Adam Schultz

Between family life, working on new clients, making time to work on GiveAndGo.org and and maintaining my status as top commenter on MarketingHipster.com for 2 months in a row, I have been neglecting my own soap box. (Any monthly prizes for top commenter Cord?)

Over the past year Bold interactive has gone through plenty of trials, adjustments, tweaks, more trials and more adjustments. The good news is that through it all, we have remained profitable and continue to grow while still keeping our focus of working with people we like, on projects that add value to our clients and their customers.

It has been a fun ride with some great people and until now things have been pretty manageable for me. Until last month, Garrett moved to Philly and Bold landed it’s biggest contract to date. The company has finally grown too big for my britches.

That being said, help has arrived. Her name is Nathania Johnson and I expect great things from her for Bold, Our Clients, Conversational Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Online Custom Publishing.

Look for some great tidbits and insights from her and others on BoldInteractive.com. If you haven’t already subscribed to it, now is the time. I may even get around to a post or two over there as the muse strikes.

About 6 months ago I made the move over to an Intel Mac from my PC. I couldn’t be more happy about it. I love my mac and it has preformed for me with no questions asked.

The only Microsuck thing that I still used on a regular basis was Entourage. It’s the mac version of outlook. The funny thing, is that Entourage was the only program on my Mac that had performance issues. It would cause the computer to freeze up on occasion as well as not allow it to shut down because of a 5 minute long spam deletion process.

Well, I am finally rid of that final vestige of Microsoft oppression.

How did I do it you might be wondering.

I switched over to Gmail and Google Calendar. I was already using Google docs for my word processing.

In the immortal words of Darth Vader, “Soon the transformation will be complete.”

Now the only product I still use is excel. Sometime next week I am going to dig into open office and rid myself of that vex as well.

I wonder how long it will take for Google to loose it’s appeal and become the next dark lord or computing environments?

I received an email this morning from a company I have talked to on a couple of occasions about how we might be able to work together. After writing my response I thought it prudent to post the exchange for others.

Subject: SEO Pricing

Adam,

Hope everything’s going well, how is your new consulting business going? I have several clients interested in SEO and I have traditionally just managed them with another firm in Ohio, but I wanted to see what your prices would be to manage some SEO. I think I could bring you a couple of accounts, they would be very strict on seeing results, and they would probably want to optimize for 10 keywords. Do you do this? If so, what’s your pricing?

Thanks,

(Removed)

My Response

Subject: Re: SEO Pricing

I traditionally don’t work that way.

People who want to see results on 10 keywords don’t tend to understand online marketing. Additionally, they view SEO as a single marketing channel that you throw money at for results rather than realizing that search rankings are just one part of what should be a multi-channel strategy that focuses on listening to customers, building relationships and doing everything in their power to bring value to their marketplace wherever and whenever it wants it.

I try not to focus solely on rankings. I help improve companies and marketing campaigns. The rankings tend to follow when those other things are taken care of.

That being said, I am more than willing to talk to anyone you think could benefit form a conversation with me.

Just know not to expect anything like “30 pages a month of optimized copy and keywords, with monthly search engine submissions. Top 10 ranking positions GUARANTEED!”.

Adam Schultz

This is less about this person not getting what online marketing in today’s online marketplace looks like and more a comment about what SEO was and what it should be.

Should I have handled my response differently?

What would you have done?

Here is a simple update to my previous post from 6 months ago as to why KeywordRanking / Websourced / MarketSmart Interactive failed as a company.

Enjoy.

Need I say more?

Check here for pixel based updates in flickr or enjoy the slide show below.

Check back regularly as I will be adding photos to this slide show all week.

Guess what kiddies, the days of limited Joost invites are over.

Joost has just released a new version called, Joost for Friends, and the invite limitation is gone.

We will have a new kind of contest for those who don’t know anyone else who can give them an invite.

Post a comment that has to do with Joost that will make me laugh.

If I laugh, I will send you an invite.

Thats it.

There is no time limit and as long as Joost allows me to send invites and you make me laugh, I will keep sending them out.

Good luck and happy commenting.

And the winner of the 3rd and final Joost invite give away is…

Zach

Jack was the winner of the second contest and therefore was the judge and jury for this one.

Here are some of Zach’s entries as well as some words from Jack.

Zach submitted many ‘yo mama’ disses that I enjoyed very much including,

• Yo Mama’s so stupid, even with Joost, it took her 90 minutes to watch 60
  minutes.

• Yo mama so stupid when she saw the NC-17 (under 17 not admitted) sign on
  Joost, she went home and got 16 friends.

Congrats to Zach.

Second place goes to Lloyd with the following entry:

• One. Cut a hole in the box…
  Two. Put your JOOST in that boooxxx!!
  Three. Make her open that box

  I put my JOOST in a box for you. Why don’t you tell your momma to beta test it.

Thanks again to everyone who participated.

We’ll its time for another exciting round of EARN YOUR JOOST!

Last episode’s winner of the “Best Pick-Up Lines with Joost in them” contest was Jack Freeman.

He also had the privilege of choosing the contest for the final invite.

The next contest to EARN YOUR JOOST is:

Joost Disses
Who ever comes up with the best cut-down with the word Joost in it will win the invite.

Jack will serve as your judge and jury. So if you plan to do any ass kissing (Melissa), his is the ass to kiss.

We will accept entries until Sunday (29th) at midnight and will announce the winner Monday morning.

Good luck and may the best diss win!

PS. If you comment “I want an invite” this will happen to you. (Watch below)

UPDATE: Contest Closed - Live Results Show!

Ok guys,

The jury (Matt) has deliberated and a winer has been chosen.

Jack Freeman is the winner of the 2nd Joost Invite Contest.

He has not only won the invite but will also serve as the Judge and creator of the 3rd contest.

Jack,

Send me the email addy you want to use for the invite and let me know what you would like to do for the 3rd contest. Here are some Ideas. (Joost Invite Contest #1 Finalists)

Here is what Matt had to say.

Not only did Jack bring quality, but he brought them in multiples as well.

This was a tough one to beat considering Stephen stepped it up early. I only wish Stephen had come back. I would like to have seen a face-off. Melissa was definitely in there too. It could have been a battle royal to the death.

So here are my favs:

From Jack
• Would you like to share my bandwidth? I have a really fat JoostLine.
• Come on, I know ya wanna Joost. I promise its bigger than my iPod Nano
• Joosting with yo makes my CPU come out of hibernate
• Baby, lets go in the back and Joost. I‚ll have you screaming louder than dial-up.

From Stephen
• Hey baby, how about we go back to my place and Joost? I‚ll have you screaming - Web two-point-OHH - all night long.

From Melissa
• I wish I was cross-eyed so I could Joost you twice.
• I was hoping your Joost wouldn’t block my pop-up
• You have great hardware but to make Joost work properly, I have to install my software which has to be transferred from my USB stick. Can I stick it to you so we can begin with the installation process?

From Valzi but only because it scares me.
• I like to give myself rug burns and then smell the skin. JOOST! Baby.

Thanks again to everyone who participated. What a blast.

There is still one more chance to win an invite -
Episode 3 - Revenge of the Diss

PS. I have a good friend who may be continuing our little game with 3 invites of his own. I’ll keep you posted.

I know you are waiting for the results of the second Joost invite contest but I came across this this comic as part of my daily funnies and felt compelled to share it. I’m sure I wont be the only blogger to do so today.

From Dilbert.com

Like most Dilbert strips, this is especially funny because it is so true. It’s near and dear to my heart because frankly, helping people start and participate in online conversation is what I do for a living.

Joost contest finalists and results coming right up.

PS. While we are sharing comic strips, here is another great one from my friend Adam Cohen at Mosetoon.com.