Monica O'Brien is the author of the book Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It. Social Pollination provides a strategic blueprint that helps businesses leverage social media for crazy growth! For a limited time, purchase Social Pollination and get a free membership to Monica's private coaching forum.

This is a (non-affiliate) post about Adam Baker’s new ebook, Unautomate Your Finances. Adam is a friend of mine in the online space and he is someone that I regularly learn new things from, so I’m very excited to be sharing this guide with you today :) . Included in the guide:

  • 84-pages of ebook, broken into:
    • Theory (core principles)
    • Science (exercise to design ideal life and isolate the “next step”)
    • Application (deeper topics like tracking, budgeting, paying off debt, credit cards, etc…)
  • A 27 minute interview with Leo Babauta (ZenHabits) as a bonus
  • An audio interview with J.D. Roth of Getrichslowly.org as a bonus
  • a 2-page printable PDF budgeting template (of the budget described in Section 3)
  • a minimalist excel template of same budget
  • $17 dollar price for guide + access to bonuses

I know you probably skimmed over that part, but don’t skip this next part, because it’s good. Here are 3 things you can learn from Adam Baker today, even if you don’t purchase his ebook.

Click here to find out the 3 things you can learn from Adam Baker today…

untemplater

My friends and I are launching a new venture today called Untemplater and we are so excited to share it with you! The site is for Gen Y’ers who want to “untemplate” their lives and take advantages of the many opportunities available to our generation. We truly have an all-star team here…

Click here to find out who the founders are

Happy New Year!

I wanted to quickly share my plans for 2010 with the blogging community. The theme for my 2010 is scaling back and focusing on doing just a few things with all my heart. I’ve gotten my list down to three goals:

We’re moving and I’m (hopefully) getting a new job

I’ve been in Chicago since graduating from undergrad 4 years ago, and my husband and I are ready for a change. As much as we love the city life and our friends here, the decision to leave Chicago in 2010 came easily for us. We have both had it at the back of our minds for awhile now, and barely needed discussion to know what we both wanted.

Click here to find out why

price-tagBack in high school, one of my teachers told the class that he never had a glass of wine when he went out to dinner with his wife. It wasn’t because he didn’t drink, he said, but rather because if he were pulled over on the way home, a DUI would tarnish his reputation in the community and ruin his chances of becoming principal someday. I remember thinking, the guy never stops being a disciplinarian – an example for others. He never lets loose.

And I knew that day that I never wanted a profession where I couldn’t have a regular life after work.
Continue Reading…

My new book is out. Yay!

The book is officially called Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It. Social Pollination is about how small businesses can and should be using social media – starting with creating goals and strategy, to the optimizing the 12 social media success factors on any platform, to measuring social media ROI, all the way to building a social media team when you see that social media is so much more important than advertising for 2010.

The target audience for the book is entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs, small business owners, startups, sales/marketing/PR types at any size company, and anyone who wants to build their “personal brand” in a strategic way. (And my mom. Hi mom.) Since 2010 is going to be an even bigger year for small business + social media than 2009 was, this book makes an awesome Christmas gift to any of the above who could use a little help with their small business/personal goals for 2010.

Of course, I would LOVE if all 2000 subscribers to this blog headed over to Amazon (or Barnes and Noble) to purchase the book TODAY. Not only would I probably hit some random Amazon bestseller list, but I would be able to pay my rent for like, 3 months. (That would really make my husband happy.) So, if you are in the target audience or know someone who’s in the target audience, treat yourself (or them) to a fun Christmas gift.

Amazon Link: http://bit.ly/6XFPof

Barnes and Noble Link: http://bit.ly/55xnPB

Since the book is aimed at entrepreneurial types interested in becoming thought leaders in their industry and therefore want to write their own books, I also wanted to share some behind-the-scenes info on the Social Pollination process. If this is interesting to you, make sure you leave a comment with your questions so I can answer them in upcoming blog posts. I’m happy to talk about the experience and give you the low-down on all the mistakes I made in the process of getting here – I just need to know what you want to hear about.

Writing

It took me 3 years to learn, practice, and digest the material for this book, and about a month to write down everything I learned and edit it. Don’t get me wrong – that month was like a vacation to hell for me – and I LOVE writing. I’ve heard A LOT of business authors say this about their first book, so it’s not surprising that this journey isn’t for the faint-hearted. And the writing has just begun for me, because marketing this book is probably the same amount of writing as I did for the book in the first place.

I’m happy it’s done though, and I feel pretty good, like maybe I just ran a marathon or something. I would definitely do it again. I know a ton of people want to learn how to turn their blog into a book, so leave your questions in the comments and I’ll write more about this in the future!

Pricing

You’d be shocked by how little control I as the author have over the pricing of my own book. Right now it is $20 on Amazon and $18 on Barnes and Noble. Those prices are bound to go up or down over the next several weeks due to the holiday season, and I can’t do much about it.

BUT what I can say is that companies have paid me $1500 to share with them a small fraction of the information in Social Pollination. This information has gained me 2000 blog subscribers and 6300 (real, non follow-back) followers on Twitter as a solopreneur. At $20, the book is a steal for the do-it-yourself types or anyone who wants to get up to speed on social media quickly.

Distribution

A ton of people have asked me how to get the book in their country. Right now the (English version of) Social Pollination is listed on Amazon in the US, UK, France, and Germany, as far as I know.

I am working to get the book available on the Kindle as well, so that should be up in a week or so, and I believe that should be available globally, though I don’t really know for sure.

If that doesn’t work, I may also set up a PDF version download, but I’m pretty wary of that for obvious reasons. The other option I can think of is ordering and sending copies of the book on my own (as in, I’m the distributor) but that could be an operational nightmare as well. So I am thinking through mass solutions to this problem and in the meantime, working one on one with a couple people who are serious about purchasing.

Marketing

A couple people asked me about my marketing plan for the book. My big online PR push will be in early January, so at the end of that push, I will probably write a long post about what exactly I did and what the results were. I’m hesitant to commit anything to digital at the moment because one or more of my ideas might change, or might suck and completely fail :) .

After the online push, I will do a huge offline push, which will involve more speaking, direct marketing, radio, book signings, etc. I’m pretty excited to get to that point too, and will probably write about it also.

They say it takes a year to market your book well. I really hope that’s not true, but I’m looking forward to at least 3-6 months of hardcore promotion.

*******

Lastly, I just want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to YOU. The book would not be a physical object without this community that has supported me over the years. I know it’s the cliche thing to say, but out of all the things I’ve done to reach success (like, ahem, getting a really expensive MBA), this blog has probably given me the largest return on investment. So for that, I am sincerely thankful.

Don’t forget to check out the book if you haven’t already, and have a fantastic day!