2010 March

Archive for March, 2010

Building In Glitches

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

For your web writing, I think you should build in some glitches.

A glitch is different than a mistake. A glitch breaks up the surface. A glitch makes people slow down. It’s a speed bump of text.

You can describe a writing glitch as anything that makes you human. I read a lot about transparency in web writing. I think those are glitches.

If your web writing is smooth and seamless, good luck. That type of copy has been written and distributed widely by the Fortune 500 for 70 years.

A better strategy is to break things up, give it a voice, and let the audience it speaks to find it.

To do that, you have to slow things down a bit.

Tags: blogs, content, content marketing, marketing strategy, web writing, writing
Posted in Digital Marketing | No Comments »

Who Is King Of The Follow Ups?

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

I’m thinking it’s Thom Singer. How do I know?

He showed me. Twice.

First, he gave me an example in his networking session at sxsw. For the record, it was the most helpful session I went to during the entire conference. Meaning, the most immediately useful. As in, I walked out of that room, and used what I had just learned to have one of the best conversations I’ve ever had. Networking. Go figure.

And a bit of reference: I’m someone that’s…

-Old at marketing, but new to business.

-Living in a town of about 600 people.

-An introvert.

(A quick note on that last point. Introverts aren’t shy, or anti-social, or loners at all, though it’s a popular misconception. We just thrive when the company of others is on our own terms, at our own volume, and on our own time frame, to the extent that that’s ever possible. And actually, with a lot of Thom’s networking ideas, it is.)

So, even though I can tell great stories and I’m a really personable guy, I have a lot to learn about networking. And the art of the follow up was just one of the points in Thom’s session (there were 9 others).

The other way Thom showed me he’s the king of follow ups is by walking the walk. He sent a handwritten, personalized card to our office. Just like he said he would. Thom wins.

Pat Strader here at Matterhorn wins, too. He’s been doing the same thing as Thom does for years. Handwritten follow ups have opened up some great connections for him, and brought Matterhorn business and exposure time after time. Pat was once called to give some input on a blog post two years after sending a handwritten card. Why? The person who got it said that it was so unusual to get a handwritten note that she kept it.

Who else? Phil Haussler from Marblespark. He sent me a postcard a few weeks ago, even though I’ve never met him face to face. But I have been getting involved in a very cool project he’s been leading called Openbook with the goal of funding girls’ education in the Himalaya. I’ve been sick, and he was wishing me well, and thanking me for contributing to Openbook, too.

Think you’d remember something like that?

The advice, the examples, they’re not new. But not many people are doing it, still and yet.

And if you’re in doubt, ask yourself this: All other things being equal, who would you work with? The person that sent you a handwritten note about your meeting? Or the person that didn’t?

Tags: business relationships, business trust, content, networking
Posted in Partnership, Thanks | No Comments »

How To Make Great Marketing In One Easy Step

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Care.

That’s it. If you care about your marketing, most of the labor is done. It’s what Seth Godin calls emotional labor, and in our economy, nothing means more.

If you care about your marketing, you’re necessarily going to manage the details. Caring creates more work, but if you really care, that’s what you’re looking for.

Your site is going to match your collateral pieces, because you cared enough to realize that design is your first impression. Your message will be the crux of who you are, because you hired a writer to help craft it. You cared enough to spend more time on your strategy than your tactics.

You blog because you care. You pile up your photostream because you care. You spend time using social media to connect people, not to sell, because you care.

In Gary Vaynerchuk’s presentation last week at SXSW, he cared enough to:

-Greet everyone coming into the auditorium at the door personally.

-Not use powerpoint.

-Call out a Johnson & Johnson marketer (in a friendly way) for having an agency tweet for them.

-End his presentation with some spontaneous rap and beat boxing at the Q and A microphones.

One point that really struck me about the emotional labor that Gary puts in was what he had to say about projects. He made the (totally believable in his case) point that once he decided to take on a project, he had already succeeded at it.

Not because everything always works out for Gary. Because he’s interested in the process. If you care enough about the process, the result is great marketing.

And we all know what the results of that are.

Tags: blogs, business relationships, business trust, content, content marketing, getting started in social media, marketing mindset, marketing strategy
Posted in Inspiration | No Comments »

Grab Ass With Gary Vaynerchuk

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Last week at South By Southwest, Gary Vaynerchuk, best selling author of “Crush It” and creator of Wine Library TV, grabbed my ass on stage in front of 1000 people.

I’m not sure how a feel about it yet. Excited? Shocked? Maybe a little dirty?

Actually, I feel pretty cool. Love him or hate him, anyone with half a brain needs to admit: Gary Vee walks the walk. He’s a loudmouth? So what? I’d rather do business with Gary than some unhappy hipster that’s too cool for me and everyone I know. In a second. The guy loves the Jets. Publicly.

I’ve had brushes with the internet famous before. In light of this last episode, it’s beginning to get a little strange. Here’s what I mean: I met Chris Brogan and Jay Berkowitz about 6 seconds into the first conference into the first conference I ever went to. They gave me restaurant recommendations. Two days later, I got lost in a cab with Guy Kawasaki. And now, several hundred people think I’m bi/curious because of Gary (actually happily married, thanks).

Wow, someone just dropped names all over the place. Sorry for that; I’m making a point.

The internet marketing famous and semi-famous, in my experience, are a really interesting, really accessible group of folks. You could be cynical and argue that it’s their job to be friendly. But you’d have it backwards. Those people start with friendly. The good ones have a desire to help people be motivated enough to do the things they imagine they can do, and make a business out of it.

Even when it goes wrong. If you were following some of the #SXSW drama last week, you may have caught a little drama concerning Peter Shankman and some conference volunteers with close ties to the creative locals in Austin. I think it’s a pretty good illustration of how people who have made big strides can get tripped up. Think of it this way: the first word in Shankman’s business is “Help”.

Nobody’s perfect, and I’m going on record as saying that the internet famous get a bad rap. Even if I don’t agree with what they’re doing (is Guy a spammer? Or are you signed up for it?), I’m slow to criticize anyone. It’s a lot more constructive to think of ways I can do a better job myself than to worry about how bad a job someone else is doing.

Think I’m just being soft? Why?

P.S. Thanks for the interesting presentation, Gary. I think : – )

Tags: blogs, business relationships, business trust, content, getting started in social media, marketing strategy, Social Media, sxsw
Posted in Digital Marketing | No Comments »

3 Things Folks Can Learn From Salt Lick BBQ

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

It’s the last day for us here at South by South West in Austin.

Last night we made the trek for some real Texas Barbecue. Choices, choices. Stubb’s, Iron Works or Salt Lick? Damn!

As Ben mentioned:

Yes, you can have a burrito where ever you live. But Austin is a food town. And people, no matter who they are, love food. LOVE IT! You know what makes them love it even more? An invitation. Go to Champions on 4th and talk to Jason the bartender. He’ll tell you where the best BBQ in the state is (hint: it’s Salt Lick).

We had an incredible meal of brisket, sausage, and ribs. NOTE: this is real Texas-style barbecue, in the Texas hill county.

So what does BBQ have to do with marketing? It is not so much barbecue, as it is how Salt Lick has created a business of simplicity, quality service, and cultivated relationships built around a quality product.

3 Things You Can Learn From Salt Lick:
1. Keep it Simple:
The paradox of choice is not an issue at Salt Lick. You have a handful of choices for your meal and one no-brainer, “family style”. It is B.Y.O.B., cash-only, and you sit at a picnic table.

Beautifully simple. For the customer, choosing a meal is painless, and there’s no sense of buyers-remorse.

Can you simplify your product offerings? Do you have so many products, bundles, packages and variations that you are making choosing your product stressful for your customers?

2. Make Service Personable:
Our server Ian was nice, funny, and damn good at his job. He even educated us barbecue noobs on the different types of brisket. Lean, deckle, burnt….3 distinct choices which he tried to find which might be a best fit for our taste. Who knew?

He sat down to talk to us, he talked about his kids and asked about ours.

He gave us perfect directions to a diner where we could pick up a piece of pie, as they had sold out of their legendary cobbler that evening. He made sure we had a great experience and provided a great service… and we tipped him well.

Do you have any Ian-types working in your customer service department? If not, find them.

3. Cultivate Your Evangelists
Ask folks around Austin where to go for the best barbecue and it is a nearly unanimous response. In fact, if you ask, don’t be surprised if you get a look like you just stepped out of a vehicle equipped with a flux capacitor. “Seriously? It’s Salt Lick, get there!”

Before deciding to head to Salt Lick, we stopped in one of the watering holes and asked a couple members of their staff. They recommended Salt Lick, described the setting, made sure we knew it was B.Y.O.B and cash-only. Then they helped us with detailed directions to get there.

If you’re in travel and tourism, are you building relationships with the “front-line” folks in your area? Bartenders, gas station workers, toll booth workers….anyone that has contact with the public that may be interested in you.

Reach out, cultivate those relationships, offer them FAM-trips so they know what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, so they know you.

How to get people to your door?

Tags: barbecue, food, Marketing, Pat Strader, sxsw
Posted in Inspiration, Marketing | No Comments »

Confessions Of A SXSW Noob: 5 Ways For A Yokel To Network

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

The South By Southwest Conference in Austin. Me. A love story. Kind of.

If you know me, you know that I live in a town of less than 1000 people in the New River Gorge, West Virginia. There’s a national park about 100 yards from my house. I’m happy there.

So coming to Austin is a little bit of a culture shock. It’s an uber-hip place where a lot of the locals do everything they possibly can to “keep Austin weird”, as the now-somewhat-unhip-and-touristy motto goes.

For me, it’s like walking off the set of Hee-Haw and onto the set of Star Trek. If Star Trek had a spring break episode.

Here’s what I mean: there are thousands and thousands and thousands of geeks here. But very few of them are geeks in the traditional sense. They’re the creators behind tech in media, so yes, a lot of them wear glasses and funny shirts. But it’s geek chic. The social skills here are razor sharp.

My social skills? Eh. You get comfy in a small town. Even though I spent most of my adult life as a guide, and met thousands and thousands of people, unfortunately, a lot of that just doesn’t translate. I’m out of practice.

The difference: Those people I guided? They were in my house. I could tell jokes and they pretty much had to laugh. I could threaten people with bodily harm and they would actually believe me.

Here, not so much. I’m the littlest fish in the biggest pond. I’ve been meeting people from NYC, SF, and SYD pretty regularly. But when I say I’m from the NRG, I get (deservedly) blank stares.

But that’s not to say that the people aren’t friendly. They are. Very, super, amazingly friendly. Everyone, everywhere, even the weirdest person on sixth street (see pic).

So, if you’re anything like me, you need some help. Here are 5 tips to help get your network on at a big conference, esp. if you’re from a little place…

1. Be Absolutely, 100%, Completely Transparent Meaning, don’t pretend that you’re anything other than what you are: A beautiful sunfish among some pretty large sharks. That’s cool, and interesting, and can also be used as a conversation starter. If you’re not, then you’re a remora.

2. Put The Damn Phone Away If you stand there checking your email as thousands of people walk by, the people in your inbox will really appreciative, I’m sure. But damn, dude! You came all the way to Austin to do that? Move outside your comfort zone and talk. The worst people will do is ignore you, and guess what? There are a bunch of other people who won’t.

3. Go Eat Yes, you can have a burrito where ever you live. But Austin is a food town. And people, no matter who they are, love food. LOVE IT! You know what makes them love it even more? An invitation. Go to Champions on 4th and talk to Jason the bartender. He’ll tell you where the best BBQ in the state is (hint: it’s Salt Lick).

4. Share A Table Space is limited. Everywhere. No one cares if you invite yourself to sit down, and if you’re polite, and friendly, and cool, and not a “heavy typer” that makes the whole table shake, don’t hesitate to ask for a seat. It’s a great way to meet people- I had the best conversation of the conference that way (thanks, Mark!)

5. Say Please and Thanks I was at Gary Vaynerchuck’s presentation today (have a pretty funny story about that, actually- tune in tomorrow). Here’s what Gary had to say, among other things: “I believe in the Thank You Economy. You can’t scale caring.” If you go out of your way to individually do something for the people around you, they’ll notice. It’s not just fluff, no matter what you think of Gary -and he’s the most genuinely friendly and helpful speaker on the circuit, BTW. It works.

You’re small town self deserves to share ideas as much as anyone else at SXSW. But you have to make sure to speak up to be heard. Because everything’s bigger in Texas.

Tags: business relationships, business trust, conferences, content, marketing mindset, networking, social media mistakes, sxsw
Posted in Digital Marketing | No Comments »

Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web #sxsw

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

I am not a live blogger, but wanted to furiously type notes for you all that could not be here. Hopefully you will get a nugget out of the scramble of notes below.

Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web
New faceted search engines are emerging that promise smarter and more personalized results that take advantage of the Semantic Web. Do they deliver, and what do these engines mean for traditional search? How can obstacles such as scalability and diverse content provisioning platforms be overcome for Semantic Search to succeed?

#beyondalgorithms (Comically Danny adds, “you may have some room after that tag to actually tweet”)

Gil Ebaz: Founder and CEO of Factual – works in sharing and mashing structured data. Simplifying access to data through community based tools.

Will Hunsacker: CEO of Every. Business.com, Goto.com and Overture.com. Consumer site searching web for most interesting, timely relevant news.

Barney Pell: Whizbang Labs tried to treat web as an entire database, founder CEO of PowerSet – natural search engine acquired by Microsoft in 2008, now works with Bing matching words in documents to help solve complex tasks. Thinking about the meaning of information.

Nova: Works with a “do” engine, creating a virtual assistant. Can download to iphone and soon to Android.

Barak Berkowitz of wolfram-alpha – doesn’t know what semantic web is. What is wolfram-alpha? 10 trillion data points that uses parser and interpretive engine. Ask Wolfram Alpha a question, “how many calories are in cup of chicken, cup of peas”… it calculates it exactly. Overcoming need to know how to get that data, mash it up and give an answer to a question that is relevant to you.

Moderator (Can’t find his name, but said, “I’m the moderator” when Danny was making a point) Last five years with Twine working on what is where. What is on a page and what does it mean, now interested in time dimension. Live Matrix, what is happening when and where on the web like TV guide for what is happening on the web. Semantics will play a role.

Carla: VP of Community Strategy at Guidewire, focused exclusively on start ups.

Danny Sullivan: Remembers life before Google, from Search Engine Land. Semantic web definitions so bad, so misunderstood, doesn’t know that semantic is the right term, the web is a messy adversarial place where people are trying to trick search products making jobs those trying to organize data harder.

What is Semantics:
Barney: About meaning. Literally. Literal matches and literal features. Great technology applies to everything from source code to DNA. Abstract features, not tied to how it is expressed, lever of abstraction that has meaning to people.

Semantics is middle layer connecting user behavior to higher level of actual intent that users have. Contends Google and Bing are already semantic search engines.

No one is going to search engine to find semantics. Semantics is a technology term, not equivalent to search.

Carla: Confusion, when discussing “its all geek speak”, now gets eyerolls when mentions semantic. However, when show technology that uses semantics it brings it together.

Gil: Offers consumer more features if developers use it in the right way. How computable is the information available. Increasing structured data sources that might become accessible, crawlable.

Berkowitz: Not a good description of everything. More information out there than you can get from a search engine. Different ways to deal: use different approaches to understand meaning, mine data that is computable data. If all this knowledge is available to people, semantics can help people discover more information.

Nova: More interesting is what is happening now is computers are starting to understand what people are asking them to do. My computer can begin to understand what I want it to do. When asks for flighttime and understands it is running late, auto checking for avail at hotel closest to airport. Can help solve real problems, notable technology can enable it.

Amazed by how little creativity there is in going beyond search. Lack of creativity in determining relevance, vs having biggest database. How do you solve people’s problems vs who has the best blue links.

Danny: Semantics – you have to understand the meaning of something, which is why “semantics” term should be killed as no one can define it. How people link is semantic search, Excite used to say they did semantic search, if search for apple you might be interested in orange.

Carla: Next phase of semantic search is about presentation and aggregation. “Google works pretty well for me” Way to look is how the results and data are presented to me in a way that really works for me. The Google result list is horrendous, answer my questions in a way that makes sense. Subset of data geeks, looking at all the data, how to aggregate and use it. More interesting than natural language.

Berkowitz: Opportunity to give an exact, single answer to what you are looking for. Challenge is presentation of results. All at once? One pure answer, then more results that may be related. Ideal thing is if you ask the question when is high tide in Monaco April 30th, you can get exact answer. Just scratching surface with 10trillion data points.

Danny: Search is not outdated. It works, because a good way for people to get data. Is happy with the way search works, so are others otherwise they would be out of business. Suggest that the whole thing gets thrown out, because it is not in fashion. However, different things make sense at different times, maps are a major revolution, pivot tables Microsoft, Google squared factual, wolfram.

“heaven help us if every search on Google turns into Wolfram-Alpha”

Moderator: Solutions that worked don’t necessarily scale, at some point users give up. What is the point in having the other pages in results.

I don’t know an engine that does not try to understand the meaning of what you are searching for.

Berkowitz: When people are cre

Nova: Search and results in conversations tells him have not escaped paradigm. Data retrieval vs. “do something for me” goes beyond finding something on the web. It is not just about information retrieval. Do something new.

Barney: When you look at what people are doing with search engines, when you don’t get the result in a complex task. Many sessions last more than a half hour for complexity. What movie is showing, where can I park…

When think about broad perspective actually solving task…..are people completing tasks? How many queries to complete them. Wants system, to get out of the search box.

Nova: Context matters. Know who is asking, personalization and context have important role. If you could just go and ask a question, “do this for me” “take care of this for me”, some news there….

Berkowitz: API for search that can be used in different places. Ability to mash things together.

Gil: What innovation is there? Decision trees, like hunch, Microsoft pivot, seer. Possibility for start ups to tap into data

Will Allen: Real-time web. Searched for search engine in Google, #1 result was Alta Vista. Find important information that is happening now.

Want people to search less and have information delivered to them proactively. I don’t think consumers care what is happening under hood, use natural language processing to do extraction in building structured database on people, places things. Understanding the intersections, who is doing what to whom? Can actually measure sentiment.

Danny:
Search is the mall, Google is the anchor store, doesn’t mean they cant all grow, but difficult to unseat that. Is there an app for that? Is there a Google for that? Search activity providing you an answer. Many activities on your mobile are search activity, but done in different ways vs regular query. Doesn’t occur to him to open Google on mobile to find a restaurant, example that Google does not, and will not own it all as they (foursquare etc) are growing.

No more normal results in Google since December, logged in or not your search is personalized based on your cookie unless you search without cookies or block ip, not very many do.

Berkowitz: Most critical question: Who is asking for the information.

Carla: we have to be more public with our data.

Question: Works in higher education, wants to improve delivery of courses to adults online. Is technology coming that can tell if student clicks here and tell how long it takes a person to find answer.

Question: Where is trust in information retrieval?
Danny: Not just number of links, assign authority to every website, once again, “if trusted site you can fart and rank”. Google can tell when you came back, session is created. Reference to Bing search sessions that go on for two months. Tracking goes along to ad serving and more.

Nova: Transparency, make it easy for the user to determine how much they are giving.

Odds and Ends:

Danny: Facebook search is terrible, it will not replace Google. Facebook search is terrible for searching facebook itself.

Danny: Growing concern for SEO’s where data in descriptions comes from. As engines provide more answers, provide support for web content producers if traffic goes away, yet engines still benefit then they stand to be viewed as leeches.

Tags: danny sullivan, semantic web, SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

Blog Your Way to a Dream Job

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

The importance of blogs and blogging has been discussed quite often. You can build an online presence, create a steady stream of content, increase findability… blah, blah, blah right?

Blogging can also lead you to your dream job. Don’t believe me? Then take it from someone who is living it.

Before jumping in to the series of questions below, allow me to introduce you to Crag Calcaterra. Craig writes the blog HardballTalk at NBC Sports.com, he blogs about baseball…for a living.

Craig, is also an old friend. For a period of time growing up, we were classmates, played Little League together and traded baseball cards from time to time. (Craig, you never responded to my Moose Haas for Rickey Henderson rookie request!).

While our life-paths took different directions, we were reconnected as adults through social media. It has been great getting back in touch, and well, his story is compelling, valuable and worth sharing.

For those of you that have read “Crush It”, I would like to introduce you to someone that is literally “Crushing It”. Enjoy.

Pat: Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and then tell us what you are now doing?

Craig: I graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley in 1991. I went to college at Ohio State where I majored in political science, graduating in 1995. From there I went on to the George Washington University Law School, where I received my J.D. in 1998.

For 10 years I was a civil litigator at various law firms in Columbus, Ohio, and for one year I was an Assistant Attorney General for the Ohio Attorney General’s office.

I began a baseball blog — ShysterBall — in 2007, which began as a part time thing. I grew more serious about it over time and at the end of 2009 I was offered a full time with NBC Sports.com, where I maintain the HardballTalk blog.

Pat: How did you begin blogging? What challenges did you face in getting started?

Craig: It was an impulsive thing, really.

One Sunday afternoon I just happened to be reading a newspaper’s website when I came across a baseball column I disagreed with. I wanted to complain to someone about it but there was no one in the house who particularly cared about baseball besides me, so I just set up a Blogspot account and pounded out a couple of paragraphs.

I’ve been complaining like that — more or less — for about three years now.

The biggest challenge at first was simply finding time to write. Between my legal practice and two children under the age of four there wasn’t a lot of free time. It was around then that I transformed from a night person to a morning person and began forcing myself to wake up at around 5:30 AM each day to write. I still do that even though I probably don’t really need to.

Pat: Do you have a specific strategy? Do you have a specific schedule that you stick to? Do you worry about SEO (search engine optimization) or analytics?

Craig: During the baseball season I start each day with a recap of the previous night’s games, but beyond that I sort of let the news take me wherever it wants to go.

To the extent I have a strategy it’s less content-based than scheduled-based. I try to get new posts up every half hour or so from around 8AM until 5PM or so, Monday through Friday. I probably don’t need to post as often as I do these days, but when I first got started, a high posting frequency was a way to separate myself from better-known writers.

Just like waking up early, posting frequently just became a habit and now I get the shakes if I don’t have new content up on a regular basis.

I never paid that much attention to SEO when it was just my own site. Now that I’m with NBC page views are obviously more important, but I still really don’t think too hard about that stuff. My headline writing has changed slightly. I think a little bit more about enticing people with the headlines now, whereas before I’d use little puns or in-jokes that amused me. Beyond that the NBC people make a point to place links to my posts on the NBC Sports front page and, occasionally, at sister-site MSNBC.com, but my mandate is to essentially write interesting things and let others worry about wrangling the traffic.

Pat: What is your process for constructing a post?

Craig: The vast majority of what I write is reacting to things in the news or things that occur during baseball games, and for that stuff I simply begin writing. Longer posts or posts dealing with more serious issues — my writing about performing enhancing drugs, things about race and deeper historical posts come to mind — generally start out with an informal outline.

Oftentimes, however, I end up chucking the outline anyway and going off in unforeseen directions. Which is fine, because ultimately the appeal of a blog post is its immediacy and the sharpness of the opinion that animates it. I try to keep it coherent of course, but at the end of the day I want my writing to sound more like the beginning of a conversation or, sometimes, an argument, not an essay.

Pat: What have been the benefits of blogging? Would you call this your dream job?

Craig: I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, and there are still mornings I wake up and panic for a moment, worrying that I’ve just been dreaming all of this.

So yes, this is absolutely my dream job.

As for benefits, I’m typing these answers from a hotel room in Florida where I’ve been sent to cover spring training, so that’s nice. The biggest benefit, however, is that for the 51 weeks a year I’m not covering spring training I work from home. I feed my kids breakfast every morning, make their lunches, put them on the school bus and I’m there when they get home. I took a fairly major pay cut to leave the law and become a blogger, but my life is much, much richer now than it used to be.

Pat: What tips or advice would you give to those starting a blog?

Craig: Only blog about something for which you truly have a passion.

Building a successful blog requires regular posting at regular intervals, essentially forever. If you lose interest in your topic you won’t post, and if you don’t post your blog will die because readers have an almost infinite number of alternatives and won’t waste their time coming back every day to check and see if you’ve decided to post something that day.

I think the best test for whether or not you’ve picked a topic you’ll stick with is whether you’d still care and still write about the topic if no one but you ever read it.

Pat: What are some pitfalls for bloggers to avoid?

Craig: The biggest is simply choosing the wrong topic as discussed above. Other mistakes include pulling stunts to attract traffic such as trying to pick a fight with a more trafficked blog in order to get attention, spamming other blogs or message boards with links back to their own blog and other things of that nature, which ultimately alienates readers (and other bloggers who may have otherwise linked to you on their own). Attracting traffic takes time, and a blogger needs to be patient and persistent if they want to build a truly reliable community of readers.

Ultimately, if you care about your topic, write often, and deliver sharp, informed opinions, the readers will find you.

Tags: baseball, blogs, craig calcaterra
Posted in Content Creation, Digital Marketing, Inspiration, Social Media | No Comments »

Why I Go to Conferences

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Sitting here at the Austin Convention Center, catching up on emails and projects before things officially get started at South By South West (SXSW). Another conference on the calendar, another opportunity to learn.

I have had the privilege of attending a wide-variety of conferences over the years, and from each gained something to help with my everyday tasks. From learning more about CSS and Design at Web Design World and An Event Apart, to search, social and analytics at Search Engine Strategies and SMX. I always enjoy hearing how others are working in the digital space, and sometimes, I even get to share my experience as well. Sometimes you give, sometimes you get.

Creative people sharing ideas, successes and failures = the opportunity to learn. I enter every conference in hopes of walking away with one nugget of information that can help move the needle for our partners.

Which brings us here, to SXSW, one of the largest, most diverse technology conferences in the world. People from all angles of digital: Video, bloggers, app developers and much more here to connect, and share ideas.

I am looking forward to meeting some new folks, even though I generally consider myself a terrible networker, I try. More importantly, re-connecting with some great folks that I have had the opportunity to meet at some point in the past, or some folks that I have come to know digitally.

Stay tuned, if you like for some un-edited, ramblings…

Tags: conferences, sxsw
Posted in Inspiration, Marketing | No Comments »

A Blog About Digital Marketing…

Stay in Touch

Receive Our Email Newsletter

Archives

Categories

Matterhorn Marketing