Training opportunity: FREE Investigative Reporting 2.0 Workshop

It's a bit last-minute, but wanted to bring this opportunity to NENMA fans' attention:
Media Mayhem: FREE Investigative Reporting 2.0 Workshop

Slight agenda change for SEO conference this Thursday, Nov. 19

To maximize participation for Thursday's SEO conference, we have shuffled the deck on the agenda, switching to consecutive rather than concurrent sessions.

So the schedule will be as follows:

10-10:30: Registration, coffee and mingling

10:30-11:15: The Power of Search from a Marketing Point of View
Panelists include Michael Orlinski, search marketing supervisor for Overdrive Interactive in Boston, and Brendan Picha, founder of Squareoak Media in Boston.

11:15-12:00: The Power of Search from a Technical Point of View
Panelists include Mark Roberge, vice president of sales for HubSpot in Cambridge; Brent Payne, SEO Director for Tribune Interactive in Chicago; Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR in Boston and San Francisco; and Eric Esposito of SilverTech in Manchester, NH.

12-12:45: Lunch and words from our sponsors

12:45-1:45: Keynote from Brent Payne

1:45-2:30: The Power of Search from a Content Point of View
Panelists include Monica Wright, VONT + HMG Performance Web Marketing in Westbrook, ME; Derek Edmond, KoMarketing Associates in Waltham, MA; and Sean Polay, product manager for distributed media for Dow Jones Local Media Group in Middletown, NY.

2:30-3:15: The Power of Search from a Revenue Point of View
Panelists include Sara Weaver, vice president of sales and business development for Mediaphormedia in Lawrence, KS; Dawn Paduganan, director of private label solutions for Local.com in Irvine, CA; Pauline Jakober, director of client relations for High Rankings in Framingham, MA, and co-founder of SEMNE; and Ashish Patel of Patelligence in Nashua, NH.

3:15: Adjourn to beat traffic, or more mingling at Not Your Average Joe’s in Needham

Not that you need reminding, but our events are purposefully informal. Folks should feel free to actively engage panelists, and share what they are learning (or just provide general feedback) via Twitter (reply to @nenma or use #NENMA as the hashtag), Facebook, LinkedIn, photos (tag them with "NENMA"), videos and more.

There's still time to register, too. Come join us this Thursday at Northeastern's campus in Dedham, MA, for a day that will fill you with ideas and new directions that search can drive success for your Web site and your business. Just fill in the registration form and fax it on in!

Come one, come all to the NENMA SEO Bootcamp on Nov. 19

You've seen it looming on the calendar. You've been waiting with bated breath. You've been shouting from the hilltops: "Come on, NENMA! When is that fall conference already?!"

Stamp your feet no more. Here comes the NENMA Fall Conference: SEO Bootcamp Edition, to be held Nov. 19 at the Northeastern University Dedham campus located at 370 Common St. (Route 135).

We're pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Brent Payne, SEO Director for Tribune. You may have seen him quoted recently in the NiemanLab blog, and you can certainly read more about his SEO thoughts on his blog, subtitled as The Thoughts of a Bald SEO Guy. What you'll get from him at the NENMA event, though, is some of the secret sauce he has used to help double monthly visits to Tribune's portfolio of Web sites.

Personally, I love the last line of his job description:

• Responsible for all aspects of SEO for 50+ Tribune Company sites/domains
• Provide executive level summaries of search engine optimization strategy and tactics
• Develop an SEO taskforce made up of key individuals in each Tribune department/market
• Conduct SEO training throughout the 40+ Tribune markets
• Develop a network of partnerships with other media companies outside the Tribune market regions
• Not have a heart attack or other physical ailment that renders me dead

Amen, Brother Brent!

Surrounding the lunch session with Brent will be two sets of concurrent sessions, digging into the power of search from marketing, technology, content and revenue points of view. Among the panelists will be:

• Mark Roberge, Hubspot
• Harry Gold, Overdrive Interactive
• Brendan Picha, SquareOak
• Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR
• Eric Esposito, Silvertech
  
• Monica Wright, VONT + HMG Performance Web Marketing
  
• Derek Edmond, KoMarketing Associates
  

And if that's not enough to lure you out to Dedham, we've got door prizes too! We'll be giving away five copies of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan and the rest of the gang over at HubSpot in Cambridge. It's a must-read from one of the must-follow companies in the digital marketing space. Of course, you must be present to win!

The schedule will go as follows:

10 a.m. -- Registration, coffee and conversation
10:30 a.m. -- Concurrent sessions: The Power of Search from Marketing and Technology Points of VIew
Noon -- Lunch, words from our sponsors and keynote
2 -- Concurrent sessions: The Power of Search from Sales and Content Points of View
3:30 -- Adjourn to beat traffic, or continue the conversation at Not Your Average Joe's in Needham.

Speaking of words from our sponsors, we'll have several, and we thank them for their generous support: Adicio, Newsbank, Local.com and Second Street Media. Please make sure to stop by their tables, say hello, and check out their latest product offerings. We have room for two more, so if your company would like to be in front of dozens of new media decision makers and product managers, come on down!

We'll be sharing many more details with you in the coming days, especially about our panelists. Meanwhile, though, don't delay, NENMA members and fans. Sign up for the SEO Bootcamp now!

Save the date: NENMA Northern New England Meetup booked for Oct. 22

Come one, come all, to the third layer of our 3-layer meetup cake that is the 2009 NENMA meetup series -- this time with a return visit in Manchester, NH, on Oct. 22 at 5:30 p.m.

Our turnout for the NENMA Middle New England Meetup was rich in board members, but sparse in regular members and guests. Returning to a place where we previously had a richer mix of minglers was clearly in order. So mark the the evening of Oct. 22 as "Out of Office" in your Microsoft Outlook now, and join us at Margarita's for appetizers, cash bar, conversation and a bowl full of laughs.


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We've said it before, and we really mean it: Whether you're deeply mired in paid content debates, four-legged sales calls, local search, multimedia convergence, Twitter training, or something so new that we don't even have a buzzword for it yet, please join us. And by all means bring friends, colleagues and anyone who you think can teach us a thing or two about new media. We've always got an eye on the horizon and appreciate the opportunity to meet new people and learn from them.

The details:
What: NENMA Northern New England Meetup
Who: Everyone in the local online news world -- and then some.
When: 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 22
Where: Margarita's, 1037 Elm St., Manchester, NH
URL: www.margs.com

NESNE hosting meetup in Rhode Island

This meetup thing is catching on! A NESNE note landed in my Inbox last night, promoting an editors' meetup in Rhode Island this Friday.

The New England Society of Newspaper Editors is hosting a social for editors (NESNE member or not) from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11, at Cassarino's restaurant, 177 Atwells Avenue on Federal Hill, Providence, R.I.

NESNE is traveling throughout the region to meet and greet the region's editors. (If you'd like to host a social in your area, contact NESNE President Gary Witherspoon.)

For questions and further information, you can contact:
Gary Witherspoon, NESNE president, witherspoon@globe.com, cell: (857) 939-0081.

If you can't make it to that one, watch this space (or Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn) for details on the NENMA Northern New England Meetup on Oct. 22 in Manchester, NH.

Of course, the best thing to do would be to attend both!

NAA offers e-mail marketing study and webinar

Not all things top-of-mind for me should automatically be top of mind for you, but a recent report by the NAA Digital Edge team on e-mail marketing seemed especially timely given some conversations we are having lately around our company.

The report's premise is that newspapers should own e-mail marketing, but despite the audience- and revenue-building opportunities that are possible with e-mail products, very few of us are effectively developing this portion of our product portfolio.

You might recall that we hosted David Hendricks of Datran Media at our 2008 fall conference, when he spoke with the NENMA members in attendance about the immense opportunity in e-mail marketing:



So while the NAA report is not a new topic for us, it does point out that e-mail marketing remains an untapped product offering in our content and advertising mix. The report includes three case studies from The Arizona Republic, The Houston Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News, and a cheat sheet for selling e-mail marketing solutions.

NAA will be following up the release of this report with accompanying webinars next month, one on Sept. 10 that will focus on how e-mail marketing can help build newspaper readership and retain subscribers, and another on Sept. 17 about the revenue opportunities that arise from building a robust e-mail audience.

If after reading the report and attending the webinars you feel there is a need for further exploration of this topic, or if it sparks another idea, let a NENMA board member know. We're always looking for NENMA membership input on conference and seminar programming.

Time for Round 2 of the NENMA 2009 meetup series

Come one, come all, to the second edition in the 2009 NENMA meetup series, this time in Waltham, MA, on Aug. 20 at 5:30 p.m.

We had such a great time -- and great turnout -- at the NENMA Southern New England Meetup at the Wood N Tap in Rocky Hill, CT, last month that we're sticking with the brewpub theme. For the NENMA Middle New England meetup (NENMAMNE?) we'll be gathering at the Watch City Brewing Co. in Waltham.

Whether you're deeply mired in paid content debates, four-legged sales calls, local search, multimedia convergence, Twitter training, or something so new that we don't even have a buzzword for it yet, please join us. And by all means bring friends, colleagues and anyone who you think can teach us a thing or two about new media. We've always got an eye on the horizon and appreciate the opportunity to meet new people and learn from them.

The details:
What: NENMA Middle New England Meetup
Who: Everyone in the local online news world -- and then some.
When: 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 20
Where: Watch City Brewing Co., 256 Moody St, Waltham, MA
URL: www.watchcitybrew.com


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Key detail: We have a room reserved, so ask for NENMA, but also look for my shaved head atop a Hawaiian shirt. We'll cover the appetizers. You cover your bar tab.

We look forward to seeing anyone that can make it. Should you be booked for that date, one more networking event is nigh:

• Oct. 22: NENMA Northern New England Meetup, Manchester, NH (exact location TBA)

Also, don't forget to mark the calendar for our fall 1-day conference, focused on SEO, slated for Nov. 19. More details coming soon!