Getting the Word Out

(Please see also Getting the Word Out – 2 )

I’ve just published my monthly eLetter. Not a big deal; takes me about 45 minutes, because it’s largely a matter of collecting stuff that I’ve published or created over the past month.

And therein lies a problem: I write a lot and develop a lot and answer a lot of questions, but I tend to do them without any sort of framework.

So I’ve decided to formalize myself!

My goal is to “Get people to know about me, to recognize me”.

My objectives can be summarized here as “For each publishable event or trigger, emit it via Twitter, LinkedIn or my monthly eLetter”.

My Output Channels are Numerous

1. My small Emailing-list of fellow-entrepreneurs
2. My home page blog www.ChrisGreaves.com
3. My Clear Thinking blog
4. My Macros in Minutes blog
5. My Torontopreneur blog
6. My Squared Time blog
7. My vermicomposting blog
8. My Toronto Transit Omission blog
9. The itWorldCanada blog
10. My YouTube videos
11. My downloads page
12. Technical white papers in PDF format
13. My SUFE blog
14. My What’s Your Problem? blog
15. Articles mailed as flyers to my contacts list
16. The few high-level technical forums I frequent.

That’s a lot of channels, in various states of repair. There are more that have slipped my mind; clearly this is out of control.

My Sources (or Triggers) are Numerous

Web pages, especially newspaper articles and press releases.

Ideas that seem to arise spontaneously in my brain.

• My services.
• My products.
• Queries that arrive by phone or email

For Each Source or Trigger Event

There should be published something, somewhere, about me, what I did for someone.

I need a process sheet for each channel that provides me with mechanical steps I can take to publish my claim to fame, without distracting me from my other work. That is, a source or trigger, once resolved, should drop onto a conveyor belt and come out the other end as a published item.

Example 1:

I bookmarked a newspaper item “Einstein Challenged” about a recent experiment that suggested particles exceeded the speed of light; I have an opinion on this. I can write up a commentary on my ClearThinking blog, then Tweet it. I might append it to a weekly LinkedIn summary. I might issue it as an article to the eLetter or as a flyer to the C-crowd; it is a good example of my thinking process. It is certainly a candidate for a link within my eLetter.

Example 2:

I wrote another cute macro that highlights duplicated words within each sentence of a document; a style checker, you might say. I add the macro to my MiniU template. I make a video of it in operation and publish it to YouTube. I write a Macros In Minutes blog item. Then I tweet it, and possibly add it to me weekly LinkedIn summary.

Example 3:

Many of my web-page groups, List Numbering is an example, can be loaded directly to a PDF format. A link to that PDF file can be set on the web pages, and can also be listed in my Downloads page, with the benefit of allowing me multiple tweets or updates via LinkedIn.

Example 4:

I wrote a proof-of-concept tool “Follow” to do some heavy-lifting in Social Networking. It is not an application really; it is driven by an embedded string, without the database management back end, but it is a significant achievement. I have made a video on my videos page, uploaded the video to YouTube, blogged it in Torontopreneur (although it won’t appear for another week) and will Tweet it. But first I will add it to LinkedIn as an accomplishment. After Tweeting it I emitted a short email to 20 of my entrepreneurial peers.

A Learning Process

This will be a learning process over the next few months.

Today is the best time to start, because I have almost an entire month before my next eLetter issue is due out, and while retroactively fitting out my channels is going to be a beastly amount of work, I can start going forwards today with a better plan or structure to make the most of what I do.

Talk to Me !