Tonight at 8:30 PM ET, I’ll be appearing, live via video, on The Tech Buzz. It’s a popular, live streamed tech show on Ustream.TV. Check out the stream and, if you have time tonight, please stop by! We’ll be talking about the book, online community and more. Thanks.

When I posted about my session at the Independent Blogging Conference at Greensboro, I mentioned that I might be doing it with someone else. Well, that person is confirmed and it’s Robert Scoble. He is the Managing Director at FastCompany.TV and has his own Wikipedia page. I met him very, very briefly at both South by Southwest and Blog World Expo and I look forward to sharing the session with him.

Once again, the session is called “Promoting Your Blog Through Social Media,” and we will be highlighting some dos and don’ts of promoting your blog through five key forms of social media: blogging, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking and forums.

You’ve seen them: folks who leave a comment on Facebook or on your blog. The comment itself may or may not be great, but for some reason… they’ve included some sort of signature link or mention of their website, company, organization – whatever. Here’s an example:

Hey, this was a great post. I definitely agree with what you are saying. I’ve been managing communities for many years and one of the challenges that you’ll face is definitely in the management of members who are looking to cause you some sort of harm. It takes patience and an understanding that you must protect the community as a whole.

Patrick O’Keefe
Author, “Managing Online Forums” – http://www.managingonlineforums.com

This is not a comment I’d actually leave.

You only get a signature if the site allows you one. This will usually mean one of two things. Many communities allow you to set a signature in your profile and then have guidelines covering what you can and cannot have in it. In this case, it’s allowed, within the site’s guidelines. Place your signature in the specified area – and no where else.

The other instance would be, even if you don’t have a specified box, that the site’s terms or guidelines say it is OK to have a signature, the person running the site told you so or, at least, it is a generally accepted practice at the site.

In any other case, never assume that it is acceptable. Always ask first to see if it is OK and then respect what they say. Otherwise, you are using a space that is not yours to use in a manner that is not kosher. This sort of practice also has a spammy feel to it. Whenever I see someone do this, that is the first thing that comes to mind.

Many blogs allow you to post a name and URL and have your name linked and that is generous and should be utilized. But, that is where the line should be. Unless it is allowed or generally accepted, don’t take it upon yourself to insert your website or company name in your comment in a context that is not consistent with the site’s general community.

Note that I am not talking about a signature that is just your first name, etc. If you want to sign your posts or comments with your name – and only your name – then generally that is going to be OK.

But, I see some people who consider themselves to be social media savvy doing this and I wonder why. Especially with blog comments, it kind of concerns me. I did an interview a while back with a blogger and one of the founders of a somewhat well known social network for entrepreneurs (not going to name them) came and left a comment with links to their site, etc. It got deleted – and rightly so. The blogger that interviewed me told me that the person scolded them for removing the comment. Remarkable. And, yet, not unheard of.

After this happened, someone else at the company that I knew before she worked there, contacted me and said that the aforementioned founder would like to meet me and if it would be OK if they set up the introduction. I declined.

I will be traveling to Greensboro, North Carolina in just under a week to attend a pair of conferences, one of which I will be speaking at. The first is ConvergeSouth on October 17. I am not 100% sure what panels, etc. I will be attending, except to say that I will definitely be at my friend Jonathan Bailey’s session from 10:55 AM through 12:00 PM, titled “Preventing Plagiarism.” Beyond that, I’m going to play it by ear.

The next day, October 18, I will be at the Independent Blogging Conference at Greensboro, a conference put on by Kelby Carr and Dave Slusher to replace the cancelled BlogHer Greensboro. During the morning, I will be on the Opening Panel, to begin the day, at 9:00 AM.

I will also be hosting a session called “Promoting Your Blog Through Social Media,” where I (or we) will be highlighting some dos and don’ts of promoting your blog through five key forms of social media: blogging, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking and forums. I may be hosting the session with another person, but that is not finalized. I’ll post if and when I know for sure.

Later in the day, I’ll be attending a session put on by my friend Jared Smith, covering his online weather broadcasts.

In addition to meeting Jared (who I’ve known for around 8 years) and Jonathan for the first time, I also look forward to meeting Angela Connor, Michael Kimsal and more! If you’ll be attending, please let me know!

Since it’s been a while since I did one of these, I have a lot of coverage to highlight.

I was asked by Blogs.com to come up with a list of my 10 favorite blogs. Understanding that I would have to leave a ton of people off, I sought out to pick 10 amazing blogs written by great people that I appreciate. I also wanted to have the selections showcase a wide array of my interests. You can check out the list on Blogs.com.

I recently attended Blog World Expo where I had a book signing and a pair of panels, titled “How to Deal With Trolls, Spammers & Sock Puppets” and “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media.”

The “Trolls” panel was covered by Miss604 and Gwen Bell, who wrote an incredibly nice comment about me. The “Disaster” panel was covered by Rich Brooks of flyte blog, Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging, Social Studies Blog and Barbara Rozgonyi of Wired PR Works.

The panels were also mentioned by Michelle Evans of im.seeking.balance, Rick Beckr of Copywrite, Ink. in a comment on Chris Brogan’s blog and Mike Mueller. My attendance at the conference (and/or the book) was mentioned by Connie Bensen (the book was also mentioned by Jeff Chandler of PerfCast when he was interviewing Connie recently), Nicholas Chase of The Way To Success and Shai Coggins of Just Make Money Online.

I also met Lynn Terry of ClickNewz! and we talked for a while. She wrote about our meeting and conversation on her blog. While at Blog World Expo, I did video interviews with Abby Johnson of WebProNews and Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer TV. I’ve embedded both of these at the bottom of this post.

During and post-conference coverage aside, I was interviewed on the Blog World Expo podcast (along with Chris Alden, the Chairman and CEO of Six Apart), the E-Commerce Success Show with Scott Fox, Zane Safrit’s podcast, SocialMedialogy Conversations and New Media Pro.TV. I also did a text interview on the Blog World Expo blog.

“Managing Online Forums” received new reviews from eModeration, Shai Coggins of Just Make Money Online (Co-Founder and Vice President of Community at b5media), Travis Smith of Unvarnished (and Hop Studios), Liz Fuller of Business and Blogging, Heidi Miller of Talk It Up!, ONLINE magazine and Manny Hernandez, a Top 100 Amazon.com Reviewer, who also wrote about his review on Ning.

Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer highlighted the book in a discussion of Facebook group and brand page best practices, recommending it due to the coverage of user and content management issues.

Hoyt Mann of the Knowledge Management at the Information Technology Toolbox site wrote a nice feature on user guidelines, highlighting the book.

The phpBB Weekly podcast did a pair of segments on “Building a Successful Community,” inspired by the content of the book. They did so in their September 8 and October 5 episodes. It also received a mention on SuccessfoolTV.

It was highlighted in a press release put out by Circle of Seven Productions, a company specializing in book trailers and received a pair of mentions at vBulletin Setup, dealing with books about online communities and user guidelines.

I am overwhelmed by all of the interest and kind words. It’s truly appreciated. Thank you!

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger is, of course, known as leader in the blogging world. But, what some may not know about Darren is that he is the owner of a great digital photography community, the Digital Photography School Forum.

And, once in a while, he steps outside of the blogging realm and writes about forums. In September, he wrote a post called “What I Learned by Increasing My Forum Membership by 400 in 24 Hours.” It’s a great reminder that it’s just as important, if not more so, to cultivate and worry about the people you do have – rather than worry about the ones you do not.

In the post, Darren highlighted two methods by which he grew his community’s member base. One was to contact recently active members, thank them for participating and invite them to spread the word to their friends.

The other one, that accounted for half of the membership boost, was to simply e-mail unconfirmed members. That is, members that have not yet confirmed their account. This relates to what I want to write about today.

Simply, remind people that you exist. Sometimes people sign up and forget you. Sometimes people make a few posts and forget you. Sometimes people make a bunch of posts… drift… and forget you. You can bring some of them back by reminding them that, yes, you do, in fact, still exist. You may be surprised by the impact that this can have.

How can you remind people you exist? Well, in Darren’s case, he used a once off message. This is good. Newsletters, activity digests and other forms of e-mail communication can also be used. If you have developed a community of people who use your site, outside of your site, such as on MySpace, Facebook, etc., those outlets can be similarly used, as long as you are responsible for them (a MySpace group or Facebook fan page that you started, etc.).

Some of these things require only a basic effort, maybe an hour or so of your time in the case of a once off. But, the benefit you receive from that time can be tremendous.

Friday, October 3, I’ll be appearing on the E-Commerce Success Show with Scott Fox live at 2 PM ET. Scott is the author of “Internet Riches,” which was published by AMACOM, the publisher of “Managing Online Forums.”

Later this month, on October 21, I’ll be appearing remotely by video at a Social Media Club Louisville event. It’ll be held at The Louisville Visual Art Association at the Water Tower in Louisville, Kentucky at 7 PM ET.

Thank you to Scott and Jason Falls for setting these two events up.

Now that I have returned from Blog World Expo 2008, have had some time to catch up and process the experience, I thought I’d write a detailed personal recap, to share how the trip went and, also, to document it for myself, in the future. This is a super long, highly detailed post. Emphasis on personal and long. You have been warned. :)

Thursday

I was due to fly out late Thursday morning, on September 18. Only thing… my entire family was coming down with a nasty stomach bug. So, while I attempted to sleep, the sounds of them being sick woke me up and kept me up all night and I ended up receiving around four hours of sleep, or so. Not only that, but it felt like I was coming down with it because, an hour before I was to leave, I was sick. Lovely.

The main thing I thought of was how much planning had gone into this trip. I wasn’t just attending the conference, I wouldn’t just be out of a substantial amount of money. I had two panels and a book signing and I had other people that had worked for me to be there and were relying on me to be there. If there was any way I could go, I was going to go.

I basically told myself it was nerves, not an actual illness like the rest of my house (some might call this denial, heh), and pushed myself to get ready and go, make the hour and a half car ride and get to the airport, nauseous much of the time. Worse yet, I had a horrendous flight path. Norfolk, VA to Washington, DC to Los Angeles, CA to Las Vegas, NV. About 10 hours in all, from start to finish. I gritted my teeth and made it. The last one and a half plane rides were not bad as I started to feel better.

From the airport, the cab driver seriously – seriously ripped me off. I had no basis of what the proper fare was as I had forgotten to look into that. We’re talking double the regular fare rip off.

I got to the hotel, the Las Vegas Hilton, around 6 PM local time and met with my friends Brandon Eley and Chrispian Burks, for dinner. I hung out with Brandon and Chris for the vast majority of the conference. We had planned to head to a meet up hosted by my pal (and fellow panelist) Jason Falls, but we were dead tired – I was half falling asleep at dinner. So, that is where my first night in Vegas ended – in bed before 9 PM. But, I fell asleep the moment I hit the pillow and slept 8 hours straight – this turned out to be the only good night of sleep I’d get while at the conference.

One phrase that I hear sometimes from community staff (not really mine, but others) is “we are human.” It’s often used as a means to excuse some sort of inappropriate behavior.

A staff member treats a member disrespectfully in public? We are human.

A staff member takes the bait a member gave them and reacts? We are human.

You remove a post you shouldn’t have removed? We are human.

Why can’t staff members be held to a higher standard than members? We are human.

Sometimes, it’s OK to say this, but a lot of the time, it’s just an excuse and it makes it sound like what happened, had to happen. When I make a mistake or my staff makes an error, yes, we’re human. But, that’s not what I want to say or what I want to hear people say to me. What I want to know is that we’ll work to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

While we’re all human, saying so too much can render personal accountability non existant. Yes, mistakes happen. Yes, accidents happen. But, when you treat it like a neccessity, you do a disservice to your operation.

People have to be accountable for what they do. Am I going to string an otherwise great staff member up the flag pole for saying something off color to a member? No. But, I expect them to understand when I tell them what should have happened and I expect them to acknowledge it, indicating they’ll do what they can to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

When it comes to dealing with public situations, while I’m not completely against invoking “we are human,” it has to be used in rare cases when it really has meaning, to have any effect. If you say it all the time, it just becomes a tired excuse.

I just wanted to mention that I am back from Blog World Expo. Outside of how I slept and felt in the mornings, it went great and the book signing and panels were awesome. I plan to post a detailed recap, but that will take some time, so I just wanted to get a post up, letting you know that I had returned. I appreciate your patience.