Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

Today is my one year anniversary of blogging on JeffWoelker.com. Oh how the time flies. I began this blog mostly as a knowledge repository for myself. I was sending out links each day to my co-workers and family and wanted a better way to aggregate my thoughts and opinions, and so this blog was born.

As the months past, I realized what a great PR tool this could be for myself and, to all of you thinking of setting up a blog or trying to get an online presence, it can definitely work to your advantage. As a result, I’ve met a lot of great people both online and off who have enjoyed my posts and lent some great commentary on some of the more random topics here. I’ve also learned the power of blog spam and was almost to a point of shutting comments down all together, if not for Akismet.

The most popular post I’ve ever written is still 30 mpg is Laughable ~ US Auto Makers are Joking, right? I had just seen this Chrysler ad and thought 30 mpg doesn’t really seem like a lot. What were we, as consumers, getting 80 or 100 years ago? Well, the result crashed my site for a few hours and made it slow for 2 days straight as it sat on the homepage of Digg. To see more of what that whole experience taught me, check out my Digg analysis.

The power of blogging is immense and can have a very beneficial effect on your professional and personal lives. As part of my job, I’m often asked for my opinion about one technology or another, and this only helps to condense my thoughts into a coherent idea.

And finally, thank you again to all my readers. Actually, I know of only a handful of people that regularly read my blog, but my feedburner stats tell me that I have between 25 and 30 people reading this blog regularly. So all of you anonymous readers, why do you read my blog? Where are you from? What else would you like to see covered here? Let me know in the comments.

image courtesy of Table and Home.com

Thanks for everyone who attended!

Please visit www.northsideartist.com for all the links and steps to set up a blog from the presentation on Tuesday, July 10th. Or feel free to contact me anytime at jeff@jeffwoelker.com for any follow up questions concerning blogs, online communities, search engine optimization, or bicycling in Chicago.

Hope you enjoyed it!

Here’s the listing for the workshop posting.

WARNING: SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION AHEAD!

Well, I was approached the other day by the Arts and Business Council of Chicago to speak at their July 10th conference on Blogs and Online Communities:

Blogs and Online Communities
Tuesday, July 10th at 10:00 AM
The launch of ChicagoClassicalMusic.org through A&BC’s E-Commerce Incubator marked the beginning of a continuing effort to explore and develop online communities. Learn from experts how online communities and blogs are developed and executed. Hear how they integrate and track with your marketing and communication efforts, and how they can be used to engage arts enthusiasts of all ages and interests.

Asked what I would like to present, I said “Let’s set up a blog in five minutes. Live!” So that’s what I’ll be doing. Setting up a blog at a property I registered just for this event: NorthsideArtist.com. I’m going to set up a shell of a website with a placeholder for “blog” and then install Wordpress, set up an administrator, apply a theme to the site, and make a post in around 5 minutes. This can only truly be done with the ease of installation of Wordpress and the readily available themes due to its fanatical open source development community.

The audience is primarily artists and non-profits in the Chicago area who are interested in getting involved in online communities, blogging, and all things Web 2.0, but anyone who is interested is welcome in attending.

Here’s another post about it:

Blogs and Online Communities Announced
Registration Form

Wish me luck! I’ll post any interesting happenings afterward here.

According to a report today, Google has approached Yahoo Inc. in order to purchase the struggling media giant for a whopping $40 Billion in both cash and stock. When approached for comment CEO Terry Semel said, “40 Billion? More like 40 ounces! Party at my place!”

April fools!

So today is voting day in Chicago. Don’t get me wrong, the title of my post is obviously cynical and pessimistic, but I truly do love the Democratic process. It really gives me a feeling of fulfillment when I place my vote and let the government know how I really feel about issues important to me.

However, voting in Chicago today puts a sour taste in my mouth. To begin, the board of elections sent out notices of polling places in Chicago almost two weeks ago, but the post office dropped the ball and now most people in Chicago will not even get a reminder. It wouldn’t be so bad for me, as I have internet access and can easily lookup my polling location online. But it didn’t really matter last night if I had internet access or not, because the Chicago Board of Elections website was overrun with traffic and crashed multiple times. And what about people without internet access, how do they find out where to vote? I guess you could call 311, but what if they don’t have a phone. You get my point.

Ok, so let’s assume I knew where to vote and made it to the polls. My ward, the 40th, only has ONE candidate. Patrick O’Connor, who is probably a decent alderman, but his bio reads like this: “Longtime Daley ally on the North Side is unopposed for fourth straight election.” Fourth straight election? Come on! There isn’t anyone who thinks they can take this guy on? Secondly, what business does he have being MY alderman. Look at where I live:

How can a guy who is primarily focusing on Lincoln Square/Ravenswood really care about Rogers Park? Rogers Park is a WHOLE different world compared to Lincoln Square. I guess I should be grateful I didn’t buy a condo half a block north as I would have this joker as my alderman and this guy cares more about goose liver than economic development.

On a final note, we get to the biggest deal of the day: the Chicago mayoral elections. That, however, is anything but democratic as Daley is going to crush his opponents, who have been too busy…busy…doing nothing it seems like. I have seen the Daley commercial maybe twice on TV and I can only name one of the other candidates because I saw her on TV last night, Dorothy Brown and from what was implied, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to run or not, along with Johnny Otherguy who is also running. Do I have a problem that Daley is going to destroy these two? Not necessarily. I would however like to see some things come out of the Daley administration this term that don’t really seem to be on the docket.

1. CTA Overhaul: Can we get some trains that run on time? No slow zones? Scrap the Block 37 improvements. It would be a nice change. Granted, I love the bus system, but to be a world class city, you need to have reliable transportation.
2. Green City: Daley has boasted that Chicago is the greenest city in America, but I find that hard to believe. The blue bag program is a huge joke and the new program of drop off points just took a lot of blue bags being picked up with the trash and converted them into a big blue dumpster where we throw glass, paper, plastic, aluminum, etc. all together in one big happy mess. Why is it so hard to have a dumpster for glass, one for plastic, and one for paper?
3. Corruption: Why is it every time I turn on the news, there is a new report of the “Hired Truck Scandal” or some other garbage that indirectly points to the Mayor and his crew. I understand that city contracts are lucrative and lots of money is changing hands, so why don’t we up the pay for some of these city workers to ensure integrity (which really is a sad indictment of our society that someone has to say “Pay me more, or I’ll be corrupt”). Or is it that much money changing hands that there is no way to compete with it? Can’t we offload more decisions to committees instead of one guy pushing the button? This allows for more accountability in public office and makes it harder for one real estate developer, brother-in-law, or mob boss to get in the pockets of our city officials.

On a final note, I love this city. Seriously, I do. Everyday, as I ride the bus or train to work, I really appreciate the fact that I can live in a city like this at a time like this and have such “problems”. Hopefully, some things can change before the next election and I won’t have to go off on a tirade next time.

I recently watched the movie Who Killed the Electric Car and loved it so much, I am going to trade in my gasoline nightmare and buy an electric car to the first auto company that contacts me and gives me the opportunity to purchase one. The only caveat is that I do not want to drive all the way across the country in order to buy it. I am willing to drive within a 250 mile radius of Chicago.

I have made efforts on my own, but thought this might be more effective. I mean, how much effort can a consumer make. I want to buy an electric car. Sell me one. I have the necessary funds and good credit.

I recently contacted Zap cars to find out how I can get one. I haven’t received a response yet. I also contacted a Chrysler dealership in Chicago and this is what I discovered:

“The Smart Car will not be avaliable for retail purchase anytime soon. Chrysler still considers this a concept and will only offer it to select companies for testing, but if anything changes and it goes retail we will let you know…”

So the bottom line is, I will have to wait for someone other than the big 3 to figure out what I am blatantly asking for.

Anyone have any suggestions? Let me know in the comments below.

With the announcement of Apple’s iPhone yesterday, I couldn’t help but think about, so what happens to the old phones once everyone runs out and buys this thing? Right into the trash.

More and more of this type of stuff is going into landfills: from computers, laptops, iPods, iPhones, blackberrys, cell phones, keyboards, mice, video game systems, software, printers, and other iTrash. And if it doesn’t end up in US landfills, it ends up in Chinese landfills. More programs need to be started to help with the insatiable need of Americans for the latest in tech gadgetry and other tech doodads.

Instead of throwing out your next cell phone, monitor, motherboard, etc. please take a second and think about where it will end up and what chemicals it will add to our already dying ecosystem.

Wow! 2007 seemed to just fly by. Who would have believed that Yahoo and AOL would merge to create an even more bloated media conglomerate with little to offer besides Flickr. The market loved it for a few days, but then soon realized there was not much in terms of user and customer base. Google continued to dominate in search, taking market share from Yahoo and Live.com, but others started to get in the game. ChaCha.com became the lazy man’s search engine having someone else do the research for you, but it turned out to be a lot of fun to just mess with the ChaCha search reps [insert YouTube video here] and people realized that the search reps were just pushing the PPC advertising instead of legitimate search results.

Myspace made some strides with a new user interface, but continued to see it’s numbers dropping off as more and more users move to niche markets and more private venues, instead of announcing everything to the world. It appeared that CyWorld and MySpace were on the verge of a merger to create the world’s largest social networking site, but it’s unsure why talks fell apart. The CyWorld asking price of $2.8Billion proved to be just too much for Rupert Murdoch.

Vista launched to much fan fare, but sales were sluggish for the first few months of the year, especially with the numerous reported security holes and the lack of a real reason for users to upgrade their systems already. Microsoft did enjoy an initial spike in traffic on Live.com as part of the integrated functionality of Vista and Live.com, but users soon jumped ship after Google launched an add-on to push all Vista search traffic through their site.

Apple launched their iTV product which did very well with initial sales, but really exploded when they partnered with NetFlix and Tivo to deliver on demand television shows and movies. Apple’s iPhone is doing extremely well especially with the integration of iTunes and their lightweight MacOS, which allows for browsing and email.

Well, I think that pretty much covers it. 2007 was pretty good, but it looks like 2008 is looking to be even better. 3-D TV, Next Gen Internet, and the 2008 Scion.

UPDATE:  Predictions for iPhone and iTV (Apple TV) have come true. Stay tuned for further updates. Myspace interface redesign? Yahoo and AOL merger? We’ll see.