As I’ve mentioned awhile ago, I’ve started working with a new client in Minneapolis. It’s among the larger clients I’ve worked with an am enjoying the experience so far. While there is transition going on, the people here are pretty good.
It’s interesting to watch a department go through an outsourcing exercise and see the effects it has on the people and productivity. I’m not saying there is a productivity issue, but I started thinking how much a company can come to rely on outside resources like consultants to solve specific, important needs.
From my perspective, the consultant, it can be a challenge to dive in and learn the needs of the client, and the interaction of the team. Of course the technology as well, but that’s easy. It’s the people that interest me and how they work together. Being involved with social media for the last year, learning the online interactions and how they develop has taught me a new perspective to view closed environments. Like the corporate workplace for example, fun stuff.
But I was going to talk about being productive. Like I said, it can be a challenge when there is little direction or oversight. Luckily I am usually in this type of position and work best when I have to motivate myself and determine how to approach a problem.
I’m finding that my work in social networking and social media has helped me with this client more than others in the past. Listening to the stories, and the history of people helps to identify how to approach each individual. They all have their ideas and views on why I’m there and to be productive with everyone, it’s important to understand those views and opinions.
I’ve been rambling a bit (sorry) and am just trying to get back in my blogging groove again. My bloggers block seems to have passed, but I’m now short on time, but I’m still going to fit in a post as time permits until I’ve got a more organized schedule set.
I am interested in anyone’s thoughts on being productive in consulting gigs. What techniques do you use to "fit in"? What tricks do you have to put the client at ease and just "talk shop" so you can get started filling their needs?
That is exactly what I’ve been exhibiting to my friends and readers. It happens for a number of reasons, but mine is completely unintentional.
As I’ve alluded to over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of changes. Moving, shortage of work, bloggers block, and the related stress of it all has kept me from posting anywhere near what I would like.
I’ve got a stack of ideas, but only recently have I had the inkling to really write on a more ‘normal’ schedule. Of course, with the new consulting client, I’m going to be busier than I had been in September, but I’m less stressed for obvious reasons.
I’ll be working on posting when I can, sometimes during lunch and whatnot. I’ve got some work to do at home with some virtual systems to support research for my clients, but will be working on writing as well. Being busy is a blessing.
There are many good social networks to be a part of, but as I delve deeper into social media and personal branding I’m coming to the conclusion that your blog is becoming more important.
On your blog, you have a direct feed to your readers. Those readers can be friends as much as it can be potential employers or business contacts. Your blog can take on more of your characteristics, from the way you write to the theme that presents the information to your readers.
A blog can interact with other social networks, augmented with whatever tools you choose to bring into your branding strategy. Adding additional communications, video, audio and so on adds more value to your ability to network and share with your community.
The one big thing about viewing your blog as a social network is to remember the social aspect, which infers the interaction in a community. A blog’s comment system is there to enable the conversation, you are there to help drive the conversation. If you’re disabling comments because you don’t like some criticism, you may want to take another look. That feedback could help you grow in ways that aren’t readily apparent.
Also, your blog is your online hub. Use it to send information to other social networks that you frequent. It’s also the one place on the Internet that you can make sure people find out about YOU. You can make sure to let them know how to find you, to find your profiles and networks that you have left profiles, feedback, and articles on throughout the Internet. From your blog people can download a copy of your resume, talk about your latest work, and so on. Don’t forget that you can have an easier to remember URL to get to your blog than your profile on any service or social network.
Overall, the advantages of having a blog that you can interact with others is a statement about you. You took the initiative, you are reaching out, you are placing your ideas in a public forum, you are inviting feedback. Don’t get me wrong; in phrasing it that way it sounds like The Great You Show – but it doesn’t have to be. It’s up to you to be able to show it’s really about conversations.
On your blog, and through your interests and reading habits, you will find other bloggers in the same genre and begin to share links and comments with. This is one of the best ways to grow your network. No, it’s not like getting 250 ‘friends’ on Facebook in a weekend, but that’s because it’s more valuable. Having two or three blogging friends is more valuable and powerful than large numbers elsewhere. Your interaction in the blogosphere with others is what builds that value. It’s more than any number can represent because it’s real exchange of ideas, real interaction. And that my friend is social networking.
So what else am I missing? What else helps make your blog your entry point to social networking?
It’s time. No, not what you think – I have the time available to do what I need to do, it’s just application of that time to the discipline of writing. I’m absorbing a *lot* of information lately, but have not made myself sit and write a list of topics, or to take those topics and flesh them out.
I was brainstorming last night on some Happiness posts and realized that when I simply sat down and did it that I could pound out about a dozen without thinking much about it. As usual, this was another DOH! moment where I got to re-learn a lesson that I’d forgotten. Typical. One of these days I’m going to learn it for good.
So today is a discipline day – I’ve got an afternoon meeting and will spend this morning working on more idea generation (continued from last night) and to get a start on some content generation. Just simply going to sit down, probably at Dunn Bros. Coffee this morning and write without worrying about what it looks like. Kind of a brute force approach, but that has worked for me in the past.
Ok, I’ve been using WLW for over a year now and really enjoy the tool. However, there are a few nit-picking things that I have to be fixed in the darn thing along with some ideas that would benefit the product.
In the last two beta releases, they have improved the product substantially (download beta 3 here) with many visual and feature enhancements. My current favorite update was the ability to (finally!) schedule posting to my hosted WordPress blogs.
Complete Blog Integration – I happen to be a WordPress (hosted on my domain – not wordpress.com) user and expect that all the features will work with it. Others use TypePad, Blogger, and others. Integrate the product work the same with all these blogging platforms as well as it does with Live Spaces.
CSS Classes – I wish that the editor would parse the CSS from a selected blog and allow the user to use the CSS Classes to be applied to text/items in the post creation area. For example, I have a uniquely formatted class called “tags” for each of my blogs, and it formats my “Technorati Tags” with a right-justified arrangement with a border and background combo for each blog. Same type of class formatting for my abbreviations.
Tag Info – Wish that the tags for the post itself (again the Technorati tags) could be fed to the blog as entries to the “tags” field in the database. This way, the tagging information can be appended to the post by the blogging software with my formatting, and without putting too much space and visual clutter into each post.
Custom Tagging Tool – The ability to insert tags and have them pre-formatted with the proper URL each time is great. Here’s what would make it better. Allow me to completely write the HTML code for the tool – you’re close now, just get rid of any WLW specific HTML.
True XHTML – This is one of the big ones. GET RID OF ANY CUSTOM “WINDOWS LIVE WRITER” HTML OR “WINDOWS LIVE” SPECIFIC HTML. The output of this editor MUST be pure XHTML to be truly cross platform usable. Luckily I’ve figured out how to work around this every time there is a new update to the editor, but others may not be able to do these workarounds. Simply, if a blog that the bloggers is publishing to is not Windows Live Spaces, then the custom HTML used by WLW should be disabled and the blog theme and CSS should be followed by WLW.
Well, that’s a handful of suggestions that need to be worked into the final release of Windows Live Writer. Didn’t plan on it being exactly five, but that’s how it works sometimes. Come on WLW team, let’s get this stuff right, you’re so close to matching my expectations, it’s not too hard to finish it properly.
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