The week before we trekked off to SMX West to bring you the best best liveblogging coverage in the land (I’m biased), I had an incredible opportunity to guestblog on Copyblogger about what belly dancing taught me about personal branding. In that post, I listed off a number of things that I feel are important when constructing your personal brand. On specific tactic I mentioned was to create a character around yourself so that you are always presenting people with the absolute best version of who you are. You don’t necessarily want to give your audience “you”; you want to give them your superhero.
Obviously, people had some opinions about this. After all, social media is about authenticity and transparency and all those wonderful things. How the heck can you provide that if you’re not giving people your full, true self? How will they ever get to know the real you? I think in order to best serve your audience you have to create a superhero persona.
Here’s why. Feel free to tell me I’m doing it wrong. [read the full post…]
Stay with us, folks! Only two more sessions and SMX West will be one for the record books. The next session is always a fun one because it’s straight Q&A with some of the best and most trusted minds in the field. This time around Danny Sullivan will be moderating an all-star panel with Greg Boser, Bruce Clay, Vanessa Fox, Todd Friesen, Aaron Wall, and Jill Whalen. Rand Fishkin is also up on stage pinch hitting for Rae, who had to pull out of the show for personal reasons. Rand’s almost like Rae. But without the swearing or testosterone.
Danny lets us know that Matt Cutts is being interviewed in the hall right now so they’re trying to get the spammy stuff out of the way before he gets back. So naturally they’re starting with Jill Whalen. We all do intros and Bruce tells everyone to go visit his site. Just like he does every time he’s introduced. He could use some new material.
We hop right into the Q&A.
[read the full post…]
Hey, hey, a little more time for teh wit and teh banter… unfortunately my brain is melted so you still don’t get any. SUCKA! I’m in the coldest room in the world which will only get more cold as the search engine reps stonewall the audience with non-answers. I’m kidding. Only not really. I don’t know anymore. What day is it? Mom?
My mom’s not here but our godfather Danny Sullivan is. He’s moderating Arnab Bhattacharjee, Matt Cutts, and Sasi Parthasarathy. Matt just tossed me a package of peanut butter M&Ms from the stage. Hmm, does that mean that link to Google up there is a paid link? Free M&Ms are almost like free Google phones, right? Questions.
Okay, let’s see what they’re talking about. I’m gonna nom quietly on my bribe.
[read the full post…]
After a VERY quick break we are back in action. Speaking we have Jessica Bowman, Laura Lippay, Michael Martin, and Everett Sizemore. There’s no banter as Everett Sizemore hops right in because we’re a little behind. Okay, fine, a little banter. Fun story: According to a few people, Everett and I were standing next to one another for at least 20 minutes the other day and I had no idea. I’ve never officially met Everett. Hopefully we’ll change that soon.
Okay hopping right in!
How To Succeed As An In House SEO
Just because you bring SEO in-house, doesn’t mean it s going to work. Both situations require the right people, tools and skills. He says the word of the day is going to be value.
You Are Only What It Costs To Replace You
Ouch.
[read the full post…]
Good morning, everyone! It’s the final day here at SMX so everyone’s running around just a tad slower than they were the previous days. That means less banter, but perhaps more snarky remarks when the delirium finally takes over my fragile body. You want to hear something cool? Last night I got to meet George Revutsky, the guy Scoble threw under a bus, and chat with him about what it’s like to be scoble’d. Neat, right? We shared a moment.
Okay, getting to it! Up on stage we have Chris Sherman moderating Vanessa Fox, Avinash Kaushik, Misty Locke, and David Roth. They’re on really high chairs. I’m afraid little Vanessa may fall off. The sound’s a little wonky too where I’m up front and still can’t hear anything. Chris gets us started.
[read the full post…]
Hey, hey! It is the LAST session of Day 2. Congrats on sticking with us. I can’t lie. I can feel myself starting to drag a bit here. Totally counting on this social media session to be high-energy and stir up the juices. I have faith it will. Up on stage we have Jennifer Laycock, Matt Siltala, and Chris Winfield. Jen’s doing double duty and also acting as the moderator. Let’s hop right in.
Up first is Chris Winfield.
He laughs that the session is called 60 Minutes Per Day For Social Media Success… and the session is 75 minutes. Hee! Chris tells everyone in the room to follow Outspoken’s blog coverage and I turn about 18 different shades of red. In fact, I almost took my laptop and hide under the table. While I’m under there, you should subscribe to the blog. You’ll feel so much better when you’re done.
[read the full post…]
We. Are. Back! I hope you are, too. I just grabbed a handful of M&Ms from Dana Lookadoo and some dark chocolate Hershey kisses from Jonah Stein. My mother will be happy to know that my chocolate diet at SMX continues. Sugar highs, FTW! Muahaha!
The very-sick Vanessa Fox is back moderating speakers Eric Enge, Dave Lloyd, Craig Macdonald, and Marshall Simmonds. She said that Q&A moderator Adam Audette is going to rap after the speakers finish their presentations. Ooo! That should be fun. For now, let’s just get into the presentations, eh?
[The 'eh' is for Dawn. We're missing her at SMX West. Come visit, Dawn!]
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And we’re back! Lunch was delicious but now it’s time to hop right into the sessions. Up on stage we have 
Danny Sullivan moderating speakers Greg Finn, Jon Fougner, Bill Parkes, and Tony Wright. Danny’s enjoying giving me a hard today about which sessions I’m blogging and which I’m not. Seems when I don’t blog a session Danny is moderating he gets sad. That’s understandable. I pretty much bring the party.
We have silly music playing right now. Like people should be swing dancing. Or Greg Finn is about to be shipped off to World War II. Be safe, Greg!
Okay, we’re starting.
[read the full post…]
We’re gonna have us a good old-fashioned showdown down in Austin next week! Guns will be drawn, intimidation will set in and only one man will survive to walk away with the glory. And then, of course, there’s that whole SXSW thing going on. But that’s just the backdrop! For many, all eyes will be on the forthcoming location wars and which service will declare dominance to become the google of location apps. Or maybe Google will become the google. But probably not.
