conversations monetized

All those rumors you’ve been hearing about me are true. I DID start compiling a three letter word dictionary whose words are defined using only three letter words. (And oh yeah I married the best roller girl in the world and moved to Philly, Lansdowne to be precise.)

This collaborative dictionary revels in its self referential glory and the silly way that three letter words can be strung together to create meaning sometimes and nonsense that seems like it has meaning other times. It’s my way of weaving together the word dorks in my life, so if you’re up for it check out the project and shoot me an email… my guess is you have my email address if you happen to be reading this blog

>> Learn more about the 3 letter word dictionary.

>> Check out the 3 letter word dictionary wiki itself (beta - only the “A” section is done)

(and yes, I’m still working with Bold Interactive even though I moved to Philly…)

Imagine an incredible, articulate and mind blowing article patching all of these posts together in a way that increases their aggregate value

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

If you’re responsible for link-worthy website copy your antenna should be up at all times for methods to create content that will incite your “linkerati” to link to you.

Here are my favorite tactics for creating content and links - some of which I’ve tested, some of which I’ve observed in action.
Read the rest of this entry »

A video of a Stanford presentation by two of the founders of Threadless got me challenging my assumptions for community marketing this morning.

Based on watching this I recognize that what I wrote about here: The Community Correspondent: a Guide to Creating Link Worthy Content Through Forum Participation is more about skimming off the top of a community rather than building community.

Further, because I’ve not created incentive for community building in this particular project I will have to continually work outside of the system to keep generating content myself. It’s hard work writing massive articles - it’s going the long way around to generate community-oriented content (but still a great place to start learning…).

The Threadless founders focused on having fun and building applications that they would want to use and that resonated with their friends.

This feels alien to me, as someone who’s always looked for ways to help others monetize their own projects, but it brings back a recurring dream of mine - the idea of creating hundreds of little seeds and spreading them to the winds just to see what happens. The idea of a concept a day for a year - concepts folded quickly and launched like paper airplanes.

When I interviewed Garrett Camp of Stumble Upon for SEJ (SU Defined and Marketing with SU) I found a similar approach - they built for their community first and STILL don’t give a big crap about monetization. They funded themselves for a good bit and paid bills through donations in the early stages.

If your site/business can motivate people to DONATE to you then you’re probably on the right track.

This video is 45 minutes long. I got a nice kick in the pants from it and I hope you do too.

Thanks to exploding-boy I learned how to turn of the obnoxious visual editor and embed this video directly for you - Turn Off WordPress 2.0 Visual Editor

I spotted this video on Karl Long’s TCritic.

My primary marketing project right now is an affiliate site with a known brand that targets a passionate hobbyist and professional community. Many amongst this community are active in the roughly 10 online forums of sizes ranging from 700 to ~17,000 members.

Over the past two months through my strategic participation in two of these forums I’ve generated brand awareness, created content that’s won valuable links from important sites and blogs in the space, increased targeted organic search traffic to our site and developed an unexpected fondness for the community as a whole.

In researching to round out my thinking on this piece I found Jake McKee’s blog, CommunityGuy. He worked with online communities that formed around his employer, Lego. My approach to community is directly in line with his, but my primary intention was to create a sustainable and community-centric content stream to help thicken a formerly thin affiliate site.

In Lessons in Branded Content Creation Through Community Participation I wrote about what I learned from recent forum criticisms. This article covers with far more depth the approach to community interaction that I’ve taken for this project, with an emphasis on sustainability through aligning the content creation process with my community’s values.

Here’s what’s covered:
1) Forum Content Distributor vs. Forum Correspondent
2) Guidelines for Gaining a Workable Level of Acceptance
3) Your Value Proposition to Forum Participants
4) Getting the Conversation Rolling
5) The Unexpected Benefits
6) The Continued Dangers
7) Six Closing Remarks

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I’m one of SEJ’s SEO pimps :D.

I look forward to learning from my fellow pimps in this project.

I’m learning some great lessons on branded content creation and distribution right now thanks to my work with Adam Schultz and Bold Interactive and I wanted to submit them to you for use in your work and for your feedback.

These lessons became crystallized, back lit and tightly focused today after I posted in a forum that has been a key source of knowledge, traffic, community acceptance and links thus far. Though I’ve been very successful developing content here in the past I recognized today that false steps can open the banana can faster than a hungry monkey.

One key difference is that I opened a forum thread to DISTRIBUTE content rather than to ask a question and start to GENERATE content. I did ask a question at the end of the thread, but my intention was partly to get a quick shot of traffic which in my rear view mirror now looks like a bad idea.

But only because I didn’t follow my new rules

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In a recent report that probably costs more than a nice used Saturn station wagon Piper Jaffray coined the term “Communitainment” to describe the:

trend involving consumers moving communication beyond a mere exchange of information to facilitate an exchange of content, ideas, and entertainment within an online social context.

I’m still grappling with how to describe the marketing services I practice, as they are part PR, part SEO, part community participation.

I won’t be selecting “communitainer” as a term to describe what I do, but thought I’d share the MediaPost article describing this “trend.”

I found compelling Jaffray’s description of “Usites” (MySpace, YouTube, etc…): “Usites are the Internet’s democraticized version of the reality TV trend with users placed in control of content creation.”

Mostly because that’s the best Jaffray could come up with to describe YouTube and MySpace. But also because it got my wheels turning just a little

One perspective they’re severely missing here - and this is because MediaPost and Jaffray are writing for the Fortune 500 - is how MySpace especially has become a marketing/communication platform for local underground or grassroots commercial enterprises. Such as Roller Derby, dive bars, tattoo shops and of course bands.

I think local marketers too should pay particular attention to MySpace and video.

It’s neat to see this stuff in action… As a buddy and I planned a weekend meeting in gchat Google listened along and shot an ad at me:

Smart or spooky? Both. And quite potentially powerful considering the amount of usage that chat has.

Update:
It probably didn’t hurt that in my email I had a meeting conversation going too… so it makes me wonder if the ad was indeed triggered by the mellow mushroom and raleigh keywords or the raleigh meeting keywords, as both could be considered potential targets by the advertiser, Raleigh Take-Out.

It’s the end of an era for me and many of the people who worked at MSI, formerly WebSourced and Keyword Ranking.

From my conversations with folks from the most recent round of layoffs, which totaled 21 as far as I’ve learned, the feelings people had were primarily of relief, though a relief woven with anguished disgust that will linger in the form of stories that will bore our great grandchildren when they come visit us at the retirement home.

I felt my own relief upon hearing MSI had finally closed its doors, and some of that disgust when I was laid off two months ago, and I suspect the remaining 9 folks who went to work for MSA feel a similar mix, plus the uncertainty of a new job.

Describing the Relief:
It’s like finally pulling the plug on a cancer-ridden and aged PT Barnum who’d quit selling circus tickets and tried to open up a Shakespeare theatre by calling in directions from his hospital bed.

Or it’s like the Titanic, finally slipping beneath the waves as the idiot crew members who’d attached outboard motors to the foundering hulk leap clear onto floating deck chairs, watching the horizon for another ship.

Or it’s like… (bleh I’ll let you fill in the blanks on this one).

Describing My Relief
My relief is in part selfish. I was laid off too - in late October of last year. My fiance told me then - and it’s still true - that “getting laid off will be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

It was my first lay off though, and it stung to get laid off from a company I’d labored so hard for, uprooted my life for, and defended at the expense of my credibility with peers. It also felt like a criticism of my abilities, though it wasn’t. The company really was failing.

what haunts me still - why?
But why? Why did this company fail? What does the failure of a company mean? Why can’t a handful of people who really want to make a difference with 20 or so who don’t give a shit make a change? The questions nag me now as they did even when I still worked there, trying with the Quixotic few to propel our sinking Meta Tag Tanker with oars instead of the SEM engine we required.

Nine people were rehired by the sister company MSA. Congratulations to you and polish those resumes - ask not for whom the pink slip tolls - it tolls for thee!

If you were laid off:
Adam Schultz is poking around for potential employers for this most recent glut of talent, as is Andy Beal. Also hit that unemployment with both fists: apply for NC unemployment online.

And remember - there’s a huge difference between getting fired and getting laid off! Fired = no money, while laid off = 1/4 of your salary. Which is useful for a month if you’re getting your independent feet under you

Update: the autopsy begins…
Thanks to Evan for his take on answering my question as to why MSI failed. Also, thanks to Tansy OBryant who answers very eloquently and insightfully from the comments.

Note that Tansy was on both sales AND the services side while Evan was primarily services. Evan points to sales and management while Tansy points to failure to provide ROI.

Here’s Evan’s post:
Why I believe Websourced, MarketSmart Interactive, Keyword Ranking failed

Here’s Stephan Ward’s take:
The Layoff Bomb (Stephen Ward please give me a call - 696-4225)

And here’s my buddy JP Sherman’s take (he was rehired by MSA):
MarketSmart Interactive Closes its Doors