I coach a lot of people on how to use WordPress effectively for ‘thought leadership’ marketing. One of the most important things to include in every post is a relevant picture. Why? HubSpot says:
If you’ve ever read a book with a child, you probably know they find pictures more interesting than words; but are adults really that different? I wouldn’t be surprised (or offended!) if you found yourself gravitating more towards the picture in this post than the copy. But images drive more than just attention — they drive engagement. In fact, just one month after introducing timeline for brands, Simply Measured reports that engagement is up 46% percent per post, and visual content (photos and videos) have seen a 65% increase in engagement.
Effectively using images in a blog post is an issue however, that separates blogger sheep from goats. In this screencast I focus on a couple of ways bloggers can easily get images into their posts with an emphasis on my favorite blogging tool, Zemanta for both WordPress.com and hosted WordPress…
One of the greatest things about computing and the internet is the wide variety of “good, fast, and cheap” tools we have for ‘thought leadership‘ marketing. One of the worst things about computing and the internet is that if you are on your own, that means you have to be your own IT [information technology] department. You may or may not be up to that task…
Last year we celebrated the 30 anniversary of the first desktop computer from IBM. The thing that amazes me most about computers? Power? Yes, but the thing that amazes me MOST is that they haven’t really gotten easier to use! Most people don’t realize that the best day they have with their new computer is the first one and that as they install software, load and unload files, etc. their computer becomes slower and slower until the day they decide they need a new one and the process starts all over again…
If this resonates with you, you might want to use a tool I use called Tune Up Utilities 2012 — it keeps my computer running in top form so that every day with my computer is my best day because it’s always running at maximum capacity. You can download a free trial here and learn how to optimize your computer here:
You might also be interested in this post I did a few years back on how to keep your computer running as fast as the day you bought it [Note I recommended Tune Up Utilities then and still do; that is a testament in itself!]. If you the video and the posts seem intimidating, I can do it for you over the internet through “Personal Digital Coaching“. Comment below or use the ‘connect’ form…
To illustrate her point, I find myself posting this video before I’ve even heard her conclusion and I’m tweaking this post while I could be sitting in bed with my wife drinking coffee…
If you want to be a thought leader on the internet, there are only two things you need to do really well…
Assuming that you’re already an expert of some sort — and according to Seth Godin we are ALL experts at something — the two main things you need to do are:
Deepen your expertise. In other words, get smarter by effectively managing the content you need to become even more of an expert at what you do…
Document your expertise. Simply put, let people know you know what you know…
Deepening and documenting your expertise may actually facilitate thought leadership by using a few “good, fast, and cheap” tools to get you a share of voice which may get you a share of mind which ultimately could get you a share of market…
…or how to be a thought leader in your industry without breaking the bank! Prepare yourself — I’ve been thinking about this one all weekend…
I had a chance to have lunch last week with Dana VanDen Heuvel, an internationally known ‘thought leadership‘ marketing expert who happens to live in nearby Green Bay. Dana and I travel in similar circles although his focus is more on strategy while mine is more on the mechanics of thought leadership marketing. Back in November I was trying to get my mind around content marketing and thought leadership and I asked Dana whether or not the two were synonymous. Either he didn’t have time to answer my question or you wanted me to figure it out on my own; in either case eventually I concluded that content marketing is a means toward thought leadership but the two are not the same. You can use content marketing to create share of voice on the internet but it’s the quality of your ideas that determine whether or not you ultimately become a leader by getting share of mind and share of market.
To me, thought leadership is the process of becoming and being known as the expert. In my oversimplified view of things that requires two activities; you have to deepen your expertise and detail your expertise or, get smarter and show people you’re getting smarter. IF you do that well they may actually follow your ideas…
Are you a wannabe thought leader? You can test the waters in this area for $17 per year using WordPress.com as your thought leadership marketing hub. The $17 will buy you a domain and the ability to map that domain to your free WordPress site. Then, all you gotta do is publish something…
Deepening your expertise
In in order to deepen your expertise I think there are three things you need to do
Use Gmail to manage your just-in-time information
Use Google reader to manager just-in-case information
Use Gist to track other thought leaders
Detailing your expertise
In order to demonstrate to people that you are an expert
Either create or curate your ideas in WordPress.com
Share the content you create or curate on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Paper.li, Twylah and MailChimp
Engage in conversations using HootSuite and/or NutshellMail
David Kanigan of davidkanigan.com is an example of someone who had done exactly what I recommended on his WordPress.com blog…
New to blogging — only 6 months in — and he is already rocking his site! His Alexa rank is currently 61,500 in the US — testimony to both the power of WordPress.com and his frequent posting [too bad that due to his work in the financial industry he can’t engage in business blogging]…
You could be a David, too, and take on the Goliath’s in your industry using the tools and tactics I mentioned above. Here are links to every tool and a few more…
<script src="
imho, here are the best tools for content management and marketing for thought leadership. All free, all cross platform…
imho, here are the best tools for content management and marketing for thought leadership. All free, all cross platform…
Now, either you look at this and say “Ah, that makes perfect sense — why didn’t I think of that before?” for you look at this and say “What a fustercluck!?!?!?” In either case, I may be a resource for you. Either I can help you simplify your existing thought leadership marketing workflow or I can set it all up for you and teach you how to run it. It’s your call, but if you’re looking to establish a thought leadership position you have just run out of excuses…
I’m a huge fan of Evernote and it seems recently that almost every day I find another reason to love it. Perhaps the most important reason lately is that it fits nicely into my Getting Things Done [GTD] world and is a massive productivity booster. Evernote is my über-container — everything goes in there! Why? Because Evernote syncs with every device I own and it’s searchable so the important things I need to have at my finger tips are there when I need them…
In the past couple of days I have added important emails, pictures, audio notes, web clips, pdfs, Word docs and presentations. I have added them via their web clipper, Shareaholic, email, Twitter and a folder on my desktop that syncs everything to Evernote. It seems there is no end to the clever ways I can get content in. Not only can I search Evernote for the things I’ve stored there, but I can share the things I’ve saved via email, Twitter or Facebook. It just rocks for the things I need it to do!
I’ve posted a list of my top 5 productivity tools along with a couple of good books and other suggestions below, but those are just the ingredients. Here’s my recipe:
First, I read David Allen’s classic productivity book Getting Things Done annually and refer to it often. Buy it using Kindle software so you can search it or mark it. Why do I do this first? Because in my world, tools without a purpose are useless…
I use…
Gmail to manage ‘just in time’ information; information that affects relationships or revenue. If there’s a task, I add it to the built in Google Tasks. If there’s information I need to hold on to, I send it via email to my secret Evernote email address. I use Getting Things Done [GTD] principles combined with Gmail’s features to practice ‘inbox zero’ and cut through my email like a proverbial ‘hot knife through butter’!
Google Reader to manage ‘just in case’ information. The things I need to read to deepen my expertise.
I use Gist to track the important people in my world and what they are publishing [Gist is much better than Google Reader at tracking output from people!]
I use Google Tasks and apply Getting Things Done [GTD] principles to my task lists.
Finally, I used my beloved Evernote as the one über-container to keep it all together.
As I’m writing, I’m telling myself I need to put together a screencast on this topic as so many people are struggling to manage their information. What do you think? Is this interesting enough a topic to you?
Here are the ingredients I promised you…
These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…
These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…
These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…
These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…
These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…
On Tuesday, I usually focus on tools for content management and marketing for thought leadership. I had just prepared a post on Google Reader tips and tricks when my good friends at Zemanta shared a little tool from their labs they call Quotelove. Quotelove is a nifty tool for curation that allows me to highlight and grab any text I find with a minimal amount of fuss. Here’s an example of a quote that I curated using this content management tool…
I have written before on the rise of the Business Designer – a person uniquely adapted to optimise your business processes. But in line with the Hype Cycle, the Business Designer is most effective later in the cycle – as you climb out of the Trough of Disillusionment. Most businesses are not in this space as yet. And many are still facing the ascendant forces of the Peak of Inflated Expectations. It is in the way up this peak (and the way down the other side) that you need an individual uniquely suited to “getting s#@t done. You need the Social Media Mechanic. This is the person who can implement your strategy, find the right bits and pieces and bolt them together. This person will know what needs to be done to make the right things work – and sometimes even do the wrong things (let’s face it, we’re still making mistakes and learning from them, right?). But without the Social Media Mechanic, you’re just going to be left with a whole heap of unconnected parts. So once you’ve got your continuous digital strategy underway, start seeking your Social Media Mechanic. You’ll never get out of the trough of disillusion without one!
I plan to curate more of Gavin Heaton’s thoughts on ‘social media mechanics’ later on. For the time being, I wanted to give a shout out to the smart Slovenians at Zemanta that give me such great tools for content marketing…
It’s okay to be doing okay and to feel like our life is manageable and on track.
Many of us have learned, as part of our survival behaviors, that the way to get the attention and approval we want is to be victims, if life is awful, too difficult, unmanageable, too hard, unfair, then others will accept, like, and approve of us, we think.
We may have learned this from living and associating with people who also learned to survive by being a victim.
We are not victims. We do not need to be victimized. We do not need to be helpless and out of control to get the attention and love we desire. In fact, the kind of love we are seeking cannot be obtained that way.
We can get the love we really want and need by only owning our power. We learn that we can stand on our own two feet, even though it sometimes feels good to lean a little. We learn that the people we are leaning on are not holding us up. They are standing next to us.
We all have bad days – days when things are not going the way we’d like, days when we have feelings of sadness and fear. But we can deal with our bad days and darker feelings in ways that reflect self responsibility rather than victimization.
It’s okay to have a good day too. We might not have as much to talk about, but we’ll have more to enjoy.
God, help me let go of my need to be a victim. Help me let go of my belief that to be loved and get attention I need to be a victim. Surround me with people who love me when I own my power. Help me start having good days and enjoying them.” Source; December 1: Let Go of Being a Victim | Language of Letting Go
“It’s so easy to look around and notice what’s wrong.
It takes practice to see what’s right.
Many of us have lived around negativity for years. We ye become skilled at labeling what’s wrong with other people, our life, our work, our day, our relationships, ourselves, our conduct, our recovery.
We want to be realistic, and our goal is to identify and accept reality. However, this is often not our intent when we practice negativity. The purpose of negativity is usually annihilation.
Negative thinking empowers the problem. It takes us out of harmony. Negative energy sabotages and destroys. It has a powerful life of its own.
So does positive energy. Each day, we can ask what’s right, what’s good about other people, our life, our work, our day, our relationships, ourselves, our conduct, our recovery.
Positive energy heals, conducts love, and transforms. Choose positive energy.
Today, God help me let go of negativity. Transform my beliefs and thinking, at the core, from negative to positive. Put me in harmony with the good. ” Source; November 19: Positive Energy | Language of Letting Go
“One of the things that I use to get over negative and obsessive thinking is the practice of Gratitude. I have a book dedicated to all the things that I am grateful for. Everyday (almost) I list all the things that I am grateful for and I don’t stop until I’ve filled one page. On the days that I feel most negative, it takes the longest time to fill a page, but once I have, I feel calm, serene and full of Grace. These days, I’m feeling particularly grateful for the spring time scent of Jasmine that blooms at the door of my office. Aside from putting Jasmine in my Gratitude Journal, I also step outside and take in a deep breath of the sweet perfume, getting lost in the moment and coming out the other side a little more centered. The daily practice of Gratitude makes the world seem a friendly place and gives me a good measure of positivity.” Source: Daily Practice « My Recovery in 12 Steps
“Last week Lenovo lent me one of its X61 ThinkPad laptops so that I could give Ubuntu Linux a try. Having had a bad experience with Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop a few years ago, I had sworn off desktop Linux and determined not to return.
A week into a new trial with Ubuntu Linux, however, it’s clear that desktop Linux has come a long way. I found it extremely easy to use, including when I had to install a program (Skype) that wasn’t included in the supported applications list. This is an operating system that my grandma could (and, in fact, did) use.
This isn’t to say that my week with Ubuntu Linux was uneventful. I had a few struggles, which I’ll detail below. These struggles, however, were almost entirely due to running Ubuntu on unsupported hardware, and not any fault of Ubuntu (or Linux) itself.” Click here to read the full article online…
Things looked promising for rural geeks this time last year. Engadget reported here:
“As we’ve seen in the decidedly botched digital TV transition, nothing involving government and technology is ever straightforward. With that in mind, let us present to you the most germane portion of the recently passed economic stimulus package with respect to gadgets and the overall nerd kingdom: $7.2 billion. That amount is what President Obama has set aside for “broadband grant and loan programs,” though things get confusing right from the start. $4.7 billion will be distributed through a program run by the Commerce Department, while $2.5 billion is handed out by the Agriculture Department. In theory, at least, that latter chunk would go specifically to rural and underserved areas, but having one goal with two masters just seems like trouble waiting to happen. Oh, and then there’s the mandate to the FCC that instructs it to create (within one year, mind you) a “national broadband plan to ensure that everyone in the US has broadband access.” Granted, these aren’t entirely unheard of — Britain just did the same sort of thing a few weeks ago, and South Korea’s already aiming at 1Gbps for all. We appreciate that the money’s there, but only time will tell if leads to anything meaningful.” Stimulus bill seeks plan to ensure all Americans have broadband access — Engadget
One year later? Yet another major policy failure on the part of the Obama administration! In the next couple of posts I’m going talk about the sad state of broadband outside of major and minor metros, how many communities are failing to see the importance of broadband for business development, and what solutions I have found as a webworker living in a 100 year old farmhouse in Wisconsin. Stay tuned!
Your Sunday morning collection of profound stuff to think about all day long. The big buzz this week WAS Buzz and the ancillary issues it raises…
“I’m having a hard time deciding whom to follow on which network with duplicate shares everywhere. The problem is compounded further by folks who auto-share from one network to another. There is no value in following people who share the same thing on Reader, Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. Duplication simply amplifies noise and reduces signal.
This is a real problem with social media today. Everyone wants maximum likes, shares, retweets on each and every thing they share. Their hope, understandably, is that each morsel they throw into social media becomes a feast on which everyone will drool.
Well, count me out. If someone is auto-feeding the same thing on all networks, it doesn’t add any value to me to follow them on all networks. Especially if they are not engaging in conversation where their content is landing.” Source: Google Buzz + Reader + Twitter + Facebook = Noise by @ScepticGeek
On to Gina Trapani on adding social media to your already hectic life…
“When you’re active on the Web, keeping up with all your online accounts can feel like a full-time job. You want your high school friends to find you on Facebook, your co-workers to follow you on Twitter, and business associates to find you on LinkedIn. But there are only so many hours in the day, and too many Web sites to check in and update. The good news is that you don’t have to hire a personal assistant to update all your profiles. With the right strategy, you can manage multiple accounts with minimal effort. Here’s how.” Source: Work Smart: Mastering Your Social Media Life | Fast Company
You’ll have to go to the source to read Gina’s thoughts. If you’re still confused, contact me; imho, few people know more about seamlessly integrating social media into your already hectic life than I do… Continue reading “Ponder this 2/14/2010”→
“We all know that there is growing agreement that podcasts are a great way to share your thought-leading content.
According to a study released by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann on the emerging role of new media, over 41 percent of survey respondents claimed they had listened to podcasts on more than one occasion, and 13 percent stated that they frequently download or listen to them; and 65 percent of podcast listeners said they listen to podcasts for both personal and business interests (source: Emerging Media Series: The Influence of Podcasts on B2B Technology Purchase Decisions, July 2006).
There is increasing demand for podcasts as part of the marketing arsenal to engage audiences and advance conversations with prospective customers. Podcasting is proving to be a great way share multimedia content because your audience can fetch it automatically or when it fits their schedule. Podcasts are fun and easy to do and there are plenty of free or cheap ways to get started. Click here to read the original article or give me a call at (920) 486-4798 if you’d like to know more…
Tamar Weinberg’s got you covered. Here are some characteristics she says you’ll need…
A few weeks ago, I posted about the seven characteristics of highly effective online video. Taking this theme a little further, I decided to branch out into the blogosphere, but using the number seven this time around was a tad too limiting. There are at least ten characteristics off the top of my head that make blogs and bloggers successful. These characteristics give the blogs mentioned below fame, fortune, and loyal followings.
“Shareaholic makes it easy for you to submit the web page you’re on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, google reader notes, kaboodle, magnolia, mixx, myspace, pownce, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr, twitter, and ycombinator. You can also e-mail the web page directly to a friend.” Shareaholic – The browser add-on extension to share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly
If you’re a blogger, one of the most important things you can do is to get your content out into the social media stream is to share, share, share. Shareaholic is the fastest, easiest way I’ve seen to do that so far…
6/29/2011 My old friend the ‘Blog Post Promoter’ tells me via this post that I’ve been officially loving Shareaholic for over three years now. Although I have moved from Firefox to Chrome as my primary browser, Chrome remains the one extension or add-on that I could not live without. While I’m not a Chris Brogan or Darren Rowse, when an internet mechanic like me says this extension rocks, I’d suggest you find out why…
Is it coincidental that the only auto maker that wasn’t bailed out by the government is also the most innovative? If I were buying a new car today, it would be a Ford…
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png)
Bright, shiny objects! 
You must be logged in to post a comment.