MackCollier.com

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#Blogchat Topic for Sunday: How You Can Use Topic Buckets to Blog More Often

One of the things I’ve always tried to do on this blog is share with you what’s worked for me.  Earlier this week I wrote a post called ‘Done is better than Perfect when it comes to blogging‘.  This post got a lot of interesting feedback, but the point I wanted to make was that when you blog more often, you become a better blogger.  That’s worked for me, as well as other bloggers I know.

Now, another reason I wrote that post was because it’s something I intend to do this year: Blog more often.  Here’s why:

As with a lot of you, my blog is technically a marketing tool for my consulting and speaking.  So really, this blog at its core is a glorified business development tool.  In theory, the more I blog and create valuable content for my readers, the more my awareness grows, and the more often I will get work from this blog.

Now for the past three years, my blogging here has followed more or less the same pattern:

1 – From January through March, I typically blog more than any other time of the year.  A big reason why is because for whatever reason, work is typically slow around the first of the year.  So I have more time to blog, plus I need to blog more to get more work leads coming in.  In 2011 and 2012, March was my biggest traffic month of the year.

2 – Around April or so, more work leads start coming in.  Which is good, because it means I am busier.

3 – By July and August, I am typically swamped.  I usually have to turn down work.  Now on the surface this seems like a great place to be, but the mistake I have made every year since 2010 is…when I get super busy in the second half of the year, I stop blogging.

4 – By November and December, work has slowed back down.  A big reason why work has slowed down is because…I’m not blogging as often!  When work picked up a few months earlier, I decided to focus on the work, and let my blog get put on the backburner.

5 – So around January or so I start blogging like a madman all over again, and by March or April the biz leads start coming back.

 

I mention all this because I’ve begun to realize that my blogging inactivity every Fall was keeping this blog from really going to the next level.  I realized this in 2011, and planned on blogging consistently throughout 2012.  But then I got the book deal for Think Like a Rock Star, and convinced myself I needed to focus on writing an amazing book versus writing an amazing blog.  So this year I decided to re-dedicate myself to blogging more often.

Then a few days ago I saw this video from Michael Hyatt explaining how he grew his blog to over 300K visitors a month:

Notice in the last couple of minutes how Michael talks about the growth of his blog. He started blogging in 2004 with only 110 visitors a month. After 2007, he was still only at 700 visitors a month, but the next year his readership spiked to 20,000 visitors a month.  One of the reasons that he credited for the huge jump in the fifth year was that he made a commitment that year to blog every weekday, or 5 times a week.  He says that was a big reason why his blog took off.  Heading into 2012 I realized that my blog was too important NOT to blog much more often than I had been.

And from participating in #Blogchat I know that many of you are having the same problems.  You want to blog more often, but coming up with ideas is sometimes tough.  Something that has helped me is organizing your blog’s focus into Topic Buckets.

The basic idea is this:  Pick 2-5 main topic areas that you want to cover on your blog.  For example for me, I currently have 4 Topic Buckets:

1 – Blogging tips and advice

2 – Case studies on how rock stars and companies can better connect with their fans

3 – Case studies on how companies are and can use social media better

4 – Promotional, either talking about speaking I am doing, work, etc.

Now the great thing about Topic Buckets is that they really help you organize your posting patterns.  You may be trying to think about how you can blog 2-3 times a week, but if you can create 2-3 Topic Buckets, then all you have to do is write one post a week for each topic, and you are set!  Also, it’s a good way to keep track of what you’re blogging about.  For example, if I look back on my posts over the last 2 weeks, I might see that I haven’t really written a post that comes from one of my buckets, so I know I need to try to address that one soon.

Now even with this approach I’ll still sometimes run out of post ideas.  A great tip I have for helping find topic is via Google News searches.  I search for terms like ‘music marketing’ and ‘brand evangelists’ and ‘social media case study’.  It’s a great way to keep up to take on news involving these topics, and typically these searches are coming from sources that are different from the same blogs and sites that are being bounced around on Twitter and Facebook.

So if you are like me and wanting to blog more often, check out #Blogchat on Twitter tomorrow night at 8pm Central.  Hope to see everyone there and hope 2013 is a great blogging year for all of us!

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Some Thoughts on Monetizing Twitter Chats and Getting Sponsors

As we close in on March, #Blogchat will have its 4th birthday, having started on March 22nd, 2009.  And over the past 2 years I don’t think any chat other than probably Jessica Northey’s #CMChat has done a better job of bringing on sponsors and monetizing.  And over the past year or so, I’ve had more and more current and potential Twitter chat hosts ask me for advice on getting sponsors for their chats, and other ways to monetize.  I hesitate to give advice because I can only talk about what worked for me, it’s not a guaranteed formula that anyone can replicate.

Having said that, the one thing that has always driven any attempt at monetizing #blogchat has been answering this question: If I do this, how will the #Blogchat community benefit?  If I was trying to monetize via sponsorships, I would ask how the sponsorship would benefit BOTH the sponsor and #Blogchat.

But if I had ever started trying to monetize #Blogchat because I simply wanted a new source of income, then that would have changed the dynamic completely.  Then the end goal becomes making more money, and it’s a very slippery slope to go down, because if making more money is your top goal, the benefit to your Twitter chat community can easily take a backseat.  Which can lead to the community resenting your efforts to monetize, and the whole ball of wax quickly backfires and you lose what allowed you the chance to monetize in the first place: Your community.

So my advice is if you want to monetize, make sure there’s a clear benefit to your community from doing so.  I have turned down several sponsorship opportunities simply because I didn’t see how the sponsor’s involvement would benefit #blogchat and make it worth the community’s time.  Likewise, I have turned down some brands that wanted to sponsor #Blogchat simply because I didn’t think it was the most effective way that brand could use its money.  There’s a potential short-term loss from doing this, but in the long-run it benefits you.  I’ve had very little pushback over the last couple of years as I started selectively bringing on sponsors to #Blogchat.  The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive to having sponsors and I hope that’s because the people that show up to #Blogchat every week understand that I’m not going to bring on a sponsor unless I think it’s a good fit for us.

For example, there’s no sponsor for #Blogchat this month.  Why?  Because I couldn’t find a sponsor that I thought was a good fit for us.  There’s no need to monetize just for the sake of monetizing.  If it works for both the sponsor and #Blogchat then awesome.  But if not, then I walk away.  BTW I could not be happier with the recent sponsorship that #Blogchat had with Paper.Li and I’ve roped Paper.Li’s Community Manager Kelly Hungerford into writing a post here soon that will go into more detail about that, and Paper.Li itself.

So if you are running a Twitter chat and want to bring on sponsors, here’s the steps I would follow:

1 – Always start the monetization/sponsorship discussion by asking yourself this question:  How is this going to benefit this community and help me take the chat to the next level?  It is FAR too easy to think that you need to start making some money from your Twitter chat in order to justify the time you spend with it.  On this issue I will side with Twitter chat organizers because I don’t think a lot of the people that participate in Twitter chats really understand the amount of work that the organizers put into them.  It can easily become a part-time job.  But as an organizer, I think you will ultimately make MORE money from your chat if you focus those efforts around how that money can help you grow the chat itself.

2 – Make sure that people know that you are wanting and accepting sponsors.  In 2011 I did 7 Live #Blogchats, and these events were my main source of income that year.  Here’s how they got started:  In early January 2011 I was crunching the numbers to see if I could afford to attend SXSW.  I realized that it was going to cost well over $2,000 for my flight, badge, hotel and food.  There was just no way I could justify spending that much money.  I was pissed, but I refused to give up on going to SXSW.  So I started brainstorming ways to come up with the money for the trip.  Completely on a whim, I threw up this post here asking if anyone wanted to sponsor a Live #Blogchat at SXSW.  Amazingly, within 15 minutes I started getting offers from potential sponsors, and within an hour the main sponsor was on board.  I. Was. Stunned.  But it goes to show that you can’t assume that sponsors will come to you, you have to let them know that you are interested.  BTW if you are interested in sponsoring #Blogchat next month, now’s a great time to email me for details.  I would advise you to create a page on your blog with sponsorship details like the one I have here for #Blogchat sponsorships.

3 – When you find a sponsor that is interested, make sure you structure their involvement so that it enhances the chat experience, instead of detracting from it.  One way I do this is by being extremely picky about the topics of the chats during a sponsor’s involvement.  Whenever I flesh out the topics for a month that a sponsor is involved in #Blogchat, we work to find a happy medium between covering topics that benefit the sponsor, but that are also interesting and valuable to the community.  The last thing you want to do is bring on a sponsor, and suddenly change the topics to subjects that benefit the sponsor, but have little to no value for your community.  That’s a big signal to the community that bringing on the sponsor changed things, and not for the better.

4 – Make sure the sponsor will get their money’s worth.  When the sponsor is interested, have a frank discussion with them about what they want to see happen as a result of the sponsorship.  And don’t settle for ‘oh we just want more exposure’.  Figure out what positive change you want to happen for the sponsor as a result of being associated with your chat.  Maybe it could be signups, maybe it could be a trial of the sponsor’s service (like Paper.Li did last month), but there needs to be something that the sponsor can measure and when their sponsorship ends, they can look at and easily decide if the sponsorship is worth their time and money.

Here’s an example of a sponsor I turned down.  They provided hosting for bloggers, and although their service is very highly-rated, I felt the price-point would be too expensive for many #blogchat members.  I told them that a sponsorship would likely get them few if any new signups, and wouldn’t be worth their money.  Even though they were ready to pay, I turned down the money.  You have to look out for the best interests of potential sponsors as well as your chat community.

5 – Always strive for a win-win-win solution.  When the smoke clears, you should be able to look at see how you benefited as the chat host, how the chat members benefited, and how the sponsor benefited.  If all three parties don’t benefit, then it doesn’t work.  Always strive for a solution where everyone wins.  Oh and if someone has to take a slightly shorter stick, make sure it’s you.  It will benefit you in the long-term.

 

So there’s some thoughts and tips on getting sponsors for your Twitter chat based on what’s worked for me.  Your mileage may definitely vary, but I hope this is helpful.

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How to Make Your WordPress Blog Mobile-Friendly In Less Than 60 Seconds

Oh how I love quick and easy solutions!  I’ve been meaning to make a mobile-friendly version of this blog for a while now, and it just stayed buried on my To-Do list.  Then a couple of weeks ago I was out and I checked Facebook on my iPhone and someone linked to a post that Peter Shankman wrote.  I pulled it up on my iPhone and what I loved was the site was optimized for a smartphone!  It just served up the post, not the entire site, so it was much easier to read on my iPhone!

Then earlier this month I saw someone mention WPTouch as a plugin that optimizes your blog for viewing on smartphones, and I decided to check it out.  First, here’s what this blog looked like on my iPhone before I added the plugin:

Yeah you’re not reading that without some serious pinchin’ & zoomin.  So I went and installed the WPTouch plugin, and less than a minute later, here’s what the blog looked like on my iPhone:

MUCH better!  Now you clearly see the headline, date, plus number of comments!  Same content, but it’s been optimized to improve viewing on a mobile device.  I went in and changed it to show the full post title and this is what that looked like:

I like that a bit better!  And if you click on one of the posts, here’s what it looks like on your iPhone:

So much prettier than before!  If you want to add WPTouch to your own WordPress blog and make it mobile, it could NOT be easier:

1 – Log into your WordPress dashboard.

2 – Click on Plugins

3 – Search for WPTouch

4 – Install it

5 – Activate it

You’re done!  60 seconds, tops, you can probably do it in closer to 30 seconds.  Then you can go in and edit some of the features as I did.  It will be interesting to see if my mobile traffic, especially from iPhones, increases any.  See, you get the best tips and tricks at #Blogchat 😉

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The 80/20 Rule is Alive and Well in #Blogchat

I honestly don’t spend a lot of time diving into the stats and numbers behind how people are participating in #Blogchat, because ‘what gets measured gets managed’ too often.  But I decided to check out the numbers this week since Paper.Li is on as sponsor for December.

What I thought was interesting was that almost exactly 80% of the tweets came from the top 20% of the contributors.  There were a total of 250 contributors to the #blogchat hashtag last night.  Of those:

The Top 10 contributors accounted for 34% of the tweets.  That means the top 4% of the contributors were responsible for over a third of the tweets.

(Sidenote:  I was the top overall contributor, and accounted for roughly 5% of the total tweets.  Lesson:  It pays to be an active member of any online community you are trying to grow.)

Past that, the Top 20 contributors accounted for approximately 51% of the tweets.

The Top 50 accounted for 79% of the tweets.  Since there were 250 contributors, that means that 20% of the contributors created 79% of the tweets.

In other words, 80% of the content is being created by 20% of the people.  Those Top 50 contributors have a HUGE impact on the entire flow and tone of the larger conversation taking place.  Again, it’s no accident that I was the top contributor because when I take an active role in participating in the #blogchat conversation, I have more control over shaping that conversation.

This is exactly why I constantly harp on the need for brands to actively participate in the online conversation around their brand.  That conversation will happen with or without your brand, so why wouldn’t you want to take an active role in that conversation, and as a result have more control over its flow and tone?

So if you are trying to build an online community, remember to always think about how you can reward the behavior you are trying to encourage.  For example, there’s a couple of things I want to encourage each week with #Blogchat:

1 – Great conversations.  So I try to respond to every reply I get, plus I am constantly asking everyone questions about the topic at hand to get them engaging with me and everyone else.  Plus, I will scan the tweets and see when others are making points, and I will ask them to expound on their point, or maybe I will offer a counter-point.  The bottom line is that there are a lot of smart people in #Blogchat, and it’s up to me to find ways to get them to share what they know.

2 – Participation by newbies.  I will be the first to admit that I never see about 90% of the tweets in #blogchat.  There’s simply too much happening, look at the transcript, there were over 2,000 tweets.  At best, I could see 300-400 of those.  But if I ever see someone tweet that it’s their first time joining #Blogchat, I will always reply to them and thank them for coming.  Because what better way to encourage someone to keep participating in a chat than by responding to their first tweet in the chat?  And I am constantly asking other #blogchat regulars to please welcome new contributors, and to help them with any questions they have.  I cannot tell you how awesome it is to see 2-3 other #Blogchat regulars welcome a newbie before I can even reply to them 😉

If you have started a Twitter chat or a Facebook group or a message board, have you seen similar stats as far as contributors?  What have you done to reward engagement within your community?

 

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Paper.Li is #Blogchat’s Sponsor For December! (Plus All Topics For December)

I am so excited to announce that Paper.Li will be sponsoring #Blogchat in December!  If you are active on Twitter you have probably seen your friends sharing their Paper.Li pages.  It’s an amazingly simple way to curate and collect content from multiple sources.  For example, I created a Paper.Li, told it to use the #Blogchat hashtag as a content source, and this was the result. Could. Not. Be. Easier.  What I love about this is it’s an easy way for everyone to catch up on the links shared during and after #Blogchat, plus it gives a little more exposure to the people participating in #Blogchat.  Which is always a good thing.

So here’s the topics we will cover in December(#Blogchat happens on Twitter each Sunday at 8pm Central):

2nd – Curating Content in the Workplace  – We’ll talk about how companies, organizations and small businesses can curate relevant content for its employees and stakeholders, especially blog content.  This could be via a new blog, an internal wiki, an email newsletter, a Paper.Li, etc.  Also, we’ll talk about how this really helps the company get everyone ‘on the same page’, as far as what type of content to be reading, what guidelines/rules to be following, etc.

9th – Email + Blogging – This is always a fun topic, we’ll explore ways that email can help us grow our blogs.

16th – Creating your blog plan for 2013 – This is possibly the most important #Blogchat we have every year.  We’ll talk about how to create a plan and strategy for our blog for 2013.  Here’s a hint:  A great time to actually create this plan is the last week of the year, when everything is pretty much dead anyway due to the holidays.  Why not take advantage of the downtime by creating your blogging plan for 2013?  This #Blogchat will help you figure out how to get started.

23rd – Christmas content – We’ll discuss ways we can share and curate Christmas-themed content.  Maybe how families can share pictures and blog posts from Christmas morning, how companies can share Christmas videos and pictures from their employees, etc.  And we might even share a few Christmas memories from years gone by.  Hey, tis the Season 😉

30th – OPEN MIC – This happens the last Sunday of every month.  There will be no set blogging topic, so it’s a great chance to ask any nagging blogging questions you have and get some great advice!

I am a big fan of Paper.Li’s Community Manager, Kelly Hungerford.  I love Kelly to bits and pieces.  She told me that not only will she be joining #Blogchat each Sunday in December, but that most of Paper.Li’s team will as well as they can, including the CEO.  Well you might not think that’s a big deal, because as sponsor they should be joining, right?

But here’s the thing:  Paper.Li is based in Switzerland, and so is Kelly and the team!  The reason why they can rarely join #Blogchat is that it happens around 2am Switzerland time!  So Kelly, bless her heart, has been ‘sleep-training’ all this week and getting up at 2am every morning just so she will be used to waking up then, so she can join us at 8pm Central US time on Sunday nights!  Kelly and her team will be joining in on our conversations, and they’ve also convinced some of Paper.Li’s top publishers to stop by as well.  So if you have any questions about Paper.Li during #blogchat, they will be happy to help out.  Otherwise, they will be joining in on our conversations just like everyone else, but we’ll forgive them if they have to sneak in a yawn or two 😉

Oh and finally, Paper.Li has a special offer for you!  As a thank-you to #Blogchat, they are giving all new members a free one-month trial of its Pro service!  Just click the image at the top of the post, and you’ll see the neat-o welcome page Paper.Li created just for #blogchat, and info on how to sign up and get your free trial (no credit card required!).

So I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in December, and glad Paper.Li will be with us to help close out 2012 with a bang!  Happy blogging, y’all!

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Sponsored Post for OverBlog: Five Sundays in September

Note from Mack: This post is part of OverBlog’s #Blogchat sponsorship from September and is written by OverBlog user (and one of the stars of #Blogchat) Linda Bernstein (@WordWhacker).  

How many times did the “factoid” that a month with five weekends happens only once every 823 years appear on your social media feeds this fall? Though Snopes makes mincemeat out of that legend (October 2011 had 5 weekends – how quickly we forget!), September 2012 was certainly special for #blogchat. Overblog, a leading European blogging platform that is re-launching (like, from scratch) itself in the USA, sponsored all five chats. Additionally, three vibrant co-hosts added to the already über-stimulating, aerobically-paced chatter typical of the Sunday night discussions. It took me a couple of weeks to digest all this, but I wasn’t surprised to realize that my main takeaways all looped back to Overblog.

Overblog caught my attention at Jeff Pulver’s #140 Conference (“The State of Now”) June 19th-20th 2012 in New York City. I co-adjunct a social media course in the continuing education program and Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and one thing we always emphasize to our students is that different social platforms are different ecosystems. What’s appropriate and interesting on Twitter, let’s say, may not belong on Facebook. I advocate that unless the check-in or pin is really good, people should not push their FourSquare or Pinterest onto Facebook or Twitter.

When I saw how Overblog aggregates a person’s social into one space AND provides the ability to curate, I though, hmmmm. Let me try. Long story short, for several weeks I was stuck with pink. I had chosen a pink “theme” just to see how it looked, and I couldn’t get out. Happily, Overblog did not give up on me, and I now have a site for what I am calling “My Social Media Stuff.”

Anyway, I learn a ton of stuff each week on #blogchat, but here are six things that hit home with me about blogging during the month of September.

  • We should get organized. I love Nick Kellet’s Listly. I’ve been a magazine journalist for years, and I am a big fan of bulleted or numbered lists. They enable readers to get to the main points more easily. Lists work fantastically in blogs too – not just in the reading, but in the writing as well. But as Nick Kellet was tweeting, an idea was sparking in the back of my mind. Overblog similarly can help us keep our social selves organized. When my entire social is aggregated onto one page, I get to see how much I’m repeating myself. Luckily, I can curate and edit out all the reruns. Every time I see the same photograph or link pop up in my Overblog, I am reminded that with social I need to practice what I preach. Importantly for my blogging, with Overblog I have in front of me in one place what has caught my attention enough so that I’ve put it on social media. Blog topics galore!
  • We should own who we are. Neil Glassman from CMP.LY did a great job of explaining why those of us (and we all wish) who are being paid by brands to blog need to disclose this information on our blogs. But, tra-la-la, this slides over to other meanings of “owning.” We need to be responsible for and about what we say on our blogs. That doesn’t mean we can’t be controversial, but we should always try to fact-check ourselves. Yes, opinions can’t be fact-checked. But they need to be based on something. Even faith can be sourced! And now for the Overblog connection – just about the only thing we can own on the Internet is a URL. That’s why so many bloggers use WordPress and buy hosting for the URL(s) they have claimed. It really doesn’t cost much to own and self host – the equivalent of a few cups of java. Many bloggers, however, don’t feel “up” to the maintenance and expense a WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla site entails, and so go with something like Blogger. Here’s the amazing news. Overblog has many nice themes that require no coding (though they are all fully customizable with HTML and CSS) – and you can tie your Overblog to a self-hosted URL. YOU CAN OWN YOUR BLOG. And it’s pretty no fuss. You can add a blog to the page that has your social, or you can put your blog on a different page under your account.
  • Blogs ≠book chapters.  The chat with Lisa Petrilli was elucidating. Blogs are one thing; books are another. Not everyone is a book writer, but some bloggers have great book ideas. The Overblog connection? This platform makes it easy to practice and see how “chapters” might look.
  • Collaboration is great. Many of us in #blogchat are lone bloggers, but during every “open mic” chat, more than one person raises the topic of how best to collaborate on blogs. Yes, sharing is never easy. (My kids are young adults and I still tell them they have to share better!) But what if you were using a blogging platform that actually facilitates a collaborative blog? Voilà, Overblog. Check out how the folks who put together Social Week NYC (October 15-19) used Overblog collaboratively.
  • Customer service is king, that is, after content. Oh, the buzz on #blogchat about brands who erase negative comments! Such a no-no. We all love brands with great customer service, those who respond to their consumers, and for #blogchat-ters who represent brands, a reputation for good service as well is good content remains a primary goal. I must say that Overblog’s customer service is really blowing me away. Having problems setting it up? They’ll get on Twitter with you. Or email. Or even the phone.
  • We need to keep up with the fast-paced world. Yes, here’s another frequent #blogchat topic: whether email is still important. I could name names because I know where you all, my fellow chatters, stand on this. I also know that we’re concerned about how our blogs look on mobile devices and how and when we should add video. Overblog again to the rescue: You can livestream to Overblog. Yes you can. And Overblog is set up to look good on all kinds of devices. Yes it is.

Overblog isn’t for every blogger. People attached to beautifully designed websites probably might find it redundant. And many bloggers have time constraints that make blogging hard enough. The last thing they need is a recommendation to try something new. Still, give Overblog a look over. You might find it pretty cool. Me, I’m always an early tester and cautious adopter for all kinds of new tools and technology. I’m still in the testing stage, but I’m pretty sure Overblog has me hooked.

For a in-depth look at Overblog, follow this link to Jason Fall’s whitepaper on choosing a blogging platform: here.

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Graphic Recording of the Live #Blogchat at B2B Forum by Veronica Jarski!

I love this!  Veronica was at the B2B Forum last week in Boston doing a ‘graphic recording’ of some of the sessions, and she did a great job of recording some of the key takeaways from the Live #Blogchat!  Click the image to see it full-size.

Here’s Veronica’s blog, and her page with many of her graphic recordings.

Thanks Veronica!

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@NeilGlassman Joins #Blogchat Tonight to Talk Blogger Disclosure

Tonight at #Blogchat starting at 8pm Central we’ll be discussing what bloggers should be disclosing on their blogs plus how they can use disclosure to improve their reputations.  Joining us will be special co-host @NeilGlassman, who is the CMO of CMP.LY.

Tonight we’ll be covering three areas:

1 – From 8:00pm-8:20pm central we’ll discuss when disclosure should be made by bloggers.

2 – From 8:20pm-8:40pm central we’ll discuss how to disclose on blogs.

3 – From 8:40pm-9:00pm central we’ll discuss disclosure on other social sites with an emphasis on Twitter.

 

That’s it!  If you are a blogger that either is reviewing products on your blog or have considered it, make sure you tune in tonight to get some expert advice from Neil on how you should handle disclosure.  To prepare for tonight’s #Blogchat make sure you are following @NeilGlassman on Twitter and also please follow #Blogchat’s sponsor this month, @OverBlog!

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OverBlog is #Blogchat’s September Sponsor Plus the Topics For All Five Sundays!

I’m very excited to announce that OverBlog will be sponsoring #Blogchat in September!  OverBlog is a service that pulls together your social media content from multiple sources (your blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc) and organizes it together on one page!  For an example, here’s Robert Scoble’s Overblog page.  I am looking forward to playing with it and think it could be great for a brand or marketer that wants to establish thought leadership around a particular topic.

Additionally we will have not one, not two but THREE co-hosts in September!  Here’s the entire lineup for this month (see this is another advantage to bringing on sponsors, it forces me to set the topics ahead of time ;)):

September 2nd – Topic: Getting your blog and social media content organized and filtered.  Co-hosted by List.ly co-founder Nick Kellet!  This will be great for those of us that are struggling to manage all our social media presences all over the net.  How much is too much?  Nick will help us figure out how to get organized!

September 9th – Topic: How small and medium-sized businesses can effectively use blogging to built its brand and we’ll also address time management (how do I make time for blogging and social media?)

September 16th – Topic: How bloggers can and should handle disclosure on their blog. Co-hosted by CMP.LY CMO Neil Glassman!

September 23rd – Topic: How to turn your blog posts into a book or ebook. Co-hosted by Lisa Petrilli!

September 30th – OPEN MIC!

So there you have it, the entire lineup for September PLUS thanks again to OverBlog for sponsoring!  I’m excited to meet their team that will also be one of the sponsors for the Social Brand Forum in October where I will keynoting Think Like a Rock Star.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, see you Sunday night at 8pm Central!

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Heading to MarketingProfs B2B Forum & Social Brand Forum in October

Wanted to let y’all know about a couple of events I’ll be speaking at in October.  The first is the MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston on October the 3rd through the 5th.  On the 4th we’ll cap off the first full day with a LIVE #Blogchat!  The LIVE #Blogchat is only open to B2B Forum attendees, so if you want to attend, use code BLOGCHAT to get a $200 discount on registration!  If you’ve never attended a LIVE #Blogchat, they are a blast.  It’s all the #Blogchat, without all the Twitter 😉

BTW Marketing Profs is also looking for a sponsor for the Live #Blogchat.  If your company is looking for a way to get involved in the B2B Forum this is a killer opportunity to not only be associated with a stellar event, but to help make the Live #Blogchat possible.  Remember there will be a ton of brand marketers and small/medium business owners in attendance, so if you want to reach those crowds, a LIVE #Blogchat sponsorship makes a ton of sense.  If you’re interested in learning more about terms and pricing, please email me and I’ll connect you with MarketingProfs so they can help you out.

Marketing Profs always puts on a great event, and once again has a killer speaker lineup.  Hope to see everyone there!

The second event I’ll be speaking at in October is the Social Brand Forum in Iowa.  I’ll be delivering Think Like a Rock Star for the first time as a keynote, and it looks like for the first time since completing the book.  Ann Handley and DJ Waldow will also be keynoting plus there will also be a LIVE #Blogchat at the Social Brand Forum as well!  Perhaps the best part is the rate is just $195 for the first 100 registrations plus that will get you a copy of Think Like a Rock Star PLUS Ann’s book Content Rules PLUS DJ’s new book Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing!

As for Think Like a Rock Star, I am thankfully almost done writing it!  The manuscript is due to McGraw-Hill on September 10th, and I am finishing up the final chapters now.  It has been an incredibly rewarding/inspiring/frustrating/exhausting process, all at the same time 😉  So look for semi-regular blogging here to resume in the next couple of weeks, I’ve missed y’all!