Tag: TED (conference)

How to become a thought leader on $137.88 per year…

A couple of days ago, Craig Badings of the Thought Leadership blog asked me to complete the following sentence: “Thought Leadership is _______”. My response? Fundamental. As in “thought leadership is fundamental”. Craig asked me if he could post my definition on his site with attribution and frankly I don’t know if it’s because he thought my response was stupid or brilliant or somewhere in between. Let me explain however, what I meant…

At a time in history when almost 90% of people search Google before making a buying decision you need to show up in search in a good way. To me a thought leader is someone who uses the incredible good, fast and cheap tools we have at our disposal to get found when people are looking for what they do, or, in what Google calls the Zero Moment of Truth. They use blogging and social media to attract and retain fans who either buy into their ideas or by their products.

It was Leonardo da Vinci who said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. I maintain that if you aspire to thought leadership there are only two activities you must master: finding and sharing good information. When I teach my college classes, I call this deepening your expertise and documenting your expertise. Any person who aspires to thought leadership has probably done Malcolm Gladwell‘s 10,000 hours of work to gain their expertise but if you want to be a thought leader you must continue to nourish that expertise and stay current on the things that are important in your field of study. That’s what I called deepening your expertise. The second part, documenting your expertise, simply means to use the publishing tools available on the Internet to provide social proof of your work. If you’re a great thinker who aspire to thought leadership that’s all you need to know — hence my statement that thought leadership is fundamental.

I have developed a simple workflow that I call a ‘Me’cosystem which anyone can use to establish a thought leadership position over time. All of the tools are best of breed, free or freemium, and completely cross platform down to the smart phone level. There are nine different activities in which the thought leader must engage and I outline them here:

I’ll be going into more detail in each of these stages later on in the series. Organized efficiently from the beginning to the end of the process, it looks more like this:

And again, I’ll be going into more detail in subsequent posts. All I think you really need to know at this point is that the process really does work and that it’s simple enough and cost-effective enough that even someone who does TED talks can use my system. :-)

Next week I’ll start with the analysis phase in the flowchart. Questions? Feedback?

 

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Wholeheartedness = courage, compassion and connection…

220px-Brene_portrait_cropWEBTime to mix things up again. Thanks to my friend Tim Kastelle for sharing Brené Brown’s TED Talk on vulnerability. She writes here on cultivating worthiness…

Practicing courage, compassion, and connection in our daily lives is how we cultivate worthiness. The key word is practice. Mary Daly, a theologian, writes, “Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.” The same is true for compassion and connection. We invite compassion into our lives when we act compassionately toward ourselves and others, and we feel connected in our lives when we reach out and connect. Before I define these concepts and talk about how they work, I want to show you how they work together in real life—as practices. This is a personal story about the courage to reach out, the compassion that comes from saying, “I’ve been there,” and the connections that fuel our worthiness.

Brown, Brene (2010-09-20). The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Suppose to Be and Embrace Who You Are (p. 7). BookMobile. Kindle Edition.

Here’s the TED Talk in case you haven’t seen it yet…

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Ever heard of the Pareto Principle? Mostly likely you have but may not know it by that name. “The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” In the ‘e1evation workflow‘, 80% of my results come from having mastered just three tools. Why is this important? My clients include thought leaders like author Nilofer Merchant, author and professor Philip Auerswald, author and professor Timothy Kastelle, consultant Gretchen Jahn and professor and TED Fellow Nina Tandon; people like that don’t have the time or patience to learn an infinite number of tools — they need to know the three that will yield the most effective results…

I teach them [and all my clients] that if I could only use three tools for effective content marketing there is no confusion in my mind as to what they would be:

Why? No other combination of tools covers the basics of content marketing better. Google Reader helps me find great content that deepens my expertise. WordPress and Twylah help me document my expertise by turning everything I create or curate into content marketing with Search Engine Optimization [SEO] value for my domain. Let me explain…

Here are all the tools I use in the ‘e1evation workflow’:

And here are the 20% that yield the 80% of my results:

Questions? Feedback? Comment or contact me to talk more about how this applies to you and your situation…

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Nilofer Merchant is a kick-a$$ woman from Silicon Valley about whom I have posted several times before [search box!]. Here she is at TED speaking about innovation…

I think you can why I’ve been blown away by her for years — she’s a deep thinker and engaging communicator, Nilofer totally rocks!

Well, today Nilofer just ask lil’ ol’ me for help in putting together her ‘thought leadership marketing’ toolkit. What a great world it is when a Silicon Vally powerhouse can call on an ‘internet plumber’ from Algoma, WI and they can collaborate using this wonderful thing called the internet…

I know that when you get in the end zone you’re supposed to act like you belong there but I’m awed. And humbled. And I’ve been practicing and perfecting my craft every day for 5 years just waiting for an opportunity like this. I’m ready to kick a$$ for you — let’s roll, Nilofer…

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