The panel consists of:
William McHenry, The University of Akron as the Moderator
Jim Kukral, BlogKits Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers
Susan Lowry, ATTEVO
Jeff Rorhs, Optiem

McHenry says it is not a sin to optimize your site. However, if you go beyond the rules of what an engine suggests, then you can have trouble. He talks about how the technology is still immature. He gives an example of phone company ads coming up when you search for: long distance running.

Jeff Rohrs: He says that search is the connective tissue between all marketing. You tell the engine what you are interested in. It represents a change from “mass media” to “me media”. He will discuss what search is today. He talks about how Google has less of a market share compared to what NBC had in the 1940s and 1950s. He discusses shopping.com.
He says that your cell phone will have a bar code scanner so you can scan a product and it will let you search that product online. He says that traditional, paper advertising will have codes that will allow you to interact with it.
YouTube.com: It has no revenue but sold for $1.65 billion. Google paid that much because of the audience reach.
Podzinger… it scans video and audio files, converts it to text and makes it searchable.
“Everything is Searchable”
Everything your ceo, marketing say will be searchable.
It’s all moving to “Minority Report” retinal scanning marketing.

He recommends the books:
The Long Tale
and
The Search

He also recommends Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago this December.

Jim Kukral will talk about PR.
He discusses a press release strategy he did.
He create a site:
MarkCubanpleasecallme.com
He put he press release out on prweb.com about this. It got picked up. And he was able to get his name in front of Mark Cuban. It cost him $80.

He has found that PRWeb.com is a very powerful way to get your message out.

He says that no one cares about your company. They just want to know how you are going to solve a problem. He says be an expert. Offer statistics. He says that this is really doable for small businesses.

Susan Lowry is a recovering chemical engineer. She says she is not going to talk about search. She says that catalogues get to your mailbox through microtargeting.

She says that RFID (radio frequency IDing) is a small tag that can be put on your cell phone, credit card, Best Buy Rewards card and track who you are and where you are through GIS.

She talks in detail about how all of your information is being tracked.

Some anecdotes she gives are:
People who buy Ford trucks also buy waverunners.
People who drink Sprite and watch Prowrestling are Democrats.

They open the seminar up to the group:
Q. What type of ROI can you expect on an overall internet campaign.
A. Kukral says everything is trackable. An agency should alway base everything on ROI. Rohrs says online is much better at measurement than any offline marketing. He says that the “win” is different for different clients. Don’t discount being there. He says there is a branding portion of this.

Q. How do you convince management that the money needs to be spent.
A. Rohrs says, “Jelousy”. Show them what their competitors are doing. It’s omnipresent. There is an expectation that you are going to be represented online. Your brand takes a hit if you are not there or are not helpful. It’s absolutely imperative that you are there.

Q. What’s the thought on online community.
A. Kukral – The people that are making a lot of money online have communities. Rohrs – don’t build a discussion board and expect people to just show up. He gives me some props for this blog posting. He talks about how things are being talked about and indexed in ways that you have no idea.