Wanted to share this brief presentation as a superb example of how effective, simple design can be used to tell a story. In less than three minutes, the primary findings on a research study on the source of individual power are wonderfully illustrated.

Think how effective this communication method is compared to simply reading a blog article on what could have been a very dry subject.   What are your thoughts on this presentation?

Last week I attended a premiere of a wonderful film called That Evening Sun.  I live in Knoxville, TN, which is 2,191 miles from Hollywood. We don’t attract too many premiers around here. This one was special because the film was produced and filmed about 10 miles from my home and the making of it is a story that may inspire you. 

That Evening Sun was the first film by a new company, Dogwood Entertaiment, and executive producers Larsen and Adrian Jay.  Like so many triumphs, it was born of tragedy. In 2007, Larsen, a successful media executive and entrepreneur, sustained severe injuries when he fell off of a roof.  Being confined to a wheelchair gave him a lot of time to think about his life and what he was really accomplishing. “Life is too short,” he said in an interview. “I know that all too well now.” 

After multiple operations, he arose from his wheelchair with a new passion to achieve his dream of making a feature film.

Larsen and Adrian made their dream come alive with fierce determination and keen business maneuvering. They raised the necessary capital, partnered with executives in Los Angeles, and filmed a feature-length film in 22 days. Best of all, they delivered an award-winning film that has legitimized their venture and launched a bright new company. 

Larsen and Adrian inspired me to think a little bigger about my own life and career.  Heaven forbid it should take a life-altering injury to be a catalyst for change. 

What if you viewed yourself as the executive producer for YOUR dream?  Could you assemble the resources and create it in 22 days?  Could I do it?  Would I do it?   How about you?  Would it take a catastrophe to even give us the time to dream these dreams?

P.S. Click on the picture to see the movie trailer, and don’t miss a chance to see it. Hal Holbrook deserves an Oscar nomination for this!

There seems to be this new genre of media out there meant to scare the crap out of you.  The techno music starts to pulse and then these animated slides whiz these amazing facts at you like “Did you you know that the average worker now spends 26 hours a day on Facebook?”  <next slide>  “And that rate is growing at a rate of 1,120%”  <next slide>  PER MONTH??”

These ”scare slides” are meant to impress you with social media’s omnipotence and power. Through the pounding music they want you to think that change is coming at you so fast that you might as well just call it a day … unless you buy their consulting services.

I don’t know where they come up with these facts, but here’s one that caught my attention: “For a college freshman, half of what they have learned will be obsolete by their junior year.” 

While that “fact” seems improbable, it did make think about the accelerating rate of change and the impact on indivudals as we try to remain effective leaders.

A hypothesis:  Personal “technological adaptability” is going to be an increasingly important life skill.

Here’s what  I mean.  The rate of technological change is occurring so fast that an ability to quickly assess, process and deploy new apps will be a source of competitive advantage not only for companies, but for individuals.

Let’s say we had two employees, equally educated and experienced. Both are given a task. Employee One begins the task, as assigned by the boss. Employee Two first assesses free tools on the web that can sort, organize and automate that task.  Ultimately that employee will provide a better, faster and cheaper result for the company. And get a promotion!

Even two years ago this would not have been an issue. Both employees would basically have access to the same company-issued and approved technology — Excel, Access, Word, etc.  But now, for almost any work task, somewhere, there’s “an app for that.”  The ability to find and apply these free and useful ideas will become an increasingly critical skill.

So what does this mean for me and you?   How do we keep our edge at this incredible rate of change?   Where do we find the time to do explore and learn new applications?  How do companies enable this skill in employees?

This is a blog post for anybody who has trouble finding the time to blog. In other words, everybody.  I humbly submit a few practical ideas to help you become a time-efficient blogger.  

1)  Leap.I mentioned this in a recent post, but it bears repeating. The number one challenge most bloggers face isn’t time, it’s CONFIDENCE. Can we agree that you will take the leap? You will?  Good, I knew it!  You may proceed to item 2.

2)  Don’t be Chris.  Kids practicing basketball pretend they’re Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. They won’t be, but they can still have fun playing basketball.  When I first started blogging, I tried to be Chris Brogan, who writes at least one post every day. I nearly killed myself. The bionic blogger and has set the bar unbelievably high.  You can’t be Chris, but you can be YOU quite successfully.  That’s good enough.

3) Take a little bite. Take the pressure off yourself by setting a goal of writing just one 400-word essay a week.  Doesn’t that sound MUCH easier?  Bonus points: Long posts lose readers any way.

4) Set sacred blog time. How long will it take you to write that one short essay? Probably an hour?  Give yourself the gift of one quiet, undisturbed, productive hour each week to write.

5) Write lots of headlines.  It takes time to come up with ideas so write them down right when they come to you. Inspirations for blog topics are everywhere. When I see an interesting tweet or news article that could be a post subject, I go into WordPress and quickly write the headline for the essay. That way, when it comes time for my quiet hour, I have a whole list of  essay topics to choose from.   

6) Stop second-guessing.  Go back to your essay a day or so before you intend to publish it.  Proof it. Tighten it up.  And after 15 minutes, stop!  You can waste far too much time re-writing and second-guessing yourself.

7) You don’t have to be profound.  Here’s a recent post from my friend Danny Brown.  He saw something interesting — a video demo of the electronic magazine of the future. He simply pasted the YouTube link into his blog, wrote a brief comment, and voila — c’est le post.   This was a fun, interesting article.   He did good work. How long did it take him to write it?  Probably 10 minutes. 

8) Listen to yourself.  A lot of people tell me that my blog posts reflect questions and concerns they have but have never articulated. Why not?  When you have a thought, idea or rant — write it out at that very moment when it is fresh and you are full of passion. This is the most efficient way to write and it almost always results in a great post.

9) Leave the technical stuff to a technical person. Don’t spend your precious time trying to figure out why your blog widgets are haywire.  Pay an expert to figure it out, even if you like that technical stuff … especially if you like that stuff!

10) Try a video blog. I haven’t worked this area myself yet, but if you’re naturally eloquent, it might be a lot quicker for you than writing out a post. Best practice: Jason Falls.

11) Turn your comment into a post.  You probably contribute comments to other blogs. Why not re-use the time it took to write that comment? Copy your comment and use it as the seed for an original post.  Look at the comment section today. How many of these ideas could become a stand-alone article? 

12) If you run out of ideas, see number 6. Repeat as needed. Seriously though, Google “ideas for blogs.” There are lots of lists of thought-joggers out there.  If you are having trouble blogging, write about it.  Seems like that would be the best cure.

I hope that gives you a practical framework to have some blogging success, even when time is tight. What other time-saving tricks can you recommend?

Other posts that might help:

Ten ideas for the beginning blogger

Can you out-source authenticity? (Great comment section!)

Successful business blogging in just one step

Blogging is the ultimate team sport

How to be a ghost blogger

Zappos* is a successful company with a well-publicized, aggressive employee use of social media.  In fact, it may be the most famous social media model in all of blogdom. They have 13 blogs, 50,000 videos and their employees tweet like rabbits in heat.  It’s worked for them and it’s a wonderful case study. I get it.  But it’s probably the wrong model for most companies.   

And here’s the point where the waves of Zappo-sniffing social media purists come crashing down on me.  So be it.  This is dangerous stuff. 

It is relatively safe to blog and tweet about shoes.  But in many companies, the risk of an all-employee social media free love policy will far outweigh the benefits.  For many important companies all it will take is one Twitter-induced SEC violation, a leak of vital competitive information, or a national defense breach, and the hammer will come down on the use of social media forever. Policies are usually made to deal with the lowest common denominator.

Is this a leadership issue? Not necessarily. There are irresponsible people everywhere.  There are disgruntled employees even in the best-managed companies.   Where corruption can occur it will occur. Welcome to the human race.

So what’s the answer?

Under the following conditions, the Zappos model might be ideal:

• Company culture supports employee engagement
• Company leadership understands the model
• Customer base is active on the social web in a meaningful way
• Benefits outweigh risk of security breach

If just one of these conditions are not met, the free love policy cannot work. 

That’s not to say that social media won’t work in some form with almost any company if there is appropriate training, role clarity, effective policy and boundaries. But you have to fit the tactics to the strategy — and the culture — just like any initiative. 

A marketing leader has to make effective decisions based on what IS, not on what you WISH for. You can’t “will” a social media effort to work in your company just because it worked in the Zappos corporate culture.

For an excellent and thorough perspective on the need for effective and appropriate corporate social media policies, I recommend Kent Huffman’s recent post on the subject.

OK, your turn. Let ‘er rip!

*If you are unfamiliar with the Zappos social media model, Jeff Bullas has written wonderful case studies on this company:

• How Does Social Media Help Deliver On Zappos’s 10 Core Company Values

• Why Would Your Company Need 13 Blogs?

• Revelations On How An Online Retailer Went From Zero to $1.2 Billion

• 6 Ways Zappos Uses Twitter To Increase Sales

One of my pet peeves is this whole “snarky” thing. 

I often see people excuse away their unprofessional on-line behavior by saying “Well, I was just being snarky.”

Since when is it acceptable to be rude, sarcastic and dismissive to other well-meaning, professional people?   We probably wouldn’t act that way in a face-to-face interaction but somehow in the bizarro world of the social web, it’s OK as long as you call it snarky.  Inexplicably, it’s usually the more experienced bloggers who hide behind this position, and seem to be proud of it.  They wallow in their snark. 

Gratefully, {grow} has usually been a snark-free zone.  The folks in this community take accountability for their thoughts and words and don’t hide behind euphemisms.  Thank you. 

As for those who mask cynicism and cruelty behind snark, grow up.  Be accountable.  Be a leader.  Set an example.

Whew. That felt good. : )

Addendum: The day after I wrote this post, I saw this quote from American entertainer Conan O’Brien, commenting on his emotional exit from the Tonight Show: ”I hate cynicism.  It’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

Something amazing has happened.  I have nearly 8,000 Twitter followers in eight months.  How does somebody maintain a meaningful presence on Twitter with a crowd like that?  I’m a work in progress, but here’s what’s going on with me.  Maybe it will help you too!

First, after I block out the creeps, I consider it an honor to have somebody follow me.  Sure, they still might be trying to spam me, but my underlying assumption is that a new follower has genuine interest in me and I generally follow them back.  I want to treat anybody who follows me with respect. My intent is to connect with you if you sincerely want to connect with me.

The wave of noise

Obviously there is no way to have a meaningful dialogue with 8,000 — or even 1,000 — people.  It is a wave of noise.  As my followers grew, I realized that I was simply not going to be “engaged” with most of them.  

The compromise is, I try to stay engaged in a meaningful way with anybody who makes an attempt to connect with me through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or (gasp) the real world.  I manage this through Seesmic (or Tweetdeck, take your pick).  I have segregated lists of people who connect with me and I try to watch their activity and support them as much as possible.   If you make an effort to engage with me, I’ll put you on one of these lists so I can hopefully get to know you and engage. I truly want to help and support people in my audience any way I can, whether it is tweeting, reading your blog, or having a chat about a problem. 

Everybody’s equal

In my Twitter World, even though you may be one out of 8,000, everybody has an equal chance at dialogue.  I generally follow back — now it’s up to you!  I also make an attempt to engage in some way with new followers, especially if I see something in their profile that indicates a common interest. In general, if people connect to me, we stay connected.

I also maintain a Seesmic list of the folks I consider to be thought-leaders from a wide range of disciplines.  Learning from these great thinkers and having access to them is one of the best benefits of Twitter, in my opinion.

I have not used public Twitter lists for two reasons. First, I don’t see an advantage over the lists I’ve already built on Seesmic. Second, I don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. If I had a list of “B2B thought leaders” and one of my followers wasn’t on it, it could hurt their feelings.  As I said, bottom line this is about respecting people. I know there is a real person behind that little picture and you are amazing in your own way.

What’s next?

This strategy seems to be working for the time being.   Can I maintain relevance with an audience of 10,000 or 20,000?   I’m sure I’ll have to adjust and I’ll probably have a new post to write you at that point!

In the mean time, I would appreciate your feedback.  What issues do you face with your growing list of followers? What ideas do you have that can help me do a better job staying connected with you?

I wanted to write a post on the ability to “geotag” on Twitter but my friend Frank Podlaha is so much smarter than me and gratefully he contributed this guest post:

What the hell is it?

Twitter Geo-tagging is simply attaching your exact location to an individual tweet.   Not only does a tweet contain its message, it also contains the name of the person who sent it, when it was sent, etc.  That’s obvious.  Recently, Twitter has allowed additional attributes to be tacked on each tweet, specifically your latitude and longitude coordinates of the tweet’s location.

Your Earthly coordinates are your “geo-tag.”  It’s a very specific point on a map, ex: 35.9550,-83.9249 (paste that into Google Maps).  To use geo-tagging on Twitter takes a few steps.  First, the feature must be turned on for each Twitter account under the “settings” menu.  It is turned off by default.  Second, the geo-tag can only be attached to a tweet by third-party Twitter applications.  The main Twitter website does not attached a geotag.  Mobile phone applicationsare the most likely to attach geotags.  Ubertwitter is a mobile app with this feature.  And once a tweet is geo-tagged, you will need an application that can display this map point.  Tweetdeck, a popular Twitter desktop interface application, has this feature (look for the tiny yellow pushpin icon under certain tweets).

Why in the world would I want to do that?

“So let’s get this straight.  I turn on the geo-tagging feature on my Twitter account.  I’m in the coffee shop and send a tweet from my phone that I’m laughing about a girl in a purple blouse that has a long piece of toilet paper stuck to her shoe. She reads that tweet, sees the geotag for that coffee shop, figures out she’s in a purple blouse, finds me sitting in the corner, and whammo – I get hot coffee thrown at me.  What are you insane?  This is the craziest feature I ever heard of.”

Yup, that’s what it can do in all its creepiness.  But let’s stop for a second.  Twitter is a public broadcasting system, really.  And a public message is so much more relevant when you know who, what, when, AND where.  Does it help to tell your friends which restaurant you’re in (like in the game @FourSquare)?  Sure, sounds like fun.  Could a travel tweeting app help you find the next gas station with clean bathrooms?  That would be nice.  Could I brag in a tweet about robbing a bank and the police track me down?  Yes, you dumbass.

The business of geo-tagging

The business possibilities for geo-tagging go well beyond individuals spouting nonsense.  Twitter is that public messaging system, remember?  Many use Twitter for actual communications, oh my God.  There are numerous websites and applications that search specific cities to find local tweets.  These tweets are often displayed as content on their websites.  A tweet that is geo-tagged to that location will appear in that search.  In this way, tweets can be broadcasted to a small region.  Ah-hah, the light bulbs should be going off.  Take a look at the tweets from @LocalChirps with a geo-tag-ready client (like Tweetdeck).  Each message contains a different geo-tag specific to the message in the tweet.  One of these tweets may end up in a search for that specific city.  It’s like sending banner ads directly to a targeted audience.

How about a trucking company tweeting status and location of your package?  How about a restaurant giving away a free dessert for the next person who tweets from within their store?  I could go on, but Mark asked to keep this post under 600 words.   Now it’s your turn, what ideas can you think of for geo-tagging?

Frank Podlaha is a brilliant technologist, an inspirational entrepreneur and creator of LocalChirps.com

I was reading Ross Dawson’s excellent blog on media trends and was entranced with a visualization he developed (with Richard Watson) on future trends.

Along with the usual trending topics of urbanization, gentrification and a power shift to the east was “anxiety.”   Anxiety as a trend? 

This struck a chord, especially during a week where every critical technology in my life malfunctioned!  What are the ways technology is contributing to growing levels of anxiety in our culture? 

• Paralysis

Last year I was in the hunt to buy a new digital camera. On top of the millions of combinations of brands and features, there were an incredible number of purchase options.  And sorting through hundreds of consumer and web reviews –supposed to make things easier —  seemed impossible to process.  Many consumers faced with a similar amount of information simply shut down — they are afraid to make the wrong decision. Decision paralysis that comes with too much information is a real issue.

• Complexity

I just bought a new computer. It took me three weeks to move the software, settings and files from one computer to the new one. This involved multiple phone interactions with various software companies, finding licence numbers that required a magnifying glass to interpret and manipulations of servers to get all of my applications to work together again in harmony ( which has not happened).  Just setting up this basic business functionality was difficult and time-consuming.   While individual applications may make life easier in the short-term, the complexity and fragility of technology systems is making life increasingly stressful. Which also leads to …

• Impact of Gentrification

What if I did not have the underlying experience with technology to make this all work?  There are two speeding trains heading straight for each other — the increasing number of senior citizens and the increased complexity of technology. 

• Vulnerability

We are becoming increasingly vulnerable to Internet attacks as our dependence on web life-tools increases and the analog method of doing things becomes obsolete.  Don’t buy that?  Try getting by for one week without email. 

• Ubiquity

Undoubtedly the Orwellian vision of “Big Brother” is coming true. Technology companies may soon know more about us than we truly know about ourselves. What are the implications for how we live our lives when every movement, and every mistake, is recorded for posterity?

• Rate of change

Technology moves in dog years.  If you un-tether for a month, it’s like missing seven months of technological advancement.  The answer to staying on top of things?  Never un-tether.

Before you beat me up and point out all the wonderful benefits of technology (including this dialogue) I’d like to leave you with this thought.  Two hundred years ago, the pressure to keep up with technological change was not even a human consideration. Life pretty much went on as it always had,  and our mindset was that it would continue that way forever.  Mankind lived a rural life dependent on friends and family, weather and livestock … as it had for centuries.   There was no “app for that.”

Genetically, we are cut from the same cloth as our pioneering ancestors.  What are the implications for having a constant imperative in our lives to understand, assess, deploy and maintain our digital selves?

A lot of social media content elicits “rants,” “vents” and snark these days.  But today I am overwhelmed by the positive feelings flowing from the blogosphere.  Let me back up a step.

This has been a difficult couple of weeks. I have been very sick, had a string of daily technology disasters, and the perfect storm of critical customer deadlines.  By today I am exhausted.

Then this amazing thing happened.  I started getting all of these little “Follow Friday” love notes.  About every 10 minutes or so my computer would “ping” with an unsolicited little ‘atta boy. I think maybe 30 or so floated in with very touching and generous sentiments on many of them.  How did you know I needed this today?

Did you ever think we could live in a time when you could get 30 love notes from people you’ve never met? 

Even more important are the growing friendships I am developing with you. When I see your comments on my blog, tweets or Facebook posts, I get a smile on my face because I think of the special relationships I’m developing with so many people, and it has been so powerful and unexpected.

I began on Twitter eight months ago. In that time I have:

Collaborated on videos, articles and books with Rebel Brown, Ben Hanna, John Bottom, Jamie Wallace, Robin Frank, Shane Mac, Neicole Crepeau, Kimmo Linkama, Jayme Soulati, Anne Giles Clelland, Jenn Whinnem, Venessa Miemis, Nancy Scott, Rebecca Denison, Michael Winn, Jeremy Victor and Steve Farnsworth.

Started working on customer projects with Steve Dodd and Jeremy Floyd.

Donated to charitable causes with the inspiration of Danny Brown, Billy Mitchell and Kacy Maxwell.

Created a video (you’ll see it soon!) with Michelle Chmielewski.

Wrote a case study with Nathan Dube.

Provided potential new business opportunities to Trey Pennington, Nitin Gupta, Tim Knight, Stuart Mease, Lisa Foote, Michele Linn, Rebecca Renner, Christina Kerley, and Rebekkah Hilgraves.

Received new business opportunities from Nathan Egan, Lisa Worley, and Leil Lowndes.

Worked through problems on phone calls and meetings with Jason Falls, Dianna Huff, Olivier Blanchard,  Joseph Fiore, Christina Kerley, Gavin Baker, Karl Yeh, Dean Holmes, Jen McClurg-Roth, Dan Levine, Sidney Eve Matrix, Gregg Morris, Bill Sledzik, Jennifer Yeager and many others.

In less than a year, there been nearly 2,000 comments on my blog from hundreds of people.  Thank you so very much.

If you’re not on the list and we’re connected, it’s just a matter of time until we find some way to work together.  Let’s make it happen!

Thanks for making {grow} the greatest community on the social web.

P.S. I’m sorry if i missed somebody. Remind me and I’ll add you to the list!