If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook lately, you’ll know that I have been heavily involved as a volunteer for a local charity event called “Cracking-Up the Capital for Mental Health“, a comedy show fundraiser that took place on February 18th in Ottawa. It’s been a wild and exciting 5 months, and I wouldn’t trade any minute of it for the world. The event itself went off without a hitch, and though we are still waiting for the final amount raised for The Royal Mental Health Centre, we are thrilled that we were only 200 or so seats away from selling out the 2,300 seat Southam Hall at the National Arts Centre. Among other things, I helped coordinate and run the social media campaign for the event. We think that overall it’s been very successful. I am still working the final measurements, but I want to share with you a few ideas on how you might go about building your own successful event-based social media campaign. Start early. One of the biggest mistakes most people make is they don’t start their campaigns early enough. While it’s true that most of our target audience was not thinking back in October about what they’d be doing the night of February 18th, it was critical that we started building our social presence even at that early date. I got the blog up and running and banked a few initial posts – mostly announcements of the line-up, information about the cause and content to build momentum for the ticket sales. I got access to the existing Twitter account and beefed up the profile, added a few relevant posts, and started doing searches – following local media, Ottawa Twitterfolk, and anyone I came across who had a connection to the cause. As we got closer to the event, I continued to post at least once or twice a day on relevant topics around mental health, with a bit of info about the show thrown in for good measure, then ramped it up when we got to be a few weeks out. The point is – don’t EVER wait till the last couple of weeks to build your social presence. Start as early as you can, and build momentum. Social media takes time, a lot more time than you think it will. So be sure to leave yourself enough time to build an engaged following, that will be there for you when you need them. Follower numbers – it’s all relative. If you look at the follower numbers for @CrackTheCapital and our Facebook page, you’ll see that in comparison to some things, they might be considered kind of low. But it really is all relative. Our goal was to sell out 2,300 seats. That doesn’t mean we need to find 2,300 people to buy individual tickets – most of those tickets are sold in groups of two, four, or more. So really, we only needed about 500-700 people to actually click the “buy” button to be considered successful. The fact that we have about 200 followers on Twitter, who are about 95% Ottawa-based and are real accounts, is great. We have a following that is about 10% of the number of people that came to the show, and they are quality followers – people who are connected to the cause, and are engaged with us. Our followers were great for re-tweeting our messages and interacting with us – and I made sure we were there to interact with them too. Follower numbers are ALWAYS about quality over quantity – I’d rather have 200 people who care about what I’m saying than 2,000 who don’t give me the time of day. Involve your social media people in the event. Right from the beginning, I was invited to be part of the core team of the event. I was at all the meetings, was copied on the emails, and was able to really get a handle on the overall marketing effort and key messages. But more than that, I was able to get a real feel of the vibe of the people behind the event. I got to spend a good deal of time with the production team, and was able to develop a rapport with the talent too. As a result, I had a real sense of the excitement that was happening behind the scenes, and was able to translate that into great content that helped build momentum. The worst thing any event (or business, for that matter) can do is keep their social media people hidden. You simply cannot run an event, and have your social media person sitting in an office somewhere trying to understand what’s happening so they can blog and tweet about it. You must have your social media team immersed in the event as much as possible, and that means having them at ALL the meetings, and setting them up on site so they can experience the event themselves, and really communicate the essence of what’s happening. Social media isn’t the ONLY way. We put a lot of effort into the social campaign and I believe it helped to raise awareness in the community about the event and ultimately put some bums in seats. But social media was definitely not the only marketing we did. We had articles in the newspaper and ads as well. We had CBC radio running frequent promo spots and doing giveaways. We produced and aired a promo for CBC Television, with our emcee Patrick McKenna. It ran in heavy rotation for several weeks leading up to the event. We had other local radio, print and TV media doing stories on the show. Social media is a great way to engage with people and I think it’s an essential part of any event-based campaign. But it MUST be combined with traditional marketing and advertising. Social media is just one channel of many to help spread the word. All in all, the event and the campaigns we ran
A Kick in the Pants for New Bloggers
You’ve got the itch to blog, congratulations! It’s a wondrous thing. I started my first blog in 2006, and I have reaped rich rewards both personally and professionally. I use this blog as a bit of a sandbox – it’s where I experiment with new ideas and play around with features. Blogging helps me to sort out things in my head, and I love the opportunity to be able to publish in a public way. I may not have the most subscribers. I may not get a tonne of comments on every post. The number of views I get on my posts is probably pretty average (with the occasional spike). But I deeply appreciate every time someone stops by to leave their thoughts, or shares my posts on their Facebook page or Twitter feed. I have grown to love being able to share my thoughts with the world in this way. Starting up a blog, while technically very easy thanks to great tools like WordPress, is not without its challenges. There are myriad sites out there that will present long lists of best practices for running a successful blog. But sometimes all we really need is a kick in the pants to get us started. So consider this your kick. Inspiration is everywhere. Don’t tell me you have nothing to say. Inspiration is everywhere you go, in every part of your life. You just need to be aware. I find inspiration in all sorts of things. Much of the time it’s in my interactions with others. I will go out with a friend, or attend a meeting or event, or spend time with my family and before I know it, I’m observing something about myself or others that I want to write about. Most of us just motor through our days so fast that we get to the end of it and we can barely remember what happened. Becoming more mindful is the secret to becoming a better blogger. Slow down and pay attention to everything going on around you. Watch people in line at the grocery store. Observe your colleagues in meetings. Sit on a park bench and just watch. Really listen to your friend when she’s talking to you. Before you know it, ideas will start to percolate. I will often wake up first thing in the morning with an idea in my head for a new post, especially after spending time doing things I enjoy. When inspiration and ideas hit, be ready. Carry a notebook or digital note-taking tool (I love Evernote) with you everywhere you go. When you get an idea, write it down. I have pages full of blog topics that are based on the experiences and observations I have every day. Then when you sit down to write, you can just refer to your list and go nuts. Don’t over-think it. I know so many people who start up blogs and agonize over every little detail. Their design has to be exactly perfect before they show it to the world. Their posts have to go through umpteen drafts and rewrites before they are ready for prime time. Frankly, I think in many cases, this is a stall tactic. The longer you take to prep and primp your blog to perfection, the more you don’t have to actually hit that publish button and make yourself vulnerable to peoples’ opinions. One of the great things about blogging is that it allows for a certain amount of spontaneity. While it’s true that some posts require more thought and research than others, the truly prolific bloggers are the ones who can get inspired, sit down at the keyboard, and bang out 500 or 600 coherent words in about 20 minutes. The secret to being able to do this is two-fold. First, you need to stop over-thinking your posts so much. Just write. It’s okay to change things around as you go (I often find I’ll start writing and realize I’ve written the end of the post first and have to move paragraphs around, but that’s part of my process). But don’t agonize over every little thing. The best blogs have some element of “stream of consciousness” mixed with facts and opinions. Second, you need to practice. Some of the posts I wrote back in 2006 are cringe-worthy. I hadn’t found my voice yet. They didn’t have much flow. The ideas were a bit muddled. But I published them anyway. Why? Because blogging is kind of like yoga. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Your Downward Dog will start out very differently from how it ends up after you practice, and your blog is just the same. But just like going to your yoga mat every day, you need to sit down at that keyboard and practice as much as you can. And you need to publish your work. Because keeping your ideas all to yourself won’t teach you anything. You need the feedback of others to keep growing. Fun first. Blogging should not be an arduous process. The beauty of the medium is that you can post about any topic you want, whenever you want. It’s a relatively informal platform, so people don’t mind so much if your sentence structure isn’t perfect. What they care about is that you cared enough to share something that’s important to you. If you really want to blog, now’s the time to stop thinking about it and planning and trying to make it perfect. Now’s the time to just do it. And one more thing – and this is true whether you’re writing for yourself personally or for a business – blog for yourself first. Do it for the pure enjoyment of creating something new and sharing it. If you create from the heart, the rest will follow. That I’m sure of. Thanks to @AnatheaT for the inspiration for this post. See, inspiration can come from anywhere! In this case it came from Twitter. Thanks, Anathea! [photo by Britney Bush]
Tips for Managing Your Online Time You May Not Want To Hear
It’s no secret that social media can be one of the best ways to generate new business leads, especially for small business owners. I’m living proof of that; at Jester Creative, many of our clients have come from connections we’ve made through blogging, and via social networks like Twitter and LinkedIN. I am a huge proponent of small business owners participating in social networks, and I encourage it whenever I can. Leveraging social media in small business is a very effective approach, but it’s not without its challenges. Lots of entrepreneurs jump into social media wholeheartedly – setting up blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and more. Soon, they realize that, while starting these accounts is free, the work it takes to maintain them by regularly providing relevant, timely, compelling content can be pretty overwhelming. It’s a challenge to strike a balance between running a business and maintaining an active presence online. I’ve been travelling the social road for about 5 years now, and I can tell you with certainty that it’s changed my business and my career for the better. I have some suggestions for how you can manage your online time in a more effective way. Don’t be a lurker. Here’s a hard truth. If you really want to make a go of leveraging social media for your small business, you can’t just spend 10 minutes a day checking your Twitter feed and be done with it. It takes work, and a good chunk of work at that. There’s a big difference between simply “spending time” on social media and being an active participant in the community. I know a lot of businesspeople that consider themselves “lurkers” in the social space. They “Like” the Facebook pages of their prospects but never comment. They follow plenty of people on Twitter, but they rarely post themselves. They subscribe to all sorts of industry blogs but don’t contribute their expertise to the conversation by writing their own posts or commenting on others’. This is the online equivalent of showing up to a networking event and hanging around at the bar complaining to your co-worker that you find it hard to meet new people. If you’re going to make a go of this, you have to start talking. You have to introduce yourself to people. You have to contribute to the conversations that are going on. This takes more time than just lurking. It takes thought, and effort, and guts to reach out your hand and say hello. But I promise you, 99.9% of the people in the online world (at least the ones who are worth your time) are friendly. In fact, they are here for the same reason you are – to get to know people. To talk. To share. So start using your online time more wisely. Don’t lurk. Participate. You’ll find that your online experience will immediately become richer, and you’ll reap far more rewards, because people will actually get to know you, and perhaps, want to do business with you too. It’s about integration. Self employed people like us don’t subscribe to the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday world. We work when there’s work to do. We put in the hours. So why is it that I hear about so many people who try to fit their online presence into the mold of the workaday world? Twitter doesn’t stop at 5pm (in fact, it often just gets going around that time). People comment on blogs 24 hours a day. I’m not saying you need to be on social media 24/7. But in my experience, it’s the people for whom social channels are part of their every day lives who have gained the most from them. I carry my smart phone everywhere I go. When I feel inclined to post something to Facebook, Twitter, my blog, or someone else’s blog, I post it. It might be 7am on a Tuesday or 9pm on a Saturday. I check in on my accounts on a regular basis – when I’m in line at the grocery store, when I’m in between tasks at work, or when the commercials come on TV. If it seems like I’m “always on” it’s because in some ways, I am. You need to stop looking at your online world as something entirely separate from your offline world. It’s all integrated now. It’s all your real life. If you want to make a go of this, I mean really make a go of it, then you need to look at social media tools as a way to stay connected often. And that means you need to be connected. You need to integrate it into your life. Yes, we all need to shut down once in a while, not just from technology but from everything. I encourage that as a healthy way to stay balanced in all aspects of your life. But if you look at social media as “only work” then you’re missing out on the opportunity to participate on a truly human level. And given the choice, I’d rather do business with a human being than a lurker that posts once a day at 4pm when his computer timer tells him to. And in the end… You need to ask yourself what you want to get out of your online presence. You need to ask yourself if you’re willing to make the commitment required to spend the time it takes, to stop lurking and start getting involved. You need to ask yourself if you’re willing to take some steps to integrate your online life into your offline life a little more. Then you need to just try. Thanks to @katgordon for the inspiration for this post. I’m not sure if it’s what she wanted to hear, but it’s what I believe to be true. Hope it helps! [photo by borabora]
You Are Not What You Do For a Living
I went out with a friend last night that I hadn’t seen in a while. We met up downtown, went to a jazz club, had a bite to eat and “caught up”. We yakked about all sorts of things…music, mutual friends, and our respective neighbourhoods. But there was one topic that came up only briefly…work. And you know what? It was refreshing. People who know me might not believe this, but I’m not always the most sociable person in the world. I don’t particularly care for big social events, which is why you’ll only ever see me at a handful of them. One of the reasons is because of what has long been a pet peeve of mine…the “What are you up to?” question. It’s not so much the question itself that bugs me, it’s the implication of it. When asked that question, most of us feel obligated to launch into a big speech about our jobs, how busy we are, how many clients we have. To make matters worse, once the can of worms is open, the asker of the question, with only the best of intentions, usually wants more details. “What kind of projects are you doing?” “Tell me more about what you’re actually teaching in that class!” Then the conversation sometimes turns judgmental: “You’re so busy, be careful you don’t overdo it!” “Do you really think you can sustain a business in this economy?” “I don’t know how you find the time to stay so active online…when do you get any real work done?” and my favourite one “Must be nice to be able to do what you love. You’re so lucky.” (All of these are actual things people have said to me at social events at one time or another.) The problem with the “what are you up to?” question is that most of us are answering it incorrectly, because we tend to be completely defined by our work. If we don’t launch into our big speech about how busy our work is, we are certain the other person is going to think, “Gosh, when I asked what was new, he didn’t mention his business. Maybe things aren’t going so well”. So we over-compensate. But caring about other peoples’ perception of our “success” is only part of it. The other part (and I think for many people, a big part), is that we use our professional lives as a sort of protective barrier. If we focus on talking mostly about work in our conversations, then we don’t leave ourselves vulnerable to ever getting too “personal”. What I’m learning, and I think the reason I’ve been feeling so irked by this lately, is that I am craving more personal conversations. Like most people, I work many hours every week. I spend much of my time nose deep in running a business and teaching. So, when I’m on social time, sometimes the last thing I want to do is continue to talk about my job. I don’t want to explain the details of my latest video project because I’ve just spent the whole day with it. I don’t want to talk about the topics of my courses because I’ve just spent the whole day talking about it. And frankly, I don’t only want to hear your stories from the trenches either. Maybe I just want to hear a story about YOU. In the online world, it’s easy to get wrapped up in all-business, all the time. It’s easier to make your social media accounts “professional”, because that way you’re less vulnerable. But you know what? Just like with in-person interactions, people who talk about work continuously can get pretty boring after a while. If your social accounts are intended to be “just professional”, then I’m never getting the chance to see who YOU are. You are defining yourself by what you do for a living. Here are two things to try. First, the next time you meet up with people in a social situation, make an effort to not discuss work. If someone asks you what you’re up to, say something like “I’ve started doing 30 minutes of yoga every morning, and now I can almost touch my toes!”. Or, “You’ll never believe what happened when I was walking the dog today!” Also avoid asking your friends about their work. Instead, ask them what great movie they’ve seen lately, or how their Mom is doing. Second, in the online world, consider dropping your “business only” philosophy. Try sharing some links to other things you’re interested in, like gardening, or a great band. Have a light hearted chit chat with someone on Twitter. Or (gasp) actually post what you had for lunch. Amazing conversations and connections come out of lunch talk. But most of all, stop defining yourself by what you do for a living. That doesn’t mean you can’t be passionate about it or love what you do. But become more aware that underneath that great project, and underneath your expertise and long hours, is who you really are. That’s the person I want to know. Photo by Kaptain Kobold
The Experimentation Experiment
Back in 1998, I had just graduated from a multimedia production program at Algonquin College. In that 6 month, post-graduate course, we learned all about design and development of interactive CD-ROMs, which was still a great skill in those days. The Internet was just starting to become popular, but nobody really knew where it was going at that point. As a result, we had a grand total of 1 day of HTML training in our program. The moment I had my diploma in hand, I realized that the Web was probably going to be a big deal. I headed to the bookstore and spent what little money I had on a pile of books about HTML and web site design. I then proceeded to spend the next 6 weeks living off coffee and Ramen noodles, learning everything I could about web design. I did more than just read the books though – I built and launched three web sites by myself as experiments. I sat back, with a sense of satisfaction…but not for long. 3 weeks later I was in demand…people saw what I had done, and now they wanted to have sites set up, and they wanted to know how to do it too. My 2nd career as a web specialist and web design teacher was launched and I haven’t looked back. The point is, school didn’t get me my first job in the web industry. Experimentation did. The secret to learning Lots of people take courses to learn new things. School is a great way to build a foundation of knowledge, but for me, it’s only how you learn what you need to know. Most people who work full time opt for continuing education. Continuing Ed is great, but the courses are often pretty fast paced. You’re in and out in a few weeks. It’s a great way to pick up some new ideas, but it’s not until you sit down and apply your newfound knowledge that the real learning begins. Back in ’98, I could have read all those HTML books and called it a day. But at the end of it, I still wouldn’t have known how to actually build a web site. Instead, I sat down and built three of them. I made tons of mistakes. I ditched hours of work and started over from scratch more than once. I struggled, got frustrated, maybe even shed a few tears. But at the end of it, I knew it backwards. The secret to learning is not just showing up to class. It’s what you do with the things you’re taught that makes the difference. Don’t just go to class and take a few notes on how to set up a WordPress blog. Go home and stay up till 3am and set up the damn blog. Mess it up. Break things. Just hit publish. That’s the way you learn. In my expert opinion You know all those social media “experts” we are always going on about? The real ones, like Chris Brogan and Mitch Joel and CC Chapman? They didn’t get that way by reading books. They got that way by slogging it out while everyone else was hungover from hanging out at SXSW parties till 4am. They got that way by sitting down and doing the work. And mostly they got that way by experimenting. They were blogging and podcasting and tweeting before those words even made it into the dictionary. They were making mistakes and learning everything they could. They are experts now because they have been there, done that, and they frigging earned the t-shirts. If you want to really be on top of your business, you need to check your ego at the door, stop worrying so much about what other people will think, and sit down and just do it. Play. Experiment. Build things. Take them apart. Fail. Fail again. It’s the only way. Test your theories Last summer I decided to write and publish an e-book. I decided right at the start to offer it as a paid product, not because I was expecting it to become my retirement plan, but because publishing something I expected people to pay money for raised the stakes. I knew it had to be really good and provide real value to people. I new it needed research and editing and formatting. It wasn’t a 20 minute blog post. I also did it because I wanted to go through the process of publishing and promoting something on my own. It was a sandbox of sorts. I wanted to see what worked and how people responded. I tried different things, and had a few false starts. In the end, I learned a lot. I am amazed at the support of my community and overwhelmed by the response. And I know what I’ll do better next time. I could read 100 blog posts and 3 books on how to write and publish an e-book. But until I actually perform the experiment I am nowhere. Treat your personal projects like a laboratory. Try things out, compare and contrast. Watch closely, and emulate (don’t copy) the people you respect. But you have to stop talking about it and reading it in books and sitting there listening to people like me lecture you about it. This is your experiment. Ultimately, it’s your life. What will you try today? Photo by wader
3 Ways to Reduce Online Noise and Get More Done
The world is a noisy place, and it’s only getting noisier. If you’re like me, you remember a time when there were only a couple of TV stations (in fact, when I lived in the Arctic as a kid, we only had ONE channel!). You remember a time when you had one telephone, and if it rang, and you weren’t home, it just kept ringing. The caller would just have to call back later. There were no answering machines. If you were on the phone, and someone tried to call you, it didn’t go to voicemail – the caller got a busy signal. Because you were…busy. The mail wasn’t just full of junk flyers and bills. There were letters and postcards too. 25 years ago, our incoming information was manageable. Most of us only had a few inputs – our work phone, our home phone, the mail, and in person. These days, the number of inputs has grown exponentially – we have voice mail at home and at work, multiple email accounts, text messages, Facebook messages, Twitter replies, Google+ conversations, blog comments….there’s seemingly no end to the amount of inputs we have. For all the noise that our volume of inputs creates now, there’s a lot of good, too. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook enable us to keep in contact with many people at once (imagine having to send an email to 300 of your closest friends every time you wanted to tell them something!). Text messaging is a convenient and quick way to communicate to others. I wouldn’t give up any of our modern ways of communication for the world. It’s made me more productive, helped me grow my business and it’s a heck of a lot of fun! So how do you manage the noise that all of these inputs create? Well, the truth is, it’s up to each of us to find the best ways to control the information we receive on a daily basis. Here are some things I’ve had success with. 1. Get control of your email. Today. We are all overloaded with email. I used to be too, averaging 2-300 new messages in my inbox every day. But I sat down and took a good hard look at the email I was getting. Most of it was useless – notifications from Twitter and Facebook, and myriad other social tools. Email newsletters that I’d signed up for but never got around to reading. Blog post subscriptions. The number of important emails I was getting was actually pretty low. So I went on an unsubscribe rampage. I went to every social tool and turned off ALL notifications. All of them! Now I check my @replies and Facebook messages when I want to. I unsubscribed from all email newsletters except one or two that I get REAL value from. I moved all of my blog subscriptions to Google Reader. I also give out my cell number to people who need to reach me on a regular basis, and ask them to send me a text if their message is short. Now, I average 20-30 mostly relevant emails per day. It’s made a huge difference. 2. Use Twitter more wisely. I follow over 5000 people on Twitter. When people discover that, they wonder how I can possibly keep up. Well, first of all, I’m not trying to read everything – Twitter is about skimming for me. Second, I take advantage of Twitter lists. I have a private list of about 100 people and sources that I follow on a regular basis. I spend most of my time in that list. (Here’s how to create Twitter lists). I also use tools like HootSuite and Echofon, to help me manage my @replies and messages, and to follow #hashtag conversations. The secret to Twitter is to treat it like a pub or coffee shop – you pop in and only experience it while you’re there. When you’re not there, the conversation continues without you, and that’s okay. You can either catch up later or stop worrying you’re going to miss something (I do the latter most of the time). 3. Turn off ALL notifications. This is a lesson I learned from Mitch Joel. Turning off email notifications is only part of the battle. You also need to shut off anything that blinks, flashes or beeps on your phone and computer screen. I even turn off my email badge indicators (so I don’t see the email piling up before my eyes – too stressful!). You don’t need to know every time someone replies to you on Twitter. You don’t need to hear a “beep” or see a red flashing light every time you get a text message or an email. The reason we are so exhausted and can never seem to catch up is because we’re continuously bombarded with new messages. YOU control who accesses you and when, not anyone else. Shut down those notifications. Do it today. Tell people if it’s really urgent, to phone you, or use a service like AwayFind. You’ll be so much happier, and get so much more of the important stuff done. Finally – if you really need to reduce the noise so you can accomplish more, there’s one thing you can do, that I highly recommend. Just shut everything down. Close all applications on your computer and unplug the Internet. Put your phone away (and shut off the darn ringer!). Heck, turn the computer right off, and grab a piece of paper and a pen. Gain control of your information flow again, and you will find your productivity and your peace of mind go through the roof! How do you manage the flow of information? [photo by futureatlas.com]
You Gotta Speak Up – Finding Your Voice in a Sea of Information
Okay class. First thing I want you to do is watch this video of Marlon Brando. For real. Then come back. Great stuff, eh? That interview was taped in 1973. Brando admits to being a little “long in the tooth”, but that doesn’t stop him. He wasn’t one to give many interviews, but when he did, gosh, he gave great ones. My husband Greg sent me this last night, and I watched it three or four times. I couldn’t get over the incredible insight Brando had. Remember, this was a good 20 years before the Internet, and about 30 years before social media started to take hold. We’ve gotta drop format. “We’ve gotta drop format” is one of the best quotes from the whole interview. At first I wasn’t exactly sure what Brando was trying to say (a lot of people have trouble trying to figure out what he was trying to say most of the time, so I guess I’m normal.). But I realized he’s referring to “format”, as being the typical way in which big media operated back then (and I suppose still tries to operate today). Dropping format means not putting up with the status quo. It means not letting big media and famous people with big voices get all the attention. (Today, that includes “Internet famous” people too.) He even refers to himself as a “pontificating actor”, and points out that the sound man has just as much right to have his voice heard as anyone else. Think about that for a minute. Brando is right. We used to get all of our information from the people with the biggest voices, because they were the only ones that had control of the broadcast channels. But that’s all changed. If you have an Internet connection and an idea, you can be a publisher. You can have a voice. You can broadcast your stories to the world. You can break format. As Steve Jobs might have said, “How cool is that?”. If somebody disagrees, you gotta speak up. How many of you refer to yourselves as “lurkers”? You spend all of your time online listening, and watching. You treat new media like old media – as a consumption-only medium. The single most amazing thing about the Web is that it’s a many-to-many conversation that you don’t have to simply consume. You can be a contributor. You have as much right as anyone else to participate. You can, and I’d argue you should, speak up. Not just when you disagree, but when you have something to say. This is our space, our forum, our medium, and McLuhan was right – it’s also the message. This is your chance to find your voice, and all it takes is making the first step – saying hello to someone new, writing 200 or 300 words on your blog, or sharing something that you find interesting. You gotta speak up, as Brando said – because now, your voice can, and will, be heard. You gotta hear from everybody. This is the line I had running over in my brain all night – “If it isn’t a world of dialog and exchange between people….we are in for a helluva lot of trouble.” It’s not about just listening to the big voices anymore. It’s not about corporations and governments telling us how we can and can’t share information. It’s about each of us taking responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, ideas, dialog, and opinions, and about being brave and standing up and finding our voice and using it. I completely agree with Brando. If you only let the big voices do all the talking and sharing and pontificating, then the channel doesn’t thrive. In fact, I think it runs the risk of stagnating, and dissolving back into the old format, where big media dictated what we should see, hear, and experience. And if that happens, we are indeed in for a helluva lot of trouble. It’s a noisy world out there. But that just means, you need to learn to speak up. What say you?
Announcing “Just Hit Publish” – My New e-Book
The thing I hear most from my students, clients and online friends is that they don’t know where to start when it comes to creating online content. They are swimming in a sea of information, and consuming as much as they can, but when it comes to creating, they fall short. They just never quite get around to starting their blog because they think they have nothing interesting to say. They want to post a video, but aren’t sure where to start, and feel shy about talking on camera. They think podcasting is a great fit for their communication style – but the weeks and months go by and they never press “record”. We all know how important a content strategy is to marketing your business and yourself online. We’ve seen how creating great content can help us to position ourselves as experts, help our customers and open the doors to tremendous new opportunities. Yet we are still fearful of taking that first step. I know how challenging it can be to dive into the world of content creation. I’ve been there. In 2006 when I started this blog, I felt really awkward about communicating my thoughts to the world. But now, more than 430 posts later, I don’t know what I’d do without this channel. Blogging has been an enjoyable adventure that has connected me with great friends, and opened new doors of opportunity to me as a teacher, a professional speaker and entrepreneur. That’s why I decided to write this e-Book. “Just Hit Publish: How to Become a Prolific Digital Content Producer” is a 59 page guide that will take you through a process of discovery into your own creative process and help you to master the art of publishing online. You will learn: Why it’s important to publish How to find your personal style How to get past creator’s block How to overcome your fear of putting yourself out there How to find your muse How to be a prolific producer of great content I hope you enjoy the book, and if you know of someone else who can benefit from it, please let them know as well. Click below to buy now for just $8.99.
Re-creating Time
How busy are you? No really…how busy ARE you? If you’re like most people, you’re so busy you barely have time to think. You feel like you’re always playing catch up, and you never quite get there. Yep. Me too. I like to be busy more than just about anything – that’s probably why I have a full time business, a part time teaching job, two fairly big volunteer commitments, and a pretty active family and social life, offline and online. I usually have a pretty good handle on my time – in fact I pride myself on my time management skills. But this past Fall, my schedule spiralled a bit out of my control. It wasn’t that I couldn’t meet my commitments – on the contrary. I was able to meet and exceed expectations (especially my own) with everything that was thrown my way. But the problem was, just about every waking moment, I was either working or doing something. I would get up in the morning, make a coffee and breakfast, and head right to the computer. Sometimes I was replying to emails in bed before I even got up. Every weekend I’d aspire to take a couple of days off, but inevitably work would almost always push into my Saturdays and Sundays, because I wasn’t accomplishing everything I needed to during the week. Before I knew it, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a real day off. I finally decided enough was enough. My schedule was controlling me, and was time to get my schedule back under MY control. Laying the ground rules. There were a few bad habits that I’d developed that I needed to eliminate. Sometimes when working from home, it can be difficult to separate work and home time. It just gets all mish-mashed together. Hence, the bad habits like checking email in bed, and hopping on the computer and getting to work right when I got up. I had to make some new rules for myself. I needed to make my health a priority. So I filled the fridge with healthy food, and changed my morning routine. It would no longer be wake up, check email, make breakfast, go to work. Now it’s wake up, meditate, exercise, eat breakfast, read, shower, get dressed, sit down at computer and work. I simply don’t do any email and work stuff until I am ready for my day. I ease into the day now, starting each one off with time for me and my health. And laying that one simple ground rule has made all the difference to my mental state at work, as well as my pant size! If it’s not in there, don’t do it. The reason I was missing getting a bunch of stuff done every week was, it wasn’t actually scheduled. I would only really put things on my schedule when I had to BE somewhere…at a client meeting, at school, and so on. The rest of my work day was relegated to a to do list, and things like email and voicemail were just slid in willy-nilly throughout the day. The result was, the to do list and the emails were controlling my work day. The volume of the average person’s incoming information – new tasks, emails, phone calls, and so on – is much higher Monday to Friday. So with those things bombarding me from all angles during the week, the work I was supposed to be doing wasn’t getting done. Instead, the important stuff got pushed and pushed until a quieter Saturday morning was the only time I could focus on it. Before I knew it, I hadn’t had a day off in six weeks. All that has changed. At the end of each week, I open my calendar to the next week. I go down my to-do list, and I schedule the tasks on that list into my calendar. I block off time for all the work I need to do. I even have my morning routine scheduled. I schedule when I will check email throughout the day too. I leave blocks of free time for things that might come up (it’s not good to be over-scheduled either!). Two interesting things have happened since I have started putting everything in my calendar. First, I find that I am far more focused. I know exactly what I need to accomplish every day, because it’s right there in black and white (and red and purple and orange and blue). Second, and this surprised me…I worry less. Once my week is planned out, I can shut down my calendar and not have to think about it. I don’t have this constant nagging feeling of “Oh, I have to remember to do this or that”. Once it’s in my schedule, I can forget about it until it’s time. Re-create your time. We all get the same 24 hours in a day. Even though we all have obligations (you have kids, I have animals to care for), in general, and particularly when it comes to work, we still get to choose how we manage our time, and the things in our schedules we have control over, we can completely control. Sit down and take a long hard look at your calendar. Instead of letting your time create your experience, you can re-create your time. So what are you waiting for? [Photo credit: ramyo]
The Art of Practice
All my life, I have loved learning. If I don’t know something, I will work and work at it to figure it out. (Well, except algebra, but that’s another story.) When I was growing up, you could always find me in a corner of the house, drawing pictures, painting, or reading. My parents did not allow boredom in our house. There was always something to do and something new to learn. And my folks taught by example – to this day you can often find my Dad with his nose in some sort of history or 10 Wonders of the World book. Learning never stops. I find there’s one part of learning that often gets overlooked, and that’s practice. I can read 1000 blog posts about social media, drop $500 or more on a course about it, but if I don’t start a Twitter account or begin blogging on a consistent basis, I will never really understand anything. Understanding takes practice. Practice takes effort. Practice means slogging away at it and making mistakes. I think it’s the making mistakes part that hangs people up. The Journey of a Thousand Miles I have been working on taking better care of myself lately. With my business ramping up to all new levels, taking on more responsibilities at Algonquin College, and working on some volunteer projects, I realize how important it is to maintain a healthy body, mind and spirit. That means getting plenty of sleep, eating well, exercising, taking quiet time for myself, and dropping some pounds. All of these are areas at which I’ve tried and failed multiple times. But I’ve realized, although I have read all the articles on healthy eating, though I have learned some yoga and how to work out, and that I know how to meditate and go to bed on time, I haven’t been practicing. And because I haven’t practiced, I don’t really understand. I haven’t done the work. The Whole Enchilada Our problem with practice comes because we only ever focus on the end result. We want to be successful with our social media efforts overnight. We want to wake up tomorrow 40 pounds lighter. But when push comes to shove, and we realize that in order to get social media working for us, we have to devote several hours per week over many months to do it, we never start. When we realize that losing the weight is going to take putting down the bag of chips and practicing daily movement of our stiff, unflexible bodies, we decide to start tomorrow or next week instead. The whole enchilada is too overwhelming. When we can only see the end of the road in our sights, we become afraid of how much work it will be to get there. It stops us in our tracks. Just One Bite Learning is easy. Figuring out what we have to do is pretty simple too. Practice is hard, but it’s the only way to true understanding. The best way to practice is not to consider the end. Consider the step you need to take next, and only that step. If that’s setting your alarm for 6am so you can wake up the next morning and exercise, then let the practice be that. If it’s sitting down and writing just one blog post, it’s that. Don’t think “I have to start blogging more, I have so much writing to do.” Think, “I’m going to write this post now.” Think, “I am going to eat this healthy salad for lunch now.” Then just repeat doing that one thing over and over again. What you’ll soon realize is that every one thing you do is practice. And if you do one thing often enough, then time doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that it took you 6 months to have a significant body of work on your blog. It doesn’t matter that it took you 5 months to lose the 40 pounds. Because all along, you were just doing one thing at a time. And now, you haven’t just learned. You understand. So go. Practice one thing. Then repeat. [photo by Martin Gommel]