I got an e-mail from Pizza Hut yesterday (we just got a new Pizza Hut in town, which I’ve been wanting for almost 3 years!). I wasn’t sure if it was going to include dirty pictures or not. Check out what it looks like in my e-mail box:

Pretty cool, huh? So I can’t open this in front of my kids because they aren’t 17 yet.

Yes, this was a legit e-mail from Pizza Hut. Yes, it was family-safe.

Turns out the cool people that wrote this wanted to make sure that I knew “Pizza Hut” is a registered trademark, probably so I don’t inappropriately use it. But it did make me think thrice before I opened the e-mail.

Make it great blog. How he makes it great and how we can be relationship geeks, too.

what is a geek? expert, style, passionate, smart… out of 15M bloggers, taht right at least once every 3 months, we are here. We already are relationship geeks. How can we make it better and get bigger, be more successful and outstanding?

When Phil started 2.5 yrs ago he wan’t successful or outstanding… he quoted a lot from others (all the greats).

TheGoodBlogs and MyBlogLog are tools to help develop relationships, see who visits and who is talking to us, linking to us, etc.

Know Yourself First: even if you may not agree with the comment, or if they don’t mention you and how great you are, it’s not about the links, etc. It’s about the relationship – maintain the relationship with people. Trow Worman , who’s topic is “connecting the unconnected,” has a blogroll with 1,200 blogs… he isn’t worried about competition with other’s blogs, otherwise he wouldn’t reach out so much. WHAT IS YOUR BLOG ABOUT? WHAT IS YOUR CORE COMPETENCY, WHERE IS YOUR STRENGTH? Then, share that on your blog. Even when you use someone else’s stuff, wrap your thoughts around that. Write every day, even if you don’t post it, write it down.

Questions:

how do you manage all of the relationships? Phil has a goal to get 2,000 new relationships… he agrees it is hard but uses the tools like MyBlogLog, etc. to manage what’s going on.

how has blogging affecting his day job? He says 2 yrs ago his boss didn’t understand what it is but does now (I’m guessing that they want to leverage that?)

comment about Phil is that the consistency between who he is (as we’ve gotten to get to know him in person) and what he writes is awesome – he is an excellent example of authentic blogging. Question is, what are you thinking (like, deep down, what’s your motivation?)? Phil says his blog is like an advice column for him – and the focus is on the person, not on the technology… authenticity over spell check. If he can’t sleep he’ll get up and type some more…

Explain authentic connection: just be who you are, talking with one person, blogging to an individual relationship and not worrying so much about all of the relationship (Jason – very diff than newpaper)

what do yo udo in your life if people are not supportive ofyour blogging (like, they think it’s an addiction)? For him, his wife was able to actually meet a lot of these people, and seeing those connections and/or e-mails, cards, etc. was very helpful for her to understand those connections. You have to put a real face

blog comments and community are starting to take off – he’s having more trouble tracking the relationships, how do you maintain the relationships once it starts to explode (JibberJobber, yells Kent Blumberg! Go Kent!)? Phil says “what do you expect,” figure out what they want/need… and what kind of relationship they are expecting.