I’ve frequently been asked if I can point to a good example of Twitter marketing, and it’s rare, but I saw one first hand this weekend.

Sunday afternoon, I happened to notice that Gary Vaynerchuck twittered that he would offer free shipping for the entire year of 2010, if the New York Jets were to beat the Indianapolis Colts!

Fat chance of that happening, I figured, but I still thought it was a cool gamble, so I retweeted what Gary said.

Then, in the second half of the football game, the Colts laid down for the Jets by removing their starters,  and the Jets did actually beat the Colts by a score of 29 to 15.  Was this some sort of payoff by a competitor of Gourmet Library?

Anyway, I sort of forgot about it, until just now as I was looking at the Twitter stream, and I happened to see this:

So following the link in that Tweet,  I came to this -

So, I just got done sending an email off,  requesting my free shipping code for the entire year, and i’m going to go browse the catalog…

It will  be interesting to hear how many free shipping codes get given away, as well as to know (a year from now) how much in free shipping was given away, how many dollars, and how many new customers were brought in by this single Tweet.

Google, Facebook and Myspace have all made announcements this month that continue to lead us down the road of social convergence.

Advertising Age magazine just published an article called, “A Web-Wide social network“, and it’s really worth a read for clients that don’t get it many people that are in “social denial” and still think the answer to everything is going to be found in higher search engine rankings. That’s very short sighted, in my opinion.

I think that if you really value your business over the years to come, and you have the foresight to look past next months SERPs and your sales figures, then it’s really helpful to understand how all this stuff is going to continue to morph your world as you know it.

At the Elite Retreat in San Francisco, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress and Automattic talked about where he thought things were going to go in the future, and what he envisioned for his company and for the evolution of WordPress.

He explained that in the same way most of us began with AOL, (or in my case, Prodigy), he thought that today’s communities that we’re all joining, like MySpace and Facebook, are all just temporary placeholders, until better options become available.

True sharing of information and data becoming available across common websites and platforms (like WordPress for example) is going to change the way our kids look at things. Do you think they’re going to have the patience to sit down and fill out 35 profiles? Highly unlikely, wouldn’t you say?

In the lower right side of my blog you’ll see a social community called My Bloglog, where people that choose to share and show their information will appear on my site with photos, and I would appear on theirs, and it’s all pretty cool. If anyone wants to find out more about a particular visitor, they can go to his profile and find it.

Another example or this sort of “interconnected sociality” that I’m using on this blog would be the Gravatar plugin, which stands for Globally Recognized Avatars.

This means that anyone who’s Gravatar member that comments on this blog instantly has their picture up here by their comment, allowing for true sharing of information. Gravatar Accounts are free, and you can sign up for one here. There are no real profile pages there to speak of, but I would guess there’s something in the works.

The author of the Advertising Age story, Abbey Klassen, quotes another blogger talking about how “social networks will be like air, saying this…

“I thought about my grade-school kids, who in 10 years will be in the midst of social network engagement. I believe they (and we) will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to ‘be social.’

Even if you don’t have time to read the whole article, then I recommend you at least scroll to the part where it says “Listen Up Marketers“, because this is affecting our future faster than we think.

In January of 2007 I joined StomperNet under the belief that I would get the personal attention of their world-class faculty.

I assumed that for the nearly $10,000 I was going to pay for the year, I would not only learn everything I wanted to know, but I would establish some personal relationships that I could continue to nurture over time.

Admittedly I learned an awful lot, but primarily what I got was sales pitch after sales pitch, and “new program” after “new program”, and far too many different forums that offered practically no participation by the original faculty members that were the catalyst to my joining.

The primary reason for my joining was to hear directly from certain faculty members, and overall, as a group, their participation was shamelessly poor. The whole experience at StomperNet basically sucked my time dry, and left me wanting for much, much more.

To be clear, I’m not saying StomperNet sucked, or that StomperNet wasn’t worth the money for anyone, just that it wasn’t worth the money for me, because I didn’t have four hours a day to wade through their ever growing and poorly organized volumes of crap looking for the “good stuff”.

At PubCon In December I was discussing my disappointment with someone, and telling him that I was not going to renew Stomper after January 1. I’d put in a year, and was fed up. That’s when he told me that he had gone to Elite Retreat, and it changed his life.

Elite Retreat
The more he talked about Elite Retreat, the more I realized that I had really blown it making my decision to skip it last year. Everything he claimed to have gotten out of ER was exactly what I had been looking for.

Last week I was on vacation with my family in Mexico, and I spent nearly three hours every day doing email, and dealing with work issues by phone and by web.

After getting back this weekend, and immediately spending nearly 2 hours on three separate unproductive phone calls this past Monday morning, I hung up from the last one and immediately signed up for Elite Retreat.

It’s not “productivity” that’s my problem, it’s that I’m focusing on the wrong things. With only so many hours in a day, my business model really isn’t scalable, and more growth as an “SEO Consultant” isn’t something I really want any longer.

One of my Internet Marketers New Year’s Resolutions was to do more of my own affiliate sites, and while I’ve been managing to keep two people fairly busy, we just haven’t made nearly the progress I expected to make nearly 2 months into the year, and have been bogged down by little details. I’m counting on this conference to change that.

Elite Retreat will be held April 2 & 3 2008 in San Francisco, and will be a conference unlike any other I’ve ever attended. To begin with, it’s only comprised of 35 attendees, instead of the hundreds thousands that attend Search Engine Strategies and Webmaster World’s Pubcon.

Elite Retreat is more what I would call an “interactive session”, as opposed to a conference, and I expect to be learning far more in this two days that I would in an entire year of Pubcon and SES conferences and learning it in a much different way.

Along with only 35 attendees there are six world-class experts in their fields, including the keynote speaker, Guy Kawasaki. The entire faculty will be there the whole two days, which means lots of face-to-face quality time with some of the brightest minds in the world.

I’ve spent nearly half of my entire 2008 education & travel budget on this event, and I’m specifically skipping SMX West and SES San Jose as a result, but I have no doubt it’s going to be worth it.

Here’s who’s running the show in San Francisco…

Guy Kawasaki
I was riveted by Guy’s keynote at the 2006 Pubcon, and it remains the best I’ve seen. He’s motivating, inspirational, and dare I say brilliant? I remember trying to get near him just to say hi, and to be perfectly honest, I had an easier time talking to Google’s Matt Cutts than I did getting close enough to Guy because of the crowd.

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College

Jeremy Schoemaker
Since I ran across Jeremy’s blog a little over a year ago, I’ve found some of his posts to be incredibly inspirational for me, and it’s clear that there’s a reason he’s holding that big fat AdSense check, and it’s not because he just got lucky. This guy is the real deal, and while his “no bullshit” style may not be everyone’s cup of tea, he’s exactly what I need.

Jeremy Schoemaker (widely known by his nickname of ShoeMoney) is an important player in the search engine marketing world, and his knowledge and expertise make him one of the top go-to guys for PPC, arbitrage, SEM, branding, and online income optimization. His weekly Internet radio show Net Income allows listeners to hear Jeremy’s honest assessment about his failures and successes in the online marketing space.

Neil Patel
Having seen Neal speak three or four times now, I can say that he is one of my favorite speakers, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know him. His presentations are always rapid fire fast, totally enlightning, and given with such total confidence and enthusiasm, that you can’t help but realize that he’s bursting at the seams with killer information.

Neil Patel is an Internet marketing consultant and the founder of Advantage Consulting Services which was started in 2002. He has lead Internet marketing strategies for small and medium sized businesses as well as top companies such as Hewlett Packard and Wal-Mart. His experiences include search engine optimization, social media optimization, reputation management, and viral marketing.

Aaron Wall
This is the guy that actually “wrote the book” on search engine optimization, and while it may not have been the first, (or was he?) I do believe it’s been the best, to ever come out.

At PubCon in Las Vegas, Rand Fishkin said that Aaron was one of the smartest people he’d ever heard, and “if there’s one blog you should be reading every day, it’s Aaron’s”.

Aaron Wall is a search engine optimization expert who blogs about search at SeoBook.com. He also wrote a popular book by the same name, publishes numerous other websites, and has consulted clients large and small about how to increase their search exposure.

Brian Clark
Being a conversion expert, I expect to learn a lot from Brian not only in the area of usability but in measuring and quantifying results.

Learning how to use the tools I already have, like stats, logs and Google Analytics, to better identify exactly where and how conversion rates can be improved upon has never been a more valuable skill.

One of the best quotes I heard at PubCon last year was that “it’s a lot easier to double conversions than it is to double your traffic”, and I’m taking it to heart, not only for my own sites, but for my clients as well.

Brian Clark is an Internet marketing strategist, content developer, entrepreneur, and recovering attorney. In addition to building three successful offline businesses using online marketing techniques, he has sold scores of products and services online via joint venture and affiliate arrangements. He founded Copyblogger in January of 2006, and continues to develop successful web properties with a variety of partners.

Andy Liu
Andy’s name did not sound familiar to me at all, and I can’t even find anywhere online to link his name to. However, anyone not living under a rock has heard of Net Conversions, (now aQuantive, err, Microsoft) and as the President of an Internet company way back in 1999, he undoubtedly has a lot to offer.

As a startup expert, I think he rounds out the faculty perfectly for me, because I have some of my own ideas far beyond simple affiliate sites, and I’m really looking forward to meeting and hearing from him.

Andy Liu is CEO of BuddyTV, the largest independently held TV site on the Internet reaching over 4.3MM monthly uniques. Prior to BuddyTV, Andy served as President and CEO of NetConversions from 1999-2004 prior to its sale to aQuantive and served as VP and GM of its Site Optimization unit from 2004-2005.

He’s also a founder of a non-profit focused on technology in developing countries and is very passionate about entrepreneurship. He brings deep experience in building companies, site optimization, SEO, community building, and product development. In 2003, he was named to Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 under 40 and holds an MBA from Wharton.

What do I really hope to gain?
By paying approximately $300 per hour for two days of “coaching”, I’m hoping that I can get any specific question I might have answered, and believe me I have a lot of them. I have three pages on the front page of Google for a “Internet consultant”, yet what I DON’T know could fill volumes of Encyclopedia thick books, and I don’t expect to hear many “I don’t know”s from the student questions this crowd gets asked.

I hope to gain the confidence I need to try new things. I’ve continued to stay in my comfort zone for the past couple of years, both in my personal projects and in dealing with clients. I’ve turned down dozens of consulting opportunities, simply because I didn’t like their platform, or I didn’t know anything about their technical setups, and I hope to gain the confidence to break out of that comfort zone and accept those challenges if I choose to.

I hope to gain lasting relationships with these guys, and because they continue to hold weekly conference calls for past attendees, I expect that will happen. The insights that I got from having a conversation with one of their ATTENDEES was enough to keep my buying the drinks in Las Vegas.

I hope to gain some sanity in my affiliate business, as I continue to flounder making just a few bucks here and there on several of my own domains, while I continue to leave dozens of other domains that I own undeveloped. With what I know ALREADY, this shouldn’t be the case, yet it is, and I’m tired of it.

I hope to gain some insight on better ways of scaling some of the mundane tasks that are necessary, like outsourcing decent content, getting that content into pages, and obtaining inbound links. I have developed my own methods out of necessity, but the time involved in doing this successfully when dealing with a dozens of affiliate sites is astronomical, and paying employees to do it is not cost effective. There’s got to be a better way.

Above all, I hope to gain more of the knowledge and the networking connections necessary in this industry that will allow me to write my own ticket (but upgraded, of course) and continue making a living online, without the need to get out and “sell” my SEO services – That’s just not a game I want to play any longer.

Since I live eat and breathe for search, and I’m truly passionate about what I do, for me, this is going to be like going to a fantasy baseball camp. There’s literally nothing I’d rather be doing… If you’d care to join me, there are still a few seats left to sign up.

I get a lot of e-mails asking questions, and I frequently turn my replies into articles. That’s actually how my SEO 101 section came about long ago.

Replying can be quite time consuming, but not replying might be seen as rude, so I’ve now come up with a great compromise that adds a sort of “Web 2.0″ aspect to my site, and helps me easily generate new content.

Since I had this idea, I’ve been playing with a certain plug-in for a long time, and just today decided to buckle down and make it work. If you look over to the left on my blog menu you’ll see a new link for Ask Scott.

It’s an FAQ plug-in and it’s really pretty cool. For every question that gets asked, I get an e-mail notification, along with a link to log in to my own blog and answer the question.

Upon my answering, a new page is created and added to my blog, and the FAQ question page is updated. Each new question page is created with subject specific link text, title tag, H1 tag etc. and even added to my XML site map.

The sender of the question is then notified with a copy of the answer, as well as a link to the specific page where the question is displayed, where they (and others) can give the answer a thumbs up or down.

The only recommendation I’ve got for the creators of this FAQtastic plug-in would be to allow an option for the use of a post for each new question answered, instead of a static page. This would encourage comments and further discussion on each particular question asked. Otherwise, great job guys, and thank you…

At the upcoming SEMpdx sixpack event*, I was supposed to give a 15 minute talk about Blogs and RSS in a generic sort of way that might appeal to the broadest variety of users… Pardon me while I yawn for a minute.

Do you really need to be told again that user generated content and RSS is an effective form of marketing and driving traffic to your website? Wouldn’t you rather have specifics about the best platform on earth?

So, instead of just giving generic information, I’m going to turbocharge my portion of the event by explaining and demonstrating methods that we’ve deployed on our WordPress blog to make it as effective as possible.

• How do we ensure that we are adhering to the Top 10 SEO factors?
• How do we use the most up-to-date open source WordPress plug-ins available?
• How do we maximize our visibility and crawlability for great SERPS?
• How do we include news service pings, site map creation, tag generation, and user participation inside the WordPress environment?

For those that don’t use WordPress, all of the principles we discuss will still apply, and generic info will still be given, but making it all work in your own archaic system will be your problem.

This is one Porland search marketing event* you don’t want to miss…

*If you are viewing this past November 13th 2007, please see the SEMpdx events page for our next event, because that link will fail, giving a 404 error.

When it comes to social media marketing, the very term itself is almost an oxymoron. If you think about the process only as “marketing”, you’re likely going to fail, because you are trying to exploit the very concept that these networks were founded on.

These web 2.0 networks don’t exist so that you can sell your product or service. These networks exist so that users with a passion for similar subjects can get together and share information, discuss opinions, and sometimes make recommendations ABOUT the products and services of others.

Submit Content (Not just your own)
Shameless self-promotion will backfire, and people will call you out in their comments, if the website itself doesn’t just ban you.

The best way to avoid appearing self-promotional is to primarily submit the content of others. As you come across things on the Internet that you like, take a minute to submit those to your favorite networks.

You can add something to Stumble Upon or practically any site in 30 to 90 seconds, so get used to doing it. If you expect others to submit stuff of yours, then you have to submit content that others have written. That’s how it works.

In the same way there are people leaving comment spam on your blog, many of these websites have people trying to “game the system” by creating user accounts and submitting article after article they’ve written of pure crap, without ever participating in the community.

Social Networking Rings
There are actually “social network rings” that are (sometimes huge) groups of people that all vote on and submit each others’ stuff, attempting to become popular.

Members of these rings are quickly identified and rooted out of the communities, because of the unnatural relationships between users that are easily spotted by moderators and communities, and the technology for finding these relationships will continue to improve.

In many cases, heavy participation in these rings can even lead to having all of your content removed, and the banning of your account, disabling your ability to submit anything at all – (or so I hear

Social Network Marketing
Now don’t get me wrong, you can “market” successfully in these communities, and having friends and associates with accounts can help, but you have to do it honestly and legitimately by becoming an active member of each community you want to be involved with. Doing things right can best be described as “participatory marketing”.

You have to spend some time in each network and determine if it’s an appropriate place for you to even submit any of your content.

For example, some sites are more news oriented while others are lighter fare, and many are in between, with a eclectic mix of content that may or may not suit what you’ve got to share.

Read a few of the articles that have made it to the “most popular” sections, and to the front pages of these sites so you can determine what these people really like. This gives you a feel for the demographic of the audience.While you are reading / skimming / glancing at those articles, DO take a minute to vote for some of things you like, and it don’t be afraid to vote things “down” which that you disagree with or don’t like.

Also at the same time, DO leave some comments on articles that interest you or those that move you to disagree (controversy is even better!).

Try to leave something with some insight, something clever, something funny, something sarcastic, or anything that actually adds to the discussion in the article. In other words, be honest and add to the discussion with comments of value. Don’t just say, “me too!”.

Show that you value your own reputation. Don’t submit cat news to a dog group just because you’re too lazy to pay attention to what’s going on. In the best case scenario you’ll damage your credibility as a worthwhile contributor, and in the worst case, you’ll lose your account altogether, and the conversation about you will continue after you’re gone. Either way, you lose.

These networks are growing by leaps and bounds, and even the smallest network can drive some quality traffic to your site. They are all filled with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of new users every month users and may well be worth your participation.

Get out there and explore and participate in some of these sites, find a couple that you like and stick with them, support them, and become a part of their community in the same way you attend your local chamber of commerce or networking group meetings.

Get involved in these communities BEFORE you start trying to exploit them, and you’ll gain credibility, you’ll be contributing something positive, and you’ll have a better time while you’re at it.

Tomorrow nights Portland search engine marketing meeting is in a new location for SEMpdx, and although this was announced a while ago, I thought I would point it out again -

Tuesday, May 8 2007
Registration & Networking: 6:00 PM
Program: 6:30 – 7:30 PM
The Portland EcoTrust Building (721 NW 9th Ave. Portland, OR 97209)
Pizza (Hot Lips) & soft-drinks included. Cash bar (beer & wine).

There is no spider food like RSS. The search engines love the language of Podcasts and Blogs and the smart ones utilize this to their very strategic advantage. Join Paul Colligan for a content rich hour on the “7 Secrets of RSS And SEO” and walk home with a game plan for better search results.

It’s too late for the early bird discount, but you can still register to attend the meeting.

Pricing:

• SEMpdx Member: $30
• Non-Member: $45
• Student: $20

I also thought this would be a good opportunity to mention my free RSS tool, for easily adding RSS to any website.

Sitting at a table in the bar after a recent SEMpdx meeting,  a member (Garry Egan) stated that he could get a site indexed by all three search engines in 36 hours, and even ranking for a non-competitive term or two.

While everyone at the table was sufficiently impressed, I already knew that this was possible and had done it myself, so I took it with a grain of salt.  Assuming the new site is properly structured, all you have to do is link to it from another site that is already getting spidered daily, and “bang” you’re going to be in the index.

However, Garry took it a step further by accepting my challenge that he do this without providing any inbound links to it from any other domain. I knew from experience that the site could be ignored for months if it wasn’t acknowledged from any other established websites.

I assumed that he was going to just create the site (WordPress & Plug-ins) and submit an XML site map to Google, but he added in interesting twist with Google analytics, and even, (gasp) a manual site submission.

Even though he lost the beer bet of 36 hours, the site was up and running,  and currently ranking number one on Google for our chosen key phrase “Vegan pirate bar“.

I’m as impressed as anyone else, and can find no inbound links other than a del.icio.us tag. Nice job Garry!

Thanks also for outlining all the steps you took to  get listed in the search engines in 51 hours on your blog.  That’s very generous of you, and the next beer is on me!

Today I got notified by a hosting customer that his website had their content and design copied and reposted under another domain name hosted elsewhere.

The copied domain is here – www.nim-company.com while the ORIGINAL design and content are here – www.webpositionexpert.com.

The original site is a friend with a business in Antigua, while the content and design thief is apparently named Robert Soloway, and is in my back yard, up in Washington State.

I googled his name, and this guy has apparently ticked off a lot of people. There’s a lot of information about him on the web, and someone even registered the domain name Solowaysucks.net with links to his other misdeeds.

In an attempt to help him remove the duplicate content from the Google index (yes, it’s in there) I sent him here, to report an offender to Google. They’re usually pretty quick to react to stuff like this in my experience.

He also had another question of legality, and while we were IM’ing each other, I ran across this excellent explanation of his options. If someone ever steals your content, this is a great reference page to review. Nice Job, Lori, (and I see you’re in our backyard too, up in Spokane, Wa.)

I’m going to the Webmaster World Pubcon convention next week, and getting pretty stoked. I’m so glad they’re back to a 4 day format now…

The session grid has been complete for a while now, and looks really good. Like always though, it’s hard to be two (or more) places at once.  I’m pretty sure these are the sessions I’ll be attending, but some were a tough call, and I may still switch at the last minute:

Day 1

1. Keynote Address by Guy Kawasaki
2. SEO and Big Search – Don’t miss Jake Bailie!
3. Feeds & Alternative Optimization (tough decision with Eric Ward down the hall)
4. Site Review Forum – Always entertaining
5. Corporate Mega Site SEO Management – (It never hurts to dream big)
6. Jon S. Von Techzner Keynote
7. Ask.com Cocktail Hour

Day 2

1. New Age of Web Advertising Keynote – John Batelle
2. Local and Mobile Local Search  – (This is the future…must dominate)
3. Search Blog and Reporter Forum (Cant miss this one)
4. Optimizing Your Site for Higher Conversion Rates
5. Search and Research on a Rail – (Super Session)
6. Google Event

Day 3

1. Danny Sullivan Keynote – Better be there by 7am!
2. Forums & Communities – Building and Optimization
3. Viral & WOMM Marketing Management – What’s WOMM?
4. SEO Dream Team Site Reviews (skip lunch and get a seat early)
5. Search Engine Smackdown – The original classic

Day 4

That’s a free day to shop, eat and gamble, until 1pm when the actual “Pub” part of Pubcon kicks in, with the location TBA the day before.

This day was the best part of the whole trip last year in Vegas, and after being forced to miss the last day in Boston, I promised myself it wouldn’t happen again, so I’m staying until Friday.

Anyone that’s going to the show from Portland (or anywhere) should feel free to look me up and say “hi”. Let’s hook up and compare notes, talk search, have a beer, win big at the craps table, or whatever. Don’t be a lurker…plan to participate!

Search Engine Marketers of Portland (SEMpdx) has announced officially that its first networking event will be held Tuesday, October 24, 2006 at Portland Oregon’s Hotel Deluxe from 5:00 to 7:30 PM.

Most of the SEMpdx board members, (including myself), will be on hand to answer questions, and to tell attendees more about varios membership benefits, upcoming events, and sponsorship opportunities over. Appetizers will be provided by Gracie’s, and there will be a no-host bar.

Don’t miss it

Even though I’m online 12+ hours a day, what I DON’T know about the Myspace community is enough to fill hundreds of pages.

Internet Consultant Mark Harris has written a book called My Space 4 Parents. In his downloadable Ebook, he includes six videos too, to help you understand all that he’s talking about.

If you have kids that are able to use a computer, it won’t be long before they’re diving into the MySpace pool (if they haven’t already) and as a parent, it’s your responsibility to make sure they don’t drown, or even worse, pull someone else down with them.

Do yourself and your kids a favor, and pick up this book right now. The price is certainly right, and I’ve seen no more comprehensive coverage of the subject by any author.