Another windy morning in Chicago last Thursday ushered in an intrepid LoSasso quartet to The Drake Hotel. Awaiting LoSasso President, Scott LoSasso and Vice President, Mark Hollingsworth were professors from colleges and universities around the Midwest, plumbing the depths of LoSasso’s interactive marketing expertise at the 2011 Spring Marketing Management Association Conference. The talk was organized by Don Jones and resulted in great dialogue between area professors and our LoSasso team.

The presentation addressed changes in the marketing industry and what businesses are looking for in new hires, especially those undergraduates hot off the presses. Particular attention was paid to content driven interaction: the driving force behind creating a space for consumers to interact with one another and with businesses. Industry forums and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare) have become the new quilting circle or local watering hole where information is readily exchanged, available and digested at a rapid pace.

The message was clear: the toolbox has changed but the fundamental principles of marketing have stayed the same. Developing a relationship with a client is still at the core of those principles; it is the way in which we enhance that relationship that has grown to include social media, SEO (search engine optimization) and the need to build a presence both physically and virtually for every client.

Frequent and consistent messaging continues to be of utmost importance but a close second is the need for silos within businesses to break down. More than ever, direct marketing and public relations are completely meshed together: communications and marketing departments have to interface constantly to maintain that consistent messaging for optimal success in their campaigns.

The discussion was also centered around best practices for hiring and what makes a new hire successful. Scott LoSasso initiated the conversation by outlining optimal job candidates that contribute to a team work environment. Incoming new hires are strong writers, positive team players, involved in an array of social media platforms, creative thinkers and detail-oriented. For more information about skill sets businesses look for in new hires, visit iMedia Connection.

Thank you to the Marketing Management Association, Don Jones, The Drake Hotel and all in attendance for a great open discussion about our evolving industry!

Maintaining a high keyword quality score is vital to improving your pay per click campaigns. Watch as Mike Hernalsteen, Online Marketing Specialist from LoSasso Advertising, discusses the value of achieving high quality scores for your keywords.

Don’t forget to catch our other SEM Minute videos!

Mike Hernalsteen is the Senior Interactive Marketing Specialist at LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency where he develops comprehensive online marketing strategies for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Mike)

I was recently in Seattle attending the amazingly informative SMX Advanced conference. It featured dozens of enthusiastic search marketing brainiacs with a lot of great information and ideas. The first session, Social Media & Search Marketing: Not the Same Old Stuff, offered many insights. Here are a couple of my key takeaways from the first presenter, Dave Snyder co-founder of the search marketing and social media firm Search & Social.

SMX Advanced 2009 in Seattle - Photo by Andres Andrew Larsen

The Power of Links is the Problem with Links

Historically, getting links to your site has been one of the most effective techniques for boosting results in Google. If other sites link to your content – especially if their anchor text includes your keywords – your content is seen as more important than pages on other sites without links. Sort of a link popularity contest.

Additionally, the concept of “trust,” represented by the age of the referring links or sites, meant that older more trusted links and sites would deliver higher rankings. This helped combat against new sites spamming links to improve their rankings.

That’s all great, but not without problems…

• If you weren’t already well linked, it was hard for others to find your content and link to it.

• If you needed to get the word out fast, traditional link building was too slow.

Legitimate new pages were at a disadvantage since they had little trust built up with Google. The result was that searchers looking for timely information were often bombarded with older, less relevant search results.

To address this issue, Google developed the Query Deserves Freshness or QDF Model. QDF says that if news and social media sites are publishing lots of new content about a topic, it should be given greater importance in results. QDF is basically a measure of global enthusiasm for a topic.

With the exponential rise in social media content, there is a huge source of new “social signals” that Google is monitoring to help deliver the most relevant results. Inbound links are essential, but Social Media provides new ways for “hot” content to leapfrog “trusted” results in Google.

• News coverage
• Blog coverage
• Viral activity
• Micro-blogging through Twitter
• Social networking activity on Facebook, Linked-in and others
• Social bookmarking on sites like Delicious
• Social news activity on sites like Digg
• Search volume – Google Hot Trends

Twitter and other social media activity sends important "social signals" and can help boost relevance in Google. Photo by Bobby James.

Google is Watching

The objective of Google is to provide the most helpful, relevant information to searchers. In order to sort through the mountains of information on the Internet, Google has increased the complexity of what they monitor to determine relevance.

On-page/On-site Analytics - if people are spending a lot of time on a page or site, the content is seen as more valuable.

Upstream and Downstream Data – where visitors come from and where they go after they visit – these signals affect relevance.

Link building to high quality, keyword-rich content is still crucial to organic search success, but Social Media provides new ways to attract the attention of the search engines an get important content out quickly.

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll discuss techniques you can use to increase your social signals and help Google find and rank your content when you are short on time and “trusted” backlinks.

David Fabbri is Creative Director of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by David)