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 !

Social Networking Automated!

I am feeling quite pleased with myself.

I have automated a large part of getting my social networking up to date.

Imagine if you will a database of contacts – about 350 companies and the same number of people.

That’s 700 contacts.

I’d like to (LinkedIn) connect with each of them and I’d like to (Twitter) follow them.

My proof-of-concept application - “Follow” - will work its way through my contacts database a half-dozen (or a dozen!) records at a time and determine the appropriate LinkedIn page for each contact, from which I can click on a button to follow them on Twitter, or click on a button to ask to be connected on LinkedIn.

I could automate that last part, but I’d rather retain some control over the timing.

The proof-of-concept takes a self-delimited string of names (,Shane Schick, Chris Greaves, David Webb, Cathy Nesbitt, Mona Albano, Brendon Cowans, Karen Granville Carole St. Laurent) and throws up a tab for each LinkedIn profile in my web browser.

Neat!

You can watch the video directly from My Videos Page (item #59) or via YouTube .

Talk to Me !

• LF> Very cool. What if my contact manager isn't in Word? Can it read an Excel file or a .CSV?

Yes it can.

My contact manager isn't in Word either; it's an Access database.

The application (well, proof-of-concept, strictly speaking) is written in Word/VBA which can "talk" with Access, Excel etc.

I have a Word/VBA database interface that communicates with just about everything including dBaseIII files and Act!(v6) databases.

Just so you know, I ran the p-o-c from just a character string:

Dim strPeople As String
strPeople = ""
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Shane Schick"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Chris Greaves"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "David Webb"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Cathy Nesbitt"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Mona Albano"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Brendon Cowans"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Karen Granville"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Carole St. Laurent"
While Len(strPeople) > 0
Dim strPerson As String
strPerson = strsplitat(strPeople, vbTab)
If Len(strPerson) > 0 Then
Call LocatePerson(strPerson, ie, os)
Else
End If
Wend

Since I already know how to hook up Word to an Access MDB I didn't waste time doing that.

I wanted to prove that, given a series of personal (or corporate business) names I could throw up, in a manner of speaking, a series of tabs, one for each person.

• FL> Just so I'm clear... one could feed in a list of company names and your tool, either as-is or with tweaks, would go out to LinkedIn and build a database of relevant LinkedIn contact info for each employee?

The answer is always ...

Yes.

This proof-of-concept level accepts a self-delimiting string (",Shane Schick, Chris Greaves, David Webb, Cathy Nesbitt, Mona Albano, Brendon Cowans, Karen Granville, Carole St. Laurent") and process it to the point of raising the LinkedIn profile page(s) in front of you.

I am pretty sure I have the skills to automate the follow-on stage, e.g. "Follow this person on Twitter", "Ask for a connection" - so why do it if I already know I can do it.

A more practical concern is that if I automate that end of it, I could blindly be following "Dave Web", the drunken downhill skier from Birmingham UK, instead of the Dave Webb I know, editor at itWorld.CA.

And therein lies a clue: I think that LinkedIn is being smart, and building the list by distance-from-M9C 2A6, which works for me, because most of my business relationships are face-to-face, local to YYZ. You, with your world-wide following/clientele, may find that the hits aren't quite so accurate. It's significant that the 8 I tested all came out 100% accurate.

I haven't tried it, yet, with businesses. Of course to "Follow.dot", they are just strings; it depends on how smart LinkedIn is.

The database end is also trivial, and I have to do that next.

• I need two new fields in the table, "LinkedIn" and "Twitter".

• Each day process 6 more records from the database.

• If a field is empty, go look for it.

• If not found, put today's date in their and revisit it later on.

• If a contact is found/made, follow/link it and put the appropriate link in there.

• After that first pass, just process the dated-fields in stalest-first sequence, or something.

Of course, even that wouldn't be a blind process; I ought not ask for a connection until I've made, say, three distinct contacts with the person.

Follow/link to a business is another matter; that can and ought to be automated.

I am now accepting beta-testers ..... but you beta be fast!

How Many can You Follow?

If you’ve been following my saga on Twitter you will know that I’ve been puzzled about the vast numbers of people who follow me for no apparent reason, and the number of people I follow, for reasons that escape me after a month or two.

There are people I keenly want to follow, tweeps on whose every word I hang, but too often they get swamped out by a burst of activity from others who I’m following.

And how on earth did I end up following “BeerGuy”?

So I’ve Made an Executive Decision

Right now I’m following 50 tweeps.

That’s too many.

I will reduce that number by ONE at the start of each week, until I reach 40; then I’ll re-evaluate the situation.

Then I may reduce that number by ONE at the start of each week, until I reach 30; then I’ll re-evaluate the situation.

I rather think that following 30 tweeps; seriously following by being able to engage with them, is a commendable activity.

Trying to follow 300 is just plain stupid.

Talk to Me!