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Went Hot: February 5, 2008 - 6:01 am
Posted By: lafmm 292 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchenginestrategies.com)
Category: Other Search Marketing
17 Comments
Went Hot: February 5, 2008 - 6:01 am
Posted By: lafmm 292 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchenginestrategies.com)
Category: Other Search Marketing
17 Comments
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Comments
I'd love to be going to London - unfortunately living in the middle of nowhere with 2 small kids puts getting a freaking PASSPORT lower on my todo list than i'd like.
Oh well, maybe someday!
I hear you, Carrie. So, I'll be going to SES London -- for the 4th time in four years. Check out the conference at a glance at http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/glance.html and let me know what sessions you'd want to attend, what people you'd want to talk with, and what questions you'd like to ask them. I'll be blogging from the event and I can at least try to represent you on the other side of the pond. Hey, I've got 3 big kids -- although they won't even "friend" their dad on Facebook even though I paid for their college tuitions. So, enjoy your 2 small ones while they don't mind being seen in the same time zone with you. In the meantime, us parents can buddy up and keep each other as informed about search as we can. Hey, I understand search a whole lot better than my own kids, who've grown up faster than Google has and are far more sophisticated than its algorithm.
I will be there having fun.....
@Aussie - Thanks for rubbing it in Frank!
@Greg
Thanks for the offer - I think my main goal would be to learn more about marketing IN the UK and europe. There isnt a lot of international online marketing going on in the US travel industry and I think that's a missed opportunity, esp w/ the weak dollar and the strong pound situation.
I always learn little things when I attend conferences, and I love hanging out with search people, as my kids are too young to get it and my wonderful husband could care less :)
Have FUN!
~C
So since I run a rival conference series, it's messy for me to jump in. But since Matt's in charge of marketing for SES and the person submitting this "news article," I figure it will balance out OK.
The original URL submitted was this, which is simply a copy of the same information you'll find on the SES London 2008 home page (except for the intro, which I'm pretty sure was also on the home page back when the original URL was written at the end of December). So I've linked directly to that.
If the SES London home page had been submitted, there's a pretty good chance it would have been pulled, since the home page of any web site (I don't care what site, event or not), isn't news. Hey, want to test it, go submit the home page for SMX Social Media, and I'll yank that.
SES London itself IS a news event, so something on that subject that is more substantial than the event home page would be more acceptable. For example, these are things that have already been submitted:
Mike Grehan Appointed Chairperson of 2008 SES London
SES London 2008
It's "Horses for Courses" at SES London
The last is an article about the show and what's coming up from Search Engine Watch. That's much more newsy to me than the event home page.
Anyway, I'll leave this up because it will get even messier if I yank it down. Best to everyone going to the show, and I look forward to actual news stories about it being submitted for consideration.
Danny, Thanks for complimenting Search Engine Watch blog posts, news items, and upcoming plans. Greg Jarboe, who wrote the Horses for Courses" post is one of the best bloggers in the business.
Seems to me you have an issue with Boris and Search Marketing Standard for their editing. If you didn't like Search Marketing Standard's cross-posted content, call out Boris. There's lots of conference promotion on Sphinn and SearchEngineLand, as well as promotion of Search Marketing Standard.
Discount On Search Marketing Standard Magazine
I've meant for ages to put a plug in for Search Marketing Standard, the print magazine that Boris Mordkovich started in 2006. Since then, it has continued on each quarter, and it's pretty cool to see search marketing articles playing out in print ...
Not sure I buy the front page argument. Most Sphinn posts are from the front page of blogs.
I think the Sphinn community would benefit if you clarified what can be promoted on Sphinn:
SphinnCon, yes. It's for the Sphinn community. SMX? Yes. PubCon? The first SEOmoz conference?
SphinnCon North Carolina
Went Hot: February 4, 2008 - 9:10 am
Posted By: evilgreenmonkey 1 day 10 hours ago
Topic Type: Discussion my network | add to My friends
Category: Sphinn Zone
Barry Schwartz will be hosting the first ever SphinnCon in Israel on Tuesday, which we know will be a tremendous success. The Sphinn team is keen to hold more of these local events this year, one of which being discussed is a SphinnCon North Carolina...
Since I'm a former Tarheel, sounds like a fun event. But let's be upfront about what Sphinn moderators and the Sphinn editor can post that rival conferences can't.
Kevin
This is all so very strange.
I thought it was all so very Odden. ;-)
Boris didn't submit the article, Kevin. Matt, who does the SES marketing did it. He submitted what clearly wasn't a news article against the site's guidelines and putting me in a no win situation of either sitting back and saying "hey, walk all over our site, 'cause you know/figure we won't pull something so as not to be seen as beating up on a competitor" or we actually pull it, then people go WTF, where did it go. As a result, I have to walk an awkward middle ground and put the messy situation out there with public moderation, not fun, not what I wanted with better things to do, but what I was stuck with.
To spell it out for you, here's what's on the article Matt submitted:
Now let's go to what's on the SES London home page, which says:
Now do you think Matt, who oversees the copy on the SES London site, somehow reads the copy at SMS and doesn't realize this is the same stuff? He thinks wow, this is a new article? He's got nothing instead that's fresh or new he can find to submit (which, I can assure you, would have been well received).
The only different content was the intro, which either used to be on the SES London home page or was on information that he sent out. Or did 56 other pages with the same copy magically appear on the web?
Moreover, the page he submitted was posted on November 30, which is a bit late in terms of being "fresh" content. So that's two strikes.
It's not an issue with conference "promotion," as long as there's something new going on. We encourage people to submit their own best stuff in the guidelines. If Greg Jarboe, who does the SES public relations, had submitted his own "Horses For Courses" article you posted at Search Engine Watch, good for him. At least it was news to the degree it didn't just replicate the source material on the SES home page. Someone else submitted Greg's article, as it turns out, and good for them.
To beat the dead horse one last time, submitting the home page of a web site isn't news. Submitting the same content of the home page of a web site isn't news. If we allow that, then we'll constantly have people submitting sites where we cannot tell if they are new or not, and that degrades the quality of submissions. News content, great. A discussion saying "hey, who's going to SES London," wonderful! Home page content? That's not going to fly. And no, most articles submitted here are not from the home page of blogs. They might be featured on a blog's home page, but they are standalone pages.
I have no doubt there will be lots of coverage coming off the show, and I'm sure there will be some other preview articles as well. Bring them on.
As for the review of SMS, I gave Boris a plug because he does a good magazine and I hadn't highlighted it at SEL before. The last time I mentioned it to an audience I write for was when it launched in 2006 and I did this post at SEW. As I'm sure happens with you, Boris tends to ask for reviews on a regular basis. In December, he did this promotion that hit a lot of blogs (Pandia, Search Engine Guide, Marketing Pilgrim and more you can see here). I figured that was as good as time as any to give him a mention -- not because of any marketing deal. I assume the many other publications that gave him a mention did so because they thought their readers would be interested as well.
As for promotions of conferences in general, if it's a genuine news article or a discussion topic, bring it on. Plenty of hot stories for SES, Pubcon and other shows have gone hot here, and you can easily discover that. As long as things follow our news guidelines, there's no issue. Submitting home page content doesn't, as if there were most anything else, the thread would have been pulled. But for the reasons I've mentioned, Matt gets a pass with this one.
@kevinheisler - Erm, my SphinnCon North Carolina post was a request for opinions and discussion about an event that is still being planned. It is completely different to what has been posted here.
I'm a little concerned about your attitude, and can I also point out that I'm one of the people organising the only public party at SES London. If Sphinn was really against SES in any way, why would I (the Editor) use my time and our LondonSEO brand to help support the event?
@Lee - I agree.
@Danny - if by giving me a pass you compromise the intentions of the site please don't do it.
I completely understand your point of view that said Kevin Heisler makes good points as well. Let's not forget, this is not an issue that solely pertains to this post.
@All - bigger to both issues is the fact that duplicate content is a major issue online and even publications that are endorsed by industry veterans are guilty of it. In fact, it could be argued, that the whole social media phenomenon has only added to it by facilitating the process of propagating it. There was in fact a Sphinn chicklet on the SMS page to begin with, does this mean the Sphinn community endorsed the dupe page? More over does it mean the Sphinn management team does?
These are important questions. Where does the line get drawn? Are we going to draw one? This issue is not unique to our industry by the way, eBay, and other online auction sites, have been dealing with similar issues for years. Who is responsible for executing change and enforcing best practices for an industry? I believe it starts with the community, but as people are emotional, it needs to be enforced by a governing body.
PropertyRoom.com, a company I am associated with, feels it is the community, in this case the auctioneer, that is responsible - this guarantee has allowed them to secure business relationships with over 1,000 police departments.
Further thinking on measuring value
@Danny - you questioned my posts value yet numerous members of your community spun it and I have now received numerous e-mails regarding it (which I why I am writing this) - no doubt about it, the post has received a lot of attention (as was the purpose of my posting it, I am a marketer by the way - as is pretty much everyone in this community, including, I would argrue, the editorial people). This attention adds value to the community by reminding people that the event is only weeks away. Moreover I personally believe, as do the thousands of others who have registered for SES London this year that additional value will be garnered by all those who attend. So is my communication to them, many who are members of the Sphinn community, spam? Even if all it did was remind them to attend?
I agree, this was not the best Sphinn I have ever Sphunn (can I coin that phrase? It doesn’t look like anyone has ever used it before), in fact I am not a prolific Sphinner - at least when it comes to Sphinn.com - that said, I am consistent. SES is a topic and an event that the Search community is passionate about and something that all people in our space should be exposed to at some point in their career… we who have attended more than one, should consider ourselves lucky to have had the opportunity to do so.
@Rob (aka EGM) - looking forward to the party, let me know if SES can help at all in the promotion or planning.Matt, I tried to fix the formatting of your post, but it was too complicated, sorry. It looks like some fonts and things got carried over as part of the copy and paste.
In terms of duplicate stories, we do indeed pull those if they become a problem. For example, if the same press release went out to various place and all of them got submitted and started all to go hot, we might pull some. In general, what happens is most don't, so you don't bother with it.
A different issue is like what happened with Microsoft, where everyone blogs "hey, they're trying to buy Yahoo" but aren't adding more value beyond that. In some of those case, we might also pull. But usually, we just let the sphinns decide.
In terms of the value of the post, yes -- I totally question it in the same way that if someone submitted the home page of Digg and said "social media site, check it out," we'd pull that. The home page of a web site isn't news. And posting the same content that you know is on the home page of a web site isn't news.
SES London 2008 IS news. And like I said, if you'd submitted a press release about it, or a blog post about it, or an actual article about it, there would be no problem at all. But a page that's simply listing all the same stuff that's on the SES London site? It just doesn't meet the content guidelines. Nor did I say it was spam. There's a difference between spamming (submitting something that's not apprpriate) and something that doesn't fit the guidelines (an old story, something that's not a actual news story, etc).
Let me stress that I'm not questioning the value of the show, or that there are people on Sphinn who will go or want to know about it. As I already said, if you'd just started a discussion saying "hey, who's going," this would be a non-issue. And in retrospect, it might have been better if I just switched this over to a discussion thread and dropped some private notes about why I made the change. But like I also said, anything we do might open up accusations that we're somehow not playing nice to SES, so the public comments seemed to be the safer way to go.
Wow! Last night I noticed a weird occurance, someone submitted one of our conference listings on Sphinn. I showed it to Boris and we were both surprised that our events section of the site even has "sphinn it" button for events.
@Danny: You are absolutely right, the content is not unique and was never intended as such. It was taken from the SES website, just like SMX listings are taken from SMX website. Obviously, it was never intended for submission on sites like Sphinn.
The "sphinn it" button is a technical issue and it was not supposed to appear on event listings in the first place. It will be removed shortly.
Who would've thought that a stupid button on one of our pages can create so much controversy and put you in this position.
Let us consider this issue closed and move on to more important things.
Best Regards,
Andrey Milyan
Editor-in-chief
Search Marketing Standard Magazine
Meanwhile in another part of the forest...
Let me return to Carrie Hill's request: "I think my main goal would be to learn more about marketing IN the UK and Europe. There isnt a lot of international online marketing going on in the US travel industry and I think that's a missed opportunity, esp w/ the weak dollar and the strong pound situation. I always learn little things when I attend conferences, and I love hanging out with search people, as my kids are too young to get it and my wonderful husband could care less."
So Carrie, I'll look for that at SES London. I'll sit in on the "Search Around the World - Part Two: Europe and the Americas" session for you, which may compare and contrast what's happening on both sides of the pond. I'll also look a blogger who will cover the "European Search Marketing Case Studies" session. That may be another good source of what you're looking for. And I know a number of bloggers plan to cover the "Searcher Behaviour Research Update" session, which should also be one that you'll want to follow. For a preview of what one of the speakers plans to say, read Simon Heseltine’s blog post, "SES London 2008 Interview - Piers Stobbs." Or read Massimo Burgio's blog post, "Pre-SES London interviews: Piers Stobbs, comScore."
Finally, I want to thank Danny for letting me comment on Sphinn. Yes, I'm handling PR for SES London these days. But, way back in 2003, Danny invited me to speak at SES for the first time and, in 2005, Chris Sherman invited me to speak at SES London for the first time. Since then, "It's been a long, strange trip."
But, I've always encouraged friends and colleagues to attend four search engine marketing conferences a year. That's the only way to keep up with the rapid changes in this industry. And Danny puts on great conferences. SES puts on great conferences. Brett Tabke puts on great conferences. So, there are are lot of places to go to get updates.
And, if you can't attend four conferences a year -- because you have young kinds -- then find the bloggers who cover these industry events like a blanket. Search Engine Roundtable does a great job. So, does Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, WebProNews, SEOmoz, BruceClay.com, Online Marketing Blog, and the aimClear Search Marketing Blog.
But, so far, there is only one Sphinn. So, kudos, Danny. Everyone comes here to "sphinn it" -- or, now, "desphinn it."
Oops. A type in my comment above. I should read "young kids," not "young kinds." Oh, well. Since I'm "revising and extending" my remarks, as they say in Congress, let me also says that Danny AND Chris put on great conferences. Kevin Ryan, Mike Grehan and Andrew Goodman put on great SES conferences. And Webmaster Radio, Search Marketing Gurus, and Search Engine Guide as well as Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, WebProNews, SEOmoz, BruceClay.com, Online Marketing Blog, and the aimClear Search Marketing Blog do a great job covering search engine marketing conferences. And I apologize in advance if I've fogotten anyone else.
Greg, you or anyone is welcome to comment here -- though it is odd to see you responding to Carrie 12 days after she raised a question.
I'm glad you're encouraging people to attend four conferences per year. It's just kind of sad as someone running of one the other conferences that the Search Engine Watch audience only seems to hear about the SES shows lately. Recently, there's been a post per day about SES London, most of them penned by you (working I assume in your PR capacity to publish them on SEW) and not a word about another big show coming up in a week, our own SMX West conference in Silicon Valley -- 3 days, 50 sessions, networking galore.
What's up with that? In our SearchCap newsletter, probably every other day or so we're running links about SES events coming up, to help keep our audience informed of ALL that's going on in the space. Hey, I think SMX is a great conference series since it is, after all, ours. And we do the occasional story-style preview post of what to expect at SMX. But our SearchCap readers, thousands of them, get exposed to SES, Pubcon and other shows that we do not run. Why do I not see SMX mentioned ahead of our events similarly at SEW in any way? Certainly SEW folks seem to have enough time to comment about SES shows here on Sphinn lately. I'd love to see you do a post about SMX on SEW that someone could submit to Sphinn and talk about too (be nice to see the blog roll on SEW eventually get back, also, after it was dropped during last year's design change).
Carrie, the challenge in doing more about international marketing of any type -- travel or not -- is that it is hard to do it justice with a session or two. As you probably know, I started the SES conference series and grew it to record-breaking numbers until Chris and I left last year (Goodbye Search Engine Strategies! has some back history on how we started things).
People would often ask for a session on marketing to a particular region of the world, and occasionally I'd program one of those. But they're often not satisfactory. They give you only an eye-opening at best into the many real challenges you'll face, from domain name issues, to local search engines for particular countries, to language issues and more.
In the end, I led the development of country-specific shows (I did the SES London show at first, then Chris Sherman did it until his last one in 2007. Similarly, I started shows in Germany and Sydney and more came after that). My advice to people was that if you really want to get into marketing to a particular place, go to a show for that region. That would give you the real time and space that's needed.
SMX has a wide-range of country-specific shows happening, such as SMX Munich, SMX Sydney and SMX China in April and SMX Madrid in May. SES has a range of them, as well, as you'll find listed at their site. None of these will be travel specific, so it's hard to say that you should go to them for that aspect. But interested in search marketing in general for those areas? Then I'd really encourage you to make the time and hear from local speakers. That's especially what we try to do with SMX -- find really good, local people who know their own countries and ensure lots of them are presenting. And if you can't make SES London in a few days, never fear, our own SMX London show returns in November 2008.
@AndreyMilyan Exactly!