chrisbrogan.com - Latest Comments in Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

yuregininsesi — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 09:52:23 -0000

Great list, I love reading your blog! It's so informative for a relative newbie and small business owner like me. A discussion about how to integrate the basic building blocks--website, blogs and social networks--would be useful. People have such varying degrees of experience...perhaps you might query attendees as to their experience with webs, blogs and various social networks to help you have an idea of their experience prior to delivering the marketing bootcamp.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Patrick Dominguez — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:27:55 -0000

One important ingredient to add - how to wrap a strategy around all of these activities.

Good luck!

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Sloane Wood — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:22:59 -0000

Chris -

Wow! A lot of great stuff! A smorgasbord!

Will there be any follow-up after the boot camp? Say in a week, then in a month, then 2 months, then 3 months, then 6 months.......? After completely showing everything to them at the boot camp, follow-up would be gradually backing off over time until they are flying on their own. In education we call it "scaffolding". This guided practice would ensure that all of your great tools would "stick" for the long haul.

Would there be people at your company who could do that kind of follow-up? If the boot campers knew that they were getting good tools & that there would be follow-up afterwards, it would initially make them feel more confident as well as hold them accountable for implementation later on. Your boot campers would grow into enduring success stories.

Your curriculum has great value. Best of luck to you!

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Kristiana — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:14:43 -0000

Hi Chris-

It looks like I missed the boat to reply in a timely fashion (vacation will do that), but I was curious to see if there is any way to make these bootcamps interactive with your audience? I know bootcamps usually have a lot of talking at and not so much talking with your audience, but why?

For instance, can you send a few website addresses (of really good and some not so stellar) to participants BEFORE the bootcamp for them to review with some pointers? This way, when you go through Part 2 and talk about what's good about some of the websites you're showcasing, people will have already seen them and may be able to add to the conversation? You can also highlight some websites that are "almost there" that you can then throw to the audience to see how they would proceed?

This way you're keeping your audience engaged on different levels and forcing them to utilize what they're learning in your bootcamp at that moment. It may lessen the "in one ear and out the other" syndrome...

Best of luck with Brogan Bootcamp, it sounds wonderful!

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Elizabeth — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:53:56 -0000

I think this is a great list and, having a new website myself, I can envision how useful a one or two day bootcamp would be. The only other things I can think of are: delicious, DMOZ, copyrighting, and creative commons.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Cynthia — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:48:56 -0000

Tim,

The thing with wordpress.com is that you cannot advertise. If you want to blog for business, it's much better to use WP install. Of course, if you want to make things simple, bBogger might be a good place to start.

Hope this helps!

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Tim Rueb — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:46:02 -0000

Chris, how do you choose between wordpress.com or a wordpress install. For many of my smaller clients I have them start with wordpress.com. Then I find it difficult to transition them because I don't want to lose any momentum they have built.

Your thoughts?

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Patty Dominguez — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:53:16 -0000

Chris - will this bootcamp series be done via the web - or in a physical location?
Via the web, would be great for those of us with limited funds but a strong interest to learn about what you have to offer - this list (and relevant comments included) sounds like actionable for marketers who are looking to implement, but need a roadmap on what to do from a social media standpoint.

Cheers!

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Ellen Naylor — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:40:28 -0000

Hi Chris,

Thanks!

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Karen Talavera — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:38:11 -0000

Great stuff! What about teaching them how to capture subscriber/registrant data and build an email marketing list? So much of monetizing your blog or Web property is about building a following and proving you have a captive audience to up-sell/cross-sell and/or just communicate to when needed. (If you want to include an email 101 module I can help you - or send people my way if they need that!).

Also, what about basic setting up new products/offer pages and shopping cart basics?

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Erich — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:31:16 -0000

Sounds great! I agree with #michael Durwin; there's so much you could say there. Would it make sense to divide it up into more days? Or, put together one of your eBooks to assign homework?

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

maddiegrant — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:29:21 -0000

Assume you're going to do this but you might want to add setting them up on Feedburner with accompanying optimizing/publicizing etc, setting up feed and subscription options, then feeding through to outposts like FB and LI.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Derek — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:10:49 -0000

The one big omission that I see is content.

Without great content, it doesn't really matter how good your network or social media profiles are. Copywriting, writing for the web, and basic journalism skills are key.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Doug Firebaugh — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:05:51 -0000

Chris, I would suggest a schedule-or a daily blueprint on what they do daily and how long it takes. We have instituted that and it gives a structure of work, flow, and accomplishment as well. Great idea and so badly needed. Rocking Hot!

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Tom O'Brien — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:57:08 -0000

Hi Chris:

One thing I think is missing here - is community. Many, or most categories have large, vibrant, existing communities. Everyone should become a valued contributor to their own community. For example, http://howardforums.com gets >8 million posts per year about cellphones. If you have ANYTHING to do with cellphones, you need to be reading, contributing, helping people over there.

Figure out where the energy is and go there. Don't try to create it all by yourself.

Tom O'Brien
MotiveQuest LLC

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Ladee K. Rickard — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:23:16 -0000

I found a need to understand the basics of setting up Google Ads and a simple payment/PayPal account. Present a basic outline of what the tools are and how to compare to determine what is required.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

LisaNewton — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:20:09 -0000

Wow, what a great list. The only thing I would add is even with the technical knowledge, it's so important to keep the human side to it.

For example, many people know how to use Twitter, but aren't human about it. As soon as you follow them, they send you a DM asking you to click a link, or plug a product. You are the one who taught me that online trust and relationships are a key ingredient, so knowing the technical aspect is definitely a necessity, but everyone is a person first........................:)

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

michael Durwin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:31:46 -0000

p.s. Perhaps dividing the bootcamp into 3 day long sessions:
1) The Basics
2) Tactics
3) Strategies

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

stevenmilstein — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:31:31 -0000

I have to agree with many of the comments above. Personally, I'd take a whack of those bullets & make them perquisites for the bootcamp. Why not blog a Prerequisite To-Do List with Chris' Preferred Bookmark and let folks go off on their own to get them done? Maybe even give them an estimate of how much time they could expect to spend on each task. Personally, I think this approach is not only more scalable and containable, but it also ensures participants that you'll get to the good stuff.

For me, that good stuff would not be the technology behind Chris Brogan but the classic Chris Brogan we read everyday. That would be the value add for me.

And speaking of Classic Chris Brogan stuff, it would be very much in your persona, and your curriculum, to link to some of your contributors. As I comment here, I'm number 26. That means there's potentially 25 links ahead of me who could make that list. IMO, of course :-)

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

michael Durwin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:27:17 -0000

Chris,
I agree with a few above that it may be a bit much for one day, especially considering that many attendees will be real virgins. You might want to have a 1 day seminar hosted by someone else who can just cover things like "what is an RSS feed, what are the different blog platforms", etc.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

ccseed — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:20:47 -0000

As a grateful alumni of your bootcamp who is now implementing what I've learned in the workplace for our leadership team, I'd add how you can tie your activity together with backtype, friendfeed, twitter, etc... Helping folks realize how they can implement these tools from their mobile access has also been very powerful for newcomers. Finally (I think your hitting it in your reader listening station above) I'd emphasize the power of crafting specific searches in google blog search and twitter search and feeding them through rss into the reader.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Victoria — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:06:08 -0000

You might want to add the importance of LinkedIn and how to use it and connect with people.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Yu Yu — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:59:36 -0000

There are going to be more social media jobs out there in the coming years. How about career advice to them? Like "Traits of a good community manager"

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Deb New — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:56:03 -0000

As previously said, a great outline for a workshop. You might ask people to come to the workshop knowing or having an ideas about why they want to market online and what their goals are for online marketing. This will help them be more clear about why they're doing this and help them think through how they'd implement what they'll learn at bootcamp instead of just learning a lot of cool stuff. They'd get to learn how to actually apply it to their marketing strategy and goals.

Re: Question for You While Preparing for 2009

Frankie Johnson — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:51:43 -0000

Hi Chris. Great list but I agree with a couple of other people that you may be in danger of getting tangled up in the weeds and missing the view. You jump right into registering a domain, but maybe it would be helpful to preface this by talking about how your blog is your brand. Perhaps you can add more on the importance of your blog name, what it communicates, the need to integrate the elements of name, look, tone and content when building a blog brand, etc. All basic branding stuff. Good luck with it!