I primarily started this site to organize samples of my work and have everything easily accessible when meeting new clients or reviewing older material I've worked on. Of course, my initial thought was to update the blog on at least a weekly basis, but most of my posts have been links to other sites and the like - I think it's about time I take down the blog, since it's not offering a lot in terms of new content.

So, stay tuned for a revamped site in the not-to-distant future... I'm contemplating going the way of old and moving to a static site.

We'll see.

This is my latest guest post for Smarter Than Your Average Blog: A Collection of Useful Tools.

Excerpt:

I prefer Drupal to most other content management systems I’ve tried, as I find it more intuitive than most, the designs tend to be a little more creative (which is awesome for those of us who don’t want to worry about the design portion of a blog and want to focus on content alone), and it’s super-easy to add modules and perform updates. This site has a fantastic community with lots of support documentation and discussions. I’m a fan.

This is my latest guest post for Smarter Than Your Average Blog: Avoiding Social Media Burnout.

Excerpt:

Just like in other media formats, we need to be smart consumers, filter through the garbage, and have a purpose for using these tools. The communities that offer quality interaction paired with ease of use and efficiency will be the victors in the social media game. Many networks waste time, over-advertise, and create an environment where their members find it difficult to initiate valuable contact or find information of worth.

Last night, I attended the HTCE's latest event, presented by Marian Lewandowski: Stand Out from the Crowd: How to Deliver Effective Presentations.

We have all been victims of “Death by PowerPoint”. Every day, more than 30 million PowerPoint presentations are delivered. The majority of these presentations are not as effective as they could be. The Effective Presentations Session will show you how to create and deliver effective presentations to ensure that the audience understands and remembers your key messages.

It was a really fabulous presentation and I came away with a lot of information. And I didn't take one note. Seriously - the presentation was that engaging.

Marian talked about delivering only three key messages, using PowerPoint as a tool to support your presentation (not as the presentation itself), and he demonstrated how to use storytelling as an effective method of communicating the subject matter. He really just gave an informative and engaging talk and brought presentations back to the basics.

Check out Marian's site: Effective Presentations - and book him for a talk with your company - he really knows his stuff, and I guarantee that the majority of attendees will come away with at least one piece of valuable information.

This is my latest guest post for Smarter Than Your Average Blog: Internal Company Blogging. Excerpt:

An internal blog is essential for any tech.-industry company that wants to communicate effectively with their staff. An internal blog will:

-Capture information for short and long-term reference
-Foster cross-discipline communication of information
-Localizes information and increases “findability”
-Decrease deficiencies found in traditional knowledge transfer

This is my latest guest post for Smarter Than Your Average Blog: Allow Crossover... But Not Too Much. Excerpt:

People have been on a “long tail” marketing craze for a while, talking about all the little niche markets that make up a larger percentage of potential customers. Targeting all those little pockets of people does drive highly targeted traffic to sites, so why shouldn’t everyone get in on it? Perhaps without realizing it, many bloggers have already done so.

This is my latest guest post for Smarter Than Your Average Blog: Cash In!. Excerpt:

Once your blog has solidified you as an expert in your subject matter, with your expertise and existing traffic; it won’t be difficult to turn your work into something profitable.

This is my latest guest post for Smarter Than Your Average Blog: Using SEO Content to Boost Traffic and Make Money. Excerpt:

Most people use search engines to find what they’re looking for, and from those people, most won’t look past the second page of results. There is a higher probability in someone clicking on a link to your site if you are ranked high within the search engines - and the more hits you have, the more potential money you can make.

I was recently asked to be a guest blogger for Smarter Than Your Average Blog.

With the aim of helping bloggers increase their blog’s quality and traffic, Smarter Than Your Average Blog is a Voxant-sponsored blog that offers blogging tips, tricks, and tools - join in the conversation.

This is my first post for them: Approaching Blogging Honestly.

Writing with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind involves a combination of presenting valuable content and information honestly and accurately, while providing a structure and formatting that’s friendly to search engines.

Valuable content, readability, and structure make up the bulk of any SEO-friendly content. Not only does this include creating compelling and informative content, but also includes matching all content to meta tags and keywords, inserting relevant internal and external links where necessary, and developing content with top search terms in mind (i.e. writing for what the reader is searching for).

In addition, search engines even give weight to bold and italic words; while important to include, these techniques should not be overused, as readability must be maintained. There is a fine balance between providing your readers with valuable content and providing the search engines with popular content - use the tips and tools below to help improve your search engine ranking through content changes.


Basic Tips & Tricks

-Research popular search terms - remember, this isn't necessarily what you WANT people to search for; it's what they're ALREADY searching for - ensure that you use popular terms

-When writing content, pay attention to your "keyword density" to ensure you're using keywords that are popular, yet reflective of your message

-Use your meta tags and ensure every page's title, description, and keywords tags are unique to the page's content

-Pare down unnecessary language - keep your writing concise and to the point

-Keep track of your traffic and where it's coming from; tweak your writing style based on popular posts or pages

-Link to external websites as well as pages within your site

-Update, update, update! Frequent content means the search engines will index your site more regularly - start a blog or a forum or add an events calendar - whatever it takes for you to present regularly updated, fresh content


Reference

-Metatag Analyzer: a fabulous tool that generates a report based on how effective the meta tag content is on a given page - probably my most used SEO-related online tool; an easy way to obtain in-depth meta tag analysis

-Keyword Density Analyzer: enter your website address and security key, and this tool provides a "cloud" of keywords along with percentages

-Google Analytics: the industry standard in site analysis - easy (and free!) to use, and it provides powerful results

-Wordtracker Keywords: a free tool that suggests additional keywords (there is also a paid version)

-Alexa: provides information on web traffic

Check out Monica Hamburg's video on crowdsourcing:

Koka Sexton has put together a 50 links to social media articles: Super Link List

From the site:

Have you ever wanted to know more about how to make a huge impact in social networking? From Blogs to Twitter and everywhere in between. I have collected a Super Link List from around the blogosphere for you to be all that you can be online!

Randall launched a new site: Rising Mob

Available on the site: a frequently updated blog, a free e-book on SEO, a metatag analyzer (an AWESOME tool to check your tags), and more - basically, a bunch of information for those interested in online marketing. And yours truly wrote the About page. ;)

From the site:

Rising Mob is a collective of online-savvy people who want to share and exchange online marketing information. Today’s mantra for online information is “give it away”, so that’s what we’re doing. No longer will we whore out our services to the highest bidder (well, not as often, anyway)! Now, we’re just easy! And we like it.

So, uh... go there.

Comparing Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche

From the site:

Identifying top niche blogs is invaluable knowledge for anyone wanting to enter, study or market to people in a particular field. It's one of the fastest and most effective ways to learn the lay of the land and get involved in the community of successful artists, real estate agents or 4-H club leaders using social media.

and...

How then can you identify the top blogs in a particular niche field? There are paid services you can use to identify influencers online but they are expensive and not appropriate for quick hits in a new topic. I'm all for paid services but in this case, let's talk about options that are fast and free.

The author, Marshall Kirkpatrick, goes on to compare the pros and cons of the following options:

-Technorati
-Del.icio.us
-StumbleUpon
-Google Reader Recommendations
-AideRSS
-Ask.com Blogsearch

Having been talking to various people in the advertising and communications industries lately, attending a few meetings, and reading Age of Conversation, everyone, including me, seems to be repeating the same buzz words: "conversational marketing" and "authenticity".

"Conversational marketing" is just a fancy way of telling up-and-coming marketers, particularly in the online world, to keep it real and talk to people on a common level. Treat people as equals and value their opinions. Listen to what they have to say. Be like bloggers (and bloggers get told, "be transparent"). Have an actual conversation with people.

And "authenticity"? Be honest. Do what you're going to say. Address issues publicly, timely, and truthfully. Act like you've got nothing to hide, and back it up by (shocker) having nothing to hide.

These are not new concepts.

So why are people listening? Why do they suddenly seem to be buying in? And did it start with the advent of social media networks and blogging and leak to traditional companies, or did it start in traditional values and leak to online culture?

Thoughts?