Archive for February, 2008
Reaching Inbox Zero
Several times, I’ve tried to get my inbox down to zero. It’s a tricky thing with between 200-400 emails hitting my box daily. But today, I hit zero, and I’ve held the line all day. And with my system in place, I feel comfortable that I can sustain this, barring any tragedies. My recent inspiration? Julien Smith. But neither Julien nor I invented Inbox Zero as a concept. I believe credit goes to Merlin Mann.
To learn more, here’s a video:
Or, if you prefer reading, Merlin released a best of GTD post with LOTS of links to useful self-improvement stuff.
I recommend this methodology. VERY useful.
The Power of Links
Kevin Burton’s post about how Google implemented the “nofollow” on all posted links as a baseline behavior on their new Sites implementation. (Briefly, this means, when Google’s or anyone else’s spiders go out and see what’s on a website, they don’t follow links off to other sites to see what those sites are, and index them as well). Now, I’m not a search guy, and so I’m not sure what Google’s reasons are for this. But here’s what this has me thinking about.
Links Signify Intention
This relates to what Steve Gillmor talks about with regards to gestures and attention and the like. If I put a link in a blog post, it suggests that I find value in what lies at the other end of the link. It means that I think YOU should click the link and see what’s going on.
So think about that for a moment. Think about YOUR behavior with links. When you write about Britt Raybould’s Bold Words blog, but you DON’T put links, you’re signifying that you’re not interested in people following the link to discover her work ( link to Britt’s great blog, btw). When you talk about LinkedIN, but you link it back to your own blog post instead of to LinkedIN, you’re signifying that you want to keep traffic on your site. SOMETIMES, this makes sense. If I said, “here’s my other article about LinkedIN,” then that makes sense. But if EVERY link keeps the audience on your site, you’re telling me that you don’t want me wandering around the web sharing attention.
Links Build Networks of Thought
Years ago, when I got the first ever Mac, it came with HyperCard. It was SO amazing to me. I could link up words inside of text, and give you all kinds of nuance and reference and sidebar conversations, all the while keeping the original document in-line. Links are part of that same magic, only better. Because HyperCard, at least when I was starting out with it, was relegated to referencing my own computer and documents, whereas links let me point all over the web.
To that end, you can build amazing and interesting networks of thought. You can build posts that give people an understanding about something by synthesizing data FOR them. Sometimes, you’re not the authority, but you are always in a position to thread up some articles, videos, and other resources to build out something of use to you. Being helpful means finding the right resources for the point you’re hoping to make.
Links Give Credit
If you click the photo included in this blog post, it takes you back to the artist who created it. Though it’s not a “perfect” way to give credit ( Steve Garfield schools me on this all the time), it’s better than just using their picture in my blog post, and better than just writing that “Jared” did this work.
In this world of free, one of the ONLY currencies we still seek and demand are links. If you note, my work is all available to you for free, to repurpose in lots of ways. The only thing you can’t legally do with my work is directly make money from it. (Mind you, if my ideas help you make money because you EXECUTE on them yourselves, you get to keep that with my blessings). But you could repost every single blog post I put up here on your blog, on your dog’s blog, wherever you want, provided you give a link back to me here at [chrisbrogan.com]. That’s not asking a lot in return for all that I put into my work. Right?
So, links are a very important piece of Internet currency. They are the money of attention in that way.
Links ARE the Network
Your phone has plenty of buttons on it, but until you push them in the right order, it’s a lot of capacity and not enough intent. Building web pages like blogs and wikis and the like are YOUR chance to build a network of your own intentions. We do this all the time. FriendFeed is a tool to show you links to all my web presence. So is Lijit. Twitter, blogs, everywhere that we can input html, are ways to thread the needle.
When you add links to a page, you tell a story. You build networks of value. For example, if you build a blog post called “The top 20 Torrent Sites,” you’ve just given someone a resource to improve their web experience.
Go forth. Create networks. Learn how to make nice, beautiful, useful links, give people credit and signal your intentions, and thread a beautiful net for people who can use your help.
The return value is how this all ends up working for us. Doc Searls might call this a way to make because of value from what we’re doing. Do you agree?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Buy a Domain for Email or at Least a Gmail Account
Several friends of mine recently left their job all at once (the company had a mass layoff). I checked in LinkedIN, and it looks like I’m now missing a way to directly contact at least 70 of them, because they used their business email address as their primary point of contact. My goal in writing this is to get you to consider one of two options: either buy a domain to use as your email address, or at least get a gmail account.
Why NOT to use your ISP’s email address
Say you make your home email address your primary point of contact. If your home address is yourname@comcast.net, what happens when you shift from Comcast to Verizon? You’ve just lost a bunch of folks who only knew how to reach you the other way.
Why NOT to use your business’s email address
Times change. People move. That’s one reason, but the other is this: sometimes, your company doesn’t want your company being represented by the places you visit and use that email. For example, we had a CTO who pointed out that anyone in our company contributing to security forums online using their work email address would be terminated. Why? Because every time someone from my company’s security team asked a question on such a forum, it signaled to hackers (who read the same forums) our company’s vulnerabilities.
Buying a Domain for email is easy
There are plenty of providers. I use 1&1, though I don’t give them the highest marks. Lots of people use GoDaddy, and if you use them, check around with your favorite podcasters, because some have deals with GoDaddy that save you money and give the podcaster a few bucks, too. The cost for a domain, especially if all you’re going to use it for is email, is around $6US a year right now (yes, you can find cheaper, or more costly).
Or Gmail
I recommend gmail because it’s easy. It’s web-based. It’s flexible. You can use it with a mail application on your desktop, with a BlackBerry, and in lots of other ways. It has powerful search, and is widely accepted as a good import gateway for most social networking sites, meaning you can make your friends portable.
Equipping YOU
The basic idea, in case I wasn’t clear, is that by making an email presence that points directly to YOU, people will know how to reach you, no matter what the circumstances of your employment or your choice of ISP on a given day. It’s about maintaining connectivity.
What do you think?
Photo credit, Joe Shiabotnik
Share YOUR Social Networking Success Stories
Recently, I posted about how Twitter once again made something cool happen. I’m curious about you. Have you had success stories, even minor ones, with social media and social networking?
Tell us about them.
LinkedIN Gets Pretty
LinkedIN is a necessary tool in your business arsenal. It’s a professional-minded social network, centralizing their activity around the “build your profile, and then connect up with people who matter to you” activities. LinkedIN isn’t exactly FUN. It’s business-y, and you can use parts of it to ask questions, develop relationships, fulfill needs, find employment, and more, but if someone says, “Hey, I’m going to spend a half hour working on my LinkedIN profile,” I’d be surprised.
So the fact that they gave themselves a nice facelift, added personal photos to the site, and have quietly added some new functionality, comes as a pleasant bonus.
Social networks are apparently blue. LinkedIN, to their credit, has always been blue. Facebook: blue. MySpace, blue. But did LinkedIN get somehow blue-er? Not sure. The design is clean, crisp, and has just a slight bit of a widget feel to it. I like it.
What I like more? Even more information visible to me.
What’s your take? Have you logged in? Do you like it?
Are we already connected? (If not, you’re invited to email me a connection request).
Love to hear your thoughts.
Twitter Hooks Me Into Louis Gray
Louis Gray tweeted that he was coming to Boston. I ask him why, because I’m nosy, and hey, this is my town. : ) From this, he learns what I do for a day job (VP of Strategy and Technology at CrossTech Media, and then he and I get together to talk geeky things for a bit. He also introduces me to a few really great guys who I might have some future business with now.
Oh, but did I mention he takes me and some other guys to a Celtics / Cavs game? In a box. With like…steak and salad and buffalo wings and um… cheesecake and cookies and beers and whatever.
Oh, and by the way, Louis is really cool, downplays his rockstarness (he’s Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins’ favorite blogger), and he made me join FriendFeed last night, swearing that it’s the coolest thing in the world.
Twitter = score!
Developing Possibilities
We’ve got OpenID. We have OpenSocial. We have cross-platform IM clients like Adium and Pidgin. We have life stream aggregators like Friend Feed, Spokeo, and Lijit.
I want the following to be product features of something cross-platform, and I want it soon-ish:
- Friends list portability.
- Proximity-based social networks.
- Mesh networking widely built into laptops.
- A Network Communicator (that allows for IM, Voice, SMS, Status, Presence, and a platform for commands (like “follow” and “@”). I want this communicator to work the same way on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, my IM client, etc, the way a cell phone just cares about connecting the call, not which network you’re reaching.
- Granular, modular grouping of friend data.
What do YOU want?
Why Reinvent the Wheel
Websites that build directions information instead of just giving me a Google Maps widget are silly. Making me use your email system instead of sending mails to my box is silly. Building your own amazing video player when there are tons of players out there that you could’ve just collaborated with to manage whatever thingy you needed added in is silly.
Just stop. Stop building the simple stuff. If someone’s done it and it works well, use that part, and add VALUE on TOP of that.
Just a rant as I had to find directions to a place.
The Community Play
Publishers are scratching at this right now: how do we turn our publications into communities? In the magazine world, FastCompany swapped their magazine site out for a social network with a magazine stuck in there between the member content. Last year’s Gnomedex conference used IntroNetworks to power people-to-people connectivity before the event started. Webkins knows it’s not about the cloth or the stuffing. But they’re just the start. There are too many obvious community business plays laying on the table waiting to happen. Why?
Here are some community options for some organizations not yet doing such:
Hotel Social Networks
Forget loyalty programs and miles. Imagine a program where business types can opt in to expose that they’re staying at a particular hotel, and that they’re amenable to meetings about product pitches, but not job offers, and for the next four days. The upside? I’d pay EXTRA to go where the business opportunities would make it worth it.
Fear Factor: stalkers and other liabilities. This can’t be too hard to solve, can it?
Harry Potter
They’ve merchandised the hell out of the books, everything from pretend wands to real jelly beans, and they’ve got a massively multiplayer videogame in the works (or did they launch it?), but what’s missing is a place where fans of the books and movies can get together, talk about them, create their own fan fictions and mashups, and otherwise sit there in a barrel to be hit with opportunities that would work best for them.
Fear Factor: kids in the mix means different privacy laws, so, stalkers/predators are part of it again.
The NFL (or Your Sports Industry Here)
During this past year’s SuperBowl, I was at a local cinema pub watching my team melt down on a 40 foot wide screen in a room full of people. I’m a casual attendee, but sports fans are crazy passionate. Where there’s passion, there’s an opportunity for a community play in social networking. Why not some kind of site to share videos, pictures, audio, and more? It’s obvious the difference in quality between what an NFL fan will produce and what a huge organization dedicated to the best crafted sports media can whip up. Allow for profiles, for chats, and maybe even for on-NFL-site fantasy football, an opportunity you want anyway, and haven’t figured out how to approach.
Fear Factor: my only guess here is copyright and other legal stuff.
Trade or Non-Profit Associations
Most trade association websites are brochureware from the 1990s. They have a home page, an about page, a contact page, a calendar, and maybe one more wild card page. Here are situations where you’ve got hundreds and/or thousands of members and prospective members who might also find value in connecting to each other, as well as to you. Make it easier. Build a space for connecting side-by-side as well as the part of your site just giving out information.
Fear Factor: I don’t think there is a fear factor, unless it’s just fear of cost to upgrade their sites.
Any Where You Have a Population of Like-Minded People
There are community plays inherent in most every situation where you’ve got tons and tons of motivated customers waiting to be converted into even more valuable community members. I could keep naming them, but the above are some examples that should get your head moving. In all cases, I provided a fear factor that might keep people from executing. You may or may not agree with me that these are the reasons why people wouldn’t execute a community play. But if you disagree, you’ll have to share what else might be holding them down.
Whatever the case, I think there are opportunities not yet being explored. What do YOU think?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, Sarimeh
The Ten Words That Define You
Sam Lawrence from Jive Software is on a roll. His latest blog post, 10 Thought Leaders Boiled Down to 10 Words, holds a few folks in this space (including me) to the words we use on our blogs. The cloud was fascinating to observe, and there were some great people mentioned in the post, including Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang, Shel Israel, JP Rangaswami, and more.
My 10 words, by the way, were:
- People
- Social
- Things
- Networks
- Time
- Media
- Great
- Make
- Community
See what the others had to say, and, recreate what Sam did. He shows you on the site.
Full post is here.
