Search and Social Rank Symposium #3 will be both mental and physically nourishing. Attendants will get a tasty HOT meal from a buffet table with lots of selection, alongside a delicious alcoholic beverage of their choice. Most importantly, they get a nice cushy seat at a long wooden table surrounded by peers.

Wireless internet access will be available, of course and indeed some folks open their laptops and take perfect notes, and some even record the event!  Last month there were lots of blogs chronicling the wisdom – nobody caught my mistake though, but I did, and it still keeps me up at night. Oh why do I care so much? Here’s Lisa from Wolf21′s take on Craig Backman’s presentation on how to use video for SEO.  Some notable bloggers will live ‘blog’ the event and the Twitter stream will be alive with hollars and hashtag #SSRS3; that’s what I’ll use.

Weird Science of Web Marketing Showcases Self Taught Systems

Brad Gosse of Your Brain Media is a true entrepreneur and self taught web tactician.  His bio reads, ‘…I started building websites for other people in 1996, and realized quickly that I was better off making my own sites that had revenue models built into them. Now I own several online and offline businesses along with commercial real estate. I also pick and choose a few select consulting gigs each year to help others.

So I’m thinking that Brad must have seen and experienced first hand the impact of the shifting Google search algorithm. Like everyone else, he too must struggle to keep his content relevant in search results and keep his affiliate programs afloat. Does he court the new traffic sources? Does he use social media to help improve search rankings? Let’s find out.

How can you use social media to get better search engine rankings?

The obvious answer is to start a blog, of any kind, and use social tools to push your content.  People who experiment with blogs soon come to learn that great posts with good headlines do indeed end up on top of search engine result pages for specific keyword queries. That’s an easy-to-understand first step,

Come and learn all the elements of good business storytelling, and understand how easy-to-use Facebook and Twitter rituals can build your website’s ‘social relevance’ and increase search engine rankings. Whether you are a journalist, a blogger, a web content producer, or an advanced social media marketer, there will be something in this buffet of ideas for you. This is the place is to hear good secrets you can share with your friends.

Rob Campbell and Brad Gosse take two totally different approaches to online advertising, and they disagree on storytelling structures, and how to use Google search in web marketing. Their presentations should stand in sharp contrast. Alex Blom, who speaks first, has always been a creative thinker with clever ideas about clouds and conversion metrics. He’s a smart guy with an Australian accent and his professionalism will set the tone.

There are really good speakers full of rare knowledge pontificating on what they believe are the most important tactics emerging at the intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization.

Once again I got a chance to explain this diagram above to a room full of curious people. My only reward was the sound of their ballpoint pens scribbling notes on paper as I passionately imparted the wisdom of building incoming links as part of a prolonged SEO campaign, manifesting itself as warm and fuzzy social media stories. I filled the talk with web URLs they can visit and little tips and tricks they can use to improve their search engine rankings while telling their own informative and emotional stories.

I crammed three hours of tactics into a forty minute talk in the main presentation room of the Direct Energy Bldg in CNE grounds at the 2012 CRFA trade show in Toronto. Fifty people soaked up the knowledge – we talked about Irish pubs today, but yesterday i used selling gas BBQs as the model.  Irish Pubs was better as most of the audience were bar and restaurant owners.

The whole thing came about because of @itresults Carmine DeSanto of iBusiness magazine, an Apple friendly b2b solutions journal  – he was at the show and served as my handler. Carmine doesn’t care for speaking to large crowds in public, but it comes with the job representing the magazine. He told me that he knew I was good because I was easy to find on the web, and that’s a fantastic compliment that validates my entire existence. I have to wonder what search term he used…?

According to Christine, my employee who saw Monday’s show, I did make some mistakes. She believes that my negative comment about Blogspot.com probably alienated all of the ‘women and babies’ in the room, esp if they are using that free blog platform.  And I did swear once, but not the fbomb.  So overall she too thought it went swimmingly.

If you were at the presentation please share your thoughts in the comments below.

These pioneers correctly predicted that their business would change the world. Making the ‘dancing shadows of light’ on the silver screen would soon be regarded as the highest art form, a powerful new communication tool called cinema.

Storytellers from around the world experimented with length, dialogue and genres, and eventually a common narrative form appeared, and an entire new industry emerged to repackage man’s archetypal myths on silver nitrate.

Human brains need emotional narratives the same way our human bodies need nutritious food.

Today we live in another great age of change – web media is a powerful new tool that’s quickly transforming our lives and changing the way we do business, and the way we tell stories. But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention.  – Rudolf Arnheim.

Rudolf Arnheim referenced the 1890’s French ‘motion picture shows’ specifically Lumier Bros film, The Gardiner and remarked on how our human brains instinctively construct meaning by seeing contrasts; in this first film, a groundskeeper is watering the lawn until a young boy appears behind him and kinks the hose. When the older man inspects the nozzle, the young boy straightens the pipe and runs away laughing as water squirts up into the Gardiner’s face.

This sketch was repeated several times in various locations near the Lumier Bros workshop in the summer of 1895.  Subsequent productions show the evolution of thought, Arnheim reports. In the third film, the Gardiner is presented alone on screen and the Boy is nowhere to be seen. When the water stops flowing the Gardiner looks around and does not see the Boy. But he knows, and the entire audience knows, who is responsible, even though we cannot see it happening; we all must imagine the boy off screen kinking the hose. We have learned and so we no longer need to see the boy to imagine him as the culprit in this simple story. Arnheim deduced that what’s happening outside the frame is more important than what we see happening on screen. Its better storytelling. When the human brain is actively required to make a leap of logic, and work to find meaning, the resulting story is more satisfying.

Today, on the internet the same active storytelling happens between platforms when readers do searches, click pictures and follow links to learn more about a story and construct meaning in their own heads.

In the 1920s a Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein created a series of propagandist movies celebrating the glorious revolution and the success of communism. Red October, Strike and Battleship Potemkin are all still screened today in film theory classrooms.

Soviet constructivism was an eastern film movement that used contrasting images to construct meaning. Modern audiences would call this a ‘montage’, because it’s a collage of static shots cut together to impart a sense of something; hundreds of black and white images collectively produce an emotional response in the viewer.

This is where we are today on the web – videos inside rich media articles, blogs with interesting sidebars and discussion forums filled with pictures and links can be sewn together to make multi platform stories that require readers travel about, from one domain to another, collecting bits of data to feed and satisfy their own comprehension

STORY FUNNEL Today the reader’s journey often begins on Facebook, Twitter or Google search where they find and follow links to compelling articles – let’s say they navigate to a reputable citizen journalism website like Digital Journal and there become intrigued and are compelled to click a link to the author’s personal WordPress blog wherein they see interesting pictures in a Flickr sidebar widget and on that platform find links to an estore buried in the photo descriptions. They are engaged and far more likely to journey to that ultimate destination, and buy the proffered goods or services. The act of learning about the company converted the visitor into a customer.

Engineering such multi platform stories to build satisfaction and funnel readers to e stores, and sign-up pages for subscription based services is the new ‘high art’ of storytelling.

We invited everyone we knew, and used the occasion to promote our brand of science. I debuted a rather sticky piece of content called Who to Follow on Twitter in The Distillery District which I had just posted on The Distillery District blog. This in my mind exemplifies SEM and SEO because sharing the document spreads my links. I went about a rather backward route to explain this to the audience and ended in kind of murky water with a question about canonical script.

People came from miles a around to hear Craig Backman, Geoff Whitlock, Alex Blom, Joey DeVilla (The Accordian Guy) and Benjamin Allison.

The guy with the mustache and beard is Nick Segura, who is without question lenzr’s best ever intern / temp/ minimum wage slave. He’s our excellent video editor.

Every speaker has a different topic coinciding with their particular area of expertise. Every presentation explored some facet of social media marketing or search engine optimization , or both. In fact the mandate was to show how both elements can combine for maximum marketing power!

Here are the office ladies, all wearing black for some reason. Who died?

I’m proud to announce that there are already plans in the works for another symposium. I will have to clean up my slide show to better illustrate my thoughts. This is the area I’ve selected for improvement. Its a fact that these events are learning experiences for everyone involved, us included. The are truly indicative of, and indeed textbook examples of continuous improvement, as we do seem to learn from our mistakes.

Did you come to the Search and Social Rank Symposium on Monday Jan 23rd? If you did please comment below on your experience and the validity of the meeting and highlight any takeaways or list criticisms or review the food, beer or venue.  Any feedback would certainly be appreciated.

On this evening Rob Campbell of Lenzr Corp, and David Shephard of Jib.ca will have gathered together some of the brightest thinkers and builders in Toronto’s internet technology community to share their thoughts and ideas on ‘social rank’ and how it affects search results. This is what we mean by ‘search and social rank’, how social media is now skewing search engine results, and vice versa.

Guest speakers include Joey DeVilla (the Accordian Guy) from Shopify.com, Geoff Whitlock of Click Clip Deals. Craig Backman the president of McLellan Group , Benjamin Allison, myself and one more speaker, To Be Determined . You can see all their faces and read their biographies and subject lines on the Search and Social Rank Symposium on Jib’s website.

At 6pm the doors will open and early attendees will commence networking, mingling about and snacking on food and ideas. Sandwiches and one glass of beer or wine is available with the price of admission. There will be wireless internet available – I will post the wifi password at the event.

At 7pm everyone will take their seats and I will introduce the evening and the first speaker. This is a night of ideas, and these people are not salesmen, not tonight. They are scientists pioneering software and web tools designed to help improve their users’ social media marketing and search engine optimization. The best tools do both, at the same time. Joey is no doubt going to talk about how to get social with an e-store, and Geoff will discuss the rise of the social coupon.

The Google Search Algorithm is the Arbiter of Relevance in Search and Social Rank

Its a bit like natural selection, and very much like Mother Nature herself, the Google search algorithm is always evolving. The smart company, reacting to the market, is always changing its search algorithm by weighing different links heavier or lighter, and adding or subtracting values in an effort to remedy black hat SEO practices and return more accurate search results to users. And it works – I have always found Google to be the best at delivering high quality results. THIS IS THE AGE OF EARNED MEDIA: It seems to me, now more than ever, that to be listed on page one of any search engine, our clients must genuinely deserve to be there. I like to tell people that we are fooling Google, by doing exactly what they want.

Today our clients need to build better destinations, and grow content fields to ‘earn’ natural rankings as one of the top ten portals on page one. Many URLs do this by serving up good information for free, in the hopes that someone will be impressed and return to buy their product or service. Much like the apple tree gives away its fruit to spread its seeds, I ask clients, “what can people take away from your site and digest? What subjects are you the expert on? How can we plant your idea seeds in other peoples’ brains?’

Where search engine optimization meets social media marketing there’s a round table.

A symposium is a meeting of equals and a general sharing of ideas. There is no keynote speaker and nobody will dominate more than twenty minutes of the occasion at one time. Also, I have asked that Archeo restaurant be set up with a central round table – not a bunch of round tables, but rather a central horseshoe wherein 36 people can comfortably sit facing each other around the central speaker. Other attendees can sit behind this arrangement. This will facilitate true round table discussions, like a company boardroom, the dieas can be weighed and analyzed, clarified and expanded upon by enthusiasts – plus it gives everyone at the table room for their notepads, laptops and food and drink. Deb Lewis of Toronto City Events is organizing the symposium. Deborah was recently profiled on Canada Blog friends.

We’ll be promoting the event on Dingo – so get Dingo to see what happens there.
On Twitter we’ll be out tweeting updates and promoting the event #ssrs12 .

One of the best parts of my job as Managing Director of Lenzr Corp is walking to work in the morning through the Distillery Historic District in Toronto. Located at 55 Mill Street, south east of Front and Parliament, this is one of the oldest parts of the city and was originally the busy lakefront up until the 1870s. I used to work as a grip in the film business, and I’d get called to shoot movies here in the 1990s, which was before it was restored to its present glory.  Today the compound is still filled with cinematic old buildings and beautiful cobblestone streets, but also accommodates a thriving community of artists and theatre workshops, cafes, galleries, stores and specialty markets. The area has been preserved as much as possible to accommodate museum quality historic artifacts and tell the life story of a large Canadian distillery, Gooderham and Worts 1842 – 1921. These people made the rye whiskey that was drank all across the Canadian and American West.

Its always interesting to me to see the work that’s involved in creating a live event. The Toronto Christmas Market is a massive spectacle that will attract a quarter of a million people to the Distillery venue over the next sixteen days. Everyone is hoping for snow.

In this picture you can see a suction pump machine is draining the marshy land underneath the new clock tower. Getting a firm foundation in The Distillery is difficult because the water table is high.

Working in combination with the event planners and Distillery District staff, I am proud to announce that Lenzr.com was chosen to power the Official Toronto Christmas Market Photo Contest which collects and displays images right on the Toronto Christmas Market website.

This world class event runs from Dec 2nd to December 18th, 2011- the photo contest runs until Jan 1st. Voting begins on the 15th and ends on Jan 25th. The sponsor is the sole judge.

The photo challenge has been created to secure the most beautiful picture(s) taken at the event – the Distillery District is keen to show the best snaps that capture the true essence of this festive assembly.

The winning photo will almost definitely be used in the 2012 Toronto Christmas Market advertising campaign, both on the website and in print, published in Distilled Magazine with proper photo credit.  Because there’s nothing worse than winning a big prize and then finding your shot expropriated and used everywhere without any consideration.

There are three prizes:

Winner will receive a $250.00 cash prize,
2nd place will receive a $250.00 restaurant gift certificate
3rd place will receive a $100.00 restaurant gift certificate.

Also on Lenzr, House For Renovation by Toronto Mortgage Broker

Lenzr members have been very busy in the last month uploading sensational snaps of derelict houses and barns and buildings that could really use either a wrecking ball or the womanly touch of a property developer who would preserve them. House for Renovation is making history by collecting over a hundred images of historic properties. This is a photo preserve to stand the test of time. Renovation properties are a hot subject on cable television right now, but they have always been of interest to photographers. Old houses and shacks are storytfull scenery with people in the foreground, or wonderful subjects all by themselves. The prize is an Apple iPad2 courtesy of a successful Toronto mortgage broker with a great team located in the High Park area of the city. These guys are very experienced in the local Toronto mortgages, and international US mortgages, commercial mortgages and residential real estate mortgages.

Electronic Engineering Photo Contest on Lenzr for Reed Switch Maker

The Electronic Engineering photo contest on Lenzr is sponsored by a reed switch designer and wants to see the actual electronic mechanisms inside of things. The contest page copy leads with a cry to compel members to crack open their clock radios and spill out the circuit board guts. ‘Break into your obsolete electronics and showcase the components. Let’s see dusty old chips and thermostats, fuses, filters and fans – can you tell an amazing story with only microchips?’

The prize is an Apple iPad 2 courtesy of a reed switch component designer that makes and distributes these magnetic marvels to many home electronics producers in Canada and USA.

Raymi the Minx told me about harthfest in a heartfelt mass email. She wrote,

Hey idiots this is how you come to harthfest for FREE tomorrow – get your tickets for your flight on harth air, i’ll be checking you in at the door. Forward this to friends of yours you want to bring with. 8PM 99 Sudbury See ya! http://harthfest.com

Harthfest was the AndroidTO After Party

2 ROOMS – 2 EXPERIENCES, both of them kinda chilly

LIVE PERFORMANCES

COLORFUL EXHIBITS were arranged about the room behind a boxing ring,

The StickerYou Make-Your-Own-Sticker Photo Booth
Roller Derby champions THE ROLLERGETTES in-person
The art of Jimmy Chiale
The Eightshit social media profile pic service and much, much more.

Raymi the Minx, harthfest, her on stage antics  complimented Sean Ward harthfest opening for ANDY MILONAKIS, a rap artist with MTV accreditation. Sean and Raymi shared the stage with him.

Andy Milonakis is no stranger to new media; he broke into show business through a series of Internet shorts. His rap was passionate, but to me it wasn’t very interesting because the words were incomprehensible in that venue.

The stage, which was a boxing ring, was bouncing so much it threatened to break, and the promise of that imminent disaster kept me watching for another 20 minutes, but then I had to leave for the quieter and slightly warmer climate of the second room.

Michael Nus was there and I see today he wrote a comprehensive account, AndroidTO and Harthfest

Casie Stewart were there, and she wrote about it too, Canada’s Android Conference, AndroidTO.  And many other people I didn’t know, and have yet to follow me on Twitter @roberrific

It was indeed a Harthfest and I hope they do it again in a more  acoustically suitable venue next year. Here are my pictures of the evening.

There is a new page on the Lenzr Blog entitled, How To Get Votes? that explains the art and science of soliciting votes and earning a Top Ten ranking (to be considered by Judges as winner for prizes and permanent honour with blog links to user profile page).

Not content with simply posting my thoughts on the subject, and reflecting on years of experience, I have placed a thread in the Lenzr discussion forum. How To Get Votes? in the Lenzr Forum to ask the membership for their ideas. (The Promote section of the Lenzr Forum is incidentally one place where you can get votes), Referrals and ‘Vote Exchanges” are allowed, and encouraged when they are communicated and acted upon in a manner that perpetuates a germ of the sponsor’s story.

Carolyn Wilman, Contest Queen and Lenzr Judge

Carolyn Wilman has volunteered to be one of eight current Lenzr Judges! The Contest Queen is a veteran contest media blogger with a dedicated following of frugal moms and many more semi-professional contesters, some of which are photographers of considerable ability. She writes From The Contest Queen which is a weekly round-up of best prizes, clever challenges, international conventions and thoughtful profiles of other successful sweepers. Last week she wrote about Lenzr photo contests in a piece entitled Get Clicking with Lenzr that set the record straight regarding seven contests on the index in October 2011. She’s a pal.

There’s a lot of noise in contest media, because there are so many competitions to choose from, and so people need to be able to reference a veteran authority like Carolyn Wilman; here’s a lady with a passion for these web attractions, and she has the competitive constitution necessary to compare the data and decide which contests are worth entering.  You can follow her on Twiter @ContestQueen .  Carolyn is a regular on morning TV news programs, including Canada AM on CTV; she was cast in a TLC reality TV show about online contesting in the summer of 2011 but that project hasn’t won any broadcast windows yet.

Lenzr Celebrates The Bread Maker’s Art with Our Daily Bread Photo Contest

This online event is sponsored by a food scientist with a bread baking company that has just launched an organic ingredients estore to help folks find good stuff that they can use in their kitchens. Home baked bread is the best food in the world. The challenge asks members to submit foodie shots of bread, either by itself or alongside meals. The Prize is a fancy Breadman Breadmaker, the perfect electric rig for making bread and it comes with a baker’s manual book in which you can glean the basics and then perhaps substitute your own components into the bread recipes.

Will you also be handcrafting your own clever Halloween costume this year?

Making a homemade Halloween costume can actually improve your reputation as a friend or neighbour.  Homemade Halloween Costumes is an online event designed to celebrate the best achievements, that would otherwise be forgotten. This is a sixty day web challenge. The Prize is $250 worth of cash or candy that comes courtesy of Jib Strategic Social Media Contests and if you visit this page you can see how this boutique web marketing company is getting clever with their own unique blend of contest media storytelling and social marketing for urban professionals. Upload your pictures to the index now, and right up until November 25th, 2011. It’s recommended that you promote your pictures when voting begins Nov 15, 2011 to get into the Top Ten grouping.

Do you have any pictures taken inside warehouses?

A leading information technology company that develops material handling software for cost efficient inventory management systems seeks specific images to accompany informative text on their new website.

Warehouse Stockpiles asks for images of exterior holding pens and interior warehouses full of raw materials or finished goods. The challenge here is to get good pictures for a technical assignment beyond the contest. Getting pictures of industry is tough. This match demonstrates how manufacturing companies can use Lenzr to crowd-source images that have more character and authenticity than stock shots. The warehouse data management software developer shows extensive thought leadership in raw materials handling systems, and production planning software that can better track expenses, and calculate wasted time and stock.

Top Ten Limiting Script

Lenzr is adding limiting scripts to prevent the usual chorus of semi-professional contest photographers from dominating the Top Ten photo galleries in every contest. Its not their fault – they jut happen to be more social and have more ‘networks’ that will engage and help them .

On Oct 22nd 2011 the Lenzr admin (Rob Campbell) made the decision to manually remove multiple images that are held by the same members. You can read more about this development and about the development and installation of a manual limiting software switch in the Site Suggestions category of the Lenzr discussion forum.

Here I am helping my brothers harvest their honey crop. The harvest is late this year, and beeing out in a ‘yard-of-bees’ on a chilly September morning isn’t much fun – the bees were miserable!

But the mist covered scenery is breathtaking.

I love this particular beeyard because its centered in an old apple orchard. Its a trip back in time to when local farmers planted fruit trees and made their own home cooked pies and preserves. Now here in a very old field, far from any major highway there are a half dozen hundred year old trees and their children, and their forgotten fruit lies all around the perimeter of the apiary enclosure.

This place would be excellent cow pasture, or a natural habitat for wild deer if it wasn’t for the beehives and an eight volt solar powered fencer that keeps the critters away. It keeps the animals away from bushels of healthy apples too, and that’s a shame.

The second best thing to happen in the month of September was meeting Nora Camps of Duo.ca

Nora Camps of Duo Strategy and Design is a business storyteller with a great track record, and a website full of referrals from well known clients.

Nora taught me lots of little things in our very first meeting. She introduced me to High Fidelity Storytelling and enlightened me on how charitable Foundations and Trusts do business, and how she tries to do good work for the most deserving clients;

she seeks out projects with green mandates, and especially those organizations that work to create real change. She is overwhelmingly positive.

Nora has a wonderful  storytelling process and it starts with listening…

Building your Brand Story

I am honoured to be working with Nora and Duo Strategy and Design

We’re running a Lenzr photo contest for Duo called Canadian Harvest, wherein we’re asking folks to upload pictures of themselves, friends or neighbours outdoors harvesting Nature’s bounty.

TEXT UNDER IMAGES!

Here is a look at the future of Lenzr storytelling – to me this is a very exciting. Text under the pictures adds volumes to the story.

Websites that collect high quality user submitted content can be used to help businesses investigate and even illustrate their consumer’s perception of a subject; they collect ideas and images for the sponsor’s own brand stories.  By selecting a theme that’s somehow related to their business, the sponsor makes mosaics with other people’s pictures and anecdotes; Lenzr lets companies make powerful myths to serve their own brand establishment.

A web 2.0 storytelling tool, you can see all the pictures in Canadian Harvest, Photo Storytelling on Duo.ca as Nora is testing the innovation on her own site – the RSS feed for this contest will someday be a fully developed API that allows real participation on the client’s website.

The photo above is all that i have left of an interesting experiment that I captured – for two days the feed to Nora’s site from Lenzr had the 140 character descriptive text displaying under each uploaded images, and it revolutionized the entire storytelling experience. This is how to tell stories! Images and text melt together into a beautiful rich media collage – this is how I want the Lenzr Archives to display all previous contests.