Writers for the Red Cross

by Beth Dunn on January 23, 2011

March is fast approaching, you know, and while I am more than usually excited about March because I’ll be heading back to London for OMGLondon2, this March I have something equally — if not more — exciting to talk about.

It’s called Writers for the Red Cross, it’s something that the altogether delightful Holly Tucker and I are cooking up together, and believe me, you’ll be hearing more about it. And not just from me, either.

The full website will be going up in mid-February, but you can learn a great deal about it on the placeholder site at www.writersfortheredcross.com.

Too lazy to click? I dig it. Here’s the scoop:

What is Writers for the Red Cross? This online event is intended to raise funds and awareness for the Red Cross and its work in communities across the country. We’ll be auctioning off publishing-related items and services donated by authors, publicists, agents, and editors. We’ll also have daily guest posts from authors about “What the Red Cross Means to Me” and a daily countdown of “31 Things You Didn’t Know About the Red Cross” on the official event website. All donors who give over $25 will also be able to select one free book from a range of books donated and shipped by publishers for the event.

Writers for the Red Cross will go live in mid-February, with active fundraising running from March 1 through March 31. It is modeled on the highly successful “Do the Write Thing for Nashville” fundraiser in 2010, which raised $74K in ten days following last spring’s devastating floods.

Why Writers? Writers share our commitment to community by bringing people together through their stories. And these communities continue to be strengthened as readers come together with writers in their local bookstores, in book clubs, online through social media…and through partnerships with national organizations with a similar mission of community: national organizations like the American Red Cross.

Why the Red Cross? If there were one word to describe the Red Cross, it would be “community.” Each year, in communities large and small, victims of some 70,000 disasters turn to neighbors familiar and new – the more than half a million volunteers and 35,000 employees of the Red Cross. Through nearly 700 locally supported chapters, more than 15 million people gain the skills they need to prepare for and respond to emergencies in their homes, communities and world.

Want to get involved? You can.

Join us on Facebook. Follow Holly on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter, if you don’t already. And stay tuned.

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The True Beginning of the Year

by Beth Dunn on August 29, 2010

Fall colorsI’ve always been a bit of an academic at heart, and so I always feel like September is really the beginning of the new year, not January. How bizarre is it to think of January as the beginning of anything? But Autumn, now, that’s a clear, obvious, vivid transition period. The old passes away. The new begins.

I’m transitioning into a new role at HubSpot, where I have for some time now worked as a Premium Support Consultant, working one-on-one with our Premium customers. Starting next week, I’ll be working more directly with our entire customer base, as I’ll be moving into managing the customer forums and creating all the support documentation and instructional materials for customers and users of the software. It all adds up to much less time spent on the phone, one customer at a time, and more time spent on the computer, creating articles, videos, webinars, and such for the consumption of our entire online community.

I’m just about as excited as a person can be for this transition, because I really love writing, editing, and making little videos more than just about anything else.

Of course, I am also tremendously excited that Fall is almost here. I know that’s not a terribly popular position to take, but there it is. I am just much more of a Fall and Winter kind of person, Spring is OK, but Summer is really right out. Far too hot, for my tastes, and there’s all this pressure to be Spending Time Outside, which is vastly overrated, in my opinion.

It’s time now for baseball to get really exciting, for football to start (annoyingly) horning its way in on baseball’s airtime; for sweaters and jeans and scarfs and jackets. All those things spell “awesome” to me. Except maybe for the football. But whatever. You can’t have everything.

How was your summer? What’s on tap for Fall?

Image by Denis Collette

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Tracking the Power of the Network

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You know that old saying about advertising? The one that says we know that 50% of our billboards work, we just don’t know which half? Knowing “which half works” has become a kind of Holy Grail in advertising and marketing. Lots of folks who haven’t yet made the leap into inbound marketing labor under the [...]

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The Power of the Pen [Guest Post by Barbara Oliver]

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This post was written by guest blogger Barbara Oliver, a nonprofit communications professional on Cape Cod. What can Twitter really do in a person’s life? Can it move you to re-examine your past, and to re-imagine your future? Or is it just a lot of nonsense about what people ate for lunch? Can a tweet [...]

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The New (Old) Rules of Networking

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If you’re a new business on Twitter, or Facebook, trying to generate interest in the goods and services you have to offer, the funny thing is that you should try talking about those goods and services very, very sparingly.

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Bronte, Austen, and Eggplants

March 29, 2010
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If I know you in life, or you follow me on Twitter, then chances are you already know about the side projects that have been consuming such a vast amount of my free time. But in case you haven’t heard, I’m very pleased to announce two new website launches.

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Sense and Sociability

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I’ve got a new series launching over at the HubSpot Inbound Marketing blog called Sense and Sociability – Your Guide to Social Media Etiquette. Email your questions to sense at hubspot dot com.

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MassChallenge Startup UnPanel

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MassChallenge UnPanel Event

I am a big fan and supporter of the UnConference concept, especially as exemplified by the many and multiplying PodCamps in the world today. So I’m pleased to see that the format is being applied in other ways, too, such as at the MassChallenge UnPanel.

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