Update 7/13/16 – Willis will be a featured speaker at Search Marketing Expo (SMX East), Sept., 27-29, in New York City. He’ll be one of three panelists discussing search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing for the session, “SEO & Social: Let's Dance” at 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 27.
The session will be moderated by Chris Sherman, partner and vice president of event programming for Third Door Media. Willis will be joined on the panel by Maggie Malek, head of social media for MMI Agency, a marketing and public-relations agency; and Mark Traphagen, senior director of marketing for Stone Temple Consulting, a digital-marketing agency. The session will cover how search and social media marketing teams can use their unique skills and knowledge to complement and amplify their respective marketing efforts, according to a Storage West press release.
SMX East will be held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The event will feature more than 50 sessions and four in-depth workshops covering search-marketing topics related to link-building, mobile search, paid search, SEO and social media. The keynote speakers are Babak Pahlavan, senior director, measurement and analytics; and Jerry Dischler, vice president, product management AdWords, for Google.
2/24/14 – Don Willis, director of sales and marketing for Storage West Self Storage, will speak as part of a panel discussion on small-company success during Search Marketing Expo (SMX West) next month in San Jose, Calif. Willis will be one of four panelists discussing search-marketing strategies for the session titled “The Small Company: Big Results.”
Willis has nearly 15 years of search engine optimization (SEO) and Internet-marketing experience. “As a strong believer in purpose-driven branding, I look forward to sharing the tactics that have built Storage West into a leader in the regional self-storage industry,” he said. “By taking advantage of the flexibility accorded to small businesses and being willing to be creative and take risks, other small companies can find a way to achieve big success in their online marketing.”
The March 12 session will be moderated by Matt McGee, editor-in-chief of “Search Engine Land,” an online publication owned by Third Door Media, which produces SMX West and other events as part of its Search Marketing Expo conference series. Willis will be joined on the panel by Fionn Downhill, CEO of Elixir Interactive, and Angela Needham, senior search specialist at Nina Hale Inc., both SEO agencies, as well as Andrew Melchior, vice president and founder of Internet-marketing firm Avalaunch Media.
SMX West will be held March 10-13 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The event will feature 60 sessions covering search-marketing topics related to SEO, mobile search, paid search and social media marketing. The keynote speaker is Amit Singhal, search chief at Google.
Storage West Self Storage is the operating brand for LAACO Ltd., a California limited partnership that acquires, builds and develops self-storage facilities. The company owns 52 facilities in Arizona, California, Nevada and Texas.