Apr 20, 2012 | blog, featured
Ideas Notebook By Matthew Allard
Sometimes you find that you’ve got too many ideas. Ever have that problem? I do this week, and I swear I’m going to do something about it. I’ve got blog post ideas going back several years covering things from social media to technology to life topics and so on. It’s time I liberate these post ideas. I’m giving them to you to take and run with, just in case you’ve run out of ideas and need some inspiration. What better way to end the week, right? Alrightly, here we go:
- Social Networking & The Impact On Your Personal Brand
- Moleskine Notebooks – Going Analog For The Fun of Writing
- How To Balance Social Network Participation In The Workplace
- 101 Uses for Twitter
- Why I Believe The “Smartphone” Isn’t So Smart
- Your Blog IS Your Social Network
- Online Communities – You Get Out Of Them Only What You Put Into Them
- The New Social Economy
- Social Media Is About Sociology Not Technology
- Never Stop Experimenting To Grow Yourself Or Your Brand
- If Words Mean Things
- Old Media Using Social Media
- Building A Better Branded Blog
- Decline Of Technology In America?
- Social Media And The IT Professional
- Anonymity – Pros & Cons
- Can You Connect Up To 6 people?
- Linux: Ubuntu Or Fedora Or ?
- The Most Powerful Social Media Tool: YOU
- Decisions: iOS Or Android
- Personal Branding And The IT Professional
- 10 Reasons For A Windows Hack To Love The iPhone
- Disengage From The Collective That Is Your Corporate Mindset
- “Who Am I?”
- How Can I Help People?
- Linux Software Installers – Why Do They Suck?
- Essential Software For The Blogger
- The New Intellectual
- Is the Theme/Style Of Your Blog Important To Readers?
- Social Realities Of A New Generation
- What Do I Do?
- What Can I Accomplish?
- Powerful Writing…
- Do I Realize How Lucky I Am?
- Social Media In The Enterprise
- Negativity In The Workplace
- Don’t Talk, Just Do
- Social Media Is An Evolutionary Step
- Tear Down This Wall (Cubicles That Is)
- What Is A “Social Entrepreneur”?
- Enterprise/Corporate Culture Clashes
- Good Enough
- Social Media Shoehorn
- Blogging Is A Commitment, Social Networks Are A Fling
- Making It Happen
- Why My Blogging “Rock Stars” Are From the Z-List
- SharePoint Can Be An Internal Enterprise Social Media Tool
- Labeling Things And Why It’s Ok
- Why Paper Publications Will Never Go Away
- A Culture Without Culture
- To Meme Or Not
- Step Away From The Ledge – It’s Going To Be Ok
- Help People
- Want To Be A High-Buck Consultant?
- Positive Growth Through Negative Feedback
- Virtualization: For Technology Only?
- Build Your Own Brand Armies
- Networking For Fun And Profit
- Fostering New Communication In The Enterprise
- What Social Media Has Taught A Techie Geek
- Afraid To Succeed?
- Stodgy Or Stale Brand? 10 Sure-Fire Ways To Freshen It Up
- Social Media Does Not Equal Marketing Or PR
- Fearing Free (Free Rage Fears?)
- The Problem With Technically Excellent Solutions
- Be Your Own Editor
- Thinkers – The Ones To Watch
- Getting Back To Where We Came From
- Go Where Your Forefathers Couldn’t
- Unsung Heros: Headhunters
- The Line In The Sand & When You Step Over It
- Landing Pages – Why Bother?
- Put It On paper
- Gen Y & Why They’re different
- Engage HR For Change
- Friend Counts Do Mean Something
- Anatomy Of Twitter
- Lack Of New Examples
- The More You Share
- The Android Dilemma
- Is Your Day Job Your Only Gig?
- When Self Promotion Goes Too Far
- The Joys Of Building Community
- Is Social Media Respected In Corporate Environments?
- Lets Not Screw Around
- Why The Old Tools Don’t Work
- Why The Old Tools STILL Work
- Corporate Obsolesce
- The changing Face Of Social Media
- What’s The Big Deal About 4G?
- What’s Next For Social Media
- The Dark Side Of Social Media, And Why It Sucks
- You Will Live Online
- Why Tablet-Haters Loose In The End
- 10 Billion Apps
- Do What Comes Naturally
- The Decline Of Social Media
- Social Media Posers
- Ongoing Standards Wars
- Shortsightedness Of Newspaper Publishers
Well, there’s a handful of the post ideas I’ve got in my notes. That was just from one page of a OneNote notebook of post ideas! Sometimes, you just run out of time or simply never get back to the ideas you had when you thought of the topic. Whatever the case, I figure somebody might make use of one or two, or ten of these. Better to set them free than keep ’em in a dusty digital notebook right?
Blog Header Photo credit:
JOH_1994 by
star5112. Thanks for a neat picture of post-it notes that captured my thought!
Oct 17, 2010 | happiness
Late nights, improbable project scope, tight deadlines, last minute ideas, and knowing it wasn’t for someone else’s gain… but rather, your own passion.
Aug 16, 2010 | blog
We’ve talked about this before. Employees taking steps on their own to induce change into an organization, to better serve the customers they interact with. We’ve talked about this before, though probably from a corporate perspective rather than a personal one. Let’s make it personal.
Most agents of change have historically bent the rules. These people found new, simpler, or better ways of doing things. They didn’t hesitate to take on the leadership role (taking initiative) to make things happen, often without asking for permission or direction ahead of time.
Taking risks and bringing new ideas or technology into an organization can not only be challenging, but can potentially put your job in jeopardy. Below I list 5 things you can do as an agent of change in your organization. Be aware, however, that doing some of these things may violate the specific policies in your company, and that these are simply examples of what has been done by other people in other situations where they acted as Rogue Agents.
1 – Build Your Own Brand
One of the most important things to do first is be aware of who you are and your passions. Sometimes it helps to have a brand or package to work with before you start working with someone else’s, and what better one to start with than your own? Build your personal brand, and establish who you are first.
2 – Gain Access to the Tools
In order to stay on top of industry news (your own and for the social media “industry” of ideas & tools), you need to be connected. Many companies have fairly open access to information on the Internet, and some have unfettered access to social media/networking sites. If this isn’t your situation, bring your own access! Use a 3G modem to connect to the Internet without pesky firewalls and policies in the way. Ultimately I’d suggest bringing in your own laptop to do this with. In any case, you do have a smart phone don’t you? 
3 – Experiment, Learn, Share
Try everything that looks useful! Most tools don’t fit the needs of your organization, or yourself for that matter. The lesson here is that learning what tools are good for what tasks is what’s important. That way, you can properly identify a tool/service/solution for a given need. Remember to share what you learn!
4 – Get Involved
Find something your passionate about or good at. Participate in the forums, groups, meetups, or online discussions. Let people hear your perspectives & ideas, and listen to what they’ve got to say (you’ll likely learn a lot). Let other folks in your organization in on some of the discussion & groups that are of value to your company’s product or brand. Share the knowledge, and make sure that you’re recognized in those groups as a thought leader.
5 – Become a Knowledge Expert
As you work on your personal brand, and learn the concepts and technologies that make up what social media is, you will start establishing yourself as a knowledge expert. Mostly this means that you’re sharing interesting ideas and knowledge that help other people succeed. This in turn is something that people will recognize about you, and that’s what the personal pay-off is going to be for all the time you invest in being a rogue agent. It’ll help you be a better you as your career unfolds, and you can bring your specialized, demonstrated skills to future clients.
It goes without saying that the items above are examples of what some people have done at different organizations in the past. What worked for them may not work for you or your organization. Be smart in what you’re trying to do – changing an organization to better itself for it’s customers is the right thing to do, changing an organization simply because you don’t like their policies isn’t.
Photo credit: Roguestar by Jeremy Brooks
Aug 12, 2010 | blog
One of the most amazing things I’ve experienced in the past decade of social media is the aspect of sharing. From the first time I read Cluetrain to the current place it takes in the multiple buzz word lexicon of social media – sharing is a central pillar of social engagement.
For many of us today, sharing is an easy exercise. Cut & paste a link, click a share button for a photo or embed a video in a post. We take it for granted… it’s easy!
For those getting started, or for businesses both large and small, sharing is not as clear as one would think it is. Businesses may worry about ownership of content (copyright) issues, or the context of the content they’re sharing and how it reflects or impacts their brand and reputation.
Individuals may have similar concerns, and might have trouble understanding the technical “how to’s” of proper attribution or embedding of HTML code. But that’s what the seasoned folks should be, and are, helping with – that’s a lot of what we share.
Back to sharing itself though.
As online social engagement grows with mainstream participation, people and businesses gain more from sharing than we initially realize. Giving back to the community has always been a cornerstone of corporate responsibility, and participating in online communities is easier and more cost effective than in the physical community.
Offering up tips, tricks, ideas, solutions, trials, samples, free product, services and more helps build community and reflects on individuals and brands in a positive light. Who doesn’t enjoy or respect those who are helpful? That’s not the same as giving things away simply for favors, that has it’s place in brand building, but not for community building.
Many will call it the “pay it forward” method, and indeed giving back to your community is crucial to the health of that community. It motivates others to do the same and thereby provides a basic, common knowledge to the community that benefits the whole. In the end, ideas are shared back to you or your business that you might otherwise not have thought of. And that’s always a good thing.
Photo credit: Andrew Crummy
Jul 30, 2010 | blog
A longtime staple of many social media professionals is to share what they read, what they find and the resources they use every day. I’m not different, and have been sharing this information for the better part of a decade.
Over the years, I’ve used Google Reader (still a staple), Tumblr, Posterous, Read It Later, InstaPaper, BlogLines, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Digg, and many others that I’ve since forgotten (sorry!). In fact, earlier this year I wrote a similar post pointing out that I had More Resources To Share.
Since then the work involved to share to so many different sources, along with the changing landscape of browser experimentation (my fault for using Firefox and Chrome) with their different sharing plugins takes way too long. To add to the complexity, I’ve added several dozen feeds to my daily reading list, even after cleaning out many non-essential feeds.
I’ve made it simple. Finally. At least for me it is and I hope it is for you as well.
Google Reader is still my mainstay for sharing – everything that I think may be of interest to others is found here. By everything, I mean everything – social media, mobile technology, android stuff, apple stuff, microsoft stuff, and many other topics. If you’re connected to me via Google you’ll see it in your “People You Follow” portion of your own Google Reader. Otherwise, you can find it here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/rickmahn
Posterous is the main place I’ll take time and post social media related items that I think are very relevant for anyone in the field. These articles and posts might be on business use, marketing, communications, tools, news and so on. You can find this fee at: http://rickmahn.posterous.com/
Finally, I do still bookmark some items at Del.icio.us. There’s really no rime or reason to those, but it may be useful, so here it is: http://delicious.com/rickmahn
Photo credit: ryancr
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