It never occured to me until today how hard it is to contact Twitter support with a unique request. On the Twitter Support page, they’ve got lots of information but no help on how to contact them unless you’re reporting spam (in which case you simply tweet to @spam).

After about 10 minutes of digging, I found a link that will allow you to open a new ticket for contacting Twitter support.

Without further adieu, here is the link to open a new ticket with Twitter Support.

It’s been almost six weeks since the incident with US Customs at Winnipeg James A Richardson Airport. In that incident, the officers took away my NEXUS membership card and told me my membership would be terminated.

Earlier this week I checked that status of my membership online – still says active. Hmm. I looked a little more into the appeal process. Looks like US Customs has to send me the details of my “violation” in writing and then I can appeal it. But I haven’t received that yet either.

I placed a call to the Canadian Customs officer at the airport – she’s been very helpful, even before this incident when I was just trying to change my last name. Her system also says that my membership is active.

What does this mean? Not sure. The officer thought it could just take a long time. Honestly though, given the sensitivity of the program (TRUSTED TRAVELER) you’d think they’d disable that right away. After all, I don’t need the card when using the iris-scanner at the airports. If my account is still able, I wonder if I can still use it? I won’t, of course, one thing I’ve ALWAYS been is 100% honest. I’m not about to change that.

So we’ll see what the next few weeks bring, see if that customs officer can find out anything for me and whether or not I can get my membership reinstated.

NOTE: If you’ve been considering NEXUS, please don’t let this discourage you. It’s actually really awesome and SO useful. I highly recommend it.

Last Monday, February 15, was a provincial holiday here in Manitoba, Canada. I decided to drive down to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Why? Well, it was a nice day and I wanted to go for a drive (I find long drives in my beloved Mustang extremely therapeutic), I wanted a few groceries I couldn’t get in Canada and I was dying to know what it would be like to enter the USA after my experience less one month before.

Got to the border and it was not busy. There was a lane with two cars, and I thought I saw another lane open – turns out I was wrong so I did some fancy steering to go back to the initial lane. When I got to the booth, I explained where I was going and why. As usual, they ask whose car it is (mine, don’t know why they always ask) and why I was going alone. Well, I like playing the music I want as loud as I want it. I didn’t say that though. A scan of my passport later and I was sent to the garage for inspection.

No one else was in there, so there was no wait. But I got out of the car, emptied out my pockets and purse and was told to flip my pockets inside out. Wow. So I go wait in a little room for a bit and they come out and tell me I can go. Great! Off I go to finish my drive where I picked up about $40 in groceries and filled up on gas.

I was expecting this. I don’t know if this is something that will happen every time, but I would guess that yes it will. Returning to Canada would be a snap I figured.

Nope. Got sent in for secondary inspection there too. This time I really felt the interrogation. I also found it interesting how one officer drew my attention away from what the other two officers were doing with my car. It made me very nervous. But, after a while, I was on my way again.

So, now I know that I will likely have to allow for extra time if I’m crossing the border as I will expect to be taken for secondary inspection. I can handle that.

I have never, ever lied when crossing the border. I declare everything, big and small. I’m always honest about where I’m going and why. Despite the hassles of the past six weeks, this won’t change.

However, I am still pursuing answers about what happened in January and what I can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Still no answers, but as soon as I hear anything, you can bet I’ll be posting it.

Affiliate Summit West 2010 started this weekend in Las Vegas. I was honoured to be a speaker at this conference.

I knew the Winnipeg airport would be a little bit crazy, especially flying internationally. But I am a member of NEXUS, a trusted traveler program between Canada and the US.

Important note to the story: I changed my last name this past fall. Changing all my documents was no problem, but the folks at the NEXUS office had trouble getting everything updated. After a few visits in November, they assured me everything was updated. Today was the first time using NEXUS since doing that update.

Sunday morning (this morning), I got myself to the airport for 4am. After one hour of waiting in lines to check in and wait for US Customs to open, I waltzed past the long line at customs and up to the NEXUS line. A quick scan of my irises later, I had my printout to give to the customs officer and I could proceed to security.

I handed my print out to the woman who did not appear to enjoy working at 5am. She looked up code and informed me that I had let a document expire on my NEXUS account and therefore was in violation of the program. She proceeded to interrogate me about where I was going and why. I explained that I was scheduled to speak at a conference on Tuesday morning and that I’ve done this many times before. She grilled me on whether or not I was getting remunerated and whether or not people pay to attend this conference. My answers – I do not get paid to speak at the conference (other than my regular wages paid by my Canadian employer) and yes people pay to attend the conference.

Told that this was NOT allowed, I was waltzed into the US Customs and Immigration office and handed over to the supervisor for interrogation #2. By this time, they had all my ID, my business card, and my integrity. I went over the same details and again I was told, people CANNOT go to the United States to speak at a conference that people pay to attend. The supervisor seemed aghast when I said that I had done it many times before – he likened it to admitting I’ve done these horrible fraudulent activities in the past. He informed me that I was lucky I’d never been caught before, and that the other hundreds and thousands of Canadians who go to the US on a daily basis to speak are also “lucky” they’d never been caught.

Finally, my punishment. I was told that they would be lenient with me and that I would be “permitted to withdraw my application to enter the United States.” But that I needed to wait for the paperwork to be completed.

45 minutes later, I’m sat down in a little room for the “paperwork” – which ended up being the third interrogation, fingerprinting, and a mug shot.

This guy was a little bit nicer and tried to explain things to me, but I still had to go over my story again and again be scolded for what I was trying to do and had done in the past. I gave my weight, height, marital status, employment information, etc.

Another 30 minutes later, the paperwork was finally done. After being told that my NEXUS trusted traveler status was now revoked for life, they started finger printing. However, the program kept freezing and after three tries, they decided I didn’t need to be finger printed and have a mug shot done since they finally admitted they didn’t think I was knowingly trying to do anything wrong.

At 7am, I was on my way home.

SO! Why was I turned away? What are the rules around this?

All travelers to the US must go on a Visa. Now, as Canadians, we don’t require a physical Visa. But if you’re going for business, you’re traveling on a B-1. If you’re going for pleasure, you’re traveling on a B-2. Most people will never know this.

The documents surrounding this confuse me greatly. But here’s what I found on the US Department of State’s web site:

Download the document here: Business Travel to the United States – What Type of U.S. Visa Will You Need.

The documents the customs officers actually gave me seem to indicate that the issue lies under the category of “employment”. That, regardless of whether I was compensated for speaking or not, I’m taking the place of an American who could have done the same thing. They did not seem to care that speakers are selected for their credibility and knowledge. Maybe that’s because of all the blank states I got when saying words like “affiliate” and “search engine optimization”. Who knows.

I’m at a loss now. Although I was not formally denied entry, my record is now marked for life with this “incident”. I go to the states a lot. That’s why I got the NEXUS membership. I don’t know what this means for me, speaking at future conferences.

Many are saying “well I guess now you lie and say you’re just attending.” Except that I can’t do that. If I were to be caught lying about the same issue that brought me trouble this time, there consequences would be much less pleasant. And honestly I don’t condone lying to any peace officer – customs, police, etc.

What I want is to ensure this doesn’t happen again, and to continue my life and career just as I was, with minimal trouble.

Was this a “quota” issue? Did this happen because of a glitch with my NEXUS membership, so I was flagged as an easy person to turn away? I don’t know. NEXUS will for sure be getting a phone call from me this morning. They didn’t know what they were doing in November and as a result, I now have a record, I lost my trusted traveler status, I will forever be scrutinized when crossing the border, I cannot fulfill my commitment of speaking, and smaller things (but greater to my heart) like not seeing my dear friends whom I only see a few times a year at conferences like these.

Thoughts and your experiences are welcome.

Funny, pointless and a waste of time – does it get better than this?

Begin! Make sure you leave your statement in the comments.

Pick the month you were born:
January … I kicked
February … I loved
March … I karate chopped
April … I licked
May … I jumped on
June … I smelled
July … I did the Macarena With
August … I had lunch with
September … I danced with
October … I sang to
November … I yelled at
December … I ran over

Pick the day (number) you were born on:
1 … a birdbath
2 … a monster
3 … a phone
4 … a fork
5 … a snowman
6 … a gangster
7 … my mobile phone
8 … my dog
9 … my best friends’ boyfriend
10 … my neighbour
11 … my science teacher
12 … a banana
13 … a fireman
14 … a stuffed animal
15 … a goat
16 … a pickle
17 … your mom
18 … a spoon
19 … a smurf
20 … a baseball bat
21 … a ninja
22 … Chuck Norris
23 … a noodle
24 … a squirrel
25 … a football player
26 … my sister
27 … my brother
28 … an iPod
29 … a surfer
30 … a homeless guy
31 … a llama

What is the last number of the year you were born:
1 … In my car
2 … On your car
3 … In a hole
4 … Under your bed
5 … Riding a Motorcycle
6 … sliding down a hill
7 … in an elevator
8 … at the dinner table
9 … In line at the bank
0 … in your bathroom

Pick the color of shirt you are wearing:
White … because I’m cool like that
Black … because that’s how I roll.
Pink … -because I’m NOT crazy.
Red … because the voices told me to.
Blue … because I’m sexy and I do what I want
Green … because I think I need some serious help.
Purple … because I’m AWESOME!
Gray … because Big Bird said to and he’s my leader.
Yellow … because someone offered me 1,000,000 dollars
Orange … because my family thinks I’m stupid anyway.
Brown … because I can.
Other … because I’m a Ninja!
None … because I can’t control myself!

We’re having some technical difficulties but @RavenJon promises we will have a demo.

Jon is showing off his desktop background, a Henshaw original painting.

And now he just yelled at me to pay attention. In the mic. Hmph.

Jon explains how the tool got started, dealing with the tedious tasks and made it into an automated process. Now the Raven tools are growing and growing with lots of new features all the time.

Whether you’re agency or in-house, it can help you manage your campaigns and keep track of your sites, help with keyword and competitive research, link building, contacts, content management, social media monitoring, search engine rankings, Google analytics integration and more.

In Raven, you can set up profiles and within those profiles you can manage one or many sites.

The dashboard has all the web sites for that profile with quick links and options for each.

RESEARCH

The research assistant tool allows you to research your own or competitors by domain or by keyword

• In Jon’s example, he uses “seo tools” as the keyword which returns related keywords, CPC, number of results, volume, etc. What’s awesome about this tool is how it allows you to add the keywords to your manager or SERP tracker with one click.
• Click Save View to see this later or run a report on it.
• Also in the research assistant is the Page Analyzer tool. Enter a URL and it will find relationships and ideas in regards to location, businesses, people and keywords.

DASHBOARD

Keyword Manager

• Includes Google AdWords data, links and SERP tracking for your keywords.

Competitor Manager

• Compare your site rankings with your competitors. You can also set up alerts if anything changes for you or your competitors.

Event Manager

• Add events like newsletters, publications, etc., and overlay that event onto your other reports (like traffic, SERP traffic).

Raven reports are downloaded to branded PDF documents. (awesomesauce!!)

LINKS

• Take the domain that you want a link from and run it in the quality analyzer report and the tool will give a grade out of 100.
• If you decide you want that link, click “add link” on the toolbar (when you’re on that site) and fill in the details. Tons of options, including assigning that link to someone else.
• Sorts your links by status (queued, requested, active, etc.)
• The Web Site Directory will get you tons more information about the site you flagged for a link.
• Contact them for a link
• Once it’s online, click “add link” again and update the status to Active.

Other options:

• Link status (check every month to see if anything has changed)
• PR change, Nofollow, Link removed, Etc.
• Email alerts

Jon went through the notification and alert options – totally customizable.

Jon mentioned that all reports can be exported; you don’t have to use their reports.

CONTENT

Content manager

• Useful for a copywriter to save content to and then have someone else approve it.

Blog manager

• Put in blog posts and schedule them for publishing

SOCIAL

Persona Manager

• Great for more than one social persona (other employees, corporate personas, etc.)
• You can log into your social network sites from the toolbar
• Twitter module is available for extra data about that account. You can also tweet from this manager. Custom URL shorteners will be available in Q1.

Social Media Monitor

• Partnered with social mention
• Set up as many searches as you want (your own or competitors), pick sources and choose whether or not to be alerted daily
• Report show buzz, sentiment graph, daily mentions etc.
• For each result, choose a sentiment and the sentiment graph will update

KnowEm

• Integration with this tool, further integration hopefully coming

Omgili

• Search forums using keywords

SERPS

SERP Tracker

• Compare competitor SERP ranking side by side
• Change display settings (turn on/off competitors, search engines, Google AdWord data, baseline data)
• Trending available for up to six months of data. Cached results available!

Jon stealthily showed what search engines are available for this tool.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics data is imported into the Raven reporting tool. Overlay trendlines and events over the GA data.

Report Wizard

• Report settings include report name, brand template, report template, scheduling options and date range. Choose to email the reports directly to the client.
• Drag and drop report pieces and drag them around to choose order.
• Reporting options galore. Far too many to be able to mention here.
• All report sections have an option to add summaries.
• Jon says you can templatize these reports. Is that a word? If not, it should be.

Admin

• Add users and roles and the user will only see the modules they have access to.
• Rolls apply per web site.
• JavaScript snippit available to allow for user login access.

Other Stuff

Messaging, tasks, contacts and more!

Aaaaand we’re done. Kickin’ ass and taking names. Or business cards.

I enjoy playing poker and this year I want to give PurposeInc’s Poker Tournament a shot.

DK is an awesome guy and has asked that, as a mandatory part of registration, players and guests blog about their charities of choice.

There are so many wonderful charities out there. So many causes and organizations have touched my life. Those charities and organization save lives every day, though breast cancer research, diabetes research, children’s hosiptal donations and more. My charity also saves lives, in a most different way.

My charity of choice is the Winnipeg Humane Society. Not only is my company, Canada’s Web Shop, a WHS supporter but we also are redesigning and rebuilding their web site with new features that will make it even easier for people to adopt a pet, become a foster parent or donate to help the WHS keep up with the growing expenses of more and more animals in their care.

Thsoe who know me know that I am a massive animal lover and if I could, I would probably become a crazy cat lady. I donate regularly to the Winnipeg Humane Society and as soon as I’m back from PubCon Las Vegas, I’m hoping to adopt a second kitty.

Every month, hundreds of dogs, cats and other animals are turned into the humane society. Every month, not nearly enough find homes. And every month, the Winnipeg Humane Society struggles to find room for these animals that just so desperately want forever homes.

Pets can save lives. For those suffering from depression, a pet can make the difference between life and death. I know that for myself, my kitties have helped me through my darkest times. Having a furry friend that gives unconditional love can lift people from depression and even suicidal thoughts.

If you can’t adopt a pet for yourself, please consider donating to your local humane society.

Hey good news for those who travel by air frequently, or even infrequently! Canadian Air Transport Security Authority issued a bulletin to front-line officers outlining the new policy.

Security officials can no longer require you to remove your shoes before passing through the metal detectors. This means no more scrambling to get your shoes off while holding up impatient people in line behind you. No more embarrassment over your mismatched socks or socks with the big hole that your toe pokes out of.

One exception and this should come as no shock to anyone – passengers heading to the United States. The standards set by Washington overrule the new Canadian policy.

Another exception occurs after a passenger has set off the metal detectors. At this point, the passenger can be requested to remove his/her shoes.

Passengers can still voluntarily remove their shoes. In fact, that’s what I’ll be doing since I often wear steel toed boots. If I know my boots are going to set off the metal detectors anyway, I might as way save everyone some trouble and remove them right off the bat.

This policy is effective immediately, though won’t be in the operating manual until the next edition is released.

Here’s hoping this will lead to a little more fluidity and a little less pain next time you’re travelling through a Canadian airport.

Information from: Yahoo! Canada News.

It’s 4:30 on Friday afternoon… about to close out a beautiful week of weather here in Winnipeg. Except that it’s pouring rain right now. I suppose we were due. Too bad though, I was hoping to try out my new roller blades this afternoon.

I’m posting on a new blog – The Tipping Glass. It’s a fun place of random posts with a few bursts of pure inspiration. Go check it out.

Another place I’m blogging regularly is at the Canada’s Web Shop Blog. No real surprise there since I’m the Director of Online Marketing.

My blogging schedule slipped as I haven’t written for Search Engine Journal in several weeks. I must get back to doing that.

It’s all so odd given that I’ve always emphasized that I’m NOT a writer – I’m a numbers girl. But that’s okay, I write these posts, encourage others to as well, and then I get to be all giddy over all the analytics.

I’m such a nerd. And that’s my Friday afternoon.