Tag Archives: friends

Announcing our 1st S&S Spring Summit Contest Winner – Ben Cook (@Skittzo) !

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We are only 33 days away from the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit ! Only 68 tickets are still available. We have sold out for past events and foresee the same for this one. Act FAST! This is one of the most important conferences that you will ever attend in the search marketing industry. Top experts within the field are flying in from all over the country to be a speaker on our panel. Search marketing is ever-evolving and the news, trends and strategies will all be covered during those two days. And the most important reason to go is for the hyper-networking opportunities! Congratulations to Ben Cook, @Skitzzo , for winning the first ticket to the summit! Cook entered in the Twitter contest by making up a team name, in his case Team Bacon, and having as many Twitter users tweet out Team Bacon. Cook put his best foot forward and brought about some hard-hitting strategies like antagonizing his competition as well as saying he won’t tweet politics for 6 months. Great job, Ben! Now, what about Team Guns @KennyHyder , Team Bieber @Daver , Team Speedbag Club @Cyandle , Team Joe Hall @JoeHall and Team KickAss @TheMadHat ? You guys still have a chance to redeem yourselves (see below). And for anybody else who is still looking to get a free ticket to the Search & Social Spring Summit, here are a list of four other contests that will end this week ( IMPORTANT: some of the deadlines have changed to this week! ):   1)        VIP All-Expense-Paid Trip to Tampa, FL for the summit : Those who participate have to reach out to their friends, colleagues, etc. and get them to register on the event website. Whoever gets the most people to sign up by Thursday, April 15 th , 2010 will win the VIP package. Since tickets are selling at a fast pace, you can purchase your ticket now and we will reimburse you if you win. Click here for more info. Those who already entered, where are the results? Show your marketing skills. Yes, I am talking to you: Kiran Voleti, Michael Gustman, Peter Brooke, Robert Enriquez, Jason Owen, Kenny Hyder, Donovan Pete, Lisa Kenny, Renee Petro, John Koehler, Vivian Hoang, Paul Fach, Jörg Gammanick, Darren Ortsman, Tom Conte, Marcela Curran, Sam Khwaja, Michelle Dye, Dipali Thakkar, Shailendra Singh, Inga  Weireter, Nicole Burney, Petra Kraft, Scott Hemmons, Eric Weidner, Erin Martin, Roy Morejon, Geoffrrey Levin, Tu-Anh Pham, Nishant Mehta, Casey Yandle, Gene Gerwin, Ben Cook, Melissa Fach, Surjanu Chaudhuri, Nathan Driver, Mike Wells, Kieran Hawe, Chris Azzari. 2)      Your Story Contest: We’ve had some amazing responses from  several people. It was great to hear everyone’s story on how they came into the internet marketing industry. There’s still a chance for the rest of you to share your story here . We will end this contest at 12pm EST TODAY, March 31, 2010 . 3)      YouTube Contest : Everyone who is entering needs to tell us an interesting story that they had through a social media network. Did you send a private, steamy message to someone on Facebook and it ended up going public? Did you break up with someone or got dumped on Myspace? Let us know! This will run until Thursday, April 1, 2010 . Click here for more info. 4)      SEOtini Contest: What’s a search marketing conference without a little bit of alcohol to get the blood going? Our signature drink, the SEOtini, will be created by YOU! The one with the best recipe will win this contest. Enter here . This contest ends Friday, April 2, 2010 . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Announcing our 1st S&S Spring Summit Contest Winner – Ben Cook (@Skittzo)

Google Bookmarks Rolls Out Social List Feature

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Although Google has already stopped supporting its Notebooks service, those who did not delete their accounts can still use the service and its features. One of Google Notebooks’ feature is the creation of lists of interesting content you found on the web. This feature is now ported into Google’s other online service – Google Bookmarks . Items you add in your Google Bookmarks account are previously for private viewing only. But now, you can create a list containing some of  your Bookmarks’ items and share it with your friends and contacts. According to Google : “We’re working hard to improve Bookmarks and make saving and sharing stuff on the web easier than ever. That’s why we’ve created lists. Like labels, lists let you organize your stuff into categories. But they can do so much more! And to create your Bookmarks list, simply follow these steps: Select the checkbox next to the item(s) you want to add to a list. At the top of the page, under  Bookmarks , click  Copy to list . To add the item(s) to an existing list, click the list name. To add the item(s) to a new list, click  Create a new list and follow the instructions. In addition, the Google System Blog notes that you can easily convert previously created Bookmarks labels to a list. Likewise, those whom you invite to view your list can also add new webpages to it. In short, the  list feature has just transformed the Google Bookmarks service into an online collaborative tool. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Bookmarks Rolls Out Social List

How Nestle Could Have Fixed Their Problems Online For $7.49

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Dear Nestlé, I’m living in London for a little while and Kit Kat bars here taste way better than they do back in New York.  I’ve actually had friends ask me to bring them back for them.  I’m really bummed though because after 25 years of eating Kit Kat bars, I’m not going to buy them anymore. On Friday, you gave the world a shining example of how brands shouldn’t behave online.  It’s a tough break that you were very publicly called-out by Greenpeace for being a contributor to rainforest deforestation.  However, your Draconian response of bullying YouTube into taking down the “Have A Break?” campaign video and insulting your fans and detractors on Facebook has lead to an unmanageable PR nightmare that was totally avoidable. All you had to do was say, “We’re sorry. We’ve heard and share your concerns and are working with Greenpeace to find ways to fix this problem as soon as possible.  Please visit nestlecares.com or twitter.com/nestlecares to follow our journey towards sustainability.” Nestlecares.com would have cost you $7.49 on Godaddy and a Twitter profile is free.  I found you a promo code (cjc749fat) to get the discount on the domain, which usually costs $9.99.  It only takes 30 minutes to set up a Tumblr blog and Twitter profile and there’s no hosting costs. In 15 minutes a day, you could maintain both sites by posting updates on your commitment to sustainability, ie ditching your palm oil vendor or your efforts in Tanzania to increase coffee yield for farmers while maintaining sustainability standards.  On days when you didn’t do anything, you could post interesting content related to sustainability that you find while researching how to make your company better. Admitting fault is endearing and makes a corporation like you guys seem a bit more human.  When Anssi Vanjoki, #2 at Nokia, publicly apologized for prematurely releasing the N97, which had some pretty substantial bugs, and announced a commitment to fixing the problems as quickly as possible, he bought the company a lot of good will with jilted consumers.  Instead of owning up to your mistakes, you insulted your Facebook fans and tried to navigate your way out with corporate doublespeak. By the time you posted a press release about your commitment to become fully sustainable by 2015, it was way too little, way too late. A big part of being social online is actually being social.  If you were at a party and someone took 30 minutes to respond to a question and then insulted your grammar and walked away, you probably wouldn’t want to talk to them again.  If you had simply said “We messed up” the moment Greenpeace posted their campaign it might not have gone viral, and your customers would be focusing on your commitment to sustainability instead of dead orangutans… which are not cool with the urban influencer and early adopter markets these days. 2015 feels very far away and kinda seems like lip service.  However, daily updates on your quest to sustainability would make your efforts seem a bit more real.  You had a really great opportunity to rebrand your company one day at a time by creating really great content about sustainability. I don’t know if you totally missed the boat, but it kinda seems like you did.  I’m only one guy, but I used to love eating Kit Kat bars and was going to bring back like £20 of English ones for my friends in New York, but now they’ll have to wait until 2015.  Sorry, guys. Sincerely, Josh Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How Nestle Could Have Fixed Their Problems Online For

10 Ways All Employees Can Contribute to Link Building

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It’s not a hidden secret that link building is an essential part of SEO, but how you go about building links can make a huge difference in your organic visibility. Having your company buy into the fact that actively building links to your site can help your bottom line can help make your efforts a lot easier. Instead of having an in-house SEO or marketing department focused on link building, why not leverage the power of the entire company and have everyone contribute. Roles and