So yeah, I doubt your skull cracked from reading any of these findings but they served me well in my design process and served as a great refresher for lessons I got many moons ago. Thanks Nielsen Norman for rocking on with your bad selves.

That’s what I would have written if I wasn’t going out to get sushi tonight with my lady to celebrate her first paid gig doing roller derby training (she’s buying) and the successful (and BUSY) month Adam and I are having.

I haven’t been at my bloglines for a week or so – here’s what’s notable to me. Oh yeah – I haven’t actually READ any of these closely yet… this is as close to a non-post as I’ll try to come here on conversations monetized ;P

On Stacking Mad Cash
How to Get Started as a Domainer: 28 Tips, Techniques and Resources
I Secretly Want To Be A…
Domainer’s Magazine
Frank Schilling’s Seven Mile: My Favorite Domainer Blog
The Absolute Fastest Way To Make Money Online

SEM
Why the Age of Your Domain Name is Important for SEO
Blue Hat Technique #17 – Keyword Fluffing
66 Ways to Build Links in 2007 (very excited about thoroughly reading this one)

Social/Community Marketing
Can Twitter Serve as Highly Targeted Marketing Tool?
YouTube Case Study: Widget marketing comes of age
User Community and ROI
New research: participants vs. lurkers (from one of my new favorite blogs…)
Social Media Now: The Consumer Lesson of Twittermania
Disposable Camera Model for Community Growth
Lego MMO Revealed

Mmmm… sashimi! Bye :)

My MarketingShift Postings:
I post industry interviews and observations at MarketingShift. Here’s what all I’ve posted there in the past two weeks:

TrailFire’s Annotations Anywhere + Distribution Through Organic SERPs
Fortune 500 DIY Social Media Marketing
Brian McCullough on the Mechanics of His Social Job Search Engine WhoToTalkTo
Social Deal Sites: Distribution and Business Models
Become.com’s 2005 vs. 2006: a Chat with Greg Haslam
YouTube Email Spam Getting Bad
Google Audio Ads to Monetize the Dogs, Not the Long Tail
Watch for a TurnHere Near You: Local Web Video Advertising for $300
MarketingShift’s Mega Guide to MPlanet Coverage
AskCity: Integrating Local Search (and IAC)

the Search Marketing Standard Blog
The Search Marketing Standard blog is the online arm of the search marketing industry’s only print magazine. Here I write more tips-oriented search marketing posts, with the occasional rant thrown in for good measure:

Social Media Marketing: Metrics Whining vs. Need for Action
Sustainable SEM Growth is Rooted… in Your Dev Team?
When Maps and Search Marketing Collide
Pay-Per-Post the New Directory Submission?
21 SEO Tips from Google’s Matt Cutts + Vanessa Fox Video
SES Chicago 2006 Coverage Round Up
Building Links: the Research Phase
Free SEO Tool Checks IPs For Results-Crippling Duplication

1) Congratulations to Ben Wills for winning Andy Beal’s SEO Scholarship. Ben’s going to the city of broken winds for a confronce of seming. NICE!

Andy does a wonderful and useful because of transparency “anatomy of a contest” post. Thank you for that Andy! I will be building content marketing ideas from your concepts for years :)

2) An article I wrote on social search will be appearing in the next issue of Search Marketing Standard. I hope they use the strange picture of me that Brandy took where I look like Rasputin on crack.

Also I will be recommending to Ben, perhaps only here, that he shoot an email to Andrey there and get in the next issue. Andrey was a phenomenal editor for me.

3) My great friends at MSI bid me farewell at my old home, Search Engine Lowdown. Special thanks to Jon Revill and Jeremy Swiller, plus anyone else behind the tribute. You guys rock and you were so sweet with your choices of anchor text!! I have a, shall we call it “in the flesh,” tribute in the works for MSI… Watch for it at a YouTube near you ;)

4) I will be posting like an m-fer on Monday and Tuesday of next week for my friend Loren Baker at the Search Engine Journal.

5) This video is absolutely wonderful. WONDERFUL. Watch it and glory in no-budget video creation and the wisdom of 1.65 billion.

…

Yeah. I didn’t think so.

(the rest of this post… from Ben Wills… I deleted because it contained logins, usernames, etc… I feel like a kid at Christmas with this shiny new word press blog)

“As our media planner/buyer it felt like I was cheating when I worked with Garrett. His unique and creative thinking is always 2 steps ahead of the industry and our clients saw the direct benefit of those efforts. In a time when every agency tries to talk about viral and community marketing, Garrett’s ideas and understanding of the clients goals makes the others look novice.”
Geoff Lamm – Manager of Interactive Media, MarketSmart Advertising

“Garrett is a forward thinking person who is always sees outside of the box. I worked with Garrett for almost two years and he was a collegue who offered great insight, advice and practical knowledge to many different areas of interactive marketing.”
Cord Silverstein, Director of Engagement Marketing, capstrat, author of MarketingHipster

“[Garrett's] focus on search optimization and social media marketing allows him to identify unique marketing opportunities and help clients take advantage of cutting-edge campaigns.”
Andy Beal, MarketingPilgrim.com

My Story:
In 2001 I began researching and writing about search marketing tactics for an email newsletter called WebProNews. We had 1,000,000 readers and – at the most – received 10 email responses from our readership when we sent out our newsletter.

Then I offered my readers a “Free Web Site Review by WebProNews.” This offer generated over 450 responses in the first day.

I continued to find ways to meaningfully connect with audiences and leveraged our reader interactions to increase open rates and site traffic, make content creation easier, fuel the growth of our forum to over 50,000 members and land more advertisers.

Where I Am Today:
I bring this lesson in leveraging community for business to all of my marketing projects with my partner Adam Schultz and our new company, Bold Interactive. Our clients include a tool affiliate site, a lemon law firm, a turbo kit vendor, a remote control toy manufacturer, a real estate marketing services company and other advertising agencies.

Publications:
I’m a regular contributor and participant for Search Engine Journal and the Search Marketing Standard blogs.

In addition I’ve been published in Search Engine Guide and WebProNews.

Recent Successes in Conversation Marketing:
Through combining blog marketing and email newsletter strategies with community interactions I’ve helped one client increase links in Yahoo from 750 to over 4,000 in just four weeks. Blog marketing for the site now accounts for over 25% of total traffic, the site has gone from 350 pages indexed to over 2,000 and has seen a 300% increase in organic search traffic.

Get YOUR Market Conversation Started Today!
Contact me at gfrench@gmail.com or call 919-696-4225 to learn how you can start or improve your market conversations today!