Building expertise vs. building knowledge

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Morgan

Image from Wikipedia

Funny where you can get inspiration from. Last night I was watching Monday Night Football and caught a line from John Gruden, former Super Bowl winning coach and now-commentator for ABC/ESPN that really rang true for me. He was talking about perfecting your craft and continuing to work on the small things, even for pros at the NFL-level. His quote was:

“The accumulation of work is a powerful thing.”

Simple to be sure. Powerful, I think.

It really rings true to me when it comes to blogging and building your personal expertise. There are days when no one reads this blog. Zero visits. Including me. There are posts that get a handful of views. This blog doesn’t make any money. This blog doesn’t generate leads and it doesn’t help me find a job. (I’m gainfully employed at the moment. Thanks.) So why am I blogging?

One could easily make the argument that blogging here isn’t the highest and most valuable use of my time. That there are other things that could do more for me than writing here. But to me that goes against the spirit of blogging and of creating your own content.

Precisely because of what Coach Gruden said: “The accumulation of work is a powerful thing.”

It’s not the accumulation of knowledge. It’s not reading the most books, it’s not passively accumulating information. It’s the accumulation of work that creates power.

Note, I’m not saying not to read. I read a ton. But I am saying that simply reading without actually trying to do the work is not a path that leads to success.

So, I am here. Putting in the work.

Someone might not read this post. But by writing here I’m working on my voice, my point of view, my craft, sharpening my thoughts, my mind and how I think about things. I’m accumulating work. I’m one blog post closer to finding my voice. I’m one post closer to getting the audience I eventually want. And so while it is inconsequential in its current, singular state, it’s important in its contribution to the accumulation of work that will get me to where I want to go.

The point being: if you’re not writing or creating or working then you’re falling behind the people who are out there accumulating work, building their expertise and power. So, I ask you – what are you doing to accumulate work to get the power you’re looking for?

Why Google Reader Might be the Missing Link in Your Social Media Workflow

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Morgan

I wrote in length about identifying and implementing a social media workflow as a way to make social media work for you and your organization while not becoming overwhelming or too much of a time suck. Today I want to look at a particularly powerful tool that is often under-utilized in social media workflows. Google Reader not only makes reading and sharing news easy; but it is also an important tool in building your following and reputation as a thought-leader online. In this post I’ll show you how I use Google Reader to engage followers, build credibility and thought leadership, stregthen relationships and improve visibility across the social Web and Twitter in particular.

The premise is simple – share links to articles, blog posts, podcasts and videos relevant to your area of interest as a way to provide value to the people that follow you (and hopefully their followers as well via retweets) by being a filter that identifies high-quality content in the river of noise that is the Web.

This is not an exhaustive overview of the benefits and short comings of Google Reader. Nor is it a post on how to use Google Reader. There are plenty of other great posts that cover the features and functionality of this powerful feed reader. What I want to focus on is the workflow that you can use with Google Reader to accrue the benefits listed above on the social Web.

Setting Up Google Reader in Your Social Media Workflow

I use Google Reader to engage people, build thought leadership, strengthen relations and improve my visibility online by integrating my Google Reader activity into my social media workflow as follows:

Google Reader > Shared Items > Shared Items Feed published to FriendFeed > Google Reader items in FriendFeed published to Twitter

To set this workflow up take the following steps:

Make your Google Reader shared items public and viewable by anyone. (You can view my shared items here.)You can do this by going into your shared items settings in the reader by clicking on Shared Items, then Sharing Settings.
Get the feed URL for your shared items by clicking on Shared Items, then show details. You will see stats for your shared items and also the feed URL. It will look like this: http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/08867225285676593227/state/com.google/broadcast
Next, go to FriendFeed. If you don’t have a FriendFeed account register for one first and then follow the remaining steps.
Add your public, shared items feed as a new service in FriendFeed by clicking on “Settings” (link is under your name on your FriendFeed page). This will launch a dialog box where you can edit your preferences and add your Google Reader feed.
Choose “add/edit” which appears next to the services icons that you currently have aggregated in FriendFeed.
Click on “Blog” on the Services page. (This page lists all of the eligible services you can add to FriendFeed along with all of the current services that are aggregated with your FriendFeed account. )
Another dialogue box will pop up. Paste your Google Reader feed URL in this box.
Click the “Import Blog” button.

Your Google Reader is now importing into FriendFeed. You’re almost there! The last step is setting up FriendFeed to publish your Google Reader items to your Twitter stream.

You can configure your FriendFeed/Twitter publishing settings under the settings tab as well. Do this by:

Click on “Settings” under your name on your FriendFeed home page.
Click on Twitter publishing preferences. This will take you to a page titled “Advanced Twitter Settings”
If you didn’t log in to FriendFeed with your Twitter account at the beginning you’ll have to login to the account you want to publish your Google Reader items to before proceeding.
Check the box that says “Link to source site instead of FriendFeed conversation (does not apply to comments)” This will ensure that when people click on your shared links on Twitter they will be taken to the source content instead of an intermediate page requiring another click to get to the source content.
Make sure the box next to “Google Reader” is checked under the section “The services I’ve selected below”

You can see how I have my page configured for reference:

That’s it – now your Google Reader shared items are set up to be imported into your Twitter stream.

Sharing Items with Your Followers on Twitter with Google Reader

Now that you have Google Reader integrated into your Twitter feed you need to start sharing items with your followers. You do this simply by clicking the “Share” button at the bottom of each item in Google Reader. Alternatively you can use “Shift+S” as a keyboard shortcut to share the items without a mouse click. You can find the “Share” button at the bottom of each item in Google Reader, as seen below:

Simply click the “Share” button and it looks like this:

Your shared item will now appear in your Twitter stream:

You can tell it’s one of your shared items because the tweet says “from FriendFeed” and the URL is shortened using the ff.im link shortener.

Building Thought Leadership, Engagement, Visibility and Relationships with Shared Links

There is no shortage of commentary about information overload. With millions of blogs publishing millions of articles, on top of the traditional news, video posts and podcasts, trying to keep up with the Web is impossible for most people. People easily feel overwhelmed by the idea of having to sift through all the noise to find the information they like and are interested in. In the world of new media there are no easily identified editors. Unlike traditional media like the New York Times where their editors decide what is news and what isn’t, the blogosphere and social media has no appointed editors. This is where your opportunity lies.

I’m not suggesting that you try to digest the Web and sift out the gems, that doesn’t really work as part of a sustainable workflow as part of your daily routine that earns your income. But what you can do is canvass a small corner of the Web and become an ad hoc editor, a trusted filter, identifying the best content in that niche and share that with readers. For example, if you’re in education you can round up the education blogs and feed them into your Google Reader. You can slowly add them as you discover them (expedite this by searching for education related Tweets and using tools like IceRocket.com and Google Blog Search).

Then you can go through the education posts and share the best of the best each day with your followers on Twitter. You’ll find that you’ll receive more replys, more retweets and more followers as you become known as a trusted source of information and news about the segment of the Web that your followers are interested in.

You’ll start to notice a few valueable things as a result of your sharing:

People will thank you for your tweets
People will retweet your links extending your reach beyond your current followers (and often their followers as the link spreads)
People will recommend you as a person to follow to their followers

These are all great indicators of a healthy and improving presence among your followers on Twitter.

Workflow Tips for Google Reader

Here are a few of my tips to keep Google Reader a productive part of your social media workflow (and not a burden).

I try to share news at least twice a day. Once in the morning, once in the evening. I spend about 30 minutes at each point reading, sharing and saving articles to read later. Occassionally I’ll also check it on my lunch break if I have time.
Don’t be afraid to declare feed bankruptcy. News has a definite shelf life. If you can’t get to your feed reader for a couple of days and find that you have thousands of items unread don’t feel pressured to get through them all. Go through the last 24-48 hours worth and then mark the rest as read. There’ s no need to feel overwhelmed by the amount of unread content in your reader.
Mix it up. I share content about online video, social media and studies about online advertising effectiveness. But I also share funny stuff and general geekdom items from sites like Boing Boing and other fun stuff. I only mix these in occassionally; but you don’t want to be a boring stiff – show some personality with your shared links.
Don’t import your links to Facebook. I did this at first and it was very noisy. Because Facebook doesn’t update as frequently as Twitter you can litterally overrun your friends’ news feeds with your shared items. I’ve tried it both ways and have found that people seem happier when the links aren’t shared via Facebook. (I’ll have some more thoughts on this and how to surface the best links to Facebook in a future post.)

Putting it all Together

I often hear that people don’t have enough time to write content, that they get burnt out on writing blog posts and they feel like they can’t “keep up” with creating value for their followers on an ongoing and consistent basis. Google Reader helps solve for this problem because it is easier and less time consuming to find and identify quality content to share. Instead of producing content you’ll be known for your keen eye and ability to filter the signal from the noise for your followers. People will come to appreciate and respect this service that you provide and it will in turn create and build your social capital among your online networks.

Why Blogging Still Matters

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Morgan

People love to claim stuff “dead” on the Internet. It seems everyday something is dying or already dead. Frankly, the pace of extinction around these parts is exhausting. And, of course, the rhetoric is usually completely overblown and, well, wrong. So it is with the death of blogging. As Twitter user growth soars (1928% YOY to be precise) and people flock to Facebook in droves, pundits love proclaiming that the statusphere is the new, new blogging. And with equal joy it’s corollary blogging obituary.

I’m here to humbly say that blogging is indeed not dead, and in fact now, unlike any time in the last 4 years, represents the single best opportunity for professionals and organizations to stand out from the competition and river of noise that is the statusphere. In this post I look at why it’s still important to professionals. In a future post we’ll look at why it matters for organizations.

Reasons why blogging is still important to professionals

The case for blogging for professionals has never been stronger. As more people jump on the Twitter bandwagon and engage in the cocktail party that is the statusphere there are fewer hours and fewer people dedicating time to producing longer-form content that demonstrates their expertise and value to prospective customers, potential employers and others in the community. While interacting with people online is critical and an important way of building relationships and your network, the effectiveness of that effort is greatly reduced without some home base that represents who you are, what you stand for and what you know. Having a well-developed blog gives the people you engage with a true sense of who they’re talking with and can be an important relationship builder in its own right.

Demonstrate Expertise

There is still no better way on the Web today to create and curate a body of work that demonstrates your expertise and insight than a blog. While engaging quickly and responding to questions and engaging in conversations online is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise they have a definite shelf life and limited utility shortly after the exchange. Go ahead, try to dig up a Tweet from 5 days ago. You’ll quickly find that your conversations are washed away by the onslaught of new information added to the statusphere. You face a similar problem with discussions on LinkedIn, comments on YouTube, Facebook status updates and Wall posts, forum posts and more. By simply participating in online conversations in these social platforms you’re making your expertise a perishable commodity. If you maintain a blog and curate your thoughts there you maximize the value of your expertise by giving it a longer shelf life and making it infinitely easier to find.

Why throw away your expertise by using a social conversation only strategy when you can easily create a valuable library of insight and expertise with a blog?

Create a Google-able Home Base

For better or worse you are who Google says you are. And while your profiles on the various social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn may appear higher than your personal blog in a vanity search (where you search your own name in Google) Google can reward you heavily with searches that include your name and important industry and career topics. For example, my previous blog, blownmortgage.com ranked exceptionally high for terms such as subprime mortgage, FHA home loans, loan modification and other key mortgage terms that drove traffic and business to my company. More importantly, because of the body of work I created at the site (if you can’t tell by the name it was a site intent on blowing up the malfeasance in the mortgage industry) people instantly bonded and trusted me. And I showed up all over the place in Google on terms that people were searching while looking for information related to my expertise.

While Twitter and Facebook may come up higher in vanity searches, Google will reward you with rankings in areas of your expertise when you create a body of work on a blog dedicated to the exploration of those subjects. Twitter will never rank for loan modification for me, but my blog (which I recently sold, more below) did. And it created additional (dare I say ‘long tail’) referrals to my home base on the Web resulting in additional business, contacts, and more.

Build an Online Resume

You can either have a resume and say what you know or you can have a blog and show what you know. What do you think is more powerful to a prospective client or employer? Exactly. Particularly in a devestrating job market creating differentiation among your peers is critical to getting out of the deluge of resumes and on to the short list for the interview. And while your blog can’t help you in the interview, it can certainly help you get in front of the decision maker. It can often jump you several steps through the interview process in the first place. Any professional can benefit from a solid body of work that is easily found and referencable on the Web. When employers look for quality individuals a blog can be an invaluable advantage to you. It creates the ideal forum to demonstrate your thinking and analysis of issues critical to your industry. Same thinking applies in demonstrating your expertise and thinking to a potential client.

While you can build a resume online with LinkedIn and other online services it’s impossible to curate a living body of work that speaks to your unique skills and viewpoint like you can with a blog.

Opening Yourself to Other Opportunities

By having a blog you begin to build a body of work to position you as an expert. While this can lead to direct business gain and advantages in winning business, employment and more; there are other benefits as well. With a Google-friendly home base pushing your name to the top of results in terms critical to your industry you’ll find inquiries from journalists looking for front-line insight into breaking stories. You’ll get random interview and speaking requests. You’ll receive product review requests and feedback on business samples. And you’ll find more people looking to engage and connect with you than ever before. These benefits can often lead to new experiences and opportunities that were never visible to you previously. And while journalists search and monitor Twitter for breaking news you can create more press opportunities by creating a body of work that positions you as a credible source for stories that they may be working on.

My old blog resulted in mentions for me in The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, The Orange County Register, Better Homes and Gardens, The Village Voice, Inman News and many, many more. Those mentions would never have come from my LinkedIn profile, Twitter or Facebook conversations alone. I also received several speaking opportunities and won awards based on my work with my blog. It was the body of work and the easily-found nature of my blog that led to those opportunities.

Crafting Your Personal Brand

Your blog is your home. You get to decorate it and furnish it in any manner you see fit. It’s your personal self-expression online and the single best, most consistent opportunity to build and curate the personal brand that you want to project online. On any number of other social sites you’re dealing with the vagaries of the shifting conversation, newest shiny objects and limitations of the platform. There is rarely the perfect opportunity to express the ideal position for you as it relates to your personal brand. Your blog represents that safe harbor in the malestrom where you can talk about the things that are important to you, you can demonstrate your personal brand, and you can work at, improve and refine your voice and brand online.

While your blog can be your online resume it can also be your online batting cage (or putting green if you don’t like the baseball analogy). It can be a place where you can find your voice and refine it. Where you can test out hypotheses and construct arguments. You can analyze problems that are interesting to you and work through your thinking on issues that are important to you. This is often difficult to do in social conversation platforms. The flow of the conversation rarely affords that type of introspective learning. A blogging platform can open up that opportunity like no other platform.

Making Your Blog Matter to You

In an age of 140 characters blogging is hard. Creating content that people want to read, engage with and share is difficult and the payoff is often not seen immediately. You can spend hours creating content that is barely read when it is initially published. But it’s important to remember that social media is a marathon, not a sprint (and the same goes for blogging) and that the effort is a long term investment in your online personae. It is my firm belief that you cannot extract the maximum value from your social media endeavors without a blog as a home base for your efforts.

So how do you make your blog matter to you? Here is a quick list of things that I did to make my blog matter to me (and what I’m doing with this new blog as we speak.) These are obvious but if you’re struggling with a way to get started try these out.

If you can, register your name as a domain name. It allows you to make your blog the home base for your online activities for the rest of your life. It gives you flexibility in topics and allows your blog to grow with you as your life changes. It also helps with the aforementioned Google love. (To wit, imagine if Scoble’s first blog was Microsoft Insights instead of Scobleizer.)
Blog about something you’re passionate about. Pick a topic you have an opinion about and start with that. And don’t be afraid to have an opinion and express it.
Don’t be afraid to put something out there. Start writing and start publishing. Don’t let perfection or how you think other people might respond deter you from putting content out there.
Get insight and inspiration from other blogs, Twitter and the news. Just like new writers can often get past writers block by taking the opening of an existing story and spinning their own tale, so can you leverage an existing story line and add your own perspective as a way to get started.
Don’t try to write like a journalist or a marketer. You’re not writing the cover story of the New York Times and you’re not writing the corporate brochure. Write from the heart and with passion and don’t worry about the formalities when you first start.
Be a good online citizen. Don’t steal content. Be sure to link and provide attribution to ideas and give credit where credit is due.
Experiment. Try a video blog. Try a long post. Try short posts. Try thought pieces. Try news pieces. Do an email interview. Do a podcast interview. Just do, over and over until you begin to get your blogging legs under you.

Blogging and ‘Winning on the Uphills’

Seth Godin recently wrote about using challenge as a differentiator between you and your competitors. The idea of winning on the uphills is that everyone succeeds and goes fast on the downside of the mountain. In a good economy everyone is profiting. It is in a difficult environment where the good companies and professionals have an opportunity to stand out from the crowd and move forward, ahead of the pack. The same can be said for blogging. While everyone is proclaiming blogging dead and lamenting how “hard” it is compared to Twitter you can win on the uphill and begin to carve out your own little portion of the online conversation. And before you know it you’ll have created an online presence that will serve you professionally and personally for the rest of your life (if you let it) and will help you stand out from the noise of social conversation by creating a clear signal that resonates with readers.

Flickr photo by Mexicanwave.

P Morgan Brown

A work in progress

Tag Archives: Blog

Building expertise vs. building knowledge