Review: Born to Blog by Mark W Schaefer and Stanford A Smith

Thanks to The Social Penguin Blog, I had a chance to review Born to Blog by Mark W Schaefer and Stanford A Smith.

The book takes the reader on a journey of discovery, starting with the question: were you born to blog? Spoiler alert – you were. Apparently we all fit into five blogging specialities: storytelling, dreaming, persuading teaching or curating. We’re taken through each skill, shown examples and told stories. With three years of research behind the book, including 500 blogs and interviews with over 150 bloggers, I know I can trust this book. Then a sentence like this kind of makes me doubt that:

“A person who cannot dream will die”

Whoa! That seems a bit tough to back up – how many people have died from ‘an inability to dream’?

Uh oh, not a great start …! Read the full review here to see if the book redeemed itself.

Four Brands Rocking Social Media

We spend a lot of our time telling everyone how to “do” social media. Use hashtags – but not too many. Reply to commenters. Choose a tone of voice and be consistent etc etc etc. Often we include examples of people who get it so, so wrong. But who’s getting it right?

To find out what four brands I dig, read the original post on The Social Penguin Blog. It also got picked up by Social Media Today – I feel like an online celeb already. Excuse me, my milk bath is ready now …

Women in Business: Get Blogging!

I had a guest post published today by Communities Online, about why professional women should be blogging more. Of course, there’s a huge focus on getting women into board positions just now. For aspirational girls and women, being able to read first-hand advice and anecdotes about that journey would be inspiratinal, and help to forward the movement.

Girls and women have always looked for role models – our mums or our peers, and especially celebs in glossy magazines. So it follows that to see an increase of women on Boards, we need to see women on Boards, or women on the path to Boards.

Blogging is a great way to become visible, and is a tool that could be used (and should be used) by successful women to achieve that. By blogging, inspirational ladies can be the professional role models young women need without even leaving the comfort of their own homes.

To read the whole article, including why women don’t blog more, click here.