David Meerman Scott

I think someone must have peed in David Meerman Scott‘s cornflakes a couple of weeks back. He was so hacked off that he went off on a rant on content curation:

You may have noticed that content curation has grown very quickly as a way for people and organizations to publish on the Web.

Sure, there are some benefits to this effort. But as a strategy for generating attention for yourself or your business, content curation is nowhere near as powerful as generating original content.

Content curation

Unlike writing your own blog post or shooting your own video, content curation simply involves pointing to others’ work.

Services like Scoop.it and Paper.li have sprung up to make it easy for anyone to publish an online magazine by linking to anything on the Web.

Yes, there is value in pointing to others work. But that is the point – it is other people’s work, not your own.

Many organizations use guest writers to create content, which in my mind is another form of content curation. Nothing wrong with having a guest blog post now and then, but if you never showcase your own peoples’ ideas, I think it is a mistake.

Original Content: The focus a successful marketing [sic]

The best way to generate attention is to create original web content including text based information (sites, blogs, a Twitter feed), video content, photographs, infographics, and the like.

You brand yourself as an organization worthy of doing business with. Done well, an added bonus is that the search engines rank the content highly and people are eager to share the content on their social networks.

And hey if you generate some interesting stuff, then the content curators will link to you!! Wouldn’t you rather have the links come in?” via Content Curation: A Poor Substitute for Original Content | Social Media Today.

Now David’s a really smart guy — I even own his book “The Rules of Marketing & PR” — but this article doesn’t reflect that especially on the topic of curation…

The kind of curation David talks about is only one kind of curation — linking to other people’s content. This post is another type of curation. Sure, I point to David’s site and quoted a couple of his paragraphs but I’m adding my own value by pointing out that there’s another form of curation that David chose not to consider but that actually adds value. It looks alot like this

There is a ‘wrong’ way and a ‘right’ way to curate and a lot of it carries over from the ‘wrong’ way and ‘right’ way to write a term paper; correctly leveraging a quote is appropriate and brings power to your writing and your Search Engine Optimization [SEO] done properly. Like this post.

Want to experience peace of mind? Blogger David Kanigan and I both advocate learning Getting Things Done [GTD] principles and tools to help accomplish that objective. Follow the ‘reblogged’ link to read his post…

Live & Learn's avatarLive & Learn

From David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, Productive Living, March 2012:

“If you want to have the feeling of freedom regularly, you’ve got to get used to it. Literally.

What’s the greatest obstacle to living in the relaxed state of mind that is possible with the methods I coach? People simply aren’t used to it. Anything your nervous system experiences as unique or unusual will likely be “rejected” unconsciously in short order, because it is not in the comfort zone.

People are more comfortable being uncomfortable than being comfortable, if they have been uncomfortable for an extended period of time. It’s simply an ingrained pattern, and familiarity is more comfortable than novelty. Most people have for so long experienced the gnawing sense of anxiety about all the un-captured and un-clarified “work” of their life, that’s what they’re used to. Then, no matter how clean and in control they…

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Darren Rowse - Photography Blogger Extrodinaire
Image by kk+ via Flickr

Whenever I present on the topic of ‘practical, tactical social media’ organizational leaders usually like what they hear about social media and how to implement it to build their brands online until they hear that in order to achieve maximum results, they’ll have to post a thought every day for at least three months. The response is usually IMNOTAWRITER. If you’re one of those people, read on…

“Have you ever accidentally slammed your hand in a car door? OUCH!

I think that very unpleasant feeling can be compared to how some small business owners feel about blogging. Until very recently, I would never have published anything on the Internet because I have never considered myself a writer.

Well, that all changed when I purchased my small business and suddenly I was forced to start producing content so that I could try to rank in Google, educate customers, and develop my backstory.

However, even though I started producing content, I still suffered from the inferiority complex that can only be associated with IMNOTAWRITER syndrome.

This syndrome, I’ve found, can be deadly to your small business blogging and it can cause countless hours of wasted time and frustration.

Plus, telling yourself, IMNOTAWRITER, is a very easy and convenient excuse not to blog, isn’t it?” Source: How to Blog When You’re Not a Writer

You can go to the source if you want to read more, but what amazes me is the number of organization leaders that have time to write the same emails over and over, but don’t understand how much more efficient they could be and how many more people they could attract by posting the same email content on a blog and then sending the link to the post to their correspondents! Not only would it save them time, but also drive traffic to their sites. Fine, they say, but they don’t want to learn new technology to update their sites. For those people in particular, I allow all the sites I create to be updated via email — a skill which even the most technophobic organizational leader has mastered at this point. Now what’s your excuse? Please comment!

Handling Email; 5+ emails you should filter

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Email is such a simple tool but it makes or breaks so many people’s productivity and it breaks my heart to see how many people struggle with handling it…

“How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? Are you an inbox zero freak like me? Or do you have emails piled up and unread that you’re hoping you’ll get time to get to?

I’m not judging – I used to have as messy an inbox as anyone. And even now, if I go on vacation or don’t check my email for too long, I can get in a heap of trouble: the email piles up, and it can be a real chore getting back to my empty inbox.

I’ve got a few tips up my sleeve though to make dealing with email a little less painful – and I’ve found the best defense is a strong offense. In this article, I’m going to give you some concrete tips and examples to reduce the number of emails in your inbox instantly – and help you keep it that way long term with the use of filters.” Source: 5 Types of Emails You Should be Automatically Filtering – Stepcase Lifehack

Here are the 5 types:

  • Newsletters
  • Forwarded articles
  • Comments and pings from my blog
  • Facebook/Twitter/Social Media Notifications
  • Store Promotions
  • cc:’s [This one is my own — and I’ll explain later]

You’ll have to go to the source if you’re interested in the full rationale behind these statements. #6 [the one I added] comes from seeing how email is used as a CYA tool in large corporations. I have a friend — let’s call her Sue — Sue is an important mucky-muck at a large manufacturing organization and she’s stuck in email hell. She’s a slave to Outlook and her BlackBerry. I would venture to say that 70% or more of the email she receives is CYA. How much easier Sue’s life would be if she’d only use Outlook to put all the emails where her name appears on the cc: line in a special folder to read later when she had more time. Or used the filter on her BlackBerry Enterprise Server to only send her the emails where her name appeared on the to: line. Sigh!

As the author says, these filters work particularly well with Gmail or Google Apps [both of which I use] to manage mail effectively.

“Once you’ve created some of these filters, GMail (what I use) has an option to immediately run them on whatever you’ve got in your inbox. Use this to instantly filter low priority items away so you can focus on what’s important.

Going forward, your filters will be applied to any new email that comes in. This will keep your inbox clean so you can read the relevant, important emails first, before you head to your folders to deal with these low priority emails that may still be important to you – but don’t require as quick a response.” Source: 5 Types of Emails You Should be Automatically Filtering – Stepcase Lifehack

One more thought for those of you unlucky enough to be on MY emailing target list. I send ‘just in case’ info from my personal gmail account and important ‘just in time’ email from my e1evation account. If you’re smart, you’ll filter emails from toddlohenry@gmail.com and make sure emails from todd@e1evation.com are granted the HIGHEST priority! Those of you who are prolific emailers may want to grant your frequent recipients a similar escape hatch…

As always, I invite readers to comment, call or contact me and let me know what YOU think [or ask for help if they’re caught in email hell!]…

Social media fairy tails

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - NOVEMBER 10:  MC Hammer sp...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Great stuff from patgermelman’s blog…

“There are social media formulas that you can pick and choose from and adapt to fit your schedule, staff, and resources. There’s a virtual candy store of platforms and options. Here’s the secret…they all take work. There are no silver bullets. If someone claims to have all the answers they most assuredly don’t. If you get help from an expert and something doesn’t sound right, then it isn’t. You know your organization better than social media experts and any plan can be tweaked and adjusted to fit your organizational needs.” Source: patgermelman: Social Media Fairy Tales

The rest of the content is equally compelling! Go to the source for the rest of the article. btw, who’s the guy in the picture? Why did I use him?

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