Sharing Resources With You

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

The Authoritative Voice

Do you blog with an authoritative or a more passive voice? By “authoritative”, I mean an expert, someone with experience. I don’t know about other bloggers, but I seem to get wrapped around the axle when it comes to authoritative voice in blogging. Maybe I’m not even on point in this post – you tell me. When a post starts drifting from my intent, it usually starts sounding “wishy-washy” and doesn’t draw conclusions as I’d like.

Depending on what you’re focus or intent is for your blog, it’s important to keep your tone consistent. If you are an authority on a topic, a knowledgeable or an experienced professional, it’s important to find the right voice to present your ideas to support your brand. Writing with too authoritative a tone without having the expertise to back it up won’t bring a positive vibe to your brand.

Because I want to share experiences, ideas, and such, I often stop writing a post when I feel like I’ve lost that authoritative voice. Usually, it’s also about the point where I’ve lost direction on what I’m trying to say. I know this happens to others as much as it happens to me, but I find it really disruptive and end up closing the work and walking away for a few hours.

Being authoritative is a double-edged sword though. As easily as you can communicate your expertise, you can also annoy or alienate some folks too. There’s a balancing act to it, one that nearly every blogger works to maintain. At least if their trying to be a contributing resource to the social web and not just blog about their family photos and latest vacation.

So how do you stack up? Are you able to present your ideas as an expert without being a know-it-all? How about me? Which way does my writing usually end up?

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