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June 30th, 2010 marks the first annual Social Media Day, as declared by Mashable., it is a day to celebrate the revolution of media becoming a social dialogue.

I celebrate social media everyday!

I am passionate about connecting people, and I love how technology enables us to do so. Besides making great friends and forming new business relationships, I also met my husband online and have dedicated my career to teaching others about the benefits of social media.  Needless to say, I will be celebrating Social Media Day, today and everyday here after!

Would you like to join in the party?  There are over 10,000 people attending over 600 Social Media Day Meet-ups around the world, find the one closest to you and start socializing!   Chicago will be celebrating Mashable’s Social Media Day at Da Coach’s place, Mike Ditka’s Restaurant tonight from 7-9pm. If you are coming, don’t forget to bring your business cards!

Social media brings people together, if you can’t get out of the office, you can tune into see how 90+ countries around the world are celebrating, festivities are already underway in Tokyo, check it out!  Chained to the desk? You can also keep up with the celebration on Twitter by tracking by following @mashSMday or #smday.

How has participating in social media made a difference in your life?

Please share success stories, seemingly random connections that changed your life, and cool social media stories with us… that’s the whole point!

Happy Social Media Day, friends!

Last year’s WordCamp was my introduction to WordPress, and one year later I feel like I’ve come a long way but still have so much to learn.  Two days, two conference tracks, and 15 pages of  typed notes later -  here is a high level overview of key takeaways I learned at WordCamp Chicago, held June 5-6, 2010 at the Holiday Inn Merchandise Mart.

I’d classify myself as a WordPress “advanced beginner,” and I am a user, not a developer,  so I stuck to the User Track and attended sessions on: Using WordPress and Buddy Press for Education, Creating Custom Menus with WordPress 3.0, a WordPress User Experience, session, but for me the meat and potatoes came in the afternoon of Day One.

I was blown away by Amanda Blum’s session entitled “Sitemap to Success” and Scott Stawarz’s session on how to Maximize the All in One SEO Plugin.  So let’s start there.

Every website is selling something.  Is that clear on your site?

Many business cater to multiple audiences, and your website should have a clear call to action for each user group.  After you’ve done the initial leg work of defining what you do and who you serve; address each one specifically and determine what constitutes a success point on your website?  Make sure you create a path to buy!

Amanda suggests starting with the following  four questions:

1. Why do I want crap?
2. Why do I want *your* crap?
3. What is your process to give me crap?
4. Give me crap.

Everything should be a call to action!  On every page what are your options to buy and/or contact for more information. Remove the roadblocks, website design should be supporting content, not the other way around.

That said, Scott Stawarzs’ presented a great session on a popular WordPRess Plugin, called All In One SEO Pack (AIOSEO for short).  Since the bread and butter of a website is its content, ask yourself:  What key words do you want to rank for??

Creating great content is the best way to be Search Engine Optimized, so regardless of what tools you are using for SEO begin by identifying the keywords you audience will use to find your site.  Then write fantastic content and tell a story!  SEO is an important part of the process of improving the volume and quality of search results, and only after you’ve created compelling copy, will the All In One SEO Pack be your blog’s best friend!

Scott offered the following practical next actions steps, which I will use as a guide going forward:

1. Spend 80% of your time on creating new content
2. Spend 20% of your time on SEO
3. Spend 100% of your time helping others
4. Follow Google SEO Guidelines

So you’ve created a sitemap and a plan to get people to take action, you’ve optimized your site for the search engine, but have you backed your site up?

Data losses are very common, 66% of internet users have suffered from serious data loss. Are you prepared?

A perfect way to end this post is with another very important takeaway I had from WordCamp. Chris Jean offered a comprehensive session on Backing Up and Upgrading WordPress – and you guessed it… I can not stress enough how important it is for you to back up your site, both the files and the database.  Make sure you have a strategy to back up your site, before you need it!  After you’ve selected your back up tools, create a schedule, and stick to it, oh yeah…and test the back up too!

Chris suggests the following schedule of how how often you should back up your website:

1. do a full back up at least once a week
2. do a database backup if possible once a day
3. do a  full back up before a WordPress core or major plugin upgrade

Did you also attend WordCamp, what takeaways did you leave with?  Please share the learning!

I am always up for an adventure, so when I was invited to attend the Indy 500 as a guest of Chevrolet I was honored and off to the races over Memorial Day weekend.

As it turns out, this would be my first time at an Indy race, and it was no ordinary adventure! Besides the fact that at 95 degrees it was the hottest Indy 500 in history, I also had a HOT pass, which in addition to media credentials, allowed me Pit & Garage Access on race day, which means all access, baby!

Pace Car & Pit Pass for the Korins!

Within minutes of picking up my credentials, I was wisked away on a golf cart, and taken to meet Good Morning America host Robin Roberts before she hit the track for a few laps in the pace car. Check out the Good Morning America segment of her pace car practice.

Pace Car driver Robin Roberts is race ready after a few warm up laps!

In under 40 hours, I amassed over 675 pictures, rode 130 miles per hour in a pace car around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway,

I was moving 127 mph, of course it's blurry!

watched a parade of 33 race cars get pulled out of their garages and taken down Gasoline Alley,

Here comes Helio's car!

and I stood on the starting grid with Danica Patrick minutes before the green flag dropped!

Danica Patrick stands with Team GoDaddy crew at the Starting Grid of the Indianapolis 500!

What a whirlwind weekend, I still want to tell you about how Chevrolet spoiled a lucky group of Camero and Corvette owners, about all of my celebrity sightings and of course about the race (although admittedly, I was learning from the trenches, I mean the Pit!) – and therefore this story will have a few posts throughout the week…

In the meantime, there are more pictures posted on interactiveAmy’s facebook page. Please “like” me so you can see who else is part of this weekend’s funky bunch… (wink, wink / hint, hint!)

Many thanks to Connie Burke, Adam Denison and Patrick Hernandez with General Motors for the incredible invitation and once in a lifetime Indy experience!  Chevrolet pulled out all of the stops to make this an amazing weekend,  not just for me, but for over 300,000 Indy 500 spectators and race fans all around the world!

Were you watching the race this weekend? Let’s lap it up and rehash all 500 miles of Indy500 fun!