This month the prestigious You Get It award goes to Katie Konrath, author of the Get Fresh Minds blog! I’ve been watching Katie for a little while now and each time she pops up I’m really impressed with what I see. I’ve even introduced you to her formally… so you should be familiar with her. Here are some things that I LOVE on/about her blog:
- Katie’s blog is about innovation and creativity, right? Her title/subtitle make it very clear, and her category names totally reinforce it. You can tell that everything she writes is aligned with the ideas/creativity/innovation track.
- In just 3 months of blogging she has somehow managed to find a bunch of people that read and comment on her blog. Check out her “recent comments” section (on the left) and you’ll see that most comments are made on different posts by different people – this is NOT easy to do, but her content is so fresh and rich that she generates excellent discussion!
- I like how she renamed “Blogroll” to “Fresh Blogs,” which is aligned with her brand (or, her blog title)… this reinforcement is icing on the cake.
- Katie has a nice, easy, engaging style of writing. It doesn’t hurt my simple mind to read it and follow what she’s talking about. Including videos helps me, as a reader, get her message more and gives me more of an emotional attachment (I’ll never forget that she is studying German. Why? Because I saw this hilarious video that she put into a post about how hard it is to learn foreign languages).
- Aside from her style, she breaks up the reading with font, bullets, pictures, etc. She is making it easy for ME to read — critical!
- Katie does good blog marketing. She has left comments here and on some other blogs that I frequent. Does it work? Heck ya, she has been blogged about (or, her posts have spawned new posts on someone else’s blog) and she got on my radar. It’s a tactic to get your blog out there, and she does it really well.
Katie has done an excellent job in just a few months. I’m looking forward to more great ideas (make that, fresh ideas!), and watching her personal brand online grow!
Congratulations Katie! – You join a special group of professionals and have earned a coveted link from my monthly winner’s blogroll area (on the left), six months of premium JibberJobber (you can transfer/award this to someone else :)), and a cyber-high five! Feel free to post the You Get It award on your blog!
Here are the past winners:
- September 2006 – ClickDave – my review
- October 2006 – Kent Blumberg – my review
- November 2006 – Heather Henricks – my review
- December 2006 – Adelino de Almeida – my review
- January 2007 – Rob Humphrey – my review
- January 2007 – Ariel Meadow Stallings – my review
- February 2007 – Mike Schaffner – my review
- March 2007 – Susan Johnston – my review
- April 2007 – Thomas Clifford – my review
- May 2007 – Rob Frankel – my review
- June 2007 – Trent Hamm – my review
Hi Jason, thanks very, very much! I have to admit though, I was stalking… er, following your blog for many months before I started commenting. I’ve learned a lot, and really took your blog promotion secrets to heart when you wrote about them not long ago.
It’s tons of fun for me to write about creativity and ideas. I actually started http://www.getfreshminds.com because I had so many ideas clogging my head that I wasn’t thinking of any new ones. I thought that putting them out in public would force me to start looking for opportunities everywhere. And it has.
Plus, one of the best parts about blogging is following comments back to their owner’s blogs and seeing what everyone else is writing about. It’s incredibly interesting to read a huge variety of topics, because everything I learn gives me more ideas.
And, as for the hilarious video, it’s even funnier when you’ve made horribly wrong comments yourself! Like, nearly thanking the German-speaking parents of my boyfriend for “das Weihnachten Gift” at dinner one night. I thought it meant “Christmas present”. It actually means “Christmas poison”. Yikes. Thank goodness I ran it by my boyfriend first!
I wasn’t so lucky with trying to tell my Mexican co-workers that I was embarrassed. Interesting tip–the word for “pregnant” in Spanish sounds like how a bad-Spanish-speaker would try to translate “embarrassed”!
One thing I’m wondering, since I’m already a happy lifetime subscriber to Jibberjobber, can I do a comment contest on my blog to pass the 6 months on to someone else?
Hi Katie… interesting information. I love to hear about how bloggers get started. It’s amazing to me how many people with great ideas could be, should be blogging but we don’t know about them yet. I think that your blog is an excellent representation of your personal brand… there are a lot more things that you are doing right than what I put in this small post, and it will benefit you throughout your career!
I speak Spanish and the embarazado/pregnant/embarrassed thing always cracked me up 🙂
With regard to the upgrade, I didn’t want want to “out” you in the post and say “and she’s already a lifetime premium user”… for some reason it seems like it’s not my place to talk about my users… that’s why I didn’t address this… but YES, you can transfer it any way you want. Others have had contests, some had someone in mind… do something … fun, fresh, creative 🙂 Wow me!
No worries Jason, I don’t mind outing myself. 🙂
Congrats katie..nice blog too
Katie, you have a wonderful blog. Creativity and innovation are strong currents in most markets and is in definite need around our country. All of our American personal brands should be proud of creativity, ideation, and innovation!
I just subscribed – and plan on linking to you!
~ Vikram
PersonalBrandMarketing.com
Great choice Jason! Katie has a wonderful perspective, a fresh outlook and a superb writing style! She is a real talent and quite a nice person too. I enjoy her views and classy style.
I bloghopped from The Most Innovative Car contest and say congrats to you all the way from Norway 🙂