Eighty percent of success is showing up. – Woody Allen
Seth Godin says
Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the meta-cognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself…How do you force yourself to describe, in three paragraphs, why you did something. How do you respond outloud.
If you’re good at it, some people are going to read it. If you’re not good at it, and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it…basically you’re doing it for yourself to force yourself to become part of the conversation, even if it’s just that big. And that posture change changes an enormous amount.
Now here’s what Tom Peters says about “The Brand Called You” and “Brand You Survival Kit“
What you want is a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, more provocativte projects….Think about great gigs.
I’ve got a great boss. He “get’s it,” as does his boss.
Your blog is your the answer to the question for you, Who am I? And a constant quest not only to define yourself but be defined by the public. To respond, not react, and lead the conversation by at least hosting it. It is an ongoing soul-searching conversation with the world, led by the persons or organizational self-knowledge, purpose, and openness.
For those searching for you, Who are you? They meet you somewhere…they’re interested, perhaps want to work with you…can they find you? What do they search for? What do they find? Who has defined you? Does it represent you? Make sure you do that.
Your static site is great for your product, your brochure, but the Web has progressed, people want to see what you’re doing now, your activity, your expertise. Google rewards relevance, recency, and referrals, so be relevant, be recent, and be cool so that you’ll want to share yourself and so will everyone else.
Below are my favorite stats from the video. For the original post, with references, visit http://socialnomics.net.
- By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
- Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
- 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
- Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
- 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
- 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
- % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
- The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
- 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
- The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube, now reaching a billion views a day, heading toward trillion
- There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
- 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
- Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
- 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
- 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
- People care more about how their social group ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
- 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
- In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media
- More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
- Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
- Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser
What to do.
- Start a blog. Start making a dynamic Web-presence for yourself, your organization, team, church, book group, photography, art, cause, hobby. Blogger is simple, all one page. WordPress a is powerful little CMS, easy, and user-friendly. Start telling a story. At the very least, fill our your Google profile.
- Join a network. It doesn’t matter if it’s a list-serve, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Comment on a blog you read, share your videos on YouTube or pictures on Flickr, but find your people, engage, converse, help, define a community. At the very least set up a Google alert for something and monitor it. Fill out your Google profile.
- Figure out who you are, what’s unique and valuable about you, and participate in the world by representing yourself, finding your people, contributing, sharing, and leading. This is how you get the good gigs.
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