Society Of Marketing Professionals Event In St Louis

Franki and I received a direct mail piece for a SMP seminar on Search Engine Marketing. The event, which will be at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in St Louis on February 27th, is an all-day event covering topics like PPC (pay-per-click), Search Engine Optimization, Online Marketing, and Organic SERP improvement.

All good stuff, and if you're in this field, especially if you're in a company, I strongly urge you to attend and pick up information on how the online world affects your marketing, your brand, and your reputation.

But...it's sad, disappoin, interesting that use of blogs, social media, newssites, and social networks isn't included. I wonder if this is because the SMP experts don't know how to use blogs and social newssites to improve their SEO, or if they're afraid of talking about blogs because they know that a company that blogs can cut their budget for PPC and SEO.

That's right. If you're spending money on PPC or SEO firms, and not on blogs, you're spending too much for too little.

Search Engine Optimization has changed. After writing good code for your site, there's little you can do in the actual site to actually "optimize" your site. The tricks to improving your site can almost all be found using bookmarking sites, blogs, social newssites (Digg-like sites in an industry), badges, contests, and a whole host of social media campaigns that don't get mentioned.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking SEO or PPC vendors. I know several and would recommend them to clients and friends without hesitation for projects and industries that best fit them. But if you are learning about online marketing, and you don't understand how blogs affect the results, you're only getting half the story.

If you're looking into search engine marketing in St Louis, the event put on by SMP is a good one to go to. If you want to know how you can spend less to get more in the online world, you need to go to a blogger.

From Marianne Richmond's links today, we see another search engine marketing expert saying the same thing. Search Engine Optimization today is all about social media. Much of what is still being sold in the marketplace is ineffective, or at least it's less effective than learning and participating in social media. If you're spending $500 a month or more on SEO in St Louis without a social media campaign, you're spending it in the wrong place. And if you disagree, you're welcome to leave comments or post on your blog. I'm up for the conversation.