I just had the pleasure of recently moderating the panel at Ultra Light Startups “Employment Related Business Models“. Hosted by For Your Imagination, the recent Ultra Light Startup, yet again, blew me away. I’ve attended their events since September ‘08, taking pictures and submitting post event write-ups. Here are a few of the recently covered topics:

1. Web Analytics
2. Revenue Model Workshop
3. Monetization of Ads
4. Outsourcing
5. SEO/SEM
6. Open Source CMS <-Popular Event!

This past month continued to bring in new faces as well as the “ULS Regulars”, and I was very surprised that a niche topic like “Employment Business Models” drew as large of a crowd as it did. Some of the topics covered included:

• What are the most promising niches and technologies for employment-related startups?
• Revenue-generating technology for bloggers and web publishers – job boards, services and related packages. An overview and comparison of platforms available to publishers.
• Efficiency-enhancing technology for recruiters – social networks, requisition-sharing tools, etc. Which tools are essential for recruiters and why?
• Innovative employment-related startups – TheLadders, Indeed, SimplyHired, JobScore, Doostang. Which niches and approaches are the most profitable and fastest growing?
• Job search on social platforms – LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. How are these platforms changing the business of recruiting?

The reason I was picked to moderate this event was because of my background in the employment related online space. I recently co-founded  RezRedo, a vertical search engine for job experiences found in resumes. The first search engine of its kind, RezRedo is opening doors to new methods of resume writing and job related research. Prior to RezRedo, I was a recruiter at AC Lion and headed all online marketing and web related initiatives for the firm including: Blogging, Social Networking, Web Analytics, E-Mail Marketing, SEO, and exploring new advertising options. But most of this experience fails in comparison to that of the panelists:

Panelists:

• Allen Ackerman, Founder/CEO of A-List Placement, I Have A Req & MAD-G
• Charlie O’Donnell, Co-founder/CEO of Path 101, Founder – nextNY, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at ITAC
• Jeff Stewart, Founder of Urgent Career and Urgent Ventures
• Eric Yoon, Founder/CEO of JobScout,  Founder & former CEO – JobThread

Before the panel began, I had the opportunity to present a powerpoint presentation that helped break down the Employment Space. Take a look and see the presentation for yourself:

*Click here for a copy of the powerpoint seen in the video above.

This past month there were over 70 people listed. To get a feel for what types of entrepreneurs attend and present their ideas at this event,  take a look at some of the attendees:

• Chubby Brain by Anand Sanwal
• Urban Interns by Cari Sommer
• DubFiler by Corey Maass
• Gercek Design/Web Development by Gercek Karakus
• Groupable by Gerrit Hall
• Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
• J.C. Neu & Associates by Jeffrey Neu
• SEO Drop by John Murch
• College Mogul by Matt Brockman
• The Factionist by Nate Berkopec
• CareerGrub by Phil Kim

Be sure to sign up for next months Ultra Light event: Monetizing Online Video. You can sign up on their website or via meetup.com.

(*If you are interested in reading more about this past event,  check out Ultralight Startups meet-up, March, 2009 by Corey Maass)

I have been chosen to moderate next months Ultra Light Startups event, and after attending last months Ultra Light Web Analytics, I have a feeling this month will have a great turnout.

This Months Topic…

This months topic will be Employment Related Business Models. The topics are as follows:

• What are the most promising niches and technologies for employment-related startups?
• Revenue-generating technology for bloggers and web publishers – job boards, services and related packages. An overview and comparison of platforms available to publishers.
• Efficiency-enhancing technology for recruiters – social networks, requisition-sharing tools, etc. Which tools are essential for recruiters and why?
• Innovative employment-related startups – TheLadders, Indeed, SimplyHired, JobScore, Doostang. Which niches and approaches are the most profitable and fastest growing?
• Job search on social platforms – LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. How are these platforms changing the business of recruiting?

The reason I was picked to moderate this event was because of my background in the employment related online space. I recently co-founded  RezRedo, a vertical search engine for job experiences found in resumes. The first search engine of its kind, RezRedo is opening doors to new methods of resume writing and job related research. Prior to RezRedo, I was a recruiter at AC Lion and headed all online marketing and web related initiatives for the firm including: Blogging, Social Networking, Web Analytics, E-Mail Marketing, SEO, and exploring new advertising options. But most of this experience fails in comparison to that of the panelists:

The Panelists

Allen Ackerman

Allen is founder of A-List Placement, a digital media recruiting firm, and recently launched I Have A Req, a private social network that helps recruiters collaborate on placements and share commissions through a ‘cloud recruiting’ model. Allen is also founder of MAD-G, (aka Mobile Application Development Group) which takes a progressive ‘consortium-based’ approach to providing its clients with cutting edge mobile solutions. Allen honed his skills as a software developer, creating applications for companies such as Goldman Sachs and Sony Music.

Charlie O’Donnell

Charlie is the Co-Founder & CEO of Path 101, a NYC startup that is revolutionizing career guidance though the mining of data from millions of public resumes. After funding VCs at the GM pension fund, and funding startups at Union Square Ventures, Charlie spent a year as Director of Consumer Products at Oddcast before starting Path 101 with Alex Lines. The founder of nextNY, he also teaches entrepreneurship at Fordham University and is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at ITAC.

Jeff Stewart

Jeff is the founder of Urgent Career, a technology start-up seeking to revolutionize the way companies find, screen and assess sales talent. He is a serial entrepreneur, inventor and investor specializing in technology-enabled growth businesses through his angel fund, Urgent Ventures. Jeff has founded over a half dozen companies which if combined employ over 600 people. Jeff writes about start-ups at his blog, Urgent Speed.

Eric Yoon

Eric is the founder and CEO of JobScout, a daily email digest of great jobs in new york city for business development, product management, marketing and sales professionals. Formerly, he was a founder of JobThread and CEO since 2003. Eric has been in the online recruitment industry for the last 10 years in mainly product management roles (Product Manager at HotJobs, Product Development Manager at Bernard Hodes Group, Product Manager at The New York Times Digital for Job Market).

Event/Ticket Information

The event is going to take place on March 5th, at 6:30-9pm, at For Your Imagination. If you are interested in attending, it’s only $5 to attend and Pizza/Drinks will be served.  This is a great opportunity for recruiters, business owners, and publishers to network and grow their own businesses. The event page can be found on http://ultralightstartups.com/newyork/employment-related-business-models.html. If you are interested in reading more, check out the BusinessWeek.com article featuring Ultra Light Startups.

Due to growing number of attendees, an expectadly large crowd of ultra light entrepreneurs, I am looking forward to this event seeing you there!

The recent Ultra Light Startup, yet again, blew me away. I’ve attended their events since September ‘08, taking pictures and submitting post event write-ups (Revenue Model Workshop, Monetization of Ads,  Outsourcing, SEO/SEM, and the popular Open Source CMS). I had a feeling this month would draw a larger croud due to the recent article in BusinessWeek.com featuring Ultra Light Startups.

This month presented yet another relevant topic drawing one of the largest crowds in Ultra Light history: Ultra Light Web Analytics. Topics included:

• What is Web Analytics? – definitions, terms, objectives
• Why is analytics so critical for a startup? What insights are going to justify the time spent on analytics?
• Most analytics resources are written towards operators of very high-traffic sites. What techniques are important to know and apply at my startup?
• What are the free analytics tools available and what is each best for? Will I ever need to buy analytics tools?
• Practical advice for maximizing your web analytics investment
• Startup success stories attributable to effective use of Web Analytics

With 4 sponsors (Sun Microsystems, J.C. Neu & Associates, TheHatchery and For Your Imagination) and a large venue, this month presented its attendees with a great opportunity to comfortably network and learn. As usual, entrepreuneurs were given 60 seconds each to pitch their businesses. Besides promoting my own startup, RezRedo.com, here are 5 other noteworthy ultra lights:

1. BabyNameWizard – Baby naming expert network w/ proprietary technology
2. Boomerater – Online advice for Baby Boomers.
3. Groupable – Helps groups get sponsors.
4. ProCompare – Review of business products.
5. The Factionist – Clothing and products for the ethically conscious.

Some of the other businesses present included: Customizable shirts, plus sized clothing, cheap/simple web design, marketing agencies, raw chocolate importers…as you can see, a highly eclectic mix! In addition to the 60 second pitches, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks and CloudContacts shared his “Ultra Light Success Stories”. The crowd looked generally pleased with his presentation and Q&A responses.

Surprisingly, the pizza arrived on time this month, and the networking/card swapping/pizza topping session lasted a good 1/2 hour. I was busy setting up my video camera and as the lights began to dim, I was ready to go.  After everybone found their seats, moderator Maisha Walker (President of MessageMedium and Inc.com Columnist) gave a quick powerpoint presenation covering the backgound of web analytics and introduced the following panelists (2 of which were active board members of the WAA – Web Analytics Association):

• Dennis Mortensen, Dir. Data Insights,Yahoo!/Author, Yahoo! Web Analytics
• Marshall Sponder, Sr.Web Analyst, Monster.com/Board Member, WAA
• Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder, Future Now, Inc./Founder, WAA

I have prepared a shortened video version of the 45 minute panel and embedded it here. Check it out:

Be sure to sign up for next months Ultra Light event: Employment Related Business Models. I will have the pleasure of moderating the panel and, due to growing number of attendees, an expectadly large crowd of ultra light entrepreneurs.  I look forward to seeing you there!

(*If you are interested in reading more about this past event,  Sun Employee, Robin Goldfarb Wilensky (aka: Rockin’ Rob) also published a write-up. Check it out for more good words about Ulra Light Startups!)

Founded 10 months ago by Graham Lawlor, Ultra Light Startups finally gains press coverage on BusinessWeek.com. I’ve attended their events since September ’08, taking pictures and submitting post event write-ups. (Revenue Model Workshop, Monetization of Ads,  Outsourcing, SEO/SEM, and the popular Open Source CMS.)

Heather Green of BusinessWeek.com titled the article,  Self-Help for Startups . “Ultra Light Startups is giving entrepreneurs—many of them newly laid-off employees—a chance to test their pitches on an audience of their peers.” I really like to add how right she is! According to Heather, “The group has taken off partly because of the rough economy. Fifteen people showed up at the first session last April” and I think it’s very easy to agree with that statement. Many audience members were either laid-off or quit to pursue their startups. This economy helped propell those numbers exponentially.

If you’re interested in reading the original article, check out “Self Help For Startups” on BusinessWeek.com. My only concern is the fact that there was no link to the Ultra Light Startups website or Facebook page. There is some basic SEO value in keywords here, but I hope somebody lets BusinessWeek know that they should provide a link. That’s where the big hits come in. Besides that, congrats to ULS and for all of you interested, there’s an event taking place this Thursday night: Web Analytics. A solid panel, and a relevant topic for all internet based companies. Hope to see you there!

WordPress – The Ultimate Content Management System (CMS)

I was recently approached by HP to write about “Using WordPress to Grow Small Businesses” for their Logoworks: Inside Small Business blog . This is a loaded topic, which makes it all the more fun to write about! For those of you who don’t know, WordPress is  a very powerful Content Management Systems (aka: CMS – “a computer application used to create, edit, manage, search and publish various kinds of digital media and electronic text.“)

WordPress was originally designed as blogging platform, but WordPress’s community continued to expand and its uses continued to evolve. If you wanted to setup a portfolio, news/magazine, or e-commerce site – WordPress could handle the job. And best part? It’s Free!!  Steve Bruner, of Slipfire.com, built his entire business on creating WordPress websites.  “WordPress lets us get a full-featured website up and running in a fraction of the time it would take to build one from scratch” says Steve.  “The benefits of content management, built in SEO, easy feature expansion via plugins, a short learning curve for the user and one of the largest, most supportive communities on the web makes choosing WordPress a no-brainer”. An example of a few major sites that use WordPress:

• TechCrunch
• Mashable
• ZDNet Technology News
• CNN – Anderson Cooper 360
• All Things Digital
• Ford’s Auto Show Website

For a complete list, check out the WordPress Showcase.  WordPress is a popular CMS for a broad range of businesses, meeting and exceeding their needs.

Top 5 Reasons To Use WordPress for Your Small Business

Just to give you a better idea of the demand for WordPress, last week oDesk (an online staffing marketplace and management platform) published What’s Hot? Skills with Fastest Growing Demand in 2008, and  based on job/project listings WordPress came out on top with a 427% increase since last year.

Don Campbell, founder of Expand2Web, says “WordPress is an ideal choice for small business websites.” With a background largely involved in Silicon Valley,  he started his company to help Small Business Owners build efficient and strong website and get a steady stream of new customers from Google/Yahoo searches. He  are his Top 5 Reasons To Use WordPress for Your Small Business Website:

1. SEO – WordPress provides good search engine optimization (SEO) right out of the box. There are a few tweaks you need to make, but there are many seo benefits that WordPress provides for free. In fact Google’s own Matt Cutts says WordPress is “made to do SEO well” in this video: Matt Cutts gives tips to small business owners.
2. Content – it is easy to update content on your website without knowing HTML.  Do you hate the idea of having to learn to use a complex HTML editor tool like Dreamweaver? Do you have to “ask” your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website? Well no longer – once WordPress is set up for you, you can easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text editor.
3. Extensions – There is a thriving ecosystem of developers creating themes and plug-ins – imagine free design themes, or the ability to extend your website with polls, contact forms, ratings or hundreds of other cool features without having to hire a web developer.
4. Support – If you do have problems, or want to add very custom features, it is easy to find support and developers who can help you. There are literally thousands of WordPress developers out there. And there are so many people writing about WordPress that help is only a Google search away!
5. One-click-installation – Quick installs are provided by many hosting providers, including Bluehost, 1and1 and GoDaddy.

Don Campbell and Steve Bruner use Worpdress for all of their clients because of these 5 reasons and more. The list goes on, but the point is simple: It’s Efficient and Effective!

Best WordPress Plugins

It’s important to elaborate on just how strong and vast WordPress Extensions are. Kieran Hawe, Sr. Director of Online Marketing at Folica Inc., (previously Director of SEO at MTV Networks) said it best: “The real value of using WordPress are the enormous amounts of plugins available to help you manage, promote and do just about anything else with your blog.”  He published a list of the Best WordPress Plugins covering anything and everything. I suggest you check it out. A few of my favorites include:

• All in One SEO Pack: Optimizes your WordPress website for Search Engines. Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines, generates META tags automatically, avoids the typical duplicate content found on site. Override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want. You can fine-tune everything, Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.
• Lighter Menus: Lighter Menus creates drop-down menus instead of the regular admin menus of the WordPress interface, so that you can browse items with one click and work on your website in a much more usable environment.
• Enhanced WP-ContactForm: WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. In the message it sends to you it gives the page the user visited before the contact page, as well as the original outside referrer. It can be implemented on a page or a post.
• Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your website which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade: Usually you have to go to your hosting company in order to upgrade your site – not with this plugin which takes care of the upgrade automatically.

For more information on WordPress plugins and development visit Yoast.com.

Deciding if WordPress is Right For Your Business? Other CMS’s?

I recently attended an Ultra Light Startup group that put together a panel on Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS).  Experts representing different CMS’s, including WordPress, went head-to-head discussing the pro’s and con’s for small business using their services. I caught the panel on tape and if you need help deciding on a CMS, watch the video on YouTube. Even more noteworthy, the article I wrote about that event was picked up by the well know online publisher SmashingMagazine (<–They’re website is built on WordPress).

If you’re serious about WordPress for your Small Business needs, check out Don Campbells “WordPress for Small Business Websites” where he explores WordPress as a content management system for small business websites, including video tutorials on how to set up WordPress for yourself quickly to manage your small business website. You can also sign up for his free newsletter. Steve Bruner of Slipfire.com is another great person to contact if you’re considering WordPress. In terms of reading I suggest the blog of WordPress’s founding developer, Matt Mullenweg and also the WordPress Blog itself. By the time you’re done with all this reading, you’ll be a “WP-Pro”.

Feel free to contact me with any questions and I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction. You can contact me from my blog MarketingBlog.NET (also built on WordPress). Now go, sign up for WordPress and create an online presence for your company!

Article Posted by Joshua ‘The Red’ Russak on HP Logoworks – Inside Small Business Blog:

• Using WordPress To Grow Your Business – Part 1

• Using WordPress To Grow Your Business – Part 2

• Using WordPress To Grow Your Business – Part 3

*If you have questions about hosting, go here for hosting help.

I recently attended my 6th Ultra Light Startup, where the mission is simple: “Tech entrepreneurs sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper!”  I’ve covered their recent events including Monetization via Ads,  Outsourcing, SEO/SEM, and last months most popular Open Source CMS. (I made a video of that event and the article itself was picked up by the well know online publisher SmashingMagazine.)

This months meetup tested a completely new format – the Revenue Model Workshop. At this event, 5 startups were selected to give brief presentations of their business, focusing on their revenue models. It was held at For Your Imagination (special thanks to Kathryn Velvel Jones) in order to support , without a doubt, one of the largest Ultra Light crowds to date.

As usual, the night kicked off with 1 minute elevator pitches by the Ultra Light Audience. This ran pretty smoothly, particularly thanks to Ronald Bradford’s “Entreprenuer Pitch Instructions”. Some of the more impressive and eyecatching companies included:

• Groupable.com by Nate Brochin: Group Sponsorship Exchange
• BabyNameWizard by Jennie Baird: Baby Naming Expert Wizard
• ProperCloth by Seph Skerritt: Custom Dress Shirts via Online

Following the quick pitch session, guest speaker Derek Lee wowed the audience with his  “Immodest Proposal”…STOP CREATING AD INVENTORY (write up by Sanford Dickert)

• The long tail is dead.
• You will not feed your family or pay the mortgage with google Ad Words
• Figure out your economic value per customer instead of ad impressions
• Remember the difference between branded advertising and direct response – note that Lawn Doctor was on the prime time CNN show
• Sell something – unlimited ad inventory is nothing
• West Coast Model is what everyone is chasing – build a big community of 4M members and then monetize it. The darlings of the current economic world will disappear.
• East Coast Model is making money – figure out your revenue model – $ for one customer, $$ for more than one, then $$$$ for lots. Pick a revenue model and build it.
• Don’t get a job now – we are in a recession. In 20 years from now, look at the Fortune 100 then and see how many got started in 2009.

It was a lot to take in for the audience and left people hungry for more answers. Good timing, because the pizza arrived shortly after and the networking frenzy began. After 15 minutes of handshakes, business card exchanges and hardcore networking, the panel was seated and ready to go.

As planned, five entrepreneurs had 5 minutes each to pitch their product and revenue models ($$Cha-Ching$$). The panel would then provide helpful alternatives for the entrepreneur to consider as methods to generate more revenue from their business more efficiently. The presenters were as follows…

• John Murch, SEO Drop
• Joshua Russak & Gerrit Hall, RezRedo, LLC. [*video below]
  
• Mor Sela, ProCompare
• Laurent Kretz, CabEasy
• Hermann Mazard, Home Shop and The “Yes We” Can

The panelists included:

• Maisha Walker, President, MessageMedium & Columnist w/ Inc. magazine
• Jay Levy, founding Principal of Zelkova Ventures
• Martin Breslin, Managing Partner, The Hatchery and founder of Fiscvl Corp.
• David Schnurman, President of Lawline.com and CEO of TrueNYC.com
• Steven Adler, CEO of Financial Summit Ventures

Overall the feedback was helpful for the presenters. Each panelist seemed to have their own perspective and advice, but there were times where they were simply “confused” by the ideas presented.  But overall, the event was successful and the presenters walked away with what they needed to improve their business.

I highly suggest you attend next months meetup, Ultra Light Web Analytics, February 5th at For Your Imagination. The panel lined up is strong and based on the growing numbers, this will be a large/networking worthy venue.

**In order to give you an idea of what it was like to present, I have decided to sacrifice my video for the sake for your viewing pleasure:

This is a great chance for me to learn how to monetize it RezRedo.com (advertisement to the left of this blog). VC Fred Wilson said on his blog, “Most web apps will be monetized with some kind of media model. Don’t think banner ads when I say that. Think of all the various ways that an audience that is paying attention to your service can be paid for by companies and people who want some of that attention.” The question is which model to choose?

Chris Anderson of Wired.com, put together a strong Media Business Model list of revenue models you can find in the media industry, all based around a core of free or almost-free content:

• CPM ads (“cost per thousand views”; banner ads online and regular ads in print, TV and radio)
• CPC ads (“cost per click”; think Google ads)
• CPA ads (“cost per action”; pay only if the customer performs a certain action)
• CPT ads (“cost per transaction”; you pay only if the customer brought to you from a media sites becomes a paying customer.)
• Lead generation (you pay for qualified names of potential customers)
• Subscription revenues
• Affiliate revenues (think: Amazon Associates)
• Rental of subscriber lists
• Sale of information (selling data about users–aggregate/statistical or individual–to third parties)
• Licensing of brand (people pay to use a media brand as implied endorsement)
• Licensing of content (syndication)
• Getting the users to create something of value for free and applying any of the above to monetize it. (Like Digg or our own Reddit)
• Upgraded service/content (ed: aka “freemium”)
• Alternate output (pdf; print/print-on-demand; customized Shared Book style; etc.)
• Custom services/feeds
• Live events
• “Souvenirs”/”Merchandise”
• Co-branded spinoff
• Cost Per Install (popular with top Facebook apps who can help others get installs)
• E-commerce (selling stuff directly on your website)
• Sponsorships (ads of some sort that are sold based on time, not on the number of impressions)
• Listings (paying a time based amount to list something like a job or real estate on your website)
• Paid Inclusion (a form of CPC advertising where an advertiser pays to be included in a search result)
• Streaming Audio Advertising (like radio advertising delivered in the audio stream after a certain amount of audio content has been delivered)
• Streaming Video Advertising (like streaming audio but in video)
• API Fees (charging third parties to access your API)

A lot of your revenue model choices depend on B2B vs. B2C. Some work for both, while others are particular to the type of regular transactions that will be taking place. At this point, I have narrowed down my choices based off of this list and I hope this helped you do the same.

I recently attended my 5th Ultra Light Startups and as expected, it was a success!  I have covered their recent event topics including Monetization via Ads, then Outsourcing, & last months SEO/SEM. But this months topic was highly controversial: Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS). Topics included:

• The most popular Open Source CMS’s – Drupal, Joomla & WordPress.
• Examples of successfull startups on each platform.
• What are the main differentiators between the platform.

For those of you unaware of this event, the mission is simple: “Tech entrepreneurs, sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper!” It is a great source of networking with a panel also included to help drive engaging/helpful discussions to improve your startup.

As usual, the night kicked off with 1 minute elevator pitches by the event participants. Rami Weiss of Boomerater.com, explained why this was so crucial: “Pitching is important and practicing your pitch is the only way to perfect it!” (His tips included: Stand Up, Explain What you do, Your Business Model, Funding, Size and Other Stats). There were a lot of web-design and CMS design companies present, but a a few stood out from the crowd.

• Jason Calderon, BrandYourBaby.com – Child naming and website apps
• Benjamin Horst, Wishler.com -Social wishlist sharing site
• Michael Meyers, NowPublic – NextGen “Reuters”/1st VC’ed Co. using Drupal.
• Peter Raymond, Human Condition – Feel what a disease feels like…
• Joshua Russak (Me), RezRedo.com – Database of Resume Job Experiences
• Boris Bulayev, Educate – Educating Africa’s Future Leaders

Also, a last-minute addition, the creator of the website Overheard In New York, Morgan Friedman, talked about how he achieved success with his ‘ultra light’ startup. The best advice he gave came from his Rabbi: “Any problem that can be solved by money isn’t actually a problem”. Following his speech, came pizza+pop+networking which is a core to this event. After a 1/2 hour of business card collection the panelists took their seats. The panelists were as follows:

• Vishy Venugopalan (moderator) , The 451 Group.
• Steve Bruner – Founder/CEO, SlipFire; Organizer of NY WordPress Meetup.
• Ezra Gildesgame – Drupal contributor;Co-author Drupal in Action.
• Donna Vincent – Principal, JoomSites, LLC; Maintains NYC Joomla Group.

In the past, I covered the events in a Q&A format on my blog, but I decided to try a new form of event coverage: Flip Video! First suggested to me by Melissa Salas (Director of Marketing, Buy.com, met her at Affiliate Summit Social 2008), the Flip is a great way to quickly video-capture events and easily upload them 1-2-3 to social video networks. So…instead of taking notes at this event…I put a fun little video together. Questions covered in the video include:”Describe your CMS…“,”Examples of websites that use your CMS“, “CMS Developer Communities“, “What’s next?” and more…

If you liked what you read here, come out to next months Ultra Light Startup Event: Startup Revenue Models. I look forward to seeing you there.

SearchEngineLand recently published “a list of things that small businesses can be thankful for — one for each letter of the alphabet — this Thanksgiving. These are things that can make the difficult challenge of online marketing a little easier for any small business.” I’ve went through the list and find it a great resource for small business owners. You can find the exact list, word-for-word (as found on SEL’s blog) below:

A: Analytics – It wasn’t too long ago that a full-featured analytics package was out of budgetary reach for a lot of small businesses. But thanks to Google Analytics (and, hopefully, Yahoo Web Analytics when it launches publicly), small business owners now have access to the type of data that only their deep-pocketed competition could previously afford.

B: Blogs – Have you noticed in my ongoing “Small Business Success Stories” series here on Search Engine Land how often a blog plays a major role in a successful online marketing campaign? Element One Photography, real estate agent Teresa Boardman, and Avante Gardens are just three examples of successful small business blogs.

C: Common Craft – “Explanations in plain English” is the tagline for this video-making company that takes somewhat complicated ideas/services/tools and brings them to the masses. RSS in Plain English is their most popular work so far, and a great primer for small businesses who don’t quite “get” why RSS is so great.

D: DomainTools.com – It’s not the best place to brainstorm domain ideas for your small business, but DomainTools is the best place to do competitive research on domains that have already been registered.

E: Education – From Search Engine Land to Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide, and the countless other excellent web marketing sites, getting an online education is pretty easy. Is there another industry in which the best in the business consistently share their wisdom so openly?

F: Firefox – Any small business owner wanting to become a do-it-yourself search marketer can thank the Firefox web browser and its countless plug-ins that put a wealth of SEO data at your fingertips.

G: Geotargeting – There are almost 20 cities named Columbus in the USA. Those dentists in Columbus, Ohio, sure don’t want their ads being clicked on by searchers in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Texas. We overlook it, but the ability to geotarget ads is a real blessing for small business owners.

H: HitTail – It’s not the only analytics-type service you should use, but with almost-real time tracking of sites and keywords that send visitors to your site, HitTail is a great complement to your primary web stats program.

I: iStockphoto – A great photo or image can dramatically improve any piece of content, no matter how well written it is. iStockphoto offers an amazing collection of images, many of which can be purchased for web, blog, e-book, or similar uses for just a couple dollars.

J: Junk Mail Filters – Be glad that you can filter away all those “Submit your web site to 5,000 directories” and “We’ll put you at #1 on Google for $49.95 per month” emails. They’re useless and should be ignored at all costs.

K: Keyword Research Tools – Whether it’s Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, or one of the many others, keyword research tools seem to get more powerful every year while still staying affordable for small business owners.

L: Local Search – All three main search engines offer local search business listings, and countless other local/social directory sites bring value to small businesses, too. Add it all up, and local search is the best way for local businesses to connect with local customers.

M: Matt Cutts – You may not like all of Google’s policies, but give credit where it’s due. Small business owners can be thankful that Matt’s blog offers a direct window into Google’s anti-spam and search quality efforts.

N: Networking – When you start a new small business, the first piece of advice you’ll get is to join the Chamber of Commerce. Why? Networking. It’s how you meet local people who might become customers or business partners and help you grow your business. Small business owners can also network online thanks to social media sites with local networking opportunities.

O: Onebox – Thanks to Google’s local search onebox, a small business now has an extra ten chances to show up on page one of Google’s SERPs.

P: PPC – For many small businesses, there’s no better and faster way to get search engine visibility than a well-planned PPC campaign. Pay-per-click advertising can bring in targeted traffic while you’re waiting out those weeks or months for your SEO campaign to bring results.

Q: Quality Over Quantity – Small businesses can be thankful that, when it comes to content and links and competing in local search, it really is about quality over quantity. With a few exceptions, you probably don’t need to go out and find hundreds or thousands of links; a few high-quality links should be enough.

R: Reviews – No small business owner likes getting bad reviews, but progressive small business owners know that it’s smart to embrace online reviews and encourage happy customers to write reviews. Searchers rely on reviews to make buying decisions, and local search algorithms look at ratings when determining rank order.

S: Social Media – Many small business owners don’t quite understand social media, but there are numerous ways for any small business to succeed with social media.

T: Tools – Using the right SEO toolbox can give any small business a big advantage over the competition. But it’s important to remember that tools can’t make decisions for you; that’s your job.

U: Unleashed – Geared specifically to small business owners, the Small Business Marketing “Unleashed” conference has quickly become a must-attend event for both its educational and networking opportunities.

V: Video – Video used to be something that only Big Companies could afford, but today there are numerous companies bringing affordable video marketing to the small business sector. And with blended search results becoming more widespread, videos can be an effective tool for attracting new traffic and customers.

W: Webmaster Central – It’s not just the tools and data you get from having a Google Webmaster Central account that matters; equally important is the fact that GWC provides a direct line of communication between small businesses and their primary source of natural search traffic. The communication aspect is highly underrated, but something to be very thankful for.

X: Xenu – Give thanks to Xenu Link Sleuth, which advertises itself as a tool for checking broken links, but really provides so much more link information than that.

Y: Yahoo Site Explorer – With Google and MSN both neutering their public link reporting tools, Yahoo Site Explorer offers the best free, straight-from-a-search-engine snapshot of a site’s indexing and inbound links.

Z: Zappos – Any small business that thinks social media, and Twitter especially, are useless as business/marketing tools need only look at what Zappos is doing. They’ve become the poster child for how to connect with customers online.

©2008 Third Door Media, Inc.

Have a happy thanksgiving and thanks again to SearchEngineLand for providing me with great content and an easy way out of having to blog pre-thanksgiving. For more about SearchEngineLand, check out their parent company ThirdDoorMedia.com, creators of SMX, Sphinn and SearchMarketingNow.

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I recently attended my 3rd Ultra Light Startups! I covered last months event in my article Ultra Light Startups – Outsourcing Your Startup!! This months Topic was SEO and SEM:

• Principals of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing
• Practical advice for maximizing your S.E.O./S.E.M. investment
• Build vs buy (do-it-yourself vs hire an agency) decision criteria
• Customer testimonials and entrepreneur experiences with S.E.O./S.E.M.

For those of you unaware of this event, the mission is simple: “Tech entrepreneurs, sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper!” A room full of 50+ Entrepreneurs with bootstrapped budgets discussing professional techniques on improving their businesses. A great source for networking and information. And more importantly, the panel at this event felt a lot more engaging than the big conferences, but the content and material was just as good, if not better!

I was very impressed with the companies presenting this time around. I made a few notes  about the companies I found to be the most intriguing. Web100.com presents top 10 and 100 lists in many different categories and brings in over 125,000 page views per month. The funder and CEO of SlipFire, built a web marketing and design company using wordpress (impressive!). I presented RezRedo.com, the 1st and only database of Resume Job Experiences and overall, it received good reactions. Other noteworthy companies included SEO Tools company SEO Drop, TurboCourt the TurboTax for law, and Boomerator.com the one stop shop and social network for Baby Boomers (I’d like to not that they were recently mentioned TechCrunch and Mashable.com). There were many other great presentation and if you want to see the full list of presenting companies, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Once the networking+pizza 1/2 hour was over, the panel was ready to get going. It consisted of the following:

• Maisha Walker, President, Message Medium & Columnist with Inc. Magazine
• Regau Flowers, SEM Director at Comet Conversion
• Cesar Hervieux, Online media buyer and planner with Media Contacts
• Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Editor at SearchBuzz, & Director of SEMPO
• Joseph McElroy, Search Artist at Gigapixel Creative and Chair of IPTV Committee on Emerging Technolgy (SEMPO)

I usually report on the panel in the following manner: Q & A format, where write the question and provide each panelist’s response below it. It lasted about 1 hour, but here’s the most relevant content I was able to write down:

Q: How do you know you’re SEO campaign was effective/is doing well?

• Sarah: “You’re making money (everybody luaghs)…but note that setting a benchmark is very important”
• Regau: “I need to know your GOAL in the beginning”

Q: Pro’s and Con’s of doing SEM in a Content Management System (CMS)?

• Joseph: “WordPress, Joomla and Drupalare great porgrams. If you’re not going to use a CMS and start from scratch, you better be an expert”

Q: How long until you see results?

• Regau: “It depends on your campaign and goals.”
• Sarah:”As soon as tomorrow to a couple of months. It really depends on Spider Frequency from Google…oh ya, there are other search engines too (everybody laughs). SEO is like PR, where you have to pitch to the editor every day…and the pitch keeps changing.”

Q: SEO Basics?

• Regau: “A huge part is how many sites are ranking in your area! How many site are ranking against you?”
• Sarah: “3 Basics – 1. Make sure a spider can get into your site; 2. Make sure the content is relevant to the text; 3. Internal and External linking.”
• Joseph: “It’s also important for when people get there, what’s going to happen after that?”

Q: What’s the difference in promoting a Product vs. Services?

• Joseph: “You should contentrate more on PPC for Products and SEO for Services.”

Q: How much time should one spend on SEO vs. Social Marketing Optimization (SMO)?

• Regau: “If you’re aiming for the longtail, longer lasting success then SEO…SMO is an ongoing process that needs daily updates.”
• Sarah: “Utilizing social networking sites will be good for Tomorrow’s success…but you have to keep up with it then.”

Overall it was a successfull event and if you’re interested in going, I suggest going to December 4th: Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) to hear from Joomla, Drupal and WordPress experts. It’s a guarantee you’ll find what you’re looking for!

Full List of Companies That Presented: