How to Create a Website .... and look sexy doing it

I love me a lot. Yesterday, I bought four domain names of myself. Well, technically, MerchantCircle, the company I work for, bought them. They own me - literally. But that's ok, I steal a lot of thumbtacks and paper clips from them. And if they ever had to eat me, that would suck for them. There's no meat on these bones, everyone would feel gipped and disappointed - much like the women in my past.

MerchantCircle just released an awesome new feature, that instantly pulls all the content from your MerchantCircle listing (think Myspace or Facebook for business owners) and instantly creates a website for you under the domain name you just bought. No need for figuring out how to host the domain, html jibberish, DNS-something-or-other, or paying someone to build it for you. It really is freakin' cool. Check it out below:

Don't I look handsome in that picture? I'd give myself a 4, so you know what that means in the Rule of 13! Come hang out with me and find some good looking people! Anyway, anytime you want to change something, you can just change it on your MerchantCircle listing. There's several different web looks you can go for, some of which you can find under my various web domains I bought:

http://www.kevinleu.com/

http://www.kevinleupr.com/

http://www.klpublicrelations.com/

http://www.bayareapublicrelations.com/

As the great Ron Burgundy said, "Hey everyone, come and see how good I look!"

Sincerely,

Kevin L.

The Vain Narcisstic Bachelor

How I Transfer My Narcissism

Everyone once in awhile I trade in 'excessive love for self' (I had to look it up in the dictionary. I'm a narcissist, not a genius!) and transfer it over to my company. I like to browse Facebook for 7.5 hours of each work day, but during weeks where MerchantCircle makes a press announcement, I tone it down to 5 hours and then work 10 hours on top of that. That's how much sacrifice I make for MerchantCircle. Here are some of our previous press releases - exquisitely written I must say, and the subsequent 'love from the club!' I'm hoping for some of the same later today.

Kevin Garnett summed it up best after he was asked what it was like to win the Championship Trophy with the Celtics, and he said, (but let me put it in my own words): Think back to when you were in grade school. Imagine a bully picked on you every single day. Made fun of you. Embarassed you. Shoved you. Pushed your books off your desk. Ate your lunch. Just going to school and seeing the bully put knots in your stomach. Then imagine one day after relentless torment, you stand up to the bully and with a swift blow, you knock him on his butt. That's what winning this championship feels like. That feeling you get when he's on his butt and you're standing over him. That sense of relief and joy and pride. You've won.

That's how I feel when securing that great piece of press for MerchantCircle. I don't want my name up in lights, I want MerchantCircle's name up there. All my coworkers, my teammates - it's about rewarding them for their hard work.

I love them. Going to work and hanging out with them is a joy. This is how I go to bat for them. The other 48 or so non-press weeks, I go back to loving myself.

Sincerely,

Kevin L.

The Silicon Valley Bachelor

How Wearing Makeup Helps with the Ladies

I took a break from my glamorous lifestyle last weekend to step back into the world of reporting. If you've been counting (which I would be very disturbed if you have), it's been almost 21 months, 3 weeks, 4 days since I've been 'on-air' (not that I'm counting). That's excluding my forays as product spokeperson for MerchantCircle - to which I do a pretty darn good job! It's great to finally be able to put these good looks to use again. Sometimes I feel bad sleeping, because no one can see how good I look in those wasted hours.

So the freelance gig I got was reporting for NADA-TV for the National Automobile Dealers Association Convention at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I got to interview Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford Motors, and Mark Fields, President of the Americas, which was pretty neat talking to two people who ensure the jobs of so many Americans. First off, I had to dust off my makeup - MAC that is. It's the best, and my face deserves it! (Just kidding, it probably deserves plastic surgery). Anyway, everytime I think about MAC makeup, I think about that TLC song '...all the makeup that MAC can make, but if, you can't see inside you.....' I bet they never thought a guy would be humming that song everytime he put on his MAC makeup.

I mostly use makeup to take the shine away, but there are some guy reporters who cake it all over their face, it's quite alarming if you ask me. Then again, could you imagine being broadcast in hi-def, with every pore left open for analysis? I digress - other than occasional weird stares from guys and girls alike, it's actually a pretty good conversation starter. I can't tell you how many situational stories I've been able to pull out of my butt about wearing makeup. It breaks the ice and girls love stories of humor, humility, and modesty.

So go out there and buy yourself some MAC makeup, 'borrow' a dress from your mom, and parade yourself around the house for an evening. You'll feel good about it. And you SURE will have some stories to tell.

Sincerely,

Kevin Leu

The Silicon Valley Bachelor

P.S. Don't forget to hide your 'junk' - Silence of the Lambs style - you'll be glad you did!

Kiss Me Fool!

One of my friends has this ill-conceived notion that people actually read my blog. Little does he know, it's just me typing in the URL from several different computers at several different locations throughout the day to drive up the unique page views. Plus, I just love reading stuff I write over and over, and laughing to myself at how funny I am. Anyhow, I promised him I would write about the application he built for Facebook, that in just over a month, has over 1 million users!

It's called Kiss Me - and you can find it here. My sources tell me (according to him) that it is now one of the Top 20 Apps on Facebook. That's pretty darn impressive. MerchantCircle has a Facebook app that has like 5 total users - no joke - and they all sit in close proximity to me.

MerchantCircle is still the bomb though! We have over 320,000 members now, which is more than any online local business directory site out there (Citysearch, Yelp, and Yellowbook included). My buddy also sent me this link about the Top 7 reasons to work at a Start-Up and I couldn't agree more. Although I would have added a reason 8: Free Booze! And booze makes kissing me a lot easier!

Sincerely,

Kevin

The Silicon Valley Bachelor

Kevin Leu in the Matrix...

.....I feel like a complete nerd for writing that title. But bear with me, it gets nerdier.



So as you may know, up until about a year ago I thought html was short for hotmail (see above, 'about me' section). But recently, the CEO of the company I work for - to protect identities, we'll just call him Bob Smith, IV - decided to up the ante and asked me to start delving into the world of product management, spec writing, basic html, data pulling.... stuff that made me quiver and lay in bed dreading the thought of work. (Actually, I really like to sleep, so it's not that hard. I quiver for a few moments and doze back into lala land.)

My first thought was to go, 'whoa, let's pace ourselves here! It's only been a year, html does not stand for hotmail..... I am still getting use to it.' I thought better of it, so I kept my mouth shut and decided I would learn this thing they call 'html'. I had to learn it, so that I could plug stuff into our newsletters at work. Let me know if I use too many technical terms on you here....

I guess the criteria kind of fit in my realm of 'community relations,' of which I am the 'manager' - thank you very much. By the way, I work for an awesome company called MerchantCircle - with some of the best folks around! One guy in particular - we'll just call him Bryan Ollisa - is the best teacher a non-techie could have. Anyway, he taught me the basics and what to look for with all those back slashes, brackets, a href's, and combinations of letters that no human being should ever have to know. Unless you want to make money.... what losers!



So the most amazing thing started to happen, as I would change things and then go to the newsletter and refresh it, I could see things start to change just the way I had planned it! I would then go back into the code and see all these things and know.... what.... had .... to ..... be ....done. I had to step into the Matrix and sacrifice everything that was cool about me and kill it. My transformation into nerdom would be complete.

I started to giggle - not laugh, or chuckle - but giggle everytime I put something new together. I was calling people over to look at my handy work and I didn't care how dorky I seemed. It was like, 'hey everyone, come over and see how dorky I am!' After awhile, I then put on my iPod headphones and listened to music like all the great engineers before me had done. I never understood how engineers could listen to music and get work done - now I knew. I was like Neo when all of a sudden he puts his hand up and stops all those bullets.


I know html.

Conversely, I will not be writing about dating exploits anymore because I like to spend my spare time at home now learning about the latest progamming software, hacking the iPhone for future web infamy, and hanging out with my little rugrat.

Sincerely,
Kevin Leu
The Silicon Valley Engineer

The Battle For Kevin Leu Supremacy

This is a post from my work blog at MerchantCircle. I figure it has a lot to do with me so I'll give it some love here as well:


Alright, I've already been called narcissistic, so what have I got to lose? So at least several times a day, I Google my name - Kevin Leu - it's a good name. And for awhile I was running second in search results to some champion, child-prodigy flutist from San Diego. There were many nights when I hoped that he would give up the flute and do something more practical with his life, like gardening. Or maybe he could be like a normal kid and play video games all day long or other teenage activities like sitting in shopping carts while getting pushed at full speed into bushes.

Since this kid wasn't going anywhere, I started to think to myself, I have got to do something noteworthy so that I don't lose the battle of supremacy for the name, Kevin Leu. For example, can you imagine what it must have been like to be the other Howard Stern, Howard K.? I was not going to go through life as the other Kevin Leu; this was war!

Right off the bat, I had heard that linking to a site helps bring it up higher in search engine results. Linking is what I'm doing here, with my profile from my last job at Newscenter in Columbus, OH. It's when you create this link going from one website to another that apparently helps out these search results. So I did that a few times from this exact blog and waddya know? My Newscenter bio was starting to come up higher than that champion flutist.... I can't remember his name.

Well this wasn't half bad. I decided to create a blog recently off Blogger - an excellent resource (you can see my blog by clicking here), and start a company, Kevin Leu Productions and Public Relations (don't tell my bosses). Of course I used MerchantCircle to start my business presence on the web (you can see my business here), and I use our blog services as well to write about my business methods. One of the cool things that MerchantCircle lets you do is include all the links you have from any other websites. So I started to cross link all of them - my Myspace profile, my Linkedin profile, my Facebook profile, my blog, Silicon Valley Bachelor, and my MerchantCircle page.

One day later, I checked in and I was flabbergasted! I was now the top 4 results after I Googled my name and 5 of the top 10! I couldn't sleep that night for at least an hour (but then afterwards I slept very soundly, thanks for your concern). Man this was cool stuff. But now let me move on to you, (begrudgingly - I am narcissistic afterall). What this means is that by following some of the steps we lay out for you when you sign up on MerchantCircle, you too may be the most famous Kevin Leu....errrr, I mean the most popular business in local search results. Be on all the different sites that we list for you on your dashboard and link them together. Write blogs and fill in the keywords. And keep tabs on where you show up on Google. It's fun. Believe me - I do it several times a day.

Until next time, sincerely,

Kevin Leu
(The More Famous One)