SMOjoe.com

Sunday Feb 28th, minutes ago Canada won the gold medal in Men’s Ice Hockey and my Twitter feed erupted with mostly one word tweets. Truly amazing - no other event could so singularly dominate that space except perhaps an alien invasion. I follow two hundred souls @Roberrific and fifty more and mostly different folks @Lenzr but it would seem that everyone who matters in my Twitterverse is 100%  Canadian.

Speaking of Lenzr, tonight, the international ice hockey event was just the opening act. Tonight all three photo contests will end at midnight! Who will win  the Locaboire wine tour? The automated scoring system leaves no doubts about the prize winners.  I’m very curious to see who will win the Best Gourmet Food photo contest because that person will share a Locaboire escapade through eastern Ontario with The Wine Ladies (and myself) in the middle of March.

Last week Smojoe had some fun at Fastlane at Dermatologica watching the ladies go crazy over cosmetics and creams, drinking protein shakes and wiped their fingers every ten minutes with all natural hand sanitizers.

There was a real push to get men into the chairs, and all the clinicians had this strange and powerful obsession to put product on boys. As soon as I entered the venue I was ushered (past the bar and) into the white room.  Oh their eyes lit up when they saw me.  My pasty white skin needs help, and they wanted at it… But the white walls and white tile floors scared me. Yes I fear the cruel knife. Lots of stainless steel in here told me this was also an operating room, despite the crowd of laughing people drinking cocktails and nibbling on fruit I wasn’t comfortable and instead held court in the reception area (beside the bar).

Earlier that same day,

Deb Weinstein mentored with Rob Campbell at Personal Brand Camp 2

Deb Weinstein, President of Strategic Objectives is a fascinating person, and someone I should probably study. Here she is lurking behind me at Personal Brand Camp 2 at The Church on Berkeley, Feb 23rd.  We had a few moments before the crush of eager Humber PR students came to gather our knowledge, packaged and sold as Question #16: What are simple but effective social media practises that I can adopt?

My answer was never really defined - there are so many possibilities, and its different for everyone. But Deb brought a flip chart and had ten sheets of wisdom to bequeath. And of course I learned a great deal from her presentation too, and benefited from hearing it three times in rapid succession. My favourite part was when she asked the students to define themselves, because I could never guess exactly what they were going to say… and they were always so different.

Anyway I was so terribly inspired by the whole affair, and the quality of the ‘experts’ and the genius of Michael Cayley and his Memetic Brand that I blogged about Smojoe at Personal Brand Camp 2 and recorded my experience and observations (mostly about Deb W) for posterity right on the Humber PR Ning website.

Elizabeth Verge of Brain Possibilities

Earlier this week I explored the dark areas in my own brain with Elizabeth Verge of Brain Possibilities. She has invested time and money into the practice of mapping the human brain and studying brain activity as recorded by electromagnetic energy which is captured and observed as brain waves with EEG amplifiers and computers. Elizabeth’s computers process the brain wave information and translate the brain waves into an optimized pattern in the form of sound.

Brainwave Optimization with RTB™ encourages some brain waves and discourages others so the brain will begin to function differently - it will create a balanced condition. Basically her patients accept that harmonizing their brain waves can balance them into optimized patterns.

Do you believe this is true? I do.

As far as we know all human brain activity functions through tiny cells called neurons which interact and connect with each other forming neural-networks. These grids are activated based on stimuli. When given new stimuli they might be trained to behave differently, or use different routes to create different networks. Elizabeth claims that her clients have recognized the benefits of her unique treatments after just three sessions, but she likes to schedule 30 sessions to make the benefits permanent.

Brainwave Optimization with RTB™ is a completely non-invasive, individually tailored process of balancing and harmonizing the brain. Elizabeth and her system work to balance brain activity from the lobes of one side of the brain to the other, and from the front of the brain to the back.  Harmony refers to the way energy patterns function together from low to high in the various regions of the brain. The sole objective of brainwave optimization is to establish balance and harmony in the brain.

Do you think I should continue to explore brain wave technology?

Chris Binet has mass experience doing public relations for health and beauty companies in Toronto.  He has helped improve media awareness for spas, skincare and soy products.  Chris writes really strong press releases which are distributed through an expanding array of news media publishers and TV producers.  Do you want to get your health /beauty product or service mentioned in the newspaper? or promoted on daytime television? or mentioned on the radio? Chris Binet is your fella.

I met Chris Binet last summer in connection with the Miss Teen Canada - World pageant.  Chris, accompanied by Ellen Smith of EnCourse, attended the very first web marketing seminar that Smojoe offered. The April 09 event was promoted by Deb Lewis of Toronto City Events, at the Spoke Club.

Heath and Beauty Toronto is a Ning Community site that Chris created, and I have pledged to support and grow to prominence. Its a two fold assignment - creating content and recruiting more content creators. Eventually the hub will become the first and best place on the web to find all Toronto related Health and Beauty offerings and events.

At the Center for Social Innovation on Spadina Ave, I had two business encounters with the following notables.

Downstairs in the Dark Horse coffee bar I met Tina Rogers who is the brains behind a content portal for people over 50 yrs of age called Tempo Toronto. It was a very casual discussion as I couldn’t get the internet on my laptop again - I message Beanfield and leave my phone number, but they don’t ever call or text me back with the PIN. I must be doing something wrong.

Ana Matica of Matica Design is a doll. She is so kind and relaxed, humble and accommodating, and she’s real easy to talk to; she coaxed one hour’s worth of Smojoe tactics out of me for a white paper she is writing on the subject. I will include a link here when she’s done.

Pro Bloggers know that some subjects are really hard to write about, and it takes mad skills to subtlety broach sensitive topics, especially in 3rd party social networks, blogs and discussion forums where you can’t completely control the reaction.  Now let Smojoe show you two women who make it look easy…

Enter two creative writers Skye Blue and Elizabeth Rose. These girls write good content on tough topics, like disease, bad sex and heartbreak. Believe it or not, there are lots of women out there who can’t talk about sex, even with their lovers, and they’re ashamed of getting personal and can’t communicate important emotions.

Met Another Frog is a dating blog, a catharsis? an therapy with a feminine perspective that tackles tough questions and comforts readers. Unfortunately at this time the site is almost completely void of pictures, and my first piece of advice was to get images in there, and try make it a visual blog and more FUN.

Smojoe charted their future in his crystal ball. On Thursday Feb 11th, I both diagnosed maladies and prognosticated on the success of a bold new path… for in the fog I could see one schematic for success.  I told them that I hoped they would continue to encourage comments… and grow a readership. Then one day without fear they might implement a vBulletin discussion forum to grow a community within a readership and then start a newsletter. Grow the permission based email newsletter to 1000 subscribers by hosting real life singles events and condo parties, then gradually over time, evolve the content portal into an interactive dating website and then ultimately a sophisticated dating service for executive women.  Elapsed time: three years.

Should Ontario Fund Single Gender Education Schools?

Earlier this month, with the help of school staff and borrowed photographs from St. Andrew’s College I wrote an article on Orato that details the advantages that single gender education over co-education models. The piece chronicles Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty considering the idea of funding some all-boys schools in the future in response to the problem of declining male academics. The very idea has outraged some folks who see it as a giant step backwards in the battle for equality of the sexes. But when I was in grade school in Percy Centennial Public School in Warkworth Ontario, I lived in fear of a black leather strap that was contained in a drawer in the school Principle’s desk. I saw the strap once, and Jamie Jenny showed me his hand after it had been struck with the strap - just once. It was red.

So now there’s an new idea floating around that all-boys schools are friendlier places where boys can be boys without fear of corporal punishment. I started a discussion on my favourite discussion forum to poll the Greater Toronto Area and find out if the public thinks private schools are actually any better, and if so why? Toronto Forums: Are private schools better than public schools? Do you think kids enrolled in all-boys, or all-girls schools think co-education public schools are better? Are single gender education schools better for kids? I wrote that on Blog.ca

Do Over Day is coming up, Feb 26th is the day, once again…

Last year was the first ever Do Over Day and Smojoe helped spread the word. I went on a couple dozen blogs and discussion forums and asked folks to “…picture yourself re-experiencing the fabulous meals you’ve eaten, the exotic lands you’ve visited, the epic raves you cannot recall attending. Conversely, visualize yourself making amends for your life’s imperfect moments – the time you made a pass at your wife’s sister (and got caught), or the night driving home from the pub when you accidentally ran over your neighbour’s pet…” Hahaa that’s good web copy. I didn’t write it, but rather, I found it on the DoOverDay.ca website along with a whole lot more light hearted easy reading.

Three Lenzr Photo Contests Come to an Exciting Conclusion on March 1st 2010

Three very engaging Lenzr photo contests are approaching a predetermined temporal mark that’s the official finish line. I write it that way because most contests continue to get submissions long after the time period expires… not sure exactly why, but it could have something to with drugs and alcohol.  Should be interesting to see who wins in this batch of photo battles. The first two challenges are pretty much locked up now, but the Best Gourmet Food photo contest is still wide open and The Wine Ladies have put up an amazing prize, an eastern Ontario Locaboire wine tour vacation, to help promote their own wine blog. This challenge could be because its a late addition to the series; the contest just launched last week.  Already Mommakoala and Satsuma are both actively promoting their pictures on other social networks, and it makes for a fun morning of watching Google Alerts.

Last week I asked London Ontario Phronk to post on Lenzr photo contests because I absolutely love the way he approaches a paid post, and the total transparency he exudes, and because Lenzr pretty much writes itself.  Stay tuned to see what’s up for March / April; I think you’re gonna love it.

The twitter community of Toronto united at The Courthouse on Thursday February 11th 2010 to donate their money over drinks and conversation to the people of Haiti, who need it more than anyone else in the world.

It was a very entertaining evening, and I had a great time talking to everyone, especially the bloggers and business people who came out to mix and mingle and help make a difference.

Of course the music was too loud. And it really was impossible to hear anything in the main room, where everyone gathered, and I found myself seeking corridors and cavities away from the audio assault. The DJ played dance music, like any other night at The Courthouse, and it was a little sad.  My ears didn’t need it, and I would have drunk more and stayed longer if they’d played native Haitian music at comfortable levels.

The high points of my night included meeting David Black, the Coordinator of Emergency Response Planning at the University of Toronto, and Heather Lesson, a Communications Lead at Tucows that was instrumental in their team’s response to the calamity.

The Big Thinker was there, Jonathon Sinden, and beside him is Kat Scrivener who is a smart young woman with a Masters in Globalization & the Human Condition.

I also met Kurt Gooden the co-founder of Targetivity and if you are reading this Kurt please know I’d still like to talk to you more, and I consider it unfortunate that we were interrupted. But as I was standing at the name tag table and holding the only red sharpie in my hand the interruption was perhaps inevitable. Hanging out at the name tag table or even appointing myself as name-tag-maker is an old trick of mine.  Its a great way to survey the landscape and meet dozens of people in short order. If they are boring you can move along to the next customer quickly and efficiently, and as a self appointed name tag maker, you can walk away anytime.

Here’s Lisa Charleyboy, the most beautiful native girl I know, and her friend Jon Gauthier who has a remarkable business card that bears a star burst on the back with the words ‘connect yourself with the limitless’, and when I stare at it, I get a warm feeling and it makes me happy.

I met Carly-Anne Fairlie of the Fairlee Agency standing in the quiet room (the room with the prizes which was 17 decibles less intense than the courtroom), and ofcourse the girl at the very top of the post is Casie Stewart holding a limitless supply of raffle tickets. When I think back on the evening I regret not buying any of those…  Jason bought some, and he didnt regret it.  Jason if you are reading this please tell us the story behind this photo in the comments.

‘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!

Try as they might, Canadians cannot stop CanPages from delivering their obsolete advertising product to their homes and offices.

There is no mechanism on the CanPages website to allow consumers to opt out of the delivery scheme.

On Thursday Jan 28th, 2010 two nice people from CanPages visited the 2nd floor hallway of 176 John St and left behind five pounds of rubbish in eight tiny piles outside everyone’s door.  I told them to stop and to please remove the debris, and I personally tried to give one unit back - the deliveryman said nothing, smiled and took it down that hall. He left it on a stack beside the stairs. That’s when I vowed to do something about it, and to write this resource page demanding action, and accountability and CHANGE.

CanPages is pollution, and because I have a microscopic carbon footprint I really don’t want to be associated with such waste. So I went online to see if it is possible to opt out of the delivery program, and I discovered that it is not possible – there is no form or web page on the website whatsoever to allow Canadians to opt out of the delivery system. But there is however a place to leave a short message, which I did…

In a section called Book Distribution Feedback, there is a form in which humans can leave suggestions…

While researching this topic and checking the level of societal outrage on this issue, I discovered that I’m not alone. There are other people who have also complained with various amounts of success, but nobody has yet succeeded in making this company listen, or change their evil ways. There is still no ‘opt out’ form on the website.

Darren Barefoot spells out some CanPages abuses in his piece, From The Front Door Directly To The Recycling Bin in which he identifies greenwashing in their marketing messages.

And there’s a Facebook group entitled, Stop Forcing Us To Accept Giant Unsolicited Phonebooks which I joined immediately.

In the group’s desc page I read how the CanPages PR people were quick to quench the fire of the original ‘creative complainer’ and group creator, by rushing a delivery man special to pick-up the offending book.  But there are also some details there on how you can write an email or phone CanPages and get them to come pick up your book. PLEASE DO THIS.

Please call CanPages and ask them to come pick up their garbage.

Phone: 604-525-1551
Toll-Free Phone: 866-525-1551
Fax: 604-516-0823
Toll-Free Fax: 877-525-1519
Email (general enquiries): customercare@canpages.ca

Giant yellow books full of alphabetically indexed print advertising are less than useless today, but of course this fact negates the company’s print division business model, which charges money for ads in the tome.  Paul Batchelor, the Yellow Pages Group vice-president of sales for the western region is quoted in a CBC article Residents demand companies end unwanted phone book deliveries saying, “About two-thirds of the population still use the printed product on a regular basis,” which is simply not true.  I know this convienent statistic isn’t true, and I have proof.  Anyone who walks into the lobby of a secure condo building in Toronto will see piles of these yellow books NOT BEING USED. The books are ignored and I suspect that less than 10% are taken upstairs by the residents. These books will sit there for months as every resident passes and does not ‘opt in’ to their old fashion advertising program.  Eventually the books end up in the dumpster behind the building.  You know that’s true.

CanPages PR trolls, before you leave a comment on my blog saying ‘When your basement is flooded and you need to call the plumber…‘ or something like that, just know that I’ve seen and read all your tricks, and I enjoyed the battle between activitist Ed Kohler and your own PR bot KenC.  And Ed Kohler also has a Facebook group, Wasteful Unwanted Phonebook Action Super Society. But I’m not advocating violence or anything… I just want to be able to visit CanPages website and opt out of the phone book delivery scheme.

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.

What is social capital?

I saw Julien Smith on December 1st 2009 inside the Berkley Church in downtown Toronto and he talked about Trust Agents and how to value social networks. He waxed poetic about advice his father had given him concerning perspectives on friends and potential employers. His script was pretty flat actually, and there was no deviation from the template - a couple times he paused for laughs and there werent any and I suspect he was used to laughs in those places and missed them.

In my humble opinion, Julien mislabels social events as Social Capital. These things Smojoe considers to be ’social currency’ which can build capital.  But that’s me being knitpicky … The only thing that kinda bothered me in this presentation was that Julien did not once define social capital in the plainest terms, and so most of the audience is still mesmerized by the abstraction of something that is, in fact, a very real and calculable thing.

This is NOT how Smojoe defines social capital.

In his Third Tuesday in Toronto Meet-up Presentation on Dec 1st 2009 in Toronto, Julien Smith described the idea of building premium social networks and using tools to prep managers before you ask for a promotion, and win jobs before you submit a resume, etc.  His presentation makes sense for bank employees and insurance brokers building careers, but he didn’t say what to me is the most obvious answer to the question ‘what is social capital?’

So what is Social Capital?

From an internet marketing perspective, social capital is a measurable array of incoming links each buried in keyword rich text and from respectable, highly usable sources. This is how Google measures social capital, and this is what puts your URL on page one of search engines.

Every webmaster knows what I’m talking about - to grow a successful ecommerce website today you have to be findable in search engines. The best way to get found first is to rank high on page one of Google for the most popular keywords that best define your offering. The way to the top is to earn links.

As more and more business goes online, more and more URLs compete for the same keywords. For all business owners my advice is the same; now is the time to win as many search terms as possible, because your media will only get stronger and appreciate in value over time.

An example of a social capital bank

The best example of a social capital bank that I know would be the Miss Teen Canada-World pageant, and how they now rank first for the term ‘Miss Teen Canada’ because they have the most social capital, the highest usability and the most trust… yes trust, because even trust is measurable.

The people who join and help build this social trust also withdraw its benefits when they show friends, potential sponsors, project managers, college registrars and potential new employers their blogs. In just about every case, the girls who participated in the 2009 MTC-W Blog Army used their own names in the OnSugar blog link URL, and now these blogs are the first results that appear when they type their names in Google. This gives them findability, credibility, and trust.  There’s a list of all blogs in the 2009 MTCW Blog Army here http://squidoo.com/missteencanada

On Sunday December 6th the Miss Teen Ontario - World pageant brought together fifty hopeful teenagers from all across the province and filled the St Lawrence centre for the Performing Arts on Front St with 500 or more family members and friends. This part of the MTC-W pageant is really popular now and business is booming because of an improved online presence in search engines, and a very strong MTC-W Facebook community.  With hundreds of incoming links from dozens of rich media offerings, press releases and OnSugar blog posts created by the MTCW Blog Army, no other Canadian pageant production can successfully compete against this massive link building machine.

This pageant raised $30K for Free The Children in 2009 through direct appeals from participants to personal sponsors. Thats an example of how to leverage social networks for cash, but the organization has more goodness to share with society.  Associating with the Miss Teen Canada - World pageant is a dream come true for sponsors.  Now businesses that donate to the production enjoy triple rewards. They harvest the traditional media buzz, and enjoy conversational word of mouth advertising, and they leverage the MTCW social capital bank and its powerful link building mechanisms.  So now corporate sponsors get their logo printed in the programs, and their company name mentioned in press, but more importantly the sponsor businesses also get link love from social media press releases, articles, photo captions, tweets and unique blog post links from an army of bloggers who reference them in connection with assignments and activities relating to the pageant.  The sponsor’s online goods and services are connected to more valuable stuff, and so their URLS appear higher in search engines.  So the MTCW social capital bank rewards sponsor businesses with increased findability, credibility and usability.

Build Social Capital With Smojoe

Rob Campbell will be at the Centre for Social Innovation Wednesday, January 20, 2010. I’ll be showing folks exactly how I execute complicated story funnels that capture readers on multiple platforms and bring them home to a ‘buckstop’.

Build Social Capital with Smojoe Wednesday, January 20, 2010
6:00pm to 9:00pm at the Centre for Social Innovation
215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 120 Toronto
Social Media Workshop: $40.00 CAD per ticket plus service charges and taxes.

Story Funnels to Buckstops

Bring your laptop and blog with Smojoe! Learn by doing as Rob Campbell demonstrates exactly how to build ‘Story Funnels to Buckstops’ and works through the little known principles of article replication, blogvertising and discussion forum marketing.

Story Funnels to Buckstops is the methodology Rob uses to put clients on the first page of Google search, diminish negative press, and generally increase his clients ‘findability’.

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…

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.

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.

It has been a long time coming, and it’s still not done yet, but Deborah Lewis of Toronto City Events has a handsome new Wordpress blog at DebLewis.ca

It’s pink of course, and has some bells and whistles. Darryl Cheung of Deezilla.com skinned the Brian Gardiner Revolution Lifestyle template that was downloaded by Smojoe over a year ago.  I paid sixty bucks for the files, and made QueenWestGirl.com (which I sold earlier this spring), but those same files are free now, open source available here.

Anyone visiting DebLewis.ca will see Smojoe’s fingerprints in the content and fossilized in the sidebar.  The Lenzr blog widget runs in the bottom corner, three links in the Blogroll, and my own pretty face graces two Featured Content windows.

The layout and design of DebLewis.ca was selected because of those dynamic featured content windows, those big sliding pictures on the homepage are very compelling. But learning how to make them display properly was the principle cause of our delay.  Anyone struggling with these issues should look for conflicts between other third party widgets and applications. Darryl Cheung revealed that Deb’s own upload custom calendar was somehow affecting the featured content display; developers should look for those kinds of problems.

Deb Lewis is the owner, founder of and principle planner at Toronto City Events. This new blog was a lot of work to build, (not much money but a lot of time) and it will no doubt be a lot of work to maintain.

However her blog debut shows how she has embraced web share and is now keen to post her info and grow seven different communities at once, each filled with the people of Toronto, her target market.

This is probably a good time to reflect on my own belief that even now in the age of Twitter and Facebook status updates, blogs have never been more necessary.  That’s because the blog is the perfect place to showcase the other more spontaneous media.  Like myself, Deb runs the MyBlogLog ‘what’s new with me?’ widget in the 300x sidebar as this displays her Flickr images, tweets and social bookmarks. This makes her blog destination the perfect place to get up to the minute insights on the woman that is Deb Lewis, and witness in real time her expertise in action planning and promoting concerts and live events in the City of Toronto.

More Smojoe / City Events Seminars on Horizon

Look for another co-presentation in September 09 called How To Market an Event in Toronto using the Internet for Free. This is something I’ve been kind of obsessed with after pioneering procedures and gaining new insight into the Canadian teenscape in regards to the Miss Teen Canada World pageant. During the July campaign I was real proud of the widgets I’d made on Eventful.com (which many of the 54 contestants in the 2009 MTC-W Blog Army speedily added to their OnSugar blogs), and the hooks I’d sharpened to leave as bait on other local TO events indexes; in the next presentation I’ll spend time showing folks just exactly how I concoct more compelling Craigslist advertisements.

Bret Patriquin went to High School with Deb Lewis

Smojoe lunched with Bret Patriquin at Amsterdams (King St at Portand) in downtown Toronto sometime on Aug 20th 2009. We shared our brains on the state of search marketing in Canada and profited from each others’ perspective.

Bret Patriquin is perhaps ‘the most well known unknown’ internet marketing consultant in the city of Toronto. I’m keen to solicit his advice and help spreading the word about my photo contest that helps business sponsors target keyword driven organic search results. At lunch I ate a chicken Gouda sandwich with red melon balls; this picture I offer in homage to the local bloggers I emulate.

Just last week I had a beer with native actress and model Rachelle Whitewind at a curious cafe on Queen St East just past the bridge and before Broadview Ave. Didn’t get the name of the place but it was super cute and the beer was cheap. Rachelle is fresh back from Los Angeles where she experienced first hand the American film and television industry. For two years. She told me now she really appreciates all that Canada has to offer artists and performers. Rachelle is friends with Urban Native Girl and we talked about Lisa Charleyboy’s success helping showcase the lives and achievements of Canada’s aboriginal people online.  Rachelle is inspired again.

Also in the month of August and also totally unrelated to Deb Lewis, or her blog or Bret or Rachelle, is a young woman named Brandy. She is the blogger behind Artistic Tendency. Last week she came to listen and learn from Smojoe. This very talented artist and designer, blogger and business woman is centered in Barrie Ontario where she works to promote an artists cooperative that will soon be a major tourist attraction for the area.

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.

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.

It’s always a big day when you speak in front of a lot of people, but today was easy. I was backing up Christa Jean the Petite Fashionista, and Raymi the Minx, two of Toronto’s most famous bloggers.

The Smojoe social marketing event How To Be Famous On The Internet was a big success and I got lots of cards, handshakes and smiles.  Thank you Deb Lewis of TorontoCityEvents.ca , it was a smart decision to relocate to ICON home design, and although I fumbled the ball a few times getting the address right, and the chairs didn’t show up until two minutes before the presentation, we carried it home.

Our amazing guest speakers, Christa and Raymi rocked the house - it was awesome to behold how two totally different approaches could both yield such success. Christa talked about how she grew her influence by doing charity work for Save The Whales and related details of how she auctioned off dresses worn by Hayden from Heroes. Then Raymi showed us her approach, and what I like most about Raymi is how she gets specific about her stats. Much to my amazement Raymi put up her numbers on screen and left no doubt in anyone’s mind about just how many people she entertains daily (about 3500).

The more I get to know Raymi The Minx the more I like her. She says exactly what’s on her mind and I think being so amazingly candid on her blog has made her so refreshingly bold in real life.  She swore a few times during her talk, and although I cringed, I saw other folks smiling and so I think it might have actually added to her presentation - she’s real.

Toronto Local Bloggers

Its not everyday that I get to picture nine Toronto Local Bloggers together.

From left to right,  Raymi The Minx, Ted Healy from Dead Robot, Casie Stewart, Sean Ward, Sass Zucket, Meredith from OhMistletoe.com, Stefania from Torontotextstyles, Lisa Charleyboy from UrbanNativeGirlStuff, Andrew Louis from Hyfen.net

Standing behind me, Glen Rostie an internet marketing guru at Your Virtual Butler was there, and Julian Brass of Notable.tv

We all met and talked and maybe gave birth to a very potent local blog squad.

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.