Today’s post comes Farukh Shroff, our Manager of Internet Marketing here at Solid Cactus. Farukh and his team have just returned from Search Engine Strategies in NYC and below is his take on the show. Enjoy!



I have mixed feelings about SES New York. First
let’s talk about the positive aspects of SES. The reason I continue to attend
SES every year is because I am able to:

• Hear industry experts speak about topics
  about which I would really like to learn more.

• Meet people like myself who are very
  familiar with the online space, yet trying to learn the latest and the greatest.

• Getting to almost have a 1:1
  conversation with speakers or other attendees who are the “rock stars” in the
  online marketing space.

• Visiting different booths at the
  exhibits and trying to figure out a way to integrate different
  technologies/channels in a strategic way which would allow us to increase our
  clients’ market share.

Here are the negative aspects:

• Most of the time there are 2-3 sessions
  that are running simultaneously that I’m trying to attend.

• Some sessions which say “Advanced track”
  really aren’t.

• Some speakers don’t have a clue what the
  hell is going on.

• Some speakers don’t mention anything new
  or repeat things that I can read about on any number of blogs.

• You have to know someone to really get
  invited to parties/events where you can meet cool people or the celebrities.

That being said, I still love SES. Although I found myself walking out of some
sessions because of lack of new information, I still was able to find a session
where I learned something new and exciting.

Couple of my favorite sessions where I really felt like I learned something new
were;

• Podcast & Audio Search Optimization (Daron
  Babin from webmaster radio, Rick Klau from Feed Burner and Amanda Watlington
  from Searching for profit were able to provide some valuable insight into
  different mediums/ways for successfully doing a podcast.

• Meet The Mobile Search Engines - I love
  cell phones, and being in the online marketing world the future of Mobile
  advertising fascinates me. It was very informational as well as intriguing to
  hear from people who are trying to integrate and monetize the mobile marketing
  channel. So hearing from people like Paul Yiu, Product Manager for Mobile
  Search, Matthew Snyder, Head of Business Development, Mobile Advertising, at
  Nokia ,

  Matt Tengler, Senior Product
  Manager,
  JumpTap & Matt Ward-Steinman,
  Director, Product Management,
  Medio Systems, Inc. was awesome.
  They really pointed to the fact regarding the endless potential for this medium
  as an advertising channel with facts.

I
was also lucky enough to take four of my Search Marketing Managers to this
session and they absolutely loved the whole experience. They also learned a
lot. I consider myself a geek when it comes to finding new technologies and
different advertising media. To my surprise there were a few really cool
companies exhibiting the latest advances that were off the hook. I would
especially like to mention a company called Revshare whose business model is
monetize the television advertising medium in a performance/ CPA (Cost Per
Action) model. Apparently this company has been doing this since 1989 and hell I
just heard about them… I guess that’s what you get when you focus on the
online channel too much. Thanks Reno (marketing manager for Revshare) for taking
more than 20 minutes to really get into the nitty gritty of how small-to-large
advertisers can take advantage of this model.


To
summarize, if your skill set is anywhere between beginner and
intermediate–definitely attend SES. If you’re more experienced, think twice
about which sessions you want to attend. Or, just say screw it and hang out
with Rock Stars. You’ll learn more that way (PS- They tend to go to different
bars than the Hilton anymore - OK don’t start stalking them now :)).


Oh,
and I saved the best part for last.


We
were invited by Google to a private party at Hotel Gansevoort’s Rooftop Lounge,
which was a swanky place…. Not too shabby right? And if that weren’t
enough–our team was able to visit Google’s headquarters in NY, which alone was
worth this whole trip! So, thanks to our Reps Matt & Tyler for inviting us and
making this trip really special for us. A picture of yours truly at Google is
below :).