Browsing Tag

contest

Great Ideas? Maybe not, but they are YOURS!

So I continue to just be so busy with life, that it is hard to keep the content comming, but true to my less fluff more value statement, I thought I would spend some time and share some topics hopefully you can blog on. I’ve already had a couple of great guest posts from folks and 2 more on the way. My thanks to the Bigg Success Show and Stephen for their efforts. I also am interested in letting folks guest post on the following topics (especially the first 9) or another topics which you feel might fit well into this eclectic mix here at Spatially Relevant:

Business and Social Media

What is the biggest challenge for social media for general corporate wide participation/acceptance?
What is the best use of social media for a business? Service, demand gen, knowledge management…
Our brand has been hijacked online – now what?!?!

Social Media and Ethics

What role do standards play in creating transparency and authenticity, if any?
How can identity management improve accountability?
What is the biggest hurdle for establishing best practices and ethical frameworks for social media?

Standards

How can standards assist in scaling a given activity?
What controls and governance opportunities exist for standards organizations/development which are NOT being pursued today in Social Media?
What is the value in a standards based approach?

Product Management and Marketing

Can a technology development model change a product or companies viability in the marketplace?
Who owns the product strategy – the customer, the product management or the market?
How can positioning and targeting of buyer persona’s improve sales execution?

Better Place Concepts

This <single experience> represents an opportunity for all of us to learn <X>?
In the last 90 days this in the biggest lesson I learned which should be shared
If <X> was a commonly held belief/activity/x it would be easier for everyone to <x>?

Personal Growth

I’m putting an personal action plan in place to accomplish <X> in the next 30 days?
I just realized I’m not the center of the universe, now what?
I used to think X was sorta important, now I think it is a requirement for a fulfilled experience

Personal Shrink (two sides to every coin)

I am the center of the universe, deal with it jackass.
If everyone would stop X, I’d be a better person
I can’t believe you don’t appreciate X

Geography

What cities are all of your Grateful Dead/Phish/Panic/Yonder T-shirts from?
Where is the best place to do nothing at and why?
What is the smallest city you actually flew to and why?

If you end up posting on one of these please link back and send me an email, I’ll do a summary post which itemizes all the blogs which posted on Wednesday and links to the posts.

If you think you have a guest post in one of these send me an email at publisher AT spatiallyrelevant DOT org.

I will schedule my guest post schedule for next saturday due to travel, so I look forward to your posts and submission by Thursday – midnight for an eligible guest post. Ok, Friday am will work, but much later than that – no promises.

So the question is – can you get listed in both the Wednesday list and the Saturday list? Yup, you just have to participate/do the work. It does have kinda of an outsourcing feel or another way to look at it is I’m going to pimp my list for you.

When you send the email for a guest post or to point me to your post on one of the above, please include the following:

Name, blog URL and Post URL – A sentence about your blog would be cool, so the folks here might want to add you to their RSS reader.

if you are interested in a guest post, just give me a sentence or two on why your should be considered along with the post you think should make it. I will post no more than 10 during the month of August. Everyone looks forward to YOUR POV on these.

Hope this is fun and works, because I clearly would like to learn more about the folks that read my stuff and how we can as a group influence our space.

~jon

August 3, 2008 by Jon Gatrell

Authority Blogging? Surely not I, YOU?

So Chris Garrett and Liz Strauss have launched a compelling contest which focuses on helping folks understand what it takes to be an authority blogger. This is a great opportunity to drive awareness for the SOBCon08 and Authority Blogger and represents a great opportunity for the community to collaborate. Authority Blogging conjures up a lot of things for me and probably for you as well – personalities, brands and even individual posts which have influenced your understanding. There is just a bunch ways to look at this topic and to position oneself as an authority blogger.

Narrowing Authority

There may be more than a little game theory in folks responses and I spent some time looking at folks posts. This project has already delivered some amazing insights from the participants and it is clear that it is GAME ON!

Content, topics and perceived value are all part of the authority puzzle. Spatially Relevant is a great opportunity for me to share experiences and develop relationships with folks I would not have otherwise and is the main reason I’m even blogging. There is no shortage of opportunity for me to share great content from folks’ I interact with via social media. Y’all provide great tweets and posts to write on. Each authority I follow provides an interesting lens for looking at the segment. It’s the diversity of views in this segment which is completely amazing. I just hope that I can add to the discussion. To that end, I suspect a person’s personal biases can ultimately drive authority.
With at least a directional understanding of authority, it is important to clearly understand the rules of this game should YOU want to participate as well. I’m very appreciative of the contest, since I have been struggling to find something to blog on since my muses aren’t here right now. I now have a topic AND I could get some cool things. What you ask? Here’s the cool stuff:

$1000 budget to pay for SOBCon08 registration and travel expenses
A hour of consulting with Chris Garrett.
The complete Authority Blogger online course.
Meet the speakers.

It’s About the Booty

A fabulous prize package indeed! I’m motivated – YOU? Wait, wait – THAT’S NOT ALL! You can also get a guest blog piece on New Music Strategies and since Music is a tertiary theme here – I couldn’t resist to participate now — like a bug to a flame.

So what is the correct way to tackle this topic? That is now the increasingly more important question which I’m looking to close on by the end of this post. Folks are creating diagrams and generating comprehensive lists in their responses. I’m probably not going to do a list, since Confident Writing has 12 GREAT inspirational items. The great ideas from the folks which is making it difficult to decide on how to write on authority blogging and differentiate.

Bob Younce has an excellent overview on his authority and an about page which was fairly intriguing for me. As a geographer, I am completely interested in where he is from, since he only references mid-Michigan. What is mid-Michigan? Bob’s post has successfully reminded me of a paper I’ve never wrote on what is the definition of the frequently used term “Up North”. Authority bloggers have a unique ability to start conversations and actively participate in conversations with others.

Ain’t too Proud to Pander

I am a little too proud to brag and may never be an Ego on Alltop, but I’m not to proud to suck up. Hmm… sucking up as a component of Authority? So I may have a chance on this whole thing, since this is in fact a core competency for me.

The above image in fact is a subtle suck up, since Chris likes images and has a Canada birth connection. While my vacations to the Bruce Peninsula aren’t as authoritative as Hart’s “Canadian-ness”, but I did co-author a piece on “Canadian regionalism’s impact on the media: A content analysis”, which should raise my Canadian street cred. So I got that going for me… Let’s see how that works….

Building out the concept of authority blogging is a great topic to work on from a project perspective. The great insights on influence and authority which have already been surfaced and are yet to come out of this contest are the key drivers for my wanting to participate in the discussion.

So what is Authority Blogging and why should I be considered an authority blogger? I’m not sure authority blogging is any one thing, or that I’m even able to meaningfully opine on why it should be me, but there are a 3 things which I feel authority blogging is not about:

Ego: I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that ego’s can drive traffic, but not influence. I find myself linking to really insightful content from non-ego folk who provide a thought provoking take on a subject.
The amount/size of Content: Very often the amount of content is confused with authority. Some of the most authoritative things online are published in under 140 characters on twitter and isn’t a fleshed out, but a query or insight which makes you THINK.
It is NOT a metric: Not links, not technorati ranks, not page views. A single post can be more influential than anything – where is YOURS?

So if authority isn’t driven from those things, it only leaves me with two things it might be or that I might have. A passion to share and willingness to engage. It would be great to do an interview and to get some open feedback on how to improve my blogging from Chris, but it would for anyone. Authority is as authority does and below are some folks YOU should know and who should participate too:

March 30, 2008 by Jon Gatrell