"As a former media sales person and a current writer, journalist and publisher, I’ve spent hours trying to find this information, praying it might dwell within a single credible location that was portable, easily accessible and affordable. During my years of media sales I used a crude version of this book, predominantly for vendor marketing, gaining access to new accounts or persuading agencies to pony up a few thousand dollars extra to coincide with a national promotion. When I became a publisher, I found that I needed to know when many of these events were occurring to draw traffic to our website CouplesCompany.com. How this works is key word searches for many of these events skyrocket during the promotions. Essentially, we needed content people would be looking for with the heightened awareness surrounding a given event.

THE GOOGLE FACTOR

We began updating this calendar again for 2012 in October based upon feedback from our fans, unaware of a pending change in Google. They had updated their algorithm in March/April 2011 and we saw a 50% drop in traffic overnight. That change penalized sites for outbound links. As we used over 1000 affiliate programs on Couples Company, we got hit hard. Fortunately, I had merged the company with two others in January 2011 and we were rebuilding the site and company on the backend and had decided to eliminate nearly all affiliate programs within the redesigned the site. We took the hit knowing when the new site launched in August we'd be able to regain what we lost with the new changes. We also figured that we were safe from another Google change as these usually came every 18-24 months. We were wrong to assume Google was done making big changes.

In November 2011, ten days before Thanksgiving, Google made changes again to their algorithm, giving priority to new content over existing articles on the internet. This proved very costly and a nasty surprise for us and tens of thousands of content websites with decades or more of information focusing on specialized fields without a need for breaking news. The change to Google's algorithm, whether intended or not, gives priority to the multi-national media conglomerates whilst penalizing the smaller boutique and specialized websites like ours. We saw a 30% dip in traffic, again overnight. Several of our exclusive articles and series suddenly stopped drawing. Our shopping mall, set up for the holidays fell from top positions. We were heading into the 4 most critical weeks of the year and Google changed the game plan…AGAIN!

One thing was clear. We needed a strategy and we needed it yesterday. Our little LEEP suddenly moved from useful to critical in generating a steady stream of new content that is timely to compete with the major media companies and re-establish our presence, most notably on Google.

USING THE LEEP TO COMPETE

By using the LEEP calendar, we are able to assign timely stories to our columnists and provide our product development, marketing and retail divisions with a calendar outlining the most opportune time for product releases and sales promotions. We're able to stimulate story ideas that will be in demand, target key words, add elements that make the articles germane to that day, week or month and work within the parameters of the new Google algorithm without sacrificing content, quality or focus. On the marketing end, we're able to integrate key words and promotional events into our social media strategy, marketing and PR, whilst positioning products to play upon various upcoming events that see an uptick in search relevance during the leading weeks. The international nature of the LEEP, specifically with its comprehensive guide to religious holidays helps significantly with our second and third largest markets, India and Europe.

Regaining what is lost in a Google revise does take time, but it can be done and this calendar is proving its merit in reversing the harm. We've started adding additional content featuring various events and the traffic is climbing once again. Our hope is you find the LEEP useful in your work as well." --Laura Dawn Lewis, Creator

THE LEEP

Whether editorial or marketing, you probably have a dictionary and thesaurus sitting on your desk. The LEEP rounds out the must-have, often-referenced tools of writers and marketers. The 2012 LEEP the second calendar in the series. The 2013 version will be released in Q2 2012.

The LEEP deals with dynamic information and thousands of different sources and each date is therefore ‘subject to change without notice.’ Sources include the US and other nations' governments, the United Nations, various professional organizations, non-profits and NGOs, news stories, public and private institutions, websites and cultural customs. Due to the dynamic nature of calendars, it is advised that before you commit resources to a specific day or event, make sure the date has not changed since this book was updated in November 2011.

We've also included several historical events and major events from 2011 in the 2012 calendar. These dates include the major uprisings in the Arab Spring, major disasters, key news stories and Occupy Wall Street movement. Our hope is these dates will be quite useful for journalists, bloggers and teachers.

BIOGRAPHY of LEEP Creator: Laura Dawn Lewis