I wonder if I am actually a Digital Native? I learned to code when the foundations for the digital economy were laid and I was into the Internet as soon as it was out. I haven’t watched TV since approximately the day the world wide web was launched. I was fairly early on Twitter but did resist quite a long time before opening a Facebook account. I feel really digitally native. And when I was a teenager, I definitely had FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). I even wrote the very definition of it in my little notebook: “So many express trains I have to catch”. The stress of youth in the wide world of wonders.

According to the demographics, however, my children fit the definition of the Digital Native better than I do.

In recent years the term FOMO (fear of missing out) has become quite popular and has even been added to dictionaries. It is usually connected with the always-on generation of Digital Natives – you know – the generation that were raised on Youtube tutorials and who eat Instagram for breakfast. There is actually scientific research showing that the effect of social media on your brain is similar to that of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. How cool is that? – drugs that don’t hurt your body, only your brain, available day and night.

But social media also has another effect on people. Have you noticed how everyone is always happy and good looking on social media? I reconnected with a friend IRL (in real life) a while back and told him how happy I was for him because he always seemed to be having a great time. And then he said “Ah, you know, a divorce is never fun”. He didn’t even know I didn’t know. When his wife suddenly changed last name on Facebook, that was a big event as well. Most people had no clue. And I count them both as friends. Sort of. Well more than Facebook friends at least…

I think most users of social media feel that pressure of having to look good, be seen with the right people, do the right activities. Do we have any social media burn-outs yet? I think they are on their way for those who are in always-on mode.

And then there are those who are not on all the time. The you’s and me’s. Well, I am actually on quite regularly in my efforts to build awareness for the Search Strategies Report I published, but it just means I have the FOLS more often than most. We are the ones who are a little reluctant to show our faces, our bodies, our kids, our house, our car. When you then, for some reason – personal or professional – feel that you must post on social media, it suddenly strikes you. The Fear of Looking Stupid. FOLS-struck. I have known for a long time that I have it.

And then I recently discovered that FOLS is not just something I have. I think this was in a discussion on Twitter with a new friend who had acquired some internet fame thanks to videos he made and who told about the number of rounds of his living room he would do before going in front of the camera. He is definitely part of this other group of digital natives that are really uncomfortable in front of a screen and seeing themselves on camera. Not that you can see it when he is live of course… In that discussion I suggested he maybe was suffering from FOLS as well. I told him the solution was definitely Nike. I also shared – and regretted afterwards – how stupid, old and with a deformed face, I look when I do video reports. Aargh.

I googled the term afterwards, discovered that Fear of Looking Stupid was real although I thought I had just invented it. Other people talking about FOLS, the younger brother of Imposter Syndrome. I also started noticing discussions on the more professional network, LinkedIn, between people who were surely less digitally native than myself asking how to expand your network on social networks and getting the same range of ever-lasting by-the-book good-and-friendly advice from well-meaning peers: publish outstanding content, share engaging concepts, comment and interact in relevant discussions. “Yes, but what if I look totally stupid when I ask a question?”, what if people I know suddenly realize how Human I am, despite my SuperHero avatar?

The answer is Nike again, Just do it.

The thing is we have an invisible guardian angel. It is the social media algorithm itself. It will come to our rescue whenever we look moderately stupid or give silly or uninteresting comments. When nobody reacts to our publications, the algorithm will penalize that content. Uninteresting. Not worth sharing further. Not monetizable via advertising as people don’t care. And therefore nobody sees it. My new friend in that twitter discussion ignored my last comment – thank heaven – and my silly message just drowned in the vast ocean of never-seen content on the internet thanks to my guardian angel.

People don’t talk so much about Fear of Looking Stupid – do you know why? Well, because they are afraid they will look stupid when they do. So really, be fearless, most of what you publish on the internet will never be seen and most of your comments will not generate any reaction. Just as most web pages are never visited and most blog posts never read. There are very few exceptions: if you have more sworn enemies than loyal friends or prone strongly controversial standpoints. In those cases, you can become infamous really quickly as your smallest false step will be detected and bloated up by those who don’t appreciate you. But frankly, that is the case for a small minority of people and you are surely not one of them, so walk without fear, express your opinions, they are worth it! Share your ideas, exchange with people, like things you like and ask questions when in doubt.

Almost like in real life.

Liverpool is home to wonderful Beatles statues, to the Ferry cross the Mersey, to seagulls and Liver birds.

Liverpool was also host the the European Search Conference 2018 earlier this week. A one-day conference with a great line-up I was happy to be part of.

Chaired by Jim Banks, the one-day conference had several good friends speaking: Aleyda Solis, Lukasz Zelezny, Pierre Far and Dawn Anderson and then some new friends Zbigniew Nowicki from Bluerank, Matt Vignieri from Kenshoo, Vicke Cheung from Distilled.  I can not do everyone justice in this post. Rob Weatherhead, Michelle Wilding, Dewi Nawasari.

A Jim Banks quote is in place:

“It feels like they have picked all the speakers with names that are impossible to pronounce”.

Aleyda as always impressive with solid advice on web migration, Pierre Far going deep into GDPR and providing a tracking solution, Blockmetry, that supports it, Dawn Anderson showing us where Voice search is going.

Automation

Lukasz Zelezny did a great little presentation on Social Media: “things you can do tonight”. Hey Lukasz, I know you are tracking mentions, so I am sure you will find this post 😉 I love your tools and tricks on Automation, Social Media and brand monitoring. I too have fallen in love with IFTTT (although I later adopted Zapier) and with Sotrender for Social media monitoring.

I really enjoyed the fact that Lukasz was talking so much about Automation because it was one of the major trends I was going to address later on in my own presentation.

Machine Learning and AI

Zbigniew Nowicki from Bluerank presented a case study for their client Rainbow. I didn’t know Zbigniew before the conference but I knew his company Bluerank very well as they were a double winner at this year’s European Search Awards and also one of the companies I referenced in my own presentation. The case study was about the user journey and attribution in the Travel sector where bluerank have applied a machine learning approach to finding the most important step in the user journey. Fascinating research. Machine learning and AI is a major trend in digital marketing and it was great seeing this addressed from someone else than the big masters of AI, the Gafa, Microsoft and IBM who are traditionally dominant in the field.

 The importance of Research

Vicke Cheung from Distilled, presented the 10 Commandments for the Creative process and what I really liked about her presentation was the emphasis she laid on the Research process. There was a nice quote from Ogilvy about how Research can be boring but that it is extremely important. I found another one which I hadn’t heard before:

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

David Ogilvy

I was so into the research phase that I didn’t take down her 10 commandments on paper but I clearly remember the most important message about Ideation: “ideas come from dialogue”, confront them, present them, challenge them.

Of course, agencies doing more research for digital marketing is one of the major trends from my own presentation, which I why I find it so important to stress…

Understanding the User journey

Matt Vignieri from Kenshoo told us a story of his own user journey in the last online purchase he made. He clearly illustrated how you are using different moments, different channels and how you state of mind is different from one step to the next in that journey towards a purchase or a conversion.

Kenshoo is a technology provider that allows you to track user exposure and engagement at various stages of the user journey and I was really happy he emphasized this as he was precisely on one of the major trends as well.

What are the best digital marketers doing that maybe you are not?

My own presentation was named Major trends in Paid Search and was based on research I have done into the best “PPC” entries in this years European Search Awards. In the presentation linked to on slideshare, I am providing a good view of just that.

However, the parts of the presentation I have not put on Slideshare were asking a slightly different question. What are the most advanced digital marketers doing? Well, you have some of the answers in the titles used in this post and some of them in the presentation. From the 24 PPC case studies I analyzed, the pattern that I could see was one of digital marketers constantly adapting to change, research for insights, trying to understand the user journey, trying new things, testing, raising the bar on what they already master by introducing processes, automation and machine learning. For the full story, come to my next conference but for a nice take on it, here is a tweet I liked from AgencyPedro summing it up:

My presentation can be found on slideshare here:

The European Search Conference 2018 was a great experience and I was really happy to get the opportunity to speak there and to discover the  great city of Liverpool.

If you like the content, please follow me on twitter for updates @soanders. It is likely that I push further on this research and publish more insights in the future and I will use Twitter to announce and share.

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To do a little more justice, please find below 3 other presentations on Slideshare:

The SEO guide for successful web migrations by Aleyda Solis: https://www.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/the-seo-guide-for-successful-web-migrations-eusearchcon

10 Commandments to demystifying the creative process by Vicke: https://www.slideshare.net/VickeCheung/the-10-commandments-to-demystifying-the-creative-process-103496955

Voice search and conversation – Challenges and opportunities by Dawn Anderson: https://www.slideshare.net/DawnFitton/voice-search-and-conversation-action-assistive-systems-challenges-opportunities

Web analytics and EU regulations by Pierre Far:
https://www.slideshare.net/PierreFar1/european-search-conference-liverpool-2018

Major Trends in Paid Search by Anders Hjorth: https://www.slideshare.net/secret/KnlwWEmoEkyvdI

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Write-up from Kanuka Digital: https://www.kanukadigital.com/2018/07/european-search-conference/

The main topics were of course Privacy and GDPR on one hand and then Automation and Artificial Intelligence on the other. In the conference programme, various topics touched on AI: Automation for PPC and Voice Search being the most prominent ones. But GDPR was discussed in every break, over every drink and in most of the questions asked during the individual sessions.

The conference addressed some really interesting questions this year:

• Should you use Ranking factor studies to guide the way you do SEO or simply use for inspiration?
• What are your options when organic reach in Facebook and other social media is dropping?
• Is AMP for mobile rendering or or just a temporary patch to a problem of speed?
• Should we be worried as marketers with the arrival of AI in the optimization interfaces?

Overall, there was a lot of discussion of Speed. Speed as a ranking factor – not time to first byte but time to full page render as Marcela de Vivo from Semrush stressed. There were session on AMP which are in essence a way to speed up pages.

At the beginning of the year, my prediction was that AI would be big but that it would be more of a hype effect than a reality for the Digital Marketer this year. Well, it looks like AI is more prominent than that. Frederick Valleys from Optymzr reminded us that the Quality score was the first Machine learning functionality in Adwords and has been around since the beginning of Paid Search. And we have seen new ML driven functionalities enter the scene little by little. The Smart bidding options (Target PPC, Target ROAS, Maximize Clicks and Maximise conversions) are all part of this, as Brad Geddes reminded us. And in a separate session, Ann Stanley showed an example of smart bidding for shopping campaigns involving remarketing: Optimize by Goals which you can find here.

What we won’t see is perhaps the shift from Machine Learning (ML) into Artificial Intelligence (AI) for these functionalities.

Voice search is another area where Artificial Intelligence has a big role to play. It was covered in the keynote by Beshad Bezhadi but also at a more concete level in a very popular session by Pete Campbell:

As is often the case, I met some wonderful people in the networking around the event – and also had some of the more interesting discussions off the record.

• Changes in the Google algorithm favouring niche approaches
• The need to constantly renew ourselves in this industry of constant change
• The need of business in other industries to learn from our experience as they will soon be facing the same challenges of constant change that we have for 20 years due to major technological, organisation and behavioural disruption across all business sectors.

Soon it will be time for SMX Paris – the programme is very different and there is no real speaker overlap so it will be another exciting conference on Search, Social, Analytics and Digital marketing overall.

I have analyzed 25 of the best entries in the European Search Awards in order to identify the major trends in Paid Search. I will be presenting the results on the European Search Conference in Liverpool next month.

Paid search was such a powerful marketing tool at its inception. In the early 2000s, Search Marketing would be a challenger to all media and communication budgets as it could drive volumes, drive conversions and even prove its value. Since then, Paid Search has become a bit more humble and opened up to the marketing mix and it is fascinating to see how Paid Search integrates with other channels; Social media, of course, but also Shopping engines, email and even offline.

Strategies, tactics, functionalities and hacks

I have structured the analysis around 4 different categories:

Strategies: for many years a Search Strategy would be built on 3 elements: Granularity, Expansion and Optimisation. We still see this approach in entries in 2018 but the more advanced strategies are looking at the wider user journey and are pulling data or inspiration from outside of the Search channel.

Tactics: it is at the tactical level that most of the trends are visible. The spectrum of tactics used seems to be expanding quite a bit. We see several tactics deployed within one entry.

Functionalities: the search engines are adding a lot of functionalities and Paid Search has become a complex beast. It was never really « 15 minutes and a credit card » as Google originally announced on the Adwords entry page. Extensions are some of the most adopted functionalities and we also see mentions of machine learning.

Hacks: some of the entries are using innovative techniques. I am hoping to be able to share some of these hacks in my presentation but can’t reveal anything at this stage.

I have been a Judge on the European Search Awards for the past 4-5 years. That has given me the priviledge to see some of the best work in Search Marketing carried out across Europe. The judging experience is very rich but also time-consuming and I believe these awards are doing a wonderful job of compensating excellent work and also of making a whole industry aim for excellence.

The Awards ceremony is a great celebration but there is no time available for celebrating the content of individual entries. Each year we see new ideas emerge and each year we see quality improve.

This presentation is an aim to share some of that experience so that the industry can build upon an even stronger foundation for coming years.

I hope to see you there.

European Search Conference 2018
27 June, 2018, Liverpool International Business Festival
https://www.europeansearchconference.com/
Discount code: ESC20SP

There are 29 different categories and I am convinced that most agencies, in-house teams and software editors will have at least 1 outstanding client story to submit.

Building and submitting a case study in itself can be an enriching experience and it also allows you to benchmark your organisation against the market. Will you make the shortlist? Could you win one of the trophees?

Shortlists are due to be published on the 23rd or March. And all the excitement will culminate in an amazing Event ceremony which will be held in Prague on 16 May.

You can submit your entry here: European Search Awards

Ideation, Viralisation, Brand Content, Native Advertising. I think it will be a lot of fun.

Hope to see you there!

Details here: Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference 2014

This will be my first time to Iceland and I am really looking forward to this. I will combine a great looking RIMC conference with the European Search Awards and additionally I will take an extra day to discover this amazing country I have been wanting to visit for many years.

Iceland, here we come!

We are launching something new called the Nordics track. This track which is on the second day of the conference will focus on the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic markets seen as a whole and from the outside.

There will be a focus on Ranking factors specific for the Nordics. What? Different ranking factors in different countries? Well as keyword morphology and backlink profiles are very different from one market to the next, ranking factors differ. Marcus Tober founder of SearchMetrics is aiming to do dedicated research on this for the conference.

In paid search, there are obvious differences also and I have convinced Sean Malseed from SEMrush to also do some dedicated research for this conference. He will be looking more specifically on the ecommerce sector and compare across the Nordic markets.

We are also planning to address the topic of “the Nordics as ONE market”. Adding the 5 populations together you reach some 25 million inhabitants. From a global marketers perspective that may not seem much but the market has some fascinating characteristics in terms of buying power, internet penetration, standard of living. Remains therefore the challenge of managing Search campaigns across 4-5 languages of which at least 3 are very close but not the same.

There will be plenty of reasons for coming to SMX Stockholm this year and catching the early bird AND an early flight booking can even make it quite affordable. Oh, and we will be aiming to do some SMX After Dark as well…

I will do some more updates on this event as we progress towards the final program and speaker line-up!

» RTB: From Search Marketing over Display Remarketing into Display Acquisition

This will be the second time I speak in Poland but my first time in Poznan. The presentation will go into depth on the mechanics of Display RTB & Remarketing for a Performance-driven client of BDBL MEDIA.  

I found the “Lovely French words” on a “Franchophile” blog named My Melange. The author suggested some of them and the community added the rest. My contribution was to sort them, give them weight and then throw them into Wordle.net. This is not scientific research but it does give us a nice cloud.

For those attending you will also see input from interviews I did with a handful of Search Marketing Industry Experts. Big thanks for their contributions to:

• Alan Boughen (Havas)
• David Towers (MEC)
• Marc Poirier (Acquisio)
• David Szetela (Vizion)
• Shahid Awan (Cheapflights)
• David Henry (Monster)
• David Carralon (British Council)

For those not attending ISS tomorrow, I hope to be able to provide the research in one form or the other at a later stage. I will make sure to announce that via twitter @soanders.

For those attending, you will get a chance to hear my own opinions as well – see you tomorrow 🙂