Are these Gnomedex attendees geekier than you?

Last week I attended the Gnomedex 10 conference in Seattle, and I asked speakers and attendees what makes them a true geek. This video is the result of that interview.

This video was shot for Dice, "The career hub for tech" and a client of Spark Media Solutions. For more on Gnomedex, read my roundup "The cool and not-so-cool from Gnomedex" plus for more videos from the event, check out Dice's Facebook page or read the latest stories on Dice News.

There's no trick to it — just a lot of hard work

What Hollywood has discovered is that people can be really passionate about stories and characters. Fans are so emphatic they just want more. Hollywood appeases them with additional content such as t-shirts, extras on a DVD, and maybe a podcast.

But what if the entire production is fully shut down, yet the fans want the story to continue? This was the question Steve Fisher and Mike Dougherty asked about the TV series “Firefly” and its subsequent movie “Serenity.” They were avid fans who wouldn’t be satisfied with just another piece of fan fiction. They set their sites on creating a movie. They first asked for permission from the series producer, Josh Whedon, made a call out to fans to help, and spent two years organizing and producing the film “Browncoats: Redemption.”

It took 160 volunteers, a lot of work, a ton of favors, and only $27,000 to produce the film. In the end, all the proceeds from the film will go to five different charities connected with Firefly's original creator and cast members.

When Fisher and Dougherty are asked, “What’s the secret to pulling off a crowdsourced film?” the two of them simply said, “We just did it.” There is no trick. It really is that hard to do. Above is my interview with the two filmmakers at Gnomedex 10 in Seattle. I was shooting a series of interviews for Dice and Dice News at the event. I asked Fisher and Dougherty about the project and some of the hurdles they had to overcome.

For more on Gnomedex, read my piece, "The cool and not-so-cool from Gnomedex" and check out other videos from the event on Dice TV and Dice Out Loud.

Here's the trailer for "Browncoats: Redemption."

I'll be giving a webinar on social media press releases, along with Mark Budgell of Hewlett Packard, in a Bulldog Reporter/PR University event on Sept. 9.

Social Media Release Update: Use the Latest Templates, Tips and Inside Tricks to Boost Pick-Up will show participants how to create and write your own social media releases, the best and most practical SMR templates to use and which social media widgets to include.

In the 90-minute online presentation, we'll also cover how to distribute social media releases and how to monitor and measure the reach of your new, supercharged press releases, resulting in greater reach and results among online influencers covering your brand, product or company.

If you use social media releases or can point to some interesting examples, please share them in the comments below -- and let me know if I can use it in my presentation.

Webinar details:

When: Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010, 1 p.m. EDT, 10 a.m. PDT

Cost: $299 per registrant. Session details. Register here.

How: All you need is a computer and an Internet connection.

What you'll take away:

• New Opportunities: How to become an expert in issuing the latest Social Media Releases
• SMR Update: Latest developments, recent templates, who social media releases reach now — and how they are being used to build a bigger digital footprint
• Common myths and examples of social media releases
• How to incorporate social media elements into traditional releases — and how to update your online newsroom to include these elements, as well
• Convincing Data: How to sell SMRs to skeptical management and clients
• Strategic Planning: How to incorporate a Social Media Release Strategy in your PR plan this year

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Even with social media, half of success is just showing up

Social media as we all know is not a panacea to achieve your goals, but rather an enabler. If you want to land your dream job using social media, it still takes a lot of work. I chatted with Adria Richards of But You're a Girl, who believes the secret for dream job success starts with attending events and building your relationships in person.

Are you a little shy about meeting people at conferences? Do you not know the best ways to follow up? Richards has some great answers to those questions. Watch this 4-minute video.

This interview is part of a series of videos I produced at Gnomedex 10 in Seattle this weekend as I was reporting for Dice and Dice News. They've got a fun contest to win an iPad on their Facebook Page. Just explain what makes you a true geek and you're entered to win (August 31 is the deadline). Plus, check out Robert Scoble's tips for getting started in social media.

Here's a little proof that Twitter is now not simply location aware, in terms of latitude and longitude or address, but is now place-aware.

I checked in to both of these places on Foursquare and Twitter recognized these places by name:

Then, I decided to click on the Trader Joe's, Falls Church link beside the little map marker, and lo! there was the following pop-up window, which is very much aware of not simply location anymore but they're following the trend of Facebook Places and the other location-aware social networks by starting to connect to businesses:

Pretty interesting development -- what do you think about this?

Via Marketing Conversation and Chris Abraham

Photo by tantek on Flickr

Since I have become addicted to Foursquare, the location check-in service, I set out to find the best tips to get to the top of Foursquare’s leaderboard while playing fair.

Here are the top 5 tips I discovered:

1If you want to become mayor, check in to places that you know that you’ll be able to check in to frequently, as many times as possible. Didn’t find your place on Foursquare already? Add it. Don’t forget and don’t neglect -- someone else may steal your mayorship from you.

2Foursquare resets its leaderboard on Sunday nights. To maximize your weekly tallies, make sure you start early in the week.

3Check in to new places -- every time you do so, these grant you 5 extra points, and these can add up quickly.

4Get familiar with how to unlock your special badges and work on unlocking them. Here are two great badges lists: TonyFelice.WordPress.com and TheKruser.com.

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Google Webmaster Tools is a phenomenal free resource.

Guest post by Danny Dover
SEO moz

For as long as I can remember, the best way for me to learn has been to do. I have gone through countless checklists while trying to understand search engine optimization. The following is a compilation of the most useful checklists I have completed in order to learn SEO. My intent is that this list can be used by people who are inexperienced in SEO but want to learn more.

Learn how to build a basic website

Before diving into SEO techniques, it's important to know the basics of web development. The following tasks will develop the necessary web development skills needed to become successful at SEO:

Learn how to code a basic website without using a WYSIWYG editor – Don't fear the word code, writing HTML is much easier than you think. If you can make a sandwich with two pieces of bread and put something in the middle, you can write HTML. For help, check out this excellent tutorial. Remember, don't worry about SEO techniques at this point. Focus on learning how to build a website first.

Code a website that contains the following:

• All styles with CSS. No tables!
• Homepage has 3 unique paragraphs about you
• 3 pages total; homepage, contact and portfolio

Pick your keywords - Pick keywords that are uncompetitive. This is very important as the words you choose will become the center of your SEO efforts. I recommend using your name. Go to Google and search for yourself. If a small amount of low quality websites show up, use your name as your keywords. If your name is competitive to rank for, find a variation of your name that is easier. Example: Danny Ben Dover.

Register a domain name and find hosting - This is not nearly as difficult as it sounds. I recommend SiteGround as good option. However, there are literally thousands of choices. Use your best judgment, but remember you shouldn't be paying more than $7 a month and the domain name should be included for free. Your only requirement is that your host can't have immovable ads. These could be crawled by the search engines and ruin your rankings. For your domain name, use your keywords from above. Eg., dannydover.com or dannybendover.com. If your keywords are not available as a domain name, choose different keywords. (Note: In this exercise, the keywords you are optimizing for and your domain name should be the same. Although this is not always the case in the real world, having similar keywords to your domain name makes SEO much easier.)

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It's amazing how upset people can get from a letter

On Friday night I appeared on KQED's "This Week in Northern California" discussing the open letter Google and Verizon cowrote to the FCC proposing new broadband requirements for mobile and some type of second Internet. The letter bent everyone out of shape and caused a flurry of response from traditional journalists and bloggers. While the protest at Google on Friday was a dud, anger in the blogosphere remained very high, with most everyone trying to extrapolate what Google and Verizon meant with their rather vague proposal. Google and Verizon responded to these various theories trying to clear up some myths that had developed over the week. But in the end it appeared the two elements that most upset everyone, mobile and this "second Internet" being exempt from the FCC's net neutrality regulation, were still very much on the table according to the two powerhouses.

If you haven't been paying attention, or need an overview, watch my five minute segment from the KQED show with Belva Davis.

Image by smi23le on Flickr.

Guest post by Anthony Piwarun
SEOmoz

Like most in the SEO (search engine optimization) community, I’m always looking for ways to improve content for my clients. Whether it’s a website, blog or a press release, there is always a way to make it rank better. Recently I began optimizing profiles on LinkedIn, the social networking site for business professionals. Using my own LinkedIn profile as a test, I’ve discovered that the same principles we use in the SEO field.

For two months, I altered various fields of my profile and logged the effect on the number of searches that it appeared in according to LinkedIn analytics. While I’m not one to rely heavily on a single method of measurement, LinkedIn doesn’t offer an option for analytics so my primary method of measurement was the in-house tracking system. The results I found were conclusive: It is possible to optimize your LinkedIn profile to rank better in search.

Before diving into the results of my study, I’d like to point out a few areas that I believe are key to achieving an optimized LinkedIn profile and also give a brief “how-to” on optimization techniques.

How to handle the profile headline

The first and most important field to optimize on your LinkedIn profile is the headline. The headline field can be most equated to a meta description in SEO terminology. It’s a way to explain what you do and how you do it (in as few words as possible) to the world without having to use one of those awful labels known as a “job title.”

For my headline, I opted to go with three keywords and my contact information. For those that aren’t too familiar with LinkedIn, contacting a non-connection isn’t easy unless you’re in the same group or you have a mutual friend, so adding contact information is helpful for new business development. Like its SEO counterpart the meta description, it’s the first thing a searcher sees when searching on LinkedIn.

Profile summary

A LinkedIn summary is a chance to describe who you are, what you want to accomplish, and what you aspire to be. In SEO terms, I like to think of it as the first 100 words of the page. This is a great opportunity to add a ton of keywords, related terms, and longer, more descriptive strings. While it’s important to use your targeted phrase a few times throughout your summary, keep in mind this is a professional profile and if you sound like a robot you most likely won’t win the bid, get hired, or be able to go more than 4 consecutive hours without your coworkers calling you R2D2. Just like any effective website, a LinkedIn profile optimized with user experience in mind will get the sale long before a keyword-stuffed can of Spam.

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