Have you ever gotten in trouble for missing a birthday?

Fortunately, I’ve never forgotten my wife’s birthday, but I did forget to share with you all Trackur’s 4th birthday! Shame on me!

Seriously, the expression “time flies when you are having fun” has new meaning to me, thanks to Trackur–especially in 2011 which has seen our strongest year yet! We’re almost at 41,000 registered users and our growth looks set to exceed 100% for the fourth consecutive year!

Reading David Lee’s post “What We Look For” had me reminiscing about what caused me to launch Trackur 4 years ago and embark on this incredible start-up journey. Lee writes…

Our preference is for founders solving a problem for themselves…Another advantage of a founder building a product or service to solve her own pain point is that she doesn’t have to do market research or focus groups—she is the target market.

Which is exactly how Trackur started. Let me tell you the story, in case you’ve never heard it.

After finishing my book Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online, I looked over the chapter on monitoring tools and felt so much frustration and dissatisfaction. You see, you had Google Alerts (free) then you mostly had the big boys of monitoring–all charging thousands of dollars per month. There was no stepping stone. In fact, looking at my own needs, I realized there was no affordable option that allowed me to graduate from Google Alerts, manage multiple reputations in one place, and, most importantly, fit my stingy budget.

So, I decided to build that option.

The vision included a dashboard that drew inspiration from Google Reader and Gmail, but tailored to the monitoring market. I wanted to be able to quickly edit and update searches, see reports on discussions about my brand, and do so without any flashy eye-candy to distract me from my task. That was our goal, and I think even the first iteration of Trackur achieved that.

Once I had that concept, I figured that this might be a tool that others would find of use too! So, the next step was to build a brand for it. I wanted something short, memorable and easy to spell. Well, two out of three ain’t bad! I tried dozens of domain names, but just about everything was taken. I settled on the name Trackur for two reasons. One, it could be said phonetically the same as “tracker” and, if Flickr could be a success even with a completely missing vowel, Trackur could be too!

As an aside, Trackur ended up being a little less phonetic than I had envisioned. Even to this day, some folks believe our company name is “TrackUR” as in “Track You Are.” That’ll teach me to make the “u” and the “r” a different color!

With the concept and brand in place, I set about to build it. Being more of a marketer than a programmer, I worked with a small but talented team to build the first version and launched just a couple of months later–in February of 2008.

It was a modest success that first year. I was still consulting a lot on reputation management, so Trackur mostly stayed as a side project. A good friend asked me at the time, “What is your financial goal for Trackur?” I replied that if I could sell enough accounts to make back my small financial investment, I would be happy. Boy, have we done that, and then some!

In 2009 Trackur started to take off and, by the end of that year, I decided to start winding down my consulting and focus on Trackur. I’m starting to get long-winded here, so to cut a long story short, we decided against selling the company in 2010, completed a major overhaul the early part of this year, and are tremendously excited about Trackur’s growth in 2012.

So, there’s the back story. Trackur’s now in its fifth year–our birthday was November 12th–and so I want to take the time to wish all of the Trackur team, customers, and friends a belated happy birthday!

PS. Watch for new announcements after Christmas as we’re not done with the upgrades and hope to announce some cool new stuff in the New Year!

So, how early did you get up today?

Slept in? Yeah, I don’t blame ya!

There’s still a chance for you to make out like a Black Friday bandit, thanks to your friends at Trackur. For today only, sign up for any paid Trackur plan and we’ll refund 75% off your first month. Simply forward a copy of your PayPal receipt to help AT trackur.com and we’ll take care of the rest.

Oh, and don’t forget, you have just five more days to take advantage of our fantastic annual plan promotion. Pick up an annual Plus plan and get a free iPad 2! Grab an annual Premium or Ultimate plan and get the iPad 2 AND an iPod Touch, Nano, Shuffle and Apple TV!!!!

All these amazing Black Friday offers from the comfort of your computer chair.

We want to take time out to thank everyone that has signed up to use Trackur.

Thanks to you all, we have just surpassed 40,000 users–making Trackur arguably the largest social media monitoring vendor in the world!

2011 has been a great year for Trackur. We’ve added new features, charting, and generally improved speed and response times of the Trackur dashboard. We’re not done….not by a long shot. Expect more great news, features, and improvements over the coming months.

If you’re a fan of Trackur, please leave a comment so we know who you are. And, just in case we don’t get to thank you individually, know that you have the sincere thanks of the entire Trackur team.

Thank you!

If you’re considering monitoring your reputation in social media, don’t even think about it until you’ve covered these six important foundation steps, given by Trackur CEO Andy Beal at the recent Pubcon Las Vegas conference.

Of course, we’d love for you to use Trackur for your social media monitoring, but no matter what tool you use, make sure you heed our advice.

Christmas is fast approaching and to help you give the perfect gift this year, Trackur is offering free Apple iPads and iPods with all annual Plus, Premium, and Ultimate plans.

While we’ve had a long running iPad 2 promotion, for the month of November you can get a free Apple iPad 2 with just the annual Plus plan. That’s right, for $1056 you get one year of amazing social media monitoring and insights AND a free 16GB iPad 2 worth $500!

The iPad is brand new, and you get to choose black or white. It’s not engraved, so you can give it to a loved one as a Christmas present and they’ll think you rock!

But, it gets better! If you prepay for our Premium or Ultimate plans, you’ll get not just an iPad 2 but an iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, and an Apple TV! Keep them all for yourself or give them as holiday gifts. Either way, someone better call the sheriff  ’cos this offer is a steal!

Interested? Just fill out the form below and we’ll send you the full terms/conditions and get you set up!

Hurry, this offer must end November 30th! This offer has now closed.

Yikes, it looks like Trackur has been hacked…

…by a rather mischievous vampire named Count Trackula.

In addition to changing the Trackur logo, he’s also taken over the Trackur Twitter account!

And if that’s not enough, he’s trying to put us out of business by offering our Plus plan for just $31 for anyone that signs up today. Simply sign-up for our Plus plan and you’ll pay just $31 for your first month (send an email to help AT trackur.com after sign-up, to get the price adjustment).

I know it’s Halloween, but I hope Trackula doesn’t stick around too long. Still, it could be worse, it could be zombies!

While Trackur may not be technically the very first social media monitoring tool to add Google+ monitoring, we are the first to make it available at such a low price!

Yeppers, starting today, all paid plans will now have Google+ monitoring available to users. With our plans starting at just $18, we are by far one of the most affordable ways to monitor Google+.

You’ll find Google+ listed in your “Selected Sources” in your Advanced Search Options. You should find that we have activated it for all existing saved searches, so there is nothing you need to do. Should you not wish to include Google+ (which, we doubt) then simply unselect it, re-run your search, then re-save it.

We’re always looking to add valuable sources to Trackur and we think Google+ is going to be a great one. Not so great lately, has been Digg. Our users tell us they’re getting much more out of the recent addition of Reddit, so as of today, we’ve pulled Digg as a source.

If you’re not yet on one of our paid plans, today is a great day to upgrade! You’ll get the addition of Google+, Facebook, and Forums monitoring–none of which are currently available on the free plan. And, if you upgrade this week, we’ll give you a 50% rebate on your first month’s payment–for any plan. Simply contact us to let us know you’d like to take advantage of this offer (ends Friday).

Here at Trackur, we’re constantly reminding companies that their employees are an extension of their brand. Their actions reflect on the company’s reputation.

So, it was to my horror to see this tweet from @travisoliver and accompanying photo:

Google’s Street View program is already unpopular in many places around the world, so you’d think Google would have trained its drivers to be extra courteous and considerate, right?

Let this be a warning that you should be monitoring your employees actions across all channels. You never know when one of them will give your reputation “the bird.”

Hat-tip @gatewood5000

I’m about to share a secret with you that most link building pros don’t want you to know. It’s about a link building tactic that they’d rather keep to themselves in order to maintain a competitive edge. Sure, they’ll tell you about the standard link building tools they use, they’re just less likely to tell you about this awesome tactic for finding fresh, influential links.

What is this tactic? Using social media monitoring tools to find backlinks.

We know of a number of SEOs that use Trackur for link building and while they’ve not spilled the beans on how they use Trackur, I happen to know a thing or two about SEO, so here’s how they’re using social media monitoring to get better links than you.

Checking for Existing Links

• They’re keeping track of existing mentions of their company
• They review the anchor text used in those blog posts and articles and then politely ask the author to switch to better targeted anchor text.
• If the link is pointing to the wrong page, or they need the link pointed to a more relevant page, they’re asking for it to be switched.
• If the destination URL can’t be changed, or worse, broken, they’re 301 redirecting the link.

Monitoring for Potential Link Partners

• Link building pros are keeping track of who’s talking about their company and products but not actually featuring them.
• They’re following up with emails to the author, thanking them for the shout-out and suggesting further topics for discussion.
• They’re keeping an eye out for articles that mention their company but don’t link to it. They then simply ask if there’s anyway they can get a link.
• Smart SEOs are watching for affiliate links. If a blogger is already a part of their affiliate program, they sweeten the commission so as to encourage further discussion.

Discovering New Keywords

PubCon Vegas (Nov 8-10) is the one internet marketing conference you don’t won’t to miss. More than 200 expert trainers will teach over 110 training sessions on everything from SEO, to PPC, to affiliate marketing, and, oh yeah, social media monitoring.

Our very own Andy Beal will be there and he wants you to join him…on his dime! Yep, simply sign up for Trackur’s awesome white-labeled Ultimate plan and we’ll pay for your Gold Pass to PubCon Vegas.

Ready? Here’s how it works.

First, sign up for four months of our Ultimate plan at a rate of $1,508. No obligation to renew.

Second, get a free Gold Pass to PubCon Vegas–valued at up to $1499!

Third, let Andy Beal buy you a drink in Vegas and sit down with you to talk about the latest trends in reputation management & monitoring.

To recap. You get our fully white-labeled social media monitoring dashboard AND a free Gold Pass to PubCon for around fifteen hundred bucks! Plus, you get to sit down with reputation expert Andy Beal.

What’s not to love about this deal? The offer expires October 31st, 2011 and space is limited, so if you are interested, please contact us today to secure your spot!

Tell Me More!

P.S.
You just did the math, didn’t you? $1508 minus $1499 leaves $9, right? For that extra $9 you get to spend time talking with Andy Beal about the topic of your choice AND he’ll buy you a drink!

Promotional Terms and Conditions: This offer does not include transportation, food or lodging for PubCon Las Vegas 2011. A PubCon Las Vegas 2011 Gold Pass will be issued upon receipt of your payment for 4 months of our Ultimate plan. Payments must be made by check and are non-refundable. One PubCon Las Vegas 2011 Gold Pass will be issued per account. This offer is open to new and existing Trackur customers. Offer cannot be combined with any other promotional offers and our normal money-back guarantee does not apply.