...well, you know the rest of the story.

I missed the hijinks at the Active Rain Party in Orlando and that was a bummer.  I so wished to meet Broker Bryant and TLW among many other AR members.  If you've met me at any social function, you know that I"m more inclined to howl at the moon rather than to prepare to be bright-eyed and bushy tailed but this NAR Orlando weekend was a working trip for me.

We held the Bloodhound Blog Unchained Online Marketing Conference on Friday.  Our line up was astounding:

Greg Swann - The Unchained Epiphany
Brian Brady - Ninja Social Media Marketing
Sherry Chris - Keynote Address
Teri Lussier - Building a Community Through Blogging
Kelley Koehler - What To Do When Google Doesn’t Love You
Mitch Ribak - Internet Marketing Conversion
John Rowles on IDX
Sean Purcell - The Bloodhound Way
Eric Blackwell - Leveraged Search Engine Marketing

12 hours of online marketing advice that was as practical as nails on a construction site.  To say I was pleased with the results is an understatement.  Here are some notes from the conference:

Eric Blackwell:

My biggest personal “take home” from Unchained? Mitch Ribak. I am in a position where our site is getting LOTS of leads so I NEEDED him to kick me in the butt on converting them into clients for life. They don’t count unless they close. Thanks Mitch. I pulled about 100 things that I need to do out of your presentation. Step 1: Treat it like a business

Eric On Search, with his top ten takeways from the event:

#10 - Kelley Koehler rocks at PPC. I love the way that she and her husband use page templates to create landing pages. That’s a to do on the list.

#9- Kelley also struggles with the forced registration decision. (Just like I did!) Good to know I am not the only one tormented by that. Do it, Kelly! (grin) I did starting in Oct. and it has made a world of difference. Glad to hear that others find this tough as well.

...and Eric Blackwell, again, this time about keyword rich URLs:

I met Cyndee Hayden at BHBU. I like her site SandbarsToSunsets.com much better than a domain name like clearwaterrealestatetampahomes.com. Call me crazy. One is great branding, the other is a marketing turd. Which would YOU want on your business card?

Greg Staker talking about how his experience at Unchained might help Florida home buyers and sellers:

So much useful information. I met several great people from around the country and hopefully will have the opportunity to talk and meet with these folks again in the near future. Re-reading my notes I see terms like "win the niches", "send marketing prospecting to area that are moving to your area", "make sure landing pages allows visitors an ability to search for homes", "timely, on subject and written by an authority" and "Forced registration works".

John Sabia, a Ft. Lauderdale Real Estate agent, took copious notes during the event.  If you are to read just one summary, John's is most likely the most complete outline:

Your goal with Adwords is to create an ad which is clicked on by users and make sure you are sending the users to a relevant Landing Page. The Landing Page is usually NOT your home page. The Landing Page is the page that is relevant to the user’s search and the ad you created. By doing this well you should receive a high Click Through Ration (CTR) which means your ad is being clicked on often by users and the users are satisfied with the page they landed on.

Sean Purcell, a contributor, offered his notes:

The one theme I find over and over again is most assuredly not on Greg or Brian’s agenda, but the results speak for themselves.  Allow me a few words on most of the speakers and tell me if you see a thematic element:

• we opened with Greg discussing the Greeks and the disciplined violence that was the Spartans
• you had Brian sharing the dark secrets of being a Ninja in social media marketing
• Teri warned of a fatal addiction to the Tweet drug
• there was Kelly exhibiting the cool, detached efficiency of a hit man targeting Google
• Mitch covered 100mph and proved that speed does kill the competition
• we were exposed to John’s killer app
• and finally, Eric explained how to make the organically grown poison known as SEO

Is it just me, or was there a message here?  A call to arms, so to speak, that our competition did not (or could not) heed.

We followed the event with a vist the next morning to Linda Davis and the CyberProfessionals.  Our thematic skit was disrupted by Active Rainer Jim Lee, who deduced the conclusion long before we got going.  He was generous enough to allow us to complete our skit and we enjoyed meeting folks who are as wired as we.

Sleep was sparse this weekend as the concept of Scenius was being played out in our crib in West Disney.  Laptops and late nights were the norm for this working weekend as the Bloodhounds plotted our next big workshop in Phoenix:

BloodhoundBlog Unchained is not a conference or a seminar, it’s a workshop, a lab. We don’t want to talk about or teach or lecture about our style of marketing strategies, we want to deploy them. We want for the people who entrust us with their time and their minds and their money to come away having implemented their own unique versions of our tools, tricks, tips, tactics and techniques.

As you can see, I didn't sleep much.  I was a guest at Louis Cammarosano's HomeGain party where I saw so many of the folks preparing themselves to dominate their local markets online.  A few Bud Lights and a lot of conversations and I was ready to hit the hay early, Saturday night.

Thank you to so many of the folks who lent us their minds this weekend.  Scenius, baby...pure scenius.