SEMPDX Blog Post: What I Learned from the PSU Search Engine Marketing Course | by Claire McEachern

What I Learned from the PSU Search Engine Marketing Course

First Published May 29th, 2013 by SEM PDX

Claire McEachern, the recipient of the of the PSU Digital Marketing Strategies scholarship, writes about her experience and learnings during the Spring 2013 course.

I think my head might still be spinning from everything I learned during the Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Course offered by SEMPDX & Portland State this spring. And that’s coming from someone who has a *decent grounding in the web and digital field. (*being a relative term)

Sure, there was mention of buzz terms, currently flying around today’s blogosphere, like “big data”, “content is king”, and the usual avalanche of industry acronyms. But what stood out as the biggest takeaways from the 3-class course were the details of fundamental skills and tools as well as an understanding of the big picture of SEO & SEM efforts.  Yes, you can go in and set up an Adwords account and make some ads or fiddle around with Facebook's advertising but you can very quickly waste a lot of money and time trying to just “figure it out”.

Graphic Design & Photography Work

We are pleased to see some of our graphic design and photography work, for client SustaiNext|EU, featured in the Sustainable Brands weekly communications bulletin.

Not only is this great news for a great event (being held in Dublin this October--for free!) but it also makes us here at 2 Miles Consulting smile to see our work amongst some of the best and brightest sustainable branding peeps out there!

Fun fact: 

The chairs you see in the background on the banner and on the site are the real ones from the auditorium where SustaiNext|EU will be taking place, the Helix Center!

Part 2 of 2: Retrospective On Our Renovations

Photo Credit: 2 Miles

June 16th, 2012
Claire McEachern

In a relaxed and calm voice, mixed with hints of jest, Van Jones greeted the assembled crowd by saying, "I may be preaching to the green choir, but I want to brag a little bit…"

From the Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s recent MBA recipients, to the local green industry veterans, such as Energy Trust, the Sustainable Industries Economic Forum (held June 13th, 2012, in Portland, OR) brought together a keenly interested and progressive audience. Every eye and ear was poised, anxiously awaiting a story of success. One could almost hear the mental buzz of global news, tweets, timeline updates, blog posts, and RSS feeds spooning out messages of doom and gloom into our collective sub-conscious.

Let us not forget to mention that Mr. Jones was also there to promote his new book: Rebuilding the Dream.

He began by reminding us how representatives in DC use the term “job killers” for environmentalists. But the statistics from the past several years show a very different reality. According to Brookings Institute, the green economy has created over 2.4 million jobs and includes the fastest growing sectors. This is in despite of a bad economy and a politically “stuck” world.

Curious then, that there still remains division within the United States and around the world on whether or not to fully embrace and integrate the green economy. How does this division persist when even the most skeptical among us have recently been heard to say, “The weather wasn’t quite like this before…”