, will be a guest speaker at Online Marketing Summit, an online marketing education conference being held this week in sunny San Diego.

Brian will be moderating the PPC vs. SEO: The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle panel, which seeks to finally answer one of the industry’s biggest (and toughest) questions: which is more effective, pay per click or search engine optimization? The panel will start at 10 a.m. on the 25th, the third and final day of the conference, and the debate is sure to be pretty lively, at the very least.

Online Marketing Summit runs from February 22nd to the 25th at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa in San Diego. More information can be found at onlinemarketingsummit.com.

Finally, we’d like to send out a personal invitation to visit us if you attend OMS in San Diego–our offices are only ten minutes away.

Conferences, Engine Ready, Industry Events, OMS, Online Marketing, PPC, SEO, SES

On December 22, 2009, Engine Ready’s Brian Lewis and SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin arranged for a holiday networking party for the local San Diego SEO community. About 35 internet marketers showed up at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in San Diego to join in some great networking, beer sampling and appetizer munching.

Rumor was that there were even isolated pockets of SEO related discussions going on … imagine that …

Engine Ready, EngineReady, Google, Internet Marketing, SEO

An interesting study has been recently released that shows the growth in mainstream acceptance and use of social media as a tool for shoppers.

According to a comScore survey, 28% of respondents indicated that social media has influenced their purchases. Of those influenced, most had read consumer reviews and expert product reviews. Interestingly, almost 1 out of 10 of those people mentioned that they were influenced by postings on Twitter, from either a company’s Tweet or friend’s tweet.

A similar study was performed by a search marketing agency in 2007, and at that time, Twitter was not even on the radar as a tool for holiday shoppers.

So, it’s pretty obvious that retailers will need to increase their attention to their social media strategies including the 3 primary movers: product reviews, Facebook, and Twitter. For those who have yet to jump in, here are some tips:

1. Identify your social media goals (customer service, branding/awareness, marketing, product update communication), and the metrics by how you’ll evaluate campaign success.
2. Identify the “players” in your industry, and begin to follow their Tweets. Get a firm understanding of the conversations taking place about you and your competitor’s products. It’s important to do a thorough job of listening before jumping in.
3. Setup up auto alerts in Twitter with your company name, name of your products, and those of your competitors, so you can quickly stay on top of the incredibly dynamic nature of conversations relevant to your products.
4. To maintain and grow your follow list without alienating your readers, be sure to provide a ratio of tweets of at least 4 to 1 of “value or information messaging” versus “marketing messaging”.
5. Whenever possible, provide links to the source of your information messaging.

Engine Ready, Facebook, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Twitter