Dan Heath presenting Made To Stick’s hallmarks of sticky ideas:
Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories.

Dan presented the main concepts from his book, covering why some ideas survive and spread while other ideas die. As with a number of SES conferences in the past, many attendees apparently decided that this last day of the conference would be of lesser worth, so the audience for this keynote was a lot sparser than on previous days. This was a shame, because, aside from the Orion Panel discussion, this preso was likely the one that would’ve been of the highest worth to marketers.

How do you introduce an idea so that it may catch fire and spread? What are some characteristics of sticky ideas that make them viral and persistent?

The classic antipollution ad campaign with the weeping Indian.

Many companies try in vain to introduce new ideas in the form of products and services, and it’s challenging to promote those ideas into the marketplace. So, how does one improve the chances that a worthy idea will catch consumers’ interest and spread? This is really the basic problem that marketing seeks to solve. Made to Stick analyzes the components of sticky ideas and provides methods for making concepts or stories viral.

The book was co-written by Chip Heath, Dan’s brother and professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. (I went to school with Chip and knew him to be a really savvy guy.) The brothers have received a lot of critical acclaim since the book published in late 2006, including positive reviews from Guy Kawasaki, major newspapers (it’s a New York Times bestseller) and various TV interviews such as The Today Show.

One really interesting exchange between them and Guy Kawasaki is as follows:

Question: “Can a slick marketer apply your principles and make a piece of crap stick—or does the intrinsic value ultimately decide stickiness?”

Their answer: “Slick marketers are already using most of these principles. We wanted our book to serve as an equalizer. Because you’re right—instrinsic value counts…” and “The problem is that ideas with intrinsic value don’t always win…” and “We can bemoan the fact that dumb ideas win out. But we can also reverse-engineer them. We can figure out the principles that make them stick and teach them to people who have worthwhile messages. Slick marketers know a lot of these principles already. Urban legends have them baked in. But no one teaches engineers or entrepreneurs or chemistry professors how to make their ideas stick.”

Dan’s presentation of the book’s highlights at SES was excellent and well-polished. Here’s a pretty good recap.

My course on “SEO 101” is a not-to-be missed session for any search marketer who wishes to learn the basics of “organic” or “natural” search engine optimization (a.k.a. “SEO”). While basic SEO principles are really very simple to incorporate in web site design, most companies fail to exploit them when building out their web pages and internet applications — losing out on traffic and marketshare. Adjusting a site to include just a few of the basics can increase traffic and associated sales significantly.

I’ll be speaking along with the legendary Neil Patel, who is renowned as a social media marketing guru. Neil will be covering the basics of social media optimization, or “SMO”.

Search Engine Strategies Conference

This promises to be a great session, and I have some cool tips to impart on how to effectively communicate with one’s technology department staff in order to break down barriers, cut through red tape, and get changes deployed to bang up site traffic.

I happen to know what I’m talking about! Not only was I formerly an in-house SEO, but I was also the head of the technology department at my former company. You might think that heading up tech dev might’ve made it easy for me to get what I needed done, but I still had to employee multiple interpersonal skills in dealing with other parallel technical departments, and in communicating effectively with developers within my own team.

Now that I’m an external consultant, I’ve had to work with IT staff within dozens of other companies as well, so I have a very broad experience in dealing with many styles of technical teams.

I guarantee that this session will be well worth attending, because I’ve got a number of tips that will empower search marketers to get all they need out of their technical teams!

SES San Jose is well worthwhile, if you’ve never attended one. All search marketers should attend one! Typically, the SES conferences held in New York and San Jose are the two best-attended of the conference series, with many thousands in attendance. San Jose is particularly great because it’s smack in Silicon Valley, so it often has many more representatives from each of the various search engines in attendance.

And, who can miss the famous Googledance?!?

Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing and multiple other books will be one of the keynote speakers at the conference, which is way cool — probably well worth hearing.

I’m travelling back and forth in the next few weeks, so I may only be present at the conference the same day as when I’m speaking. If you’re interested in speaking with me that day, hang around after the panel session or drop me a note in advance.

I’ll be speaking on the subject of “Managing a Local/Mobile Search Marketing Campaign” on the morning of the first day. There are also a number of other interesting presentations that I plan to attend, covering subjects such as Local SEO, Pay-Per-Call Advertising, Mobile SEO, Mobile Advertising, and LoMo.

For readers of Natural Search Blog, we’re able to offer a conference discount of 20% off the full registration price if you sign up now. Just go to the SMX Local & Mobile 07 registration, and enter our discount code:

SMX20OffLM

Google’s advent of Universal Search has propelled content from a number of search verticals into the main results page, including content from Local Search in many cases. This development has opened the eyes of many marketers to the fact that businesses with local components really need to specifically target their content to appear optimally under this new paradigm.

Also, there have been a few evolutionary leaps in the development of cell phones and other mobile devices, as shown by the rapid success of the iPhone. Industry analysts have predicted that usage of mobile services in the US is likely on it’s way to becoming far more popular and ubiquitous than ever before — a situation not unlike the introduction and rise in popularity of the internet itself.

Learning about Local Search, Mobile Search, and the combination of the two (“LoMo”) is going to be vital for effective broad-spectrum interactive marketing. The SMX Local & Mobile Conference will be a great opportunity for getting ahead of the curve and discovering the latest information.

This was the last leg of the tour, but I understand that this day-long seminar is to likely begin touring anew through additional cities this Fall. If you’re interested, stay tuned and watch the AMA site’s events pages for upcoming dates.

As promised, here’s my PowerPoint presentation on how Content is the Basis of SEO. (8.4 mb download)

Read on for more details about the AMA Hot Topic Series day’s sessions.

Here are some pictures I snapped of each of the speakers (except for moi):

Stephan Spencer

Stephan Spencer, opened the day, speaking on “Inside the Head of the Searcher”, and he also later spoke on “Link Building Your Way to the Top of the Rankings”

Alan Rimm-Kaufman

Dr. Alan Rimm-Kaufman spoke on management of paid search programs in “You Gotta Pay to Play – Winning at Pay-Per-Click Search” – Alan went into a number of the complex and constantly-evolving issues which can impact paid programs. (Alan’s blog may be found at www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog)

(not pictured: Chris Silver Smith)

I spoke on “Organic Search is All About Content” which went over basic Search Engine Optimization tactics.

Amanda Camp

Amanda Camp from Google’s Webmaster Tools, spoke on “The Straight Scoop from Google”, which went into basics of how Google crawls and indexes pages, their strong tools they provide to webmasters, and some approaches which Google frowns upon.

Gene Chan

Gene Chan from HP spoke on “It’s All About the Bottom Line – Measuring Search Marketing with the Long Tail”, using real-world examples from HP’s best-in-class paid search campaigns.

Neil Patel

Neil Patel of Advantage Consulting Services spoke on “Social Media Marketing – Leveraging Online Communities to Create Links and Buzz”. Neil is expert on integrating with these Web 2.0 or Social Media sites like MySpace, Digg, and StumbleUpon, so this is probably some of the most cutting-edge stuff in this Hot Topic workshop day!

This AMA Hot Topic seminar day will be happening again in New York in May, and Chicago in June – so, sign up now if you’re interested in attending one of these sessions!

Finally, as promised, here is the link to my “Content is the basis of SEO” presentation from the day, if you have the patience to download a 8.4 mb file!