Having worked in SEM for around 18 months I think there is still a lot I don’t know, so I think this will be a great learning experience for me. I’m particularly looking forward to finding out more on video optimisation and mobile in Europe (Greg Jarboe and Bas van den Beld) also, as I use Twitter regularly, I think the presentation by Oscar Carreras on: Twitter – An International Strategy, will be most informative.

Hopefully there will be a few of us tweeting, so follow us #ISSLON @IntSearchSummit @J__9 @jennysimpson @davidecorradi… to find out more if you can’t make it!

Are you going to ISS? If so, who are you looking forward to seeing and why?

Also follow #isslon on Twitter for live updates.

Andy Atkins-Kruger kicked things off by thanking Sante J Achille for attending.  Sante is not the only speaker who has flown in for the event, but he has special circumstances as he lives in l’Aquila, the Italian city destroyed by earthquakes.

The first presentation was from Anne Kennedy about the global reach of Facebook.  Anne had lots of insights on the growth of Facebook, their success in part due to their successful localisation project.

Then it was my turn to speak (too quickly).  My subject was the opportunities and threats of marketing through Twitter.  I was surprised to see that at least 2/3 of attendees used Twitter.  My basic viewpoint is that there are lot of opportunities, but don’t be misled by the simplicity of Twitter – put in as much effort into planning as you would with any other campaigns…

I also believe that Twitter as a search engine has great possibilities for growth.

After a break, Nicole Vanderbilt of Bebo and Regina Bustamante of Plaxo spoke about the services offered by their social media sites.  Regina also shared information on their complex translation and localisation process.

Peter Crosby of Viadeo explained how they turned a French start-up into a global professional network.  He kept us on our toes with some live text voting and emphasised that their success in going global was based on taking very local approaches in each country.  Weirdly, it turns out I am following his brother on Twitter, small world and all that…

After lunch Andy, Dixon Jones of Receptional and Kristjan Mar Hauksson of Nordic eMarketing had their traditional battle, this time they each championed a “future of web marketing”.  Kristjan said nothing would ever be more successful than Google and was amusingly dismissive of Twitter’s ineffective search results.  Dixon argued that Facebook was the future model, because of its stickiness and the engagement it offers users.

Andy was pretty convincing sating that Twitter will be the future, but he lost the vote to Kristjan.  (Dixon later tweeted that he had been robbed!)

Moving onto blogs.  Vasco Sommer-Nunes of Mokono spoke on how to monetise blogging and Sante went through international blogging strategies, a subject that he is an expert in.  He also mentioned the importance of Flickr  - look out for the pictures from the conference on there soon! (Update – pictures from ISS London are already up, more coming from WebCertain

Then trends – Alex Burmeister of Nielsen online provided lots of in depth information on tracking and analytics – basically proving once again that social media is growing at an unstoppable rate.

More coming soon…

…continued

Tom Smith from Trendstream continued the analytic / statistics theme.  There was an awful lot to take in from both of them, one things that will definitely interest Stats-Fans – Nielsen are committed to making more of their data generally avaiable.

After a break, we had a passionate presentation from Massimo Burgio @massimoburgio (Massimo had an adventure getting to the conference from Barcelona with all sorts of travel problems – he arrived about 15 minutes before he was set to speak…)

Massimo’s presentation was a call to arms and all about the need for SEMs to change their attitudes, in line with the changes in search behaviour.

Following Massimo was my colleague Oscar Carreras with the brief to discuss SEO techniques in Social Media.  Oscar firmly believes that blogging is the way to go (I agree with him) because blogs allow synchronisation between channels – and the content is ideal for using in campaigns, in comparison to point-of-sale pages).

And wrapping things up, Martin Belam (@currybet), information architect from the Guardian spoke about How Major Publishers are Using Social Media to Drive Traffic.  Being an old news hound, this is my kind of subject and I touched on it briefly in my presentation – Twitter is an excellent news channel.

Even people weren’t as into that subject as I am were really enjoying the presentation, with an incidental Star Trek theme to the slides.  Martin (who was speaking for himself and not representing The Guardian – he has a disclaimer and everything), nevertheless spoke about a new project at The Guardian, the release of content – for free!

This caused a bit of a ruffle in a room full of marketers – could and should this be a model for other organisations and sectors?

Here is Volker Ballueder’s reivew of the ISS London.

Find tweets from the day on Twitter under #isslon

Please share your comments or useful links for information about the conference.

With virtual social networking taking the world by storm it’s no wonder marketers have already jumped on the band wagon promoting their businesses and colleagues, for example, the use of Twitter has totally entranced our colleagues here @ WebCertain, follow: @globalppc @starbuck8 @jennysimpson @davidsegal @davidecorradi @ballueder @WebCertain @J__9 @YorkSEO @globalseo @andyatkinskruge @seoprtips @newscertain @WebCertain_DE @AnaVLeckenby @oscarcarreras, for updated information on specialised areas of multilingual search!

Promoting the latest international search summit, general information about PR, SEO, link building, PPC etc… has developed a wider knowledge on each subject, by sharing and re-tweeting relevant data to enhance the specialised knowledge arena WebCertain hold.

Many businesses and organisations are using online facilities and companies such as WebCertain not only for English articles, as we are multilingual; multiple languages from across the globe play a large part in how they operate, especially for clients. Online PR is a great way of getting your company, news / press releases / data, relayed around the world, especially using press release sites with an overseas domain, rather than the traditional offline methods. This however, does vary upon client needs; everyone wants something different and to be unique, so be adaptable and knowledgeable on your subject arena to create the best possible service for your company and your clients!

“On travel companies not reviewing Web 2.0/Social Media as part of a comprehensive Internet marketing and distribution strategy, together with website re-designs and optimisations, search marketing, email marketing, strategic linking, online sponsorships and display advertising: Many travel companies don’t have the resources or confidence to think holistically.” said Scott McNeely, Director of Consumer & Affiliate Web, Viator Inc. also recommends that travel suppliers should constantly update content.

take a look..

The need to keep up-to-date with social media and business is imperative to promote the brand as much as possible…SEO, SEM, link building, web design etc

The WebCertain International Search Summit event about Social Media and International opportunities will be held in London @ the British Library on 14th May 2009… Find out more

I’m in the process of putting together some training documents for the multilingual WebCertain taskforce – it isn’t easy…

Although press wire services exist with a pretty standard format in most countries, I’ve come across lots of little, unexpected differences. For example, in Germany the fashion is for press releases with a short headline followed by a short strapline and in China and Korea, personal blogs are used quite differently.

Also, at some point in a PR campaign, you are going to have to communicate with a human being…

Now in the UK, we are happy to send an email with a simple “Hi” to the addressee. Not so in France. that would be insultingly bald. French business-speak is incredibly polite and it reminds me of when Laure was preparing to start at the company. I’d sent her a welcome email (“Hi Laure”) thinking I was being nice and friendly, but unwittingly caused great consternation to her as she debated back and forth how to address her reply to me. Was I a Madame or a Mademoiselle? She didn’t want to offend her new “chief”.

So, such a very simple issue can make the difference between making a new friend or enemy (or a story hitting the front page, or being spiked). What’s our advice?

• Always (always) use a native speaker with experience of the local market – and listen to their advice
• Never think you can cut corners by following an English / UK pro forma of communication
• Get a name for your contact (that is very old advice)
• Good luck!