Thursday, April 11, 2013

After Thoughts from SESNY


It’s been about 2 weeks since SESNY.  I covered the conference as a social reporter for our client SEMPO and captured some tweet highlights in my guest blog for them last week. Interestingly, unlike other conferences I’ve attended, I find myself still thinking about some of the overarching themes that emerged there and wanted to share some thoughts:

  • As a conference name “Search Engine Strategies (SES)” is no longer representative of the evolved state of our business.  Fortunately, as I discussed with Incisive’s Matt McGowan while at SES, they purposefully delivered keynotes and a number of sessions that reflect the now-accepted understanding that sophisticated marketers consider search (SEO and PPC) as part of a larger digital marketing strategy that is integrated with offline tactics as well.
  • The term “content marketing” is being used by many to bridge the growing synergy between SEO and Social Media.   Unfortunately, I think it’s becoming one of those broad, corporate speak buzz words that sound good but lacks definition or, worse, means something different to all who hear it.  We here at DBE actually prefer to use the term “context marketing” that addresses the need to put the right content in the right place(s) to drive connection with your target audiences.  Context marketing also extends beyond SEO and Social to include other emerging media delivery channels like video and mobile.
  • Speaking of buzz words, “big data” was bandied about quite a bit at the conference and I wonder if it’s plateaued as a concept (i.e., big data your 15 minutes are up).  Don’t get me wrong - the need for analytics is more important than ever to drive program improvements and to justify investment.  But it seems like more and more marketers understand it’s not really about the amount of data you have but how you leverage it that matters.  In fact, we've seen how “small data” insights can often lead to big revenue increases for our clients.
Stay tuned.  I’m headed to an iStrategy conference in a couple of weeks and am looking forward to see how it compares/contrasts with my takeaways from SES. 

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