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chrisbrogan.com

Covering social media business strategy and personal power

I’m running the New Marketing Summit for the second day today, and I’m surrounded by a very intelligent group of professional marketers who have come to discern how these newer tools will drive more business for them. When I listen to the more skeptical and cynical in the crowd, I realize that we (and by we, I mean the new media, the bloggers and podcasters types) have to build our interfaces a lot better. For those of us who want to help businesses grow, it’s up to us to understand how to better deliver value back to what marketing needs most: things like lead generation and search value, things like list building and market segmentation.

No matter how many of our fluffy toys make business more human, there are still real, solid goals that need to be met before marketing teams of the world embrace these tools as part of their set.

So today, while I’m at the conference working with the hot exchange of information, I wanted to give YOU my blog ,and have you write your thoughts and ideas on how what we’re doing helps the process.

What value are we giving to the larger communications world? Not even marketing, but how are we helping MEANINGFUL

Remember the Root GoalYesterday

There might be a better picture to describe the intentions of this post. I should start this blog post with a catchy anecdote; I’d better go find a story that matches what I’m looking for. I’m going to go ask Twitter what they think. Once I get that all done, I’m going to stumble, digg, mixx, sphinn, delicious, and reddit the post. After all that, I’m going to add it to LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and everywhere else. Then, I’m going to go comment on 10 blogs that have similar posts, and try to subtly convince people to come back over and visit my site, because hey, there’s a new blog post over here. Hey! Come look at this incredible blog post!

The goal is rarely that. The goal is conversation. Or if you’re someone else, the goal is sales. Or if you’re someone else, the goal is thought leadership. Or the goal is capturing business practices.

It doesn’t require the right picture. It doesn’t require a blog post. It doesn’t require anything very specifically, as much as it requires realizing that you’re doing what matters most to the goal. If my goal is to make money blogging, then I do a really poor job of it. If my goal isn’t about this blog at all, but for something larger, then getting tied up in my stats and things like that means I’m not focusing on the goal

Finding Treasure in the CommentsOctober 13

I found this little gem from Rachel Cornell in the comments to my pirate ship post:

…Here is yet another reason why it’s smart to build relationSHIPS not little relation-dinghies. RelationSHIPS are well designed to withstand troubled waters; dinghies will capsize easily.

Thanks matey for such a great topic,
Rachel

How clever is that? RelationSHIPS versus relation-dinghies.

When she’s not burying treasure in my comments section, Rachel blogs here.

Photo Credit, D’Arcy Norman

Sock Puppet Blues- Brandings LamentOctober 13

Jonathan Salem Baskin makes my blog twice in 30 days. How? This time, the author of
Branding Only Works on Cattle has a ditty about what happens to sock puppets after they’ve used up their good graces. I watched it, laughed appropriately, and knew you might want to see it, also.

What do you think?

25 Excuses You Can Have During the RecessionOctober 13

I was looking through my supplies in preparation of launching my pirate ship, and I came across a whole bunch of excuses that I wasn’t using any longer. I’m not sure where I got some of them, because they sure don’t look familiar to me. Being one to share, I wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to take these excuses and use them yourself, in case you needed some during this economic whatever you want to call it.

Meanwhile, I’m going to just keep pushing forward, creating, linking things together, and seeking business value for the people I work with. Who knows? Maybe you’re in the pirate ship kick with me. But for those of you who are staying behind, I wanted you to have these:

25 Excuses You Can Have During the Recession

TV is a relaxation tool. It’s not a shunt of your attention.
The Internet is more engaging than TV. It must be more nutritious.
Are your reading choices educating and equipping you? Or entertaining you?
How much more educated are you about politics?
How much preparation are you doing versus the actual doing?
Who’s holding you back? If you answered anything b