So this is it, this is what I’ve been counting down to: The public launch of my new blog, MarkTzk.com.
I’ve been blogging, a little irregularly, and have had my own domain (www.thoughtsignals.com) for nearly eight years, but I felt it was time to try something a little more focused. I’m going to give thoughtsignals, which has always suffered from a lack of focus, a rest. I’ll write more about why I launched this blog, and what I hope to accomplish here, later. And if you’re reading this on thoughtsignals.com, where this has been cross-posted, I encourage you to go over to marktzk.com and subscribe to the RSS feed or to the daily email update.
Now, on to the contest. In the last couple of weeks as I’ve been counting down on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and thoughtsignals.com, I’ve been surprised by how much attention I’ve gotten. Coworkers, friends and acquaintances have all been guessing what I might be counting down to. (For the record, only Cameron Tew figured it out before today.) People guessed that maybe RLF was going to have a big announcement, or I was going to have a new child, or start my own business, or go skydiving (!), or more. Let me just say that all of you have much more creative, interesting ideas about my life than I do. Thank you. I’m honored.
But I also hope that no one feels let down by the fact that I’m launching a blog. I mean, c’mon, everybody and their mother has a blog.
So, to make this a little more interesting, I’m going to have a contest. You can participate. You could win. And if you do win, you’ll get a $50 Amazon gift card.
One of the topics this blog will focus on is the use of social media in marketing. So I’m looking for a short piece on that. Give me no more than 500 words (remember, longer is not necessarily better) in response to this:
“Social media (including blogging, wikis, social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) is better than, worse than or just different than traditional marketing and public relations techniques. Please provide examples, anecdotes, links, etc. to support your point.”
Here are the rules:
1. The total length (excluding the headline) must be 500 words or less. The title/headline doesn’t count toward the total word count.
2. The entry must be posted someplace online that’s publicly accessible — a blog, Facebook page, whatever — and must include a hyperlink back to this post: http://marktzk.com/launch-contest. (If you don’t have a place to post this, one option might be to create a Squidoo page.)
3. Please email the link to your entry to me at marktzk at gmail dot com, and put “MarkTzk.com contest” in the subject line. Your email must reach me by midnight this Friday, July 18.
4. Multiple submissions are fine, but each individual submission must follow these rules. If your entry is a blog posting, each one must be a separate post.
5. As I receive entries I will post the links to them here. So if you have a blog you should get some traffic out of this, too.
6. I reserve the right to disqualify entries that are pornographic, contain hate speech or are otherwise objectionable. (Hey, I believe in free speech, but it’s my contest.)
7. The winner will be announced in one week, next Monday morning, July 25.
Got it? If you have questions, leave them in the comments or shoot me an email. Otherwise, gentle readers, start your keyboards.
NOTE: This is cross-posted from MarkTzk.com, but please go there to leave comments, ask questions, etc. Contest entries will also be posted there.
And even if you don’t want to enter the contest, I hope you’ll go to MarkTzk.com and point your feedreader at that big orange RSS icon in the upper right hand corner and subscribe to the feed, or put your email address into the little subscribe box over to the right to receive the blog posts via email (just one email a day).