In episode #15 of the vlog series at the Search Engine Roundtable I interviewed Mel Carson (@melcarson) of Delightful Communications. Mel goes way back to the early days of search working at LookSmart, one of the early search engines and then joining Microsoft to work with the search ads when it was known as adCenter, then Bing Ads, then Microsoft Ads.
We talked about his journey from London all the way to Seattle, including his days at LookSmart back in 2000. Then in 2005 helped launch adCenter for Microsoft, known as Bing Ads or now Microsoft Advertising and then in 2011 starting his own company Delightful Communications.
He became known as adCenter rep in the discussion forums, and he discussed how that came about and how that role progressed during that time. Several years later, Microsoft cut 5,000 people were cut, and he was one of them and he was laid off. He wrote a blog post about it and although he got lots of job offers and he then decided to start his own company - Delightful.
Dixon Jones with Majestic SEO helped him start his consulting gig. Delightful was almost immediately hired by Microsoft to consult for them, which is why Mel said you don’t burn bridges on the way out. Microsoft is still a client of Delightful through today, now going on several years. He explained how Delightful has grown, not just in terms of the team but in terms of how they have come up with creative ideas like sending stuff up to space.
We then moved into the SEM community area and talked about how he MC'ed the Search Awards for five years. He gives shouts out to Casie Gillette, Greg Gifford, and Christi Olson for what they do. He discussed how he made a conscious discussion to share not just professional information about himself and his company but also a bit of personal information.
Mel is a true gem in our industry and we are so lucky to have him.
Here is the interview:
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Forum discussion at YouTube.
