President
http://www.ericward.com
http://www.urlwire.com

Eric founded the Web's very first online promotion services, called NetPOST and URLwire, in 1994.  Eric then helped Jeff Bezos announce Amazon.com's launch, and subsequently won the 1995 Tenagra Award For Internet Marketing Excellence, which was the industry's "Oscar" back then. Since then Eric and his methods have been written about in nearly 100 publications and been featured in college courses about online marketing.  This past Winter, Eric was one of 25 people profiled in Online Marketing Heroes, a book from Wiley & Sons, Inc. Written by Michael Miller.

Today, Eric offers content publicity and link building services, as well as training and private consulting, helping companies learn how to generate organic content awareness via links, publicity and online buzz generation. 

A vehement "white hatter", Eric developed and executed content publicity and linking strategies for PBS.org, WarnerBros, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, The New York Times, TVGuide.com, Paramount, and Weather.com. In 1997 Eric was named one of the Web's 100 most influential people by Websight magazine. Eric also writes the LinkWeek column for search industry news site SearchEngineLand.com, and is a featured contributer to the print magazine Search Marketing Standard.  Over the years Eric has written for Web Marketing Today, ClickZ, MarketingProfs, and Ad Age Magazine.  Depending on the weather, Eric resides in Knoxville, Tennessee or Seagrove Beach Florida. 

More than you probably want to know about Eric
Before the first graphical Web browser was invented, I spent my twenties working for print and broadcast companies in marketing, advertising, and public relations. I hated every minute of it.  I was a Marketing Director for Whittle Communications, where I worked on Special Reports. When Whittle Communications died it's slow painful death, I had the first of my now annual mid-life crisis', and decided I had to change my life direction so I wouldn't spend the rest of it selling ad space. 

In early 1992, I started taking evening school Graduate courses at U.T. Knoxville, where I learned about the Internet for the first time. Back then the Internet was Gopher, WAIS, USENET, and for the adventurous, Lynx. I was hooked. I've been online for hours almost daily ever since, learning and absorbing everything I can about it.  I transformed myself from disinterested sales guy into really interested netgeek, and I loved it. I remember then grad student Mark Andreesen's first distribution of Mosaic 1.0, (Netscape's Great Grandmother), and I was online the day Jerry Yang and David Filo first turned Yahoo loose. Akebono anyone?  Back then Jerry used to help me create new Yahoo categories. 

I emerged from my grad school period with an odd set of skills perfectly timed for the blossoming Web. A marketing and P.R. background and an obsession and understanding of the nuances of a brand new medium. Today, as then, my area of greatest expertise is in helping new web content to find its natural audience, and vice versa. 

My NetPOST service (launched in 1994) was the Internet's first Web site awareness building service, and I now work with FORTUNE 500 clients (though I prefer smaller sites) in the US and abroad. 

I am invited to speak at several conferences each year, including Web marketing, advertising, and Search Marketing conferences.  Here's a session from one of my first conference gig's, back in 1998.  Today I'm writing the Link Week column at Danny Suillivan's SearchEngineLand, contribute articles to the print magazine Search Marketing Standard, and have recently written columns for ClickZ and Ad Age Magazine's NetMarketing (print and online), and was the technical editor for a book published by MacMillan called Strategic Internet Marketing. 

Lastly,  I suppose if industry fame is in any way a measure of validation, then I'm doing pretty well today, as I am one of the 25 people profiled in the just published book Online Marketing Heroes (see cover above on right), from Wiley and Sons.

On the home front, my wife Melissa and I live primarily in Knoxville, but we spend as much time as possible in Seagrove Beach Florida with our boys Noah and Abram. 

Previous Work
The University of Tennessee (Research Associate)
Oak Ridge National Lab (Information Specialist)
Time Inc. / Whittle Communications (Marketing Director)
Various print magazines and directories (Sales)
OMNI International Hotels (Event management)