CX director of community affairs Don Dvorak (@dondvorak) and CX content and social media strategist Nicki Escudero (@nickialanoche) get photobombed by City of Glendale social media strategist Jessica Alexander (@pepperjess) at Social Media Day Phoenix at the Ritz-Carlton Phoenix

Last Saturday, June 30, social media aficionados from around the world celebrated Social Media Day, an event launched by tech website Mashable 2 years ago. There were meetups and Tweetups and lots of digital enthusiast-populated parties, and Phoenix even had its own celebration: Social Media Day Phoenix, which took place at the Ritz-Carlton last Friday. Representatives from CX (which gives you 10GB of free file storage) attended the marketing workshops throughout the day, which culminated with a carnival and networking event at night. Read on for some notable insights from the event.

Website Optimization

First up was Michael Donato of Helix House, a Phoenix-based search engine optimization and social media marketing company. Donato gave some great tactics on leveraging SEO for business, including making it easy for customers to interact with the company and purchase the company’s products — something that seems like common sense but isn’t always. He also talked about the importance of focusing on promoting keywords your potential customers are already searching for (they may not be what you think) and about how important it is to engage customers on social media by gearing every post to a conversation — not simply spewing marketing-speak at potential customers. Donato noted the vitality of adding descriptions to photos, since they also affect SEO.

Donato shared some nice free tools for small businesses looking to do some of the SEO work themselves. One is SEM Rush, which shows the top organic keyword searches driving traffic to your site, as well as what your competitors are up to. Another is Marketing Grader, a site powered by HubSpot that gives your small business rich, useful information on everything from how better to optimize your website for conversions to how you’re doing social media-wise. Finally, he mentioned the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which allows users to see how popular certain keywords are. These are all wonderful ways to gauge how you can improve SEO for your business, as well as the All-in-One SEO and XML-Sitemaps plug-in’s for WordPress blogs he mentioned.

Landing Your Dream Job

Next up was Paige Dell’Armi, a former Phoenician-turned-Seattle-ite who landed one of the most coveted social media manager jobs around, working for Starbucks. She talked about the drive, passion and digital networking skills you need to land your dream job, as well as mentioned a couple of her favorite resources now in her new position — Cinemagraphs, which are photos that show movement on the web (GIF’s); and Social Media Today, an online resource rich with great info for staying on the cutting edge of social media trends. She also talked about the power of memes and how content that “goes viral” can launch your business into super-stardom.

Deals Sites: Are They Worth It?

Andi Barness spoke next — not only does she have a wide array of experience hosting on Phoenix television news shows, she also owns Doozy of a Deal, a Phoenix-based social coupon similar to national giants Groupon and LivingSocial — though with Doozy, 7.5 percent of the proceeds go to Arizona charities. Barness’ talk was interesting because she emphasized the value of trying out a deal such as Doozy’s for your business if you are new and looking to gain immediate exposure to your fledgling business. For more established companies, doing a deal, or even multiple deals with a variety of sites, might make potential customers think you are desperate, or, worse, wait to make a purchase until they see the next deal from your business.

Barness also talked about the importance of customer service once people who use a deal come through the door, as well as the significance of targeting your deal to the right people and the need to track the deal to make sure it worked for your business. One tip brought up during the discussion was to entice people to come back by offering them the same deal if they booked their next visit that day, which ensures repeat business and the potential to cultivate loyal customers.

Blogging: Why You Should Have One

Closing out the marketing workshops was a presentation on blogging by Amanda Collins of The Grammar Doctors, a content writing service that extends to everything from blogs to resumes and books. Collins talked about the importance of SEO in blogs, of creating compelling headlines and adding keywords into blogs. She also spoke about online networking and guest blogging, which not only aids in SEO but also expands your reach. Plus, she talked about how to create rich blog content no matter what your business — for example, if you’re a realtor, content such as home decorating tips may expose you to a wider audience than just blogging about your listings.

The marketing workshops were perfect for small business beginners, and even digital marketing experts were able to take away lots of new valuable information. Let us know what kind of content you’d like to see on CX’s social media channels in the comments, and read more about how you can connect with CX socially here.