As noted yesterday, SoCon 10 offered two breakout sessions after lunch.  The second one I attended was titled “Create Mobile Media With Your Cell Phone,” led by Amani Channel, founder of Visual Eye Media and My Urban Report, and content manager for Public Broadcasting Atlanta’s new Lens on Atlanta social media site.

SoCon 10 offered two breakout sessions after lunch.  There were 12 to choose from in both time slots, so it was hard to choose, knowing that you’d have to miss the other 11 (22 total).  For the first breakout, I selected “Turn Your Company Into a Content Machine,” led by James Andrews, Managing Partner at Everywhere, a strategic communications consultancy specializing in social media.  James’ blog is at TheKeyInfluencer.com.

By Kristin O'Neil, Account Manager

Dan Siroker worked at Google until he heard an impassioned speech by then-Presidential hopeful Barack Obama in 2007.  Dan volunteered to work on New Media for Obama’s Presidential campaign, and eventually became Deputy New Media Director for Obama’s Presidential Transition team.  Currently, Dan is a founder of both CarrotSticks and Optimizely.

Carol Kruse is the VP of Global Interactive Marketing for Coca-Cola.  She started her talk by noting that after the word “Okay,” the second most well-known word globally, across languages, is “Coke.”  As we all know, Coca-Cola is the best known brand in the world, and it’s heavily discussed in a myriad of social media, globally, all the time.  Which is great but also scary because, of course, it’s the consumer that owns the brand, not the company.

I spent much of this weekend at SoCon 10, the fourth annual Social Media “Unconference” hosted at Kennesaw State University’s Center for Sustainable Journalism.  It was a first-class event that offered notable keynote speakers, a wide selection of breakout sessions, networking with top social media folks, and even good food!  This week I’ll be recapping the sessions I attended.

I'm heading west in a couple weeks, attending two Internet marketing conferences back-to-back.  The last week in February, I'll be speaking at the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) in San Diego (see previous post for more about my panel topic).  The first week in March, more than half of the Prominent Placement team will be attending the Search Marketing Expo (SMX West) in Santa Clara.

As a board member for SEMPO Atlanta, I am so excited and proud of our upcoming event.  Three brilliant speakers, including one of the pioneers in our industry, will share advanced search engine optimization information at Park Tavern on Thursday, February 11, 2010, starting at 6 pm.  More info is below and you can register here.

I’ve been asked to participate in what should be a lively session at the Online Marketing Summit in my hometown of San Diego next month.  “PPC vs. SEO: The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle” will feature my fellow panelists and I duking it out about which SEM tactic is best, Pay-Per-Click advertising or Search Engine Optimization.  My friends at OMS have not yet told me which side of the warfield I’ll be on…but I’m ready to take out some teeth either way!

We spend an inordinate amount of time ensuring that our clients' web analytics software is installed correctly.  We look at page code, we test, we ask the developers to fix it, we test again...and you'd be surprised how often, once it's all working, the code mysteriously falls off a page later on down the road!

I've consulted with our colleagues in the search marketing industry and found that we are not alone.  I've also read that up to 45% of Google Analytics installations may be incorrect.

Obviously, if web analytics software isn't tracking correctly, you're not gathering good data, which means any actions you take based on that data may be flawed.

My colleague and friend Brian Ussery has a good blog post about this phenomenon, giving a number of examples of common errors to look out for.

The main lesson: never assume that your web analytics software has been installed 100% correctly - dig through the data and test on a regular basis!