• Published the event on the Web Marketing Seminars page on my Web site. This is a no-brainer and the first, essential step.
• Added the event information (including a link to the online registration) on Facebook, both on my page and as part of the Portland, ME network so that other local people could find it.
• Sent out an email alert to the people who have signed up for my Web Marketing Alerts email newsletter. (You can sign up for this when you sign up for flyte log, our free, monthly email newsletter.)
• Added it as an event on MaineToday.com, the online presence for the Blethen newspapers.
• Added it as a class through Craig’s list.
• Added it at MaineBiz’s event calendar.
• Submitted to Maine Public Broadcasting Network’s event calendar.
• Posted it to my Internet Marketing 101 blog at MaineToday.com (at least twice.)
• Posted it to my flyte blog: web marketing for small business blog (again, at least twice.)
• Posted to Eventful.com, which sends to several other sites including Podbot, Google Calendar, del.icio.us/events, Ping-o-Matic, Technorati, and Upcoming. Several of these sites extend that reach even further through their own network. (Found through Joan Stewart, the Publicity Hound, through Denise Wakeman tip.
• I also learned about EventCrazy.com that way.

I also plan on submitting this event to the print versions of MaineBiz and the Portland Press Herald.

Will I do this for every event? Probably not, but I will try and track which channel is bringing me attendees, by asking everyone at the event.

Your Turn: What tools do you use to promote your events in this 2.0 world? Leave your suggestions in the comments section below.

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Two Billionth Photo Finds Its Way To Flickr

The photo that set this record is rather pretty; it features a eucalyptus tree set against a blue Australian sky.  “yukesmooks” is the photographer, and in the course of receiving 174 comments (and counting) on her picture, she wrote, “Thank you so much for everyone who congratulated me!”

Unfortunately, yukesmooks has yet to receive any goodies from Flickr (aside from a mention on the official blog), but that’s a relatively minor point in this story.  Flickr is one of Yahoo’s most popular properties, and the two billionth photo’s appearance helped confirm that fact; news of it spread as quickly as many of the “Google buys ____” stories that we’ve seen.

Flickr may not measure up to some other services in terms of sheer volume – Facebook’s apparently above 4 billion photos – but it remains a sort of fan favorite.  And all of this hubbub makes Microsoft’s upcoming rival to Flickr look even more silly.

He found code for Jabber transports, which would allow contacting people from other instant messaging networks over Google Talk/Chat’s Jabber connection, which makes sense given the fact that Gmail’s new contact manager asks for Yahoo, MSN and AIM usernames now.

Also, he found code that seems to hint they will be enabling users to choose different colors for labels, which should make quick identification of categories of email messages possible (though how they will manage emails with multiple labels is a mystery to me). Also, you might soon gain the ability to seperate emails from a conversation, a necessary addition to the Gmail conversation management we’ve waited three and a half years for.

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I’ve also seen some horrible pitches. My favorite bad pitch was from someone who didn’t clarify the company of the speaker, and then I went to the PR agency’s website and it was touting how it won some award for Agency of the Year. While I didn’t use that exact pitch, the speaker will likely be added to a related panel as her perspective and company are a perfect fit. That takes us right into the tips:

1. Market a good product or brand. I’ll at least try to find a way to work in a speaker I’ve heard of (in a positive context) or have seen and enjoyed. Even if I don’t know the speaker by name and he or she is from a great company, that’ll often do the trick. It’s not foolproof, but it can help.

2. Make yourself a strong brand when pitching. There’s one speaker who will make it in on the coattails of his PR agency. I’ve heard the speaker before, but they could have put anyone in his place with a similar proposal and I’d have likely found some way to get him in.

3. Be original. I love the pitches that take a very stale topic, like search engine optimization, and give a completely fresh angle on it. One of those pitches in particular made it in easily. In fact, when I asked someone for their take on any sessions I should include, that was the only one she mentioned.

4. Be unoriginal. Don’t you love points that totally contradict each other? If you can’t be totally original, then do a solid job pitching something that a lot of others are pitching. There were three themes that kept emerging in a number of pitches, so I grouped those proposals together. All three of those themes made it to my ‘must include’ list, generally just taking one session title and description from the best proposal, but sometimes mashing them up and creating this hybrid that I hope makes sense. When I took elements from multiple sessions, I’d include all of the proposed speakers for those sessions, and then I’d sometimes include speakers from sessions that were related. I knew these other speakers could fill out the panel, even though the pitches themselves didn’t make the cut. It’s still a win for the speaker (and, if applicable, the marketer or firm doing the pitch).

5. Be timely. With all the buzz about video these days, how come not a single pitch was focused on video search? I had to create one from scratch since it’s too big a topic to ignore. I’ll also find my own speakers for it, since hardly anyone seemed to be a great fit for that topic. Another topic was especially timely and also original, and it will likely make the cut (if it doesn’t, it’s a lock for the Search Insider Summit).

6. Follow directions. Make it clear who the speaker is and who the PR firm or in-house marketer is. Check the right boxes. It goes a long way in preventing the event organizer from thinking you’re an idiot.

7. Fill in the optional fields. For this event’s forms, you didn’t have to fill in the speaker’s bio, but it helped for some speakers who had it. I especially liked knowing if some marketers were seasoned speakers. Granted, I’ve heard enough CEOs speak who should never be on a stage but wind up with lengthy resumes. Still, credibility helps. I don’t think a single proposal mentioned whether that speaker or company had been part of the conference before, and that information might have made me take a second look at some proposals. 

8. Recommend others. When two proposals are similar, I’ll give priority to the one who names some great panelists. One in particular listed all the company’s competitors to be helpful. There’s a big difference between a proposal that mentions the speaker will provide case studies and a proposal that lists other speakers who may be available to speak.

9. Avoid cliches, especially in the titles. It just saves the event organizer time from rewriting the pitch later.

10. Don’t pass off corporate collateral as a speaker proposal. Some proposals reflected the same copy that’s used on their companies’ websites. One speaker probably would have been in the running for a related session, but I’m not sure if he could talk to anything besides his own company. Write about a topic, an idea, a trend – anything besides the company itself.

11. Know the event. This is another given, but come on. A number of proposals were acting like they were pitching keynote speakers for an event that even turns most of its keynotes into panels. There was no chance that any of these sessions would have fewer than three speakers and a moderator.

12. Show excitement. While most proposals felt like this was the same pitch over and over again, a few showed genuine excitement for the subject. It’s contagious.

When I help with these events, I ultimately want to be enthusiastic about it. I want to be able to tell others, "You can come to any of these sessions and will be grateful you were there. You’ll learn something, you’ll hear a great speaker, you’ll meet interesting people." The agenda for the last Search Insider Summit was like that, and the tracks I helped with for OMMA Hollywood earlier this year were close (it was my first time helping select proposals for that event, so I had to learn a few lessons as to what panels worked best for it). I’d love to know that I don’t have room for some amazing sessions and proposals because there are too many great ones to choose from.

It’s still early, but I have that great feeling about the event. That’s entirely thanks to the proposals that followed these guidelines and inspired them.

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Presumably, this takes advantage of features developed for Google Docs’ upcoming Google Presentations software, which is supposed to release sometime this summer, or even uses some of the tech acquired from Tonic Systems earlier this year.

Perhaps someone at Google could explain why they don’t support Microsoft Office 2007 formats yet, either for previewing or sending to Google Docs, when the beta was released over a year ago, and the software has been sold since November? This screenshot should have links to View As HTML and Open as a Google Document, as shown in Ionut Alex’s screenshot of what Gmail does with .DOC files, but Gmail doesn’t support .DOCX yet. Why not? There’s been plenty of time.

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Upcoming.Org Now Upcoming With Yahoo Local

Old school Upcoming users, you get a badge and a t-shirt. Everyone gets new features to play with on the site, including a redesigned home page. They also get to login with a Yahoo ID, a change the Upcoming team welcomed with open arms:

You wouldn’t know it, but our legacy sign-in system is an endless source of headaches. About 1/3rd of our support requests come from people who didn’t get their registration email, forgot their password, forgot their username, or can’t login for some other reason. Since nearly everyone online already has a Yahoo! account, this opens up Upcoming to a huge new audience.

When logging in to Upcoming now, those existing users will be offered a free t-shirt (limited supplies, so get in early). Existing settings will be migrated to the new version of the site.

Event and venue pages, and the new homepage, will feature relevant photos from Flickr. Upcoming users can share their event pictures as well.

Location support should be much improved with the redesign. The old Metro system Upcoming used has been sent off to the junkyard. Yahoo’s database of places as used by Flickr and Yahoo’s Search Marketing supports Upcoming and eliminates the problems that came from user-defined metros.

The move to Yahoo’s Local platform should make more events available on Upcoming. Events posted there will combine with the contributions from Upcoming’s members. It could be that Yahoo finally has the consolidation bug, and Upcoming’s shift may be the first of several Yahoo has available to it from its various acquisitions.

It’s great to see more media coverage of ad exchanges, and since launching ours almost two years ago at Right Media we’ve often felt alone beating the drum of the ad exchange. One quote I particularly loved in the NYT article was:

DoubleClick, based in New York, views the exchange as the centerpiece of a growth plan and may derive the majority of revenue from the new service within five years, said David Rosenblatt, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview yesterday.

Good to see that others think exchanges have a bright future!

Other coverage:

• Techmeme
• Screenwerk
• Centernetworks
• ZDNet Digital Markets
• PaidContent
• Alarm:Clock
• Clickety Clack

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Now I consider myself among the category of "prosumers" that are willing to spend money, time and effort on the photography, but will probably never do it professionally.  I have had my Portfolio Gallery linked on my blog for some time (though it’s well hidden at the bottom of my sidebar) and have published photos and sold several stock images in the past.

As part of my passion for photography, I am an big fan of Thomas Hawk’s photoblog – one that many would consider the leading photoblog out there.  I have corresponded with him in the past – but it was particularly interesting to read his post last week about the upcoming Canon Mark III Digital SLR.  He’s exactly the kind of consumer evangelist that companies should die for.  He uses Canon products, is loyal to them, and talks about their product range with passion.  His blog has thousands of readers a day, he has a high degree of influence and even stated in his post about the Mark III that he would love to try it out.

As a marketer, if I worked for Canon – I would put all these pieces together, recognize the opportunity and ship him a new Mark III to try out as soon as I could.  I might even hand deliver it.  This is a perfect authentic word of mouth marketing opportunity just waiting to be tapped and the only barrier is the right person at Canon finding out about it and deciding to do something about it.  So much of successful blog "outreach" and marketing is about this … uncovering a brand enthusiast and giving them an opportunity to share their affinity for you with their readers. 

This is what Briggs & Riley managed to do by contacting me after I posted about their luggage on my blog.  So the real question is, do you know how to find the highly influential enthusiasts like Thomas Hawk that are talking about your brand right now?  Do you have a plan for building a relationship with them?  In many ways, this could be the easiest marketing opportunity ever, and nearly every brand has it.  All you have to do is find a better way of listening for it, and identify the right way to do something about it.  Canon, are you listening?

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This is fascinating, but even more so is the comments on her post. People from 30Boxes, AIM, etc. are telling how their service does something similar. That’s interesting in that I had no idea there were companies doing this AND in that these companies know that these comments will resonate to a targeted audience that they want to reach.

From a marketing standpoint, this clearly demonstrates the need to follow not only your name online, but conversations that are of import to your company. No search feed would have clued these people into Emily’s post.

These are likely either 1-regular readers of her feed or 2-regular Techmeme readers (being that the post is now on Techmeme). Either way, they are plugged in enough to know how to mention their company without sounding spammy at all. In fact, they have added their commentary to a blog post that is very relevant to their company.

No advertising will give these companies what these guys just gave them:

1. The real attention of a vocal, and well-read, blogger

2. The focused, relevant attention of all her readers

3. The attention of all the Techmeme readers who clicked through to read Emily’s post

Impressive on all accounts. Make it someone’s job to follow relevant feeds and comment when appropriate (and only then). If you don’t have someone on your team to do this, hire someone. This is WOM at its finest.

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So to help anyone interested in learning more about Digg sort through the jungle of information out there I have created the following list of bloggers who in my eyes have proved through their writings on the subject that they really know what they are talking about. These guys have established themselves as authorities on the subject of Digg. So here is the list of the Digg experts along with a few links to what they have written about Digg. I am sure there are others experts out there but these are the ones that I have found to be the most insightful. If you know of anyone else who deserves to be on this list please list them in the comments.

Neil Patel

- Beginner’s Guide to Digg
- How to get on the Digg homepage
- How Not To Get Your URL Banned From Digg
- Spying On Digg

Muhammad Saleem

- The Digg Economy: Socialist Bookmarking
- Why Digg’s Numbers Matter
- Why The Wisdom of Crowds Fails on Digg
- Legalizing The Underground Digg Economy

Todd Malicoat

- Etiquette for Submitting Stories to Digg
- The Search Marketers Guide to Digg

Ozgur Alaz

- Top 10 Actionable Tips (Rules) That Make Me Top Digg User

Stephen

- On Diggs and Votes, but no Reads.
- Digg’s Upcoming Features?

Cristian Mezei

- The Digg Algorithm – Unofficial FAQ

Rand Fishkin

- Why It Doesn’t Pay to Game Digg (or Other Link Aggregation Sites)
- Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content

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Chris Sandberg is an independent internet marketer from who blogs regularly about search marketing and internet business.