My brother runs a site that covers motorcycle events and news in the Northwest called www.biker-events.com

Many of his articles are not in my niche, but one struck me as I hadn’t heard the news Evel Knievel died last night at the age of 69.

This was a guy who, whether he was an entertainer or just a motorcycle rider, touched and inspired millions of people who sat in the audience and witnesses a man that redefined the limits every day of his life.

In all my efforts, I can only hope that in some strange way my life interacts and influences so many people. To have a talent to inspire the crowd, to leave them in awe, and to believe that something impossible really is possible.

As my brother says “Check out his website www.evelknievel.com and take a moment to send a thought to him and his family on this sad weekend.”

A lot of people ask me things like:

When was the last time you used the Yellow Pages? Probably never.

Simply put, the bricks and mortar business model is changing. I spent a good portion of my career at the largest directory company (Verizon), and was constantly examining how social networks, business networking groups, home office technology, video conferencing, inexpensive video blogging, and the general acceptance of online and virtual companies was forcing everyone to reconsider basic business models.

The branding and reputation is moving more and more online: Google, Facebook, Digg.com, YouTube….

Consider this brand new networking group we are starting here: all that is required to do so is a website, a club membership (The Columbia Tower Club provides us with all the faciltites necessary to do business, not only in Seattle, but in any major city, at a small fraction of the cost of an office) and the search engine placement that we already have after just one week:

Seattle Networking Club Google Search

Seattle Business Club Google Search

Seattle Networking Google Search

This is the new model:

• You join the Columbia Tower Club (I have the premium membership which makes all Club Corp clubs worldwide available to me!)
• You have search engine placement and placement in social networks which feeds you business
• Your office is a website, your meeting place is online and at the club and at events, your books are online; CRM…
• You work from wherever you are, at any time of day and night!

As business professionals, many of us have extremely busy and sometimes hectic lives. Our daily routine usually involves handling the immediate tasks at hand, overcoming the “here and now” obstacles, and depending on our workload- some of us manage to make time for a networking event: sometimes ranging from a casual friendly dinner or an intensive conference.

The end goal of these events: finding new clients and professional contacts.

The problem: there are only so many hours in the day.

In the real world, many of us would be happy to have a professional dinner where we have the chance to share who we are with twenty-five professional contacts or prospects.

Imagine if you had the power to spend the same one hour a week sharing that information with a hundred, or even a thousand contacts and prospects. Suppose for an instance you could take the greatest party of your life and share the detailed conversation you had with that one lucky person with everyone who attended…

That is the “Economy of Scale” found within social media and online conversations. Professionals of all types (not just real estate professionals) are multiplying intellectual and conversational communication a hundred-fold by using community oriented online networks. Rather than coordinate new groups or shaking hands in the physical world, professionals are marketing themselves in digital communities and social groups. For some, this simply has the benefit of having more informational available to qualify an introduction, with such basic features as profile information. For others, they understand the online power the communities have in search engine marketing and other online marketing efforts.

An additional benefit of this online version of networking is historical conversation.

Historical conversation is what happens when an article is taken from a social media site and is indexed by the major search engines. Very popular phrases and search terms used in a conversation will continue to pull up an article that was written years ago; along with all the commentary and discussion surrounding it. These phrases and search terms can be very precise or sometimes be two to six words in length. Marketing professionals refer to longer search phrases as “The Longtail” of searching.

A new visitor finds the conversation by looking for a phrase in a search engine and finding the article. When a new visitor arrives and reads it for the first time, they have the ability to add additional remarks to the previous conversational thread of the article. In the conversation system (blogs, forums, as well as the search engines), this new comment resurrects the old article and brings a discussion ‘back from the dead’.

Many popular bloggers note that very popular articles continue to pull in high amounts of traffic six to twelve months after they were written. By noting what articles tend to draw visitors, you can watch your stats and when the article seems to be forgotten you can even resurrect the conversation yourself by writing a more current article that links back to points in the older article. This allows visitors to benefit from past experience and conversations, and it saves you from rewriting the same idea over and over again.

If you have ever heard or witnessed “the perfect conversation” in real life, you can understand the value of being able to browse through the best of the best conversations you have been involved in and using them as points to leverage for your business. With the right steps, a professional can perfect an ordinary idea they had into an ever-evolving conversation that becomes better and better with time.

To learn more about leveraging your conversations, see 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog

About the author:
Barry Hurd is president of Social Media Systems, an online marketing and advertising consultant group working with search engine marketing and leveraging social media communities. He has over 15 years of entrepreneurial Internet and online marketing experience. As an author and prolific blogger, he has reached online audiences around the world. Since the mid-1990s, Barry has been involved in numerous efforts to bring forth technical innovation through online business models. Past projects have included NIKE, REI, TMP Worldwide, Monster.com, Verizon Superpages, Intuit, and RISMedia.

For more information, visit www.socialmediasystems.com.

I have actually decided to move a majority of my professional thoughts over to my other two blogs at www.socialmediasystems.com/blog where I will talk about various advertising ideas and impacts, and socialmediakit.com where I will talk about the “online 101″ items and reviews that I wander across.

Technical Disaster will be put on the back burner for the next few months as I examine some projects and figure out which one works best here.

Having been involved in blogging for years… I’ve been challenged by the numerous changes to electronic communication, the ethics behind the words, the emotions that underlay the ideas, and the personalities that are introduced.

In the 80’s and 90’s I was an active member of multi-line bulletin board systems (BBS) and I was one of the first adopters of the net when things went visual. The years of 300 baud dial-up modems vanished to the world of high-speed multi-page online browsing enhanced by wireless communication of video commentary and nearly instant relay.

So a few years ago I wrote the Blog Manifesto, a series of thoughts and ideas that were inspired by the Cluetrain Manifesto. Having been written before the age of the recent online social revolution, I thought the Blog Manifesto was something that detailed how I felt.

I now realize that within a few short years that many of the things I wrote about have indeed materialized in one way or another. I think that is amazing.

I also realize that the Blog Manifesto is already coming and passing- it may indeed be outdated already. Scary how technology and society can move so quickly.

I have been reviewing a good number of Google and Yahoo marketing campaigns, along with several other services like Idearc, InfoSpace, and a pile of others.

One thing that I have been finding more and more distasteful is that the largest online marketing and search companies out there tend to be the ones that are bending or breaking the most rules (perhaps being the engine themselves, they believe there are no rules?)

As part of a series of articles I’m doing over the next month, I’m asking some tough and hard questions about what online marketing should be about and why “the fine print” in the “big boys” of online marketing tend to be so cluttered with bad clauses.

I released the first one today Google Adwords Qualified Company- Fraud or not? and hope to get some input on it. The Biznik community seems to have a different vantage than many clients I deal with and I wonder what perspective everyone has here.

After reading my article, I would love to converse about what things business owners see when they see a “certified by X” brand.

Does it hold any weight in your buying decision? is this type of thing fraud in your eyes or merely deceptive marketing?

I am not really lost in SPAM, unless you count the fact that on an average daily basis I receive about 125 SPAM comments on this blog. Lucky for me, I know how to defend myself automatically by using scripts and little elves who closely monitor the validity of commentary here. (I do fear that the spammers know something I do not, because I keep getting comments for a new job or for personal “growth” products.) One of my technology co-workers actually wrote a blip about SPAM a day or so ago SEO Advice - Learning from SPAMMERS.

In reality my thoughts are just a little quieter here because I’m fully enthralled in a love of labor with my new company at SocialMediaSystems. Our team there is doing some wonderful things, changingsome very old-school industry trends, and having a great time doing it.

I promise to post here more often now. This will continue to be a personal yet professional site, covering some of the topics that may not always refer to social media and online marketing. (If you want that, go to SocialMediaSystems.com!)

Daily Blog Tips is a great “how to” blog site. Every now and then they have a good idea about something.

Here are a few great articles that you should take a gander at:

30 Traffic Generators is 30 different tips from thirty different pro-bloggers around the net. Some of these ideas are simple and straight-forward, while others require a little brain power.

101 Blog Tips is a slightly more comical bullet list of blogging ideas. It deserves a once-through simply to jump-start your blogging brain and make sure you didn’t miss anything.

5 Tips for Writing Timeless Content covers a few points on not dating your articles so that they remain “fresh” forever.

And lastly 10 Professional Looking Themes is a quick list of some decent themes that both new and seasoned bloggers can use.

LinkedIn is a huge network of millions of professionals. They range from IT professionals and corporate CEOs, to urban bakery professionals and auto mechanics. By using search tools and filtering options, you can find people from nearly all of the Fortune 1000 as well as your friendly neighbor down the street.

Virtual networking tools like LinkedIn do not replace regular networking tactics. They are merely magnifiers for reaching new and unique crowds of contacts. The overall function of LinkedIn is to help leverage your contacts to introduce yourself to new associates with similar interests and professional goals.

Some basic fundamentals of using LinkedIn

• Reach out to everyone you run across. Don’t be shy.
• Take time to connect with everyone you can. Think of out-of-the-box reasons to accept a new invitation and cultivate a relation.
• Consider every person in your network to be “you” supporter. Use your personal network to spread your message when you need to.
• Detail yourself as much as possible. The extra information allows other members to figure out ways to network with you.

Once you have 100 connections, begin analyzing individuals who have developed networks and leverage those connections.

• Endorse individuals you have met along the way.
• Ask your friends to endorse your profile and add recommendations.
• Add detailed employment items to remind connections of your history.
• Be real. Be truthful. Offer endorsements and commentary. If a user doesn’t like the exact wording of a statement they won’t put it live.

Take a day each month-

• Do a quick name and e-mail search for new contacts you’ve met in the real world.
• Use new introductions as a way to even more new introductions next week.

Start today. Everyone is waiting. You can find me here.