When you plant seeds online, good things start to happen.

When I first started blogging, I met a ton of great people through my online participation. Commenting, tweeting, discussing books – all these activities ultimately led to new connections and friendships. Three years ago, Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton took it upon themselves to create a book called The Age of Conversation, asking marketing bloggers to create a one page entry for the effort. With all proceeds going to charity, the decision was easy. In fact, proceeds from this year’s book are earmarked for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Beautiful.

Now, after having contributed to the first two books, we’re all proud to announce the launch of The Age of Conversation 3: It’s time to get busy.

With a new publishing partner in place (and a big thank you to Channel V Books, operated by Gretel Going & Kate Fleming, contributors to the book as well), the book will be available in April. Full details of the book can be found over on Channel V Books’ website. Watch this space for official launch news.

In the meanwhile, you can get busy checking out each contributor. There are over 300 of us.

Adam Joseph
Priyanka Sachar
Mark Earls
Cory Coley-Christakos
Stefan Erschwendner
Paul Hebert
Jeff De Cagna
Thomas Clifford
Phil Gerbyshak
Jon Burg
Toby Bloomberg
Shambhu Neil Vineberg
Joseph Jaffe
Uwe Hook
Steve Roesler
Michael E. Rubin
anibal casso
Steve Woodruff
Steve Sponder
Becky Carroll
Tim Tyler
Chris Wilson
Beth Harte
Tinu Abayomi-Paul
Dan Schawbel
Carol Bodensteiner
Trey Pennington
David Weinfeld
Dan Sitter
Vanessa DiMauro
Ed Brenegar
David Zinger
Brett T. T. Macfarlane
Efrain Mendicuti
Deb Brown
Brian Reich
Gaurav Mishra
Dennis Deery
C.B. Whittemore
Gordon Whitehead
Heather Rast
Cam Beck
Hajj E. Flemings
Joan Endicott
Cathryn Hrudicka
Jeroen Verkroost
Karen D. Swim
Christopher Morris
Joe Pulizzi
Leah Otto
Corentin Monot
Karalee Evans
Leigh Durst
David Berkowitz
Kevin Jessop
Lesley Lambert
Duane Brown
Peter Korchnak
Mark Price
Dustin Jacobsen
Piet Wulleman
Mike Maddaloni
Ernie Mosteller
Scott Townsend
Nick Burcher
Frank Stiefler
Steve Olenski
Rich Nadworny
John Rosen
Tim Jackson
Suzanne Hull
Len Kendall
Amber Naslund
Wayne Buckhanan
Mark McGuinness
Caroline Melberg
Andy Drish
Oleksandr Skorokhod
Claire Grinton
Angela Maiers
Paul Williams
Gary Cohen
Armando Alves
Sam Ismail
Gautam Ramdurai
B.J. Smith
Tamera Kremer
Eaon Pritchard
Brendan Tripp
Adelino de Almeida
Jacob Morgan
Casey Hibbard
Andy Hunter
Julian Cole
Debra Helwig
Anjali Ramachandran
Jye Smith
Drew McLellan
Craig Wilson
Karin Hermans
Emily Reed
David Petherick
Katie Harris
Gavin Heaton
Dennis Price
Mark Levy
George Jenkins
Doug Mitchell
Mark W. Schaefer
Helge Tenno
Douglas Hanna
Marshall Sponder
James Stevens
Ian Lurie
Ryan Hanser
Jenny Meade
Jeff Larche
Sacha Tueni and Katherine Maher
David Svet
Jessica Hagy
Simon Payn
Joanne Austin-Olsen
Mark Avnet
Stanley Johnson
Marilyn Pratt
Mark Hancock
Steve Kellogg
Michelle Beckham-Corbin
Michelle Chmielewski
Amy Mengel
Veronique Rabuteau
Peter Komendowski
Andrea Vascellari
Timothy L Johnson
Phil Osborne
Beth Wampler
Amy Jussel
Rick Liebling
Eric Brody
Arun Rajagopal
Dr Letitia Wright
Hugh de Winton
David Koopmans
Aki Spicer
Jeff Wallace
Don Frederiksen
Charles Sipe
Katie McIntyre
James G Lindberg & Sandra Renshaw
David Reich
Lynae Johnson
Jasmin Tragas
Deborah Chaddock Brown
Mike O’Toole
Jeanne Dininni
Iqbal Mohammed
Morriss M. Partee
Katie Chatfield
Jeff Cutler
Pete Jones
Riku Vassinen
Jeff Garrison
Kevin Dugan
Tiphereth Gloria
Mike Sansone
Lori Magno
Valerie Simon
Nettie Hartsock
Mark Goren
Peter Salvitti

My friends at Point To Point in Cleveland invited me to guest post and it just went live. The post, titled, “Playing the name game when it comes to online reputation management” comes with a back story.

You see, in February 2007 I was contacted by their president, also named Mark Goren, to discuss our “Google problem.” Since that first chat, we’ve become friends, done a little work together, and continue to serve as each others’ mentor.

The guest post talks about the importance of filtering out bad information from social media monitoring to collect results that are most relevant to your search strategy. Using the example of our name, I illustrate how to do so through simple search.

Why does this relate to planting seeds? Because the more content you produce through different social networks or the more you’re being written about, it’s vital to know where conversations are taking place if you want to manage your reputation online. In some cases, it may even make you want to distinguish your name somehow, to help make it easier to search for. Cleveland’s Mark Goren did so by using his middle initial, which you can see on the right sidebar on P2P’s blog.

Mark is a great guy and the team at Point To Point is at the top of their game. I encourage you to learn a little bit about them, their award-winning work and their unique charity, Change for $20, which they launched last year for the holidays.

To learn about how Mark and I met, read this old post.

To read today’s guest post, head on over to P2P’s blog.

To check out Change for $20 (which is probably the first thing you should do), visit the site.

As I wrote in the original post, and still believe very strongly today:

The world is smaller than ever. People are meeting new people and making new friends every day. It’s all about reaching out, connecting and making meaningful relationships. Last night’s chat was just one more powerful example.

And so is today’s guest post.

Here’s another post in a series that looks at the chapters in the Age of Conversation 2 that support, in one way or another, the Planting Seeds concept.

Why Listening is Priority #1
Simon Payn
Section: Manifestos
Page: 31

Context: Simon highlights the six things he learned when it came to setting up his own business - and all of them have to do with listening. I won’t give the explanations away, just the bulleted list of six points.

•After all, we’ve been taught that the most important skill of a great conversationalist is shutting up and listening to what the other person has to say. And any business that truly listens to the conversation that is going on around its products will show it has mastered marketing in the Age of Conversation.

So when it came to setting up my own business, I decided to make create a dialog with my prospects and clients. And, most importantly, I would really listen to what they had to say. This is what I learned:

1. Grow big ears
2. Show that you are listening
3. Ask for feedback
4. Use surveys
5. Listen to their behavior
6. Turn questions into products; turn complains into feedback”

I like how Simon breaks down the listening process here. It’s key when looking to Plant Seeds online as well. As we’ve discussed before, the first step into any social media efforts is listening - and there’s a spirit in how to do so.

These six steps speak to that spirit and are an excellent launching point for you and your business.

•”

Others in this series:
Domain-Free, by Mike Arauz

•”

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Tags: PlantingSeeds, PlantingSeeds.ca, Planting Seeds Online, Age of Conversation 2, Age of Conversation, AOC, AOC2, Age of Conversation 2 - Why Don’t They Get It, Simon Payn, Mike Arauz, Listening, Monitoring, Manifestos, Lulu, Variety The Children’s Charity,