I am heading up to Seattle this afternoon for SMX Advanced. One of the main reasons I am going is because a lot of the SEO/SEM social network is converging there. When I started this blog, these guys were the ones who helped me get it off the ground by welcoming me into the 24/7/365 community of search engine marketers.

These people are always on, be it Digg, Sphinn, Facebook, Mixx, Twitter, Techmeme, TechCrunch, whatever. Wherever I go online invariably someone from the SEM social net seems to be there. And I don’t think it’s because we are all spamming social nets, I think it’s because we as a group have an enormous curiosity about how these things work and how communication is changing. Also, outside of teenagers and sex chat line operators, we probably as a group spend more time online than most.

The challenge with the always on culture is that if you want to be a part of it you actually need to be always on. And with a family and a growing business that’s not going to happen. Lately I haven’t been very engaged in any of these networks, although Twitter seems to be taking up more than its fair share of my time. As a result a lot of the relationships I created early on have been kind of dormant lately. I am hoping that by spending a few days at SMX Advanced I can rekindle some of those relationships and get back in the always on (or at least sometimes on) groove.

As the headline says, social media marketing is hard work…but it beats a sharp stick in the eye or picking cotton or both at the same time.

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  • David Saunders  June 2, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    ….. always on culture – classic! That’s been the story of my life right down to the notebook (remember the paper ones?) and pen back in the 70s.

    I really must remember that 🙂

    David