SEM for SMB Conference Roundup, Part 1

Last week I attended part of the SEM for SMB (that’s search engine marketing for small-to-medium businesses) conference here in Austin, both as an SEO writer and as an entrepreneur who has a few things to learn about search engine marketing. Though I was only able to attend the Thursday morning sessions, I learned plenty as a newcomer to this brave new SEM world. This week, I bring you conference highlights, starting with the first Thursday morning session:

Using SEO, Blogs and Social Media Together for Top Results presented by Mark Volpe

Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing at HubSpot spoke at Thursday’s general session. Since the crowd was made up of marketing professionals and business owners, each speaker faced a bit of a challenge. The SEM practitioners already knew much of the material being presented, and many of the small business owners or staffers were beginners. Though I am familiar with a few SEM techniques, much of what I learned was new and gave me many challenges as a writer hoping to market her suite of services to a wider constituency.

Here are a few things I want to pass on from Volpe’s talk:

Every company needs a blog. This is not only to help increase search engine ranking, but also to develop a personality to for your company or brand.

Companies that use videos on their homepages rank better in search engines. How can writers use this knowledge? Create a video detailing your suite of services, post it on YouTube or a similar video site and embed the video on your homepage. This also helps people associate a face with your brand.

Google your company’s name or your name. Are people talking about you? Is it good? Then tell your blog readers and Facebook friends about it. You’re not just promoting your product, you’re promoting all the chatter online about your product or service. Wanna see an example? Last week, I wrote about the Tillamook Cheese Macaroni and Cheese Contest on Foodie Friend Jen. Someone who works for Tillamook found the post and posted it on Tillamook’s Facebook page. Now all of my readers who love cheese can visit the Tillamook Facebook page to read more about cheese, and the Tillamook readers can visit my blog. Woo hoo!

There are plenty of free tools available to help your brand become more prominent online. During his Thursday morning talk, Volpe mentioned blogging, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter and Del.icio.us as free tools of the trade for any business wanting to become more visible. And, these tools can all work together. See the Tillamook Cheese example above. Also, Volpe generously broke down “The Day in the Life of Inbound Marketing” for the audience. One technique he introduced: Post a blog about a topic relevant to your industry, let all your Facebook and Twitter friends know you’ve posted the blog, then once someone else writes about your content, let your friends know about that as well.

Volpe inspired me to become more active in the social networks online. So far, I am on LinkedIn and Twitter, but in the next few weeks I will be experimenting with Facebook as well.

Stay tuned. Later this week I will bring you more goodies from the SEM for SMB Conference.