ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett

Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets
by Stephane Grenier

Head over to the OMIO blog to find out how to enter.

The conference is huge, the parties are over the top, the venue is amazing (who doesn’t love Austin?) and the people are what it’s all about.

This was the first year I was speaking at SxSWi, I had a book reading for Online Marketing Inside Out on Saturday, March 13 at 11 AM (well, a little later because the previous speaker ran into my time slot). So I was incredibly excited about going this year, but decided to take a slightly different approach.

Instead of trying to go to a lot of panels and sessions, and trying to hit all the big parties, I would just take it as it came. The last two years at SxSW seemed to fly by so quickly and it seemed like I never had time to just sit down and enjoy the company of friends or really connect with people. This year I was determined to really make the most of it.

So what follows is a daily recap of my SxSW experience (with many thanks to Foursquare for the helpful history tool!). Be forewarned… it’s long and incredibly detailed. If you’d rather skip all the minute details and just read my takeaways, you can jump to the conclusion.

Thursday

We have a client in Austin, and it was actually a trip to meet with them that led me to my first SxSW in 2008. It just so happened that our client meeting and the conference were extremely close, so we got tickets to the conference. For the past two years we’ve repeated that coincidence by scheduling our meeting around the conference.

We flew into Austin pretty early, and Donna (our client) picked us up from the airport. We went to their offices for a short time and then went to Rudy’s BBQ for lunch. We stuffed ourselves, then headed back to the office to get some work done.

Went out to The Salt Lick for dinner, one of my favorite places in Austin to eat. It’s located in a dry county, but you can take a cooler filled with beer. It’s got a great atmosphere and even better Texas BBQ.

After dinner I hitched a ride to the hotel and checked in. It was 9:45 PM when I got to my room and dropped my bags, so I decided to run over to the convention center to try to get a badge. I ran past Jim Caruso in the Hilton lobby, and he walked with me to the convention center. I barely got my badge before they closed at 10, then Jim and I went to the lounge in the Hilton and had a drink. Chrispian Burks met us there and we hung out for a few before calling it a night.

Friday

I went back over to our client’s office for a while and wrapped things there, then had Mighty Fine Burgers for lunch (owned by the same folks as Rudy’s). We finished up around 4 PM and I headed to the hotel and convention center. I went up to the day stage for Darren Rowse’s book reading of the second edition of his ProBlogger book co-authored by Chris Garrett. I met up with Julie Taylor, Josh Coffee, Patrick O’Keefe, Chrispian Burks, Deb Ng, and Chris.

Someone pulled the fire alarm right in the middle of Darren’s book reading and the entire convention center was evacuated. It was a little funny how slowly people were evacuating. If there was a real fire, I think half the world’s bloggers would have been lost. When we got the all-clear, we went back to the book reading and Darren finished. After the reading, Darren and Chris had a book signing at the SxSW Bookstore. I bought another copy of Problogger Book and got them to sign it.

I went back to the room briefly and then went downstairs to meet up with Jeremy Wright and head to dinner with some friends. He was in the Hilton lounge with a few friends. I grabbed a drink and he introduced me to Loren Feldman of 1938 Media. Loren seems like a pretty cool guy, the kind of guy that’d be fun to just hang out and have a few drinks with. We threw down our drink pretty fast because we were running late and then headed to Roy’s where we met Darren Rowse, Deb, Chris, Patrick, Chrispian, and some others. The food was great, but it was a little dark.

After dinner, we went to Emo’s and I saw Jim Caruso, Courtenay Bird, Scott Lockhart and a few others. The scene at Emo’s was a little… err… different. We didn’t stay there all that long.

We headed to the Driskill Hotel (that’s where all the cool kids said the party was at) and it was packed. I saw lots of cewebrities there like Gary Vaynerchuk, Robert Scoble, Brian Solis, etc. Whoohooo! (note the sarcasm). I stayed at the bar upstairs for a while but then heard a few friends were downstairs at the 1886 Cafe and Bakery. I headed down and the atmosphere was much better. We could actually hear each other talk. We stayed there for a bit then I headed back to the hotel to get some sleep because I had a book reading Saturday.

Saturday

I woke up early to prepare for my book reading, and as I was going over my notes and slides I decided to completely change my talk. Instead of going through several chapters in the book giving tips and tricks, I decided to tell a few stories about our experience at 2BigFeet.com over the years. I frantically retooled my slides to be much simpler and prepared some notes for the talk at 11am.

I got to the Day Stage around 10 minutes before 11, and the presenter before me was still going strong. Book reading presentations are supposed to be 20 minutes, but the time slot is 30 minutes. This gives the AV team time to get the next presenter setup and gives the people in the audience time to get up and leave or new arrivals time to find a seat. The guy before me ran really long, cutting well into my time. At 11am, I looked at the AV folks and they said he was wrapping up. 5 minutes later, still talking. Playing videos. Talking more. 10 minutes… STILL talking. Then as he was playing a video he told us he’d take ONE question after it was over. As soon as the video stopped, he said “I’ve got time for a couple questions” and proceeded to take two, and give extremely long-winded answers.

If people came at 11am for my book reading, I can only imagine what they were thinking. Did it get cancelled? Was it already over?

He finally got off the stage, and we setup the AV and I started. I was a little worked up about going on late and the previous presenter’s lack of respect, so I stumbled a bit over the first few slides. I think it went well as soon as I got into the three stories, and my talk was even covered on HubSpot’s Internet Marketing Blog.

Immediately after the book reading, I walked over to the SxSW Bookstore (a few tables across from the Day Stage) for a book signing. I sold lots of books and met some really cool people… and some really great friends like Patrick, Josh, Julie, Chrispian, Deb and Taryn Pisaneschi were there to support me.

Then we went to Patrick O’Keefe and Twanna Hines’ core conversation, “Shameless Self Promotion Without Looking Like an @#$%^&!“. It was originally submitted as a panel with Patric, Twanna, Darren Rowse and me, but was converted to a core conversation so Darren and I just attended and participated from the audience.

We were pretty hungry after Patrick’s panel, and one of my friends James Paden and Deb Ng had never had Texas BBQ, so I took a group of friends to Rudy’s BBQ (worst bbq in texas) for some brisket and beef ribs. It was me, Josh Coffee, Julie Taylor, Deb Ng, James Paden and Chrispian Burks. We had a blast, and have photos to prove it! We had to take a couple cabs out there, but it was worth it. Next year I’m taking them to The Salt Lick though!

It took a while to get there and back, so not much was accomplished that afternoon. We had RSVP’d for the Old Timers meetup so Patrick, Jared Smtih and I headed over there. We met some great folks like Alyce Lindquist from the Silicon Valley Social Media Club and Brian O’Shaughnessy from Skype.

We left there with intentions of finding a place to eat, but had trouble getting a cab back to the convention center area. When we finally got there we saw Lucretia Pruitt and Allison Worthington in the Hilton lobby. We were all hungry, so we just decided to get something to eat in the Hilton Lounge (food by Finn & Porter). The group ended up being me, Lucretia, Allison, Patrick, Josh, Julie and Chrispian. I had a great time talking to Allison about her BlissDom conference.

From there, we tried to go to the TechKaraoke party but the line wrapped all the way around the building. One of my goals this year was to not stand in any lines… you can waste so much time waiting to get in and there are so many parties going on. Why wait to get into that one cool party? We eventually ended up at the Bellmont bar and had a great time. They had live music and the weather was great, so we stayed outside on the roof most of the time. We closed it down, then went to Jimmy Johns for a late night snack.

Got back to the hotel really late, and suddenly remembered I was going to have to be up early because Patrick and I had RSVP’d for something Sunday morning. I set my alarm and tried to get a few hours of sleep.

Sunday

I had to wake up early for Social Media Breakfast… but of course slept late. I woke up at 9, and was supposed to meet Patrick in the lobby at 9:30 to grab a cab. I jumped in the shower and threw on some clothes as fast as I could. We left the hotel by cab at 9:45, got there, got some grub and sat down at a table with Deb Ng, Chris Garrett and later Dave Barger. The presentations were very interesting and I met a few people afterward. I even scored a free Skype headset they were giving away. We snagged a ride with Patrick’s friend Nathan Wright back to the hotel.

The breakfast lasted until noon, and we were pretty hungry by the time we got back to the hotel. I went to Champions for lunch with Patrick, Chrispian, Julie, Josh and Jared. After lunch I dropped by the blogger lounge and said hello to a few people. Outside the blogger lounge Patrick introduced me to Rafael Marquez of MarketingLatinos.com and he interviewed me for his blog. Then I headed to the Interactive Agency Workflow session. The session started out great, going from requirements gathering and wireframing but seemed to linger about wireframes way too long. Most of the people got up and left about halfway through.

We skipped out a few minutes early and went over to the Twitter Dating panel at the Courtyard Mariott supporting Jeremy Wright (one of the speakers). The panel was hilarious… there was lots of participation and interesting online dating stories (probably helped by the free beer).

After the panel I went back to the Hilton and met up with Joe Hamm and the usual Patrick, Julie, Josh and Chrispian and headed to dinner at Cantina Laredo. We had some awesome gourmet mexican food and then headed to Lanai for the Big Omaha party. Nathan Wright was a sponsor and we spoke to him for a moment when we got there. It wasn’t very busy at all, nice group of people until Gary Vaynerchuk announced his “secret” wine party was there (about midnight). It packed out with hundreds more people and they cranked up the music. I got a pretty bad headache and decided to call it a night… went back to the hotel and got some sleep.

Monday

I think my body was trying to tell me I needed some rest, because I woke up around 7 and felt much better. I got ready and headed to the Blogger Lounge to catch up on some email and work before the sessions. Jeremy came in and sat next to me and we caught up on our SxSW adventures to that point — I think he had much more eventful time than I had at that point! I also talked to Rohit Bhargava and Patrick about professional speaking.

For lunch, Julie wanted to find some gluen-free pizza. She’s gluten-intolerant so she’d been just eating a little of this and that wherever we went. She did some research and found a couple of pizza places in Austin, but none of them close enough to walk to. We took a cab to one of the restaurants she found but it had closed down. We were sitting in two cabs with meters running so we decided to just go to Conan’s Pizza. We original and thought they had gluten-free pizza, but it turns out they didn’t. We decided to eat there anyway, and it turned out to be a very interesting place.

After lunch, we took a few cabs back to the convention center. As Patrick and I were walking through the convention center floor, we ran into Thom Singer and had a great conversation about professional speaking. Thom is a professional speaker and spoke over 50 times last year. He is a wealth of information about speaking and presenting, so I picked his brain for a while and asked a ton of questions.

Patrick and I walked back over to the Hilton and saw Jacqui Chew, who I had met earlier (but when and where is escaping me right now). We decided to head over to the Frost Tower for Gary Vaynerchuk and Brian Solis’ joint wine tasting and book signing. I saw a lot of people there including Courtenay, Taryn, and Jim. Taryn introduced me to Stephanie Lichtenstein and Lindsay Burck.

We were getting hungry, so we decided to find a place to eat. We had a decent sized party, and went to one restaurant that wasn’t going to be able to seat us for 30-45 minutes. They recommended Sullivan’s Steak House which was right down the street, and we got a table there almost immediately. Me, Patrick, Jacqui, Jim, Julie, Josh and Chris all had dinner, and it was great. The service and food were excellent, and they got us in and out relatively quickly. After dinner, Patrick went to watch the premier of MacGruber. We all went to the TechSet party but several of us weren’t on “the list” so we couldn’t get in. Josh, Julie and Chrispian decided to call it a night.

Jim, Jacqui, and I decided to go to the Rackspace Revolutions party, since Jim and I are both customers. When we got there, Jim spotted the chairman and he and Jackie ran off to find him and take a picture with him. I hung around the bar area, and ran into several people like Robert Scoble, who is now working with RackSpace. I also bumped into James Paden, Taryn, Stephanie and several others.

Later that evening, I noticed a crowd gathering around a table. They have hired someone to hand-roll cigars. After waiting in line for about 30 minutes I finally got a hand rolled cigar. After enjoying my cigar, I met up with Taryn and Lindsay. We stayed at the party until closing, when I walked them back to Lindsay’s car. Her car was dead so we asked someone else who just left the party if they could jump start her car. They just got in the car and left. I called AAA and they sent someone out to give us a hand. After waiting about an hour, a tow truck showed up and helped us get her car started. They gave me a ride back to the Hilton and I called it a night.

Tuesday

I went to a few sessions about mobile development and had lunch again at Champions with Patrick, Chris, Josh and Jared Smith. After lunch we went to the Press Lounge to wait for Abby Johnson of WebProNews who had scheduled an interview with Patrick.

After their interview, she asked if I’d like to interview again (of course I would!) so I talked about my book reading a bit. Afterward, I went to one final session on mobile advertising and then went back to the hotel to work a bit. Later that evening I joined Jim, Stephanie Frost, Chris Turner and Jackui for dinner at Eddie V’s. I had Ahi Tuna (rare, of course) and it was amazing.

I decided to go back to my room and work, forgoing the closing party since I had an early flight.

Wednesday

I originally thought my flight back to Atlanta was at 5am, but fortunately that was when I needed to be at the airport. My flight was at 6:55 and I was joined on the flight by lots of Atlantans heading home from SxSW. I sat with Joe Hamm and Stephanie Frost waiting to board.

The Big Picture Takeaways

SxSW was epic as usual. This blog post is a testament to that. This was my third South-by and was by far the most productive. My first year I tried to attend ALL the sessions and ALL the parties. As a result, I was always running around like crazy and can barely remember who I met or what I did. Last year I took it a little easier, but still tried to go to all the parties and meet as many people as possible.

This year I just decided to go with the flow. We made dinner plans at the last minute, hung out in the halls, went to meetups, and generally just bummed around the conference. If you just looked at my schedule, you might think I completely wasted my conference pass… maybe I did. But I got more from this year at SxSW than the two previous years combined.

I spent time with great friends (including some new ones like Deb and Chris), met some truly awesome people, and made some connections that I am sure will be extremely valuable. I stuck by my original goal and didn’t wait in lines to get into a party (with the exception of a short line to have my ID checked).

The overall takeaway for me is to experience SxSW like you’d experience a great little city you’ve never been to. If you’ve never been, you don’t know all the cool places to go see, you just go exploring, meeting people as you go. Not only is it much more fun, but I think you get a lot more out of it that way.

People that Made SxSW Rawk

I met literally hundreds of people at SxSW. I had great conversations, learned a lot, and really had a great time. But there were some people who really stood out and helped made SxSW 2010 really special. In no particular order…

• Patrick O’Keefe
• Chrispian Burks
• Josh Coffee
• Julie Taylor
• Jeremy Wright
• Jim Caruso
• Stephanie Frost
• Darren Rowse
• Chris Garrett
• Jacqui Chew
• Taryn Pisaneschi
• Thom Singer

I’m especially excited about this year because I have a book signing Friday at 11 AM, a time slot I’m sharing with Patrick O’Keefe, good friend and author of “Managing Online Forums.”

I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones. If you’re headed to BWE as well drop me a line in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter.

I’m also looking forward to Sunday, where we all get a free pass to SeaWorld for the day. I can’t wait, because I’m surprising my son… Sunday happens to also be his 4th birthday and I’m taking him (and the rest of the family) to SeaWorld.

Since I wasn’t able to attend the conference, I decided to just crash the after party which was held at Ten Pin Alley in Atlantic Station. I was originally planning on leaving the office around 4PM, since it takes me at least an hour to get to Atlanta with road construction and traffic.

Unfortunately, I left a little late and arrived at Atlantic Station around 6:30 PM. There were a lot of people there, so I got a drink and started mingling. I talked to a couple of the event staff, then said hello to Daniel Walters of Social Media Birmingham. I met Daniel at BarCamp Birmingham back in May. Unfortunately, he was on his way out to head back to Birmingham for WordCamp.I walked back up to the bowling lanes and said hello to Wayne Sutton. Wayne and I met back in March at SxSW but only briefly. We talked about social media, online marketing, and business in general. It was a great conversation, and I can’t wait to hang out with Wayne at IzeaFest this weekend.

When I walked down to the bar to get another drink, I noticed Jim Caruso who I’d met a few weeks ago at the Atlanta Web Design Group meeting. Jim owns MediaFirst, a tech-focused PR firm in Atlanta. We were both hungry and started trying to wrangle a group to go to dinner. As we were talking, Courtenay Bird walked up and said hello. Coincidentally, she and a couple friends had also been talking about grabbing a bite, so we left the after party (which was just about dead at this point anyway) in search of food.

I ended up at Rosa Mexicana with Jim, Courtenay, Allie Sullivan, and Scott Lockhart, founder & CEO of Regator. The food was great, we even had fresh guacamole made fresh right in front of us. After dinner, we talked for more than an hour before leaving.

I was planning to meet a friend who was on his way to Atlanta, so I departed Atlantic Station and called it a night with the New Media Atlanta folks. I had a great time meeting everyone and look forward to actually attending the next one!

The idea behind Trust Agents started with Trust Economies, a free ebook published by Chris and Julien Smith back in March of 2008. If you have not read Trust Economies yet, I highly recommend it as a precursor to Trust Agents. In it, they lay what would eventually become the foundation for Trust Agents… the philosophy that social media marketing is less about “marketing” and more about building real relationships (and the trust that comes with them).

Essentially, Trust Agents is about the rules of relationships (online or off). As Stephen Covey put it in the amazing 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, relationships are like bank accounts. You can make deposits and withdrawals. Deposits are selfless acts you do for others, such as helping a friend move or just complimenting someone on their new haircut. Withdrawals are selfish requests, such as asking for a favor. The consequence of breaking trust, such as missing an appointment without calling, is also a withdrawal (and a big one).

“Emotional bank accounts” might have come from Covey’s book, but the idea is as old as relationships themselves. You can only take out what you put into them.

Chris and Julien take this fundamental principle of relationships and expand on it in Trust Agents. They start the book with a discussion about trust and social capital. Essentially, a trust agent is a person who builds real relationships online, and then leverages them to help others. In return for this, there is a long-term value to the person (or their company). It’s a fundamentally different concept than traditional marketing (even online marketing). Instead of being all about you… your products, your services, your company… it’s all about them. I can see this being a tough concept for companies to understand and see the long-term value… but Chris and Julien do an excellent job at showing the benefits and convincing you that it’s the right way.

The rest of the book outlines a process for becoming a trust agent, and ends with how to manage if (or when) you actually become one. They describe six key principles, each broken into their own chapter:

• Make Your Own Game
• One of Us
• Archimedes Principle
• Agent Zero
• Human Artist
• Build an Army

Chris and Julien outline some tools and even go into a couple of services, but the book is not really about tools or techniques. It’s about principles and relationships.

I don’t see “Trust Agents” as a marketing book, or even a book about social media. It’s a book about relationships. Like Covey’s 7 Habits and other great business books, Trust Agents is a must read for anyone in business. Even if you have no interest in becoming a “trust agent” or Internet celebrity, the fundamental principles in this book will serve you well. It’s a timeless book that you will pull down from the bookshelf every year or two, re-read and remember why it was so important.

Below are the slides of the presentation hosted on SlideShare:

I also recorded the audio of the presentation and exported it as a movie synced with the slides. Below is the complete presentation (slides and audio) hosted on Vimeo:

Using Social Media for Brand Awareness and Marketing from Brandon Eley on Vimeo.

Online voting amounts for 30% of the decision making process, with the advisory board having 40% and staff picks having 30%. Since online voting counts for so much of the decision, I’m asking everyone to take a look at these panel and session submissions and please vote “thumbs-up!”

Note: Even though my name isn’t on the Panel Picker website for each of these, I am a speaker on each of the panels below.

Marketing By Design: Practical Advice For Better Conversions

Great design is about getting visitors to take a desired action, whether that’s placing an order or clicking on an ad. Learn how to use proven marketing principles to increase conversions and ROI. I’ll discuss how to improve usability, navigation, calls to action, home page layout, error pages, & headlines.

How to Pitch Social Media to Your Clients

Odds are your clients have already asked about Social Media. They’ve heard about Blogging, Twitter, and Facebook and want to know how they can effectively use social media in their marketing strategies. We’ll discuss what questions to ask, how to charge, and how to pitch social media to your clients.

Other Panelists: Jason Falls, Principal at Social Media Explorer; Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs and Co-Author of “Trust Agents.”

Marketing and Online Communities: Oil and Water?

Online communities represent captive audiences, having conversations that you want your company to be a part of. But, communities are built upon trust and respect that is earned and are rightfully protective of their space. So, how do you connect with them? That’s what we’ll discuss.

Other Panelists: Patrick O’Keefe, Owner of iFroggy Network and Author of “Managing Online Forums”; Darren Rowse, Founder and Editor of ProBlogger, Digital Photography School and TwiTip and Co-Author of “ProBlogger: the Book”Shayne Tilley, Marketing Manager at SitePoint and Co-Author of “Online Marketing Inside Out.”

Shameless Self Promotion Without Looking Like an @#$%^&!

Too often, individuals and businesses take advantage of someone else’s turf and excuse it as “shameless self promotion.” It’s not acceptable and it can lead to you being labeled a spammer or worse. In this panel, we’ll tell you how to promote yourself without turning others off.

Other Panelists: Patrick O’Keefe, Owner of iFroggy Network and Author of “Managing Online Forums“; Twanna A. Hines, Founder of Funky Brown Chick Corporation, freelance writer and blogger and Owner, FunkyBrownChick.comDarren Rowse, Founder and Editor of ProBlogger, Digital Photography School and TwiTip and Co-Author of “ProBlogger: the Book”.

When Does the Conversation End and the Selling Begin?

Social media is now critical in the modern marketing mix. However the emergence of a social media corporate etiquette is creating real barriers between a conversation and direct sale. So how do you effectively transfer your conversations to a sale without risking your online reputation? That’s what will be answered.

Other Panelists: Patrick O’Keefe, Owner of iFroggy Network and Author of “Managing Online Forums”; Darren Rowse, Founder and Editor of ProBlogger, Digital Photography School and TwiTip and Co-Author of “ProBlogger: the Book”Shayne Tilley, Marketing Manager at SitePoint and Co-Author of “Online Marketing Inside Out.”

Yesterday I was in Mobile, AL speaking at the monthly Mobile Bay AAF chapter meeting about Social Media. Specifically, I was talking about using Social Media, namely Facebook and Twitter, for businesses.

I was expecting a crowd of about 35-40 people, typical of most monthly Ad Fed meetings. We had a great turnout, and approximately 80 people showed up! It was so packed, there wasn’t enough seating or food for everyone. I’ve since found out that it was the largest crowd for a monthly speaker in two years! (I’m honored)

Thank you to Laura Burton and Sarah Jones for being excellent hosts. I really enjoyed dinner and conversation at Felix’s Fish Camp. It was great meeting you both, and all the members and guests of the Mobile Bay AAF.

Below are the slides from my presentation.

Thank you to everyone who came by and congratulated me, it really meant a lot. Special thanks to cousins David & Christi Burroughs and Scot & Debra McEwen who drove down from north of Atlanta to be there. And thank you to our good friends Rick & Donna Beauford who came down from just south of Atlanta.

Thank you Charles and Chase Hudson of C’sons for all you did to help make the book signing a success. The hors d’oeuvres were delicious, and the service was excellent. Some family and friends stayed with us after the book signing for dinner and they were all extremely impressed both with the quality of food and the service.

Below are some photos my wife Tracy took at the book signing.

Back in February I mentioned that I was writing a book about Online Marketing with Shayne Tilley. I’m excited to announce that the book, now titled Online Marketing Inside Out, has been released and is now available for purchase on SitePoint.

If you have a web site and you want to promote it but are unsure where to start, this book is for you. It covers all aspects of Online Marketing including press releases, search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media, email marketing, and more.

Special Bonus from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger

As a special bonus, if you order from SitePoint direct you’ll also get ProBlogger Darren Rowse’s “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” workbook FREE (a $20 value). Darren’s workbook is packed with valuable content from his recent “31 Days” series on ProBlogger.net, plus over 6,000 words of new content in a professionally designed ebook. Hear what Darren had to say about Online Marketing Inside Out:

It is a great resource for those wanting to market products or services on the Web. This book shows you how to reach customers through podcasting, blogs, social networks, video, email, and contextual advertising and much more.

You’ll also get the satisfaction of knowing you helped me feed my family… SitePoint giving me a generous commission on books sold through the links on my site.

Here’s a peek at the Table of Contents:

1. The Changing Face of Marketing
2. 21st Century Public Relations and Media
3. Turn Page Views into Profit
4. Search Engine Optimization
5. Social Media
6. Email Marketing
7. Affiliate Marketing
8. Online Advertising
9. Tying It All Together

So what are you still doing here? Go over to SitePoint and buy Online Marketing Inside Out today!

Still with me? Okay, if you’re still not convinced, check out this awesome shot of the book after it arrived at SitePoint headquarters earlier today, fresh off the presses…

• State of the Industry
• Online Advertising
• Email Marketing
• 21st Century PR
• Social Media
• Monitoring Your Brand

I indented to talk for 1 hour, then open up for questions/discussion. I ran a little over, and the Flip camcorder we used to record the presentation only recorded the first hour, so it cuts off about 10 minutes before I stop talking.

Below is a video of the presentation and the downloadable slides:

Online Marketing Presentation (long) from Brandon Eley on Vimeo.

I love going to conferences, but there are so many and with a busy schedule I can’t always make it halfway across the country. Either I can’t afford to take the time off because I’m swamped with projects, or I have conflicting plans. The Social Media Success Summit looks like an opportunity to learn from the experts without the expense or inconvenience of traveling to a conference.

Chris Garrett has posted a chance to win a free ticket to Social Media Success Summit on his blog. You can enter up to five times by posting the following tweet to your Twitter account:

Win a FREE ticket to Social Media Success Summit 2009: http://cli.gs/Grq8RX #smsuccess

You can also enter to win the grand prize (two tickets to SMSS, Darren’s book, Mike’s book, your site critiqued by Chris, and a social media marketing consultation with Michael) by writing a blog post detailing why you want to win the ticket… which reminds me!

Why Do I Want to Win?

I bought Michael Stelzner’s book Writing White Papers when it was first released back in 2007, in both hardcover and PDF versions. While I haven’t met him personally, I follow his blog and respect him immensely.

I met Darren Rowse at SxSW in March, 2008 and bought his (and Chris Garrett’s) book Problogger as soon as it was released (pre-ordered it actually). Darren is a role model for any aspiring blogger or online journalist, and is also a genuinely good person. I’ve been reading Copyblogger, Brian Clark’s blog, for as long as I’ve had an RSS feed reader. Darren, Chris and Brian are the definitive experts on blogging.

Gary Vaynerchuk just might be my biggest inspiration in business. I discovered Gary’s Wine Library TV several years ago, and have been following Gary’s show, blog and @garyvee Twitter account ever since. I’ve seen Gary keynote or speak half a dozen times and he knows his stuff. He just landed a 7-figure 10 book deal to write about succeeding in business and life, and his first book Crush It! is due out in October.

These are not a group of wannabe “social media consultants” who just appeared out of nowhere to sell something. These guys know their shit. They were in social media before there was an industry or name for it. Most of them were in marketing before there was even a Web 2.0, much less social networking websites. They’re thought leaders… they’re rock stars.

I want to win because I want to know everything these guys know. I want to soak up that knowledge like a sponge and apply it across my companies and those of our clients at Kelsey. I want to win because you can actually speak with these social media superstars. Yep, it’s a live event and you can interact, ask questions, discuss the materials. You can network with other attendees and with the presenters themselves. Who doesn’t want to rub elbows with the likes of these guys?

UPDATE: Both presentations and slides are now embedded and linked below.

This was my first ever Barcamp, so I wasn’t too sure about what to expect. I was traveling to Atlanta on Friday with work, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it to Barcamp Birmingham because we were leaving for the beach on Sunday. My friend Chris talked me into going (and then bailed on me, no hard feelings tho!)

If you’re not familiar with Barcamps, they are a conference without a pre-arranged agenda. Everyone just shows up, some people propose a few topics they’d like to present on, and people decide which sessions they want to see.

I left from Atlanta Friday afternoon and headed straight to Birmingham; it’s about 2 1/2 hours from Atlanta. When I got to Birmingham, I checked into the DoubleTree hotel and got some dinner. I crashed pretty early; I had a really long day. I woke up early at 5 AM and was ready to get going, so I went ahead and showered, checked out of my room, and headed out to find some coffee and breakfast. After a while of searching, it seems there wasn’t much to choose from in the area of coffee shops downtown (none that were open at 6-7 AM anyway) so I ended up getting coffee at McDonald’s and heading on over to Innovation Depot, the host of Barcamp Birmingham ’09.

I helped load in some chairs and setup for registration, then started working on my proposed presentations. I proposed two sessions: “Selling Mobile”, about getting clients to say yes to mobile, and “Online Marketing Inside Out”, a discussion about online marketing, specifically social media and PR, with topics from my book.

I was missing a mini-displayport to VGA adapter, so I couldn’t connect my laptop to the projectors. I asked Jeremy Flint, one of the coordinators of Barcamp B’Ham, and tweeted to see if anyone had an adapter I could borrow. Unfortunately, I spent most of the morning trying to round up an adapter and didn’t adequately prepare for my talk, which ended up being scheduled for 9:45 AM. I managed to throw some slides together while sitting in the Podcasting session at 9AM, and borrowed a laptop for the presentation.

I personally think this was my worst presentation ever. I didn’t have time to rehearse or go over my notes, and I rushed through the presenation in about half the time. I missed a few key points and had to go back and try to explain them, making it a little awkward to follow. Still, I got really positive feedback from the people who attended, so I guess I didn’t bomb that badly. I guess you truly are your worst critic.

After presenting on Mobile, I went to an Introduction to Social Media panel. Not that I need an introduction to social media, but with only three concurrent tracks sometimes it was hard to pick a session to go to. I figured I may get some ideas for my own presentations by going to some similar presentations.

The last session I attended during the morning segment was Tammy Hart’s “Converting a Static Site into a WordPress Theme.” Tammy’s currently authoring a book on WordPress with Packt… she’s a WordPress ninja.

Lunch was catered in and was pretty good. I enjoyed just hanging out and talking to people. After lunch, the afternoon schedule was posted and my online marketing panel was scheduled for 2PM. I decided to run to the Apple Store and grab a video adapter for my presentation. I barely made it back. I think I walked in at about 2:01 PM and setup for my presentation in about 30 seconds.

Online Marketing – BarCampBirmingham3 from Jeremy Flint on Vimeo. My slides from the presentation are also online.

I think the Online Marketing session went extremely well, filled the time slot and covered a lot of material from the book. I was much more relaxed and felt it was generally a much better presentation… which is great considering that’s a variant of the presentation I’ll be giving several times throughout May and June.

After the Online Marketing session, I went to Mitch Canter’s session on integrating social media tools with WordPress. Mitch is a very engaging presenter. While I knew about half of the plugins and tools he mentioned in his presentation, I got far more from his presentation than most of the others, just in terms of mental notes and tips for my future presentations.

My last panel for the day was another talk about Twitter and social media by Wade Kwon. Wade is also an excellent presenter and really engages the audience, making it fun. Towards the end of his presentation we were told we had to cut it short and get out… the security was apparently only paid through 4PM, and we had to all exit the building. We quickly got together for a group photo (see top) and scattered.

Some of us went over to Shift Workplace for the after party (a little early, it was supposed to start at 6PM). They were nice enough to let us in a bit early, and we mingled there for a while. I was originally going to head out as soon as Barcamp was over, but ended up staying through the whole after party. I finally left Birmingham at around 9 PM to head back to LaGrange. I got home after 1 AM EST.

Overall, Barcamp Birmingham was awesome. I met a ton of great people and really enjoyed the sessions. I also really enjoyed presenting… it’s always good to get practice and with several speaking engagements coming up I needed it!

I should probably have written a SxSW recap when it was still fresh in my mind, but after being out of the office for more than a week I was swamped. I also came back to a few small changes for the book, which didn’t take long but still added to the overall workflow.

Four of us from Kelsey Advertising & Design trekked down to Austin this year, up from just two last year. It was myself, Brant Kelsey (Principal and owner of Kelsey), Brian Handley (illustrator and web developer), and Roman Alvarado (graphic and web designer). Overall, I would consider South by Southwest to be a big success. I really didn’t feel the conference itself was as energized or had the impact it had on me last year, but the people and parties definitely made up for it. I spent a lot of time just hanging out and meeting people, one on one in small personal settings.

I met a ton of people, and saw a ton of friends and acquaintances from other conferences. Some of the highlites are below… I’m sure I’m forgetting someone (it has been over a month). If we met at SxSW, drop me an email! I probably just didn’t have your card and my memory is aweful.

I spent a lot of time hanging out with Brant Kelsey, Patrick O’Keefe, and James Dasher, especially in between sessions and at lunches. I met up with James, who I knew back in the early days of SitePoint, and ended up hanging with him for a good part of the trip. Patrick introduced me to Wayne Sutton at Mohawk at one of the first parties. Wayne’s a cool guy, and I’m looking forward to seeing him speak at future conferences.

I saw Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging at a party, and even though we’ve met twice at other conventions, last year at SxSW on the Chitika Beer Bus and again at Blogworld, she still didn’t remember me! It was actually pretty funny, and I don’t think she’ll have as hard of a time remembering me at the next one… I actually think Wendy felt pretty bad about not remembering me. At any rate, I enjoyed talking to Wendy as usual, and look forward to seeing her again at Blogworld in October. I saw Rick Calvert of Blog World Expo at the same party, and also met him at SxSW last year. Rick talked me into going to Blog World Expo last year when I met him, and I was glad he did! I only spoke to him briefly, but look forward to talking to him more at Blog World this year again.

I saw Jason Falls at one of the many parties at Mohawk (a bar in downtown Austin). He threw a small unofficial party for Maker’s Mark. I said hello, but it was nearly impossible to hear due to the loud music. I did run into Jason later in the Blogger Lounge at the conference, and enjoyed talking with him about social media and picked his brain for a few minutes about the best way to “pitch” a blogger. I’m hoping his tips will come in handy as we promote the book in the months to come.

One day at lunch, Ted Murphy, founder of IZEA, tweeted that he was looking to grab some lunch. After a series of tweets and DM’s back and forth, we finally met up with him and Ashley Edwards of IZEA for lunch. We tried two or three different locations (one closed, others packed) and ended up at Buffalo Billiards. Ted’s a really cool guy, and also runs IZEAFest conference, which I’m seriously considering for this year.

After an amazing panel, I spoke to Gary Vaynerchuk who was kind enough to give me a quick 30 second video interview. I still haven’t gotten the video up, though remembering it now I think I’ll go do that… I also met Gary at Blog World Expo where he was keynoting. Gary is an amazing speaker, but he’s a more amazing person. See him on camera? That’s Gary, all the time. I met him in the halls of BWE and walked with him to his keynote. He’s truly one of the most down to earth “superstars” I’ve met, and I wish I had 10% of his DNA. I’d love to be able to stay that positive and always “kill it” as he says.

I almost got through the entire conference without meeting up with Aaron Brazell or Jeremy Wright, two old friends from SitePoint. There are so many different panels and parties, it’s entirely possible to never even be in the same place at the same time. Fortunately, the last day of the conference I ran into both Jeremy and Aaron in the Blogger Lounge. Though it was a hectic day with people in meetings and such, I really enjoyed talking to both Jeremy and Aaron. I was able to pick Jeremy’s brain for a bit about book marketing, a subject he knows well having published Blog Marketing way back in 2005.

Chris Brogan was hanging out at the Pepsi Podcast Lounge one morning and sat down next to me at the bar. I think I met Chris last year at Blog World, but I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, he’s a very approachable guy

I’ve been an author, member and Community Advisor of SitePoint for 8 years now, so when I heard Matt Mickiewicz, the founder of SitePoint, was coming to SxSW I was pretty excited. For some reason, we just couldn’t seem to hook up at the conference. I’d see Matt tweet that he was at one room, and I’d be on the exact opposite side of the convention center. On the last day of the conference, I heard someone talking on a mobile phone… he said “This is Matt with SitePoint.com…” He was sitting right next to me. It couldn’t have worked out better. Matt didn’t have a lot of time, he was running off to a scheduled appointment in about 10 mintues, but we talked for a few minutes and he introduced me to Jason Aiken of 99designs. Matt also interviewed me about my new book coming out in May, published by SitePoint, “The Art & Science of Online Marketing,” co-authored with Shayne Tilley. It was great to finally meet Matt in person.

I almost met Guy Kawasaki. I’ve seen him at several conferences, and he’s a very engaging and entertaining speaker. When we were at the airport waiting on our flight home, Guy was sitting at a terminal just down the way from ours. He was on a phone call when I walked past to grab some lunch, and when I came back he was already boarding the plane. I would’ve loved to have met him, but I’m sure I’ll get a chance at another conference or event. My favorite quote from his keynote, “If you live for the weekends and vacations, your shit is broken!”

In addition to all the great people I met, we also had a few funny or embarrassing, all captured on Twitter for posterity of course! The first full night of parties (which included the Madison and Mohawk) we ended up at Stubs. I don’t remember it all too well, and not because it’s been a month since SxSW. I do remember eating the best smoked wings I’ve ever tasted, which seemed to arrive 30 seconds after we ordered. I also vaguely remember offering to take a photo of two ladies with their camera… and apparently I couldn’t even figure it out because after about 5 tries they just took their camera back. I think Brant may have gotten it on tape, too, but fortunately I haven’t seen the footage.

The next night after a few hours at the Google party, I ventured out alone and ended up at the Pure Volume Lounge. I made it back to the VIP area without a VIP pass, just wandered back not knowing what it was. The second time I tried to walk back I was stopped by a security guard. He was really cool and gave an interesting perspective about how locals perceive SxSW’ers. I did manage to find my way back to the VIP area again, just before someone apparently sprayed a fire extinguisher, ending the party early (at 3:20 AM). I walked about a block before realizing it was really late. Fortunately the cabbies were out in full force, so I made it back to the hotel fast and safe.

Brant rode a mechanical bull at the closing party, which was caught on video! Unfortunately, I’ve been told I can’t post it on YouTube, but it is posted on my Facebook. All you have to do is friend me to see it… The closing party was a pretty good closing to the trip. We had a great time, even though I had a lot of party left in me it’s probably best that I called it quits a little early (i.e. 2 AM). Travel days are no fun.

I was pretty excited about this particular trip to South by Southwest because it couldn’t have come at a better time. With my book being released in May, it was a great chance to talk to people who’ve done it before and get some advice. I’m extremely thankful to everyone that stopped for a few minutes to answer a question or just lend a word of wisdom. I learned so much and met so many great people! We had just a blast, and every day (and night) was an adventure.

So far I haven’t attended many panels, but have met a lot of great people in the halls and at the parties at night (the real reason for coming). I’ll write a follow-up post reviewing the conference and all the people I’ve met, but just wanted to throw out what I was up to…

Of the top 20 Twitter users (according to Twitterholic), 6 of them are companies or use a company logo or graphic (Twitter, CNN, Barack Obama, etc.). Of the remaining 14 people, 8 of them have professional photos. The remaining 6 include Wil Wheaton (cartoon drawing) and several self portraits (Kevin Rose, Alex Albrecht, Michael Arrington). And Jason Calcanis has a photo of his dogs.

So is a professional portait important? The top 20 might be a bad group to evaluate, because most of them had a strong personal brand before Twitter.

I can honestly say that a user’s avatar does have some importance in whether I follow them. I subscribe to several searches in TweetDeck, and the users with professional, well lit portraits stand out… especially if they are well cropped. I think the best portraits are zoomed especially tight (even to cut off part of the face or forehead) and well lit with very light or no shadows on the face.

I don’t have hard evidence to prove it, but if you want to increase your followers and friends a professional portrait would certainly not be a bad idea.