Sorry for the radio silence. We’re both on vacation. Marie is preparing for a big move, and I’ll be doing a little fiction writing. We’ll be back next Thursday with “3Q’s in 3Min.” In the meantime, catch up on all of this season’s interviews on our blip.tv channel page.

Again, thank you all so much for continuing to read and watch socialTNT.

Have a great holiday!

Chris

Last night, my MacBook decided it wanted to be ornery. I tried repairing the OS, but that didn’t work. I ended up having to do a clean install of Leopard. After that didn’t work, my happy MacBook has to spend today at the Apple Genius Bar. Luckily I had an archive (Thanks Timemachine!), so they were able to restore my data. There is still some software that needs to be reinstalled, but the interview slated for today will be up tomorrow.

Thanks for your understanding.

Best,

Chris

• Every day in our professional lives, we encounter experiences that can be used to help others learn. Write anecdotes of challenges or successes, or share tips and tricks. They’ll help increase your industry’s knowledge, and your readers will appreciate it.
• Do you have case studies, white papers or reviews you can share? Do it!
• Holiday coming up? Incorporate your blog’s focus into a post with a seasonal angle.
• Instead of posting every time you want to share a link, try using Twitter, tumblr, or del.icio.us to create a link log.
• One of the most revolutionary things about blogging is that it allows readers to participate in the news dialog. Before writing about the news or another blog post, check to make sure you are adding insight or evolving the conversation. It also doesn’t hurt if you are adding your own personal style to the news (for example, instead of covering the Final Four, what about covering how brackets have moved into the social media space, or the way brands are using these brackets to market to consumers).

Blogging is a great tool to share your unique point of view with the world. With so many people writing, you can’t always have original content. You can, however, always have your own style. Be genuine and you’ll always be able to add to the discussion.

What are some tips you can offer other bloggers on how to fight the noise in the echo chamber? Or is it even a problem? Let us know in the comments!

:: :: :: :: ::

Don’t miss a post: Add socialTNT to your RSS reader [what’s that?]. Better yet: socialTNT delivered to your InBox!

[The above photo, “Megaphone” by Indigo Goat on flickr, is used under Creative Commons]

As many of you know, I’ve been struggling with the flu for almost two weeks now. Thank you all for your warm Tweets and emails.

Initially I thought it was tonsillitis, but it has progressed into something more. When not at work, I’m sleeping. It’s been rough trying to maintain my client workload and publish the blog. Unfortunately, I’ve also had to cancel interviews with some great folks.

Please bear with me as I regain my health. I hope to return next week to the timely commentary and insightful profiles all of you have come to expect from socialTNT.

We’ve got some exciting things in the works this quarter, including a bit of a face lift and more audio and video programming. We also are working on some distribution deals across a variety of media so that you can get socialTNT however you want it.

If you haven’t already, please add our RSS feed to your reader.  Better yet, subscribe to socialTNT by email!

Best,

Chris

Forrester Research’s Jeremiah Owyang Outlines the four qualities of a “community manager”

• A Community Advocate
• Brand Evangelist
• Saavy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial
• Gathers Future Input for Product and Services

It’s great that this position is becoming more formalized. It’s already creating some discussion.

Dan Ackerman Greenberg gives advice on how to create a viral video and then tries to save a sinking ship in a follow-up post

Heavily weighted on the commercial angle, this piece seems to promote Dan’s viral marketing firm. Nothing in it is very surprising; it’s just shocking to see it written out and in use.

He gives some good advice on how to optimize the thumbnail and titles plus other basic viral strategy (send to all your friends, post in MySpace comments, etc.). Ultimately, the whole post turns south when he mentions these practices:

“Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.

“Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.”

“A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video. We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this). Everyone loves a good, heated discussion in the comments section – especially if the comments are related to a brand/startup.

“Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment. We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.”

Facebook ruins everyone‘s holiday shopping; Creates privacy issues

A lot of people are talking about this one. I have a lot to say about this. Working on a post. Until then, I’ve joined the MoveOn group on Facebook.

Any comments on any of these stories? They each deserve a full post. I’ve been sick since mid-weekend and haven’t had a chance to write what I’d like, or even catch-up on reading. A full post tomorrow. On Thursday, John Markoff of the New York Times will join us for part one of two special conversations in the “3Q’s in 3 Min” series.

UPDATE: After being in a semi-state of shock all morning, I received an email from Todd Defren with a cached version of yesterday’s post. The post should now be up in its entirety. Todd, you F-ing ROCK!!!