Like the talking mice to Cinderella, we’re already working hard on MozCon and crafting Roger one heck of a ball gown. (And letting our metaphors get out of control in the meantime.) Which means I’m here to share with all of you the current MozCon 2016 Agenda and a ton of other preview goodies.
If you’re suddenly like “Oh snap, I haven’t bought my ticket(s)!”, I’ll pause while you:
New emcees: we’re mixing it up!
As some of you know, Cyrus won’t be emceeing MozCon this year. (We still adore him, and I’m sure his face will make it into a few slide decks.) So we decided to take this opportunity to shake it up.
Emceeing MozCon is a hard job. We want each and every speaker to feel supported by our stage and have the emcee warm up the audience for their talk. Instead of having one emcee for three days, we’re having three different emcees, one each day.
Please congratulate them!
Jen Sable Lopez
Sr. Director of Community and Audience Development at Moz
@jennita
Leading our community and audience development efforts here at Moz, Jen Sable Lopez’s the biggest fan of you: our community. She’s deeply invested in being TAGFEE and bringing educational content and community love to you. Jen also does a great Grumpy Cat impression, serves as Moz gif maker, and loves traveling and her family.
Ronell Smith
Strategist at RS Consulting
@ronellsmith
Ronell Smith is a business strategist with a passion for helping brands create a user experience their customers will recognize, appreciate, and reward them for with their business.
Zeph Snapp
CEO at Altura Interactive
@zephsnapp
A bilingual, bicultural marketer, Zeph Snapp helps international companies reach Spanish speakers in the US and Latin America. If you want him to go on a rant, ask him about machine learning as it relates to translation and content.
The sneak peek MozCon 2016 Agenda
Because we’re releasing this earlier than ever, there’s still a few TBD spots and topics. I can’t thank our speakers enough for being so gracious and super hard-working to settle on their topics.
You’ll also notice that community speakers are still forthcoming. That’s right — they’re coming soon (keep an eye out for the submission post!), and we wanted to give you a head start to noodle on your potential topic.
Monday
08:00–09:00am
Breakfast
09:00–09:20am
Welcome to MozCon 2016! with Rand Fishkin
Wizard of Moz
@randfish
Rand Fishkin is the founder and former CEO of Moz, co-author of a pair of books on SEO, and co-founder of Inbound.org. Rand’s an unsaveable addict of all things content, search, and social on the web.
09:25–10:10am
Uplevel Your A/B Testing Skills with Cara Harshman
Content Marketing Manager at Optimizely
@caraharshman
A/B testing is bread and butter for anyone who aspires to be a data-driven marketer. Cara will share stories about how testers, from one-person agencies to dedicated testing teams, are doing it, and how you can develop your own A/B testing expertise.
Cara Harshman just celebrated her four-year anniversary at Optimizely. Besides managing content strategy, customer case studies, and the blog, she has been known to spend a lot of time writing parody songs for company all-hands meetings.
10:10–10:30am
AM Break
10:35–11:05am
The Big One: Relaunching Your Website with Lauren Vaccarello
VP of Marketing at Box
@laurenv
Change makes us all nervous, and relaunching an entire site can be both thrilling and daunting. Lauren will walk you through how to do it right from infrastructure and content to design, information architecture, and marketing automation, and share real life triumphs and cautionary tales.
Lauren Vaccarello is a best-selling author and currently runs corporate and field marketing at Box.
11:05–11:35am
TBD
11:35am–12:05pm
TBD
12:05–01:35pm
Lunch
01:40–02:10pm
Rethinking Information Architecture for SEO and Content Marketing with Joe Hall
SEO Consultant at Hall Analysis LLC
@joehall
Information Architecture (IA) shapes the way we organize data, think about complex ideas, and build web sites. Joe will provide a new approach to IA for SEO and Content Marketing, based on actionable insights, that SEOs can extract from their own data sets.
Joe Hall is an executive SEO consultant focused on analyzing and informing the digital marketing strategies of select clients through high-level data analysis and SEO audits.
02:10–02:40pm
Breaking Patterns: How to Rewrite the CRO Playbook with Mobile Optimization with Talia Wolf
CMO at Banana Splash
@Taliagw
Best practices lie. Talia shares how to build a mobile conversion optimization strategy and how to turn more mobile visitors into customers based on A/B testing their emotions, decision making process, and behavior.
As CMO at Banana-Splash and Founder of Conversioner, Talia Wolf helps businesses optimize their sites using emotional targeting, consumer psychology, and real-time data to generate more revenues, leads, and sales. Talia is a keynote speaker, author, and Harry Potter fan.
02:40–03:10pm
TBD
03:10–03:30pm
PM Break
03:35–04:05pm
TBD with Ross Simmonds
Co-Founder at Crate
@TheCoolestCool
Ross Simmonds is a digital marketing consultant and entrepreneur. He’s worked with both startups and Fortune 500 companies and is the co-founder of two startups: Crate and Hustle & Grind.
04:05–4:50pm
TBD with Dana DiTomaso
Partner at Kick Point
@danaditomaso
Dana DiTomaso is a partner at Kick Point, where she applies marketing into strategies to grow clients’ businesses, in particular to ensure that digital and traditional play well together — separating real solutions from wastes of time (and budget).
Tuesday
08:00–09:00am
Breakfast
09:05–09:50am
You Can’t Type a Concept: Why Keywords Still Matter with Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist at Moz
@dr_pete
Google is getting better every day at understanding intent and natural language, and the path between typing a search and getting a result is getting more winding. How often are queries interpreted, and how do we do keyword research for search engines that are beginning to understand concepts?
Dr. Pete Meyers is Marketing Scientist for Seattle-based Moz, where he works with marketing and data science on product research and data-driven content. He has spent the past four years building research tools to monitor Google, including the MozCast project.
09:50–10:20am
How to Be Specific: From-The-Trenches Lessons in High-Converting Copy with Joanna Wiebe
Creator and Copywriter at Copy Hackers
@copyhackers
Abstracted benefits, summarized value, and promise-free landing pages keep marketers safe — and conversion rates low. Joanna shares how and why your copy needs to get specific to move people to act.
The original conversion copywriter, Joanna Wiebe is the founder of Copy Hackers and Airstory. She’s optimized copy for Wistia, Buffer, Crazy Egg, Bounce Exchange, and Rainmaker, among others, and spoken at CTA Conf, Business of Software… and now MozCon.
10:20–10:40am
AM Break
10:45am–12:05pm
Community Speakers
12:05–01:35pm
Lunch
01:40–02:25pm
Local Projects to Boost Your Company and Career with Mike Ramsey
President at Nifty Marketing
@mikeramsey
Mike will walk through the projects that his individual team members took on to improve how they handled local links, reviews, reports, and lots of areas in between.
Mike Ramsey is the President of Nifty Marketing, which works with big brands and small businesses on digital marketing. He talks about running agencies, local search, and Idaho a lot.
02:25–02:55pm
Reimagining Customer Retention and Evangelism with Kristen Craft
Director of Business Development at Wistia
@thecrafty
True customer loyalty and retention lies in the experience people have with your brand. Kristen will show you how to leverage video to optimize for experience, foster loyalty, lower churn, and create evangelists.
As Director of Business Development at Wistia, Kristen Craft loves working with Wistia’s partner community, building connections with other companies that care about video marketing. Kristen holds degrees in business and education from MIT and Harvard.
02:55–03:15pm
PM Break
03:25–03:55pm
TBD with Rebekah Cancino
Co-Founder and Content Strategy Consultant at Onward
@rebekahcancino
Rebekah Cancino spent the last decade helping clients, like Aetna and United Way, overcome some of their toughest content problems. Her consultancy offers workshops and training for in-house teams that bridge the gap between content, design, and technical SEO.
03:55–04:40pm
Putting Trust into Domain Authority with Wil Reynolds
CEO/Founder at Seer Interactive
@wilreynolds
Domain Authority is a trust sentiment, not a pure numeric value. Wil will show real examples of sites that build authority and trust by understanding and then solving users’ problems. He’ll also give you practical ways to use Google SERPS to uncover the many ways to best solve these problem.
Wil Reynolds — Director of Strategy, Seer Interactive — founded Seer with a focus on doing great things for its clients, team, and the community. His passion for driving and analyzing the impact that a site’s traffic has on the company’s bottom line has shaped the SEO and digital marketing industries. Wil also actively supports the Covenant House.
Wednesday
09:00–10:00am
Breakfast
10:05–10:35am
The Irresistible Power of Strategic Storytelling with Kindra Hall
Strategic Storytelling Advisor at Kindra Hall
@kindramhall
Whoever tells the best story, wins. In marketing, in business, in life. Going beyond buzzwords, Kindra will reveal specific storytelling strategies to create great content and win customers without a fight.
Kindra Hall is a speaker, author, and storytelling advisor. She works with individuals and brands to help them capture attention by telling better stories.
10:35–11:20am
29 Advanced Google Tag Manager Tips Every Marketer Should Know with Mike Arnesen
Founder and CEO at UpBuild
@mike_arnesen
Google Tag Manager is an incredibly powerful tool and one you’re likely not using to its full potential. Mike will deliver 29 rapid-fire tips that’ll empower you to overcome the tracking challenges of dynamic web apps, build user segments based on website interactions, scale the implementation of structured data, analyze the consumption of rich media, and much more.
Mike Arnesen has been driven by his passion for technical SEO, semantic search, website optimization, and company culture for over a decade. He is the Founder and CEO of UpBuild, a technical marketing agency focusing on SEO, analytics, and CRO.
11:20–11:40am
AM Break
11:45am–12:15pm
Engineering-As-Marketing for Non-Engineers with Tara Reed
CEO at AppsWithoutCode.com
@TaraReed_
Tara shares how to build useful tools like calculators, widgets, and micro-apps to acquire millions of new users, without writing a single line of code.
Tara Reed is a Detroit-based entrepreneur and founder of AppsWithoutCode.com. As a non-technical founder, she builds her own apps, widgets, and algorithms without writing a single line of code.
12:15–12:45pm
TBD
12:45–02:15pm
Lunch
02:20–03:05pm
Indexing on Fire: Google Firebase Native and Web App Indexing with Cindy Krum
CEO and Founder at MobileMoxie, LLC
@suzzicks
In the future, app and web content will be indistinguishable, and Google’s new Firebase platform allows developers to use the same resources to build, market, and maintain apps on all devices, in one place. Cindy will outline how digital marketers can use Firebase to help drive indexing of native and web app content, including Deep Links, Dynamic Links, and Angular JS web apps.
Cindy Krum is the CEO and Founder of MobileMoxie, LLC, and author of Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are. She brings fresh and creative ideas to her clients, and regularly speaks at US and international digital marketing events.
03:05–03:35pm
Mind Games: Craft Killer Experiences with 7 Lessons from Cognitive Psychology with Sarah Weise
UX Director at Booz Allen Digital Interactive
@weisesarah
How often are you asked to influence people to click a button? Buy a product? Stay on a page? We like to think of ourselves as logical, yet 95% of our decisions are unconscious. Sarah shares how to weave cognitive psychology concepts into your digital experiences. Steal these persuasive triggers to boost engagement, conversions, leads, and even delight.
Sarah Weise is UX Director at Booz Allen Digital Interactive. She has crafted experiences for hundreds of websites, apps, and products. Over the past decade, she has specialized in creative, lean ways to connect with customers and build experiences that matter.
03:35–03:55pm
PM Break
04:00–04:45pm
Earning, Nudging, and (Indirectly) Buying the Links You Still Need to Rank with Rand Fishkin
Wizard of Moz
@randfish
Links still move the needle — on rankings, traffic, reputation, and referrals. Yet, some SEOs have come to believe that if we “create great content,” links will just appear (and rankings will follow). Rand will dispel this myth and focus on how to build the architecture for a link strategy, alongside some hot new tools and tactics for link acquisition in 2016.
Rand Fishkin is the founder and former CEO of Moz, co-author of a pair of books on SEO, and co-founder of Inbound.org. Rand’s an un-save-able addict of all things content, search, and social on the web.
Don’t worry, we’ve got your MozCon evenings covered!
After a day of learning and possibly discovering a brand-new city, I know I sometimes struggle with what to do after the conference closes for the day. At MozCon, we work to bring you three evening events where you can chill, network, make new friends, and grab some food and drinks. (We will also have a post in late August or early September with a ton of great recommendations for things to do and food to eat in Seattle!)
Monday’s MozCrawl from 7–10pm
The best part of our MozCrawl is being able to explore a neighborhood in Seattle. Bring your walking shoes (or load your favorite rideshare app), and get to know a little about the flavor of Seattle. While the locations are still TBD, Moz and our MozCon partners will each host a bar with light appetizers and drinks.
To ensure you see as much of Seattle as possible, each bar will have a scavenger hunt element. Our sweet, bar-hosting partners:
(We also have two other partners, STAT and Wistia, who will be keeping a low profile that night.)
Tuesday’s MozCon Ignite from 7–10pm
In my completely biased opinion, this is my favorite MozCon evening event. For those who’ve never been to an Ignite-style talk, they are 5 minute talks with auto-advancing slides. Because we’re learning all day at MozCon about online marketing, our Ignite talks are 100% not about marketing or business. They are passion projects, hobbies, and interests.
Last year, our 16 talks ranged from a touching tale about helping a terminally ill child musician record an album, to how to love opera, to how to make frosting. You can sit back, relax, laugh, and cry. Plus, beforehand, there are networking opportunities to chat with your fellow attendees.
If this sounds like something you’d want to speak at, we’ll be opening up pitches in early July. Our venue is currently TBD.
Wednesday’s MozCon Bash at the Garage from 7pm–12am
Make sure to book your flight home the day after MozCon so you can join us at our annual MozCon Bash to celebrate another great year of learning. Put on your bowling shoes and see if you can out-turkey your new friends! Or play a round of pool, or sing your heart out with some karaoke. Food and drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, are on us. You’ll take home even more memories and some photobooth mementos to look back on.
Grab your ticket today — we’ve sold out for the last 5 years.
If you have any questions about MozCon programming, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.
