#(first one to correctly guess the two things the design for the robot was inspired by gets. A cookie. Two cookies... My lemoncake recipe) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chibi-pix · 4 years

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Your Plance Portal AU pics inspired a small bit of fiction from me. Not sure what to do with it, so here you are. Apologies if it's a bit rough, first draft. Feel free to modify, share, whatever. I'm just anon. And sorry for the lack of formatting that will result in posting here. (part 1) "Why?" The fascinating specimen asked of me. His eyes darting over the form I had taken. Curiosity. Heightened heart rate. A curious combination of two of the three primal Fs. Fascinating as always.

Wow! Your story parts were amazing! While I admit, some sections were hard to read, conclude who was talking, but I did love it! Of course, you did call it a first/rough draft and stories start that way!

You had said I was free to modify and/or share. I took you up on that offer and applied your work to this. It was fun to work with and thank you for writing it and giving me an opportunity to work with it.

Hopefully it all shows; if not, I’ll reblog the answer with the full post/ficlet.

Pidge. It was a simple name she was referred to as. She. A humanized term to separate sexes and give identity. That was her understanding. It was a logical things to humans, but not to the likes of an android, program to see and comprehend numbers, not emotions and desires. So why? Why did she go by that word that could otherwise be called a pronoun?

“Why?” Her attention was brought to the latest of the subjects, a young man. Subject number 117-98-78. He insisted on being called Lance. Another human thing. But she supposed, to some extent, she could relate. She was given a name, too, along with her identity number. Her name, though, was shorter and easier to input by her creators when they wrote their notes.

Pidge examined Lance further, doing a scan of her own on the biological creature. His heart rate was increasing. An emotional response? Or perhaps it was the adrenaline humans felt when going through certain tasks that forces them to exert themselves physically and even emotionally. “You will need to reiterate your query for proper understanding so an appropriate answer can be provided.”

“Fine then. Why are you putting me through this?” Lance commanded. “Why do I need to go through these tests? What do you gain from all of this?!”

Pidge considered his questioned for a moment. To be honest, there was no complex reason for why she did it. It was her core imperative; it was her duty to test subjects and gather data. But would that response be enough for the latest subject? “You are a new variable.” she responded finally. “With the cloned and robotic test subjects being identical variables, testing and collecting data has grown stagnant and all data is outdated and irrelevant. You, however, come from outside the testing facility. You are a new variable and therefore present new data to study.”

“Dude! I could have died back there!” Lance snapped, his anger elevating. It was an illogical outburst from Pidge’s perspective, but, then again, humans were rather illogical. “Pit traps? Laser grids? And don’t get me started on that green goo you dare call sustenance. It’s freaking torture!”

“Incorrect.” Pidge responded, plain and simple. “This is testing. Testing is a necessary part of improving and moving forward. It is, after all, the core of my programming. To continue in my duty of gathering data. I test, therefore I am. I am, therefore...”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think Doctor and Professor Holt would have wanted testing to be this cruel.” Lance interrupted.

Pidge felt a stutter in her programming. Those names. Her creators. He knew their names. “Guessing their names correctly and knowing they created me specifically would be nearly impossible.” she commented. “Logic would point to you being aware of their classified research on redacted information. Despite this, mentioning them when in your current situation with the risks on your life tell me that you are not an intelligence operative of any enemy of my creators or their benefactors.” She performed another scan. “There are no indications in your biology to suggest any attempt of deceit. This is data that I did not anticipate. Explain. How do you know the names of my creators?”

“Huh? Well, everyone knows who the Holts are.” Lance stated, looking confused. “They changed everything. Botany, terraforming, space travel, they were the top minds of Altean Laboratories. Their work was groundbreaking.”

“Were. Changed. Was. These terms in how they are used are indication of past tense.” Pidge commented.

Lance was perplexed. “I mean… well… yeah, totally.” he said. “It was five centuries ago, give or take some months or single years.”

Pidge couldn’t explain the dip in her cor performance. Had she been human, she would have described it as a weight in her stomach. Had it seriously been that long? She had lost connection to her internal clock several thousand test subjects ago. “That is impossible.” she stated. “The facility around you operates due to the power obtained from the plasma reactor. It had only an estimated lifespan of three to four centuries; due to the renewal of energy sources, I have managed to re-calibrate that and extend it for another half century or so. To continue getting power to keep the facility functioning would be impossible. My ability to function would have ceased.”

Lance sighed. He then decided to bring up a holographic display. Pidge found she could not interface with the hologram; she decided she could endure collecting data visually. As she looked at the hologram, she saw the schematics of the facility. But not all was the same. There was a new structure that she could not identify.

Lance picked up on where Pidge was looking. “You see it, too, huh?” he asked. He pointed to an area on the hologram. “Right here. We had reason to believe that a piece of what we refer to as the trans-reality comet has found its way here. And by we, I mean my superior officers. I’m just the field guy who goes in and investigates things; the others are the science guys who understand this stuff better. Anyway, long story short, but this thing is apparently radiating energy and with a copious amount still stored in it. There’s a problem, though.”

Pidge couldn’t interface with the hologram, but she knew the subject could. She went in close, finding her humanoid form to be convenient for times like this. She gently took Lance’s hand and moved it, prompting him to touch certain parts and bring up more data on the hologram.

“It appears to be unstable.” Pidge commented.

“Extremely.”

“The plasma from the facility’s reactor appears to be the cause of of the instability. However, I do not have sufficient data to fully determine how accurate this is.” Pidge glanced over to Lance, realizing he was staring at her, his mouth hung open a bit. “Does me not having the full answer cause this human emotion of bewilderment?” she inquired. “It should not; results cannot be properly determined without sufficient amounts of data. I have not collected enough data on the subject of this comet and its interactions with the reactor.”

“No it’s just...” Lance looked at Pidge’s hand, seeing it still around his own. “Your hand. It’s so warm. I didn’t expect that.” Pidge pulled her hand away quickly. “What are you? How are you so warm?”

“I am not; this is simply a byproduct of the cooling systems aboard this particular interface unit.” Pidge responded. “This unit is only a feature provided to me. I am, after all, the facility computer.”

Lance looked closely. “So… why do you look like a girl?”

Pidge blinked. So even he acknowledged that he seemed like a girl, at least in appearance. She looked ahead and away from the subject. “This interface unit was called the Physical Interface Data Gateway Exchange. To make data input easier, they formed it into the acronym PIDGE.” she explained. “It was designed with the intention of making interactions with subjects feel less… impersonal. It is for the benefit of my creators and the facility, not of my own. I have insufficient amounts of data to determine why they have given me this form.” She didn’t speak about it, but what little data she had about that, she had image files showing a member of the Holt family with a similar appearance. Perhaps it was meant to immortalize that member? She lacked the data to determine that.

“Pidge, huh?” Lance asked. “So it’s a name?”

“It is what they called me due to it being easier on the creators and less time consuming for their already limited lives.” Pidge commented. “Now then, since I have answered your queries and indulged your curiosities, it would be preferable to continue the testing.”

Lance gave a smile, but it did not look calm. It looked almost forced. “Sorry, but… this is where the testing ends, Pidge. Pidge did not understand. She then felt something in her, as though the numbers she lived by were changing.

“I do not comprehend.” she commented. She felt off balance, as though she could not properly control the unit meant for interfacing. But she couldn’t disconnect, either; she couldn’t return fully to the computer system. “What did you do to my systems? How did…”

Lance gave a bit of a guilty smile. He then brought up a new image for the hologram. “I had some help but… your entire core program? It’s gone. No more testing. No more of this… cruel torture. You’re in this device now, disconnected from everything else. Like an old game disk; one wrong move, you’re gone. Completely.”

“Impressive.” Pidge commented. “I did not anticipate your device having the necessary storage capacity for my system. Perhaps the claim of five centuries passing is not as far-fetched as I originally determined.” Around them, the corridors and testing chambers grew dark. What Lance could only assume to be the emergency lights turned on, illuminating the area in a bright red. “It does not appear that you or your outside help have considered another variable.”

“Um… what variable?”

“The default settings booting back up upon my removal.”

“Ah quiznak.” Pidge could only assume that Lance’s choice of word meant something profound. “Okay… so what do we get? Some five hundred year old security system about to hunt me down?”

“That would be accurate to the data.” Pidge confirmed. “Which would not be good for your condition.”

“My condition?”

“Of being alive.”

“Oh.”

“However, I do possess the necessary data to thwart the old program. The variable now stands at you being the only one who can interface with my core due to the technology you transferred to it. It would then be in my best interest to keep your status as alive.”

“I mean, how hard can this be? I’ve dealt with you so far.” Lance prompted. He jumped when a sound caught his attention. There was movement further in the corridor. Blades typically seen in tests, meant to be turned off or dodged. Past it? There was another figure, though harder to see.

“In subject terms? Bad. Very bad.” Pidge commented. “I suggest listening to what I say and following my instructions without fail.” She looked to Lance. “My first instruction-”

“I’m gonna take a guess and say run!” Lance grabbed Pidge by the hand and ran off in the opposite direction, pulling her along; it was a good thing that despite her data being put into the device around his arm, her body, as one could call it, was still functional and able to move.

Again, thank you so much for this opportunity!

#chibi answers #chibi writes #plance portal au #portal au #Pidge #Lance #VLD #Voltron legendary defender

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agentaw · 6 years

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Detroit: Become Human - Funny story...

Okay... so Story Time because my friends pointed this out and it’s been fucking with me ever since.

This is the story of how I kinda...sorta wrote/ predicted parts of DBH about...2 years ago. Just hear me out...okay?

So this all started similarly to how DBH started, with that dope-ass demo back in 2012. My 15 year old self became enthralled in it, much like I am now enthralled in the full game. I’ve always loved story telling and had a sort of soft spot for digital modelling. So that demo was a masterpiece to me, it had a great concept and beautiful design. It was a short obsession but it had an impact.

And that was the last piece of news I’d ever hear about it until a month after they released the full game. I remember hearing some rumour that they weren’t gonna make it a full game or something and left it at that. I didn’t hear anything about it’s coverage at E3 because while I like video games, I become absorbed in different obsessions from time to time.

And two years ago I was obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, the thought of creating a whole world and having others enter it was fascinating. And while I tried to create worlds from scratch, I had a problem.

I had never been too interested in Fantasy things, I liked fantasy characters but tended to focus on too much of the political aspect of fantasy worlds and not the fun stuff like slaying dragons and stuff.

The return of an old obsession began to try and take my focus off of DnD but I wasn’t ready to let it go yet.

So I merged them, DnD didn’t have to be fantasy, I didn’t have to invent a world from scratch and luckily my old obsession had a world pre-designed. Marvel, specifically MCU had a treasure trove of lore and I could take a number of rules from DnD 5e and tweak them to suit the change in genre.

So I started off with a one shot campaign, set in a HYDRA base. My three player characters would be playing themselves and making decision based on how they’d react. They ‘woke up’ in a white plastic robot body. Singular, all three were in the same body, looking through the same eyes and rolling for control over said robot body. It was entertaining to watch them figure out what they hell was going on organically. They quickly met the first NPC an old doctor/sciencist who was a very nervous person. He explained that they’d all been loaded into the same body by accident and that he was just testing out that his creation (the body itself) was working correctly. So my players decided to answer the jumpy doctors questions and let one of them take control as the doctor got them to walk around while still connected to the computer around them by a bunch of wires connected to the back of their neck. The doctor left the room briefly (to report to his superiors) before returning and calmly explaining that he’d need to shut them down before making the rest of the bodies. Yes, this was heavily inspired by the demo but the players didn’t notice or didn’t comment on it at the time. And they genuinely really like the one-shot. So, I started writing more, growing the campaign and expanding my list of NPCs.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “wow...you ripped off the demo and think that counts as writing a whole game” but I never said I wrote the whole story, that would be mental. But as both me and my players have pointed out, there is a large number of similarities which is spooky because as i already stated I didn’t know anything about DBH until almost a month after it’s full release.

The first and most profound is Amanda. Or my Amanda, who’s called Ruth LaRue. Dr. Ruth LaRue, the trio’s psychologist/co-creator who acts pleasant (too pleasant) towards them...unless they disobey or resist their training to become Hydra Assets. One of my players is rebellious and LaRue has tried to manipulate and coldly threatened him as a result. While another obeys and gets praise and rewards as a result. Also she looks like Amanda (a character i didn’t even know existed), I originally described her as the same race, hairstyle, though slightly younger. And then I drew her (poorly) for my players to get a better idea of how she looked and Jesus Christ they look the same.

Another is the fact that I have three player characters. There was a possible fourth player but work and life made it difficult for her to be a part of the game. Also my players are two boys and one girl. And while that’s all freaky, their characters appearances/designs are extra weird. Originally, after all getting their own bodies, they all had white plastic robot bodies, all male design (which female player wasn’t happy about because she missed her boobs). The only way to tell them apart was voice and the nervous doctor had given them different coloured eyes. Creating robots came with the challenge of figuring out how their bodies worked (one player was particularly interested in this). Once again inspiration partly came from the Kara demo, the robots are a water (blue liquid) based system, a pump (heart) transports water, which is collect in bags (lungs) through the robots absorbing moisture in the air (through breathing), around the machine frame (body). The water has two purposes, to thinly coat the white plastic casing (skin), which allowed the robot to feel pressure but not texture and also to keep the pump valves going, which creates the energy the machines (players) are run on. After learning that the white plastic version could be easily broken during training, the nervous doctor created a second batch of models, this time made out of metal (female asked for a female body and therefore the doctor gave her a large dent in her chest plate, she was pleased). They then get a new model, ones that are designed to blend in with humans. And this is where this section gets super freaky. The player got no say in how they looked because in game they wouldn’t.

The female is the shortest model as well as they palest model with loads of freckles, the similarities with Kara stop there but the female player has been gifted a female kitten (thankfully named Cookie, not Alice) as the reward and is quite paranoid about it being taken off her or harmed (calm down, I haven’t hurt the cat...yet).

One of the males is only slightly more tanned than the female with considerably less freckles and markings. He’s the tallest and the player has been surprisingly obedient, only "failing” when he doesn’t understand what’s happen or doesn’t think something will benefit HYDRA. Because of this he’s been promoted to team leader by the powers that be. He’s logical and is usually thinking about training and what’s going on in the NPCs’ heads.

Lastly we have the second male who looks southern European (Spain, Italy, Greece and could probably pass as Mexican but the story is set in central Europe) so a different ethnicity/race to the other two. This is the rebellious player who generally plays pranks, cracks jokes and says “fuck you” to authority. Like I said before as a result, he tends to be the one looked down on and oppressed by the powers that be. He generally has a very clear line which he won’t cross no matter what and is willing to stand up if he views something as drastically wrong (refused to hurt his friends or pick up a gun).

Also when asked what they wanted to be called (I.e What’s your name?) The players decided to to sick to what the nice nervous doctor had designated them, i.e the colours of their eyes. Rebellious is Red. Logical is Blue and Female is Purple (name later changed to Violet).

Next is three more NPCs, who have enough in common with the DBH characters to mess with me.

The nervous doctor, Dr. Thomas Thornley, while having a completely different personality, has formed relationships like Hank. A number of the players refer to him as “Daddy Thornley”, not to his face but when talking to each other in game. And most disturbingly the rebellious player has implied on several occasions that he “ships” the logical male player with father-figure Thornley, jokingly of course. And while in the beginning Thornley may have viewed the robots as a project or experiment, he now appears quite protective and fond of them. Even displaying discomfort when one is broken or completely destroyed.

Their combat and gun trainer, Agent Woodrow who is ex-military and treats the robots exactly like you’d expect he would, like machines. He could either be Gavin or Captain Allen but either way he’s a genuine aggressor and dislikes/hates the robots.

The Head of Hydra, Director Malachi Storm who has an air of mystery around him and commands any room he enters. He’s considerable less creepy than Kamski but is an “all-knowing, all-powerful” character. Also I guess I’m technically also Elijah Kamski (a.k.a GOD) and my players pointed out that i have his sadistic, power hungry play style (thanks, guys).

Lastly is a few game mechanics and events i put in the game. The players have always been able to telepathically talk to one another, they can also transfer images to each other. If broken beyond repair (i.e Killed) they now get automatically rebuilt, similar to Connor. I made LaRue give them a morality test which was mostly the “Track dilemma” which is similar to both the driver-less car AIs and the Kamski test. I actually did the motherfucking Kamski test with one or two of my players (but with humans instead of androids lol). Also the players believe they’re alive (which technically they are). They’ve literally been give zero context as to how they are in robot bodies in the MCU, specifically they’re last memories before the start of the game are of going to sleep in their beds in the real world. They are literally three robots walking around stating that they’re alive.

And yes, I realise that Cage took shit from other movies but it have seen any of those movies so...:P

If I looked hard I could probably find more scary comparisons but a) I don’t particularly want to show all my cards, in case my players read this post, and b) I appear to have written a fucking TED talk out of what was supposed to be a short funny story.

#dbh #dbh connor #dbh kara #dbh markus #dbh hank #dbh amanda #dbh kamski #dbh everyone #custom dnd #dnd shenanigans #story time #freaky #what is life #thanks for coming to my ted talk

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kronecker-delta · 7 years

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Cage Zone Thoughts

(Or some attempted guesses about upcoming Android Hell. While making numerous comparisons to Nier: Automata. And a little bit of Nier too. As well as considering some of Cage’s faults, particularly in sexual themes and bad writing.)

As such, spoilers and long, long post discussing such matters below.

I’m not what one would call a fan of David Cage’s work. I’d even say that I think his games are generally just kind of bad, and bad in a way where I’m not sure how they could be fixed.

Because ultimately they’re narrative experiences that have bad narratives. It also doesn’t help that I feel like Cage doesn’t have a central theme a lot of the time. Not a plot, he’s got too much plot in some cases, but an idea as to what the story is supposed to say.

What exactly is the point of Beyond Two Souls? What is Jodie’s life supposed to instruct the player about when they see it through to the end.

Or Indigo Prophecy. Or Omikron especially.

(Heavy Rain is more coherent, if deeply crippled by some parts because it manages to have a point that is sometimes self-sabotaged by other components.)

I bring this up as David Cage has given some... interesting interviews of late as to the direction and story of his next project. In once instance he tries to be clear that there is no political inspiration or greater point he is trying to illustrate. (Kotaku)

Yet in another he claims that the violence that will be an option for the Android rebellion is meant to draw the player in with similarities in real world incidents. To have a message regarding the nature of violent action in protest and revolutionary movements. (The Verge)

Obviously these two statements stand in some measure of opposition. A narrative can’t simultaneously have no authorial message it intends to impart and a clear one meant for the audience. There are further worrying elements. Such as David Cage first saying that it was about Androids and science fiction content as a focus and then later talking about how the story was about humanity.

While still avoiding a ‘big message.’

Perhaps it’s prejudice on my part, but I’m not sure one can write about themes like this, or really anything that might attempt for deep emotional investment from the audience, if there isn’t some fundamental core idea to your attempt.

This fear is what has brought about this essay. Since I’m now concerned that David Cage is going to handle this plot in the same way as his earlier works, which have quite a creative fingerprint to them, I think I can make some educated guesses on the likely direction and potential missteps that will follow.

Suddenly Ensouled

I suspect that the emergence of Android consciousness will not be planned or desired. While there remains the potential that there is some supernatural cause (and given previous stories some element of that being outright or left on the cutting room floor is quite likely) I think even in the case of a mundane malfunction being the origin it will be seen as a problem.

The Android Markus is supposedly ‘special’ for being able to free androids. What this means is entirely speculative at the moment, but I will guess that this ability is not common or easily understood. Cage likes mystery plots, particularly blunt ones where the question the audience has it upfront and with them for a long time. More over the trailers for the other character Kara point out an even stronger trend towards spontaneous intelligence.

This isn’t bad really, even if it’s common. The issue is, at least to me, that its been done enough times that if that’s all you’re doing with it you should really shoot for more.

Take Nier: Automata. There’s an outright robot rebellion plot in it. That is risen and dropped in the span of thirty minutes. That the Machine Lifeforms killed their creators isn’t the important part. The questions is why they did that and what they will do now.

(Much like the background of humanity’s death in that game is a footnote. The story is about what is supposed to be done after that point.)

I’m not too certain about what to expect give his previous games. I’m not optimistic that he’ll be able to swing it into something novel and interesting.

*Kill* and *Fuck*

Especially given how gratuitously exploitative his use of sex and violence has been before. A lot has been said about unneeded shower scenes and female characters placed in peril. I’m not of the mind that this comes from a place of sexualized degradation or some such, but instead cheapness.

It’s cheap and easy to make the audience care about a character by making them a young, attractive woman, and having her almost get killed or sexually assaulted (or both, as is not entirely a unique incident in David Cage games). There’s something schlocky and fake about the way those scenes are used though, that makes them not feel right for the stories they appear in. The serial killer and the dance club strip scene don’t really fit well in Heavy Rain (especially not one after another) and those aren’t the only offenders.

The birthday party torment in Beyond Two Souls is especially egregious in how far and how radically it shifts into tormenting the main character in order to draw out emotions from the player. It’s also not earned yet, as Jodie simply hasn’t been around long enough for that scene to have the weight that is desired. It’s simply assumed that the player will care as it’s about a vulnerable teenage girl crying.

Compare that with the slow descent of 9S. His emotional destruction takes the better part of the last third of Nier: Automata and while shocking, does not come across as unrealistic once it begins. Further it is not played as heavy handed. His love/hate (fuck/kill) relationship with 2B is symbolized by events that occur during gameplay, and not merely stated outright to the player. As I said, Heavy Rain does have a central theme and message (how far would one be willing to go to save the life of one they care about) but said theme is amazingly blunt in realization.

(Or ever better, Pascal. Making the player care about an obviously non-human lifeform grieving over even less human like creatures to such an extent is far beyond what I expect to see in Detroit Become Human.)

Not bad, but definitely worrying to me if David Cage is going to approach social issues. Especially given how extremely cliche, if not outright stereotypical his stories have become when they did such things before.

Added in that he will now be working with characters that are outright meant to be exploited by definition, and I’m extremely wary. I can only contemplate the potential (highly emotionally manipulative) scenes of coerced sexual activity that I see has highly likely in Detroit Become Human. It fits his previous work too well at this point. Once might be called a fluke, but David Cage has defaulted to such scenes for their emotional weight multiple times in the same game at this point.

Furthermore I doubt David Cage is going to play too far from his comfort zone. Kara is likely the designated subject for such roles, and I doubt I will see a switch up in how this works. The switch of support and physical action as seen with 2B and 9S is unlikely to be part of the story. So no Markus being rescued from military androids or Kara being the first to take a human life to save him.

(I suspect the opposite is more likely.)

Railroads End

I don’t think a story driven game necessarily needs choice. Or more correctly, not all narratives need to care about what the player would prefer to happen. Sometimes that works, but sometimes a tighter, more consistent story can be told without trying to fit different endings even if differing routs may be used to get there.

I bring this up as David Cage has had some rocky attempts at choice based gameplay. Omikron really doesn’t have any, as the central plot and ending is immune to any open world shenanigans the player might get up to. Beyond Two Souls barely has any meaningful choices. There is one centrally narrative choice (at the end) but it doesn’t change the post-game epilogue in a meaningful manner. The world’s still doomed to get Ghost Boned in the Ghost Zone.

Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain have more, with Heavy Rain being the standout by far. Given that Detroit Become Human is going back to the trio of player characters again (or almost quartet that Heavy Rain had) we might have another case where differing endings that allowed for player characters to die while the plot continues on despite that point. I found that to be quite a bit of fun in truth, if not enough to overcome the other story issues and such.

So while I’m hopeful that this might be a return to better elements, I’m none the less alarmed that David Cage’s decision to shoot for a more cerebral plot than just a mystery/thriller about a serial killer might not play well. Indigo Prophecy is barely coherent past the halfway point.

Which is one thing I haven’t brought up. Even Heavy Rain has cut content involving an inexplicable psychic link between the serial killer and the main character. Every David Cage game has some rather clumsy mystical elements thrown in. Like the multiple factions of Indigo Prophecy and Omikron or the Navajo part of Beyond Two Souls. I think it’s impossible to guess about this right now, but it’s not at all impossible if the real reason Markus can give other Androids free will is some kind of techo-magic Apple of Knowledge or that Kara might be a actual re-incarnation of a dead woman and/or possessed by a ghost from the Infraworld.

We’ll have to wait and see on those points I suppose.

Final Note: I haven’t mentioned gameplay at all because it doesn’t matter. David Cage’s games play like ass. They just do. Telltale is better. I don’t even like them and they still are. The complicated quicktime events don’t add an appreciable investment most of the time as they just plain don’t work.

More conventional controls for the majority while saving the weird ‘artsy’ stuff for specific scenes would be better in my opinion and give more weight to them when they happen.

Or, there’s a reason the visual novel stuff in the forest of myth is the my favorite part of Nier. It’s not anywhere else in the game really. By being used sparingly it has more of an impact.

(Had another essay, but it wasn’t focused on Cage material so I wrote this one up instead. Hopefully I can finish that one too eventually.)

#david cage #video game analysis #videogames #detroit become human #nier automata #beyond two souls #omikron #heavy rain

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aishiteruitsumo6 · 8 years

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Aoi Shouta LIVE 2017 WONDER lab. ～prism～ Osaka/Tokyo 2017-02-04/2017-02-12 - Report

*DO NOT REPOST*

Two reports in one post! The majority of the live was similar ✨ Osaka parts will be in italics, Tokyo in bold, plain text means it happened in both lives! Most the official photos I've used here are mainly from Tokyo.

As usual not 100% accurate!

At Tokyo Live

*Thanks to those who responded to my post! ^^* So I got to my seat and after I was ready I messaged @jeanette-ting seeing if she got to her’s ok (we applied for tickets separately so never got to sit together 😢 ). And not long after she told me she spotted Chiharu!!! Here are screenshots of our convo 😂Thought it’d be easier than trying to explain it all lol Hopefully it’s not too small and you can all read it! (Probably better to read on mobile devices since you can zoom in!) Please excuse the spelling mistakes, as you can tell I was really excited 😂😂

And~ then the live started!

If only I could have recorded him 😂 It’s not in the convo but I also saw Agematsu Noriyasu, BROCCOLI’s composer (third photo) he was sitting next to Naru, Shoutan’s kouhai in S Inc (second photo). And I couldn’t tell who it was next to Agematsu-san, but since they were next to him and Naru, I guessed it must be Satou Hiromi, S Inc’s president (third photo). Araki Hirofumi, Kento’s actor in Smile Mermaid was also there (last photo)

I seen Japanese fan reports saying that Onoken was also there but I never seen him.

Video

The live started with a video of painter/artist Shoutan in an art studio. His Budokan Prince outfit was also displayed in the room ☺️ He was drawing a white, space-like outfit. He then turns and look straight to the camera with this expression (noticing us)

(ok not 100% this expression, he was more happy looking) and then he smiled beautifully~

Suddenly he sees something unusual and wiped his eyes to check that he wasn't seeing things. Sparkles started coming out from the drawing, he then smiled again Then Shoutan appeared on stage in that white outfit!!!

North Star

“Please don’t be afraid, one day surely it will get brighter~” Shoutan: HEY! Fans: HEY! HEY! HEY! If anyone has seen his performance in T-SPOOK, the way he performed was about the same ^^ The dress part of his outfit flowed really beautifully

DDD

I really, reeeeeeally love this song! Most of us chanted along to the “Wow wow wow” parts

Zessei STARGATE

There weren't many people who did the short choreography for both lives :(( But we all chanted "3, 2, 1 LET'S DIVE!!!!" really loud and clear!

Talk

Shoutan welcomed us and he looked round happily seeing how his live was full ^^

He said that the theme of this live is to make everyone's dreams come true~ He said that they've asked for fans to send in postcards with their dreams handwritten/drawn on it. Shoutan: Who has sent one in?! Fans: YAYY!! I also cheered since I sent one!

He said even in the video he was painting his dreams, like the outfits, and magic was casted making it come true~

As usual we asked him to spin XD Shoutan: "I was prepared for this lol" He spinned slowly to show us the beauty of his outfit

He said he wanted to be a robot when he was young which inspired this costume Ai-chan? lol, plus the outfit reminds me of his 5th Stage outfit but even more elegant and over the top. It was so beautiful, he suited it SO well.

Every now and then he went back to drink water XD Fans: OMIZU OISHII??! (Is the water nice)

Fans: SHOUTANN!!! Shoutan: Hai~ Shoutan desu~~

Fans: OMIZU OISHII??! Shoutan: Omizu desuka? (The water?) I'll~ leave it up to your imagination~ XD

After thinking, I realised we never got him to spin in Tokyo...

Innocent

I’m always amazed when Shoutan sings this live. Because he properly hits the “Get away!!” notes and doesn’t sing them softly.

UNLIMITED

Just before the song started he took off the dress part of his outfit! So kakkoi!! It really does look like a battle plug suit XD I wasn’t sure whether to mention this or not. Shoutan stood in the middle of his dancers, as the music started, a ball from the stairs rolled down towards Shoutan. Shoutan didn’t see since it was behind him. A dancer noticed it and went to roll it away behind them straight away, then got right back into the dance, preventing an accident. I couldn’t see who he was from where I was sitting. I want to thank him for his fast reflexes and for making the performance run smoothly! The ball is really big, the size of his palm, it also looked heavy.

Shoutan's dancing gets even better and better by each live! His dancing was so slick and smooth!

Video

Painter Shoutan went to sit down, rocking his body side to side, kicking his legs back and forth, he was super adorable here! He wasn't sure what to draw, then he looked out the window and decided to draw the beach (Smile Mermaid????)

He drew a tail near the shore MARINASAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He went to get a pot of water for going over the watercolour on the drawing. He looked at the little owl ornament sitting on his desk, smiles cutely and bopped its nose with his brush XD

He painted over the drawing and then focused on the tail.

Then the waves of the painting started to move. Shoutan who was amazed by it, smiles~

Endless Song!!!

Shoutan wore a outfit what was a mix between Marina-sama and Kaguya He wore long black hair extensions which again suits both Marina and Kaguya He had 2 blue feather rings on his right hand

He appeared at the top stage The shape of the Japanese style trousers made it look like Marina's tail He did hand movements (spin/twist) like he did in Smile Mermaid

He's so beautiful!!!!

Shoutan appeared floating above stage!!!!

He's so elegant He started to float forward and then I looked up and noticed the extension goes all the way to the bottom of the stage! 😳 He- he- he's going to come all the way over?!?! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

He slowly made his way to the end and was lowered down

During the instrumental part he waved to everyone really elegantly *MARINA-SAMAAAAA!!*

Near the end of the song he was lifted up again and was floated back to the top end of the stage and landed there.

There was a long silence before the next song

*??? Is Shoutan ok?* Everyone else was also whispering to each other

He's taking too long before Ai No Sasamaki Goto (compared to Osaka) I can hear faint noises coming from his mic.

*looks through my binoculars*

I think he's stuck or something!? >< Since it was dark I couldn't see clearly, but I seen his silhouette and he was struggling fixing something >< *me whispering* "Ganbare! Ganbare! Shoutan ganbare!"

Shoutan speaking calmly and softly: Minna-san

He said something else which I've forgot >< And then the lights came on

Shoutan: I always ask for costumes to be long, and you can't turn round with long costumes. *looks at his back* Mawaranain desu yo ne. (You really can't turn round in this)

Ai No Sasameki Goto

He stayed at top stage and he sang in a dome(see photo above), the effects were so beautiful, the dome rotated to open up. I was really, really happy to hear this since it's one song which I really love and was a little disappointed when he never sang it at Budokan. During the instrumental part he waved to all of us really elegantly

Sora Wa Toumeina Chika

Shoutan was still at the top and he walked down during the first verse of the song.

Talk

He said that he showed us umi no sekai (sea world) again~ He was really formal and elegant with his words when he started to talk XD Lol he said even his way of speaking has changed with his outfit XD He mentioned about his outfit and talked about the extensions, he said he also got to design the outfits this time again

We asked him to spin, as usual XD He slowly spinned round and stopped to show us the details of the back✨ He said he selfishly wanted a train for the outfit (for Marina) ii yo Shoutan!! It's beautiful! ^^

There was a slight pause again before the talk.

Shoutan: I'll be honest with everyone. We are having some technical difficulties just now, I'm really sorry.

Shoutan: During my second live, there was 2 performances, afternoon and night performances. And during the afternoon performance we had technical trouble too, so I ended up singing Tenshi No Inori in acapella.

Shoutan: Ah, chotto matte... (Wait a second) *bends down to the floor to pick something up*

Shoutan: ...re's a... *holds mic properly* There's a ladybug here

*The camera zooms in* He used his two index fingers to pick it up. He was trying so hard! But it kept falling because he had no nails!

After so long, Shoutan gave up and swept it away with his hand instead!!!

He was trying to save it at first but looks like he may have ended up killing it instead 😂😂😂 Poor ladybug

Shoutan got up and he talked a bit more about his outfit

He walked round in a huge circle so that he could turn round without getting tangled in his train.

It looked so funny and we all laughed XD

Shoutan: Nani waratteru no? (What are you laughing about?)

Shoutan: So in December last year I starred in a Stage Play, a story about a Mermaid Princess Shoutan: Aoi Shouta wa otoko de wasurenai yo ne (You guys haven't forgotten that Aoi Shouta is a guy right?)

Shoutan: There were some who've said/thought, "ah, that's right, Aoi Shouta is a guy" Shoutan: Yes, Aoi Shouta is a guy 😂😂😂

Shoutan: Ja otoko rashiku utaimasu (Then, I'll sing like a man~)

Murasaki

Shoutan: Mairimasu!! “Hito yo~ hito yo ni hitomi goro~” He never did Murasaki dance again this time either, the end of the song was the same a the MV where he twirled his hands

We all changed colour from red, blue to purple well✨

I seen the wire coming down and the fabric behind and under him *is he going to fly again and like Budokan?!?!*

Turns out it was just to raise all the fabric, but it was truly beautiful! *__*

Ai Uta

He held his mic like he did in Budokan again while singing

He also went down to perform on the extended stage, at the last chorus, he laid down in the middle of the circle that his dancers made. The camera shot a aerial view and the effects along with the dance were amazing! If I seen correctly, that part of the stage spinned him round

Video

Dancers and band members intro In the video, Painter Shoutan wrote each dancers’ name on the screen and introduced them one by one as they did a short solo performance It was the same for band members

RUN!! RUN!!

He wore a purple hoodie with checkered shorts and orange trainers. His hoodie had 29 on it for his age XD Pompoms were attached to his back it looked so cute like a tail XD He then took them and danced with them Half way/three quarters through the song he threw the pompoms away and took a huge prism flag (it was taller than him), he spinned, threw it up and caught it when it came back down! So amazing!!! Seeing him perform this live made me love this song even more!

START!!

He sounded even cuter in the way he sang this! And he looked so adorable waving the flag around in his outfit! We chanted “Let’s START!!” in the chorus. The flag looked really heavy though and you can hear him getting a bit tired from time to time ><

Talk

Again we asked Shoutan to spin XD He jumped and spinned to show his outfit XD

He spinned and then made a peace sign XD

So there's 29 on this outfit Yep, I'm 29 until August this year! He talked about Hajime (keyboard player) lol his hair is still amazing as ever XD Shoutan: I'm going to be 30 soon~

So there's a number written on my outfit, what is this "29"?? Fans: Shoutan's age!! Shoutan: This number, is my age until August 11th this year!! XD I'll be even more otona- otoko like!! (Lol otona is adult but he wanted to say be more manly otoko 😂)

Shoutan: Daisuke na minna san he(To everyone who I love)

Zutto...

Shoutan: Douko ikouka? Fan: Nani tabeyouka? Shoutan: Koko ga ee na? Fans: Kore ga ee na~

The lyrics is "ii na" but he changed it to "ee" because that's Kansai dialect!! So cute! ^^

Shoutan: Mada neteru no?  Fans: Sakki okita toko Shoutan: Chikoku suruyo?  Fans: Heiki dayo ^^

Usually we only sing the second verse with him! I was so happy to sing the first and second verse too!

He gave us a chuu~ at the end ^^

He turned around after he finished singing and stayed still for a while Touch To Take Trico?? And then I seen a staff handing him the flag Yes it is!

Touch To Take Trico

I managed to get my glad ready in good time and so did everyone else “Lalalala lalalala lalala~” Shoutan: Oh you all managed to properly get ready!

*music starts* Already had my flag ready~ Shoutan: "Jyaa!! I'm going to sing close to every one!!!" Ehh what?!?! 😳 He runs to the right side of the stage and gets on a cart!!!!!!!!!!

He sang and waved to everyone in all directions while slowly going round! Wait, wait, wait! Is he? Is he going to come here too?!? >___< *thinking back to 5th Stage, because Saitama Arena is too big, you can't make it round the arena in one song* he's going to come here!! 😭 I think he looked over to my direction when he was at the bottom right of the stadium 😭😭😭 When he made his way over to my side he was so close!!!

He looked like he was about to fall at one point!! *Shoutan be careful!!!* O__________________________O

He travelled on !! *REMEMBERS CHIHARU IS SLIGHTLY FURTHER UP!!!*

OMG! CHIHARU HAD HIS LIGHT ON YELLOW TOO AND HE WAS WAVING AT SHOUTAN LIKE MAD!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂 Chiharu: "YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!" *Waves frantically* 😂😂😂Chiharu the best 👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Shoutan being professional as he is, never seemed to react, I don't even know if he looked at Chiharu or made eye contact since he had his back towards me

Oh yeah, I looked over to Chiharu every now and then from the start of the live, and he was actually pretty chill throughout the whole live and didn’t wave his light stick much lol. Guess he is sitting at the special section after all, he’d attract too much attention with no one else waving their lights XD

At the end they extend the music and Shoutan got us all the song the “lalala” parts a few times ^^

Video

Painter shoutan couldn't think of what to draw and was pretty down 😢 He starts working out doing stretches, sit ups, then he tried weight lifting but couldn't do it, it was so cute 😂

Then he finally came up with an idea and started drawing and painting the outfit He had a big satisfied smile He was drawing a prince outfit

Shoutan goes to sleep. Wakes up and sees the sparkles coming from Budokan prince outfit and sparkles from the drawing mixing together The magic sparkles gathers on Shoutan Once again, he showed a really beautiful smile

The stage was dark and he appeared at the top of the stage in that Prince outfit.

We all cheer and then it was silent while he made his move, slowly but coolly. He walked to the right side of the stairs. He sat at the top of the stairs

He walked a bit further down before sitting

Kimi No Kotoba Ballad ver

The music starts Shoutan slightly missed the start of the song because he walked further than he was supposed to 💦*me whispering ganbare!* He forgot some of the lyrics near the start *ganbare Shoutan!!* but he picked himself back up

The performance was so beautiful and I was so touched by it once again

Himitsu No Kuchidzuke

As usual, fanchanting to this was so amazing and fun!!!

*Saying this fast*"Fukaku... "karemete ageru?" He said ageru in a higher register sounding like a question

He gave us 3 kisses instead of the usual 2! And we got to hear them loud and clear 💕

He said the lines more aggressively than usual, he was too kakkoi!!! 。・゜・(ノД`)・゜・。

If I remember correctly he came to the bottom of the stage for parts of song!

Couldn't quit hear his kisses here, the same happened in Budokan

And the ending instead of a kiss, he held his index finger to his lips (like shhhh) >///<

Now, chanting to this was also amazing!!!!! We were all so hyped up! Shoutan was extra kakkoi, and aggressive as he said in his blog ✨ He performed part of the song at the bottom of the stage.

Talk

Shoutan: *sighs* Boku mo ningen datte, tsukareru toki mo aru (I'm also human, there are times where I'll also get tired)

*Ganbatte! Otsukare!* >__< rest if you must!!

Fans: Omizu wo nonde!! (Drink water!) 😂

Shoutan: I always will be/want to be everyone's Prince (can't remember which one he said)

Shoutan: For the girls... Please always let me be your Prince For the guys... Hime-sama ni... Zettai narenai (I'll definitely never be able to be your princess) 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I was so tempted to shout "HIMEOUJISAMAAAA!" 😂

Shoutan: This part is called the first floor right?? Fans:Yeah! XD Shoutan: Jyaa! First floor! Fans: YEAHHH!! Shoutan: Second Floor Fans: YEAHHH!! Shoutan: Third floor!! Fans: YEAHHH!! Shoutan: Girls! Fans: YEAHHH!! Shoutan: Guys! Male fans: YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!

The guys were amazing and that's when I noticed there was a guy sitting not too far from me. His cheering was amazing XD

Shoutan talked about the band members Shoutan: Everyone loves curry and only eats curry We usually have lunch box meals prepared, even today the meal they had was curry.

Shoutan to Taka-nii (drummer): What did you think of the fans? Taka-nii: Yappari dansei no koe ha sugokatta (The guys’ voices were amazing after all XD)

Shoutan spoke to Masu papa calling him papa as usual XD Masu papa: Papa wo yamete (stop it with the papa) 😂 And we all shouted papa XD He talked about Shoutan's talents again and also mentioning how Shoutan had 4 outfits

Shoutan: Even years ago I wouldn't think I'd be here like this like this, it’s really thanks to everyone. We all cheered and thanked Shoutan too Shoutan: No, I mean, without everyone I wouldn’t have been able to hold a live! You can’t hold a live with no one attending!!

He said he won't let go of us

He said that time really flew by and its time for the last song :(

Shoutan: I'll sing another song Shoutan: Keep following me

Checkmate

The dance!!!!! It was SOOOO kakkoi! and then it went cute and girly during “Everybody go~ Everybody now~” parts!! Choreography during instrumental part: he walked from left to right in line with the dancers, each dancer stopped one by one as Shoutan walked on.

Shoutan: I said before that the time will fly by and the time has really gone by, it's nearly the end

flower

He performed it the same as his MV and it was perfect!!

Encore

We chanted: Shoutan! Shoutan! It felt really long and it was tiring, but 3/4 through it I decided to cheer even harder!! The girl to my left cheered from time to time, but when she did she was loud and clear (have more confidence and don't be afraid to cheer for Shoutan!!!)

Not many people around me cheered, but even when it went quiet where I was, I never stopped once (apart from when I kinda choked a bit lol). It felt long but not as long as Osaka.

SHOT A LOVE

Shoutan came back! And of course in the Live Tshirt! He wore the same bottoms and boots as his Prince outfit And... WHAT IS THAT ON HIS HEAD?! XD He wore an Optopus hat, he looked SO cute!!

Everyone's postcards showed on screen! They’re all so cute! 90% of them drew illustrations and wrote a message. My Japanese friend’s one was shown! ^^ I didn’t see mines appear, maybe in Tokyo!

I can hear Shoutan but where is he???? HE’S ON THE CART AGAIN BUT THIS TIME BETWEEN 1ST & 2ND FLOOR!!! So high up! The cart has so many of our postcards stuck on it!! Not many people did short choreography, but we all chanted “SHOW TIME!”

TRUE HEARTS

Half way through SHOT A LOVE, TRUE HEARTS started! Towel out!!

Summer Dreamin’

The song switched to Summer Dreamin’!

There's also a short dance to Summer Dreamin which @moirica taught me before hand (thank you!) and I did noticed quite a number of people knew it as well which was good!

Back to SHOT A LOVE!

As usual, he ran round stage really cutely during the instrumental part ^^ I didn’t see my postcard here either, but I may have missed it as I was looking back and forth between Shoutan and the screen ^^;;

I can’t remember which song the confetti bursted and fell down. I tried really hard (1. because I promised some friends that I would try to catch one 2. because I never got any from Budokan and I wanted to get Prism’s for the memory) but I managed to catch ONE strip!!!

@kuroitsukinohime I’ve been so busy that I can’t even remember if I told you, but I got us one!!! I’ve already split it all between all my friends and don’t have any left ^^;;

Talk

He said he heard us calling Shoutan Shoutan and thanked us

He said it’s his first time performing a live in Osaka and he's really happy and glad.

About his hat, he said he went looking for something with Osaka in mind, he found the big one first, then he found the smaller one and decided he had to put them both together (on top of each other) XD At first he said takoyaki (it's a food) and then he corrected himself and said he meant tako (octopus) instead 😂 He said he wanted to sing close to everyone so he road a cart, and even asked to be on the 2nd floor, the staff helped moved him along. He said everyone’s dreams (postcards) was stuck on the cart and the ones that couldn’t fit in got shown on the screen.

Shoutan: It's my first time performing a one man live in Osaka, and to be able to participate in this theatre. Shoutan: Let's take a photo!

At first he said to do a peace sign Then him and the staff got into position and he turned round again, and asked us, we said we wanted to make an "S" instead for Shouta ^^

So we went with that again ^^ Cameraman: Hai! 3, 2, 1, cheese~ *Silence~* We took about 3 photos or so and it was the same each time 😂😂😂

That’s the Octopus hat lol He said that last year he got to perform in Anime Kouhaku Utagassen, and it was in Yoyogi too, he thought it'll be nice if he could hold his own live there too one day~ And he's here!!

Shoutan: Then to celebrate/for the memories! (I can't remember which one he said) let's take a photo together!! I don't want do be alone so let's take one with the dancers and band too! As usual, let's make an "S"!!

They got into position Shoutan: Ah, a bit further back?? *moves back more*

Shoutan: Make sure your right hand is on top! If it's left we won't know lol Shoutan: Ok 3, 2, 1~ *shoots*

Shoutan: Oh we'll take about 3 shots *picture gets taken while he turned round to tell us that* 😂 Shoutan: 3, 2, 1~ *shoots* hai okay~~

Thankfully I’m not cut out in the photos, but you still can’t see me. Shoutan, thank you so much for letting me be in 3 photos with you (including Budokan) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀)

He took off his hat and fans expressed their dissapointment. Shoutan: I can’t wear this anymore~

He made announcements which I’m sure you’ve all seen: Tokyo Prism Live will broadcast on TBS Channel on 03/26! 2nd Full Album will be release this year! 2nd Fanclub Event will be held in Yokohama PACIFICO on 08/12!

Shoutan: So this is really, really the last song Fans: Ehhh ><

Shoutan: Kiite kudasai, Melodia (please listen)

Melodia

I started tearing up during the instrumental part after the second chorus He sang "Minna ga ireba" just like he did in Budokan instead of "Kimi ga ireba" ^^ The music to Melodia played in the background and Shoutan introduced all the members once again. He lined up in the middle of them, hand in hand *Without a mic*Shoutan: TRULY, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TODAY!!!!

His voice cracked so much because he was shouting so hard! Poor Shoutan!! Some of us laughed. Shoutan waved and said thank you to all of us, he went to every side and every direction, thank you Shoutan!

He blew us all a kiss before he left for good. Once the live ended they played the instrumental of flower.

This Live lasted just under 3 hours (shorter than Budokan). I’m not sure how long Tokyo Live lasted as I never kept a tab on times.

Some things I’ve forgotten when it happened

Shoutan was meant to say he changed outfit, but he made a mistake and said something else which sounded similar and it was so cute!

Instead of getting each floor to cheer, Shoutan got: everyone, girls and guys. Again the guys’ voices were amazing, and again there was one guy really close to me XD Some guys on the 1st and 2nd floor on my left cheered really hard at times and they REEEALLY love Shoutan 😂

Thoughts

It felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO short!! Both times as well! As soon as he said it was the last song after S I couldn’t believe it!! Both lives were amazing, but I wasn’t quite feeling it in Osaka for some reason? I couldn’t remember much very well either :/ I was able to enjoy Tokyo Live a lot more and felt more emotional (which is normal for me) Poor Shoutan though, there was so much trouble at Tokyo!! But things like that makes it more fun and interesting! Fav performances: DDD Endless Song Ai No Sasameki Goto Murasaki RUN!! RUN!! Zutto... S Checkmate flower I was disappointed that he never sang Brilliant Moon (super grateful he sang it at Budokan!) and Why, pessimistic? It would have been the perfect set with Checkmate and flower!! But I guess 3 dance songs in a row would be too much ^^;;

Fav parts of the live? It’s the same no matter what event it is. It’s to be able to see Shoutan’s smile. I always look forward to that and he gave me another happy day to remember ^^ I would still say that I love Budokan Live the most. Prism was amazing but that happiness I felt at Budokan cannot be replaced. Every single moment was precious and I received so much when I expected nothing. Even when I received Shoutan’s sign at Hatsukoi Monster Event, I was extremely happy of course, but Budokan is still the happiest day of my life.

Tagging for people to read ^^ @showta0811aoi @chiyamabunny @gloriouscrowncreator

Also thanks again to @kuroitsukinohime because of you I was able to go to Osaka Live!! Cheering for Shoutan together was the best!!

So I’ve changed my style a bit and tried to make it more report-like than my usual personal ones. I skipped out way more of my reactions and thoughts compared to my Budokan report. I skipped out about buying goods and things in between. Haven’t included much photos of my own.

If anyone is still here reading this (lol) please let me know your thoughts, and what you’d prefer :)

#Aoi Shouta #Shoutan #Seiyuu #WONDER lab. ~prism~#Aoi Shouta LIVE 2017 WONDER lab. ~prism~#My report #Sawashiro Chiharu #Never forget #Oujisama Shoutan

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years

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MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/mozcon-virtual-2020-top-takeaways-from-day-one-2/

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

So much of the day was different from what we expected six months ago, but the one thing we can always count on from our speakers is a MASSIVE amount of value. We’re talking insights, game plans, cheat codes — you name it, we’ve got it — and this year was no different.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

AAAAAND WE’RE OFF! #MozCon Virtual @Moz CEO, @SarahBird, discusses her take on the State of the Industry.

5 Timely Trends for 2020: 1. welcoming our robot overlords 2. entities 3. knowledge panel 4. localization of everything 5. new & ramping up search experiences

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I’ll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

Shannon explained that we talk about Digital PR campaigns as if the majority of them are “huge wins”. The reality, however, is that most of our campaigns will be steady performers and the huge wins are actually just anomalies.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

Aira put out a state of digital PR study and found that most campaigns only got between one and 20 links. When Shannon broke down the numbers for Aira, they were consistent: about 17 links were gained per campaign!

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

When it comes to determining the success of your “brand,” the numbers aren’t straightforward. There are a lot of data points to take into consideration. In fact, Robin started off by asking us if we used multiple datasets, collected data on our competitors, and got granular. Needless to say, many of us knew we were in for a ride.

Need? Brand interest data.

Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads.

This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Honestly, this presentation was so jam-packed with information that we had a hard time keeping up! Thankfully, at the end of his presentation, Robin laid out step-by-step instructions on how he collected, compiled, and analyzed all of this data.

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

Takeaways via @alexisksanders 1. Make use of first, second and third-party information 2. Ask questions on Google Discover 3. Try Sparktoro -new tool for me! 4. Map your users’ journey againts content 6. Today is change and learning fast#MozCon #marketing pic.twitter.com/DH80dThomS

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

The marketing funnel is broken, we all know that. But if we aren’t focusing on getting people to work down a funnel, what are we working towards? Building our brand. Right. Well, how do we go about doing that?

Phil blew our minds with insights on how he helped Wistia change their mindset when it came to creating “brand awareness.” The first step was to stop calling it brand awareness and instead call it brand affinity.

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

Dr. Pete talked all about spotting trends. Nothing about this year could have been predicted. There was no way that hair salons could have predicted that “how to cut hair” was going to be an opportunity keyword.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

Dr. Pete showed us exactly how we can use tools that we’re familiar with, and a few that we might not be familiar with, to spot trends and turn them into opportunities including Google Trends, Pinterest, Twitter search, and even Boing Boing Store.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

In Twitter Advanced Search, restrict to your language, relevant date ranges, and set a number of minimum likes. Go lower on that last one than you think – but this way you won’t get every random tweet on the topic@dr_pete #MozCon

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

If you’re looking for a great example of letting go and embracing automation, Microsoft Ads is a good place to go. They allow you to import all of your Google Ads right into Microsoft ads so they can start running right away.

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey…

#MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

Rob showed us how he scrapes websites (including the big G) in seconds using a few lines of code. He walked us through every piece of code needed to scrape G2, Google, and even Google’s Lighthouse tool.

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we’re calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

Source link

#General

0 notes

isearchgoood · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

AAAAAND WE'RE OFF! #MozCon Virtual @Moz CEO, @SarahBird, discusses her take on the State of the Industry. 5 Timely Trends for 2020: 1. welcoming our robot overlords 2. entities 3. knowledge panel 4. localization of everything 5. new & ramping up search experiences

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

Takeaways via @alexisksanders 1. Make use of first, second and third-party information 2. Ask questions on Google Discover 3. Try Sparktoro -new tool for me! 4. Map your users' journey againts content 6. Today is change and learning fast#MozCon #marketing pic.twitter.com/DH80dThomS

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

In Twitter Advanced Search, restrict to your language, relevant date ranges, and set a number of minimum likes. Go lower on that last one than you think - but this way you won’t get every random tweet on the topic@dr_pete #MozCon

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

via Blogger https://ift.tt/38VQd7n #blogger #bloggingtips #bloggerlife #bloggersgetsocial #ontheblog #writersofinstagram #writingprompt #instapoetry #writerscommunity #writersofig #writersblock #writerlife #writtenword #instawriters #spilledink #wordgasm #creativewriting #poetsofinstagram #blackoutpoetry #poetsofig

0 notes

fmsmartchoicear · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

0 notes

timeblues · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2Os8U92 More on https://seouk4.weebly.com/

0 notes

kjt-lawyers · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

�� Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

0 notes

theinjectlikes2 · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2Os8U92 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #The Moz Blog

0 notes

gamebazu · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

0 notes

paulineberry · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

0 notes

noithatotoaz · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

0 notes

pacoteemagrecer · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

0 notes

michaelandy101-blog · 4 years

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/mozcon-virtual-2020-top-takeaways-from-day-one/

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

AAAAAND WE’RE OFF! #MozCon Virtual @Moz CEO, @SarahBird, discusses her take on the State of the Industry.

5 Timely Trends for 2020: 1. welcoming our robot overlords 2. entities 3. knowledge panel 4. localization of everything 5. new & ramping up search experiences

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I’ll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data.

Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads.

This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey…

#MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we’re calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

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