Guy Kawasaki at PubCon Austin

Live from Austin PubCon, March 11, 2009:

Guy Kawasaki of AllTop.com said he was late to blogging. First year was easy because he just regurgitated his existing content. Second year was tough. Third year he hit the wall. Then, he discovered Twitter.

“I was born to tweet!”

It took him a month or two to figure it out. At first, it was “what is this crap?” Only 140 characters?

Now he says, do you know how much better the world would be if all communications was limited to 140 characters?

“Twitter for me is a weapon to promote AllTop.com. I believe I have to tweet high value, very informative links so that people will tolerate my promotion of Alltop.”

Alltop.com is Kawasaki’s topic related “magazine” site.

The moment you go to search.twitter.com and search for yourself or company, you open yourself up to finding conversations, he says.

One of his favorite tools is Twitter Hawk which always looks for a string, drafts auto tweet and sends to persons looking for that string. Twitter Hawk records that it sent a tweet to a Twit and will not send to that person again. It also costs .05 each to send the tweets to help reduce spamming. Check it out at http://www.twitterhawk.com/ .

Isn’t this spamming?

“If I do it, it’s good marketing. If someone does it to me, it’s spam,” Guy says with a smile.

Another great utility he recommends is Tynt. With Tynt, you copy a line of javascript into you blog code. When someone copies text from your blog, an attribution link (your blog) shows up. Great for content theft because it drives traffic back to you and it provides a management console where you can see what is being copied. Check out http://www.Tynt.com .

And, Guy thinks that the more dumb an idea, the more likely it is to work, citing examples of ideas that sound so far out that they sound ridiculous, but are successful.

His current book is Reality Check and his web site is http://www.guykawasaki.com .

Losing to Win: Taking the Prize by Blogging

Unlike a certain recent political candidate we’re all familiar with, I know when it’s time to concede. John Carcutt is the winner of the Search Engine Journal Blog Off. John’s finalist post Are S E O Forums Still Needed? beat out my own 25 Blog Optimization Tips Even Dear Old Dad Could Ace to take the top prize.

What can I say? John has this ability to come up with topics near and dear to an SEO’s heart, write great content about them and attract Sphinns like a magnet.

Great work, John!

I really don’t see coming in second for the competition as a loss, though. Far from it. I blog because I love to share what I know. That’s really what blogging is all about. Every time I get the opportunity to publish some of the things I have learned in a subject I am passionate about (in this case, SEO), I’m a winner. It’s such a feel-good thing for me. As far as I am concerned, sharing amounts to taking the prize!

That’s what my blog, The Web Optimist, is all about. I certainly don’t make money with it. It’s just a place for me to share the tips and tricks I pick up along the way as an in-house SEO. I also manage, optimize, edit and write most of the content for The Eye Zone, the eyewear blog of FramesDirect.com, my employer, so I do a LOT of writing every week for it. Squeezing time in to write for my own blog (or something for Search Engine Journal if I think I’ve got something good), can sometimes be difficult. But, when I can, I love doing it.

So, we’re all winners here. Lots of great content and tips came out of this competition. The folks over at Search Engine Journal are the best!

Now, I think I’ll retire to the chaise lounge by the pool and console myself with the bright California sunshine, clear blue skies, gorgeous Palm Springs mountain views and a glass of White Merlot (or two).

Loser? Naw…