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

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.

There’s something for everyone on Lenzr.com, as three new photo contests launch for the months of November and December 2009!

Medicinal Plants in Nature celebrates natural medicine and hopes to collect images of potent herbs and flowers growing wild in the great outdoors. The discipline of depicting plants and flowers accurately with respect to their form and colour is called botanical photography, and members are encouraged to pinpoint each plant’s medical applications. A successful botanical photographer is both a scientist and an artist. The discipline requires a detailed knowledge of plants and their habitats as well as a keen eye for making attractive pictures.

Sponsored by Ontario’s premier natural medicine clinic, the member that uploads the highest rated photo WINS six different Neal’s Yard Remedies which are formulated from botanical ingredients. The prize package includes Orange Flower Facial Wash, Rosewater Toner, Orange Flower Facial Oil, Yarrow & Comfrey Moisturizer, White Tea Eye Gel, Geranium & Orange Body Butter for a total retail value of $330.00* all prizes subject to change

Macro Photos of Life contest is specifically destined to amass a large display of small living things. Photographers are asked to use their camera’s macro lenses to capture the tiny facial expressions of animals and bugs.

ShrinkRay is a powerful tool built by an advanced mobile app developer to trans mutate business websites into effective mobile applications and web 2.0 widgets for small to mid sized enterprises. It’s a Device Management System (DMS) and an application toolkit that can be customized to suit any marketing agenda.

The friendly sponsor works with their clients to ensure the application delivers all necessary functionality.  ShrinkRay Mobile is quite possibly the best mobile platform available.

Prize is a free deluxe Locaboire Eastern Ontario Wine Tour Travel Package for two adults. The prize includes two meals and one night accommodation at a beautiful Brighton Ontario B&B. Contest ENDS: Jan 1st 2010

Ontario Tourist Attractions 2 photo contest on Lenzr.com will once again show off our province’s most interesting travel destinations. The contest theme fits with Kanetix.ca, a forward thinking company that specializes in delivering the lowest car insurance quotes, and so the challenge is even more relevant when people submit family road trip pictures. Are these types of vacations becoming a thing of the past? or are they even more relevant now in a recession? Eco tours are also becoming more popular - I think people who pick up liter and trash along the beaches and while hiking in the woods should be commended. If everyone were like them then the world would be a better place and the great outdoors would be even more great.

The winner is the member that uploads the top rated image January 1st 2010 as determined by the quantity of registered votes + popular votes / total number of votes.

Are you paying too much for your mortgage or your insurance policies? Can Kanetix help you to find a cheaper rate? As Canada’s leader in online insurance and mortgage price comparisons, Kanetix.ca can quickly provide you with competing quotes from top rated companies. Pick the company with the best quote and arrange for coverage online. Compare mortgage rates, home/property insurance, motorcycle insurance, life insurance, business insurance, travel insurance, health insurance, and more…

David Himel is one of North America’s foremost experts on Vintage Leather Jackets. He’ll tell you that he’s the world’s top expert, and this might be true; his blogspot The Art of Vintage Leather Jackets is currently ranked first on Google for that popular keyword, and receives over 500 visits a day . The blog is great; it’s a campy photo journal full of awesome unique information. It’s cute and catchy, but it doesn’t convert.

David Himel is an expert in an age when the search for experts drives the internet.  He writes bi-weekly posts detailing the construction of replica jackets, including the leather source and treatment, and the name and manufacturers’ address and model numbers of period zippers and buttons. Some of his replicas are sold to celebrities, and his blog highlights the jackets worn in movies. Some costume designers have approached him before their movie begins shooting to consult and secure perfect replicas for historical films (Amelia) and all this adds to his street credentials.

How does David Himel make money from his blogspot?

Right now he doesn’t. One piece of the cash machine is missing - David doesn’t have a buckstop.

David’s blog is under monetized. The Golden Age of Ebay is over and he counts himself among the millions of people who can no longer make a living using the auction sales website. But he continues to maintain an eBay store with about 65 items for sale and a leather repair and assembly shop and storage facility in downtown Toronto, with a large inventory of about 1500 coats.

Look at the Google pay-per-click rate / traffic stats for this popular keyword.  Sixty thousand people went online looking for vintage leather jackets last month, and David’s blogspot is probably the first place they picked to visit.  To summarize, David’s fledgling ebusiness has two out of three components necessary for success – he has merchandise and he has handcrafted excellent social capital that’s now yielding lots of traffic.  But he lacks an effective buckstop, which is what Smojoe calls the mechanism by which readers become buyers.  The only way a visitor can become a customer here is to click a relatively small button in the top corner of the blog sidebar and then travel to eBay, which is not effective, and so his coats remain on the shelf.

What would Smojoe recommend?

On Thursday last week David Himel asked Smojoe a simple question, “how can I best turn this popular blogspot into an ecommerce business?’

I pondered the dilemma… He needs an e-store, but the Blogger software he uses doesn’t give much of an option for that, and the widgets that do exist will cost a % of his revenue.  The problem is that his fun and easy-to-use blogspot is owned by Blogger (which is owned by Google) and so he’s spent almost four years fixing up a piece of online property that he doesn’t own. Now it would be a crying shame to walk away and close this portal forever in favour of another site, even if the replacement comes custom built with a proper payment portal. It might be that Dave will never get back on top of the search rankings again with anything but this blogspot… So what’s the solution?

Smojoe advocates a using David’s campy but popular blog to drive a new e-store catalog website with a small network of affiliate bloggers helping out.

Indeed, what Mr. Himel must do is actually very simple. He should build another website that is a slick e-store with a shopping cart and a proper payment gateway. Smojoe recommends the site open up right into a catalog of colourful vintage leather jackets and merchandise in which every item on every page is a separate URL – that way stories can reference and anchor right to individual pieces that are for sale.

David should keep blogging same as before, but truncate material on the old site, and leave links to MORE on the new site. Reduce frequency of posts to one a month on old blog, and post like a bandit on the new site. The new catalog site should have all new original articles, and lots of period photos and keyword rich content. Smojoe recommends David re purpose some of the articles on the old blogspot and bundle together themes into ebooks with long keyword rich excerpts that can be published again on the new site (where content can be downloaded and sold as an ebook).

David should create affiliate marketing badges and place the biggest and best example in the sidebar of his blogspot. The old blogger blog should be edited full of new text links too – stories and photo descriptions should link deep into the new e-store.  Over time the new catalog website will benefit from the links and attention of the blogspot and it too will rise in prominence.

In addition to this primary feed, the new catalog website can attract other affiliates and pay them a percentage of each sale. I know that 69 Vintage on Queen St here in Toronto now has a blog, and popular individuals like Lisa Charleyboy Urban Native Girl Stuff are always looking for cool fashion to represent. Depending on the split, I’m sure other artists and fashion bloggers would also come on board as affiliates. These people would come in handy to help promote David’s future fashion shows and events.

One thing is certain, David Himel and his blogspot have certainly become a very interesting Smojoe case study and pondering his predicament helps answer the question, how do experts convert social capital into cash? Keep your eye on this guy and his The Art of Vintage Leather Jackets blogspot and let’s see if he takes my free advice.

This is a victory cry.

As of October 2009, the keywords ‘miss teen Canada’ will always return www.MissTeenCanadaWorld.com as the first result in organic Google search.

The MTCW blog written by 2009 Miss Teen Canada- World, Siera Bearchell is in 2nd position.

Miss Teen Canada- International is now third, forevermore

Today we celebrate the Miss Teen Canada-World website as the first most socially relevant return for the keywords ‘miss teen Canada’ on Google, eclipsing at least four other contenders in that surprisingly competitive search category. Bounced completely from the first page index is Miss Teen Canada Global, Miss All-Canadian, and Miss Teen Galaxy and others; I don’t know all their names, but I do know the number one rival and previously dominant Miss Teen Canada – International now ranks third.

These folks fought a good fight. The MTCI organization’s top ranked position was finally overcome by the sheer volume of media and incoming links from the MTCW ‘blog army’, of the fifty four 2009 Miss Teen Canada-World contestants.  Without a similar strategy, the MTC-International pageant site cannot hope to be first again. Indeed, when I examine their site today I see that their main page is ‘under construction’. Perhaps they’re spending money, building a powerful response?

Miss Teen Canada –World deserves to be first in all SERPS.

Michelle Weswaldi, the pageant’s executive director is quick to remind photographers and staff that her organization deserves to be atop the first page results in this busy niche because, “The Search for Miss Teen Canada-World is the only teen pageant that conducts provincial competitions all across the country to select national finalists and has the rights to send its winner to represent Canada at the Miss Teen World Pageant.” In Jan 2009 Michelle Weswaldi assembled a dream team of marketing experts and skilled media publishers like Ellen Smith of EnCourse Business Development and Deborah Knight of dkpr. These professionals hired Richard Carmichael of Frank Ideas and Execution and Rob Campbell of Smojoe Social Media Marketing.

The Miss Teen Canada World website itself is the biggest part of this success story. This is a slick destination all readers really appreciate, and the administrators like that it comes complete with full CMS integration and extensive database management software to customize newsletters and email bulletins.

Each website’s inherent quest to be first in SERPs is like a mini pageant, where Google is the judge.

For teen beauty pageant websites, the struggle for organic first place listing on Google is really a quest for legitimacy, and as such it’s like a mini beauty pageant. The winner is the organization that most deserves the crown, and the prize is 80% of all organic search traffic. How many visitors is that? All across Canada those keywords yield approx 1000 unique searches a month.*

The MTC-W Contestant Blog army

The Miss Teen Canada- World beauty pageant has come out on top because of an innovative social media network of OnSugar blogs, photos and videos.  Our electronic community now shares the adventure of being in Toronto and competing in pictures and stories. This media has very high usability and is 100% original, created by the competitive energy of fifty young authors.  Essentially, our blog network shares the experience better than our competition’s website could ever hope to accomplish. We have provided a digital venue for photo sharing and experience digesting as measured in our low website’s exremely low bounce rate.

Sabrina Eldridge Advances The Future of the MTCW Blog Army

In 2010, MTCW finalists from all across Canada will be using a custom MissTeenCanadaWorld.OnSugar template made special by Sabrina Eldridge @SabrinaBot, the community manager at OnSugar and author of The Daily Sabs. She loves that we decided to go forward using the On Sugar blog platform and has stepped up support to offer the exclusive template design and widget implimentation.  BONUS the new template has built in Google analytics that will record stats from all across our blog network.

The ever expanding MTCW Blog Army combined together with teen celebrity Siera Bearchell, Miss Teen Canada – World 2009 who blogs right on the website creates a staggering amount of stimulating content that makes mountains of media and hoists the MTCW flag ever-higher over the landscape; the system implemented by Smojoe cements the pageant’s online reputation and builds ‘social capital’ because of the blogs.

Check out the squidoo lens, http://squidoo.com/missteencanada where you can find a complete list of all 2009 bloggers and a full introduction to Siera Bearchell, Miss Teen Canada - World 2009 and here’s links to Siera Bearchell on Twitter and Siera Bearchell on Flickr.

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.

Rob Campbell the Smojoe now sells honeybee propolis right on the company blog. This is the real thing, scraped off the hives of Campbell’s honey in the summer of 2009 by yours truly. Eager to learn more about the stuff, I researched it, and have filed a detailed report here on this blog.

While extracting white clover honey from comb frames at Campbell’s Honey in Warkworth Ontario this summer, the third son of the beekeeper collected 2 kgs of genuine Canadian bee propolis from empty honey supers using nothing more than a metal hive tool.

Would you like to buy 100g of this exotic substance for $15 US + $10 shipping?

What is Bee Propolis?

Propolis is a dark brown sticky substance that honeybees use to hold their hives together. Some colonies make so much of this gum it’s hard to pry the hives apart, or lift heavy supers off metal or plastic queen excluders. Propolis sticks to everything, and honeybees use it to hold everything together.

Is honeybee propolis good for you?

Who knows? … But propolis is definitely good for honeybees. The substance stops drafts, insulates the brood chambers and sanitizes the bee’s tiny feet as they walk about their home. The pine resin and other vegetable compounds in propolis give the gum special germ killing powers. Scientific research shows propolis has antiseptic, antibiotic, antibacterial, anti-fungal and even antiviral properties.

Canadian beekeeper once told me that he once found a dead mouse completely entombed in propolis inside a healthy hive. He believes the honey bees protected themselves from disease by stopping the decomposition of the dead animal, which was too big to move. The mummification of small animals fascinated ancient Egyptians, who reputedly still use bee propolis in a wide variety of natural remedies.

What is the exact composition of bee propolis?

The sticky recipe and components for honeybee propolis are different all over the world. Indeed they are different from hive to hive inside the same beeyard. That’s because honeybees just use whatever they have available, from a variety of different plants, throughout three different growing seasons (here in Canada).

One thing we can all agree on however is that propolis is made by mixing beeswax (and other honeybee glandular secretions) with resins from the buds of conifer and poplar trees. Worker bees gather sticky natural substances from trees, especially pine gum and other plant resins using their mandibles. They pack bits of gum and tree resin into their corbiculae (pollen baskets) on her hind legs. Each of the 100mg units represents months of work.

Beware Chinese bee propolis

It’s a fact that sometimes bees collect man made material too, and use inorganic material the same way they would combine natural resins with their beeswax.

Some experts have suggested that Chinese bee propolis contains measurable amounts of paint, road tar and furniture varnish, all of which might have been collected naturally and added to the product by the honeybees themselves. Their product is unsafe due to availability of toxic pollutants in the south Asian ecosystem.

How is propolis harvested in Canada?

Bee propolis is not something that’s regularly collected at Campbell’s Honey, and to my knowledge it’s not something that’s ever been made widely available to the public before last decade. In the past couple of years however there has been a renewed interest in almost all beekeeping bi products because of their alleged medical properties.

Curious to learn and share my research and information about this natural substance, I scraped the hard and crumbly deposits from the tops of the super boxes while working in the honey house. I made a special pile of propolis atop the hoist as I unloaded individual honey frames into the stainless steel uncapper machine central to the extracting room.

Check out this chunk that I left out in the sun by accident. That’s a chip of hard propolis that once filled a crack between two honey supers. The heat has brought puddles of oily resin to the surface. The tree gum orange portion on top of picture was inside the hive, while the hard brittle bottom part of this flat chip faced the outside.

What is bee propolis used for today?

Bee propolis is used in the manufacture of some medicinal chewing gums * will research, cosmetics, creams, lozenges and topical ointments. There was a story in the paper about propolis being investigated as a dental sealant and tooth enamel hardener.

Acording to some reputable websites (smojoe cant decide who to link to here yet*) there are a number of studies have tested its effectiveness in humans and animals as a treatment for burns, minor wounds, infections, inflammatory diseases, dental pain, and even genital herpes. Successful results were achieved for many conditions including some throat cancers, infection of the urinary tract, gout, and sinus congestion

It’s been used to treat influenza, bronchitis, gastritis, and diseases of the ears. There is some case history for periodontal disease including bile infections and intestinal infections. It’s listed as a treatment for ulcers and eczema, and even pneumonia.

How is bee propolis prepared and used as medicine?

Andrew Weil, M.D. recommends using bee propolis as a topical treatment for uncomplicated wounds, and as a gargle (or in spray form) to treat irritations in the mouth. He writes that he uses propolis in tincture form to treat canker sores and even sore throats.

On Thursday July 23rd 2009, Rob Campbell, the social media director for The 2009 Search for Miss Teen Canada - World was invited to judge The Preliminaries at the Betty Oliphant Theatre.  At 9pm, fifty four girls got off a charter bus outside with dresses, fancy shoes and all their costumes.

Betty Oliphant Theatre is cute little venue on Jarvis Street. It’s one of only a half dozen non union theaters left in Toronto, and has a friendly and accommodating staff that still love their craft and are keen to show visitors and trespassers like myself exactly what’s possible in a modern venue. Smojoe was treated to a preview of the lights and sounds of the upcoming pageant preliminaries, an hour before they actually happened. And I should NOTE the show went seamlessly. Great work guys.

Anyone familiar with the Miss Teen Canada- World beauty pageant knows the pageant director Michelle Weswaldi is the benevolent ‘boss of all aesthetic things’.  She bought or licensed the World title a few years ago, and has been growing the pageant ever since. Unknown to me before I accepted this contract, a national beauty pageant is a year long activity, with regional pageants all across the country in every province; the MTC-W pageant culminates in a week long event in Toronto Ontario at the end of July.

This year, the final moments of The Search For Miss Teen Canada World will occur on July 25th in the John Bassett Theatre in the Metro Toronto Convention center at 8pm, and I’ll be sure and post a detailed account of that evening in upcoming dispatches.

Michelle Weswaldi runs a tight ship, like someone that’s organized a fashion event once a month for three and a half years.  Earlier in the week I had the pleasure of watching her interact with some of the young contestants. She has the ability to focus on each one individually all at once. She listens just long enough to determine what’s important, and then interrupts with the answer before the girl is finished describing any of the symptoms of her problem. You get the feeling Michelle has heard it all before, and doesn’t play favourites.

What should the judges actually be judging in a teen beauty pageant? I know the answer to this now.  Beyond physicality (tall thin pretty etc) and whatever strikes them as beautiful, judges look for style.

Michelle Weswaldi, seen wearing an orange dress and shuffling pens in the photo above, was carefully to elaborate on exactly what Judges should look for when ranking performances, and she tried to describe the special confidence she seeks. Its personality, and stage presence.

Thinking back on it all now, there was one contestant (I don’t rememebr which one) that walked a little slower than the beat, but still in time if that makes sense, and she gave the entire catwalk a special charm. And there were girls who were obviously very nervous and gave it nothing. During this experience Smojoe gained insights and a new understanding into the origins of personal style.

The show started at 9:15pm and was done by 10. The first girl to emerge from the curtain was Wendy Huang and she rocked it.  A petite girl,  her performance set the bar pretty high, for me anyway.  She has a bounce and a nice bright smile, and she walked to the very extremes of the stage and waited the precious moments that the audience needs to absorb the full ensemble.  I gave her an eight and I was still watching when she disappeared, with a final wave,  backstage. Wendy had style, and it showed in her walk and her charisma as she presented herself on stage.

And there was applause. Every girl had their fair share of applause, but some of the contestants had personal cheering sections! This was quite effective.  Unlike other sporting events, beauty queen contestants are affected by audience reactions, and having five or eight friends sitting in the audience loudly cheering your performance really helps. It clearly made each of these contestants more confident and sub consciously it plays on the judges too - it lets them know that these girls are somebody’s favourites.

This is Brittani Gray, one of the youngest contestants in this year’s pageant. Her blog is good and full of pictures of herself and she writes with the skill and ability of someone much older. Her performance in the preliminaries was strong, especially her evening dress, which was spectacular.  I include this photo here because its the only one of any swimsuit model that wasn’t blurred or red eyed or badly under exposed, but of course its all of those things.

The Judges marked the papers with numbers that represent ‘beauty’, an intangible something that each contestant strives to possess, both inside and outside their bodies.

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.

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.

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.

On Thursday April 30th, Smojoe had lunch on the patio of Jack Astors at Yonge and Bloor with Julian Brass of Notable.TV, and together we enjoyed a terrific social media marketing brain share over fajitas and fresh tomato juice.

Short story, today’s lunch occurred rather spontaneously because I happened across Julian’s ad while trolling Toronto craigslist marketing and PR boards on the weekend; he was on there Friday looking for an intern to help out a busy social media start-up. No I didn’t apply for the job, I wanted to know more about the start-up.

What does he do exactly? Notable.TV is a streaming video site that targets 25 - 39 year old people and shares exclusive ‘insider moments’ from some the most noteworthy and inspirational happenings all over the country. The Features section showcases Notable Happenings that must be seen, while other sections cover Fashion, Music, Events, People, and All Access.

So who is Julian Brass? A sharp dressed twenty five year old guy with a BComm from the University of Guelph, Julian Brass has a background in business, events management, and online audience building. Right after finishing school, he managed consumer acquisition strategies which included online and offline marketing, PR, advertising, affiliate management as well as planning his own events and partnerships for a silicon valley firm called Engage.com That’s where he worked with hip California ad agencies and PR firms to develop affiliate networks, event strategies and membership initiatives. Last fall he escaped back to Toronto with all their secrets.

The performer meets the producer meets the programmer, Julian Brass knows he can actualize his own destiny by building himself a role as host in a web video profiling business.  The bold endeavour combines his web skills with his show business savvy and lots of diverse marketing experience. He;’s a good actor, and over the last five years he’s built an impressive resume of TV host credits, fashion show MC appearances, and some film and tv work. He’s been honing his skills in front of the camera.

Smojoe can help Julian build Notable.TV’s audience and daily traffic with some basic link building packages. Fifty keyword focused incoming links will secure some popular search clauses and raise his website’s overall page rank. I showed Julian how to amplify his own social relevance by bookmarking his video content on StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious and Reddit. Putting the names of the artists and events he profiles in the titles and tags of his video media should bring a steady flow of search traffic in direct proportion to the star power of the celebrity subject.

Julian and Notable.TV can help Smojoe by showcasing some upcoming client events on his streaming video site.  Julian Brass just became another piece of Smojoe’s VIP social media package, and I gave him a fair price to resell my link packages. It was a good lunch.

I’m not usually this far behind… Yesterday I did a search for more information on a new free blog site called On Sugar and that’s when I found an article about On Sugar on TechCrunch where I learned that it launched last November.

Six months later this enterprise is still growing.  Now people are asking if perhaps one day it might challenge WordPress dominance. Okay I’ll admit that isn’t likely, but I am surprised this handy new parking lot isn’t already more popular… at the risk of sounding cliché, On Sugar really is blog candy.

Petite Fashionista mentioned On Sugar in her how-to-blog seminar last month. I’d never heard of it before and wrote it down. And I was impressed with the look and smell of it immediately…

Sugar Inc must be more popular in the United States than it is in Canada because honestly I’d never seen one before and I look at a lot of Canadian blogs. This company launched the site or around September 2008. The Drupal-powered OnSugar platform is designed to be simple but also versatile. It has a proven track record as the Sugar blog network is written using the same technology and this has been around since 2006. Navigation is a breeze because the program is very intuitive – it’s the kind of code you write after years of empiric testing. This easy-to-use program gives registered members the necessary tools to create unique looking blogs with lots of cool features like photo galleries and polls. The above mentioned TechCrunch article said something about access to a large repository of free images from Getty which I couldn’t find at first, but later spotted in the image upload area of the website. The preview displays white text in the bottom corner of each pictures that says ‘Getty Images’ because nothing is ever 100% free in this life.

Bloggers working On Sugar are still able to monetize their sites through standard ad networks like AdSense or Glam which can be inserted easily into the sidebar using the blank text / html widget. But On Sugar has added something new, a ShopStyle widget option.

ShopStyle was acquired by Sugar last fall. The software lets bloggers create visual spreads of real-world products and then collect a piece of the action - they get a cut of any sales that result from the widgets. This is just the beginning of an entirely new ad network - more on that later.

On Sugar employs the following state-of-the-art internet technologies:

* Drupal - open source content management system
* Akamai - Entire platform uses the Akamai content delivery network

* memcached - Extensive use of memcached

* Smarty - Template engine
* sIFR - (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is a technology that allows you to replace text elements on screen with Flash equivalents.
* TinyMCE - Rich Text Editor
* LLMP - Linux, lighttpd, MySQL, PHP
* Fully documented API

Key Platform Features:

* 10 different post types: (text, gallery, spread, poll, quiz, quote, link, chat, video, & audio)
* Free access to a hundreds of thousands of Getty Images®
* Fun drag and drop “spread maker”.  Create your look with thousands of fashion images from hundreds of online retailers through ShopStyle, e.g. ShopBop, J. Crew, Net-a-Porter, and others.
* ShopSense: Make money by linking to products and retailers NEW
* Build your audience of followers with automatic notifcation of new posts
* Follow your favorite sites and view an aggregated feed of your followed sites
* Post by email NEW
* Automatic update of your Facebook and Twitter status NEW
* Multiple sites per account
* Multiple authors per site
* Easy import from Blogger, Wordpress, & Typepad
* Full domain support
* Free

Key Site Features:

* Drafts/Timed Publishing
* Search
* Archives
* Pages (e.g. About Me, Galleries, Videos, etc)
* Widgets for highlighting content from your site or around the web ( Flickr, Twitter, etc)
* Related posts from your site or, if you choose, from sites you follow
* Completely customizable themes

Have a look at my Dad’s beekeeping blog: CampbellsHoney.onsugar.com is a terrific example of what’s possible and just how it easy it is to use 0 even a 78 yr old beekeeper from Canada can make a fine and useful information portal.

There are nine other properties in the Sugar network:

FabSugar.com - fashion and trends focus.

BellaSugar.com - beauty and skincare.

BuzzSugar.com - entertainment news and reviews, for must-see movies, albums, MP3s and TV.

YumSugar.com - cooking and entertaining with style and ease.

FitSugar.com - healthy, balanced lifestyle focus.

GeekSugar.com - readers’ guide to great gadgets.

GiggleSugar.com - good laughs and humor.

DearSugar.com - An advice web site.

CitizenSugar.com - Politics and News

TeamSugar.com - user-enabled hub of the network where all members go to discuss the content on the other Sugar sites and maintain their own profile pages.

Noon Friday March 20th, 2009 Rob Campbell of Smojoe social media enjoyed a working lunch with the Petite Fashionista at her blog workshop at Eglington and Yonge, uptown Toronto.

Petite Fashion Blog Workshop

Speaking to a packed room, Christa Jean highlighted the finer points of blogging and emphasized interactive widgets, video components, and how to obtain helpful analytics to know and better target random readers. She made it personal by talking about her own experiences growing her blog, including her June 22, 2008 charity event where she raffled off dresses from a celebrity designer Hayden Panettiere for her Save The Whales campaign. That one event tripled Petite Fashionista’s traffic and online reputation as it pushed her Google page rank to PR5.

Here’s a shot of me enjoying a cucumber avocado on whole wheat sandwich. I was caught half puckered trying to appear surprised in a not-so-candid photo. It didn’t really work out.

Three bites later I set my sandwich down and snapped a lovely shot of Christa describing the process she uses to shoot, edit and post videos on YouTube.  She’s having lots of fun streaming videos and packing powerful messages into moving images. Check out her video gallery on her Petite Fashionista Ning community website.

Overall I was impressed with Petite Fashionista and her cozy little information exchange. The fun and friendly gathering is another reflection of her charisma and experience. In so many ways Christa is wise beyond her years; she’s an absolute expert at building online communities and growing a dedicated readership.  Some of her web tactics are downright brilliant. She impressed me with her ideas about joining small groups, and how important it is to find and build a core community of genuine friends that read and connect with each others’ blogs everyday.

Addictomatic is fun. Its almost a year old now, but I just found it today.

Addict-o-matic makes me smile.   “Instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on any subject“, and in that respect it kind of reminds me of Squidoo, but this dynamic search functions effortlessly and without any supervision - which is why I’ll forgive off topic results.

Who created Addict-o-matic?

A quick search brought me to Jason Kincaid’s May 1st 2008 article on Tech Crunch. That’s where I learned that Rollyo founder Dave Pell is behind the innovation.  He also writes Davenetics, the official blog of the next five minutes.

Jason Kincaid, the author of the Tech Crunch article was rather critical of the addictomatic experiment. He cites the lack of a ‘relevance algorithm’ necessary to properly refine the search as the biggest detractor; and it’s true there’s a lot of redundant information, and not everything presented in the results is on topic.

Addict-o-matic has a clean layout

Three columns of content boxes do a good job sorting out the mess of information. Users can add, remove, and rearrange the location of each headline feed, and layouts can be saved by simply creating a bookmark. The site offers plugins to help integrate Addictomatic into browser search fields.

Addictomatic pulls images and headlines from multiple RSS feeds and presents them in small boxes similar to those found on iGoogle and Netvibes. Stories are drawn from top blogs, news feeds, and media sites. Unfortunately there’s still no way to customize the search or add your own feeds (though there are plans to add these feature).

The new search engine landscape

In my quest to learn everything, I’ve investigated the ‘new search engine’ landscape to view the competition.

Popurls didn’t hook me, but I don’t like websites with black backgrounds. Secondly I couldn’t find much information on anything except the biggest subjects and news media keywords.

Alltop couldn’t find ANYTHING. This service produced very disappointing results for just about everything I tried, and of course I tried searching for all my own media first. Alltop asks users to search topics from a preordained menu of categories, and that’s why it’s worthless.

How does SMOJOE use these tools?

Social marketers can use this visual search tools to spot holes in their client’s social media, and find new places to post photos and links.  After I typed “Smojoe” into the search box it became obvious that I still have a lot of work to do to increase this domain’s findability. I could immediately see the places i needed to visit, and the experience actually gave me some fresh ideas - that makes Addictomatic a winner in my book.

Bloggers who ‘borrow’ other people’s photos must know that internet technology will eventually catch them. Tin Eye is a website, still in beta,  that’s designed to  let both amateur and professional photographers track their published images.

But will Tin Eye help police photo theft on the wild wild web?

Someday, perhaps, but not yet. Although the program searches 1.2 billion images in just a few seconds, it doesn’t find much. When I experimented on Feb 5th 2009, I was disappointed.  Suffice to say none of my pictures had been replicated by anyone, and I couldn’t even find matches to the ones I’d stolen.

Consequently I’m left believing that one point two billion pictures is a very small fraction of the total amount of images available online.

The Tin Eye blog is just what you’d expect; the author chronicles his company’s achievements and documents their growth. He explains new widgets and how to add Tin Eye to your web browser.

A recent post on the origin of the Obama HOPE graphic is very interesting.  The author plays detective in Will the Real Obama HOPE Photograph Please Stand Up? as he uses Tin Eye software to accurately find the origins of this iconic graphic.

So there is HOPE for Tin Eye yet.

In this sidebar of this blog you will find a very curious widget that cycles through the leaders of a photo battle challenge in the ARENA component of the Dumpdiggers.com social networking site.

The same widget now appears in the sidebar of a very popular history blog called The Bell Rang, and of course it appears in the left hand margins of the Dumpdiggers blog.

Here it is:
This widget is designed to capture your attention as it displays curiosities that are battling to be the best in category inside the Dumpdiggers.com Arena. This platform allows peer reviewed / user submitted / user rewarded content - the winner is chosen by his peers.

The Photo Battle Widget in the sidebar of this blog can be customized and implemented on any website with or without Inventory Software it takes viewers to an ARENA photo battle much like the one pictured here on the left.

This was the Best Coin Battle of November 2008 wherein seven members went head to head with their own images.

When users click on an image, an Info Card appears with member submitted keyword rich text bytes.

All of this information is warehoused in the ARENA Hall of Fame where keywords could be competitive in SERPS. The winner is rewarded with sponsored prizes. The best images are celebrated on blogs and in niche discussion forums.