theme 2 Archives | Ian M Rountree

The Needs of a Personal Platform

March 20, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

When you’re starting out online, it’s easy enough to dig into everything a little bit, and keep your agility by not building a routine.

However, as you do more and more work – more writing, more tweeting, more status updates – you’ll begin to look for ways to reduce the emotional overhead on working your networks. Tools, like TweetDeck, web apps like The Deadline, time management processes, and more. This makes it easy to maintain momentum and keep your consistency high – but it does remove some agility unless you’re aware of the scaffolding you’re putting up around your work.

Creating a platform can’t be haphazard – you need to put some thought into the framework you create.

Got a blog? Great! You have a home base, somewhere all the content is your own.

Got a podcast? Cool. Whether you blog or not, you’re publishing your own content.

Youtube channel? Ok… Now we’re getting into mixed media. Video is powerful, but if it’s on a platform not your own, you don’t own control of it.

Massive Twitter following? Neat – but, like the YouTube channel, or a Facebook page for that matter, if Twitter goes away, so does your content – so does your platform.

Building a platform means having control not only of the scaffolding – the framework – but also of the content that fills it out.

We’ve known this for a while. Owning your database is important. Having purpose apparent behind our work is important too. But how do we do this in effective ways? We diversify.

We produce podcasts as parts of our blogs, we use Twitter and Facebook as promotional and communication tools instead of publishing venues. We create spaces where people can not only congregate, but interact as a group – campfires of media to be gathered around, rather than street corners to be passed through (and passed by, and bypassed entirely).

Diversity is part of the difference between building an effective personal platform – and building ephemeral content gardens.

Look at any of your heroes, the people who got you into this whole content marketing, social media game. What do they do? How have they grown over the years?

Chris Brogan writes a number of blogs, produces video, takes part in podcasts, tweets, has a Facebook community, does Third Tribe stuff, and more. He’s diverse.
Mack Collier has a blog, but also is intensely active on Twitter, and has built #blogchat into one of the biggest weekly twitter chats.

But these are platforms which have existed for some time – what else are we seeing?

I look at people like Stanford Smith at Pushing Social, who’s recently started video blogging and podcasting in addition to the #tweetdiner twitter chat he and Margie Clayman started last year. That’s diversity.

These are just a few examples – there are more. Are you one of them?

If you’re just blogging – why? If you’re only building a community on Twitter, what reasoning do you have behind it?

How are you addressing the needs of your platform – how are you allowing yourself to grow?

Image by Peter Alfred Hess.

Decision Time – What’s Your Platform For?

February 14, 2011 by Ian 2 Comments

You’re a blogger! Hooray!

You found some good hosting, came up with a catchy title for your blog, and set up a site using WordPress, Blogger, or one of the other major blogging softwares. Perhaps you even made the investment in a killed theme for your site, to make the biggest bang you can right out of the gate. You’ve got a twitter account, you’re sharing pictures on Flickr, maybe you’ve even set yourself up a Facebook page (like I just did) to help promote your stuff.

You’re covering all the bases, dotting all your J’s and crossing all your T’s. But you’re still missing something.

What’s that you say? You’ve found yourself a niche? Ooh, good work! The niche is an essential part of any blogger’s homework. How many people are in it? How is the niche being explored so far? Is anyone even remotely close to your angle?

Not many people, shallow exploration, and mediocre angles? Excellent! Now comes the really hard part.

You still haven’t decided what you’re working towards!

You’re building a platform. Great. But what is it for? Getting the word out about your widgets? That’s a weak reason to spend so much time on something. Getting the word out in order to bring traffic to your site to sell your awesome widgets? Now that’s something entirely different.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling thousand dollar eBooks, ten dollar beef jerky, or increasing awareness for your non-profit in hopes of landing a patron or two – having an aim behind your work is extremely important to being able to say what was successful and what was a flop.

And that’s just the macro end of things.

The more laser-focused you get on your goals, the smaller the work you do to improve your rate of success can feel.

Changing the roundness of your Subscribe button’s corners by 2 pixels? Moving from an autobiographical About page to a professional Curriculum Vitae? These are the beans that you can address at the end of the cycle, once you know your aims are worth working towards, and your entire platform is already aligned with those goals.

It feels like small stuff, but if that 2px radius increase (or decrease) adds five percent to your subscribe rate? It might be worth it. If your CV-style About page means two extra clients per month? You bet your perfect prose it’s worth it.

When you’ve got really strong goals in mind, you can stop worrying about diminishing returns.

That five percent extra subscribe rate means nothing unless you’re building a database for future use. Those two extra clients mean nothing unless you can execute for them and retain them past the first project. Whatever it is you’re using your platform to achieve, make sure it’s actually lined up with your business goals.

But hey, maybe it’s simple.

Maybe you just want to put thought to keyboard, and get into some interesting conversations. It’s not all business right?

Right. It may not be all business, but even with what appear to be casual aims, keeping your platform in line with your purpose is powerful. Conversation still has conversion – a pleasing comment form makes a difference the same way choosing a more open network like Twitter has benefits compared to a more closed network like LinkedIn or Ning.

No matter the aim, there are considerations you can take to make sure you’re reducing your emotional and administrative overhead before diving in too deep.

What are some of the ways you’ve narrowed in on a goal and adjusted your platform to match?

Image by David Sim.

My Platform – The Tools I Use

February 9, 2011 by Ian 4 Comments

When you’re doing work online, there’s a lot to consider, not just about the work you’re going to do, but about the tools you used to do it.

This goes beyond just picking between Blogger and WordPress or Tumblr and TypePad – the tools for web workers to build their platforms on range from getting the right laptop and Skype-ready headset on the hardware side, to picking seemingly low-priority things like task management software, browser plugins, and Instant Messenger clients.

Very often, the things that seem to be the least of our concerns when setting up turn out to make the biggest difference in the long term.

It’s easy to buy a new keyboard for a desktop computer. But what about laptops? We look for good screens, good speakers… Maybe a good processor or large harddrive if we’re savvy enough – but how many of us buy laptops based on typing tests and the way they fit our hands? It’s virtually impossible to replace the keyboard in a laptop.

Choosing your tools wisely is important. Here are some of the ones I use.

Some of the hardware that gets me through the day:

Dell Studio 17′ laptop – I chose the beast based on screen size, keyboard, and capacity for graphical work. When you’re a writer, any old typing machine will do (If you can type on it) but storing loads of data – hundreds of pages of writing, images, photoshop files… Big data is making its way down to the individual, so having a large harddrive is a good idea. My Dell has a terrabyte of storage.
Sony MDR-XB300 Headphones – picked based on their range (they work for the music I listen to) and for their comfort. I listen to a LOT of music, in addition to podcasts
BlackBerry 8520 – I’ve got the WordPress app, as well as Twitter, Facebook, Google Talk, Live Messenger, and AIM on my phone. Oh, and Evernote as well. I use my phone as a backup publishing platform – mostly for ideation and review of ideas I’ve had. It’s astonishing how much having even a little access can increase productivity, and accessibility.
Razer/Microsoft Habu mouse – it’s a gaming mouse, really, but I got it based on ergonomics and high DPI, which is a boon when working in Photoshop.

That’s an incomplete list, but you get the idea I hope – if any of these pieces of my kit fail, it changes the way I do my work. All of it was chosen based on knowledge of my workflow,

Some desktop software I use for productivity:

iTunes for music – because… Well, it’s iTunes. And I have an iPod.
Google Chrome – because it’s fast, even though it has some issues with WordPress’ post editor. Also, add-ons like;
- SEO Site Tools
- Bit.ly
- ScribeFire
Instant Messaging software, like;
- Live Messenger
- AIM – AOL Instant Messenger
- Skype
- Google Talk
Evernote – as mentioned above, because it lets me keep information on the move.
Dropbox because it keeps my things safe and lets me collaborate easily.
TweetDeck for Twitter management.
Adobe CreativeSuite software – it’s a standard, really, though mine’s outdated.
YNAB – You Need A Budget to keep things in order.

There’s also web software:

(mt)MediaTemple for web hosting – for reasons I’ve covered in a review previously. My domains register through them as well.
WordPress.org as a blogging software, because it’s infinitely extensible and powerful – I’ll get into more detail about WP.org later.
Standard Theme 2 which I developed my current site theme on top of, for reasons also covered in a review
Google Apps for my domain email and other tools – everything, at this point, routes through my Google Apps account

This is, of course, an incomplete list – in both cases. However, the trend is clear; I’ve chosen a set of tools that works the way I need them to. It’s not all flash and sizzle, but it does the trick, exactly as I expect, every time.

Picking hardware and software that works well in concert with your best creative workflow is of paramount importance. What tools do you use to get stuff done online?

Image by extranoise.