Looks like fun! See you all tomorrow.

On Sunday, June 21st, my wife and I will be doing a half ironman triathlon with a group called Team In Training to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I highly recommend Team In Training and LLS - two outstanding organizations. There's no way we could do this without their support - and the tons of support we have gotten from our friends and family here in Seattle and around the globe.

Please check it out at http://ironmanbuzz.com and if you care to make a donation - of any amount - we would be very grateful. All proceeds will go to fight blood cancer.

That's great, David.

Team In Training has been a wonderful experience. My family and I moved to Seattle two years ago, and TNT has been an awesome way to plug in to the community here. We have found it to be a very supportive environment. The physical training is lead by paid professionals and by a group of volunteer mentors who have done the races before. Some folks in our group actually learned to swim so that they could complete a triathlon. I can't even imagine be able to do that. It's inspiring to be around people with that kind of determination. Some of those participating are cancer survivors themselves. And, as I mentioned, it's for people of all ages. One woman in our group is 65. She will be doing the half ironman triathlon with us in Victoria, BC, on June 21st.

David, Great advice! It's worth noting that there are ways to increase physical activity that are also social (and fun!) and will open doors by creating connections with new friends. I'm thinking of Team In Training because my wife and I have found it to be thoroughly rewarding for many reasons, not the least of which is the new circle of friends we are a part of - all people we probably never would have met otherwise.

But there are many other groups of this kind. They combine social gatherings and events with goal-directed exercise (it helps to have a goal!) and fundraising for a cause that's bigger than just one's own self-interest. Personally, I can't stand working out in a gym, but working out with others in order to complete an endurance event like a half-marathon or triathlon is challenging (and not as hard as it may seem!) and much more fun because it's done with a group of like-minded folks - of all ages.

In terms of keeping up with the latest technology, I would also like to point out that Biznik is a very good resource for seminars and events that will bring you up to speed. Many of these are low-cost or free. For examples, see my upcoming and past events:
Introduction to Web 2.0
Social media marketing - past seminars on Biznik.

Miles, Great article and a welcome reminder. Every business - and probably every person - should take the time required to register on major social media sites and reserve an appropriate domain name, if possible. Buying the .com domains for your kids is not a bad idea either!

Speaking of registering domain names, what site do you recommend using to see if names are taken or not? I recall not long ago that there was a flap about a registrar (or someone that worked for a registrar) that was apparently snagging names that were being checked on their site if they thought they seemed valuable.

I agree with Bob that consistency is the key. It is absolutely the case that the more often you post, the more often Google will check for new content on your blog - and if you have that blog integrated into a larger website, this is great for SEO for the whole site, not just your blog.

I am not always consistent about when I post, but I do know that if there is something I want to promote or draw attention to, I need to be consistent for that to happen.

It's also possible to go too far towards consistency and post when you have nothing very informative to say. We have all seen posts where people just throw up a bunch of links to other sites and resources and call that a post.

There are already too many sources of that kind of information out there for that strategy to work for very long. People follow your blog because they want to hear what you have to say, not so they can pick through a bunch of bookmarks. And Google (the search engine) feels the same way. Posts filled with bookmarks don't do much for SEO, in my opinion. (Others may disagree.)

Twitter is a good way to maintain some consistency and remind people that you are around - and that you have something to contribute - without having to blog every other day - or week!

Great article, Beth. I love your writing style: straight-forward and polished.

Social media technology like WordPress, Facebook and Twitter now make it much easier to "show up" authentically online, and people are coming to expect this more. People are beginning to use Twitter to search for information instead of Google because they want the freshest news they can find - often in the form of an online discussion taking place in real time.

Today I received an automated boiler-plate email response after signing up for a newsletter on a blog, and I could barely get through a third of it before saying to myself, "This isn't written to me. This wasn't really even sent by a person. It was sent by an autoresponder! I wonder how old this boiler-plate material is. Why do I need to read this?"

Networking, collaboration and educational events - online and off - are the new marketing, and showing up authentically, as you point out so well, is what makes these successful.

Hi all! I'm an online marketing consultant whose clients include travel agencies and photo tour specialists. I'm also a participant in a local meetup of travel bloggers that meets in West Seattle - some of the members of which spoke at this year's SXSW Interactive festival.

In general, I'm a both a follower and proponent of "conversation marketing" or social media marketing - especially in the sense of building online relationships as opposed to using social media as just one more way to get people's attention so you can sell them something.

I'm encouraging my clients to get involved with communities like Biznik so they can see the difference between the old marketing/PR and the new - and how a website like Biznik's facilitates the latter.

Thanks, Annika, for starting the group! I look forward to participating.

What a great discussion! I agree with all the tips from Bob and Judy, and I sympathize with everyone's concerns - in particular those about good content, finding what works best in terms of keeping a regular posting schedule (while at the same time avoiding burnout), and trying to keep up with all the technical "advances" that were supposed to be making things easier, not more complicated.

WordPress is easy to use when it comes to creating posts and pages, but for people who have other things to do - like run a business! - it gets more complicated fairly quickly when you start trying to do more than just the basics.

In October 2007, I started creating free online video tutorials for WordPress, in large part so that I could have my customers watch them rather than having me walk through the same basic techniques every time I set up a new WordPress website. At that time, the latest version of WordPress was 2.3. Then came 2.5, which had a different user interface. Then came the current version, 2.7! Different again! This makes it hard for most folks to use the older tutorials. I'm gradually updating them, and there are several there now that cover 2.7. But the point has already been made above: it's hard to keep up - even for those of us using WordPress every day.

By sharing information and experience through groups like this one, we can help each other to stay up to speed. Of course, there's so much information buzzing around out there, the value that Bob and Judy and I and others like us can provide is to filter out some of the noise and point you to the most helpful resources and tools.

Great job, Joe! You have zeroed in on one of the things Biznik does best and helped to make it even better. I love the fact that we can all learn from one another by hosting and attending educational events. By following great advice like you offer here, we can continue to improve our presentation and networking skills - skills that are totally invaluable to growing a business.

I really like what you say about making things simple for participants, not because we need to dumb things down - Biznik members are sharp as all get out! - but because it enables attendees to get it - to make the connections necessary and see how what you're presenting will make them more successful right now, today.

In an economy that's increasingly being driven by social-media, our customers expect us to provide more access to information about what we do and how it serves them. Honing presentation and networking skills is essential to good social media marketing.

Biznik makes the whole process easy and fun. (Business and fun in the same sentence! What a concept!) It's easy to get your feet wet by attending events hosted by others, reading and commenting on fine articles like the one above, and then diving in to partner up with another Biznik member to hold an event or to do one of your own.

Let's face it, Biznik rocks! I am so fired up to be part of it with everyone else here, and I'm telling others to join all the time. In our Introducing Web 2.0 seminar, it's what's known as the "network effect": the more people get active in Biznik, the more people want to get active in Biznik. It's happening in this community in a big way. Mark McLaren

Hi All! This looks like a good group. Thanks for organizing, Bob.

@Vicki D. Good move switching to WordPress! Bob has a seminar on April 23 that would surely be helpful, and if you would like an overview of WordPress before then, check out the seminar Steve MacDonald and I are offering on March 31st: "Practical Social Media: How to Create Killer Websites with Little to No Budget" http://bit.ly/3qg6

And, in the meantime, I have a site with free video tutorials on WordPress called Business Blogging 101.

Thanks for the great article, Elge. I haven't tried BudURL.com but I'm going to now!

All the talk of microblogging makes me think it's time to do another Introducing Twitter seminar with Wayne Bishop. You should come up and do one with us!