How to Think of Blog Posts

1. Answer questions. You get emails with people asking you for your thoughts on X. Write the post instead of just replying to the email.
2. Take pictures. I see strange things out and about. When I snap them with my cameraphone, I have a post waiting to happen, when I think about how that thing applies to the people I write for.
3. Read blogs way outside the scope of what you write about. I use Alltop to find topics far outside of my blog’s topic. Amazing what I learn about from fishing blogs.
4. Think about what’s next and work backward.
5. Mash two ideas together and explain them in your own words.
6. Write about ways to improve your industry or space.
7. Write speeches that you’ve yet to give on a stage (see also: How to Start Speaking At Events).
8. Rant. Yes, I’m afraid that good old rants and complaints are still a powerful anchor tenant of most blogs. Know who rocks this well? Justin Kownacki.
9. Point out people doing the good stuff. That’s what I prefer to do instead.

Those are just some ways. How do YOU think up blog posts? Where do you get your ideas?

photo credit, Kristian D

You can land a flathead catfish the size of a 10 year old child with your bare hands! It’s a sport in the southern United States known as “noodling” or “hand-grabbing.” It works on the premise that if a catfish thinks you’re a threat to its eggs, it will try to eat your arm. Follow these simple steps to put catfish on your table:

1. Get in the water.
2. Get a giant catfish to eat your arm.
3. Get your friends to help drag your prize out of the
   water.

With all the uncertainty about money these days (as if uncertainty were a new thing!), there has been a lot of discussion about ideas.

How do you come up with new ideas? How do you find ways to create revenue and improve your surroundings while making the most of your skills and talents? Look no further than the champion noodler:

1. Put yourself in a position to be inspired. Champion noodlers work year-round to improve their chances at success by finding new hunting spots and installing custom boxes for the fish
   to nest in. Any veteran noodler will tell you, there’s no chance of catching the “Big One” if you’re not getting in the water and making an effort. Write down a new idea each day at lunch for a week. Make it
   a habit to ask questions and seek out solutions to the challenges around you. You’ll find the ideas soon flow faster than you can write them down!
2. Don’t just come up with ideas. Take the next step! It’s not enough to just get in the water. A champion noodler wants to get a bite and reads the muddy water for signs of the prize. When you have an idea, find out where it leads! Search for your idea online and see what others have said on the topic. Read industry magazines and expert blogs. Get a feel for where your idea fits into the greater scheme. If you find that somebody has already developed your idea, it’s okay! Not finding a fish doesn’t mean the noodler read the signs wrong, just that another noodler got there first. There are many fish in every pond and even more ideas swimming out there for you to grab!
3. Get others involved! Dragging a 70lb fish out of the water with your arm stuck in its gullet is quite the task. The champion noodler always has friends around to help. Friends can be some of the best sources of inspiration. You might not worry about being dragged to a watery death by a large catfish, but you should make a point to have a support system in place. Great ideas can quickly grow into daunting tasks. Friends will help you weed out the lesser ideas, plan for the great ones, help you reach a finish,
   and celebrate your victory! Get involved in the broader conversation by joining Twitter, Friendfeed, or another social media platform. Having expert friends just a click away can be a tremendous help in weeding through your ideas and discovering new possibilities. Joining a conversation also means you’ll be able to help others discover ideas to be passionate about!

It’s great to be cautious and not give away valuable information indiscriminately. Be smart! Just know that as new media expands, success will show less favor to those who insist on pursuing ideas alone. Grab a few friends, pick a pond of ideas, and jump in! By working together, you make it possible to pursue the big ideas and increase your chances at success.

Your friends will share in your failures as well. Sometimes, when you’ve nearly got that big idea in the boat, it gets away. Failure is part of the sport. Don’t worry, your friends will be there to remind you that frozen fish sticks taste better than that muddy old fish that got away.

Happy Fishing!

Seth Simonds writes a fantastic blog over at The Dating Papers

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The answer is ridiculously simple. You know who’s training tomorrow’s reporters? Steve Garfield is on his Off on a Tangent blog. Look how Steve reports things. It’s simple, brief, to the point, and loaded with appropriate links. If you ever wanted to learn good link journalism, learn from Steve. (He’s also teaching journalism now at Boston University, because they know he’s brilliant.)

But YOU, without much training, can report small news. Maybe it’s not meant for your very specific blog, but a side blog, a side project, with a few other reporters. I think realtors are actually figuring this out from a slightly different perspective.

It’s not too tricky. We have the cameraphones. We have the Flips. We have the distribution. This is as simple as putting up a blog, adding media to it, and reporting on small news that matters to you. And you, in this case, is whatever vertical matters to you: .NET reporters in Glasgow, people who live in Park Slope, the folks of OMG Pittsburgh.

This is as important as Brian’s Alive in Baghdad, only different. It’s a way to bring small to the people in a meaningful way.

If I had time, I would do this in 2009, but I don’t. But YOU might. You might be exactly the person to set up a site to show people how to report small news. You might show them how to embed videos, how to ask enough questions to make a story at least a little more balanced than a typical blog post. You might invite professional journalists in to share their experiences, and to weigh in on how to make small news reporting better. You might link to the sites who are doing small news out there, so that we build a small news network.

This is a pirate ship waiting for a captain. Are you the leader of the small news movement? Report back to us, would you?

Photo credit, Ninjapoodles

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I was looking for this book:

I found these:

The Point

The process that led me through those books is sloppy and not exactly research. It’s more like idea design. In every instance, I looked at the book that caught my attention, and then I devoured the user-entered data. (First point: social proofing and user-entered data is powerful.) I read what others had to say about it, and then I read the best and worst reviews. I looked at the context of other things Amazon wanted me to know. And I made some judgments based on that.

Second point: in all cases, the path of my exploration formed new thoughts and ideas in my head. (Note: it’s also 12:21AM and I’m strung out on caffeine, which also helps me form new ideas.) These will lead to future work. People ask me where I get my ideas. It’s definitely not from just regurgitating what the blogosphere throws my way.

Third and final point: don’t avoid rabbit holes. At least not always. There’s something there (or there can be.)

(Yes, Wesley, that’s an affiliate link. If you click it and buy the book, I’ll make $1.75)

I get books to review quite often these days (and I’m grateful for every one). Some of them are pretty humdrum. Others are interesting, but really preachy. I can say without hesitation that The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, by Mike Michalowicz is the first book my Mom ever ran off with before I even had a chance to browse it. She was visiting last week, and did just that.

Diane Brogan runs a custom wire wrapped jewelry business, and generally likes to read the same types of books as me. But she really liked the TPE. She thought the cover and title was catchy, and that’s what got her to read it.

“One of the things that hit home was, in order to be a true success, you have to have passion. You have to live it, think it, breathe it. If what you want to do does not become part of you, you may not be as successful as you planned to be. It’s focus.

I thought the writing style was good. When I started, I thought that it was a little bit crass, but right from the beginning, it was very real. But we’ve all been in that situation in the bathroom and it’s very real. I thought that he went through the planning steps of being alone in the bathroom without enough toilet paper, in a great way.”

I read the book, too. There are lots of interesting ideas that are even more pertinent given the economic situation globally. I think Mike Michalowicz has a great perspective, and offers a mix of cheerleading and first steps to action. The book will most definitely have you smirking, and you might just accidentally learn something while enjoying the read.

Check out The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur or put it on your list for a gift.

Too esoteric? How about this: you don’t want to buy cars from Coke. You don’t want your airline pilot cooking your supper. You, yourself, shouldn’t try to be a combination web designer / CPA. It’s not that you can’t do this, but rather that the results are less than stellar. This is some of the mindset behind the way the folks at 37 Signals create software, by the way.

In planning my goals for 2009 (and yes, I’m thinking about that right now), I’m thinking about which small boxes to use, what goes in them, and how I will address the challenges faced by choosing not to do everything. I’ve got some plans for what I’m doing with CrossTech (both Media and Partners), as well as how I’ll work with other social media types across the globe.

Want a peek inside my head?

As with all things I do, the goal is to give you something to help you figure out YOUR 2009.

Planning and Constraints: a Framework

Let’s start with plans/goals. If I don’t, I’ll just put stuff in place for no reason .

My big plans for 2009

• Publish Trust Agents and help others develop.
• Educate through speaking / advising / articles or interviews.
• Equip businesses through a social media practice.
• Improve blogging to educate more. Deliver smaller chunk projects.
• Improve my physical health to improve my capacity.

(Note that my plans are all phrased around my biggest core belief: be helpful.)

Now, here are some things that are important to me, and important to my sanity, and important to my business needs.

Some Constraints

• Writing practice even more disciplined. (I write TONS, but need to focus on what goes into blogging versus what goes into work.)
• No more than 3 trips a month.
• Small (2-3 day vacations) every 3 months tops.
• Walk daily, especially if I can walk my daughter to school in the AM instead of my commute.
• ALL conferences reviewed on: opportunities / reach / committed time.
• Check ALL requests versus the five above-mentioned goals. Fit in? If not, pass through to others.
• EVERYTHING goes out of my inbox and into review. Approved projects are commitments.
• All commitments have time allocated to them, and all time is budgeted.
• All commitments are checked against revenue needs and time budget.
• Commitments are spreadsheeted: who, what, due, hrs, $, notes, status.
• Twice weekly commitment reviews, and success reviews. (Am I doing what I said? Are my projects succeeding? If no to #1, fix it. If no to #2, can I fix it or do I kill it? No screwing around, because of the economy.)
• Accountable to Operations head.

If I hope to succeed, I do also have to keep track of what I’ll need to deliver on my five big goals.

Some Things I’ll Need

• An assistant and/or an intern. – I can’t manage my inflow by myself any more. I need a parser.
• Build and enhance my network of support. – CrossTech and I have a framework started for this. I’ll enhance it even more.
• More business acumen. This past month, I crippled myself by putting out too much travel budget in one big pop. It left me broke for several weeks. Small businesses need to manage their cash flow, and I’m now much more aware of how this works.
• An Operations head, mentioned above (have someone in place for this).

Boiling This Down

If you want to do something like the exercise I did above, here’s what I did:

1. Decide what matters most. Articulate it in the largest possible way. It’s easier to drill down when you have the larger goals in mind.
2. Put constraints around HOW you’ll accomplish the goals you’ve set out to accomplish. Include accountability in the constraints.
3. Figure out what you need to help you achieve those goals. In my case, I need two other people and some more education. You’ll need something else.
4. Make your goals public in some form or another. (This helps with accountability).

If you can put your giant plans into small boxes, it will help you move towards your goals. It’s part of what Julien and I think about when we talk about “Make Your Own Game” in our book. (That’s the chapter we’re writing so it’s heavy on my mind.)

What do you think? Does it make sense? How does it match your own needs? What would you change?

Photo credit, Alana Elliott

What do you think?

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So now, the question becomes: how do you, as a professional, as a business, as someone with a product or service, contemplate those forces on YOUR ideas, products, services, deliverables? Are YOU the sole author of your efforts? Do YOU own the intellectual property, or have you open sourced it? Who can tinker with how it is used / displayed / consumed?

It’s easy to think about these things when we’re talking about someone else: “Record industry: let music be free,” but does it become a bit more difficult when you consider YOU and your relationship to these ideas?

Authority, ownership, mechanics. How do these forces impact what you’re doing?

Inspired by a presentation given by Moshe Yudkowsky about Revolutionary Telephony

Photo credit, ul_Marga

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.

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