Jon Reed's Blog, page 19
November 30, 2011
How much does a 99c ebook cost on Amazon?
By Mark on thewritersguidetoepublishing.com
No, it’s not a trick question.
Fact is, Amazon may not be selling your 99c ebook for 99c. It may well be selling your 99c ebook for $3.50, and pocketing most of the difference.
For those of you lucky enough to have strong sales from the US market it’s perhaps not something you’ve ever given a thought to. And when you look at the six million Kindlefires expected to be sold over the Holidays, plus all the nooks, it’s really not something you need worry about.
Sellers with a strong US base can expect a bonanza this Christmas season for sure.
But spare a thought for the rest of the world. Because the vast majority of your potential readers don’t live in the USA. And if you’re thinking, So what? Amazon is the world’s biggest book store and my book is available for 99c anywhere in the world, then think again.
Read the full story at thewritersguidetoepublishing.com
November 15, 2011
How to find out more about your LinkedIn Group members
For a long time now you've been able to access lots of demographic, growth and activity data about your Facebook fans. More recently, YouTube provided 'insights' into your viewers. LinkedIn has been behind the curve on analytics, but has just launched a great statistics dashboard for groups. It's updated daily, and you don't even have to be an owner or even a member of a group to see the data. It may be long overdue, but it's a very useful tool that will surely increase the take-up of LinkedIn groups. It's also beautifully designed – see LinkedIn data visualization designer Anita Lillie's blog post about it for more information.
Why is this useful? It always helps to know who your community is – and the results can sometimes surprise you. This can help you tailor the content of your group discussions, blog – or even the products your business offers – to your market. It may also throw up new ideas for products and services. It can help you know whether or not you are meeting your objectives, and reaching the people you want to reach. You can find out what impact you are having, if you need to change your approach – or even if LinkedIn is worth pursuing for you as a social media tool. And finally, you can also gain valuable insights into your competition!
If you own a group, try it out for yourself – click Group Statistics under the More… menu on your group. You can also do this for groups your are a member of, groups you discover by searching – or just look at the stats for my LinkedIn Groups for Publishing Talk or Get Up to Speed to get an idea of the information available.
Find out more about LinkedIn in Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing (UK | US), Chapter 12: "Create Credibility on LinkedIn – How to take your business networking online".
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November 7, 2011
How to find out where your Twitter followers are
I've been looking for a social media tool for a while now to tell me where in the world my Twitter followers are. And I'm not alone: it's something that I discussed with Joanna Penn on a recent podcast. I'd previously used the (now apparently defunct) Twitteranalyzer to give me an idea of this – but we were both bemoaning the current lack of such a useful tool.
Of course, immediately after the interview, I discovered a new one: Twocation. This is a great free tool that gives you a lot of information about where your followers are. Every country is listed, along with a percentage score. Make sure you're logged in to the Twitter account you want to analyze, go to www.twocation.com, and click the big green 'Calculate and Tweet' button. This requires you to authorize the app to use your Twitter account – but it's safe to do so, and you don't need to enter any login details.
As well as giving you a detailed breakdown, this will automatically tweet the following sort of tweet from your account, listing your top three locations and with a link back to Twocation. You could delete this, of course – though it seems a small price to pay to use the service, and both the stats and the app may both be of interest to your followers.
#bbpBox_133540020450627584 a { text-decoration:none; color:#759e28; }#bbpBox_133540020450627584 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }My followers live in the U.S. (38.2%), the U.K. (37%) & Canada (4.6%) [top 3]. Find yours at http://t.co/NpNQt24N
40 minutes ago via Twocation
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Jon ReedSo, I now know that 38.2% of the followers of @getuptospeed are in the US, 37% are in the UK and 4.6% in Canada. I also know the (smaller) percentages for every other country.
Why would you want to know where your followers are? For me, knowing that a majority of my followers are in the US reminds me not to make my tweets too UK-centric – and, in my case, to include links to the US edition of Get Up to Speed as well as the UK one.
For my @publishingtalk account, where I have over 170,000 followers, a majority of whom are in the US, this is even more important -I don't want my tweets to be irrelevant to over 85,000 followers! It also influences the time of day I tweet. This is the other good reason for knowing where your followers are. For me, there's not much point in tweeting before lunchtime in the UK, as America hasn't woken up yet.
If you are targeting specific geographic markets with your business, it pays to be aware of where your followers are, and if you are attracting enough of them in the places you want to. If you aren't, think about ways you can attract more of them. If it doesn't matter to you where your followers are – if you are location-agnostic – use it to be aware of which timezones people are living in, and when would be the optimum time to tweet, or to pre-schedule your tweets with HootSuite.
It may even surprise you where some of your followers are, and spark ideas for new business opportunities.
Find out more about Twitter in Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing (UK | US), Chapter 13: "Tap into Twitter – How to use the power of the real-time web to build a following" or in The Publishing Talk Guide to Twitter .
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August 10, 2011
5 Online Tools for Promoting Real-Life Events
Laura Austin runs the BookMachine website and tweetups with Gavin Summers. Follow them on Twitter at @book_machine.
Do you organize real-life events? Social media can help you promote them – and save time, says Laura Austin.
Image © Toby Rhind-Tutt
How do we organize our bi-monthly BookMachine tweetups alongside full time jobs? Well, doing this has only become possible in the last few years, and all thanks to social media. We spend just two to three hours a week on promoting our events. Here are the top five free tools that help us out:
1. Twitter
Twitter works best if you use it little and often – that way you get to follow the trends and keep in touch with your followers, but without losing sight of the rest your life! In other words, it’s extremely addictive but equally extremely effective.
We have been using it for a year and now have over 1,150 followers, many of who come to our parties. We have learnt so much by following interesting people and also extended our network and knowledge of the industry by reading the constant stream of articles on our timeline.
BookMachine’s Top tips:
use DMs for more personal contact
always thank people for RTs
use Tweetdeck to schedule your tweets so you can get on with the rest of your life.
2. Mailchimp
Mailchimp software is ideal for starting out with email campaigns. We send out weekly newsletters to our distribution list. It enables us to easily monitor response rates. The best feature is the mobile app which allows you check data on the move. Using the app you can also add new contacts to your distribution list as-and-when you meet them.
It is very intuitive and provides an array of pre-designed templates to get you started. From the easy-to-follow analytics we can check which campaigns are most read and which articles are clicked on. It’s interesting to see how many people might read the same email up to 18 times!
BookMachine’s Top tips:
carefully analyze your stats so you increase click through rates
don’t add folks without asking permission first – if you do they’ll block you and if you are blocked too often you will be blacklisted by anti-spam software
take the app with your everywhere so you can always add contacts.
3. WordPress
WordPress makes building and updating a website much easier. Previously only a platform for blogging, WordPress has become a fully-fledged web content management system, used by some of the biggest sites on the net. Using free plugins, it is easy to integrate feeds from all our social media profiles, and create a real ‘base camp’ for BookMachine. Once set up, we just add our articles weekly using the handy management tools, and hit ‘publish’, no fancy coding involved!
BookMachine’s Top tips:
there are a multitude of high-quality (and free) themes available for WordPress, pick one and give your site a more polished look
don’t buy an expensive web hosting package if you only want a simple blog, host for free using wordpress.com
use Google’s Analytics code with WordPress so you can track visits to your site (in terrifying levels of detail)
be sure to add social links to your posts so your content can easily be shared on social media sites.
4. Eventbrite
We have just started using Eventbrite for event sign ups and so far it seems to fit the bill very nicely. It enables you to set up a few events at once and event-goers are then sent invitations, which you can customize. For example, Atwood Tate are sponsoring the drinks at our next event, and we’ve been able to personalize each and every invitation with their logo on it.
You also have the option to insert a map of the venue and attendees can either sign up with their name and company, just their name or anonymously, depending on the type of event you’d like to hold.
BookMachine’s Top tips:
link up Eventbrite with your Mailchimp account, and easily send out event invitations to your mailing list
do something interesting with your tickets – we might hold a raffle at the next BookMachine event using them. Maybe.
5. Facebook
We are also quite new to the world of Facebook brand pages. When we first signed up we started an ads campaign so that people who were interested in publishing were enticed with BookMachine adverts. The response rate to this was good, and we made some interesting contacts this way, although we found it to be too expensive to be continued long term.
We have many contacts whose only regular social media usage is with Facebook, so it’s really important to be present here, even if your updates are less frequent than with Twitter or LinkedIn. It’s also a good way to share great content from your website as people can ‘like’ and comment on your posts.
If you do wish to feed your Twitter posts into Facebook, make sure you only do so for tweets marked with #fb. This way there won’t be a content overload.
BookMachine’s Top tips:
set it up so your WordPress articles feed automatically into your Facebook feed so it runs itself in terms of new content
similarly set it up so that there are no more than two updates a day – no one wants their Facebook homepage overloaded with posts from one contact
make sure you like other interesting pages via your Facebook page so that you are able to follow and support others with their marketing too.
Sign up for the next BookMachine party. Simultaneous events are being held in London and Edinburgh on 25th August.
August 3, 2011
10 Twitter Hashtags for Writers
Today is #WriterWednesday and also the second anniversary of #amwriting – which has got me thinking about hashtags. There are now many Twitter hashtags out there that are useful to help writers promote their work, connect with other writers, and – well – write. How do you use them, and which should you use?
If you’re not yet familiar with hashtags, they are simply words or phrases used in tweets with the # symbol in front of them. Make sure you don’t use any spaces or punctuation, and they become links in Twitter that, when clicked, reveal a timeline of everyone whose tweets contain that hashtag. To make the most of your hashtags, include a relevant weblink where appropriate and where space permits.
Here are my top 10 hashtags for writers, with suggestions for how to use them – and a recent example of each plucked from the Twittersphere. Click on a few of them to get a feel for hashtags and how you might use them – and do share any others you’ve found useful in the comments below.
1. #amwriting
Writing can be a solitary experience, and Twitter is a great way of connecting with other writers. It’s like a virtual watercooler. #amwriting is a hashtag started by Johanna Harness as a way of supporting writers and fostering a sense of community. It even has its own website at amwriting.org. Use it to tell us what you’re working on, support and learn from others, and share your experience.
#bbpBox_96301229315063808 a { text-decoration:none; color:#f03e6e; } #bbpBox_96301229315063808 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } Crossing the 50K mark on this first draft tonight! Over halfway done and still right in the thick of things! #amwriting
July 27, 2011 7:29 pm via TweetDeck Reply Retweet Favorite Stephanie Poscente
2. #amediting
If you’re at the editing stage, let people know and ask for any advice you need.
#bbpBox_96253521959190529 a { text-decoration:none; color:#0084B4; } #bbpBox_96253521959190529 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } Writing is easy but crafting the words and honing the plot sure isn't! #amediting
July 27, 2011 4:20 pm via web Reply Retweet Favorite mmrule
3. #WriterWednesday
#WriterWednesday or #ww was originally intended as a way to give shout-out to writers / suggest authors to follow, or to share writing tips. In practice, it also covers pretty much anything else to do with writers or writing too.
#bbpBox_98739007151816704 a { text-decoration:none; color:#8cc63f; } #bbpBox_98739007151816704 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } A big #WriterWednesday shoutout to @ August 3, 2011 12:56 pm via bitly Reply Retweet Favorite Publishing Talk
4. #writetip
While #WriterWednesday is sometimes used to share writing tips as well as give shoutouts to writers, if you specifically want to share or find writing tips, use #writetip.
#bbpBox_96222088985194496 a { text-decoration:none; color:#2200ba; } #bbpBox_96222088985194496 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } Avoiding distractions frees up more time to write http://ow.ly/5OoPh #writing #writetip
July 27, 2011 2:15 pm via HootSuite Reply Retweet Favorite Jody Calkins
5. #wordcount
For some people, regularly sharing your word count in public can be a great way to stay focused. Use it to share your successes (and failures!) and motivate yourself and other writers.
#bbpBox_98554199389904896 a { text-decoration:none; color:#D02B55; } #bbpBox_98554199389904896 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } Today has been an AMAZING success. I successfully avoided writing a single word, leaving my August #wordcount at 777. #campnanowrimo
August 3, 2011 12:42 am via TweetDeck Reply Retweet Favorite Lauren Anderson
6. #followfriday
#followfriday or #ff is one of the most popular hashtags on Twitter, used on a Friday to suggest people to follow to your followers. Ideally, don’t just include a list of @usernames – tell us why we should follow the person or people you suggest. You can do them one at a time, or include a list of people grouped together by topic or reason.
#ff can help raise your profile too, if people return the favour, or at least thank you in public. This isn’t why you should do it – but it’s an added bonus if it happens.
#bbpBox_96906149860880384 a { text-decoration:none; color:#ba482b; } #bbpBox_96906149860880384 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } Thank you! RT @ July 29, 2011 11:33 am via TweetDeck Reply Retweet Favorite Helena Halme
7. #fridayreads
Another thing you can do on a Friday is tell us what you’re reading. This can be a good way of name-checking other authors your admire – or even promoting yourself if you can persuade your friends to include you in their #fridayreads!
Ideally, include the Twitter @username of the author and official hashtag for the book if either exist; and a link to the book on Amazon. If you have an Amazon Associates account, you might even earn a few dollars (pounds, euros etc.) if people buy your Friday Read on your recommendation.
And if someone else gives a shoutout to one of your books – whether one that you’ve written, or one that you’ve published – retweet it on your own Twitter account, and add it to your ‘Favorite’ tweets.
#bbpBox_96951872283357185 a { text-decoration:none; color:#ff650f; } #bbpBox_96951872283357185 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } xoxo RT @ July 29, 2011 2:35 pm via HootSuite Reply Retweet Favorite Penguin Books USA
8. #writingprompts
Use #writingprompts as a way of engaging with other writers by suggesting a trigger for a story; or to look for writing inspiration yourself. Sarah Salway starts her Twitter day with a writing prompt, for example. Also check #writingprompt (no ‘s’), since this is used too; and maybe throw in an #amwriting for good measure! You’ll notice that many of the hashtags in this list are combined where appropriate.
#bbpBox_98295990557220865 a { text-decoration:none; color:#041024; } #bbpBox_98295990557220865 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } A writing prompt for today: The subtitle for your life #amwriting #writingprompts
August 2, 2011 7:36 am via web Reply Retweet Favorite sarahsalway
9. #bookgiveaway
Running a book giveaway on Twitter? Use #bookgiveaway to help people discover it.
#bbpBox_98745069036769281 a { text-decoration:none; color:#0084B4; } #bbpBox_98745069036769281 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } #bookgiveaway time! Which pig built a house out of bricks? 1st, 2nd or 3rd? Tweet us ur answer & u could win a copy of http://t.co/7MBBNph
August 3, 2011 1:20 pm via web Reply Retweet Favorite Friday Project
10. #askagent
You know that you should never pitch to an agent on Twitter, right? They really don’t like it. However, you should follow them, and many are prepared to give advice on Twitter. #askagent is the hashtag to use, which some agents will seek out to answer your questions. #askpub and #askeditor are variations to ask questions of publishers and editors.
#bbpBox_97652566808215552 a { text-decoration:none; color:#D02B55; } #bbpBox_97652566808215552 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } OK I am starting the August Open Thread early so you can hit me with your great questions. http://t.co/932UlDV #AskAgent
July 31, 2011 12:59 pm via web Reply Retweet Favorite jennifer laughran
Let us know which other hashtags you find useful – and find more practical Twitter tips in The Publishing Talk Guide to Twitter.
January 5, 2011
Twelve Months of Workshops
January is when I announce my new workshops for the year ahead – and it's going to be a busy twelve months ahead. My regular London-based workshops this year include:
Social Media Marketing for Publishers – a half-day introductory course for publishers
Social Media Marketing Bootcamp – a practical one-day course for small business owners
Managing Social Media – a one-day course for managers
Find a full list at www.reedmedia.eu/workshops. And all one-day courses now come with a free copy of Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing!
Find out more about the workshops and book online
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January 4, 2011
Eleven Business Cases
Get Up to Speed features plenty of case studies from businesses who have succeeded with online marketing. Some are 'classics' that you may have heard of if you're a seasoned social media watcher. Many are brand new, from business owners who generously shared their experiences with me for the book. All contain important lessons that you can apply to your own business. They include:
How clothing store Studio8 achieved website success using third-party tools WordPress and Powa.
How photographic gallery Stills achieved a huge jump in sales and attendance by switching from direct mail to email marketing – and integrating it with social media.
How www.alljigsawpuzzles.co.uk became the UK's largest online jigsaw retailer using search engine marketing.
How Stormhoek Wines achieved brand recognition, boosted sales and became the talk of Silicone Valley using blogger outreach as a marketing strategy.
How organic gardening mail-order business Wiggly Wigglers reached a global market with an award-winning podcast.
How Blendtec built an audience of fans on YouTube with their 'Will it Blend?' videos.
How Oxfam's music festival Oxjam engaged supporters and encouraged user-generated content by setting up a Group Pool on Flickr.
How Jane Lindsey built a craft business, Snapdragon, using Facebook.
How Indian snack brand Hippo solved an inventory fulfilment problem using Twitter to crowdsource stocktaking.
How Marcus Carter used video and a virtual world to create Virtual Farmer's Market.
How BBQ Addicts achieved a massive spike in web traffic using social bookmarking.
Do you have an online marketing success story? Let me know, and I'll feature the best ones in the
Case Studies
section.
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January 3, 2011
Ten Trends to Follow
This post is in my Twelve Days of Christmas series.
New Year is the time when everyone makes their predictions for the year ahead – and I'm no exception. Here are ten trends I'll be watching this year:
Facebook continues to dominate. In March 2010, Facebook overtook Google in terms of Internet traffic. Goldman Sachs have just invested $1.5bn in a deal that valued Facebook at $50bn and estimated its user base as 600m. Mark Zuckerberg is Time Magazine's Person of The Year, and the rumours about him shutting it down were a hoax. Not going away anytime soon.
Twitter continues to grow. I've been saying 'Twitter is the fastest growing social network" for years. It still is. And they've now stated an aim to reach one billion users by 2013. Hugely ambitious – but possible at current growth rates.
Monetization. Facebook is already monetizing all those users. In 2010 it made $1.86bn from Social Ads. In 2011, look out for Facebook Credits. Twitter will be next to cash in on all those users, and has already started experimenting. This year, look out for promoted accounts, products and trending topics. And 'premium' services for businesses – something that third party apps using the Twitter API are already doing.
Social commerce is the new e-commerce. Not only are the social media sites making money – business are by using them. More people will sell more via social networks. Don't have an e-commerce site? Sell on Facebook Marketplace or enable people to buy from your customized Facebook page. Social commerce has the added advantage of tapping into online reviews and recommendations.
Blogs are the new websites. Why spend time and money creating a static website when you can have a WordPress site up and running in minutes that is better for search engines, easier to update, more professional-looking that you could do yourself – and free? Not just for blogs, more businesses will use WordPress to create their main website in 2011.
Social media becomes more integrated. Do you have your Twitter username on your business card? Can people 'like' your Facebook page direct from your website? Social media will become less of an add-on, and more an integral part of most websites – and offline marketing.
Television plugs into social media. One 'old media' channel that is starting to understand the links between traditional media and social media is television. More TV shows will announce their hashtag in the opening credits, and people will continue to watch TV together on Twitter. Even David Dimbleby has started announcing the #bbcqt hashtag on BBC Question Time. Look out for new TV shows pre-launching on Twitter to build an audience – such as #10oclocklive in the UK.
Location-based marketing struggles to go mainstream. This was one of the big trends last year – social networks like FourSquare that enable you to geotag yourself and let people know where you are. Facebook Places and Twitter locations followed in November 2010, which suggested the trend was going mainstream. I have my doubts. Popular with geeks and useful for some businesses – but it seems too much like electronic tagging to me. Some insurance companies have even suggested that premiums may be raised for people who regularly use location-based services. After all, if you keep telling everyone when you're out of the house, it gets a bit burgleme.com…
Quora. It's like the new Twitter, yeah? Or not. Everyone seems to be joining this at the moment – though users being able to auto-import their friends from Twitter and Facebook is no doubt helping to boost the numbers. It's actually quite different to Twitter – a forum for Q&As. A bit like LinkedIn Answers but kinda Twittery. I'll look at this in more detail in a later post.
Sofalizing is the new socializing. It's also my new favourite word. The word sofalizing was coined in November 2010 by online casino company Yazino, in the context of research commissioned to determine trends in how potential users interact with one another. It means socializing from the comfort of your own sofa on social networks – such as by watching TV together on Twitter. About a quarter of us do it – and it looks set to increase.
What are your online marketing predictions for 2011? Let me know in the comments below.
Related articles
Why socialise when you can just stay home and 'sofalise'? Why staying in is the new going out (dailymail.co.uk)
Using Facebook or Twitter 'could raise your insurance premiums by 10pc' (telegraph.co.uk)
Person of The Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg (time.com)
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January 2, 2011
Nine Ladies Launching
This post is in my Twelve Days of Christmas series.
Today it's time for another #followfriday-ish shoutout. This time, to nine lleaydeahs who came to the book launch or supported the book in some way. Yes, there were some gentlemen at the launch too, but I can't quite shoehorn them into the ninth day of Christmas… Here they are, in strict alphabetical order:
I was delighted that my favourite political tweeter, and Quentin Letts's favourite 'plonking trollop', Sally Bercow, could make it to the launch. She joined Twitter in January, and claims I'm one of the first people she followed. We were trying to work out why. It might have been when we were playing #torycocktails on Twitter, which I think is when I first discovered Sally. My contribution: "The Alan Clark: 1 bottle Chateau Palmer 1961, 1 bottle Chateau Palmer 1975, 1 bottle Chateau Pichon-Longueville 1961, mix with a Short. #torycocktails." Yes, OK – one for politics geeks only…
Cathy Crawley runs the London Business Book Club. They have a different business author in each month to speak about their book/subject – and I spoke at last month's book club, the day after the launch party. It's actually more of an interview / in-conversation-with / Q&A than a formal talk – a format that I have discovered I rather enjoy. Liz Gooster, Dominique Jackson and Janet Parkinson were also at the event. Listen out for an audio extract soon.
I worked with Anna Faherty at Macmillan, where she was a business book publisher. She regularly reviews business books on Amazon, and was the first to review Get Up to Speed, on Amazon
and on her blog.
My lovely publisher, Liz Gooster. Despite disappearing off to South America for six months while the ink was still drying on the contract (just kidding, Liz!), she was a great advocate for the book, and a lot of fun to work with. Having been a publisher, I know how critical the author-publisher relationship is to the success of a project – and I couldn't have written the book without her support. Liz also blogs about her travels at Gooster on the Loose, so she was easy to stalk in South America. Plus, having been coaching business authors for years, she is now training to coach business owners, and is blogging about it at Business Class Coach.
I've known Suzanne Kavanagh since we worked at Routledge 15 years ago. She has since evolved into something of a geek girl, and was very keen to see my book as a work-in-progress. Her day job is all about skills and training, at Skillset, and she is also immersed in the social media world, so her feedback on the first draft was very useful. As one of the few people who had read the book before it came out, Suzanne also supplied a nice back-cover quote. She also recently included it in her Book a Week blog. No, I have no idea how anyone has the time to read a book a week…
I met the lovely Suzanne Moore, columnist at the Mail on Sunday and The Guardian, last year thanks to Facebook and Twitter. We became regulars at a Facebookish tweetup of skeptic-political-blogger-writer-social-media types, Salon Intoxicante. Suzanne has written about social media in the Mail, and recently spoke about it – and other journalistic trends – at this year's Benn Lecture in November. You can listen to her lecture here. She also kindly supplied a quote for the back cover.
I met Anne Nolan when she came to one of my social media workshops. She has since become a regular at book trade tweetups, and has taught me a thing or two about social media – notably introducing me to the great daily photojournal community that is Blipfoto. Of course, she blipped me signing a book – the only photo of me that night, I think. Randomly, she knew Nina Stibbe (see below) from way back when.
Without the intervention of Katharine Reeve, I might never have got the book written. At the time, I only knew Katharine on Twitter, but she responded to a plea for help I tweeted in 2009: "I want to go away somewhere for a week to focus on writing – any suggestions?" Several people replied, but it was Katharine's suggestion of Cafe Alf Resco in Dartmouth, Devon that won. And I wrote a third of the book there, in a week. I discovered that this is a method that works for me, and I'm always on the lookout for new places to go away and write. My criteria: big writing table, freewi-fi, nice view (preferably of sea or river) and great coffee. Do let me know if there's somewhere you'd recommend!
I was delighted that my oldest publishing friend, Nina Stibbe, was able to make it to the launch – all the way from Cornwall! We lost touch a bit over the years, but were reunited about a year ago thanks to Twitter. I visited her on my tour of the South West in the summer, where we had the best lunch ever at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Cornwall. I love how social media helps you make new friends – and reunites you with old ones.
Couldn't make it to the launch? Signed copies are also available to order online.
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January 1, 2011
Eight Bloggers Blogging
This post is in my Twelve Days of Christmas series.
Happy New Year! Today I want to highlight some blogs I've enjoyed over the last year and think you may find useful:
Mashable is one of the top ten blogs worldwide, and is a great resource for news, trends and information about social media.
TechCrunch is a useful source of tech news, trends and events. I tend to read TechCrunch Europe.
Social Media Today has a prolific team of writers providing features, resources and how-tos on social media.
Social Media Examiner is an excellent source of how-tos, resources and features on social media.
Social Media Explorer has some useful insights and opinion on social media and online marketing.
Media140 runs a series of worldwide conferences and events on social media and also has a useful blog.
Like Minds is an international community of of business leaders, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers which also runs events and conferences. Again, with a useful blog.
Zen Habits is a bit of a wild card in this list, but has become one of my favourite blogs this year. It has also just topped TIME magazine's top 25 blogs of 2010. Blogger Leo Babauta's has also written a book called The Power of Less. The blog has some great tips for increasing productivity, beating writer's block, positive thinking and simplifying your life. Running a business can be stressful and time-consuming. For a while at least, this blog helps you step away from the computer, off the treadmill – and away from all those blogs!
What were your favourite blogs of 2010? Let me know in the comments below!
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