Today, I had an amazing time. My team and I visited Anchor Brewing with Google! You might recall that I recently watched the SF Giants game at Google’s Luxury Suite. Our Google account management team is truly unparalleled. Not only do they provide the highest possible level of service, but they have made a tremendous effort to build a lasting relationship with us on a personal level. That’s what it’s all about in my opinion. Successful networking and business relationships are all about the long-term.

Have you heard of Anchor Steam before? Here in San Francisco / Silicon Valley, Anchor Steam is quite the popular beer. They have been making amazing beer since 1896. Importantly, they make beer the old fashioned way, and it’s absolutely some of the best tasting beer you can find.
Today at Anchor Brewing, we enjoyed a really great tour of their facility. It’s super impressive. The facility is huge and is the central location where Anchor Steam makes all their beer, right in downtown San Francisco. Aside from seeing the facility, I enjoyed learning about Anchor Brewing’s history. The company certainly faced challenges over the years. However, despite all odds, they made it due to persistence and of course quality. This is an important lesson for any business, and is quite the motivational story. The tour ended with some great beer tasting, with my favorite beer being the “Breckle’s Brown Ale”.

I also enjoyed today’s tour because it was the perfect excuse to take it a little easy. Pay per click is a very intense career path. Since the beginning of the new year, I have been working around the clock. I’m thankful for that, it has been fun. That said, I need to remind myself to take a little time off. The Anchor Brewing tour provided the perfect opportunity to do so.
Of course, the best part of today was spending quality time with friends. I couldn’t think of a better group to spend time with outside of our normal work environment. Thanks so much Google for arranging this event and making it happen, you are the best! Want to visit Anchor Brewing yourself? Make sure to make reservations in advance, it’s a very popular tour and fills up quickly.
Images in this post © PPCIan.com
Posted in: Networking | Tags: anchor brewing, anchor steam | Comments: 3 comments so far, join the discussion!










Blogs With Top Commentators Are Now Rare
Posted by: Ian Comments: 16 comments so far
One of the most popular posts on PPC Ian is my Blog Commenting Strategy. I’m a huge fan of blog commentating for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it’s fun! It’s great to be part of the conversation. Second, it’s a great source of traffic. Write an insightful comment and you will quickly gain new readers. Third, blog commentating can be a great source of SEO-optimized dofollow links. That is, if the blog you comment on has a top commentators widget (like the one I have here on PPC Ian in my footer).
I used to do a ton of commentating. I originally purchased my iPad so I could commentate on the go. I would write comments on the train to and from work. I would bring my iPad to lunch and would write comments during my meal. I would even commentate on my mobile phone while away from my computer. I got a little bit obsessed.
These days, I’m still commentating but not quite as much. Why? Many of the big bloggers such as John Chow and Jonathan Volk have done site redesigns and have removed their top commentators widgets. I used to comment on these blogs multiple times per day because I got my name in the top commentators lists. This gave me thousands of dofollow inbound links, from blogs closely related to mine by topic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a huge fan of both of these fine blogs, it’s just that I don’t comment quite as much since there is less of a reward.
So, you may be wondering, why are these big bloggers removing their top commentators widgets? If I had to guess, it probably comes down to preserving link juice (5-10 outbound links on each page of your blog can add up). It probably also comes down to comment quality. When you have as top commentators widget, the comments can sometimes be of lower quality. I particularly saw this happening on John Chow’s blog, although not anymore now that the widget has been removed.
As a blog owner, I’m a huge fan of having the top commentators widget. In addition to my top commentators widget, I even ran a Blog Commenting Contest. I feel passionately about rewarding those readers who support my blog by commenting. It takes time to write comments and I do my best to reward those supporting my blog.
The moral of the story: My blog commenting strategy is still very viable, but it’s more difficult finding blogs with top commentators lists. They still do exist, however, and I highly recommend seeking them out. You can even search on Google for directories of blogs that have dofollow top commentators lists. Moreover, don’t give up on blogs without top commentators. You may wish to throttle back your comments, but I still write many comments to this day on blogs without the widget.
Image of comment © iStockPhoto – pagadesign
Posted in: Blogging | Tags: blog commenting, top commentators | Comments: 16 comments so far, join the discussion!