What’s keeping you from taking the next step? Something more than simply being noticed I hope! If you’ve got ideas, or something to say or to share, you need to do something about it. Do you blog? Do you podcast or video blog? Are you on a social network? How are you making yourself heard on in this brave new world online?
The biggest thing for those sitting on the fence is simply to make the decision that they want more opportunity than they may have now in their lives. One way to do that is to start participating online. That can take many forms, from simply joining a social network, or building your own personally branded blog and going to town on creating content.
Whatever you choose, you can’t go wrong if you’re interested in building your brand. Don’t wait, don’t second guess yourself. You are too valuable to the world not to share your knowledge and play your part. Now is the time.
We talk a lot about social networks and social networking these days, but it’s really nothing new. Only the tools are. People have been networking with peers for decades, much longer actually, but we’ve only really called it networking for a generation or so.
While tools like social networks, micro-blogging, or podcasting utilities, and the Internet itself bring powerful new (and fun) ways to network, it still relies on people. Without people, these tools are simply high-tech toys with little purpose.
Anyway, what I’m talking about here is your personal network of peers and associates in your industry or genre. The people that you interact with, compete with, and explore opportunities with. Your personal network is an important part of your career. I didn’t fully realize this until I left a cozy but uninspiring position a couple years ago. It wasn’t until spending a bit of time out participating, networking, and interacting with folks in and out of my field that I discovered how important a personal network is.
Interestingly, my personal network is grown from my mix of social media exploration and personal branding work. Through both interests, I’ve grown a network of friends and associates that I can share ideas with, send questions to, be a support network for peers, recommend people, help solve problems, and much more.
So, I strongly recommend paying attention to your network. The people you associate with professionally and socially have a lot to offer to you in both your personal and professional life. Not only does a person need to grow that network, but to maintain it as well. After all, as in most things, it’s the quality of the network, not the ultimate size that yields the greatest results and rewards.
Also, being a helpful resource to your network, not just a consumer of it, will bring more value to you than you can imagine. As you participate in your network – your friends and associates – make sure to help them find what they’re looking for. Help them with jobs, choosing the right iPod, finding the right hotel for vacation, answering those social network questions, or whatever else comes along. Be the resource that your network needs and your network will be there for you.
Glad you asked! I don’t know, guess it’s a lot of things. Work is one of them, and my current contract certainly eats up the business hours. Sure, the real job takes up the majority of the time in my day and week, but I’ve found more. I’m spending more time doing the things I forgot I liked to do.
And that is a key component to recharging and taking next steps I suppose. There’s lots of opportunities for people that they never seem to recognize for what they are. Until a couple years ago, I spent most of my career doing just that – not recognizing opportunity after opportunity waltzing past without my realizing it.
So far, this year has been amazing on so many fronts, that I’ve found more opportunities offline because of online efforts. These chances to do new things, combined with more time spent with my family have meant that I spend less time writing and posting on my blog here. That doesn’t mean that I’ve abandoned it by any stretch, but it does mean that I’ve not spent much time developing content and sharing ideas or new things.
I just wanted to take a minute when I seem to have a few extra and simply say “Hi!” to all the folks I don’t get a chance to chat with very often of late. I’ll be around the ‘net working on a number of different things, but hope to get a chance to sit over virtual coffee and catch up with many of you soon.
Part of what made the early and current social media crowd important to me, has been the willingness for folks to “give it awayâ€. By that I mean all the ideas, tools, and techniques that are used and talked about on the social web. This post itself is inspired by the very concept of sharing and giving ideas away as the title comes from Chris Brogan’s100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write. During one trip nearly a year ago, he gave away 100 topic ideas, offering them up for folks to expand on.
That is an example of what I mean. One guy has time on his hands and wants to share his ideas, knowing that he may not have time to write about some of the posts he’s thought of. There’s more though. The bulk of social media to date is based on giving away something. Whether it’s ideas, or stories, or comedy, or podcasts, or how-to’s, or videos, the interest in sharing in this new media venue is what makes it all so exciting. Sure, it’s going to change – you can already see that happening – but it’s the folks who’ve started it, and those that follow the same ethos that make it exciting.
As this medium evolves as a method to connect and interact with clients and customers, it will become more commercialized and controlled. At least, there will always be attempts to control it. We believe at this point that most attempts to control the social web will fail – we’ll have to wait and see if that turns out to be true.
Mostly, I enjoy the idea that through all the years, through all the social and political change, through the technological changes, that we still value social interaction as much as our grandparents. It’s the satisfaction that through the years, the desire to share tips and things we’ve learned with folks doesn’t change. That people are quite happy to share and “give it awayâ€.
I’ve been reading a lot of bloggers and fellow social media travelers lately and they’ve all had a common thread. That commonality in opinion is that there is a shift in blogging vs. social networks, and I have to agree that there is.
It appears to me that a lot of the interactivity that used to occur on blogs is moving to the major social tools (pick your favorite). As usual, there is a blogging meme to go along with that, something like blogging being ‘dead’. While I can’t speak to the realities of that & it does seem to me that many of us are spending a lot of the time we used to spend on blogging, now on the social web.
Instead of posting opinions or taking hours crafting a great informative post, we immediately share what we’re currently doing and where we’re doing it. We can do it on the fly with most phones, and since status updates are a mere sentence or so & it’s nothing to whip off a few of these messages and move on.
Does this have a negative consequence for blogging? I think not, but I’ll admit to being biased. Even so, anyone can point to my own blog and see that I’ve been lax in posting in the last couple months. Sure, it is due (in part) to the social web and all the easy-to-use tools. Sure, there are a number of known bloggers either hanging it up, or going on hiatus. However, I think that there are many times when people simply need to do something else in order to rediscover themselves. I remember Robert Scoble doing this about two years ago for a few months. Russell Beattie took a long break before coming back to the blogging sphere as well.
Neither of these guys had preconceived ideas of how long or why, but just knew they needed the change. It’s something I’ve thought about myself when I’m struggling.
I guess the point is that blogging is dead, but the realities of the social web are the same in every part of life: change is constant.
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Yup, taxes are criminal and we need serious reforms. I've always said that if you want to see a tax revolt, make withholdings illegal and have Americans write a tax check every payday. They'll revolt for sure. You don't miss what you never had.
Sen. @berniemoreno says voter ID and proof of citizenship are simply common sense.
“We’re talking about a very low threshold — identify who you are and prove you’re a U.S. citizen when you register to vote. I think we’re getting closer to
