98 percent of the people using social media do not know what they are doing, but the 2 percent who do know what they are doing are rapidly expanding their businesses and making money. That’s the message from, Patrick Schwerdtfeger, an author and new media marketing guru, who spoke this week to a group of about 40 small business people at the Sacramento Speakers Network. “Most people practice trial and error and fail their way to Success,” Schwerdtfeger says. The ground floor method is to attempt campaigns, and see what happens.” Schwerdtfeger, 40, a native of Ottawa, Canada now based in the Bay Area, spoke to the group the very day his new book – titled “Marketing Shortcuts for the Self

Sacramento artists of all sorts have been asked by Richard St. Ofle and Jesse Vasquez to contribute to a weekly "participatory art project" on their new blog, "Topical Thursday." On "Topical Thursday," Sacramento's most creative are asked to consider a topic and contribute their interpretation, in whatever form they choose, to the blog. According to St. Ofle, the contributors will be "mostly artists, but also writers as well . . . we wanted to limit it to people who do something creative, but not just visual art." St. Ofle and Vasquez, themselves artists, reveal a new topic every Thursday, as the blog's name implies. Past topics have included "guilty pleasures" and "secrets." Upcoming