The itinerary for my official 5-week trip back to the U.S. to travel to South by Southwest Interactive, Coachella Music & Arts Festival, and all over Arizona and California in between. Help contribute to my ambitious projects or help me seek a corporate sponsor for a 2011 entrepreneurship & personal development retreat in Southern California.

Last week my friend and colleague Monica O’Brien published her first book, Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It, a thorough guide to social media marketing for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and PR and marketing folks.

Social media heavyweight Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book “Crush It!” will teach you how to make a living with your passion with the new social media tools that are available to all of us. Gary gives us an exclusive video about his unconventional advice for how Gen-Y and the non-profit world can Crush It hard!

A nice bedtime story about the time Cody got royally effed over by a big-name blogger. Rather than ranting about all the perceived misdeeds I’m stressed out about, I try to distill this experience into some useful lessons on community building and how not to treat your True Fans.

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing has teamed up with Microsoft Office Live Small Business to provide a thorough e-book guide to social media for business owners. For businesses, social media is a new language that businesses have to learn, and Jantsch guides you through all the basics: blogging, RSS, search, social bookmarking, social networks, and microblogging tools like Twitter. [...]

Today, LinkedIn has joined the application craze and opened their platform for developers to create user add-ons. I’ve got mixed feelings about saturating all the social networks with extras, but it looks like LinkedIn will hopefully try to keep its focus on professional tools. If you’re a WordPress blogger who also happens to use LinkedIn to connect with your business [...]

I think with the economy in the toilet, business owners are eager to expand their online reach, and they’re trying hard to get creative with advertising and promotions. I’ve been getting a lot of questions from colleagues and friends recently about how to best promote their businesses online, and there are a few things I’ve been recommending a lot lately, [...]

Two weeks ago I told you that you can’t ignore social media if you’re gonna succeed in business these days. Well this Wednesday there is a great opportunity for many of you small business owners and entrepreneurs I know. If you’re interested in internet marketing strategy, building a web presence, gaining visibility through the search engines, or if you are [...]