New Feature: Friday Link Love

I’m still contemplating Part 2 of my series on legitimate ways to outsource content for corporate blogs. I’m probably over-thinking it. It’s a sticky issue, and… well, it’s a sticky issue, okay? I promise to work on it over the weekend.

For now, I’m launching a regular new feature on this blog, and it’s only slightly derivative. (Can I sell, or what? Yo…)

Every Friday, expect to find links to blogs or forums that inspired me to post a comment.

Photo credit: ArtemFinland

About a third to half of my “blogging” time goes to reading and commenting on some thirty blogs that I regularly scan. They run the gamut from marketing communications, social media, writing and lead generation, and they’re all excellent.

In fact, I’m constantly discovering valuable new bloggers to add to my Google Reader,  list every week. If you think I should be reading your blog, then add a link to your best or most recent post in the comments section. If you inspire me, maybe I’ll leave a comment on your blog – and not just the cursory “Hey, great post.”

I actually take time to compose my comments, and contribute something of value to the conversation. Commenting breeds reflection and, as a few of my past posts demonstrate, reflection on other blogs can generate interesting new threads to follow here.

The only downside is that none of the thoughtful stuff I participate in on other blogs appears here… until now.

Credit to Christine Hartter for her post about the importance – and difficulty – in keeping your blog and other social media channels current. This is the post that sparked the idea for Link Love.

John White took an interesting take on how to pitch social media to engineering companies. He gets extra points for patiently tolerating my insistent prodding, in the comments section.

Beth Harte has a knack for asking difficult questions, and sparking easy conversation on her blog The Harte of Marketing. This week her post entitled “How truly serious are you about being social?” raises that question in a hypothetical world where Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin (gasp) disappeared overnight. (Sounds like a Jerry Bruckheimer scenario to me.)

Beth also asked this week how to promote yourself to social media contacts without putting anyone off. That question was too big for me to tackle quickly. But it’s worth reading Beth’s post anyway.

Tom Martin got all meta-cognitive in a couple of posts this week, including the one I commented on: “What do you want from me?”

Corey Freeman is a 17-year-old entrepreneur and female freelance content writer and designer. More notably, girl can write. She asked this week how to decide if freelance writing is for you, and I answered.