A Cool Conference

Mar 10 2011

A total success according to me, because I learned a LOT. I’ve been to many conferences over the years, and to be honest they’re mostly meh… keynotes full of hot air and pontificating while the “networking you’ll do!” being sold as the best part. Not the Art of Marketing.

Gary Vaynerchuk was great of course; you already know how I feel about him.

Above that’s Jeffrey Hayzlett CMO of Kodak. Get this… 15 years ago Kodak sold $15 billion in film, last year they sold $200 million… woah, I know. He was great because he brought old school business sensibilities to the online world, and with relish at that.

By far though, my favourite was the Avinash Kaushik’s analytics talk, because FINALLY I heard someone of authority say what I’ve been saying for years… [paraphrased]

… it’s not the amount of hits and visitors you receive, it’s the level of engagement that matters.

I’ve been saying this since 1999, because let’s be real – if you want hits, oh I’ll get them for you…. by doing a shady deal and buying thousands of views for pennies. But how will that help you or I? It won’t; all it will do is screw up our analytics.

The rule-of-thumb online is: for every 1 comment there are 20 visitors who were there but didn’t say anything.

And so wit: these are the stats for my video, Let’s have a Staring Contest shortly after I posted it and before I put the link out anywhere…. so these are pure numbers here:

21 views, 5 comments, 2 likes…. that’s approximately 25% which is 20% higher than the average 5%.

Not bad not bad. Quality over quantity.

And now this will be a post I send to potential sponsors and advertisers.

Thanks again for inviting me, Art Of Marketing!

Google Result for 'The Canadian Explorer'

Mar 2 2011

There I am among those mighty explorers!

That second row photo… of all the photos to rank YES that one.

When I saved this screenshot, I named the file: CDN Explorer Search BOOM

Wait it gets better… the top photo is me exploring… my new haircut HAHA those guys trekked cross country forever… and the bottom photo is another “here’s my hair” post.

Here’s the Google search.

Hair by Brennen Demelo

One more thing.. for the longest time last year when you searched ‘KeriCDN’ the first image was a …. FinalCut file HA.

In serious though, my stuff is a mess, all of it. It needs a good spring cleaning. Before I do that I’ve been mulling over a video, documenting just HOW bad it is… it’s probably wrong I find it so funny.

If You’ve Never Blogged…

Mar 1 2011

There are 3 things to know:

1 – Bloggers have good work ethics and problem-solving brains

2 – They spend a lot of time alone; it’s a solitary endeavour, blogging

3 – It’s the invisible in-between stuff that is most frustrating

If ever you see two people finding out the other also blogs, and they exchange a sort of nod, this is what they’re nodding about.

What’s the invisible in-between stuff?

Kay, let’s post a slideshow. I need one for my new professional photos, thanks Suzy.

First, I need some software to make one. Start researching what works best with WordPress.

Looks like, of all the internet, there’s two real contenders. So choose one, download then upload the plugin, learn it, insert the code.

You might break your own site:

Back and forth between the help file, Google searches and the software. We’re over an hour by now.

Now the photos are too giant and need resizing.

They won’t open in your budget Photoshop version, so find a workaround, which no way will support batch-editing that would be ‘catching a break’, so one by one here we go…

By now you’ll likely look and feel like this.