Thinks I find along the way
Here’s a reminder of some of the basic principles…
Questions? Feedback? Comment below…
The ever brilliant Heidi Cohen shares this:
Pinterest is the fourth largest source of traffic in the world according to data from Shareaholic. Pinterest’s traffic has doubled since May making it an important entryway to your business.
Since the beginning of 2012, Pinterest has passed other social media platforms including LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Twitter and StubbleUpon, in terms of the amount of traffic it refers to other sites. Additionally, Pinterest refers more traffic than Bing and Yahoo. (Here are nineteen other reasons to use Pinterest with charts.)” Get the rest here: Pinterest: The Best New Source of Traffic [Research] | Heidi Cohen.
I can be pretty dense sometimes but when I get three distinct messages from the Universe that tell me to ‘write the book’, it’s time. This morning I read the third ‘message’ from Michael Hyatt in Google Reader. He said:
Being a published author has done more for my career—and my income—than I could have ever imagined. It has opened doors of opportunity I couldn’t have dreamed were possible. And, it can happen for you, too.
Here are five good reasons why you should consider writing a book:
- It provides an opportunity to share your expertise. Whether you realize it or not, you are an expert. The problem is you take your knowledge, experience, or skill for granted. Because it is familiar, you assume everyone has it. They don’t. And people will pay to know what you know or learn how to do what you do.
- It provides an opportunity to establish your authority. People work for years to land an important job or get a graduate degree. Both of these can be important steps in your career path, but neither provide the level of credibility that comes with having a book with your name on it. In our culture, this is still regarded as the ultimate proof of your mastery.
- It provides an opportunity to differentiate yourself. Whatever your profession, you probably have lots of competition. But I’d be willing to bet only a handful of your competitors have a book to their credit. This is one way—perhaps the most important way—to set yourself apart and get noticed. It provides an unfair advantage in today’s dog-eat-dog world.
- It provides an opportunity to expand your market. A book is the best marketing tool you could ever have. It makes an introduction. It opens doors. It prepares the market for the other products and services you offer. It goes where you can’t go and does what you can’t do. It positions you as someone with something important to offer.
- It provides an opportunity to launch a business. A book is but one expression of your message. Once you have published it, you can introduce an assortment of ancillary products. For example, my Platform book led to an audio book, a video series, and a conference. Soon we will be launching an exclusive membership site and a premium WordPress theme.
Granted, writing a book is not easy. It takes a lot of hard work and, most of all, perseverance.” via 5 Reasons You Should Seriously Consider Writing a Book | Michael Hyatt.
The first message came Saturday night in the form of a movie called ‘Being Flynn’. Here’s a clip…
Throughout the movie, Flynn claims to be one of three great American writers but he hasn’t published a book. Me? I’ve been talking about my book ‘Be Known’ for a year and haven’t written a word of it for several months. This afternoon I was talking with my dad about the need to publish the book and he asked me if I had fleshed out the ideas, etc. I laughed because all the thought work has been done and I know exactly what I want to say — I gave him a very detailed synopsis of how it all fits together. I just haven’t put fingers to keyboard! Stupid, no? It’s a little like when Steven Wright says “I’m writing a book — I have all the page numbers written down”…
The message in the middle and the one that means the most came from my friend Nilofer Merchant whose book 11 rules for change in the #SocialEra just passed Richard Branson — yes that Richard Branson — on the Kindle bestseller list. Her advice? Writing is like exercise — just do it. Everyday…
OK, Universe! I GOT IT! I’ll do the book already…
Here’s my approach to blogging and social media in a nutshell…
“You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between
You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene”
Whether you’re a solopreneur or the ‘Director, Corporate Marketing and Brand Communications Worldwide’ for a large farm implement manufacturer you can use good, fast and cheap social media tools to implement the ‘Perry Como’ approach to publicizing your business. Did you find some great news about your company on the web? “Accentuate the positive” by posting it to your corporate blog. Is someone harassing you online? “Eliminate the negative” by posting positive content and feeding your fans. Get the picture? Old Perry had it right, even if social media didn’t exist in 1958 when he recorded that song…
So, you latch on to the Perry Como method when you think about promoting your own personal brand…
PS Originally posted 02/24/2010, updated 9/21/2012; still true over two years later…
Gee. Ya think? :-D
Why do people use social networks? Is there a difference in how we approach and use personal and professional social media platforms, and are we a different person on each?
In The Mindset Divide, LinkedIn polled more than 6,000 social media users across 12 different countries about the ways they use different social channels. Their aspiration? That marketers will be better able to connect to these different mindsets on personal and professional networks.
It’s a big study, and all a bit biased towards LinkedIn, really, inasmuch as personal networks – i.e., Twitter and Facebook – are somewhat dismissed by the talking heads in the video that accompanies the study as “entertainment and fun” and ways to simply pass the time, whereas professional networks – i.e., LinkedIn – are “essential”, allow us to “succeed” and “learn about new opportunities”, drive us to “understand the changes in the landscape” and “help us lose weight and meet sexy people”. Get the rest here: People Use Different Social Networks For Different Reasons, Says LinkedIn [STUDY] – AllTwitter.
Watch this:
A few weeks ago, I did an epic post on ‘supercuration’ tools — here it is, just in case you’ve misplaced it. Tops on my list of those tools is Buffer, a great freemium app that takes much of the pain out of curation and sharing. Here’s my take on it and why I think it belongs in YOUR social media workflow…
Questions? Feedback? Here’s a link where you can get started…
Gmail featured used in this video…
[listly id=”1me” theme=”light” layout=”full” numbered=”yes” image=”yes” items=”all”]
I do offer personal digital coaching via GoToMeeting on applying these principles to your e-mail system. Here’s what one happy student said:
Carrie Klassen (client)
Carrie hired you as a Business Consultant in 2011
Top qualities: Great Results, Personable, Expert
“I spent two hours with Todd that will save me at least a gazillion hours. His patient coaching and time-saving processes helped me get to an inbox of zero (!!) that same day. Highly, highly recommend e1evation for any consultants and thought leaders looking to manage personal and professional information overload.” October 11, 2011
You can get help here:
One of the best things I get to do as e1evation, llc is to enjoy a huge quality-of-life living in rural Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Michigan and yet get to work with some of the smartest people in the world through the magic of the Internet. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about some of the advice I dole out to my clients and then deciding to eat my own dog food. I took a walk this morning to my thinking place; the Algoma lighthouse — from my office to the breakwater, it’s one mile round trip…
In her new book “11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra, Nilofer Merchant says…
Purpose can become an alignment system.
Merchant, Nilofer (2012-09-12). 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era (Kindle Location 261). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.
I’m realigning what I do around my ‘true’ purpose; being an internet ‘mechanic’. Here’s what I came up with while I was there [another one of my epic videos where you need to close your eyes to focus on the content! I’ll keep trying.]…
Updated video…
Previous video… [go ahead — the joke’s on me!]
Questions? Feedback?
Bonus! Images from my walk to the breakwater…
[imagebrowser id=1]
Afraid it’s a massive time suck? Here are two ideas for having your Pinterest cake and eating it too…
‘Personal news aggregation’? That’s using tools like Feedly and Google Reader to make the information you need to fuel your expertise come to you instead of rooting around the internet hoping to find good stuff…
Now I have spoken many times before about how I’d handle the flow of information in my world. I draw a sharp line between just-in-time information and just in case information. For me Gmail is the killer application for just-in-time information; information that affects relationships and revenue. You’ll never be a thought leader you can’t get out of your inbox…
But what about the just in case information? The just in case information belongs in Feedly/Google Reader and I believe the best way to consume that information is on a tablet or smart phone. The following playlist should give you a good idea of how Feedly on a tablet and Feedly on the Desktop can drive ‘personal news aggregation’. The first video is the product demo from the good folks at Feedly; they neglected, however, to show one of the best features of the new app, namely, that I can save articles to Google Reader simply by pressing down on an article for 1 second when I’m browsing. Take a look…
I think you’ll agree that Feedly, when combined with the 4 other tools in the video, is THE killer app for ‘personal news aggregation’. Try it today! You’ll thank me for it…
[View the story “Using Google Reader for curation…” on Storify]
Storified by Todd Lohenry · Thu, Aug 30 2012 14:23:04
‘Non-modal’? You’ll have to watch the video! :-D
[listly id=”1ey” layout=”full”]
I’ll be doing a Google hangout today at 15:00 CDST [GMT -6] on the topic of ‘How to be an Inbox Hero with Gmail’. I’ll be sharing the 7 killer features that make Gmail the only email tool for me. In addition, I’ll be talking a little Getting Things Done [GTD] principles for how to handle email. How to join? The first 9 people to email me at toddlohenry@gmail.com will be added to my Gmail circle and can participate live. Anyone else can watch it here via the miracle of Google Hangouts on Air…
The playlist is a collection of my ‘Greatest Gmail Hits’ to hold you over…
Tim Allen is one of my favorite comedians and I love the show ‘Home Improvement’…
For three years, I’ve been wanting to do a weekly live broadcast and now — thanks to Google+ Hangouts on Air — today’s the day! Watch this…
You can connect with me in Google+ at toddlohenry@gmail.com to participate live at 15:00 CDST [GMT-6] [only people in my circles can attend] or you can watch the stream here:
I just concluded my ‘lunch and learn’ series on information and content management at The Docking Station in Green Bay, WI today. The first two classes were shot via video camera and unfortunately you can’t see the screen but you can hear the narrative. The last class was captured using a Google+ hangout and I’ll be using that from now on. Questions? Feedback?
This is [almost] everything I think I know about the topic with a couple of bonus videos thrown in at the beginning…
…featuring a tool called Gist and you can see it here over the internet!
Here’s a brief outline of my intro:
This event is hosted by my friend Dana VanDen Heuvel at The Docking Station in Green Bay, however, thanks to the new functionality in Google+ of being able to broadcast a hangout over the air in YouTube, I’ll be broadcasting and recording the event in this post at Noon CDT. You can either watch it here or join more directly by connecting with toddlohenry@gmail.com in Google+…
Here is the Google+ Hangout video from the event:
“Information, if viewed from the point of view of food, is never a production issue. … It’s a consumption issue, and we have to start thinking about how we create diets and exercise,” said JP Rangaswami in his TEDx presentation.
For a man who currently has 38,000 books in his collection and lives in Calcutta, India where they are known for their rich, savory and sweet Southern Indian cuisine, his is a theory that could very well make sense!
Since most of us consume food according to a certain diet, minimize our surrender to sinful indulgences, measure our nutrition intake to make sure we have enough of everything; it’s possible that we’ve been doing the exact same thing all along with our consumption of data – or perhaps we should. As Plato the philosopher once said, “Knowledge is the food of the soul”.
“When I saw Supersize Me, I started thinking, now what would happen if an individual had 31 days of nonstop Fox News?” joked JP Rangaswami.
What do you think? If you saw information the way you see food, what would you do to digest the knowledge differently – nibble, bite, scoff or binge?” via How To Eat Information | FinerMinds.
Long before I saw this TEDx talk on eating information, my thinking on the topic was galvanized by Clay Johnson’s book The Information Diet which I highly recommend if you are intrigued by JP Rangaswami’s thoughts and are looking for more on the topic…
Me? I ‘eat’ information via Gmail, Google Reader and Gist and then share the best of it here and at business.toddlohenry.com, Twitter, Twylah, etc. Johnson’s book and Rangaswami’s statement about “Information overload or ‘filter failure’?” address the heart of the matter — just because I can track almost anything or anyone in Google Reader or Gist doesn’t mean I should in the same way that I shouldn’t eat everything I find at the Piggly Wiggly and I certainly shouldn’t eat it all at the same time! As the Apostle Paul said “All things are possible but not all things are beneficial” — tools without forethought result in poor tactics. Johnson and Rangaswami’s thoughts can help us ‘eat’ information on purpose instead of by accident…
If you want to ‘eat’ better, I suggest you need better thoughts, tools and tactics. One way to do that might be to read my free ebook on ‘personal news aggregation’. Register at http://elevation.company/pna/…
Here’s a test of the new Hangout over air functionality…
http://youtu.be/pQk3rU1rtLM
In Monday’s epic post I mentioned the UM Dartmouth study on the death of blogging. Here’s the response I should have written if I were as smart as Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks…
When I speak to CEO organizations, I typically run through a series of quick slides that show where technology is right at this moment.
For instance: There were 107 trillion emails sent last year, Facebook is at more than 900 million users, Pinterest is closing in on 15 million users, and there are three billion videos streamed on YouTube every day.
I do this to show how many people are using the web, to preempt the “My customer doesn’t use the Internet” conversation (yes, I still hear that).
But the stat I want to talk about today is the number of blogs on the Internet. According to Technorati, there are 158 million blogs floating around, which is partly why I’m so surprised to keep reading that blogging is dead.
I get it. It’s not an easy think to keep up. My guess is many people or companies say, “Let’s start a blog!” and then do nothing with it after a month or two because it’s so labor intense.
So, let’s say for argument’s sake, half of those blogs never see the light of day, either because they’re abandoned or no one reads them because they’re too self-promotional. That leaves us with 79 million blogs, which isn’t a small number.
USA Today reported this morning that more companies are abandoning their blogs in favor of Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
Add to that, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth released a study earlier this year that says the percentage of companies that maintain blogs fell to 37% in 2011 from 50% in 2010, based on its survey of 500 fast-growing companies listed by Inc. magazine. Only 23% of Fortune 500 companies maintained a blog in 2011, flat from a year ago after rising for several years.
So, I see. Based on Wall Street and fast-growth companies, blogging is down, and now it’s time to claim the whole blogosphere is dead.
Here’s the thing, though. Those companies aren’t blogging because it’s hard. It’s hard to generate good content even once a week. It’s hard to cultivate a community. It’s hard to grow traffic. It’s a thankless job most days. So people throw something up there that talks about how great the company is, if only to check off “blog today” from their check list.
And the blog fails.” Full story at: Is Blogging Dead or Are Companies Not Trying Hard Enough? | Spin Sucks
Go to the source if you want the rest of Gini’s perspective…
Thanks, Gini, for connecting the dots in a way that makes sense. Me? I always tell my clients that blogging is one of those things that takes more time than money and the organic Search Engine Optimization [SEO] is better than paying for Search Engine Marketing [SEM]. Gini, however, did a much better job deconstructing the UM Dartmouth study…
…if I won a blogging trip to Australia? What? A blogging trip? Yes! A few weeks ago, I read a post on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger blog. He shared…
A year ago I was in Queensland for a conference and, sitting at the airport, I had the crazy idea that we should run a ProBlogger Down Under competition. The idea was simple—we run a competition to bring a group of bloggers to Australia to see the Great Barrier Reef and also do a little blogging training. I tweeted the idea and was inundated by people wanting to enter. I also received tweets from some tourism organisations.
To cut a long story short, today I’m ecstatic to announce a competition to bring ten highly creative bloggers from all corners of the globe to Queensland to become Queensland Blogger Correspondents. Lucky winners will not only experience the destination first hand, they will get to blog about it plus become a guest blogger for Tourism Queensland’s own blog later this year.
Source: Win 1 of 10 Trips to The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland Australia #QldBlog : @ProBlogger
Sounds great, I said what do I have to do to win? Darren said…
For your chance to win a spot on this exciting trip we want you to tell us why you would make the ideal Queensland Blogger Correspondent.We will choose ten winners based on how you would cover the experience. How you would get the word out about what you’re doing. What kind of exposure you could bring to the destination. What creative methods you would use to share your story.
via Win 1 of 10 Trips to The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland Australia #QldBlog : @ProBlogger.
The form they gave me doesn’t give me near enough space to tell the story so I thought why not post about it and show by example a little of what I’d actually do?! When I told my wife about the possibility, it was the first time she actually got excited about my blogging – that is until she found out it was not a trip for two!
I’m a guy from a town of 3,500 in rural Wisconsin – I have never been to Australia and as a father of six a trip like this would likely be my only hope! My impressions of Australia – like many Americans of my generation – come from movies like these:
I have been blessed in the past, however, to make 7 international trips to 15 countries – one of them was as a social media correspondent for AGCO covering the 2009 Agritechnica trade show in Hannover, Germany. The Agritechnica content is not available on their site, but while traveling as a social media ‘journalist’, I shot and posted videos like this…
In Hannover, I interviewed company representatives and show attendees using business blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to extend the trade show experience to people around the globe using what became my ‘e1evation workflow’ – a toolkit with a repeatable process of finding and sharing great content to drive traffic. The work our team did won the first NAMA award in the social media category…
The work we did at Agritechnica seems pretty ‘run of the mill’ today, but it was quite ground breaking back then. We mastered the logistics of international social media ‘trip coverage’ and set a new standard. As I did in Hannover, I would use each and every tool in my workflow to ferret out stories and capture and produce great content that would drive interest in the trip. I would also benefit from the opportunity to work directly with Darren Rowse — a person whose blogging has directly and indirectly given me many insights over the course of my blogging career. If you doubt just search this blog…
I think my ignorance of Australia would actually be an asset in this case – I would use it to fuel my curiosity and share what I learn. As a management consultant, I have lots of experience getting up to speed quickly on a subject matter and I’d take on Australia in the same way I did agriculture for AGCO. Among other things I’d…
The end result would be some great content for Tourism Queensland targeted at Americans like me that would drive traffic and interest for years to come. The skills I would gain would benefit my business and my customers as well. I may not be the first choice for a trip like this, but I think I could be the 10th…
Please comment below for the folks at Tourism Queensland and ProBlogger if you think I’d do a good job of getting them the coverage and content they want! Thanks in advance…
I’ve officially told over 100 stories with Storify so I guess you can say that I officially love it! Thanks to the guys at Storify — especially Burt and Jeff — who make and support such a great technology. I think the future of blogging looks a lot like Storify…
Here are some of my best Storify screencasts in one handy playlist…
Bright, shiny objects! 
You must be logged in to post a comment.