Pubcon South, SES NY, IM Spring Break and YOU
Feb 27, 2009 by Chris Winfield | Conferences and Events
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Elite Retreat. It was an amazing event. One where I felt I learned just as much from the attendees as the speakers (who were awesome!). Shoemoney did a nice recap of the conference here and so did Scott Hendison. Shoe isn’t sure if he’s going to do it next year but if he does – I would highly recommend attending.
A bunch of people have asked me where I am going to speaking in the upcoming days, so I figured it would be easiest to give a rundown of the conferences I am going to be at and the panels I will be on.
Pubcon South (March 11th – 13th * Austin, TX)
For the first time in it’s storied history, Pubcon will be held in Austin, TX. The Pubcon conferences are always great events and this one will be no different (how can you go wrong with keynotes by Matt Cutts & Guy Kawasaki?). I’ll be speaking on two panels at Pubcon (both on Wednesday – March 11th):
* Intersection of Search and Social Media @ 1:20pm
Is the intersection of search and social media a train wreck waiting to happen or is it the “not search” based traffic we have long been seeking? This session will explore that intersection from the webmaster, site owner and publisher points of view.
* Twitter Landscape – A Indepth View of the Twitter Ecosystem @ 2:45pm
Twitter – the hottest commodity to hit the web in years. The lighting growth curve and new nature of Twitter has left more than a few businesses wondering what it was all about. This panel will look at the Twitterverse and how to effectively use it.
Find out more at the official site (I think there are still tickets available).
Search Engine Strategies NY (March 23rd – 27th * New York, NY)
SES NY is one of the biggest search shows of the year and an awesome place to learn new things and make some great relationships. I’ll be speaking on one panel there on Day 3 (March 26th):
* An Update on Social Media Optimization @ 10:30am
Community-built web sites, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft Tagspace, Wikipedia and new sites allowing content to be shared through “tagging” can be a great way to tap into links and search-driven traffic. This session looks at some social media services and strategies and demonstrates how to tap into them in an appropriate manner. Hear how-tos and tips from search marketers who have discovered what they have learned from their experiences in optimizing social media.
But I’ll be there all week. One of the highlights of this conference will be on the night before the conference starts (March 23rd) when we will be throwing our now famous IM Charity Party. These events are super fun and also do so much good (all money raised goes directly to charity). Here’s the details:
Who: All Internet Marketers are invited
What: $50 Charity Donation For Open Bar Party
Where: Heartland Brewery in Union Square, New York, NY
When: Monday March 23, 2009 from 8pm-12am
Why: Because this is the hottest networking party for internet marketers. It is being held at Heartland Brewery, NYC’s very own microbrewey which has won many awards for their craft beers. Most of the conference speakers and top internet marketers will be there. Did we mention that all raised money is going to charity! Go ahead make business connections, have fun and help save the life of someone with cancer.
Suggested Donation: $50/person
You can buy tickets online and know that you will have fun (& do good). Even if you can’t make it – think about making a donation.
IM Spring Break (April 2nd – 4th * Deerfield Beach, FL)
Based on the success of their “non-con” Scary SEO last year – the boys at IM Broadcast are back with IM Spring Break.  As of right now tickets for this amazing event are only $500 and the speaker lineup is amazing.
I will be kicking off the conference with my keynote speech on Social Media Marketing which starts at 9:30am on Wednesday (April 2nd).
Then right after me, 10e20’s Greg Finn will be on a panel called Creating Content for Social Media – How to create the content and make it stick (at 11:15am). Greg is the best content guy I know so his presentation alone will be worth the price of admission.
*Added*
I am also going to be attending SMX Search Analytics in Toronto Ontario on March 31st. I won’t be speaking but will be there to learn (because you can never have enough info about analytics). Check it out here.
I hope to see you at one (or ALL) of these events. If you’re going to be there, please let me know so we can meet up!
Follow me on Twitter here.
Creating Content for Social Media – How to create the content and make it stick
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Having trouble getting exposure for your linkbait on social media news sites? Well, complain about algorithms all you want, but the odds are you’re doing something wrong. Identifying these 5 main mistakes along with these tips to correct them, can help you debug your social media problems leading you to social success!
This is a no-brainer; social media ‘power users’ do exist. While you DON’T need to be a power user to find success on sites like Digg and Reddit, you DO need to be a part of the community. If you don’t regularly participate in the community, vote on stories, submit great content (not just your stuff) and make friends … then the odds of  your content becoming popular are severely limited.
If your accounts have never had any social media successes in the past, don’t waste your precious linkbait trying to make it your first ever submission to go popular. Join the community, contribute to the site and build yourself up BEFORE submitting your content. If you don’t have time to work your accounts, you should either stop your involvement in social media news marketing or look to others for help/guidance. Chris wrote a brilliant post awhile back on how to meet other social media users and how you can use this to your advantage.
The quality of accounts is one of the most critical success factors in the social media news sites. To set yourself up for success, make sure you join the community wholeheartedly or know someone  who does.
The quality of a site is make-or-break in social media. If you are too salesy, business oriented or ad-focused you are setting yourself and your content up for  colossal failure.  Social media news users are looking for one thing – interesting news or great content. They didn’t come to get slapped in the face with a massive pop-up.
Many users are even repulsed by content that is too corporate. Many times the creation of special non-branded pages or microsites is a good way to ensure that your linkbait will have a higher probability of being seen.
A classic example of setting yourself up for failure is that of spreading your content across multiple pages to boost your ad impressions. Sure, getting  ten extra pageviews for that piece of linkbait spread across  ten different pages is nice, but what would you rather have – a social media success with 100,000 visitors and 100,000 page views or a failure with 100 visitors with 1,000 page views. I always recommend erring on the side of caution, and not giving social media users a reason to not vote for your content (or even downvote you).
Even the most powerful social media users can’t make poor content popular. Your content should fit the site’s audience, and be unique and engaging. This is far and away the most common problem with the linkbait success.
People spend far less time on lists, guides, and articles than they should. If your content doesn’t floor someone, then why would they vote for you, let alone link to you? If you are taking the humor hook, have your funniest friend or local struggling stand-up comedian help you write it. Using the resource hook? Then reach out (send emails, leverage twitter) and try to gain a quote from an industry expert.
Maybe you think you can buy votes to get popular, or maybe you think setting up hundreds of accounts will do the trick. Wrong. Strategy is absolutely critical in social media news sites. Your content should fit the network that you are using; you should follow all terms of use and you should act in a way that represents the community.
Buying votes is a bad strategy. Submitting to irrelevant sections just because they have more subscribers is an awful strategy. Having everyone in your building vote on a story is a terrible method.
Make sure that you have a well documented strategy before engaging in social campaigns, as one bad tactic can kill your linkbait forever.
Let’s face it, sometimes your competition is just dirty. Make sure your campaigns are under the radar until they become popular. Don’t update your Facebook about upcoming promotions or send out Tweets asking for votes. You are just asking them to help you fail. Like everything else, there are always people looking to halt your success.
Conclusion
If you can take one and only one thing away from this post, I implore you to think about this: “When in doubt, always take the cautious route”.
Do whatever it takes – ping a top user, put that corporate linkbait on a non-branded page, throw an extra set of eyes at the content, spend the extra time coming up with a comprehensive strategy and stay under the radar. Your linkbait will thank you.
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Ultimate How-To: Social Media Buttons, Tools and Badges Resource
Feb 17, 2009 by Patrick Winfield | Social Media Marketing
Great content needs to be seen and, ideally, voted on then shared. After spending the time creating the content, spend a bit more gearing up the page so that it can so it will receive optimal social media votes. We have created a one stop shop for all your social media site buttons and badge needs.
Site Specific Buttons
If your website is tailor-made for a specific social news site, try one of these buttons/badges. These buttons allow visitors to vote quickly and easily if they deem the content worthy.
Reddit Buttons
The Reddit button allows for visitors to vote directly for your site (and see the current # of votes) on Reddit.
Reddit WordPress Plugin
Adds a Reddit badge to every post on WordPress blogs.
Get the official Digg badge that allows visitors to see a story’s current # of Digg while making it quick and easy to vote.
This online generator kicks out code  for custom Digg buttons.
‘DiggThis’ WordPress Plugin
This plugin displays a digg badge on your WordPress blog only if the story has been dugg!
With this JSON powered Tagometer Badge, you can easily show both tags and number of saves.
Allow others to follow you on Twitter with this button.
These are a few slick looking Twitter icons to help turn traffic into followers.
Bring Twitter conversation to your blog. This WordPress plugin brings tweets to your post right into your comments!
Adding this ‘Stumble It!’ button to your site makes submitting your content to StumbleUpon easier for vsitors.
An easy icon that allows visitors to vote on any Yahoo! Buzz-worthy content.
The Sphinn badge will shoot visitors over to the Internet marketing social news site.
This Sphinn button visitors quickly submit your post to Sphinn.
Wordpress PlugIn: SphinnIt Button
It adds a “Sphinn It” button to your posts on WordPress blogs and the position of the button is also fully customizable.
This code allows visitors to Mixx your content right from the page.
This widget allows visitors to cast votes, buy clicking straight from the page.
These Tip’d buttons make it easy for readers to submit or Tip your financial stories on Tip’d.
These badges allow for easy voting on Shoutwire for any of your current stories/posts.
The “Seed Newsvine” link on the article pages of your news site or blog will allow your users to easily spread links to your site throughout the Newsvine community.
Combination Badges
These badges incorporate a variety of social media news networks so users are able to vote for on a variety of social sites. If your site does not generate traffic that is specific to a social media news niche, then one of these might be the best option for you.
This plugin lets you pick and choose which social badges to display on your WordPress blog. Simply check the social si(s) of your choice and you are ready to go!
ShareThis  not only features all of the major social media news sites, but also Facebook, MySpace, AIM, as well as Email and through text messaging to mobile devices.
This badge, allows voting on the major social sites and gives you the ability to customize the menu colors to match your site.
Makes it easy for your visitors to bookmark and share your content with others on all of the major social sites This badge is very minimalistic and offers a very clean and simple design.
RSS Icons
These icons are essential to turn social media traffic into repeat visitors. RSS icons should be placed prominently on your site so users can easily subscribe to your content. Many times site specific RSS icons can help you gain additional followers.
An optimal position for RSS-icons is the area that surrounds your logo and the top area of your site. The lower an RSS-icon is placed, the less subscribers you’ll be able to get. Also of interest, should RSS buttons be modified? And if so what works and what hurts?
It’s reasonable to make sure that visitors can identify and recognize RSS quickly and easily, this is why the standard RSS-icon is used in most cases.
Easily create RSS buttons for your site with this tool from TopRankBlog.
The .zip file contains around 15 ‘alternative’ RSS icons in JPEG and high-res PNG formats.
Also of interest, should RSS buttons be modified? And if so what works and what hurts? SEOmoz takes us on a little lesson on why readers often prefer the original orange logo button.
Embeddable Widgets
Just cut and paste the generated code into your site and your specified reddit.com feed will be displayed and updated as new stories bubble up.
You can easily display Digg news on your site, now with many different flavors to choose from:
- Top News (can be sorted by topic)
- Digg Stats (dugg/submitted) by user
- Digg stories (popular/upcoming) from a site
Display your tagged items on your blog with this widget.
Bring your conversations to your site. This allows you to bring your Twitter stream to your site/blog.
This widget creator lets you add Mixx content to your site. Simply select your theme, add content, and set a few options and you’re on your way!
Easily organize all your feeds into one widget that can be placed on your site.
On Monday, I did a presentation at LegalTech on a panel called “What is Twitter and How Can I Use It?” along with Kevin O’Keefe & Matthew Homann. As you can probably tell from the name of the conference, this session was aimed at informing lawyers (and people in the legal profession) on how they could effectively use Twitter. Here’s my entire PowerPoint presentation:
As I have done in the past with another Twitter presentation, I called on users of Twitter to actually show how Twitter works. By asking these three questions, I got over 135 responses in ~30 minutes:
- How would you explain Twitter (in 140 characters or less)?
- What is your *one* MUST have Twitter tool?
- How could a lawyer or someone in the legal field use Twitter effectively?
The answers that I received were all excellent and I’d like to thank the following folks for their help:
Jfavreau, LisaBarone, stuntdubl, MarkMayhew, RyanCaldwell, kennyhyder, RuudHein, davidmihm, maxchirkov, brianchappell, kid_disco, robwatts, szetela, aldorella, danperry, toddmintz, MichelleRobbins, amabaie, gregfinn, dedmond29, Franco_F, 1KrazyKorean, sizzler_chetan, JoannaLord, groovemonkey, shoemoney, timstaines, JadedTLC, lornali, rabeidoh, factive, MattMcGee, jeredh, hol_kinz, saffyre9, leeodden, LukaIsntLuka, sizzler_chetan, samiwasnt, PatrickPete, Rhea, ImprovingTheWeb, MelWebster, cloudspark, Frozen2Late, mediamanx, timstaines, ayb, tonyadam, remarkablogger, webconnoisseur, brianchappell, Matt_Siltala, nicholashomh, Franco_F, LornaHarris, dedmond29, darkbulb, netmeg, bendunn, danperry, johnfairley, RyanCaldwell, TheOtherJeff, GregBoser, ElijahIgnatieff, robwatts, timstaines, maxchirkov, inflatemouse, DavidWallace, jdevalk, AussieWebmaster, DavidBrim, matthewdiehl, Jfavreau, caroladam, danperry, connectionshk, SearchBuzz, matt_mcgowan, dallasdesign, Pamela_Lund, yummyman, branflakez & Ragnell.
Twitter is all about participation and interaction – so if you’re looking for good people to follow, I would check out all of these folks above.
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