Peanuts and Due Diligence

by Josh on August 24, 2010

This past Sunday I was enjoying some chinese takeout by myself watching the worst movie ever on the SyFy channel, when I heard a “crack” and felt a pop. Then I swallowed something that tasted really funny. I spit out a whole peanut and pieces of an off white hardened object, pieces of my tooth. Then I realized I swallowed the other parts that broke off. Rather than get upset I simply set the pieces aside to check on my tooth. Sure enough there was a huge chunk missing. It didn’t hurt really bad, but as the day progressed it got worse. My wife took a look at it and said she thought it looked as if the tooth had a cavity in it, which would have weakened it. The dental assistant I saw the next day confirmed it was a cavity. So to prevent it from becoming a fracture I getting a crown on Wednesday. I got to say I’d rather deal with a crown than with a fractured tooth.

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I’ve had the privilege to go to some fantastic search marketing conferences this year. However, there are some great conferences going on right now I wish I could be at but can’t. I’d love to, but that’s a lot of money and traveling. Not to mention many conferences overlap each other. Thankfully there is a way to get a lot of information from these conferences without attending. I’m talking of course about monitoring the hashtag for each conference. Conference goers frequently tweet key points and links to resources referenced throughout the sessions. Also, when each session is over those who have been live blogging the session will be posting their notes for everyone to read and learn.

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How to use clients for guest blogging

July 28, 2010

It’s no secret that blogging is becoming something many businesses are using to help drive traffic and engage consumers. Thankfully some rules have changed in blogging to help make things easier, but for small businesses this can still be a daunting task. The issue I’m referring to of course is actually writing the blog posts. With all the challenges small business owners are already facing how is it possible to find time to write quality posts? There is an answer. Guest Blogging. But for small businesses paying someone to write guest posts can get expensive. That’s why I think small business can use customer testimonials as guest posts.

BlueGlass LA – Links Matter: How to measure and attain them with Rand Fishkin & Dave Snyder

July 20, 2010

Strategic Link Analysis for SEO
Rand Fishkin

Certain links will accomplish goals, other will not. If the content doesn’t get storied permanently in the index it won’t rank.

Match Goals to Competitive Analysis. What do I need to rank #1 in the search results?

Execute a Link Acquisition Campaign Centered on the Missing Metrics.

Create Content/Profiles on Powerful Sites

Lots of links from very few domains or multiple domains make a difference. Save yourself tons of work by doing good research.

BlueGlass LA – Marketing Strategy: Don’t forget search with Melanie Mitchell, David Szetela & David Roth

July 20, 2010

Marketing: Now, With More Search!
David Roth

Search Marketing at Yahoo!

Valuation

SEM for Branding

Paid vs. Organic

Search Alliance

Search is the best way to acquire customers, even if you’re among the biggest sites on the web. Yahoo!runs Direct Marketing campaigns across the organization that include paid search, SEO, Affiliate Marketing, etc.

Yahoo is engaged in several different business models, subscription, transactional, download, lead generation, CPM revenue. LTV optimization:

Blueglass LA – Social Media Marketing Brent Csutoras, Micheal Brito & Tony Adam

July 19, 2010

Using Social Media To Create Customer Advocacy
Micheal Brito

Social media is about using online tools for customer advocacy. There is a difference to being loyal to a brand and advocating a brand. In 2008 58% of Americans use social media to interact with brands, in 2009 the number is at 78%.

Social media tools come and go. Consumers’ expectations are changing. In fact, they want more out of brands. That is a good thing. How does a brand live up to the expectations of consumers?

Blueglass LA – How not to FAIL at getting search traffic with Vanessa Fox & Adam Audette

July 19, 2010

Here we go again folks!

Build what your audience needs
Vanessa Fox

It isn’t just a ranking aspect. It’s about fulling understanding who your audience is and understanding their needs. Figuring out how to solve the customer’s needs is the first step at getting more exposure. First example is about the healthcare reform bill that happened recently. The actual bill itself was out ranked by another site designed specifically to make all of the government bills available to the public. This site is solving the consumer needs.

Blueglass LA – Marketing Metrics for your business with Dave McClue & Dave Patel

July 19, 2010

Hey Everyone! As you may know I’m in LA learning so much from the conference here. This is the first of hopefully many live blogging posts to come. I’ll go ahead and apologize for any typos, I’ll correct them later tonight.

Startup Marketing for Metrics (for Pirates)
Dave McClure

#FF IRL Edition – Why These Tweeps?

July 16, 2010

Well I almost didn’t do a Follow Friday post today. But I figured I’d better, have to keep pushing myself to stay consistent. When it came to picking what topic to base this Follow Friday on I found myself in quite the conundrum. I mean I just got to meet a lot of people I’ve met via Twitter locally last night at the inaugural Social Media Club of Johnson County; and this weekend I’ll be meeting up with some tweeps I haven’t met yet/have already met at BlueGlass LA. So, I thought I’d make a mix of the two and call this edition of #FF IRL Tweeps:

My rants on follows & friend requests

July 15, 2010

I typically don’t do posts two days in a row, and tomorrow will make three when I do my #FF post. Though I do need to begin doing more each week. I’m just sick and tired of getting @ replies and seeing screen names ‘ifollowback’ on twitter. In addition to this I’ve gotten one too many friend requests on Facebook from spammy accounts that claim we share one commonality. I’ll admit there have been rants about these before. But sometimes I feel you just have to let loose to get it out of your system. I hope you’re settled in for a good read, this may take a while.