Nov 10, 2010

Any sane marketer these days is trying to be in tune with SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), as well as social media. The combination of all of those elements together gets you the most bang for your buck. Think of it as a product portfolio… technically, you could go with just one, but why not diversify to broaden your earnings and lower your risk?

Backlinking is a critical element of any solid online marketing campaign. The ability to identify the appropriate link sources, reach out to them and acquire a backlink with great anchor text is an art. Personally, it is something that I’m trying to improve.

I had the chance to chat with Garrett French of Ontolo (one of the smartest backlinking dudes around) and Al Scillitani of Phonebooth (analytics genius, colleague and all around nice guy) to learn more about backlinking.

Learn about backlinking in less than 20 minutes:

An introduction to backlinking
How backlinking impacts marketing
How social media is changing backlinking

Are you experimenting with backlinking and integrating it into your marketing campaigns?

5in5 Episode 4 with Todd Simon, Senior VP of Omaha Steaks

Five questions. Five minutes or less.

5in5 is a video interview series to ask smart people five questions in less than five minutes. It gives me the opportunity to learn about them and get answers to tough questions in a short amount of time.

5in5- five questions in five minutes with chris moody

Why the name 5in5?

Simple. Five questions. Five minutes or less.

What did you ask Todd?

1. Being a family owned company for five generations, how do you keep your culture and values consistent?
2. As Senior Vice President, what do you do to make sure you’re in tune with your market?
3. What is the best piece of business advice you’ve ever been given?
4. How has social media changed your business?
5. What did you want to be when you grew up?

As I discussed in my Blogworld 2010 recap, I had the pleasure of meeting some of the folks making Omaha Steaks run smoothly in Vegas. Todd Simon is Senior VP and a key member of the Simon family that is on their fifth generation of running a highly successful business. We caught up to answer five questions in five minutes. Follow @omahasteaks on Twitter.

Freezerburns Live + Phonebooth = Crazy amounts of Movember love

We’re raising money to change the face of men’s cancer. Join us at http://live.freezerburns.com and let Greg know what you think @freezerburns.

Should be a rocking time for a great cause. Thanks to Phonebooth for setting up the live calls.

Are you influential where it matters… with the people you love?

Nellary and Chris Moody

This is not a social media post. Nor a marketing post. Not branding. Not design either.

I recently stopped what I was doing to take a few minutes to watch a video on YouTube. It was the lead-in that got me really. I’ve seen Scott Stratten speak twice and hung out with him a few times, but it was the “most emotional talk I’ve given” excerpt that made me click. I’ll embed the 15 minute video below and highly recommend that you take the time to watch it.

Are our priorities out of whack?

Define success. Define the inputs you think are required for success. Did you only picture business meetings, presentations, rockstar ideas or did you think of loved ones? Spouses, children, family members, friends. These days we measure everything. As you read this, I can tell you where you came from, what browser you are using. how many other folks use that browser, how long you read this, what you clicked next and so on. Are we measuring the right things?

I consider myself to be ambitious. Ambition is sexy. Driving to be great at anything is a quality that I highly admire and find myself gravitating towards others that feel the same. As I was chugging through the NC State MBA program (I wanted a better job), we had a very successful Founder and CEO visit our campus. I will never forget what he said:

Success takes time. Success takes hard work. Being a business leader requires you to put 99% of your focus on your work and the rest on your family. There will be late nights. There will be missed experiences. But to be a global business leader, you have to put in the time, put work first and be great at what you do.

I was young. I was impressionable. But I immediately said to myself “are you kidding?” If that is success… I’ll settle with mediocrity (which I despise). I’m not saying that I don’t work late some nights… I do. But my first priority is not my work. My work is not my life. That does not hinder me from being successful. I’ll only work somewhere that shares the same values and priorities.

Scott’s talk sparked a lot of those memories for me. We’re so hung up on being a big deal to whatever segment we’re in and trying to measure our influence that we may be missing the point.

25 years ago today, I was diagnosed with leukemia.

This is not a sob story and I don’t want sympathy… it is just funny how things are always timed like that (Scott’s video posted yesterday). I was a kid. I had no clue what leukemia was and didn’t know how to act.

My parents were devastated when the doctor at Duke gave us the news and a less than three year old boy looked at them and said “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be alright.” In retrospect, maybe I liked a challenge. Maybe I was destined to be a comforter like most folks in my family. Maybe I had no clue what I was even saying. Regardless, that was a quarter of a century ago.

I never lost my hair and although it did stunt my growth, I’m still 6’4″ tall. I’ve been in remission for almost 23 years and while it was nothing out of the ordinary for me… I’m guessing it had a rather large impact on the people that love me.

“Keep going until we stop.”

Wanting to provide for your family or make others proud does not trump the fact that they want you. Take the time to be the husband, wife, brother, sister, son, daughter, father, mother or friend you can be and measure that influence.

Is there a @Klout for personal relationships?

We work. We blog. We tweet. We network. We share. We comment. We try the best we can to be the best we can. We try to make an impact to move up to the next rung on the ladder. We strive for leadership. At times we even crave acknowledgement. But how important are any of these things once we get home? Thanks Scott for a good kick in the tail that I needed this week.

Invest 15 minutes and watch this video then go give someone a hug. That is all.

Out of the blue… Sears has an incredible Zombie catalog for Halloween

Now… this is Sears we are talking about. The same Sears catalog that we probably used to pick our Christmas gifts just “rebranded” for Halloween with zombies…

Really?

This. Is. Awesome. Rock on Sears and way to come out of nowhere with this.