Urban Vancouver

It is a go. eMarketing 101 has finally decided to move one step ahead in its advertising and is pleased to announce that we will be working with Adhack, the DIY (Do it Yourself) Advertising community to create video ads for eMarketing 101. If you want to be part of this great journey or want to contribute in some way, please find the eMarketing 101 commission summary on Adhack.com. This is going to be a lot of fun. I will post the ads here as we progress and you will be able to comment.

Now, if you want to do the same thing I do to market your company more efficiently online and elsewhere (they do all kinds of ads) at a fraction of the cost of any major advertising agency, please feel free to visit Adhack.com for more information or communicate directly with James Sherrett, Director of Adhack: james@adhack.com. His talented team will help you develop the powerful advertising ideas that will bring you and your business on a positive viral spin.

In yesterday’s installment of this week’s holiday SEO series, we covered hot product research and how to boost your rankings for these items’ product pages. One of the tactics was to target bloggers and other media for Christmas gift guides or product reviews.

Again, the more quality links a product page has pointing to it directly, the better chance it has of ranking well in search engines. Plus, a diverse link profile (you have some links pointing to deeper pages, not just your home page) makes your site look more authoritative as a whole to search engines.

So when you do acquire these deep links, you want to keep them. But often in ecommerce - product pages come and go. So it’s important to make sure your links still give you benefit even when pages disappear.

I recently searched for “top geek gifts” and found Wired Magazine’s Ultimate Geek Gift Guide from 2005. It links to 26 products - most are deep pages on the manufacturer or online retailers’ sites. Though an old list, it’s likely the page still gets a lot of traffic. It certainly ranks well, and the links are valuable to SEO forever.

But only a handful of these product pages still exist, a whopping 13 (that’s 50%!) of them are now Not Found pages with no links back into the site, and no suggested alternative products.

Bad for customers, bad for SEO.

Only 20% of the pages preserved the link juice by using a 301 permanent redirect. 3 sites redirected to the home page, while Alienware redirected the page to its Desktop Computer category (one more link for you, Alienware - Merry Christmas) and Sonos to its What to Buy section.

The 301 (permanent) redirect does 2 things - it sends a visitor to a real page on the site, and it tells search engines to pass along any incoming link “juice” (Page Rank) to the page that is redirected to. Whether you redirect to the home page, category page or similar product, the link pointing to your domain helps the overall link popularity of your domain. But redirecting to a category or alternative product page other than the home page is preferable for a few reasons:

• It’s more specific for the user. If you redirect the page for a wireless keyboard you no longer carry to all your wireless keyboards, it’s more relevant to the visitor than dumping them on the home page.
• It boosts the rankings for the category or page you direct it to.
• It keeps diversity in your link portfolio. Search engines like to see that not all your backlinks point to your home page - looks more natural, and looks like your deeper content is valuable.

How do you accomplish this? John Honeck has a great technical article for programmers on how to set up permanent 301 redirects on ecommerce templates in ASP.

You never know when someone will link to you or to what page, so it’s best to make this standard procedure for all your pages.

Free Webinar: September 11th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder and Executive VP, FutureNow, Inc.
Register to Attend...

• SEO Tips for Special Holidays
• Tips for SEO Friendly Affiliate Programs
• Are You Making The Most of Your Ecommerce Blogs SEO Power?
• Ecommerce SEO Hack: Free Tool to Hone Your SEO Strategy
• Killer SEO Trick only 1% of Online Retailers Use

One of the dirtiest of taboo words in the professional design industry:

“SPEC WORK”

What is spec work? www.no-spec.com defines it as:

“Spec” is the short form for any work done on a speculative basis. In other words, any requested work for which a fair and reasonable fee has not been agreed upon, preferably in writing.

In some cases, people see spec work as synonymous with “crowdsourcing.”

Since the term “spec work” came up in the comments of our first commission with Techvibes, we felt we needed to address it. And this post is our first stab at doing just that. As our first stab, we want feedback. We’re open to other opinions and encourage you to post your thoughts.  As always, please post comments that are constructive and insightful. Flame wars will be doused.

So let’s jump right into things.

The first problem many designers have with spec work is that designers get taken for a ride. Imagine applying for a contract design job or a design contest, showing some work to compete, not winning, and later seeing your hard work used by the client, just how you intended, but without compensation or attribution.

We think that’s unacceptable. But it happens. And worst of all, sometimes it’s legal to get away with it. How, you ask?

Many websites (if you want to know which ones, either ask us or look at their statements on copyrights or terms of use) and various one-off “design our next…” type contests require that designers give up all rights to their work upon submission, and those right are gone for good. Poof.

That’s just crazy talk! You worked hard on that design!

We believe that your design remains your design. We’ve tried to enshrine that in our Terms of Use, which we’ve tried to make as readable as possible.

So when you upload an ad to AdHack, here’s what happens.

By uploading an ad to AdHack you are assigning to us, AdHack, a bundle of rights to sell on your behalf. That’s how we match ad buyers with ads and make sure we can deliver instant gratification to buyers when they hit the Buy button. We take that bundle of rights assigned to us and try to sell them, in whole or in parts, on your behalf.

That doesn’t sound so different yet, does it? Here’s how it’s different.

You can always choose to delete your ads from our servers. When you delete them the bundle of rights you assigned to AdHack reverts back to you. And you can do what you like with them.

So when we run a commission (like this one for Dreambank or this one for eMarketing 101) all the ads in contention for the commission have assigned to AdHack the standard bundle of rights that all ads uploaded to AdHack have assigned. The ad buyer then chooses one ad (or more, we encourage that) and acquires the rights they need.

The rights to all the remaining ads are still held by AdHack in that bundle of rights assigned by the ad creator to AdHack. And we’re going to keep trying to sell them. As long as we have them. But at any time the creator of the ad can delete the ad from AdHack regain the rights to their ad.

And did we mention that when we sell the rights to ads uploaded to AdHack we pay the ad creator? And that we pay ourselves and the ad creator based on how successful we are selling the ad?

It’s true. We split the sale price 80 / 20 — ad creator / AdHack. So an ad that sells for $10,000 pays the ad creator $8,000 and pays AdHack $2,000. We played with a few different pricing models and this one made the most sense to us. It aligned our interests with our clients’ interests. If we charged a flat rate, for instance, it would encourage us to bring in as many low price commissions as possible. And that’s not what we’re interested in doing.

The second problem with spec work is more specific to crowdsourcing communities — they tend to attract buyers looking to get cheap design work. And they get what they pay for (a nice way of saying crap).

This is a result of little to no communication between designers and buyers. Designers end up making “cool” looking logos without any thought to the business, strategy, market or branding that would be considered by a typical design firm.

We’re trying to overcome this problem a few ways. We developed an AdHack Ad Creative Brief to go along with every commission posted. We work with ad buyers to make sure they accurately describe their needs to the design community. And we try to provide a variety of ways for ad creators to provide feedback — to ask specific questions privately or publicly, to leave feedback on the commission, to collaborate with other ad creators.

We’ve got a long way to go with our system. It’s sure not perfect today! But we’re doing all we can to get the ball rolling. To get some real examples to build real processes.

When it comes down to it, we want our ad creators and ad buyers to be aware of how spec work can damage the creative work environment they both need. Ad creators need to be fairly rewarded for their hard work in a system that sees them as more than cheap labor. Ad buyers need to understand the value of their purchases. A $250 commission is not going to yield the same work as a $2,500 or $25,000 commission.

We have made a list of some discussions and articles on the Spec Work that we encourage you to browse if you’re interested more information. People are rightfully concerned.

• Spec work can damage your business
• 99designs: Bullshit 2.0
• Logo design contests are bad for business
• Crowdsourcing Graphic Design

Now it’s your turn. Are we full of crap? Are we right on the mark? Are we deluded? Is our position clear and fair?

It appears to me that phone manufacturers are releasing new mobile phone models at a quickening pace. It used to be that you could have a phone for over a year without it looking dated. However, in the iPhone Era, if you bought a phone 6 months ago, you are already two years behind the times (even if the phone you bought was an iPhone). The Age of the Disposible Mobile Phone is seemingly incongruous in the increasingly environmentalist milieu of western society. However, I am certain that when someone finds a way to make money by selling a "Green" phone all of the other phone makers will jump on board. For now, though, we will have to content ourselves with the cycle of "man, I need a new phone" to "just bought a new phone joy" to "look at that guy's newer phone envy" to "damn, why am I stuck with this Zack Morris phone" and back to "man, I need a new phone".

One just-released phone that I am looking forward to trying out is the Nokia E71. Personally I am a big fan of phones that feature WiFi, GPS, full qwerty keypads, and sleek Scandinavian styling--what is not to love? Another great reason to love this phone is that it is now supported by EQO.

You may or may not have noticed, but we have added a whole host of new phones to our supported list of the Nokia, Sony Ericcson and Samsung varietals.

Peter

Wanna do some extremely cheap (free) and fast market research? As lovely as Google Trends, Google Insights and Google’s Keyword Tool are - they are not as valuable as Amazon for commercial keyword research. They can’t tell you which products are most wished for and most gifted.

Though it’s hidden amongst a jungle of other links, products and calls to action - Amazon has a Bestsellers department. On the Amazon.com home page, scroll down to Features & Services / Amazon Exclusives / Amazon Bestsellers (or just click our link).

You’ll find every category that Amazon offers (which is pretty much everything) and even sub-categories.

And you’ll notice you can select the Most Gifted and Most Wished For items, based on Amazon’s tsunami of customer tracking and purchase data.

For example, if you’re in the beauty category, you can see the top 3 wished for fragrances are Vera Wang Princess, Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue and Marc Jacobs Daisy.

Comparing to Sephora’s best seller list, this is pretty good data.

When you understand what customers’ most desired and most gifted items are, you know where to focus your SEO efforts at the product page level as we approach the holiday season. And by SEO efforts, I mean link building.

If I were Sephora, I would head over to the search engine and scope out the ranking situation (making sure I’m signed out of my Gmail account so my rankings aren’t skewed by my frequent visits to the Sephora site). Now it doesn’t really matter what position you are in the results - results may vary based on a searcher’s location, browsing history (personalized search) and exact keyword term (rankings may differ for “vera wang princess” vs “princess vera wang”). And there’s always room for improvement when it comes to link building.

But you want to get an idea of which pages you are competing against. Is it Amazon? The manufacturer’s site? A popular blog review or shopping engine? Also, you want to know if you have a hope in the North Pole to actually rank for the product. If you’re not on page one or two, you may want to think realistically about your chances. Or, aim for a less competitive search like “buy vera wang princess” or “princess by vera wang.”

Okay, keeping with our hypothetical Sephora case:

Sephora is doing really well, and it’s tough to outrank the manufacturer site but we’ve seen it happen. Also, assuming Sephora’s competition reads Get Elastic and is embarking on link building campaignage as we speak, Sephora must protect its position. The key will be to build links (and start soon), and here are some ideas to accomplish this.

Leverage the Blog

Sephora has, in my opinion, one of the better retailer blogs out there. It actually has several posts linking to its Marc Jacobs Daisy page. But linking from a new blog post that includes “Marc Jacobs Daisy” in the title tag and URL will give extra topical relevance to the link. I’d go ahead and write a post on how it’s one of the top sellers, what customers have to say about it or which celebrities wear it.

Blogger Outreach

Why not make a list of influential beauty bloggers and send them a free Vera Wang Princess bottle or sample to review? As long as the review is appreciated but not required, I don’t see how this would violate the “don’t buy links” rule. Of course, I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments.

It works for quirky lounge chair maker Sumo. Top Internet marketing and advertising blogger B.L. Ochman calls Sumo’s blogger outreach smart marketing:

Sumo has used blogger outreach to get their furniture reviewed, and it’s smart marketing. Sending chairs to bloggers is cheap; effective because you feel like you need to review something that costs more than $100; and, unlike a book, way too big to ignore once it gets to your house. They didn’t send some stupid press release, or cutesy pitch. They just sent an email asking if I’d like to try the chair and review it, with a link to the site.

Sumo ranks quite nicely for terms like “lounge chair” and “bean bag chair,” thank you very much.

Search for Conversations

Who’s been blogging about Vera Wang Princess? Two tools I like to use to find out are blog search engine Technorati and reputation monitoring tool Trackur. These both have advantages over Google Blogs search.

Technorati shows you an authority score (higher is better), so you don’t waste time checking out low-quality blogs:

And Trackur lets you bookmark items with “Add to Favorites.”

You may discover some interesting things, like this blog that actually did link to Sephora:

But as you can see in the status bar, the blogger buggered up the link with a cut-and-paste so it reads http://http//www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P212915&shouldPaginate=true&categoryId=5625 which sends people and search engines to a dead page.

Sephora should send this blogger a heads up, and some form of thank you for linking (coupon or free gift). And to build a relationship, ask if she’d like to be an official reviewer for Sephora products on her own blog.

Help a Reporter Out

Get on Peter Shankman’s HARO (Help A Reporter Out), a thrice-daily mailing list of press opportunities. I’ve seen requests for sources from reporters from major news papers, magazines and even network TV morning shows. Several calls for products for gift ideas have come through. Getting on the list to receive the notices is easy, sign up here. You could get a link or great word-of-print marketing.

Sephora not only ships for free over $50, but also has free return shipping.

This should be in the title tag / meta description. Especially for searches like this:

This will also improve click through for searches without “free shipping” as we discussed yesterday.

So try out Amazon Bestsellers for the category/ies you sell - and remember, you can apply this insight to email marketing campaigns and merchandising strategies too. If you have additional link building tricks, you may want to keep them close to your chest. If you’re brave and already in the holiday spirit, you may want to share them in the comments here *wink.*

And before you ask why you should bother building links to product pages that may get dropped from your site in a year or sooner, come back tomorrow. We’ll explain how to handle this.

Free Webinar: September 11th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder and Executive VP, FutureNow, Inc.
Register to Attend...

• Ecommerce SEO: How To Preserve Your Deep Link Juice
• Ecommerce SEO Hack: Free Tool to Hone Your SEO Strategy
• Yes Virginia There Is a Santa Claus & He Searches for Free Shipping
• Ecommerce SEO: How To Plug Free Shipping Traffic Leaks
• SEO Tips for Special Holidays

I just wanted to let you know that I will be away for the next few days in lovely Montreal and although I will still be in work mode with client meetings and so on, I might not be able to answer your emails in a timely manner during that time. I will back in the office on Tuesday August 26. Thanks for your understanding. 

Rolling along with the SXSW Get the Vote Out campaign, today's potential presenter is me, Dave Olson.

A wee rookie at last years' SXSW, I fell into a groove and rocked it hard, producing an epic barrage of social media extravaganza.

As for presentations, i'm a guy who obsesses about doing something innovative in form and message - i avoid hackneyed acronyms and run o' mill tech babble to create sessions with a positive vibe and useful edu-tainment which you ain't heard before. Here's what I offer for SXSWi 2009:

1) F@ck Stats, Make Art - Dave Olson - solo

Via a pictorial journey through his own career of creating grassroots art and publications, renegade social media producer and writer Dave Olson will extol, encourage and explain the importance of taming the intimidation, solving conundrums and digging deep to muster authentic creative self expression in the digital era.

2) Social Media for Social Change - Dave Olson + panelists

Tips and case studies on how social change focused groups with limited resources can use the web, and internet tools including mobile technologies, to spread their messages effectively and inexpensively, as well as rapidly activate constituents for campaigns and activities to effectuate local or international change.

To convince you of my qualifications, here's a video - DaveO and Band of Social Media Renegades at SXSW - featuring Roland Tanglao, Jordan Behan and Nick Cook at Studio SX.

Audio of F@ck Stats, Make Art spiel from Northern Voice 2008 - Sweet Nectar of Validation - NV08 wrap up, reviews and podcast + photos, reviews, feedback (thanks Cosmo for audio)

Ditto with 3 P's of Podcasting presentation from Northern Voice 2007 - Belated, but Joyful, Northern Voice Podcast Mop-up - yup, photos & feedback here too

Most recently, Podcasting for Social Change - Net Tuesday4 with DaveO and All-Star Panel (with preview video) and a Miss 604 NetSquared Liveblog re-cap

And, here's a regular sorta bio:

A compulsive art and crafter from his earliest days, world-rambling Dave spends time writing (essays, freeverse poetry, epistletory literature), making static montage art and listening to old vinyl albums on the back porch whilst gazing at North Van's mountains and trees.

At Raincity, Dave brews up blogs, podcasts and white papers laden with anecdotes and derivatives on topics around community building, paradigm shifts in the media industry, and tips for producing quality content.

• Uncleweed.net
• Ephemeral Feasthouse
  
• Out n' About video blog
• Choogle on podcast
• Gravelly Beach podcast
• uncleweed Flickr photostream
• "uncleweed" tag on Flickr
• uncleweed Twitter

As such, I heartily encourage you to pitch in a vote for my two pitches for SXSW Interactive 2009. In return attendees will receive a guaranteed hour or two of edu-tainment and experiential learning. For non-attendees, i'll be there rocking out the podcasts coverage at my chooglin' speed.

By day, tech industry inspired interviews from the SXSWi trade show floor for Raincity Radio (feed), and by night ... after-hours hi-jinks while attending the music "conference" - {methinks what happens in Austin should be podcast, not stay in Austin!}

Rolling along with the SXSW Get the Vote Out campaign, today's potential presenter is me, Dave Olson.

A wee rookie at last years' SXSW, I fell into a groove and rocked it hard, producing an epic barrage of social media extravaganza.

As for presentations, i'm a guy who obsesses about doing something innovative in form and message - i avoid hackneyed acronyms and run o' mill tech babble to create sessions with a positive vibe and useful edu-tainment which you ain't heard before. Here's what I offer for SXSWi 2009:

1) F@ck Stats, Make Art - Dave Olson - solo

Via a pictorial journey through his own career of creating grassroots art and publications, renegade social media producer and writer Dave Olson will extol, encourage and explain the importance of taming the intimidation, solving conundrums and digging deep to muster authentic creative self expression in the digital era.

2) Social Media for Social Change - Dave Olson + panelists

Tips and case studies on how social change focused groups with limited resources can use the web, and internet tools including mobile technologies, to spread their messages effectively and inexpensively, as well as rapidly activate constituents for campaigns and activities to effectuate local or international change.

To convince you of my qualifications, here's a video - DaveO and Band of Social Media Renegades at SXSW - featuring Roland Tanglao, Jordan Behan and Nick Cook at Studio SX.

Audio of F@ck Stats, Make Art spiel from Northern Voice 2008 - Sweet Nectar of Validation - NV08 wrap up, reviews and podcast + photos, reviews, feedback (thanks Cosmo for audio)

Ditto with 3 P's of Podcasting presentation from Northern Voice 2007 - Belated, but Joyful, Northern Voice Podcast Mop-up - yup, photos & feedback here too

Most recently, Podcasting for Social Change - Net Tuesday4 with DaveO and All-Star Panel (with preview video) and a Miss 604 NetSquared Liveblog re-cap

And, here's a regular sorta bio:

A compulsive art and crafter from his earliest days, world-rambling Dave spends time writing (essays, freeverse poetry, epistletory literature), making static montage art and listening to old vinyl albums on the back porch whilst gazing at North Van's mountains and trees.

At Raincity, Dave brews up blogs, podcasts and white papers laden with anecdotes and derivatives on topics around community building, paradigm shifts in the media industry, and tips for producing quality content.

• Uncleweed.net
• Ephemeral Feasthouse
  
• Out n' About video blog
• Choogle on podcast
• Gravelly Beach podcast
• uncleweed Flickr photostream
• "uncleweed" tag on Flickr
• uncleweed Twitter

As such, I heartily encourage you to pitch in a vote for my two pitches for SXSW Interactive 2009. In return attendees will receive a guaranteed hour or two of edu-tainment and experiential learning. For non-attendees, i'll be there rocking out the podcasts coverage at my chooglin' speed.

By day, tech industry inspired interviews from the SXSWi trade show floor for Raincity Radio (feed), and by night ... after-hours hi-jinks while attending the music "conference" - {methinks what happens in Austin should be podcast, not stay in Austin!}

AdHack Roundup #18: Nothing but AdHack

Welcome to the AdHack Roundup #18, a generous slice of the latest AdHack news. Get it in ya.

We’re still the new kid in town: AdHack Beta. Go on. Introduce yourself.

Rounded up for this issue:

• AdHack Launch Party Report
• AdHack Community on the Homepage
• Canpages Commission update
• New Commissions: Dreambank and more
• Straight up: adhack.com

Unsubscribe? Go straight to le fooooooter.

The AdHack Roundup gets posted to AdHack blog too. Comments and uniques, bring the noise.

Like your RSS? Subscribe and you’ll feel the flow.

AdHack Launch Party Report

Veni, vidi, launchi.

We came, we saw, we launched.

On Friday, August 8th, in Vancouver, at the Anza Club, we launch the H-E-double-hockey-sticks out of the AdHack beta.

DIY DJing direct from your iPods to the sound system? Check.

A nifty copywriting contest with 3 excellent winners? Check.

Beer and wine? Sandwich platters? Licorice cigars as if we celebrated a birth? Check x3.

A cartwheel across the dancefloor? Check.

Here’s the official AdHack launch party report. If it’s not in the report, it didn’t happen.

Despite the evidence in the slideshow of AdHack launch party photos.

Questions? Missing clothes? Contact us. The statute of limitations ends in September.

AdHack Community on the Homepage

Our outstanding developer Paschal has been piling on the little changes to AdHack beta. Bit by bit we’re building out the site we imagined.

The latest improvement we’ve launched is the addition of links to the AdHack Community on the AdHack homepage.

Now you’ll be able to find the latest Commissions, Assignments, Resources and posts from AdHack Community Blogs on the homepage.

AdHack Community Blogs? You bet. Every member of AdHack has one. We’re just working out how to make it easier to find them and use them. Then we’ll open the floodgates to you.

After all, first impressions are important, right? You want to like it when you see it.

Canpages Commission Update

Did you vote for the winner of the Canpages Text-411 ringtone commission winner?

A ton of folks did. And left comments. And shared the ringtones. And we have to tell you, all that attention, traffic and feedback rocked our socks.

All the Canpages ringtone entries were strong candidates. So we owe a big thanks to all the folks who created entries. Jeremy Lim, DJ Hillman, Corey Rollins and Madincraft all riffed on ringtones with outstanding results. Each one deserves more than a few listens.

Now Canpages is going to choose one as the winner. Who will it be? You’ll have to check in to the AdHack blog on Wednesday, Aug. 20 after 5 pm pacific standard time to find out. Yes, we can be such a tease sometimes.

To make it up to you, here’s a list of all Canpages Text-411 ringtone entries for your aural pleasure.

New Commissions: Dreambank and more

The hits just keep coming. Now how about a video?

DreamBank wants you to help them create their flagship video to launch their community of people who ‘give dreams, not stuff.’ Here’s the full ad commission to create a Dreambank web video. Top prize: $1,000.

You’ve got until September 21 to complete and enter your video. But don’t let time tick, tick, tick away on you.

In our first two commissions we’ve noticed that ads received early make a strong impression on ad buyers. So get cracking on your ad and you’ll be the one making that strong impression.

Check out the Dreambank web video ad commission.

Nothing but AdHack

Through our alpha and now beta websites, with our blog on the side, we’ve never been as easy to find as we wanted.

adhack2.com, beta.adhack.com, adhack.com, blog.adhack.com. It’s a bit of alphabet soup.

But no longer. Starting today, we’re simply AdHack.com, with a side helping of Blog.AdHack.com to make sure we’re always online. All our other former names and links will still work too, but we’re cleaning up our act. A little.

Now we’re one site, with a blog on the side. We hope that makes things simpler, cleaner, clearer. A little spit and polish, ya know?

Now it feels pretty spiffy here at AdHack World Headquarters. Let us know what you think.

(The title for this section and edition of the Roundup comes from that classic Larry Bird vs. Michael Jordan McDonald’s commercial Nothing but Net. Check out those views!)

Tippy, it’s been a slice. Be a lamb and mix Mommy another martini while you’re up.

Feedback? We ain’t too proud to beg.

Mailto: james@adhack.com. Or just hit the reply button and you’re liquid.

Go with dog,
~JS

Panzanella, an Italian bread salad, is one of the easiest dishes you can whip together on a hot summer day. It contains such a beautiful mix of refreshing ingredients. Ripe tomatoes, fragrant basil and rustic bread are tossed together with a tangy vinaigrette. The juice from the…

Click here to view the text recipe, or sign up for a Free Membership to watch the full Video Recipe.

…tomatoes soak into the crunchy but still soft-in-the-center bread and you wind up getting bursts of flavor and different textures as you eat. A basic panzanella salad is typically made with only tomatoes, bread, fresh basil and olive oil but it is quite versatile. While it’s perfect with just these few ingredients, we’ve added some olives and bocconcini cheese to the mix. It’s also common to add cucumbers, capers, anchovies, or bell peppers. Really, you can use any garden fresh ingredients but just remember…less is more. A great salad is one where you experience something different in every bite, so don’t add too much of each ingredient. This salad is all about using the best tomatoes and is a great way to celebrate one of the finest ingredients of summer.

Viral videos (and marketing in general) are becoming more and more popular.

Why?

Because it works so damn well. Viral marketing works by presenting something so awesome in the eyes of your fans, that they will do the advertising leg work for you.

The most effective type of advertising is referral word of mouth advertising.  If you see an advertisement for Product X but your friend tells you that product Y is better. Odds are you will go with your friends advice.

Viral videos are a great way to reach like minded consumers and make them feel involved with your product or service. Videos are the most common form of viral  marketing and we want to give you some tips on how to make them.

We found an article titled “8 Secrets for viral gold,” which provides 8 simple points you should consider before creating your viral video conquest.  It’s an AdHack endorsed easy read.

We thought this might be useful, especially since our next  two commissions are Internet video requests *hint hint*.

Below I have made a quick list, complete with hot links for easy reference.

1. Strategy
2. The creative brief (assignment brief)
3. Brand guidelines
4. Message “must-haves”
5. Creative assets
6. Production specifics
7. Editing
8. Prompt payment

If you have other suggestion, comments, or links to similar resources be sure to post them!

Summer's winding down which means less camping camping, and more indoor camping, on the agenda.

Next up to add to your geek fest calendar are two free-form, inter-disciplinary meetups in Vancouver:

MobileCampVancouver2 at WorkSpace on Saturday, Sept.6th.

BarCampVancouver2008 at locations Granville Island on Saturday/Sunday, Sept. 27th-28th.

Both are participatory events with presentations selected by vox populi at the beginning of the session. Check out the the Rules of Bar Camp to learn what to expect.

Alas, MCV2 runs concurrently with Drupal Camp Victoria but there are enough enthusiasts around to make both events a success. MCV2 is sponsored by Mobile Muse - an applied research and developmet project funded by the Canadian government to conduct projects in the emerging mobile space.

MobileCampVancouver is bringing together iPhone junkies, Crackberry addicts, couch surfers, coffee shop hackers, vagabonds and mobile nomads to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobility.

May include - but are not limited to - mobile gaming, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, mobile storytelling, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, linux based devices, and mobility on other continents. 

Organizer's hub Google group

• Igor Faletski
• John Boxall
• Jean Hébert

MobileCampVancouver at WorkSpace on Saturday, September 6th 2008.

MobileCampVancouver wiki (the password is c4mp):

via Google Spreadsheet

In its third interation, BarCampVancouver2008 is camp-over-able shindig and a Vancouver juggernaut with multi-parts like PhotoCamp, WordCamp along with myriad spontaneous sessions. You are likely too late as the event is sold out ;-( but sign on to the extended wait list via EventBrite.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

All attendees are encouraged to give a demo, a session, a presentation, or help with one. All attendees are expected to be participants. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

BarCampVancouver2008 at locations on Granville Island, on Saturday/Sunday, September 27-28, 2008.

BarCamp Vancouver wiki (the password is c4mp)

• Miss 604: BarCamp Vancouver 2008 Save The Date
• Boot up blog: BarCamp Vancouver 2008 set for September 27th
• Fade to Play: Barcamp Vancouver 2008 (upcoming)
• JenTekk: BarCamp Vancouver 2008
• add your BarCamp Vancouver 2008 preview post in the comments

Sold out but get on the waitlist at EventBrite

Summer's winding down which means less camping camping, and more indoor camping, on the agenda.

Next up to add to your geek fest calendar are two free-form, inter-disciplinary meetups in Vancouver:

MobileCampVancouver2 at WorkSpace on Saturday, Sept.6th.

BarCampVancouver2008 at locations Granville Island on Saturday/Sunday, Sept. 27th-28th.

Both are participatory events with presentations selected by vox populi at the beginning of the session. Check out the the Rules of Bar Camp to learn what to expect.

Alas, MCV2 runs concurrently with Drupal Camp Victoria but there are enough enthusiasts around to make both events a success. MCV2 is sponsored by Mobile Muse - an applied research and developmet project funded by the Canadian government to conduct projects in the emerging mobile space.

MobileCampVancouver is bringing together iPhone junkies, Crackberry addicts, couch surfers, coffee shop hackers, vagabonds and mobile nomads to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobility.

May include - but are not limited to - mobile gaming, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, mobile storytelling, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, linux based devices, and mobility on other continents. 

Organizer's hub Google group

• Igor Faletski
• John Boxall
• Jean Hébert

MobileCampVancouver at WorkSpace on Saturday, September 6th 2008.

MobileCampVancouver wiki (the password is c4mp):

via Google Spreadsheet

In its third interation, BarCampVancouver2008 is camp-over-able shindig and a Vancouver juggernaut with multi-parts like PhotoCamp, WordCamp along with myriad spontaneous sessions. You are likely too late as the event is sold out ;-( but sign on to the extended wait list via EventBrite.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

All attendees are encouraged to give a demo, a session, a presentation, or help with one. All attendees are expected to be participants. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

BarCampVancouver2008 at locations on Granville Island, on Saturday/Sunday, September 27-28, 2008.

BarCamp Vancouver wiki (the password is c4mp)

• Miss 604: BarCamp Vancouver 2008 Save The Date
• Boot up blog: BarCamp Vancouver 2008 set for September 27th
• Fade to Play: Barcamp Vancouver 2008 (upcoming)
• JenTekk: BarCamp Vancouver 2008
• add your BarCamp Vancouver 2008 preview post in the comments

Sold out but get on the waitlist at EventBrite

These recipes are courtesy of one of our fantastic camera people Sergio. He is actually just left us for a few months to go and shoot a documentary in Mexico. We wish him the best of luck and can’t wait for him to come back to us.

Yummy! or “Jummy” as Sergio would say, is the word I would use to describe this weeks recipes. The first recipe is Chicken Enchiladas…

Click here to view the text recipe, or sign up for a Free Membership to watch the full Video Recipe.

But we couldn’t stop there, because you can’t just have enchiladas on their own, you need some scrumptious Mexican red rice to go with them…well that and maybe a few cervezas!

Gooey…mouth-watering…sinful…and frickin’ fantastic are some of the words that come to mind when I think of this bread.

This recipe comes from Joe’s Aunt Mary Bea. I have made this bread for many barbecues and “get- togethers” and it’s a hit everytime - in fact, I think it’s one of the reasons why I get invited to barbecues myself, “oh, ah…ya, Dawn…can you also bring that bread.”
I know it is not the healthiest bread around, but don’t judge it until you try it.
People will go crazy for it. And I bet that most people will guess that there’s garlic in it…but there’s not!
Just make sure you make enough ’cause I can guarantee you won’t be able to have just one piece.

Click here to view the text recipe, or sign up for a Free Membership to watch the full Video Recipe.

This is one of my “go to recipes” and by “my” I mean one of the recipes that Joe makes for me regularly, bless his little heart. The first time he made it for me I said, “oh my goodness, what did you do, it’s so good”. Turns out it’s just the ingredients.

This recipe is just that good! Really! This is just another example of fresh ingredients making the best meal.

Click here to view the text recipe, or sign up for a Free Membership to watch the full Video Recipe.

Update Tuesday August 19th 1:00pm: Issue has been resolved.

As you may have noticed, all of AdHack’s websites are offline this morning. We apologise for this interruption of service and are working with our service provider (Bryght) to identify the problem and fix it. These guys are very good at what they do and we are confident that they will fix this, but at the moment we have no idea how long this will take.

We make regular backups in addition to those made by our service provider. For this reason we are confident that we can recover the data should there be any need to do so. As new information comes our way we shall post it here to keep you, our user community, updated on what is going on.

Again, we apologise for this interruption in service. If you feel the need to get in touch with us about this please write to our community manager at corey[at]adhack.com

To follow up from yesterday’s post on why you should include “free shipping” in your title tags and meta descriptions (only if you offer it, of course) — today I’m going to demonstrate why you should create a unique page optimized for your “brand name + free shipping.”

We mentioned yesterday that people search for “free shipping.” There’s no doubt.

And people search for products with “free shipping” as a modifier.

Guess what else they search on? Your store name plus free shipping. And who ranks? Often affiliates, deals and coupon sites.

Check out the related searches suggested by Google when you search for “free shipping.”

Let’s click on “free shipping JC Penney”:

Now, JC Penney needs a page optimized for “free shipping” so it would rank #1. Of course, JC Penney doesn’t need to offer free shipping all the time to have its own dedicated page. The page just needs to exist, all the time, as a landing page for “free shipping jc penney” traffic.

These searchers are going to find the coupons one way or the other, so why not have a landing page (perhaps a sub-section of customer service) that shows which products qualify for free shipping at any given moment, and has a link to an RSS feed for future free shipping offers, or an email sign-up link? Then you can even segment these cheapo-s out into their own bucket in your email campaigns (I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding).

And don’t forget keywords in the title tag: “JC Penney Free Shipping Offers.”

Free Webinar: September 11th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder and Executive VP, FutureNow, Inc.
Register to Attend...

• Yes Virginia There Is a Santa Claus & He Searches for Free Shipping
• Zappos Secret SEO Sauce For Branded Pages
• SEO Tips for Special Holidays
• Ecommerce SEO Hack: Free Tool to Hone Your SEO Strategy
• Cart Abandonment: Nipping FUDDs in the Bud