Last night I popped my #Cbusr Meetup cherry! To quote Austin Powers, “Ooo, Behave!”

First off, I’ll just say that I have a pounding headache, but I guess that just means that I had a good time! Second, it was great to finally meet a lot of awesome people, as well as to catch up with old friends. A big thanks to Woodlands Tavern for hosting, Cheryl Harrison for planning and promoting, and CBusr.com for making it possible for so many local Columbus peeps to connect, and TechLife Ohio for sponsoring.

As far as CBusr goes, I must say I really love what they are doing and I really think they are building a new type of social network – that is, one based around cities and communities. In my opinion, their platform and model could easily translate to other cities (although the name may have to change). It will be interesting to watch where they take it.

I just want to give shout outs to some of my old friends that I was able to catch up with, my online friends who I was able to finally meet in person, as well as those new faces that I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time last night (in no particular order):

I’m sure that I met more than that, but the cloudiness of a slight hangover is stopping me from remembering. Either way, if you’re on the list above or not, I toast you and look forward to attending future events with you!

Also, I got a wicked-awesome CBusr t-shirt! I’m a sucker for cheap (or free) t-shirts…

Note: The Awesome T-Shirt was made by a Local Columbus T-Shirt Company called TraxlerTees. Props to them!

In my opinion, the whole point of social media is to develop relationships. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and in this case CBusr are the tools by which people can start the relationships and interact. The crazy thing is that many of these relationships wouldn’t have been formed otherwise without the platforms.

However, what the platforms are not is an excuse to be lazy. I repeat – social media platforms are not there to enable you to be lazy. If you want to develop relationships, you have to try.

So what I realized earlier this month when I decided to attend the event last night was that I was not practicing what I was preaching. I said to myself, “You’re such an A-Hole. You’re out there telling other people how important it is to develop relationships and you’re not fully following your own advice! Flippin idiot! Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (Napolean Dynamite reference).”

So for me the next logical step was to take the online offline and start meeting the people I only know on Twitter, etc in real life – i.e. stop being a damned lazy geek and actually be social. Now, since I’m super awkward when it comes to making small talk with strangers, I naturally had a fear of this. BUT the best part about this was that the people I was meeting for the first time weren’t strangers at all.

In fact, there were several people who I’d never met in person in my life who I was able to walk up to and say “Hey (so and so), how’s it going?” and get the same response in return as if we’d known each other for years! I knew people by name as well as things about them without ever meeting them. If you ask me, that is pretty cool – and maybe creepy – but I’ll stick with cool!

I’ve heard people say that meeting social media folks in real life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I totally disagree. After last night, I confirmed that belief. Taking it offline is a great way to meet new people, make new friends, develop more trust, solidify relationships, etc. Plus it’s cool to see how people differ from their online persona.

Anyhow, that’s my 2 cents. It was nice to meet everyone and I look forward to seeing you all again in the future.

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Are you new to online marketing? You might have hired someone to do it for you and you get confused by the language used? You do not have to be an Internet geek to understand the ‘language’.  Here are the top ten acronyms used in online marketing explained in a simple way.

HTML
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.  This is the standard language behind most websites and what the search engines read when they look at/crawl your site.  It is made up of hundreds of tags which has all the content on your website and tell the search engines exactly what is in that content.  You can easily see this by going to any website and view the page source by hitting ctrl+u on your keyboard.  Each tag opens with an angle bracket and the tag closes with an angle bracket followed by a forward slash and another end bracket (i.e.

).

CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and dictates the way the HTML code looks and is presented.

XML
XML stands for Extensible Markup Language.  This language is more generic and is one that is read by a computer.    In online marketing, you most likely need to have a XML sitemap, which means having a map of all the content on your site because search engines specifically prefer to read this format.

CRM
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Manager.  This is great at making sure that your sales team can see what revenues have increased.  It also helps identify things like who are your loyal customers and what aspect of your business is not doing too well.

CMS
CMS is a Content Management System commonly used to manage the content of your website.  Examples of this are Joomla and WordPress.  They allow you to access a private admin area where you can either add, edit or delete pages of your website.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator states exactly where your content is located on the Internet.  Example: http://www.thenorthernoffice.com

SERPs
SERP’s stands for Search Engine Results Pages.  If you hear your SEO telling you that your site is at position 20 in the SERP’s, this means your site is appearing around the middle of page 3.  Its best to have  you site appear to a closer position.

SEM
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and can encompass just about anything that involves publicising your website on the Internet.  In includes things like SEO and PPC, social media, and Online PR.

SEO
You would probably hear this one more, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.  The purpose of this is to improve your websites visibility in the organic search engine results pages.

PPC
PPC stands for Pay Per Click.  These are the results that appear in the paid results in the right hand side under the heading ‘Ads’.  You only pay when someone actually clicks on your ads.

There are still other acronyms and marketing jargon that you might encounter later, but this should give you an idea about the basics of online marketing.  Need help with your business’ Online Marketing? The Northern Office is a marketing consultancy firm specializing in innovative marketing support for SME’s.  The Northern Office  can provide you a complete range of online marketing strategies that will help you get concrete results out of your investment. Contact us for more details.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 at 6:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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topseos.com, the independent authority on search vendors, has named the best SEO companies for April 2011. ThinkBIGsites has made it to #2 rankings based upon an in-depth review of the internet marketing service provider.Online PR News – 22-April-2011 –The independent authority on search vendors, topseos.com, has announced the Best SEO Companies for April 2011. An independent research team that was assigned to the Search Engine Optimization category reviewed each applicant in order to determine the top SEO companies. ThinkBIGsites made its presence as one of the Top 10 players in the rankings for this month in a field of thousands worldwide.An extensive review was completed and the research team found that ThinkBIGsites is a pioneering leader in Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Bid Management, Social Media and Website Design. Last year, ThinkBIGsites is an SEO powerhouse that has captivated the attention of many online customers because of its outstanding SEO results for their clients on a consistent basis over an extended period of time. As the research team has probed deeper into what made this company stand out among its peers, it quickly became evident as topseos.com received overwhelmingly positive feedback from their consistently growing list of clients from all over the world.As an independent ranking authority, topseos.com could not ignore the ever increasing global buzz that surrounds ThinkBIGsites. Based on further extensive evaluation of ThinkBIGsites.com, the ranking authority felt compelled to move them from 10th position in SEO all the way up to 2nd position for this month of April 2011. In fact, it can be expected that ThinkBIG moves up again to the top position in the coming months based solely upon client results, client satisfaction, client retention as well as a tremendous increase in new accounts and revenues. This company is clearly focused on becoming the most well known and trusted SEO/PPC company in the world today and they are on pace to do just that.Established in 2007, ThinkBIGsites' proven track record of success and their continued drive for excellence has earned the company the reputation of delivering proven, safe, fast and affordable results to businesses of all sizes and types. Its full line of scalable "Organic" SEO solutions are small enough to accommodate the local business owner and large enough to impress any Fortune 500 company. ThinkBIGsites thinks outside the box while conventional SEO Firms continue to go by the "old book"; and while they may promise their clients the world, they often leave them with as little online web presence as having a "billboard on the moon." With their Organic SEO, ThinkBIG can definitely get results their clients ever wanted.Moreover, ThinkBIGsites owns several top rankings in topseos.com for this month of April 2011, #2 - Best SEO Company, #4 - Best Social Media Marketing Company, #5 - Best Pay Per Click Management Company and #6 - Best Link Building Company. The firm has gained reputation in implementing effective SEO techniques by controlling their clients websites? popularity and authenticity. topseos.com has been ranking the best internet marketing service providers since 2002. As the independent authority on search vendors they have connected thousands of businesses with internet marketing firms that have provided top notch services. Over 50,000 visitors connect with topseos.com every month in search of the best. In addition to the rankings of the best internet marketing service providers, visitors to the site can find information on the latest changes within the SEO industry.To view the complete list of the Best SEO companies, visit:
http://www.topseos.com/rankings-of-best-seo-companiesTo find out more about the Top #2 SEO Firm, ThinkBIGsites, visit their profile at:
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