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The Most Important Lesson Learned at #BrightonSEO April 2013…

….was that the UK is severely lacking in talent.

I’m not sure what it is, maybe with recent events has left people scared, and people haven’t practiced their art as much as they should, but BrightonSEO left a lot of people scared, borderline quivering mess, as a juggernaut rolled through their hard work without much care and attention.

Of course, the “talent” I’m talking about isn’t SEO talent (BrightonSEO has a selection of the most talented Digital Marketers the world has to offer), but rather a talent for pinball! I thought somebody would give me a game, these two pictures show I was sadly mistaken.

The names of the SEO’s of which the spherical smack-down has been laid down upon have been censored for the protection of the innocent.*

In all seriousness though, it was my first Brighton SEO, but it definitely won’t be my last. Had plenty of takeaways from the speakers, many of which their slides are floating around online (you can view the slides from Alex Moss’ Brighton SEO talk on Social Structured Data here) – EDIT: Daniel Bianchini‘s Blog has a list of all the known slides put online. Plus it was great seeing so many friends, even if I do spend a large part of Sunday detagging myself from Facebook photos.

I’ll try and type the bullet points I made, and either post them here or on the 3 Door Digital blog. They are fairly substantial, and Evernote isn’t exactly behaving itself at the moment. Will probably be a copy and paste job.

Here’s to the September 2013 one, yeah? If you are a Digital Marketer with any sort of drive to succeed or care for your job you really should go.

I may even get to that Lewes FC game I was threatening to go to beforehand.

* I should add that PushON‘s Simon Wharton, if this whole digital malarkey thing doesn’t work out, should really become a hustler on the Amstar’s 1980 classic Phoenix.

** Photo Credit – Jackie Hole.

Bye Google Reader, Hello Feedly!

So over the Easter weekend I switched to Feedly!

feedly

My stalling for switching has largely been because of compatibility with one of my favourite apps – Buffer. Previously on Google Reader, I used IFTTT so that any starred post would get posted to Buffer. I reached out to IFTTT to see if there was a replacement. Their response was the rather unhelpful “sign up for updates!”, so I put it on the backburner for a while.

That was until I saw a post by Leo Widrich on the Buffer blog entitled “Top 5 Google Reader Alternatives that Work With Buffer“, after trying Feedly first I was happy with it, and decided to stick with it.

I was more than happy, I was impressed! It played a lot nicer with third party services that Google Reader did. I think is because each reader seems to be their respective company’s main focus, whereas Google’s is search. As such, it’s probably in the best interests for them to innovate and keep things new.

It isn’t perfect. For one the Android App is dreadful, so much so that rather than the app, I am simply using the desktop version on my tablet. But apart from that it is pretty good.

But as things stand, I’m happy with Feedly. And as such, I need some new blogs to read! So what blogs have I missed so far? Bear in mind, I am into in WordPress, SEO, shit like Lifehacker, Football, Travel, Wrestling and General Bumpf.

March Challenge Update & April Goal

Again, this month’s review of the challenge is a little late (again, apologies – blame the Easter Bunny).

March’s Goal – Launch a Website: Complete!

Yes! I finally pushed a website I had out of the door from one of the domains I had. Hurrah! The website – if you cannot tell from the banner at the top – was Wrestling Betting. It is a domain I’ve held for a while, ever since I had a run of 6 Pay-Per-Views where I predicted the result of every single match perfectly last summer, and it was just when twitter accounts such as @FootyAccums & @HashtagBetting were beginning to become popular, so I bought the domain and sat on it until the end of last month.

Anyway, had some great ideas to push it, one of which from Britannia Wrestling which is brilliant and could result in me not walking for days afterwards, but I’m seeing how it does in Wrestlemania Season in terms of traffic and people viewing it. Would love to grow it into a more substantial idea, and keen to get your thoughts on what to add to it. It’s basic at the moment, but will be adding to it! But for now, please have a read of my Wrestlemania 29 Predictions on the site.

You can also like Wrestling Betting on Facebook and follow @Wrestlingbets on Twitter.

April’s Goal – I’m Not Telling!

Yes. There is a big goal for April. It’s actually massive and could be life changing, but I cannot say what it is. A few people know what it is though, but

The worst thing is a few choice people know. I’d love to sing it from the rooftops, but I cannot.

But all I can say it’s exciting, and it may involve a party. Keep your evening’s free.

Trip To Glasgow – March 2013

Recently I visited Glasgow for a long weekend. Really the reason was to watch Wales play Scotland in Hampden Park, but as it is a city I’ve never been before, I took some time out to visit the city.

All in all, I had a great time, Glasgow is a great city, people were dead friendly, and we were even allowed in The Iron Horse, the Tartan Army pub. So many memories and happy thoughts such as the spine tingling rendition of “Caledonia” on karaoke on Thursday night by some amazing singer, an American stumbling into The Iron Horse with not a clue with what’s going on (even going so far as to wearing an Irish jumper!), eating horrible food and not giving a damn, stumbling upon a great hotel full of Welsh people. Kippers for breakfast (a relevation!), a solid Wales performance. Ashton Lane in Glasgow for pints, and Partick Thistle. Especially Partick Thistle.

Anyway here are my “cultural” photos. The matches I went to see will be covered on You’re Supposed to be at Home, with the Wales match up first!

A proper post is on the way soon!

As an aside, and here’s a Social Media Tip you’ll never hear at conferences:-

If you ever want to get a lot of retweets, followers and replies, talk about Partick Thistle. They love their club being mentioned. Seriously. Work it into your digital marketing strategy today.

February Challenge Update & March Goal

Apologies for the small delay in the blog post. I completely missed a blog post last week, which is practically inexcusable, as I do have posts to post. I celebrated my 29^th birthday last Monday (Happy Birthday to Me!) and generally spent most of the week either celebrating or recovering.

I have also have some amazing news on the horizon on the next couple of months, which may take quite a bit of my time, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend on this site for the next couple of months. Next months’ goal for example is “fucking finish what is causing the amazing news”, so that’s all sorted! But onto this month’s goal & last month’s.

February’s Goal – Decluttering: Complete! (ish)

Yes! I managed to declutter a fair bit from my room and domain portfolio, making about £100 in the process. Money which is appreciated as in under two weeks I am heading to Glasgow to watch Wales play Scotland in the footy (as well as the bonus attraction of Glasgow Rangers vs Stirling Albion the next day – Scottish Division 3 doesn’t get the International break that higher leagues do). It wasn’t without it’s faults, here were a few things that could’ve scuppered me:-

eBay Throttling My Listings

I talked about this briefly in another one of my other posts, but something I didn’t realise was eBay would only allow 10 items (or £500 value items) for new sellers. As somebody who rarely dabbles in eBay, this was frustrating as I had to split my listings up over two days, nearly missing the February deadline.

Bad/Late Payers

So I had two auctions won, however at the time of writing I’ve still to receive payments for. They were also fairly high selling items, so I’m a bit gutted to not get the cash in my back pocket yet. I’ve chased and chased, and not sure what to do if I’m honest. eBay don’t exactly support sellers over buyers, so I’m thinking I may have to suck it up and relist. Boo hoo.

Godaddy

What a bunch of monumental weapons. You see, I snapped up a domain on backorder a few years ago, and it came with a “free domain monitoring service” which automatically links me with the domain. However, after realising I had fuck all to write about Belgium I sold it to a friend of mine. Said friend has let it lapse, Godaddy paced it into auction and because I have the “free domain monitoring service” still on my account they very kindly put in a bid for the domain. A bid that wasn’t matched, and I now once again own said domain.

I’m not happy. It’s not expensive, but frustrating as GoDaddy have been as helpful as a chocolate teapot, often throwing answers in legalese to me. In this one dickish move, they are losing me as a customer. Sucks to be you, Godaddy.

March’s Goal – Launch a Website

And so onto March’s goal – it is to get a website out of the door. I’ve been sitting on a domain for about 3 or 4 months for an idea that I’ve never even started, so decided to launch a website by March 31^st.

I’ve bought the domain name, secure the Twitter & Facebook accounts for it and invested a little bit of money for advertising. The domain however is going to try and make money, and I have a plan for doing so. Wish me luck!