The media is constantly sourcing blogs and the experts who write them to feature in both online and offline news stories. Almost every single cable news show incorporates experts who are identified only by their blog or website.

Imagine you being that next expert! Imagine saving thousands of dollars on worn-out pitching methods and getting the news media to come to you through your unique content on your blog.

Did you know that last week the AP announced it will officially give bloggers attributions in news stories?

So why aren’t you creating news with your blog?  Be ahead of the stories of the day and offer your expert opinion via your blog before you’re asked to.  (TIP: Don’t make it snarky.)

Stop waiting for a PR firm to make your news for you. The Web has created a fantastic way for you to be directly seen by journalists, freelance writers and news media. In fact, they’re hoping to find you because their editors are tasking them to find experts online who have large communities.

If you are that expert, and they can quote you in a story then it serves the publication as well as you. Offline and online publications will assume that if you’re quoted in a story, you will also link to that story on your blog, Twitter, Facebook etc. and that will help drive more readers to the media publication itself. It’s a win-win.

If you rely only on traditional PR flacks and online PR folks to get you to the media, but are not actively working on your own behalf, then you’re missing out!

Journalists would rather be in contact with you directly. Make it easy for them by creating content on your blog that sets up interesting angles on stories, underlines your expertise, and is well-written so they can source it.

How do you write news hook blog post titles?

1. Look at the headlines on major media sites, and use the same form for some of your blog posts. Here are some I grabbed off MSNBC.com today.

To get to D.C., a Democrat runs away from it
Many Gulf fishermen reluctant to try their luck
Poll: Most still confused about health care
No Verizon, not antenna, is iPhone 4′s big problem
Bombed car from Iraq on display at museum
Body Odd: Screwy in the city?
Tween boys tackle obesity: One family’s story
Airline passengers fight fees   |  Peeved about peanuts
Ouch! Contestant’s face is a melon magnet on ‘Race’
Public employees snooped in Bowersox files

Those headlines are clever, engaging and make you want to read the rest of the story.

You can write the same type of headlines for your blog posts! The job of a good blog post title is to get the readers’ attention. It’s exactly the same with a headline.

My past client Manisha Thakor is very adept at this on her site. Hit her blog and read the last five to seven headlines on her blog posts – you will love them! And then learn from them.

Now go and make the news!!!

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Here are 7 questions to ask yourself about how you are running your blog marathon and how well you are utilizing this long blog-race to get your message out.

Answer them to see if you really are blogging purposefully and at the best possible level of empowering a community with your insight.

1. Do I wait until the last possible moment to blog about something or do I treat my blog as if it really can change the world and make certain I blog the change I want to see in the world?

2. Do I blog with envy or do I blog with abundance? Do I understand it’s a marathon not a sprint and I’m not a viral marketer of ideas, I’m an idea-marathoner?

3. Do I celebrate other bloggers’ successes and insights by featuring links to them on my site and my blog?

4. Do I encourage my community to run the marathon with me by blogging questions openly and know that each commenter can contribute to a greater discussion?

5. Is my blog a “have to” or a “can’t but not” blog? Do I view it as a terrible task to get through or do I see it as an immense conduit for expression and empowerment of my community?

6. Do I have a mission statement for my blog? Do I know what I want to engender with my blog content?

7. Do I understand that I’m not blogging just to gain attention, but rather to educate, inform and elevate?

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Five Reasons to Read: Making News in the Digital Era

1. Chapter Seven: Twitter Dispatches in 140 Characters

2. Chapter Twenty-Five: Be Clever and Be Bold – love this chapter!

3. Chapter Twenty-Three: The Price of a Forgettable Slogan

4. Chapter Twenty-Two: Mission Statements Are Useless – this is a key chapter filled with ton of good insight.

5. Chapter Sixteen: A Good Story Has Great Legs – quote “A great story has legs that in today’s world can travel many miles per hour.”

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(I’ve included the commercial YouTube at the top of this blog post.)

On bad days, I watch it to make myself laugh. While I don’t think I sound all that Southern, the voice in the Geico commercial does tend to grow on you.

It also reminds me how powerful humor is and why it’s so important to use in our lives and in our social media presence. Laughter is the great equalizer for us all.

My great Aunt Florence used to say, “If you can’t say something funny, don’t bother to say anything at all.” At her funeral this was particularly hard on all of us because what’s funny about a funeral?

In a small cemetery, in Mobile, Alabama we all stood in the rain, led by a minister, who was all of 30, and he used humor to ease our grief.

The minister related how on the last Sunday of Aunt Florence’s life she had managed (at 90 years old) to go to church that morning, have him over for fried chicken and turnip greens at noon, and prior to that mowed the front lawn on her riding mower, in her favorite purple flowered floppy hat.

In fact, she was a little bit peeved at the minister because he came a bit earlier than noon and caught her, all dressed in white on the mower clipping the very last bit of the front lawn. She was a staunch advocate of good Southern manners and you never arrive early for supper in the South.

But caught her he did and despite her chiding, they had a great supper and later that night she went to sleep and passed away. When he finished the story, our tears turned to laughter because his story had so perfectly captured our Aunt Florence and her great love for supper, mowing the lawn and her church.

I suppose today I’m feeling particularly Southern and proud because the Texas Book Festival is this weekend and my client Bill Scheft is here among all the other amazing authors that always make me laugh.

So your “Minding Your Southern Social Media Manners” is really about remembering that laughter is good medicine online and offline.

1. Don’t waste time being snarky.
2. Don’t Twitter twerrible twthings.
3. Don’t Facebook-fatigue folks.
4. Don’t blog bad mojo
5. Don’t ever lose sight that life is best lived offline and online with humor and grace.

DM me on Twitter if you’re at the Fest, would love to see you. Twitter @nettiehartsock .

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It’s really time to stop worrying about how you will “look” on the Web if it’s preventing you from wholly participating. It’s not about how you will look on the Web, it’s about being authentic, engaging and real while you’re on there. It’s about sharing your insight freely and championing those in your peer arena who are doing the same.

If I worried about how I “looked” on the Web, I would have been a failure, during the years from 1995 to 2002, because dare I say, I was a full-time mom, writing my technology news stories late at night for Ziff-Davis and Allbusiness.com , Internet Business Forum (now defunct), all for the sake of being able to stay at home with my kids when they were little. I was lucky and blessed, and left a job at a news station to do this.

I mistakenly thought if someone could have seen the real me (mom, pajamas, milk pump, cheerios strewn throughout my hair, typing feverishly at 4am), they would not be paying me to write as a technology journalist or think the stuff I’d written was worthwile.

But here’s the real secret, they can see you on the Web. They know your heart by your writing. They know who you choose to affiliate with by your blogroll. They know how much you care about your readers of your blog by how often you post really good edu-focused content to uplift your whole community.

The Web community can tell a bait and switch a mile away. This community can also tell when you’re not being honest, authentic and mindful of their time.

If you’re going to spend time on the Web building your platform the biggest thing you need to understand is there’s not a dress code, but there is a social 2.0 code.

Take time to learn it and you’ll thrive. You’ll really make lifelong connections. Hey, maybe you’ll even be like me, who got roses upon the birth of my son Gibson, from a client in New Zealand that I worked with for almost three years and never met.

The only way to truly participate in the Web is to give up control over what you dictate your community should find useful. Decide that you are going to focus your energy on empowering the collective and you’ll be surprised at the Web marketshare you’ll slowly gain.

Decide to invite your community to share their ideas, to guest blog at your site, to openly comment and disagree with your ideas. Elevate the discussion and you’ll elevate your community as well.

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Too often corporations, non-profits, musicians, and authors are throwing up a blog and thinking of them as a tiny insignificant ant amongst the more firm terra cotta of an entire website.

In reality, that tiny ant is the key to your long-term visibility on the Web.

If your whole site is not built on a blog platform (like mine is), at the very least your blog link needs to be front and Web-page center on your website.

Web 2.0 is changing everything we thought we knew about websites and how they drive search and build community. All these methods and ideas are slowly being uprooted by this new, persistent, unyielding blog ant. (Think rubber tree plant and what the ant did to it.)

The Web is the rubber tree plant and the blog is the ant.

“Anyone knows an ant, can’t move a rubber tree plant.” Or can it?

IT CAN.

All the major news sites including NPR,  CNN, Washington Post and countless others are incorporating blogs. Not only do blogs provide an immense amount of value in terms of driving search engine traffic, but they also provide an immediate conduit for conversation with your colony.

The conversation that starts with one blog  post is then taken to hundreds of others via the Sharethis widget under each blog post. (This makes it easy for everyone to share messaging out on the Web.)

If you don’t have a way for folks to pass your content on easily after each post, please go to Sharethis and get the widget.

When your content is shared, it in turn grows and feeds your colony, boosts your “link love” and your Google Page Rank and empowers your message.

Having a blog can be incredibly valuable if you’re willing to work to link to other bloggers, blog 3 times weekly and post your blogs out to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. (Work hard, little ant.)

Your blog also opens up a beautiful way for you to interact with your readers. Through comment forms and your own comments,  you constantly underscore the value of your colony and the more important value of their part in the “joint conversation.”

(Side note: On the power of Ants and the colony - (Excerpted from Wikipedia) - “The colonies are sometimes described as superorganisms because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony. 

Ant societies have division of labor,  communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems. These parallels with human societies have long been an inspiration and subject of study.”

Your blog builds your colony for you. Think inspiring, uplifting and engaging and your colony will grow.

The days of websites just serving as adpages or long marketing messaging are gone. The best sites and blogs incorporate real, authentic, story-driven content. We all want to feel a part of a bigger colony.

You see, it’s good to be an ant.

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2. Don’t be chintzy on the decor for the party: Don’t try to get the cheapest website or blog design you can and then hope that people won’t notice they’ve arrived to a dump.

3. Serve fresh, snappy, enticing snacks: Make sure witticisms abound and you’re not grumpy with folks who come to your site or your blog.

4. Don’t stalk your partygoers: If a blogger or reviewer picked up your book at the party, don’t email them incessantly for months afterward asking them when they’re going to post about it.

5. Don’t be the smartest one in the room (even if indeed you are – the only person this rule would not apply to is Stephen Hawking – because he cannot but help be the smartest one in the room. ) If someone is talking about your book and they have a different take on it, unless it’s completely and utterly inaccurate let them have their own opinions. D’OH!

6. Don’t close the party just when it gets going: The only way to successfully work a virtual party is to be in it for the long haul. To that end, don’t just grab a blog, post for three months and then stop after you “feel you’ve done enough.”

7. Don’t be ridiculous: You and your publicist have never done enough, you can always do more. Pick up another tray of your books and start walking the blogosphere party again.

8. Search out the folks in the corners of the room (Web): Don’t just try to pitch to the biggest blogs or online sites, let others be included too. They will feel all the more valued by it. (Plus, the people who are prone to being more shy are always the more interesting ones! Or at least that’s what my husband said when we met and I was the one in the corner.)

9. If you can’t find something nice to say… ok, you know the rest. Just insert the word “post” for the word “say.”

10. Revel in other people, not in front of the mirror, by the door, whilst holding up your book and ignoring your partygoers. Unless there is a fatwa on your head, get over yourself and circulate.

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Ten Ways to Blog the Same Way You Speak: (Note:  If I’ve put these in bold, it probably means you should at the very least read them, and at the most you should try them out.) (Note: They’re all in bold!)

1. If you’re funny, then don’t leave humor out of your writing on the blog. If you think your blog needs to have a “certain voice” – I would challenge you to have that voice be your own.

2. Don’t rant if you disagree. Write with the Lincoln/Douglas debate in mind. People need to come to their own conclusions and the more thoughtful you make the content, the more likely they are to see your side. (Which as we all know, is the correct side, right?)

3. Don’t be dumb and dumber. What you say on your blog can be excerpted by a journalist and read by a myriad of other press folks – so don’t be snarky or stupid if you can be smart instead.

4. If you’re a great storyteller, then occasionally take time to tell a story on your blog and weave it into a bigger idea around your business or book etc.

5. Share your insight – operate in abundance by sharing what will truly help your readers. Don’t do blog “bait and switch” where you just give out miniscule pieces of insight in order to trap readers into your e-newsletters, webinars or new speaking event.

6. Don’t exaggerate. If you’ve not really had a beer with Clint Eastwood whilst fishing for salmon in the great Northwest, then don’t say you did.

7. If you do have a beer with Clint Eastwood while fishing for salmon in the great Northwest make sure you take your Flip camera though and post a vid blog about it.

8. Don’t get a ghost blogger to “punch up” your blog posts for you. Unless they’re going to be there when a journalist asks you to repeat or reference an idea you had on your  blog as well.

9. Don’t spend an inordinate amount of time, drafting and re-drafting your blog posts. Just write them and then let them go.

10. Don’t blah, blah, blah about you, you, you. Make your blog an interesting mini-magazine of ideas, not ALL ABOUT YOU.

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Here is one of my favorite interviews featuring Thomas R. Clifford - Corporate Documentary Filmmaker & Story Katalyst -  “Breaking patterns…Discovering heroes…Igniting conversations”  – TwitterID is ThomasClifford .

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Ten  Ways to Break Bloggers’ Block Forever:

1. “Use the force, Luke.”

* Writing blog posts are part science, part intuition and part just using “the force” (your keyboard and typing!)

2.  Herman Blume: What’s the secret, Max?
Max Fischer: The secret?
Herman Blume: Yeah, you seem to have it pretty figured out.
Max Fischer: The secret, I don’t know… I guess you’ve just gotta find something you love to do and then… do it for the rest of your life. For me, it’s going to Rushmore.

* Blog about that which you love. Truly, madly, deeply. Share the love.

3. Ron Burgundy: I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.

* Keep your ego, your mahogany and your leather-bound books in check. Your readers are the most important ones, not you!

4. Cal Naughton, Jr.: Shake and bake!
Ricky Bobby: What does that do? Does that blow your mind? That just happened!
Jean Girard: Is that a catchphrase or epilepsy?

* Find a good catchphrase to brand your blog and its contents.

5. Ethel: Well, I don’t think it’s very intelligent to keep an electrical gadget on the edge of the tub.
Margot: [in bath] I tie it to the radiator.

* Don’t blog from the bathtub – no matter what.

6. Charlotte: I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be.
Bob: You’ll figure that out. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.

* Don’t blog as someone you’re not.

7. Narrator - “This is a story about a man named Harold Crick and his wristwatch. Harold Crick was a man of infinite numbers, endless calculations, and remarkably few words.”

*Don’t be a blogger of few words. Don’t endlessly calculate the word count of your blog posts. Be a blogger of infinite content.

8.  Dr. Jules Hilbert: What is your favorite word?
Harold Crick: Integer.

*Ask a question as a blog post and get tons of conversations started! Start with one question every Friday, share your answer and encourage others to chime in as well. 

9.  Veronica Corningstone: I told you that I wanted to be an anchor…

Ron Burgundy: I thought you were kidding. I thought it was a joke. I even wrote it down in my diary – Veronica had a very funny joke today. I laughed about it later that night.”

*Blog your dreams – raise your aspirations - blogger love thyself!

10. Ron Burgundy: …laughing and enjoying our friendship, and someday we’ll look back on this with much fondness.

*Don’t give up! Keep at it and you’ll be amazed at the community you will foster. 
 

Some of my fav bloggers:

Erika Andersen, Mitch Ditkoff, Bill Scheft, Phil Gerbyshak, Richard Laermer and Kevin Dugan, Thomas Clifford, Steve Kayser, David Henderson, Britton Manasco, Lois Kelly, Franke James, David Meerman Scott, Arthur Rosenfeld, Alex Skolnick, Steve Roesler, Marty O’Neill , Diva Marketing Blog and most every blog on Alltop.com.

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