Healthy Blog Reviews

If you’ve been involved with SEO or online marketing for any length of time, chances are you’ve escaped the confines of your office and ventured out into the real world to meet like minded marketers. Perhaps you’re a conference regular attending events like Pubcon , SES , or SMX . If you’re like me and tens of thousands of other online marketers, you’ve also checked out your local meetup scene. Meetups are gatherings of people who all share a common profession or interest. There are meetups covering almost every aspect of online marketing including SEO, SEM, Affiliate Marketing, Publishing, and Programming. Most online marketing meetups are organized by local marketing organizations or specific individuals or companies looking to increase exposure for their own services. While motives may vary, most meetup organizers provide a valuable service for their local marketing community by offering insightful presentations, information sharing, and networking. Some of the great things I’ve experienced attending meetups include client acquisition, client education, finding new hires, conversing with other marketing professionals, and learning really interesting information from some great speakers (shout out @ btabke ). If you need to step up your game or just want the opportunity to share ideas and participate in your local marketing community, you need to check out your local meetups. To help you down this path, I’ve compiled a list of 2-3 meetups for the 31 NFL cities. If you feel there’s a great meetup I missed, please mention it in the comments along with the name of your city. ATLANTA, GA Atlanta SEO Atlanta Bloggers Atlanta Web Design Group BALTIMORE, MD The Maryland Internet Marketing Group The Baltimore Washington Tech Meetup Baltimore SEO BOSTON, MA TheArlington/Boston/Cambridge SearchEngine OptomizationMeetupGroup The Boston WordPress Meetup Group SEMPO Boston BUFFALO, NY Buffalo WordPress Users CHARLOTTE, NC The-Official-Charlotte-SEO-Search-Engine-Marketing-Meetup Search Engine Marketing Association of Charlotte Ecommerce Charlotte Meetup Group CHICAGO, IL The Chicago Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group Chicago SEO Group Chicago Online Marketing Group CINCINNATI, OH Heartland Internet Entrepreneurs Meetup Continuous Web- Cincinnati Interactive marketing meetup group CLEVELAND, OH Local Entrepreneur and Social Media Network Your Digital Footprints DALLAS, TX Dallas Interactive Marketing and internet SEO and SEM meetup DFW Social Media Marketing DENVER, CO The Denver Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group Denver SEMPO Meetup Group Social Marketing for Business – Join the Conversation DETROIT, MI The Detroit Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization And Web 2.0 Marketing The Detroit Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group GREENBAY, WI Wisconsin Online/Offline Networking Group HOUSTON, TX Web Marketing Strategies, SEO, and ROIs Houston Stompers INDIANAPOLIS, IN Indianapolis Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing JACKSONVILLE, FL The Jacksonville Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group Internet and Direct Response Marketing Group Kansas City, MO Internet Marketing Social Media Group DotNext Kansas City Kansas City Search Engine Marketing Association MIAMI, FL How to increase ROI On Websites – S FL internet marketing South Florida internet Marketing South Florida Interactive Marketing Association MINNEAPOLIS, MN Minneapolis internet and search marketing authority Internet Marketers Using StomperNet Strategies Social marketing and networking meetup NASHVILLE, TN Nashville 2.0 The Nashville Online Business Strategy Meetup NEW ORLEANS, LA Net2No NetSquared New Orleans gnocode eCommerce Merchants South Louisiana Chapter NEW YORK, NY Internet+Traditional Advertising/Marketing Professionals NY Internet marketers of New York (SEO, PPC, social, affiliate) New York Internet Marketing Meetup Group OAKLAND, CA Webifying Women of the East Bay East Bay Internet Marketing for Businesses – SEO, SEM, PPC Bay Area Net Marketing alliance PHILADELPHIA, PA SEO Grail Philadelphia Pennsylvania Stompers Phoenix, AZ Phoenix internet marketing and search engine optimization Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization AZ chapter Phoenix SEO Meetup PITTSBURGH, PA Pittsburgh Internet Marketing and SEO Meetup SEMPO Pittsburgh SAN DIEGO, CA San Diego Search Engine Optimization Meetup The San Diego Internet Marketing Meetup The San Diego Social Media Marketing Meetup SAN FRANCISCO, CA The SES San Francisco Meetup Group SEMPO San Francisco Meetup SEATTLE, WA Seattle Web Technology Meetup Group Meetup202 Seattle ST. LOUIS, MO St. Louis Small Business Internet Marketing Tiny Business, Mighty Profits TAMPA, FL The tampa seo and internet marketing group TAMPAS PREMIER INTERNET MARKETING GROUP Tampa Stompers Washington DC Washington DC on line marketing (SEO/SEM/Social Media) Group Marketing Meetup Group in Wash. D.C. Monetization & Income Strategies For Online Entrepreneurs (special thanks to Mary Werner for helping to research this list) Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Tags: digital, internet, Internet Marketing, marketing, media, Networking, office, optimization, publishing, Search, Social, technology, Web Marketing
Posted July 23, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

I had to do a double take this morning when I read about the plight of reddit, one of the original social news websites. Apparently things aren’t so good over at the Internet property. It’sso bad that they have started to ask for donations to keep the site afloat. I bet you that their owner, Conde Nast, must be so proud. eConsultancy reports Making money online isn’t always easy, especially when you run an ad-supported business. And that’s not just true for the small fries; it can be even more true for popular, heavily-trafficked sites. That’s the case for reddit, the popular user-generated news site. It was purchased by Conde Nast Digital in 2006, but a blog post last Friday indicates that all is not well at reddit. That post reads We’ve been kinda bummed at reddit these days. It seems like every week something comes up that slows performance to a crawl or even leads to a total site outage. And we almost never get a chance to release new features anymore. Our four engineers — KeyserSosa, jedberg, ketralnis, and myself — are working full time (plus many evenings and weekends and sometimes even the middle of the night) just to keep things going. Perhaps we’re doing it wrong: there might be ways to optimize our code, or technologies that could allow us to work more efficiently, but we’re too busy to investigate these things, or to migrate to the ones that look promising. It becomes a vicious cycle. The bottom line is, we need more resources. Whenever this topic comes up on the site, someone always posts a comment about how reddit is owned by Conde Nast, a billion-dollar corporation like Time Warner or Cobra, and how if they wanted to they could hire a thousand engineers and purchase a million dollars worth of heavy iron. But here’s the thing: corporations aren’t run like charities. They keep separate budgets for each business line, and usually allocate resources proportionate to revenue. And reddit’s revenue isn’t great. Essentially the rest of the post is painting a grim picture of where reddit stands and it ain’t pretty. So how do they intend to solve this ‘revenue isn’t great’ problem? By asking their users to become reddit ‘subscribers’. That would make sense in a world where it is understood that in order to survive any company needs to generate revenue. Apparently the folks at reddit live in the ‘free Internet’ alternate universe thus this apologetic request for their visitors’ subscription help moving forward. We’ve been trying to get this out the door for some time, but it always got held up because we wanted to write some cool subscriber-only features first, like the ability to sort your profile page by score, or have more than 50 reddit communities on your front page, or a button you could press to smack someone in the face over the Internet. We now realize that we’re going to have to put the cart before the horse: in exchange for subscribing to reddit, we can right now only offer you our undying gratitude and an optional trophy on your userpage. It’s kind of a lame offer, we know, but if the program is a success, we’ll be able to give subscribers better incentives in the coming months. We invite you to post ideas in the comments section; in the meantime, I suppose it’s more or less a pledge drive. Unfortunately, it doesn’t wrap up any better. As long as we’re going to be taking suggestions and money from you guys, we might as well also take the name you came up with: this new program will be called “reddit gold”. How much would you pay for this wonderful opportunity? $10? $30? $∞? No, seriously, how much would you pay? We have no idea what we should be charging. So for now, we’re just going to let you pay whatever you want. Geesh, this is just, well, pathetic. I don’t wish any ill will on reddit but I do wish a few classes in business practice and common sense. Can you imagine how the folks at Conde Nast are looking at this plea from one of their business units? Business ain’t so great for Conde Nast overall but I don’t foresee a pledge drive anytime soon to help the bottom line. Am I being too hard on this or does this really appear to be one of the weirdest moves in recent history by a site that has some real power in the online space? What’s your take? Oh and by the way, if you are looking to help out reddit don’t forget ol’ Frank here …….. . (Hey, I had to ask.)

Tags: Business, code, Conde, conde-nast, digital, folks, internet, night, online, Social
Posted July 12, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

The Tribune Company is struggling to pull itself out of bankruptcy proceedings but it continues to try to move its business forward by becoming the latest publishing company to turn agency. This type of move by larger publishers is becoming more commonplace these days as they scramble to re-invent themselves in light of the digital ‘revolution’ that has kicked many in the tail pretty hard. paidContent reports With ad dollars for magazines and newspapers continuing to shrink, publishers like Meredith and Gannett have expanded the purview of their digital ad sales teams to include digital marketing services offerings outside of the content they produce. Tribune Company is the latest entrant into the interactive marketing space. The publisher, still struggling through its interminable bankruptcy proceedings, has formed a new interactive marketing consultancy called 435 Digital Services. Named for Tribune’s Chicago street address, the project will shift a small number of current ad sales staffers into the new 10-person unit, as well as making a few new hires, according to a piece in Crain’s Chicago Business . Newspapers are under attack from all fronts which include the general move to online consumption of content, the rise of classified ad killer Craigslist and the challenge of smaller, more nimble hyperlocal blogs. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine how these companies including Meredith and Hearst (who purchased iCrossing recently) are going to pull this off. Even traditional advertising agencies were slow to truly pick up on digital offerings and are playing catch up. Add to the fact that everyone knows the troubles that the newspaper industry is having and it’s tough to see how even a small to medium business, or SMB, would trust their marketing to a newspaper entity. Of course, what companies think they can charge the SMB for such services will play a very large role in their level of success. No matter what the politicians say, the economy for the smaller players is still very bad and the fears of getting worse are getting more play these days. As a result, SMB’s won’t pay top dollar for services that many tell them they can do by themselves. Whether that is good advice to the SMB is irrelevant because many use it as a shield to keep service providers at bay. So this move to be all things to all businesses is interesting. Interesting in a way that it could very well be too little too late. It also looks like a move born more out of desperation rather than something that was part of a bigger business plan to succeed in the online space. Heck, if any of these companies had been actually planning for the new digital world order they wouldn’t be where they are now anyway. So would you trust your marketing services to a newspaper or magazine publisher who just put on another hat to attract your business?

Tags: Business, charge-the-smb, Chicago, craigslist, digital, include-digital, interactive, latest, marketing, online, politicians, project, these-companies, well-as-making
Posted July 7, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

We all know it goes on. Sometimes it’s disclosed, other times not. Sometimes it’s black and white, other times it’s more of a gray area. What am I talking about? Paid blog posts. According to  Fleishman-Hillard’s 2010 Digital Influence Index ( pdf ), consumers are wising up to paid/sponsored blogs posts–and they don’t like them! If you’re given a free sample, only 24% of your readers will trust you to be unbiased. Paid to write a review, that trust drops to 19%. Still, in both cases, there’s this big area of indecision (61% and 54% respectively). Of course, it’s one thing to say that you wouldn’t trust a sponsored blog post, but what about in reality? Factors that need to be considered in the real world include: Do you generally like and trust the blogger in question? Do you want to buy the product anyway–so need little persuasion? How was the disclosure handled? How relevant is the product to the normal content of the blog? All of these would effect the scores above, but at the very least, you have been warned that your readers don’t embrace sponsored posts as much as you’d like them to! Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Tags: digital, disclosure, know-it-goes, other-times, posts-as-much, product, readers, Research, shot-2010-07-02, Times, world-include
Posted July 2, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

YouTube has chalked one up for the distribution channel of videos. The Google Blog says it best so I’m going to let them say it: Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online. The key to this entire argument and result is that YouTube worked cooperatively. They didn’t pirate anything, per se. Copyrighted material that was on YouTube was taken down as pointed out by the Judge in the case. The Washington Post reports “When they (YouTube) received specific notice that a particular item infringed a copyright, they swiftly removed it,” Judge Louis Stanton, of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District Court of New York wrote in his summary judgement order released Wednesday. “It is uncontroverted that all the clips in suit are off the YouTube website, most having been removed in response to DMCA takedown notices.” Those actions protected Google from liability for copyright violations, the judge said. This ruling was of interest to others who filed friend-of-the-court briefs in favor of YouTube’s position. Among these ‘friends’ were Facebook, Yahoo and IAC/Interactive. It’s pretty obvious why they needed a YouTube victory here. Of course, Viacom disagrees and will appeal. They feel that the ruling is not honoring the spirit of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Oh well for now. Others on the outside think that this is a fair agreement. Public Knowledge, a public advocacy group, said the decision strikes a good balance for content and Web services companies. “The burden to point out allegations of infringement is with the content provider, and the burden of taking down material lies with the service provider,” said Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director of Public Knowledge. “Had Viacom won this case, that burden would have shifted dramatically. As the law now stands, prompt compliance with take-down notices shields an online service provider from liability.” Looks like this could all lead to the advent of a new cottage industry, OVM, otherwise known as online video monitoring / management. Hey Andy, do you have a solution for that?

Tags: court, digital, distribution, dmca, facebook, knowledge, rights, southern, summary, video, Yahoo, YouTube
Posted June 23, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media