Well now it can.  On Seth’s Blog today he officially announced the launch of Brands In Public.  This is part of Squidoo, a company he founded.  Brands in Public already has some large brands like Home Depot, Guinness, Allstate and Hello Kitty up and running. 

The basic idea is that each of these brands have a page where all tweets, blog posts, news stories, images and videos about that brand show up.  Everything in one central place.  Good or bad.  It’s one thing for people to be ”talking” about you, but it’s another thing for you to participate in this discussion.  And the goal of Brands in Public is to make that participation easy.  Because that is when the real value comes in.  The question is – are you willing to pay $400 a month to do so? 

What do you think?  I am curious.

Even being a daily reader, sometimes I am still amazed by the content.  Today was one of those days.  Today’s post was entitled You Matter.  Talk about a great way to start off your day!  This is a must read. 

Below are just a few of my favorites from this particular post by Seth Godin:

When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter.

When you love the work you do and the people you do it with, you matter.

When you leave the world a better place than you found it, you matter.

Reading Seth’s blog is a great way to start your day.  I had a conversation with a fellow Tweeter about how reading his daily post is almost the equivalent to a cup of coffee.  Each post typically provides a unique insight to a common problem or mistake people make in the marketing world.  It makes you think – which can be hard to do early in the morning.  More often than not, including 5 minutes to read Seth’s Blog in your day, each and every day (he has posted over 3,000 blog posts in a row now) will result in a feeling of motivation to go out and take on whatever that day may present you with.  I strongly encourage you to make this part of your daily routine. 

While I obviously cannot make it a requirement for you.  I can guarantee you will enjoy.

Get started with today’s post – Whether or which

This is often true in social media as well.  It is very easy to get caught up in trying to increase our awareness online, form new relationships and drive new business using social media.  But what about our current clients?  How are we using social media to strengthen relationships with them?

If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to take a moment to check your social media profiles to see how many of our current clients are out there.  Send them a message.  Share something cool you found online with them that you think they might be interested in learning more about.  I think you will find them to be very receptive to this initiative. 

Your current clients should not be just another connection or friend.  If you work together they should be your greatest social media ally.

Passionate people with a strong work ethic can accomplish great things.  Can you imagine the sense of accomplishment after making your 3,000th blog post in a row? 

There is a reason people like Seth Godin are so successful.  It’s because they are remarkable.  Read Seth’s post on How to be remarkable.  Over a month after the fact, this blog is still fresh in my mind and serves as motivation.  My hope is that it will provide some motivation for you in some are of your life as well. 

Below are two segments from Seth’s 3,000th post which I wanted to share:

“Within a week of starting this blog, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be giving it up any time soon. It’s a difficult habit to develop, but an even harder one to break.”

“And thanks. Thanks for reading and sharing and instigating and helping me grow. I appreciate it more than you know. It’s a privilege.”

This post inspired me to share a recent interaction with a Qdoba manager which I would classify as a “No” experience.  I hope he somehow finds and reads this blog.  It would just be another opportunity for him to create a “Yes” though I am sure he wouldn’t even realize the opportunity if it jumped out of the screen and bit him. 

I recently obtained a coupon at Cardinal Fitness for a free naked burrito with the purchase of any burrito of equal or lesser value.  This coupon had an expiration date of 3/31/09. 

I attempted to redeem the coupon at a Qdoba location that I frequent at least once a week and received the following objections:
“Where did you get this?”
“This coupon was only good last month.”
“I see the coupon says 3/31/09 as the expiration date, but that is written in.”

After I refused to accept his objections, I was made to feel guilty about using my very valid coupon with the following remarks:
“How many more of these do you have- is this your last one?”
“I will honor it this time becuase I know you come here alot, but I could get in big trouble for this.”

So let me just recap this experience.  I am a loyal customer at your store where I regularly pay $7.00 for ONE burrito.  And you are going to give me a hard time about using one coupon, accuse me of changing the expiration date on the coupon (basically calling me a liar), then tell me that I could be getting you in trouble because you are honoring one of YOUR coupons, and finally you are going to check to make sure I do not have any more coupons for your store.  Great job!  Great job at delivering HORRIBLE customer service.  I will still eat at Qdoba no doubt at some point in my life, but NEVER the store where you work.  I can also promise that I will tell as many people as possible about this experience and encourage them to tell others. 

And I am sorry but you will soon find out that negative word of mouth has no expiration date…

Here are the rules as taken from Mark’s Blog:

I will invest money in businesses presented here on this blog. No minimum, no maximum, but a very specific set of rules. Here they are:

1. It can be an existing business or a start up.
2. It can not be a business that generates any revenue from advertising. Why ? Because I want this to be a business where you sell something and get paid for it. Thats the only way to get and stay profitable in such a short period of time.
3. It MUST BE CASH FLOW BREAK EVEN within 60 days 
4. It must be profitable within 90 days.
5. Funding will be on a monthly basis. If you dont make your numbers, the funding stops
6. You must demonstrate as part of your plan that you sell your product or service for more than what it costs you to produce, fully encumbered
7. Everyone must work. The organization is completely flat. There are no employees reporting to managers. There is the founder/owners and everyone else
8.  You must post your business plan here, or you can post it on slideshare.com , scribd.com or google docs, all completely public for anyone to see and/or download
9. I make no promises that if your business is profitable, that I will invest more money. Once you get the initial funding you are on your own
10. I will make no promises that I will be available to offer help. If I want to , I will. If not, I wont.
11. If you do get money, it goes into a bank that I specify, and I have the ability to watch the funds flow and the opportunity to require that I cosign any outflows.
12. In your business plan , make sure to specify how much equity I will receive or how I will get a return on my money.
13. No mult-level marketing programs (added 2/10/09 1pm)

Top 20 Social Networks of 2008
Twitter is growing like crazy (I’m sure you already knew that).  Facebook is about to catch MySpace.  Classmates and Ning are doing surprisingly well?  Very interesting report by Mashable.

Don’t Make this Twitter Mistake- It Will Destroy Your Brand
Is it possible to go from 23,000 followers to just 213 before you know it?  Just tweet something offensive and it will happen.  I guess this proves @astrospace followers were paying attention.

Wikipedia is Wrong?  How Can this Be?
Right or wrong,  I still love Wikipedia.  Thank goodness I don’t plan on doing any reports soon.

Marketers Promise Hope
I love this Seth Godin Blog Post.  A perfect reminder that marketing isn’t always about a product or service, but about the feeling it creates.  The feeling of hope.

Why did you start a blog? Why should I start a blog?

I have been getting these two questions a lot lately as my blog continues to develop.  There are a lot of valid reasons why you should start a blog, but just remember a blog should be something that you WANT to do.  It may take a little convincing from some friends or co-workers to finally quit talking about it and actually do it.  A blog is not for everyone and it should not be something that is FORCED or something that you are not ready to make a commitment to.  Having said that, If you do decide to start a blog I believe you will find it to be a very rewarding experience.

Watch the video above to see why I started a blog and read more on some of the reasons on why you may want to think about creating your own blog.  There are many more than I could list…trust me.

Through blogging you learn about new things
Learning can be a great experience and a blog enables you to learn a lot about not only the online community, but other topics you might be blogging about.  It is natural to want to make your blog the best it can be which forces you to learn about things you do not know and more about things you may already know.  It is also very fun learning.  Why?  Because you get to share something you learned with the rest of your online community.  And then the best part- you begin getting feedback.  Mostly positive, though you will have a few negative posts as well.  You will also have posts of other people talking about similar topics that interest you.  Time to go check out those posts and learn even more.  All at once you have this cycle developing and you are learning new things every day while having fun doing it.

Blogging is low cost and helps create YOUR brand
What better way to get your name and expertise out to a large amount of people than blogging?  Blogging is a great way to help you not only strengthen your company’s brand- but YOUR brand.  It enables you to establish yourself in the online community as someone who is knowledgeable about a particular topic or topics.  Suddenly you become an expert in your own niche.  Then people began to trust you and the next thing you know you have developed followers or a Tribe or even Sneezers (as Seth Godin would say).  This allows you to spread your name while developing contacts and quality relationships with those followers.  Just like the traditional definition of networking, this can lead to great business opportunities as well as person opportunities.
All of this great exposure and endless potential opportunities and how much money does it cost you – not much at all. In fact, you can create a WordPress blog for free right now.  It will take you about 5 minutes to get started.

Blogging enables you to quickly produce content resulting in SEO and ROI
Content is king on the web.  Search engines are all about fresh, changing relevant content.  A blog delivers that content that search engines are after.  It makes Google happy.  This means your site gets more traffic.  Not just traffic, but qualified traffic.  With qualified traffic leads are generated.  With leads come sales.  Sales=money.  Money = good = you stay in business.  You don’t have to take my word for it.  Check out some of the benefits of blogging according to Compendium Blogware.

Blogging helps people
This is by far the most surprising and rewarding aspect of my blogging experience so far.  I can tell through comments and other interaction that I have been able to help people.  Even if it is something as small as telling them why they should or should not buy a particular cell phone, go see a certain movie; or even if it is something as trivial as helping them customize their Facebook or Twitter experience.  In some way, I know that I have helped them.  I don’t care who you are- helping people (even if it is someone you barely know) is one of the most rewarding experiences in life.

Final Reason: Blogging is fun.  Try it.  I think you will agree.

Firefox Gaining Ground on Internet Explorer as Browser of Choice
This is an article about Firefox increasing in popularity.  It has now taken over 20% of the market share.  Firexfox continues to improve on this number as Internet Explorer continues to drop off.  Internet Explorer is set to release IE 8 soon, in fact it is in Beta now.  Based on feedback so far, Firefox still is much faster than IE and Google Chrome tops them all.

Mashable’s 10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009
Twitter has made it’s mark and is here to stay.  As of now the focus as been how integrate Twitter with your blog or social media in presence.  In 2009 it might look more like how do I integrate my blog with Twitter- meaning Twitter will become more of the platform of choice and other tools will integrate in.  This article covers everything from Tweetbacks and Tweetstats to TwitterRolls and blogs influenced by Twitter themes with WordPress widgets like My Favorite Tweets.  I don’t know about you but I cannot wait to add more Twitter-based words to my vocabulary.

Seth Godin’s Blog: When Marketing Goes Nuclear
As I am sure you know by now the Nintendo Wii was a huge success this holiday season.  I don’t even know what you say about this particular post.  You must watch the video below.  I do love the Nintendo Wii, but this is a bit disturbing to a certain degree.