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Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at MarketSTL, a local conference focused on helping business owners in St. Louis learn how to optimize their online presence. The conference pulled in some of the region’s top experts on topics such as search engine optimization, social media, video and website analytics. The audience included a solid mix of local business owners and professionals in online marketing and related fields.

The day kicked off with a great keynote from Jason Tinnin (@jasontinnin) of SimpleFlame (@simpleflame)that was charged with energy, humor, and some solid nuggets of advice such as the importance of finding a trusted advisor as a partner in your web strategy, and treating social media like courting – “You can’t just walk up and say ‘Hey, you wanna get married?’”

After the keynote got everyone fired up, I attended Russ Henneberry’s (@russhenneberry) “Using Content to Drive Hot Referrals” presentation. There was great content (no surprise) in this presentation, and Russ has energy. We gave him kudos for being so LOUD and even gave him an honorary Loud name of Loudenberry.

Up next was the Local Search panel, which I joined along with Will Hanke (@TechLH) and Rachel Boone (@trileafdesigns). This session was an open discussion format in which we introduced the importance of local search and encouraged the audience to ask questions relating to local search and local SEO. The audience had a LOT of questions – clearly the search engines have a long way to go in communicating with local businesses. Google has taken some steps in a positive direction lately by partnering with the US SBA on a site called “Tools for Online Success” which offers video-based tips for small businesses.

Other helpful sites mentioned in this discussion:

• Get Listed
• LocalEze
• And of course Google, Yahoo and Bing local resources

In the afternoon Lisa and I attended Jim Barnthouse’s (@jimbarnthouse) session on incorporating video into your online marketing strategy. Jim provided a lot of great tips on optimizing your video strategy for the web and shared a lesson learned from a Youtube casino incident.

Next up was Melissa Gilliam (@milligfunk) on Planning for Success in Social Media. Melissa shared many social media tips and tricks that she’s picked up along the way as a world traveler, blogger, photographer, freelance writer and Marketing Director for the YMCA.

I had the honor of closing out the day with my website analytics presentation. Be sure to check out the slides and free analytics metric dashboard.

That’s a wrap for all of the sessions that I attended at this Fall’s MarketSTL Conference. I had a great time, and enjoyed meeting many talented people and motivated business owners from the St. Louis area.

Note to speakers and attendees: If you have any slides or notes from the day that you’d like to share, let me know and I’ll add links to this post.

About the Author
Erin Steinbruegge is a Partner and Lead Marketing Strategist at The Loud Few who specializes in search engine marketing strategy. You can learn more about her here or follow her on twitter at twitter.com/steinburglar.

I attended my first “The Rise to the Top” Luncheon, which is hosted by our friends over at Rangency and none other than David Siteman Garland. To tell the truth, I was kind of nervous, but it was a good nervous. It was gorgeous day as I walked into Araka in Clayton (also for the first time) and was greeted by Jennifer Volk. She was manning the registration booth and then handed my name tag. From this point on I mingled. I went on a recon mission on what to expect at the event. The event was going to focus on business development and how not to screw it up. I’ve been to plenty of these “lunch and learns” and most of them delivered stuff I already knew or outdated information.

Not this lunch. David brought some guest speakers that gave some short but powerful nuggets of knowledge. Like Jason Bahnak of Gateway Biz Development and a spitfire named Patti, who in the shortest time possible had me fired up to close something. I didn’t care what it was but I was going to close it. I felt like Rudy in the Notre Dame locker room. Through the lunch we worked through the different phases from getting leads to getting the meeting to closing that meeting. At most of the business “lunch and learns” I have been to you see people eat then nod as the host speaks. Not here. People did eat but then scurriously (So I made up the word, deal with it) found paper to write notes on. Everyone was actively engaged and contributed some great questions. The audience included a mix of owners, managers, and sales people; all who were truly involved in the conversation.

So you begin by trying to generate leads. Jason expressed the opinion that no matter what technology is available to you, still the best school is old school, and that is picking up the phone and calling. People these days are inundated with emails and quick “follow ups”, and a good ol’ fashioned phone call usually beats out the email. David Garland agreed with this sentiment, and with his boisterous and contagious personality it would be difficult to contain yourself within an email.

So what happens once you get that appointment? Don’t screw it up right? Jason and David tag-teamed this topic like the robots in Voltron, which came together nicely and to the audience’s benefit. The main ingredient in getting the appointment and being in that appointment is building rapport. The key difference between you and your competitors is you. If you went to work for your competitors you would say that your company is the best. So what it comes down to is you – your personality, your knowledge, and how your knowledge answers the PAIN or needs of that potential client.

I would give David Garland, Jennifer Volk and the rest of the speakers an “A”. I would give the Strawberry Shortcake I had for desert an “A “….Holy cow, it was amazing. Kudos to Araka for making a great first impression on me as well for their culinary arts. I would certainly go to another “RISE lunch” and hopefully next time David will answer The Loud Few’s question on how his hair stays so perfect.

About the Author
Adam Hallas is the Business Development Lead at The Loud Few and specializes in interactive marketing strategy. You can learn more about him here or follow him on twitter at twitter.com/MrHallas.