As a contributing columnist for Search Marketing Standard, who covers usability topics for the search engine marketing industry, it’s always exciting to get my copies in the mail. A perk of being a contributor is that I get complimentary magazines to give away. My husband hands them out in the IT department for the company where he works, showing off his wife of course.

The Spring issue has arrived and seeing the words “Spring 2008″ on a day where we’re expecting snow is sweet. For this issue, I was assigned a topic that required me to download software to explore because I’m not comfortable writing about topics that I haven’t played with. My topic was Flash usability. It was the most difficult article I’ve written to date (poor Andrey, my patient Editor!) It’s called “Is it Time to Reconsider Flash?”. If you get your magazine copy and read the article, please let me know what you think.

Other articles include an interview with Cameron Olthuis on social media marketing. He’s the handsome Founder and CEO of Factive Media. Industry Analysis is juiced up with 4 interesting articles covering social media, search engines, and privacy issues. Eric Ward has a piece called “Linking Analysis: Making Sense of the Mess”. One of my favorite writers, Gord Hotchkiss, wrote “How We Shortlist Our Buying Decisions through Search”.

The Featured Authors section is a regular section where SMS introduces two or more of its contributors. This issue I’m featured and I’m in great company along with Grant Crowell of Grantastic Designs. Grant wrote the feature article called “Add Video Search Optimization to Your Playlist”.

This issue is not only informational, it’s inspiring and educational. Going into its third year, Search Marketing Standard is the pride of the industry. Free copies are available at most search engine marketing conferences and to make sure you get your’s, SMS subscription fees are very reasonable.

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