With the recent launch of Google’s Airship Advertising, famous tire makers “Goodyear” are scrambling to close sponsorship negotiations with existing contracts, terrified of being locked out in favor of what may be a more profitable money maker from Google.

“We tend to take our time signing deals with stadiums as there just isn’t really any competition in the blimp messaging business,” says Bill Pmilb, Director of Dirigible Marketing at Goodyear, “We just never saw this coming – especially from an internet-focused firm like Google. They really caught us with our pants down on this one.”

Yesterday marked the inaugural “What’s Next DC – Your Marketing Communications Roadmap” Conference. Marketers, PR Specialists, Web Development Companies, Technology Experts, Associations, Government Organizations, Social Media Addicts, and more converged on George Washington University in Washington, DC to listen, learn, share, and network. Whats Next, the brainchild of Tod Plotkin of Green Buzz Agency in Arlington, VA, was born of Plotkin’s frustration with the fluff and sales pitch-iness of typical events, and so he set out to create something different. His goal was to keep people engaged constantly with good information and make sure they got any questions answered that day. While not quite an “unconference” like Nonprofit 2.0, it was a veritable assault of information lined up with no breaks (except for a quick lunch) in short bursts with scheduled “niche conversations” and “floating experts” on the side. Captico sent 3 emissaries: our Lead Developer, Todd Fisher; a Project Manager, Bob Wolfe; and New Media Coordinator, Corrie Davidson (me).

Rand Fishkin, the CEO & Founder of SEOmoz.org, managed to stuff an inspiring presentation on “Advanced Tactics to Maximize SEO Opportunity” into a too-short 25 minutes presentation at the What’s Next DC 2011 Conference on Monday, January 24th. With organic search results becoming increasingly competitive, Rand’s specific tactics supplemented with examples and case studies had me eager to try some new techniques to pimp out our website. You can view his slidedeck here. (All photos by Nakeva Corothers). Some key takeaways included:

Tomorrow several members of the Captico Team will be joining social media, new media, and technology experts from across the country (and perhaps the world!) for the “What’s Next DC” Conference in Washington, DC. The event promises to be jam-packed full of real data, case studies, real experts (no fluffy “gurus” here), networking opportunities and roving discussions.

Last week, Google launched the Beta version of “In-Page Analytics” – a visual aid that sits on top of your website to give context to the data that regular Google Analytics provides. Google Analytics is a great tool for webmasters to track traffic to their website, what users are doing on the site, and what people are clicking on.

While researching the new updates to Twitter’s third party app authorization process, something interesting caught my eye in the Google search results for “twitter”… Twitter itself came up as number one return, but Lance Arrmstrong’s Twitter account came up as number two- above the wikipedia entry for twitter, news, the twitter search engine, Twitter’s facebook page, reviews, and videos.

Clients often ask us, “What simple task can I do myself to improve my search engine results’ ranking and start appearing ahead of my competitors?” This Do-It-Yourself trick will get you moving in the right direction.

According to the BIA Kelsey Group, viewers engage more after watching a video, with clicks for more information increasing by 30-40% and phone inquiries by 16-20%. Web video is a proven selling technique and is far cheaper than traditional advertising.

Looking to increase your visibility to Google AND get your business listed near top of Google for FREE in Local Business Center? Follow the easy steps below to do just that and move up in rank when a user types in your service oriented business followed by the city for their search.