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Aaron Strout

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Don’t Put Me in a Bucket, Yo! Live from #IMS09

October 7, 2009 By Aaron Strout 4 Comments

I’m here at the Inbound Marketing Summit in lovely Foxborough, MA (yup, the home of the New England Patriots). This is the fifth occurrence of the event and second time in the Boston area. I am proud to say that I’ve attended four out of the five and this is by far the best attended out of the five. The focus of the event is on harnessing the power of things like social marketing, media and search engine optimization.

My original intention was to blog several of the panels but as you can see, it’s nearly 3:00 PM ET and this is my first one. Oh well, that’s what happens when you run into a group of about 100 people that you haven’t seen in a while and you need to do some catching up. Fortunately, I saved the cream of the crop for you and I’m kicking this off with a friend and super smart guy, CC Chapman.

CC’s talk is on “buckets” or more importantly, the importance of not putting people into buckets (he used an example of him being announced as a “daddy blogger” — arguably, it’s something he does but it’s not what he wants to be categorized as. Too many times today, he sees people getting put in buckets, especially as they become well known for a particular facet of their social prowess (podcasting, daddy/mommy blogging, photography skills, etc.) This is interesting because another good friend, Melanie Notkin, founder and principal of SavvyAuntie.com, has shared similar frustrations when she’s been billed as “a blogger.”

In both cases, neither CC nor Melanie were trying to distance themselves from the world of blogging, but rather for being pigeonholed into one particular category. This is particular important when you think about pitching a blogger, reporter or podcaster.

p.s. the reason I chose this photo is that I had a burger with CC at 5 Brothers today lunch. I couldn’t resist.

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 17: Yelp-ing it Up

October 2, 2009 By Aaron Strout 1 Comment

I have a rule with e-mail. It’s called the 2 minute/2 week rule. You can probably guess what the rule is but if not, it means that I try and respond to most e-mails within 2 minutes. The reason being, if I don’t get to it in 2 minutes, it usually sits in my inbox until I’m on a plane so you get a response 2 weeks later.

The reason I bring my “rule” up is that I’m taking that approach with today’s Quick-n-Dirty podcast wrap up. I’m hustling a little bit because I have to leave in 45 minutes to pick friends up at the airport. We’re going to the Austin City Limits music festival this weekend so if I don’t do this now, you won’t get the recap until Monday or Tuesday of next week.

With that as a caveat [ahem, excuse] for my pithiness, onto to the deets. Oh, remember that you can always download these podcasts on iTunes, listen to show archives here or find recaps of past episodes on this blog and co-host, Jennifer Leggio’s Feeds blog on ZDNet focused on social business.

Highlights from this week’s show:

  • Featured Social Network: Gowalla. The easy way to describe it is that it’s a FourSquare knock off but don’t just take my word for it. TechCrunch did a good comparison of Gowalla and FourSquare if you’re looking for a more detailed description of each. To that end, Gowalla does have some cool additional features like recommended user generated walking tours. Jennifer isn’t a fan, especially because of it’s wonky GPS capabilities. The jury is still out with me.
  • Special Guest: Vince Solitto, VP of Communications, Yelp. Okay, I feel a little bit bad because Jennifer and I definitely put Vince on the “Budweister hot seat” with some of our questions. Given Vince’s background in politics, he seemed to handle the pressure without any problem. The one big takeaway that I didn’t realize about Yelp is that only a third of their reviews/ratings are for restaurants. The rest are for services — similar to Angie’s List — think dentists, doctors and daycare. Who knew?
  • Featured Tweeter: Simon Mainwaring. I’ve recently put Simon in my “Trust Tree” list on Tweetdeck — that’s the 100 or so people that I follow closely for one reason or another. The main reason Jennifer and I liked Simon as a choice is that 1 out of every 3 tweets is a link to some great report or statistic on social media, marketing or Web 2.0. Given his background (big brand/big agency), methinks he knows about that which he speaks.
  • Point / Counterpoint: This week’s discussion was short and sweet. We focused on third part social networks’ “ownership” of content. Jennifer said that she didn’t like places like Facebook, Twitter and Ning owning some rights to her content but she went into the deal “in the know” (she reads ever word of ever terms of service). My contention is that as an individual, I don’t care much that the socnets own my stuff but when it comes to business, companies should be careful. One MAJOR argument for considering a branded only community in addition to joining these places (and yes, I admitted on the show that this is a little self-serving given the fact that I work at a company that builds branded online communities). Whatever! 😉
  • Give away: we also gave away another pass to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit. The lucky winner was none other than Mr. Michael J. Russel for his very clever Q-n-D Haiku. Hope he can make it!
So that’s it. That’s the recap. Don’t miss next week’s show where we’ll discuss the hashtag study that Jennifer conducted with our friend and fan, Deb Robison. If you haven’t weighed in yet, be sure to do so. Also, we are broadcasting live from Blogworld Expo in two weeks. If you have suggestions on anyone that you think we should interview, tweet us or put your reco in the comments!

Want to Win a Pass to Inbound Marketing Summit Boston?

September 28, 2009 By Aaron Strout 1 Comment

Our friend, Justin Levy, of New Marketing Labs was kind enough to give my Quick-n-Dirty podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio and me a few passes to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit: Boston to give away on our show. We’ve already given away passes the last two weeks during the show and we’re going to give away another pass this Thursday to one lucky caller. However, we have one other pass that we’re going to give away in a little bit of a different way…

Anyone that knew me in my early days of Twitter may remember my weekly “Tweet-ku” contests — essentially a prize for the best haiku poem completed in a 140 characters. I would give away $20 iTunes gift cards. This time around, you don’t need to do haiku (although your welcome to if you like) but Jennifer and I are looking for the most clever tweet ABOUT the @QuicknDirty podcast show. Yes, that’s pretty vague but that’s not by accident.

How do you enter you ask?

RULES

  • You must be following the @QuicknDirty podcast Twitter account
  • You can enter multiple times with multiple tweets
  • The tweets MUST contain a reference to the “@QuicknDirty” Twitter handle
  • Contest starts as of noon, PT today (September 28) and ends at midnight, PT on Wednesday, September 30.
  • The winner will be announced on the show (Thursday, October 1 at 3 PM PT / 6 PM ET)
I’m sure I’ve forgotten something so feel free to tweet me @aaronstrout or leave a comment down below.

Upcoming Conferences: Where to Find me in April-June

April 10, 2009 By Aaron Strout 2 Comments

Yup, it’s that time of the year again. Conference time. We got things kicked off last month with SXSW and now we’re on to some of the “less networking/more learning” type conferences. While I’d like to get to a whole lot more, this is about all my work/personal life/mental health can handle for the time being.

  • Inbound Marketing Summit, SanFrancisco, CA April 28-29th (speaking)
  • AV Marketing Roundtable – Creative Ideas to Stretch Your Marketing Budget, Austin, TX April 30 (speaking/sponsoring)
  • Community 2.0, San Francisco, CA May 11-13 (attending/podcasting/blogging)
    NOTE: I have deep discount passes. Use code: GSTM2105AS when you register for $600 off.
  • Corporate Communication & Technology Conference, New York, NY  May 15-16 (speaking)
  • Inbound Marketing Summit, Dallas, TX May 27-28 (speaking/sponsoring)
  • BlogPotomac, Washington, DC June 12 (attending/podcasting/blogging)
Which conferences are you attending in the next three months? Is there one that I don’t have on the list that is a MUST attend?
Photo Credit: John Federico

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