I’ve been on a crusade of sorts lately, looking for unique voices in the blogosphere, to find more interesting and relevant content. In the process, I’ve been finding better ways to absorb the information I find.  Many of these methods are a change from how I consumed information in the past and I cover five of them here today.
First, of course, I’ve gone through and gotten rid of all the “dead” or abandoned feeds that added unneeded bulk to my daily Google Reader adventures.
Second, I’ve identified my top 10 all stars, and started visiting their blogs directly to read what they’ve written. This has been a huge improvement for me in getting their point of view on a more personal level, one of the biggest things that I felt I was missing in a feed reader. By the way, that original list of 10 has expanded to 18 blogs that I visit every day (but hey, that’s another post). Yes, it takes much more time than a reader, but these people’s work is important to me and deserves more time than a quick scan in a feed reader.
Third, I’ve started to “speed read” in Google Reader. The difference has been a boon to my information consumption because I no longer try to build each sentence from it’s component words & letters. Instead, I have been scanning each paragraph, using a visual recognition technique that constructs the concepts the writer is presenting. This has allowed me to reduce the time it takes to read the feeds in my reader and continue to add more feeds as I come across new & interesting sites.
This has not been easy, as we’re programmed at an early age to read every word, and then practice this function for decades. Of course all those years of traditional reading builds up a visual library of words & phrases that are more quickly recognized than mechanically assembling each sentence a word at a time.
Fourth, I’ve used the tagging feature in Google Reader to separate out the news feeds from the rest of the blog feeds. These news feeds I literally scan for keywords and quickly move on it they aren’t new, informative, or otherwise don’t interest me. The remaining blog feeds, I’ve also tried to tag specific to different genres like blogging, mobile technology, social media and so on. This way, I can either read the “river of news” of all my feeds from top to bottom, or just focus on a specific genre if I’m limited on time and need to prioritize my reading.
Fifth, the last thing that has been helping me is to perform a “quick glance” at the post in the feed to see if it is visually appealing before starting to scan the text. This quick glance impression of the post along with looking for the “meat” of the post in the first sentence or two quickly indicates to me if it’s worth continuing to consuming it. While this has backfired in some instances, I usually find the post again by another blog pointing to it, and I give it more attention on the second pass because of this.
So these are my latest methods and techniques to consume content faster and give me back a few precious minutes each day to use for writing, working, or relaxing. I don’t know if any of this is of value to you, but it’s how I currently handle a growing number of feeds.
Oh, and one last thing – three of my latest “top bloggers” jumped from “oh, this is an interesting blog” to my top list in less than a week – and I have my original 10 bloggers to blame thank for linking to more quality bloggers! 😉
Are you positioning yourself for growth? How much buzz surrounds your personal brand? Wonder what you could do to change that?
Well, one way to start giving people another facet of you is to leverage Social Media. Social Media is made up of many types of tools that can help you not only work to enhance your brand, but also start connecting with people in new ways.
Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves.
Social media can be more than the sum of its parts; blogs, wikis, social networks, presence applications, lifecasting and video are just tools and methods to enrich interactions with your connections. While broadcasting your every move (lifecasting) may not seem like a wise move to most of us, it’s one example of gaining exposure for your idea (i.e. justin.tv).
However, social media also includes ideas and things that have become common, even mainstream – take blogging for example. Blogs are becoming ubiquitous in communicating, sharing ideas, reporting, and personal branding. Blogs are really your own social network in their own right (but hey, that’s another post) because they allow you to do so much more.
From your personal blog, you can talk about your own ideas, topics, perspectives, and most importantly – set your own agenda. From your blog, you can launch into podcasting, video posts, host your own OpenID, host a PDF of your resume, and link to all your online resources.
Some of those resources should be a social network. For nearly any professional, a service like LinkedIn is a great place to start. Yes, it’s an online social network, but it is tailored to professionals connecting with professionals in a controlled environment. It’s really an organized, standardized way to host a copy of your resume, allow people to search resumes, gain authority (via recommendations which are like references), post & search jobs, and accept/deny invitations to “connect” with peers as you see fit.
Some more socially adept individuals will point out that LinkedIn is deficient in many interactive social aspects, such as being able to share pictures, status updates, funny icons, favorites lists (movies, music, etc), and the like. The good part is that none of this clouds the primary purpose of LinkedIn: to network with like-minded professionals.
Now for the more adventurous, there is Facebook where many professionals are starting to leverage the advanced features, using them to better understand their contacts and communicate with them around the world in real time.
Another quickly growing tool in social media is a micro-blogging/presence application such as Twitter. The speed with with you can communicate, share information, get updates, news, and the like is incredible. The important thing to remember about Twitter (and similar services) is to not judge it by it’s original purpose. The Twitter question “What are you doing?” was just a launchpad. In 140 characters or less, you can communicate a status, a thought, a question, a frustration, a plea, a thank you… Twitter is just another view of the online community that you build.
I guess the point of this is that online communities, be they blogs, social networks or IM are only as good as the effort you put into them. Just like in offline relationships, the effort to understand, learn and grow is crucial to succeeding and gaining benefit for you – and your network!
While an adventurous few of these users are willing to try these services, the majority are just awakening to online social networking and, of course, find things like Facebook to seem unprofessional. You have to admit that LinkedIn comes across as a professional-oriented service that is designed to build professional relationships between its users.
This has probably helped cultivate strong feelings about Jeff’s switch…. that and most user’s anxiety to change. Also, most people work so hard on their professional image (i.e. Personal Brand) climbing the corporate ladder, that they cringe at the thought of using something that may seem less than professional.
Of course, I think the point of Jeff’s BW article was to stir the pot. Good!
I’ve had the pleasure of working on a great new project with a number of really great people over the last month or two. The project is the new Personal Branding Magazine, in which I’ve been a contributing author, and I’d like to alert you to the premier issue which you can find here.
The magazine will be published electronically on a quarterly basis, and all proceeds go to charity – the American Cancer Society. An Annual subscription is $12.95, and advertising opportunities are available for individuals and organizations (see Personal Branding Magazine site for details).
Shel Israel makes the point that blogging is normalizing, and I think he’s right on the mark here. The discussion among several bloggers is that blogging is “cooling off”, or becoming less popular. It may be true, but Shell posits the idea that there are additional social media tools and services that people are migrating to.
The social media webscape has changed in the last two years, not so much because people are becoming less enamored of blogging, but because of additional outlets. Micro-blogging services like Twitter (and Jaiku, Pownce, and Hictu) are making huge changes in the conversation. Social networking sites like the now-booming Facebook, or LinkedIn are bringing new ways to connect, network, and share in the conversation.
He points out that we all enjoy talking about the latest thing, whether its blogging, Facebook, iPhone or Harry Potter. Its what’s new that takes up a large part of the popular conversation and media attention. Many of us still use landline telephones even though we also have mobile phones. The analog clock is still popular even though digital clocks are abundant and easier to read at a glance. We still read newspapers despite radio, television, and the Internet.
Blogging is another medium that, at this point, is maturing. It’s entering that next stage, past fad, where it grows up a bit. Starts getting more respected, more widespread. The determined professional bloggers are what will emerge in the next months and years – many have been with it since the beginning, a decade ago.
As new technologies and ideas of new ways to communicate are developed, the conversation is naturally going to jump onto these platforms. Some will thrive, others will bust, but one thing is for sure. The conversation will continue.
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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
