Weblog
Mar 11, 03:19 pm: Week 3: Publishing is the new black.
Here’s what you have to date:
- a collection of resources courtesy of your first week of Google searches
- an RSS reader full of targeted topic-rich goodness that you’ve been shifting through, first thing every morning
And, in week two, full of following and reading, you’ve been starring links in Google reader, sharing things with co-conspirators. You may even have been commenting on a post or a video or a photo here and there.
Now, you need to start publishing the things that you find interesting, the things with which you are engaging. And the first phase of publishing is to point.
Set up an account on the social bookmarking site, Magnolia. Now, there a lot of arguments for using del.icio.us instead and if you have someone standing at your shoulder advocating at you, I’d go for that tool. But, short of that, I think Magnolia has a friendlier user interface, has a handy group feature, and makes printing out a list of links an attractive snap (the one big downer: it is not as easy to build a URl that brings together multiple tag words).
When you sign up for the account, spend more than a minute filling out your profile. Upload a picture — it can obscure your face if you aren’t comfortable. But make sure to point to your organizations web site — or another appropriate issue based site — from your profile page and put a sentence or two about the cause that is moving you to do all this in the “About You” section.
So, get the account at Magnolia, from the Help menu, get the appropriate bookmarklet. As you surf the web, share the really interesting things on Magnolia. And use the tag field to provide rich information so that you can find it later. And fill in the comment field. Tell other folks why are your thought it was interesting. Just a sentence or two. This is the first step in publishing and it is starting to get you established as someone who doesn’t just see a link and send it but has something to say about it. Something that directs the interest of a person who will follow the link and then follow you.
As you use the service, you’ll see that people are adding you as a contact. Check out their profile and add them as a contact, too, if appropriate. At the end of the week, five days into this exercise, go back and look at your list of links. See who else has saved them. See if you should be adding those folks as a contacts, if you should be subscribing to their bookmarks.
Now, you’re well on your way to building and contributing to a network.
Next week, we’ll add to that network on other services.
