Let’s now look at the term bloglightenment, whichI define in this way – using your blog to enrich understanding and the spread of knowledge about your expertise, your book, your product or your market.

What it doesn’t mean is using your blog as a one way marketing conversation. I think it’s incredibly important to start defining why we’re all using the social media tools we’re using and how WE truly want to use them.

As the hype for social media usage continues to rise, so does the misuse and misapplication of these tools.

I believe you should blog the change you want to see in the world. This is the harder path to take, but ultimately it’s the more valuable one to your community and to the world.

This is not as hard as you might think it is. What bloglightenment requires is your commitment to blogging with the full intention of sharing your insight freely and openly so others can benefit from it.

Stop thinking of your blog as strictly a marketing or lead generation tool. Start using your blog to affect change in the way people relate, do business together and lift one another up.

Having been on the Web since 1996, this is the most exciting time I’ve seen because of all these tools and the very real power they bring to communicating truly on a worldwide scale.

Don’t waste one more day of your blogging content on insignificant or bait and switch marketing information. Don’t waste your community’s time by snarky blog posts. Elevate your writing and you will elevate the lives of all those who read your blog.

Take a look at your blog today and see how you can apply blog-ightenment to the content mix. Make your blog personal, meaningful and actionable.

Here are some great examples for you to look at: (Note, some include  past or current client blogs that I think are extraordinary!)

Manisha Thakor

Mark Levy

John Perkins

Toby Bloomberg

Lloyd Dangle

Mitch Ditkoff

Sam Horn

Liz Kitchens

Steve Kayser

Let these bloggers inspire you to bloglightenment! I can’t wait to read your insight!

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Promote Your Book With Social Media

Teleclass :: September 28, 2010

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The announcement has filled me with glee, when I consider that all those Oprah-esque PR insiders who provide you tons of tips, insider secrets, oprah-show advice etc. will also hopefully be cleaned out as well.

If it’s time for Oprah to have a new start, it’s also time for everyone who has ever paid thousands of dollars to consultants just “hoping” they’d get the right Oprah teleseminar-guru-recipe for being on the show to have a new start too.

For those folks, I hope Oprah’s announcement will serve as a wakeup call that you don’t need to rely on PR gurus, or media gurus to get you on the Oprah show. I’ll tell you a secret, the best way to get on the Oprah show is by using your own initiative, being creative and having a unique and interesting story.

I’ll tell you another secret! People have actually been booked as a guest on her show by pitching the show directly through the website form on Oprah.com. People have actually been booked on her show by tweeting out interesting ideas that Oprah’s producers (who are also on Twitter) find and then build a show around.

If you don’t think they’re on Twitter, do a Google search for “Oprah Producer Twitter” and find them yourself. I could give them to you, but it’s time you start doing your own walking! Come on! You can be your own PR guru if you believe in yourself enough.

You too can go back home to Oprah when she starts her new show. The first step is to tap your shoes together three times and say, “There’s no place like Oprah, there’s no place like Oprah, there’s no place like Oprah. ” (Oops, wait, I was channeling a PR guru and what they might tell you.)

Ok, start again. The first step is to come up with what makes you unique and then research Oprah’s website and see if there is already a show they are booking around that topic. Every week they post new calls for guests to pitch themselves.

The second step is to be persistent without stalking! The third step is to be creative about how you want to get on the show. Don’t believe there’s room for creativity? Peeshaw, as my great Aunt Susan would say.) Still not feeling it?

Read this story of how one person got on Oprah by selling tickets to his own show on the sidewalk.

Or how about using a billboard to get on Oprah?

Still not convinced? Read this story about how one woman used the online submission form and kicked ass on Oprah.

Don’t give up. Who knows you might even be featured on the show twice!

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If you think of the Jerry Maguire scene and apply it to your signature line in your email, then make certain you will have them at “hello.”

Five Tips For Having them at Hello: (on your signature line in email)

1. Link to your TwitterID under your name – “Tweet with me TWITTERID”

2. Link to your blog – not just “See my blog here – LINK”, but rather, “See how contrarian I can be at LINK”

3. Link to your LinkedIn.com account- again, put a teensy tiny call to action – Come on you know you want to LINK up – LINKEDIN ID here

4. Change your signature line at least once a month if you can with new innovative short calls to action to your other online platforms.

5. Take your social media IDs on your sig line and make sure when you get a new batch of business cards printed they are also on there as well. It’s not just about having your website on your card anymore.

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Hmm. Why don’t they reveal them? Perhaps because they themselves have not really ever had a client on Oprah? Or maybe it’s because if they did reveal them you wouldn’t keep buying the seminars?

Or maybe there really aren’t any secrets and all you need to do is work very hard at presenting yourself as authentically as possible, and have a new angle to a story that Oprah and her staff just might want.

Previously on this blog, we covered two other Oprah-stories of success, not created by a PR firm, publicist or viral marketer, but instead created by folks who were willing to get out there and really brainstorm their way to the Oprah show.

Here’s the third installment!

I cannot encourage you enough to study what Mubarakah Ibrahim of Balanced Fitness was willing to do and how it got her on Oprah. (Beware: this did not involve stalking Oprah’s BFF Gayle, or Oprah’s chef, or Oprah’s dog trainer, or even Oprah’s mailman!)

It simply involved Mubarakah having great faith and pride in herself and what she knew was her differentiator from other fitness trainers out there. Bravo!

In less than ten days after Mubarakah went to the Oprah website and emailed them a very brief pitch about herself and her fitness center, she was contacted by Oprah producers and subsequently on the show.

The Web and Web 2.0 offer you amazing abundance if you choose to be brave!

My favorite Rilke quote is, “Be brave and mighty forces will come to your aid,” in Mubarakah’s case, she was her own mighty force! Learn from it!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTLk9Fe9IYw[/youtube]

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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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This top one focuses on community, Web 2.0, building synergy across the world using 2.0 platform.

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As the modes of monetizing social media continue to expand, it’s very important to keep in mind that each person can be a mighty social media force for all things good.

When we just think about social media in terms of how much money it can make us, how many books it can sell, how many CDs are bought – we can lose the very important piece of how social media can change the world for better.

Here are 5 Tips for Being a Mighty Social Media Force:

1. Don’t be a back to me social media poster child. Always think of how you can mightily expand everyone’s endeavors, not just your own.

2. Focus more on how your social media can empower, instead of the increase it might bring to your bottom line. (Secret - If you do good, you will do well.)

3. Don’t be stingy – share your ideas freely.

4. Power abundant link-love – link to other folks who are brilliant and share their posts as well with your readers.

5. Be real – be the same offline as you are online. Don’t be incongruent.

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1. Authorsden.com - excellent book reviewing site – anyone can send a book to them and they are superb in terms of reviewing the book and posting about it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

2. Shelfari.com – join this community and you’ll find some wonderful book lovers and groups that would love to feature your book.

3. Book Club Queen – growing book club community site – fill out an author’s page for yourself.

4. BookPleasures.com – Norm Goldman’s superb book site.

5. Filedby.com - claim your page on Filedby.com and help build your web visibility!

Also, I have to weigh in on a piece of advice that is floating around both in newly “how to books” and online about contacting bloggers. Do not send out a full press release to a blogger about your book without asking them first if you can do so. And don’t ask bloggers to post a review of your book or let you have a guest bylined article on their blog without really taking the time to read their blogs and actually respect their blogs!

Bloggers are not there to sell your books – they exist for their readership. They are a highly dedicated group of folks who are blogging for the love of their topic matter. So please don’t consider them just another avenue for you to “sell” books.

If they feel your book would be a good fit for their audience, if they regularly write book reviews, if they state they are open to book reviews, then that is a great start! But please keep in mind bloggers are not “automatic billboards” for you to utilize as a vehicle for marketing your book.

Practice good netiquette when reaching out to bloggers. Don’t post about your book in comments and spam a blogger with your marketing links.

Relax, take a deep breath and take the “long tail” home by really engendering and initiating community around your book and its ideas.

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