Back issues: personal newsletter, July 2010

I just realized I never got around to posting the relevant content from the back issues of my personal newsletter, so over the next couple of days, we’ll get everyone caught up. Some of the stuff won’t make it here because it’s woefully out of date (like events) so it’ll just be the pieces that are still relevant. If you’d like to get the newsletter when it’s actually released, just click here to subscribe.

July 2010 Issue

If you want serious long term results boosted to your personal network, find something of value to forward to a friend every single day. One of my favorite resources is HelpAReporter.com, which sends out media inquiries from reporters to marketing and PR folks three times a day. It costs you nothing to subscribe to it except disk space.

The golden play is this: get each issue. Scan it quickly. Find someone in your personal professional network to forward just a single query to every day. If you do this, you’ll very quickly become the hub of your social network and stay on the radar of anyone you think is important to stay in touch with. It’ll show that you are thinking about them by providing legitimate value without pitching a product to them.

This little routine takes 5-10 minutes a day but reaps HUGE rewards over the long term.

Neat Stuff

There’s been a rash of neat and useful tools lately, and I mean that in a good way, not in a “requires anti-fungal cream” way. Here’s a couple I think are worth your time.

• Have you stopped in on Google’s Webmaster Tools lately? They’ve fixed up the place nicely and their new link statistics tools kick some serious butt, including telling you which pages on your site/blog have the highest click through rate in search. Pure gold – and free to boot.
• I’ve finally gotten religion on Evernote. The ability to write and compose stuff on the fly on mobile devices that automatically gets synced back to my desktop for formatting and cleanup means that newsletters like this, along with blog posts, work, and other content is much easier to do. I’ve found myself outlining a blog post on the iPhone, fleshing out the text on the iPad, and then doing cleanup, linking, and publishing from the MacBook – and because it’s all synced together, it’s a fairly seamless transition. I’m doing fine on the free version, but supposedly the paid version is nice too.
• On Avinash Kaushik’s recommendation, I’m trying out Tynt on my personal blog, a utility that supposedly tracks how often your stuff is copied and pasted. I’ll let you know how it goes, but it’s free if you want to try it yourself.

Stuff For You

What’s been popular among my stuff? This list. By the way, I generate this by looking in Google Analytics at Content > Top Content and looking at the last 30 days. This is a helpful way to generate “best of” lists that requires no subjective opinions. The data tells you what people like about your stuff.

• I asked recently, what content are you sitting on? I found a bunch of stuff in my archives, and I’ll bet you’ve got some amazing stuff too. Go sift around and see what’s worth bringing back in style.
• It’s been a fun time lately on the Blue Sky Factory blog. One of my recent favorites is a post I wrote on 3 web analytics tips to help you create better subject lines.
• Some marketing lessons from the kitchen. Marketers are constantly having to balance two conflicting priorities, like a chef.
• Speaking of kitchens, J. Kenji Lopez wrote an epic, epic piece on reverse engineering McDonald’s french fries. There’s some seriously solid food science in here that will really help you understand this iconic, if unhealthy, food. Nothing gross either.
• Oh, I redid my speaking kit recently. You’ll see one of my new tricks in it if you look closely. If you’re a fellow public speaker, you might want to borrow said trick.

Stuff You Did

In the spirit of you get what you pay for, I’m paying it forward to the people who share my newsletter with your networks. This issue, I’m profiling two people who moved the needle. Scott Monty brought in the most new eyeballs (212), while DJ Waldow brought the most action with clickthroughs (105).

Scott Monty is known to just about everyone in corporate social media as the guy at Ford Motor Company. I’ve known him for what seems like a very long time, and in addition to his work at Ford, he’s also a Sherlock Holmes fanatic. He’s also frighteningly good at impersonations. Check him out over atScottMonty.com and @scottmonty on Twitter.

DJ Waldow is the unfortunate soul who has to report to me at Blue Sky Factory. In addition to being the community guy at BSF, he’s an avid dad, blogger, and evangelist for ethical online marketing. You’ll find DJ’s personal stuff at DJWaldow.com and @djwaldow on Twitter.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.