I just read my friend Shannon Cherry’s blog post about the changes she’s putting into place in her business. I love how she’s publicly working through the issue of being relevant and useful for her many readers and followers.

• Her ezine will be discontinued as of September 2010.

• Her prices are going up.

• She’s going deeper into the marketing strategies she’s so great at, which doesn’t exclude publicity but puts it into a whole new light.

In other words… she’s keeping things fresh.

And you need to do the same thing.

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Not all blogs are created equally… especially when they aren’t blogs at all. There’s a trend in internet marketing to imitate a blog- complete with a first person story and a string of comments- to sell products.

I’ve seen this for skincare and weightloss and I’m sure a number of other categories are out there.

So here’s how it goes… somehow you find yourself on a website and you click a link that says something you’re particularly interested in, usually around sex, money, diet, health. “I lost 25 pounds in 2 weeks!” or “I was broke and now I’m a gazillionaire!”

And it looks copacetic with an engaging and amazing story.

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Yesterday I posted about engaging your followers… and how it’s not always that easy. Remember that first high school dance? Remember any social situation where you felt awkward? Nobody started off knowing how to flawlessly engage. We’re all learning on our feet!

Here’s a real life example of people jumping into a topic and getting lots of visibility from it.

I love to post “Elephant Under the Rug” topics… things that are on my mind that nobody seems to be talking about (but they SHOULD be talking about).

For instance, I’m up to my ears in telesummits. Like any cool idea, once it gets overdone it ceases to be cool and turns into a parody of itself.

So I posted a thought on Facebook:

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What you’re about to read isn’t rocket science. It’s no discovery I came upon in the rainforest. It’s just about people… talking to each other, responding, and engaging.

If you follow marketing big wigs, they’re all saying you must ENGAGE your audience. Whether you’re a big brand or a solo-entrepreneur, you need to engage, engage, engage.

And yet people aren’t… or they don’t know how. And I think I’ve figured out why.

Remember your first high school dance? A lot of us were not super comfortable no matter how much AquaNet fixed our hair in place.

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I love living in the Information Age, where my 7 year old asks me to Google “what’s the life cycle of a Junebug” after I told her I had no idea what their life cycle was. (I was trying to avoid the topic of how they mate wildly all night long each June, and seem to land in piles of blissfully deceased bug carcasses on my patio come morning.)

And even if I knew the answer to that question, would it make me an expert? Could I hang my shingle as the premier Junebug expert?

Of course not, it would simply fill my head with more random information that perhaps will serve me one day on a game show. Maybe.

But what if I spent years studying with Junebug experts, donning night vision goggles to document their nocturnal trysts? What if I had someone to answer my questions, to correct my erroneous assumptions, and to lead me to new discoveries?

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Shama Hyder Kabani is a twenty-something genius at business, social media, and making money online. Her new book, “The Zen of Social Media” is the answer to my prayers. It clearly outlines a thorough and effective social media strategy without going overboard with hyperbole, fluff or unimportant technicalities.

I get a LOT of books sent to me by people wanting me to read them, review them, and help promote them. And sadly to say, the majority of what’s sent to me are inferior. The “book as a sales tool or lead generator” tactic has gone too far, in my opinion. I want a book where I’m actually going to learn something, not just have the obvious stated and restated page after page. I love trees too much to see all that paper wasted with bad books.

So let me say this about Shama’s book- it’s a real book. It’s not a glossy 186 page teaser with zero nutritional value for the mind.

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When you’re invited to a party, usually the first reply isn’t “What should I wear?”, but “Who’s going to be there?”

Knowing who’ll be at an event, for better or for worse, helps us prepare.  It gives your mind time to map out a plan so you get the most out of it whether it’s a social event or a business building seminar.

Social media is the way people communicate about events these days and you can tap into the buzz for your next event by strategically using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more.

While planning my upcoming event I Heart My Biz I noticed that as the Twitter buzz grew, so did my guest list.

It taps into the primal desire of not wanting to be left out. What’s worse than sitting home reading bad romance novels when all your friends are out having a great time?  That’s pain.

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Struggling entrepreneurs, when feeling frustrated enough, will enthusiastically jump on a “magic pill” solution that presents itself as the be-all, end all solution to stagnant sales.
It’s often presented as a single tactic by someone with enormous success and the premise is that if they can do it, so can you.

I addressed this in a November 2009 blog post when I had the realization that the “fitness hoop” I purchased from my cardio-salsa teacher wasn’t the only secret behind her six pack abs. “I just hoop 15 minutes a day and look at me!”, she’d exclaim. But she didn’t mention she also taught 7 aerobics classes a week AND a class on awesome abs.

Each of the marketing tactics listed below are awesome, but proceed with caution if you think any one thing will solve all your problems:

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When my 7 year old started basketball this year, I sensed it was going to be a motherlode of learning opportunities for life and business. I was right!

This was our first adventure into team and contact sports. She’s participated in track and field (and she’s pretty darn fast but you’ll get those metaphors when we’re well into that season) but nothing that involved ball handling skills or high levels of teamwork.

She was pretty timid at game time, staying a good 20 feet away from where the ball was in play. She wanted to be in, but lacked the confidence to get right in there. She’d stand at the half court line yelling “I’m open, I’m open” but the problem was, throwing the ball to her wouldn’t help her team score. So she was doing the right moves, but in the wrong place.

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As much as I love the life of a solopreneur, sometimes I come up with ideas that could use a little committee input.

Case in point: Lovefest.

Seemingly harmless word to me, at least with the mental picture I held while I was writing about my upcoming event I Heart My Biz.

I was trying to think of a way to use it in a tagline but I just couldn’t come up with anything. Business building lovefest? Business breakthrough lovefest? Like right now, the ideas weren’t flowing.

So  I fired off an email to copywriting goddess Michele PW. “I need a tagline for this event that says LOVEFEST! Any ideas?”

She said she’d think about it. Meanwhile I saw that branding whiz  Rick Butts was online and I sent him a quick question.

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