I jumped on board a couple weeks ago and am having some fun with it. Interesting to hear what my associates and other  industry leaders are doing “at the moment.”

It is a free sign up at Twitter, then you locate friends and build up your list of who you are “following,” then most of them will end up following you. Curious little Social toy. Lots of url plugs. Check it out: www.twitter.com

Look, SMX Social was a great show. Danny Sullivan was great! The new staff was great! The panelists were great! the topics were great! The attendees were great! The food was even palatable. The hard chairs on day one sucked. But they got swapped for better chairs the second day, as if by a miracle.

The presentations were very helpful. And since Matt Cutts wasn’t in da house, the presenters were very relaxed and candid and forthright and even revealing. A couple of the “presenters” could use an ego check for sure. But all in all and root in all, I was very pleased with the panel selections, which were well suited to the subject of social media; too many names to list for now. Of course a few stand out in my memory. Among the presenters, the “I am certainly proud of myself” award went to Diggster specialist and SMO, Neil Patel.

Mr. Rand Fishkin, kudos my man. If I did not work for Mr. Web Guru, I would be happy to work for you. At SMX Advanced in Seattle you impressed me, but in New York you really shined. Rand is my new Search Marketing hero. He is probably wondering then, why I am not paying for a subscription to his members site? Well, truth is that I’m a one-man show with a couple of very talented designers and programmers in the fold but not in the employee status. Lucky me. Therefore, I just don’t have much time for newsletter. I am actually forcing “read time” into my weekly schedule to get involved in the social media phenomenon, but I have a workload to fulfill that keeps me real busy. I make time for essential and crucial reading, usually data laden white papers and occasional, select blog posts and a book or two a year to home study related web niches I want to become proficient at. I do prefer my annual events though, like SMX, PubCon and Search Engine Workshops, where I can really put aside what I already know [works] and focus on learning and discovery of emerging strategies and tactics (often I will find the best gems off the clock like at lunch or at an after party off site). What I do daily, since 1997, has always genuinely helped my clients to succeed and grow wealthy online. For the most part, forums (I don’t like forums, as I was mob raped at one of the first ones I visited years ago the “ihelpyou” forum) and newsletters and blogs, take time away from my clients (and more importantly my family) and MUCH of the information easily accessible online is debatable, and even easily refutable. When I get time to read a subscription again, yours Rand, will be the first I’d pay for, at least today. Keep up the excellence and professionalism you exude. Rand is the founder of the SEOMOZ blog.

Mr. Danny Sullivan, thank you for another excellent SMX event. Some day, if I come to enough SMX’s, you won’t have to squint and look at my ID tag to get my name when I say hi to you. It is Robert Wright (a good ‘ol English name, from: Shipwright), my ancestors likely built the ships that brought your ancestors to New York. But now you’ve come to New York to ship me home with some great and timely information. My hat is tipped to you also.
And Lui, I was also impressed with you. Christine is real lucky to have you on board!

I may have been a good panelist for this event. I have dabbled in Social Networking sites and taught my clients to get involved in them (the newer Web 2.0esque versions, not just groups and forums) since 2004.

All of the presentations at this SMX event were very good. I would attend it again.

Robert

Lot’s of talk about social media marketing and linkbaiting and news social sites and hopefully good info on book marking and tagging.

I’ve been doinking with a few Social sites and the results are certainly encouraging. This aspect of Internet marketing is fun also so NYC, here I come.

I went to the SMX Advanced in Seattle this past June and I was fairly impressed. It was like an SES with less people and less commercialism from the panel. Let’s hope it stays this way!

Oh, goody, maybe I’ll get to see Lion King this time in the Big Apple.

Robert

For those of you who have never met me this is a great opportunity to see me and understand more about my extracurricular activities and interests. You’ll certainly understand after viewing the video that I am a lover of God! I’ll bet that way down deep you are too. There is more to me than just the ability to help people get sites unbanned from search engines and performing well for user and marketing! You may be surprised, but either way I want you to know about the many benefits associated with putting video up on the Web, which you should be doing, or you are missing out on an awesome potential traffic stream for your business (or hobby or church, etc.).

Here is the Google Video link

Here is the link to You Tube version

BTW, if you enjoy this 10 minute video, give it a rating on YouTube. This rating feature and the ability to make comments at You Tube also bring that service into the realm of social networking, via peer review of content. The higher rated videos gain prominence thus enjoy more views, in theory. Enjoy the view friends.

Robert

I thought over 20 years ago when I was meeting once a month with a group of salespeople to exchange leads, that we were “social networking” and as it turns out we actually were! Then and today, social networking is about interest specific community building. What is your interest? Audio – try MySpace, video – try YouTube, teen chat – try Bebo, business connections – try Ecademy or LinkedIn. Do you have a cool collection of bookmarks? You can share these with the world at Del.icio.us or Digg.com.

It doesn’t really matter what your interests are these days, you can most likely find a social network that caters to it. And social networking is not limited to what is listed, online chats like Skype and AIM and Messenger all have the basic elements of networking, even forums and groups and sometime Blogs. Are you plugged into it yet?

There are also search marketing applications for social networking. For a more comprehensive writing on this matter be sure to sign in to the Ashram, which should be live pretty soon now.

Namaste!
Robert