Internet Word Magic Blog

Online Marketing Summit - Digital Hollywood

In my ongoing search to find quality online marketing information, I hit the jackpot yesterday, by attending the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) at the Digital Hollywood event held in Hollywood, California.

I ended up taking 21 pages of notes and frying my brain in the process! To say the information was good is a complete understatement. Last year, I attended the OMS event in Long Beach and thought it was excellent, but this day's event was even better.

Aaron Kahlow, the guy who organizes OMS, has a rule that none of the speakers are allowed to pitch any of their products or services to the audience. And, neither are the participants allowed to sell services or products to each other. There were no vendor tables and no pressure to buy anything.

Unlike other Internet Marketing events I've attended, OMS is solely for educating people about how to ethically and successfully do business online. What a concept!

Here's a quick summary of what you missed:

(1) Online Marketing and Website Planning & Strategy Best Practices
Paul Sonderegger, Wesite Planning/Strategy
Jason Schulman, Online Strategy

(2) Website Usability: Balancing the Customer Experience and Conversions
Olivier Chaine

(3) Driving Your Online Campaigns: Best Practices in Balancing Search Engine Optimization, Paid-Search and Email Campaigns
Ben Hanna

(4) SEO 2.0
Ray "Catfish" Comstock

(5) Email Marketing Secrets
Stephanie Miller

(6) Social Media and Measuring Your Online Success
Jason Breed
Todd Simms

All of the speakers did a great job, but as usual, "Catfish" Comstock blew me away with his "in the trenches" knowledge of SEO. I felt like I was sitting at the feet of the master. What a talent! Oops, my geekiness worship is showing.

Kudos to Aaron for putting together another incredible OMS. If you ever get a chance to attend OMS, go without hesitation. Your brain will explode, but you'll enjoy every minute of it. They will be in NY on June 10, 2008 with DM Days.

Powerful Workshops

I just got back from spending three days in San Diego at Debbie Bermont's "Outrageous Business Growth Acceleration Program." All I can say is "Wow!" What an amazing weekend.

I met people from all over, including England, Australia, New York, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan and even Hawaii. In fact, I felt kind of silly telling people I lived only an hour away from San Diego.

Debbie's event was unlike anything I'd ever attended and it was incredible. Every one of us walked away with a unique business model to generate more abundance into our lives. Not only did I learn some great marketing techniques, but I learned how to make the right marketing choices for my business.

And, three weeks before Debbie's program, I attended Adam Urbanski's "Info-Profit Seminar" where I had the pleasure of spending three days with one of the smartest, nicest marketing guys around. He shared with us all the brilliant techniques he uses to create info-products that easily help him generate a seven figure income every year. He didn't hold anything back and I walked away with a ton of ideas for products I want to create.

2007 Bronze Winner of IPPY Award

I'm so jazzed!! My new book, Turn Browsers into Buyers – Secrets for Turning an Internet Profit, is the 2007 Bronze Winner of the 2007 Independent Publisher Award in the Computer/Internet category. The book was displayed June 1 -3, 2007, at BookExpo America in New York, the largest and most important exhibition for the publishing industry. I got invited to a big ceremony in New York city, but decided it was too short notice (one week), to rearrange my schedule.

The "IPPY" Award honors the year's best independently published books. It is the largest independent book award contest in the world. For the 2007 Awards, there were 3,378 entries from all 50 United States, 8 Canadian provinces, and 17 other countries around the world.

My new book is a step-by-step guide of how to ethically present a website marketing message in a way that allows the writer to tap into a target audience's personal value system. Unlike other "in-your-face" sales writing techniques, the book offers an alternative to website sales writing that I call "attraction writing." The secret is learning how to tap into that inner voice that guides us all in making all the right decisions.

Attraction writing generates sales; it’s that simple. People do business with people they like and trust.  "Turn Browsers into Buyers" shows you how to instantly build rapport with your audience and how to express your marketing message without being pushy. It shows you how to make every page on your website interesting and engaging.

A free download of a chapter of the book is available now at Turn Browsers into Buyers.