Since the blog’s launch in June, the site has seen over 10,000 pageviews from over 5,0000 unique visitors in 114 countries and the RSS subscriber base has grown to over 200. THANK YOU! Below are the two 5 posts from this year… take a look if you missed them or want a refresher.

1. Personal productivity
2. How to become a search marketing pro
3. Add Bing search to your site
4. 11 plugins every WordPress blog should have
5. Startup Weekend

I read somewhere that publishing your goals for all to see greatly increases the chances of reaching your goal. So, my goals for 2010 (”twenty ten“) are to:

• Take a vacation from work/life and totally unplug from everything. No phone, laptop, etc. Just beautiful scenery and my thoughts.
• Publish 15 posts on this blog.
• Attend 3 entrepreneurship, online marketing, or startup conferences.
• Start to learn a spoken foreign language. (I took Latin in school.)
• Travel to 2 other countries for either work or pleasure.
• Donate $200 and volunteer 8 hours to/for a non-profit.
• Write 3 business plans for business start-up ideas I have.
• And most importantly…. HAVE FUN AND ENJOY LIFE!

Below is an excerpt from the “New Year’s resolution” article on Wikipedia on success rates. It’s quite interesting, especially if you’re setting goals for this year.

Recent research shows that while 52% of participants in a resolution study were confident of success with their goals, only 12% actually achieved their goals. Men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting, a system where small measurable goals are used (lose a pound a week, instead of saying “lose weight”), while women succeeded 10% more when they made their goals public and got support from their friends.

2363 miles is the distance from Cleveland, OH to Seattle, WA. Starting today and over the next week, I’ll be driving it. Yep – I’m moving to Seattle for Microsoft. Things will be pretty slow on this blog through July, but I’ve scheduled a few posts and hope to be back soon. In the meantime, be sure to take a look at some previous posts by searching or viewing the most popular (both in the left rail).

I finally got around to taking my exam and passed the first time with an 86%. So, I’m now a Google Adwords Qualified Individual, since I’ve already met the other requirements. What does this mean? Well, it just means that I’ve met certain requiments set by Google to become a “qualified” Adwords search marketer – giving me access to premium content within the Google interface. It also adds a level of legitimacy to my work, which is important since there seems to be so many search marketing “experts” out there.

Preparing for the exam

To prepare for the exam, I reviewed all the learning center text lessons and also took all the quizzes. It took me about 8 hours to do this and I split it up over two days. Also, I logged into the Google Adwords account and re-familiarized myself with its interface and where key sections are located and their functions. I’ve also been doing search marketing for a few years now, which helped a great deal.

Taking the exam

The exam consisted of 110 questions, which were either multiple choise or true/false. I used 80 of the allotted 90 minutes to take the exam. Some of the questions were the exact same as the quiz questions, but a number were different. Also, the exam didn’t seem to reflect new changes to Google Adwords, such as the location of the “Billing” information. Nonetheless, I passed. Make sure you have a solid internet connection and an environment that is effective for exam taking.

I’m happy to announce that my thesis, “The Social Media Use of Obama and McCain” is now available online for public viewing. In the paper, I looked at how Barack Obama and John McCain used social media, the age of the users of these sites, and the age of the voters in the 2008 presidential election. The results are interesting. It’s best to download the PDF (via scribd or docstoc) for easiest reading, but I’ve also embedded it below as well. It’s important to note that this version is slightly adapted for web distribution.

Over the coming weeks I also plan to write individual blog posts on certain sections, especially the voting results. So, if you’re interested in reading that as well, I really suggest you subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog.

I’d really like to thank Dave and Connie Rigotti (my parents), Professor Carol Sullinger (adviser), Dr. Thomas W. Sharkey (mentor), Dr. Ainsworth A. Bailey (inspirer), ShareThis, eMarketer, and everyone else who helped in making this paper possible.

Please share this liberally with friends — especially via Twitter and Facebook.

My chapter, titled “Should you be blogging?” has been accepted in The Project 100’s book, titled “Connect!: Marketing in the social media era.” The book is written by 100 Internet marketing experts, writing 400 words each. My chapter was inspired by a similar post here. Here’s a slideshow on the book:

Today, the Independent Collegian, the school paper of The University of Toledo, published my letter to the editor titled “Ban would compromise safety, learning.” In it, I rebuttle a few professors at U.T. who are pushing to ban laptops (and cell phones, wifi) in classrooms.

Do you think professors should allow or ban laptops in the classroom?

When you post 2 comments, all subsequent comments will be no follow free.

What does this mean? Search engines will now recognize the link relationship between daverigotti.com and your site, helping to increase your search visibility and ultimately your rankings in the engines. In other words, commenting on daverigotti.com helps your site in search rankings.

What defines a hero? Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot of the US Airways flight 1549 jet that crash landed in the Hudson, has been given “hero” status by many. In fact, he’s even been given keys to New York.

However, he was doing what he was trained to do. An impressive feat and story, yes, but does it really deserve the keys to New York? He said in the long interview Sunday that, “The only viable solution was the one I chose.”

Should “hero” status be given to everyone, who under pressure, perform well at their job. How about a CEO who saves some jobs?

My point isn’t to discount his skill, but to mearly remark on the fact that this story is still in the media. Especially in light of the economy and other, more newsworthy, content.

I posed the following question via Twitter (@drigotti if you’d like to follow me) to my followers: “What defines a hero? Is the pilot who crashed landed the jet into the Hudson considered a ‘hero?’”

jeffbob Hudson pilot is hero. He’s one because he was thrown horrible disaster that could have gone 10,000 dif ways – but he stuck it.

kauf I think a hero needs to go beyond the call of duty. This guy is just a very talented pilot and I commend him for that.

I posted this over at Career Fire, but it’s also relevant to my personal life as well, so am posting it here too, with a little more information.

Fortune just released the annual 100 Best Companies to Work for list and there are some noticable differences, including the dethroning of #1.

Some observations:

• Microsoft and Quicken Loans (see the Quicken Loans blog), both previous employers of mine, are, yet again, in the top 100. Check out a post on Quicken Loans.
• Google is no longer #1. Congratulations NetApp. I bet your number of applicants just shot through the roof.
• Many college students, based on a non-probabilistic convenience sample said they never even considered apply to a company based on this list. These companies are great to work for, so apply to them!