Ever get the urge to drop everything and run for the hills? In my experience, when this happens, people either pop out for a pint of milk and turn up in Chicago 20 years later, or book last minute tickets to Paris, indulge in a hedonistic weekend long orgy, and dutifully return for the Monday staff meeting.

Personally, I’m not really prepared to start a new life with 34 cents change and a pint of milk in my pocket, and while I like Paris as much as the next European, I’m not really prepared for that level of packing either. (And let’s be honest: if you’re a women, jetting off to Paris even for a weekend requires a whole different level of wardrobe prep than catching a flight to virtually any other short haul city. It just does.)

So instead, I’ve run away to the very local seaside. Even this required a fairly heroic laundry effort, but on the morning I woke up and decided that the choices were either a) do the washing and get the hell out of Dodge, or b) repeatedly bang my head against my desk in an attempt to brainwash myself into believing that my creative well was anything short of completely dry, the washing machine suddenly looked like my very best friend ever.

When doing laundry is the good option, you know it’s all a bit dire.

Obviously, I didn’t just get on the first bus out of town. I told my very understanding husband, I reassured my very distressed dog, I checked in with our very behind schedule contractor, and I let all my active clients know I was going to be AWOL for a few days. While I was sure all my clients were going to be annoyed by this impromptu getaway of mine, nobody berated me, although they did all have the same reaction.

“By yourself?” they gasped. “Oh my God, I’m so jealous.”

Back Monday!

Yesterday they poured concrete. Today I ordered house warming invitations. Date on invitations: 21 September.

This may well be foolhardy but I’m 100% comitted to moving into the new house by the 14th of September, and 100% committed to throwing an open house to warm said house. The 21st not only gives us enough time to unpack some boxes and find the couch, but is also our wedding anniversary. While we’re not particularly sentimental about such things, it seemed a good target date for Project House Warming Party.

And so, we’re having a party, and you are invited. By “you” I actually mean you. If I’ve met you or swapped email with you, you’re invited. If you follow me on Twitter or stalk me from the weedy looking shrubs at the back of our current house, you’re invited. If you’ve never heard of me before today but will be in Cork on the 21st of September, you’re invited.

There are two caveats though. One, I need your address (that links to a form that goes into a database for label printing) to send you an actual invitation. I believe in real life dead tree invitations for real life parties; they are different than conferences or events or work dos, plus I don’t have a lot of excuses for sending pretty printed materials – I am actually aching to use stamps here.

Two, the invitation states that come hell, high water, or wet paint, we are having this party. There may well be wet paint on the walls, or possibly no paint at all. I don’t care, and neither should you. Regardless of the state of the house, there will be wine, beer, fabulous food, and the best brownies in the world. Who cares about paint?

So, really – please give me your address if you’d like to come. Don’t be shy. It’s an open house and we’d be delighted to have you there to help us warm our new abode. Plus, brownies! What’s not to love?

I don’t know about you, but the minute I hear the words “used car sales” I brace myself for a deeply unpleasant experience. So we worked hard to put together a site that would set BetterCars.ie apart from its unfortunate cousins in the used car market. Interestingly, although you cannot purchase vehicles online, this site is built on an ecommerce platform – we’ve simply ripped the financial transaction part out and taken full advantage of the cataloguing system. (The site also features a blog, though it’s currently a bit unloved.)

So I’ve been drafted in to speak at PodCamp Ireland – Krishna De rang me up this morning to point out that if I am going to be there anyway, I might as well open my mouth and do something. I was a little surprised because I assumed that something called “PodCamp” was all about, well, podcasting – a subject about which I know next to nothing – but apparently it covers all kinds of social media. Who knew?

Anyway, Krishna suggested that I do something around design for blogs and websites, but to be honest, I can’t. I suck at talking about design. There are a lot of reasons for that, but at the end of the day I just find design very difficult to be articulate about.

So instead, after a quick Twitter poll for topics, I’m going to be presenting on How to Market Your Website or Blog (Without Making the Internet Hate You.) I have more than a month to put this presentation together, but I’m pretty sure it will break down into the specifics of conversational marketing, generating press and PR, and paid advertising.

I’ve been doing a couple of these informal presentations, so I’m also pondering getting a bit more organised about presenting materials and having downloadable slides and handouts available after each one, just so they’re more accessible to people who missed the gig or want the notes.

Realistically, that probably means a redesign. God help me.

Photo ©TheConsumerist

One thing I’ve noticed is that Irish companies in particular seem strangely hesitant to put themselves forward for things, be it press, social business introductions, or award nominations. This is, in a word, stupid. Unless you are paying a very, very good PR company, the person whose job it is to promote your business is you. While sure, some of your customers or clients may think of you and throw your name in the hat for this or that, there isn’t a lot of sense in sitting on the sidelines and hoping someone will ask you to the ball.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with going after something, and hey – if you don’t make it, nobody will know so that’s okay. These quickly approaching deadlines are on my list, and I hereby challenge you to put them on your list, too.

This is the inaugural year for the Irish Web Awards, being held in Dublin on October 11th. Rumour has it that nominations may open to the public in the next day or so, but you can (and bloody well should) nominate your site in the applicable categories. Whether any of my clients make the short list this year or no, I’m going – at €30 a ticket, it’s a bargain for a great night out and Christ knows I need to leave the house.

The Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary Awards are also taking nominations until Friday, 12 September. I do love a black tie do, but at €250 a ticket I’ll only be dusting off my ballgown in the extremely unlikely event I make the shortlist. Still, this is great PR for any company, so if you fall into any of the categories or love a site that does, those nomination forms are not going to fill themselves out!

One place I definitely will be going to is PodCamp in Kilkenny on the 27th of September. My other half has been drafted as a speaker and is doing From Broadcast to Podcast. I also have a couple of clients ripe for podcasting who I will be dragging along by way of encouraging them to get their feet wet in the podcast pond.

Finally, I have one more, top secret, soon to be revealed event planned for September, but I’m scheduling it around the previously mentioned Girl Geek Dinner in Cork on Sunday September 7th, 2008? There’s still time to sign up if you’re of the XX persuasion — the table is about 1/3rd booked and this event could use a little love if you’re inclined to help get the word out. Thanks! :)

Hurrah! Martha Rotter’s moveable feast know as Ireland Girl Geek Dinners is coming to Cork on the 7th of September, 2008. We’ve booked a table for 20 and we’ll be meeting up at Proby’s Bistro, which has a dire website. Despite this, Proby’s has been the scene for many geeky get together dinners of one sort or another, and the quality of the website does not reflect the quality of the menu.

What is a Girl Geek Dinner and how do you know if you’re invited?

Girl Geek Dinners are a chance for ladies in technology to get together, enjoy some nice food and drinks, and have fun meeting other women in their field.

“Ladies in technology” is a rather wide remit, so as far as I’m concerned if you’re doing anything from coding software in C++ to blogging on a default WordPress template, that includes you.

The table is booked in the private dining room upstairs for 7:30 PM, and there will be a set menu with vegetarian options for €24. Proby’s Bistro is located on French’s Quay, and there’s a map if you need one. So RSVP by leaving a comment at Girl Geek Dinners and we’ll see you there!

I spent the afternoon at the fairly wild and fabulous Cork Airport Hotel (pictures) taking part in Damien Mulley’s very generous Train the Trainers event. This day was interesting in a lot of ways, but for me a very valuable part was listening to and taking part in the back and forth conversations about content. It helped me to formalise some of my thoughts about the process of blogging.

Basically, I think there are two approaches one can take when blogging as part of a business communications strategy, both to engage readers and attract links:

1) Be a Resource

Ice Cream Ireland and Tast.ie are examples of this kind of blog. While both Kieran Murphy and Deb Hadley blog about their businesses and their experiences in ways that help keep the content varied and lively, if asked to sum up either of these sites most people would say “they’re recipe blogs.” They provide a very specific resource that helps them to pull a very specific audience.

Damien made the point that one of the most popular and link-tastic formats for resource posts is the Ten Step How To. People love this stuff; just look at all the inbound links and Twitter chatter on yesterday’s How To Demo Your Startup post at TechCrunch.

But you can’t produce that kind of post every day; it’s tremendously time consuming to create, which is why the successful blogs have that “varied and lively” content. More importantly, however, people take in a massive amount of information from scores of blogs each day. I suspect your average reader can manage maybe one or two “heavy” posts from across all of their sources in a given day. If your blog is always the blog with the big ask for time and attention, you will actually lose rather than win readers with your dense but awesome content.

2) Be Personal

This does not mean you need to share your ovulatory cycle with the internet. Rather, it means putting a lot of your personality, experiences and individuality into your blog posts. The best ways to do this are:

• Be funny.
• If you can’t be funny, be controversial or at least opinionated.
• If you can’t be opinionated, be intimate.

Again, intimate does not mean spilling your sex life online – and unless your profession is among the oldest in the world, this probably isn’t a great topic for a business blog anyway. But being intimate does mean giving readers a way to connect with you.

One of my favourite dislikeable people is Penelope Trunk of The Brazen Careerist. She gives excellent career advice, and if you skim through the entires in her blog, you’ll see that she almost always relates advice to experiences in her own life. Being fired, embellishing resumes, getting divorced – a continual litany of her personal failures peppers her instructions and lends a lot of authenticity to her posts. You learn a lot about managing your career, and a lot about Penelope.

Intimacy in this case is about the reveal, but it doesn’t have to be personal. Companies, and the individuals blogging for them, can tell stories, too – about the company, its employees, its relationships with outside vendors… all kinds of stuff.

Either way, the point is that a business blog is not about press releases, not about products, not about job vacancies. Can you name one blog you regularly read that’s about that stuff?

No, me either.

Luckily I am short on sleep, low on health and about a month behind everything I need to do, so I don’t have a lot of spare time to spend bitching. So I’ll just get straight to the point of what’s got my panties in a wad this evening.

I got an email tonight from  Angeline Vuong at CrowdSpring. It was also to Angeline Vuong at CrowdSpring; it was a mass email that read thusly:

Hi there,

I’m Angeline, crowdSPRING’s new Community Manager. I saw you used Twitter and wanted to just say hello. If we’re not friends yet, feel free to follow us at http://www.twitter.com/crowdspring. We love to keep in touch with our creatives and buyers..I post lots of interesting / informative blog links, promote designers, and give hints at really cool upcoming projects of interest. Hope to see you on the site. Feel free to say hi!

Best,
Angeline

My response to this was “feel free to kiss my ass” but my email was slightly more polite than that. Some pertinent facts:

• I am in CrowdSpring’s database, in so far as I have a working login there. I have never used the service, never posted a project, never bid on a project, never posted in the forums, never filled out any profile information there. I am not “in touch” with CrowdSpring in any sense of the word, nor am I any kind of community member.
•  To the best of my knowledge, I have not at any point provided CrowdSpring with my Twitter details. Their privacy policy doesn’t say they collect that data, either.
• Their privacy policy does say that they may tell me about “targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your specific preferences” – and my specific preferences are set to No way, Jose. Seriously, that’s what the check box option says. (The internet, it is killing me with these hipster kids…)

OK, so according to Sabrina Dent’s Dictionary of Bitch, the above email qualifies as a tasty processed ham product nestled in white bread and lovingly coated with mayonnaise. In other words, it’s spam. But what really irritates me is that it’s not just spam; it’s really crappy spam.

• When you mass email people you do not know, it’s really preferable to attempt to disguise this fact by, oh let’s say… actually sending the email to my actual address, using my actual name.
• Angeline does not “just want to say hello,” as she claims in the second sentence; she wants me to follow her on Twitter. Presumably so I can follow her “interesting / informative” content, like uh, trolling for new members.
• To underscore how completely impersonal and outcome driven this email is, the “if we’re not friends yet, feel free to follow…” line clears that up immediately.

So basically, someone who doesn’t know me from Eve has abused my personal data to spam me with a solicitation to join her (it? them?) on a social network. Despite the social and conversational nature of the network, the communication invitation is completely top-down, and the message being sent here basically boils down to “Follow me, I’m COOL!” I had to double-check this wasn’t a MySpace invite for a minute there.

Seriously, people. It’s called conversational marketing for a reason. It’s called social media for a reason.