Why I Have Writers Block

Ryan    Uncategorized     Personal Blogs, Professional Blog, Social Media, Writers Block

I really don’t have writers block, but for some reason, ever since baby X was born, I haven’t been quite as motivated to talk about myself or what I’m doing.Sure I am just another human individual working my human job, but is there anything really exciting about that? I’m not really trying to sell myself right now, so I don’t really know if I should feel compelled to continue to write to an unknown audience when I am so extremely busy at work… (I feel like I should put a question mark there…)?

Although I know the answer, I feel that I need to persuade myself again and again the reasoning behind it.

I don’t consider myself an expert at anything, but I think the underlying purpose of blogging is primarily for personal growth. Today, social media has turned into a business of communication. While blogging is a vital aspect of this communication, the personal blog has become a strange conundrum for the working professional, especially if that person focuses in social media on a day to day basis. While we tell ourselves that the coordination between personal and professional humanizes our professional appeal, it also seems to ‘mechanicalize’ our personal appeal, which I think can be damaging. Is it too much to suggest that every one of us is a sell-out to our own personal brand? No, but then again, that is what makes our brand… personal.

So to make a long story short, I will be the first to admit my personal brand is pretty chaotic. Although it was first built on a foundation of appeasement to all those interested in listening, it began to turn into personal heartfelt story, and now is a vast juxtaposition of creativity, logic, and pure insanity. Is that really who I am? Maybe, but I think everyone one of us has to be a little insane.. it’s what makes life fun right?

So what is next you may be asking? I guess it goes back to that whole idea of personal growth. It was a sad and gloomy day when I realized I couldn’t make millions of dollars through my subpar writing skills, but that is not going to burst my bubble! Recollection, description, and logical creativity in a natural prose is really what I’m trying to produce for me and me alone. Whether other people come by and say hi, I will never know, but I do know one thing for sure… actually I don’t.

Peace

SEO Content Writing

Ryan    Uncategorized     Marketing Integration, Organic Search, SEO, Social Media

I recently attended a conference here in Phoenix, that covered topics ranging from SEO, social media, link building, content marketing, and a few other things. Although I usually enjoy these kinds of events, I have to say that I was a little less than thrilled with what was actually offered in the end. Sure it is good to get an updated summary on what is current in SEO, but if you already have a general idea of what is important, sometimes, these sessions just aren’t for you. Especially once you realize that some of the information they are pushing is actually not correct.

Needless to say, there was a central theme that somehow made itself heard throughout all of the mumbo jumbo. With the divide between social and SEO becoming more and more blurry, the actual digital content/assets on the webpages themselves are beginning to take central stage in where everyone wants to lay high importance towards. Without universal understandings of what and how you actually want to optimize a piece of content, you are sometimes better off not putting the content up in the first place. Without a general integration strategy, or even simple plan of attack, the marketing and promotion efforts you have put so much money into, can sometime turn sour! So what do I do?

If you’re marketing yourself personally, this can be a really enlightening experience. You don’t always take a step back and analyze just who you are personally. Whereas if you are marketing or promoting a business or separate entity, this experience can also be very rewarding in that you can take it upon yourself to ultimately understand without a doubt just what it is you are optimizing or selling. Sure you can pick and choose those high trafficked keywords that YOU think will work, but are they relevant to your product… Are they relevant to your product in 6 months?… or even, are they relevant to you business as a whole? As an individual who specializes in SEO, one should take it upon themselves to reach out, talk, and work with everyone in the company who are willing to help grow your understanding. In addition, work on planning press releases, articles, social campaigns, and whatever else around your SEO strategy as well. If you can communicate and optimize your plan, your keywords, and your vision with your company, people will more likely want to jump on board, and help you help them in the long run. Because that is what you are doing right?

Although there are tons more issues revolving around the simple concept of optimizing content for SEO, a good first step in any plan is to INTEGRATE. Sure your body parts can all have separate jobs, but if you want to learn how to dance, you’re gunna need some coordination.

Peace

Communities… Building Versus Finding

Ryan    Uncategorized     Branding, Communities, Social Media

For a long time now I’ve really been thinking hard about the issues revolving around social media and brands/businesses. It doesn’t matter who you talk to, everyone has an opinion, and quite frankly, they should. But as these discussions continue to evolve and change, there is one key ingredient that keeps coming up.

Communities are the catalyst to social media.

Plainly put, communities, no matter what size, shape, or form they take on, represent the actual catalysts for how social media is played out. I know you may be thinking.. “it is the conversation”, or “it is the free give-aways”, but really, those are all what are stemming from communities. The question that comes to my mind however, is where do brands build, versus when do brands join?

Let’s take a look at ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover. Any ways, the premise of the show is centered on good will towards others who may be less fortunate, have gone through a hardship, or whatever else. Basically, Ty Pennington and his team of carpenters and designers come in, tear down your old decrepit house, and build a new one centered and personalized to your specific needs. Great premise, but what does this have to do with community? I say lots.

First, it is important to realize that this team travels every week to the location of their new project. They aren’t  just building an apartment complex and waiting for people to get up and move. They’re actively seeking families or individuals whom they can help.

Secondly, they focus a whole hour on each and every project. Now because they’re on ABC, they do have a little bit of an advantage of spreading their word and distributing their success, but still, one week, one hour, one project.

Finally, the level of personalization, makes the end-all-result, all the more special for the family they are helping. Maybe a little too personalized in some cases as the show takes every detail and every concern the family has, and somehow incorporates that into their projects. When the family returns, they ultimately feel that the house is personalized just for them.. and it is!

Coming back to the main question at hand, Extreme Home Makeover seems to be finding and reaching out to these individuals in order to help. They aren’t building the community, but joining ones that already exist. Even though they are specialized in their services, they understand that as soon as they go about building their own community, the overall impact on the outside individual diminishes. Not good!

So let’s compare this to Twitter!

Back in the day, when brands were experimenting with new approaches to using Twitter, companies would have a Twitter account and broadcast news, updates, and whatever else was associated with the brand. As this theory became a foundation for how many brands used Twitter, a new approach, a more specialized approach, began to evolve. Instead of relying on @NYTimes for your New York Times news, you now have @nytimesbooks, or @nytimesstyle, or @nytimessports… and so on. (There has got to be at least 100 NYTIMES accounts out there now) Essentially, @NYTimes had the idea that by splitting up their sources (Music, Television, Business, etc. etc) they could essentially build the communities where only certain people could be ‘fans’ of certain groups. Doesn’t this seem like that ‘we build it, you come to us’ example I mentioned earlier?

So what is the solution?

Try not to make things overly complicated! Instead of creating complex networks of Twitter accounts that people just have to keep following, go out and search for where your help is needed! If I received a Tweet from someone saying “Hey I see you’re into this, why don’t you check this out” – I would definitely go and check it out. Actually, that just so happened with a new restaurant, Smashburger, in Tempe, AZ. About two weeks ago, I received an email saying I was invited to their Social Media/Blogger’s night… In the end, I had some good free food, got to speak to their VP, and now I’ve got a new place I can eat in Tempe! It was really quite a simple, and quite an enjoyable experience. (Makes me want to write more about restaurants ;) Any ways, when you are waiting for people to come and talk to you, you risk losing a big ‘ol heap of discussions later on. You aren’t the new kid at school anymore! New kids deem themselves successful these days by introducing themselves and explaining why ‘friending’ them would pay off in dividends. (I’m going to make sure my future son or daughter does exactly this).

Peace

Brand Building on Twitter

Ryan    Uncategorized     Branding, Social Media, Twitter

Twitter Tip! Want to Build your Brand on Twitter?

Here’s a suggestion, Think of Something NEW to do!

Every day, and I mean every day, I see people on Twitter saying this exact same thing… “Want to Build your brand on Twitter? GO HERE.. to my blog!!! http://www.LINK.com” In other words everyone in social media knows how to build brands on.. social media. Do I doubt them? No, not really, but I really don’t think their idea is the end all supreme idea of brand building. Sure they may have something really really good. Or maybe they have a great system for getting followers quick and then blasting them with gimmicky ‘click here’ tweets. I dunno. But the one thing I do know, is that really successful branding initiatives on Twitter… are never copycats.

Think of it this way… say for example, I own a company. Ryan’s Magnificent French Onion Soup Co. Basically, I sell soup.. in restaurants and grocery stores. Now lets say I have a competitor… Bill’s Best French Onion Soups. Bill sells soup in restaurants and grocery stores too. Now lets say for example, Bill hires Michael, a “social media expert” and comes up with a great social media campaign which has helped him grow tremendously. Michael now says. “Want to build your brand in social media? I’ve done it!”. This is all great and good, but will Ryan really want to follow Michael’s suggestions? Wouldn’t that make Ryan look pretty stupid in the French Onion Soup biz?

Back to the social media thing. Now I could go on and lecture you about how social media, Twitter especially, is all about communication and not about the broadcasting, but I hope you’ve read some of my other posts and have a firm grasp on how I feel about this. In a nutshell, yeah, it is about communication. So what?

I could also explain why creating content or products is so important, but I hope you already understand that without content, you really have nothing to talk about other than yourself in the social networks ;-) You know who you are.

So how do you build your brand?

Darned if I know. I don’t know you, your content, or your products. Why should I (I’m not talking about me… I’m talking about people who claim they are ‘social media experts’) dictate how you should sound or act on Twitter or even Facebook? I shouldn’t! Heck, maybe you’re selling something that SHOULDN’T be on Facebook or Twitter. I’m not sure what that might be, but who knows?

To make a long story short, if you think about it, there is no set rule for how companies should construct their television commercials, right? There are no set rules for how magazine ads are created right? Your brand is yours, and if you want to start or optimize your branding campaign in social, do it because you know your audience is there. Gimmicks are fine, to a certain point, but don’t come across as a spammer. In this day and age, it’s pretty dang easy to see who and who is not a spamming Spam’ophile.

I know what you might be thinking now.

But what about those brands or people who just suck at Tweeting or Facebooking..? Social will always have its place.. whether its in or out of your brand’s solution is up to you. Are you actually on Facebook? What about DMOZ? How about Yelp? Or maybe a Local Business Listing on Maps. What about Flickr? Or Youtube? Blogsearch? If you’ve hit all of those, then you’re good. (Just kidding) Find your place… and make it your own. It’s about  being different..right?

Peace.

Twitter Fuels Fire to Local Search

Ryan    Uncategorized     BlitzLocal, Google Maps, Local Search, Marchex, Social Media

My first real job out of college was at a company devoted towards leveraging the local search market. Marchex, BlitzLocal, and many other companies out there today see local as the blossoming form of main stream search. Essentially, they are banking on the fact that what people actually search for online will change to a more centralized and local base. Is this the case, and should we too be seizing this opportunity? Hell yeah! Well at least to some degree.

Today, applications and websites such as Google Maps and Yelp have helped pave a new local channel for people to funnel through in order to reach their destination. Local restaurants, service companies, and tech savvy independent business owners have harnessed this evolving channel in hopes of capitalizing on the trend that is local. Bring Twitter into the discussion and this shift is hugely magnified

If you browse through the millions and millions of Twitter users out there, you might just notice something. There are a lot of businesses, corporate accounts, as well as things which I would like to call community broadcast accounts. One example of a community broadcast account I personally follow is @CenPhoTV (Central Phoenix). So what do I mean by local broadcast account? With the ease and simplicity that Twitter represents, many people today are creating their own news feeds much like how a year or two ago,  RSS and other numerous technologies were helping people decide what is and what is not read-worthy. With Twitter, what was once a personal news feed for Joe who works in accounting, is now a public news feed for many other people who are interested in the same thing Joe is interested in. Even more, communication and chat can be added to the picture. Do you want to know what is happening downtown? What local restaurants are having specials tonight? Do a Twitter search and see if you can’t navigate your way through the TRAP (Twitter Crap.. I should brand the term – Look for a blog post later!) out there, to something that is meaningful AND LOCAL to you! Maybe a wine bar is hosting a tasting for $20 tonight. Entertainment on a Saturday? Sure why not. Plus… it’s local.

So why does this matter?

Let’s just say a map represents a grid. Like an X/Y grid. Oh.. this is an easy comparison. Google Maps has come a long long way in terms of shoving data into the actual maps. Restaurant locations, addresses, barber shop phone numbers (I don’t use a barber.. I use a very sophisticated beautician) and everything else you can think of is displayed on these maps. But as more and more information gets published, the more the clutter we need to sift through.

Real time statuses, reviews, and specials offers a totally different thing…

Put these two things together, and you have the capability of creating some of the most complex XYZ three-dimensional models out there. It’s like walking down the street and hearing every single person’s word of mouth blurb. … they should make an application that lists the most referenced restaurants on Twitter in a given city. Talk about word of mouth!

Alright, so while this might not be the best example, it does show a lot of what I’m talking about.

Today’s searching community is smart and can pretty much put two and two together. I know real time Twitter updates on Google Maps is just about here (maybe it’s already here and just not mainstream.. or maybe I’m totally out of the loop. I dunno), but we don’t need an application to do that kinda stuff for us! (Then again, we don’t need an application to decide on where we’re going to eat dinner tonight).

Maximizing Twitter, Maps, Yelp, Review Sites, Facebook, and everything else out there, searchers and social media users today are living proof as to why Local is now here more then ever. You know who you’re looking for. Do they blog?

Peace!

Twitter Follower Schemes- Getting Them Quick

Ryan    Uncategorized     Pyramid Schemes, Social Media, Twitter

I really do hate schemes and programs dedicated to making people pay a fee for learning how to make a living in an at-home career. From becoming your own affiliate marketer to reaping the rewards of Google AdWords… yeah I know there is money to be made, but come on. I should create a new get rich quick scheme aimed at creating get rich quick schemes…. I think they already have that (the infomercial to this program is hilarious). It’s called a fricken pyramid scheme people.

The other day.. more like 2 or 3 weeks ago, I stumbled across two sites dedicated to pumping up your follower lists. Like the naive person I am, I decided to check it out, so I logged in with one of my faux Twitter accounts. After a welcome screen, I was prompted that in order for me to get the followers I wanted, I had to follow ‘ALL of the VIP members’ as well as ’40 of the regular members’. I know what this is.. I just mentioned it above! Any ways, wanting to proceed in my horrible experiment, I went ahead and followed pretty much every single face on that page. Did I have a choice? Sure! but I wanted to test this service/get followers quick, even though my mind was pretty much already made up.

After I was done, I did pick up some followers. In the process, I also picked up around 60 new people I myself was following… maybe 1 of them, worth reading. So what is my point?

Everyone wants followers right? Okay, well maybe not everyone. Many people want followers. In essence, many people want friends. Look back at Facebook. Do you remember when you needed a college/university email address to actually access the social networking site? Well back in the day, your friends were like currency. The more friends you had, pretty much… the more popular you were. You may disagree with me, but is that not the determining factor in popularity?

Twitter is no different. Followers means you are relevant. Popular… okay maybe, but mostly relevant. This is important because in our evolving view of social media these days, relevance in and of itself really means popular… and what does popular mean? You guessed it, money. How many new social media consultants have sprung up over the last year and a half? Your guess is as good, and as wrong, as mine!

In theory, followers are good, but those people who tell you to follow someone so that they may follow you back… they are dumb. Yeah there is maybe a 5%-10% chance they’ll follow you back, but do you really want them to? Let’s say for example I like to write and tweet about my ‘Get Rich Quick’ program. If I go out of my way and follow like crazy and get other people to follow me like crazy, am I really offering them content that they’ll want to hear about?

If you’ve got some time, do this simple simple game. 1. Go through your river of the latest tweets, and look for people who you do and do not recognize. 2. Now look at the content they are pushing. 3. If you think that they offer you no real value, please stop following them. However, if you do think they are offering you value, @ reply them and tell them so. But make it look personal. Have I told you yet how much I hate automation. We’re already building Robots for our social networks, because we’re too effing lazy. Does that make sense…. look up the term ‘social’ in the dictionary, and make up your own mind.

Now that I’ve thoroughly gone off topic, I suppose I should come back to these ‘get followers quick schemes’ and wrap up this post about whatever. In a nutshell, if you want followers, lots of them, then create your own way of luring them to you. If you want to do one of these stupid schemes, go ahead. Just realize that the value you add and the image you are trying to portray in all your efforts, is probably going in one ear and out the other with these people. Not saying they’re dumb… just saying they aren’t interested. Try making that first engagement yourself. You might be surprised.

Peace.

Twitter Profit House – It's Real!

Ryan    Uncategorized     Social Media, Twitter, Twitter Profit House

No its not.

So I was on Facebook this morning, when for some reason, I accidentally clicked an ad. I’m not sure what the ad said, or looked like, but I think I clicked on one. I move fast. All of a sudden, I’m taken to this….

Image taken from: washington-reporter.com - DUMB

What a well done phishing job!

So after I saw the post, I had to admit that the site looked legit. First I looked up at the URL… http://washington-reporter.com/gibberish. Then I read a few paragraphs. Then I checked out the picture of the dude, read the caption, then scrolled down to see if there were comments. Sure enough, there were. I didn’t click on anything though. Let me just get that point across. There was no clicking whatsoever.

Any ways, after thinking that this could possibly be a true post, I did some searching myself and found the actual Piece of Crap link to Twitter Profit House. (That was a SEO joke.. did you catch it?) – After looking through the site, I soon began to realize that this could be a total piece of douche baggery going on here. Back to the article again.

After a glance at the comments, I soon realized that there was not an ounce of negative reaction to this article. Everyone was 19 and making hundreds in their parents basement or something. I dunno. But the picture for the 1st comment killed me.

Everything about this image is hilarious!

Tell me, what does AdSense for content have to do with Twitter?

Any ways, if any of you have ANY experience with Twitter and AdSense, then you should find that picture just hilarious. – By this time, I began asking myself, whether it was companies like these that push those freakingly dumb tweets out there that try to make you click stuff. You know, the ones that say… “Just found a great site! Free $100 Visa Gift Cards! – http://bit.ly/AnEKT” Probably right?

With this recent influx of crap that is floating around on Twitter, I think it is important to reevaluate the metrics that we hear about on almost a daily basis. Yeah its growing substantially. Sure there are lots of famous people out there. But maybe, just maybe, there is a bit of falsity going on here. I mean, what is with the increase of spammy accounts out there? Oh maybe these people follow @NYTimes and want to emulate the way they tweet. Who knows.

Peace.

Google Maps – A Content Factory that Evolves

Ryan    Uncategorized     Google, Google Maps, Organic Search, Social Media

So last week sometime, I forgot what day it was, I came across a Tweet mentioning the new features of Google Maps. Have you seen them? They are ridiculous. Check out my old office when I worked in Seattle at Marchex…

View Larger Map

Any ways, if you haven’t noticed, you’re now able to click on various parts of the street view map to zoom in or travel to the specific location of which you clicked. Gone are the days of clicking through streets to find the restaurant you want to go to. Gone are the days of thinking.. ‘Wow, somehow, I’m here when I need to be all the way down there.. it’s too much work to go to map view again just to go to the right location. I’m going to just keep clicking until I get there.’ – Okay so that might just be me, but you get my point. Take a minute to go to maps.google.com and play around in street view. It’s kinda fun!

But whats the point? Why make a good thing better?

So Google Maps isn’t Social Media. It isn’t SEO, or even PPC, but it is content… and you better believe you’ll be finding all three of those things embedded into it sooner or later if not already. Take for example. Google Business Listings. Google was smart enough to tell people.. ‘Hey… we’ve got this application out there that is way better then other maps on the internet, that we’d like to populate with GOOD information.. such as your business! Do you want to be on GOOGLE MAPS?’

‘Sure?’ says Barry Wells of Barry Wells Chevrolet. (Disclaimer: I don’t think there is a Barry Wells Chevrolet.. if there is, you should rejoice in my free publicity!)

Why wouldn’t local businesses want to show up on the map most Googlers, let alone people, use today. – Add features such as kick ass zoom, position warping, and simulated earthquake damage.. this is not available yet, and you’ve got a content factory that people are just going to want to keep pouring their heart and soul into. It’s the Google business model. (If you don’t know the Google business model…. Create Content Theme Parks (Search Engines) -> Slowly Incorporate Advertising -> Make Gazillions… its sort of similar to this video:

Alright so those mind trick videos are kinda dumb; your attention is not on the moving bear, but nonetheless, the bear was there… you can never go back and tell me otherwise. Although the bear is irrelevant to the basketball players, it does ad value to the video. Essentially.. Google has perfected this illusion, so much that it’s not really an illusion anymore. PEOPLE LOVE BEARS!

As Google Maps continues to pull more and more people, businesses, and cool tools/applications that make map navigation easier, why not optimize for this local audience. Make the effort to create the Local Business Listing, or submit some photos for a particular address, or just write a review or two. You know SEO, you know that content is key. Join the local conversation, and you might be surprised at who sees you. But although you might not be a local business owner, you can at at least wave to people when they drive by.

Peace

Social Pyramid Schemes

Ryan    Uncategorized     Facebook, Pyramid Schemes, Social Media, Twitter

Found this NowSourcing.com image off of Google Image search: 'social media war'

So while I admit that I’m relatively new to Twitter, I feel pretty confident in some of my other social media platforms, mainly Facebook. By today’s standards however, if you took a look at my Facebook page, you might say otherwise. Maybe this is because I am one of those early adopters… those old fogies who don’t like change in what’s already a perfect system. Who knows.

When I first logged in, and submitted my first tweet on Twitter, I had already figured out that getting followers is the way to really make it in the twittersphere… (The more people who follow me, the more reach I’ll have when I want to say something really important. Good right? At the same time, I should also care about who I follow. Friends, family, role models, yadda yadda yadda)… For me, there was no agenda, no purpose for me to strive to gain followers fast, so I didn’t. I lived in the Twitter moment, and then at times, came out of the woodworks and sparked a little debate here and there. It was fun! Although I soon began to want more followers.

Although there were a couple weeks where I made hardly any tweets, I’ve tried to push my TPD (Tweets Per Day) averages since then, so that I could slowly become more relevant in the twitter aspect that is… ‘popularity’. The events that followed, however, soon began to modify my outlook of how Twitter is really making online computing communication different then what it used to be, or what we perceived it to be. Twitter is a great way to dumb down every day life. For example…

To follow the life of a new Twitter user, would look something like this:

1. Have a friend tell you how cool Twitter is.
2. Have another friend tell you how cool Twitter is.
3. Reluctantly create a Twitter account.
4. Make first tweet/twit whatever you want to call it.
5. Realize this is a waste of time.
6. Have people nag you and tell you you aren’t doing it right.
7. Realize that I should ‘optimize’ my tweets/twits for optimum searchability.
8. Reference someone in a tweet/twit.
9. Get in an argument with a tweeter/twitter(er).
10. Realize you are better then them.
11. Begin your quest to gain followers, in hopes to one day over take your antagonist in ‘follwers’.
12. Devise your own ‘get followers quick’ scheme.
13. Market it on Twitter.

Alright, so maybe that isn’t the way it works, but it might be close.. to some people.

In essence though, this could totally be a reason why Twitter is catching on so fast. Sure friends like to use it to communicate with each other(@noexample because they are my friends), companies and brands like to use it for PR and branding purposes (@starbucks, @zappos), or even news agencies will use it to broadcast each and every damn story they produce down to the minute (@nytimes, @cnn). What about everyone else? Maybe everyone else is just a Social Media Evangelist. “How can I show you the POWER of Twitter? Look at how many followers I have. I must be a professional at this SM stuff. I will show people that you just need to push garbage out of your Tweetdeck and sooner or later, people will think you’re cool and will want to follow you.

The idea I’m trying to convey is that a lot of what is happening on Twitter, is talk about Twitter. I’m not opposed to this! Don’t get me wrong. I just think that in order for this NOT to become the next big Pyramid Scheme… we should look at our actions on Twitter carefully. Hey, yeah I know I’m adding fuel to the fire, but look at the rest of my blog. I’m not a social media evangelist by any means. Although I do think everyone is an expert at it.

Peace.

White Lies

Ryan    Uncategorized     Elliott, Jessica Sutta, Organic Search, Social Media, White Lies

I’m not sure if it was last week or last weekend, but I stumbled on White Lies by Paul Van Dyk, featuring Jessica Sutta. Now I know I’ve been totally geeking out about weird music lately, but I can’t get this song outta my head. It might be the fact that Sutta looks totally awesome in the video, and “Hello?” Why don’t the Pussycat Dolls let her sing once in a while… she’s not that bad. Oh well.

Any ways, as Q2 starts, and I’m doing the stuff that I thought I hated back in January, I’m beginning to feel less and less threatened by it. I mean come on, who would have guessed I would be lead budgeting, media buying, and campaign managing when I started back in October? Not I. Oh, had my performance review today as well.. went pretty well I suppose, no surprises, and apparently I’m doing a good job. I’m happy. But back to the topic. In January, I would have cried if I knew I was going to be doing this same stuff.. but I’ve stuck through, and truthfully, I feel more invigorated now then depressed. Yeah they’re looking for an Online Marketing Director, but I can honestly say I’ve kept the boat afloat for the last 4 months, and have done some good here and there as well. Now what do I do though? On a side note, I just finished a training session with ion Interactive’s LiveBall… an awesome landing page creation system. I can’t wait to get started.

Now that Elliott is gone, I find myself sorta manning the social media platforms… ie. Twitter, Facebook, etc. Is this what I’m used to? No. Would I like this job? Maybe. Although I’ve been told I should apply, I sometimes feel that maybe evolving the position into a juxtaposition of what I’m already doing now and what Elliott was doing would be nice. I think so. I mean what is social all about? One person? I don’t think so. One of my main SEO goals for Q2 is to create a campus-wide SEO training system for all content creators… yes, everyone. So why wouldn’t I be able to give that kind of guidance elsewhere in say, social media? Before he left, Elliott sold some assets, and started other departments in their own social endeavors. I think personally this was the best decision of his final days here. Give the people a voice and a platform, and they’ll naturally create a following for themselves. How they use it, and how they think they’re using it can sometimes differ, however. Maybe that is what a Social Media Strategist is most concerned with.

Well, all things aside, I think I have some thinking to do. I know I’m not going to be a Social Media Strategist, but also, I know I’m not going to be doing this kinda of SEM my whole life as well.

If you’ve got some time, check out Jessica Sutta in White Lies. It makes you wanna go dancing this weekend, or just have a good time.

Peace