Google+ brand pages are now showing up ranking just below the main websites for some brands but not all yet. I’m obviously not the first to realize this but I want to prepare your minds for when their posts are going to outrank most other sources on the web. Huge brands with insane amounts of followers are going to have a major advantage dominating the SERPs. I know a lot if you folks think the “social network” isn’t going any where but I urge you to push for those followers even harder now.
Ron Paul being what seems the only candidate with a heart and brain(and non corporate ties) running on both sides of the idiot fence, his message is not his only strong point. He’s the only candidate with a strong social media push from supporters and his camp and this video is a brilliant example of doing things right. Sadly the mainstream media treats him like the handicap kid in school stuck in the far back corner. Well, before I go off on a political rant and make either new fans or enemies, just sit back and press play….the marketing is brilliant and so is the message.
Writing link bait is one of the most fun aspects of link building and it takes a certain eye to do it right. Keeping on top of what’s trending is so very important and can lead to some quick and easy link bait ideas, even if you’re not a superstar writer. Knowing the trends is always a good asset to any marketing team and you’d be shocked at how many companies simply aren’t paying attention. I use a variety of tools to track trends and then capitalize on them to profit for not only myself, but our clients as well.
The majority of trend tacking tools are free, which is a huge plus for basically everybody. All you have to do is keep your eye out for something in your vertical. Great link bait requires you to always be writing about something fresh, funny and or “horrific”. Your content will go a long way with the right flare so lets see what we can do about keeping you all in the know.
If you can utilize this at least once a month for your brand, you’re going to become a company rockstar. Putting an end to tedious, boring and over done content is where you really start to see real results coming in from all angles… not just links!
You should be using this tactic now more than ever! Why? Well, since the Google freshness update has been brought out of the workshop you have a big opportunity for more traffic. Emerging trends are going to be a major player in your branding power and establishing yourself as an authority on the subject. What’s more is that this is an area where having the most links isn’t an issue.
We’re going old school here and producing a list for your reading ease. It also prevents me from rambling on and and and on and on and on… If you’re used to reading my posts then you know I can get a little out of hand at times (like this paragraph for example).
Google Trends – I’ve been using this since it came out and it’s always a great way to discover trends according to Google search traffic. Since so many of us use Google, this becomes an invaluable tool for doing a little trend research. Sometimes it’s not an up to the minute report, but it should be useful here and there for certain data.
I find Google Trends really helpful in determining the popularity of certain products over a certain time period. It’s really helpful if you need to look back a year or so and determine certain things for a specific time period. I find it really helpful with Christmas trends or any other holidays. For even more in depth of a look, you can mosey on over to Google Insights for all sorts of awesome data on keywords and websites. Don’t forget to play around with Google Insights as well, check it out:
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Technorati Authority – Here’s a site I haven’t mentioned in a long while and it’s a shame because it provides great insight in to the blogosphere. We’ve always been a big fan of how Technorati keeps tracks of the sames trends and buzz for each category in their blog directory. This has always lead to interesting and quality link building opportunities, as well as one of my personal favourite link bait idea generators.
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Blog Pulse – If you’re wanting to track more blog trends and find hot topics to cover on your site, you can’t ignore this useful site. I always double check their trend results right after my visit to Technorati. They have a more useful search box that lets you get into specifics, which is helpful if you’re looking for one particular subject/keyword/niche.
I always use Blog Pulse in my link building efforts regardless if I’m writing link bait or not. I really find their conversation tracking abilities helpful for keeping an eye on a subject or two for any given date. You can also really dig deep into some older trends… up to 180 days back, which is a really nifty extra feature.
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Trends Buzz – For a quick and lovely look at some daily trends and what’s trending you’ll want to bookmark this site. They cover all the important sites that you’ll want to know what’s going on with and I check it near daily just to stay in the know.
They have other areas where you can check out what was hot that day or what’s currently trending live and wild right on the web. It’s such a simple and easy to use interface and I hope they keep the site going for a long time. Big thanks to the folks behind the site and keeping it free for schmucks like me.
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Topsy – This is perhaps the most useful and well put together site for tracking trends across videos, images, social news and blogs. They’ve recently added a Google+ trend tracking section of their website, which is something I’ve been using on a daily basis ever since it came out. You could pretty much stop using any other piece of software or trend analyzing website, use Topsy exclusively for your research and still have some of the most topical and interesting content in your niche.
Topsy also has an API and analytics section where things get pretty schweeeeet. You can even use this to go back in time a little and see trends for a whole event during a given time frame. A good example of this could be the recent occupy wall street news/mentions, or during a product launch to measure how well your marketing team did.
Twitter is hands down the best and most up to date source for trending topics. You could only use their trending topics data and be totally fine in your link bait idea discovery. There are a few easy ways to discover trending topics on Twitter so I thought I’d share the ones I use. I’d also love to hear from you folks on the tools I missed out on listing. The beauty of the ones listed here is that they’re all free!
Twitter Trends – I’m sure you’ve noticed the trending topics on the sides of your Twitter searches. They’re a quick update on what’s hot at the moment and it allows you to change a few targeting features. The trending topics are both on the homepage with one of them being “promoted/paid/sponsored” and the rest are in the sidebar after you’ve searched. Once you’ve hit the sidebar trends, you can change your targeting by location and get down right local if need be. It’s definitely my favorite feature and I find myself getting super targeted information for a number of clients and niches that wouldn’t be relevant without it.
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Hashtags.org – This is an excellent site for digging deep into the trending hashtags at any given time. You can also check previous dates if you’re doing some trend research, which is a really handy feature of this site. There’s not much to it other than figure out what you want to do research on and search away.
TweetMeme.com – This is a daily read for our team here at Linkbuildr mainly to see what’s the most Tweeted piece of content. It’s great for picking the right blog posts to comment on. You can also further develop your link bait ideas based on trending news, images and videos. The biggest and best blogs on the planet are using the TweetMeme plugin/app on their site so you know you’re getting a good data scope. You can follow us on TweetMeme or check out any site specifically and keep up to the minute tabs on your favorite websites.
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Twitter.com/Tweetingtrends – For those that would like to get their Twitter trends in their social circle, why not follow Tweeting Trends? They only tweet when something hits the top 10 and this, in my opinion, is all you need to spin some funny/weird angle for your link bait. I cannot think of an easier way to keep on top of the Twitterverse and I always keep their stream in a Hootsuite tab for viewing pleasure.
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The latest and greatest from the world of trend tracking is Data Sift. They have ponied up for the full on Twitter firehose access and offer the service to you by only paying for what you need. The platform is hands down the prettiest and the most useful when it comes to getting the data you need.
one of two exclusive re-syndicators of Twitter data, we deliver 100% of the firehose in a format that allows you to filter against the meta-data attached to each Tweet.
The data streams are really freakin cool and I wish I had paid access to all the data I need. I highly recommend checking out their example streams to get an idea of what this software suite can do for you and your business.
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Youtube – One of my favorite features of the new Youtube layout is where they show you the most popular videos of the day/week. One other area that’s a little harder to find is the Youtube Trends Dashboard where you can really dig deep into what’s trending. This is a great place to research your niche and come up with awesome videos to embed in your link bait. We’ve had a lot of success to video compilations for clients and this is the first place we go to find out what’s hot on Youtube.
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Top Selling On Amazon – Most of us are here to make money and the biggest shopping site in the world gives you all the trend data in the world. This is an essential place for people selling products and or looking for something hot to blog about. It’s almost Christmas time, so just think of all the link bait opportunities here. You can go down into every category and find all the goodies. Since we’re on the topic of trends, check out Amazon’s Movers & Shakers section for what’s spiking off.
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I’ve saved the best for last and it’s for the brands with a little extra in their budget. TrendHunter.com is an amazing website for just about everyone and their mother. You can be just a browser, there to network or take advantage of what’s actually hot in the world today. I’ve been a “Trend Hunter” for many years and I’ll continue to read this website every day of the week.
If you’re looking to go above and beyond in the world of trends, then you may want to try out Trend Hunter PRO. They’ve put together thousands of emerging trend opportunities, over 100,000 innovative examples and over a thousand reports for the 2012 year. So many amazing companies are on board and if you’re still scratching your head as to what the hell it’s all about, check out this video:
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As always, I like to leave some other great reading resources on what I’m blabbing on and on about. I also encourage you to leave links and mentions of tools you’re using in your marketing efforts, despite how little you folks comment. There are tons and tons of awesome tools for tracking trends so I want to hear about them.
I noticed Blake from Workaholics in a commercial for Sockos(thanks to the folks on the Workaholics Reddit) and loved the cross branding. I always talk about “riding the social wave” of other influentials in the social realm, and this is a fresh example of just that. Blake has 111,000 Twitter followers, mad Facebook rep and enough branding power to get Sockos a huge amount of buzz.
Article Marketing Robot is a very popular content “marketing” tool used by a lot of folks, specifically in the affiliate marketing world. I frequent a lot of SEO forums to keep my “ear to the street” as they say, and one particular Blackhat World thread caught my eye. Keep in mind that this person was most likely doing all sorts of junk link building like 2.0 and forum profiles, junk blog comments and other low quality stuff. The message I’m wanting to get across is that the Googly Woogly is cracking down a lot more on poor link building practices.
Short story: a few weeks ago 4 of my sites were penalized and I made a reconsideration request on all 4 of them. Of course they are were rejected so I have written them again with more details. Few days ago they finally replied me (this is the first reply from google in 5 years ).
Here is part of the email I got from them:
“Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank.To illustrate how these articles could apply to you [they mean google quality guidelines], here are examples of pages that contain inorganic links to your site: [they posted examples from which one is an AMR article]” To illustrate how these articles could apply to you [they mean google quality guidelines], here are examples of pages that contain inorganic links to your site: [they posted examples from which one is an AMR article]”
They tend to be really helpful now. They post links and even the anchor text. I replied them again and they answered within 72h.
I decided not to post a screenshot of this email because I am still trying to recover my rankings and I don’t want them to know that I am sharing this info here.
I know a lot of people say links cannot hurt you but the fact of the matter is they can. I’ve quoted Google’s guide on link schemes so many times my fingers hurt. Pimping low quality content going after certain anchor text is in direct violation and is risky business. We all know it works well so just be careful in how you go about your link building efforts.
I am by no means saying not to game Google. If you have a solid brand backed by wicked awesome content you’ll be able to get away with a lot more. The majority of affiliate sites will rarely ever get linked to and that makes it too easy for Google to spot a link scheme taking place.
I thought I’d never see the day I would have a client come in needing promotion for their music. While it’s not at all strange, it was just a unique and refreshing client opportunity that I had to jump at. To make things even more fun, it was a Dubstep artist we’re all a fan of here at work so we were pretty pumped to take it on. With any music niche you’re promoting, social media is most definitely the most powerful tool in the shed. This artist also wanted a strong link profile to boot, so that was something we could most definitely help with. Even though this is a vertical you’re not all going to be engaged in, it should inspire you to work all the angles no matter what niche you’re rocking.
Photo: Avicii – he was not our client, just used in all the examples
I contacted Jason to do a guest post and thought this topic would make an interesting case study, even though I wouldn’t be able to disclose my client. The campaign was also a huge success and both parties were not ready for the amount of traffic, followers and links that were to come in. If you’re a band/dj/composer then be ready to explore a plethora of marketing avenues.
This post will be chalk full of all the real world examples I can give away because not everyone will be able to abuse these resources. More importantly, you cannot be bringing lame sounds to the table, so you won’t go very far utilising these marketing channels if what you’re producing isn’t good. We learned that one really good track was enough to cripple our clients download servers, blast him with thousands of links and produce a 64% increase in social followers within a week. His record label was more than thrilled with the interest and didn’t mind the excess server bill we caused them.
The main goal is to be heard and seen and luckily for you, this isn’t so hard in a social world. There are a boatload of amazing websites that you can actively promote your music and not have to worry about anything else. We’ll take a look at the top few we had a huge success with specifically with this client. These sites are not to be slacked on and will forever push new listeners your way.
Soundcloud.com – I’m sure most of you have been to this site by now, especially those into the electronic music. It’s one amazing platform that allows fans to get music either streaming on their site, or instant download for listening on the go. Their platform is great for promoting your music, especially because you’ll be using their bandwidth. The second best part is you can nab some links to your homepage and other social channels you’re wanting to promote. Since I used a picture of Avicii above, we’ll take his SoundCloud profile as a great example.
The social community at SoundCloud is alive and well. There are also tons of groups on Sound Cloud so make sure you’re in there promoting your tunes. On top of that, you can promote your tour dates quite nicely and we all know that’s where the money is for artists these days. This social music site, in my awesome opinion, is the creme de la creme in music industry.
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Last.FM – This is another music social site no band can ignore for promotion, and the links aren’t even close to the best thing about it. I’m a daily user of the site and it has lead me to discover countless artists based off of the ones I love. Last.FM is the total package and provides information on your tour dates, blog entries, fans, ringtones, groups, events and news.
Of course, Last.FM provides links to all your important social profiles and your homepage so you can’t forget to funnel the Last.FM traffic about your social profiles and let the search engines know where you are on the website. How often do you find yourself checking out an artist then following them on Twitter and Facebook? I do for all my favorite artists when I come across their profile on here. Last.FM also does a really great job at marketing the artist in all the areas I mentioned above… I mean, just check out the 360 degree promotion going on here;
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Resident Advisor – While this site is strictly for electronic artists, it’s another great example of an authority niche site you’d want to be linked and mentioned on. This site has been around the longest and provides a wicked cool profile like the other sites mentioned above. It may not be as pretty, but if you’re a DJ, then you know you’ve made it when you have a profile here. Avicii of course has made it so, once again, I can use him as an example for my post here.
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Discogs – This is definitely on the top 5 must be listed on music sites out there as they help you build your brand, get fans and sell your music! It was also on my target list for a great place to get a link to the client’s homepage and his major social profiles. Our client also saw a pretty hefty jump in music sales from Discogs which is really the end goal here. Most of all the other sites listed above allow the artist to sell as well, but Discogs was quick to show results.
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The buck doesn’t stop there either! There are tons of niche social music sites out there that are worth checking out. You folks know how to use Google(or Bing/Yahoo), so put it to work for you and discover what else exists. For general band branding you’ll be left in the dust if you don’t get your chords wrapped around these musical powerhouses;
– Google Music
– iTunes
– Spotify
– PitchFork
– Billboard.com
– Song Kick
– Tune Wiki
Over the 6 months we were marketing this Dubstep artist, one of the main goals was to get some air time. Being a decently well-known artist in the genre, we had an easy time locking down a whole host of juicy publicity. We managed to score the artist all of the above during the 6 months and it made a huge impact on the overall visibility of the music/artist.
Getting our client the gigs was very much the same as link begging, and it even required some of that to boot! The first step we took was to get either an interview or guest mix spot on a related podcast, and there’s a lot of options out there. The best part of this marketing avenue is that it all came with links, brand buzz and a new connection made in the digital music space. Let’s take a look at some of the best places to start to track down podcasts worth building a connection with. Even if you don’t get a guest mix opportunity or an interview, you can still submit your tracks in hopes of getting some air time and a mention.
Dubstep isn’t the most well know genre of music, but it certainly has been the talk of the internet generation in the past few years. We certainly didn’t have a shortage of podcasts to attack in this genre, and as you can see, the results were staggering. We only netted half a dozen guest mixes and interviews in the time we had, but we’ve been asked to proceed down this path again in the new year. Check out the results for dubstep, and just imagine the opportunities for say hip-hop or country music.
Podomatic – This is the go to place to find a whole host of awesome podcasts in all different genres. These podcasts are done for the love of the music and almost every DJ we contacted was more than thrilled to be involved. And why not? Everyone wins in this situation and the two 90 minute long guest mixes each reached over 50,000 downloads!
Podfeed – This is another podcast directory that has been around a long time and will quickly get you what you need.
The best podcasts these days seem to be on their own domain, building their own brand. In my client’s case, Dubstep.FM was the golden egg. A little social networking and getting in touch provided us with some air time of some tunes and an interview. Since our client had a repertoire and a bit of a reputation, it was a match made in bass heaven. Also remember that you can get links and other important information dropped into the podcast episodes information… it’s basically a blog post so don’t forget!
Radio & Industry Connections
We found it wasn’t too hard to get coverage in the media, especially when our clients EP dropped. Most of the coverage came after the tracks were released onto related blogs, but it never hurts to alert the right journalists. There’s no secret in doing this, it just takes some hard work or hiring the right PR firm to utilize their connections. I recommend doing the following;
– make relationships on Twitter with journalists
– utilize services like HARO(Help a Reporter Out)
– put out a press release for tour announcements and releases
– Use the huge reach the folks at http://getinpr.com/
I’ll tell you this now, marketing via blogs and forums in the music industry is a blast. Since you have amazing content to share, you’re welcomed almost everywhere you go! If you’re well known, then the music world is your oyster. There are tons of blogs and forums for every music genre and it’s one amazing way to get exposure. Usually people associate the word spam with forum marketing; I like to refer to it as being a part of your community. We’re not here to drop links and disappear, let the world know who you are on the forum and make friends.
Music Blogs – I’d definitely take advantage of Jason’s information posted on link prospecting with SEOQuake in this area of link sniffing. In our case, there were hundreds of high quality dubstep blogs and we took it a step further to the ones that accepted tracks. One good blog can result in insane amounts of listens and downloads, but most importantly, social shares. A few of the posted tracks spread like wildfire throughout forums as well, which was a nice bonus.
Music Forums – I recommend not outsourcing any form of forum participation, but instead go on as the artist. There’s no need to try and be sneaky just for a link or two – that’s not the point of being on a related forum either. Most, if not all, forums related around a genre will have a section for artists to “pimp their track” to the masses, so there ya go. One of the biggest dubstep forums has a few areas for artists to promote and get feedback, no spam needed!
Lyric Sites – These sites are a dime a dozen and some of them provide nice bio’s with link opportunities. Since dubstep is mostly WOMP WOMP WOMP and wobble wobble we could not really make use, but keep these sites in mind if your music does in fact make use of words.
Almost any established band/DJ is going to be touring at one point, even if its restricted to only your city. This is where people start out and it can be a great asset to your online marketing aspirations as well.
There are almost too many event sites out there, so taking the time to see who syndicates what and who has the most traffic is key here.
If you’re in a bigger city, you’re more than likely to find a whole bunch of local sites ready and willing to take your event. You had better make sure that your website has a tour/event data feed of sorts because websites/APIs/scrapers will come for it eventually. We had a huge increase on our clients tour RSS feed after 6 months of hitting the digital streets.
I’d most definitely recommend out sourcing this work mainly because you shouldn’t be focusing on this. But if you’re into the whole guerrilla marketing thing, getting out and submitting your gig is the way to go. Let your friends do all the Facebooking and Tweeting, but make sure your event is getting some exposure.
Social Event Sites – There are dozen of event sites out there in the social realm and I tend to stick to Yahoo Upcoming, Going.com and Eventful for reach. There are tons more you can hunt down as well from the links I’ve posted in this section, so don’t forget to try them all out. You’ll find different ones have amazing partners and syndication, so you never know how far the word will spread.
Local Event Sites – For the extra exposure in your city make sure to use Google to sniff out the many options that await you. Let’s say you lived in Chicago and wanted to submit your event…. what kind of options are out there that are ripe for the picking?
There turned out to be a lot of options going back 10 pages deep in the SERPs! Of course not every option is going to be a match, but there was definitely a lot of local event marketing options just waiting for your content. Any major city is going to be the same and even smaller cities are going to have a couple of opportunities. The one thing I kept finding was opportunities to get links from local newspaper sites, which is always a nice bonus. A lot of local blogs also seemed to have an events section, or were more than willing to write about it if it fit their user base.
This was best aspect of the 6 month campaign we had the pleasure of doing! Dubstep is pretty hot right now and the viral marketing tactics were a breeze. I’ll talk about a couple of areas we explored that netted our client many millions of video views and sent a hunger through the community for his tracks. If I had to choose from one tactic to stick to, this would have been it without a doubt. The key to success here was of course relationship building and having some damn amazing music to work with. To kick this section off let’s use this video as a perfect example. Sadly this was not my client but you get the idea.
The result? 18 million views and a few reuploads with more millions of views to boot. Both the dancer Marquese Scott and the producer Butch Clancy propelled their careers big time here. They managed to reach our to a lot of new people and the result was nothing less than stellar. The dancer is incredible and the remixed song to dubstep isn’t so bad either.
So what lessons are to be learned from this?
Collaboration! There are so many ways dubstep artists (and other producers/artists) are getting mad exposure from doing something fun and unique with other people. I’ve also mentioned numerous times that your tunes have to be tight, and if they are you’ll have no problem with viral exposure. We explored a few options within our 6 month campaign and only began to scratch the surface of what is possible.
Remixes Are Key – I don’t really have to say much here other than be one of the first artists to remix a pop song that’s trending hard. Keeping on top of this will bring you millions of song listens and downloads. For those who frequent Youtube and dubstep forums for tracks, how often are you listening to remixes? I know I do on a weekly basis and I’m sharing them when they’re hot. Take a look on Youtube to see what’s been done and what worked for other artists.
Be Apart Of The Bass Community – I already mentioned the forums and blogs out there, but don’t forget to come join us on Reddit.com/r/Dubstep and also for the hipsters, Reddit.com/r/Realdubstep. There are tens of thousands of fans here that are well connected and can help launch your career to the next level. This is the beauty of social media! If you’re bringing the goods, you’ll be welcome with open arms from the community at large… you’ll have my upvote!
Random Video Marketing – While this aspect can only come from putting your tunes out there in the wild. When we had a new track out from the client we made sure to fire it off via email, Youtube shares and Twitter to video producers that we had our eyes on. It eventually paid off and a few tracks were used in a few productions which lead to a contact for a commercial.
Others Avenues Of Social Sharing – After getting the video marketing aspect out of the way we found a few other interesting areas to explore. We gave away tracks to ringtone and royalty free music websites. It’s perhaps not the most explosive marketing opportunity, but you never know where it will lead. I’m all for more branding and exposure so it might be worth looking at. Sadly I don’t have much in the way of ROI so I’ll let you experiment on your own.
I always close my posts asking to hear from people who’ve had experience to help us learn from your expertise. There are so many online marketing avenues to pursue when it comes to music, so let’s hear what has worked well for you. I hope we hear from more artists to get us to help with their marketing, so don’t be scared to get in touch.
I was browsing the SEO section of Reddit today and came across a really interesting, and real world example of why you’ll eventually need reputation management. There are a lot of ways of going about it, but when it comes to out ranking some solid SERPs, you’re going to need some solid links. This case as rather interesting and more personal than corporate, but the results will drastically effect this person’s credibility if searched for. Imagine your future employer finding out something you’d never want them to see…it’s not a fun situation and by the sounds of it this guys is going to have some work cut out for him.
The problem is that a close friend of mine had an incident a couple of years ago. He went through a real nasty divorce which went through court and it really took it’s toll on him. One time during the court hearings he failed to show up and the judge convicted him on contempt of court. So he got arrested and was brought to the hearing. A mugshot was taken.
Now a couple of years ago the state he resides in made all arrest records public and websites like mugshot.com started to sprout. Now when you google his name the mugshot is usually the #1 or #2 link.
I do realize he made a mistake by not showing up, but that’s a different story. I have tried everything I can think of to try and make websites/profiles/blogs with his name but the mugshot site is always on Page 1 on Google. Other search engines (Yahoo and sometimes Bing) aren’t a problem, they show his mugshot profile on page 2-3.
You can ask the website to remove the mugshot but it’s really expensive because the site basically charges lawyer fees for it. Do you guys have any ideas or is this a lost fight? What I’m trying to accomplish is to move the mugshot website to maybe page 2-3 on Google.
Not a happy place! See original thread here.
The options for removal are up to you, and you can pay to have it removed from Mugshots.com. It’s a really dirty business in my opinion but all is fair in business and war. The OP got a handful of advice, some solid and some questionable so you really have to be careful in how you proceed in a situation like this. If you’re in a bind, then just paying to have something like this removed is worth the effort. For the rest of us, a little link building and leveraging authoritative social networks should do the trick.
We had a similar situation with a CEO of a company needing to get a certain results pushed off the first couple of pages in Google. For us, we utilised his personal blog, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Scribd, Youtube, Pinterest and other sites to build a strong network of profiles. In a case like with Mugshots.com, they have a weak link profile so it shouldn’t take too much work to over run it. Take note of what social platforms are ranking well and make good use of them. Properly done profiles will go a long way, and interlink where you can to juice the others you’re building up. Make sure each profile has a lot of unique content…I cannot stress this enough.
What tips do our readers have for the rest of us, I want to hear below!
I had the pleasure of going down to the beautiful city of San Diego to meet with a good friend of mine and now business associate. I tend to do a lot of on-site work around the world and was pleased when I got the call to get yanked down to the best state in America. I snapped a bunch of pictures for everyone here just in case you wanted to get a little more personal with me and our brand. I wish I had more than four days to lounge around, take in some more sun and a bite out of the local food scene.
I was a young lad the first time I visited this great city and it has changed quite a bit (for the good). The weather was much better than what we get up here in British Columbia this time of year – and I even had some rain. How else could you make a Vancouverite feel more welcome than sending some rain my way? My new venture will be bringing me out there quite a bit so do get in touch if you ever want to grab a beer and some grub!
Photo: Heading off from YVR
Photo: Settled in first class, gotta love it!
Photo: Lobby for the Grand Hyatt Manchester
Photo: Great view from my room @ the Hyatt
Photo: Shot of the hotel towers from the San Diego harbour
Photo: WW2 memorial in the harbour
Photo: Aircraft Carrier just outside The Hyatt in the harbour..massive!
Photo:My travel ritual…always get a double Glenlivet on the rocks!
Photo:Delicious meal from the fine folks at The Burger Lounge
Photo: Best American beer I’ve had to date from Mission Brewery
