Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 27, 2011

If you’re receiving this blog post, that means you are one of the last remaining survivors. You are the future now. You are the last hope for humanity. Only you can help rebuild our fallen world. Round up as many Facebook friends and Twitter followers that you can! Re-tweet dammitt! For god’s sake Re-Tweet!!!!!! (and don’t forget to @mention yourself in the Re-Tweet).

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Klout Influencer Comparison Hosting 254

Jason Yormark

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

I’ve always been quite entrepreneurial in nature and constantly am thinking about new ideas for websites, blogs or businesses. Needless to say that often has me frequently looking for good names to inspire me enough to go through with those ideas. I always feel like if I can actually find an affordable name, it’s more likely that I’ll see them through.

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Jason Yormark

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

When the web exploded onto the seen roughly 15 or so years ago, a new revolution began in a variety of ways. One of those was the ability for just about anyone to be anything they wanted to be much easier then ever before. Whether you wanted to launch a business, start a blog, or claim yourself an expert in whichever matter you choose, the web gave just about every person with an internet connection new opportunities.

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Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 3, 2011

A few weeks ago I noticed that Klout had added the WordPress button to the available channels to connect to which was encouraging. Quite frankly I think those that write successful blogs carry more influence then just about anyone in the social media sphere, so a welcome addition. But not so fast. Apparently the new addition only covers WordPress.com hosted blogs and not self hosted blogs.

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Jason Yormark

AUGUST 9, 2011

Along with the hyper growth of social media platforms over the past few. years, comes the army of awful marketers that spam, mislead and embellish their experience. The term Social Media Douchebag has seemed to be the winning term to describe these folks, and there are quite a few funny sites detailing their exploits (see here and here ). That being said, I feel it is my duty to perform a Social Media Douchebag audit on myself to ensure I don’t unwillingly succumb to the dark side.

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Jason Yormark

AUGUST 2, 2011

On my flight back home last week I was sitting next to a woman who had her laptop out most of the flight. She was a Microsoftie no doubt, and I knew this as she was working on her yearly commitments. Commitment setting at Microsoft is a ridiculously long and tedious process that involves multiple pages of countless sections and sub-sections of big words talking about what you are going to do in the upcoming year.

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Jason Yormark

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

Imagine you come up with a great idea for a blog, or business idea. Or maybe you just are helping a good friend out with getting them their website up finally. You’ve got the domain name, the business or organization is registered, and you’re just about good to go. Then you go to obtain your social media usernames. You know going into it that there’s a good chance it’s probably already taken, but worth a shot anyway.

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Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 25, 2011

One of my favorite parts of my job over the past year or so is having had the opportunity to participate in speaking engagements at conferences and local business chapters. In addition to helping me add credibility to what I do, I’ve been able to connect with people offline, and create additional opportunities for myself and my firm. While I’m not an “expert” by any means when it comes to securing these opportunities, there are a few steps I’ve taken that have helped me do so that I thought migh

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Jason Yormark

APRIL 6, 2011

I wrestled with the idea of creating a Facebook Page for my blog vs. just utilizing my Facebook Profile to promote. My initial thought was that I didn’t really see myself as being “celebrity” enough to warrant having what was once referred to as a “fan page”. It felt a bit vain to me, but I started to sense that I needed to re-visit the issue as more and more people I did not really know wanted to start connecting with me on Facebook professionally.

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Facebook SEO Issues Engineering 230

Jason Yormark

APRIL 4, 2011

A few years ago when I got laid off from Microsoft, I got a quick lesson in how important it was to invest time in your personal brand regardless of your job situation. I had not done that, and was then left with no online identity to fall back on. I was competing with thousands of other job applicants with my traditional cover letter and resume, and regardless of my qualifications, was often buried in an inbox of competition.

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Jason Yormark

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

For months I wanted to have my blog re-done, but I could never justify spending that much on something that quite frankly, didn’t really make me any money. Great design costs quite a bit, and I just never felt my blog design was a high enough priority. Of course I could go the free or premium theme route, but these days, they are all really looking quite the same and if I was going to change things up, I really wanted something unique that no one else could have.

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Jason Yormark

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

Imagine you come up with a great idea for a blog, or business idea. Or maybe you just are helping a good friend out with getting them their website up finally. You’ve got the domain name, the business or organization is registered, and you’re just about good to go. Then you go to obtain your social media usernames. You know going into it that there’s a good chance it’s probably already taken, but worth a shot anyway.

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Domain Name Twitter Small Business Activities 222

Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 25, 2011

One of my favorite parts of my job over the past year or so is having had the opportunity to participate in speaking engagements at conferences and local business chapters. In addition to helping me add credibility to what I do, I’ve been able to connect with people offline, and create additional opportunities for myself and my firm. While I’m not an “expert” by any means when it comes to securing these opportunities, there are a few steps I’ve taken that have helped me do so that I thought migh

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Jason Yormark

JANUARY 4, 2011

Tweet A little over 5 years ago I packed up the family and we trekked from Chicagoland to Seattle for a new chapter in our lives. I had been working independently for about 5 years doing web development and internet marketing and doing well enough to support the family with my wife working. When son #2 came along, she wanted to be a stay at home mom, so I had to close up shop and find something more stable.

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Jason Yormark

JULY 25, 2011

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been roughly 6 months since I left Microsoft for the agency world. In that time I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and all the planning and strategy work is starting to pay off as the last few months have had me constantly driving new business for the firm. At Strategies 360 we have a unique approach as we combine public policy & government relations work along with the communications, marketing and PR work that traditional agencies

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Jason Yormark

MAY 2, 2011

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a very interesting tool called Triberr. Simply. put, Triberr is a way for you to retweet other bloggers posts that you know and trust, and have them potentially do the same for you as well. You join and/or create “tribes” of those in your network that you feel comfortable associating with, and through those established connections, build a network of individuals that mutually share each other’s content.

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Jason Yormark

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

In an effort to spark more ideas to blog about, I thought it was time I started a blogging “series” and the idea that came to mind was sharing my experiences (successes and failures) around how my blog has matured over the years and what I’ve learned. In Part 1 of this series I thought I would talk about the often overlooked art of factoring in search when you write your blog posts.

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Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 31, 2011

One of the things I’ve loved about blogging is getting to see the growth of comments on my blog over the years. I’m always incredibly thankful for those that actually take the time to leave their thoughts on my blog posts, and it makes it that much more inspiring for me to continue to write here. I make practically no money off of my blog, so my efforts here are strictly authentic in being helpful, entertaining and to connect with as many people as I can.

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Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 17, 2011

The time has finally come. I think I always knew that I’d have to do some sort of Twitter house cleaning, but based on my last blog post, and some folks like Michael Hyatt and the mighty Chris Brogan who have pioneered by braving the backlash, I think I’m ready for a purge myself. So starting today, I begin unfollowing everyone on Twitter with the help of SocialOomph.

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Jason Yormark

JULY 15, 2011

I love Netflix. I think their service is fantastic, prices fair, and their integration across a variety of hardware choices is top notch. It’s one of those monthly fees I have no problem paying even when I don’t consume very much in a given month. I’ve followed their ascent to greatness burying Blockbuster in the process, and also paid close attention to the realities they have begun to face with increasing operating costs.

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Jason Yormark

MAY 20, 2011

One of the biggest challenges in my new role at Strategies 360 is going from developing social media strategies for B2B & B2C to less product/service focused clients. Most of our clients fall under non-profit, education, energy, & cause based organizations. Most of these firms are not selling a product or service, they are selling an idea or wanting to build awareness and support for their directives or initiatives.

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Social Media Startup Review Energy 214

Jason Yormark

JANUARY 28, 2011

Tweet Well I’m now 4 weeks in on the new gig at Strategies 360 and it’s been awesome. There’s something to be said about being in a position with full creative freedom and it’s invigorating. I absolutely love being able to build out a marketing/social media business for the firm, and we’re already making things happen with some pretty significant clients.

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Social Media Strategy Technorati StumbleUpon 214

Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 6, 2011

I’m about 9 months into my role at Strategies 360 running their social media outfit, and we’ve just about hit critical mass where we are exploring and upgrading our social media tools around monitoring and engagement. Up to this point, we’ve been able to manage without the enterprise level offerings such as Radian 6 and Sysomos , but times are a changin.

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Sysomos Social Media Engagement Radian6 209

Jason Yormark

AUGUST 12, 2011

My blog often stresses me out. As much as I enjoy writing and actually having a decent audience that actually reads what I write, it’s definitely become part of my regular routine. What was once just an occasional hobby has grown into more of a responsibility now that I have established a bit of an audience. I’m always looking to grow my readership through creating helpful, informative and entertaining content, marketing such content, and engaging with like minded readers.

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Jason Yormark

APRIL 21, 2011

One of the hot trends in social media these days are the crop of sites that are claiming to measure ones social media influence. Sites like Klout , PeerIndex , and up and comer Empire Avenue all have unique ways in which they measure your social influence based on a variety of factors. All three attempt to apply their own home brew algorithms that factor in the size of your networks, the frequency of your participation, and how often your contributions to these networks are shared.

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Jason Yormark

MARCH 2, 2011

I’ve found myself breaking free of hard drives and flash drives as more and more cloud based storage and software options have become available. For those not in the know, cloud software/services basically refers to storing or working in online environments where your data is stored “in the cloud” and not on your machine or external hard drives. Many old schoolers still scoff at the security implications, of not having your data stored locally, but the fact is with the growth of this industry an

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Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 17, 2011

The time has finally come. I think I always knew that I’d have to do some sort of Twitter house cleaning, but based on my last blog post, and some folks like Michael Hyatt and the mighty Chris Brogan who have pioneered by braving the backlash, I think I’m ready for a purge myself. So starting today, I begin unfollowing everyone on Twitter with the help of SocialOomph.

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Twitter Curation Course List 207

Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 19, 2011

Every once in awhile I stumble across a tool or service that I just have to blog about. This time around it is SignNow.com. SignNow.com’s premise is dead simple, upload a document, sign it, send it. Of course SignNow.com is not the first site to offer this, but I can tell you first hand they are by far the fastest and easiest way I have ever found to have a signed document completed and sent…within minutes.

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Jason Yormark

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

I know what you’re thinking; big deal right? I know. It’s not a big deal at all really. But I did find it very interesting based on my particular circumstances, and I thought sharing might be useful in some way to some of my readers. So I went on a blog hiatus for a few weeks, and it certainly made a significant impact on my Klout score. I was hovering around 70 for awhile, and after about 4 weeks of not blogging, I dropped down to 67.

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Jason Yormark

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

I’m always surprised at how many sites use questionable tactics with their websites that most certainly drive away readers. In some cases these decisions are certainly centered around monetizing a site, but in others, they are simply mind boggling. I’ve taken the past few months to really gather some feedback on how I’d like to evolve my blog in terms of making it more reader friendly and call to action oriented, but I can assure you that I would never consider any of the following tactics in an

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Jason Yormark

MAY 5, 2011

About a year ago, I remember reaching a crossroads for myself around what career path I wanted to align myself with. I had built up close to 12+ years of experience around digital marketing, but was really gravitating towards social media marketing. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time at Microsoft Advertising on the community team.

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Jason Yormark

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

Tweet Like I mentioned in my earlier post, things couldn’t be better in my new gig at S360. So good in fact that it’s only taken a little over a month and a half to already need to hire my first team member and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Today I begin my search for the first piece of many in building out the S360 Marketing & Social Media team.

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Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 19, 2011

Every once in awhile I stumble across a tool or service that I just have to blog about. This time around it is SignNow.com. SignNow.com’s premise is dead simple, upload a document, sign it, send it. Of course SignNow.com is not the first site to offer this, but I can tell you first hand they are by far the fastest and easiest way I have ever found to have a signed document completed and sent…within minutes.

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Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 21, 2011

Well, nobody is perfect. Was unfollowing everyone and starting over a good idea? Probably remains to be seen. Looking back, I probably would have been better off not announcing it on my blog, but I’ve always been transparent with my actions, and simply thought it would be useful to others to document what I would be experiencing. But in my particular case, I do believe it was the right thing to do regarding my wants/needs when it came to managing my social media efforts on a personal basis.

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Jason Yormark

OCTOBER 14, 2011

I want to be able to use DMs in Twitter, but really it’s such a vast wasteland of spam that it’s practically impossible to do. While I have a column for my DMs setup in Hootsuite, it’s really just for the rare chance that I may actually catch a legitimate message here and there. And even that is highly unlikely. What I fail to understand is that after years of being in existence, how is it that Twitter has failed to deliver absolutely nothing in the form of spam control or filtering for DMs.

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Jason Yormark

JUNE 21, 2011

Certainly the highlight of my Toronto trip last week was getting the opportunity to appear on the tech show Webnation that is part of the CP24 network which is a Canadian news channel. The show is hosted by Amber Mac who was also the keynote speaker at SES Toronto. Often times television personalities and book authors can be a bit pretentious, but I found Amber to be really down to earth and a pleasure to work with on the segment.

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Jason Yormark

JUNE 10, 2011

Mental note…don’t wait till the last minute to pull out our passport when you’re going out of the country. I learned that the hard way this morning when I had to scramble to get a new passport in 1 day to make my Toronto trip this Sunday to SES Toronto. Surprisingly you can actually get a passport in one day if you have all your documentation. Very expensive however.

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