Michael McLaughlin, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, offers great tips on the new must-have for authors - a companion book blog. Looks like he updates his companion Guerrilla Consulting blog frequently (sometimes several times a week). A key tip for new authors: blogging a lot may improve your book's Amazon sales rankings.  

From an interview with another blogging book author, Ted Demopoulos.

Halley Suitt's remembrance of her dad who died exactly four years ago takes my breath away.

In doing a bit of research for a talk I'm giving tomorrow here in D.C. (to the local chapters of IPRA and PRSA-NCC) I've been looking for stats on the growth in CGM - Consumer Generated Media. Here's one I found in yesterday's Washington Post, reporting on a new study by ComScore Media Metrix. From the Post:

"The number of people posting or reading material at [Blogger.com] jumped to 15.6 million last month from 2.5 million a year ago."

In other words, traffic to Google-owned Blogger.com increased 528 percent [scroll down for complete Washington Post…

Eegads...almost everyone bit when I posted on April Fool's Day that Bill Gates hired me to be his executive blog coach. Here's an email I got from a friend and colleague who happens to be a senior executive. Yes, he's the enthusiastic type:

"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU JUST SCORED THE BIGGEST EXEC CEO WHALE OUT THERE!!!!!!!!!! This is just so unbelievable for you, I am sooooooooooooo thrilled!"

Frankly I'm a bit embarrassed. My little joke was the product of about five minutes thought. It was inspired by several others. See here (Robert Scoble) and here (Steve Rubel). I'll admit to being pleased at being a successful prankster. But the real takaway is more serious.

The…