This is a bit of a digression from the social media/SEO sphere, but I’ve been straight-up ruminating on this since 2008 and want to kvetch about it some.

Forrester Research’s Josh Bernoff, whose book Groundswell (co-authored with Charlene Li) is one that I’ve gifted more than once this year, blogged a few days ago about a [...]

I’m delving into my own inbox to talk about link building again.  Maintaining a personal blog with its own modest following apart from the work I do at Cactus means that I get a literal ton of requests for links, promotion and publicity, and the majority of them are just like the one I called [...]

So, last night I opened up my inbox and found this:

SUBJECT: link exchange offer
Hello Webmaster,

My name is [REDACTED]. I am doing link exchange for one of my client. I visited your website and interested in Link Exchange on your site.

I will add your website link on quality websites. I have more than 200 websites [...]

No, not the coming of age roller-skating drama starring Lil Bow Wow. That, as any true film buff would know, is Roll Bounce. Though I’d love to talk about that, I’m told I have to talk about search engine ranking factors, and one that flew under most of our collective radars - [...]

The death knell rang for microblogging platform Pownce this week; the brainchild of Leah Culver and Digg mucky-muck Kevin Rose was purchased by venerable blogging vendors Six Apart. 6A is best known for the creation of LiveJournal, but also responsible for Movable Type, TypePad and the blog/social network hybrid Vox. Pownce is going [...]

It’s been live for three days and has amassed nearly a million views at the time that I sit and write this (by the time this posts, it could be well over a million), but Bike Hero isn’t going to save the Guitar Hero franchise.

Oh, it’s thoroughly entertaining. That’s not the problem. Here, check [...]

I know that we’re kind of fun and laid back (comparatively speaking) here on SC’s SEO Blog, but let’s put on our Common Sense Hats for a second.
We all know the value of repetition, right?  When I taught writing, I’d use repetition in my notes and PowerPoint presentations to increase my students’ retention. From repeating [...]

Last week, I talked to the Nonprofit Summit at Luzerne County Community College about blogging and social media.  I don’t say that to underscore that I’m kind of a big deal (trust me, I’m not), but as a set up to this:  My co-presenter (John Dawe) and I stressed that Twitter is a great tool [...]

You know what I hate? “Viral Marketing.” Which isn’t to say that I hate quality content becoming viral. Instead, I hate the notion that viral marketing is something you can reliably plan.

Most people I meet who believe this fall into two categories:

People who are enamored by the amorphous power of the [...]

Darth Vader has 16,313 followers on Twitter.  With updates like, “To all troopers: When searching for droids with stolen Death Star Battle plans, check behind ALL doors, even the ones that are locked,” and his revelation that he was dressing as Vice President Dick Cheney for Halloween this year, it’s a safe bet that Vader’s [...]