By Gini Dietrich
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
OK, maybe it’s just the end of the Spin Sucks Scavenger Hunt.
I’ll tell you what. Those people who recommend you create an editorial calendar might not be so bad.
Knowing what I was going to write about for the past month has been super helpful…and very low stress.
And, because I haven’t written about anything other than what’s in Spin Sucks, the book, I have a list of 14 topics for upcoming blog posts. That easily gets me through another month.
Yay for planning!
The Spin Sucks Exercises
It’s been an epic month, with longer content that I typically write….and you all have been great sports and very participatory.
We’ve covered:
- Tell Your Organization’s Story without Sex
- How to Create High-Quality Content
- How to Create a Call-to-Action for All of Your Content
- Seven Steps for Dealing with Critics
- Ten Ways to Personalize Media Relations
- Four Ways to Fight Content Thieves
- Communications Done Well
- How to Build a Community that Thrives
- Repair Your Online Reputation
- The Future of Content Marketing
These are all pieces that accompany the book, and they each have exercises for you to do the work described.
Download the Spin Sucks Workbook
And speaking of doing the work described in the blog posts, there are case studies and more information in the book, which can become pretty overwhelming and paralyzing.
So we have created a Spin Sucks Workbook.
Since the book came out, I’ve wanted to do something that helped communicators work through the ideas presented in Spin Sucks.
And then Jeremy Miller published Sticky Branding. And, along with it, provided a workbook for his readers. When I saw that, I thought, “Ah ha! We can do something similar!”
(So thank you, Jeremy…even though it caused a great deal of work, it’s going to be super valuable.)
The Spin Sucks Workbook is nearly 50 pages (48, I think), but it easily helps you do the exercises described in each of the blog posts.
And, because things change so quickly, we’ve also added some exercises on content hubs, content distribution, and how to use media relations to get on the first page of Google.
These things are not in the book because, well, they hadn’t been perfected yet two years ago when I wrote it.
You can also expect to find in the Spin Sucks Workbook:
- Company storytelling;
- Reputation management;
- DIY media relations;
- Content marketing;
- Lead generation;
- Choosing priority keywords;
- How to define the right influencers for your industry; and
- An addendum with tools and advice.
Download it now.
We are going to be offering several other things that help you do the work—and create results—described in Spin Sucks throughout this year, so if you download the Spin Sucks Workbook now, you’ll automatically be on the list to beta test some of those products.
The Spin Sucks Scavenger Hunt
While the scavenger hunt officially ended yesterday, we’ll keep it open until Sunday night.
If you haven’t already, send an email to [email protected] with the phrase you collected. You can attach your scavenger hunt card, but it’s not necessary.
We’ll do a drawing for the 10 sets of wine glasses on Monday.
I’d also like to thank the following brand ambassadors for their help with the scavenger hunt:
- Corina Manea
- Martin Waxman
- Shelley Pringle
- Jon-Mikel Bailey
- Rosemary O’Neill
- Jeremy Miller
- Carrie Morgan
- Andy Crestodina
- Paul Sutton
- Howie Goldfarb
The best part about their involvement was it was really exciting for me to see what they came up with, having so little direction.
You all rock! Thank you!
(This also gives you a list of the blog posts you should have visited during the scavenger hunt, if you want to cheat and do it all right now.)
And don’t forget…if you buy a copy of Spin Sucks between now and Sunday night (March 8), we’ll send you a fun package full of goodies to use in your office.
Just email the receipt to [email protected]. Please include your mailing address so we know where to send the package.