I’m at the Blogger Meetup.   Having fun hanging out with other local Eastside bloggers.  There are a bunch of people here that found the event through upcoming.yahoo.com, Twitter, local Redmond Chamber and Sammamish Chamber.  Steve Broback is talking about things like “what is a blog” and “driving the right traffic” to your blog.

If you’re interested in hanging out tonight, we’re here from 6-8pm.  Come on by right now!

Steve Broback and Jason Preston from the Parnassus Group are speaking at the Sammamish Chamber lunch on December 18, 2008 from 11:30am – 1:00pm.  Steve’s an expert at blogging and recently spoke here at thinkspace, where together we co-hosted the “Blog Bling Mixer“.  Jason is an expert at Social Media.  Jason has taught me a lot about Twitter.  Most people think blogs are for hobbies or special interests that you have.  Steve discusses the value of having a blog for your business.  I’m definitely going to attend this event and check out the Sammamish Chamber of Commerce.

Last night we had the Blog Bling Mixer. We had a good mix of beginner bloggers as well as some expert bloggers.

We wrote down topics on the whiteboard and everyone had a chance to vote for what they wanted to hear and learn about. The first topic was about “Widgets – What are they, how do they work?”. The second topic was “Adding Google Talk to your blog”, that was something that I had the opportunity to talk about.

Winners of the drawings:
• Joe Kennedy – One free week of coworking
• Andru Edwards – thinkspace schwag – Organic cotton t-shirt

Some of the people that attended were: Steve Parnassus and Jason Preston – Parnassus Group; Andru Edwards – GearLive; Monica Guzman – The Big Blog; Joe Kennedy – Eastside Business; Iris Kao – Iris Kao Desgin; Elizabeth Kasprzak – Facelogic; Maureen Nolan – Windermere; Shona Milne – Woodinville Chamber of Commerce; Mike Weisner – Green Point Technologies; Adam Loving – Adam’s Blog.

I hope everyone found some useful information to take back to their blogs!

People are blogging about your business, and Google is listening. Are you ready? Today customers are tweeting about your products on Twitter and ganging up you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of the social media phenomenon and the opportunities for businesses to utilize the force of customers connecting to their advantage.

Presenters: Steve Broback, author of Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business and founder of the Parnassus Group, a Social Media consultancy, and Jason Preston, New Media Manager at the Parnassus Group, will be presenting the tips and techniques of making your online presence matter. Learn how to rank highly in Google and attract new customers by taking advantage of easy-to-learn social media tools.

To register for the breakfast event click here.

Date of the event: September 26, 2008 from 7:30am - 9:00am.

We’ve been liberated from WordPress.com and are now running a self-hosted blog. We’ve changed our blog url too. If you’re reading this, you may have noticed that we’re no longer at blog.thinkspace.com — rather we are now at thinkspace.com/blog. If you’re noticing any anomalies please send me an email or leave me some feedback. Thanks.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Steve Broback, co-author of “Blogging for your Business“.  We had a very interesting conversation inside the thinkspace office.  He addressed me initially as the “the blogger”.  I was humored by that comment.  I was glad that he knew that thinkspace had a blog before he had even toured our space.  During our conversation I asked him what kind of work does his business do and he stated that he was an author and handed me his book.

I’m a bit of an information freak and quickly read the entire book.  In the past, I’ve googled the topic of business blogging a lot and read a lot of different blog posts.  I’ve always been a bit skeptical about what I was reading because I always felt like some SEO company is trying to sell me something.  I enjoyed reading this book because it didn’t feel like I had to buy something at the end.   Rather there were a lot of different practical ideas being introduced and discussed.  Chapter 7 “Launching Your Blog and Getting Noticed” was my favorite chapter in the book. I’ve tried a few techniques that were in “How to engage the Blogosphere” and got immediate results.  Understanding the rules of engagement is critical.  Getting other bloggers attention requires a bit more savvy than having a press release blasted out through the newswire.

I believe that blogging for your business is critical if you want to engage your customers in what you’re doing.  Your customers become much more educated in what you are doing, it can show them what makes your product or services unique, and allows you to stands out from the crowd.  One of the keys to being successful at business blogging is bringing something new to the table.  Don’t be a part of the “echo chamber”.  “Use your unique personal experience and knowledge to create original content that others can regurgitate.”  I strongly recommend this book to anyone looking to start a blog for their business.