Marketing Pilgrim

As you know, a couple of weeks ago (my company) Trackur launched Trackur Free–a competely free version of the popular social media monitoring tool.

To celebrate Trackur Free’s success–and to get as many people protecting their reputation as possible–Trackur is now giving all users a chance to win a free Apple iPad!

Yep, you can get your hands on a free online reputation monitoring tool AND enter to win the hottest gadget around!

Want to enter? Head over to the Trackur site pronto!

I absolutely love doing my online reputation management workshops. An entire day of me sharing just about everything I know about reputation management. Not only do I enjoy them, but the feedback has been amazing–just about everyone that attends walks away a reputation management expert!

So, I’m going international and bringing my workshop to Australia and New Zealand in May!

Thanks to a collaboration with Bullet PR, I’ll host my Auckland workshop on May 18th, then jump on a plane and host it again in Sydney on May 20th!

This one-day master class is the only way to get hands-on reputation management training from me, without paying my normal consulting day-rate. In fact the Auckland workshop is priced as low as $595+gst, while the Sydney one is just $550 for PRIA members!

Here’s what our day together will cover:

• Introduction to Online Reputation Management (ORM)

How would you like to indulge in two days of hands-on, advanced social media marketing training?

Training from experts such as Jason Falls,  John Jantsch,  Giovanni Gallucci, yours truly, and a bunch of other top-notch marketers?

What if I said you could get that training for just $429? When was the last time you went to a 2-day event for less than $500?

What if I made that price even sweeter by providing you with the discount code “andybeal” which drops the price down to a crazy low $304!!!

Up for it?

OK, then head over to register for the Social Media Optimization Summit taking place in Dallas, TX on March 23 & 24.

There are dozens of workshops to choose from and I’ll be teaching you how set up your own social media monitoring alerting system–and I may even throw in some Trackur freebies too.

I’m not sure if you know the back story of why I decided to launch social media monitoring tool Trackur.

After completing Radically Transparent, I felt like there was a huge void between those that had outgrown Google Alerts and the monitoring tools available at that time. You had Google Alerts (free) then you had services that started at thousands of dollars.

Fast forward a couple of years–yes, Trackur is two years old this month–and Trackur has grown to be one of the most popular monitoring tools on the web. So popular in fact, that we’re racking up many agency clients–attracted by our quick, easy, and affordable tools.

I digress. No really, I digressed. While we were serving the big agencies, we kind of neglected those that I wanted to help the most: those that had outgrown the limitations of Google Alerts. So, today I’m delighted rectify that by announcing Trackur Free.

We finally have a Marketing Pilgrim fan page on Facebook!

I know, I know, it’s about time! But hear me out.

You see, I always figured that having a fan page on Facebook wouldn’t be of interest to Marketing Pilgrims. I thought a fan page was just an ugly expression of vanity–did I really feel like people loved this site enough to become a "fan" of it?

Then it struck me.

It’s not about being a fan, it’s about providing you with another way to enjoy Marketing Pilgrim’s posts. Maybe you’re not a big user of RSS, but would prefer to nom on our delicious posts, while throwing sheep or growing carrots.

So, for those of you that wish to connect with us via Facebook, now you can.

If you know Tamar Weinberg, you know, she knows, social media.

If you don’t know Tamar Weinberg, then when I tell you she’s the community and marketing manager for Mashable–the #1 social media blog in the world–you’ll believe that she knows social media.

So, you’ll probably want to jump on this opportunity to win one of 3 copies of her fantastic new book The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web.

As the book promises, it will help you:

• Explore blogging and microblogging, and find out how to use applications such as Twitter to create brand awareness
• Learn the art of conversation marketing, and how social media thrives on honesty and transparency
• Manage and enhance your online reputation through the social web
• Tap into the increasingly influential video and podcasting market
• Discover which tactics work — and which don’t — by learning about what other marketers have tried

The Marketing Executives Networking Group is a group of 2000 marketing executives (10 points if you already guessed that ) at the VP level and higher. Recently, the group’s leadership asked members to name their favorite blogs by non-MENG members—and guess who was part of the top 20?

Oh, I guess the title kind of gave it away, didn’t it? That’s right, Marketing Pilgrim .

Seth Godin’s blog took top honors, with 59% of execs naming that as a favorite. Mashable was second with 38%. Tied for third were Chris Brogan’s Community and Social Media and Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World (30% each). One in five named Tom Peters’ blog, tied with Duct Tape Marketing to round out the top five (with six blogs ).

The rest of the top twenty:

• Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim
• Avinash Kaushik’s Occam’s Razor

I trust you had a great Christmas!

As our minds dream of how fantastic 2010 will be, it’s time to look back at the hot topics of 2009. Here are Marketing Pilgrim’s top ten most read posts in 2009.

1. Bing.com; Is it Worth Switching from Google? – A home run for Microsoft? While Bing certainly deserves credit for being the first serious challenger to Google, it didn’t hurt that 2009 was the year that Microsoft stepped-up its media outreach to us.
2. Social Media Monitoring Tools: 26 Free Online Reputation Tools – This post was written in 2007 and has been in our top five for the past 3 years!
3. Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide – A great guest article by Jon Rognerud and it still stands-up as a great primer for social media marketing.