Hey Friends!  I’m currently on vacation right now, but I was able to make sure there you had some juicy material to read in my absence.  If you need to reach me, please use the contact page.  I’ll see you after the holidays!

A few weeks ago, I found myself following a link from Srini Rao to a uStream chat he was testing out.  I played along, and joined in the chat for awhile.  I don’t quite remember what was discussed, but I do remember that I had the opportunity to meet and chat with Jade Craven.

For those of you that don’t know Jade, she runs a great blog that speaks about her experience in the Blogging & Social Media field.  She’s a huge advocate of relationship marketing and she cofounded Social Media Solutions with her best friend.  She’s written some monster posts that went viral on ProBlogger and NetSetter.  She also works with Dave Navarro, the Launch Coach, and has amazing insights on product launching and creation (from inside the labs of some big names) and the role of influence in the blogosphere.  She’s all sorts of brilliant and all sorts of geeky (which you’ll get a dose of shortly).  Side note: She also happened to inspire me to start blogging almost exactly a year ago.

After the uStream, Jade and I traded a few emails, a few tweets and began to help each other out.  In the short time I’ve known her, she’s proven to be an experienced, smart, authentic and absolutely hilarious individual.  When I sent out a call for help so that I could keep delivering amazing content while I was away, Jade stepped up, and she’s had some amazing things to share.

I know you’ll enjoy reading this interview as much as I did!

1.  I’d really like to make this a human interest piece, so let’s get some juicy information to start: Who is your favorite Star Wars character? (ok, I know you hate Star Wars, so who is your favorite Trek character?)

That is not fair. It’s not my fault that pop culture had parodied Star Wars so much that by the time I watched it, I cracked up laughing during the ‘important’ bits.

My favourite character is B’Elanna Torres. I really resonate with her character. She’s incredibly strong and complex, and is portrayed brilliantly by Roxann Dawson. There was this episode in the fifth season, called Extreme Risk, which explored her clinical depression and another episode which explored the battle between her human and klingon heritage. I won’t bore your readers too much but I just find her really intriguing.

For those who have no interest in Star Trek, I recommend you check out this youtube clips of William Shatner. I love him.

• Parody of SEVEN
• Total eclipse of the heart duet with Lin Yu Chun

As an aside, I’m learning that being a geek is a killer networking strategy.

2.  One of my favorite parts of your site is authentically you present yourself on your blog: 100% Jade.  What’s been your biggest challenge with being so transparent on your blog?  What impact has your transparency had for your blog and on your relationships in the blogosphere?

Ok, so before I say anything I just want to do a copy and paste from a document where I file my rants that I may turn into posts:

I get a lot of comments thanking me for my honesty. I know that this leads to more people: more buyers, readers, fans and friends. I get a lot of email and comments thanking me for talking about the realities involved in my work.

It is easy to think that to be successful, you just have to be honest. This won’t work. People will see through you and you’ll alienate the people you are trying to attract.

Write from the heart because it feels right. Write because you want to tell a story and empower people to take action. Reveal parts of yourself because some reason beyond the needs of yourself and your audience. People will resonate with this and stick around to see more.

See, for me being authentic isn’t a challenge. I actually prefer to be transparent and honest. My anxiety can cause cognitive symptoms and, well, you’ve personally experienced my forgetfulness in action. Byblogger readers – I forgot the email Jonathan had sent me where he thanked me for inspiring him to start blogging. You think I’d remember a statement like that but mentally, I’m struggling today. Being transparent about my life makes the bad days that little bit easier.

It’s difficult, though, when telling stories that other people are a part of. I got a lot of positive comments about my recent post, How I Kicked Arse in 2010. I talked about the crush I had on my best friend, Bill. I felt really uncomfortable writing that and had a little bit of a discussion about whether he was cool with me talking about it.

Regarding impact, well, it leads to a lot of positivity surrounding you. Just look at my twitter favourites. I will mention that people admire it a lot more when you talk about the good things that have come from bad situations. A lot of the people thanking me are either suffering from mental illness or know someone that is.

3.  You’ve described yourself as someone who, “influences the influencers.”  How did you come to play that role for the influencers?

Like everything in my career, this happened by pure accident.Ooh, here’s a story. I sat next to Yaro Starak on a plane after snobbing him at an event the previous day. I didn’t talk for most of the flight, either, because I was so exhausted. Lack of sleep fail.

Seriously though, I can attribute that to two factors:

• Brilliant positioning on my behalf
• Treating the big names as people, not idols.

The positioning was accidental. I talk about the journey in my post about the networking secrets the A-Listers wont tell you about. It was simply a matter of hustling, leveraging other peoples audiences and building upon previous successes. I will point out though that by being the silent influencer, you can get overlooked by the wider blogging community.

The later factor, which is treating your idols as normal people, is what really gets you attention. I’ve gone to a lot of conferences and events where I’ve gotten shoutouts based on my networking skills. In all cases, they say that my technique should be modeled because I’m interested in people for their personality rather than what they can do.

Just look at us. I’ve developed a lot of respect for you based on our mutual interests. It’s allowed us to bond and has meant that I’ll often slip you bits of advice when I’m procrastinating.

I get awkward when people idolize me and say positive things. I respect it, but it freaks me out. However I’m more likely to pay attention to someone who talks geek or will respond to my random tweets about the garden.

4.  As someone who is in touch with such a spectacular crowd, you get to see product launches from every angle.  What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned from having an inside view?  Did anything surprise you?

The most valuable thing wasn’t so much a learning experience – it was moreso a dramatic mindset shift. See, I grew up poor. I’ve had to struggle for a while because I couldn’t work during the worst of my recovery period. I used to always feel really icky when people like Dave talked about income projections for future launches. They would mention 5 or 6 figures and I would freak out because I had to survive on just $10’000 a year.

Somehow, I become used to the large figures that were being talked about. Instead of shying away, I’d actively talk about how they could increase that figure. That was personally the most valuable thing.

Regarding the launches themselves, nothing really surprises me. I have good intuition and can generally tell how a launch is going to go because I have access to the core audience as well as the people launching the product. You, or someone else, will have to drill me about the aspects I find fascinating in several launches.

5.  A huge part of the success of launching an e-product (any product really) is exposure: the more eyeballs that see the product, the more sales.  What type of role does an influencer / gatekeeper like yourself play in the process of promoting a product on larger blogs?

(Could you also explain the By Bloggers audience what a gatekeeper does?  I was completely unaware of the concept until we started talking)

I don’t remember where I found the term, but this is how wikipedia defines it:  ”A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to something, for example via a city gate. In the late 20th century the term came into metaphorical use, referring to individuals who decide whether a given message will be distributed by a mass medium.”

So, to apply this to the blogosphere, there are a number of people who decide whether the information gets to the A-listers. This can be in an official capacity – such as a team member (like me and Dave) – or as a virtual assistant. They are the ones that the big names will pay attention to.

Honestly – checking out if someone/something is legit or not takes a lot of time. You cant expect someone with a huge workload to be able to go through everything to ascertain whether it’s the right fit for their audience. They need to rely on people like us to help with the decision making process. It’s win/win. They look good to their audience, and they’ll talk you up. It’s brilliant.

Dave places a lot of trust in me. There have been times when he has said “I’m really busy but if you say this person is awesome, I’ll make the time.” There have been times where I’ve introduced him to people and he’s gone on to be one of their lucrative affiliates. Then there are the people below me that I’ll help in an unofficial capacity. I’ll let them know of products on sale, launches they may want to be involved in, interview opportunities and such. Being a gatekeeper can help more than just the big name.

Another really cool term that I want to play with is ‘gatejumper’. I stole it from Tim Brownson who discovered it in Trust Agents. ”A gatejumper is a person, business or organization that doesn’t try to take the normal route to success, they cheat (or hack as it’s known in online gaming parlance) by changing the rules of the game to fit their strengths.”

This is something I’d like the Bybloggers audience to think about as this is a question worth asking – how are YOU changing the rules of the game?

6.  One of the things I love about your style is that you don’t just stick to the blog – you take it into the real world as well.  How has your experience networking online translated into your experience networking at events like BlogWorld?  And how valuable is it for a blogger to get off the blog and into events like Blog World?

A blog is a very small part of it. It’s the catalyst to relationship building. If someone is worth while, i’ll take it off the blog as quickly as possibly. I’ll take it to email and, once I’ve learned more about them, take it to skype. I think that networking one on one, without an audience, is the single best thing you can do.

Now, I have to admit that I haven’t done as much offline networking as I’d like to do. I live in Australia and am suffering from an anxiety disorder, so have to find a nice balance to avoid making myself sick.

It has been valuable for me because people get the see the personality behind the blogger. I am a very different person offline then I am online. This isn’t by design, I’m just more reserved as I’ve had limited social experience and am terrified of rejection. However at Blogworld I was able to make some really good bonds with people and shaved months off the online networking dance. Online, networking takes time. You have to coordinate schedules and face distractions. With face to face you get rid off all of that bullshit and you are just there to hang out. I was unsure about Karol Gajda, Sid Savara and Thursday Bram because I’d had very limited interaction with them online due to time constraints. I met them and had a blast and that’s led to a lot of laughs – some of them at Thursdays husbands expense – and some work opportunities.

I got to hang with Darren Rowse, David Risley, Naomi Dunford and Johnny B Truant in a social setting. Most people would do a lot for that type of opportunity but I got to do it just by showing up. It’s fantastic from a networking perspective but honestly? I just like it because I get to hang around with people who understand what I do and laugh at my geeky jokes.

7.  Do you have any exciting plans for 2011 that you can share?  What should we be keeping our eyes out for from you?

Yeah. Most of my plans for next year are half baked and are still being formed. What I can say is that I’m going to step away from the blog and focus on being more useful. I’m going to be filtering information for other sites (think the launch coach and Problogger) and not holding back when it comes to helping others.

I understand that is extremely vague but I’m planning to use my hiatus to nail down some of the plans for next year and create something amazing.

That sounds awesome.  Thanks for taking time to do this interview, Jade!

Please share any questions or comments you have for Jade in the comments section below – she’s a font of knowledge.