Tag: Tools

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Here’s some important data on consumption, curation and creation from Brian Solis…

According to Forrester Research, overall adoption of social technologies has effectively reached saturation. 80% of people in the US engage with social media, which is equal to the number of people who text via SMS or  equivalent to the ubiquity of those who own DVD players.

While it’s new, its value is not to be minimized. Social media users already number in the hundreds of millions, providing the reach of traditional media but also the precision of one-to-one service and attention. Forrester notes that just a handful of “Mass Connectors” will create 256 billion influence impressions in the US this year.

As our social graphs propagate, the information that passes within it also multiplies. Individuals are not only socializing, they are sharing information and creating content. In doing so, updates serve as social objects, becoming catalysts for increased interaction and overall reach. As a result, participants and their social presences are amplified within existing social graphs and now also extend across a rising category of nicheworks or interest graphs – social graphs united around common interests and themes.

We are the architects of our own experiences and we are also the hubs of relevant content, resembling production foremen as we develop workflows and processes for consuming, curating, and creating content.

Source: The Three C’s of Information Commerce: Consumption, Curation, Creation – Brian Solis

I have been using the first three words in the ‘e1evation workflow’ for almost two years. To these I add ‘connect and converse’ as you see below…

'e1evation workflow' (2)

The ‘e1evation workflow’ is a ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ process for content marketing that can help you establish a dominant thought leadership position. If you’re intrigued by Brian’s work and are looking for a ‘practical, tactical way’ to become one of Forrester’s 23% in the creator space, comment or ‘connect’ to discuss how this applies to you and your organization…

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Craig BadingsCraig Badings has put together an epic post on thought leadership trends for 2012. He starts…

I asked 12 people who I consider to be leading global commentators on thought leadership as well as a couple who have produced some amazing thought leadership programs in-house over the years to comment on four critical thought leadership questions for 2012.

Source: Thought Leadership – 12 experts on the key thought leadership trends for 2012 – content curation

In it, he quotes my friend Dana VanDen Heuvel on the topic of curation alone as a means of thought leadership marketing…

“No, I don’t think so.

“I think content curation may perhaps be a reason why critics are inveighing against thought leadership in the first place.

“Of course it is a useful way of identifying and re-branding an issue. But I think the trend will be to move towards more sophisticated thought leadership initiatives. For that to happen, a thought leader must be authentic.

“Authenticity, transparency and trust are values that will become even more important in the coming years.”

Source: Thought Leadership – 12 experts on the key thought leadership trends for 2012 – content curation

I agree with Craig, Dana and the general consensus of the article. Curation alone does not a thought leader make. It is, however, an effective means of bolstering a thought leadership position.  “Content curation as a blogging model is widely misunderstood by most bloggers and marketers.” says curation enthusiast Jack Humphrey:

You absolutely must tie the content you curate into a post (i.e. links to different angles from different authors, bloggers, and news stories around the same topic) with original commentary.  Commentary that makes sense and seeks to draw new connections, parallels, or shed new light on a topic others are writing and sharing information about.

Source: The Content Curation Guide for Bloggers | Internet Marketing Consultant Jack Humphrey

I was recently taken to task on my curation style and I readily admin it may not be for everybody. In response I wrote this:

I always attribute content that I curate under Fair Use Guidelinesso that everyone benefits; the original author, the reader and me and I always encourage my readers to go to the source and read the original author’s entire article. I frequently use a curation post simply to share great content with my clients – my standard close of ‘Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…’ – is an invitation to get customized ‘value add’ that I deliver via telephone to fill windshield time as I drive across the great State of Wisconsin.

Source: Content Curation and Adding Value | Power Tools for Thought Leaders

How you do it is up to you, but I strongly encourage you to consider Craig’s article before embarking on a thought leadership marketing strategy. Perhaps it would be a good idea to read his entire 4 post series? Should you decide to pursue thought leadership marketing, please connect with me so we can talk about how the ‘e1evation workflow’ can help. I’ve developed a ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ cycle of thought leadership marketing that can help take your strategy to new levels. Questions? Feedback?

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WordPress

WordPress. Where would I be without it? Most likely living a life of quiet obscurity in Algoma, WI. Thanks to WordPress, however, I have a global platform and people can find me in Google. Does it work? Well? You’re reading this, aren’t you?

The Power of WordPress Infographic – Pingable :: Everything WordPress | Pingable :: Everything WordPress

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Right Where You Need To Be (via Breathe.Smile.LetGo)

I love WordPress! Here’s another great blogger I found who is using it well. I was drawn in by this quote — “Many times on my journey I stopped short, convinced I would never find the place I was trying to find, only to discover that it was right in front of me all the time. (M. Beattie)” — and liked the rest of what I saw while I was there. I now subscribe to ‘Breathe.Smile.LetGo.’…

The other day I was driving along and realized suddenly that it takes more effort than it used to for me to brake. It got me to thinking about how that gradual change in my brakes’ effectiveness has finally caught up enough for it to be noticeable. It was nothing that happened over night. It was a combination of events that have occurred over the past 40 thousand miles. And then I started thinking about the larger picture… Did you know that if … Read More

via Breathe.Smile.LetGo

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A tag cloud with terms related to Web 2.
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All vendors, heck, EVERYONE needs to rethink the way we interact with customers, especially now that there are 400 million Facebook members, 100 million of which access the service via smartphones…

“Traditional Web sites are being replaced by social media and Web 2.0 communities for vendor and partner marketing and sales activities, and the number of people using such tools for sales purposes is increasing as the technology continues to evolve and users start to understand how to better take advantage of the benefits.

In fact, the way vendors and channel partners are doing social marketing is starting to change a lot, said Michael Dubrall, managing director of Gilwell Group, during the recent “Exploring Social Media & Vendor Marketing Trends — Survey Results” Webinar hosted by Integrated mar.com as part of its Trusted Business Advisor Webinar series.

Vendors and partners are having to change the way they meet their customers’ needs, but they’re also communicating with and finding customers differently than before.

“There’s a huge change in the way we’re interacting with each other up and down the value chain,” Dubrall said. Some of the old ways of doing business are giving way for the new reality of social media marketing…” Source: Integrated mar.com: direct results for the indirect world

If you’re a marketing genius confused by all the social media possibilities, comment, call or contact me to talk about how this applies to your business…

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Still not convinced on the topic of curation? Read on…

Curation is now a necessity. The web is full of content. More than a person could consume in several lifetimes if all they did was sleep a couple hours per day and surf the web, life after life.

Google can’t help us with our internet A.D.D.  Nor can Facebook or Alltop.

The best we’ve been able to do so far to harness the massive information overload is use tools like Google Reader and RSS feed aggregators like Alltop.  They’ve helped, to be sure, but no one is going through all that information and picking out the best of the best and making sense of it all for you.

Rather than start a new site with the goal of creating a bunch of new content, it’s time for people to think about being content curators.  Organizing and commenting on the best content around a certain topic.

Curators still use blog software to publish their content, but the vast majority of each post is made up of carefully reviewed and organized 3rd party information.

via jackhumphrey.com

Jack Humphrey says it well here and I encourage you to follow the ‘via’ link and read his 11 reasons. Me? I am the self-styled ‘king of curation’ and my ‘e1evation workflow’ allows you to curate content better and faster than any other system I know of with maximum effect. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…

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Guy Kawasaki, American venture capitalist and ...
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I’ve been following industry oracle Guy Kawasaki for over 25 years and I agree with him almost all of the time. He was right about the Mac, he’s right about Posterous and he’s right about Alltop. He’s right about so many things. When he speaks, I take notes. This time, however, I take issue…

He posted a recent article on the topic of Facebook pages recently and this is one of the rare times I need to take issue…

“Q: I’m a small business entrepreneur, and I’ll be introducing a consumer product soon. Should I create a website for my company or a Facebook fan page?

A: I faced a similar question a few weeks ago for my book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. I had three options: create a site for the book, add a section for the book to my existing website, or create a Facebook fan page.

After five minutes of thoughtful deliberation, I decided to add a bare-bones section to my website (which I haven’t gotten around to do yet—which should tell you something) and create a Facebook fan page but not to create a website for the book. Here’s why I did not choose a website:” Source: Ask the Wise Guy: Facebook Fan Page or Website? : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

Guy goes on to elucidate 4 reasons why he did not choose a website and 8 reasons why he chose a Facebook page along with 3 potential ‘gotchas’ — go to the source and read the entire article if you’d like…

Here’s where Guy and I part thinking. In business, the answer is rarely either/or. Frequently it’s both/and. Guy’s advice is great for someone launching a product or a book, but it’s not really great long term advice for an entrepreneur launching a company. As a short term strategy I recommend that entrepreneurs buy a domain, set up Google Apps and create a Facebook page. Google Apps will give them the ability to send corporate email from their domain and their domain name can be temporarily directed toward their Facebook page until they build a blogsite. This will give them a total ‘appearance package’ that will allow them to look professional immediately while they contemplate their website and further social media strategy and tactics…

On this issue I side with author Lisa Barone who recently posted…

“Brace yourself: Facebook is trying to take over the world. Or, if not the world, at least the entire Internet. With Facebook partnering up with popular sites like Yelp, many SMB owners may feel as if their load got lighter. I mean, why waste time worrying about your building your blog or your own site when you can grow your Facebook presence instead? If Facebook’s opening up the doors so that people can take you with them, you don’t have to worry about anything else anymore, right?

Wrong!

It doesn’t matter how hot Facebook or any of the other social media sites are looking right now. You still need to be focused on using your blog to create your own authority and brand.” Source: 10 Reasons Not To Ignore Your Blog For Facebook

Reason #1 she cites? “You don’t own Facebook”…

The problem with Facebook from my perspective is that you’re not only a renter, you’re a free renter and you can expect all the rights and privileges thereof. In other words, you have no rights on Facebook — not even privacy. You use it at your own risk. Facebook can — and has — made major changes to their technology without notice or recourse. Using a Facebook page is a great place for an entrepreneur to start but not to stay. I agree with Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse and other internet visionaries who propose an internet ‘homebase and outpost‘ strategy that puts a blog at the center of your online presence. The key is that you have to own that presence and be ‘master of your domain’ name and internet brand…

In the future, these homebases may become less important as more people understand the wisdom of David Sauter and his team at Envano. Their ‘autobahn’ model describes a future where a website becomes less important as a company embraces appropriate social media tools to build their internet presence, but the lack of an ‘easy button’ or unified social media dashboard makes this more of a future vision than a present reality…

Guy, I love you, your thought leadership and your content, but just this once I think your Q&A might have done the reader a disservice. Readers? Questions? Feedback? Please comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

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From time to time, I post a list of WordPress plugins that I’m currently using. It must be that time…

Click to enlarge...

I think the best recent find is Google Docs Embedder which allows me to easily display documents without having to post them to Scribd first. How about you? Have any good ones to pass along?

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…does a great job of inventorying social media tactics and tools…

Questions? Feedback? Make a comment or use the contact page…

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Nilofer Merchant; Author, Speaker, Inspirer

The good Lord has put some amazing people in my path. For a guy ‘straight outta Wisconsin’, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to collaborate with some pretty high octane people. One of them is Nilofer Merchant. Now Nilofer herself is not in need of a ‘total beauty makeover’ but her web presence was another issue altogether…

Nilofer and I met and worked together at Apple during the ‘Think Different‘ campaign — she at the ‘mothership’ in Cupertino and me at the field office in Chicago. We both left Apple and went on to other things; she to GoLive, Rubicon Consulting, writing a couple of books and me to eventually start e1evation, llc. Thanks to social networking, our paths crossed again recently. I commented to her that I was surprised to see a global thought leader like her using Posterous for her blog. She remembered that comment and a couple of weeks ago asked if I would guide her through the process of moving to WordPress…

The old Posterous site; click to enlarge...

For her theme, we chose the highly modifiable Canvas from Woo Themes and designing the site was ‘easy peasy lemon squeezy’ due to their flexible and powerful approach to WordPress theme design. We still have a few things to clean up, but Nilofer, being the hard charging kick ass girl she is, couldn’t wait to ‘go live’. You can view her site online at http://nilofermerchant.com but don’t follow her unless you want your world rocked!

The new site; click to enlarge

Are you a great thinker that wants to engage in ‘thought leadership’ marketing? Do what Nilofer did. Ask me to guide you through the process. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can get started…

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Here’s what I’m thinking at the close of the weekend and the start of a new week…

To paraphrase my good friend Dana VanDen Heuvel of MarketingSavant, the difference between a thinker and a thought leader is that while the thinker has a point of view, the thought leader has a PUBLIC point of view; a point of view that is searchable, findable and knowable. This public point of view gets the thought leader a share of voice which leads to a share of mind which leads to share of market which in turn adds to the bottom line. Almost anyone can establish a thought leadership position using the tactics and tools I discuss and use every day; a good thought leader can beat the great thinker to the customer by learning to use these tools well. If you want to know about the STRATEGY of being a thought leader, then you need to head over to MarketingSavant.com, subscribe to the rss feed and newsletter and learn from Dana — he does the thought leader thing much better than I do. If you want to know about the TACTICS AND TOOLS of thought leadership, however, read on…

As of today, this website is ranked 364,509 in the United States by Alexa — and thanks to my friends in the UK, it’s ranked 273,939 there [btw, I want to use my incredible influence there to say one thing: “Hey, British dudes! Give Ireland back to the Irish! but I digress.”]. Three months ago, my site was not even within the top 20 million in the world so that’s a pretty rapid ascent. Traffic this week is more than double that of last week. Traffic this month is 59% greater than that of last month and today is only the 18th of the month. What’s the secret? Home bases and outposts. Home bases and outposts. Home bases and outposts….

Every day I use my ‘top 10 tactics and tools’ [tomorrow I’ll be writing about #2; using Google Reader to help establish your point of view] to market my business. Using a systematic process, I take the reading I do every day and spin it into a blog using good, fast, and cheap cross-platform tools widely available on the internet — kind of like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold — and I could teach you how to do it too. If you want to be a thought leader, Dana has the data and the strategy and I’ve got the tactics and tools; together we can help you get the market share you want!

Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact form…

6/22/2011 Hey, kids! Back when this was first posted in 2009 I thought I was really on to something. And I was right. Here’s my Alexa ranking today…

If you want an effective but inexpensive website that rocks traffic, comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…

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Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
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Tweet a lot?

Integrated pictures, keyboard shortcuts, a decent way to track conversations and a slick new look. That’s what some users of Twitter found recently, and they were really happy. Twitter isn’t sure how long it will take to push these features out to everybody, but if you primarily use Twitter from a client such as Tweetdeck or Gwibber you may have access and not know it. 

We at MakeUseOf don’t hide our love for Twitter. You can find the entire MakeUseOf staff on Twitter, and most of us are pretty active there.

Our articles about Twitter, though, largely revolve around ways to avoid going to the site altogether.

For example, I recently pointed out five Linux Twitter clients you’ve probably never heard of and Steve recommended you use Seesmic Desktop 2 as your Twitter client. The new Twitter might convince people like us to stop using a client and use Twitter directly. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the new Twitter, as compared to desktop clients.

via makeuseof.com

Personally, I’ve been stuck on HootSuite for over a year because it gives me powerful Twitter management tools and more; the ability to monitor other social media accounts and post across platforms. It’s nice that Twitter finally got their act together on their end user side, but imho they should spend more time getting their act together on the server side. btw, I like Seesmic Desktop 2 as well, but HootSuite, being a web app, is always ready for me on any platform. If you’re interested in mastering Twitter, give HootSuite a try…

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Long before I was a website developer, I was in sales and sales management. The other day, I had a convo with a fellow sales puke and we were discussing the top 3 sales movies of all time. They were, in our opinions, Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room and, of course, Tommy Boy! Here’s the best sales team meeting of all time imho [warning: NSFW!]…

Blake, Alec Baldwin’s sales manager character says ABC means ‘always be closing’, but if you’re a blogger I say ABC means ‘always be curating’!

In my weltanschauung [worldview for those of you behind on your German], blogging, on one level, is little more than the public e-mailing and bookmarking. After all, what is a blog post but a “to whom it may concern” memo to the world? Because most people save bookmarks and send e-mails and links to one another they already have the basic instincts they need for thought leadership marketing. They are however using tools that are sub optimal for the task at hand. Even the person who has 1 million people in their address book cannot match the reach of a tool that can reach out to 2 billion people on the Internet.

What then are the right tools? I believe they are the 10+ tools in the elevation workflow…

  • Google Chrome
  • Gmail
  • Google Reader and Feedly
  • Shareaholic
  • Posterous
  • WordPress
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • MailChimp
  • YouTube
  • Dlvr.it

I firmly believe that anyone who wants to be a thought leader can use this combination of tools to establish their public point of view. Many people are using some or all of these tools but have not aligned them in an optimal fashion.

I want to take a moment to talk about Shareaholic. When teaching social media I tell my classes if you only add one extension to Google Chrome [or Firefox], make it Shareaholic. Why? Because Shareaholic is the one tool that allows you to always be curating. With the Shareaholic extension installed I am always ready to share content to the appropriate channel in my vast Internet publishing empire. Shareaholic, I have said earlier, is the Swiss Army knife of sharing. Allow me to demonstrate…

Curation not only adds authority to your public brand, but it will also rock your SEO. Shareaholic is the secret to my success, because with it, to paraphrase Night Ranger, I’m curating and blogging 25 hours a day…

I believe that the elevation workflow is a kick ass solution for thought leadership marketing. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization — I’m always available for Personal Digital Coaching on the ‘e1evation workflow’…

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via makeuseof.com

Same applies to websites or almost any other type of technical work. If you’ve heard me speak, I’m always talking about “good, fast, and cheap” tools. There are a few — like Google Apps for Business — that are all three! Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

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…I did a post on ‘top 10 tactics and tools for tightening your tribe‘ with social media. ‘Tightening your tribe’? What the heck does that mean. Well, in order to understand the reference you’d have to drill down on Seth Godin‘s book ‘Tribes‘ which I have been reading over and over again this summer. Here’s what the summary in Google Books says about it:

In this fascinating book, Seth Godin argues that now, for the first time, everyone has an opportunity to start a movement – to bring together a tribe of like-minded people and do amazing things. There are tribes everywhere, all of them hungry for connection, meaning and change. And yet, too many people ignore the opportunity to lead, because they are “sheepwalking” their way through their lives and work, too afraid to question whether their compliance is doing them (or their company) any good. This book is for those who don’t want to be sheep and instead have a desire to do fresh and exciting work. If you have a passion for what you want to do and the drive to make it happen, there is a tribe of fellow employees, or customers, or investors, or readers, just waiting for you to connect them with each other and lead them where they want to go. 

Seth says that in order to start your movement, all you need is the message and the tools to share it. When he discusses social media, he refers to it as a tool for ‘tightening your tribe’, hence the title of my series. Godin does not, however elucidate on tactics and tools much beyond mentioning Facebook, Twitter, and Basecamp…

Being the social media tactician that I am, I decided to mindmap those tools and for the next 10 weeks starting on Monday, there’ll be an original post to the series. Stay tuned! I’ll work hard to make it worth your while!

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I had a great connect with an old friend who is a real estate rockstar in Barrington, IL. She’s not willing to accept anything less than being the dominant player in her industry and she’s looking at social media as a way to help her accomplish her objectives. Couldn’t help but think of her when I saw this article…

“Brian Halligan is the founder and CEO of HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company that helps small and medium-sized businesses get found on the Internet and converts website visitors into leads and customers. He is also the author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found In Google, Blogs, and Social Media.

It used to be that you could efficiently grow your businesses by interrupting potential customers with outbound marketing methods like cold calls, email spam, and advertising. Today people and businesses are tired of being the targets of so much outbound marketing and they’re getting better and better in blocking it out.

At the same time, people and businesses have fundamentally changed the way they shop and learn, turning more and more to Google, social media sites and blogs to find what they want. Inbound marketing helps companies take advantage of these shifts by helping them get found by customers in the natural way in which they shop and learn. The following are Brian’s five steps to help you get “get found.”” Source: How to Get Found : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

You can go to the source and read more, but just in case, those 5 ways are:

  1. Be remarkable
  2. Create content
  3. Optimize content
  4. Promote content
  5. Measure results

As for my old friend, she certainly has 1 and 2 down cold — I’m hoping to get the chance to help her with numbers 3-5… ;-)

In the meantime you can use the site tools [comments, contact form, call button] to contact me if YOU are an entrepreneur who wants to be found!

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Let me count the ways…

“When technologists of the future look back in time, they’ll remember 2009 as the year Google got serious about an internet operating system, speeding up the web, and indexing EVERYTHING in sight. Take a look at the year 2009 in Google.” Source: This Year in Google: The 2009 Edition – Google – Lifehacker

No company produces more good, empowers me more, or innovates more. Go to the source for a reminder of what Google delivered this year…

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Google Calendar is a contact- and time-managem...
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The folks at Lifehacker took a poll on the top calendaring applications. Here are the results…

“Nothing’s more important to your productivity arsenal than a solid scheduling tool, and considering so much of what we do happens at the computer, a good calendar application is just the thing to bring order to your agenda. On Tuesday we asked you to share your favorite calendar application, and today we’re back with the five most popular answers. Keep reading for a detailed look at the top five and to cast your vote for the calendar tool you like best.” Source: Hive Five: Five Best Calendar Applications 

Me? I use Google calendars — the free one associated with my Google account as well as my business calendar in Google Apps. Go to the source to read the whole article — it’s worth it!

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An inside look at my morning routine and the tools I use to bring e1evation.com together…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFHGIoLhyQQ

In case you missed it, I’ve covered Google Reader in depth here, Feedly here, Gist here, and Shareaholic here…

btw, I’m aware this not my best video yet, but I’m learning to use Camtasia which is a powerful, but complex tool. Maybe I should read the manual?!

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