A new venture by NSA Northern California past-president Scott Q. Marcus looks interesting. Scott lives up in the redwoods in Eureka and is turning his geographical isolation to an advantage with a blog on Long Distance Marketing.

Scott writes of the challenge of finding and developing a customer base that is not located near your base of operations:

The question is “How?” That is one foundation on which this site is built. How do you reach potential clients and customers who live far away from you? What works? What doesn’t? In this “new” age of marketing, what are the most effective tools to find your clients? Of even more import is how do they find you?

His blog will document creative approaches to that challenge. One approach is to publish a quarterly magazine called ‘Two Words’.

For a ringside seat at the birth of a new business venture, bookmark Scott’s blog and join in the conversation as he launches himself into cyberspace - WOOOOSH!

Peggy at the SCORE Women’s Success Blog has very useful step-by-step guide on transitioning to the Wordpress.org self-hosted blogging platform. I use this and attribute ‘Executive Communications’ being #2 in the Google rankings to having my Wordpress blog sitting on my own webserver. Not be confused with Wordpress.com

Today marks the anniversary of the birthday of Cavett Robert (1907-1997) - the legendary founder of the National Speakers Association (NSA).

Each November 14th the association celebrates the Spirit of NSA in his honor. The purpose of the day is to continue Cavett’s legacy of sharing and giving by mentoring, referring and honoring fellow NSA members.

In this spirit, I’d like to remind readers that there are over 60 NSA members with blogs listed in the NSA Blogroll on the right side of this page.

These are speakers who write, who share their insights not only on the podium but also on the web. Check them out, there are blogs on everything from Disaster Planning to Word of Mouth Marketing; from Sales Tips to Strategic Planning; from Dating Advice for the over 40’s to Overcoming Adversity. And much, much more.

I attended the 2008 NSA Convention in New York City. Unlike my podcasts from the 2007 San Diego Convention and my blog from the 2006 Orlando event, I was not able to spend the time necessary to review the Convention in depth on Professionally Speaking.

Not to worry. There are two excellent resources I’ve added to the NSA Blogroll in the right column.

NSA Meetings is a blog hosted by Cynthia D’Amour and Don Cooper. There are a number of excellent postings on the conference in New York.

No NSA Conference would be complete without the parties Ed Rigsbee organizes for the Cigar PEG. Their new blog will keep you up-to-date on what happened in New York as well as plans for the future.

Finally, if you missed any of the sessions at the conference, don’t forget you can order audio and video of all sessions from SoftConference.

Thanks to the international blogosphere, I’ve been interviewed by a Portugal-based public speaker and Toastmaster. Francisco Saraiva is a young executive in Marketing and PR, working for the Port of Leixões in Northern Portugal. He heads the Oporto Toastmasters Club.

The interview was conducted by email. Check out Francisco’s wonderful English-language blog - it’s all about public speaking.

Kudos to John Kinde for a couple of full reports on the National Speakers Association (NSA) Presentation and Performance Lab which took place over the weekend in Las Vegas.

His report on day one of the conference shares a tip from keynote speaker Giovanni Livera useful for both speakers and speech writers:

…a storyboarding technique using colored Post-It Notes to visually see the flow of audience-impact-moments in your speech (color-coding each type of speech segment; stories from the heart, audience participation, music, etc. Pick categories most relevant to the texture of your speech.)

His second report covers the last two days of the event. Among the dozens of ‘keepers’ John records are many of equal value to speakers and writers:

• Make your spoken word imaginative and more precise.
• When you write a speech: Write it. Speak it. Write it. Speak it.
• Your job as a storyteller is to be an observer.
• Stories are not complicated. They are simple…but difficult to create.
• Transcribe your talk and then edit to eliminate the unnecessary words.

Thanks to John, this was one time when what happened in Las Vegas did not stay in Las Vegas.

One of the gems in Andrew’s list of public speaking blogs was Jessica Hagy’s wonderfully witty blog Indexed.

Jessica creates inspiring sketches on Index Cards. These simple outlines of ideas are a great model for your next PowerPoint slide deck. Here’s a couple of examples.

What concepts or ideas in your next speech could you reduce to a simple visual?

Canadian Toastmaster and award-winning speaker and speech evaluator Andrew Dlugan has compiled a fantastic list of Public Speaking Blogs. He currently lists 75 blogs which cover a wide range of topics: speech delivery, visual presentation design, speechwriting, humor, personal development, and interpersonal communication.

I’m honored that Professionally Speaking is included in the list.

He includes a link to a sample posting for each blog. There’s also a useful OPML button at the end to allow you to import all 75 blogs into an RSS reader in one step (this is a little tricky. If, like me, you use Bloglines, first save the OPML file, then use [Edit] [Import Subscriptions] to load all the RSS feeds into a single folder.)

Andrew is actively soliciting more Public Speaking bloggers to contact him and have their blog added to his list.

Useful Video Critiques

Andrew’s blog has other great content. I especially like his video critiques of various speeches. These use YouTube videos to allow you to see the speech being delivered, then, in true Toastmaster style, a thoughtful evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each speaker. I especially liked his critique of Steve Jobs’s well-known Stanford Commencement Address and Al Gore’s talk at the 2006 TED Conference.

Thanks, Andrew, for a great resource for all speakers!

Recently I’ve noticed a number of blogs that seem to be unloved, untended, unedited. They’re not as disturbing as Splogs (Spam Blogs) or Flogs (Fake Blogs), but they are quite annoying and deserve their own name, so I have chosen to call them Mogs (Moribund Blogs).

It’s apparent that many, many blogs become moribund. Blogging takes energy and commitment. People start a blog, post a few entries, get tired or distracted, and voila! a blog that has not been updated for weeks.

Nothing will turn blog readers off quicker than leaving too long a gap between postings. Would you subscribe to a newspaper that was only delivered every three months? No. So why expect people to subscribe to your blog if you’ve not posted anything new in weeks.

There’s no easy way to say when a blog becomes moribund. However, I think it’s fair to say that any blog which has festered for more than 90 days is probably in need of some attention.

So, since this is a great time to make resolutions, bloggers who have not tended to their blogs for 90 days should perk up and post. Or else, the moggies might come calling!

Meow!

This New Year seems like a good time to look back over my own blog postings for 2007 and make some 2008 resolutions.

Of my 140 postings (better than one every third day on average) certain topics sustain my ability to blog:

Professional Speaking and Speechwriting

The National Speakers Association annual meeting, our Northern California Chapter meetings, the Ragan Speechwriters Conference and the Pro-Track meetings all provided material. I find it’s a useful exercise to write a ‘trip report’ on conferences and meetings I attend. The useful thing about a blog is that the material I post is an archive I can easily refer back to.

Resolved: To continue to post about any and all conferences I attend, and to extend the reports by commenting on Toastmaster meetings.

Podcast Interviews

I’ve enjoyed my role as ‘outside broadcast’ correspondent. I moved from using an elaborate high-end digital recorder with external mic to my trusty Olympus hand-held recorder. A recent experiment with Skype convinced me that podcasts recorded from my conversations on Skype have great potential. What I like about podcasting is that there’s no writing. The voice of the person comes through loud and clear. It seems like a good idea to keep the podcasts to around 5 minutes. And I have no interest in sitting down in front of a mic pontificating.

Resolved: To continue to podcast interviews with interesting people I meet at conferences and also to seek out people anywhere in the world I can connect with via Skype.

The Financial Times

My daily read of the FT gives me a host of ideas for blogging. I usually spot three interesting articles for each one I write up as a blog entry. It’s been fun sending some of the FT journalists a note about my blog comments and occasionally getting a kind word in return.

Resolved: To continue to scour the FT for stimulating ideas to comment on.

Deep Issues

Looking back on 2007, I see there was a period in February and March when I was trying to look into ‘deep end’ issues such as Ethnomethodology and examine how it is relevant to public presentation skills. I think this is a grand subject for someone’s PhD thesis, but I could not sustain the interest myself. I did hear from a couple of sociologists who came across my blog because there is relatively little on the web about a subject as obscure as this.

Resolved: Stay away from the deep end.

Politics

Since 2008 is an election year there’s going to be plenty to comment on here. I’ve mostly commented on Immigration and Climate Change. OK, so this is not central to the title of the blog. But how these ‘hot button’ issues are debated and the way people represent (and mis-represent) them is a great case study in communications.

Fun stuff

Since all work and no play makes Ian a dull blogger, I’ve found that fun stuff now and again keeps things fresh.

I’m proud of my review of Bamber Gascoigne’s Timesearch site which resulted in an email of appreciation from Mr. University Challenge himself.

The Rothko paintings in Washington DC left a lasting impression, as did the movie Code 46.

Resolved: Have more fun with my blog.

Guest Postings

Little did I know when I invited Clinton speechwriter Vinca LaFleur to create a guest posting on the State of the Union Speech that this single blog posting would attract more visitors than any other. So thanks, Vinca.

Resolved: Invite other qualified people to create guest postings.

Hewlett-Packard

After ‘flying under the radar’ with my day job at HP, 2007 was the year my blog was listed on hp.com. To date, I’ve only posted a few blog entries specifically about HP, but since executive communications at the company is a rich source of content I could easily expand this. My role supporting Prith Banerjee at HP Labs gives me a ringside seat at a major global R&D organization. Communicating about complex technology is a fascinating challenge.

Resolved: More blog entries about HP’s executives in 2008.