I’ll be in Toronto for the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo on June 8th and 9th. Please feel free to connect with me if you are also attending the show.

Getting the best of Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2009
Since SES is the biggest Canadian show in our industry, we (NVI) are looking to grow our presence in order to position NVI as a leading Canadian internet marketing company. In addition to our CEO’s (Guillaume) presentation on Canada-specific SEO + PPC Issues, Naoise Osborne (NVI’s SEO Team Lead) will also be part of a panel covering site performance tuning and SEO. On the top of that, NVI is also investing in a booth as well as into the sponsorship of the event’s official party. I’m looking forward to be in Toronto, hopefully I’ll meet you there, see you at the show!

L’annonce a été faite sur le blogue de l’événement: mardi soir prochain aura lieu le lancement de la seconde saison de 3e mardi | 3rd Tuesday Montreal. Au programme, nous aurons le plaisir de recevoir la désormais consacrée auteure-blogueure-conférencière Michelle Blanc qui (pour ce que je connais d’elle) se fera un malin plaisir à haranguer échanger sur un sujet d’actualité, soit les moyens privilégiés afin de sauver les journaux publications confinés à vivre avec les nombreux bouleversements qu’amène l’avènement des nouveaux médias.

Quelques pistes de réflexion afin d’optimiser le rendement des journaux
Dans ce même ordre d’idées, nous avons récemment collaboré chez NVI à une série d’article proposant des moyens et des réflexions pour l’industrie des journaux. Deux de nos articles, Can Improved Online Subscriptions Save Newspapers? écrit par Simon Abramovitch et Britney, Lindsay, and Recession; Why they increase Readership & Ad Revenue rédigé par Guillaume Bouchard, ont notamment été publié dans le Hollywood Today. On y souligne notamment l’opportunité pour les médias de profiter de leur version papier afin de promouvoir la version en ligne, et vice versa, l’article cite en exemple The Chicago Tribune qui s’acquitte avec brio de cette tâche paraissant pourtant si simple. Il est également question de ne pas négliger le référencement organique lors de la sélection et du déploiement d’une plate-forme de gestion de contenus pour un site de nouvelles ainsi que de la possibilité de produire et publier du contenu sur mesure pour des verticaux niches prédéterminées par les intérêts du lectorat. Il devient ainsi possible de développer une communauté basée sur les préférences de nos visiteurs et par le fait même d’augmenter le niveau d’engagement de notre public.

Déjà un an pour 3e mardi | 3rd Tuesday Montreal
Hé oui, il y a déjà un an que nous présentions notre premier événement! C’est quand je pense à ces nombreuses soirées à se réunir afin de discuter de médias sociaux et de nouveaux médias que je considère vraiment ce que mon implication avec 3e mardi m’a apporté. De fait, bien plus qu’un moyen de rester au courant des nouvelles tendances dans l’applications des médias sociaux dans le domaine des communications, je retire avant tout d’agréables rencontres faites avec plusieurs personnes fortement impliquées dans l’industrie. Parmi ces rencontres, j’ai notamment grandement apprécié pouvoir discuté avec Steve Rubel lors de son passage en novembre. Bien que d’avoir tenu cette rencontre de novembre le même soir que Yulbiz et que quelques autres importants 5 à 7 ne fut probablement la plus judicieuse décision que notre comité ait prise, ceci permit néanmoins à moins d’une douzaine de chanceux de pouvoir obtenir un entretien exclusif avec l’un de ceux que plusieurs considèrent comme le guru de notre profession. Je garde également d’excellents souvenirs de ma rencontre avec Shel Holtz pour lequel j’ai profité d’une courte balade en auto afin de lui faire visiter brièvement notre merveilleuse ville. J’ai finalement particulièrement aimé la soirée où Steve Proulx (Voir) et Roberto Rocha (Montreal Gazette) partagèrent avec l’audiance des points de vues tout à fait différent dans l’utilisation qu’ils font de certains outils sociaux dans leur travail de journaliste.

En somme, de nombreux bons souvernirs et autant de belles rencontres. Sur ce, on se voit mardi soir prochain! Un merci également à nos commanditaires: CNW Telbec, Thornley Fallis, K3 Media et IABC/Montréal.

I’ll be one of the next Webcom speaker on November 12th. Here is the description of my session:

How to measure the impacts of SMO with 10 business cases made in Quebec
Because marketers sometimes find it difficult to have a fair measure of their ROI when it comes to the social media space, the conference aim to share results from a study on more than 10 SMO business case made in Quebec.

Over the last 12 months, NVI has collected data of more than 125 stories that were brainstormed, written, submitted and pushed to the top 6 news social site (digg/reddit/mixx/propeller/stumbleupon/yahoo buzz!) for medium to large Canadian brands. Let’s take a look at what SMO brought to these companies.

Even if the topic is already chosen, I’m still in the process of building the presentation. So, if there is anything that you would like me to cover during that 55 minutes speach, please let me know. For your information, I mainly plan to focus on social media optimization through social news sites but also want to bring as much as possible concrete examples made in Quebec. I’ll add more information on my conference in the following days/weeks within this post.

update 10.14.2008
Webcom was yesterday and everything went well. It’s always a pleasure to meet everyone from the industry. And as for my conference, i received good feedback, some told me that I was a bit nervous but that the content was really good. I mainly gave examples of concrete applications of the use of social medias to support your SEO efforts and to help creating a buzz by doing online PR. There are the business cases that I’ve mention during my talk:
-Canpages.ca [business case, results, a blog post]
-Tourimsme Alma [blog]
-Bounty Fishing [business case, a blog post]
-Pros du Party (Molson Dry) [le concours]
-Légendes urbaines (Canal D) [the viral clip, the release]
-débatpourtous.net
-Usernamecheck: interesting tool to check where your username is still available

Good question seen on twitter few minutes ago: Where do you get upcoming information about event such as Yulbiz, Webcom, Podcamp and other meet-ups? Of course, there are personnal blogs, Upcoming, Twitter updates, Facebook Groups and Events and other social sites but in order to get a maximal exposure should we have one place to look for all events? Or let me put it this way: should we take for granted that people interested in web related events are already social media users?

A good example of promoting events and keeping the community informed of what’s happening is what Heri at montrealtechwatch does with the right column of his blog: quite simple but a good way to showcase the different venues. As for internet marketing events or other social media meet ups, Nicolas Roberge‘s tweet gave me the idea of builing a work in progress list or these types of events, I’ll defenitely take much time later to complete the list but please also feel free to contribute in the comments.

Social Media Events in Montreal

1. Yulblog

Once a month Montréal bloggers get together in a very friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Usually 1st Wednesday of every month at La Quincaillerie. According to Patrick Tanguay who’s been taking care of the event for the last 3-5 years, ”it’s just an occasion to meet people and grab a beer. There’s talk about pretty much any and all subjects, not that much talk about blogs actually, aside from what’s your URL and what do you write about. There is no agenda and no organized setup, we just go there and meet people.”
[Yulblog site | reportage de yulblog sur Montreal.tv | Pourquoi venir au yulblog en vidéo]

2. Yulbiz

More business oriented than Yulblog, Yulbiz gives a monthly opportunity to network with bloggers on every last Tuesday. Event takes places at Café Méliès. The concept was exported to many international cities such as Bordeaux, Barcelona and Strasbourg. Michelle Blanc explains that she and Philippe Martin have started the meet-up when they both wrote an open invitation on their blog to reunite Montreal business bloggers.
[Yulbiz site | reportage de yulbiz sur Montreal.tv]

3. Yultour

Yultour réunit les gens de l’industrie touristique qui s’intéressent aux technologies et au e-tourisme en général ainsi que les blogueurs d’affaires qui s’intéressent au tourisme. Yultour is directly inspired by Yulbiz and targets the tourism and cultural industry. Yultour started in 2007 and doesn’t take place on a monthly basis. So far, there has been three meetings covering topics such as the use of Facebook in tourism industry and the culture 2.0. The main differnce between Yultour and Yulbiz is that the event always features a 10 to 20 minutes conference while the rest of the evening is mainly about networking.
[YulTour site | reportage sur Yultour par Intruders.tv]

4. 3e mardi | 3rd Tuesday

3e mardi |Third Tuesday Montréal is a monthly meetup to learn about and discuss the practical applications of social media within their industry. PR and marketing professionals interested in the social media phenomenon meet on (or around) the third Tuesday of each month to hear from and speak with guest speakers who are experts in the field of social media. The informal conferences are also a great opportunity to network with peers who are active in the field. The meet up features a presentation from an social media expert covering topics such as social media PR, online video or business cases involving social media marketing. 3rd Tuesday also takes place in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and other Canadian cities.

[3e mardi | 3rd Tuesday blog | sponsors: CNW Telbec, Massy-Forget relations publiques, K3 Media, 76designs]

5. Podmtl

PodMtl (Pod Montreal) is a gathering of podcasters, listeners and anyone that is interested in this new phenomenon that is podcasting. The event is open to everyone and is occuring every months. Event takes usually place at Sergent Recruteur.
[podmtl site]

Between a kick-off event presented last Monday in Toronto and a Cross-Canada road show scheduled to visit Halifax, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Canada) new Mixx Canada event has stopped today for a full day conference in Montreal. Even if the conference name has changed (it used to be branded as Interactive to the Max, the concept stays the same: conferences and panels sessions about interactive media advertising.

After a very welcomed but quick networking breakfast, well-known blogger and internet marketing consultant Michelle Blanc first took the stage to present a conference called: Building Your Business By Blogging. Blanc introduces blogs as an editing technology combined with a communicational philosophy. She notes that every company in every industry can blog and surely can gain something out of it. She gives the examples of few companies from Quebec that have experienced important success with blogging such as Ice.com, Dessins Drummond, Provocat and Marché du Vieux Longueil. Michelle Blanc suggests that any given company should start with an internal blog in order to get use to the practice and once comfortable, they could use the tool to share their knowledge and their expertise beyond the borders of their enterprise. According to Blanc, blogs offer an incredible opportunity to show the world how you master some specific topics related to your industry. If you read French than you can take a look at her slides here: PDF link.

Following Michelle Blanc on the stage was a pannel of experts on the video’s next generation of advertising products. Speakers were Neil Sweeney (StreamTheWorld), Jeff Sundheim (Yahoo! Canada), Mark Coleman (DoubleClick/Google), Chris Johnston (Brightcove) and artist Pierre Côté (Gramsclo). If it wasn’t clear for some before, we’ve understand during the session that there is no single right format for the advertsing video industry. It seems that expectations for video revenu are high and that viewers tolerate ads as they don’t have any other choice to live with them. It also seems obvious that people prefers 7 seconds pre-rolls spots rather than 15s or 30s ones, in fact users tend to remove all video ads when possible. Besides that, video ads are facing other challenges as they will need to improve their solutions for local adverstising as well as they will need to incorporate better SEO in the near future.

+++

Kudos to the organization of Mixx Canada for making the conference a completely carbon neutral event and also for inviting bloggers (including myself) to cover the day. It’s always great to hear about what people is doing into our industry and I’m always pleased to meet and exchange with such great folks.

Interlocking Stones : Decisions, Techniques and Styles to turn daily downloads from 20 to 2000 – Mark Blevis
Podcaster are passionates, not experts
If you are memorable, people will take about you
Interlocking stones, tight together with passion
If you have a partner/spouse in your life who is also passionated about, that really helps

Please Don’t Suck! -Sylvain Grand’Maison
Is Bigger really better or do they just suck on a larger scale ?
How deep is your love, the only way the receive lovee is to give, so please comment first

The New New Music – Fans, Community And What Business Can Learn From An Industry In Peril – M.Joel and D.Usher
We are taking away the core product of the whole music industry: the cd – M.J.
Back in the days, we used to look at the charts and the numbers – D.U.
All I can judge my success now is about how the relationship with my community gos (selling shows) – D.U.
Music is a way to connect with people – D.U.
It’s not about ‘how many’ but about ‘who’ – M.J.
If you don’t get a reaction, you suck – M.J.

David Usher on the New Music

Audience listening at Mitch Joel and David Usher

Sylvain Grand’maison and a photographer

So far, I’ve found these reactions on the blogs, How was your week-end???
- My Saturday at PodCamp Montreal – At home with Kim
- De l’utilisation des bons outils en baladodiffusion par Michel Dumais – biotope.tv
- Podcamp Montreal Day 1: Considering Ourselves – SuzeMuse
- Podcamp Montreal 2008 – Debrief – Mike Kujawski
- PodCamp Montréal : non, je n’ai pas profité du soleil… – Claude Malaison
- PodCamp Montreal : Blogues et relations publiques – Muriel Ide, blogue de l’AMM
- Retour sur PodCampMontreal – inevernu

I’ll be at PodCamp Montreal this week-end, so if you’re going and that we haven’t met in the past, feel free to say hello (just to let you know, I’ll try to wear my new NVI shirt).

Since the event is organized by few of my friends (Laurent, Michelle, Laurent,…) and that some of my friends (including Jerôme, Kim, Michelle, Mitch and more) will also be speaking, the whole week-end quickly became a must. Even if the happening hasn’t started yet, I surely can say that I’m very impressed by what people behind this week-end had already set: great conference line up, nice updated blog + an upcoming live feed through Ustream, what else could we expect… they even have a social media breakfast + an opening ceremony on Friday night. Hopefully I’ll meet a lot of other social media geeks there. See you soon!

Pictures of Podcamp

There are some pictures from PodCamp Montreal on my Flickr

How Canadian search industry is different than the American? According to Yahoo’s SEM National Director, Martin Byrne, Canadian companies might be missing the boat. We are way behind the States in SEM expenses. Byrne made a quick test to check how many paid results would show up for online banking services. While they are about 10 PPC ads in yahoo.com, there are about 5 sponsor results in yahoo.ca and even less when searching in French. These results show that Canadian companies don’t take all the opportunity available.

Eric Morris, Account Executive for Google Canada points out 3 main differences:
1- Canadians are very loyal to Google in comparison of other countries
2- We are facing a bilingual reality
3- the industry is much more developed in the States

According to Morris, US companies have already shifted budgets from traditional channels to internet marketing. While Canadian begin to use and understand all the possibilities of analytics, US companies focus on the next steps of search such as contextual targeting for mobile.

Last on the panel, Guillaume Bouchard from NVI presented a look a the landscape of the SEM in Province of Qubec. Guillaume said that online sales would probably be higher if debit payment was widely accepted because Quebecers use more debit than credit card payment which is not the case in the States. It seems that Quebec users trust their banks before 3rd party websites such as PayPal. Also good to know that Quebec online market is mainly owned by 3 actors: PowerCorp, Transcontinental and Quebecor.

I’m leaving today for SES Toronto ’08 with 6 of my colleagues. Guillaume will be presenting on the State of Search Marketing in Canada panel and I plan to cover some of the panels during the two days event. I know that Simon and Louis-Dominic from Adviso will also be there. I don’t know about other Montrealers (I think Mitch is presenting also). In fact, I didn’t get the chance to take a look at the speakers but I’ve already selected few panels that I might be covering:

-Universal & Blended Search
-The State of Search Marketing in Canada
-Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions
-What’s Different About B2B? Tailored Strategies
-Social Media Success
-Web 2.0 & Search Engines
-Giving Credit Where It’s Due: Which Campaign Sold What?

update: Some pictures from the SES Toronto Show, so far

Thanks for the people at PAN Communications who provided me a media pass for the whole event! More to come…

With three different tracks all branded 2.0 (marketing 2.0, enterprise 2.0 and solutions 2.0) this year’s edition of Webcom Montreal was all about this move toward a more social, collaborative and interactive web. I didn’t get the chance to attend the whole event but since I was participating in Webcamp, the off-Webcom event, I was allowed to go to some of the keynotes.

Andrew McAfee from HBS on Enterprise 2.0
Andrew McAfee was first to present in the morning and I would say that the audience had large expectations regarding his conference. In fact, McAfee is credited with first coining the expression ‘Enterprise 2.0′, that definitely brings some authority to the guy. So, McAfee explained that the only reason why he looked at this 2.0 thing is because he wanted to walk away from this whole thing, to convince himself that he could quickly go back to his usual researches. But everything changed when he started exploring Wikipedia: he realized then that technology strongly impacts on the organizational environment. He gave us the example of Intrawest where an idea from a single employee shared all around the company resulted in half a million in savings. According to McAfee, the enterprise 2.0 is going to increase differences among companies and these differences will become much more important in the future. If you are interested in the topic, I would recommend you to check his blog where he goes deeper into concepts such as capturing and sharing knowledge across ties.

Pierre-Karl Péladeau on Quebecor 2.0
I know that PK Péladeau wasn’t really familiar with his speach sales pitch but he still represents a powerful media empire in Province of Quebec and since his company is a major Internet Service Provider, I think his point of view of the 2.0 thing was more than welcomed. Quebecor also has a huge presence into the traditional media landscape and PK Péladeau knows certainly that his corporation won’t have the choice to adopt new business models sooner or later. They are working on a community website called EspaceCanoe and they’ve been experiencing really good things lately: RSS feeds, embeddable videos , they have a community manager and blogs, they are feeding the community with contests and more. It’s always good to see mainstream Medias embracing some of the 2.0 tools.

What really brought the 2.0 to Webcom : Videopresse

Webcom organisation: Claude Thibault, Claude Malaison, Marc Chioini and Christian Aubry from Videopresse

I think that the greatest move from Webcom’s organisation was to partner with VideoPresse in order to broadcast live from the event. It’s pretty hard to make a conference really interactive, unless you present on a Q&A panel, but the broadcast brought another dimension to the whole event. In fact it gave access to the speakers to anybody on the web that couldn’t be part of the day. Greatest thing is that Christian Aubry and Laurent Maisonnave, who did the interviews, were also taking questions from the chat room. They managed to interview most of the speakers during the day, including me who spoke about Webcamp. My boss Guillaume went also in front of the camera since we (NVI) were presenting on two different conferences at this event.