Sometimes I give professional talks. Sometimes… less so.
It was an absolute pleasure to speak at Ignite Cardiff‘s eleventh event in May. I was supposed to speak at IC #10 in February, but pulled out at the very last minute due to illness (as reported previously).
My talk topic? What Skyrim Taught Me About Business Networking. Here’s the video:
If you’d like to check out the slides separately and in more detail, here they are for you:
Around this time last year, I interviewed Rand Fishkin (@randfish) – CEO/founder of Moz – about Inbound.org (which you can read here).
I’m delighted to have been granted the opportunity to interview Rand again, this time about the rebrand that took place at the end of May – when “SEOmoz” became simply “Moz.”
At the time, Rand talked about his reasons for the move in a blog post, plus Mozzer Ruth Burr has blogged about it from a domain migration point of view, and while my questions have touched upon a few things that have already been brought to light in those two posts, I wanted to catch up with Rand to see how he was feeling about the overall process.
Here goes…!
Steve Morgan: The biggest question on many people’s lips: why rebrand at all?
Rand Fishkin: As I mentioned in the blog post about our rebrand, this is really for several reasons. The biggest of which is that we’re more than an SEO software company, and having “SEO” in our name doesn’t transparently reflect our identity today or our plans for the future. We always want to provide great tools for SEO, but to do that, we need to go beyond SEO and into areas like content, social, branding, local, etc. (just as many SEOs have).
Steve: When did you have the idea for “Moz”? And when was the decision made?
Rand: I believe the idea was first conceived and proposed in late 2010, and the decision was made to move forward with the re-brand in mid-2011. Although the re-brand and new website wouldn’t have been hard to pull off on their own, our decision to ship Moz Analytics (the new version of our software) with that change delayed us considerably.
Ladies and gents… It gives me great pleasure to announce the launch of my brand new website: morganonlinemarketing.co.uk!
A few months ago I went self-employed, and although I have a Hire Me! page on this blog, I wanted a separate, dedicated website for the freelance side of things.
The website was designed by the wonderfully talented Rhys Bartlett (@rhys_bartlett), a freelance WordPress developer based in Cardiff. I’d also like to give a shout-out to Gene Thompson (@GeneThompson1) of Creative Services Ltd, who designed the logo, and (as mentioned before), Peter Rowlands (@P_M_Photography) of P & M Photography, who provided the photo on the About page.
While holidaying in Spain I read two business books, recommended by @mackfogelson of Mack Web Solutions and @lstigerts of Marketing Gal during a recent #maximpact webinar: The Pumpkin Plan and Million Dollar Consulting, respectively.
(Please note: the above two Amazon links are affiliate links.)
I adored the former. The latter, Million Dollar Consulting, was interesting for a number of reasons. The author, Alan Weiss, makes some great points, and it’s clear that he is an expert when it comes to his profession and the world of consulting, but I had a few… bugbears about some of what he said. But this isn’t a book review. In fact, I’m only going to dig deeper into one area where I strongly disagreed: his thoughts on social media.
Before I continue, it’s important to point out that MDC was originally published in 1992, well before the world of social media (and even the Internet) became prominent as the behemoth that we know and love today. However, its 4th (and latest) edition was published in 2009 and has been updated to include “brand new material on blogging and social networking.” And while Mr Weiss praises the Internet (“The Internet and its accoutrements… have offered marvelous ways to improve our effectiveness and efficiency”) and recommends blogging (“Use a blog to regularly… promote your experience and ‘go to’ status”), it is clear that the man is not a fan of social networking.
While everyone is most certainly entitled to his or her opinion, just as Weiss is entitled to his own, the problem here is that his opinions are spoken in absolutes: it’s not “consider against using it” or “give it a try but be warned,” but more of a “don’t bother” and “don’t waste your time” attitude instead. Not only that, but when you’re dealing with an authority like Weiss, readers/fans will hang on every word and take every single suggestion on-board – I bet a fair few readers have said to themselves: “You’re right, Alan! Forget social media! Who needs it!”
In the last 2-3 months I’ve written two blogs posts (this one and this one) dedicated to a recent pet project of mine: a blog 365 project I started back in April called Whose Line 365, sharing YouTube clips of Whose Line Is It Anyway? on a daily basis for a year. Unfortunately it’s time to put WL365 out to pasture, way before its time, only 1/5th-ish of the way through its journey.
You see, Warner Bros. Entertainment – the copyright owners of the US-side of the show – have started to request that YouTube blocks clips of its show. I’ll admit that the reason that I went ahead with WL365 was because for years they didn’t seem to care that WLIIA clips were being shared on YouTube – just my luck that they start to care now, but I can’t exactly argue. Regardless… given the fact that a) the majority of the clips available online are for the US version of the show, b) they’re starting to disappear one-by-one with no sign of stopping, c) I don’t want to get into any trouble for sharing them and d) I’m insanely busy in other aspects of my life as it is, I’ve decided to pull the plug on the project.
R.I.P. Whose Line 365. It was fun while it lasted. You may have been a Mochrie, but you went out in Stile(s). Take Care(y).