As is tradition, we publish the previous edition of the Marketing Over Coffee newsletter on the blog once the newest edition hits the inboxes. This way, there’s incentive for you to subscribe, but no penalty if you missed previous issues… both of them…
Read on after the break for the Autumn 2009 newsletter.
Welcome back! We’re happy you came back, or at least never got around to pressing “Mark as Spam” the last time around. This is the second issue of House Blend, the Marketing Over Coffee Newsletter, and in this issue, we’re going to just drop a bomb on you. Specifically, we’re going to drop our action blog list in this newsletter. What does that mean?
The Action Blog List
If you’ve caught the show lately, our goal with this newsletter is to provide you stuff that would frankly bore you to tears if you had to listen to it. We’ve got an OPML file in this edition that you can import into Google Reader of 108 of our favorite marketing, advertising, and media blogs. These are not necessarily the A-list blogs. These are not necessarily the Big Brands. These are the blogs that tend to have useful, actionable advice and information, the stuff we live and breathe on. Big ideas and big thoughts are nice, but as Penn jokes, sometimes a thought leader is a guy or gal who is thinking about leading, but never gets around to it. Our blog list is made of the action hero folks.
Now, we know what 99% of you are thinking:
What’s an OPML file?
To make a very long story short, it’s an index of stuff. In this case, marketing blogs. Here’s the file to download:
Okay, that’s it for this month’s newsletter. We’ll catch you next time and…
… what?
Oh, right. The instructions. That would help, eh? Here’s how you use this file. Click on the link above to download it to your desktop.
Next, you’ll need a free Google Reader account at reader.google.com. We’ll assume you’ve got that all set and ready to go. The next few steps are pictures of Google Reader. It will really help if you turn images on in your email software; this section will be far less helpful without them. Click on any picture to make it larger.
Step 1: Go to settings.
Step 2. Click on Import/Export.
Step 3. Click Choose file. When the file box opens up, choose the OPML file you downloaded just above.
Step 4. Click Upload.
Step 5. You’ll know if you were successful if you see a big pile of blogs like this below. If it looks good, click Back to Google Reader.
Step 6. Enjoy the blog goodness. If you already use Google Reader, this will add a bunch of folders below your existing ones. If you’re new to Google Reader, this will create a bunch of folders on different marketing topics that should provide you with tons of reading, insight, and knowledge.
That’s it for using Google Reader and our massive blog list. Try this out, let us know what you think, and let us know if there are super action-oriented blogs that have the goods that are not in our list of 108.
By popular request, in the next newsletter, we’re going to compile a list of the books in marketing, new media, social media, and business that have found permanent homes on our bookshelves. We’re not saying you have to get them, but they’ve earned that treasured inch and a half of real estate in our homes and offices, so they might be worth a look for you too.
Thank You!
It’s important that we say this: thank you for making Marketing Over Coffee such an incredible success. When you share MoC, when you tell friends or coworkers about it, when you link to it on your web site, blog, and Facebook page, you energize us and motivate us to keep cranking out the goods for you. Thank you again for making this show rock.
Oh, we’ll have two interesting add-on lessons about this email in this week’s audio show. Stay tuned ๐
That’s going to do it for this edition of the Marketing Over Coffee newsletter. We’ll talk to you on the show every Thursday morning, so tune in at your convenience and please give us lots of feedback, questions, comments, things that you want to know about, things you want to discuss, things that are on your mind.
Enjoy the coffee,
Christopher Penn & John Wall
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