Marketing Pilgrim

We’ve just posted the second round of entries to our 4th Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. They are:

• You Know You Work In Search When You…
• 15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started as an Internet Marketer
• Why Iran, Perez Hilton, and The US Open relate to SEO
• Game Changing Principles – Enabler SEO
• 9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design
• How to Write Hundreds of Unique Articles from One Article with MS Excel – Article Theme Versioning

That’s all the entries for this year. Remember, the entries have 4 weeks from the date of publication to try and qualify as one of our five finalists.

I hope you’ll read the posts–you might even learn something new!

We’ve just posted the first round of entries to our 4th Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. They are:

• The Small Business PPC Art of War
• Holistic Online Marketing
• Oh, That’s Right, We Don’t Need SEO Standards
• SEM & Job Recruitment
• SEO by You
• How to Kick Ass with a Mobile Website

The next round will be published the same time tomorrow. Remember, the entries have 4 weeks from the date of publication to try and qualify as one of our five finalists.

I hope you’ll read the posts–you might learn something new!

To help all procrastinators, we’ve decided to extend the deadline for our $10,000 SEM Scholarship contest until 6pm ET Wednesday.

You now have an additional two days to submit your 400+ word article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media.

Please help spread the word by clicking the blue Twitter icon (or any of the social media icons) below this post.

Thanks!

We don’t often ask you to thank our awesome advertisers, but the next time you need help with your marketing, please consider these Marketing Pilgrim supporters.

• Full Sail University – check out their new Internet Marketing Bachelor’s Degree. You can study it online!
• Text Link Brokers – increase your traffic and search engine rankings.
• WPromote – offers a wide range of professional search engine marketing services.
• Spellr – need an easier way to check your web site for spelling errors?
• Sponsored Reviews – bloggers earn cash for reviewing products and services. Advertisers build buzz and links for your web site.
• Admanage – content-relevant ads with some of the highest revshare rates in the industry.
• Work From Home – get some great ideas for working from home.
• Vertical Leap – offers search engine optimization and PPC management services.

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We know how busy you are, but you have until the end of the day Monday to enter our 4th Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship contest. Miss the deadline, and you’ll miss your chance to win this awesome prize package:

• All Access Pass to SMX East
• All Access Pass to Pubcon
• Twelve months of Enterprise reputation monitoring from Trackur.com
• Free seat to Jill Whalen’s High Rankings SEO Training Classes.
• Enrollment in a “Certified Search Engine Marketer Pathway” course at SearchEngineCollege.com.
• Free seat to MarketingExperiments’ 2009 Landing Page Optimization Training Tour.
• A professional press release–highlighting the winner’s article and expertise–from TopRank Online Marketing.
• Six months premium membership to SEOmoz.org.
• Six months premium membership to SearchEngineLand.com
• A one year subscription to the SEO project management site, SoloSEO.com.
• One year subscription (ten user license) to blog post management system RustyBudget.

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We want to help find the brightest minds in search and social media, so each year, we ask you to submit your very best “how to” article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media. Over a 4 week period we tally the traffic count and send the top 5 most visited entries to our panel of expert judges. They pick their favorite, and the winner helps themselves to a prize package worth over $10,000!

Continue Reading…

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If you’re asking yourself “Who the heck is Chuck Hester?” then you’re clearly not doing much with your LinkedIn profile. If you were, you’d likely find yourself already one of Chuck’s connections–and benefited greatly from that relationship.

Chuck’s a “pay it forward” kind of guy, and that’s exactly the premise behind his new book Linking In To Pay It Forward. I’ll let Chuck explain the book’s concept:

This book is not a step-by-step guide on how to use LinkedIn or network. No, this is more of a “let’s sit down and talk” story. A way to help you realize the power of Linking in and Paying it Forward by showing you how I’ve made it happen. It is an exploration of how once I started asking “how can I be of service to you,” instead of wanting to know “what can you do for me,” when I connected with people on LinkedIn, the value proposition of social media changed for me – for the better.

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We probably won’t post anything today, other than this photo.

Without the sacrifices of those who died to protect our freedom, who knows if this blog would even exist.

It’s been almost 2 years since Dan Schawbel introduced himself to me via email. Barely a month later he asked me to help judge his Personal Brand Awards. At the time, I had never heard of Dan, so put him through the wringer–asking him lots of questions before agreeing.

Since then, I’ve kept in touch with Dan, did an interview with him, and watched him grow to become one of the foremost authorities on personal branding–all while yet to reach his 25th birthday!

Dan has taken his experience and expertise and distilled it into a new book entitled Me 2.0. While aimed at those leaving college–or early in their career–it’s really for anyone that has yet to build an online brand. We covered personal branding extensively in Radically Transparent, but Dan dives a lot deeper and uses himself as a case study for helping those that don’t yet have a reputation to protect!

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Can you believe it’s been more than a month since we held our last book prize giveaway? Let’s rectify that immediately and give away 3 copies of Steve Woods’ Digital Body Language.

I’m a big believer in targeting your marketing campaigns–especially search marketing–to the different stages of your customer’s buying cycle. I tend to break it down to 3 basic steps: awareness, research, and purchase. Little did I know that I should really look a lot deeper and consider the digital “body language” of my target customer.

That’s where Woods comes in. His book helps you understand not just the buying cycle, but how to profile your customers, how to nurture your relationship with them, and how to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

It’s a quick read (just over 200 pages) and is packed full of real case studies for your edification.

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…these fine companies. All of which helped keep the lights on at Marketing Pilgrim this month. Please consider showing your appreciation by doing business with them.

Cheers!

Full Sail University – check out their new Internet Marketing Bachelor’s Degree. You can take it online!

Text Link Brokers – increase your traffic and search engine rankings.

WPromote – offers a wide range of professional search engine marketing services.

Reciprocal Consulting – standing by to help you with your next pay per click management campaign.

Sponsored Reviews – bloggers earn cash for reviewing products and services. Advertisers build buzz and links for your web site.

Vertical Leap – offers search engine optimization and PPC management services.

PRWeb – the next time you send a press release, try PRWeb–it’s the newswire I personally use.

Want to advertise your business to some of the most affluent people on the web? Contact us for availability.

OK, OK, I’ve made you all wait long enough.

Of the hundreds of readers that correctly spotted the RSS-only message "I’m a Pilgrim that needs a Kindle 2" the following winner was picked at random:

Amanda Stone

Amanda, I’ll drop you an email with details of your prize.

Everyone else, thanks for entering! Keep subscribing as we’ll have new contests to announce soon!