Day 2 here at Pubcon and all that seems to rattle through my mind is “Twitter-this” and “Twitter-that”.  Between the “#pubcon” hash tag being used quite liberally and Question & Answer sessions focused around us tweeting our questions to a hash tag of “salonX”, I’m twitter-exhausted.  Been a lot fun, though (and gives me a good excuse to tweet a lot!0

But it gets better…after 3 Affiliate Summit trips (and a fourth coming up here in January), I ran into co-founder Shawn Collins.  Too cool!  I got to chat with him a bit and even brought up the topic of this “twitter-crazy” internet universe that seems to exist.  Further, we talked a bit about how Affiliate Summit uses twitter to promote this ever-growing conference.

Check out this attendance growth:

(See full attendance post)

Check out the video above to hear what Shawn has to say about it!

As for the rest of the event…

I have a few highlights and tips I want to share:

1. The Google SideWiki

I’ll be honest, I really didn’t know about this at all.  (And personally, I don’t think many others do either), but that seems like a golden opportunity to hope on the ground floor to help promote yourself and your site.  Great post about it at How to Claim Your Website’s Google SideWiki.  Thanks @vizionweb!

2. Some Conversion Gems

(@gaspland): Be careful using Flash Animation to make your point (they probably won’t watch!).  I used to do this.  I had some kick-ass flash intro pages, but as shown here, people usually don’t stick around and watch.

(@janetdmiller): Considering segmenting your landing page outbound path (Just ask what they want!).When someone lands on your site, find out what they want, maybe with two buttons and then offer content and design (using cookies) based on this information.

(@bmassey) - One crazy scientist: Cater your copy, buttons, headlines, etc. first by understanding your demographics.  Should your buy button be “BUY NOW” or “ADD TO SHOPPING CART”?  Your customer type is the answer.  Not sure?  A/B Test it!

3. Forbes Ad Effectiveness Study

I really found this graph interesting.  It was published in mid-year but was reported on for the months of February through March, 2009.

SEO and email marketing are still king (though, I bet we’ll see more social media coming up in the upcoming year!).  I found a few version of the report here.

So many more things to share, too, but that is for another day!  I have a beer waiting for me over at the New York, New York hotel!

Until tomorrow…cheers…matt

P.S.  Again, much thanks for Shawn Collins to do the video with me!  It was fun and a real pleasure to finally meet and talk to him.

And Affiliate Summit IS the premiere affiliate marketing event in the US.  I’ll be there January 17-19 here in Las Vegas (the Rio Hotel).  It is one of the few events I make it a priority to attend every year!  To learn more, go to AffiliateSummit.com and be sure to follow Shawn on twitter (@affiliatetip)…hint…he gives away passes quite often on Twitter!