The 24 Hour Challenge: Internet Marketing Without Sleep
I’m going to string myself out on coffee and spend the next 24 hours straight promoting The Age of Conversation online. Not only do all profits from the book go to a worthy cause, the book itself is a virtual smorgasbord of inspiration and ideas from 100+ marketing professionals across the world.
I’ll be liveblogging my adventures here, so stay tuned for updates while I drive to the neighborhood café, roll up my sleeves at get to work…
Many of my fellow authors have been busting their tails getting the word out – I can’t wait to join them.
Before I go, I’ll leave you with this thought:
What can you do in 24 hours to promote your website, your business or your cause?
Liveblogging…
UPDATE 7/17 @ 7pm: Darn you ! I never made it to the café as one of my clients had a bit of an emergency that took me hostage this afternoon. Given my jangled nerves and the state of my coffeelogged stomach, I’ve decided that I’m going to start my 24 hour challenge fresh tomorrow morning. Probably for the best as I’ll be able to spend this evening getting a few of my proverbial ducks to line up.
I’ve cleared my schedule for 7/18 and am keeping my fingers crossed that the red phone doesn’t ring on me tommorrow.
UPDATE 7/18 @ 11:30am: Update coming soon — I am just about to wrap up the first step in the challenge…
UPDATE 7/18 @ 3:30pm: I’ve just recently published a Squidoo lens for The Age of Conversation. Squidoo, Seth Godin’s nautical brainchild, is a great way to pull together resources about a particular topic or idea in a concise fashion. At the moment, I’m working to add the list of authors and links to the lens.
UPDATE 7/18 @ 5:15pm: An alphabetized list of authors is now up on the Squidoo lens. I’ll be tweaking this up over time. Right now only a small portion of the Flickr photos from the Age of Conversation Flickr group are streaming into it, but more should drop in eventually.
UPDATE 7/18 @ 5:45pm: Lori Magno emailed to say that The Age of Conversation is up to #5 on this week’s bestseller list at Lulu.com. That’s great!
UPDATE 7/18 @ 7:00pm: Just added a fixed page devoted to The Age of Conversation on this blog. I’ll be adding and expanding that section over time.
Maintaining and expanding a section on your blog devoted to a topic or a cause can provide a lot of long term benefit as it gives search engines something juicy to grab hold of and becomes a natural magnet for both your own internal links and that of other bloggers that may link to it as a resource. In this case, as the mission is to sell the book I’m working up a spot graphic to use as a call to action.
In most blogging software, such as WordPress this is easy to do. If your blog software doesn’t allow this, there are free alternatives out there such as Google Page Creator where you can have pretty much full control over a single, static page.
UPDATE 7/18 @ 7:15pm: Just added a WTF at Technorati — if you have a Technorati account, you might consider voting for it or adding one of your own.
While we are talking Technorati, why not add The Age of Conversation to your Technorati favorites? You can so so here:
UPDATE 7/18 @ 7:30pm: Add www.ageofconversation.com
UPDATE 7/18 @ 7:45pm: I just stumbled www.ageofconversation.com on StumbleUpon. If you don’t have the StumbleUpon toolbar, now is a great time to get it. You’re in for a lot of fun. StumbleUpon is essentially a bookmark swapping community. All you need to do to recommend a webpage is to hit the “thumbs up” button on the downloadable toolbar. You can sign up and download the toolbar here.
UPDATE 7/18 @ 7:55pm: I’m a little surprised that only have 31 people have dugg the book release so far. I mean we have over 100 contributing authors 
I dugg it yesterday — check it out and see if you think it is diggworthy. If you aren’t sure of of the whole Digg thing works, there is a great introduction to Digg by Neil Patel.
UPDATE 7/18 @ 8:15pm: Just wrapped up my new call-to-action graphic for The Age of Conversation page. You’ll notice that the sidebars throughout this site link to that page for maximum exposure here. Eventually, I’ll refine that page I’ve got setup to promote The Age of Conversation here, giving it an optimized layout all of its own.
UPDATE 7/18 @ 8:55pm: OK — I need to get out of this cafe before they kick me out. Time to get back to the home office. BTW, if you are every looking for a place to stop off on Highway 101 about 45 minutes north of San Francisco, Cotati makes a nice little stop. It still keeps a lot of its 60’s counter-culture charm and you can get free wi-fi and some good food at the Redwood Cafe.
UPDATE 7/19 @ 12:45am: Well, my little boy hasn’t cooperated as well with my master plan this evening. He is (almost) asleep and I’m getting ready to roll out something else I’ve been working on for The Age of Conversation… Just a little bit more…
UPDATE 7/19 @ 12:50am: Oh, I forgot to mention — Drew McLellan has a great roundup of media mentions.
UPDATE 7/19 @ 1:30am: All mentions of additional donations, including the Squidoo lens, now point at this Typepad tip jar that Drew setup. If you can donate something extra to Variety, they can really put it to good use. Also, more photos from the launch are now up on the Squidoo lens.
UPDATE 7/19 @ 1:40am: Just added the site to me del.icio.us bookmarks. 28 other people have done the same so far.
UPDATE 7/19 @ 2:30am: Just submitted the launch announcement to the marketing category at PlugIM. If you have an account there, consider voting for it. If not, consider making an account — it’s a great marketing community and I have a Google Toolbar button for download on this site that can make submitting stories a little easier for Google Toolbar users.
UPDATE 7/19 @ 2:40am: I’ve also submitted the story to Sphinn, another great marketing community that covers social media. This is another place your votes would count greatly Sphinn is the new kid on the block from Danny Sullivan’s posse at Search Engine Land.
UPDATE 7/19 @ 3:50am: I’ve launched one of the things I was working on earlier — and I think its going to prove pretty useful for me. It’s a Google Custom Search Engine that searches the blogs of all the contributors. This should be a great way to introduce people to our collective writings to encourage them to buy the book. Take it for a test drive and let me know what you think.
UPDATE 7/19 @ 4:45am: I’ve just spent the past 55 minutes emailing some people that I thought might be interested in learning about the book. Been at things roughly 20 hours so far, aside from breakfast and a few toddler temper tantrums. Alas, I think I misjudged just how blurry the screen would look after such a long day It looks like I may have to take a little catnap as I’ve got a pretty full schedule starting later on this morning that I think I’ll need my eyes for.
But the promotion continues! I’m going to be chipping away at it over the course of this week when I have a few moments here and there. But…… for…… now…… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……………………
This content was originally published here.
