Then you have come to the right place, almost… Technically you want to go to Echelon Media (www.echelonmedia.com).

This project has been in the works for some number of months now, and I have to admit it is coming together quite nicely. I have teamed up with three other amazingly smart and talented people to bring the best possible service and information for those looking to gain a footing in Internet marketing and social media.

Who are these people?

Allyn Hane – Master of his own domain located at www.bloggerillustrated.net
Steve Sherron – Media Entrepreneur www.bloggerlens.com
Brian Matson – Mr Fargo/Moorhead when it comes to social media www.fargomoorhead.org
Josh Whitford – Myself, with an emphasis on marketing techniques and startegies www.joshwhitford.com

What is our goal?

We want to bring the world of social media and Internet marketing to real people running real businesses. How can a mom and pop flower shop use and gain a return on investment from communities like Facebook, Twitter or local sites. This would include using all kinds of different methods for promoting that include a little bit of everything, SEO, community websites, video and cross platform marketing and advertising techniques.

Who are we trying to serve?

The team we have assembled is very good at many different marketing techniques and we want to bring that knowledge and experience together to better serve more people. We are here to serve businesses of all size and have quite a foothold is some prominent industries already. We will also be creating products and services that everyday people can use to better utilize and leverage these social and marketing techniques to their advantage. This isn’t going to be another fly by the night membership site or service or just an excuse to be invited to conferences to speak. No, we are trying to further other people and businesses to the next level in the ever-changing landscape of Internet marketing and social media.

Where can you find info on the other guys?

Our Blogs

http://bloggerlens.com/ (Steve)
http://bloggerillustrated.net/ (Allyn)
http://www.joshwhitford.com/ (Josh)
http://www.fargomoorhead.org/fmnews/ (Brian)

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Monroe-Scoop/142453226861?ref=nf (Steve)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Blogger-Illustrated/127955991346?ref=ts (Allyn)
http://www.facebook.com/therealjosh (Josh)
http://www.facebook.com/FargoMoorhead?ref=nf (Brian)

Twitter

http://twitter.com/hyperlocalblog (Steve)
http://twitter.com/AllynPaul (Allyn)
http://twitter.com/therealjosh (Josh)
http://twitter.com/fargomoorhead (Brian)

Echelon Media Links

http://www.echelonmedia.com/
http://twitter.com/echelonmedia
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Echelon-Media/372799737541?ref=ts

What do you think?

We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas. What do you think of the site? What topics would you like us to cover?

I hope that everyone is enjoying the eggnog with loved ones next to a warm fire and some good food. This year Lindsay and I continued our tradition of having Chinese Buffet for Christmas lunch. We started going 3 years ago when both of us used to work on Christmas. This year is a little different.

I quit my last job a year ago this week. Hard to believe where life has taken me since. Quitting my job was the guttiest thing I have ever done, leaving behind a secure dismal paycheck to pursue a life of business and Internet Marketing. It was the best choice I have ever made. Deciding to strike out on my own definitely came with its ups and downs, but over all has been extremely worth it.

Looking back over the last year makes me very thankful that I get to spend time relaxing with my girlfriend Lindsay and for all the support that family and friends have given over the years. I hope that wherever you are, you are with the ones you love and cherishing every moment. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. God Bless you and may this year be more fruitful than the last.

-Josh Whitford

P.S. This year I am changing the focus of my newsletter to better help and encourage others to pursue a better life through marketing.

What a busy week. I feel like I have been running around with my head cut off and completely slacked on getting a post up. Yesterday I decided to take the whole day off from anything that resembled work, with the exception of helping to shovel snow. Such is life sometimes. Now without further adieu…

Susie Asks: How much emphasis or value do you believe social networking is for companies? I believe it’s really good for brand building, but conversions are a different story, especially when you are limited in your “territory”. What are your thoughts and ideas.

Josh: I think social media and social networking are huge for companies to get involved with. When you have a brand that has been established over time it is very important to monitor that brand and encourage open discussion. One of the best tools I have seen for brand management and tracking social networking trend is an analytics software called SM2 Techrigy. I won’t go into huge detail about what the software can do other than it is top of the line for online brand management.

Recently, I have been trying to use Techrigy to help in planning marketing campaigns for clients versus just as a brand management tool. I will have to tell you about the results after I am done.

If you are limited to a territory I would seek out the noise makers in that area and work on building a positive working relationship with them. If you are an online retailer I would look for the Twitters and Bloggers in your area and build the best relationship possible with them. Don’t be afraid to be fully honest about why you are talking with them and see what different kinds of ideas they might have. That alone is enough to make them talk.

Jeff Asks: love your stuff- you must work with some talented people. who are these stalwarts of creative energy?

Josh: Funny that you ask Jeff. I do as Jeff says surround myself with many people with creative energy. Here in no particular order are those people.

Jeff Nyquist – former marketing director of The Marcil Group and current marketing director of Black Knight Marketing in Fargo, ND.

Sue Long – who specialized in marketing and design also formerly with The Marcil Group and currently with Black Knight Marketing.

Lindsay Stordahl – Lindsay is the author of That Mutt: A Dog Blog and provides marketing assistance for local companies via SEO, content and editorials. P.S. Lindsay is also my girlfriend and chief editor. Thanks, beautiful.

Justin Moen – Who we imported from Norway as a little programming gnome that helps with our automation processes and SEO. (Actually, he returned from a Norwegian hiatus and we snatched him up quickly after).

Sherry Asks: Since I am going to start a contest end of Dec at my blog. I like to know what’s the best way to choose the Winners. Beside using random.org, is there other way to do it?

Josh: Another way to have people win a contest is to make it so difficult that the only person to finish it wins by default. Or, you could have a set guideline that must be followed in order to win. There are always the contests that you purely decide who the winner is based on your own opinion or that of a panel of people (your friends or closest Internet companions). I think all work fine as long as you specify how people are chosen.

stores open on christmas Asks: My question is how do you brainstorm for good marketing ideas to test out on your blog?

Josh: Mostly out of boredom. I usually see what other people are doing and then see how I can apply that to my blog or other sites with the least amount of work possible. I usually just try something because I think it is cool and want to do it. Like my Marketing Ideas En Masse idea where I just wanted an easy way to post frequently about Marketing Ideas to help with my search rankings on that term. Yes, it helped and also got me a boat load of new visitors. I just kinda stumble through this as I see fit, like my own little Internet Marketing / Social Media experiment.

If you have a question and would like me to take a stab at it go ahead and shoot for the next round of Ask Josh or use my contact form.

Thirty days ago I started my Marketing Ideas En Masse trail to see what kind of results I could produce. Wow, am I amazed by the results of the test trial. Let’s dive into the numbers and see what we find.

Effects of a 30-day trial on search results

Before this trial I was averaging about 90 search engine hits a day and growing (slowly). About last week I started averaging 200 hits a day mostly from Google. So in 3 weeks I doubled my search engine traffic and it seems to be holding pretty steady. Some of my most successful posts are:

• Marketing Ideas #17 Tim Ferriss Trial by Fire on the History Channel
• Tim Ferriss Trial by Fire a huge success leading to a new show
• Marketing Ideas #14 McDonalds Free Coffee Monday
• Marketing Ideas #20 McDonalds Anti Starbucks Marketing Campaign

Each of these stories is more or less a new topic at the time of writing that I was able to take 1st or very near the top of the search engine due to their freshness in the search world.

How to beat out other blogs on a new topic

I have to admit that I had an advantage in taking the top positions on a number of these searches just by posting. I run a WP Plugin call Auto Social Poster on this blog that helps to automatically bookmark posts on sites like Delicious and Flurl. What happens is pretty simple. I hit publish and in a matter of 15 minutes I have a post with backlinks zooming to the top of the search engines. In the case of the search term Seth Godin Tribes I outranked Seth Godin’s site and Amazon.com for the first 24 hours. I am still just below them both.

Conclusion of 30-day trial

I view the trial run as a success where I am now getting twice the search volume daily than I was at the start of the trial. Another thing I realized is how important it is when boosting search traffic to blog about new things. With the amount of backlinks Auto Social Poster gets me from the start tends to carry the post on the first page of Google for a while. Without building more or better backlinks, those results will slide but at the same time so does the search volume. I will plan another 30-day trial soon and make it a little more daring. Have any ideas?

For the next 30 days I am going to be doing a little bit of a test. One of the things I like to do on my blog is test ideas that come to me and see what affect they have on my site, subscribers, comments and so on. So for the next 30 days I will be testing my “Marketing Ideas En Masse Campaign.”

This campaign will consisit of shorter and more frequent posting surrounding different marketing ideas. I will add a little input to the beginnings and possibly the end with a link to the original post, video, news story and so on. If you see stories or marketing ideas in some form or another and would like to let me know about them, feel free to send them via my contact form.