It’s officially released today and is a MUST READ.

While you’re waiting for the book to arrive, you should also check out the free e-book that vividly details David’s scoop on how Fortune 100 companies respond to news queries, how real-time marketing and PR should work and what you can do to capitalize in this 24/7 environment.

To quote David, “In my research, I contacted the communications departments of the Fortune 100 companies and found that only 28 percent engaged with me in real-time. Many of those 28 companies have comprehensive real-time communications programs in place, which I describe in the ebook.”

Check out David’s post announcing the book here.

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So wait till the end and I’ll let you know.

I’m listening this morning to K.C. and the Sunshine Band on my iTunes and I just finished walking a mile around our neighborhood. In the mornings, where I live, there are deer, snakes, frogs and rabbits meandering about. Often when I go out in my front yard I  see the same sleeping beautiful doe with two brand new baby deer sleeping beside her.

At about the same time, my over- abundantly gorgeous pug Willie starts barking and wakes up the poor doe as we make our way out the door.

She wakes up her babies and off they run.

I don’t think about email, blogging, tweeting, or linked-ing-ing while I’m walking. I think about BEING. I think about how more of us need to think about BEING, and less about DOING.

While all these tools in social media: blogging, tweeting, facebooking give us incredible new ways to communicate, it doesn’t mean we have to DO it all the time. Spending too much time on social media or doing TOO much on social media does not guarantee that you’ll have that time returned to you in dollars, customers, or new speaking gigs.

Don’t be caught in the hype cycle of these tools and give up your BEING to them.

Use your time efficiently  – don’t panic, don’t sweat it if you aren’t able to blog more than twice a week and for gosh sakes stop comparing Ashton Kutcher’s number of followers to yours.

Just BE.

Find the best narrative for your social media content and tell your story one post, one tweet and one facebook update at a time. Don’t overload folks with inane chatter just to show you’re on the platforms. Don’t let social media folks talk you into spreading yourself too thin over all these channels so that all you really have is watered down messaging and communities that are fragmented over the different tools.

You can make the same strides without the frenzy and you’ll enjoy it a lot more. Don’t blog without a reason, don’t tweet endlessly and don’t Facebook your 8th grade history teacher to death with updates of how smart you turned out to be. (Sorry, Mr. Wilbanks! I’ll try to work on this.)

Aim for a good meditative balance for all you’re doing online and offline and aim for your work to benefit others first and your bottom line second.

What’s the translation for the title of this post?

BE HERE NOW.

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As a longtime journalist turned online visibility strategist I’ve seen many of my clients apply the power of their social media content to connect directly with journalists and secure media coverage.

The days of just having a traditional PR person pitching you as an expert are long passed. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the old mass pitching methods via fax, spam mail and phone do not see the uptake they once did.

When over 50% of the journalists, bloggers, and media are freelancers it’s vitally important to remember they are actively on the hunt for the next great story because that is how they will in turn get paid for a story.

That next great story could be YOU.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to share insights on how to use your content to “be the expert that shines online” to the media. I’ll also share some client wins that have come through using the processes I’m writing about.

The tips today focus around how you can use your blog content to garner media attention as well as new opportunities for contributing to larger online sites like the Huffington Post or BasilandSpice.com that feed out to many online channels.

Remember your blog content can be repurposed into all your other online channels. (Note: If you’re concerned about copyright of your blog content, then make sure you’ve registered it under the Creative Common License.)

Here are five tips you can use today to attract the media to your blog:

1. Set up google news alerts that match your expertise and and respond to at least major media article that comes through those alerts on a weekly basis. Link to the article in a blog post, and give additional insight (from your perspective) to the article’s topic. Don’t be snarky. Give actionable insight.

2. Subscribe to three enewsletters from publications that cover your topic. When you get those enewsletters make sure you read through them and see if there is a wonderful article you can cite in your own blog and again give your take on the article. Make sure to explain why it’s a useful article to your blog readership and add a couple of your own insights as well. (Extra tip: Go to the actual site the article is running on after you’ve made your blog post and comment on the article itself on the site. Always comment authentically and don’t comment just to get a link back to your site!)

3. Be a news breaker on your blog. Just like a PR person offline spends hours reading the news in your arena and trying to determine how you can comment on breaking news – you can do the same yourself and use your blog to do so. If you’re a fiction writer for instance, you might keep up with the latest sales in fiction and share your insights with your readers first!

4. Don’t leave out the local and regional! Too often we’re focused only on national blogs, media and coverage. If you start with your local coverage, articles, etc. to link to you can begin to catch the local media’s attention through your blog. Once in awhile blog “close to home” sharing some local insight or linking to your local paper. Imagine if your local paper is The Washington Post and the editor is scanning blogs for local folks to comment on business stories!

5. Stop waiting for just the right blog-bite! The longer you wait to start sharing your insight in your arena on your blog, the more the competition will outpace you. Take 30 minutes today and write up ten things you know you could effectively comment on in the news or media world. Start building some content around those on your blog.

You will succeed!

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If you’re ready to truly have independence and thrive both online and offline, then you need to also declare your independence from naysayers.

You know who they are and  you have to compassionately say goodbye to them. They are not only the people in your life that are always the first to say no to a new idea, but also your own negative beliefs about your brand, your offerings or your value to the world.

Does this mean once you say goodbye to them you don’t have to do any more work? That things will just happen? Absolutely not. To make anything happen in this world, you absolutely must be scrappy, persistent and unyielding in your desire to attain your dream.

If you want to attain the dream of being more visible online then you should:

1. Stop listening to people who say social media tools like Twitter and Linkedin.com are useless.

2. Stop listening to viral marketing agencies and PR firms who tell you the only way to get your message out is through bait and switch content and endless affiliate marketing spam techniques.

3. Build your thought leadership online by sharing your insights freely, honestly and often. Stop waiting for people to give you permission to share your expert knowledge. Start providing your community a way to freely access your content on your blog/website in conjunction with other social media networks.

4. Stop listening to people who promise a quick method way to gaining thousands of followers on social network communities with very little real work or effort on your part. There is no quick, easy way to community-building, start one click at a time and keep going.

5. Stop buying into the idea that only a giant PR or marketing firm can do conversational sweeps, define social media touchpoints, or find relevant communities for you to participate in. You can do alot of this work on your own and you can collaborate with the agencies if you do determine to work with them.

6. Stop letting the fear of social media and all those folks who say it can’t be used effectively keep you from you USING it. If you choose not to let your voice be heard through online channels, then you’re missing out on the opportunity to truly effect change in the world.

No go and be vibrantly independent!

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• 10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics (mashable.com)

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For someone (me) who is always trying to balance the online with the offline, I feel your social media junkie pain.

You Just Might Be A Social Media Junkie if…

 1. You keep dropping a note in your collection plate at church instead of a donation. The note says, “Dear Reverend Hill – why have you not yet started a Facebook fan page for Jesus?”

2. Your wife wants you to be in therapy with her, but you’ve told her you will only do it if you can find a therapist who can dispel his/her wisdom in 140 characters or less. (length of a Twitter)

3. You’ve told your immediate and extended family that the best place for them to find out what you’re up to is on Tweetdeck. 

4. Instead of an emergency phone number on your children’s school information – you’ve posted your TwitterID account and told them that is the best way for them to reach you. (The school secretary in particular does not seem hip to the tweeting.) 

5. You volunteered for the Parent Teacher Organization group but only on a virtual level and have promised you will send tweets during the school carnival when the principal is dunked. 

6. Your Mom closed her Facebook account, because she was getting too many Fan messages from you asking her to join your Fan page. 

7. Your husband has a Google alert set up on your name and occasionally searches Google images so he can see what you looked like before you became part of your office chair. 

8. Your neighborhood bunko group has unfriended you on Facebook because they don’t much cotten to you sending status updates like, “I just kicked everyone’s butt in bunko. I’m the bunko queen and these women can’t roll a triple six if it killed them.” 

9. You tell people you and Barack Obama are very close virtually because you joined his Facebook Fan page. 

10. You found your Honors English teacher (Mrs. Whitley) on Facebook and you’re sending her blog posts to redline for you (because after all once a teacher, always a teacher.) 

11. Your husband has banned twittering, facebooking, linkedin-ing from the bedroom. 

12. Your pug starts a very high pitched noise when he sees you reach for your iPhone.

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Wonderfully funny and incredibly talented people abound and the dinner this evening could not have been more hilarious. If you’ve not read anything by Laretta LaRoche, please change that and get her books.

She was the keynote speaker this evening and really delivered! Also Tim Bete (past director of Erma Conference) spoke and he was truly funny as well.

The room tonight was packed full and what a great honor to be among so many talented people.

I’m nervous about presenting tomorrow but I’m wearing my tweet-proof vest so all should be well, plus I’ve got to say the spirit here feels incredibly kind and generous.  I’m going to try very hard to have the audience at my first “Hello, Ya’ll.”

I also got to hang out with Sam Horn, who I really count as one of my mentors and just think it is incredible gift to know. You should also check out Sam’s books!

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I’ll be leaving tomorrow to speak at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference which is a great thrill for me. My client Bill Scheft will be speaking there too, as well as one of my heroes Gail Collins.

Erma is another hero of mine and I started reading her books when I was very young and my Mom would pass them to me to inspire me and give me the gift of humor. I’m taking my Mom, a 72 year old English teacher, who still teaches in an 95% economically disadvantaged school district near Dallas. My mom gets the kids in 9th grade who everyone else has “passed along” but those same kids can’t read and often have no one to believe in them. My mom changes all that for them. Several of her students are now in college and many have gone on to work in other careers as well. She inspires them to do more with their lives.

Erma’s writing always inspires me. It is timeless because it is good common sense and elevates the power of humor and love in our lives. Being a humorist is the hardest writing job one can have, yet Erma did it effortlessly. So before I leave for the trip in the morning, I wanted to share my favorite Erma quotes.

1. Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

10. It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” I’ll be presenting “Overwebbed: Help I’ve Had a Social Media Breakdown and I Can’t Tweet Up”. I’ll also be tweeting from the event so look for hashtag #ebww . I think everyone will be using that one for tweets.

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So grateful to be included in the “Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time To Get Busy” book.

This book is an incredible tome of leading marketers, writers, PR folks and others on the Web. Hope you’ll take time to check it out. And below are all the fantastic folks who contributed to the book itself.

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When I work with clients on Web visibility, I define exactly what we want their social media Economy of Effort plan to engender. I define Economy of Effort in this way – taking the best content and brainshare you can provide and using it in the most efficient and economical way possible to reach your communities through online channels.

In the hype, over-hype, more hype and master hype that the social media “experts” are urging you to buy into about social media profiles, they forget to pass on the real truth that if you can’t keep up with them all, then not one of these tools serve you well.

If you’re diluting your message across hundreds or frankly even five or more social media platforms, fan pages, blogs, twitterIDs – then you’re not utilizing economy of effort in social media. And your return on investment in doing all this work will be very small.

You can’t conquer all communities, you can’t be the answer for every single question on the Web, and you can’t be active on every social media platform. And trust me, you don’t want to be either.

It’s not about the masses, it’s not about how many people are following you on Twitter, it’s about the quality, the congruency and the resources they require from you uniquely to help them.

It’s not about how many comments your blog posts are getting – it’s about setting up a structure for you to blog effectively, even if it’s just once weekly, with valuable and integrity-based content. It’s about using content to its best purpose through all your online profiles and not spending hours generating tweets, blog posts, status updates or weeping over your keyboard because you can’t possibly think of one other “tweet-worthy” thing to say.

Instead, it is about using your efforts wisely. Pick three goals and focus your online efforts toward those.

(HINT: Make it a goal to attract journalists, media and peer publications to your blog or your profiles, so you become a valued expert for them, without the need for PR gatekeepers, agencies and pitches full of pablum to mass media lists.)

Keep in mind all your goals should focus on supporting your community with grace and respect for their time as well as yours. Your community is always more important than you. Your community, by this point, is most likely sick of being interrupted by your Flickr, YouTube, blog posts and incessant tweeting.

We would all be served better if we decided to incorporate what Einstein said, “Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

How to do that?

1. Out of clutter find simplicity – Start slow with your social media efforts. I suspect many of you are already suffering from what I’ve termed “Post-Traumatic Social Media Disorder” and so for you, I would advise you “socialdown” immediately. I know it sounds hard, but you can do it. If you’ve got twenty places you’re juggling online, reduce them to five. Message them so they know where you’ll be and why you’re doing it, and believe me, the ones who really value you will “socialdown” right along with you. In fact, you’ll inspire them to take this step themselves.

Think of it in terms of downsizing, social media belt tightening so to speak. There’s not enough time in the day to do everything well, and keep our work life balance where it should be, so choose to no longer be trapped by ”tiny shiny social media” tools.

2. From discord find harmony – Incorporate a strategic and congruent plan for your brand and your online conversations. Not just superficial junk, make sure that every single thing you’re doing counts for something. Not only counts, but brings you harmony with your community. And most importantly, brings you harmony in your life. Stop being in front of the computer 24/7. Get off the Blackberries, iPhones, laptops, YouTube and walk outside.

3. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity – I feel your pain. I feel your panic about what you might be missing out there if you’re not online all the time and you’re not on all these platforms. That difficulty – that pain- will pass. Give yourself six months and you’ll recognize that it’s nice to see the sun again, it’s nice to not be in constant social media panic mode, it’s nice to have a plan and follow it. Congruently, abundantly and with boundaries.

Sieze the opportunities, I promise you’ll find, if you’ll choose to set yourself free from being everywhere online.

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While many of you might not have the time or inclination to reach out to bloggers, and will want to hire a publicist to help you, keep in mind that you still need to participate as much as you can in terms of blogging, building good content to repurpose as guest bylined articles, and pro-actively thanking (via commenting) bloggers for featuring the book.

The best authors are those who are willing to take that extra step toward connecting with the bloggers whether they have a publicist or not.  Take time to thank and give link love to bloggers who have featured your book.

Put Google blog alerts on books in your vertical and make sure your publicist is reaching out to those books too.

If your publicist is returning results to you that include blogs with just one or two readers, ask how that benefits the book. Part of understanding the blog world is getting your book to blogs that have a strong reader community. It’s not always about numbers – it’s also about quality – but you still need to shoot for blogs with a larger community of readers.

If you have a smart, savvy publicist then you should expect them to build and refine a very strong list of blog, website and online potential reviewers. You also want to look for blogs where the community is active in terms of posting comments to reviews. Also look for blogs that offer book giveaways. There are many of those and they’re very good about considering a book for giveaway.

Always keep in mind that bloggers want good content to give to their readership. Don’t blog-blast pitches that don’t fit the blog’s focus. Don’t rely on traditional PR methods to garner coverage. Don’t just send press releases. Send short pitches that evoke immediate reaction.

SAMPLE:

Dear NAME OF BLOGGER:

I’m writing to you in the hope that you might be interested in reviewing this book, “TITLE OF BOOK.” Here is the book’s website – www.WEBSITE.com . I know that you review leadership books – SAMPLE LINK OF REVIEW THEY”VE DONE RECENTLY , and would love for you to consider this book as well.

Here is a brief bio of the author and a link to the book information online.

Thank you in advance for your consideration!

Best,

YOUR NAME

Remember, your book can be evergreen on the Web. What that means is that long after you’ve engaged or not engaged a publicist you still have the potential for garnering new readers and reviews for the book.

Keep going!

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Here are 5 tips for inspiring journalists, readers and followers to keep coming back for more!

1. Tell them everything, be transparent and ask lots of questions that you don’t know the answer to.

2. If a journalist writes a story about a topic you’re familiar with then take time to dig deeper for your readers in an accompanying post. Recognize the journalist by name (it’s only respectful) and contrast and compare their insights with your own. Stop listening to PR folks who tell you that you have to get your requisite, always the same soundbites down pat. Pat is boring!

3. Be endlessly curious. Every single part of business has its own mysteries. Sometimes we’re all asking the same questions over and over again instead of challenging ourselves to look at something differently. Don’t be a lemming constantly leaping off the dull edge with everyone else. Step back and create new ideas.

4. Don’t make it about becoming a celebrity in your field, make room for everyone to rise to your level of understanding. Do these by asking your readers to ask questions, comment and guest post on your blog. Choose to be different, not “celeb-boring.”

5. Stop trying to be “quotable” and start trying to be perenially memorable.

6. Soundbites don’t drive curiousity, they just get us stuck in the mud of old traditional PR.

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One of the most important things to ask in the new year is, “What movie is my website playing to visitors?”

What that means is to really identify the changes that are driving this new social media technology usage and ensure  you are doing the very best you can to employ those tools as well.

No matter what you are doing in terms of your site, if you’re not incorporating some form of social media with it, then  you really are just starring in a silent movie at this point.

I picked the Buster Keaton clip because in watching it I realized that in many ways the tumbles and turns he takes are similar to how many of the authors and thought leaders I work with feel when faced with the task of social media.

Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.  And as many posts over these five years on my blog have noted, this is a long-term investment you’re making. You’re at an incredible place in the Internet. Having been on the Web since 1996, I can tell you that what we are witnessing is a communication revolution and there is still plenty of time to find your place and your community on the Web.

Information for how to start your own social media mojo can be found freely on the Web by reading key blogs that help you understand how Web 2.0 works and how to tap into its power.

Read David Meerman Scott, Mashable.com, DailyBlogTips, Problogger.net, SocialMediaToday.com and others that empower how you market your messages and how to use online tools transparently.

Keep thinking, “From Book to Brand to Beyond!”

The key is to start somewhere and move forward one step at a time. You can do it!

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