SEO Werkt!

By sheer dumb luck (and knowing the right people) I’ve scored invitations to several activities around the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington the weekend of April 27. I’m not invited to the dinner itself (I’m not that well connected!), but I will be at the pre- and post-parties, as well as at the Sunday brunch.

Thomson Reuters, which is my host, is offering to try to set up interviews with its other guests, who are listed here. I’ll have my video camera ready. Question for you: Who should I ask to meet? Give me some suggestions in the comments area below, and if you’d care to suggest questions, that would be even better.

Dan Stevens (left) – English Actor best known as “Cousin Matthew” in Downton Abbey
Fred Armisen – Actor/comedian best known for Saturday Night Live & Portlandia
Jamie Wyeth – Artist
Jeremy Renner – Actor best known for The Hurt Locker, Bourne Identity, the Avengers
John Baird – Canadian Foreign Minister

Kathleen Turner

Kathleen Turner (left)- Actress/Activist, best known for Body Heat, Romancing the Stone
Madeline Stowe – Actress/Activist, best known for Revenge, Last of the Mohicans
Mariane Pearl – Freelance Journalist, widow of Daniel Pearl, Writer at Glamour magazine
Mark Carney – Governor, Central Bank of Canada
Mary Jo White – Chairman, Securities & Exchange Commission

Victor Cruz

Michael Corbat – CEO, Citigroup
Pat Llodra – Selectman, Newtown, CT
Ruth Porat – CFO, Morgan Stanley
Steve Zahn – Actor best known for Treme
Victor Cruz – Wide receiver, New York Giants
Several Top Chefs from Bravo TV Show ‘Top Chef”

Since yesterday afternoon my Google Reader has been flooded with articles about Apple dropping the YouTube app from iOS 6.  I’ve read seventeen different posts on the matter, from CNET to the Google Operating System blog and even The Washington Post.  Say goodbye to YouTube in iOS 6!  Apple’s giving YouTube the boot!  We get it.  Now can we please stop talking about it?
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson on Tuesday reaffirmed the tech guru’s respect for Mark Zuckerberg during an interview with Washington Post Company CEO and Facebook board member Don Graham.

idreambooks.com launched this week in an effort to help people read less crap. The site aggregates literary reviews from publications like the NYTimes and Washington Post and recommends books that were given a positive rating by 70% of critics.

Plenty of book review sites out there collect user reviews and base recommendations off that criteria. idreambooks sticks solely to the professionals, so only books with critical endorsement are promoted. The recommendation engine is based on a principal similar to RottenTomatoes or Metacritic. By sticking to editorial reviews, the quality of the recommendations is higher.

For example, while Fifty Shades of Grey may have 5 stars and rave reviews from hormonally charged teenage girls and repressed housewives, it received a 30% approval rating on idreambooks. The site links to the original reviews and also suggests other books in the same genre.

It was founded in March 2012 and has 3 full time employees. It faces competition from other sites like goodreads.com, Amazon reviews, and Shelfari.

Filed under: offBeat

Sun Valley and self-driving cars aside, the story of the day today is that social news site Digg has sold its remaining assets for $500K to the NYC-based tech firm Betaworks; While that number is indeed in the ballpark, we’re hearing from multiple sources that the total price of the Digg acquisition was around $16 million, including the price paid for IP by a previously unreported acquirer, LinkedIn.

According to a familiar source,  the Washington Post ended up paying $12 million for the Digg team and around the same period career social network LinkedIn paid between $3.75 million and $4 million for around 15 different Digg patents including the patent on “click a button to vote up a story.”

Betaworks picked up all the remaining assets today, including the domain, code, data and all the traffic for between $500k and $725k. We’re hearing that Borthwick and co. will license from LinkedIn whatever patents it needs to execute on the what it chooses to do with those assets. I have no word how on the “single-digit millions equity deal” some are reporting fits in here exactly.

Pre-acquisition, social news vanguard Digg had raised $45 million in funding from Greylock Partners, Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and other Valley notables. Digg was an extremely influential site for anyone who worked in the early era of online publishing, so it being scrapped for parts is sort of weird, especially for those of us who used to beg friends to vote up Digg stories.

This guest post is by Kelsey Meyer of Digital Talent Agents.

You’ve finally made it big! The Washington Post or SocialTimes has picked up your well-crafted, thought-provoking article, and you see your name in shining lights (or at least in the author byline).

Is your job done? No way.

Now is the time for you to stop gloating and get to work. Getting a great article published in a reputable publication is only half the battle; if you stop there, you are not only being disrespectful to your readers, you are doing yourself and your brand a disservice.

Here are three ways to follow through on an article that has been published.

1. Promote conversation

If you’ve written an interesting piece and had it published on a site with a decent readership, your article will likely attract a few comments. Some of these comments will be positive, and you should spend time and real effort reading these and thanking the people who wrote them. Don’t just thank them, but comment on what they liked within the article and expand on it—if they liked what you gave them to start, give them more!

You’ll also run into people who don’t care for your article. They may even hate it. Address these people as well, no matter how much you may want to ignore them. Don’t tell them they’re stupid for disagreeing with your article or that you hate them. Instead, a more mature tactic is to welcome their viewpoints and try to address anything they may have misunderstood about your article.

Addressing comments, both good and bad, promotes conversation and engages your readers on a deeper level. Guest bloggers who can take it just as well as they can dish it out are golden. A great example of this is an article one of my company’s clients, which was published on Under 30 CEO. My client had readers who agreed and others who disagreed, but he responded to every comment and it sparked great conversation.

2. Thank your sharers

It’s a great ego boost when you see that your article has drawn over 100 tweets. You get all warm and fuzzy inside, and you may even mention it to your co-workers.

Now it’s time to make those who shared your article feel just as special. There’s a great tool at your disposal, called Who ReTweeted Me, which you can use to see exactly who tweeted your article and easily thank them.

This way, you’ll make new friends on Twitter and encourage people to continue sharing your content. Everyone likes to feel acknowledged—you’re living proof!

3. Make sure the link ranks for your name

If you’re the author of a great article, you should be credited. Most publications will insert a link back to your website or your social media accounts in the author byline so readers can find out more about you.

Go one better: sign up for BrandYourself.com and include the link to the article in your optimized links. That one small move will help the article rank higher in Google search results for your name. BrandYourself.com is a free service, so there’s no excuse not to sign up and start making the most of your posts.

Get more exposure for each post

Take these three steps after each of your articles is published, and you will gain more exposure with each one. You’ll also engage your community and up your attractiveness to publications looking for guest contributors. And what’s more appealing to a guest blogger than another opportunity to blog?

Kelsey Meyer is the VP of Digital Talent Agents, an online PR firm dedicated to helping entrepreneurs, authors, consultants, corporate leaders and experts establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Stop Being a Lazy Guest Blogger in 3 Steps

Facebook has named chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg as its newest board member, settling recent criticisms that the public company doesn’t have a woman on its board.

Sandberg’s appointment to the board of directors has been a long time coming. She is one of the more familiar faces surrounding the social network and helped bring the company public. She joins Facebook’s chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg on the board, along with Silicon Valley heavy-weights Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Reed Hastings, and James Breyer, as well as Erskine Bowles, president emeritus of the University of North Carolina, and Donald Graham, CEO of The Washington Post Company.

“Sheryl has been my partner in running Facebook and has been central to our growth and success over the years,” said Zuckerberg in a statement. “Her understanding of our mission and long-term opportunity, and her experience both at Facebook and on public company boards makes her a natural fit for our board.”

Facebook recently came under fire for not having a woman on its board. Women’s rights group Ultraviolet campaigned against Facebook, demanding that it appoint a female board member prior to going public. At the time, Facebook had a 7-person board of all men. Sandberg’s work for Facebook speaks for itself, and thus she was an obvious appointee, but the social network IPO-ed without acquiescing.

Zuckerberg snatched Sandberg away from Google in 2008, where she was the vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations. Like Zuckerberg, she was also a student at Harvard. Other than Facebook, Sandberg serves on The Walt Disney Company’s and two other boards.

Sheryl Sandberg image via World Economic Forum/Flickr

Filed under: social

The Supreme Court today rejected or upheld the Arizona immigration law. I guess I’ll have to read the story (and a hundred blogs) to see why there’s enough in this ruling to disappoint everyone.