Ann Handley is a name I have known for a while now. I was introduced to her through her Twitter handle @MarketingProfs, an online source for online marketing resources, marketing strategies, marketing articles, online seminars, case studies, conferences and events for Marketing (that's the SEO description of what they do... In non-marketing speak, MarketingProfs.com is education for marketers). 

Ann is head of content there, and also tweets from her own handle @AnnHandley, but I didn't discover this until after I became friends with her on Facebook and Instagram. 

HEAD OF CONTENT at an educational website for marketers. Just writing that gets me excited!!! My life as a social media marketing manager/director/consultant/whatever I decide to call myself has been driven by content.

Blogging, social media messages, imagery... All of this is content, and my job is to come up with content (or a content strategy) for brands. It is a lot of hard work (being creative/witty/fun/smart 365 days a year can be exhausting), but it is made easier by learning from people like Ann.

Cited in Forbes as the most influential woman in Social Media and recognized by ForbesWoman as one of the top 20 women bloggers, Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, a training and education company with the largest community of marketers in its category.

 Her new book, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, will be published by Wiley in the fall of 2014. 

Why am I going on and on about content and Ann? Well, she is the keynote speaker at the San Francisco North Bay's PSMG Conference on October 16th, 2014 and I am so excited to learn from her in person.

The event, which has the long title of "Ahead of the Curve Marketing: What's Now and What's Next", is an opportunity for Sonoma/Marin/Napa County marketers to connect at a conference designed to inspire, encourage, and recharge all the creative aspects of marketing.

The details:

Ahead of the Curve Marketing: What's Now and What's Next
Thursday, October 16, 2014, 9am - 4pm
Wine networking reception, 4pm - 5pm
Early Bird tickets: $65.00 until Sep 12, 2014, $75.00 after. 

Tickets on sale now: http://psmgnorthbay.com/conference-2014

Looking forward to hearing from Ann, Kristy from Clever Girls Collective (I spoke on a panel with her at Unified Wine Symposium back in Jan and she is amazing), Traci Stuart, President, Blattel Communications, Roy Gattinella (who actually was my PR teacher at SRJC for a half a semester before I moved and had to quit the class), Ryan Kelly who is the co-owner and Chief Operating Officer of WSI Smart Marketing, and Kerry Rego... a fellow Sonoma County Social Media Media Trainer, etc. :)