Marty Weintraub will be speaking about “Advanced Social Media Tactics” at SearchFest 2012, which will be held February 24, 2012 at The Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
Thanks Todd! Well, since you asked… :). I’m the author of "Killer Facebook Ads" (Wiley/Sybex 2011) & CEO of aimClear®, an online search & social marketing agency that has managed Facebook ad campaigns generating over 30 billion impressions internationally. Over the years we’ve gotten to work with righteous clients including MarthaStewart.com, Siemens, Second Life & other global brands. I’m a direct response search marketer by trade with a long history with SEO and PPC. Last month I keynoted MediaPost Search Insider Summit. In 2012 my speaking travels will include London, Israel, New York, Australia, Boston, San Diego, Chicago, San Francisco & numerous other cities around the world. I am a very lucky person.
I’ve had the privilege of writing extensively for SearchEngineWatch, SearchEngineLand, SearchEngineRoundTable & been quoted in many publications. My "home" blog, aimClear Blog, was cited as a Technorati Top 10 Small Business Blogs, Cison Top Ten Social Media Blogs & PRWeb’s 25 Essential Public Relations Blogs You Should Be Reading.
My background is as a musician, which led me to writing jingles. From there, advertising agencies began inviting me to the creative table, which lead to a job as Creative Director of a CBS station. THAT led to building out their first website and working with salespeople to bundle "interactive" into traditional media sales. That was back in the mid-90s. Next stop for me was leading a fledgling interactive department for a venerable regional advertising agency which, after I did not buy it, became Westmoreland Flint. It was at that point that I started taking online marketing jobs, which later led me to start aimClear 5 years ago. We’re about twenty strong now and growing fast, with offices in Duluth and St. Paul, Minnesota.
2) Since you sent your book to press several months ago, what new trends have you noticed in Facebook advertising?
Like all online marketing paradigms, much has stayed the same and some has changed. The # (hashtag) was a big deal, as FB rolled up inventory. Also the editorial process is getting much tighter, social segments are being hidden and/or cleaned up, costs are rising, competitors are clogging things up and there are fewer ads on the user’s main page. Also, there are rumblings in Europe that FB targeting may be a bit too much for the paranoid, misinformed and myopic politicians abroad. Remember, these folks scuttled cookies! Dude, Facebook Ads are like guns. Criminals kill people, not guns. OK, I don’t really believe that but chill OUT! Facebook is free software and, if users are silly enough to use it for free, in exchange for serving their data up for advertisers to target…tough darts!
3) How will +1 evolve over the next couple years and how will it impact the SERPS?
Even though +1 sort of sucks and, relative to Google’s size it’s not THAT big a deal, the sampling is still large enough to influence SERPs in ways that positively effect Google’s mission to serve up tasty SERPs. That said, who knows if the good folks using Google +1 now will remain committed to the banana. I’ve always believed that Google users do not go to Google to be social. They go there to search for things. Still, it looks like this latest round of spaghetti thrown at the wall may stick and Google +1 could remain a viable product for the long term.
+1 has some cool feature ideas but, in terms of user experience, pales compared to Facebook IMHO. Google has other tools that are extremely useful for keeping SERPs copacetic. For instance, I think the rel="author" and the canonical tags are vitally important to keeping the SERPs clean, arguably with equal impact to +1. One thought though: If Google +1 catches on and even a somewhat representative sampling of Google users participate, then +1 could have a massive effect in surfacing content as advised by social.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.
Good Interview and thanks for the information regarding the Social Media Websites.
Marty you really are the best. Keep helping us find great was to engage with our customers online.