Now that the wedding is behind me time to get back to blogging

Wow it really has been a while since my last post, but I have an excuse. For those who don't know me personally I got married to my sweetheart of 6 years on Aug 16th up in Malibu. So for those of you who are already married, you know what it's like when it's "crunch" time. And for those of you who are about to get married hang in there cause it's worth it!

I have to say the last 6-8 weeks before the wedding was the most stressful time of my life. There were so many little details that we had to take care of. Making sure the rooms were booked, getting gifts for the bridal party, planning the rehearsal dinner, making sure Courtney (my wife) was sane. So with all of that, and all the stuff going on at work there was no time for blogging.

I have to say even though it seemed like it came and gone in a flash, the wedding was a big hit. Everyone had a good time, and there were no major train wrecks. That is all thanks to Courtney, she did most of the planning. I just tried to be as supportive as possible and not get in the way. =oD

After the wedding we spent a week in Hawaii on the big island to un-plug and relax. Someone told me that my honeymoon would be the best vacation of my life, and they were right! After a year of planning a week in paradise it the perfect way to unwind.

So now that my second job of wedding planner support is over I can get back to the business of online marketing. Before I took my hiatus I was planning to write a 3 part series on analytics, but I just attended the Online Marketing Summit, and my head is swarming with ideas so I might have to change it up a bit.

If you were not able to attend the summit, you missed a good summit. The information was fresh, the speakers were very knowledgeable on their subject matter, and above all it was a good place to network and learn. There was some really good takeaways; one of my favorites was on the topic of social media. In the final keynote: Big Brands, Big Plans I asked if there was a measurable way to measure ROI in social media. The collective response was that with social media it shouldn't just be about ROI it should be about engaging with your users. If you get your users more engaged in your brand eventually the sale will happen. Also another good point is that social media doesn't have to just be about blogging, or being on facebook. If you have a product letting your customers rate the product and give feedback is a form if social media. Finally one of the panelist said "Don't just jump in to social media just to check something off of a list. You should use social media in a way that is aligned with your overall marketing strategy." If you want to check out some more good points from OMS check out my twitter feed. If you were at OMS please feel free to comment with your feedback.

So stay tuned because over the next few weeks Im going to be posting some good topics on analytics and paid search.

Also if you are going to the MarketingSherpa B-to-B Demand Gen Summit in Boston or San Francisco let me know. I will be co-presenting with ion interactive on the topic of Optimizing SEM Strategies from Keyword to Conversion. We will be talking about our success with increasing our paid search conversion rates. The whole summit looks to be a promising event, so if you have the extra time and money I encourage you to come out.

So I'll leave you with a couple of pics from my wedding & honeymoon, Enjoy!