Duct Tape Marketing Podcast — IntelliContact

The podcast I did in March interview with Duct Tape Marketing went live today.

You can listen to the podcast here.

“I interviewed Ryan Allis, CEO or IntelliContact, an email marketing and communications company for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast

I’ve been trying out the IntelliContact email sending service of late and the thing that stands out the most is how simple the service is for anyone to figure out and use. Now I don’t mean that it lacks power, it just has a great user interface. I tested this theory out on a number of folks who are not what I would call early adopters and they agreed.

Ryan’s story is a very interesting one although this is his third or fourth successful venture he clocks in at a mere 22 years of age. Companies large and small are staring to take note of IntelliContact and future offerings promise to make this service a very comprehensive communications tool.

If they keep this simple but effective approach I think you will hear even more about them.”

Triangle Technology Job Fair Wednesday

12 Local Technology Companies will be presenting their open job positions at the Triangle Technology Job Fair on Wednesday from 4pm to 7pm at the Broadwick offices at 2635 Meridian Parkway, 2nd floor.

You can view our open positions here.

On NPR Marketplace - Intern, or be your own boss?

Janet Babin from NPR’s Marketplace show interviewed me at Venture on Wednesday for a story called, “Intern, or be your own boss?“. The piece ran last night. Jeff Reid, the former Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at UNC was also interviewed as well as 24 year-old entrepreneur and Wharton grad Ryan Comfort whom I met at Venture and is working on a 2 person web 2.0 startup.

Here’s the transcript and the audio in RealPlayer format.

Video of Broadwick Venture Pitch

Here’s our Venture 2007 presentation from Wednesday…

If you’d like to syndicate this on your blog or site you can use this embed code:

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At Venture 2007 Today and Tomorrow

I was at Venture 2007 in Durham at the Washington Duke Inn all day today and will be there tomorrow presenting Broadwick on the Main Stage at 2:15pm. Congrats to CED for a great turnout.

They have 4 Showcase companies, 18 main stage companies (including Broadwick), 20 early stage companies, and 9 angel retreat companies presenting, plus 18 very early stage company who participated in a unique “start-up speed dating” event this afternoon in which each company spend 5 minutes each with 30 different investors for an hour and a half. There is a lot of activity here in the Southeast.

Interview with Success Magazine

The interview with Success Magazine is now online…

Ryan Allis
The Kid / 22 / Founder & CEO, Broadwick Corp. / Durham, North Carolina
by Rebecca Spagnuolo

BACKGROUND:
Ryan Allis started Virante, a web marketing consulting firm, when he was just 16 years old, incorporating the company in two years. Over the past three years, he has helped build three companies that have each generated $2 million or more in sales. His newest venture, Broadwick Corp., a provider of email marketing, RSS Feed and blogging software, currently has 47 employees and over 9,000 customers, with almost $5 million in annual sales.

MY ASPIRATION:
I want to be a senator in 20 years. But in between then and now, I’d like to finish what I’m doing with Broadwick, finish my undergrad, get an MBA/MPP from Harvard, and build a billion dollar company in my thirties.

MY INSPIRATION:
It all comes down to figuring out ways to reduce human suffering and to provide opportunity for all people.

WHY I’M A SUCCESS:
I don’t consider myself a success yet. I am successful because I persevere, I keep at it, I work hard, and I’ve got great people around me. But I’m not yet a success. That will take a couple more decades.

HOW I DID IT:
It’s amazing what you can do, even as a young person, when you take advantage of the opportunities that the Internet provides.

WHAT I’VE LEARNED:
You have to play life like it’s a long-term game.

WHAT I KNOW:
That all humans are inherently good.

WHAT’S NEXT:
We want to revolutionize the future of online communication.

Photo by Jimmy Williams

Summer Entrepreneurial Internship at Preation in Durham, NC

Broadwick’s sister company Preationhas an Entrepreneurial Internship available for the summer.

“Preation Entrepreneurial Internship Program

FightHunger.org Walk on Second Life

FightHunger.org is organizing a walk-a-thon on the virtual world Second Life on May 13, 2007 in conjunction with Walk the World 2007 on the same day. The event will be starting in the Pooley Auditorium. Contact virtual character ‘Fight Hunchke’ within Second Life for more details.

“This year FightHunger: Walk the World will be walking in Second Life too. We’ve already started spreading the word about Fight Hunger in-life - see this picture of the recent U2 concert. The Second Life walk will be one that people everywhere in the world - no mattter their time zone - will be able to join in. Sign up below now to walk or if you’d like to join our group of volunteers who are organising the in-life walk then send an email to secondlife [ at] fighthunger.org

If you can’t walk in the real world then walk in Second Life! (We couldn’t decide where to put the dot on the map for Second Life so put it near the North Pole!)”

Thanks to blog reader Stacey Shaw for bringing this to my attention.

Pickup in Raleigh News & Observer Today

We got a mention in the Business section of the Raleigh News & Observer today.

You can view the article here.

How to Get to the Top of Google - The Basics

I’m getting a few emails per day from people who read the Fortune Small Business article in which I mentioned that one of the initial ways we built Broadwick was through search engine optimization.

I wanted to post the four basic steps for search engine optimization here as well as link to a free copy of my ebook on the topic…

Tim wrote:

Ryan, I was inspired by your story and would like to learn more about how you got to the top of Google for comptetitive search terms. Could you email some advice on how to do this?

Ryan wrote:

Hi Tim. Thanks for writing. You can download a free copy of my whitepaper on how to get to the top of the search engines at http://www.search-engines-guide.com/thankyou.html.

The key advice is:
1. Choose which keyword you want to rank well for.
2. Increase the number of times this keyword shows up on your home page (keyword frequency).
3. Add additional content to your web site about this topic.
4. Build links from related web sites using the keyword as the text that is clickable (the anchor text). The easiest ways to build links from related web sites are by writing good quality articles with a link in the byline and offering them to related sites for publication and asking for links from related web sites in exchange for a link on yours.

Also, my other company Virante provides search engine optimization consulting. You can reach them via www.virante.com.

Cheers,
Ryan

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