Trying to follow Chris Brogan’s advice to Grow Bigger Ears and engage with people and all that, I have a series of Google Alerts set up so on keywords that interest me. So I followed one of them to a post about self-publishing by a writer on Live Journal. I felt I had something to contribute, so I wrote a comment.

That’s when life started sucking for me. There are only three options for identifying yourself as a commenter:

• Anonymous
• Open ID
• Live Journal User (Become a member!)

I hate being anonymous- might as well not post. Open ID…. well, apparently I’m not a geek, since I don’t know how that works or whether I have it (going to the Open ID website DID NOT clear things up). Only option left was “Become a member!”

I should have stopped at this point, but I had already invested some time and thought into my comment. So I forged ahead. I clicked on the link. Filled out TWO PAGES of forms (they apparently want to know what kind of music I listen to). When that was over, I was not returned to my comment- the login process deadended. I had to use the back button on my browser to find my comment. Which I submitted, finally.

Except, wait, no- I haven’t verified my email account yet, so I can’t publish my comment. So I go back over to my email, click on the verification link. The page loads slowly. Why so slowly? OH! You want me to watch a video ad for Best Buy? Classy. And I can’t X out of it for 3…2…1 I CLOSE YOU NOW!

I finally am able to post my comment. I’m so proud of myself, I could just spit.

If you are a blogger, writer, marketer, company, etc:
Do NOT put your primary presence somewhere it is hard to get to. LiveJournal, and places like it, are supposed to be obsolete in 2009. Why do you think they shut down GeoCities? No one wants to look at poorly designed websites cluttered with ads. And no one wants to go through hell just to post a comment. I would have abandoned ship early on, but I decided to see how far this would go (so I could write a blog post about it). Most of your visitors do not have my motivation.

If you are building a community, platform, service, etc:
Remove friction. Do not annoy me. Interruptive ads are not the best way to monetize.

If you are an advertiser:
NO ONE likes pop up ads. No one likes noise to suddenly start blasting out of their speakers. Stop it. Please stop it.

Seth is a true Thought Leader- of all the people with that label, Seth lives up to it and embodies it more than anyone I can think of.

His posts are usually pretty good, but then- every now and then- he writes something really fantastic. I always prefer practical articles (here’s how) over theoretical articles (“Engage in the conversation!”), and today’s is perfect, especially for the kinds of clients I find myself working with.

Topic: How to start.

What if your organization or your client has done nothing?

What if they’ve just watched the last fourteen years go by? No real website, no social media, no permission assets. What if now they’re ready and they ask your advice? And, by the way, they have no real cash to spend…

That describes 90% of small businesses, I think. His advice- move forward. Don’t talk too much, don’t plan too much- just start doing stuff. (Good business advice always, I think). I won’t summarize the whole article- go read it yourself.

Thank goodness.

This post is part of the Brogan 100.
Learn more here and here.

• Blog regularly
• Read a lot of blogs (using Google reader)

Things I need to change/adjust/improve on:

• Twitter – I tweet very sporadically
• LinkedIn – I do not use LinkedIn effectively at all
• Podcasting – Right now I don’t
• Video – Don’t do this either
• I don’t seek out new sources through Google Alerts or Blog Search
• I only comment on other blogs sporadically (although I’ve been doing better recently)
• I don’t really get enthusiastic about every new tool – I am not an “early adopter”

I’m sure there are other things I’m either forgetting right now, or am simply unaware of.

I would really appreciate comments, tweets, emails, or links that might suggest ways to improve, especially concerning how to work some of these items into a work flow efficiently.

This post is part of the Brogan 100.
Learn more here and here.

I do not care that you…

• are looking for the cigar.
• need to build an army.
• became a green-belt.
• earned your fairy-wings.
• bought a tractor.
• found the morning-star.
• want me to join your posse.

No one else does either.

At #microsoft #cambridge for #wordpress #meetup. Speaker riffing on #Thesis. Any questions?

And then, about thirty seconds later, I get RTed by The Real Microsoft!

Okay, okay- I know the “Real Microsoft” isn’t the Real Microsoft. At least I hope not, because that Twitter background is horrible. But they do have over 1000 followers, which is 1000 people who would never have heard my name otherwise.

Clearly, the secret to this tiny, twit-sized success is to use hash-tags that might be found by people who are not following you already.

I know I’ll be hashing up a storm now.

You should try it too, and let me know how it goes. You can either comment here, or find me on Twitter.

Well… Maybe.

The thing is, you do have to do all that if you want to become a Thought Leader… in the field of New Media, Social Media, and Thought Leadership. If you want bloggers to see you as the world’s greatest blogger, there is a never ending arms race to have the coolest new technology, the greatest new Socially-integrated, semantic high-definition 3G cheese slicer.

But you just want to be a Thought Leader for Estate Planning or payroll processing. You just want more people to donate to your community theatre. You just want to sell more red flip-flops.

For you, most of those things are not essentials, just possibilities. Good ideas, maybe. Additional tools.

What does it really take to become a Thought Leader? What are the small set of things that are required?
Here’s my list.

Innovation

The bedrock of Thought Leadership is innovation. That doesn’t have to mean crazy-new technology. It might mean that, but it also might mean a new way of doing an old thing, or a new way of thinking about things, or even just a unique point of view.

If you’re not different- unique, interesting, innovative, creative- in some way, then it’s remarkably unlikely that anyone will ever care about your Social Media strategy. They won’t remember you after networking events. They won’t bother to come to your seminars or read your books. Why would they?

Without innovation, everything else stops being “Thought Leadership Activity” and becomes “New-Fangled Advertising and Time-Waste.”

Content-Rich Website

Until the world changes again (it will, but it hasn’t yet), a website that is full of interesting and useful content is the cornerstone of Thought Leadership. When someone hears your name, meets you at an event, or gets one of your newsletters, the first thing they’ll do (if they care) is Google you.

As great as a LinkedIn profile is, what they really want to find is your website. And when they get to it, they will make all sorts of judgements about you. Based on the way your site looks, the way it navigates, and depth of its resources, people will decide how good you are, how interesting, and how valuable. They will know (or think they know) if you are a start-up or an established business. They will know (or think they know) how much you know about your industry. How big your firm is. How profitable you are. Whether you’re a legitimate business or some goofy MLM scam. What kind of culture your company has. What kind of clients you service. Whether you are honest or not. Whether you are cool or not.

Blog

A blog (like the one you are reading) is something like an online journal and something like a personal Op-Ed collumn. They can be part of your overall firm website, or they can be separately hosted and separately branded. It’s a place where you can, on a regular basis, write about your thoughts and opinions relating to your field or industry. You can comment on current events and trends, you can announce company news or promotions, and you can advance your philosophies.

Blogs are essential for at least three reasons. The first is that they provide a regular way for people to connect with you and your ideas. The second is that the constant addition of content provided by blog writing is highly valued by Google. The third is simply that it is expected.

Robust Social Media Presence

No, you don’t have to live tweet while you stand in line at the grocery store. Nor do you need to post on everybody’s wall or follow everyone’s feeds. But you do need a presence. If someone wants to link to you, they should be able to find you. If they want to follow you on Twitter, they should have the option.

You can’t do everything, and it is very easy to lose yourself to the time-sink of Social Media (especially if you can convince yourself that it is “business”). But people expect to be able to find you on at least the most popular networks. If they can’t, they’ll just move on to the next hopeful.

E-Books and White Papers

These are just PDF files (usually), which address particular issues within your field in a more in depth way than a blog post or online article could. Typically, White Papers are shorter (5-15 pages) than E-Books (25-100) and more technical as well.

White Papers and E-Books give visitors to your site an opportunity to see the depth of your knowledge on particular topics, while getting some informatiion they can actually use. Even better, If your E-books or White Papers are useful and valuable, your readers will forward copies to their friends and colleagues, advertising on your behalf.

Print Books

Nothing says “expert” more than having published a book.

It is now possible to write, edit, design, publish, distribute, and profit from the sale of books, without a publishing company or an agent. Will you be a New York Times Bestseller? Probably not (although, probably not anyway), but that isn’t the goal, really. The goal is to position yourself as an expert, as a Thought Leader, and bring in additional sales to for your primary business. It may turn out that you make additional money from the sale of the print book. That’s just a (welcome) bonus.

Real World Networking

So much of Thought Leadership is tied to relationships. You’re trying to create a network (or a community, or a tribe) of people who think of you when they hear a reference to your industry. People who provide you with new business, but more than that- people who provide you with new ideas, information, resources, friendship, and joy. (It isn’t all abot money, you know).

While it’s possible to develop connections like that solely online and through media, it is so much easier if you just spend time with people. So go. Go to networking events, to conferences, to seminars, to workshops. If there are more than five people in a room, and one of them might be a potential client, you should be there.

Public Speaking

After print books, the most powerful Thought Leadership tool is Public Speaking. That could mean running your own seminars and workshops, or it could mean speaking and giving presentations at other events. When you stand in front of a group of people, and all the attention (or most of it, anyway) is focused on you, people assume you must know what you’re talking about. If it turns out that you do know what you’re talking about, and that you’re able to provide valuable, useful information, your audience will remember. They will tell their friends, they will seek you out for additional information- they will buy from you.

Visual Branding

A fresh, impactful logo.
A consistent color scheme and style.
Attractive fonts, perfect kerning, and a vivid margin.

In order to become a Thought Leader, you need people to engage with you and with your ideas. Your ideas will mostly be words, so you need people to take the time to read your words. Before anyone bothers to read, they will see the logo, or the cover design, or the splash page. They need to be compelled to read what you have to say. And once you have them reading, your branded design needs to make it easy for them to keep reading or to engage further with your material.

Sloppy branding turns people away. Inconsistent branding confuses people, which eventually turns them away. Branding that doesn’t quite match your culture, your personality, or your product inevitably attracts the wrong clients, who will be disappointed when they don’t get what they were expecting.

If you go crazy, trying to jump from one essential element to another, you’ll waste vast amounts of time and money. You’ll become frustrated and eventually give up.

But if you think strategically about how to combine the nine elements into a plan that makes sense for your business and your budget of time and money, you can build a following, become an expert, and create Thought Leadership.

And make a lot of money.

This post is adapted from a chapter in my soon-to-be-available book, DIY Thought Leadership.
The book will break down each one of those Essential Elements and show you how to do each one by yourself and on a budget.
If you’d like to know when the book is available,
Subscribe to This Blog OR Follow me on Twitter

What do you think? Too many essentials? Too few? What are you doing to create Thought Leadership?

So, you start with a Google search about blogs, blogging, social media, and all the rest. You start to read a few blogs. You read blogs about blogging. People twittering about twitter. People whose entire Social Media presence is devoted to talking about their own Social Media presence. These are meta-bloggers. And then other people are blogging about them- meta-meta. And then there are all these people selling programs designed to help you sell programs about selling programs to help people blog about selling. (Meta-meta-meta… wait… isn’t that a pyramid scheme?)

These are the kind of people you encounter first, because they have the best SEO for all the keywords you might type in when looking about information on blogs and blogging and Social Media.

And, if you listen to these people at all, you’ll find out something: you are way behind.
Blogging is dead. Myspace is dead. Even Ebay is dead. Nobody is using Internet Explorer. Nobody reads books anymore. Everybody is on twitter. Everybody has an iPhone. No, wait- you should be lifestreaming. No, wait- you’ll be left behind if you don’t implant a chip directly into your brain that syndicates your sensory inputs, thoughts, sexual arousal state, and bladder/bowel contents to a  feeder running on Web 3.7 technology.

Hmm…

And all you wanted to do was blog about flower arrangements or tax prep services.

The problem is- all the “experts” are fickle, early adopter types. And so are all their friends. And all their media sources. They buy and sell information about technology- so they have to continually be at the screaming edge of everything in order to have a competitive edge. They don’t really care, or know, about using social media to sell flower arrangements to your neighborhood or tax prep to local small businesses. They think- they really honestly think- that every single one of your potential customers behaves and thinks like they do, and so you should pitch all of your effort at the people who think that carrying a laptop on a business trip is old-fashioned.

But your business might not be like that. Sure, it might- if you are trying to sell smart-phones to 20-somethings, or music to teenagers, or web-apps to the technoratti. If you’re in a forward-looking field, or selling to a wealthy, forward looking market- then, yes, implant the chip and start streaming your bladder contents all over everybody.

For the rest of you- the flower arranger, the tax preparer, the Estate Planning attorney:
Blogging is not dead. Neither are newspaper ads, for that matter.
And Social Media is a fantastic platform… in combination with other marketing efforts… as part of a holistic strategy… that makes sense for your business.

In the course of our conversation, my friend said he just doesn’t feel like the changes that are happening now are as big a deal as all that, that this isn’t as life-altering as, say, the industrial revolution.

That’s when I realized something…

• Most people didn’t make it out west.
• Most of the world’s population didn’t live in the colonies during the Revolutionary War, AND
  • The revolution didn’t significantly change the lives of any black slave in the colonies.
  • The revolution didn’t significantly change the lives of most white colonists as it was happening
• After the industrial revolution, there were still farmers, herders, hunter gatherers.

A few interesting points from the site Interent World Stats:

• Only 23% of the world uses the internet
• Over half the world’s population lives in Asia. But in Asia, only 17% of people use the internet.

Yes, yes- here in North America, 74% use the interent. That leaves 26%, or 79 million people NOT using the internet.

What about Social Media…?
According to comScore, 140 Million people used Social Media in April of 2009. Alot? Yes.
Percentage of the world population? 2%

I’m also reminded of a fantastic book I read awhile ago- The Source, by James Michener. The book takes place in the Holy Land, telling the story of one plot of ground from the dawn of time until the present (1960s, when the book was written). At one point in present-time, a local expert-guide takes his American charge around and shows him people living, essentially, in various past eras, including one man living in a cave and using flint tools (Stone-age style).

Where I’m going with all of this, I guess, is…

There is no requirement that anybody be at the forefront of things. Most people, in fact, are not at the forefront of things. While some people (you?) act like the whole world will fall into a black hole if they don’t take advantage of the newest Web 3.7 technology, other people are still happy living in the stone age (literal or figurative).

I’m not suggesting that anyone abandon Social Media, or that it isn’t important (I make my living, partially, by helping people with this stuff)- I’m just suggesting some small amount of perspective. Venture out into the wild frontier because you’re excited, because you’re curious, or even because you’re bored. Go because you’re looking for a new opportunity, because you want to stake a new claim, because yo’re running away from something.
But don’t become a pilgrim just because you feel like you have to. There are still plenty of customers and friends back on the mainland.

But, for those adventurous souls- the pioneers, the outlaws, the prospectors…

“Go west, young man- and grow up with the country.”

Another friend of mine has been itching to start a restaurant for as long as I’ve known him. He says that when he was a kid, they played make-believe businesses- his was always a pancake store.

My wife was laid off of work back in January and is slowly, but surely, moving toward becoming a freelance graphic designer. She just can’t figure out a way to do the kind of work she wants to do under the employ of someone else.

I was at a networking event about two weeks ago and I met another dozen people who are in various stages of starting up a company.

At the bookstore I find that the motivation/management/business/investing section is overflowing with books about starting businesses. Meanwhile, meetup.com is flooded with groups devoted to startups, entrepreneurs, and business opportunities.

So… what’s going on? There seems to be a “perfect storm” (ugh, buzzword) of factors that all add up to this phenomenon. From what I can see, all of the following are contributors, and you can’t blame it on one in particular:

It is a crazy exciting time to be alive, to start a business, to dream big (or small) dreams about life and possibilities. But it’s also a time frought with dangers. This brave new world of ultra-light startups and independent consultants is a magnet for con-artists, pyramid schemers, fools, and plain old bad luck.

This week in the blog, I’m going to highlight some of the inherent dangers, and how to avoid them.
First up tomorrow: Is it really a business?