SES London reports

Dave Coplin, Microsoft, keynote speaker

Last week I reported on SES London for State of Search. I attended some great sessions including:

- a keynote by Dave Coplin of Microsoft, Future Forward. I’ve heard Dave speak before, and it’s always enjoyable.

- two brilliant talks on B2B video, one by Phil Nottingham and one by Greg Jarboe. As video is something I work with for clients, I loved the advice they gave, and found it both credible and practical.

- a basic introduction to analytics by Dave Rohter with some sound advice for beginners.

- and, close to my heart, website migrations (something I’ve had to manage through, although let me say for the record that my involvement was only in the absence of someone else to do it – I’m not claiming any expertise in the field, and it’s definitely not where my career aspirations lie!).

The wonderful Jackie Hole liveblogged one of the sessions I attended, where Kev Gibbons of BlueGlass and Paul Maddens gave fantastic – and sobering –  presentations.

Kev’s talk was music to my PR ears: think about the reader!

Bearing in mind that SES is aimed at search professionals rather than PR people, his talk, naturally, focussed on links. He contends that Google turned turned links into commercial entities, creating some bad behaviour. Google changed the rules to correct this, so today’s metrics need  a new look. The real assessment of whether a link has any value is whether it generates traffic to a site. And the assessment of the value of the page is whether people are commenting. And if they’re not, the page needs work!

Google has huge amounts of information. Chrome is now the World’s most widely used browser. It can see how many people are subscribed to the RSS feed. Google + as a verification mechanism is invaluable. Eric Scmidt has alluded to its importance in the context of identity. And Gibbons is staking that in 2013, it becomes an even more important way of establishing identity, with content from the best authors attributed ever greater value.

So in addition to normal metrics, Gibbons suggests that traffic, RSS subscribers, bounce rate, average number of links per post, number of social shares and comments as important.  The recipe for success is to focus on the audience experience, on human interaction, on being topical and relevant, helping create a natural, defensible profile. As a PR person, his talk was music to my ears.

(You can see many of the other presentations from SES reported on State of Search, by seaching on the site with the hashtag #SESLon)

Today’s PR crop

The big PR story of the day has to be Close Protection’s appalling treatment of workers coming in to marshal the Jubilee Pageant in London. Their reaction was a nominal apology, followed by blaming the coach company (who, in fairness, do share blame for dumping youngsters out in the cold).

I blogged this story from a personal perspective, but from a professional one they’re in a mire.

The unchanged statement on the front of their website, “Our Security Consultants are trained to the highest standards, are always vetted both professionally and personally and have extensive operational experience within commercial, executive and hostile environments”, doesn’t quite ring true if you’re bringing in unemployed youngsters for work experience on one of the most high security risk days of the year.

They could be turning this into a real PR coup by being more proactive, and using their website better. Never mind: the SEO team will be loving all the links beiung created back to their site!

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Good luck State of Search

As one of State of Search’s occasional bloggers (covering PR for search people rather than the other way around) I can attest to how lovely (and patient, and knowledgeable) the State of Search editor Bas van den Beld is, and what a knowledgeable team of bloggers he has built up.

I want to wish State of Search well in the European Search Awards, where it is one of three shortlisted blogs - it deserves to win!

Just making the shortlist was incredible. Well done to all of the agencies who’ve had their work recognised, and good luck on the night (Amsterdam, July5, 2012).

To follow the awards on Twitter, follow the hashtag #eusearchawards. 

Paypal goes mobile

The tidewaters of mobile payments are impossible to hold back.

This time, Paypal. Demonstrated beautifully by The Next Web: