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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presentation Points – Secrets of Smojoe Social Media Marketing

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

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

Story Funnels To Buckstops

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

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

Writing Content for Humans and Robots

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

How To Make Keyword Sandwiches

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

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

Smojoe Speaks Again Feb 4th, 2010

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

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

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

How to make money with a blog?

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

Which sidebar widgets are best for your blog?

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

Toronto Dentist Scrutinizes Smojoe’s Smile

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

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

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

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

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

SHOT: Michael Buble - Sean Michael Turrell, director

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

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

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

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

Keri the Canadian Explorer on Canada Blog Friends

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

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

Connie Behr on HGTV home renovation series House Poor.

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

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

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

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

The Toronto Blog Girls package a Value Proposition

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

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

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

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

Lisa Charleyboy - Pop culture with an indigenous twist

KeriCDN - Video blogger and Canada’s biggest fan.

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

My Brother’s Bicycle Helmet Video Camera Contraption

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

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

Lots to talk about, here in January 2010.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ruth Wilgress Begins Blogging

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

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

Lisa Charleyboy, veteran blogger takes up article marketing

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

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

Abel DaSilva shares a hole lot of secrets with Dumpdiggers

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

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

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

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

Its Christmas time, and Smojoe is busy.

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

On Tuesday Dec 15th, Smojoe met Molson Ferg

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

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

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

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

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

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

SE Telecom signs up to sponsor Lenzr photo contest

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

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

Melani Chong is Soy Based Cosmetics Expert

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

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

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

On a sunny Thursday Dec 17th 2009 afternoon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Smojoe with City Events seminar, How to Market Events in Toronto went off smoothly at the Spoke Club on Weds Oct 14th , and we had an excellent audience that came to listen and take notes - twelve folks shared their own ideas in exchange for a free 375ml jar of pure Canadian honey.

The first half of the talk was Deb Lewis doing her thing, sharing her secrets and generally bringing the gathering together. At the very start of the night she polled the audience for a show of hands to determine that pretty much everyone in the crowd was somehow involved in event marketing.

Michael Braun the publisher of Bizbash.com was waiting in the audience and came forward to share his business model with everyone… He made it clear that his magazine is always willing to help promote and market events, and his specialty is of course publishing high quality articles with nice glossy photographs detailing the production of upscale parties.

Smojoe Gets Specific About The Path to Web Personality

One thing about my presentation, like my blog, is that it’s filled with good information, and lean on positive affirmation. I don’t butter up the crowd with useless success stories, or tell bogus tales of personal empowerment, because I have so much real information to communicate in such a short period of time. My talk is like a checklist of things to do to complete a long journey.

My speech comes complete with short anecdotes outlining mistakes, scams and things to avoid. The greatest payment I get is seeing the attendees scribbling notes and filling their pads with website URLS and insights and new marketing ideas for their own enterprises. One lady made three pages of notes!

At the end of the evening I walked away drunk with sore feet and a fist full of business cards, promises and compliments; I left a twenty seven dollar bar bill unpaid in the lounge and my half finished paperback novel in the gallery.

Attending the event was David Yohands, a gifted composer and audio production engineer, singer, songwriter and piano bar crooner. David is a class act and likes to laugh and listen and learn things about social media – we put out laptops together at the Dizzy gastro pub on Roncesvalles on Tuesday Oct 20th.  Despite the traffic problem and the loud construction outside, the restaurant is still my first choice for meetings because it has free wireless, a great burger, and commercial free classic rock from sattelite. It was an enjoyable meeting because nobody tried to sell anybody anything; we just shared ideas as we explored the audio tech keyword landscape together.

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.

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.

Paradigm Events in Muskoka is proud to present Muskoka Connects, a series of educational and networking events bringing people and businesses together in the Muskoka region.

Michelle Planche, CMP and president of Paradigm Events Inc has contacted me and tempted me north to share my wisdom with strangers for greater glory, one free drink, a hearty meal and a hotel room.  It promises to be quite an adventure, and I agreed to appear  because I’ll do just about anything to escape the city in the summertime, even for a day.

Leveraging the Marketing Power of the Internet
Determine your Accountability, Marketability and Accessibility Online, and how to use Search Engine Marketing Software.

Smojoe is set to discuss the fundamentals of business storytelling, and how to leave fragments of information on four different platforms to build brand experience through discovery.

Thursday, July 16th
5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Regatta Muskoka Wharf
1110 Bay Street
Gravenhurst, Ontario
Sagamo Room

Tickets are only $35.00

Also presenting will be Vanessa Williams who is a renown marketing specialist at Yahoo Search Marketing, and right after her is my old Canada Blog Friends subject, Bill Anderson of Muskoka Outdoors.

If this looks like something you’d like to attend, and or if you’re planning a trip to Gravenhurst anyway,  you can register online TODAY at www.eventsinmuskoka.com or call telephone number 1 877 760 0360

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.

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

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

Date: Weds May 27, 2009

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

Raymi The Minx Vs Petite Fashionista

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

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

WordCamp is an information buffet.

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

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

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

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

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

Friday at 3pm in Track1, Erin Blaskie

Erin Blaskie and her sister, Trina traveled from Ottawa

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

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

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

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

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

Joey deVilla is a Microsoft evangalist

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

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

WordCamp Toronto 2009 Opening Night Party at Lou Dawgs

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Stone Angel

Zack And Miri Make A Porno

Milk, the movie

Stone Of Destiny

Shakuntala

Death Note II: The Last Name

Dumpdiggers

Blindness movie

Manon

La Fille Mal Gardee

Ontario Harness Racing

Where in the World is Osama Bi…

Hamlet 2

Last Tango in Jadac

The Wrestler

Billie Mintz

Barack To The Future

Battle in Seattle

Blabble

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

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

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

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

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

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.