I am Famous, Therefore I Blog

August 29, 2008

Ego blogging seems to be the big thing. If the egos aren’t blogging, they are telling other bloggers how bad their ego is. Trust me, I represent – both the ego, and the telling egos off.

So I’m offering a new Technosailor tee-shirt for sale that states very simply, “I am famous, therefore I blog”.

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Be Confident

August 28, 2008

There’s a bit of a meme going around that started with Mitch Joel. He is asking what the best social media practices are and why. Chris Brogan picked it up and it’s finally trickled to me via Micah.

Confidence is sexy. Confidence oozes through and greatness is often catapulted to new levels because of confidence. Of course, confidence is also a double edged sword. Although it will ensure that you will eventually be noticed (at a minimum), it is also the thing that will get you into trouble.

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Issues don’t go away when Congress goes home…

August 27, 2008

Meanwhile, one of the major problems facing this Congress is what to do with the massive Universal Service Fund (USF), which was originally meant to keep the copper phone network working in rural areas. Those areas are pretty well served now. But there is still lots of cash flowing into USF. You pay for it on your mobile phone bill. On your landline bill. On your VOIP bill. Look. It’s there.

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C-SPAN Providing Social Media Hub for Conventions

August 24, 2008

Political junkies are in the prime of their year right now. Tomorrow in Denver, the Democratic National Convention begins with the GOP convention slated to start the week after.

C-Span is offering a social media hub for both conventions with featured tools being video giant YouTube, which will be present at the Big Tent in Denver (see Google) as well as in St. Paul the week later.

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Apples and Oranges, the Rise and Fall of Women Bloggers

August 21, 2008

I have sat on this post for the past few days because the last thing I want is this post to offend. I’ve tossed around the best way to approach it constructively and in an encouraging way. I’d like to consider myself a “friendly” for women bloggers, so with that context, I hope it is taken constructively.

Melanie Notkin, aka Savvy Auntie has built a fantastic site that is a non-mommy blogger mommyblog. It’s actually an AuntieBlog, as the name suggests. I got the scoop from Melanie when I was in Detroit a few weeks ago.

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Business Consulting Etiquette

August 21, 2008

A lot of people ask what I do. Depending on the person, I’m a blogger, or an editor. To others I’m a WordPress consultant. Still, to others, I work with Lijit as I used to work with b5media. Notice I said with and not for.

The choice of words is very intentional. Though I own the work I do, and make it mine (or I wouldn’t do it, to be honest), I am a self-employed contractor. To that end, I am constantly getting referrals, cold call emails, etc asking if I can help company X or person Y do task A, B or C.

Generally, an email will come that says something like this (fictional):

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Fantasy Football for Charity

August 19, 2008

Adam Ostrow, from Mashable, put together a fantasy football league with various people from the social media crowd. I guess they all like to lose, since I was invited.

Regardless, the league will be fun and I’ll update everyone on how things are going, along with standings, etc. The reason why this is interesting is that we are all playing for charity, where the winner has all the proceeds donated to the charity of their choice.

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Findability is a Legitimate Concern for Bloggers

August 18, 2008

On Saturday, I posted a review of my session at WordCamp on Search and Findability. It was hard to gauge at that time how effective the session was at the time I wrote that. Beside my normal annual attendance at WordCamp as a subject matter expert, and several sessions at different WordCamps around the country over the past few years, I was there on behalf of Lijit.

In fact, when I pitched the session on search to Matt (as a core interest of Lijit), I was firmly instructed (as I suspected I would be) that hard pitching the company was off limits. From my perspective as a member of the WordPress community, I wouldn’t have it any other way. It was the same approach that we took at b5media. The company was represented. The company was known as a WordPress shop. We shared war stories with other WordPress shops. But no one on stage at any point pitched b5. It’s non-standard, I think, for any company to pitch their wares at any *Camp.

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Search and Findability

August 16, 2008

I’m at WordCamp San Francisco 2008 today and had the distinct pleasure of giving a talk on Search and Findability. Distinct pleasure because it was the first session of the day at 9am. And if any of you know me, then you know that I don’t do mornings well. :-)

My session was about Search and Findability. There seemed to be a lot of misunderstandings about what the session would be about. Findability is not SEO. SEO is an aspect of Findability. SEO makes a blog findable for search engines.

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Will I See you in Boston? Or in San Francisco? Or in Boulder? Or in Vegas?

August 14, 2008

Just a quick note as I’m getting ready for a meetup in my honor tonight in Boston. If you’re in the Boston area and don’t have any plans for tonight, would love to see you at Boston Beer Works across from Fenway Park. Michelle Wolverton gets all the credit for organizing and pulling the event together on my last night here in Boston (Yes, I did enjoy my first game at Fenway Park the Chapel of Awesomeness, last night!)

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The Psychology of Gap Marketing

August 11, 2008

Gap Marketing. What. The. Heck.

Gap Marketing is the idea that, when you’ve done everything you can to cover the large target audiences, there are still small gaps to fill.

Gap marketing is laptop stickers, teeshirts, even designating wifi network IDs that push the brand.

Gap marketing is finding interesting applications for a product, service or brand outside of the norm.

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