The Denver Business Journal announced today that Erin Kuwitzky, Principal and Founder of 517 Search Labs, has been nominated for the publication’s annual “Forty Under 40” awards, an exclusive list of 40 individuals who have made significant professional, civic, and philanthropic achievements to the Denver business community. The 2013 nominees can be seen in this week’s February 8-14 print edition of the Denver Business Journal.

Top 40 winners will be featured in the March 22nd issue of the Denver Business Journal.

Happy Tuesday!

After a month off in December traveling the world with my husband it is time to get back at it.

I attended the Colorado AMA happy hour Last Wednesday night at Shannahan’s. For those of you who don’t know me, I have been actively involved in the COAMA for several years and am constantly amazed how this organization has changed and grown over the years. More on that Later.

I was fortunate on Wednesday to have a wonderful conversation with a developer on how we as marketers and technology geeks stay current on the ever changing online landscape.  How to we get out of the rut of only knowing what we know. How do we stop taking what we know as the only way to do something.

Being a small business I take it upon myself to read, read read and test.  As an SEO my job is centered around testing.  As we were discussing the idea of testing it was like speaking to a kindred spirit, who understood that we are only as good as the data we have and can always improve.   Try it and if it doesn’t work we can change it, use the information we learned and apply it moving forward.  Every website, social media initiative and marketing plan should be malleable and ever changing…..growing as your business grows and changes.  We don’t set it and forget it. So why is there this push back against testing?

Maybe it isn’t so much the testing but the fear of failure?

We spent much of our conversation discussing graphic designers and how the new school of designing is based off data married with aesthetic. Brilliant! But what happens to the conversation when the design isn’t based on data but emotion? the love of a color?  trying to be too creative? Honestly, websites get produced that fail.  So how do we change the conversation and the way we work together to utilize more data and less emotion? Is this the right approach is there still something data can’t convey that the human can.  Yes, data doesn’t’ have intuition, but it does provide insight in numbers.

We don’t know everything there is to know. As marketers, creatives,  SEO’s whatever title we put on on ourselves we have to fail. We have to test, test some more and test some more. It is a never ending cycle to constantly improve and stay relevant.

So, it really does boil down to one thing.  What are we so afraid of?

On October 19th, 2012 I was honored to be a member of the inaugural class of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s “Colorado’s Finest.”  This is a huge honor and am excited to be included in such an elite group of people.  This isn’t simple a great award to win, but an opportunity for me to get involved with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Over the past few months I pledged myself to raising $2500 to help fund research, families pay for outrageous drug treatment costs and other support they might needs. Cystic Fibrosis doesn’t affect a large percent of the population and therefore many drug companies don’t invest money into finding a cure. Most if not all if the CF research done today with money raised through each states CF foundation.

The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Colorado recognizes that there are many outstanding young professionals in the state who exemplify leadership qualities, are active in their volunteer roles and have excelled in their business communities.

The CFF honored nineteen of Colorado’s outstanding young professionals, chosen by our nominating committee, for their professional, charitable and influential accomplishments, in this inaugural event, Colorado’s Finest 2012.

The Colorado’s Finest Young Professionals Campaign benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s mission to assure the development of the means to cure and control cystic fibrosis (CF) and to improve the quality of life for those living with the disease.

I am happy that with the support of friends and family I was able to achieve my $2500 goal and honored to be named along side so many wonderful young Colorado professionals. I am looking forward to my continued involvement with the CFF and the opportunity this has provided me.

For three years in a row Colorado Biz Magazine has selected the top 25 most influential young professionals in Colorado. This year I was selected out of 261 nominees as one of the top 25 most influential young professionals in Colorado by ColoradoBiz Magazine and Regis University.

ColoradoBiz Magazine selects winners based on a slew of different criteria they defined this criteria as “The judging criteria: professional achievement, impact in the community, obstacles surmounted, and the drive exhibited by the nominee in his or her career. It’s obvious there is much subjectivity involved, and there was ample discussion among the judges as to how exactly a “most influential young professional” should be defined and how certain attributes should be weighted.”

The GenXYZ event was held at Mile High Station on September 27th 2012 and had over 500 attendees. This was such an amazing honor to win and I am so appreciative to all those who nominated me. At 29, I was the third youngest finalist and the youngest female selected.  Winning this prestigious award only pushes me to be an even better business owner, marketer and get even more involved in the community that I love so much.

Thank you!

Check out the full article in ColoradoBiz Magazine.

At 517 Search Labs we know that knowledge is power. That’s the reason we started this our blog. We know that the better informed our visitors are, the better the decisions they will make for their websites and their online businesses. We hope you enjoy your stay and find the our posts and information  contained within this blog useful.