Education

One of the biggest link building conferences of the year is Distilled's LinkLove conference in Boston. This year, the Organic Team sent four teammates to learn and network at this event.  Beth, Nate, and I started our journey to LinkLove at 4:30 a.m. to make it to the Indianapolis airport in time for our 6 a.m. flight. After a delay in Indianapolis and a lengthy connection in Detroit, we made it to Manchester, New Hampshire and boarded a 50-minute shuttle ride to Boston. We met up with Stacie at our hotel -- she took a train from her vacation in New Jersey. The conference was absolutely spectacular with a star-studded lineup! The first speaker was Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, who spoke about the importance of focusing on creating great content. He said that awesome

I recently saw a TED Talk by Jane McGonigal about how Gaming can help save the world. According to McGonigal, gamers have 4 traits that make gamers so successful: Urgent Optimism Social Fabric Blissful Productivity Epic Meaning My immediate reaction to this, as an HR Manager, is to figure out how to translate this same theory into talent management. According to McGonigal, “Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible and that it’s always worth trying and trying now.” How efficient and enjoyable would your workplace be if everyone had that same view of their job? What exactly is an “epic win?” McGonigal describes it as “an outcome that is so extraordinarily positive you had no idea it was even possible until you achieved it.” One of my teammates, Eric Smith, recently spoke of something similar that really resonated with me. “When you shoot for

For many web-based businesses, staying on top of industry trends and best practices can be challenging and time consuming. Everyone has their own tasks and responsibilities during the work day, traveling to conferences can be expensive, and finding the time to catch up with industry blogs after working hours can be difficult…. especially with things like grocery shopping, laundry (ugh) and other social functions taking up very valuable time. What’s the solution? One great way to stay informed and on the cutting edge of technological and thought advancement is through webinars. If you’ve never participated in one, a webinar is basically a multi-media conference call where executives, consultants, or analysts present a case-study or set of best practices on a topic of interest. Companies like Marketing Experiments, Hubspot, GetElastic, SiteTuners and Shoutlet all offer free webinars regularly, and we at OCV have found them to be

On August 2, Tim Bayley of MAP Consulting visited One Click Ventures. Bayley assisted the team in finding more efficient ways to set and manage their goals via timed exercises, discussions and resource management. Bayley boasts twenty-four years of management experience, with fourteen of those years  consulting high-level executives. He earned his undergraduate degree from California State University, and a Master of Science degree in Business Administration from UCLA. Bayley introduced a number of strategies from the MAP Program to increase the effectiveness and efficiency in brainstorming, goal planning and execution, and communicating across teams. The MAP Program focuses on results and execution, and Bayley sat down with various teams at One Click to give them real examples of how they can execute their plans. The MAP Management System gives the same guide lines to each team member

If you head over to the Distilled website, you’ll notice right away that culture, teamwork, and the desire to always be learning are very important to the London-based SEO agency. Originally a web development agency founded in 2005, Distilled began moving in the SEO and PPC direction in 2007 with the addition of Tom Critchlow. Critchlow recently relocated to New York City to establish the third Distilled office (Seattle is home to location #2), which opened its doors for business in June 2011. During his career with Distilled, Critchlow’s focus started with hands-on SEO for local companies and has matured to Fortune 500 SEO consulting, SEO training and support, and speaking at the industry’s top conferences around the globe. One Click Ventures, like Distilled, puts high emphasis on its core values. We value excellence, continuous learning, our family-like atmosphere, and winning through teamwork, so it felt natural to