I’m thinking about writing a short eBook that I’ll host on my blog and provide to you free of charge.

For months now, Twitter-related links have been the main traffic referral source to my blog.  You’ll notice that I don’t have a lot of subscribers, compared to other bloggers that I benchmark myself against.  It’s frustrating.  But in traveling recently, I’ve met people from all over who tell me that they’ve been reading my blog for some time. To be honest, those comments were appreciated, but also surprising.  My subscriber count is really low.

Then, Mike Brown said something that got my gears turning.  When I asked him: “Do you subscribe to my blog?”  He answered:  “No.  But I do read your posts from Twitter every day.”My average daily returning traffic is somewhere around 3,500 visitors.  My current subscriber count on Feedburner at the time of this post is 142.  I have over 17,000 followers on Twitter and that continues to grow.

Distributing and Consuming Media

I put a lot of work into using Twitter to share content and feed the system.  There seems to be this idea of 12:1 in terms of presence building, meaning that to be successful in building your online brand, you need to promote the work and ideas of others 12 times more than you promote your own stuff.  Realistically, I average tweeting about 15 to 25 social objects that I don’t own each day.

I think that this is, in part, the result of my own media consumption patterns.  I primarily use email subscriptions and Google Reader to stay up on what’s happening and the bloggers that influence me.  Reading posts from tweets and links is rare for me, except when someone directly copies me on a tweet with a call to click.

This makes me wonder: am I weird?  Are most people doing things differently today?  I want to find out how you get your media.  Will you take this poll I’ve started in LinkedIn?  Pretty please?

What Presence Building on Twitter Really Means

I believe presence building is mainly about creating yet another lever.  By showing up to and participating in the online cocktail party, we build more than just a following. We open opportunities for real relationships.

Recently, my friend Desarae was in town from Minneapolis.  We met on Twitter.  While she was in Columbus, I introduced her to many of my close friends using Twitter.  It was easy.

What’s funny is that another friend, Mike Cordes, introduced us.  He did that using Twitter as the medium.  You might notice his Twitter picture and the blue TweetMyTime jersey.  I met Mike on Twitter when he asked if he could join team TweetMyTime at the Columbus Marathon.  To this day, all three of us primarily communicate using Twitter because it’s fast, easy and loads of fun.

Do you get where I’m going with this?

McLuhan was right.  The medium really is the message.  In social penetration, frequency of communication is important.  A medium like Twitter allows for unobtrusive frequency to be easy, while also taking advantage of Chris’s idea on Anywhen.

It would seem then that using Twitter as a primary communication tool to find and build relationships is a statement of human brand value.  For instance, one might get the message:

• “I’m here because I’m open to meeting new people”
• “I enjoy talking with other humans and I want to do it often, even when I’m doing other things.”
• “I know that you are too busy for random 10 minute phone calls and respect that.  I can talk with you in 14o characters or less when you have time to respond.”

Twitter is also a numbers game.  The larger you build your presence (presence being thought of as a phone book, in this sense), the more you can leverage the nature of serendipity.  Not every follower will end up as a true relationship, but if conversion of those relationships is a small percentage, then a larger presence will also equal a larger percentage.

From a small business lens, I believe presence building is absolutely essential.  Why?  As a small business owner, you have limited dollars and even more constraints on your time.  In that sense, building strong relationships through more frequent communication provides a competitive advantage in terms of finding opportunities (leveraging serendipity) and retaining customers (building stronger, lasting relationships).

Humans Marketing Channels and Theater of the Mind

Essentially, marketing creates leverage.  In the traditional sense, marketing messages help to position the product or service in the mind of the end consumer so that when the consumer finally hits the point of purchase – whether it’s a checkout counter, shopping cart or B2B account executive – they already want to buy what you sell.

But now things are much different.  Communication tools have changed in such a way that we humans have an entire arsenal that allows individuals the ability to create the leverage that you once needed a department of people to accomplish.

Human marketers are artists at creating theater of the mind.  This is the idea of using technology to create the illusion of being everywhere at once, and all the time.  This type of visibility driven largely by using Twitter has helped to create a new breed of celebrities and heros, fueled by both intellect and inherent charisma.

Visibility is also the sister of accessibility, which is very different from the celebrities of older media such as television and radio.  Celebrities in those mediums are primarily exclusive and work hard to stay away from the commoners by using money and status as the barrier.

Yet, humans are delighted when someone they admire is accessible to them.  Twitter, as a communication tool, provides that type of accessibility but also the convenience to make communication manageable.  For instance,  think about how many tweets your favorite blogger or author must get each day. I’m willing to bet that if you tweet them right now, they will probably respond, even if it’s only a few words and an emoticon.  When these popular (and busy) folks do respond, how does that make you feel?

As mobile devices improve over time, so will our ability to master this type of communication illusion.

What This eBook Will Be About

I want to write this to teach you how to build presence and create your own illusions, starting first with Twitter.  Here’s the basic overview of my ideas for chapters:

• How I Listen and a Few Other Ways to Approach Listening to the Web
• Selecting Your Presence Building Tools and Knowing Why
• The Importance of Frequency and Timing
• Copy Writing in 140 Characters for Successful Presence Building
• One-to-One Conversations in the Public Twitter-Sphere
• Leveraging The Social Graph of Others for Friendly Mutual Gains
• Feeding the System with Value without Being Boring
• Conversational Social Marketing and Response (Guest-Written Chapter)
• Hub & Spoke:  How To Tips for Business Blog Content Distribution on Twitter and the Effects

But before I put a ton of effort into a project like this, I want to ask you:

Will this be of value to you?  Will you read it?  And most importantly, what would you add?

Please let me know in the comments…

When you go to renew your driver’s license, do you say “yes” to becoming an organ donor?

It’s a hard truth to face.  Saying “yes” to that question means considering the idea that someday, something tragic might happen that could end your time in this world.  No one likes thinking about that.

But, in the end, you and I know that life is precious and fragile.  The one thing that we all have in common is that no one, not you or I or anyone else, can take anything from this world with us when we leave it.

A Good Excuse to Run

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I like to run.  From working on projects like TweetMyTime to completing my first full marathon last year, running has become both a mental and physical release for me.

So when Rachel Lewis and Heather Blausey met with me over coffee and asked me to get involved with LifeLine of Ohio’s Dash for Donation, I jumped at the chance.  What better way to train, than to train for a race with a great cause attached?

Dash for Donation needs your eyeballs.  The race takes place in Columbus on July 10th, 2010, with a start time of 7 a.m. It features a 1/2 marathon run, a 5K run/walk, a 1K fun walk and a kids and mascots dash (that’s a short run for children 6 & under, which should be a pretty cute photo opportunity for parents).

I’m doing the half, and I’d LOVE for you to run with me (in any capacity).  If you are up for it, you can register HERE.

Need Some Motivation?  Look at These Numbers

In the interest of full disclosure, I lifted these stats from the Lifeline of Ohio blog.

(On a side note, Lifeline of Ohio is doing excellent work in using social media tools like Facebook to support their cause.  It’s a a solid case study example for all of you non-profit readers.)

The following statistics come from a random statewide telephone survey of 2,012 Ohio adults, conducted in January 2010, via Lifeline of Ohio, on behalf of Donate Life Ohio, and the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati.  The numbers are staggering.

The results of the survey offer some insight into what prevents Ohioans from taking the steps to register as donors:

• 31% of Ohioans who said they did not want to donate organs, eyes or tissue after death said they didn’t think their organs would be useful, feeling that they were too old to donate or had health concerns that precluded them from donating.
• 66% of those surveyed said they have registered as organ, eye and tissue donors on their driver license – indicating that some Ohioans falsely believe they are registered donors.

The study also revealed that the common myths about organ and tissue donation are still prevalent:

• 28% of those polled believe that doctors are more interested in obtaining organs, than saving lives of organ donors.  This is the most common myth that prevents individuals from registering as donors. (The truth is that an individual’s status as a donor is only considered after everything has been done to save his/her life, and death has been declared.)
• 9% of those surveyed do not believe that an open casket funeral is possible after donation.  In fact, if an open casket was possible before donation, it will still be possible after donation.
• 6% of respondents believe that organ donation is against their religion.  Contrarily, all major religions in the U.S. support donation.
• While 31% of Ohioans who said they do not want to be donors think they are too old or unhealthy to donate, age and health are not prohibiting factors to donation.  The oldest donor (to date) was 92 and saved a life by donating a liver.  Individuals that have lived with diseases, like cancer and heart disease, have still given the “Gift of Life” after death.

[End Research Study]

Kind of disheartening, wouldn’t you agree?  I personally think that some of the reasoning behind folks not signing up for organ donation is a bit absurd, and maybe the result of a lack of education and understanding as to the intent.

Here’s a link to some facts and information on how organ donation actually works, how you can become a donor and three different ways to sign up.  Knowledge is the first step towards any change.

Ways You Can Help

So what do you think?  Will you help me raise awareness for Lifeline of Ohio and organ donation?

Would you please share this post with your network by ReTweeting it?  You don’t have to be an Ohioan to do this.

You might even share it with your Facebook friends.  It’s for a good cause.  Here’s a tip: for a little extra reach on Facebook, hit a status update between 7 p.m. and midnight.  Evenings are when the activity is highest there, because most of us like socializing at the end of the day.

If you are an Ohioan, we can be on the same team.  Would you consider taking the run with me?

I need some help and I have a lot to teach any student or new marketer who is willing to hustle.

Right now, huber+co. interactive is in Renaissance.  TweetMyTime has legs.  It’s been validated by every race organizer and endurance racing professional we’ve talked to.  It’s been published across the web on blogs, on racing websites, and in the local and national media.  The best part is that we have people lined up who want to use the application and our expertise at inbound marketing.

It feels right, so we’re going with it.  But frankly, we’re all buried with work that needs to be done fast.

I Want YOU
Are you a hustler?  Are you fearless?  Are you eager to learn how the social web is evolving and how all of these cool bells and whistles can be applied to actually making money?  Are you fun to be around and a team player?  If so, I’m looking for a Padowan Jedi apprentice to help me out as we launch this concept to the masses.

Do you want learn more about me? Want to check my references?  Do some digging my LinkedIn profile.  As of now, 38 people are giving me their thumbs up.   You can always Google me as well.

I want to set my expectations clearly, so here’s the lowdown:

What You’ll be Doing

• Learning how a CRM system works by doing some data entry on client and prospect accounts.
• Helping to write and edit copy for marketing materials, websites, Facebook pages, blogs and other communication vehicles.
• Learning how to be a content engineer through practice.  You’ll be coached and expected to help develop media content such as videos, social profiles and pages, audio, etc.
• Gaining experience in social cross-integration strategy and execution (i.e. making websites and social networks work together to make publishing easier and more efficient).
• Possibly some video editing via iMovie and maybe even Final Cut Pro.
• Presentation research, slide building and structure, with the possibility of co-presenting with me at gigs (but only after you’ve proven that you’re ready to take the stage).

What You’ll Get in Return (but only if you hustle and do a good job)

• All the experience above.  If you notice, they don’t teach you most of that in class.
• I will teach you as much as you are willing to learn.  The best applicants will be sponges.
• A really fun group of people to work with in a hip, relaxed but intense open office environment where you can wear what you want.
• My recommendation – but again, only if you hustle and do good work.
• The leverage of all my personal networks, online and offline.  You will be my shadow, and so I will introduce you to a ton of uber-sharp and connected business professionals.
• Longer term, if this all works out like I think it will, there’s potential for you to land yourself a full-time job with our company.

What’s Required

• Hustle.  If you’re not willing to work your ass off, than this isn’t for you.
• Minimum of 20 hours per week of weekday availability.
• A way to get to the Belmont Building in the Arena District
• We can have a Macbook for you to use, but if you have you’re own and are more comfortable using that, cool.
• Positive attitude.  Attitude is everything, so if you’re grouchy all the time, this isn’t the gig you’re looking for.
• Basic understanding of the web.  Frankly, if you’re in college today and you don’t have this, you’re in some serious trouble.

As of now, this won’t be a hourly paid position. Sorry.

But what you will gain something that’s worth way more than a measly hourly rate.  If you make the cut, you will have an opportunity to be working in a hot start-up technology environment with a group of really experienced and innovative social web entrepreneurs.

By working along side me, you’ll gain visibility in the Columbus business community and in my networks across the country and Canada.  And who knows, it you’re good, and TweetMyTime works out as planned, you might gain a chance at landing a job with salary and benefits right out of school.

And that’s it.  If you’re interested and want to meet up, please submit your basic info below.  I’m planning to start interviews next week.

Cheers!

Nate

It’s almost the end of 2009, and you and I both know the social web is about conversations between humans. We’ve figured that part out.  Organizations, events, products and services – none of these things really have the ability to communicate.  They’re things that have messages.  But behind those things with messages, their are people.  Their are always people.

We know people talk to each other. It’s human nature to want to connect with others like ourselves. However, the rub lies in figuring out what to talk about. What reason do we have to connect? Why should we reach out to other humans?  Who actually cares where we went for lunch or who we’re meeting for coffee? [answer: nobody. sorry.  It was interesting at first, but the luster has worn off over this past year.]

I Hate the Word Viral
Viral to me brings up a negative connotation.  Viruses make us feel terrible and maybe miss a few days of school or work.  Viruses infect our computers and make them not work.  In recent years, the word viral has been used to describe things that spread.  That said, think about what’s happening with the whole H1N1 scare right now.  Months back, it started as a few isolated cases, but in time those people infected  passed on the virus to their close friends or family.  Without meaning to, people cultivated seeds of something that spread fast.

Seeding Conversations
Consider the H1N1 example, but rather than think of seeds as a nasty bug, think of seeds different types of content and media.  We’ve already seen some people seed topics that have grown into really big online conversations.

A few years, BlendTech was able to get everyone talking about blenders by seeding “Will it Blend” on YouTube.  Zappos and Southwest Air seed online and offline conversations by how well they treat their customers. That’s one way to do it.  Spend some hours, build out content elements one at a time, publish on the right medium, and hope people get motivated to spread it.

Campfire seeded conversations using offline packages, Facebook Connect and frienziedwaters.com.  What’s interesting is that using Facebook connect allowed them to automated some of the work load.  Each user had a personalized experience on the site, but the team Campire did not have to spend additional hours creating that content.  Facebook Connect did the work for them.

That’s our idea with TweetMyTime.  We’re using Twitter and Facebook to automate seeding that get people talking about endurance racing.

Building Brand Armies
All of the cases above have something in common.  In each, armies of people are motivated to interpret and spread brand messages across the web.

These brand armies are always prompted by some type of content. Maybe it’s a service experience that goes above and beyond what they expected.  It could be a YouTube video that makes them laugh, or a personalized and engaging web experience. In the case of TweetMyTime, it’s an automated and genuine message to a network of your followers and friends, letting them know your progress in an extraordinary race.

From the seeds grows the real magic. These armies,now motivated to talk and equipped with their own social media weapons like Facebook, Blogs, Pod Casts, and Twitter, dive into the trenches of the interwebz and invade the landscape.

What do you think?  Have you ever been a part of a brand army?  Did you realize it?  How could you make this work for your business?

I ran my first 26.2 miles at the Nationwide Better Health Columbus Marathon Sunday.  It for sure won’t be my last.  As hard as I trained, I still missed my goal of a sub 3:10 time, which would have qualified me for the Boston Marathon.

See the happy look on my face?  Kristen McEnery snapped this shot at about mile 23 in Grandview.  I was hurting by that point.

A recurring theme from the speakers at TedxColumbus last night was that it’s OK to fail.  I agree with that.  We learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.  Here’s what I learned from failing to hit the mark on my  run time in my first full marathon:

• Start tapering a week later.  For this race, I started cutting down the miles about three weeks out.  I peaked on my performance ability about a week too early.
• Don’t freak out and buy new shoes just before the race.  This is an all-around bad idea and a rookie mistake.  My legs were not used to the shoes.
• Pre-race nutrition is MUCH more important than I thought.  Hamburgers and Jacob’s birthday cake is not really a sufficient source of fuel. Duh.
• Starting with faster runners messes with your head.  Shortly after the 10K mark in the marathon, all kinds of people were whizzing by me.  I felt even slower.
• Reverse splits?  Frankly, the first time I even heard that term was after crossing the finish line.  Apparently it’s a good idea to NOT bolt out the starting gate like a bat out of hell.  Who knew?

I made tons of rookie mistakes, and now know better for the next race.  Thanks to everyone who congratulated me in person, on Facebook, and even on Twitter.  I really appreciate all of your support and I’m thrilled that I finished.  Unfortunately, the goal was never solely to finish.  The goal was to qualify for bigger races.  I’m not there yet… but I will be.

TweetMyTime Rocked It!
This was an interesting experiment in how niche events like marathons can leverage inbound marketing and social media buzz generation to build an even greater online presence and start an online conversation.  Here’s some of the breakdowns from our analysis (well, mostly Dave Culbertson‘s analysis) on how this worked to benefit Nationwide Better Health and the Columbus Marathon.  There will be some more info up on play-by-play on the TweetMyTime blog soon.

Trending

• We trended on Twitter for a couple of hours for the terms contained in the tweets – “Passed 10″ and “Halfway.” These terms actually topped #beatcancer on the leader board  for a little over an hour.  We’re not entirely sure why Twitter trends didn’t pick up #cbusmarathon, but we think it may be related to the structure of the tweet and possibly the presence of “stop words” in the copy.  We’re looking into this to try and figure out the formula here, as well.
• We also trended No.1 on Google trends for around three hours.  And as a result, “Columbus Marathon” was the most searched for phrase on Google for three hours.  We have a hunch that this is a direct result of the buzz that was generated on the social web, and we’re looking at how we can prove this idea and then apply it to other races.

Google Analytics from http://ColumbusMarathon.com

Overall traffic from the launch of TweetMyTime registrant on-boarding between Aug. 1st 2009 through Oct. 18th 2009 (Race Day)

• Visits directly related to TweetMyTime – Facebook, Twitter, TweetMytime: 5,531 (3.2 percent)
• Total share of referred traffic: 21 percent
• Average visitor engagement on site: three pages and 3:21 visit length
• An estimated 3,500 additional visits from Twitter not included below (recorded by bit.ly, not present on Google Analytics)

Google Analytic results for Oct. 17th, the day before race:

• 13,850 visits (higher traffic is expected due to event taking place on next day)
• Visits directly related to TweetMyTime – Facebook, Twitter, TweetMytime are in addition to expected traffic: 489 (3.5 percent)
• Total share of referred traffic from Google and other sources: total of 24 percent

Google Analytic results for Oct. 18th, race day:

• 41,643 total site visits (being transparent, higher traffic can always be expected on race day because people are searching for info on parking, last minute updates, start times, etc.)
• Visits directly related to TweetMyTime application: 1,858 which is an increase to 4.5 percent
• Total share of referred traffic from Google and other sources: increase to 37.7 percent

What was even more interesting is that the amount of traffic generated to the marathon site from the Facebook referring URL.  Based on our numbers, we saw almost 4 times the amount of traffic coming from Facebook,  as compared to traffic from Twitter.  What’s REALLY cool is that Facebook, TweetMyTime.com, and Twitter dominated the day as the top traffic referral sources.

I’ve always been fascinated by the communication context of different social networks.  It’s interesting that in the context of Facebook – a network seen by most users as a collection of close personal friends and family – our conversions (i.e. people clicking through on the bit.ly link) went through the roof.  Visitor engagement on the site from these referring sites was decent, as well. But, there’s a ton of room for improvement.

We noticed, and you may have too, that a vast majority of automated status updates on a runner’s Facebook wall received dozens of comments from friends cheering them on as they ran.  Our whole goal with this experiment was to find a way to engineer a VERY large conversation around the race.  From the feedback we’ve received via Tweets, emails and comments,  it seems that people like how the application worked out.

We’re still chopping through what’s working and what’s not in hopes to make this application even better.  Word on the street is that lots of other races are paying attention to what we’re doing – at least that’s what Universal Sports seems to be thinking.

What’s your take?  How would you make TweetMyTime better for runners, their friends and families, and races?

In less than 72 hours, Twitter and Facebook will be flooded with Tweets from racers in the Nationwide Better Health Columbus Marathon using TweetMyTime.  Today, we crossed 800 registered users.

When I was at IMS09 last week, I noticed a trend.  Companies like New Marketing Labs, HubSpot, Radian6, and many others all combine forces.  And because they do, each company gets stronger.

That’s called synergy.  Using math terms, synergy simply means that the value of the whole will always be greater than that of each individual part.  All of these wonderful companies and people have helped us pull this project together and create synergy.  We’re tremendously grateful for them.

Disclosure: None of these companies are paying me to mention them.  They are partners and friends, who are throwing in their skills and assets to help us get TweetMyTime off the ground.

[If you can't see the video, you can watch it on YouTube]

Aurora Exhibits - Joan McKinney and Stephanie Bauer - Aurora is responsible for branding the race course at the Columbus Marathon, including our presence at the Expo tomorrow and Saturday.  We did pay for some of this stuff, but Joan was VERY gracious in lending us some items they had and giving us some discounts so that we could afford what it was going to take to make this look good.

R2Integrated - I met Cheryl Dickson last week at IMS09, right before she was presenting on R2ISmash and a page they did for the Baltimore Marathon.  R2I is a kick ass web firm with a nice client list.  We had a call with them Tuesday to work out some details and get things moving.  They’ve been awesome and are putting some of their own skin in the game to see what happens with TweetMyTime.  Many thanks to Kevin Schreiner & Chris Chodnicki for being all over it!

Irvin Pubic Relations – The super talented Sarah Irvin is a PR guru, working with Nationwide Better Health and the Marathon to get the message out in the press.  She’s connected us to a ton of opportunities to use traditional media outlets in the last few weeks.  Thanks to Sarah, if you’re near a TV tomorrow around 8:20 a.m., you can tune into Fox28 Columbus to see my bald-ass head live from the expo, chatting with Johny DiLoretto on how TweetMyTime is going to work.  She also got us interviewed on WOSU Radio yesterday.

BestLight Video – We love our Vid Kids, Paul Milligan and Andy Brush.  Andy will be on the scene Sunday capturing the race day story and getting some interviews with runners and the crowd.  We’ll also be working on some Rocumentaries that will be pushed out after the race.

YOU -  I mean this from the bottom of my heart when I say this.  Thank YOU!  I guess my role in this TweetMyTime thing has been to play the part of the Trust Agent – to be the guy who uses social capital and a network of people to carry the message like a running back carries a football into the end zone.

Trust Agents are powerless without the people that trust them, and you’ve given me your trust.  I take your trust very seriously and I’m grateful for it.

Without you and your relationships, your networks, your skilled use of new media, and your trust, no one would have ever heard about TweetMyTime.  You’ve given me and our team at huber+co so much leverage, and that is truly amazing.  Thank you!

Here we go. See you Sunday at the race!

It’s getting close to Halloween and the smell of pumpkins is in the air.  OK, not really.  But you know we will be seeing a ton of these veggies floating around through Thanksgiving.  There’s even the Circleville Ohio Pumpkin Show happening later this month.  The family event is a great time with lots of good eats and totally worth checking out if you live in and around Ohio.

But Jason Yun is doing something really creative.  He’s a self-employed personal trainer who has come up with a fun idea to help raise money for the Make A Wish Foundation.  The event is called Freaky Fat Loss Pumpkin Charity Workout and will take place on October 17th, the day before the Columbus Marathon and BETA launch of TweetMyTime.

The hook is pretty interesting – bring your own pumpkin and Jason will take the group through what looks like a pretty intense workout using only the vegetable as weight.  Seems to me like a pretty cool idea for a fun and relevant workout during Halloween season.  Jason has committed that ALL of the proceeds generated from the workout go directly to the Make a Wish Foundation.  I’m down with Jason using his talents to help a worthy cause, and the fact that he’s smart enough to see the value in using social media to help spread the word and get people there.  Jason even approached me on LinkedIn (the right way) to ask for my help.

Here’s a short clip of some of the exercises that Jason will be doing during the event.

So what say you?  Are you in for a fun workout and helping Jason raise some money for the Make a Wish Foundation?

And if you’re not the “working out with a pumpkin type,” will you help get the word out in your communities?

We’re heading to Boston.

Inbound Marketing Summit 2009 | Boston, MA from Nate Riggs on Vimeo.

Cheryl Harrison and I are leaving today for the Inbound Marketing Summit that will take place at Gillette Stadium Wednesday and Thursday.

There’s an amazing and forward-thinking speakers list of speakers, as well as a whole room full of social technology sponsors that I’m dying to check out.

Chery and I are stoked about this trip.  For one, we get to go and spend two whole days being completely immersed in the career and culture that we love so passionately.  We get to meet face to face with some of the brightest minds in business communication and social media today.  These are the operators, strategists, and entrepreneurs who are reshaping business.

But the coolest thing we get to do on this trip is play the role of storytellers.  Because of all these new and exciting publishing tools, (and that Chery and I are geeky enough to be pretty good with them), we’ll bring IMS Boston to your screen.

There’s no script to this.  We haven’t planned anything.  God knows neither of us has had any time to think of a content strategy.  So we’re just going to make it up as we go along and provide you with as much interesting content as we can find.

You can Join the Conversation
Join our conversation live from IMS Boston
 on Twitter, search for #IMS09.  We’ll be capturing the event and networking with each other there.  Feel free to tweet us with questions or requests or messages for the people we’re around.

Look for plenty of pictures on  Facebook and Twitter, and maybe even Flickr.  We like pictures.  Lots.

Look for video interviews (if we’re lucky) on my blog and Cheryl’s.  We might be playing with an idea of tandem posts and conducting a little experiment. (Hey – while you’re there, you can always subscribe to her blog and mine so that you can stay in the loop).

We’re hoping to capture some clips from the presentations as well.  Most of the people leading chats are writing books that all of us are reading, so they should be cutting edge ideas.

Stay tuned
…

Race day for the Nationwide Better Health Columbus Marathon is getting closer.  So is our little BETA test of TweetMyTime.  It’s exciting and, as of  today, we’re at about 250 registrants who will be sharing their race information across the social web.  That’s 250 people who’ve all decided that TweetMyTime is a cool idea and worth trying out.  We’re stoked about that!

I also ewant to let you in on something else we’re doing.

Get Your Official TweetMyTime Shirt
These aren’t just any shirts, my friends.  These are the official, inaugural race shirts for the BETA launch of TweetMyTime Twitter application!  A sort of collector’s item, if you will.

If you are running in the Nationwide Better Health Columbus Marathon, we have a nice race jersey for you that’s made by Wickid Performance so that it will be comfortable for you to run in.  But if you’re planning on joining the crowd of 50,000 spectators, we still have a lovely t-shirt for you as well.

Here’s How
So how do you get your free TweetMyTime gear?  First, let us know that you want one.

• If you are a runner in the Columbus Marathon, register your information on a special, hidden page on the TweetMyTime site.
• If you are going to be a spectator on race day, leave your information in a comment right here, and please don’t forget to include your size.

This is going to be first come, first served on sizes.  So if you’re down, please sign up ASAP.  Once we have the shirts in, I will contact you (probably via email) and work out how we can get together and get you your gear.

So what say you, my friend?  Will you sport an official TweetMyTime shirt?

Tweetdeck just pulled ahead in the race for designing a better Twitter application.  A recent update has, in my opinion, taken the company to the lead of the pack in “…racing Seesmic to see who can be the most innovative social media browser across multiple social networks.”

That quote up there comes from a post on on Read Write Web earlier this month. Marshall Kirkpatrick does a great job of breaking down and critiquing the new functionality set – the good with the bad.

But here’s the thing he missed.  Our friends at Tweetdeck just changed the game.  Twitter.  Global communications. The way we do business…

Tweetdeck kicks ass.

Multilingual Communication on Twitter & Facebook & MySpace
Some of you in Columbus Ohio know of Ohio Web Leaders or OWL.  When our group has breakfast meet-ups, we often tweet meeting notes and reactions to the speakers using #OWL so others can follow from home.  Now check out this Twitter search on #OWL.  You can usually find a few Tweets like this one in German.

I’ve actually used Babblefish to manually translate some of these tweets.  Apparently, #OWL is also a widely adopted hash tag for a specific geographic region in Germany.  But in order to learn that, it took manual effort and time.  Effort is plentiful but my time is spread thin, so I moved on after one translation and forgot all about it.

The result was potential missed opportunities to connect with good people across the globe on Twitter, simply because we didn’t talk the same talk.  Chances are some of these missed relationship opportunities may have led to interest in talking about how they could use TweetMyTime for an international marathon.  Who knows?

But Tweetdeck is innovative, and came up with a translation tool that hacks through language barriers.  This could potentially change the game forever.  From a communications perspective, it’s BIG.  Really BIG.  Here’s an example:

And to translate…

Then, all you have to do is click send…

And there you have it, folks.  In three clicks, Tweetdeck makes it easy for me to communicate across language barriers all over the world.  Users have the option to automatically translate Tweets in a variety of different languages around the world, including German, Japanese, Albanian and, hell, even Hebrew.

As far as I can tell, this only works for messages you are pushing out.  I haven’t had much time to play with it just yet, but the ability to translate incoming tweets is going to be a critical next step in widespread adoption of this new feature.  It may even already be there and I’m just missing it.

Fishbowl Just Got Bigger
Chris Brogan wrote an awesome post called Rules of the Pool a few weeks back, referencing the still relatively small community of social web users.  Here’s the quote:

“So, if I can’t figure out your rules of the pool, how are we all getting our panties in a bunch over what companies can and can’t do when they visit our little watering hole? (And it is little. Don’t let the clear glass sides of our fishbowl fool you.)”

One potential glass wall in communication is language barriers.  Another exists in the time and effort it takes to communicate messages.  With the translation release, Tweetdeck could shatter both of these, and in doing that, expand the glass walls of the global fishbowl.  Again, BIG stuff here for global communications.

What would you do in a world no longer constrained by language barriers?  How would that change your business practices?  Thoughts?