{Hey wait, what’s Mozcation?}

SEO Moz is a Seattle-based SEO analytics software company that holds several conferences a year, but they’re mainly in big cities (and not everyone has the time or money to travel to them). Mozcation is an opportunity for “Mozzers” to get out on the road and meet the people who use SEO Moz or listen to their sage advice on search. To choose the two cities they’re going to Mozcation in, SEO Moz has launched a nomination process that has agencies or individuals nominate their community as the next Mozcation location. Obviously, Portsmouth’s vibrant creative and tech community is on it like white on rice.

Cool, how do we win?

SEO Moz will select two communities based on who creates the most creative submission and gets the most enthusiastic response across social media. A Portsmouth based website agency has launched a website about Mozcation, Dan Freund (aka @MyFriendDan) has created videos about why Portsmouth is such a great candidate, and the Portsmouth Breakfast Club’s Melanie Burger wrote this great post about some of the things that make Portsmouth awesome.

We’re pretty lucky geographically: we’re an hour north of Boston and an hour south of Portland. And any distances we can’t cover by car, we cover with the incredible power of social media. But we think Portsmouth is a perfect candidate for Mozcation because we have such an incredibly social and enthusiastic community of creative and tech professionals–then again, you could say that about a lot of places. What truly sets Portsmouth apart is how collaborative we are. Sure, we’re competing with each other as businesses, but we also know how to drop the shop talk and gather for tweet-ups, the Portsmouth Breakfast Club, after-work beers or an impromptu coffee to talk about what we’re learning. Something like Mozcation is a perfect example of how we set aside competition for powerful collaborative efforts that ultimately benefit the whole community. We use social media to mobilize the community for good–a great example is the recent Hoopla party (sponsored by Alpha Loft), which raised over $700 for local arts non-profit 3S Artspace. We might be yankees (little Y, mind you), but we’re not stingy when it comes to sharing learning and innovation. 

So, if Mozcation came to Portsmouth, we’d be ready to share everything we learned with each other and with our online community, too. Bringing Mozcation to Portsmouth wouldn’t just benefit the people who could actually make it to the conference. The Portsmouth ripple effect would share the insights of Mozcation with everyone in our community and our collective social media network, too.

What can I do?

Share and retweet this post! (Like, a lot). Use the hashtag #03801Moz to tell @SEOMoz why you think Portsmouth deserves to be a 2012 MozCation destination. Check out this video by Dan Freund of Short Stream TV to hear from the Portsmouth community about why they think our city deserves a spot on the MozCation tour. (Tell us, too. We’re @Vital_Design). Don’t forget to hashtag your tweet #03801Moz!

We only have one more day to get in submissions, so nominate Portsmouth today! If you’ve created content of your own to nominate Portsmouth, you can submit it here. Don’t delay!