This is a sponsored guest post written by Chris Brogan on behalf of Trust Agents. Post powered by Sponzai Want to know about our book, Trust Agents? My co-author, Julien Smith, and I want to know if you are a trust agent. What defines a trust agent? Here are the six main secrets of being a trust agent. Do any of these sound like you? Make Your Own Game You can do what’s come before or you can take a unique swing at the world. If you’re Hugh McGuire, you’re working on Book Oven, a whole new way to look at books and reading. You’re someone like Perez Hilton, who took on People magazine and won, as far as we’re concerned. Are you making your own game? One of Us Maybe you’re the person in your industry who’s come to the larger online conversation, like Leslie Carothers is to the home industry. Perhaps you’re the next Matt Cutts, who represents Google to lots of us. He’s more Google than Sergey or Larry, because he’s here. He’s one of … [Read more...]
Are You a Trust Agent
A Caveman’s Guide to Sponsored Conversations
Image via CrunchBase I'm a Mom, I'm a blogger, and I'm a brand enthusiast. When I find a product that I really like, I tell people about it. I tell my family, my real life friends, my online friends-heck, I tell strangers at stores about it. What I do has a name, it's called word-of-mouth marketing, and people have been doing for as long as there has been conversation. And now, major companies are compensating bloggers for telling their online friends and readers what they think about products in what is called a sponsored conversation. IZEA, the social media marketing company for which I am a compensated Insider, sponsored this post about sponsored conversations. And I've got a video that IZEA asked me to put in this post about what exactly a sponsored conversation is and how it works. I might be able to work the words 'sponsored conversation' into this post a few more times if I try :) This clever video explains what a sponsored conversation (see?!) is, who uses … [Read more...]
Getting Back to Basics
Ever since I started blogging a jillion years ago, I've noticed that there are times when it seems like everyone whose blog I read is writing about the same thing. I don't mean like when we all get home from BlogHer and post our photos and tell our stories, I mean, times when we all seem to be thinking along the same lines regarding our blogging. I'll explain what I mean in a minute, first let me backtrack a bit. Last month, I was chatting with Amy on Facebook and somehow we got on the topic of blog comments. I told her I missed the days when I had 13 readers, and how exciting it was every time any one of them left me a comment on a post. We talked about Twitter, and Facebook updates, and how it's so much easier to just post there than come up with a whole blog post. We talked about how there are so many blogs to read that it's hard to stop and leave a comment when there are 100 more posts in the reader to get through. Today, Mr. Lady posted about Community on her blog … [Read more...]