Thanks to the quick work of the organizations below, we are all excited to announce the introduction of the region’s first Social Media Awards, The SoMe Awards (so – mee). This year’s award is on a tight time table, but your help with tweeting, blogging and spreading the word is appreciated. Most details are available at www.someawards.com. Don’t be shy – nominate yourself or a client close to you.

I’ve had terrible luck getting and keeping good and reliable handyman for my house.  I have a great plumber and a great painter that I work with and but with handymen, I’ve encountered either incompetence or unreliability with several different people.  So, after I realized that this social media trend is probably here to stay, I decided to tweet my need to my network to see if I could get any leads on a reliable Portland / Beaverton Handyman.

Okay, not really – but it could happen.  Here we go - my very own social marketing test in action…

It’s strange to have been in search marketing and professional business consulting for 10 years, and currently work in a market (search) that is practically untouchable – yet be laid off.

Several months ago, around the time that Mixx launched, I remember reading an article floating around on Sphinn entitled “The Importance of Being an Early Adopter.” The article focused on Twitter, describing the tangible benefits for social media marketers of building their brand in a smaller community, a brand that will gain significant importance as the sphere of that particular site grows larger and larger.

A few weeks ago, I was connected to Anna Song, an investigative reporter and anchorperson at KATU. She was looking for an expert in the dark arts of online reputation management.

With a decade or more of related experience, I fit the bill and we scheduled a visit to Anvil Media, Inc. Anna and her cameraman spent an hour or two with the Anvil team, asking questions and getting a better idea of what goes into the online reputation management process.

I just wrapped up 4 days of blog coverage for Search Marketing Standard at SES New York. You can read about the 16 sessions I attended online, and check my personal blog for additional color commentary. All-in-all, the event was good.

Since I first attended SES in Boston, I’ve noticed the event has changed along with the industry. For starters, the overall energy level has waned as the SES appeals to a more broad and corporate audience. Back in the early days, you could sense the nervous energy and appreciated the “insider information” now outlawed by legal departments.

Todd Mintz posted a YouTube video a couple of days ago and complained of “embedding issues” so I thought I’d do the same, testing for myself. Todd’s right… Although it showed in Firefox, it wouldn’t work in IE… What a a pain…

Sorry Todd, but here’s the fix - Before embedding the Youtube code in a Wordpress post, go to Users - your profile - and UNcheck the box for “use the visual editor when writing”. It’s stupid, but that all it takes to fix the issue. Sorry - blame Microsoft I guess…

“…Oh I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I get high with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends.” The Beatles

Sphinn has certainly changed the social and professional dynamic of search marketing. Each Sphinster has a different perspective on the Sphinn impact and to best illustrate this, I thought it would be instructive to interview several people about Sphinn who I’ve either met via Sphinn or got to know much better through Sphinn. These folks are:

Securing your social presence. Research relevant social networks, identify existing networks for your brand or your industry, have a strategy & determine who gets social profiles. Consider social profiles for your brand. Create SEO’d profiles & manage your reputation. Empower brand evangelists. Embrace convergence. Leverage existing marketing efforts. Direct traffic offline & online.

Todd’s blog

Social media for strategic linking. Benefits: control over anchor text, body copy , theme & lots of opportunity for links. Strategies - building reputation neighborhoods, building hubs with social media links, maximizes use of anchor text. Reputation management: signup to everything, text, get links, build neighborhoods, interlink within reason, vary anchor text & copy.