Fionn Downhill of Elixir Interactive talks with John Mulligan of SEO-PR about viral marketing campaigns following her “”Igniting Viral Campaigns”" session at SES San Jose 2008. Downhill analyzes negative and positive viral discussion and where a search engine marketer fits in that world in terms of trying to control negative conversations and attempting to foster positive conversations in viral marketing.

When it comes to education, it’s so unfortunate many of our nation’s children are still suffering from the effects of economic inequality. I personally feel it’s important to empower kids with reading skills. This year on October 2^nd, Jumpstart’s Read for the Record Campaign will attempt to break a world record by bringing children and adults together to read the same book on the same day. It’s a day to increase awareness of this adverse learning gap in our communities and to bring the power of reading to kids across the country.

While reading more about the event on Jumpstart’s website, I learned a lot about the progress the program has made. Since 1993, the Jumpstart program has helped over 50,000 kids develop the literacy skills they need to succeed in school. Each year they strive to reach more and more children. Over the past two years Jumpstart has been bringing classic tales, such as The Little Engine That Could and The Story of Ferdinand to young minds through their Read for the Record Campaign. This year, kids will enjoy reading the charming story of Corduroy. Kids get to keep and treasure their copy of the book, and for some it will be the first book they personally own.

Supporting the event is easy. You can choose to donate a copy of Corduroy to a deserving child, or make a donation to the Jumpstart program - which provides for one-on-one literacy development for kids each year. All donations made to the Jumpstart program between now and October 2^nd will be matched by The Pearson Foundation, and a copy of Corduroy will also be donated on your behalf. You can also donate your time to a Read for the Record event near you. Events will be held at schools, libraries, hotels, shopping malls, and other locations across the country.

Be sure to share information about the Read for the Record Campaign with your family, friends and neighbors. It really is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to come together and support our nation’s future.

On the 7th of August I will be running a workshop for PRSA Phoenix on Social Media, Online PR and Web 2.0 for PR professionals.  You can read the Press Release here

For details on how to sign up for this event visit the Valley PR blog.  Not only are we planning a great event at  Pearson Education at their new facility at 3075 W. Ray Road, Chandler but all proceeds go to the PRSSA scholarhip fund.

I have had the pleasure of working with Julie Wainwright CEO of SmartNow.com an online web resource site for women over 35.  Smart Now is Julie’s own business venture which she runs with another great woman called Lynn Forbes.  You should check out this great  resource site which has been so thoughtfully  put together by these two great women.

I was particualrly moved by Julie’s article on the five biggest mistakes she made and how she moved past them.  You can read the full article here. 

Ad Age daily  today reports the move by several States to further scrutinize the Yahoo Google Ad serving deal.  You can read the full report here.  This is hot on the heels of the congressional hearing on the same subject today.  According to CNet’s Declan McCullagh its is probably not going to make a lot of difference to the internet public.  Microsoft’s argument is just an echo from the past and its pretty much the same arguement Google put forward against the Yahoo Microsoft deal. 

Whatever happens today I personally think that Google’s dominance is not a good thing for consumers.  I love Google I think they are a first class organization and a great search engine but you can have too much of a good thing.  At least lawmakers are giving this deal scrutiny, it has almost seemed in the past that Google can do what they like.  I was expecting this deal to come under closer scrutiny and its a good thing that it has.  We will have to wait and see what the outcome is I feel that a rejection of this deal would actually be a good thing for the industry and the consumers.  it will be interesting.

On the 2nd of July I was interviewd by RSS Ray on his radio show on the subject of online reputation management.

You can listen to the podcast here.

We moved the mobile version of the elixirinteractive.com site to elixirinteractive.mobi . Anyone accessing the main site with a mobile browser will be automatically redirected to the correct site. This was primarily to aid in correct indexing by search engine spiders.

Hard to believe that SES San Jose is just round the corner again.  Another great show is planned and you can see the full Agenda here. 

I will once again be speaking on the subject of viral marketing and will be sharing some great information on our current campaigns at the session called “Igniting your viral campaigns”.  This popular session will run at 11.15 on the 18th and I am thrilled to see that I will be speaking with Justillien Gaspard.  I have a lot of respect for Justillien at his young age he has truly made his mark on our industry.  Justillien is also a fellow search engine watch expert.   

I will also be speaking at the site clinic session on the 22nd at 10.15.  Although this is my first site clinic session at SES I have run many at other events and I love the interaction with the audience and always receive great feedback on the value of that real time interaction. 

As usual the week is full of great sessions and although the party schedule is not quite up to the heady level of SES New York it does lend itself to some late nights.  I look forward to the opportunity to network something  that SES is first class for, meeting old friends and hopefully making lots of new ones.

Spent some time this week making our new site mobile friendly (XHTML-MP or WAP2). Tested using emulators and by my own T-Mobile Shadow, it looks a lot cleaner now than when I started.

In addition this blog got a makeover and is also mobile friendly.

I’ll be detailing some of the behind the scenes work at our technical blog - http://www.topsemtips.com/.

Today at 3.00 (PST) I will take part in a live interview with RSS Ray on WS Radio on the subject of Online Reputation Management.

If you miss the show it will be available by podcast on my blog and on the WS Radio site within two days.