April Fools Day is my favorite day of the year, and we’re already off to a great start with sites like Screenrant.com announcing the return of Full House and office favorites ThinkGeek debuting their Dark Knight Rises Bane Walkie-Talkies.
It’s all good fun right? WRONG! Not that creating hilarious content doesn’t fall into Wil Reynolds “Do Real Company Stuff” strategy, but yea, seriously, April Fools Day can be really really good for business, and for your SEO.
Last week was one for the record books. This time of year always is, with many businesses getting their new year budgets finally released and setting out to do that marketing thing, but also due to my mentoring at TechStars Cloud. Every year the TechStars Cloud group brings about a dozen companies from all over the world to learn from about 60 or so mentors, like me, on anything from raising money, to how to market their service or how to reach their target audience.
My busy week concluded Friday with a big “fly in” day where mentors came from all over to help these companies in a big “mass mentorship” day. Only problem was, I was out of business cards. Mentors love to hand out business cards, I have a small stack of them from folks I’ll likely never see or hear from again, but hey if I ever have a question that only a computer science engineer from IBM could answer… I’m set!
I’ve always believed that success is one of the worst things that could happen to a person, or a brand. I learned that one of my favorite gaming websites, 1up.com, is going to be shutting down and their staff relocated to now parent company IGN (or fired).
I wasn’t so much a fan of 1up.com itself, but the news section was great, similar to engadget in that it was true simple reporting. Kotaku doesn’t do it for me, IGN feels like it’s 100% advertising spam, and I’ve long been a believer that most video game content, especially reviews, are driven by advertising revenue above all else. (For example – I guess Capcom didn’t pay IGN well enough to earn a higher review for the AMAZING DmC: Devil May Cry reboot. Really, 8.5?! It’s easily a 9.5 or a 10!)
Sitting down to my desk this morning, I did what I always do after checking e-mail, I checked Facebook. I like Facebook, I like Facebook more than Twitter even and I like chatting, debating, sharing, and laughing at the random stuff people post. Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing and his recent The Book of Business Awesome/Unawesome shared his recent blog titled The Farce That Is Google+.
Loved it. Scott spoke on how Google loves to pad Google+’s numbers to make the crummy Facebook clone look like it’s actually a hotbed of activity, but sadly, I’m with Scott, the only people I know that really love Google+ are marketers wanting to plant their flag at the mountain’s peak. Twitter experts (like Mr. Stratten, come to think of it) were a specific set of folks, and knowing that every “wannabe Chris Brogan” wanted their crack at the title this time around, they flocked to Google+ in droves.
When I started writing online back in 2001 I was the Gaming Editor for a website called TheOneRing.net. I would receive packages almost daily with products ranging from Decipher’s Trading Card Game to Games Workshop’s Lord of the Rings minis.
So coming from that background of product reviews, previews and new relase coverage, it’s hard for me not to review products and talk about the important business equipment (read: toys) that made 2012 such a fun year to “geek out” in.
So with that in mind, I give you my Top 5 (mostly) Tech Toys of 2012!
I’ve always been a fan of Apple’s portables and the MacBook Pro line in general has always had a lot of praise even from PC Magazine, who named the 13″ Retina MacBook Pro their Editor’s Choice. What I love most about the Retina MacBook Pro is how fast it is. I’m not a designer but I do all of our documents in InDesign and I have to edit images frequently for this blog and for client website’s, etc.
Matthew Egan has been developing online content since 2001. Leading the strategy for Image Freedom projects, Matthew busts myths and develops revenue growing SEO campaigns for our clients. Read More >>
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