This is a photo of my lap during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Global Tech Summit.
Quick photos and some tweets went up on my Android smartphone, plus special check-ins to each session on Gowalla.
Other tweets and watching the conference hashtag happened on the TweetDeck dashboard on my Dell laptop. Most Facebook business page updates for Tourism Currents or Freelance Austin came from the laptop as well.
Great quotes and insights from speakers were often captured via pen and notebook (yes, it’s true, but they always boot up) to become Facebook or LinkedIn status updates or blog posts days, weeks or months later.
Online publishing is best served by whichever tools work for you, and don’t be surprised when one size does not fit all.
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Getting a bit tired of people offering to buy you coffee and “pick your brain?”
I have to tell you, this sort of request was a lot less bothersome when I had a salaried position than it is now, when I’m an entrepreneur and a freelance writer/speaker/consultant, and my time is quite literally how I make a living.
Sure, some people don’t mean anything by it, some have read networking advice that says I’ll be flattered to be asked, and others really ARE moochers.
How can you tell the difference, and how can you turn those people who are fishing for information into possible paying customers of your work?
I have some answers for you.
There’s a live webinar on the topic coming up tomorrow (April 26, 3 pm CST) with me and my Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray, plus we’re including a toolkit with a workbook and role-playing audio, all in a package we’re calling How To Draw the Line Between Free and Paid.
The live version of our webinar will only be offered this one time; anyone who signs up after Tuesday will have to settle for the recording. During the webinar, we’re going to add some valuable tips:
The advantages (yes, there are a few) and disadvantages of sometimes working for no pay.
How to tell the difference between predatory brain-picking and friendly questioning.
Why social media tends to cause us to be overly casual about the value of our work.
Nope, it’s not free; it’s $37. We’re charging because we want you to take it seriously, and actually do the work required to set up a system to change brain-pickers into customers.
Plus, we’ve gotta stand by our own words, and no, you may not pick our brains for free!
We promise, though, that it will be worth every penny.
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We tell tourism clients all the time that they need to occasionally go where the geeks are to really stay up to speed on social media tools and culture.
One of the conferences that we recommend attending at least once is the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference held every March in Austin, Texas. In 2010 it outsold the SXSW Music festival (generally much better known) for the first time.
With all of the hype and hoopla and buzz about social media influencer outreach, it’s inevitable that some stupidity will ensue.
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This week we are mailing out our first family holiday letter in ages.
I used to do this every single year. I won’t say like clockwork, because when I got around to sending them was pretty loose. One year when I was in Japan on Navy shipboard duty, I think I finally launched the last batch sometime in early February, prompting one recipient to write back, “What is this – some strange Asian custom?”
Even if I didn’t hear back from people, I sent them anyway, because it was very important to me to keep connecting and I knew they were probably getting them, which was enough. One year, I lost track of a high school friend, so I found and called his Mom to get his address. I was relentless.
Then, life and email and Facebook and blogging happened and it was all too much. Even when my husband would present me with a good draft each year, I just couldn’t get it together. I like to send a photo and that also became a hassle to get one to my admittedly ridiculous standards, with all of us in it and with all of our eyes open.
But, something was missing by not sending a hard copy greeting every year. I live with Web ephemera every day – it’s my living and I love it – but it can disappear and be forgotten. You have to boot it up to look at it.
This year, we gaggled together for family portraits by the wonderful Austin photographer Korey Howell, I grabbed my husband’s letter draft and actually did something with it, and once we overcame an initially screwed-up printing run – hey, your printer rollers leave lines, Mr. Office Supply Megachain – it felt wonderful to put stamps on those upper right envelope corners.
Out the door they went to the mailbox up the street….the first 14. We usually send around 50, so I have a lot more work to do, but I’m enjoying it and I promise to get it all finished well before February.
I’ll still see those friends on Facebook and elsewhere online, but it feels good to be a correspondence switch-hitter.
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Whether it’s piles of clutter in your house, hundreds of unread emails, stacks of paper, folders of photos to edit or WHATEVER….
….the techniques for getting them under control are very similar to classic military counterinsurgency strategies of Clear – Hold – Build (some would add Sustain) plus a little inkblot spreading.
Find one part of the pile, no matter how small, and clear it.
Put practices in place to keep it sorted and clear (hold.)
Spread and grow the little “inkblots of order” until they connect, and you’ll have a tidy part of the desk or section of the room.
Build habits and create techniques that bring tidiness and order into your routine, and sustain them.
Move onto the next messy pile/room/email account and clear – hold – build – sustain. It’s even a tactic for downtown development.
To make it work, you need systems to sort incoming stuff, you must set aside administrative time to do the clearing and then have the self-discipline to hold onto your newfound orderliness.
One of my favorite references for organizational strategies is Julie Morgenstern – her blog features a recent post by a military woman in Iraq dealing with time management.
It takes planning to make even simple things go smoothly (or as I found while in the Navy, it also helps to marry a fabulous guy who shares the load.)
How do you attack clutter in your life, both digital and physical?
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How would your 25-year-old self react if he or she heard you say, ”I’m too old to figure out all of this technology and social media stuff?”
Think about the words that might be used.
“Age has nothing to do with it.”
“You’re smart; what’s the problem?”
“You only need to be willing to learn and try.”
“If you can’t see the little smartphone screen, then put on some of those reading glasses you guys use.”
“But you love to write….tell stories….talk on the phone….see a good movie or TV show….meet people….share photos…. Is this so different?”
“Has this really happened to you? Why?”
Why, indeed.
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One of the takeaway points at my SoMeT blogging/content presentation was to spend more time focusing on the small details of your destination. Look at the world through a mental soda straw to shed light on the unique and interesting, rather than only writing list posts (“Top 10 Beaches” blah blah) or broad overviews.
This photo is to illustrate the concept.
It was taken with a Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera, but using the Macro (close-up) mode, which can do some really fun stuff for you.
Those are made by sticking a nail through the thin metal to make decorative patterns that also provide ventilation for the pies stored on shelves within.
Can you now imagine someone laboriously doing that by hand a long time ago….poke-poke-poke, but always with design in mind, like the paisley swirl detail seen in the photo? It brings joy to an everyday piece of furniture while also serving a purpose.
Takeaway from this: Soda straw. Get super-close. Use your camera’s Macro setting. Find those little miniature landscapes that tell a story.
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As both a speaker and enthusiastic attendee at lots of conferences, I’m getting tired of the squawking I sometimes hear about people “not paying attention because they’re tweeting.” Speaker Tom Martin has some good thoughts about it in his post Don’t Tweet Me Man.
Look, I take notes on paper AND tweet. If I can pop up a Facebook post with something great you’ve said, I’ll work that in, too.
If I’m on my smartphone and nothing else during a presentation, I do find that I’m on Twitter less only because it’s so much easier to tweet from a proper keyboard on a netbook or laptop. I’m a fast typist and can keep up with the flow pretty well, but not on a smartphone keyboard.
If I can’t tweet at all (like at the Audience Conference or many TEDs) I’m still head-down and scribbling, but my paper notes become Twitter nuggets and Facebook posts later. Bottom line is, I’m getting it online no matter what.
I’m 49 years old, so please don’t lecture me about how to absorb what a speaker presents. I’ve been at it for a few decades, before presenters got the PowerPoint crutch and ever since summer debate camp in 1970′s high school, where we had to furiously take notes about the upcoming year’s topic, to four years in an honors liberal arts program (ever taken notes in a year-long, info-packed Philosophy class, or the “History of India from 1750?”) to earning my Master’s degree.
I know from note-taking.
The only difference now is that some of my notes are tweets….and speakers, I like broadcasting your wise words to the planet.
As a speaker myself, I’m FINE with it. As an attendee, that’s what I’m going to do.
You’ll be happy to know that my tech-savvy teacher husband totally disagrees with me. Twenty-plus years of wedded bliss, so I guess that isn’t a deal-breaker.
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I’ve been an AWC member since 2006 (my journalist Mom is an Member Emeritus, ever since it was an honors journalism sorority in the 1950′s) and it is chock-full of a lot of very networked communicators, many of whom are involved in some aspect of tourism or hospitality.
One benefit of our sponsorship is the chance to provide “collateral” – some swag, a printed handout or something – to be distributed to conference attendees.
Now, I was as clueless about this as I was about how to run a trade show booth on a budget, but after some thought I realized that no one wants yet another brochure or piece of paper with pretty pictures. They want useful information.
So, I rejiggered a simple Word document handout that I’d done for the Texas Travel Summit on social media resources for CVBs to attract conferences, and made it a more general “Tourism Currents favorite resources and tips for social networking.”
Why are videos and images important? Because they are great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) if fully titled, tagged and described. There is less competition for them than for text in universal search.
None of these are blinding revelations, but if every person who gets one of our handouts learns some tidbit they didn’t already know, then we’ve succeeded in not killing trees simply to get our name out there. If they contact us for more training….well, so much the better!
Tourism Currents logo, URL, Twitter names and email address at top, helpful info, all on one page – BOOM. We’re done.
What sort of ideas do you have for printed collateral that best benefits your event sponsorship? I’d love to hear from you down in the comments.
To create and publish great content (blog posts, Facebook Page Wall notes, videos, tweets) you need….
1) Lots of good ideas about something that interests you, a way to record those ideas and time to do so
2) An editorial calendar to coherently organize and schedule the ideas – expanded into content – for publication, and time to think about and work on the calendar
3) Structured blocks of time to create all of the great content that you’ve thought of, then organized and scheduled
Three simple things, and time ties them all together.
Number One is doing fine for me; I have a whole notebook of blog post ideas that I carry around, and I keep notecards by the bed in case of late-night rockets of brilliance to the brain. Read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life for more insights into organizing your ideas.
I used to be pretty good with Number Two, then fell off of the planning wagon, got tired of pulling content out of my left ear at the last minute, and stumbled wearily back to the calendar. The key is to schedule time to think through and craft the calendar, organize the content ideas and fit it all into your workflow. Go read Becky McCray’s post on the six most important things; it will help.
I am not doing so well at Number Three.
My basic schedule for keeping up with 3 blogs means a post for one of them each day, Monday through Friday (this blog is scheduled for every Tuesday and Friday. Ain’t happening, is it?)
This means I need a more functional schedule. It also means I am considering dropping one of the blogs for which I’ve run out of creative energy. In my Navy shipboard engineering days, the electricians called that “load-shedding”….dropping noncritical items off of the power grid to ensure power to vital systems and equipment.
It does not mean I need to “make time.”
You can’t “make time.” That goose is already cooked. No one gets extra helpings of time or special favors from the Wizard of Time.
This is a photo of my lap during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Global Tech Summit.
