SEO Mentor

For this SEO & Social Media Monday Interview Podcast Series I had the opportunity to interview myself. Yea I know I am weird but hey your chance to learn a bit more about me Garrett Pierson Your SEO Mentor. I also go into depth of why and how I do these interviews and stay tuned to my next interview with Lee Odden of TopRankBlog.com on Monday August 25, 2008!

So check out and listen to the podcast above or check out the transcript of the recording below:

Hello everyone, this is Garrett Pierson here; Your SEO Mentor. You’re here for my Monday interview series. Welcome, and thank you for being here.

Today, I have the opportunity to interview myself, Garrett Pierson. The interviewee that I was going to interview fell through but that is okay. I have the opportunity to interview myself. That’s a good thing, because I’ve had a lot of listeners, people who follow me, and friend ask, “Garrett, you’re doing these great interviews with some great experts in the SEO and Social Media communities and industries, but we don’t know a lot about you.” This is a great opportunity for me to tell you all a little bit about myself, to tell you why I do these interviews, and to go through what these interview series are all about. Thank you for this opportunity. Hopefully you guys will stick around and listen. I’m going to make this very quick and to the point.

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Ideas by Garrett Pierson and Illustration by Mike Dyson

With all joking aside I am totally excited about Pubcon this year and there is a sweet lineup of speakers and the extra bonus of the conference being in Las Vegas. Just got word that they posted the conference session schedule.

Anyways this was just a quick fun post! Just wanted to lighten up the mood in the industry!

So I just wanted to keep everyone in the loop quick and talk about two top news items today that I thought were worth throwing a quick post up about.

First Google just announced the new analytics–Google Insights. You can read more about the announcement and check out the new tool but here is what I think quick and then I will give you Andy Beal’s post about the topic.

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I had the best time with my Monday Interview Podcast with Dave Snyder aka the cry baby! Take a listen above or read the transcript below to get total access to Dave admitting that he cries, a lot!

Garrett: Hello everyone. This is Garrett Pierson, YourSEOMentor. I’m here with Dave Snyder of Snydeysense.com, and SearchandSocial.com. How are you Dave?

Dave: I’m doing well. How are you doing?

Garrett: I’m good. It’s great to have you here, I’m excited. Why don’t you tell us a bit more about yourself, for those who might not know you; a little bit of your background in SEO, online marketing, social media, your family; anything you want to talk about?

Dave: I used to be a teacher for three years, when I first got out of school. I actually played music for a year when I first got out of school and just hung out. I didn’t know what to do with myself so I became a teacher. I’d always wanted to be a writer. My love for writing, and my huge love for sports, led me to start working for some content sites. They were a lot of fantasy football and basketball sites.

From that writing I started my own site and got into affiliate marketing just to keep the revenue up, to actually have the site pay for itself. I then got into SEO and all kinds of things. From there I decided that maybe the Web was the place for me to go. I really just wanted to start off as a content writer and editor. I ended up looking into SEO and getting more into it. I took a job in the agency world.

From there I worked with an agency for a while and I toiled in an agency in an online marketing manager. We all know how agency work can go. It can be pretty grueling sometimes. I learned a lot; mostly from just being thrown into the fire.

Now I’m the search and social media strategist for JRDunn.com. We’re the world’s largest designer jewelry store. I’m also the cofounder of SearchandSocial.com, with Jordan Kasteler. We’re a SEO and social media consultancy. We also do our own online media.

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With the rise of Social Media and the ability to converse real time with people you have never met before, it seems that things are changing almost daily for both the good and the bad. Lets focus on the bad for just a bit and then end with the good.

BAD:

Before social media the only area people in the industry would interact was maybe a couple times a year at conferences and the majority of this was when they were at the bar and totally relaxed. Now we have the opportunity to talk all day long via micro-blogging, live online TV, etc. We never had to interact in this setting before, we now know exactly what each other is doing not only on a daily basis but on a second by second basis (e.g. Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, etc.).

So you are asking, “Garrett what is the problem with this and why would this be bad?” Well it is simple, have you ever had a best friend that you loved to be around and then you moved into a apartment together and wanted to kill each other after a couple weeks. Well I see the same thing happening online these days, if you haven’t noticed lately there has been a lot more back and forth. In my opinion this is due to Social Media. Now you can argue my opinion all you want and that is fine really it is just an observation that a good friend of mine had and I happen to totally agree. So that wasn’t so bad lets get to the good!

GOOD:

Well the good items list is endless but here are just a couple of things that I think are totally awesome due to Social Media.

• Making new friends you would have never met any other way
• Building Relationships of trust
• Networking B2B and B2C
• Building Social Equity
• Instantly Communicating to Clients and/or Customers
• Reputation Management
• Being engaged in something (I see people being less depressed)
• Introverts becoming extroverts
• Conquering Social Fears
• Giving Value faster & more efficiently
• Building Brand Awareness
• Free marketing (if you do it right and give valuable content)
• Search engine rankings (Just search “SEO Mentor” and you will see what I mean)
• Last of all FUN FUN FUN

Again the list could go on and on and if you want to add to it simply comment below. Over all I think the Good wins over the Bad but I think we need to be aware and careful as we all share our lives online and talk about others. It all comes back to the ethic of reciprocity or the Golden Rule,“treat others as you would like to be treated.”

Take a listen above to my short and to the point Social Media Weekly News Wednesday Podcast where I give you some of the top news items in the Social Media industry. Here are some of the items I talked about today:

Twitter as News-wire

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MyBlogLog redesigns, functionality remains the same

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Looking at Fake Social Media Profiles

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Recommendation Engine rolling out this week!

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