At Social Media Mar­ket­ing Lon­don on June 17, 2010.

Anew social mar­ket­ing con­fer­ence makes its U.S. debut next week in San Fran­cisco, and Socialmedia.biz read­ers get a 10 per­cent price dis­count by reg­is­ter­ing with the code Socialmediajd.

Called Social Media Mar­ket­ing 2010, the gath­er­ing will bring together social media experts such as Brian Solis, Chris Heuer and Sarah Austin to dis­cuss the lat­est cam­paigns, tech­niques and the­o­ries for achiev­ing suc­cess­ful cam­paigns. Join in and fol­low the con­ver­sa­tion on twit­ter at #smmsf

“Social Media Mar­ket­ing is an essen­tial event for any­one who’s seri­ous about social media in San Fran­cisco. You can either spend months learn­ing by trial and error, or you can attend this event and learn it all in a day,” said con­fer­ence orga­nizer Mur­ray New­lands, a UK blog­ger and direc­tor of the agency Influ­ence People.

The con­sult­ing group is plan­ning a series of events across the United States this autumn and is kick­ing things off in San Fran­cisco after an inau­gural event that drew a crowd of 200 at the Cavendish Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in Lon­don two weeks ago.

On the agenda: Viral Social Media Cam­paigns, What Works; The Press Talks: How to get Dig­i­tal PR for your Com­pany; Insider Look: How Tech Writ­ers Cover Social Media; A/B Test­ing for Social Media; How to Build Com­mu­ni­ties for Brands; Social Media Mar­ket­ing Met­rics and Mon­e­tiz­ing Social Media. See the pro­gram agenda.

Speak­ers include Chris Heuer, Ben Parr, Richard Jalichan­dra, David Gelles, Joe Vazquez, Tom Forem­ski, Kym McNi­cholas, Jon Swartz, Dan Martell, Jen­nifer Nee­ley Lind­say, Hiten Shah, Vin­nie Lau­ria, Aaron Strout, Sarah Austin, Mur­ray New­lands and Marissa Louie.

When: July 8
Where: Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St., San Fran­cisco
Tick­ets: $250 (reg­is­ter with code Social­me­di­ajd to get a 10% dis­count), includes a drink reception.

I plan to attend, hope to see you there.

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From time to time, Socialmedia.biz will post guest entries from our friends at SEO­moz, the top site on the Web to help sites achieve bet­ter search engine rank­ings. Here’s the first.

Guest post by Danny Dover
SEO­moz

Iam proud to announce the new and improved Beginner’s Guide to SEO (search engine opti­miza­tion). This free tuto­r­ial cov­ers every­thing you need to know to get started improv­ing your search engine rank­ings in the major search engines. Put sim­ply, this is the resource I would have kicked a fool in order to get my hands on when I was first div­ing into the wild world of SEO.

The New Beginner’s Guide to SEO

The Beginner’s Guide to SEO won’t cost you a dime. It is free to read, down­load and oth­er­wise devour. The guide is the result of hun­dreds of hours of research and includes chap­ters on all of the fol­low­ing topics:

1. How Search Engines Operate
2. How Peo­ple Inter­act With Search Engines
3. Why Search Engine Mar­ket­ing is Necessary
4. The Basics of Search Engine Friendly Design & Development
5. Key­word Research
6. How Usabil­ity, Expe­ri­ence, & Con­tent Affect Rankings
7. Grow­ing Pop­u­lar­ity and Links
8. Search Engine’s Tools for Web­mas­ters Intro
9. Myths & Mis­con­cep­tions About Search Engines
10. Mea­sur­ing and Track­ing Success

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Julian Assange, founder of Wik­ileaks, looks over Micah Sifry and Daniel Ellsberg.

The dan­gers of per­son­al­ized search, turn off your lap­tops & more

I’m back from a week in New York, where I co-presented a Mobi­lize Your Cause Boot­camp, spoke on a panel at Per­sonal Democ­racy Forum, met with clients and sat in on a num­ber of thought-provoking ses­sions. Here are a few obser­va­tions and juicy bits:

• Here’s my Flickr photo set of PdF. For what­ever rea­son, there were sig­nif­i­cantly fewer cam­eras and video cam­eras at this event than any other con­fer­ence I’ve attended in the past year. I cap­tured video inter­views with Nicola Wells and Rachel LaBruyere (on mobile tech), Matisse Bus­tos Han­kes of Witness.org and Deanna Zandt (on her new book “Share This!”), so look for those in the weeks ahead.

• The Mobi­lize Your Cause Boot­camp I put on with Katrin Ver­clas of MobileActive.org was a hit, with 50 social activists, non­profit exec­u­tives and polit­i­cal cam­paign strate­gists com­ing out for the day­long work­shop at CUNY. I have a short writeup at Socialbrite.

• I spoke on the panel “Refin­ing Your Social Media Smarts: Cam­paign Suc­cesses From YouTube to Face­book to Twit­ter,” along with Jonah Sieger and Bar­net Zitron. Chiefly, we dis­cussed cam­paign strate­gies in the social media age.

• I was floored by MoveOn co-founder Eli Pariser’s pre­sen­ta­tion. He argued per­sua­sively that the pub­lic inter­est is ill-served by what he termed “bub­ble fil­ters” — the per­son­al­iza­tion tech­nolo­gies of Google, Face­book and other Inter­net giants. Google now uses 57 dif­fer­ent per­son­al­iza­tion fil­ters to cus­tomize what we see on the Web.

Did you know that when you con­duct a search on Google, and the per­son near­est you con­ducts the same exact search, you’re pre­sented with often rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent results? A search on the BP oil spill might turn up results weighted toward the envi­ron­men­tal cleanup (news focus), or the finan­cial per­for­mance of BP’s stock (busi­ness focus), depend­ing on your search history.

Said Pariser: “We need to get over the idea that code is neu­tral — it’s inher­ently political.”

The new lev­els of data per­son­al­iza­tion threaten to ham­per civic engage­ment by keep­ing us from being exposed to new ideas and view­points — even when we go out of our way to expose our­selves to oppos­ing points of view. (Eli can’t see his con­ser­v­a­tive friends in his main Face­book stream.) What’s par­tic­u­larly dis­turb­ing is that these per­son­al­iza­tion behav­iors take place even if you’re not logged in, and there’s no easy way to opt out of them.

For more on the bub­ble filter:

• The New Dig­i­tal Divide (Cause­Global)
• Ethan Eli Pariser on Fil­ter Bub­bles (Ethan Zuckerman)

Close your lap­tops (and other good advice)

We’ve been say­ing for some time that online action goes only so far and that change mak­ers need to con­nect the online world with real-world efforts. So it was refresh­ing to see the impas­sioned talk by Scott Heifer­man, co-founder of Meetup.com, implor­ing the 600 to 700 atten­dees to close their lap­tops and use new tools — like Meetup Every­where — to con­nect with oth­ers offline. “It’s eas­ier than ever to get pseudo mem­bers and harder than ever to get real mem­bers,” he said. “The most excit­ing thing in the future is not TV on your phone — it’s peo­ple using their phones to meet up together.”

NYU Pro­fes­sor and author Clay Shirky echoed that theme in his talk Fri­day. “Dig­i­tal activism has, in a large part, trapped itself in a tragedy of the com­mons,” he said. The fact that it’s now so easy to use social media tools like online peti­tions to influ­ence leg­is­la­tors means that those sig­nals are being entirely dis­counted, and dig­i­tal activism runs the risk of being turned into lit­tle more than “crowd­sourced PR” for any num­ber of do-good causes.

More on Shirky’s pre­scrip­tions for online activism:

• Fix­ing social media

Clay John­son, direc­tor of Sun­light Labs and co-founder of online polit­i­cal strat­egy firm Blue State Dig­i­tal, also weighed in the same theme, say­ing social activists need to focus less on using social media to build email lists and focus more on get­ting peo­ple active offline solv­ing social prob­lems. He cited the social net­work Momsrising.org as a good exam­ple of a com­mu­nity that’s engaged, includ­ing a nice fea­ture — a “Moms Score” — to help cat­alyze offline protests and social change.

Ran­dom bits

A polit­i­cal visu­al­iza­tion from WebSeer

• Susan Craw­ford: This year, 75–85 per­cent of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion will have only one choice of Inter­net provider for 50-100mbps speeds: their local cable oper­a­tor. Com­cast is now the nation’s largest cable TV com­pany, with 24 mil­lion cus­tomers, and no. 1 broad­band com­pany, with 16.3 mil­lion high-speed customers.

• Brian August showed off Watchi­too, a start-up that enables can­di­dates or offi­cials to hold town hall meet­ings with hun­dreds of con­stituents or vot­ers online. The mul­ti­stream­ing live inter­ac­tive video ser­vice lets you chat or tweet with par­tic­i­pants or access dig­i­tal files, shared in a playlist, such as videos, images or doc­u­ments. And the event can be archived and played back later. Very cool.

• GrassrootsMapping.org is a start-up that aims to empower cit­i­zens affected by the BP oil spill. It helps Gulf Coast res­i­dents take high-resolution aer­ial pho­tographs of the spill with the goal of com­pil­ing an ongo­ing pub­lic record of the spill and its impact.

• Marc Smith on global warm­ing: “I pre­fer the term global weird­ing” — some areas of planet are get­ting hot­ter, some colder. (That’s why we call it cli­mate change.)

• Inter­est­ing new site: Smith’s Social Media Research Foun­da­tion, a non­profit devoted to open tools, data and schol­ar­ship related to social media research.

• I chat­ted with Haley van Dyck and Dan McSwain of the Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion about the FCC’s revamped new media depart­ment and its role in mod­ern­iz­ing the agency, includ­ing open­ing the rule-making process to the pub­lic through online input, reform­ing the way the agency com­mu­ni­cates inter­nally, the launch of the Reboot.FCC.gov blog and the notion of gov­ern­ment agen­cies evolv­ing into “social agencies.”

• Over­heard or over­seen — the sites Trans­parency Data (from the Sun­light Foun­da­tion — search state and fed­eral cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion data); Poli­ti­wid­gets (also from Sun­light — the new home for up-to-date, embed­d­a­ble polit­i­cal info­graph­ics); VoteiQ (it help you learn more about the issues and rev­o­lu­tion­izes the rela­tion­ship between vot­ers and their elected offi­cials); Vis­i­bleVote (advise Con­gress on how to vote on the major upcom­ing leg­is­la­tion); Localoc­racy (learn about the issues and elec­tions in your com­mu­nity and make your voice heard); the Cam­paign Finance Institute’s Inter­ac­tive Tool for Cit­i­zen Pol­icy Ana­lysts, and Web Seer (cool visu­al­iza­tion ser­vice — see exam­ple above).

• 127 mil­lion peo­ple are using social media in the U.S., accord­ing to a recent study by Nielsen.

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Here’s our roundup of social media, tech and mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences and events sched­uled for the month of June. For the full year, see our Cal­en­dar of 2010 social media, tech and mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences. It’s another busy month, and I’ll be kick­ing it off by fly­ing to New York today for the Mobi­lize Your Cause Boot­camp (today’s the last day to reg­is­ter) and Per­sonal Democ­racy Forum (fol­low the pro­ceed­ings with the #pdf10 hash­tag on Twitter).

Note that we’ve pub­lished a roundup of social change con­fer­ences and events for June on our sis­ter site, Socialbrite.

We’ll pub­lish a list of note­wor­thy con­fer­ences and events on the first of each month dur­ing the year. Hope to see you at some of these! If you know of other must-attend events, please add them by post­ing in the com­ments at the bot­tom and I’ll add them as I can.

Con­fer­ence	Date	Place
June
D Con­fer­ence	June 1–3	Palos Verdes, Calif.
The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Dig­i­tal con­fer­ence has been break­ing news, high­light­ing inno­va­tion and bring­ing you straight-up, unvar­nished con­ver­sa­tions with the most influ­en­tial fig­ures in tech­nol­ogy since 2003. D is dif­fer­ent from other con­fer­ences: no canned speeches, no mar­ket­ing pitches — just content.
PLATO @ 50	June 2–3	Moun­tain View, Calif.
The first-ever con­fer­ence on the his­tory of the amaz­ing PLATO sys­tem. Come find out what social soft­ware, e-learning, online com­mu­nity and mul­ti­player games were like long before the Inter­net took off. Learn how the lessons of the PLATO era are still abun­dantly applic­a­ble today. Try out one of the fully restored orig­i­nal PLATO plasma-panel terminals.
Per­sonal Democ­racy Forum*	June 2–5	New York City
The annual gath­er­ing of polit­i­cal activists, gov­ern­ment reform advo­cates and techies, with a Change Mak­ers Boot­camp on June 2 (I’ll be co-presenting with Katrin Ver­clas) and an uncon­fer­ence for the Sat­ur­day after the for­mal con­fer­ence ends.
IABC World Conference	June 6–9	Toronto
The World Con­fer­ence of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ca­tors brings together 1,400 com­mu­ni­ca­tion prac­ti­tion­ers from 40 coun­tries for four days of learn­ing, cama­raderie and inspiration..
RailsConf	June 7–10	Bal­ti­more, Md.
RailsConf, the largest offi­cial con­fer­ence ded­i­cated to every­thing Rails, brings together the most inno­v­a­tive and suc­cess­ful Rails experts and com­pa­nies. Learn use­ful infor­ma­tion, ideas and tech­niques you can put to work imme­di­ately with a pro­gram designed for all lev­els of expertise.
Inter­net Week NYC	June 7–14	New York City
Inter­net Week New York is a week­long fes­ti­val of events salut­ing NYC’s thriv­ing Inter­net indus­try and the com­pa­nies, orga­ni­za­tions and inno­va­tors cre­at­ing the future of online media.
SMX Advanced	June 8–9	Seat­tle
Search Mar­ket­ing Expo Advanced is the only search mar­ket­ing con­fer­ence designed exclu­sively for expe­ri­enced inter­net mar­keters. Ses­sions are fast-paced, Q&A-packed, fre­quently con­tro­ver­sial and quite informative.
Con­nec­tions	June 8–10	Santa Clara, Calif.
Con­nec­tions: The Dig­i­tal Liv­ing Con­fer­ence and Show­case, hosted by research firm Parks Asso­ciates with sup­port from the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Asso­ci­a­tion, is the exec­u­tive event focused on mar­ket devel­op­ments for advanced dig­i­tal lifestyle solutions.
Online Com­mu­nity Unconference	June 9	Moun­tain View, Calif.
The Online Com­mu­nity Uncon­fer­ence is a gath­er­ing of online com­mu­nity man­agers, devel­op­ers, busi­ness peo­ple, tool providers and investors to dis­cuss how to develop and grow online communities.
Adver­tis­ing 2.0	June 7–8	New York City
The annual gath­er­ing of adver­tis­ing, mar­ket­ing and media execs cov­er­ing global brands, mar­ket­ing, mobile and media. It’s put on by Barry Diller’s IAC and Dig­i­tal Hollywood.
Inno­va­tion Jour­nal­ism 7	June 7–9	Palo Alto, Calif.
IJ-7 is a meet­ing place to dis­cuss how jour­nal­ism and inno­va­tion come together: How jour­nal­ism affects inno­va­tion, how inno­va­tion affects jour­nal­ism, how jour­nal­ism cov­ers inno­va­tion and the mar­ket for it. The con­fer­ence wel­comes all jour­nal­ism and inno­va­tion stake­hold­ers: jour­nal­ists, indus­try, policy-makers in media and inno­va­tion, PR, aca­d­e­mic researchers, fac­ulty and stu­dents in related areas of study, other pro­fes­sion­als con­nected to the news indus­try, as well as indi­vid­u­als with a spe­cial inter­est in jour­nal­ism and innovation.
VON Con­fer­ence & Expo	June 9–11	Wash­ing­ton, D.C.
VON: The Voice of Net­work Con­ver­gence show­cases the best of the global IP com­mu­ni­ca­tions world for ser­vice providers and large enterprises.
Turn­ing Ideas Into Business	June 13–16	Banff, Canada
The Banff World Tele­vi­sion Fes­ti­val (BANFF) and next­MEDIA have announced an inno­v­a­tive strate­gic part­ner­ship that will see these two pop­u­lar indus­try events run concurrently.
Tab­ula Rasa DC	June 14	McLean, VA
Tab­ula Rasa DC assem­bles a mas­ter cast of inno­va­tors, devel­op­ers and vision­ar­ies for hands-on guid­ance, cre­ative inspi­ra­tion and how-to maps for apps on the iPad and the wave of mobile, high-concept, high-touch per­sonal computers.
TWTRCON NY	June 14	New York
TWTRCON NY is a one-day con­fer­ence focused entirely on the busi­ness use of Twit­ter where you’ll see case stud­ies and learn best prac­tices from lead­ing orga­ni­za­tions that are using the real-time Web to deliver bottom-line results.
Enter­prise 2.0	June 14–17	Boston
E2 takes a strate­gic per­spec­tive, empha­siz­ing the big­ger pic­ture impli­ca­tions of the tech­nol­ogy and the explo­ration of what is at stake for orga­ni­za­tions try­ing to change not only tools, but also cul­ture and process.
Social Net­work­ing Conference	June 16–18	Bev­erly Hills, Calif.
The annual event is for social net­work­ing exec­u­tives who have an inter­est in learn­ing about new tech­nolo­gies, busi­ness social net­work­ing, mar­ket­ing strate­gies, busi­ness man­age­ment, ven­ture cap­i­tal, net­works and mobile tele­com. Experts in man­age­ment, soft­ware, mobile tech­nol­ogy, ven­ture cap­i­tal and mar­ket­ing for social net­work­ing with expe­ri­ence with both the mobile/wireless mar­ket and the enter­prise social net­work­ing mar­ket will present.
SIME Barcelona	June 16–17	Barcelona, Spain
SIME is north­ern Europe’s largest con­fer­ence about the Inter­net and dig­i­tal oppor­tu­ni­ties with events in Helsinki, Stock­holm, Barcelona and now for the first time in San Fran­cisco. SIME brings together top exec­u­tives, mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als, afi­ciona­dos and mem­bers of the press. SIME is about how dig­i­tal oppor­tu­ni­ties can con­vert to new busi­ness and a bet­ter world.
Veloc­ity	June 22–24	Santa Clara, Calif.
Now in its third year, Veloc­ity — the Web Per­for­mance and Oper­a­tions Con­fer­ence from O’Reilly Media — is ded­i­cated to help­ing peo­ple build a bet­ter Inter­net that is fast by default. Join hun­dreds of web devel­op­ers and experts under one roof at the pre­mier con­fer­ence ded­i­cated to build­ing indus­trial strength sites at Inter­net speed
Inbound Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit — Chicago	June 23–24	Chicago
Chris Bro­gan presents the sec­ond in a series of social influ­ence mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences for 2010.
Cloud Com­put­ing World Forum	June 29–30	Lon­don
In this 2-day con­fer­ence and exhi­bi­tion, you’ll hear lead­ing case stud­ies about how busi­nesses have inte­grated cloud com­put­ing and Enter­prise 2.0 into their work­ing practices.

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