Online Influence (Oi) Conference 2016 (#OiConf)

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Oi Conference 2016
Yesterday (21st April 2016) I spent the day at Online Influence (Oi) Conference 2016 (@OiConf / #OiConf) in Cardiff, with Oi and Freshwater UK sorting me out with a blogger pass (thanks guys)! While most people call it a social media conference (and social media marketing is a big part of it), it covers a range of digital marketing elements, including video, content and user behaviour. Even SEO got a mention or two. 🙂

I have a confession to make though: I went last year, but had a bad experience. I think it was rotten luck… While the kick-off keynote was fantastic, I went to a few bad talks (speakers arguing, tech problems, sales pitches, etc.), lunch was a disaster (I couldn’t eat what was on offer due to food allergies), and there was of course the infamous #panelgate, when the awesome Miranda Bishop (@Miranda_Bishop) challenged – and subsequently joined(!) – the all-male panel at the end of the day.

This year though? Much, much better. The calibre of talks was high, and I took a lot away from them – I’d say that each talk gave me at least one or two holy-crap-I-didn’t-think-of-that takeaways that are useful to me.

Here are the talks that I went to, along with the main takeaways I took from them:

Leaping out of the feed (or don’t let your content be an octopus)

Simon Low, BuzzFeedSimon Low, BuzzFeed

The opening keynote was from Simon Low of BuzzFeed. Now I’m not a big fan of BuzzFeed, but 6 billion monthly visits?! You can’t argue with that.

Fair play, it was a cracking talk – a great way to start the day. Some standout make-you-think takeaways for me:

  • Traditionally, most content creators pour their heart and soul into creating great content but make little effort to promote it – Simon argued that it’s a 90/10 split. BuzzFeed however spend 50% of their time creating their content and 50% promoting it. They realise that great content doesn’t just get ‘found’, and that you have to put the effort in.
  • They also take the time to translate stories into multiple languages, which helps to spread their reach further.
  • During the Q&A, someone asked about the times when things don’t go well when BuzzFeed work with brands. Simon replied by saying that the more that the brand is courageous (and that they don’t ‘sanetise’ what BuzzFeed are doing), the higher the chance of success.

SxSW ’17: why you need to go and how to validate the cost

Gabby Shaw, ADLIBGabby Shaw, ADLIB Recruitment

I was interested in the Meltwater talk (“Digital influence: 4 steps towards getting it, guiding it and growing it”), which was taking place at the same time, but a little bird told me that all the Track A (main hall) talks were being filmed and uploaded online at a later date, so I decided to be strategic and visit other talks in other rooms. That said, I’ve always had an interest in going to SxSW, as I know a few people who have gone over the years.

Gabby talked about the benefits of going, but also made it clear that it can be a costly affair – not just the ‘hard’ costs (plane ticket, accommodation, etc.) but also the ‘soft’ costs, which people often forget about (time out of the office, less chance to liaise with colleagues and clients, etc.).

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3 Reasons Why I Might Not Share Your Roundup (Even If I’m Included in It)

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Over the years I’ve participated in a few roundups (a.k.a. crowdsourced content) – sometimes via HARO, sometimes by being approached directly by email. Whenever the latter happens, I’m always chuffed that someone’s asked me and wants me to get involved with what they’re putting together. However, a few recent roundup experiences have left me a little… unhappy. I know that sounds harsh, perhaps even ungrateful, but there’s been a few bugbears with them that I’d like to share, so that other roundup rounder-uppers can avoid them if they can. I don’t know about you, but if I’m included in a roundup that fits one of these three criteria, it’s unlikely that I’ll promote it on your behalf (sorry)…

1) There’s too many people in it

Crowd imageI get the appeal of roundups, on both sides. The contributor gets a link to their site. The ‘host’ (for lack of a better word) not only gets content written for them, but the contributors are likely to share it and promote it on their behalf. If 5 people are included, that’s 5 potential tweets/RTs. If 50 people are included… well, you get it.

I was recently part of a roundup that included over 100 contributors – so many, in fact, that while there’s a pic of a bunch of the contributors, I’m not even one of them, hah! I’m sorry but that’s just too big a number to even be readable – either people will glance through it and/or read the first few, or they’ll simply look for people that they know and only take their contributions on board.

2) There’s no women in it

Graffiti imageAs a young, white, middle-class male, I feel like a complete jerk for even bringing it up – but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t. Rand Fishkin (@randfish) shares this way of thinking and is a good person to follow on the subject in our industry.

A recent roundup that I was involved in contained about 12 people – a nice, decent number. The only problem? There were 12 men (including me) and 0 women. I didn’t share/tweet/RT it – I was too ashamed to.

The same also applies to ethnic minorities. No one likes an all-white, all-male list. Not even white males.

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I’m Leaving SEO to Start a Career in Modelling

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** Sorry, modelling industry! This was an April Fool. See my AF from 2014 here. **

The other day I announced the launch of Cardiff SEO Meet. It’s generated a bit of PR interest (due out next week), and in addition to being asked to pass on info about the meetup, I was asked to provide a photo. Rather than to simply pass on a picture of the logo and call it a day, I decided to get some proper photos done. Joe of Eyes Open Media kindly took some photos of me in Welsh ICE‘s courtyard.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I hate how I look in photos (this is one of the only photos I’ve ever liked, which is why it was my avatar on Twitter, LinkedIn and almost everything else for 5+ years…). Joe’s done an extraordinary job, but I’m a self-critical git who hates various facial features.

Steve Morgan Cardiff SEO Meet photo 1
Steve Morgan Cardiff SEO Meet photo 2
Steve Morgan Cardiff SEO Meet photo 3

  • Uneven eyes? Check.
  • Crooked teeth? Check.
  • Horrendous bags under my eyes? CHECK.

But then… from out of nowhere… one photo bowled me over:

Steve Morgan Zoolander pose photo
Oh my.

Let me just zoom in on that:

Steve Morgan Zoolander pose (close-up) photo
That look – that Zoolander-style pose – made me realise something. I can do this. I can do this for a living. No more keyword research. No more inbound link building strategising. No more 301s, 404s, canonicals or hreflang. I am a born model.

Just so long as I do that pose. And only that pose. Ever.

…But I’m confident that I can.

So here I am, making this announcement via blog post – just like Jonathan Colman did years ago when he announced his move from SEO to UX. I hope that you will support me in my journey to modelling stardom.

Username Taken? Alternatives to the Dreaded “1” at the End

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Recently I fell in love with an Irish folk band called The Gloaming. I later found their Twitter profile, and quietly cringed when I saw their handle: @TheGloaming1…

@TheGloaming1 Twitter screenshot
@thegloaming is already taken by a Taiwanese lady who tweeted three times in 2011, never to tweet again (as I type this). Claiming inactive Twitter accounts is a whole other kettle of fish that I won’t be covering today – that’s not the purpose of this post. What I wanted to talk about instead is what The Gloaming could’ve done instead of simply sticking a “1” at the end of their username, which looks really, really outdated and technologically naïve…

If you have a business/startup name that’s already been taken on Twitter (or perhaps the .com TLD as well/instead) and you don’t fit the criteria of Twitter’s inactive account policy to claim it, hopefully some of these suggestions will help you out.

Alternatives to “TheGloaming1”

“TheGloaming” is 11 characters long (without quotes), and Twitter’s username character limit is 15 characters. So they have an extra 4 characters to play around with. They could consider dropping the “The” and/or chopping part of it (e.g. “TheGloaminMusic” is 15 characters, but removing the “g” at the end of “Gloaming” looks naff IMO), but I think it’d look best if they keep the “TheGloaming” element pretty much untouched and simply add words/initials around it. Such as:

  • Reference of band/music – e.g. @TheGloamingBand
  • Genre – e.g. @TheGloamingFolk
  • Country (initials) – e.g. @TheGloamingIE

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Introducing… Cardiff SEO Meet

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Cardiff SEO MeetCardiff has a lot of awesome stuff going for it. Meetups and communities for entrepreneurs. Meetups and communities for designers. Meetups and communities for web and software developers. Meetups and communities for digital folk. But there’s nothing specific to SEO. Wait for it… Wait foor ittt… Until now!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Cardiff SEO Meet. A few months ago I asked about a dozen or so SEOs native to South Wales for their thoughts on running an event of this type (a huge, HUGE thank you to everyone who responded – I owe y’all a drink!) and teased on State of Digital that I would put something together in the beginning of the year. Unfortunately I got pretty busy and couldn’t get anything sorted until now, but better late than never eh?

Got questions? Good, ‘cos I’ve got answers!

Topic? Err… SEO. Well, SEO and stuff related to SEO, so I’m happy to introduce elements that aren’t strictly SEO but are closely related to SEO, so other digital marketing topics. BrightonSEO started doing this a few years ago and it went down really well.

Who’s it for? Everyone is welcome. Whether you’re a part-time or full-time SEO working agency-side, in-house or freelance, or a digital marketer with another specialism (e.g. social media, email marketing, etc.) with an interest in SEO, or a small business owner or blogger who wants to learn a bit about how to do it yourself, I’m hoping that there’ll be something for everyone. I’m going to try my best to balance the talks and topics so that nothing’s too beginner and nothing’s too advanced, so that everyone can get the most out of it.

When? Once a quarter, with the first one starting in May. I’m hoping to finalise and confirm the date in the next few days, so keep an eye on the Meetup page for the details. I’m aiming for either a Wednesday or Thursday evening towards the end of the month. Then the same again in August, then November, then February, and so on…

Once a quarter? Why not monthly? Honestly? I don’t know if there’d be the demand for monthly. Plus I don’t want to be a position where I struggle to find speakers for the events (which is what happened to Unified Diff). If I’m wrong though then I’m happy to bring it up to bi-monthly, and then monthly. But let’s see how the first few go first, yeah?

Where? The upstairs of the mighty Urban Tap House in Cardiff city centre, which is fairly close to Cardiff Central Station and various car parks (including St David’s 2). I adore their burgers (they even have tasty gluten-free options!) so it’s a delight to be able to host it there.

How much? It’s free entry.

What’s the format? In addition to talks, I have the idea to run public site reviews, where people volunteer their sites to be audited and we (as the audience) offer advice on what to do. I don’t think anyone’s ever done it before – and I completely realise and admit that that might be because it’s an absolutely horrendous idea…! But we’ll give it a go in May and see how it goes. The survey suggested that a lot of people are interested in the idea, and I think that it’d be a good way to learn a few handy SEO tips as a group.

Who are the sponsors? Well, seeing as I’ve set it up and have been paying for all the costs myself… me (or Morgan Online Marketing to be exact). And Computer Recruiter.

How do I keep updated? A dedicated website* is on its way (when I have time to throw them together), but in the meantime, please join the Meetup page and/or follow @CardiffSEOMeet on Twitter.

* For the time being, cardiffseo.events redirects to www.meetup.com/Cardiff-SEO-Meet/ – yes, with a 301 redirect (I double-checked)…

I have more questions! Tweet me, leave a comment below or start a discussion on the Meetup page, my friend. 🙂

Lastly, I just want to say a big thank you to the event organisers and communities in South Wales for inspiring me to run something myself, especially Cardiff Start, Unified Diff and Cardiff Blogs – you guys rock. I used to put on events at uni and wanted to get into event management when I left uni but accidentally stumbled into SEO as a career path instead, so it’s good to be able to do this again. Feels weirdly full-circle, y’know? Anyway, I should probably end this blog post because I get philosophical or something…

See you in May!