Los Angeles Tech & Marketing Meetup:

Hey-

I’ve put together a private group gathering made up people I know and like who are:

• Smart and driven
• In the internet, tech or media space
• Doing interesting things (often entrepreneurs)
• The kind of people you might actually enjoy spending time with

If I sent you an invite please leave a Comment below so we can have a collective invitee list here so everyone in the group has an easy time following up with each other. When you post your info below please include:

• Your Name
• Most Recent Role/Title
• Link To Your Blog or LinkedIn (so people can’t contact you)

Details On The Event:

What: Tech/Marketing/Media Meetup
When: Wednesday, November 17th, 7:00-10:00pm
Where: Hotel Erwin Rooftop Lounge
1697 Pacific Ave Venice, CA – valet parking available
Google Map
Yelp Page

The purpose of the night is to get smart, interesting good people together to share ideas and create a better community for ourselves – and help each other where we can.

I did a similar event a while back and the feedback and response was great. People got value and enjoyed it. This time I’m expanding the circle a little bit to bring some good new people into the mix.

The invite list consists of:

• Some tech/internet CEO’s
• A few CTO’s
• Some serial entrepreneurs with a few nice exits (sales)
• Several lovely & talented internet marketers, authors and experts
• A couple of folks doing cool stuff in the mobile space
• Some web & app developers I like
• Several super sharp Advertising and Media Buying folks
• A few VC’s & Angels
• And if you come… YOU

The evening will be a fairly casual gathering of minds up top the Erwin Hotel at the rooftop bar. It’s one of the very best views in Venice too, so you won’t want to miss it.

Why Am I Doing This Event?

I’ve always felt that Los Angeles could have a more cohesive technology and internet community- the way the Bay Area does.

With that said, there are some solid groups like DocStoc CEO Jason Nazar’s Startups Uncensored. Their events are usually posted to his blog and give real value to the startup folks of the world.

There are also some other internet-centric communities including:

• DigitalLA for the networking digital minded
• Twiistup events
• The Digital Family

What I’ve sought to do over the past year or so is bring together a smaller more intimate group of like-minded internet, technology and marketing folks who are all the kind of people I enjoy sharing ideas with and getting to know better.

It’s always great to connect with smart people, and I enjoy introducing the smart people I like and know to each other so everyone benefits.

If you’re in the LA tech community please also feel free to post here and say hi and introduce yourself. If we connect I can try and invite you to the next event.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
-Leanardo DaVinci

See you there and be well!

I’m getting a group of savvy, smart fun people in tech/media together Thursday night in Santa Monica.

Here are the details…

What: Savvy Folks Meetup
Where: Bar Chloe 1449 2nd St. Santa Monica, CA
When: Thursday 11/5 at 7:45pm

I bring this group together because I like connecting with smart people who are also interesting good people, and sharing in return. It’s not very formal- more an opportunity to hang with smart folks doing great things at a cool place for the evening.

Focus on technology, marketing, media and startup entrepreneurs.

Networking, helping other people and talking about big ideas highly encouraged.

Our last meetup at the Hotel Erwin rooftop was a great group, and some great connections and friendships were made.

The group I’ve invited so far for this event are smart, successful and generous in spirit… and I want my friends to meet and hang with other good people like them. If you’d like to come and you’ll bring value to the group with what you’re doing, then come by.

Please RSVP so I know how many we’ll have. I have tables already reserved. RSVP by Commenting here on my Blog, or if you’re a FB’er, on the Facebook Event Page.

So far on the invite list:

Jackie Peters – Heavy Bag Media
Drew Kossoff – Rainmaker Ad Ventures
Wil Schroter – Founder & CEO, AffordIt.com
Kyra Reed – Markyr Media
Mark Schelbert – Shackleton Advisors
Angela Poe – The Gary Group
Brian Cooley – Wicked PR
William Barnes – uCrave
Dan Bliss – PerfectBusiness.com
Sean Stolper – Sony Pictures
Tyler Crowley – Mahalo.com
Jason Nazar - Co-Founder & CEO, DocStoc.com
Jeffrey Morgan – pausing post exit
Marc Vermut – Control Room
Ryan Born – AudioMicro.com
Dave Conway – Little Radio
Brad Barrish – Topspin
Jennifer Berson – Jeneration PR
Kit Cooper – Quality of Life Project

P.S. We’re a bit light on folks on the development side of things. If you know any developer folks who would play well in the group, let them know.

You should attend this event if you’re involved in the startup community in Los Angeles or on the west coast…

The Perfect Pitch 2009

I spoke on a panel the other night at Jason Nazar and DocStoc’s Startups Uncensored event in SM and met Dan Bliss who was on the panel as well. Dan’s the guy who’s brought this amazing event together.

At this event will be some of the top people to know in for Venture Capital, Angel investors, as well as other startups and entrepreneurs who are making things happen.

If that wasn’t enough, the Keynote for the event will be given by Sir Richard Branson.

It’s at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Rey on October 26th.

Some of the speakers and people to meet at the event include:

• Sir Richard Branson- Founder, Virgin Group
• Tim Draper- Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
• John Babcock- Partner, Rustic Canyon Partners
• Mark Suster- Partner, GRP Partners
• Scott Sangster- Angel Investor; CEO of OrganicStartup
• Jason Nazar- CEO & Founder, Docstoc
• Shawn Colo- Co-Founder/Head of M&A, Demand Media
• And other smart folks to meet…

I definitely recommend getting a ticket and attending this event.

Registration is limited, so get all the details and get your ticket now here:

Perfect Pitch 2009 Sign Up

Let me know if you’re going, and see you there…

Hey- just wanted to let you know that I’ll be interviewed by Andrew Warner at Mixergy and sharing over an hour of my best stuff on marketing and developing content that attracts and converts.

Andrew asked me to do this interview and I decided to make it my goal to share with viewers how to move from a site that “chases traffic” to a thriving business that consistently drives engagement (email, social, subscriptions) and repeat sales.

The secrets I share are all about honing your ability to understand your visitors/prospects, deliver real value that engages them in the form of on page written and designed content, and create a system that allows your results to happen repeatedly and to be improved and optimized over time.

Do you have a system and a way to automate some portion of your business/work? Then how to do plan on getting out of the “trading your time for money” conundrum?

In this video interview I’m going to share some of my best tips for marketing online and creating automated systems that will allow you to scale your success and results.

I’ll share why most successful entrepreneurs fail at attracting and converting paying customers… and what your business or idea needs for people to both find you, engage with you, and buy from you.

If you’re not 100% sure how to start with your online business or idea, and you don’t have tested and proven experience writing and designing marketing that works… then watch my video interview Mixergy.

The interview is here:

Free Online Marketing Tips to Convert Traffic Into Customers

Let me put it to you bluntly, in case you didn’t already know…

The days of the destination site are over.

The days of thinking about indiscriminately scaling traffic, and then working to “monetize” are over. (were a long time ago)

And the days of finding a model “after the fact” are over too.

And for you and I that’s all a good thing… if we’re able to adapt.

Will you adapt?

There’s been a shift over the last year or more driven by fundamentals of the internet environment, the sheer mass of content out there, the collective evolution of competition in niches, and the realities of the economics of marketing and advertising online.

It used to be that online companies could find traffic sources, buy it, and hope that it converted.

For every company that didn’t have a clear strategy on Where traffic would come from, What the traffic cost, and How Much they’d make back over X amount of days… there was still a funny way of hanging in there for a while and fumbling their way through to enough customers and revenue (unprofitable) that an exit or additional financing could materialize.

But it certainly wasn’t sustainable. Just hustling and hype. Short term faux-sustainability.

The real numbers of these traffic and destination businesses told a grim story that the founders tried to reframe with misleading charts and press releases. They didn’t want you to see and understand the numbers, because the fundamentals were flawed.

This was what was going on during The Age Of Traffic.

That age is over.

Next came a wave of smarter businesses marketers that understood the value of targeted Quality Traffic over traffic for traffics sake.

These people knew how to spot and identify market niches online, they knew how to read the tea leaves of keyword research, and they knew how to create compelling content or products to meet the desires or needs of real individuals that made up a niche of targeted traffic.

Hundreds and thousands of businesses have prospered and jumped to the ranks of a 2, 3, 20 or 30 million dollar a year businesses in this way, and they did it through a relatively simple formula-

• Create a service or product of real value that solves a real and existing need
• Find your real target market through testing
• Invest the time and effort it takes to create real value in content and products for this real target market
• Find a way to convert your real target market in some way (subscribe, buy, use)
• Follow up, often, and don’t be afraid to market and ask people to come back, try and buy

This formula was some of the focus of The Age of Conversion.

That age is largely over too, but the fundamentals of the Conversion formula are still as important now as they were then.

By the way, I talked about some of those old conversion fundamentals for internet marketing as they relate to the very first impression people have of you and your site/service on this quick ditty about Landing Pages. (*Hint- note the more “social” elements I’m testing and thinking about)

So, what’s happening now? Where are we going?

I see that we’re moving into a time I think of as The Age of Attention.

For most companies starting today online, the Conversion Age is over because of the rising cost of marketing and advertising online, and the added challenges of standing out in the crowd of existing products and businesses in most markets and niches makes competing very hard.

Building a large email list isn’t as straightforward as it used to be.

Driving traffic and getting it to convert at or above the minimum you need it to isn’t as easy as it used to be.

And prices are still generally rising in online ads, even with the downturn in the economy. (although Google Adwords hasn’t grown the same 5-8% this year in average CPC that it has steadily risen other years, from what I can tell across lots of different areas)

We’re now moving into a different time where existing companies who already have significant brands and audiences have a real advantage over companies that don’t and are starting out.

The barrier to entry for real online success has grown significantly over the last 5 years- both because of the Price of trying to compete, and because of the challenge in trying to grow your audience and the amount of Attention you can get.

Attention here meaning Qualified Traffic or Views of your message that were either referred, posted or bought.

Here’s a quick example of a barrier to entry for new companies, and the challenges in gaining Attention…

Google’s algorithm looks to favor bigger existing brands in a variety of search categories and keywords, where they didn’t before. The simple existence of Site Age in obtaining ranking in search results shows this… although age and audience awareness/attention/links can often go hand in hand.

Sites that alread have more Attention will be getting more Attention. And Attention seems to lead to more Attention.

Here’s an interesting article related to the value of links that older sites and businesses build up online. I found this quote particularly insightful:

“[There is...] the law of “preferential attachment” as it is also known, wherein new links on the web are more likely to go to sites that already have many links, proves that the scheme is inherently biased against new and unknown pages.”

Now, considering this, and consider the fact that even some of the more well-funded, experienced, web savvy people who used to be of the Conversion crowd are now changing or augmenting their methods of communicating, promoting, and growing their businesses.

Traffic and Conversion aren’t the game anymore. Everyone, even the Internet Marketing crowd, now wants a Brand, a Community, and an SEO strategy.

I found this article about the Two Tribes by Sonia Simone on Copyblogger a great insight into those still Traffic Age-minded, and those still Conversion Age-minded.

Here are some things I’m seeing as important and true in the new Age of Attention:

• Brands used to be a bad word to Internet Marketers. Now they’re essential.
• Great content alone, now matter how great, won’t win you enough Natural Search traffic to make it
• People online are starting to want and trust “in network” information, not interruptive ads and marketing
• Google is changing, can make or break you in a day, and can’t be depended on
• There are starting to be some cool ways to build attention directly in social media. Especially Twitter

What changes are you seeing?

What’s stopped working that used to work for you and your business?

How has social media, and thinking about Brand and Attention become more important to you, and changed your approach?