Open Source Blogging

Look, I will be the first one to admit. I f****ed up by installing a social media plugin in 2007, for a short period of time on the GetOutOfDebt.org site. The WordPress plugin would randomly submit a post to Digg and other similar sites to help save me time. I didn’t like the way it worked and felt uncomfortable with the approach so I pulled it.

But apparently I somehow managed to piss off Digg in the process and they blacklisted GetOutOfDebt.org. If you try to Digg a post from GetOutOfDebt.org now you get an error message.

This … Continue Reading

The Web 2.0 Expo starts this morning. I’m up early to give my keynote.

My title? “You don’t need a social media strategy, here’s what you do need.”

See, when I got together with a bunch of bloggers this weekend many of them said that companies are asking them for help with their social media strategies. One person said she was asked to help evaluate “social media tools.” You know, like TweetDeck or Twhirl which lets you use Twitter better than just the web page.

Our whole industry has gotten completely off track by this kind of lame talk.

How did we … Continue Reading

Over the past month, I've had a large amount of flying time to Europe and back. That means it's been the perfect time to catch up on my reading.

Below are books that I've read and taken something significant away.  I believe they can help you too (these are in no particular order).

#1 - Content Rich by Jon Wuebben

I recently had the chance to chat with Jon, and subsequently read his book. Here's my take: if SEO copywriting and content creation is important to your business (it should if it's not), this is a must read. Jon knows … Continue Reading

I just finished a speech at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego where I discussed the trend of "marketers as publishers" for about an hour.  Great group, excellent questions. During the speech, we discussed social media applications like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (among others).

I spoke at an OMS event six months ago, and the number of people using these three social networking applications have easily doubled (as measured by a raising of hands) over that time. Social media is literally part of a marketer’s life today. … Continue Reading