A question I received this week was, “What is the single most important thing to do so the Internet works best for your company?”
A question I received this week was, “How do you balance the 24/7 of social media with an 8-to-5 work day?”
“Always on”, 24-by-7 is kind of scary. I live an area that, this winter, has lost power about 7 or 8 times in the past 2 months, so “always on” is kind of relative, but I digress…
Awhile back I was working through a visualization exercise mentioned in Steven Pressfield’s book “Do the Work”. My first post regarding this can be found here and if you search my blog you’ll a number of other visualizations that I’ve found useful using this. Let me summarize what this entails:
- Imagine a box with a lid. Hold the box in your hand. Now open it.
- What’s inside?
- It might be a frog, a silk scarf, a gold coin of Persia.
- But here’s the trick: no matter how many times you open the box, there is always something in it.
Over time I’ve found a golden table, a pressure washer, wood floors and a few others.
I hadn’t exercised my imagination in this way for a while, so I decided to give it a go and opened the box afresh. Today I found……a fish.
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Detail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Do you remember the little plastic animals, usually dogs, that people used to place in the back windows of their cars? These plastic pooches would nod their heads as the car moved, giving the impression that they were looking around. Sadly, I see this plastic behavior sometimes taking place in meetings I attend. Someone is presenting an idea, a report, training or just carrying on conversation, and some of the people around are making appropriate nods and noises, but their follow-up conversation and engagement belies their inattentiveness. Even if they ARE listening, they don’t hear what is being said.
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The online world is utterly obsessed with content. This takes a number of forms, from articles and blogs to photos, graphics of any kind, videos, podcasts, and any re-mix thereof. It is an attention economy and if you can get your customers and visitors to focus on JUST YOU for a bit, you have achieved something pretty impressive.
However, this is only getting harder to do well. If you have the goal of creating or highlighting something of real value and relevance to your audience (as opposed to distraction or “click-bait”…) you have to be thoughtful, intentional and resourceful while balancing the other needs of your business and life. While the standing approach can still be called “Fail Fast” or “Do It Wrong Quickly“, you still need to cultivate an acute awareness of the real value of what you publish to your audience. There are numerous articles, sites, books and courses about content marketing available. Still, navigating it all as a solopreneur or small business owner can seem like panning for gold, and you just don’t feel like you’ve got the time or resources. You’ve got a business to create and run.
I’ll keep this to the point to save you time: here are three views of content that can help you use the resources you have more effectively. Frame your efforts with these in mind and you will find you come closer to “hitting the mark.”
Do you have any views of content you feel are foundational? Share in the comments and make your case.
It’s the last few days of 2014 and the Internet is packed with looks forward and backward, best of/worst of lists and the like. I’m not immune to assessing some of the more significant resources I use regularly, and so am passing onto you a short list of six of the most enlightening, not to mention entertaining, authors that I read and ponder.
Simple things can have enormous impact. I come across profiles on LinkedIn that are very well thought out, complete, updated regularly, provide a view into the person’s professional credentials and experience, showcase recommendations that are pertinent and have well-designed headlines and summaries that make it easier for anyone who is looking for someone with a particular skill (recruiter, prospective customer, whomever…) to find what they are looking for.
I also come across profiles that barely qualify as blank pages. If you are going to use LinkedIn as a social channel, there are several things you need to do to improve that first impression. Here are 3 pointers that can help you get to a better profile from the beginning:
While there are many more actions you can take to ensure you have the best profile possible, these are a good start. Here are some other resources you can check out that will help:
Social Media Examiner: 12 Resources to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile
Business2Community: 5 Killer Resources To Help You Dominate LinkedIn
LinkedIn Blog: Creating A Killer LinkedIn Profile: Tips for Link Humans [INFOGRAPHIC]
Hongkiat: 10 Tips To A More Professional LinkedIn Profile
Forbes: 22 LinkedIn Secrets LinkedIn Won’t Tell You
HubSpot: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Mastering LinkedIn
If you come across others that you find particularly useful, please post them to the comments.
Recently a friend of mine made a long-ish post on Facebook. It was an apology and a mea culpa. Although I had missed the earlier post she referred to, she stated that she was caught off-guard by other people’s reaction to it. She said that, in retrospect, she agreed with one friend of hers that had actually reached out to her about it: it was an offensive and prejudicial post. She apologized for the first post, a very real and human thing to do.
What she was hurt by was the fact that a number of her ‘friends’ had ‘un-friended’ her (in Facebook vernacular…) without asking her about the post, commenting on it, or even just responding in some way. She couldn’t understand why people who knew her would react in such a knee-jerk manner without asking her why she felt this way or further questioning the post.
I feel her experience points to a couple of challenges with building relationships online as well as some bad habits we’ve cultivated along the way. Continue reading
It’s true…..despite the knee-jerk desire to get your business into social media and “everyone’s on Facebook”, it may not be a good idea for you. Here are three reasons:
2012_09_17 Community Management IMG_0841 (Photo credit: joelogon)
OK, so I’m stepping away from the fire hose for a moment. I’m today wrapping up, if that even makes sense when you’re on the road, week #5 in my new gig as Senior Community Manager at SDL. Collecting and prioritizing my thoughts and experiences will likely take some time, if only because so many of them do not categorize very simply.
Authentic Voice 