By Sean Jackson
DFW SEM President, 2010

The DFW Search Engine Marketing Association has grown considerably from an informal get together of “black hat” SEOs to a vibrant community of search marketing professionals across all fields of marketing.

From our informal origins, 2009 proved to be a pivotal year in the growth of our organization. Under the leadership of Tony Wright, we made substantial gains in a number of areas including:

1. Formalized our back-office infrastructure for member information and credit card processing online.
2. Improved our website with monthly updates and a new look.
3. Moved our meeting structure from quarterly to monthly.
4. Held the biggest event in the history of DFWSEM with over 230 people in attendance.
5. We not only have the return of all of the 2009 board members, we have also elected four new members to the board. These professionals bring considerable passion and expertise in search marketing and compliment our current board members.
6. We have created and filled a number of new positions within the board including the election of a board Chairman, Vice Chairman and three new vice president slots for programming, membership and communications.

And while 2009 saw considerable strides in our clubs growth, we have an ambitious agenda for 2010.

Starting in January 2010, meetings will be FREE for current members! No longer will members be charged to attending our monthly meetings. This is a major step forward in showing true financial benefit for our members. Non-members will pay $35.00 to attend each meeting.

In addition, we are actively planning our role for PubCon Dallas, April 13-15. As many of your know, PubCon is one of the leading events for search marketing and we are proud to be the organizational sponsor of this national event. Look for more information in the months to come but make sure you plan on attending.

Throughout 2010 we will continue to bring a broad scope of search marketing topics for our monthly meetings – with an increased emphasis on social media and how it affects traditional SEO and SEM activity. With recent announcements by Google and Bing and Twitter, 2010 will see the convergence of social media platforms and search engines. At DFWSEM we will make sure you are informed of how this convergence impacts your role in search.

And finally, we will continue to fine-tune our back-end operations, making it easier to pay dues, process credit cards and to spotlight the work of our community. DFWSEM wants to make it easy for you to participate and to help you grow your connections and showcase the work you do.

As the oldest search marketing organization in the US, DFWSEM is proud of what we have accomplished to date and look forward to the challenges of 2010. We have evolved to be a community of search marketing professionals – regardless of the type of “hat” they wear.

With your continued involvement, we will fulfill our goal of being THE community of search marketing professionals in DFW and continue to grow to keep our members informed and successful.

Sean Jackson
President – DFW SEM