I only recognise perhaps a quarter of these, but some date back to the late 90s (like the Star Wars kid and Hamster Dance). Oh, those were the days! See how many you remember: more than half and you really need to get out more, or else increase your monthly bandwidth allocation. And they didn’t [...]
{ 0 comments }
My NZ colleague and all-round good guy Simon Young was delighted when I recently posted about ‘Gen C’. It turns out that Simon is involved with Looksy.org, an idea portal for all things Gen C. Wandering through their blog, as one is apt to do, I stumbled across a few juicy quotes: “The typical kid [...]
{ 0 comments }
Hurry! There’s only 3 weeks until the first Social Media Workshop for Communicators and there are limited places available on each course. Social Media Workshop for Communicators With me, Lee Hopkins, online & social media communication strategist. 16th & 17th October 2007, Melbourne Marriott Hotel (with the AFL Grand Final being a foregone conclusion, I [...]
{ 0 comments }
and in just under 5 minutes. Digital Ethnography has never been so beautifully explained. Hat tip to the creator, Mike Wesch from Kansas State University. Technorati Tags: digital ethnography, web2.0, mike wesch, culture, digital, video, virtuality Tweet
{ 3 comments }
Alex Manchester from Melcrum has very kindly posted commentary and a YouTube video about my half-day workshop on Social Media and Employee Engagement from last week’s seminar. Here’s the video: (watch out for the flamin’ good ending) Thanks, Alex — you’re too kind! p.s. the “employees are almost like humans” is sarcasm, a joke! Technorati [...]
{ 5 comments }
G osh! I’ve been contacted by Chris Abraham and have been nominated for the Bloggers’ Choice Awards in the Best Video Category. Since my competition includes folks like ZeFrank and the Ninja, I don’t seriously rate my chances, but it was nice to be ‘found’ and included… Technorati tags: chris abraham, bloggers choice awards, ze [...]
{ 4 comments }
And in today’s energy-packed episode I rant about Adobe not selling VlogIt! in Australia; Nel and Sheville’s new book ‘How To Do Everything With Podcasting’ and the major cause of concern that I have with it; answer Sallie Goetsch’s question about “why vlog?” (Happy Birthday, Sallie!); and ask why Debbie Weil seems to have made such a [...]
{ 12 comments }
In today’s vidcast I wax lyrical about Facebook and blog clutter. Did you know that you can subscribe to receive notice of when my vidcasts are posted on YouTube? Visit my YouTube page to find out how… If you receive my updates via email, you can watch this edition of Better Communication Results the vidcast [...]
{ 8 comments }
And in a packed video podcast, you will find out: That Vidcaster doesn’t get a “two thumbs waaaaay up!” from me That Dave has written a brilliant ’25 Steps to get your life back on track’ post, but blimmin’ Typepad doesn’t allow you to print it (Grrrrr!) That airport infrared cameras can capture the sights, [...]
{ 6 comments }
The video says it all. Courtesy of CrunchNotes: “Whatever company this is, they should use this as one of their primary recruiting tools. Well done. As soon as you get to about 0:53, you know it’s going to be good.” Where do I sign up to join? Oh, I DO miss working in web companies… [...]
{ 0 comments }
Subscribe to my business communication newsletter and receive a FREE version of my highly-regarded report, 'Master the Art and Science of Twitter for Business' (that sells for $79)
Statistics for this site are courtesy of StatCounter.com
Last month:
Visitors : 8,788
Daily av. : 283
Statistics for my site with
200+ articles on business communication
Last month:
Visitors : 14,999
Daily av. : 484
I recently picked up a copy of Bob Bly’s excellent ‘Super Productivity for Writers’ e-book and wanted to share with you some of his gems.
Here’s his seven common time wasters that he says writers (and I say everybody) should avoid:
1. Excessive blogging (more than 10 minutes per day) – unless that’s your job, of course!
2. Random web surfing (continuing to surf after you’ve found the information you need)
3. Attending meetings of writers groups, marketing clubs, etc. You can learn and network, but you lose half a day
4. Social or business lunches with other writers, editors, publishers, clients. A waste of time and you can lose nearly half a day
5. Volunteering for committees and similar activities. Every hour you spend on administrative nonsense is an hour you don’t write
6 .Sending or receiving jokes, photos, videos and other junk content via email (or my pet hate – Facebook requests to add time-sucking applications or join groups of no interest to me). Stop wasting other people’s time and yours
7 .Letting a ringing phone interrupt your writing. Get caller ID and call them back when you have finished (or better yet, set the phone’s ringing tone volume to ‘silent’ and get an answer machine to take the call for you)
Even though Bob is focusing his material on writers, of which he is a superb one, the advice found on page 22 of his book applies to all of us methinks.
As he points out on page 21, with an average lifespan of seventy- five years, we have only 27,375 days from the time we are born until the time we die. And since we’re asleep for a third of that time, we have only 18,250 days we’re actually awake and active.
How you spend this finite amount of time is mostly up to you. To maximise your productivity, income and output as a writer, writing must be a priority.
If you prefer to garden, that’s perfectly fine; but don’t complain that your colleague who spends those hours in front of the pc is getting more work done than you are. It’s your choice.
Wise words, indeed. Get a copy of this brilliant book and be careful out there…
I love Bob’s material – as I write I have 26 of his publications, each a worthy addition to my knowledge library.
Bob Bly is the man McGraw-Hill calls 'America's top copywriter.' Bob has written copy for more than 100 companies including Boardroom, Phillips, IBM, Medical Economics, AlliedSignal, and Lucent Technologies. He is the author of more than 60 books and a columnist for DM News and Early to Rise.
Making Social Media Work for Your Business - just published!
Social Media: The New Communication Landscape - for Ark Group
How to get started with podcasting in your organisation - for Melcrum Publishing
Contributing author to:
How to use social media to solve critical internal communication issues
How to communicate with hard-to-reach employees
- for Melcrum Publishing
How to use social media to engage employees - for Melcrum Publishing
These links open in new browser window
Tactical Transparency by Shel Holtz and John Havens.
A belter of a book and a 'must read' addition to any communicator's bedside reading table if they are serious about introducing social media into their communication plans. It includes a fabulous chapter on transparency and business (hint: you want to photocopy it and give it to your CEO!)
Qualitative Communication Research Methods by Thomas Lindlof and Bryan Taylor.
Not just a book for academics, it's chock-full of great ideas on how to effectively and efficiently research your employees, customers, the marketplace and other stakeholders
The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein.
A fabulous book that gives a clear, clean overview of what Twitter is and WHY you should be engaging with it. THEN it goes into depth with so many tips and ideas that they should have sold the book for twice the price!
Practical SEO Copywriting: a ‘must get’ book. My mate Glenn Murray has written a bottler of a new book on search engines and copywriting.
In a cunning twist of bizarre nomenclature, he’s titled it Practical SEO Copywriting. The cheeky little fox! It’s a DIY guide to writing online copy for both human readers AND for that 400kg gorilla we lovingly call ‘Google’.
The danger, Glenn quite rightly …err …writes is that focusing too much attention on all of the supposed SEO ‘tricks of the trade’ will make your copy all but unreadable by the human brain. You know, all that stuff bandied about by the so-called SEO (search engine optimisation) experts: keyword frequency, exact string versus individual words scattered across the page, page length, alt tags, header tags, and so on.
Not that this stuff isn’t important – it all is, and more besides – but Glenn argues persuasively that by far more important is the ability to write copy that people will actually want to read – and link to!
