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Blogging Exchange

Blogging Exchange

A few days ago at a downtown restaurant I over heard two businessmen complaining about another “waste of time meeting” they had just come from.
“We spent half the time talking about why we were meeting instead of actually meeting.”
“The other half we spent talking about when we would meet again.”
“Next we will have a meeting to plan a meeting.”
“But before that we will have to meet.”

Why are we wasting all this time meeting, if nothing really productive comes from it?

Yesterday the most productive of meetings occurred – an exchange.
Melissa Giovagnoli of Networlding decided to bring together a talented and diverse group of people to exchange ideas. Six of us met to discuss blogs, exchange ideas, and dialogue about how we could help one another. In this current day and age, every business needs a blog! It’s a whole new world that has exploded!

Jon Malysiak and Scott Allen who own Jonathan Scott Inc. which is a Literary and Right Agency arrived hoping to learn more about what blogging could do for their company. Present to help them were myself, Derrick Sorles, and Michael Snell, who also run a leadership development organization called Inside Your Chicago. They have recently started their own impressive blog and in record time. Both Derrick, Michael, and myself have just undertaken a sharp learning curve trying to master the blogosphere.

After the introduction and background updates we discuss blogging basics and the benefits of blogging all of which are outlined in the blogging FAQ.

Our next arrival was Karyn Pettigrew, the author of “I Quit – And Choose Work That Aligns With My Soul” and the recently published pocket book “An Invitation”, which will be a series of inspirational and enlightening books. With her introduction complete and the basics covered, we turned our conversation to how we could use blogs to help each other.

Writing about each other’s blogs, establishing many hyperlinks, and setting up trackbacks would collectively raise our ranking in search engines and increase traffic to everyone’s blogs.

The results of the meeting:
An exchange of information that will allow everyone to increase their success.
Jon and Scott learned about how a blog could help them personalize their business and promote upcoming book releases. Blogs are also a great medium for them to promote their authors and establish dialogues between author, publisher, and reader.

Karyn also learned a tremendous amount about blogging. She was also able to share thoughts from her new pocket book, “An Invitation”. She discussed the importance of setting and inviting in an intention in one’s life. She also sparked a discussion of a “by the slice” form of information packaging. The packaging of information needs to be broken down into smaller pieces, or “sound bites” in order to hold people’s attention and transmit knowledge that will stick. This information is particularly helpful in creating smaller and more concise blog post.

Derrick and Michael have been busy this last week launching a blog to go with the website for Inside Your Chicago. Four weeks ago they knew very little about blogs. Now, they are like a sponge, soaking up everything you-need-to-know and then some! Michael has had over 15 years of creative writing for people like Siegfried & Roy and filmmaker Michael Moore. Derrick’s unique perspectives help frame how to inform and educate today’s leaders innovatively through the message and experience.

Melissa is constantly a wealth of ideas and information. She discussed the importance of putting quality material on the web, building quality content and having a talented team to support you, if you can not do it yourself. Melissa just published her 12th book, “The Wisdom Network”. And actually, today’s meeting was in fact like a wisdom network meeting. Getting a group together who can collectively problem solve and brainstorm ideas.

In just 90 minutes, I think we all left with a wealth of new information. I definitely got a number of new ideas about the blogs I currently do. Many of the ideas I had, I now know how to implement. Back to blogging! Until next time…

Brenna Walters

Contact us:
Melissa Giovagnoli
Scott Allen
Jon Malysiak
Derrick Sorles
Michael Snell
Karyn Pettigrew
Brenna Walters

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