This is going to be a short entry, but to follow up a tweet:
He did order them, and in fact got me one too. (He mentioned where he got them here.) And here is the evidence. Needless to say, there will be much fun with this stamp when doing thesis research.
From Making Bread Magazine
Many people ask how I can possibly work from home. Don’t I just do everything but work? Well, kinda, but here is how working from home works for me. I love my job. Not kidding. Like I live my job. If I am not working on clients, I am working on personal sites and blogs. It just makes for one continuous day for me. I leave to go do yoga, pay bills, have lunch, client meetings and the like. But the freedom is that if I am having an off day, I make up for it on the weekend. Everything I do is to further the work of my sites or those of my clients, so in essence I am always working.
In that light, here are a few of my tricks for staying on task.
1. Have a good workspace.
I have a few to be truthful, I have a few of them and working on one in particular.Right now, the kitchen table and my bed.The bed is always fun, but can be … too restful.
The idea here is to have a space that is free from clutter, away from the TV, etc. Be sure you have a comfy chair. My current favorite helps me multitask with workouts. It’s the Gaiam Balance Ball Chair. Weird looking huh? It’s a balance ball and a chair with wheels. Srsly awesome. The last workplace I was in, it got passed around everyone loved it so much. No kidding.
2. Keep a List of Projects
No matter how sidetracked you get (we all have off days), having a list of projects to be completed helps. Keep it updated and cross off what you have done. I utilize a paper system (blasphemy I know) and my email inbox. If I haven’t done it, it stays in the inbox. When I am done, it’s filed. Keeps me up to date.
3. Group Outtings
Grocery shopping, working out, car service, client meetings. What’s the similarity? They are all done best in the middle of the day. Think about it, everyone else is working. (Giggle) Just be sure to do all your items at once, saves gas and time.
4. Bluetooth
I hate using them normally (I should when driving, but …) but when I am doing client calls, they are a god send. Since most of us don’t have hands-free sets at home, a bluetooth is a necessity when working from home. I realized this recently when trying to take notes during client calls. Yes, I am slow sometimes. It needed a new battery, but works wonders now!
So don’t think you can’t work from home. You can. Especially as an SEO, we can work from anywhere. Just keep on task and you are solid. Makes work more fun and “errands” easier to do.
Twitter is a favorite place of mine to hang out and talk to friends. I always say I talk a LOT – and I proved that when I hit 10,000 tweets yesterday. I have friends that are more powerful and influential (and talkative), but this was a milestone I caught and wanted to celebrate.
Twitter has allowed me to meet and converse with some awesome people in the past year. My life will never be the same, and I can’t begin to thank the people I have met that have helped, influenced, pushed, and supported me.
So with the help with Gregg Hilferding (@whoisgregg), I posted a thank you page. It’s my way of saying thank you to everyone. You are all so awesome and I cannot wait to get to know more of you.
It’s too early to tell, but the more I hear about people talking about the more I come down to one conclusion. Search marketers can talk about it all day, and it makes no difference. We live this stuff. We get mad at Ask for taking away Jeeves. We analyze every change.
How will I know if Microsoft made Bing work?
When my mom asks about it and starts using it.
I have always known that no matter what I think has hit the main stream, it hasn’t really until I see real people using it without prompting. Time will tell. And no, she hasn’t asked yet. I can’t wait for the day she does. It’ll be testing time then.
What you don’t use your family as guinea pigs? 
My good friends at NMLab.com asked me to host one of the Social Media Blog Carnivals, so I am honored to present this week’s best post submissions. This week saw a wide variety of submissions, but I have narrowed the best down to three. So in true countdown fashion, here are the best from June 1-7, 2009
PCHacks.com gives a good list of where you can get good traffic for that tutorial you just built. My advice here is to not submit to everyone, but those that make sense to those people you are targeting. Not all traffic is good traffic. Keep in mind you want your business to work, not just be seen.
From Wikipedia
This is an inspirational post from Jerry Esperanza about how with social media we all have the opportunity to be the Black Swan. Don’t just copy someone else. Give that great idea a go and utilize social media to get yourself noticed. You might be the next big thing and help others in the process.
This is by far my favorite post this week. Marino notes a phenomena that many companies are starting to catch the train on. Utilizing social media to identify those customer service issues and develop relationships. In this story, the companies identified not only helped the customer, but also built a relationship with another provider that will help each grow their business by utilizing the other business’s knowledge. The takeaway here is that while you might not see an immediate increase in the bottom line, social media allows you to grow your company’s relationships in such a way that will guarantee it’s long term success.
Next week’s carnival will be hosted at Christie Media. Best of luck, and keep talking!
So where is that recap of my trip with all the juicy details you ask? Well I’ll cover my tea time with the Queen (kidding) and all the other fun later. But for those of you that missed the show or just couldn’t cross the great pond, here is my presentation. It was for the Writing Killer Ads and Landing Pages panel. We had a fantastic time answering questions and had one of the best moderators ever, Jon Myers.
So if you want to know a little more about what goes into a Killer Ad, check this out.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments!
About this time last year, I signed up for the networking system of SMX Advanced. I came across another Austinite and decided to meet up with him for coffee. I had spent the year before at SMX meeting very few people, so this year that was going to change.
Jeremy Bencken and I met up at Starbucks and he told me the story of this new idea he was exploring, and I was floored. It was an idea that no one had come up with yet, but it was so important to the search marketing world. I was asked to keep it on the down low and did for a number of months. But since BuzzStream was named and sent to Beta, I have been the biggest fan girl.
In one sentence: BuzzStream is a CRM for Linkbuilding.
What I get a lot is, “Well then why not use Salesforce for linkbuilding?” Basically? Salesforce is meant for sales, BuzzStream is for linkbuilding.
BuzzStream automatically grabs the info that a linkbuilder would need to classify the site for starters. It’s not just for tracking emails, contacts, and taking notes (but it does all of that). It’s more than that. Just a few of the items they pull for you are:
The link building data they pull is only part of the system. BuzzStream has places to put the information you will need to reference later. It also automatically checks the sites to ensure the link you worked so hard on still exists. It checks that the link is there as well as making sure that it’s followed and the page doesn’t all of a sudden have poor onpage elements like Viagra ads.
We all hate link building. It is harder than ever to locate and create relationships with other sites. Buzzstream is there to help us track what we have done and the relationships we are building. The key is the relationship-building, but building relationships takes a lot of time. You have to contact a lot of people, you have to try different channels, you have to remember what you did 2 months ago and follow up. BuzzStream is the first tool that enables you to do all of this in a way that’s actually time-efficient.
Sales has metrics, Marketing has metrics, SEO and PPC do too … now Link Builders can have metrics. Pull reports for executives or clients, it’s all there at your fingertips. BuzzStream is adding features at every turn, so sign up now for access to the best link building tool. For example, one of the new items is that they are the first Social CRM – meaning they will import your tweets to identify contacts to build links with. Your boss and/or clients will thank you!
So people ask me all the time about what tools I use for keyword research, bid management, SEO, you name it. And I have always said I am not a big tool fan. That was until I came across a few gems. One of my absolute favorites is the Raven Internet Marketing Tools. (aff link btw)
RavenTools is a smattering of just about every SEO tool you might want. Just to name some of my favorite features:
Please note these are just a few features, there are tons more. The one I was the most impressed with and use everyday is the Social Media Mentions. It sends you an email every morning say how many mentions were found, linking you to the list. You can then rate or delete the mention to get a score of how happy the interwebz are with your brand.
They are adding new features everyday, things like KnowEm and SEMRush (for organic) that you might use/pay for seperately, but are included with your subscription! They take all the tools you use in different places and bring it into one with some awesome bonus features.
Check it out … there is a 30-day free trial. And if you catch the team at an event sometime, grab a shirt. Trust me, the most comfortable shirts ever! And the team is awesome as well, great people to know!
One of the most heated topics in Internet Marketing is paid links. Bringing it up when you first meet someone in the industry is like talking about abortion and the death penalty on a first date. It starts heated discussions, and sometimes feelings and egos get hurt. Google has guidelines that they sometimes enforce, and sometimes don’t. It seems so unfair when you see a site that is clearly violating those guidelines, but Google does nothing!
I have come to my own conclusion about Google and their policies. Paid linking and other is much like speeding and Google like the cop on the side of the road. I am not calling Google the Internet Police, but they are enforcers of their own guidelines.
We all speed, not one of my readers can say they never have. Is it against the law? Yep. Dangerous? Sometimes.
Speeding is against the law because of the potential impact it might have on someone else’s life. This is why fines are bigger in school zones. Speeding laws are not there to make the city money (though there are cops that have quotas, etc.), they are there to protect people. Now, haven’t you ever flown by a cop that had the radar gun out, but didn’t come after you? Why not? You weren’t being dangerous. Five miles per hour over usually isn’t enough to get you pulled over. Going 30 MPH over while swerving in and out of traffic will get you noticed though, fined, and perhaps thrown in jail (in Texas you can be). You had a higher potential of colliding with someone else.
So how does this all related to Google and their “policing” of guidelines, namely paid links?
Can’t get everyone: Google isn’t going to pull everyone over for violating guidelines. Just as the police all over the US can’t see every speeder, Google can’t “see” every website. Yes, there is a robot that can flag some things, but much link buying will go on under the radar.
Not every instance is dangerous: There are good paid links (sponsoring a non-profit), just as sometimes speeders are just going with the flow of traffic. Google isn’t and doesn’t really have the resources to slap everyone that MIGHT be buying links.
Don’t stand out: Just as on the roads, and even when doing taxes, try to do the right thing. When you’re doing that, flags don’t get raised. Buying links from brokers and en masse is a big flag. Might as well be driving a red sports car. Google will traditionally go after the link seller, you’ll just lose the value of the link and money you paid. Buy enough, Google will slap your wrist.
Realize the Truth: Google knows that some links will only happen when money changes hands, but sometimes those are really good links. The lesson here is that these two tactics work. Speeding will get you there faster. Paid linking works. It’s a matter of if you are impacting other people and if you get caught. It’s a risk you have to be willing to take.
Final takeaways:
Note: Sorry about the mixup earlier, I wasn’t done with this post yet. Was going to wait to post it, but everyone is asking about it now. Stupid feedburner.
We’ve all heard it. Ashton did this. Miley got coffee. Oprah tweeted. All of a sudden all of our friends and family, and the mass public is on twitter. Our little world isn’t our little world anymore. Once Oprah talks about something … the world does it. I worked at a bookstore for years, I know what her influence does.
One thing I have noticed is that the Internet community is slightly annoyed by this new trend. Most are just tired about hearing about Ashton and Oprah, but I have seen some really ticked about it too. I know they have their reasons, and some are valid. This influx has brought more and more “social media gurus” out of the woodwork. People who consider themselves experts because they have a few thousand followers and was on twitter before it got big. Don’t get me wrong, I am annoyed at them too. But the people annoyed because others are banking on this new opportunity remind me of the acronym SPAM – sites positioned above mine. Don’t hate on those that are validly utilizing the opportunities.
I want to bring to light the good things about the masses using Twitter. It’s time for us as online marketers to step out of our happy bubble and see the great things that will come of this influx of popularity.
Any more I’m missing? Let me know and I’ll add them.
See the silver lining in everything. Life is much better if you make lemonade (and then sell it).
