SeerFest 2018 Round Up: Tools, Charities, And Strategy Inspiration

This article was originally published at diamondandbranch.com

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On Monday, June 18, 2018, we were so happy to get to participate in the first-ever SeerFest! We learned a ton, met some awesome people, and helped to raise $15k for Think Dignity, a homeless advocate and services provider in San Diego’s East Village. We can’t wait to do it again next year, but until then, here’s our roundup of the Best of SeerFest.
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Miguel

New Tool I Can't Wait to Try: Tableau and Power BI

Learning about these tools, the power that they give you, and how by combining data from different sources and then visualizing it in a tool like this can give you a whole different perspective of how effective our work is, where to put more weight, and what to change.

‍New Charity I Was Excited to Learn About: It’s the Pits

‍I love dogs, and I believe that no dog is evil, they’re just not trained.

‍Some Strategy Inspiration from Jordan Frank, The psychology of SEO:

‍Sometimes we focus most of our attention on the technology piece of SEO and optimizing for crawlers, but we have to remember that there’s a human behind the search. A good strategy to capture your audience past the “research” stage is to think about what their next search is going to be, depending on what they’re searching so that we can be waiting for them when their searches become the more specific and long tail.
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Lindsay

New Tool I Can't Wait to Try: BlueMix.net (powered by IBM Watson)

‍I was also super excited about Tableau, but let’s mix it up. BlueMix is an AI that takes in certain demographic and behavioral markers, then spits out a predictive personality profile. Of course, I’ll start by testing it with myself and some known personas, then I can’t wait to simplify our persona creation process with the help of a real genius.

‍New Charity I Was Excited to Learn About: Think Dignity

‍This amazing organization works to fill in the gaps around homelessness services and policy in San Diego. I love what they are doing because it’s just so damn practical: Distributing water and feminine hygiene products, providing showers and storage, and advocating every day for our unhoused citizens.

‍Some Strategy Inspiration from Sheena Schleicher, Why Google’s Changes are Pushing SEOs to be Better, People-Focused, Brand-First Marketers:

‍Ah, Sheena! Get out of my head! I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot lately, but her talk moved the conversation from philosophy to tactics. We learned all of the different ways that her team digs into customer behavior, pain points, experiences and desires to push content towards better meeting their needs. Heck yes.
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Lisa

New Tool I Can’t Wait to Try: Ask Your Target Market

‍Rob Ousbey talked to us about the importance of asking your consumers what they want and need from your product. A lot of companies do this, but not well! He recommended a survey tool that helps you look at customers or clients as well as your competition through the specific lens of your product.

‍New Charity I Was Excited to Learn About: inewsource.org

‍Good information is important for good decision making! inewsource is a nonprofit that does investigative journalism about important issues about politics, government, healthcare, and topics specific to San Diego.

Some Strategy Inspiration from Gary Ware, Storytelling Secrets That Will WOW Your Audience:
Gary gave lots of useful strategies for connecting with clients. He discussed the importance of engaging clients and audiences with stories, analogies, and social references, but then (and here’s the important bit) to make sure to connect each of these captivating elements directly to the client, their product, their data, or an issue you know is important to them. It is the combination of a story and a connection that will make your work memorable.
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Jaimie

New Tool I Can’t Wait to Try: Power BI

‍Wil’s keynote was about a tool I’ve never heard of before, Power BI. Typically the data analytics portion of Diamond + Branch is left to Miguel, but it was super interesting to see how this tool can create in-depth reports in a very digestible way.

‍New Charity I Was Excited to Learn About: Heroes in Recovery

‍Heroes in Recovery is a movement with the goal to eliminate the stigma that keeps individuals with addiction and mental health problems from seeking help. Heroes are asking for people in recovery to share their stories so that others who are struggling can be encouraged to get help and get treatment.

‍Some Strategy Inspiration from Alyssa Bambrick, PPC: Stop Bidding, Start Living:

‍Alyssa shared her tips and tricks on how to stop bidding and start living. Two bidding strategies on Google AdWords that I immediately implemented for our clients are Target outranking share and Target search page location. The Target outrank share bidding option allows you to choose a domain that you want to outrank in search results. For the Target search page location bidding option, AdWords will automatically set your bids to increase the chances of your ads appearing at either the top of the first results page or anywhere on the first results page. In the next few days, I’ll be watching to make sure our goals are still being hit but I cant wait to see how this changes our campaigns!