As Andrew Girdwood explained so eloquently many of the presentations at SMX Advanced (at least the ones I attended) fell short of the “Advanced” label but there were notable exceptions that more than made up for some of the overly basic or salesy presentations.
The stand out session was the Killer Facebook Tactics “show”. And “show” it really was. If you want a KPI for measuring the way a presentation is being recieved, then the number of times the door slams as people sneek into the auditorium after the presentation starts is a pretty good one. The word got out on Twitter and the room kept filling up.
Guy Levine set the tone with a fast moving humourous presentation that uploaded a huge number of tips in 11mins 38 seconds (his timing, not mine). It was the perfect compliment to what came later.
The sensible filling was provided by Marco Covsaro. But then came the conference’s unique duo.
With a charachter like Marty Weintraub you might feel that you wouldn’t have a chance of shining as a co-presenter. However Marty’s colleague Merry Morud more than held her own.
(Calm before the storm: the Facebook panel prepare)
Their talk was a call to action to take advantage of Facebook opportunities, delivered with pure comedy. Guy and Marty then provided one of the most informed Q&As of the show. The session is undoubtedly the one that will bring the biggest benefit to our clients (as much for the philosophy installed as for the tips)
Other highlights included the Ranking Factors in 2010 seminar, Link Building and various contributions from Mikkel deMib Svendsen. Barak Berkowitz’s keynote provided insightful thought to the way the web is going.
The greatest travesty of the event? Bringing Rand Fishkin over to the UK and only giving him 12 minutes.
Key Takeaways
We’ll compile a list of the best tips tomorrow but here are the key things that I am thinking about as a result of the Conference:
- Facebook is being underestimated as a marketing medium – Facebook data and Ads rock (oodles of tips here)
- Are 301s something to be avoided? (See Rob Kerry discussion)
- The need to investigate Mozenda (Sam Crocker’s top tip)
- Feel strangely guilty for this one: Making use of the YouTube Keyword Tool
- Spending more time with Yahoo! Analytics (mentioned a few times)
- Making use of Wolfram Alpha as a research tool and wait for their widget and API release. (Keynote notes)
- Jumping on the infographic band wagon. (as per Chris Bennet notes)
- Getting more scientific about SERP reputation management (MdM special)
- Taking website security more seriously
- Archiving Twitter data
- Being less sceptical about alt tags, more cynical about H1s, paying greater attention to Latent Dirichlet Allocation and loving home pages more. (Rand Fishkin Research)
(My complete notes from the two days are available here. I’m working my way through them bolding what I deem to be the best tips and will pull them altogether into a list in the morning)
If you were at SMX, what were your key take-aways?
