We are all excited that the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit is less than a month away! With 52 tickets left, we are quickly approaching our capacity limit. With topics such as Doing Business on Twitter & Facebook and Outsourcing Secrets: Cut Costs & Spend More Time on the Beach, you really don’t want to miss it. We have 5 free tickets (valued at $525) to give away. One has been given to our Twitter contest winner, Ben Cook. Now, I am proud to announce our YouTube, Your Story and SEOtini contest winners. Drum roll please…   1)      The YouTube contest winner goes to Ethan Stanislawski! Ethan posted a video response on YouTube about his first day on the job doing SEO. He tells of how the Paris Hilton DUI incident, CNN and the Daily Show made him realize that SEO is about marketing.     2)      The Your Story contest winner is Joshua Titsworth! Joshua told his story about how he got into internet marketing. He went from working at a non-profit organization to being called “The Repair Man” to being hired by another company for his experience (where he gained from self-taught SEO). In 2007 I started working for a non-profit in downtown Kansas City, KS. I was hired with the directive to help raise funds, write press releases, and update the website. The more I got involved with the website the more I liked it and the more time I started to give it. After the website was looking better than it did before (I was stuck using Frontpage ‘98), a board member complained to me I was spending too much time with it. If they can’t find us what good are you? So I started looking for cheap ways to market NPOs online.   I came across seomoz and few other sites. I was a little shocked at first, not at the material, but at how quickly I was able to read and understand it. In the past it has taken me hours of reading and homework to comprehend what was in front of me. With the information about SEO I could read it, process it, and use it right away. Pretty soon the website was doing well, patients were finding us easily, their mission teams were getting filled and all from the web. After that a board member (a different one from before) asked me to look at his site. I applied the same measures as I took to ours, and the same results took place a few months later. But with all non profits, what is written in the contract is not always what you will do. I was ordered to take a break from the web to focus on facility repair. Pretty soon I was known as the repair man, which I didn’t mind, but I really wanted to do more internet marketing. I ended up leaving that non-profit to get more involved in SEO so I could get a job one day. I applied for everything I could. I had two years of limited experience, but I never got a call back until I applied at Chemidex. They called me, and I made it down to the final interview. My boss told me on my first day the deciding factor was so much experience, as it was they wanted someone with a heart for SEO and someone young enough in his/her career that they could get their start with Chemidex. I’ll admit, I’m still pretty new in this field. But I love it, and I can’t imagine not working in this industry.   3)      The winner of the SEOtini contest is Vivian Hoang! Vivian has given us an award-winning recipe for our signature drink, The SEOtini. Everyone who attend the Search & Social Spring Summit will get a complimentary round of this drink. 2 parts Grey Goose vodka 1 oz Blue Caracao 1 oz Cointreau 1 oz Champagne Mix the vodka and liqueurs in a mixing glass. Add ice, stir to chill, and then strain into a martini glass. Top with champagne, stir gently, and garnish with a lemon peel.   Congratulations to Ethan, Joshua and Vivian for each winning a ticket to the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit. We have one last contest (THE GRAND PRIZE) to be announced on April 15 th , 2010. That’s exactly ONE WEEK from today! You can still enter here .   For questions or more info about the conference, you can reach Thao Tran at thao@searchandsocial.com or (813) 932-4SEO.   Please check out this video on the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit: Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . And the winners for the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit