Photo: Boogies with Fish on Flickr

Today I was reading Amber Strocel’s post on Re-evaluating Your Dreams and Desires and it got me thinking. I wrote in my last post that I’m turning over a new leaf this year; that I’ve decided to focus my efforts on things I have always wanted to do but never have instead of on things I think I should do for various reasons… for money… for success. Part of that is re-evaluating what’s important to me, what I have time for and what I have the heart to go after with the precious time I do have. The truth is, I can’t do it all. I can’t continue to do everything I’ve been doing and add to it with new things I’d like to do.

Like Amber, I’m a little stubborn. When I put my mind to doing something, I very much intend to complete it and will usually do so no matter what it takes. I have done some very unique things in my life: Among them, Combat Engineer training with the Canadian Armed Forces, earning my black belt in SKF Kickboxing, losing 60 lbs and running a half marathon. I have a million more things in my bucket list too.

It pains me to quit anything I’ve started.

I’ve decided to give up Urban Shore. While I still believe the concept is a good one and it could be successful if I were to dedicate the time to it that it requires, it’s just not in my heart to do it. It would take far more hours than I’d really anticipated to build it up to what I’d like it to become. I had a vision for it – a community where local residents and business owners can benefit from one another… where locals can find out about what’s available in their own neighborhood and merchants can engage with those residents… a community where everyone could be proud of where we live and who we are. I was planning, in time, to add a mobile subscription component, menus, event listings and more, but really just didn’t give this project the attention it needed, or deserved.

Instead, I will be focusing my efforts on some very real dreams, goals and ambitions this year:

• Songwriting, performing and recording
• Health & Fitness – running, racing and triathlon
• Helping my husband start a new business

In the coming weeks I will write in detail about each of these endeavors… the challenges and the rewards.

What are you focusing your efforts on this year?

Photo: davidbriody on Flickr

This coming week I’ll be joining a panel of ski industry professionals to discuss social media’s place in resort marketing as part of the ResortXpo Virtual event. The experience of preparing for this has been interesting. On the one hand, I know I’m immersed in the world of social media for work and in my personal life and I’m proud of the things I’ve accomplished for my company and excited about the connections I’ve made; but on the other hand this process has made me well aware of the things I’m not doing that I wish I were or the things I could be doing better.

I’m a little surprised, actually, when I think of how many more ways I could engage:

• Some I’ve never thought about before
• Some I’ve just never taken the time to set up
• Some I just don’t have the time to dedicate

In order to wrap my head around all the things I’d like to do, I thought I’d write out my thoughts on what I’d do in a perfect world – a world without budgets, deadlines or limited resources. Some of this I’m already doing; some of it has yet to be perfected, but I do hope to get there at some point. Perhaps as the use of multi-directional web connections becomes as mainstream as the telephone these things will all become commonplace elements of guest service for every company.

In the meantime, here’s my corporate social media wish list:

Blogging

• I’d blog regularly about what’s happening not only within my company but within my industry
• I’d recruit several of our key employees to blog and share their perspectives
• I’d recruit a few ambassadors from within our community to share their perspectives on our company, product and  industry like we did with our terrain parks blog
• I’d make sure I had a solid employee blogging and social media engagement guidelines document prepared and circulated but then encourage staff to engage with our guests
• I’d also use my Google Alerts to show me where people are discussing my company or product and make a point of commenting on every single one of them, just to let them know how much we care that they are writing

Photo/Video Sharing

• I’d put all my company’s photography on Flickr
• I’d divide up the content into relevant sets based on different activities and set each with appropriate permissions for use – media would be able to access the high resolution downloads from there instead of using an FTP site and messing with FTP clients or browsers to retrieve them
• I’d do regular searches for new images taken at the mountain and comment on them or say a quick hello and thank people for sharing them.
• I’d put all my company video files on YouTube or Vimeo or Viddler depending on where our guests are
• I’d make sure the profile was customized for brand consistency
• I’d ensure videos were put into proper playlists based on their content
• I’d spend time browsing through and favouriting videos that our subscribers/guests may enjoy and I’d rate and comment on every video that showed content from the mountain and, again, thank the contributor for sharing it.

Facebook

• I’d have a Facebook fan page for the company and for other relevant lines of business or niche segments
• I’d post relevant links regularly for those groups depending on their interest in engagement
• I’d encourage fans to subscribe to mobile updates from each Fan Page as they see fit
• I’d have a custom username for those Fan Pages
• I’d add several of our top Guest Services Representatives as admins on it so they could respond to guest inquiries in a very timely manner
• I’d also ensure every event at the mountain had a Facebook Event Page so people could easily share with their friends

Microblogging

• I’d use Twitter to share important information that isn’t necessarily worthy of an email but is interesting nonetheless
• I’d share information about events, promotions, news, and anything else going on
• I’d respond to every @reply and DM
• I’d re-tweet information of value to my followers and say a quick hello to everyone who mentions my company or product in a tweet
• I’d use Twitter Search to see what’s happening in my industry and set some comprehensive searches and throw the feeds in my reader just to keep track of what’s coming up
• I’d attend company events, take some fun photos, upload them to TwitPic and Tweet them out to show how much fun it is to attend mountain events both as a guest and as an employee
• I’d link my Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and even my Google Reader to Friendfeed to aggregate everything I share on the web in one place
• I’d check for comments regularly and respond to every one
• I’d go through my Google Reader items at least daily and share relevant links that would be of interest to our community; those would also then show up in my friend feed.

Corporate Website

• I’d ensure our social media touchpoints were clear on our site by adding visible graphic links to our various profiles – our blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc.
• I’d ensure every page of our website had a ShareThis widget to make it easy for people to share our content in whatever way they like to
• I’d ensure our media resources section had web-optimized press releases linking to relevant information, written with a little SEO in mind
• On the topic of SEO, I’d make sure every page of our site was reviewed regularly to ensure keywords, meta, title and URL was optimized and relevant
• I’d encourage people to share information about their visit to the mountain on review sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor etc. or to submit it to us, post it on our blog, tweet about it or otherwise make it known
• I’d have a mobile website that listed only relevant “on the go” information

Digital Marketing

• I’d advertise every relevant product with targeted Facebook social ads
• I’d have an extensive PPC ad plan in place that also covered every product and service we offer
• I’d include recent social media updates in regular email blasts to our double-opt-in subscribers
• I’d utilize mobile alerts for relevant subscriber groups to share timely information as appropriate

The list above is my start. Obviously what I’ve listed is very top line and I could go into more detail about what to say, what not to say, who to friend, who not to friend, corporate branding, messaging etc. I could also go into technologies and tools I’d love to be using extensively within our organization – Skype, IM etc. or mention how all of this is irrelevant unless you’re listening in the first place… and there are even some great tools that automate the listening for you!

I’d love to hear from others in the industry about what they consider to be some “best practices” with regards to social media use by brands and corporate identities.

I’m sure there is much I still have to learn.

Photo: Miguel Ramirez on Flickr

Guess I’m learning a valuable lesson in blogging: if you don’t write, there is no reason for people to visit.

Work has had me super busy lately. It’s the time of year when I’m focused on the biggest sales campaign of the year, plus I’m planning for the next year. Our fiscal year begins June 1st, so I have to have my plan and budget in place well in advance of that – drafted by the end of March, in fact. Add to that the fact that I’m starting to drift into launching our summer season (yes, I know we just received a foot of new snow) because it kicks off the May long weekend and we need all of our summer marketing materials in place by then.

So blogging has had to take a back seat.

I have a whole bunch of draft posts sitting waiting to be written. Concepts in my head that I want to share with all of you but somehow don’t have the time. As I sit here writing this it’s after 11pm, and I’m bagged because I got busy building a new wordpress.com site for a friend who never asked for one (though he can desperately use one). I did, however, find a new favourite free theme that offers some great customization without needing CSS – bonus! (one of those draft blogs I’d like to take the time to write properly).

This little hiatus from original thought has caused my subscriber and visitor counts to plummet… oops. Sorry.

To those of you who read regularly, please know I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m still reading your blogs though I haven’t had much opportunity to comment on the wonderful stuff I’m reading. In fact, just this morning I plowed through 200 or so outstanding items in my feed reader while cuddling my 3 year old with Elmo in the background haha… now there’s multitasking for you.

While I’m still searching for the ever-elusive work-life-balance that I believe is so important, the words of Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin keep ringing in my ears: Go out and crush it! Now is the best time to go out and invest in yourself and your future. Learn all there is to learn. Build connections. Be great at what you love…

It all spurs me on. I want to build something really useful. I want to help people by sharing the knowledge that’s bottled up in my head with anyone who will listen.

In the meantime, I’ll settle for specific questions, comments or queries… is there anything you want to know that you think I can help with? I’m happy to give it my best shot.

I want to see you succeed too.

Photo: Spartan Soldier on Flickr

I just read a post by Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger that had my skin crawling and made me feel very uncomfortable. Darren put into words that which I have never had the nerve to say in either spoken word or type. He described me as he spoke of the early hours of Sunday morning:

“…you wander over to your computer, check your blog for comments, check your subscriber and traffic stats and maybe crank out a quick post or video. Then, you jump on twitter to check your timeline, follower numbers and reply to any @’s or dm’s.

A few minutes later, the kids wander out and your day really begins. Breakfast, then the day’s activities. It’s all great fun, yet, you still find yourself reveling in those random moments in the rest-room, where you linger a few extra seconds to check your e-mail, IM, twitter and stats once more on your trusty iPhone.” [Bloggers Without Boundaries]

Well. Ouch.

I find myself looking inwardly and feeling convinced of two things: 1) That I’m abiding in the gratification I get from engaging with a huge group of people on a regular basis and 2) that Darren might just have a hidden camera in my bathroom. Both are equal cause for concern.

The Sermon That Hit Home

This morning I was listening to a fantastic sermon that I am going to transcribe – as soon as I have enough time in the bathroom I guess – and put here. It was really impactful and it confirmed everything I’ve been thinking, fearing and worrying about: this imbalance and loss of boundary between work and play.

Today’s sermon was on The Secret of Soul Rest, based in Matthew 11:28-30

²⁸ Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” [ESV from bible.com]

… and John 15:5 (well, I’m adding verse 4 here too)

⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
[ESV from bible.com]

The thing that my pastor kept nailing home for me was that if you’re not abiding in Jesus, you’re abiding in something else. There is no other way. You live somewhere. You benefit from something. You gain from something… what are you benefiting from? Where are you putting your focus? Your energy? Your love? And how’s that working for you?

We numb our fears, our discontentment, the unfulfilled parts of ourselves with addictions… “other lovers” as my pastor put it. True. The list of addictions is so long… drink, food, drugs, sex, sports, porn, perfectionism, money, status, position, blog subscribers or twitter followers, studying, church, ministry even. Getting our sense of wellbeing, no matter how temporary or false, from the wrong stuff. Getting our egos stroked somewhere… most of which is unhealthy and causes unnecessary anxiety or busy-ness in our lives. All things that do not glorify God.

It pains me to think I’ll lose blog subscribers for even writing this.

Photo: parl on Flickr

I think about all the plans I have regarding my blog, my writing, my ability to market myself as a consultant or contractor and my reasons for doing so… and the reason is good: by the time my son starts school, I want to be 100% self-employed and working only during school hours or after my son is asleep at night while earning enough money to support my family. But in the meantime, my drive for this is taking away from my relationships with my family… it’s taking away from my relationship with God.

I’ve been abiding in the wrong stuff.

I’m not sure what this means for the future of my blog. I’m not sure what this means for my pet project: Urban Shore. I’m not sure what this means for the other projects I’ve been offered ‘on the side’ because I’ve come to realise there is no ‘side’; there are only 24 hours to every day.

God is right now bringing me to a place where I have to accept that I’m not in control of any of it. I’m in a place where all I can do is get on my face and pray… because I have no idea what the future holds. I’m not sure how life may change in the days and weeks ahead and honestly, I’m really at a place where I’m open to anything…

What I do know, though, is wherever I end up, I want to abide in my faith. I want to abide in the Love of God. I want to abide in the Word. That’s where the soul rest is.

Everything else is noise.

Photo: UrbanShore on Flickr

If you’re in business, you may have heard lately that you should be doing “Social Media”… “Web Two Point OH”. You should have a YouTube Channel. You should start a viral video. You should write a blog.

Um, why exactly?

I’m sure when you’re already working 14 or 16 hours a day on your day to day business operation, the last thing you want to do is sit down at the computer and add more to your task list. If your business is small or local – you own or manage a coffee shop or have a small fitness studio or an urban retail store – you’re already trying to do a lot with a little. Besides, the web is for big business right?

Wrong. It’s for everyone.

Here’s the thing: There is so much information online already, that you stand to gain a wealth of insight from it. And many of those people putting in their two cents are your customers… they may just not know it yet.

Here are a few super simple tactics that can help you use some of today’s web-based tools to tap into that information, streamline tasks and grow your business. I’ve broken them down into 3 categories: Listening, Building Relationships, and Home Base.

Listening

Google Alerts

Google Alerts allow you to track what’s happening in your industry by allowing you to conduct a search for keywords or phrases of your choosing and then sending you every article written about them in real time. You can search for your company name, your competitors’ names and industry keywords or prases. You can have the results sent to your email or to an RSS feed (more about these later).

Here’s the super simple way you set up a Google Alert:

1. Go to google.com/alerts
2. Enter your first search term (your company  name, likely) in the text field
3. Select “Comprehensive” – this will look for news, websites, blogs, video, and even some forums
4. Select how often you want to receive them (if you’re sending to your email, once a day may suffice)
5. Enter your email address and click “Create Alert”

It’s as simple as that. Google will send you an email with what looks like search results, only everything in the list will include the keywords or prases you requested.

If you want to receive alerts for multiple keywords or phrases, I recommend creating a Google account (you may even have one already if you have a Gmail account, Google Analytics account, Blogger account etc.) and creating a more comprehensive alerts system. But a simple email alert for your company name is a great start.

Twitter Search

You’ve probably heard the word Twitter. Twitter is all abuzz in the tech/marketing world but it has yet to reach the mainstream. Having said that, the people on Twitter are almost exclusively bloggers and influencers by the very nature of their extensive social networking.

Knowing what these influencers are talking about and finding a few in your industry or location is never a bad idea.

If you don’t want to sign up to Twitter, that’s fine. It can be a life suck anyway – if you joined Facebook you know how much time that can take up if you’re not careful. But you should use the Twitter Search function. And just like setting up a Google Alert, it’s super simple.

Go to search.twitter.com and enter a keyword. Now, keep in mind, people using Twitter only have 140 characters to talk to one another. The keywords will pick up exact words they are including in their ‘tweets’. What you’ll get in the results is a list of statements from people using Twitter to communicate. A quick browse will give you an idea of what people are saying about your business or industry.

Building Relationships

You need to make sure you have an ongoing relationship with your customers. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, encouraging repeat business takes less effort than acquiring new business. Repeat customers are the ones who become your advocates. Repeat customers keep your business open. Sometimes all it takes is a friendly conversation… in person or online.

To build and grow that relationship, find a way to connect with your customers – either via email or mobile messages – and then offer them information that’s relevant to them in the way they want.

Side note: I believe marketing can help people to improve their lives via your product. I don’t believe in selling people something they don’t want. I don’t believe in shoving information down peoples’ throats. What I do believe in, is providing relevant information via relevant media that simply show people how they can benefit from a product or service.

Email Marketing

While email marketing in general seems to be on a decline because of the prevalence of other communication methods, it’s still the most comprehensive way to share information with people who want that information. Blogs with an RSS subscription present another way to share that in-depth type of information with your customers.

You can use a simple tool like Vertical Response to collect and store contact information. You can create different lists based on whatever attributes you like – types of purchases, gender, age category – and then send them updates that are relevant to them: new product lines, special events, sales. Vertical Response has a huge set of pre-made email templates to choose from, they send in both HTML (with pretty pictures and stuff) and text so no matter what type of email your customers receive, your message will be intact. And, you only have to pay for what you use – there’s no monthly fee. You can also use it to conduct surveys or, if you collect full contact information, you can even use it to send direct mail postcards.

The cost starts at just $0.015 per email you send e.g. if you have a list of 1000 addresses, the whole email will cost you only $15. If your list is larger, the cost per message goes down from there. Or, you can pay a monthly fee based on the size of your email list and send as often as you’d like – currently for up to 2,000 addresses in your list it would cost you $28/month.

Tagga Mobile Marketing

Tagga is a really innovative new tool that allows anyone to use SMS or Text Messaging for any reason they like. You could create a tagg (or an SMS message) that people can text in to receive. You change it whenever you’d like and let people know they can text KEYWORD (whatever you choose, provided it’s not already taken) to 82442 (TAGGA) and they receive your message to their mobile phone. Alternatively, you can set up a subscription where people text in the keyword to 82442 to subscribe. You then send out a message to your subscribers.

You can pay for service and use the full 120 character text message for yourself – the cost is about USD$0.20 per message – or you can opt to send your messages using only 80 characters and pay nothing; a sponsored message (using the remaining 60 characters) at the end of the text will cover the cost. Note: it is really hard to squeeze a message into 80 characters, but at only $0.20/message with no month to month cost, it’s a great way for a small company to get in on mobile marketing.

Where mobile is really effective is last second deals to improve upon low yield times/days.

You own a bakery? Blow out the end of day inventory at a discount – send a message at 4pm that says “Get 25% off today’s baked goods at XYZ Bakery before 5pm today” (that’s only 62 characters, incidentally). Empty coffee shop? Send a message saying “Large coffee for the price of a small at Tasty Coffee Company; today only.”

Your Home Base

WordPress.com

I know, I know… I said earlier you don’t need to blog. And you don’t. BUT, if you don’t have a web presence at all, WordPress.com is a quick and easy – and FREE – way to create one. Just sign up for an account at wordpress.com for free. Then, select from a number of visual themes, upgrade to a custom URL (it’s only $15), purchase your preferred URL from a domain name provider (I like Namespro.ca) and redirect your ‘site’ to your custom URL.

You can use wordpress.com as a free web content management system by using the ‘Pages’ functionality to create all the pages your website may need (see above where it says “About Michelle”? That’s a page – if I add more they’ll make a line across the top). You can then go into the settings and redirect your home page to one of the pages you’ve created and you don’t actually need to blog at all… unless you want to.

RSS Feed Reader

The last thing I want to mention is using RSS to keep track of everything. Almost everything is accessible with RSS nowadays. RSS allows you to take the content of blogs, media sites, twitter, google searches, and any RSS enabled website and aggregate that information in one place.

I use Google Reader. When you find an RSS link – like the one at the top of this page that says “Subscribe in a reader” – you can click the link and add it to your Google Reader (or another feed reader of your choosing). You can, incidentally, sign up to have your Google Alerts also go to your Google Reader. You can also sign up to an individual’s twitter stream, a twitter search stream, your favourite news site etc.

The benefit to doing this is you go to only one site to read all the information you want to see. I go to my Google Reader and get something that looks like this:

You can see I have 579 unread items that I can review by topic; I have categorized my subscriptions into Social Media, Tourism, Vancouver, Snowboarding and the ones at the bottom of the list are uncategorized at this point. If I open any one topic I get a number of sources and I can review by source, by topic, or the whole list.

This, incidentally, is my personal reading list; I also have another Google Account for my work and have another reader account with everything I read pertaining to my employment.

I know that may look overwhelming, but I usually access my reader by utilizing the web browsing on my mobile phone and read whenever I’m waiting for something or have a few moments to spare.

Clear as mud?

Hopefully I haven’t overwhelmed you. This is meant to highlight just a few very inexpensive ways you can get involved no matter what your business or your budget.

If you have any super simple solutions you think I’ve missed, please do leave them in the comments. Alternatively, if you are looking for help to develop a plan further, you can contact me at michelle [at] imseekingbalance [dot] com.

Photo: azrainman on Flickr

Here it is, Sunday evening once again. I find myself wondering if someone has managed to find a way to speed up the earth’s rotation because I’m quite certain I haven’t had a full two days since I switched from work mode to home mode.

Last week’s work week sped by like a bullet train and this weekend passed before my eyes like a parade. I wonder what it’ll feel like 30 years from now?! YIKES.

I find, more and more, the thoughts and plans and things I want to accomplish grow more and more, and yet the available hours of the day in which to accomplish them do not multiply at the same rate. Maybe I want too much. Maybe I strive too hard for things that don’t matter.

Do they matter? What matters? How do I tell the difference?

The Home Front

On Saturday we took mini-man downtown to his first IMAX movie – Wild Ocean 3D – and then to the Chinese New Year celebrations at the International Village and a stroll through Chinatown. Well, okay, the Chinatown part was more for my husband, who was stoked to take home a BBQ duck and assorted sauces for cheap; and the cultural experience of the Chinese New Year celebrations included mini-man enjoying the bouncy castle in the kids’ room, sponsored by the Vancouver Aquarium… But it was a fun family day.

Today was spent at church in the morning, where my pastor delivered quite the funny sermon – I thought maybe he was practicing for a stand-up routine… a bit like the Mars Hill Church guy for a bit. Very enjoyable. Then came grocery shopping, nap time and playing at Go Bananas. Following that brush with every biological organism known to man, mini-man and I returned home to where dinner and a game of Wii Bowling awaited us.

All in all a good weekend.

The problem is, I have so many more things I want to fit in to a weekend. I wanted to get some laundry done, shop for a couple of new tops, go for a run or take a yoga class and do my ironing.

I’m actually kind of grateful my husband isn’t working right now. At least he can take care of the house work during the work week so we can pack in the fun on weekends and I can attend to my various social media conversations, hobbies, blogs and business ideas in the evenings.

Here is just a short list of items on my spare-time agenda:

• Blog my thoughts here so my head doesn’t explode
• Spend more time reading my bible and praying
• Write the songs God is laying on my heart
• Renew my mortgage
• Prepare my business plan for Intrinsic Influence
• Blog some more for Urban Shore & build the community
• Figure out how to customize CSS
• Read more and engage with other bloggers
• Update  Manding Jata to self-hosted WordPress
• Run and snowboard more

The Work Front

On the eve of yet another work week, my head has already shifted to the days ahead…

There are also so many things I want to accomplish for Grouse Mountain before the Olympics come to Vancouver in 2010. It’s just a goal date I’ve picked to have finalized certain new programs, campaigns and communication methods/tools I want to implement, but it’s pretty ambitious for what I want to do:

• Finalize our mobile website – m.grousemountain.com
• Customize GrousePark Sessions as a self-hosted WordPress blog
• Build a better corporate blog and engage more staff in social media
• Completely re-build our e-commerce solution
• Implement a CRM system to help people get the most value out of our products
• Implement a loyalty program mountain-wide including F&B and retail

No small task eh? I know.

I also plan to continue pushing social media engagement as a valid business tool and would love the opportunity to start speaking on the topic at various industry events. I’m not in a hurry, though.

There are times I wish I could slow down the pace of thoughts. Perhaps I should re-listen to that sermon from this morning… Keeping It Simple, Pastor Owen Scott.

Back in September I went to Blogworld & New Media Expo 2008 in Las Vegas.

The number one best thing about going to the conference was the connections I made there; I even got to rub shoulders with few blogging/social media/internet rockstars including Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Darren Rowse, David Alston, Dave Taylor, Steve Hall, Lee Odden, Rohit Bhargava, Gary Vaynerchuk and local superstars Rebecca Bollwitt and Linda Bustos.

The next best thing was some of the useful tips I learned from one of the sessions: Dave Taylor’s “Ten Things You Need to Know About Search Engines & Findability”.

For those unfamiliar with social media and blogging, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In fact, blogging is often considered a great way to market your company website if, in fact, you have a passion and a plan for doing so.

Key takeaways from Dave Taylor’s blogging SEO session:

While Dave’s session focused on 10 things about SEO, the following 6 points stood out to me and are very simple to implement no matter what blog platform you use.

1. Write as often as you can
This tip didn’t come entirely from Dave Taylor’s session; it was addressed by Richard Jalichandra’s Keynote on Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere. The most popular blogs are written to 10 times a day or more. While you don’t need to write multiple times a day for your blog to be effective, you do need to write regularly to keep the search engines pinging your site. The more often Google pings you, the higher up you’re going in the search results for keywords contained within your writing. People will disagree on how often you need to write to produce results; I would suggest a bare minimum is 2-3 times a week if you’re going to bother blogging at all.

2. Write your keywords in to your content
It’s a good idea to be aware of the key words and phrases you want your site to rank for. Make sure you use those words and phrases whenever it is appropriate in your writing. It’s a balancing act between having your blogging sound natural and having it sound like it was written strictly for keyword density, but use your judgement. The more your keywords are located in your writing, the higher you will rank for those words. This is especially important if your goal is to draw traffic and customers to your primary business.

3. Link your keywords rather than meaningless words
This is probably one of the most important things I’ve learned: Link relevant keywords. Search engines read code. They see what has a link and look at the content of that link more closely than the other text within your site. So rather than say, “I found this great article on SEO for blogs on this website,” you should write “I found this great article on SEO for blogs I want to share with you.” In the first example, you will rank for the word “website”; in the second example, you will rank for “great article on SEO for blogs”, which is a way more useful phrase, and one that is much more likely to be searched. No one needs to rank higher for “click here” or “more”. No one.

4. Use header tags to emphasize sub-headings
I didn’t know this one at all. When you use header tags like <h1> and <h2> to highlight important sub titles within your posts, the search engines will also see that text as more important again, in the same way it sees links as important. See above where I titled this list “Key takeaways from Dave Taylor’s blogging SEO session”? That’s an <h2>tag and it sends a signal to the search engine’s little electronic brain centre says “oh this is a heading; this page must be about this topic.” Just simply bolding your headings won’t have the same effect.

5. Optimized photos
Photo file names and titles are also used by search engines. So rather than leaving your file names as whatever they were when they came off your digital camera… “IMG_2008-01-07_001.jpg” for instance, rename it. Name it with relevant keywords that people may search for. Be honest about it. What is the photo displaying? If you’re writing a blog entry on your trip to Disneyland and you take a picture of Mickey Mouse in front of the Disneyland castle, call your photo “mickey-mouse-disneyland-castle.jpg”. If you’re writing a blog entry on a restaurant you visited and you’re including a photo, name the photo “restaurant-name-city-styleoffood-dining.jpg”. Then, your images have their very own chance of getting ranked by Google.

6. Tag your posts
Tag your posts. All blogging software allows you to add relevant tags to your posts. If you’re writing about how to bake an angel food cake, you might tag it with the following keywords: baking, bake a cake, angel-food cake, cake, angel food, baking instructions, cake instructions. Think for a few minutes about what words someone might plug into a search engine if they were looking for exactly what you’re writing about. If you were looking for your post, what would you search for?

Have you ever thought about a future in the Snow Sports industry? Ever wondered what it would be like to work for EXPN, Transworld Snowboarding, Newschoolers, Snowboard Canada or SBC Skier? Do you want to build skills that will help get you on the road to where you want to go?

We’re looking for 5 great park riders – snowboarders or skiers, guys or girls – to hone their skills as Grouse Park Blogospondents and network with the best in the industry. [grousepark.com]

This idea came out of my trip to BlogWorld in Vegas in September. Last year’s Build Your Own Parks opened the door to having those conversations in public and really answering for our choices to a group of very passionate and vocal individuals. This new blog will give local riders an opportunity to voice their opinions in an even more detailed way than through surveys.

But for me this project brings me back around to the post I wrote about young people and their ability to change the world… I recognize that influencing some terrain park features isn’t changing the world, but these young people who ski and ride here have that potential and I like the idea of nurturing it and helping them to find their drive to do something great.

When I was a kid I had no idea what I wanted to do. I always felt like I was sort of average at everything – I wasn’t the best musician, I wasn’t a socialite, I wasn’t a stellar athlete and I wasn’t brilliant… well, except for in physics when I scored 100% on my final exam for advanced physics taught in French, but that was just weird. But I digress. I didn’t excel in acting class or writing; I didn’t like English literature; I barely understood calculus and chemistry was a complete unknown for me.

While I knew all these things I wasn’t good at, I never really figured out what I was good at.

There are great young minds out there who are struggling with those same thoughts… “What do I want to do with my life?”… “What could I do?”… “What are the options?”… “How can I turn something I’m passionate about into a career?”… just like Sean Aiken from One Week Job, and I’m hoping that Grouse Park Sessions will be an avenue for even one of these passionate idividuals to find their outlet and a passageway into the snow sports industry and a career they can embrace and enjoy.

So grousepark.com just went live on Thursday and received over 500 visits within 24 hours. By end of day Friday I’d received the first blogger applications. I find my work so incredibly rewarding in so many ways and this is just another example of why I want to share in the reward and help people find what drives them.

Now if only it would snow.

Photo: striatic on Flickr

I am the first to admit I’m into the internet. I have always verged on a little nerdy and somewhat socially awkward in my younger days. I can do face to face, particularly for business, but I’m much more comfortable in my jamies behind a keyboard. I like talking to people, interacting, and learning from people like the ever-so-amazing Gary Vaynerchuk and Social Media guru Chris Brogan. I love knowing what is going on in the world around me, and the internet and today’s technology provides a way to learn and interact with far more people in a day than you ever could in real life.

Oh and by the way, the internet IS real life in 2008. We’re no longer talking to ‘anonymous’.

When I first started working in the marketing department for Grouse Mountain, it was 1999. The state of technology was vastly different than it is now. My favourite memory that makes me laugh, and maybe cry a little, is that we had only a few email accounts and not everyone could have their own. If I wanted to send an email I had to get up and kick the administrator off her computer, sit down and send it. Then I was at her mercy to let me know if I got a response. Funny to think back about it now.

Today, the situation is very different; I’m connected 24/7.

I started diving head-long into social media when I returned to work after my maternity leave in February 2007. I had been a forum junkie since about 2002, spending a huge amount of time in places like karateforums.com, coolrunning.com, weightwatchers.ca, familylife.com and justmommies.com. When I went back to work I was determined to seek out all the best places online in order to figure out who was where and what they were talking about. I signed up to MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn… I now have accounts I don’t even remember creating. I’m pretty much connected to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. all day long and even have to use two different browsers to stay logged in to two Google accounts. I have corporate accounts and personal accounts and the list goes on… and the lines blur…

My newest fascination is WordPress; I wish I hadn’t taken so long to discover it.

I switched this blog to it a couple of months ago and have built a new one now for UrbanShore.ca – my new pet project. I’ve also built one for Whistler Water and have one that I’m building for a friend. I also have a really exciting new wordpress site in the works for Grouse Mountain’s terrain park community that will launch very shortly.

Anyway, all this is to say I sometimes feel like my brain is going to explode. I would hazzard a guess I’m not the only one working with Social Media that is feeling this way, but I think if we’re not careful and place some limits on its use, we could easily integrate it to unhealthy levels. Who knows? Maybe I’m already there.

If social media were the only thing on my plate, maybe I would just get used to it, but it’s just a piece of my duties as a marketer and my life as a human being in 2008. I still have print ads, and signs, and brochures and documents and image requests and TV and videos and websites and planning and strategy to attend to. It’s actually the variety that keeps me loving my job, but it can tax the senses a little. Add to that the personal commitment to blogging outside of work and connecting with friends using social media and I really never leave my computer and mobile.

Such is my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Whether it’s writing, singing or playing music, writing or sharing intimate conversation with people, the drive to create seems to be rooted in this longing to contribute to the betterment of mankind.

I am on the edge of creating something new right now – a new hyper-local website/blog about urban living in the City of North Vancouver – and mostly the mid to lower Lonsdale area. This is my neighbourhood and I think it’s the best place to live anywhere. I really just want to find a way that all of us who live here and love it can share ideas about the best places to shop, eat, play… all those places that make this community unique.

And so now, urbanshore.ca is live. Welcome. Sit down and stay a while. Tell me what you think are the best places to enjoy this vibrant place. Share it with me.