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Podcamp Topeka is back #PodcampTopeka

07 Oct

Some of you may remember my post last year after the PodcampTopeka meet up, this year I’m actually going to get a post in before Podcamp. David Lee King, Lisa Coble-Krings and Bill Ludwig asked me if I wanted to help with the planning and the answer was obviously YES. Also my wife Alissa Sheley and a local blogger Joe Cheray have been helping out on the board.

We learned from our mistakes made last year, and have added a few new features that we’re hoping will be a big hit. One of them is a keynote speaker, I’m REALLY thrilled about this; our keynote speaker is someone I’ve known for 5-7 years. He’s written a great book on managing your online forums (which I have a copy and hopefully will get it signed) as well as one of the developers of the largest forum hacking community in the world. (phpBBHacks) This is where I had originally met Patrick O’Keefe, and have since grown a good relationship with him on Twitter.

Another one of the amazing things this year is our sponsors; you still have time to sponsor along with a few famous social media bloggers/developers like Mashable and BlipTV.

I’m really hoping for a good turnout, last time I checked we’re on pace to pass our number for last year. This year we really want to get the small local businesses in Topeka to show up and hopefully pick up a few things to help bring traffic to their establishment.

I know this is short, but I wanted to get a few links out and of course the PodcamptTopeka link. You’ll be able to follow the conversation on Twitter by saving the #PodCampTopeka hash tag. I’ll get another post out after the event. I’m going to take my Flip camera to get a quick video interview with Patrick and add it to my successful forum sections.

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Posted in Forums, Top City News

Our first Posting Contest on General-Forums.com

19 Jun

One effective way of promoting a forum is with posting contest. I’ve ran a few in the past years, but the one I’ll talk about today is the first for my new General Forums. In the past it was pretty easy to find sponsorship for the contest. My old forum targeted a niche, I actually had sponsors in back-order, just waiting for us to finish one contest and start another. It wasn’t so easy for this contest, but we’re still young (3 months old) it’ll get better as time passes.

I purchased a small site today, and will merge that this weekend. After I get that imported, I’ll send out an email to everyone and work on the newsletter that will be sent out in another week or so.

This is going to be a rather short post, just wanted to get a few links out to the contest. I’ve had so much go on lately and have thought about putting it down in a blog post several times, but never get around to it when I’m in front of the computer. I’m going post pics and use my tumblr account as a mini blog, I’ll see if I can tie it into a widget or something on this blog. I didn’t realize this, but I’ve had that account for 2 years! Time sure fly’s..lol

What are some of the ideas you have for promoting your forums, we’re like to hear them?

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Posted in Forums

Build Your Personal Brand

30 May

How do you brand yourself or your business, where do you stop? I’ll list off some of the ways I’ve continued to build my brand, and some things you can do to build your personal brand.

As some of you know, I recently sold a website dedicated to helping vBulletin admins. On that forum I had two sections, one that listed off all the clients I had worked with (that approved to be mentioned) & one that listed several of the testimonials from those clients. At the time of selling that forum I had worked on over 300 vBulletin sites. This was over a 3-year span & many of those admins would need repeat work (vB upgrades, new sites etc..). When I sold the site I built a new “vBulletin Services” page on this blog. Right around that same time that I sold the site, I picked up a great job with the state – I’m still very happy employed and loving it. I knew that I wouldn’t be taking on as many jobs as before, so promoting the services back on this blog wasn’t a priority.

I’m starting to clear up some time and thought I might as well take care of this so I can mark it off my list. I’m going to re-post all the clients I had worked with, a general outline of what I did and a link/screenshot to their site. I’ll setup a category for my clients and testimonials. I also have the option with the current style to display 9 featured client sites. I think it says something about webhosting right now, and you might see the screenshots displayed across the top, those will be changed soon, I’m hoping to have everything transferred over by the end of this next week. I may not end up using this green style you see, I want to have an option to show featured post on the home page, like my IPB vs vBulletin post should be on the front, it was getting a lot of comments, as well as a few others that have a high comment count.

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