This entry is from an email conversation that I was having with Kim Kolb, at the High Touch blog, Filter The Noise. I thought I would re-post it here, because it might be of some use to some of my readers. (If not, feel free to throw tomatoes at me in the comments area).

Kim says that inbound marketing relates to creating content on a niche topic, putting blogs and articles up on that topic, using organic SEO to get traffic, rather than blasting your link out with emails or tweets to people who are not interested anyways.  Sound familiar, 30 Day Challengers?  This is the same stuff we are talking about on the Team Rockstar group…  anyways, here was my response.

“Conversation marketing is basically marketing to people by building relationships with them instead of bombarding them with links and sales pitches. A lot of this relates to blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and actually becoming friends with people (although this point in itself is controversial, because many relationship marketing experts say you are NOT trying to become friends with people, you are trying to learn about them so that you can figure out what their interests and buying habits are, and then sell what they are interested in).

But with all the social sites and blogs working together synergetically to build your reputation, the goal is to be the first one people think of, so that when one of their other friends on facebook for example posts something that says, “Does anyone know a good ___________ service? Then their friends will jump in and say “Yeah my friend SO and SO does that, here is her website”.

This is the type of marketing that interests me. It is one reason the world of SEO is changing. I believe in 5 years Google won’t have a stranglehold on the markets anymore, but instead people will buy based on recommendations from their friends in the social media sphere.

Inbound linking is still a very necessary strategy. SEO, blogging, and bookmarking are all still good strategies to use to build traffic. But the two halves ideally will work together to create a cohesive, strong campaign that works well over the long term.”

Social Media Butterflies:  What is YOUR favorite site/tool?  I want to know, so leave a comment, with your vote.

Taken from http://firefoxsuck.blogspot.com/

I have been having all types of problems with Firefox 3 lately.  When I go to shut it down, sometimes it takes more than a minute to completely close out the process, so it prevents me from re-opening the browser unless I open up the Task Manager and manually kill the process.  This is annoying enough, but recently, I have noticed something even worse:

Firefox has been eating up all of my memory!  I look at the sidebar widget on my desktop and notice that memory usage has been going all the way up to 99%, and this causes all my other applications to freeze up: Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Excel, Combat Arms, TweetDeck, you name it.

I found a couple of solutions that should come in handy, bearing in mind that the #30DC recommended browser this year is Firefox, not Flock.  This link describes how to minimize your memory usage, and set the disk cache size, as well as direct memory usage to be reduced upon minimizing your window. To do this you will open a new tab and type in “about:config” and follow the instructions at the above link to make your computer run better when using Firefox.

Another fix that I implemented today was getting rid of the Google Toolbar, which was only useful to me for the PageRank indicator (which is inaccurate, and redundant since my other SEO add-ons will already give me this information). To do this, you can’t just remove the Google toolbar by unselecting it under the View menu, but instead you must actually go into Tools -> Addons and disable it (then restart Firefox).

Finally, I noticed that I was no longer able to use CTRL+T to open a new tab, NEITHER was I able to open a new tab by selecting File -> New Tab.  This is extremely annoying, since I usually have between 10 and 20 tabs open at any given time.  The solution?  Disable the AVG Free toolbar (which is forced upon you each time you install/update AVG Free.  I love AVG, I have not ever had a problem with a virus since I started using it three years ago (NORTON SUCKS!) but the toolbar is unnecessary and annoying.

If you have been following my tweets, you might know that I have had plenty of stress (more than my fair share). 

Quite honestly, the past year has been hell.

My ideal office space.

It’s time to change your mindset, Chris.

My business almost didn’t survive after I was betrayed by the one person I thought I would always be able to trust till death.  Depression and drinking, DDOS attacks, Kosovo Hackers, and an unexplained server crash, all compounded, NEARLY spelled disaster for Webovator.  But I am a fighter.  I have a tattoo of the word THRIVAL.  I don’t believe in mere survival, I want more out of life. I have been re-evaluating my business, my hobbies, and my reading materials, in an attempt to coalesce a more worthwhile existence. Money is not the goal; the goal is economic and geographic freedom.

My friend Kevin once told me the best revenge anyone can ever get is by forgetting the past and being happy.  A mentor from Broadcast Center once said that real magic is the ability to see patterns between cause and effect, and if you want to change the outcome, you recognize how to change the actions that cause the outcome.  By applying these two quotes I have come to the realization that I am happy, because I enjoy what I do.  I love helping friends and clients to build their businesses with a website, SEO, traffic campaigns, PPC management, etc., because it’s so rewarding to see the results, hear a “thank you”, and watch them achieve their own success. If you know me, you know that my favorite Zig Ziglar quote is “You can have whatever you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.”

So I was reading Frank Kern’s blog comments tonight, and stumbled upon yet another internet marketer’s squeeze page.  (You enter your email, and you get access to a free success course on Clarity, Confidence, and Focus–email me or leave a comment if you want the link, but I am not specifically endorsing it, not having opted in, myself.)  But the interesting thing was that the marketer had posted a video of a Tony Robbins interview for people to watch before signing up for his free course.  I watched the interview and I can say two things:

1. There is something very peculiar to me about Tony Robbins’ appearance.
2. He beat a brain tumor, and I think his insight on life is inspiring.

Here is the video for you, if you are in need of some inspiration:

So if you are beating yourself up with worry, wondering what the next step is, just change your mindset. It only takes a few seconds to reclassify a problem as a challenge. Watch the end of the interview, and listen to what he says about the person who is paralyzed from the neck down.  After three years, he is happier and stronger.

My year of hell is over.  Thanks to all of my friends, family, freelance partners, and clients.  May you all enjoy the success you deserve, in the remaining 6 months of 2009.