I have a confession: I’m a lousy marketer. You’d think that someone who writes about online marketing for a living would be much better as translating everything I pick up from interviewing experts and have transformed into a marketing machine. But I’m a journalist by trade, have been for more than 20 years, and marketing has always had a different connotation for me. For me, marketing equaled self promotion, and as a journalist we are taught that the story is not about us, but rather those we are writing about.

All that changed with blogging. Writing became more personal and suddenly as this form of expression and new journalism emerged, the writers were often at the center of media coverage. Often times, the result was writers writing about other writers - it was a concept I didn’t readily embrace back then.

And while, I still cling to some old school media ideas, I have since conceded that healthy dose of self promotion or marketing yourself, as long as it informs or entertains, is not a bad thing. Though, I’m still in favor of subtle over shameless when it comes to promotion.

Maybe that’s why I’m so excited about my involvement with developing the agenda for the Social Media Marketing Summit. It’s a two day event in San Francisco (October 1st and 2nd) and I’m delighted that we have managed to assemble an amazing group of speakers. But more than that I can’t wait to attend the conference, take copious notes and actually implement some of these pearls of social media marketing wisdom to better market the product I work on – Revenue magazine.

While Revenue is hardly a brand on par with the likes of Cisco, Ticketmaster, Best Buy, Wells Fargo or Yamaha, you can bet there are at least a half dozen tips, tricks or techniques that I can take away from the social media experts at those brands to help better engage my audience, gain more attention for the magazine, and improve the quality of the product.

The success stories that these brands have experienced by leverage social media and being innovative is inspiring. I’m so excited to her LaSandra Brill of Cisco, Ed Terpening of Wells Fargo, Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling of Best Buy, Erik Hom of Ticketmaster and Roger Eaton of Yamaha,

In addition, to the Brand Spotlights at the Social Media Marketing Summit, we have some truly inspiring featured speakers and informative panel discussions on tap for attendees.

I can’t wait for the keynotes. Day One will kick off with Charlene Li, a former Forrest analyst and co-author of the best-selling book “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technology.” Charlene is dynamic speaker that is able to convey the power of social media with the eye of a researcher and the passion of a true believer armed with facts and data.

Shel Israel is our keynote speaker for Day Two. I know Shel from back in the day when he was a public relations person extraordinaire. He’s veteran who knows media and technology. He also wrote a seminal book on blogging, called “Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the way Businesses Talk with Customers” with infamous blogger, Robert Scoble.

As a writer and speaker on social media, culture and business, Shel will be relating cases studies from his ongoing Social Media Global Report, where he has interviewed 110 people in 34 countries over the past 16 months. He’s got a new book coming out that has not been announced, but will be by the conference. It will focus on Twitter for business users. I can’t wait to hear what he has to say at the event.

We also have an amazing roster of featured speakers including, social media maven Tara Hunt (author of the forthcoming book “The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Media to Build Your Business“; Brian Solis, an leading expert on the new wave of public relations and social media; and comScore’s James Lamberti, who will be speaking on the intersection of search and social media marketing.

The panels will discuss a variety of very topical issues including targeting specific niches and segments, social media marketing via mobile, reputation management and leveraging your affiliate channel using social media.

With all of these great speakers and crucial information, I expect to be on overload – in the best possible way.

I hope you’ll join the discussion. See you at the Social Media Marketing Summit.

And if you’re still hungry for more social interaction, there are a series of affiliate gatherings around the globe called Frequent Flirters. Frequent Flirters is a new social network specifically for internet dating affiliates. Sponsored by AffiliateDinner and organized and hosted by Mark Brooks (editor of Online Personals Watch and a former FriendFinder affiliate manager) these dinners are slated to take place around the globe over the next month in the beautiful cities of London, Prague and Malta. So if you live in those cities or are planning a trip, make sure to sign up.