Yes, unfortunately it’s true that the example pages made for Brands in Public are being taken down. And yes it’s true that the lensmasters who participated are being rewarded with a bonus for their time.  But I’m not here to grieve the loss of a few hours of my time.  I’m here to celebrate what I learned while making those wonderful example pages.

In a nutshell:  People LOVE to participate. And yes Seth has been telling us this for years, “make something that people want to come back to” but it took Brands in Public to show me the best way to do that.

Here’s what I Learned

In addition to writing my original content I need to:

1.  Add lots of places for the public to have their say.  Add polls for them to answer.  Add guest books with thought provoking questions where people can share their stories.  Give the public a podium to shout from by adding a duel module or two where they can debate each other.

2.  One or two Amazon.com spotlight modules is all you need if you choose really GREAT products to promote.

3.  Find a couple of fantastic blogs on your subject and follow them with an rss feed module so people can see what others are saying about the topic.

4.  Let the public SEE the Twitter responses being Tweeted in real time with a few Twitter Follow modules.

5.  Add lots of great links on my subject to help people find even more information.

And YES, I already do some of these things on most of my lenses but what I learned in my short time making BIP pages is that I need to add ALL of these wonderful features to ALL of my lenses!

I’m off now to start making my lenses even better!  Won’t you join me?