So, we rounded up a crew and headed out to IRCO. Approximately 100 seniors were greeted with a fun surprise during their weekly gathering for a Loaves & Fishes meal at IRCO. The free SEMpdx Snuggies were distributed through a raffle to the refugees and legal immigrants who use IRCO’s senior services program.

Here’s some video of SEMpdx giving away Snuggies

And you can see pictures from the giveaway over on our SEMpdx Flickr Group as well

About the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO)

Forced to leave their home countries for fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, nearly 1,200 refugees arrive in Oregon each year. IRCO empowers them to successfully integrate into American society by removing the barriers to self-sufficiency and supporting employment. Many of its clients do not speak English, have little money and lack the social support networks many mainstream Americans can count on in times of need.

• The IRCO Website: www.IRCO.org
• Follow IRCO on Twitter: Twitter.com/IRCOnews
• IRCO blog post on the giveaway: SEMpdx Gives IRCO Seniors Snuggies!

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Coverage:

• OregonLive: Blanket Donation Warms Low-Income Seniors Affected by Recession Cuts
• KPTV: Snuggie Donations Keep Local Seniors Warm

The post SEMpdx Warms Local Seniors with Snuggies appeared first on SEMpdx.

• We’ll be presenting a panel called “The Future of Search” at the eMarketing Summit on May 5
• We’ll have a Site Lab booth at the eMarketing Summit and in the Innotech exhibitor area
• We are co-hosting the SoMe awards

If you haven’t already – sign up! The event is next week. Here’s more information

eMarketing Summit @ InnoTech

“The Evolution to Digital Marketing”

May 5-6, Oregon Convention Center
www.emarketingsummit.com for information and registration
Price is only $126 (normally $149) and includes two full days of the summit, luncheon presentation, InnoTech Conference, expo & receptions.  During registration use EMS20AT in the Discount code field for the lower price.

The 5th annual eMarketing Summit meets in Portland, OR this year, and brings together over 170 marketing & business professionals.

Featured Luncheon Speaker, Thursday, May 6

hosted by AMA – Oregon Chapter

–          Southwest Airlines Online Spokesperson & Emerging Media Specialist, Lindsay Reynolds

Additional Topics Include:

– Top 10 Extreme Social Media Promotion Hacks – 2 Hour Social Media Workshop

– Mobile Marketing Five Can’t-Miss Mobile Marketing Trends For 2010
– Future of Search Panel – Hosted by SEMpdx
– Doing Analtyics Right: Understand Your Goals, Measure Contextually & ACT!

– The Science of Greater Online Lead Generation
– Location, Location, Location” — A Crash Course in Geo-targeted Search Engine Marketing
– and much more.  Information and details at www.emarketingsummit.com or www.innotechoregon.com.

2^nd Annual SoMe’ Awards –

The SoMe’ Awards – The NW’s Social Media Awards is also happening the evening of May 6 at the MAC Club.  Register at www.someawards.com.  Cost is only $20 and includes two drinks, networking and dessert.  Hosted by Social Media Club of Portland, SEMpdx, TMMpdx, SAO and InnoTech.

The post Don’t Miss the eMarketing Summit at Innotech appeared first on SEMpdx.

The second annual SoM? Awards are on May 6, 2010 at the prestigious Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland, Oregon. They are brought to you once again by Social Media Club Portland, SEMpdx, TMMPDX, the Software Association of Oregon and InnoTech. Awardees will be honored based on achievement during the last calendar year in 10 categories.

Tickets for the event are $20 and include two drink tickets, dessert and unlimited fun. For event details, award descriptions and highlights from the 2009 event, visit www.SoMeAwards.com.

The post Call for Entries for the 2010 SoMe Awards appeared first on SEMpdx.

Great session full of tips, and excellent advice about how to deal with landing page testing and optimization. Please bare with my gross spelling and grammatical errors, and special shout out to Evan Davies for the use of his laptop.

Mary Huffman kicked off the session by offering 10 aspects to test on your landing pages. These 10 items are great ways to squeeze more value out of the clicks.

Mary recommended testing every aspect of a page in a measured approach if possible. She even said the sometimes counterintuitive works sometimes, and the only way you would know would by testing.

Mary provided examples from WhichTestWon. Her top aspects to test were:

1.) Headline: Keywords in Headlines?

2.) Try Breaking Up Long Forms: Breaking Up a Long Form May Convert Better

3.) Length of Form: Short or Long

4.) Layout of Page: More Copy Can Be a Good Thing?

5.) Placement of security icon: Yay or Nay? Yay!

6.) Button Size: Bigger is Better

7.) Vocabulary: Training vs. Webinar.

8.) Photos: Know Your Target.

9.) Button Color: Make Your Most Important Button Standout.

10.) Photo vs. Video: Video Worked Best for New Users on Landing Page Only.

She followed up with a short stats lesson about data validity, sample size and determining test time. Long story short…..it may take awhile.

Finally, Mary touched on some great resources for marketers to use for testing.

Cameron Cowan from Omniture explained the dilemma most SEM’s run into. The no man’s land between the users and creative.

He highlighted that control of your landing pages is essential to success, as SEM’s agree costs for clicks are going up. He emphasized that not optimizing and testing your landing pages is a waste of money, and more importantly time.

He also spoke about Omniture’s new Test and Target product for landing page testing. It is a robust platform that allows companies to take a measured approach to the creation and testing of landing pages.

Cameron left off by saying SEMs must use their testing to target users. This will improve site experience, and should improve profitability which he mentioned gets lost in the shuffle of conversion metrics.

During the Q&A, Mary invited users to visit Which MVT, a landing page testing platform comparison site.

Well done on both accounts. Their slides are available at https://www.sempdx.org/slides

Speakers:

Mary Huffman – Ionic Media

Cameron Cowen – Adobe

Moderator:

Lisa Williams

Liveblogger:

Spencer Helm of Amplify Interactive, a Portland Oregon SEM agency

The post Landing Page Testing: Don’t just create . . . test. appeared first on SEMpdx.

Keynote Speaker: Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing

SearchFest 2010 will present multiple informative learning tracks, workshops, and panel sessions designed to provide direct insight into the most up-to-date strategies and technological advancements in online search marketing.

When: Tuesday March 9, 2010

Where: Governor Hotel – 614 SW 11th Ave. Portland, OR 97205

Why: Check out our full agenda

Registration

The post SearchFest 2010 appeared first on SEMpdx.

“SEMpdx Presents 6 Pack: 12 SEM Tips You Can’t Live Without”
A rapid fire session where you’ll walk away with AT LEAST 12 actionable search engine marketing tips. The session will cover everything from SEO & PR, on-page SEO, linking strategies, social media optimization tips, local SEO tips and more. The format will feature 6 presenters who are tasked with giving you two take-home tips while being limited to just a couple of slides and a couple of minutes each – there will be no fluff, just content… and lots of Q&A time with these SEM experts.

There are lots of other great speakers & sessions at OMS Portland. Use this link to OMS PDX and get 20% off your registration (or use code SEMPDX20): https://www.onlinemarketingsummit.com/cities_and_agendas/portland.php?coupon=SEMPDX20

The post SEMpdx is speaking at Online Marketing Summit appeared first on SEMpdx.

• SEMpdx board member David Mihm will be doing a presentation @ 1pm on Wednesday “Local Search Marketing Strategies“
• Past SEMpdx President Kent Lewis served as this year’s eMarketingSummit chairperson, and he’s moderating a session @ 3:30 on Wednesday “Just the Tips Please – Implementing a Successful Online Strategy“
• SEMpdx is presenting a Social Media Marketing panel on Thursday @ 2pm
• SEMpdx is doing an SEO Hot Seat @ 3:30 PM on Thursday. We still have site review spots available. If you’re interested – sign up at SEMpdx.org/Events
• SEMpdx will have a booth in the expo hall on Thursday. We’ll be talking about membership and events, and doing some sitelabs throughout the day. So stop by & say hi!

This is just what SEMpdx is doing. The eMarketingSummit also features several other great speakers and presentations including:

Keynote Presenter Rahaf Harfoush, New Media Strategist, Member of Obama’s Social Media Team & Associate Director of the Global Cooperation Initiative at the World Economic Forum. Don’t miss her presentation entitled Yes We Did: Strategic Insights and Social Media from the Campaign that Changed History

The eMarketingSummit is going to be great – if you haven’t already, sign up and we’ll see you there! And if you’re an SEMpdx member – you get a discount on your registration. Stop by the members area to get your discount code.

The post SEMpdx at the 2009 Innotech eMarketingSummit appeared first on SEMpdx.

Thanks to the quick work of the organizations below, we are all excited to announce the introduction of the region’s first Social Media Awards, The SoMe Awards (so – mee). This year’s award is on a tight time table, but your help with tweeting, blogging and spreading the word is appreciated. Most details are available at www.someawards.com. Don’t be shy – nominate yourself or a client close to you.

The Portland chapter of Social Media Club, SEMpdx and Software Association of Oregon are pleased to announce the first annual SoMe Awards to recognize outstanding Social Media projects and the people who created them.

Awards will be given in 7 categories based on factors such as originality, effectiveness and creativity. At least one member of the team who created the project must reside in Oregon or Southwest Washington to be eligible.

Award submissions must be received no later than 11:59 pm on Saturday, April 11, 2009 to be considered. Mark you calendars to attend the awards reception happening on Thursday, April 23. Location to be announced later this week. Check out www.someawards.com for more details.

The post Announcing the SoMe’s – PDX Social Media Awards appeared first on SEMpdx.

The post Danny Sullivan’s Keynote – What Do You Want to Hear About? appeared first on SEMpdx.

In the meantime, don’t forget to sign up for our annual conference, SearchFest, which is being held at the Oregon Zoo, Tuesday March 10.

https://www.sempdx.org/Events/SearchFest-09/

The post Tuesday’s Hot Seat Cancelled appeared first on SEMpdx.