Update: Read about this event on the Google Blog.

GetListed.org has been announcing a few cities lately, but I just want to highlight the Getlisted Local University in Minneapolis is where local business owners can get answers from the search engine reps of Google and Bing. This event is happening next Thursday in the Twin Cities on May 13th.
During the sessions and after the morning session I will be helping business owners take the first steps to implementing solid best practices for their business.

I want to again thank our event sponsors Google, Bing, ReliaCloud, and Deluxe for their support.

Google representatives Ryan Hayward and Ari Bezman will be there. Mikko Ollila, senior product manager for Bing, as well as industry leaders like Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, David Mihm, Mary Bowling, and Ed Reese will be speaking there too.

Aaron Weiche of Five Technology is spearheading the logistics for this one as well as speaking, so a big thank you to him.

To get details, please see: GetListed Local University – Minneapolis

(You can use the code “gl” to save 50 dollars)

Here is some coverage of our last event:

• Photos of the event
• Small Business Wins Big With Local University
• Looking back at GetListed Local University Spokane
• Getlisted SEO WorkShop

I will be conducting a workshop at the Getlisted Local University in Minneapolis where local business owners can get answers from me about their specific businesses.
During the sessions and/or after the morning session I will be helping business owners take the first steps to implementing solid best practices for their business.

I want to thank our event sponsors Google, Bing, ReliaCloud, and Deluxe for their support.

Google representatives Ryan Hayward and Ari Bezman will be there. Mikko Ollila, senior product manager for Bing, as well as industry leaders like Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, David Mihm, Mary Bowling, and Ed Reese will be speaking there too.

Aaron Weiche of Five Technology is spearheading the logistics for this one as well as speaking, so a big thank you to him.

Our Minneapolis event on May 13th will be larger than our first Local University we did in Spokane. I do advise, however, for you to get your tickets early (even though this event is two months away, people are already buying their tickets).

To get details, please see: GetListed Local University – Minneapolis

Here is some coverage of our last event:

• Photos of the event
• Small Business Wins Big With Local University
• Looking back at GetListed Local University Spokane
• Getlisted SEO WorkShop

How to reach normal business owners with real advice about local SEO?

Google representatives Ryan Hayward and Ari Bezman as well as industry leaders like Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, David Mihm, Mary Bowling, and Ed Reese are coming together to do just that.

We are pleased to announce to have Google as a sponsor for our first event!  Getlisted Local University

When David Mihm and I created Getlisted.org our main concern was about everyday business owners who were sometimes getting ripped off or at least confused about what to do and how much to spend on their web presence.
We knew that that really didn’t need to spend much.
But how to get the message out?
Well funded, big players were selling them snake oil, and we were just lil’ ole us.
One of the things we envisioned was a city by city workshop.

We also wanted to see chambers of commerce, local papers, and non-profit business mentors like SCORE come together and get the word out.

Getlisted.org Local University is an event that will cater to cities that don’t always get the attention they deserve. It begins with Spokane, Washington on Feb 4th 2010.

We aren’t doing this to make a profit. In fact, 10% of all ticket sales for this event will be donated to a local business charity for that city.

To learn more about our first event in Spokane and how you can attend or be involved, please visit our event page.

Hi, I am Pat.

I would say that I am in love with Virginia Nussey, but due to recent stalking laws I am required to say “I believe Virginia Nussey is a very nice person”

Virginia was a delight to meet both in person, and through her writing. I have since seen Virginia a bunch of times, and it always is a pleasure.

Virginia Nussey

Virginia writes for the Bruce Clay blog and loves tortoises. She is also an extremely talented writer and blogger.

Recently Virginia wrote an article named “True Confessions of a Boring Blogger” which was a personal and heart felt post. I know Virginia but even if I didn’t know her, I would have melted. Since I know her a bit, I actually moaned, fell over,  melted, and decided to write her this.

In her post, Virginia boldly takes responsibility for the drooping numbers and comment levels of the blog. She honestly and openly discussed her role of taking over the blog from the popular blogger Lisa Barone and the difficulties involved with doing so.

I have some important information for you Virginia.

You are the perfect writer for the job and the blog that you so wonderfully write for has a few problems of it’s own. There are some correctable and easy to implement solutions here.

The goal of this post is to highlight some things that I feel can greatly improve the Bruce Clay blog I will be blunt and will try to keep it funny, but I am going to be blunt.

I have had these thoughts about the Bruce Clay blog for a long time. For those who don’t know, I respect Bruce Clay and everyone involved with that blog very much and love to see them always. These are lovingly given suggestions…

1) The Sideways Barcode Problem

If you took a barcode…

And then turned it sideways…

You would have the visual of the Bruce Clay blog…

Solely on a visual front, this offends the eyes, makes yawns more possible, and leaves one seeking for links to click or back buttons to press.

2) Pleasure People Visually

Insert photos and images as much as possible.

Yes that is Virginia in knee socks, she has been nice enough to throw on a few pair of knee socks.

A post with images is more visually alluring than a post without.

The image can be a chart, or a screenshot, or Virginia in knee socks.

But whatever that image is, it visually breaks up those amazing words writen.

They make the pleasure of reading even more pleasurable.

Breaking up the lines and lines of text improve said text, no matter how wonderful that text is.

To solve the sideways barcode problem takes only a few moments.

Just post some images. I promise that this will make your blog more interesting and pleasurable. I am an adorer of their Friday recaps but I wish they had images in them.

3) You Don’t Need a Ring to be Engaged

The most frustrating problem I have had with the Bruce Clay blog is the inability to have real time conversations. Or even near real world conversations.

I honestly believe this is the biggest culprit killing engagement on their blog.

The Bruce Clay blog is not a place that people go to talk to each other or even to respond to each others comments. I have tried to respond to other peoples comments there, and when I do it is rare that the coment even gets posted in time to respond. I have made comments there that have not been posted for over 12 hours!

How am I going to be engaged by that? I am not. It enrages me and makes me want to slap someone with a fish.

After you leave a comment, you get to what I call “The grey screen of death” …

Why take me to a screen that tells me I commented? I already know I commented. Oh great there is a link back to the original entry, so I can get back. But why would I go back? My comment won’t be there. The link that says “Return to the original entry” might as well say “Take me to a less frustrating and complicated blog”.

4) Comment Settings

Set your comments to be auto approved. If not just to improve the above frustrating process, to have the ability for people to respond to each other in the comments.

Every other blog I engage with has something the the Bruce Clay blog does not: When I see a comment on any other blog that I have a response to, or I feel I can add to, I post a comment. I do not do this on the Bruce Clay blog because I don’t think it will get posted in a timely way.

To be clear about this, the comment system at the Bruce Clay blog is a fail. Change it. You will have more engaged users if you do.

5) Can I Haz Navigation?

To write this post I wanted to give some example of older posts I have commented on, but couldn’t because…

I could not find them.

Let’s go to the bottom of the home page of the blog, you know, the place where you can go to see “older entries” or “previous entries”?

Hmm.

The Bruce Clay blog says “no” to navigation. Here is the bottom of their blog home page, where amazingly, there is no way to see previous posts…

The Bruce Clay blog is extraordinarily difficult to navigate. If you can’t overhaul the whole thing then I would at least suggest a link to previous posts or some form of navigation at the bottom.

6) Sidebars Should Not Create Headaches

I think your sidebar needs some visual healing. The good news is that you have several ways for people to use social media and feeds. That is great, but could we make the chicklets and links more unified?

You are a marketing company, not a GeoCities page. Get a designer to create you some universal buttons for that sidebar.

And on the subscribe options… It is great that you have so many options to subscribe ( full, partial, XML, Atom) but the problem is you have no way to just plain ole’ subscribe.

I suggest one of those bright orange, universally recognized thingies.

Your advanced users will appreciate the subscribe options, but your regular users just want to hit a orange icon and subscribe to your blog.

I was honestly confused when I wanted to subscribe to this blog. I felt like I was getting tested or something. It made me scratch my head and wonder which option to use.

</constructive criticism>

Virginia Nussey and Susan Esparza are some of the greatest writers around. I believe that with a simple meeting, and about a days work, the platform upon which they write on could be drastically improved.

In any case however, the Bruce Clay blog is a great blog that should definately be on your reading list.

This will be my first officially “We Build Pages” speaking gig! For those of you who remember my adventures of last years PubCon you probably know that I do not like to be awake during the day, so if I have to be awake I might as well have some extraordinary things to say, which I will.

It will be a session worth watching for anyone who is considering getting into gadgets.

Before I joined Jim Boykin and We Build Pages I told Jim that I had to attend PubCon every year. PubCon is my “my time”.

I might even unveil some secrets about the ongoing team building here at We Build Pages

I will also be at SMX East. Forward thinking marketers should attend the Enhanced Listings panel. Danny and Vannesa are showing their already all too clear smarts by having this session.

If you do not know about enhanced listings, you should. Enhanced listings are what I am probably most excited about in the search engine community, they are also the things I spend most of my thoughts on, and there are many exciting things going on. To get a flavor of them see my articles on…

Yahoo Search monkey:

Yahoo beats Google to Widgets in search results Yahoo Search Monkey Launch Party Search Monkey SEOmoz example

Google Subscribed Gadgets:

Google Gadgets in Search Results Google and Human Behavior

Microsoft WebSlices: (I know this isn’t a enhancement per se, but it could be…)

Microsoft introduces Web Slices

I am working very hard to make We Build Pages the first major SEM firm to offer enhanced listings to their clients. We will be offinging alot more than link building very soon. Keep an eye on Jim’s blog to stay updated on this.

Note: go to the 6 minute mark to skip the intro stuff and go straight top Jeremys talk.

I love the internet marketing cast of characters out there. Great stuff.

Feel free to email me if you are in Chicago and want to meet. The evening of the 30th I am doing something and the business day of the 31st I am doing something, otherwise I am free.

Unfortunately for them, I just happen to be going to Chicago to attend the Google App Engine Hackathon the next day and will be in Chicago, long story short…

The drunk guy is showing up

The session they will be doing is actually a subject that is very important and timely…

Reorganize Management For Social Media, Search Marketing & Internet Advertising

July 30, 2008: 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Gleacher Center
Room 100
450 Cityfront Plaza
Chicago, IL

A quick breakdown of the event…

Part 1: Carolyn Shelby will lead a detailed discussion on learning about social media, search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) tools and language.

Part 2: David Dalka will build on Carolyn’s foundational structures to discuss how search marketing and Internet marketing needs to be brought to the front of the c-level managerial process and the board of directors must be qualified and involved regularly. David will also discuss how elongated cycle times, outdated processes and a lack of clear metrics frequently lead to buying the most expensive and least effective marketing solutions.

Part 3: Carolyn and David would like you to join the conversation about redesigning organizational structure to create effective marketing solutions with your questions and suggestions.

More details can be found here.

About David Dalka:

I do not know David personally, but here is some info from his bio..

David Dalka is a business development and marketing strategy leader who has created revenue and retention in exponential growth organizations which thrive on learning and innovating from customer listening. David develops timely, standardized and regimented client communications and metrics in regards to advertising and financial services. He teamed to create sustainable competitive advantages via B2B account management relationships at BlackRock where he led teams that developed new quantification metrics and redefined real-time client experiences based on client feedback. David has experience in designing and driving change management in marketing and sales forces in both small and Fortune 500 organizations.

and here is his blog.

About Carolyn Shelby:

Carolyn is a very talented speaker and writer. You can hear her co-host SEO 101 on Webmaster FM or read her blog. She offers professional writing services where she can create press releases that rock (something I need to talk to her about in Chicago…).

I also like her because she and Rhea make me look good in photos

To register for the event you can go here. But do it quick, registration ends tomorrow.

Facebook has opened up early registration for their developer event, f8.

The f8 ’08 sessions cover three different tracks with four sessions per track. These are actually pretty interesting sounding sessions. Early bird registration is only 150 dollars, to learn more about sessions and registration costs visit the f8 registration page.

This is a one day event so if you are planning on going to SMX Local / Mobile you can pull it off (f8 is the day before SMX). Look at the tracks below for f8, and notice the business and mobile tracks. hmmm.

Track 1: User Experience

Introducing the New Facebook Profile & More
Integrating Facebook Connect into your Website
Building Great Applications on Facebook
Design and User Experience at Facebook

Track 2: Technical

Advanced App Building
Feed and Social Distribution
Building to Facebook Scale
Made for Mobile

Track 3: Business

Building a Business on Facebook / Metrics & Analytics
Marketing your Application on Facebook
Entrepreneurship on Facebook Platform
fbFund: A Look Inside — Seeding Opportunity on Facebook Platform