1. Fire in the Belly

by Sam Keen.
Finished in January. Amazing book.

2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Finished in time to catch the movie premiere! Awesome as well.

3. The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield.

Finished a few days ago. Life-changing. Thank you Jordan Rippy.

4. Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger.

About a hundred pages in. Whiny and narcissistic so far.


5. The Money Answers Book by Dave Ramsey.
6. Crazy Love by Francis Chan.
7. Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.
8. All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.
9. Subversive Orthodoxy by  Robert Inchausti.
10. Father Fiction by Donald Miller.
11. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
12. Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

This is a re-read for me. Gotta keep the focus on getting out of debt.

How is your progress on your 2012 reading? Get on it! I’ve gotten so much out of sticking to my reading so far this year.

But you don’t have to take MY word for it!

I, Drew Allen, have not had a bit of solid food in my system since the evening of Jan. 2. Thank you, Texas Roadhouse.

First of all, it has been amazing, and rewarding. I can’t recommend it enough.

I lost 39 lbs. in 30 days, without any drugs, or starving myself, and getting more nutrients than my body has ever regularly had.

When I finish, I will update this post with a lot more content, possibly including:

• Excerpts from the video blogging
• Before and After Photos
• Some Basic Recipes and FAQ
• Any other ideas?

For now, I’ll show you two things. One, check out the video blog about my fast here: youtube.com/drewplaysdrums.

Also, check out www.jointhereboot.com. Looks to be amazing resource from the guys that brought you the documentary, Fat Sick and Nearly Dead.

Ok, I leave you with this hilarious bit that I guess you’ll have to check with my roommate as to how accurately it describes my juice fast experience:

So, counting doubles, I went to the movies 49 times, 2 less than last year. I’m surprised at that kind of consistency though. Almost once a week. I did double up more often than last year though. And there’s not actual champion, just a tie between Hanna and The Muppets for the movie I saw most.

I know, this was riveting. What movies did you find worth seeing more than once?

Of course, I wax reflective and introspective. Not depressingly so, though. Not this year. My bank account is light, but that’s because I stretched it a bit to finish paying off my last credit card debt this week! That’s a 2011 goal reached.

I’m not 50 lbs lighter like I planned to be, but I am in better shape than I’ve been in in years, but also the snowball of getting my health in order is starting to gain momentum. Starting a juice fast in January to really pick up speed there. Nothing to be depressed about.

I wanted to read the book of Proverbs a dozen times this year (about a chapter a day). And guess what? I did. Boom. Goal Reached.

I wanted to not seriously pursue a girl in 2011. And guess what? I didn’t. Had a few close calls, and might have planted a seed here or there. But Boom, goal reached.

I didn’t take a dance or martial arts class (both were 2011 goals). But, first, I realized, for martial arts, I needed to be in better shape beforehand, and for dance, I didn’t take a class, but I did dance more in 2011, than I had in the past few years combined. So that’s progress.

My drumming didn’t take off like I wanted, and that’s something I want to change in 2012. On the other hand, my other career half really hit a stride this year. Marketing Director, Yeah, that happened.

I even started developing more and more community around new friendships that are fantastic. Without losing old, faithful friends in the process. And I even did some work restoring old friendships that had been damaged.

I don’t want to say it was a banner year, but after a couple bad years in a row, 2011 was really a turning point. One of transition. Not idly letting life slip away, unowned in the face.

I got a few years behind on life, I’ll admit. We can talk about the why and how, but I’m not gonna give excuses. I had to make a change. And I did. It may not appear to be a big one yet.

“But a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire.”

2012 is the year I resurrect Leonidas. The baby steps were fun, but now it’s time to be reckless.

About growth.
About discipline.
About community.
About change.
About character.
About hope.
About love.

“Prepare for glory!” – Leonidas

PS First thing I’m doing in 2012? Going to hang out with Matt Green.

Happy New Year!

But please stop posting pictures with your “story.”
They are all normal lives. 99% is almost everyone. You’re normal.

We get it. You work a lot but don’t make much, and might have a big student loan. That’s perfectly normal. It doesn’t provoke empathy at all. Sure, maybe if wall street reform happened a little differently way back when, then maybe you might make a little more money, or maybe your student loan interest would be less. But that’s not the only blame possibility.

Maybe you could have studied harder in high school for the SATs when you didn’t want to. Maybe you would have gotten an awesome scholarship to a school and wouldn’t have spent a dime on your education. Or maybe you could have picked a state school that evil government funding would cover instead of a super expensive private school somewhere. Then life would look very differently too.

I’m not saying Wall Street is innocent, don’t misread me. Just know, the “what if” game goes both ways for blame-placing.

It actually makes me not want to support you when you post a sad face holding a paper describing a perfectly average american life and then expect me to sympathize. I’m sorry. I can’t. Every once in a while I see one that seems worse off than most. But again, the blame is not not always by default Wall Street (especially stories I read that involve tragedy striking — definitely sad, but Wall Street had little or nothing to do with that exact situation).

I definitely want major penalties for big corporations and shady wall street people too. But I’m not begging for sympathy from my peers with emo pics.

Did you know that if you make $17,000 a year, you’re in the top 12% of the world’s wealthiest people?

I’m not making that up. It’s true. Not 99%. Top 12% of the world’s wealthiest people. $17,000. Look it up.

Then stop complaining.

Ok, rant over.

How do you believe the Google +1 button and the Facebook “Like” button will impact the marketing of a business. In what way can a business influence how many “+1′s” or “Like’s” it receives? Or can it?

I’m flattered someone would come to me with this question.
Here’s my answer.

The +1 and Like buttons are really helping to shift the marketing landscape in what I believe to be a very healthy way.

On the web side, It really comes down to a combo of three things that are very interconnected. Good content, Good Social Media Management, and building brand identity. It starts with targeting and engaging a demographic of consumers in an ongoing conversation about your company’s industry.

First, developing great content (in any form-blog, infograph, video, podcast) that is legitmately useful to your audience is very key to being trusted by your audience, being seen as authoritative (by users and ipso facto, search engines), and being well liked (literally and figuratively) by people you want to be your customers.

Along with content sharing with Social Media, you engage your audience with with questions about the industry and their opinions of it, responding with them to current events (especially industry-related ones), and also letting them peek a litte behind the curtain, so to speak, at the people behind your company (“It’s Muffin monday at the office today! [pic]), etc.

Lastly, your brand identity needs to be strong. This is of course strongly correlated to and influenced by the first two, but having a well-developed brand identity, (name, logo, core values, colors, etc.) can help bolster the other two in a huge way. The more memorable you are as a company, the more likable you are.

All of the above leads to more likes, shares, and +1s, which have been proven to increasingly more visibility online, which is a boon to all of your marketing efforts.

Beyond the web, the more you can instill these paradigms of sharing content, strong brand identity, and engaging your audience, relating to them, letting them peek behind the curtain now and then, OFFLINE in the real world, it will really help your business grow and build that brand strength. When your offline customers do encounter you online, they will be SO much more apt to like or +1 you there.

I hope that answers your question, and I hope you don’t mind that I blogged it.

When I first started watching Wilfred and, actually, through much of the first season, I really really enjoyed it. It’s just hysterical, wrong, and hilarious.

I’ve never been dumb enough to be a stoner, so that part of the comedy is a little lost on me, but there’s so much more that’s hilarious that I found myself cracking up the whole time.

But as the season neared the end, things began to sour.

First of all, Wilfred’s trifling ceases to have a valid point. Initially, each episode was a weird process of self-realization Ryan is forced through by having to deal with Wilfred incessant meddling.

But those epiphanies start to be more questionable around episode 9 or 10, and never make any more sense.

And beyond that, the lengths to which Wilfred goes to make Ryan’s life miserable and terrible go far beyond the bounds of ANY lesson one might need to learn, let alone weak, unnecessary lessons.

After this are a couple of mild spoilers, just warning you. Although honestly, a better warning would be to not watch the last few episodes anyway. You’re better off.

In one episode Ryan actually finds an amazing, interesting, attractive woman who is really interested in him. Every sane person in the world wants Ryan to go with her to Italy and leave Wilfred behind. But he doesn’t. Sure, Ryan justifies it somehow, but it makes no sense, even when watching the episode.

Ryan is doggedly (pun) committed to this VERY self-destructive relationship with this dog/person who does nothing but bring him catastrophe after catastrophe.

Then there’s the finale. *sigh*

All season long, the show has been a comedy. A very funny one. But for the finale, the show’s writers decided to make it feel like a John Grisham/J.J. Abrams Mashup gone terribly wrong. It’s heavy and dramatic, and terrible things happen, then you’re given one of those, “Wilfred never really existed at all”-type plot twists and- BAM! credits roll. It’s atrocious.

I can see how it was meant as a cliff-hanger, but a finale like that has me wanting to jump off a cliff or hang myself, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what FX was going for with the term.

And, in the end, after such an awkward ending, whatever answers I wish I had, I’m quite confident will not be given adequately or interestingly by the show’s producers.

I guess it’s a good thing so much awesome TV starts this week!

What are you most looking forward to being back on the air this fall?

In a certain way, the church is the king of content marketing.

Image Credit: Jive Turkey

The meat of its products and services (pun) has not changed much in decades, or even centuries. But that hasn’t stopped or even slowed down the machine of christian media from rewriting, re-spinning, redesigning, retargeting, researching, and redeveloping the same content for a constantly shifting set of different audiences.

How drastically different is the best way to live the christian life for the different walks of life?

Seriously. We boil it down to its simplest truth (which we love to do) and it’s what?

“Love God. Love People.”

And that’s fantastic, really. I get it. Simple, Succinct, Strong. It is the “Consistently Develop Amazing Content” of Christianity. Of course that’s the key to all SEO, but if you leave it there, what’s left to discuss? What content about SEO is left to even develop?

How odd would church services be this weekend if every pastor in America walked to the pulpit (or stool and high table— for the truly relevant), and uttered a four word sermon. “Love God, Love People.”

As a personal aside, I’d say that it would reduce the amount of “thin content” being produced at churches every week that a Parochial Panda would probably pummel. Joel Osteen, I’m looking at you.

So, what are churches to do? Well, I’m not sure. A lot of SEO advice simply eliminates a lot of what you’re doing. Remove duplicate content. That’s one of the ten commandments of SEO. Here’s how you might recognize it better:

“Avoid vain repetitions.” – Jesus

Why take the same great content, say a fantastic, biblical teaching on good morality, and muddy it up with countless, slightly different versions of itself? A great piece of content will work for almost any age. It’s not necessary to repackage (and in many cases re-sell) the same exact material. But the church loves to make a version ever so slightly altered to “best connect” with a 5/8/10/12/14/16/18/21 yr. old. Oh, and a slightly different version for 20 something, 30 something, 40 something, and 50 plus, then another set for each of those with children. I know a content farm when I see one.

On to User Experience. Don’t bait and switch. No gateway pages, that’s a SERP penalty waiting to happen. If I invite my friend to a singles event, he is going to be expecting to be able to chat and hopefully meet a nice girl. He is not expecting to be faced with the question of where he will spend eternity.

It’s getting late, so I’ll end with this kicker.

The future of search is social.

The future of church is social.

Relationships drive us. To the best content on the web, and to the best our faith has to offer.

We share the videos, blogs, images we like to those around us, so they can enjoy them. Do we not owe the believers around us the same with how to walk out this faith we claim to follow?

I absolutely refuse to use a keyword that doesn’t work. So, “small groups” (which DOES work) is what I guess I’m putting a plug in for.

And I don’t mean just one at your church. I mean the concept. Faith in community. The greatest story ever told, has yet to be told best through advertising or even keyword targeting or anything other then it going viral. People encouraging other people in their faith.

And that’s how christianity should be doing SEO.

Next week, Altar Call Analytics: Redefining “Conversions” and Reducing “CPA”

So much has happened.
So much has changed.
Some changes good.
Others not as good.

But wow, change all around.
It really is the only constant.

New job, or new position I should say, is going well so far. It’s my first week, and all the websites are still up, so I consider that a personal win, haha.

I really want to do this well. To own it. To progress the company well and forward.

Oh, yeah, so #MozCon was amaze-balls. Scrumtrellescent. As they say.

First and foremost, I got to connect well with the owner, my new boss, and develop a good rapport with him. That was great. Secondly, I just learned a crapton of stuff.

The conference was a wonderful range of inspiring higher thought level content, general principles and rules, and specific nerdy tools and tips. My aspirations now range from lofty brand identity and purpose-driven goals all the way to wanting to be a Distilled Excel Ninja and also be Google Analytics Certified.

Also, I totally helped start a mini-flashmob cantab toast to Rand Fishkin at the beginning of his head-to-head with Will Critchlow. Kudos to Greg Gifford for helping it actually happen!

And now, I have a cool title. Marketing Director. Pretty Schnazzy I must say.

It’s not really the exact position I’ve imagined myself being in, but then again, not so far off either. I feel like I can thrive here.

In some ways it’s been tough to not try to pursue and date girls more often or, more heartily. But then I look and realize that I haven’t had the time to prioritize that, and that’s ok. I’m glad I called myself out early in the year.

Sadly, I’m not as close to meeting my yearly goals as I would like to be. I’ll get there though.
Like Ali in the Jungle.

A quick recap of the whirlwind month leading up to my birthday and the present:

I spent a great weekend at the beach with some awesome friends.
I relaxed in a hot tub.
I played three shows in two days.
I went to a good friends wedding, one of the most truly joyful ones I have been to.
I went to St. Augustine to watch the fireworks on the Fourth at the Fort. Tradition maintained.
I saw Transformers in 2D.
I saw Transformers in 3D.
I saw the final space shuttle launch, which really deserves a whole blog post of its own.
I watched Harry Potter Seven part One.
I went to the Atlantic and the Bull (a few times, actually) to see Ricky Kendall, and other awesome people.
I had Hibachi with my parents.
I went to see the midnight premiere of Harry Potter Seven part Two.
I went to a Movie night at Anthem and got to celebrate with those cool people and watch Back to the Future.
I relaxed in a different hot tub.
I played drums for First Assembly, a rare pleasure, rarer still to come.
Finally life has slowed some. Although it is not without plenty of changes all around.

I’m a year older.
I feel like I’ve improved in several ways, but the busyness of summer has plateaued me in a way I am not happy with. Gotta fix that.

Two of my good friends are moving away.

J Tony, you’re the man, man; don’t give up hope man. Hold fast to integrity and character. They really make you who you are. You’re gonna make it. I can’t wait ’til we attend each other’s weddings.

Stauffer. All heroes eventually find their own Gotham, and I’m sad but excited to see you find yours. I’m gonna miss you so freaking much. Damn. Remember when you helped me load my drums on the side of a Georgia mountain? Or when you visited Southeastern? Man. Love you man.

What else? Oh, I’m getting a different roommate– Britt Daniel. Play your cards right, Britt, and one day you too could me mentioned all too mushily in a blog post much like my friends above.

And my old roommate Shane Welker is moving out. We had some pretty good talks, man. But for real, I’m sweating, I’m gonna turn the AC on. Shane’s moving up too. By a floor and in roommate models. Punny. Noah Marks is as sexy as a model… of a life that is dedicated to pursuing holiness. We’ll catch it, man.

Hope Springs Eternal from Everywhere.

I got an unofficial promotion at work that comes with an official raise, and starts with a trip to MozCon in Seattle, a conference run by my absolute favorite SEO guys, SEOmoz.

You didn’t think I was gonna NOT mention drumming, did you?
I’m growing. I need to grow more. And I will. Working on equipment, tuning, and the rudiments. I actually might have a chance to soon to get lessons from my favorite jazz drummer in Gainesville, Jon Jackson. As for a band… well, I’m a little too busy getting my crap together to worry much about that.

But when I do, it will rock with soul.