BlogOnExpo – The Day is Here!
Let the games begin! The BlogOnExpo started today, with PsPrint as an exhibitor. There are some great sessions available online FOR FREE! This is the first free online bloggers expo of its kind. Setting precedents is important people! The organizer has done a bang up job of getting some pretty knowledgeable people interviewed and contributing to the online sessions. Today’s contributions are:
Sessions
- Social Media – Neil Patel from ACS SEO
- Logo Design Trends
- What to Do When you lose your Biggest Traffic Source – John Chow
- SEOmoz Guides – Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz
Interviews
- Matt Mullenweg
- Guy Kawasaki
- John Chow
- Darren Rowse
- Ryan Block
Having personally attended sessions with Neil Patel and Rand Fishkin on the panels, I can say that those will be great quality and I’m looking forward to checking them out. Darren Rowse is also a great guy (man behind ProBlogger.net) whom I enjoy following on Twitter, so that should be a good interview as well.
The expo will run for a few days, so mosey over and check it out.
Read MoreFussing Update
I fussed around more with del.icio.us, Digg, and Technorati. So far my thoughts…
del.icio.us: really easy to use. I exported my bookmarks from Firefox and imported them into my bookmarks in a matter of minutes. I’ve spent probably the last half an hour cleaning up my tags since they’re so scattered and I’m a neat freak like that. But it’s a really simple interface that’s a breeze to use. I’ve head a lot about this site, so I get the feeling I’ll be using it a lot whenever I come across something particularly cool.
Digg: pretty easy to use, but there’s a lot there. The home page of News & Videos is cracking me up reading some of the titles. Not sure how this can be leveraged though without digging my own stories. I did try a plea on Twitter for digs, but got none. And it’s taken me hours, but I’ve figured out how to add the Digg This button you see to the right. I found out though that I have a friend already on Digg, so I can foresee messing around more with this and building more friends on this network.
Technorati: Okay what the hell? The main function of the site, as far as I can tell, is to keep a list of your favorites. Do me a favor and look HERE. Do you see any favorites? If you don’t I’m really annoyed because I followed their instructions to export my blogs from Google Reader, saved the file correctly, imported them to Technorati, they showed up for a couple minutes and now they don’t show. So my frustration is building with this site to the point where I’m already ready to give up… which for an experienced web user like me, isn’t good at all. So I’ve decided to walk away from it for awhile, focus my efforts on the other two, and mess around with this once they’ve got this bug fixed. I already ventured into their help forums on the first day… not really a good sign, folks.
Turning Gray at 26?
While brushing my hair this morning I found not one but three gray hairs. It’s hard to tell the color of a single hair, it almost looked blond… but considering that my hair is naturally a dark brown, I sorta doubt they were blond.
Has the stress gotten to me already? My coworkers have joked that I’m no longer allowed to take Vacations because the rely on my being here so much (although this is something they joke about every time I take some time off for any reason…) And since returning from Sin City, the work load on my desk has been seemingly endless. I’ve been here two and a half extra hours each night trying to catch up before Labor Day, and with it also being the end of the month I have EOM reporting coming up to worry about as well.
What happened to the days when I just came in, did my job, and went home? I guess in the days of mailing services, marketing, advertising, sales, social media, the affiliate program, and email marketing there’s no sleep for the weary. It took me half a day just to catch up on Twitter posts and all the blogs I subscribe to through Google Reader. I’ve perhaps spent more time here at PsPrint than home in the last few days.
In case you’re wondering, I did enjoy my vacation. Some of the highlights included a helicopter tour over the strip at night, seeing Penn & Teller live and getting photos with them and their autographs, seeing lots of animals, going very high up at the top of the Stratosphere tower and the Paris Las Vegas Eiffel Tower, and traipsing all over Las Vegas Blvd. My travel friend and I basically saw everything we went to Vegas wanting to see, except we missed out on the Tournament of Kings dinner show at Excalibur. I think when I go back to Vegas in November to attend the National Association of Realtors’ conference, I might take an evening to head over there. I wasn’t quite ready to re-join reality!
Hats, Hats, Everywhere!
Have you ever noticed that right before you’re supposed to go on vacation, everything piles up out of nowhere? Things that weren’t even on your radar before are suddenly paramount priority. Last week my lovely manager Anne mentioned that I’ll be taking over e-mail marketing for PsPrint. I assumed this would be happening within the next month. I get into the office today to see an email from her with details for an email to be sent out Wednesday. Good thing I was prepared!
So I’ve been working mostly on that today, ironing out some kinks and playing that good old Waiting Game for the copy and other information. I’ve been chipping away at this ever increasing task list (thank the stars for the Tasks feature in Outlook) and most of the things on the list are due in the next three days before my vacation.
About a week ago, we were invited to post in a blog called PrintSalesPros as a sort of guest author. I wrote a blog post for them about our 100% Recycled Matte paper stock in response to a request for articles about green printing they posted on Twitter. Feel free to check it out HERE. Another contributor also posted an article about green printing entitled Green printing can make a great impression, and it’s a good one too.
So I’ve added another hat to my closet, so to speak. Mailing Services, the Affiliate Program, E-Mail Marketing, Social Media Marketing, trade show assisting, some really general assistance in advertising and promotional deals… I finally feel like I’m in marketing!
Read MoreAre we too late for the boat?
Lots of industries are taking a long time to embrace web 2.0 and the blogosphere, and as we try to buy our tickets to the blogging dinner cruise, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve missed the boat?
I read an interesting blog written by Hugh MacLeod: Why we’re all blogging less. I admit that I have noticed a lack of fresh blogs to keep my entertained on my lunch break… so that has to mean there’s less serious content out there too. At work we’re just now working out our social media game plan, so reading blogs like Hugh’s makes me fear that we’re a day late and a dollar short to this party.
I hope not… I’m so excited about the blog and the social networking we’ll be doing in the coming months. Not only does it open up new opportunities for PsPrint, but it opens up new ops for me personally. As I said when I started this blog, it’s basically my thoughts on what I’ve been up to at work and what I’ve been learning while thrown to the lions.
In case I didn’t mention it, I don’t have a fancy marketing degree. I have humble roots with a Theater Arts degree, focusing in dramatic writing. Now you see why I’m so apt to blog. We’re starting to get some talk back from followers on Twitter, which is exciting even though it’s very casual at the moment. Hopefully it’ll open up some sales or marketing opportunities, but I’m not holding my breath.
Exciting, but a tad disappointing, is the fact the Shawn Collins over at Affiliate Marketing Blog has finally posted the session videos from Affiliate Summit East 2007. You have to sign up for the Real Deal summit newsletter, but it’s a good idea to sign up for it anyway. I was a bit disappointed to see that the interview we did with the wandering camera crew isn’t up, but I hope someday it will be. Just so I can point and laugh at myself 🙂
Read MoreSocial Media Marketing: The Wave of the Future?
I figured out a really nifty thing to do on LinkedIn today… creating an HTML email signature with a link to this blog, to the PsPrint website, and to my LinkedIn profile. I was, sadly, highly amused by this function and emailed a colleague to show it off.
Colleague: Oh that is cool…I am still not 100% comfortable with online communication websites but Linked In seems cool because it’s business connections.
Me: But it’s the waaaave of the futurrrrre. And we’re going to start social media marketing, so get used to it :p
That’s right, project 15927 to add to my daily agenda (okay not really but it feels that way) is a new project that we’ll have implemented by the end of the month. A full frontal attack on social media! I can’t say much yet since we’re still fleshing out the procedures and nitty gritty details, but I’ll be taking the lead on it.
So, in addition to the two and a half hats I already wear at work, I’ll be putting on a third. It’s exciting to get some new responsibilities and working on a new project now that our mailing services is pretty automated and our affiliate program is started to go places. I can’t wait to talk more about it, but mum is the word at the moment.
So I got to thinking about it… is social media and online networking really the wave of the future? What are your thoughts?
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