Performancing: The Litle Widget That COULD
Oct 31, 2006 Blog General
If this works I’m going to be VERY impressed. I have just installed performancing (the Firefox plugin) for a convenient way to blog from the office. Over the past year or so I have been very tempted to install performancing but was discouraged to discover the lack of support for b2evolution.net, my blogging platform of choice. Today I found out from the b2evolution forums that since B2evolution supports the same blogger.com API that Wordpress does, I can select Wordpress as the type of blog and it should work. (By the way, B2evolution and Wordpress share the same bloodlines as projects that split off the original B2). I installed it. And now I’m hoping this works.
But, I have been following Performancing, the company, from the start. They have been a very dynamic startup. They launched their business with a very successful plugin for Firefox. They then built a very popular online community about blogging, marketing online, the start-up life, and application development. Since they were using the robust Drupal software to run their site, they were able to open the doors for anyone who wanted to create a blog on perfomancing.com to do so (although they since moved to a forum format). They then created a popular statistics tracking service called Performancing Metrics knowing how obsessive bloggers can be with their daily (and a lot of times hourly) stat-checking habits. And for their latest endeavor, they put on their Agency hats and started a blog advertising network called Performancing Partners. Yes, they have come a very long way from a simple Firefox plugin in a very short time. I’m very interested to see where the next few years take them.
Now that I’m done playing with the plugin, I think I’ll go tinker with their Metrics service.
powered by performancing firefox
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Stuffing November with Something Other Than Turkey
Oct 30, 2006 Blog General
Thanks to John’s guilt filled missionary-esque efforts, I have taken on a bit of soul finding during the month of November. No, I’m not getting all philanthropically charged just in time for the holidays, but rather taking on a selfish solo endeavor. I’m chasing the great American Dream (the one that doesn’t involve Baseball or MLMs): I’m writing a Novel!
Yes I’ve pledged to be a Wrimo for the whole month of November. I shall produce dry diologue and un-inspired characters and will glow in the self-satisfaction that comes from actually completing a piece of fiction (not talking about this blog BTW). I will type furiously producing thunderous clacking of keys and a tornado fury of keyboard dust and forehead sweat with the hopes that most of the words will be real enough to lookup in Webster’s and the sentences will not run on and on and on (again, not the blog). Somehow, I’ll conjure up the Great Spirit of Novel Writing, my eyes will roll back in my head, and I will have created a masterpiece of 50,001 words by November 30th–Midnight. Hopefully I’ll still have a wife, a son, a job, a house, a dog, a fish and a rabbit when I awaken from my hypnosis at the end of the month. If I achieve my goal and my wrists had not yet shattered from carpal tunnel’s, I’ll guarantee to induce the syndrome by the successive patting of my own back.
If you are a friend you may want to shy away from me during the first week of December. If I happen to cross paths with you then, I’m sure I’ll insist on your reading of my daft manuscript. But I have to warn you while I’m sane: No matter how much I promise that you can tell me your honest opinion of it and I’ll take it constructively, please oh please be a true friend and LIE. Lie to me blue in the face like the devil himself has your arm twisted behind your back with a shiv up against your kidneys. I honestly won’t be able to handle your honesty at that moment. My ego will look tall on the outside (that’d be the self-patting of the back talking), but will indeed be very shallow and fragile from within. Instead, you’d be better off waiting until I let it sit and age for six months before I re-read it and declare the piece “a waste of a month of my life”. Then and only then would it be ok for you to agree with me.
So enough with the self-deprecation. Enough with the build-up. Let’s get this new project (that will more-likely-than-not see the same demise as almost all my projects) started!
Join us! Visit the National Novel Writing Month site today and become a Wrimo yourself. (I know, I know: I was pretty convincing, wasn’t I?)
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DMA Sets Standard By Offering SEM Certification
Oct 17, 2006 Search and SEO
When it comes to SEO/SEM Certification, the need for such has been met by the industry with a rather strong distaste. General consensus of the industry is that not a single party is truly capable of handling such a certification program without bias and significant resources to keep up with industry trends. There are currently a few certification programs in the Search Marketing realm, but there are professional organizations such as SEMPO in which an SEO/SEM can apply for and be accredited to. Most of the existing certifications are, at best, minimal and out-of-date. The industry lacks, and is in strong need of an industrial standard certification program, a program that will recertify marketers on a yearly (give or take) basis to ensure that marketers are changing their methods with the industry’s movements.
Enter the Direct Marketing Association. They already have established successful certification programs in the offline and online marketing worlds. The DMA has the resources, trainers, and experience necessary to offer a valuable certification program to the SEM world. I was very please to find that the DMA launched their Search Engine Marketing Certification program today! They are meeting a very specific need for the fastest growing segment of direct marketing.
It doesn’t come cheap. Level 1 certification is a hefty $1900 for non-DMA members. Level 1 will certify you as capable of performing day-to-day tasks (Hello LinkMonkey!) and reporting duties. Level 2, which is still in development, certifies one as capable of creating and building Search Marketing campaigns and becoming the in-house lead for all things search. The cost for level 2 is $2000. Both prices do not include an application fee of $400.
Is it worth it? I think so, since the DMA is already a household name in almost all Marketing Firms. But to be honest, this is a new program and we’ll need to wait for some input from the firstgoers. Time will tell if the DMA is committed to the evolution of Search Marketing and their certification program.
