I am using Google Docs to write something and did the spell check… of course JibberJobber was flagged… surprisingly here are the options:

Hm.  Not even close!  When I have some time (yeah right) I’ll go check those out to see what they mean :p

I started my business with lots of money… no wait, no money.  No money.  Lots of time, but no money.

No one wanted to talk to me, because I was a nobody and people were waiting to see if I was a flash-in-the-pan entrepreneur.

So, with no money, and nobody wanting to talk to me, and lots of time, I wrote.

And I wrote, and I wrote.

I wrote blog posts and articles, and I wrote lots and lots of comments on other blogs.

This became what I now call part of my Blog Marketing Strategy.

If you want to get your name and brand out there, and find evangelists and customers, and get traditional press and new media buzz, you NEED to incorporate blogs into your marketing strategy.

I put together a video recording, about 2 hours, of what I did as part of my blog marketing strategy.  You can get it for $50.  It is one of my favorite recordings, because I LIVED this stuff.

And it worked for me.  And it can work for you.

Here’s what Kathy Bitschenauer, Certified Career Management Coach, had to say about it:

GREAT webinar, loved the way you presented it, and gained a ton of new information and explanations of things that I had not understood, such as what’s the value of Technorati, or the ways to use Google Alerts to your advantage. This is one I’ll review over and over. And I learned how important it really is to get going on creating a blog and writing in it.

Tools.  Your own blog. Other blogs.

Strategy and Tactics.

This webinar is AWESOME (yeah, I’m biased).

If you want it you can order it here.  Or learn more here.

(update: 12/28/09 – had to turn off comments as something with blogs and marketing gets a TON of spam comments.)

My mind is in online etiquette (netiquette) as I’m finishing up my netiquette book.

This morning in my Google Alerts I found out about a post someone wrote that referenced my book.  I have had the post up in a tab for a few hours trying to figure out how to handle it.  I was going to put a link to the post and a screenshot but I really don’t care to “out” this person… since it might be embarrasing to him.

I do, however, want to voice the issue, and share some blog etiquette 101, as I know a few people follow my blogging stuff.

There are specifically two things that this person did wrong.  In fact, as I think about what he did, the words “gross negligence” comes to mind.

Why?  Because he might have tried to write the post to get on my radar (not to be presumptious, but some people do that kind of thing (including ME))… but the reality is once he got there I was, as an ego-driven blogger, OFFENDED.

Okay, maybe all caps is too big.  But still, fixing these two things could have left him with a strong post and had me think highly of him.  Here are the two things:

1. Link back to my *stuff* I say stuff loosely because he could have linked to my professional speakers site, or my LinkedIn book site, or my LinkedIn DVD site, or JibberJobber, or even the Amazon page for my LinkedIn book.  I have plenty of stuff for him to link to but not once did he link out.  He appears to be a new blogger (although a seasoned business person), so I’ll take this as a common mistake.
2. Not include so much of the content from my book. His post takes the main points of an entry in my LinkedIn book’s appendix and lays it all out there.  This can be good (all publicity is good, right?) or bad (he didn’t ask permission to put all of that stuff there… I wonder if Seth Godin would like me to include one full page of his book text without permission?).  If nothing else, asking for permission would be all I needed… or linking to my book site would be good, but all I see here is my ideas on his blog with little attribution (he attributes me and the book, but no links).  It seems like that is just too much info to put in the blog post.

For point #2 I would suggest (if he were a blogging client) that he puts 2 or 3 or 4 points, and then says “to read the rest of Jason’s ideas, check out his book on Amazon or on his book blog.”

I try and do that all the time – quote a little bit of stuff from someone but point the readers to the original post (or source) for more.

Lesson to anyone using blogs as a business or marketing tool: respect others.  Stroke egos of bloggers.  Do that and you can create an army of evangelists for your stuff.

If you followed my Multiple Streams of Income posts on JibberJobber you would know that I am an executive editor for my publisher for the Now What??? series.  I have lofty goals for this series… and today is a special day.  Why?  Check out part of an email I just got:

Hi Janet,

Congrats! Your book is officially at the printer. I’ll keep you
up to speed on how that goes and when we can ship you your
copies…

Your eBook is now live on the Happy About shopping cart. Feel
free to start sending folks there. It’s also attached.

Have a great weekend.

Mitchell

How terrific is that?

The first book was I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? (currently in it’s second edition), the second was I’m on Facebook — Now What???, and this is officially the third book in my series!

Congratulations to Janet, newest author – Sept 4, 2009 is a special day for you!  The next special day is when a box of YOUR books arrives at your door – what a thrill!

Janet wrote a terrific blog post titled The Journey of Writing a Book.

I have a webinar that you should get if you think you have a book in you called Write Your Book.

I started blogging three years ago this month.  It was a fantastic environment where you had your own “bully pulpit” … a place where you were in charge, you had the mic, and you could say whatever you wanted.

I soon learned that bloggers had quite the ego.  They used their bully pulpit to talk about boring stuff (that we were supposed to be interested in) as well as though leadership or subject matter expert stuff.  Bloggers had enough rope to hang themselves with – and some did.  Others became fantastically popular (Seth, Guy, Michael, Chris Brogan), and even internet celebrities.

One of the most empowering, ego-feeding things for a blogger is the comments – or, NUMBER of comments.  When someone leaves a comment on your blog it means (a) you have readers (aside from your momma), and (b) you touched someone intellectually to the point they wanted to weigh in.

Getting comments on a blog fed a blogger’s ego like Golden Coral feeds a hungry boy scout.  There are even bragging rights associated with getting comments.

Read a blog that doesn’t get comments?  You might just be the only reader of that blog.  Obviously, a blog with a few comments (if there are consistently a few), or dozens, or hundreds, or even tens of thousands, really validated the blogger.

And fed their ego.

Fast forward a bit and we come to the evolution, or perhaps the problem (if your ego is tied to your comments): the introduction of other social platforms where discussion can happen.

For example, three years ago I might have written a thought-provoking post and gotten 15 comments on the blog post – my ego is fed, I’m validated, and everyone knows I’m a force to be reckoned with.

Today, however, it’s different.  I write a blog post, and tweet a link to my Twitter followers.  I get NO comments on the blog.

But my tweet gets RT’d 6 times.

And 4 people reply to my tweet with their thoughts.

And 7 people comment on my “status” on Facebook, since my Tweets become my Facebook Status.

There are two problems with this scenerio:

The first problem is artificial… it isn’t really a problem, although it crushes the blogger’s ego.  If you get no comments on the blog, you start to look like a chump… right?  What happened to all of those validating comments?  Maybe you should QUIT BLOGGING?

You might have heard that blogs are dying (they aren’t!)… I think people who see the conversation go elsewhere wonder why they still blog and are somehow convincing themselves they should follow the discussion (as it travels through various platforms), as opposed to continue to initiate the discussion (on their blog).  I think this is a shortsighted mistake.

The second problem is what really irks me.  It is that someone who reads my blog post WILL NOT get the benefit of the wisdom of the crowd.

I try and write my blog posts from my perspective, and always wonder what other smarter folks would say – either agreeing or disagreeing – I don’t care their position, but I do want to get a well-rounded discussion.

It’s no one’s fault, but when people respond a little bit here (Twitter) and a little bit there (Facebook), and even in Facebook they respond on the Wall and/or the Notes section, the conversation is fragmented, and NO ONE can follow it, except me.

It makes me sad that the wisdom of the crowd gets lost amongst the platforms, and no one else can get the value of the conversation.

Are blogs dying?  No.  But there is an interesting evolution of where and how the conversation happens…. and this is an evolution that hasn’t been fun to watch

Today on my JibberJobber blog I announced the Now What??? series, where I have authors writing books, and I’m the executive editor.  It’s pretty cool, although I was jazzed about starting it.

A few days ago I was on the phone with my publisher and said “okay, I’m going to draw a line in the sand.  I’m telling you [and now I'm telling all my blog readers] that I’m going to have a Now What Authors Conference in Fall of 2010 in Salt Lake City.”

The vision for this conference is to have my authors (dozens?  more than 100?) come and learn from people on how to leverage being an author into other revenue streams.

I’ve thought about the buddies I’ve met at NSA, and others who have created various types revenue streams, to come in and speak.  Perhaps some workshops… who knows what it will be.

2 days of fun, education, inspiration, stories, ideas, networking, etc.

This wouldn’t be limited to just my authors… it would be for anyone who has (or wants to have) a book, and/or wants to take their “multiple revenue streams” to the next level.

Exact date? Dunno.

Price? Dunno.

Location? Somewhere in or near Salt Lake City.

Speakers/Presenters? Dunno.

Cool, huh?  What would you suggest to make this event amazing?

I have an idea for a children’s book.  I’ve already started writing it. I got the idea when I made up a story one night, and told one of my kids, and I thought “dang, that’s a good story!”  Weeks later, I still think it’s a great story!

I don’t have any aspirations of developing a line of children’s books.  But my oldest kid is 11, my youngest is 2, which means I’ve spent the last 11 years reading kids books.

“I can write one of those,” I figure.  Geesh, 50 – 70 words is a kids book, right?  How hard can it be?

I know it will be harder than I imagine.  I really have no idea how do to it – what I’m doing now is just working on the story, trying to come up with the right words (it’s easier to write for adults, and just write and write and write, as opposed to thinking about attention spans and vocabulary levels).

The ONLY person I know who has written kids books is Kakie Fitzsimmons, who wrote the Bur Bur & His Friends.  Maybe I can have her on a radio show sometime to chat about what I do now!

I remember the pricing discussion I had with Happy About about my LinkedIn book.  It was more involved than I thought it would be, and we finally agreed on $19.95 for the paperback and $11.95 for the Linkedin ebook, with NO discounts (except for a short while as a promotional thing).

I’ve thought a lot about book pricing since then, as I’ve gotten various feedback from people.  Here’s a line from a comment on Amazon (this is from someone who gave the first edition a one star):

“The book practically does not offer more than I found myself within 2 hours.”

So what does that mean?  Is it overpriced?  Let’s assume that it’s not contentless, or that the issue isn’t that there isn’t any meat… let’s assume this LinkedIn book helps you avoid searching on your own for 2 hours.

What do you make in two hours?  If you have a job you probably make at least $15/hour.  If you are a consultant you probably charge at least $70/hour.

Would a $20 purchase… or an $11.95 purchase, be worth two hours of your time?  Or would it be better to sift through stuff online to find what you are looking for?

That’s a decision the reader has to make, but as I’ve thought about how this book should be priced, and if it’s overpriced, I keep coming back to this: there is value in the book, and I invested my time in providing the value, giving opinions, collecting information, and working on presenting it in a format you could use as a manual/guide to get more out of LinkedIn.

I think pricing it lower would be a disservice to me.  Pricing it higher would be a disservice to you.

I would love to hear what other authors/publishers think about book pricing….

I just saw a thread on a LinkedIn Bloggers pointing to Dennis Kennedy’s Why I blog post.  He quips he blogs because he can’t play the guitar (me too) :p  One of his commentors say “I blog because if I didn’t, I’d explode.”

Fun stuff!

Made me think, though, why I blog.  I’ve been blogging almost every day at the JibberJobber blog for two main reasons (off the top of my head… there are other reasons): SEO and community.

If I don’t blog frequently, I think I’ll lose out on building a solid community (where’s Jason??), and google will think I’m not that important.  But super-frequent blogging (once a day) seems to appease both of those.

Oh yeah, I also blog because I get to develop great relationships with people.  Otherwise I’d just be a website service with no voice, name or personality.  But people learn what drives me nuts, and what makes me happy.  And our relationships can go beyond corporate.  That’s huge.

I started the LinkedIn blog before I finished my book, so that I could build a community there for people who read my LinkedIn book, or were looking for LinkedIn help.  Again, SEO and community.  But it’s been a great tool to help me collect information, thoughts and stories around LinkedIn.  I’ve been pretty good about updating that blog, usually getting in at least one post a week.

I started the Facebook Advice blog with Jesse Stay for the same reason, although we both have been pretty bad at keeping that as updated as we should have kept it.  I really want to resolve that.  I just need another me, and a few more hours a day.  As it is, sleep is getting in my way of being as productive as I want to be

I started this Jason Alba blog because there are things I want to jot down, share, think about, etc. that just don’t fit anywhere else.  Like some very cool You Tube videos I found.  Are rants, or raves… stuff that was just off-brand for my other pages.  I had to clean up my tone a bit when I made this my professional speaker’s page though.

Maybe, at the end of the day, I blog because I’m addicted to blogging.

Or wait, maybe it’s because blogging is therapeutic.

Whatever it is, I can’t image not blogging.

I talk about 2 sins of bloggers.  There are two, absolute, must-haves if you are a blogger and care to have readers.  One of them is to put a “subscribe by email” or “receive posts by email” or some form like that…

When I started blogging all the kewl kids on the block were all over RSS.  RSS is cool technology, that’s true, but I personally don’t like it.  And most people I talk to have NO idea what RSS is, how to set it up, etc.  It’s like jargon… useful but not universal.

But everyone knows what email is, right?  RIGHT?  Why, then, if you are a blogger, do you NOT offer your readers the option to read your posts right in their inbox, in the format they know and love?  If you don’t offer that, you are violating one of the Two Sins of Blogging.

Today, I was delighted to get an email from one of my favorite blogs, written by Kent Blumberg.  Kent one the You Get It award a couple of years ago, but took a LONG break from blogging as he was getting his business up and running.  Why the break?  You’ll have to ask him.  All I know is he started blogging again, and THE ONLY reason I know is because I signed up to receive his posts by email.  Now, I can’t find that form on his blog now, maybe because he planned on not returning, but he had it there a while ago, and because of that, his brand is back on my mind.  Or, in my email.

Welcome back Kent, you’ve made my day. (this is where I should say “go put that form back!” but… I won’t )