So I sat down today to write a stellar post about something or other… (It will be stellar, when it gets finished!) The problem is that I got so distracted today by a bunch of tweets with links to compelling articles about writing. So rather than actually writing what I had been thinking about, I spent half the day reading what other people said about writing. And they had some good stuff to say. For example:

Chris Brogan wrote about “The Writing Practice“: I’m writing this to you while I’m waiting for someone to get some webinar software rebooted. I find time like this everywhere.

Copyblogger had a post, “How to Blog Like Shakespeare“: I want to be clear that writing for each of your audiences is not the same thing as trying to write for everybody. Writing for your different audiences isn’t the same thing as writing for Wikipedia.

And again, on Copyblogger, “37 Seconds to Great Storytelling“: We tell you about the power of stories quite a bit. And now we’re able to see what happens in our brains when we encounter a compelling story. But how do you learn to tell these types of stories? Often, just by studying great ones.

So, I have been stretched, encouraged, and challenged by these posts today. And, at the very least, I got this blog post written. Hopefully their words will encourage you as well. I know I have some writing to do…

[photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenorton/ / CC BY 2.0]

That’s the subtitle for the latest book from Seth Godin, Linchpin. I was fortunate enough to get a copy of this book before it’s actually released (because Seth offered a limited number of pre-orders in exchange for a donation to the Acumen Fund and a review of the book). I’ve been a fan of Seth’s writing since Purple Cow. His thoughts on marketing, business, and life have challenged me and people that I’ve worked with for several years. So naturally, I jumped at the chance to read this book early, and am humbled to share my thoughts on it.

So of course, Seth doesn’t just want me to blow smoke about how wonderful his book is. So I really tried to read it with a critical eye…but honestly, I just found myself scribbling note after note, marking up page after page, and tweeting quotes that really jumped out at me. At the heart of the book is the message that we are all geniuses with the potential to create great things–to be artists rather than cogs in a machine. Though I’ve been writing (and getting paid to do so) for more than eight years, I’ve never much thought of myself as an artist. Seth really challenged me to look at everything I do–even the stuff that doesn’t feel like creativity or art–and figure out how to do it differently, better. And the reality is, with Seth’s definition of artist, no matter what you do or who you are, you have the potential to be an artist:

“Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.”

See, artists are the linchpin in an organization. They’re the ones who are indispensable because they “bring humanity and connection and art” to the organization.

The thing that stood out to me the most in Linchpin was the point that Seth made repeatedly about how our culture has been teaching us to be cogs and fit into the machines that are the factories (read: corporations). And while at one point in time our country was based on factory work and cogs fit very nicely, today what a company really needs in order to survive are the people who do not fit into a neat and orderly system–the people who are willing to create new ways of doing things, challenge the status quo, and shake things up.

Honestly, while I think everyone in business (and especially leadership) needs to read this book, an even more important audience would be all the school administrators who continue to crank out the same plans to create the same cogs to fit into machines that no longer exist. It’s a new world order, and in this world the linchpins will be the ones who rise to the top.

I’m all about community. Finding people who share a passion or interest or goal, and then working together to explore and develop those things. And I’m all about stories. It’s our stories that connect us to one another…our experiences, our journeys, our lives that bring us together and help us navigate the paths of our lives.

I’m really excited that this week I found an exciting new community for entrepreneurs. Sprouter.com is a Twitter-esque network aimed at people who are working hard to build their own businesses and bring their ideas to life. Check it out and see if it’s a good place for you to find some inspiration and encouragement for your own start-up. (And find me on Sprouter here.)

If you’re not an entrepreneur, chances are that somewhere out there is a network aimed at something you’re passionate about. Check out Ning.com and search out the group that you want to be a part of. Ask around on Twitter or Facebook to see who might have suggestions for you. It’s important to find community, to be part of a group, and to have others to support you along the way to wherever you’re going.

Well, I haven’t been taking my own advice on this one, so I’m definitely looking in the mirror when I proclaim this Soapbox message. If you’re trying to communicate with an audience, whether you’re selling a product, a service, or just trying to build a network or following, the most important thing to do is Say Something! Now, I’m not saying that you should put mindless dribble on your blog, your Facebook page or your tweets, but your silence will quickly communicate something to your audience: you no longer exist.

I don’t know about you, but if a website isn’t updated since the last time I came, I am not as inclined to stay and look around. If I haven’t received an email from the company whose newsletter I signed up to get, I don’t wonder where they’ve gone… I’ve already forgotten they existed or that we once had a relationship in which they told me what was going on and I clicked on links in their email. Out of sight, out of mind, people.

So, you don’t need to spend hours coming up with the perfect blog post (at least not for every post!), and you don’t need to have the most clever or witty tweet or Facebook status update. But you need to stay connected. Share a revelation you had recently about life, business, the world, etc. Tell people what you’re reading at the moment and how it’s affecting you. Let people know that you’re super busy and probably won’t blog/tweet/whatever as often as you should, but that you’re going to do your best to remain connected. Just be sure that you say something. Something is better than nothing.

So I’m starting a new (soon-to-be-regular) feature on the VOD Comm blog: My Soapbox. It seems that there’s always something that I’m telling my clients they need to be doing on their website, in their business, etc. So I figured, I might as well be telling everybody the things that could help make their site more effective or more SEO-friendly, or what could help their business better connect to or meet the needs of their customers. So whenever you see the soapbox, know that this is something that I’m gently harassing my clients about as well…

This Soapbox is focused on the need for a News Room or Press Room for your website. Whether you have a PR or publicity department generating press releases, you have an outside firm writing and distributing them, or you have one person making up the entirety of your business, it wouldn’t hurt to have a Press Room on your company’s website for two simple (and important) reasons:

1. For journalists or bloggers who want to talk about your company
2. For SEO (or Search Engine Optimization)

Let people talk about you! You can make the life of a journalist easier by giving them the basics to get started on a story about your company or your latest product. In this article by B.L. Ochman (who has an amazing blog on marketing & PR), it’s suggested that in creating your Press Room, you think like a journalist. If someone is interested in writing a story, make sure they have the basics available with no effort on their part. Journalists and bloggers are busy people. So, if you make it easier for them to get to your info, it’s more likely that they’ll pursue a story about your company than they would if they had to pour hours into research about it. On marketing guru Shel Horowitz’s site some of the following are suggested as essential parts of your company’s Press Room:

• Owners and management team bios
• Photos: downloadable, scalable, in 300 dpi (suitable for print publications) and 72 dpi (for online outlets), named/labeled, one for each member of the management team and any products you promote
• Company description and history, including dates, facts and sales figures (or percentage of growth by year)
• A list of products or services and brief descriptions of each one
• Customer demographics
• Audio and video clips with sound bytes about important issues
• Company and product news (with all your releases listed/summarized and linking to the full story)
• In the news (links to actual published articles, opening in new browser windows)
• Contact information for key company players: day, night, cell phone, pager, fax, email (make it easy for the reporter to get in touch with you!)
• Ability to search the site for information, keywords, topics, etc.

Of course, none of that matters if you don’t let people know you have a Press Room! So make sure that it’s obvious to someone on your site, and not tucked away somewhere.

Get more traffic! By having press releases posted to your site (not in pdf form), you create more ways for search engines to find your site. So whether you distribute a press release through the news wires or not, make sure you’re posting those releases to your site in order to give them a longer life (and a broader reach). Even after your release isn’t “current news” anymore, it will live on forever in the world of search engines, which means that whenever anyone is searching on that topic, your site is more likely to pop up in their search. In this article from (my friend!) Sarah Evans, you can get some great tips on how to optimize your press releases for SEO.

So before I step down from My Soapbox, here are a few samples of some sites with great Press Rooms (including a couple non-profits):

• News@Cisco
• Nokia
• American Heart Association
• Heifer International

Now I must get back to work helping some of my clients get their Press Rooms up and running!

Good marketing involves good storytelling. When you can capture your audience in the middle of a great story, they jump in with both feet, listening intently to what you might have to say next, and looking for ways they can become part of your story.

Remember “The Neverending Story” from back in the 80s? (I know, I’m dating myself here…) It epitomized what a captivating story can do in the mind of a child. Remember how the boy, Bastian, found himself in the story–actually experiencing it with all the characters, feeling the excitement and danger–as he eventually took on the role of the hero? When I watched that movie as a kid, I remember wishing I had a book that became that real for me, that sucked me into an alternate reality and let me be part of the story the way Bastian was part of The Neverending Story.

Now jump ahead a few decades. What stories have you found yourself wanting to be in the middle of these days? Is there a company or person whose story is playing out in a way you wish you could be a part of? It’s a whole new world today. With social media and marketing the way it is, you can actually become part of the story. On Facebook or Twitter, you can reply to the stories that are engaging to you. On YouTube, not only can you watch the stories on video, but you could even respond with your own video story. On any blog post you find interesting, you can reply, or even Tweet the post for the rest of the world to see, placing you in the story in a unique way. And with the life that viral stories take on as they resurface on different videos or blogs or Twitter pages, it really can be a Neverending Story that you become part of.

Movie studios have started to figure this out. When the new Johnny Depp movie, “Public Enemies,” was first releasing, Universal Studios brought audiences into the story by using Twitter and Facebook to invite people to rob a bank. And just the other day, the Twitter user @importantdate showed up, hinting at a tea party somewhere around Comic-Con in San Diego, starting the buzz about the latest Tim Burton/Johnny Depp creation, “Alice in Wonderland” (which doesn’t even release until March 2010!), and getting other Tweeps to link to the trailer, thus bringing them into the story and furthering the marketing efforts with very little work on the part of the studio (assuming the studio is behind the Twitter profile).

Other businesses are getting customers involved an experience that invites people to contribute their own content, which essentially becomes free advertising and promotions for the company. Take Chipotle for instance. On MyChipotle, customers can upload videos or photos explaining their unique creations they order at Chipotle. Some of the videos they have there are entertaining enough and of a good enough quality to actually be a commercial for Chipotle, and it cost them nothing to make. Everyday people engage in the storytelling, which is truly marketing for Chipotle. Even the Presidential campaign for Barack Obama benefitted from this kind of experience with my.BarackObama.com, where they invited people to share their own story of hope during the campaign, and gave them social media tools and outlets where they could essentially build their own site to tell their story, explain why they were supporting Obama, and encourage others to do the same. (No matter where you stand politically, from a marketing and social media perspective you have to give props to the Obama campaign for their use of social media! For some insights into how the Obama campaign used digital media to win supporters, and ultimately the election, check out this article.)

I think we’re looking at a phenomenon that could be dubbed “Social Story Marketing.” It’s a social web and a story-driven culture in which we find ourselves living and working today. So if good marketing involves good storytelling, and the social media provides a platform for storytelling that engages audiences on a new level, why wouldn’t we start looking at what we do as Social Story Marketing? I’m going to explore this concept a little deeper over the next few posts, but in the meantime, think about your product or business…what would it look like to engage audiences in Social Story Marketing?

While at the MediaBistro Circus last week, we heard more than one presenter talk about Twitter. Not only that, we heard more than one (probably even more then two or three) of those presenters share case studies of Twitter being used as a customer service outlet. I’m pretty sure we saw the ComcastCares guy or the Ford guy in a few different presentations. The point of each was that Twitter, for a lot of people, is becoming the face of a company. It can serve as the only place where the public can connect with someone who has a face and actually responds to their needs. (And while Scott Monty of Ford is actually a marketing and social media guy, his presence really does serve a customer service role as he represents Ford as a human with a sense of humor and an understanding of the market.)

I watched the Tony Awards the other night, and followed along on Twitter for a good portion of the show. The magic of the hashtag (#) makes following a live feed fascinating. The whole time, my husband and I kept saying, “I hope the producer is watching the Twitter feed…maybe they’ll get it into gear.” But after seeing yet another boom mic in a shot, or hearing more sound issues, it appeared that nobody in the production booth was aware that somewhere outside the walls of the Radio City Music Hall was an audience of people with valid feedback and insight into how the production was appearing on the screens in their living rooms. Now granted, if I were that producer, I may not really have time to care what all those people think. But how much more would people offer their loyalty to a person, brand, or organization when they feel that their observations, complaints, or grievances were not only heard, but were actually responded to! The reality is, businesses need to be far more aware of the life their company takes on in the social media realm. Their ignorance can be just as detrimental as their lack of response. In fact, Jeff Howe, author of “Crowdsourcing,” tweeted today, “Delta customer service=FAIL. How badly? So bad I bet they never read this tweet.”

Beyond the customer service aspect of the business world and Twitter lies the simple fact that Twitter can improve a business. Take this article from the Wall Street Journal. While some companies are still wondering why on earth they should bother with Twitter, others are figuring out how to use it to their own advantage:

New technology has been a game changer, allowing trucks to pick and move to where the customers are on short notice. Kogi BBQ, a truck serving Korean-barbecued meat inside Mexican-style tacos in Los Angeles, became a media sensation earlier this year in part for its use of Twitter, on which it currently has 28,000 followers. Following Kogi’s example, more truck operators have begun using Twitter to post messages on followers’ cell phones, alert customers of their whereabouts and even ask for tips on parking spaces.

Imagine how Twitter could change your business. (And you really should consider this.) Whether it’s giving a face to your company, connecting customers directly to your brand, or making your business a little easier, why wouldn’t you be all a-Twitter?

It’s been a week since I left for NY to attend the MediaBistro Circus and I’ve yet to find the time to sit and sift through all the notes I took at the event. I had planned to do that on my flight home, but I had to dash out after my flight got canceled and changed, and left my notebook at the conference. Thankfully, my friend David was there, and he FedExed it to me. So, I’m hoping to take some time this week to really think about everything I heard and figure out what it all means for me, for VOD Comm, for my cleints, etc. So stay tuned. I hope to pour out all the wisdom I gained from people like TIm Ferriss and Keith Ferrazzi and Steve Rubel in the next few days.

It’s only appropriate that since I’m in the City That Never Sleeps, I’m awake at 3:40 am the first day of the MediaBistro Circus. It was totally a last-minute decision to come to the event, although every time I got an email with a new update about the event I was intrigued. For some reason, last week the email just seemed to speak directly to me, so here I am, in New York City (staying with my wonderfully gracious cousin, Joyce!), ready to be challenged and to learn a lot from the folks at the Circus.

I won’t be blogging from the event, although I will be tweeting, so you can watch my updates on this site or on my Twitter page. But at some point after the event I hope to sift through my thoughts and all the info to share some of the insights. At this point I figured I’d just mention a few of the parts I’m most anticipating:

• From Gutenberg to MovableType: Publishing’s Next Edition: I’m looking forward to this session, specifically as an author and as someone who has spent the last nine years marketing in the publishing world. As content continues to flow from every direction and readers can find what they want anywhere (or just generate it themselves), how can we as writers/publishers/marketers continue to offer compelling content and stay relevant as this world shifts?
• Marketing Renaissance: The Age of the Customer: I’m excited about this session because of the direct implications it can have on my business and how I can help my clients. The description for this one really speaks for itself: Social Media. Search. Customer Engagement. Word of Mouth. Authenticity. These terms are critical drivers in a new era of marketing and advertising strategies. This group of digital marketing experts will discuss how customer behavior is evolving around technology, explore emerging trends and business models that will shape marketing, PR & advertising in years to come.
• Branding, and more… Really, as I scroll through the schedule for the event, each session seems to offer something that will help my business or help me help my clients. It will get mundane if I continue to blather on about each of the sessions and their descriptions. Instead, I’ll take great notes and share insights with you when it’s all said and done.

Until then…

First, let me say that I’m not getting paid to say this. (Although, I’d happily work for Apple if they wanted me to!) I should also say that I’m not a techy geeky kind of girl. So for something involving technology to get me excited enough to blog about it, that’s sayin’ something! However, when I find something I like, something that makes my life a little easier, I like to tell other people about it. Especially as a busy, working mom, anything that saves me time or helps me with day-to-day stuff is worth shouting about! So here are ten reasons I love my iPhone…

10. The cute Paul Frank case my girls picked out for me. It’s rubbery, so each time I drop my phone I can trust it’s relatively protected…and it’s just cute!

9. The iPod comes in handy when I get to the gym & realize I forgot my iPod…or when I’m in the car and I’m tired of whatever CDs are there…or I’m sitting with a group of friends in a random place and the need for music arises.

8. YouTube on my phone! Not only is it great for those times you hear about something “everyone is talking about” and you just have to see it… It also comes in handy when you’re sitting with kids in a doctor’s office, or any other place you have to sit and wait with kids. Even just pulling up their favorite cartoon opening theme song/video makes everyone a little happier.

7. Game apps are great–espcially the FREE ones! My current addiction is Solebon Soletaire (specifically the Baker’s Game Easy), but I also love games my kids can play too, like “Catch A Mouse” and “Whack’em All!” (The only games I’ve actually paid for were for my kids. Again, the doctor’s office waiting rooms are a lot more manageable when they can be playing games and learning their letters & numbers while we wait!)

6. Twitter on my phone has connected me to the Twitterverse in a way my old phone could never do. As the owner of two different Twitter accounts, I use both TwitterFon and Twitterific on my iPhone. Honestly, I like them both (especially after Twitterific’s last update). There are things about each that I like better than the other, but they’re both good enough that I haven’t switched to just one app to manage all my twittering.

5. GroceryZen is one of the few apps I’ve bought. (What can I say, I’m cheap!) However, as a mom, wife, and business owner, this one is a time saver! I can create my lists and even email them to my husband when he does the shopping! I can input my own recipes, and with the click of a button, I can have the whole recipe on my shopping list. There are definitely ways I’d improve this app (and I’ve even emailed the folks to tell them how), but it’s a great app for my life.

4. The Zippo Lighter. Well, it really doesn’t improve my life at all, but when I’m showing people (especially older family members) the wonderful things my phone can do, this is always a big hit. Especially when I can flick my phone and open my lighter…and then turn it upside down and have the phone shake. It’s a real crowd pleaser and comes in handy at those non-smoking venues when you hear “Freebird” and really need a lighter.

3. The camera is great for so many reasons. First of all, the pictures are high quality, so I can actually do something with them besides look at them on my phone. Secondly, my kids love the scrolling action as you look through the photos.

2. Facebook. When the latest layouts for the new FB homepages came out and everyone was complaining, I had no idea what they were upset about since I have been using my phone’s FB app as my primary connection to FB these days. I rarely use my computer for it anymore. It’s just nice to be able to check in & see what folks are up to, and maybe update my own status from time to time…and upload pics!

1. Email. I can actually manage my inbox a little better since I can see my email on my phone throughout the day when I’m away from my computer. I can dump the junk, respond to immediate stuff, etc. For so many people who have had Blackberrys for the past few years, this is not seen as a new and exciting thing. But for me, whose last phone didn’t even have a camera in it, email on my phone is a godsend!

So there you have it. There are probably more reasons to love my iPhone, and I’m sure you have other reasons. I’d love to hear what you love about your iPhone & especially about your favorite apps. So let me know!