SMOjoe.com

‘Anyone that watched Smojoe present Story Funnels to Buckstops came away with too much new information. Rob’s scatter gun approach gives audiences a glimpse into the mind of a madman.’ Anonymous attendant.

That review is from a friend of mine who said he would publish it on his blog, if he had one. I laughed and copied it and now that document has evolved into this blog post. I’m publishing it on my blog because I’m my own worst critic, and clearly there’s a lesson to be learned. I’ve just got to get better at presenting thoughts and ideas in a linear progression.  Perhaps I do need to lay it out on a boring old power point, and practice it alone at home in front of my pals? Rehearse the material, going slow and steady and explaining everything in great detail…

Smojoe sprang in action this week at the Spoke Club on Tuesday Feb 2nd downstairs in the gallery at night. That occurrence came courtesy of Deb Lewis and her City Events team. She’s Toronto’s best event producer with an obsession for details. Deb is constantly pushing technological boundaries and at this event she debuted new social technology that puts YouTube videos in emails. City Events has a powerful newsletter with over five thousand subscribers and Deb’s bi-monthly blasts enjoy a 25% open rate.  Deb’s events are always packed with devoted followers as I discovered when I rudely interrupted her on the floor to indicate that she should speed up, or better yet wrap it up; the audience feedback was very critical of my behavior… but in my defense it was only so I could have the full hour and half that was promised me in order to slow down and present my linear ideas…

On the evening of Feb 2nd 2010, Deb Lewis and I discussed How To Market Events in Toronto and of course I got a little too specific on how to use the toolbar in a Wordpress blog to craft beautiful keyword rich articles and Craigslist advertisements etc and what 3rd party event marketing widgets are most effective on your blog sidebar and why.. I think people came to learn secrets and discover new high tech magic wands they can use to magically bring traffic to their events.

The next morning Gary Puppa of Epixome twittered about joining EventPeeps which looks terrific and I wish I could have imparted that web address to the audience. But I did tell them to read my blog, and follow me on Twitter @roberrific

Smojoe with Rapport Communications in the National Yacht Club Feb 4th

Two days later on Feb 4th 2010 I wore my other pair of fancy pants to The National Yacht Club in Toronto. In this venue, at 12:00 noon I worked with the team at Rapport Inc specifically Bill Tibbles and Denise Breen and I followed Faith Seekings on stage to hold the floor for two and half hours discussing exactly how to write compelling content for humans and robots, and how to make story funnels to buckstops work for you, and how to feed search bots juicy keyword sandwiches. It was my own brand of madness from start to finish.

Here’s Faith and Will Web setting up a fancy new digital projector at the National Yacht Club.

Presentation Points – Secrets of Smojoe Social Media Marketing

Its no secret that Smojoe believes the blog is central to good social media; it’s a really fertile field where great content can be easily made, and harvested. It’s cheap to make content here and good posts accrue more and more value over time. The blog is the cornerstone of good social media marketing, and the sidebar is a content catalyst that’s too often neglected.

The blog is at the center of every story funnel because it connects so nicely to all other components, and the keyword rich crops grown here are quite often the most compelling, information rich threads in your social net – the blog is the source of daily content and soon becomes every expert’s most powerful influence tool. If your business were drawn as a stick man, the blog would be the mouth.

Story Funnels To Buckstops

Don’t put the whole story on just one page. Fragment your media so curious clickers have to travel to multiple platforms as they assemble the adventure in their heads.  Break your content into chunky bits and leave hooks in photo descriptions, articles, blogs and in discussion forum posts.  Make each piece of media link to another piece; some should link up to articles, but most will link down to your Buckstop.

You buckstop is your conversion form, and incoming links should be embedded under keyword rich text to tell robots what you are offering.

Writing Content for Humans and Robots

When bloggers take advantage of all the ways that Wordpress and other content submission platforms can index content ie headlines, subtitles, alt text under pictures tags and categories they can make truly information rich packages.

How To Make Keyword Sandwiches

When blogging, its possible to make tasty keyword sandwiches for robots by following this precise writing ritual: 1) in the back of your wordpress blog import a picture as URL from your Flickr account that has a proper headline, description and tags, and insert it in your blog. Then put keywords in all the right places on the picture as title, alt text and if possible tags.  2) Write a good rich media blog post around the picture using the same keywords in headline, subtitle, tags and categories, and then publish the blog post. 3)  Bookmark your post using Digg, Delicious, Reddit or StumbleUpon to add the same search terms to the package again -  that’s how you create a keyword sandwich, and this rich media is exactly what search bots most love to eat!

There really is no proper update on my Jan 20th presentation at the Centre for Social Innovation.
Nobody took any pictures! All parties, including Deb Lewis of City Events totally forgot to get any images of Smojoe presenting ‘story funnels to buckstops’, and  I blame Billie Mintz as he distracted me by pointing a video camera  at me.  When I asked Billie for screen grabs he politely postponed me, and so I guess he’s really busy too.

Smojoe Speaks Again Feb 4th, 2010

On Feb 4th, Smojoe will be appearing alongside Faith Seekings in an event co-produced by Bill Tibbles and Terri Carson at the National Yacht Club. There’s details on Rapport Communications website, and the Rapport blog, and why not  follow @FaithSeekings on Twitter.

A blog is the cornerstone of good social media marketing because it’s the cheapest and best place to tell the whole story.

Business bloggers, event marketers and brand managers are strongly encouraged to register and attend a comprehensive discussion on how they can make their blogs more enticing to readers and search robots.  In this session I’m really going to drill down on what works, what search engines want, and why blogs are the most powerful media distribution tools ever invented by man.

How to make money with a blog?

Yes I’m going to answer the most popular question of them all, ‘how bloggers make money online?’

Which sidebar widgets are best for your blog?

After I demonstrate how Smojoe binds keyword rich images and text, I will illustrate with examples how blog sidebars can become content catalysts for building premium social capital.  I put Flickr, Twitter and MyBlogLog what’s new with me? widgets in my sidebar to legitimate my expertise, and leave clues for detectives that want to dig deeper en route to my buckstops.  During this chapter I’ll be sure and include insights on what you can do to help your blog post find wider audiences.  Unlike other speakers I don’t share statistics or bullshit affirmation stories, I get down and dirty and actually demonstrate the specifics.

Toronto Dentist Scrutinizes Smojoe’s Smile

Late last week the Kids in Action photo contest launched on Lenzr and already there are ten great photos and over 100 votes in the system.  Sponsored by Toronto dentist Dr Natalie Archer D.D.S., the youthful photography theme should help remind kids to play safe and take care of their teeth. Or maybe it will inspire parents to preserve their white smiles alongside images of their kids at play… whatever.  You know I actually wanted the contest to be “Jobs Without Dental Plans” but other Lenzr staff members thought that theme might produce overly abstract results.

Located a few steps south of the Sherbourne St Subway station in Toronto, Dr Archer and the other dentists at Rosedale Family Dental Care will do everything from cleanings to fillings, right down to root canals.  My own mouth was scrutinized and extreme close-ups were obtained for a ‘before and after’ series to showcase Dr Archer’s skill at cosmetic dentistry.

The prize is a premium tooth whitening system, the NiteWhite tooth whitening kit is at the core of the prize package offering; the gift basket also contains a year’s supply of toothpaste, toothbrushes, dental floss and mouthwash.

Sean Turrell is a humble Toronto television director and overall cool guy.

Sean Turrell is a Canadian television director and hipster. He’s one of my oldest friends in Toronto, and yet we barely ever see each other and never make plans.  In the past we used to find ourselves together at events, or upstairs at the Drake, but those days are over now and all we have are good memories.  I remember the camera tests we shot together at York University, and the half dozen rock videos we made in 1996 and 97 in which I was chief lighting technician, and Sean was Art Director. Dave Greene was D.O.P. and Brad Walsh was director at Projecktor.  After a quick search I found Sean Turrell on SHOT magazine in connection with Spy Films.  I didn’t know he directed Michael Buble in the ‘Everything” video, and Sean is far too humble to say anything about it. That video probably really helped his career.

SHOT: Michael Buble - Sean Michael Turrell, director

Spy Entertainment director Sean Michael Turrell with Michael Buble on-location at a downtown L.A. factory for the “Everything” video shoot.

artist: Michael Buble
song: “Everything”
label: Warner Bros.
director(s): Sean Michael Turrell
production co: Spy Entertainment
DP: Adam Marsden

Build Social Capital with Smojoe
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Centre for Social Innovation
215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 120

On this evening, I, Rob Campbell the Smojoe will demonstrate exactly how to build ‘Story Funnels to Buckstops’ and together with audience members we’ll work through the little known principles of article replication, blog and discussion forum marketing as I show off the methodology my firm uses to put clients on the first page of search engines, diminish negative press, and increase our clients’ overall findability.

Keri the Canadian Explorer on Canada Blog Friends

Earlier this month I got a chance to meet and share stories with Keri the Canadian Explorer in the back of the Starbucks at Queen and John.  We talked about the dream job of creating web videos for a living and what it takes to succeed in that business. Without question, @KeriCDN is going to try.

It wasn’t long after that meeting I profiled Keri the Canadian Explorer on Canada Blog Friends and was halfway through writing the article when she emailed me to tell me the late breaking news - she has just been contracted by Canoe.ca and Sun Media to travel to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and attend opening ceremonies and all subsequent athletic events as an official member of the press.  Its a dream come true, and in fact this was exactly Keri’s dream.

Connie Behr on HGTV home renovation series House Poor.

While flipping through TV channels on Saturday January 16th, I spotted Connie Behr as a guest star on a new HGTV show called House Poor.  It was quite a surprise because eight years ago I was madly in love with her.  Indeed, she broke my heart.

This elf girl is really smart and funny and quick - the best word to describe her is nimble.  So of course she drove the episode, especially at the end when the reactions came and the couple had to pretend they were seeing the renovations for the first time.  Her facial expressions were magnificent.

The simple fact that the host labeled the couple ‘Connie and Sebastian’, and put her name first, tells me that she drove the show. She’s an actress on the verge of another big career boom, and oh the fella she married is slightly younger blond cameraman whose TV credits include Kenny vs Spenny.  He’s horribly attractive blond hair blue eyed guy, beard and all.  But he’s shy and diminutive, and I hope he’s not too boring for her.

When the show ended I scanned the credits for more stalker details,  but that’s really not possible on Global TV anymore. The names go by too fast and are too small to be comprehensible.  But rest assured, the jilted lover in me is satisfied.  I can reflect back without emotion on my journey knowing she is happily married with at least one child and a house that she paid $440K and after renovations some of which were subsidized by a television company, the downstairs basement apartment will carry half the mortgage making their payments $1200 a month. More like fourteen hundred I imagine as they’ll have to give a break on the basement apartment in Toronto’s condo rich rental marketplace.

The Toronto Blog Girls package a Value Proposition

Here are the five founding members of the Toronto Blog Girls and if you click through the link you’ll end up on a Tumblr page that collects their blog feeds. They all have uniquely different styles and content themes. Where some write a lot of text, others post more images than sentences.

Casie Stewart - Daily blogger, social butterfly and Digital Marketing Girl at Much MTV

Carly-Anne Fairlie - Agent and owner/founder of the Fairlie Agency

Carol Zara - Geeks Lover, Digitally Blonde show, voted Top 3 “Women of Geek Culture” by G4TV

Lisa Charleyboy - Pop culture with an indigenous twist

KeriCDN - Video blogger and Canada’s biggest fan.

Look for these writers at all the hottest parties, wearing the latest fashions, trying new beauty products, reviewing spas, shopping and attending live theatre throughout the city of Toronto this summer.

My Brother’s Bicycle Helmet Video Camera Contraption

Yesterday my Brother Ian used a helmet camera, which a small video camera strapped to a bicycle helmet that’s strapped to his head, to record a rather brisk bike ride through suburban Seattle. This was just a test ride, so he could record a video and post it on Youtube and then send the link to the company that provided the camera. There were some earlier bugs that this ride proves are now fixed. Ian writes that he had to use super-glue to mount the camera to the base, and then shim us the base to my helmet so it wouldn’t move. He notes that It was inputting a lot of annoying noise because the device was moving around as he rode his bike.

Tomorrow, Ian will be riding in the mountains and viewers will see some really interesting scenery on Ian Campbells YouTube Channel. I did embed the video below, but its too slow and bogs down all of Smojoe.

Lots to talk about, here in January 2010.

Three photo contests ended on Lenzr on January 1st, and are slowly being replaced. The matches were not as dramatic as previous finishes, as the winners established an early lead and maintained it over the entire course of the contest. You can read all the developments on the Lenzr blog including our endeavours to make a better scoring algorithm.  In the next session, the voting results should more accurately reflect each photographer’s skill, as decided by the people, and be less about his or her ability to promote the page to friends. We are rewarding comments now, and reducing earlier metrics that were set too high.  Congratulations to members seguini and ve3bnw

Macro Photos of Life winner (right) was submitted by a prolific member named ve3bnw which sounds like a license plate # and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is, considering he describes himself as a commercial truck driver that’s interested in photography. The image titled Time to BEEHAVE magnifies a shiny wasp.

This member will receive an Eastern Ontario wine and brewery tour set for early next month and there’s more information on Locaboire.  Smojoe will almost certainly accompany the winner on this journey and, of course, write lots of travel and wine related content afterward, for your reading pleasure.

New Photo Contests on Lenzr are slowly coming to life, and more challenges will launch next week.   Already there is an offering entitled Everday Tangled Web which asks members to upload images of the most beautiful tangles in their life, if possible.  Its a difficult assignment.

Sponsored by S.E. Telecom, a business phone systems provider in Toronto Ontario, the challenge hopes to showcase the messes we make, as individuals and as a society, when we run lines and make connections without properly organizing a system.  But even an ordered network can look confusing from certain angles. There’s lots of chaos in my home, but none of it is very beautiful.

The Prize is a Plantronics Voyager 510SL+ Bluetooth Headset System with Lifter, retail Value $429.00

Enjoy wireless freedom in the office or on the go with the Plantronics Voyager 510S Bluetooth Headset. Ensuring lightweight, all-day comfort, the Voyager 510S delivers superior sound quality and provides WindSmart technology for clear voice transmission. You can read more about the reasoning and reward in the Everyday Tangled Web photo contest on the Lenzr blog.

Ruth Wilgress Begins Blogging

Ruth Wilgress is starting a business that provides expressive arts therapy in Toronto and will be blogging and updating friends and collegues as she advances in this discipline.

Ruth is working hard to perfect new programs and new methods of helping people through the practice of creating art. Here’s The Rat Race which is one of her best pieces. I absolutely love her colour choices she used.  Who would have believed that lime green and pink compliment each other?  I also like how the picture is punctuated by computer chips.

Lisa Charleyboy, veteran blogger takes up article marketing

Lisa Charleyboy is Toronto’s most fascinating native girl blogger.  Graduating York University this year, she’s already a veteran author that has outgrown a blogspot and has advanced into article marketing as a hired gun for some big name fashion portals. Lisa has a very bright career as a freelance writer ahead of her.  It was over a year ago that I profiled Lisa Charleyboy on CanadaBlogFriends.ca

Want to read her latest stuff? Her last year’s Top Five posts. Each of these articles probably got more readership than my Smojoe blog did all year, but I’m not jealous. Its a different audience.
1) Holy Cowichan
2) Native Model in Bazaar Spread
3) Urban Warrior: Anthony Collins (aka Thosh)
4) Could Canada’s Next Top Model be Native?
5) Urban Warrior: Tatanka Means

Abel DaSilva shares a hole lot of secrets with Dumpdiggers

Just after the holidays, I wrote and published two stories about a Sunday Jan 3rd afternoon spent with Abel DaSilva, who is Toronto’s foremost excavation site bottle merchant and also a knowledgeable antiques aficionado on eBay, and power seller and prolific discussion forum participant.

Shopping for Antiques at the Sunday Market in Toronto with Abel DaSilva is an informative article that details the St Lawrence Hall, Sunday Market setting and chronicles the purchases of a wise man leveraging his knowledge of history.  Abel understands tricky niche markets for collectibles and how to buy local and sell global using eBay and related Yahoo antiques collecting groups.

Sightseeing with Abel DaSilva in Downtown Toronto sifts through half a dozen stories about four different lots in the downtown core in which historically significant antiques glass bottles were unearthed.  There were truckloads of antiques buried under just about every condominium building on the shoreline. What’s even more fascinating, is how Abel befriends the excavation company employees, site supervisors and heavy machinery operators by sharing his knowledge of the specimens they unearth in their digging projects. Abel was very generous sharing tips, but redacted some of the juiciest stuff after reading my first draft. My favourite anecdote is the King City car chase where Abel was followed by other diggers from one landfill site to another.

In closing, let me say the most satisfying metric that any freelance business professional could ever hope to measure is the amount of opportunity that he or she receives per week.

Its Christmas time, and Smojoe is busy.

My weekdays have become a parade of sales meetings and training sessions. Evenings and weekends are when I work,  completing the orders, writing proposals and reports, and generally keeping my promises.

On Tuesday Dec 15th, Smojoe met Molson Ferg

Ferg Devins is a master storyteller on Twitter; @MolsonFerg is the real time hero of a three adventures a week.

That’s how we happened to come together, again.  I was sitting at my desk on a hot afternoon and spotted a tweet from @MolsonFerg in which he described himself ‘enjoying a cold Molson Canadian while watching the air show from a boat in the Toronto harbour’. It sounded divine, and when I messaged him back we chatted about our mutual friend Billie Mintz, and his corporate social responsibility expertise, and then how Smojoe markets Canadian charities, and finally how to promote and reward contributors in user submitted content web marketing.

I really wanted to impart the mechanics of my Lenzr photo contests on him, but there wasn’t enough time and this wasn’t the right conduit. So I sent a power point document later that afternoon. Next week Ferg contacted me and we set a date for a meeting… which I missed.  So he set another date and that was Tuesday Dec 15th 2009 at 1pm, at Molson.

Together with Tonia Hammer and Adam Moffit we convened in the Heineken Room and used the overhead projector to look at a dozen different social media properties and blue sky advanced internet marketing tactics for big brands.  Then I got specific about life in the trenches.

After some brief introductions,  I directed the conversation with a detailed look at the processes by which I propagate brand stories with links.  I lectured on exactly how Smojoe distributes sponsored content in articles, blogs and discussion forums. Twenty minutes later, I arrived at Chapter 3, the mechanics of Lenzr. My dissertation included a sneak peek at the link building ritual that perpetuates the contest’s remarkable keyword acquisition abilities.

Then Ferg described his challenges and the concepts they cherish and it was my turn to listen and learn and finally see their approach from the treetops. Above is a snapshot of Ferg encouraging me on at Molson – taken by Tonia Hammer.  And here is a picture of the gift I received at the end of our visit. I haven’t cracked this 12 pack or Molson 67 yet because I’m waiting for friends. Christmas is coming.

SE Telecom signs up to sponsor Lenzr photo contest

On Weds October 16th I journeyed north of the City of Toronto with Chris Binet of BCommunications.ca . We zipped up to 231 Amber Street, Markham Ontario, the headquarters of SE Telecommucations and there talked with a smart young CEO named James Stortz. I was impressed with his knowledge. He at once demonstrated the courage and thought power necessary to blog and share valuable insights on business phone systems. I have no doubt he will grow a popular portal and become a trust agent for all manner of mobile technology. I’m going to help him. Its official.

Will Webb of Innate Media Group has also been contracted, and will perform surgery on the website.  Improvements will include a white hot Wordpress blog with plenty of well integrated 3rd party widgets to build and harness a telecom savvy community and position SETelecom as market leader with valuable experience and plenty of wisdom to share. Look for much more on this subject, including direct links to the new SE Telecom blog in the days and weeks to follow.

Melani Chong is Soy Based Cosmetics Expert

Melani Chong of Soya Boutique is almost ready to launch her new ecommerce website.  She’s still soaking up the last pieces of knowledge she needs to craft a comprehensive strategy that will best disseminate her advanced skincare offering.

Her challenge is to link soy and cosmetics together in everyone’s minds and then dominate that niche on the web with great content.  Her ideas have to be catchy and unforgettable, to be super bookmarkable.  She can offer local perspective on Chris Binet’s new Health and Beauty Toronto ning community, which is still an infant. Keep an eye on that portal and watch it grow in 2010.

I asked Melani to think up some hooks. Perhaps, how the miracle of soy can be used as an anti aging ingredient? or in anti wrinkle creams? and I discovered she’s a natural. When I asked her if she had an anti aging story, she said ‘how about Ways to get rid of the scrotum under your eyes? Is that catchy enough?’ I laughed and she kept on talking about ball skin, and how to tighten away this testical-like skin .. anyway  Smojoe found that hook very compelling. But until she actually launches her soy based cosmetics website and e-store, you should join and follow Melani’s SOYCULT on Facebook

On a sunny Thursday Dec 17th 2009 afternoon

Smojoe had the pleasure of watching Richard Carmichael of FRANK Ideas and Execution meet Dave Dingle of Shrinkray in the wooden environs of Boomboat located at 220 King St West.

Dave is very excited about the recent release of the Shrinkray which allows users to create a mobile browser as easily as they might otherwise draft an email. The system is very straightforward in the manner by which it allows business owners to import elements from their website into a custom field that becomes their new mobile website.

On Friday I trained staff at Wellpath Clinic.  My presentation was directed at the new office manager as I outlined the A,B,D’s of marketing an ecommerce business.  I also showed Richard Porter and Dr. Kathryn Nobrega Porter how to cultivate link opportunities simply by being experts in one or two (or ten or twenty) facets of natural medicine.

The lesson centered on the proper execution of one story funnel. To make a perfect example, I wrote and published an original article entitled Wildcrafting Medicinal Herbs in Ontario and I showed the team how to do basic article marketing and social bookmarking which is the top of the story funnel. Then I discussed how to blog about this new Wildcrafting article and link up to the featured article, and down to the Wellpath website, creating a story funnel.

I wrapped up the lesson by showing how to write discussion forum posts that link to the article - including my favourite thread on Mulberry Trees in Urban Toronto.ca and if you visit this thread please know I’m quite serious about creating a Toronto Mulberry Forager mobile application for the benefit of all humanity.

On Thursday November 19th, Rob Campbell the Smojoe ventured west down Lakeshore Blvd to meet Michael Cayley the thought leader behind the Social Capital Value Add (SCVA) and professor at Humber College.

On that day (National Fearless Day), I was asked to give a presentation to Micheal’s Humber PR media class. Much to my delight, I was actually encouraged to get specific about how I start brand conversations and distribute sponsored content on the web.  This particular subject is my greatest passion, and I was happy to oblige. My own thoughts, lists and processes have culminated in the creation of several varied and powerful online resources which I like to show strangers, much as a florist likes to show off his prize winning chrysanthemums.  Indeed I have a garden full of social media marvels and I employ these properties to drive traffic in advanced Smojoe social media tactics.

You may have noticed that the old website for Smojoe is gone. It will be replaced by a new site presently. The new domain will explain many things to many different types of readers using the same text.

Writing that text is the challenge. I’m concentrating on composing new page copy to vastly improve the offering, and speaking aloud at Humber about the fundamental precepts of my business helps me refine those short sweet critical messages. Like this little nugget,

Smojoe is a web savvy choir of bloggers and skilled idea sneezers that write compelling stories for humans and robots.

Bloggers are like farmers. Every post they publish plants two hundred keywords in the fertile soil of their domain. With more time and content and incoming links the keywords mature into search terms to bring traffic to the enterprise.

Story funnels to buckstops is a brand message distribution system that uses interesting hooks to tempt readers across multiple social media platforms and into conversion tools on the client website.

There is a method to the madness of telling stories on the internet. The first rule of thumb is never give the whole story in one place. Its far better to fragment the media and draw curious clickers to multiple platforms en route to an informative and aesthetically pleasing buckstop. When I tell stories on the internet, my practice starts with exclusive articles to which I link blogs and discussion forums. I bookmark the best media on Digg, Delicious and especially StumbleUpon. Here’s Smojoe getting creative on the white board in front of dozens of curious Humber PR social media students at precisely 1:35pm on Thursday Nov 19th 2009 in room 105 building F of Humber College Lakeshore campus.

Photo by Brandie Blackier of Artistic Tendency in Barrie, Ontario. And thanks to Will Webb of Innate media Group for working my laptop and fielding some difficult SEO questions. This individual has become a big part of Smojoe fulfillment because he does such a capital job creating effective buckstops.

Last week, Smojoe built a beautiful Wordpress blog for TellOscar.com.

If you haven’t heard about this place yet, let me explain Canada’s first user driven complaints website. This web destination might be better described as a customer service reports index, and by that I mean a place that lists both good and bad stories; both compliments and complaints can be recorded.

But very few people bother to write nice things or record pleasant observations here.  No, this site runs on complaints and preserves warnings to consumers researching specific goods and services.

How does TellOscar work?

If you owned a business, and suddenly found your beloved establishment written up in TellOscar’s archives, you’d do whatever possible to get the problem resolved. Am I Right?  You’d pay whatever fees necessary to access the forum and respond to the complainer, personally one on one.  I’m certain you’d pay money to make them happy (or at least keep them quiet), and that’s exactly what Tell Oscar wants you to do: That’s the business model.  When this website gets busy, all of Canada’s biggest corporations will pay a monthly access fee to be able to respond one on one with their unhappiest customers.

Why TellOscar works?

As a savvy consumer, I get frustrated with cut rate customer service departments, foreign call centers and automated telephone messages. People who naively write emails to managers, or letters to head office should not be surprised if their correspondence vanishes into a corporate chasm. TellOscar works its wonders because the complaint is so public it embarrasses the subject into action.

What about Twitter? Isn’t that already the world’s largest complaints website?

Unlike Twitter, which limits each entry to a 140 characters, TellOscar.com lets writers enter pages of details.  There is no limit, and no expiry date. The system preserves each submissions in the vault forever, until they’re resolved, and even that data is archived for perpetuity.  Also noteworthy is TellOscar’s primary focus on Canadian consumers - they have representatives who deal directly with Canadian manufacturers, merchants and service providers and are positioned as impartial advocates for conflict resolution.

Introducing the TellOscar Blog

TellOscar’s new blog is what every customer service blog should be - its the primary conduit for communicating new information and insight into the particulars of a business, and reflections on an industry in general.  This simple Wordpress blog will digest news media, profile other authors and experts and showcase some of the more vitriolic complaints that have been submitted to the site. There’s lots of very interesting content on this website, and the blog can bring even more attention to the best of the best user submitted complaints.

Check out these remarks filed under bad customer service. These are heartbreaking stories.  I want you to look at this alleged assault at McDonalds. Imagine if you were the general manager, and you became aware of this story by reading about it online, what would you do? It’s interesting to learn how two different managers at that franchise became more and more eager to find resolution. They fired the employee, offered coupons, and finally asked what else they could possibly do to get the issue resolved…

Creative complainers are every corporation’s worst nightmare, and with its spiffy new blog, TellOscar.com has just become an even more powerful place to complain.

WarrantyElephant is an online memory business.  The site is built to help consumers manage different expiry dates on warranties covering the new products they buy for their homes and businesses.

In today’s golden age of disposable electronic gadgets and junk this safeguard seems like a no-brainer, and the service will no doubt grow more valuable as the quality of our crap continues to deteriorate.

One or two warranties is probably something anyone could manage, but ten or twelve or twenty six warranties is beyond the average homeowner’s and apartment dweller’s abilities, and yet statistics show this is approx how many warranties different types of North Americans accumulate in one year.  So Warranty Elephant is an intuitive easy-to-use free service that helps people better manage their resources and hold manufacturers 100% accountable for shoddy work.

The Warranty Elephant logo is a good brand, and most people over thirty years old know the elephant never forgets.  Sadly, here in Canada, kids under thirty weren’t told much about elephants when they were young and don’t seem to associate the animal with having any special memory skills. This is something Smojoe is bent on correcting using an array of social media tools, starting with a Wordpress blog.

Smojoe helps Warranty Elephant build online presence and brand personality starting with the Warranty Elephant Blog . The Cordobo Green Park 2 theme template by Andreas Jacob structures the blog and sends it on its way to becoming the best place to learn about warranties and the reminder service industry. Readers will learn what comes standard and what’s unusual as there will be interviews with customer service experts, and lawyers and legislators and even letters from Warranty Elephant users will be included in the weekly offerings. The blog mission statement reads like this:

Warranty Elephant Blog details friends and experts, and communicates contests and events and chronicles the growth of WarrantyElephant.com, the best warranty expiry reminder service on the internet.

For this client, Smojoe uses the blog to focus a diverse community of friends into ’story funnels’ that propel readers down into the ‘buckstop’, in this case the user registration page on the WarrantyElephant.com website. This is accomplished through all manner of sidebar tools and advanced brand storytelling.  See the Roy Tanck Flickr Widget above the MyBlogLog ‘What’s New With Me’ widget?  Those are Smojoe favourites because of the way they compel readers to click through for further investigation. On an array of strategically selected 3rd party user submitted content portals, curious readers will find brand stories that showcase Warranty Elephant’s free service.

The challenge here is not structuring the social net, so much, as it is writing content with personality.  Smojoe advocates whenever possible to create real experts and brand champions that are humans, because they are more accountable and easier to write about.  However…

Cartoon elephants can also have great personality! Look at Dumbo, and Babar, and don’t forget Elmer the Safety Elephant. All three characters lend positive associations for Warranty Elephant, who I see as a clumsy chum that’s a pain in the bum for ten minutes, but he will remember all your information no matter what or wherever you are in the world or whatever calamity befalls your home or office… Warranty Elephant wont forget your data, and will always remember to email you periodic reminders of upcoming warranty expiry dates.

Everything Smojoe knows about how to market an event in Toronto will be revealed on Weds Oct 14th, 2009 starting at 6:00pm - 8:30pm inside the Spoke Club 600 King St W, Toronto.  Get tickets in advance here they’re cheaper.
https://secure.gettickets.ca/?event=15422

Deb Lewis has certainly outdone herself with this picture she has created to help promote the upcoming How to Market an Event in Toronto seminar at the Spoke Club. This is why Deb Lewis of City Events is one of the best event marketers in the city. Her Photoshop creation is strangely compelling and the bees represent buzz, but they might also represent the honey that I’ll be dispensing to reward audience participation.

Can Social Media Work for Event Marketers?

Social media is defined as using online networks to connect and share stories and information with friends. But its my opinion that effective social media marketing campaigns need time to generate interest before they can affect strangers outside the storyteller’s own sphere of influence.

Most marketers are disappointed with their results after they attempt to use online tools like Facebook and Twitter to sell tickets and ‘put bums in seats’ at actual live events. Nine times out of ten it just doesn’t work, and if you are starting from scratch then building short term solutions is doomed to failure.

Because online media lasts forever, good stories should be used to engineer audiences in long term scenarios.

Smojoe has lots of experience event marketing weird things like ballet movies for Empire Theatres, plays at Shaw Festival and comedy at Second City.  My moment of epiphany came while marketing the Miss Teen Canada-World pageant event this summer. That’s when I went on a quest to find and index all manner of online services that are built to capture event listings. That’s what I’ll be talking about on Weds. There are so many ways to shout out so many different types of messages, but unless you’re actually having conversations with your audience, it isn’t really true social media. Twitter followers and Facebook friends have real value to event marketers, but only if they are niche targeted and qualified to appreciate the messages.

Online Marketing is different than Social Media Marketing

When people ask to use my tools to help sell paid attendance to events, I generally caution that social media shouldn’t be used like that, and any money spent creating perishable stories will be wasted. Rather, I would digitally market their event using Craigslist and Kijiji.com and Eventful etc more on this Oct 14th * You can build widgets on Eventful.com that can be posted on your friends’ homepages.

How to use Social Media Marketing to Build Ready Audiences?

I would attend and document the artist’s event and make videos, take photos and write stories. Then I’d comb the media for the very best story hook. I’d certainly write about any celebrities that attended, detail the fight that happened outside, the forgery that was discovered, the food… whatever I’d combine the media in wonderful stories split across classic Smojoe story funnels that spiral down to the artist’s gallery and blog. I’d hope these destinations have proper conversion tools necessary to sell paintings or register subscribers so the artist’s work is better known and easier to market next time they host a live event.

There’s been lots of good Smojoe in September 2009. Here’s a long mash up of this month’s best memories and media.

Let’s start with Siera Bearchell and the terrific writing she’s been putting up on the Miss Teen Canada– World blog.  Her work deserves recognition and more readership because of the admirable manner in which she’s taken the reigns and responsibility from Katie Starke.

Gone but not forgotten, Katie has started her own blog Katie Starke OnSugar this month. This portal is starting small but will grow and mature in the network to keep all her fans updated with reports on whatever she chooses to do with her life.

After a well deserved Mediterranean vacation, Michelle Weswaldi is back as Pageant Director of MTC-W and is now prepping the Ontario finals as part of the 2010 Search for Miss Teen Canada– World.   Just this morning, much to my surprise, I received the first ever MTC-W newsletter. I was impressed with the creation made by Campaigner software, which contained nine pictures with interesting captions. Anyone looking for more information about the MTC-W 2010 Ontario finals can find more data on the website, and more conversational stuff on the MTC-W Facebook group.

Smojoe is proud to announce that Sugar Inc and the Miss Teen Canada -World pageant now have a formal relationship. After a four emails and one phone call Sabrina Eldridge and Rob Campbell agreed that OnSugar will give custom template solutions and support to the growing army of MTC-W bloggers.

Sabrina Eldridge and her staff will work with OnSugar designers to customize an exclusive template that only MTC-W contestants can use. The design will have built in analytics, custom headers and sidebar widgets that link them and even show off the latest posts in the network. The template will be exclusive (we hope) so that administrators alone can control and modify functionality and affect display changes across the array from one master site.  What that means is that I’ll be able to make modifications to the template and those changes will manifest in all the blogs in the network at once. So for example I can update the list of sponsors, and change the outgoing links to sponsor websites all across the network with the click of a button.

In return, Miss Teen Canada - World will make each girl’s OnSugar blog part of the official competition and worth 10% of each contestant’s final score.  We will encourage participants to make their blogs their ‘campaign headquarters’ and use the exclusive template to show judges and give readers an inside look at their lives as they prepare to travel to Toronto in the summer of 2010 to compete in the Miss Teen Canada - World pageant.

Smojoe really admires Jeannie Lottie and how well she’s using her Jeanne Lottie Blog to promote her Pink Bedroom Party on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009, at the Berkeley Church at 315 Queen St. East at Parliament Toronto. Tickets cost $55 in advance, and $65 at the door.

Here’s Jeanne Lottie with superstar Cheryl Tiegs. The timeless Ms. Tiegs is the spokesperson for the sponsor Cambria, and proud owner of a Jeanne Lottie black vintage Bead Framed Bag because deep down Jeanne believes that “every blond should have a sparkly little clutch to stash her lip gloss, cards and evening essentials.” Honestly I love the attitude of the writing on her blog now, and the personality that’s starting to appear in this portal. The stories have links to fashion merchandise available in the Jeanne Lottie catalog.

*
The myCELLmyTERMS guys have every reason to be excited these days. They’re building something, and people will come, especially after October 21st 2009 at 8pm.

Keep your eye on The Cell Phone Blog this month for insights and updates on the myCELLmyTERMS entreprenuers and their upcoming appearance on the hit CBC series Dragons’ Den. Their story has been filmed and is scheduled to be broadcast to millions of Canadians on Oct 21st at 8pm depending on where you live. This is the kind of media that can really fertilize a start-up business and grow a big customer base. They just have to be ready for the spike…

So folks can now join myCELLmyTERMS on Facebook, and follow myCELLmyTERMS on Twitter and of course read The Cell Phone Blog to get a good inside look at these guys and their business.

In truth they are a fascinating quartet of serial entrepreneurs and their idea is quite unique, which is saying something in the cell phone game where everything is derivative and cliche.  myCELLmyTERMS.com has a genius idea; they let each customer detail their dream cell phone plan (including how much they’re willing to pay each month), and then they shop the offer to all different carriers in Canada so he or she gets the best deal.

For those of you that don’t know, Smojoe met these guys in connection with Lenzr.com and through Stephen Rouse of Maverick PR.  The firm sponsored the Summer in Toronto photo contest which was won by Snickerzmom who chose the iPhone 3gs when she could have had any smart phone in the world.

Here’s Ducourt…

This guy won the Best Ontario Skyline photo contest on Lenzr and has since taken possession of a Pentax Optio P90 camera.

Best Toronto Skyline had 46 photos submitted, including some amazing shots with lightning and ducks and vintage shots of the skyline that have all together gathered up over 2500 votes.

The winner is DuCourt, who describes himself in the third person in his Lenzr.com profile, “Thomas is a long-standing freelance film technician in the Toronto film industry who is attempting to transition into an on-set photographer”.

I meet Thomas Care downtown and we talked about his life. Tom is a dolly grip in the Toronto film industry.  His job pays well because there’s a special skill to accomplishing complicated camera moves and the relationship between the camera operator and the dolly grip is quite unique.  However Thomas tells me that he yearns to be an on set photographer and hopes his new website (which I will link to here when it’s done) will help him get more recognition. For this reason he’s out building profiles on websites like Lenzr.com and elsewhere in social media hoping that such participatory investments will help him influence producers and production managers and enable help him to better find employment in this exciting vocation.

Ontario Tourist Attractions photo contest launched on Lenzr on September 1st 2009 and is  a huge success with over forty images uploaded into competition and almost 1400 votes in September. The contest has captured some fantastic images. A half dozen local bloggers have written about the photo contest and the best posts are Alexandra Highcrest, Snapping for Swag and… more to follow.

Ontario Tourist Attractions is a photo contest on Lenzr.com thats open to anyone who’s ever been a tourist in Ontario Canada and still has the pictures to prove it.  But of course you have to be Canadian to win the prize and sorry that excludes Quebec and anyone younger than 13yrs old.

This web challenge is sponsored by Kanetix.ca insurance & mortgage rate quotes and has become a search for images that glimpse Ontario’s most interesting travel destinations. So far this month forty pictures or assorted beaches and bars, towers and temples, museums and music festivals have appeared on the site.

Ontario Tourist Attractions photo contest ends at 12:01 am on the morning of November 1st 2009. On Lenzr the membership rates the submissions and the highest rated image wins the Prize, a $200 gift certificate for first place, followed by $100 for second.

There are even more big things happening at Smojoe in October.  I call this picture Lemon and Honey. It was taken in the Foggy Dew the day I first rapped with Jax.  I know there’s goin to be some level of developmental cooperation between myself and the girl with the Smojoe honey. Stay tuned for more details on her and the sweet citrus she brings to the table.

For three years, Rob Campbell the prime innovator at Smojoe has been experimenting with conversational marketing using the social web to affect Google search results for strategic keyword targets.

And now I, Rob Campbell am the first Smojoe Centurion, because I can deliver one hundred stories with links.

Smojoe Social Media Manual, version #3 outlines exactly how social marketers should engineering multi platform brand stories, and how they should measure results. It’s available right here for $19.00 CAN and is thirty seven pages of detailed information about how to market websites.

Social Media Marketing is without a doubt the fastest growing new sector of advertising in the world.

Each Smojoe Centurion is a one man marketing army and a respected contributor and member of one hundred different niche communities, and probably has one of the most findable avatars on the web.  Grounded in their own expertise they are comfortable with, and indeed profit from being, internet celebrities.

Having so many different passions means a social marketer can influence different types of people by creating primary, secondary and tertiary media in different niches.

Using articles, blogs and discussion forums these Jedi Warriors are the best idea sneezers in the business, and their participation in any campaign yields valuable social capital for the client website.

Lenzr has been a terrific catalyst for trying new things, and writing final reports every sixty days necessitates regular patrols of the landscape.

The simple lessons that I’ve learned, and the hundred places where I can go talk about my clients with links and photos have made me a Smojoe Centurion.

Story Funnels To Buck Stops

The best online storytellers leave different bits of the same brand adventure in articles, blogs and discussion forums all over the web.  The mechanism of this successful   marketing ideology can be crystallized in one simple observation; they build story funnels to buck stops.

The search for experts drives the internet, but the search for stories rules the social web.  Building story funnels to buck stops means hand crafting a dozen different hooks (things that people might find interesting) before publishing anything, and then using the bits of content to funnel readers toward the client’s website or primary conversion page.

The client website must have ‘conversion tools’ by which readers can be converted into customers. This is a magical place, and the subject of a different blog post. Right now we’re just building the funnels.

How to plant multiple platform brand stories on the social web

There is a method to Smojoe madness, a ritual exists wherein certain elements are planted first to build and compound with other elements.  For example, pictures are posted on Flickr and Photobucket first thing so they can be embedded later in blogs and niche discussion forums.  Little bits of text with links are prepared and assembled opposite links to photos on a HOT SCRIPT document.

Smojoe plants the content top down. After research and preparation, I start writing the most compelling stories as exclusive articles (or photo essays, factoidz, or videos) and then cycle down through four types of less exclusive user submitted content digesting ideas and leaving links back to clients. Second stage is blogging, third stage is discussion forums and it all ends with someone micro blogging and bookmarking the best content that was created at the end of each cycle.

The interesting thing is that readers usually encounter these story cycles from the back end first; they hit a blurb on Twitter, and then come to a discussion forum where they find a link to a blog post with a Flickr photo gallery widget in the sidebar. The Flickr images have descriptive text with links to an article in a popular niche eZine which links to a product page in the client’s e-store, the buck stop.

Story Funnels to Buck Stops is particularly effective when marketers can compel readers to follow their ideas across four different social media platforms to brand their minds forever. However, at the end of the day, the most measurable result is the increase in Google search traffic over the target keywords.  This is because the Smojoe Centurion who started all the conversations was careful to target just one or two keywords in the link text back to the client. The increase in 3rd party links buried in rich media conversations positively affects the Google PageRank algorythme and the target site will appear higher in SERPS for that keyword  after the next update.

Smojoe and the Miss Teen Canada beauty pageant have just recently extended their business relationship.  Now social media training is part of the package.

One Weds Aug 19th 2009,  Smojoe met Siera Bearchell the 2009 Miss Teen Canada- World winner, three days before her flight to Houston Texas to compete for the Miss Teen World crown.  The subject of newspaper stories and TV appearances it’s become clear that Siera is going to be a very popular beauty queen, and Smojoe has been retained to help transfer some of that buzz into the blogosphere.

At 12:30 pm we walked and talked in downtown Toronto near the Adelaide St and Jarvis offices of EnCourse Business Development. It was a super hot day and instead of sitting in a sweaty cafe I decided we’d get some pictures in the park and relax in the shade. Well it was a very busy park, and people were staring and that sure makes it hard to relax…

As an official beauty queen, Siera is required to wear her sash the entire time she’s in Toronto, esp when in public on official meetings.  She doesn’t need it though.  I swear if she didn’t have it people would probably still stare at her and know she’s special for some reason.  Indeed it was a little weird because as we sauntered along just about every single person we met on that narrow concrete path was somehow affected by our passing.  Some folks in the distance pointed and called loudly to nearby friends while others ventured closer and snapped cell phone pictures and jeepers it was odd. Is this what its like being a teen celebrity?

- Moments after winning the crown 25th July 09.

Siera was selected by a panel of Judges in front of an enthusiastic live audience in the John Bassett Theatre of the Metro Toronto Convention Center on Saturday July 25th 2009.  She came out ahead of fifty three other contestants that night and its no wonder why; Siera captured the hearts and minds of everyone because of her strong presentation of self.  Her story resonated right along with her abilities and poise and tremendous stage presence and all of this impacted the judges, and the audience.

Smojoe would like to believe that Siera Bearchell’s OnSugar contestant blog was a big part of her victory; its a fact she scored high with me because she used the magic of story. Specifically, Smojoe was moved by the unhappy tale of how Siera Bearchell overcame the trauma of living through a house fire and the resultant devastation and subsequent rebuilding of her life that occurred thereafter. She hooked me and branded me right there in that one blog post.

Siera Bearchell is a golfer and that’s another big part of her life and personal story. Oh I jumped on that element and soon insisted that she write and submit a golf course review for a high end Canadian golf ezine.   If she embraces this popular online sports community, her MTC-W blog will grow more and more popular after every game.

Here’s a girl that’s good with a club, and that’s an intriguing combination. That dichotomy would make interesting reading in so many niche golf zines. I told her that being a good blogger could allow her to play free golf at any course in Canada. Think about it.  What golf course wouldn’t pay her expenses and let her play with other VIP members to get in the center of her online popularity? It would be hot content and premium social capital.

As we walked back to the office I described story funnels and how to use three or four different online platforms to communicate  tiny bits of the same first person adventure.  Siera’s Flickr will soon be full of the images chronicling her quest in Texas and some of these bits should link to the MTCW blog platform, the former home of Katie Stark.  Siera Bearchell’s Twitter and the official Miss Teen Canada- World Twitter (updated more frequently by Michelle Weswaldi) accommodates official news bulletins and links. Siera’s comments on other blogs, her stories in the press, and other photo sharing sites will all hopefully link out and back to her blog. Her own skills using social bookmarking services (Digg, Delicious, Reddit and StumbleUpon) will help reinforce incoming links and highlight her best content as she creates the ultimate Miss Teen Canada- World blog.

Siera Bearchell, you are Canada’s most celebrated teenager, and your star is set to rise even higher in Houston Texas at the Miss Teen World competition. Good luck and don’t forget to write.

There are three photo contests on Lenzr this summer, with three different prizes.

Its now the middle of July and Lenzr.com is off to a great start. All three of contests are up and running and offer great prizes. The whole competition will end midnight 31 August 2009, but for me and everyone watching the spectacle, the real rewards come when Google updates the PageRank value Lenzr.com and then the client websites.

So far in the very first Lenzr contest period, the debut summer competition, the best prize for photographers to win is without question the reward that has been posted in  Summer in Toronto. Here the lucky winner gets their choice of smart phone* and that prize is compelling because people want to know what phone will the winner chose? Which phone would you choose?

Summer in Toronto - This web challenge is the place to show us what the word ’summer’ means to you. Snap and submit good pictures and you could win a smart phone.  Get shots of football players and urban fisherman and flaming cocktails on the patio of a sweaty flamingo bar. Take pictures of kids and dogs at the beach, or damming up a creek, or riding their bikes in the streets. Whatever makes you think of these warm summer months when the weather outside is cold and miserable summer. The reward is compelling.

The winner will choose a brand new state-of-the-art smart phone, courtesy of the best cell phone deals website in Canada, and be prepared to tell everyone WHY they have selected this model, when they could have any brand or device available on the market.

Emergency in Toronto - Toronto Firemen and Health Care Workers and Police are always trying to save time and to be the most conscious of wasted seconds and lost minutes. They are trying to save lives. This web challenge asks the photographers living in the city to look to the firetrucks and get a shot of them as they pass. Take a minute to record a moment of their lives, and be sure and report where and when you snapped the shot.

The Esquire Verve 2020 men’s watch with stainless steel band and butterfly clasp is a fine reward. This waterproof timepiece is very stylish with four diamonds. The prize is to be awarded by a time management speaker named Steven Prentice who has become rather famous for innovating social media solutions in busy offices. He also lectures on how technology can save time.

Best Toronto Skyline challenge asks photographers to submit wide angle images of the Toronto skyline. Please show us our great city dominating the horizon, and try to get unusual angles from rare perspectives. This contest is sponsored by the photo contest itself, and the winner receives a Pentax Optio P70 compact camera. The web challenge is designed to celebrate our Megacity’s urban sprawl.

On Lenzr.com, the contests change every two months. These prizes are all relatively easy to win, especially if you have good photographs that inspire other people’s appreciation and support.

Local photo contest website Lenzr.com launched on July 1st 2009.

Happy Canada Day! The fireworks all over Toronto are bursting to celebrate the birth of this nation, but to me, the pyrotechnics are popping for Lenzr.

After a two months gestation period which began when the notion was first conceived on my chalk board, and then transcribed into a seven page IA document (drawn on the fabric of experience learned from Dumpdiggers.com), William Webb of Innate Media Group delivered a demo on June 15th and now finally the beta site at Lenzr.com/toronto is presently running the first photo challenge.

At the core of this photo contest website you can hear the echoes of the photo battles for old coins and marbles that occurred last fall in the Dumpdiggers Arena. As a website designer, I gained a lot of wisdom making the antiques social networking site at Dumpdiggers.com. Lenzr was built on the knowledge that photo contests can make boring businesses socially relevant, and that’s the key to findability in this age of earned media. Using the photo contest mechanism to dispense coupons doubles the effectiveness of the innovation as it collects and confirms email addresses.

Lenzr Photo Contest Evolved From Dumpdiggers Arena Photo Battles

In Dumpdiggers.com, the photo battles in the Arena were just too darn short; they would only last a week. The contests were over and done with before anyone knew about them and respected collectors would show up in the forum and ask about photo battles in their niches long after they’d expired. The optimum length of a photo contest is three months, and if you maintain that tempo you can structure four contests a year and make them seasonal. Here’s the chronology of photo battles on Dumpdiggers.com

Lenzr.com photo challenges last for two months, and so there are six contest periods every year. But please understand that Lenzr.com is not a typical contest website that exists only to market one company. Rather, this destination was built to showcase very specific user submitted photos in an internet love affair with Toronto; it really is all about the art and the glory of winning the game is probably more important than the prize to most of the participants.

As you can see above, the model is similar to other ‘hot or not’ type of websites where you don’t have to be a member to vote. So casual passers-by can pass judgment on images and their votes are counted, and so are their IP addresses.  So voting becomes the best way to screen the images, one by one, in an interactive digestion of the material.

The first ever Lenzr photo contest is sponsored by Lenzr itself. The challenge will end August 31st and will award a shiny new digital camera to the lucky winner as it chronicles the story of their picture on the Lenzr blog and in other partner sites. The 12-megapixel Pentax Optio P70 is a super compact camera with a wide-angle 4x optical zoom lens (27.5-110mm equiv.). It has a 2.7-inch LCD display, Advanced Face Detection, Smile Capture, Blink Detection, and Pixel Track Shake Reduction “to assure sharp images with low noise even in poor lighting.” The camera can also capture 720p HD video at 15 frame-per-second.

Lenzr’s partners include many local Toronto bloggers.

Lenzr also has an alliance with All Canada Contests.

Lenzr is already an individual category on Toronto-Forums, a popular discussion forum website anchored in the GTA. Its hoped this forum will become the best place to discuss contests and sponsors and even individual pictures. This is where winners will be announced and winning pictures profiled. New ideas for contests and sponsors and photographers and friends can hook up in here to discuss Lenzr.

The very best facet of Lenzr is the library and the legacy of winning photos it shares with the people of Toronto. The archives at the rear end of the website will someday become a treasure trove of free images for anyone to use in blogs and forums, and also as postcards and calendars and rotating headers; the content will spawn photo widgets with free pictures of Toronto for the rest of time.

Smojoe Speaks Again

Through the generosity of Ellen Smith, principle at EnCourse Business Development Agency, I, Rob Campbell have been invited to share my social media marketing wisdom and experience at The Verity Club this coming Tuesday June 23rd at 8:00 am in the morning.

My message is simple and straightforward. I tell people exactly how to use four specific tools to increase their online social relevance, and how and why expert stories translate into more traffic from Google search.

Smojoe themes like The Search For Experts Drives The Internet, and Build A Bus And Drive It will be explained and exemplified in easy to understand case studies.

Smojoe report templates detail the exact roles played by three different types of media. Articles, blogs and discussion forums work best when combined to communicate different parts of the same story.

The Smojoe Social Media Manual will be available too; the 32 pg instruction booklet makes a great notepad.

Are you thinking of building a community website that accepts people as members and requires folks to login under self created usernames and passwords? Well listen up developers.

Registration is a pain in the ass and it’s a huge barrier to entry for some folks, including me. I’m starting to loath all the unnecessary questions.

Don’t make me tell you anything personal because I wont do it. I won’t ever tell you my real name, my real address, my postal code, or my phone number. And I definitely will NEVER tell you my birthday.

So why ask? Don’t make these fields mandatory or I will lie about everything and enter my address as 123 Penis St, Bumhole Town. My online birthday is Jan 1st 1970.

Smojoe has a huge online footprint. With over two hundred accounts on two hundred different social networks, article indexes, blog communities and discussion forums, there’s a lot to protect. This is my entire accomplishment.  Identity theft? Nope. None of these profiles are created in my real name, or contain any personal data that could lead to theft of any kind… except reputation … and the corrosion of social capital.

Smojoe’s User Registration Page Peeves

If I go try and register a username like ‘Jack’ and the website comes back to tell me that my handle must be at least six characters, then I will register ‘jackie’ and then it comes back and says it must have 2 numbers so i register ‘22jack’ but then it says one must be capitalized… arrrrgh! I’m gone. Why impose any restrictions on member’s usernames at all? I mean really, what’s the worst that can happen with a username?

Password Peeves

Another thing that bugs me during registration is when the website to which I’m applying enforces stupidly complicated password constructions because I know that I’ll never remember the alphanumeric nonsense when I return. That means I’ll be stuck using their ‘forget password’ mechanism every time I try and login, and that’s just a huge waste of time. So I’ll probably just cut my losses early and quit the website forever, before I join.

Webmasters Should Limit The Number of Login Attempts Users Can Make Per Minute, Per Hour, Per Day

Limiting the number of login attempts per user is security 101. If you don’t do this, you’re practically setting out a welcome mat for anyone to launch a dictionary attack on your site, an attack that gets statistically more effective every day the more users you attract. In some systems, your account can get locked out if you try and fail to log in a certain number of times in a row. This can lead to ‘denial of service’ attack and is generally discouraged. It’s therefore recommended that webmasters structure their accounts so that each failed login attempt takes longer and longer.

Smojoe Dynamic Passwords

The Smojoe Dynamic Password Technique helps social marketers deal with usernames and passwords on multiple profiles. Its simple.  When registering an account, simply use the first two letters of the website name, and a standard word, as the password. Perhaps your user name? So for example if you were registering an account on Dumpdiggers.com, and your username is Beeboy, your password here would be ‘Dubeeboy’

That we live in the ‘age of earned media’ is not my idea, but something I heard once and have come to understand as the truth.  Today, like never before, business has to earn impressions by being newsworthy and relevant. Sticking to a subject and becoming an expert is how individuals can dominate search engine result pages (SERPs) ahead of corporations, and marketing new products and ideas online now requires originality, and good old fashioned storytelling.

The search for experts drives the internet, and trustworthy data seems to be the most important currency of the web.  When I check my traffic stats I can see that 99% of my readers find me in Google search, because of the things I’ve written and the pictures I’ve taken, and the keywords that I own in SERPs.

Before 2006 the word went out at blog conventions and in SEO workshops that “Search Engine Optimization now revolves around link building”. And that fact has created the new business of ‘link brokerages’  that employ link farmers, sneezers, solicitors and spammers to leave their client’s URL in every nook and cranny of the web, and by whatever means possible.

Today in June 2009, off-shore link farms and weighted indexes are not effective link building solutions because although they still count for a link, the page rank juice has dried up. These places are simply becoming less and less relevant. This is the age of earned media and now you have to deserve the link; Smojoe believes that the best links should be issued from contextually similar web copy that’s filled with niche keywords beside a picture with similar alt text on a page with a very high usability.

Smojoe indexed Canadian Discussion Forums in June 2008

In my list I marked the forums in which it was possible to leave do-follow links right in the post, and the ones that only allowed signature links, and the ones that were stupidly complicated or too heavily moderated. I still have this list, and it’s valuable to me especially when I’m contacted by businesses that need some presence in a core niche. I use the list properly, and leverage my reputation for good ‘on topic’ posts full of relevant info.

While indexing sites, the most popular themes encountered were local events forums, followed by sports, movies and celebrities, coupon mom, and travel. My favourite discussion forum is UrbanToronto.ca and I respect the acidic barrage of witty banter that erupts on Stillepost.ca but God help marketers that try and post links there; they’ll never be able to show the resultant conversation to their clients, and they’ll soon be forced to worry and hope that Stillepost’s extremely web savvy membership doesn’t contact their clients and get them fired.

When Discussion Forums Die

On the other end of the spectrum, while I was indexing Canadian discussion forums in June 2008, I encountered multiple sites that were fighting a daily barrage of Rolex watch ads, Nike Air Jordan ads, perfumes and cosmetics, teeth whitening kits, MP3 downloads and cut-rate cell phone ring tones and cheap long distance plans.

Discussion Forums Filled With Spam

Some webmasters simply give up. Today the internet is filled with free discussion forum templates that someone started for a local hockey team, or a drama club, or a beauty pageant that are now completely overrun by these insidious spammers. The entire index, in every category is filled with user submitted threads promising name brand running shoes, shirts in all sizes for $9.99, DVDs, ring tones and ‘cheap phone cards’ and of course there are no posts with any replies, and only a few have multiple views. These discussion forums have become 100% spam, and somewhat unique portals wherein spammers are spamming other spammers because every genuine user has gone away.

Anonymous Asian Robots

There is a company in the Philippines called Goowall.com that sells fifty links for about $50 US dollars. This firm has a big white room filled with computers and staff. The employees work off spreadsheets posting ads in discussion forums all over the world, making them look like real conversations sparked by a sincere request for help on a particular subject. For example, a freshly planted request for help finding used cars will be visited by another employee hours later with a link to their client, a used car dealership website. The quality is low, and their English is poor, but the links work and are indexed by Google.

How To Create White Hat Social Media Solutions

So if inbound links make your website stand out more prominently in SERPs, how do you acquire them, legally? Matt Cutts, a Google insider, describes how good social media solutions can come in the form of funding some creativity, in a recent interview with Eric Enge.

And again Matt Cutts describes how blogs and specifically how Wordpress can help your business SEO in an article on WebProNews.

Today every business deserves a Wiki chronicling their origins, a Flickr photostream showing company picnics, a Twitter account, profiles on TellOscar.com where they answer consumer queries, and their own YouTube channel and most importantly a Wordpress blog to tie it all together. Instead of buying links, now they have to write articles and publish stories, photos and ideas that are linkworthy, in this new age of earned media.

I just used my Roberrific Twitter account to update my 114 followers that tomorrow’s Smojoe Social Media Marketing event has been moved to 533 King St West because of high demand for seats. The seating requirements have already exceeded the capacity of The Spoke Club gallery.  Its a nice problem to have, but a problem all the same. With just twenty four hours until the start of the scheduled event, Deb Lewis and her team must now race to get the word out about the venue change, rent chairs, buy beverages, and set up a digital projector and screen at ICON home design (533 King st West) which is on the south west corner of King and Spadina - I pray to God that the internet connection will work flawlessly and so I’m importing Will Webb from Innate Media Group as an insurance policy.

How To Be Famous On The Internet is actually focused more on the business of blogging, and features guest appearances by Raymi the Minx and Petite Fashionista, who are certainly two of the most influential bloggers in Toronto with large international followings. Its so great to have them both together in the same room actually, as they have very different styles and approaches to web journalism.

Date: Weds May 27, 2009

NEW Location due to high demand, ICON Home Design, 533 King Street West SW Corner of King and Spadina) www.iconhomedesign.com
Time: 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Networking
For tickets go to: https://secure.gettickets.ca/?event=15051
Cost: $45

Raymi The Minx Vs Petite Fashionista

As discussion forum moderator, I hope to glean from these two local bloggers exactly how they’ve used their blogs to create online community and hype. The event highlights the idea that every successful business in the 21st century will blog out of necessity, but the best will profit from the activity in many different ways. I hope to get specific about the fundamentals of online marketing and demonstrate exactly how Smojoe uses blogs and bloggers like Raymi and Christa to build social media marketing campaigns that win Google searches.

This is another great event by Deb Lewis of Toronto City Events and I sure hope I see you there.

WordCamp is an information buffet.

There are times when you can learn as much as you can handle as fast as you can handle it. At WordCamp, everywhere you look there is someone very interesting and very knowledgeable waiting to talk, and their name and business is printed right on their badge. For someone like me, a hermit who stays home and surfs for one gem a week, this is information overload, and that’s probably what this post will look like…
This blog post will celebrate the gems of knowledge that I learned at WordCamp Toronto 2009.

Friday morning I arrived at 8:30am and recruited help getting my laptop setup. When I asked eight strangers which of them was the smartest, one tall man stood up and introduced himself. John Leschinski of Leschinski Design fixed my new PC’s networking issues at WordCamp 2009 in a Toronto second. Now I follow John on Twitter and hope he’ll continue to school me. That’s Lorelle on Wordpress hanging off him.

Twenty minutes later I watched Terry Smith of B5 Media digest Splendicity.com which is unique because it’s built using Wordpress MU (Multi User) with elements from Buddypress and bbpress.

Then I had lunch with Dan Zen who treated the occasion much like a round table discussion and asked everyone to introduce themselves and then explain what they did for a living.

Friday Afternoon at 2pm Smojoe social media anchored a round table discussion in Track3 wherein I outlined some of the basic constructs of my own social media marketing tactics.

Friday at 3pm in Track1, Erin Blaskie

Erin Blaskie and her sister, Trina traveled from Ottawa

At 3pm Erin outlined how she’s using social media tools to make her alter ego Erin Games famous on the internet. I had to smile when I saw that she’s using the Brian Gardiner Lifestyle ‘Revolution’ template (the exact same one that I have asked Darryl at Deezilla to customize for Queen West Girl.)

Erin has mass knowledge about how to make YouTube videos go viral and seems to have her finger on the pulse of the videogame community - she showed off some other powerful media tools that let people watch her gaming. They are hungry for tips and tricks that will give them an edge over their friends. Erin has had a lot of success as a guest blogger on some big video game websites, the names of which didn’t catch…

After her presentation there was some discussion in the audience about the mental shift that’s required to stop being just a documentarian and start becoming the star of your own blog. Its all about finding the confidence to hand your camera to your friend and ask them to photograph you at the event, because you are the focus, and the event is just the backdrop

The next day, Saturday I attempted to learn something about PostRank.com

I’ll admit some of this stuff just goes right over my head

Joey deVilla is a Microsoft evangalist

Joey was one of the superstars at WordCamp. He is very approachable and immensely entertaining. His website Global Nerdy is excellent, and his personal blog, Joey deVilla.com is definitely worth a gander.

Here are some pictures of Joey playing his accordion to much applause at The Drake Hotel. While outside sunning our bodies he related more wisdom from the empire. Joey mentioned a book by Maggie Mason, “Nobody Cares What You Had For Lunch” and he believes every blogger read it… ok well that’s not exactly what he said, but that’s what I took away…

WordCamp Toronto 2009 Opening Night Party at Lou Dawgs

The basement restaurant that hosted the opening night party was fashioned from concrete and decorated with a thin veneer of paint and wood. I thought it was odd that they only served Sleemans brand beer, but that wasn’t the only negative about Lou Dawgs - worst was the acoustics. In this environment there was no place for the sound to go… Any band would have been too loud.  The blues band, Spy vs Spy was over 30 decibels too loud, and consequently most of the attendees left the bar to continue their conversations out on the sidewalk.

Many thanks to David Peralty the writer and thinker and photographer behind Branding David. What a great beer shot! This is Paul Perrier and Andrew Ainsworth and me.

Squidoo Lenses have purpose. They’re a great way to mashup multi-faceted client goods and services (and ideas) together, all in one place. Any products sold on eBay or books and videos on Amazon can be seamlessly integrated into rich text stories and spiced with YouTube videos and Flickr photo slideshows where everything is reinforced with Google or MSN news bots and Delicious bookmarks that actively scrounge up the latest information to add to the mix.

More importantly, these pages can become powerful Google juice batteries for client links. Some veteran SMO people here in Toronto still believe that sharing Squidoo mashups with seven or eight premier web services transmits some of their relevance onto your target website , and the lens itself will easily rise in page rank with just a few simple tactics, which I’ll detail later.

After reading all these positives, I understand when newbie social marketers get so frustrated with Squidoo, because their lenses GET NO TRAFFIC WHATSOEVER.

Hahaha I’m still laughing. Imagine spending days or a week building a Digital Acropolis showcasing all of your clients good and services, only to find that nobody and I mean nobody visits the attraction. I know from experience that’s usually what happens, here are my Squidoo lenses listed in order of popularity,

The Stone Angel

Zack And Miri Make A Porno

Milk, the movie

Stone Of Destiny

Shakuntala

Death Note II: The Last Name

Dumpdiggers

Blindness movie

Manon

La Fille Mal Gardee

Ontario Harness Racing

Where in the World is Osama Bi…

Hamlet 2

Last Tango in Jadac

The Wrestler

Billie Mintz

Barack To The Future

Battle in Seattle

Blabble

Why does Smojoe build these Squidoo lenses?
Because it’s easy and it looks great and nothing says multi-platform brand storytelling better than a Squidoo lens, because its one of the few places where readers can get all the elements of the story at once.

Squid U: Learning how to properly create a beautiful lens on Squidoo.com is the first step to success, and that can be accomplished with one day of intense trial and error. It’s recommended that you enter Squid U at least once while your password is still fresh in your browser so its cookied, and then the path is paved for your future and inevitable return (Squid U requires a separate login wherein users must remember their name and password). Make the connection. Inside this sub destination you will find a discussion forum, and you will see another dimension of Squidoo as ‘lensmasters’ help newbies and post links to their own material in their signature boxes below each post. You will also find links to awesome lenses; check out this one on digital cameras for under $200. This is a perfect example of a useful lens that makes money.
Also of interest is a sub forum displaying all of the Squidoo lenses that for sale. The prices are laughable at about $10 each – is it worth it? If these pages were like the one on digital cameras it would be (that person is an Amazon affiliate, and I’ll bet that lens sells ten cameras a day for about $100 daily profit).

What does Smojoe do with Squidoo lenses?
I don’t think it makes much sense to promote a Squidoo lens which in itself was built to help promote a client’s goods or service. It’s a little counter productive. In each campaign, I barely have enough time to seed backlinks to my client’s pages let alone conduct link building exercises on my own promotional material. So I’m not going to waste time building fantastic internet works of art unless I can make it pay dividends beyond backlinks…

Seven tactics that Smojoe uses to funnel traffic into Squidoo lenses:

1. Bookmark it! The very first thing Smojoe does upon publishing a lens is proclaim its existence on Twitter, and then Stumble it, Reddit, Digg, Delicious and Kirtsy the world. Make catchy headlines in these bookmarking services and be sure to leave lots of tags.
2. Article Marketing - Smojoe writes articles for clients anyway, and in the author resource box or sometimes right inside the text, I’ll leave a link to a related Squidoo Lens. This would be positioned as ‘more pictures here’, or ‘Lots of Items for Sale on Ebay’, and they would link to the Flickr and eBay components of the target lens respectively.   Depending on the quality and originality and overall appeal of the title, links in articles can be a powerful way to promote any business. These articles become a trail of breadcrumbs back to you client or your Squidoo lens all over the internet, as they are replicated and published on 3rd party niche ezines, hungry for content.
3. Niche Discussion Forums – For Smojoe its counterproductive to promote a Squidoo lens and a client’s brand in the same discussion forum. The only advantage for Smojoe here is that sometimes it’s not possible to leave links to commercial websites outright, and so a circuitous Squidoo detour becomes the only viable option.
4. Squidoo Community – Although it demands a lot of time, there’s something to be said for commenting on other people’s lenses and leaving valuable feedback. Go to competitor lenses and ask questions or offer advice. In many cases you don’t have to leave links to your lenses, the other lensmasters and even Joe Public will be able to find you, and perhaps even more motivated to do so. Get out there and socialize! Visit other lenses. Leave valuable feed back. Squidoo is a social site after all, be social!
5. Squidoo Groups – The Stone Angel movie is my most visited lens because 1) it competes on SERPS, 2) I added it to a group called ‘Canadian Movies’ and another called ‘Canadian Authors”. Add your lens to some relevant groups here on Squidoo and you will see increased traffic, especially if your lens has a catchy title.
6. Craigslist – This free online classifieds is a powerful tool. It can be used very effectively to bring a massive amount of traffic to your target if you are super creative and… a little devious. I intend to publish an entire post on Smojoe’s Craigslist Strategies in the near future wherein I will outlay all my techniques. Suffice to say that Squidoo can be used here to funnel clients down the chain of interest to the client, where it would be impossible to link to the client directly. For example, the previously mentioned Digital Cameras for under $200 URL could be hyperlinked as a resource in a Craiglist posting designed to sell an unrelated piece of used photography equipment.
7. Lensroll. Smojoe just discovered Lensroll last week.  Here’s a place to showcase your lens in category, free. Its also a great place to find other high quality lenses from which to learn advanced tactics. Look here ate the ones that have more than one view – these are usually the best of the best niche lenses.