The Master Of Media

Thanks to Mitch Joel for sharing this TED talk:

I believe that Clay Shirky is the Marshall McLuhan of our time. I realize that it is statements like this that will either make certain individuals roll their eyes and others to bail on this blog. I’m fine with that. But, before you debate, engage in discourse or dismiss me as a lunatic, I urge you to watch this TED Talk that was just posted online where Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus) talks about how transformative the Internet has been to our media landscape. Beyond the power of his thinking, pay close attention to his presentation skills. In particular, the language he uses, the stories he tells and how he breakdowns complex concepts by illustrating them through fascinating and digestible examples.” The Master Of Media | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image.

This video is well worth the watch…

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

September 30, 2012 0

The wishing/doing gap

Here’s something from Seth Godin to ponder this weekend:

It would be great to be picked, to win the random lottery, to have a dream come true.

But when we rely on a wish to get where we want to go, we often sacrifice the effort that might make it more likely that we get what we actually need. Waiting for the prince to show up is a waste of valuable time, and the waiting distracts us from and devalues the hard work we might be doing instead.

If you can influence the outcome, do the work.

If you can’t influence the outcome, ignore the possibility. It’s merely a distraction.

via Seth’s Blog: The wishing/doing gap.

September 30, 2012 0

The anatomy of a perfect blog post

Mark Shaefer has a new resource I thought you might interest you. He says:

I wanted to let you know about a new resource for all you hard-working B2B bloggers out there. The amazing and progressive Eloqua company sponsored me to create The Grande Guide to B2B Blogging and it really turned out to be a sensational piece of work. It’s full of new tips and tricks to make your company blog sing and do a happy dance.” Full story at: The anatomy of a perfect blog post.

Here’s a well done infographic that accompanies his post:

September 30, 2012 0

This is what inbox zero looks like…

Having a system or process for any ‘easy to empty’ inbox makes me feel good and ready to take on other creative activities…

I work with my clients to help them reach inbox Nirvana as often as they’d like by applying David Allen’s Getting Things Done [GTD] principles to ‘personal news aggregation’ using Gmail and Google Reader…

If you’d like to experience more of the peace and productivity that comes from effectively handling email, please connect with me using the form below…

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September 29, 2012 0

How to Mind Map in Three Small Steps

I have been mindmapping since 2007 and it’s one of the most important skills I possess for many reasons. Follow the link below for some practical steps to get started…

My tool of choice these days is Mindmeister; it’s freemium and completely cross platform right down to the tablet and smartphone levels. Full story at: How to Mind Map in Three Small Steps.

September 29, 2012 0

Getting Things Done [GTD] on the Internet…

Today I’m announcing an epic series called Getting Things Done [GTD] on the Internet. Every Friday for the foreseeable future I will post on some aspect of applying David Allen’s classic work “Getting Things Done” to the basics of Internet marketing…

I’d like to start by thanking those of you who have not read David Allen’s book — you have given me a competitive advantage for years! Seriously, though, I’m continually surprised at how many people have not read this classic work. For me, it ranks among the three best business books I’ve ever read. It’s right up there with the seven habits of highly effective people and that is saying a lot for me. In fact, I think these two books go together like peanut butter and chocolate; Stephen Covey‘s book provides a strategic framework on David Allen’s book gives great insight on how to implement Covey’s framework…

Allen says:

THE CORE PROCESS I teach for mastering the art of relaxed and controlled knowledge work is a five-stage method for managing workflow. No matter what the setting, there are five discrete stages that we go through as we deal with our work. We (1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do. This constitutes the management of the “horizontal” aspect of our lives—incorporating everything that has our attention at any time.

Allen, David (2002-12-31). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (p. 24). Penguin. Kindle Edition.

In my practice, my emphasis is on what I call “practical, tactical social media“. Chapter 2 of Allen’s book gave me a tool that I apply in multiple was to the social media process…

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be talking about how to apply this diagram to everything from email to social media management, including…

Getting Things Done with Gmail, Google Apps and Google Tasks…
Getting Things Done with Google Reader for ‘Personal News Aggregation‘…
Getting Things Done with WordPress for Business Blogging…
Getting Things Done with Twitter for social media…
Getting Things Done with social media management…

I’ll also entertain ‘how would I apply Getting Things Done [GTD] to ________’ kind of questions if you have one you’d like to ask. I’ll share theses posts each Friday so you can ponder them and implement the parts you like over the weekend so stop by next Friday for Getting Things Done with Gmail, Google Apps and Google Tasks…

September 28, 2012 2

Social media expert?

Does this remind you of YOUR Search Engine Optimization [SEO] guy?

Dilbert comic strip for 09/27/2012 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive..

September 27, 2012 0

Too Much TV, Screen Time May Mean Earlier Death

Wow. Pretty grim title, eh? If you’re reading this, you probably need to read this:

David Herbin goes to the gym every day after work and exercises like a demon for two hours. Then he comes home, flops on the couch and watches sports until bedtime.

Actually, now that the NFL playoffs are in full swing, he’s glued to the tube even more than usual, often up to four hours per game even when there are multiple games on per day including the weekends. Though his wife Pegine admits his prolific TV viewing sometimes drives her crazy, she can’t argue with the fact that the 57-year-old is still in great shape.

Or can she? A new investigation reported in today’s Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) begs to differ.

According to the study conducted by a group of international researchers, anyone who devotes more than four hours daily on screen-based entertainment such as TV, video games or surfing the web, ups their risk of heart attack and stroke by 113 percent and the risk of death by any cause by nearly 50 percent compared to those who spend less than two hours daily in screen play — and this is regardless of whether or not they also work out.” Get more here: Too Much TV, Screen Time May Mean Earlier Death – ABC News.

Thanks to Endomondo, I’ve logged 200 workout sessions since I rebooted my exercise routine in March. Now, I’m learning that’s not enough. Sitting at the computer is literally killing me. So, I’m making some changes to get myself off my dead a$$ and break up the sitting routine…

So, I’m going to try a little experiment. I set up a tall table in the corner of my office and put my least used the computer there. I’m configuring it as an e-mail station and plan to only do e-mail in a standing position. Besides getting me up off my seat I anticipate this should make me more productive as well. With this change, I don’t plan on doing e-mail is my main workstation except occasionally sending files or other such things. This way, when I’m doing website development or social media ‘mechanicing’ I’ll be focused on that; every once in a while when I need to take a break, I’ll stop by the email station…

I’ll keep you posted on the results!

September 26, 2012 0

3.5 audio book tools for ‘driven drivers’

Thoughts from the road on tools for the ‘automobile university’…

Here’s the .5 part that I didn’t mention in the audio post; did you know Pocket for Android can read articles you save to it to you?

September 25, 2012 0

Bad news for IFTTT to Twitter fans…

Got this in my inbox just now…

“Dear e1evation,

In recent weeks, Twitter announced policy changes* that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter’s data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email, Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed. Recipes using Twitter Actions and your ability to post new tweets via IFTTT will continue to work just fine.

At IFTTT, first and foremost, we want to empower anyone to create connections between literally anything. We’ve still got a long way to go, and to get there we need to make sure that the types of connections that IFTTT enables are aligned with how the original creators want their tools and services to be used.

We at IFTTT are big Twitter fans and, like yourself, we’ve gotten a lot of value out of the Recipes that use Twitter Triggers. We’re sad to see them go, but remain excited to build features that work within Twitter’s new policy. Thank you for your support and for understanding these upcoming changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at support@ifttt.com.

Linden Tibbets
IFTTT CEO”

Good? Bad? Indifferent? It will really affect my workflow for a little while…

September 20, 2012 0

Before and after; Nilofer Merchant site ‘TBO’

What is TBO you ask? Why ‘total beauty makeover’ of course! Wednesdays are the days we talk about high-performing websites at elevation and today I like to share with you some recent work that I did for friend and client Nilofer Merchant…

I enjoy telling people that I have worked with Nilofer since the days when she was a mere mortal when our paths crossed at Apple in the late 90s. Since then, Nilofer has gone on to become an author, corporate director, and speaker while I became a humble social media mechanic. About 18 months ago, Nilofer had a ‘brochureware’ website and was blogging on Posterous. I ask ‘what’s a nice girl like you doing using sites like these’? Nilofer considered my question and came back a month or two later asking if I could guide her through the process of consolidating her Internet presence on WordPress. The picture you see above was the result of our first collaboration and it served her well for almost a year…

A month ago Nilofer approached me with the idea of giving the site a total beauty makeover in preparation for her September 12 book launch of 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #Social Era. Nothing could have made me happier because helping Nilofer promote her thinking is truly a labor of love!

As we talked about the new site we both agreed we wanted something simple and straightforward that would accurately communicate her brand. We chose a simple but powerful WordPress theme that would showcase images reflecting the different aspects of Nilofer’s brand. I really wanted the website to “get out of the way” so that people could see how beautiful SHE really is. I wish I could take credit for the images but she worked with Cooper Bates Photography to get what we needed and their images really carry the site. It was pretty easy going from that point forward; here is the result of our collaboration:

What about you? Does your website accurately reflect the beauty of your brand? If not, I’d be happy to work with you as well! You can use the contact form below to connect…

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September 19, 2012 0

Instagram to Search Engine Optimization [SEO]

Here’s a little riff on Instagram and Search Engine Optimization [SEO] for my buddy Brigid in Toronto…

September 18, 2012 0

Sharing video to your circles in Google+

Now THIS is cool! I can think of lots of ways to use this immediately…

September 18, 2012 0

People Want the Real You

Interesting how when I’m thinking about something — like how I need to get more ‘real’ [curate less/create more] — Google Reader delivers all kinds of great information along those lines. I redid the look and feel of my blog this weekend with more transparency in mind. Then I find this from Chris Brogan this morning:

There are many ways in which we somehow tumble into being someone other than our true self:

We are worried about how the culture around us will react.

We lack enough self confidence to not care what others think.

We perceive that our livelihood depends on the way we dress and speak and act. (And it certainly does to some extent.)

We’ve tried being ourselves once ever in one specific situation, and someone said something unkind about it and now you’ve decided that this singular experience is now the “avatar” of any time you might ever decide to be yourself in the future, so why bother anyway? (phew)

Sometimes, we really can’t be ourselves. If you are a nudist and a fry cook at McDonalds, you’ll probably find it hard to express that particular passion (besides – ouch!). Other times, we probably could be ourselves, but maybe we’ve forgotten to do so for some reason. Most times, though, it’s because we’re chicken for some reason or another.

Men, for instance, hate showing their weakness. Women sometimes have to struggle with the “when men do it, they’re considered ‘tough’ and when women do it, they’re a bitch” problem. Most people hate to show their ignorance. These are all valid and true feelings. But I have to ask anyway: what’s stopping you from being who you really are?” Go to the source to get the rest:People Want the Real You.

After almost 5,000 posts, here comes the ‘real’ me…