Mel Carson will be speaking on the “Big Ideas for Big (and Little) Data – How to Creatively Crunch Numbers to Maximize Your Search, Social, and PR Campaigns” panel at SearchFest 2014 which will take place on February 28th, 2014 in Portland, Oregon. For more information and to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I used be an actor until I got into internet marketing and search at LookSmart way back in 2000. I joined Microsoft in 2005 to help launch adCenter (now Bing Ads) and left last year to start Delightful Communications which is a consultancy that helps businesses with social media strategy, digital PR and personal branding. I’m also thrilled to represent Majestic SEO as their US Brand Ambassador, helping them expand their presence in America and find new markets for them to share their enormous dataset with. I also do a lot of conference speaking as well which I love, as I learn so much when I’m on the road talking and listening to others.
2) Can someone do SEO effectively without a “Big Data” Solution?
Not really. The web is like a living thing with trillions of moving parts. Sure, you can get your infrastructure right and have a content strategy based on what you know today, but tomorrow that might all change and you need data to support where you’re going to take your strategy next.
3) The session description refers to SEO “lateral thinking”…what are some examples of this that might not be readily apparent to the audience?
I’m not one to stick with the ordinary or play by the rules, so I’m always looking to be creative with data and use it in different ways. I have a bit of a giggle now and then about “content marketing”, as many of us have been doing that since the web began. It’s just “knowing your customer and answering their questions and addressing their information needs” re-badged. My remit with Majestic is to help social media managers and PR professionals use links, beyond just SEO, for influencer discovery and digital PR. During my talk at SEMPDX I’ll be showing how it can be used to assess the potential effectiveness of display advertising spend too. The data is there. You just need to have the patience to wade through it and make some informed judgments as to what it’s telling you to do to achieve your goals.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.