St. Louis Business Expo – Oct 18
The biggest business expo of the year.  An entire day of terrific speakers (including myself) on a wide variety of topics.  Also, a speed banking opportunity and tons of vendors!

How to Build Your Credit Profile – Oct 18
The Saint Louis Small Business Meetup Group is awesome.  This month’s speaker is Willie Smith from WCS Credit Sense.  Learn how to identify and repair credit report errors and find money to run your business.

Using Video to Increase Your Website Traffic & Sales – Oct 20
Another great meetup, this one dedicated to helping business owners get on top of Google, Yahoo! and Bing searches for their industry.  This month’s class is all about video & how to use it to get to the top of the search engines.  Speaker: Mason Duchatschek

Show Me the Blog – Oct 21-22
The second annual SMTB conference will feature speakers from various Internet Marketing and Social Media outlets.  Topics will include new media, social media, SEO, blogging and technology.

Session One – Keyword Research

Russ Henneberry and myself presented a quick 30 minute session on keyword research.  We covered the basics of keyword research such as various keyword tools (AdWords, WordTracker, Google Instant, Yahoo Suggest and SEOBook) then went in and showed how to seed the keyword tool and get back a ton of results.  We talked about the Long Tail of search, geographic indicators (such as St Louis, Saint Louis , STL) and then mentioned the keyword tracking tool called AWR.  Russ followed that up with a quick mention of Google Analytics and we were done.

We were hoping to help the attendees understand that keyword research is the foundation of any online campaign, whether you do PPC, SEO or even a mobile campaign.

Session Two – Local Search & Maps

Our emcee for the day, Bob Sommers, took us on a trip through the mind of a business owner that owns a car rental company in Florida.  Bob implored us to claim our Google Places listing, and then went in and actually showed us how to optimize our page so that we could get the most out of it.  Bob told us about Viz on the Net and shared his 16 step process to get your business into local search.

Tips included:

• Claim Your Listing!
• Use your local phone number
• Set up a ‘service area’
• You can have coupons show up on local results (very cool!)
• Make sure you upload pictures that show what your business can do for customers.

Session Three – Search Engine Optimization

Next up was a real good looking guy named Will Hanke from Where Is My Business.  (ok enough of that).  I shared a Ten Step DIY Website Audit and explained each of the steps.  Some takeaways include:

• Build an XML sitemap of your site
• Buy the .net, .org as a minimum. Stretch your main domain out to ten years if possible.
• Also consider purchasing the .cm and .co versions of your main .com domain
• Fix your non-www redirect problem
• Validate your website HTML with the W3C validator

Session Four – Pay Per Click Advertising

Adam Kreitman from Words That Click shared his great in-depth knowledge of Google’s AdWords tool, a terrific way to get your website listed for keywords that may be difficult to rank for with SEO.  Adam’s session was my personal favorite, and his extensive knowledge of PPC is pretty obvious and impressive.

Adam took local mattress company STLBeds and gave them a $100 credit to start advertising on Google.  He set up the entire campaign, and showed us how we can target certain geographic areas all the way down to zip code.  He showed us how one campaign ad was doing quite well, while another ad in the same exact market was not doing great at all. Other takeaways included:

• Adam knows what the heck he’s talking about
• A PPC campaign doesn’t have to cost you thousands a month if you target specific areas and keywords.
• You can show your ads during certain days, or even certain hours of a day
• You have to have a good landing page. (You can’t SEO a turd)

Lunch!

We headed over to another room for lunch, and each of the speakers sat at a different table.  Attendees got to pick a table and sit with the expert of their choice. I obviously can’t really speak for what happened at the other tables, but at mine we had a nice variety of questions.  They included:

• Should I put my blog on another site or my own? (A: your own domain)
• How often should you blog (A: Often as you like, as long as you’re consistent)
• Can you blog too often? (A: Not really)
• Various questions about subdomains, franchises with multiple locations, and branding

Session Five – Content Marketing

Russ Henneberry from Tiny and Mighty was next up and delivered another great presentation on how using content can dramatically increase your sales and referrals by moving people through the sales funnel.  Russ showed us how most of our potential clients are in the Apathy stage and how, through the use of content marketing, we can get them to awareness, interest and ultimately conversion.

Russ took on Complete Solutions and showed the owner Donna how adding an audio file could extend her reach and credibility as an expert.  He followed that up by showing how Donna can reach even more people with her marketing hub.  Other takeaways include:

• Interruption marketing sucks. Permission marketing rocks
• WordPress is a top-notch platform for building a website – don’t be the one that has to call the guy
• Bleeding on your customers through the method they choose is best
• Constantly promoting sales and specials will get you hidden quickly
  

Session Six – Website Usability

Next up was Sue Spencer of (oddly enough) Sue Spencer Designs. Sue took on a local incontinence products business Medical West.  She showed us the home page of the website for about 8 seconds then took it off the screen and asked us questions about it.  Many people couldn’t answer the questions because the site was so busy that they had a hard time deciphering quickly what the site was about.

Sue also talked about colors and how they should be used to frame certain areas of the site.  Sue did a very nice ‘rebuild’ of the Medical West home page and showed us the before and after.  Nice job, for sure!

Sue also mentioned that contact info, phone number and logo should always be very visible when designing a new site.

Session Seven – Email Marketing

Tom Ruwitch of MarketVolt, a local email marketing company was up next.  He had a series of questions for the attendees including What business are you in.  Many people knew where Tom was going with this, although a few answered it wrong.  An attendee from CarStar said We are in the business of reducing stress.  Good one.  Another one answered We sell telecom equipment to our VARs (value added resellert) which was more along the lines of what Tom was after.  Tom said you aren’t in the business of selling something, you are in the business of solving a problem.

Tom then went on to show us how to set up an actual email marketing acct in MarketVolt.  He showed us how creating an entirely image-based newsletter was a big no-no.  Other tips included:

• Introduce your staff. Make the newsletter more personal
• Tell your audience how you want to help them solve x
• Use a few pictures to break up the content, and use a nice looking email template.

Session Eight – Mobile Marketing

The last session of the day was presented by Steve Kelley of the Mobile Marketing Institute.  Steve told us why many businesses aren’t yet using mobile, and along with sharing some great campaigns that various businesses have used, Steve also showed us how texting coupons, sweepstakes and other offers can increase sales.  He mentioned the great success of Groupon, and the part that cell phones have played in their popularity.  Steve said that smart phone saturation is currently around 33%, and should be well over 50% before the end of 2011.  Mobile marketing is coming folks, whether you want it to or not.

One thing I heard several people mention afterwards was that they were really impressed with the idea of ‘telling’ your cell phone about a product that you want, and that when you get somewhere close to where that product is, your cell phone will text you about it.  Pretty cool stuff.

Steve also gave away a few prizes, all through the magic of texting, and even Bob Sommers got in on the act.  He sent his first-ever text message!

Conference Wrapup and Q&A

With the last sesson complete, Bob asked all of the attendees to take a moment to join the MSMC Facebook page and post a comment or review of the conference.  It was a terrific tie-in to all the things we learned!

He then invited all the speakers up to the front, and dismissed the crowd.  Attendees were welcome to hang around and ask the speakers any follow up questions they may have had, and many took him up on that offer.  There was quite a buzz in the room and people finally started filtering out about 5:15.

Overall I think the conference was an outstanding success.  Bob and Adam at Main Street Marketing Community really put together a solid lineup, kept the show running on time, and had plenty of breaks to keep the crowd awake and refreshed.  The food was terrific and there was plenty of coffee for me.

All of the speakers will be offering various Java Gyms over the next few weeks, and several of the speakers had some free or hugely discounted offers (including me!).

Lastly, if you attended the event and want to find out more about me or my services, check out my monthly SEO meetup and sign up for my newsletter!  If you want a link to my SEO Audit offer, email me – I’m not publishing that page publicly!

Before the event, I tweeted that I was wondering if there was a list of things that are suggested to bring, but no one stepped up and sent me any links. So I had to make some assumptions and do the best I could.

What I Remembered

I remembered my laptop, which actually isn’t a necessity. It’s nice because I enjoy the interactivity of the conference, but pen and paper work just as well. I also remembered a jacket, which is good because Vegas in November (at least this November) is cool. About 48 degrees on day one.

Freebies

As with most conferences, I made assumptions that some things would be provided, and in some cases I was wrong. This year, as maybe in years past, they gave a nice bag full of goodies at the registration desk. I learned quickly that carrying my laptop around like a schoolbook sucked, so I thought the bag would be a great tool. The bag, unfortunately is a bit small, and the handles are short. So a backpack is probably the number one item I wish I would have brought along.

While on the topic of freebies, there are a lot of them. The vendor area this year had about 16 or so companies represented (which is apparently nowhere near the amount of vendors at SMX and SES), and most of them were giving things away. They were smart, though – they didn’t put out all their goodies on day one, so bringing your backpack or Pubcon bag is definitely an every day requirement. On day two there were about five different companies giving out T-shirts, plus one giving out beer (yeah, beer) in a mug, another giving out nice pint glasses, and lots of other various sundries.

Things I Shoulda Brought

This list will obviously change for each person, but here’s a list of things I wish I had brought.

• Business Cards
  There are a lot of business owners here, not everyone is an SEO.
• Backpack
  As I mentioned earlier, would have made life a lot easier, and my shoulders would be thanking me by now.
• Pen and Paper
  This one may be obvious, but I really thought I’d get a pad of paper with some company’s branding on it. Surprise – I didn’t. So I swiped a few sheets from the fax machine at the hotel after day one. There were several pens in the bags, though.
  Along these lines, I should also mention a nice tip – A lot of people with laptops seemed to have Word documents set up for each session they were attending. That way they could pull up that doc, type away and then save for later review. Great idea.
• Cell and Laptop Charger
  Another ‘duh’ but I really didn’t think I’d use these as much as I did. Since the cell was on vibrate, the battery was dead by the end of each day.
• Guts
  As with most people in my field, we aren’t the most social. There is a nice crowd of people here that have been coming for years, and they’ll congregate at various breakfast and lunch tables. So most likely you’ll sit next to some other girl or guy who also knows little or no people at the event. Take a minute to introduce yourself, but don’t always expect a lively conversation in return.

By the way, I’ve learned that the official pickup line at Pubcon seems to be ‘Where are you from?’. I’ve been asked that question by many of the people I’ve sat next to at the various sessions and food breaks.

The Sessions

At Pubcon, there were a small amount of tables/chairs with extension cords/outlets, and they weren’t easy to get. If you’ve got a laptop, you’re going to be part of a special crew of people that leave sessions a few minutes early so you can make it to the next one and find a outlet. If you have a second battery, you definitely want to bring it along.

I also learned that picking sessions simply by their title is not always the best strategy. After the first day I realized that most people pick them out by who’s going to be on the panel, and that was probably a good idea. It doesn’t bode well for the newer speakers to the circuit, but from my experience the best panels were done by the most well-known panelists. For instance, the panel on SEO 2010 with Greg Boser was just terrific, even though his presentation wouldn’t work. That one session was worth the price of admission, to me. There’s a reason they are well known – they know what the hell they’re talking about.

Other Notes

Hotel selection can save you money. Paying an extra $20 a day for a closer room may be better than taking a taxi back and forth to the event. We stayed at the Encore, which is next to the host hotel, the Wynn. Pubcon provided a free shuttle from and to the Wynn for the event, but it’s best to find out how to catch that shuttle way ahead of time. I ended up missing it the first day because I couldn’t find the pickup spot.

Probably one of the biggest conference must-have tool is a twitter-friendly phone. If you’re an active user, it’s a great way to see what is going on both at the event and after. My phone (Palm Treo Pro) is not the best and most friendly when it comes to twitter, so either have a twitter-friendly phone or miss out on a lot of the after-conference tweets.

The conference only happens once a year, and there are only 100 tickets sold.  It’s a perfect fit for  small and medium business owners/execs.  There are two tracks – a beginner and an advanced, so no matter what you’re expertise level, you’ll learn a lot.

The tickets are $249 each, but I’ve been given the green light to offer a pretty sweet deal.  From now until tickets sell out, all purchases are Buy One Get One Free!  But that’s not even the best part – if you use the promo code ‘SPEAKER‘ you’ll get $50 off of the ticket price.  That means 2 tickets to this premier conference will only cost you $199!

How cool is that?

Like I said, this deal only lasts until all the tickets are sold out.

As if I need to sweeten it any more, the tickets also get you admission to the conference’s pre-event mixer on March 31st at 7PM.  You’ll get a few free drinks and will be able to meet the speakers and mingle with all the other business owners.

It’s going to be so cool.  I hope you can make it!

Details
Market Saint Louis
http://www.MarketSTL.com
April 1, 8am-4pm

Mixer (free with ticket purchase – sponsored by SimpleFlame)
HoteLumiere
March 31, 7pm

List of freebies: http://www.marketstl.com/register/freebies/

If you were thinking about registering, use the code SAVE25 and save yourself $25 bucks off the registration.

http://www.MarketSTL.com/register/

As many of you know, I’m the moving force behind Market Saint Louis, a twice-a-year business conference that focuses on teaching local St Louis businesses the ways of online optimization, advertising and more.  Speakers from around the country fly in to share their expertise on various subjects, from SEO to Pay per Click and Analytics.  2010 is going to be even bigger, with the conferences featuring two separate tracks – one for beginners and one for businesses that are already in the game to some level.

The event isn’t cheap (although the pre-agenda tickets aren’t very expensive) and some small businesses may have a hard time shelling out several hundred dollars in this economy just to learn how to spend more time and money on the Internet.  But it’s crucial for every business to be online now.

To help quell the fears of those business owners, I’ve partnered up with the Jefferson County Library to teach a series of free classes (yes, I said free) on Online Marketing, Social Media and more.  This series of classes will run January through March, and will be very limited both in amount as well as seating.

If you’re wondering just how your competition gets their website to the top of Google searches for items you sell, you’ll learn. If you know your business needs to be on Twitter or Facebook, but you don’t know how to use these tools, you’ll learn.  And if you want to grow your online sales, you’ll learn.

Scheduled Dates

Twitter Basics and Tips

Jan 14 – 9:30AM to Noon or March 4 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Learn how to set up a Twitter account and how to ‘tweet’.  You’ll learn about some great tools that will help you get more followers, find great information about your interests, and how to utilize some ‘behind the scenes’ tricks to get the most out of your new account.

Marketing Your Business Website

Feb 4 – 9:30 AM to Noon  or Mar 25 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Do you wonder why your website isn’t listed on Yahoo! or other search engines? Are you clueless about search marketing techniques that can draw customers to your site? We will cover topics such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), online advertising tips and avenues, along with ways to increase your website traffic along with other offline marketing ideas.

Social Media for Business – Leverage Community to Build Your Brand

Feb 11 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Learn how to leverage blogging, video and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to grow your business.

Download the flyer / schedule

Sign Up Now

All classes have very limited seating and will be at the Arnold branch of the Jefferson County Library.  To sign up, call 636-296-5171.

These will be the only classes offered this Spring.  For more information on the upcoming Market Saint Louis conference (and to get the cheap ticket price) visit MarketSTL.com