eSoup

Friends of Gavin

Gavin Heaton, fellow blogger and author of Servant of Chaos, has had a terrible misfortune in his family over the Christmas holiday.

Gavin's father-in-law, Noel Davies, was severely injured in an accident on December 23 in his homeland of Australia. Noel is an avid cyclist and was riding with a group cycling buddies when the group of riders was hit by an car. Some of the cyclists escaped with minor injuries, but Noel was the worst hit and has suffered severe trama. You can see the latest updates here.

Noel has had some small triumphs on the route to recovery, but he's not out of the woods by any means, and he and his family are in desperate need of everyone's thoughts, prayers and encouragement.

As I see the blogging community rally around Gavin during his time of need, it reminds of the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" that (at least in the States) we see everywhere we look at Christmas time.

When the lead character, George Bailey, gets into desperate trouble, word spreads across the small town that he needs help, and everyone sends their thoughts, prayers and encouragement to him and his family. The result is that God hears all the prayers for George Bailey, and responds by sending an angel to help him.

There are few people who would describe the internet as being a "small town". At first glance, it's endless, mechanical, and cold. What's amazing though, is that within the seemingly limitless chasm that is the internet, small groups of people from all around the planet somehow form real connections with each other. When they hear that one of their community needs help, they rise to action and do what they can to support him.

Gavin and his family need whatever help we can give them right now. You can send well wishes to them by signing the Guestbook at Noel Davies blog. The well wishes make a HUGE difference. Gavin and his family check the guestbook every few hours, and I imagine they get a boost of positive energy from reading everyone's kind words. Think of it as an electronic hug to sent to a friend across the world.:-)

Cam has also set up a site where donations for the injured cyclists and their families can be made via PayPal. 

Thanks to David Armano for making the graphic for folks to use on their blogs, and thanks to Luc and CK for bringing Gavin's story to everyone's attention.

HowTo Get Your Blog Featured In Newspapers & Magazines

Somehow I was lucky enough to cross paths with journalist Penelope Trunk a few months ago. I ended up being featured in an article of hers, and discovered that one of the most effective ways to get noticed is to integrate online marketing with mainstream offline marketing.

So, naturually when I saw her post about how to get your blog or yourself mentioned in print, my ears perked up.

Penelope gives some great tips, and I've worked her advice into a post I just put up over a Coachamatic.com.  In the post, I also included some tips by problogger Darren Rowse about doing interviews, and I couldn't resist passing on some of the lessons I've learned from media magnet Andy Wibbels.

So, you'll get helpful tips from the journalist's perspective as well as the blogger's point of view. You can check out that post here.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Seth Godin plays Santa to Z-Listers

Wow--this was a very nice Christmas present! I wake up this morning to find that Seth Godin has been gracious enough to include eSoup in a list of recommended reading in his post What to read now/next.

How did he know that's what I wanted for Christmas? :-)

The story behind this is that the Z-list meme that Mack Collier created a couple weeks ago has been making it's way around the internet and has managed to fall into the hands of Seth, who not only shared the link love on his blog, but also created a Squidoo lens to rank "good blogs", which appears to be based on the Z-list.

Now, I can understand Mack's thoughts when he points out that the whole Z-List idea, which was to bring recognition to really good, non-famous, under-ranking blogs, is quite diluted at this point cuz the list on Squidoo includes several A-List blogs such as Seth's own blog, Tom Peters, Creating Passionate Users, and other blogs we're already all too well acquainted with.

Of course, Seth's blog is #1 (why am I not suprised?). As I was going through the list voting for my genuine Z-list compatriots, I thought, what is the use of voting for "good blogs" on Squidoo? What is really the point?

We've sort of ended up creating a Squidoo version of Technorati with the already popular blogs rising to the top again, which is sort of ironic, cuz the purpose of the Z-list was to uncover new, undiscovered talent in the blogosphere.

It's a kick to get a higher ranking in Technorati or Squidoo, but the really fun part of blogging is meeting folks near and far who share interests, have compelling ideas, and are great writers and storytellers.

The thing that is really precious about the Z-List is that I've been able to find lots of blogs that I love (check out eSoup's newly expanded blogroll!) that I never would have found if not for Mack's Z-list creation.

So, the Z-list has entered a new dimension, but what the heck--I'm extremely tickled to be included in a post on Seth's blog since I've often referred to eSoup as "Seth Godin's Other Blog" due to the fact that I can't seem to resist linking to him on almost every post he writes.

Thanks to Seth for sharing the Santa link love!