tell ten friends::

rookie of the year, mack collier

Disclaimer:: This is not a ploy to get on the Top 25 Marketing Blogs list. (That's up to Alexa, and I'm too much of fan of most on the list to think that I'll ever be in that category)

Recently, Mack Collier was invited into the fold at MarketingProf's Daily Fix by Ann Handley. The winners in this deal are huge audience that already flocks to DF for the writings of the likes of Handley, Seth Godin, John Jantsch et al. They're gonna love Mack.

As he points out in his post today (a Sunday, btw) Mack has been blogging for exactly eight months. In that short time, he built a huge following at Beyond Madison Avenue, and then expanded his portfolio to include The Viral Garden, a blog that his quickly shot up in the rankings, due to Collier's faithful fan club.

But none of that is much of a surprise to me.

Mack is a great blogger. He's ideas are good, his writing is clear and he's never short on opinion, especially when it comes to how musicians and companies market themselves. But do a technorati search for marketing, and you'll find those traits alone don't exactly make him a member of an exclusive club.

The reason why Mack is seeing so much success is because he practices what he preaches. As he'll tell you, it's not enough to post great content, you've got to get off your own blog, and join other conversations elsewhere. It's great advice (advice I follow religiously; so much so that I can't find time to post as often as I'd like to) for anyone looking to bring their own blog into the great conversation that is the blogosphere.

But even that isn't what makes Mack a terrific blogger, imo.

In a series of posts on both BMA and The Viral Garden, Mack has focused on bringing the readers and commenters on his blog together. He just wanted us to read what we were missing on each other's blogs, and in the process he accidentally created a network of bloggers, discussing different topics but sharing a passion for the conversation. It's how I discovered great blogs like Andrea's, JD's and Chris'.

Today he disclosed how he discovered my blog: He found me at the bottom. And he's been linking to me like a madman ever since.

Not that I'm TOO vain, but I do watch my stats. We probably all do the occasional vanity search, no? Thing is, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I owe a great deal of my traffic and readership to Mack. And if you peek through the comments on any one of my posts, you'll find he's far and away the most regular contributor. I suspect a lot of us could say the same about our blogs; that he's a faithful reader, and takes the time to leave comments often.

So here is what I invite you to do; If you're a fan of Mack the way I am, leave a quick comment about him here, and then fly over to his latest post at VG and give him some love there too. He deserves it.

posted by Jordan Behan @ 4:47 PM