Engage VIRTUAL Conference 2021 Agenda
View the details below for this year's Conference
Due to the pandemic of 2020, we're going VIRTUAL
August 5 & 6, 2021
Virtual - from Portland, Oregon
Conference: 9:00am - 4:20pm
After Party: On your own
Hashtag: #EngagePDX
Day 1
9:00 - 9:05
Virtual Stage
Welcome/logistics
9:05 – 9:40
Virtual Stage
Organic Search
Speaker:
- Amy Rosenberg – Veracity
Session Description:
Using Thought Leadership to Drive SEO and Content
As more and more leaders use online platforms to drive change, thought leadership is becoming an increasingly impactful part of public relations. Those that leverage this trend through owned and earned media campaigns will greatly impact their organic SEO.
This session will highlight the top ways to position thought leaders in order to bring credible links, brand and keyword mentions from high-ranking media websites back to your website.
Examples include:
– Booking podcast interviews
– Aligning with trade shows or associations
– Submitting contributed articles online
– Pitching blog posts not press releases
– And more!!!
The session will culminate with a quick list of fast and easy PR cheats for SEO.
9:40 - 10:20
Virtual Stage
Mobile SEO/Technical SEO
Speakers:
- Cindy Krum – MobileMoxie
Session Description:
Planning for the Future of SEO – A Glimpse into the Future
Digital Marketing and SEO are ever-changing disciplines that evolve with the technology of the search engines, and the technology of companies and their developers. Google has been launching more than their usual number of noticeable algorithm updates, and this session will postulate why. It will help SEO’s understand and expect future Google Algorithm changes and the shifts that practitioners in the industry should begin preparing for.
Cindy Krum has a long history of predicting and explaining how important changes in technology will impact SEO and this presentation will highlight that strength, focusing on topics like Edge SEO, Indexing APIs, Language & Entity Understanding, and other topics that she thinks will have a dramatic impact on the day-to-day duties of SEOs and Digital Marketers.
10:20 - 11:00
Virtual Stage
Paid Search
Speaker:
- John Lee – Microsoft Advertising
11:00 - 11:40
Virtual Stage
Content Marketing tied to Paid Social
Speaker:
- Purna Virji – LinkedIn
Session Description:
Myths, Macros, and Marketing Rules: What’s Shaping the Future of B2B Marketing
Macro is more important than ever. 2020 has changed the advertising industry
In this session, LinkedIn’s Purna Virji will bust myths and share the powerful marketing rules that brands of all shapes and sizes can leverage to boost reach and ROI.
11:40 - 11:50
Virtual Stage
Our 2021 Charity of Choice
Elevate Oregon
Changing lives through relationships, Elevate Oregon is a non-profit organization for at-risk youth that supports students in the Parkrose neighborhood of Portland, one of the most diverse school districts in Oregon.
ur year-round mentoring program integrates with the core high school curriculum to raise graduation rates and college enrollment, offering career development for students.
Virtual Stage
BREAK – LUNCH
12:30 - 1:10
Virtual Stage
Performance Brand Marketing (multi-channel)
Speaker:
- Melanie Mitchell – Gun Dog Supply
Session Description: Performance Branding: A shift in modern marketing strategy and structure:
Our digital first ad world with unprecedented measurement capabilities has gradually pushed the two worlds of brand marketing and performance marketing to become more collaborative and more codependent with time. No doubt, there is value in branding and performance marketing individually. However, as overall costs continue to increase for businesses and consumer expectations continue to rise for brands, a new approach called Performance Branding has emerged that will define how brand marketing and performance marketing merge to drive growth for organizations.
In this presentation Melanie will cover how to:
• Understand the value of Performance Branding for your organization
• Overcome organizational challenges and bring together teams that have traditionally worked separately
• Establish a successful framework to build, execute and manage these campaigns to engage with consumers, but also drive results.
1:10 -1:50
Virtual Stage
Local SEO
Speakers:
- Claire Carlile – Bright Local
Session Description:
Don’t just SET IT AND FORGET IT – your 10 point guide to monitoring GMB’
“For too many organisations ‘optimizing’ Google My Business is a one and done process – add the name, address, and phone number, select the category, scribble down a quick description and it’s ‘job done’. In this talk, Claire will walk you through the fast-paced changing landscape of GMB, teach you how to harness the power of GMB to capture your potential customers’ attention, and to show them (and Google) that YOU’RE best placed to meet their needs.
1:50-2:30
Virtual Stage
Paid Social
Speaker:
- Shuree Jones – Rain the Growth Agency
Session Description:
The Rise of Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has exploded into the paid social space. Once a celeb-focused, $1 million-per-post big swing, it’s now a platform-supported, creator-led industry open to any marketer with a clear vision. This session will touch on the growth of influencer media, the options available across social platforms, and the importance of creative alignment in executing a successful influencer activation.
2:30 - 3:10
Virtual Stage
“How to be ok sucking at stuff!”
Speaker:
- Mary Davies – Beanstalk Internet Marketing
Session Description:
Imposter syndrome, perfectionism and self imposed unrealistic expectations weigh so many people in our industry down. Join me as we talk about learning to be ok asking “stupid’ questions, bravely taking chances outside our comfort zones, embracing that we don’t know everything and in fact nobody does and have a quick chat on how we can uplift others like ourselves so that they can be ok sucking at stuff too!
3:10 - 3:50
Virtual Stage
Organic Search
Speakers:
- Kristine Schachinger – Sites without Walls
Session Description:
The Final Sort. How Google Uses Content & AI to Choose the Top 10.
Google uses a post retrieval ad hoc content matching system to sort the order of the Search Results, but ask an SEO and most have never heard of it. This talk will help SEOs understand how Google uses its content matching system AFTER ranking factors are applied to determine the final sort order in the SERPs. Will include a focus on Neural Matching and Rank Brain.
3:50 - 3:55
Virtual Stage
Day Wrap Up
Day 2
9:00 – 9:05
Virtual Stage
Welcome/Logistics
9:05 – 9:40
Virtual Stage
Organic Search
Speakers:
- Dawn Anderson – Berty
Session Description:
Passage Indexing – It is More Important Than You Think
Whilst passage indexing may seem like a small tweak to search ranking, it is potentially much more symptomatic of the beginning of a fundamental shift in the way that search engines understand unstructured content, determine relevance in natural language, and rank efficiently and effectively.
It could also be a means of assessing overall quality of content and a means of dynamic index pruning. We will look at the landscape, and also provide some takeaways for brands and business owners looking to improve quality in unstructured content overall in this fast changing landscape.
9:40 - 10:20
Virtual Stage
Top SEO Issues & Mistakes in 2021 And How to Overcome Them
Speakers:
- Aleyda Solis – Orainti
Session Description:
From strategical to execution, technical to content, Core Updates to Web Migrations…
In this session Aleyda will go through the main issues and mistakes SEOs face nowadays in the most common scenarios and phases of the SEO process that end up negatively affecting its outcome, and will share how to fix them.
10:20 - 11:00
Virtual Stage
CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization
Speaker:
- Jason Wright – Webfor
3 Reasons to Use Data In Design for Successful CRO
11:00 - 11:40
Virtual Stage
Analytics
Speaker:
- Chris Sietsema – Teach to Fish Digital
Session Description:
Exploring Google Analytics 4
The measurement community has been buzzing about Google’s latest iteration of its analytics platform, Google Analytics 4. An evolved version of its Universal Analytics predecessor, Google Analytics (or GA4) carries over some recognizable reports and features. However, much of what has been familiar about Universal Analytics configuration and reporting has been replaced by an entirely new data model.
In this session, we will get to know the core differences between Universal Analytics and GA4, conduct a walk-through of the GA4 interface to determine what it could mean for your measurement practices, and discuss the right time to rely upon this evolved platform.
11:40 -12:20
Virtual Stage
Content Marketing
Speaker:
- Anna Hrach – Covience and Convert
Session Description:
Think Like a TV Network to Create Content Shows
For years, content marketers were operating under the belief that publishing content consistently is key. After all, search engines loves “fresh” content, right? Unfortunately, the outdated advice of publishing consistently often results in random acts of content—a blog post or twelve there, a social post or two here, a webinar there. In order to see true content success, we need to think like a TV network and create consistent content “shows” that keep our audiences engaged and coming back again and again. Learn which shows to create and ways to brainstorm them, plus how to use shows to create a more effective and efficient content calendar.
12:20 - 12:40
Virtual Stage
TEN MINUTE BREAK
12:40 - 1:20
Virtual Stage
Search Engine Marketing
Speaker:
- Aaron Levy – Tinuiti
The New SEM – Building Campaigns for the Future
Aaron dissect, debunk and demystify a lot of the changes in the SEM landscape with an eye a few years down the line. He’ll teach you how to play nice with rising automation, changing ad technology and vanishing data.
Above all else, he’ll give advice on how to develop your campaigns into a modern structure focused on people, rather than keywords.
12:40 - 1:20
Virtual Stage
SEO
Speaker:
- AJ Kohn – Blind 5 year old
Compound SEO
You’ve heard the phrase ‘death by a thousand cuts’? SEO is the opposite of that. Yet many company cultures make this strategy impossible, allowing competitors to win with velocity and marginal gains.
2:00 - 2:40
Virtual Stage
Paid Search
Speakers:
- Ryan Moothart – Portent
Session Description:
Measuring Your Investment: Using Offline Conversion Tracking in Google Ads
With the advancement Google has made with automated bidding, user targeting, similar audience creation, and so forth, using raw leads as your sole conversion points just aren’t cutting it anymore. You need to make sure the investment and optimizations you’re making in your Google Ads account are going toward not just raw leads but raw leads that turn into qualified leads and booked sales.
To do this, you need to translate those advanced lead stages and actual sales (including, ideally, hard revenue numbers) in your CRM and import those conversions directly into your Google Ads account. This process is called offline conversion tracking, and it is going to be vital for any lead-based advertiser on Google Ads to begin executing correctly. In this session, we’ll cover how you set up and automate offline conversion tracking within Google Ads and how you subsequently use that data to make better optimization decisions.
2:40 - 2:45
Virtual Stage
Wrap up/thanks
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