The announcement dates back to just one week ago and it has already sparked the usual trepidation around the web about what the next shiny little device from Apple could be.

From the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on September 1, Steve Jobs will reveal the Apple’s news, music-themed this time of the year: it will probably be a product to be launched in the coming weeks, but about which we don’t have many clues yet.

The most reliable voices report about a complete redesign of the iPod lines that could probably inherit the dual cameras and Retina display from the new iPhone 4, and a New Service That Could let users listen to streaming music over the Internet without downloading songs directly to their own computer. Credible speculation, if you look back at December 2009 when Apple acquired /a>, a streaming digital music service – currently suspended – which allowed the users, among other interesting features, to purchase streaming-only Web albums.

Some rumors report that Jobs could also introduce a new iPad model, with a smaller screen size of 7 inches versus the actual 9,7 inches, Retina display equipped and priced significantly lower than the $ 499 needed for the current basic model of the tablet.

Probably, however, despite many who want a smaller model of the Apple tablet, that’s easier to carry and less bulky than the currently available version, we won’t see anything like that before next year anyway, because the introduction of a different product concept would be too close to the launch of the original iPad of just a few months ago.

Finally, we expect the announcement of the possible relaunch of the not-so-lucky Apple TV with its brand new name “iTV” which would then benefit from on-demand movies, television series and programs through a special decoder.


We’ll see then. Any expectation on your side?

The announcement dates back to just one week ago and it has already sparked the usual trepidation around the web about what the next shiny little device from Apple could be.

From the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on September 1, Steve Jobs will reveal the Apple’s news, music-themed this time of the year: it will probably be a product to be launched in the coming weeks, but about which we don’t have many clues yet.

The most reliable voices report about a complete redesign of the iPod lines that could probably inherit the dual cameras and Retina display from the new iPhone 4, and a New Service That Could let users listen to streaming music over the Internet without downloading songs directly to their own computer. Credible speculation, if you look back at December 2009 when Apple acquired /a>, a streaming digital music service – currently suspended – which allowed the users, among other interesting features, to purchase streaming-only Web albums.

Some rumors report that Jobs could also introduce a new iPad model, with a smaller screen size of 7 inches versus the actual 9,7 inches, Retina display equipped and priced significantly lower than the $ 499 needed for the current basic model of the tablet.

Probably, however, despite many who want a smaller model of the Apple tablet, that’s easier to carry and less bulky than the currently available version, we won’t see anything like that before next year anyway, because the introduction of a different product concept would be too close to the launch of the original iPad of just a few months ago.

Finally, we expect the announcement of the possible relaunch of the not-so-lucky Apple TV with its brand new name “iTV” which would then benefit from on-demand movies, television series and programs through a special decoder.


We’ll see then. Any expectation on your side?

Go here to read the rest:
/a>

Army Golden Knights: SFC Dave Herwig (@gkdave), SGM Steve Young (@gksteve), LTC Joe Martin (gkjoe)

My presentation on how to leverage Social Media SEO to improve the reach and effectiveness of blog content for marketing at OpenCa.mp DFW this weekend ended up being a lot of information in a very short period of time. The use of a video interview I did with Brian Clark as the segue into my presentation ate into some of the 30 minutes I had to present plus I simply had too many slides.

(Thanks to Lt Colonel em>Joe Martin for the photo taken right after the presentation. His team were literally sponges for information at the event.)

The good news is that there’s Slideshare, so I’ve embeded a copy of that presentation below. /a> and /a> gave witty, informative and entertaining presentations on blogging and copywriting for blogs before me, so the stage was set to talk about marketing that blog content.

Marketers familiar with “Push and Pull” can relate to Social Media being the push, where (along with listening & engagement) you syndicate, update and share your content via social channels. The pull is SEO, where you optimize that content with customer centric keywords they can use on search engines to easily find your content ahead of the competition.

My presentation shared a model that I call the Cycle of Social & SEO that starts with creating, optimizing and promoting content along with listening to and growing social networks. As the relevant content gets shared socially and others link to it, the exposure and traffic builds momentum to a point where search traffic and the social community you’ve fostered provides priceless data via social media and web analytics on what content to create and share on a go forward.

Guessing what keywords and what social channels your customers are connected to is the reason why so many companies don’t see an impact from their efforts. Being smart from the start and planning on developing a cycle that continues to provide value and refine effectiveness at meeting customer search and social media needs is a win for all.

Companies in the marketing space like /a>, /a> and our own agency at /a> have made strong commitments to content as well as SEO and Social Media with the payoffs coming in the form of competitive search visibility and growing social communities.

We’ve recently been engaged by another well known company in the online marketing space that sees the value in both our strategic marketing & implementation expertise, but more importantly, is making a commitment to content and it’s role in customer acquisition and customer retention through Social Media & Search Optimization.

Check out the presentation below and let me know what you think.

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OpenCamp’s Sunday schedule included presentations on blogging that included /a>, Brian Clark and myself. I caught up with Brian before he gave his presentation to give us a little preview. John P. ended up using the video as the segue between Brian and I as we changed microphones.

Watch as Brian talks about the importance of planning content and understanding its purpose in order to be effective with blog copywriting. He also mentioned that traditional media is still doing some things right and we new media types would do well to identify what those things are and use that insight for our own publishing and /a> efforts.

I think Brian’s presentation on content planning and editorial was a perfect setup to the marketing of content presentation that I gave afterwards, but of course I’m biased.  Of course you can find a cornucopia of copy writing and content marketing advice at /a>.

My next and last post from /a> will include a summary of my presentation along with the actual PPT deck embedded within the post.

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Dallas – The bomb blew up just a few days ago when a Los Angeles Times article reported that Blockbuster Inc., the video rental giant, is ready to file for bankruptcy.

Overwhelmed by debt and losses amounting to over $1 billion since 2008, the video rental chain is yet another of the world’s most famous names to join the long list of once successful companies that have not been able to adapt their business to the radical changes in the market introduced by the Internet. Another high-profile victim.

In a recent note (August 13), Blockbuster reported total revenues for the second quarter of 2010 were $788 million, with a loss of $194 million compared to total revenues for the same period one year ago. Net loss for the second quarter of 2010 was $69 million with a negative increase of $32 million compared to net loss in the second quarter of 2009.

As with the entire music industry, that in the early 2000, with the rapid spread of the Internet, has witnessed the failure of its revenue mainly because of music piracy and as, more recently, the bookstore chain Barnes & Nobles, which is paying for a significant delay in entering the business of electronic books (which record is firmly in the hands of Amazon), Blockbuster pays his choice of sticking to an old distribution model for its core business, a model that’s no longer adequate in the age of the Internet and unable to compete with Netflix or iTunes.

If it is true that over the next five years entertainment, music, books, videos, video games, will be distributed mainly via remote connections – it’s already happening right now, you know – I believe we have to realistically expect that the classic physical media will suffer a further drastic reduction and that this change will cause another earthquake which will spare only those who will react in a timely fashion.

To cope with the losses, Blockbuster plans to shut down 500 to 800 of the 3,425 on the United States territory. The bankruptcy will be filed probably by the end of September.

Dallas – The bomb blew up just a few days ago when a Los Angeles Times article reported that Blockbuster Inc., the video rental giant, is ready to file for bankruptcy.

Overwhelmed by debt and losses amounting to over $1 billion since 2008, the video rental chain is yet another of the world’s most famous names to join the long list of once successful companies that have not been able to adapt their business to the radical changes in the market introduced by the Internet. Another high-profile victim.

In a recent note (August 13), Blockbuster reported total revenues for the second quarter of 2010 were $788 million, with a loss of $194 million compared to total revenues for the same period one year ago. Net loss for the second quarter of 2010 was $69 million with a negative increase of $32 million compared to net loss in the second quarter of 2009.

As with the entire music industry, that in the early 2000, with the rapid spread of the Internet, has witnessed the failure of its revenue mainly because of music piracy and as, more recently, the bookstore chain Barnes & Nobles, which is paying for a significant delay in entering the business of electronic books (which record is firmly in the hands of Amazon), Blockbuster pays his choice of sticking to an old distribution model for its core business, a model that’s no longer adequate in the age of the Internet and unable to compete with Netflix or iTunes.

If it is true that over the next five years entertainment, music, books, videos, video games, will be distributed mainly via remote connections – it’s already happening right now, you know – I believe we have to realistically expect that the classic physical media will suffer a further drastic reduction and that this change will cause another earthquake which will spare only those who will react in a timely fashion.

To cope with the losses, Blockbuster plans to shut down 500 to 800 of the 3,425 on the United States territory. The bankruptcy will be filed probably by the end of September.

Read more:
/a>

At the OpenCa.mp conference in Dallas this weekend I was able to re-connect with Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome and the Gnomedex conference (We’ve interviewed each other in the past). We both jumped out of the same airplane with the /a> last week and are also speaking today about blogs at /a>.

I caught up with Chris to talk about his take on SEO and social media.  He had pretty strong opinions about people who are too aggressive and not always relevant in the social connections they’re making.  This is what he had to say:

You can find Chris online by Googling “/a>“. How’s that for the effect of links on search engine visibility?

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The first content session I’m attending at OpenCamp is by Gio, aka Giovanni Gallucci, a longtime search and social media marketer based in Dallas. The topic is “Blackhat SEO” and the room is packed!
The session was cut a bit short due to technical difficulties with getting the conference started and Gio took it in stride and was both entertaining and informative – the right mix for a morning tech crowd.

Gio says “Black hat is simply another way to automate a time-consuming process. In other areas of marketing and life in general we encourage automation in order to maximize efficiency and get a leg up on our competitors”.

According to the conference session description, the nature of this session doesn’t allow liveblogging or tweeting, which i think is a load of crap, so I’ll liveblog it anyway.

Speaking of liveblogging, I am writing this on an iPad and the brilliant WordPress app deleted the first version, so I am writing now from memory on a notepad app.

The session is basically about what Gio does on a daily basis for his SEO clients. Based on insights from Woopra analyticz Gio says these are 5-6 social media sites you need to focus on to drive traffic and affect your search visibility:

- Media sharing: YouTube and Flickr
- Social Bookmarking: StumbleUpon
- Social Networks: Facebook & Twitter

When you undertake your social media marketing efforts, don’t let “little people” and naysayers hold you back. Gio gives Cali Lewis as an example with her growth of online shows and current success with GeekBeat.TV

As far as as Geolocation services like Gowalla, Foursquare, Whrrrl, etc Gio says these are cute and fun, but that there’s not much measurable social media marketing value to them. (If you don’t buy that, check out Mashable.com for FourSquare case studies)

We’re 15 min into the presentation and thee’s no black hat SEO yet

YouTube lists are unreal for driving search traffic. Organize your individual videos into lists and optimize them. Find other videos that are highly trafficked and add them to lists that include your own videos. If you’re not creating video, you’ve got to get started.

Tools: tubetoolbox.com (Now we’re getting into the automation and almost black hat stuff). With YouTube ToolBox, Gio says you create a message in 2-3 sentences, mail merge their username and then create multiple versions of the message with different content and the same call to action. Then you can schedule the sending of messages to YouTube users that have been harvested at the rate of about 20 messages per hour. Something like: Hey “username” I saw that you commented on a video about XYZ and wanted to let you know about another similar video and would love your opinion.”.

I have to note, using automation tools like this must be done by someone that REALLY knows what they’re doing or you will suffer consequences. Managing risk vs. reward is important and for the record, my agency doesn’t use automation in this way.

The key to getting YouTube videos ranked high is activity on YouTube. with Flickr, you can add comments with a link back to your content.

Take advantage of current events. Gio shows a video of ComicCon geeks talking about how comic are not geeky anymore. Thee’s some irony to a code geek making fun of comic book geeks.

When going somewhere offline to get photos or video for content, blend in. Gio tells a story of buying a cowboy getup to blend in at a rodeo or maybe it was somewhere else like that where there was a concentration of cowboy types.

Keep it fresh. For example, make a presentation the day you give it.

Tool: tweetaddr 3.0. Using this tool makes it appear as if you’re communicating with Twitter via a web browser (when you’re not and actually using an automated follow tool).

“Can’t is not an option”. Gio gave an example of a how a school with only 200 kids earned 68,000 votes on a list of top schools.

“Show up and just get it done”. If you look like you’re supposed to be there, no one will bother you. (Regarding collecting content or promoting online content in the offline world).

Tool: Bookmarking Daemon – Put in your social boomarking accounts and it will randomly pick your content and promote it.

According to the room monitor, that’s all the time we have. You can find out more about Giovanni on his blog: Blog.gallucci.net and get a copy of his social media manifesto at: gallucci.net/smm

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