On Wednesday I gave a talk on Social Influence to leaders in the arts and cultural sector as part of a leadership initiative by Sync Leadership. It was a lively and interesting discussion where we looked at everything from why we want to influence others to tricks and tips for effective influencing.

Start With Why

Simon Sinek is the author of Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action which says that to make change we should start with Why we are doing something before moving onto the How and the What.

Start with why you want to influence others online and the strategy and tactics for achieving your goal will become clearer. Do you want to create change? Do you want to show different ways of being, working or thinking? Do you want to raise your profile to get more work? Do you want to challenge the status quo?

Have Something To Say

Gandhi famously once said: "don't talk unless you can improve the silence". We are all aware that the social web is creating far too much noise in our lives with constant status updates and tweets. I try to make it a practice not to add to the noise just for the sake of being seen but only share content or ideas when I think they are of value.

Social media is just an amplifier. You need to have something to say in the first place.

Know Me, Like Me, Trust Me

To influence others they must get to know you first, then like what you do, and then start to trust you and become an advocate for your work.

The first step is being found. Sounds simple but if no-one is listening, you are not influencing. A good trick is to Google your name/company/brand on a different computer to yours and see what results come up (your computer will have cookies remembering what sites you have visited). Are you happy with the results? Where are you mentioned on the social web? Make the most out of your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles and optimise them with the keywords you want to rank for.

Get active on social media and post regular but great content. Engage in conversations - don't make it a one way street. Listening first and asking questions is a good way of influencing others. Use Twitter searches and hashtags to follow conversations around a topic you want to influence.

Make your content shareable with sharing buttons on your blog. Actively ask others to tweet and share your content. If you don't have a blog, guest post on other blogs and drive traffic back to your website. Make it easy for people to follow you by putting links to your social media on your website, your business cards and your email signature.

We can influence by being an authority or expert in an area, by sharing our ideas on a topic as well as curating the best content from others. Having an opinion on the social web is crucial. In the early days of tweeting and blogging, I was reluctant to say anything that went against the status quo or that challenged others' opinions. But now I am more comfortable in my skin and happy to say what I really think.

Telling stories and being human is another key way of getting others to know and trust you. Each of us has a unique journey that has led us to where we are today and sharing our lessons and vulnerabilities is a powerful way of connecting with others.

What's your story?

The beginning of the week saw me in Glasgow speaking on a panel at the Independent Street Arts Network biennial conference. The theme of the conference, Resilience and Brilliance reflected the challenges that the outdoor arts sector (performance work that takes place outside traditional theatre spaces) is facing with Arts Council and Local Authority funding cuts, but also the exciting opportunities for the sector with London 2012 fast approaching and growing interest in the artforms.

I was speaking on a panel about Being Resilient and of course took my starting point, how producers and artists working in outdoor arts can use technology to be both resilient and brilliant, and I wanted to share some of those thoughts on the blog today.

Being Resilient

The arts sector as a whole is going through tough times. The main funders of the sector, Arts Council England and Local Authorities have faced significant cuts from central government which in turn has affected the support extended to the sector. Many outdoor arts festivals around the UK have either been shelved entirely or lost a great percentage of their funding as Councils are under pressure to cut non-essential services. In these tough times, arts organisations need to be as resilient as possible.

Three areas where technology can help arts organisations ‘be resilient’ and save costs are: cloud computing, working environments, and people.

The lack of knowledge about current IT solutions in smaller arts organisations can end up costing the organisation money but also time. Cloud computing is becoming more ubiquitous in the commercial sector with organisations as big as GM moving their systems from local, server based setups to the cloud using Google Apps. Arts organisations should consider moving systems to the cloud using applications such as Gmail, Dropbox and online CRM systems such as Highrise which can result in significant cost savings and nearly no downtime.

Office space, business rates and utility bills can be a substantial part of a smaller arts organisation’s annual budget. However, today’s employees increasingly want to work flexibly, either from home or from shared co-working spaces. Companies in the commercial sector are realising that having dedicated desk spaces for employees, especially in large urban areas, is a false economy as these spaces are only used 45-50% of the time.

The arts have always been ahead of the curve in terms of expanding and contracting project teams, with performers, writers and designers hired as necessary for projects. But the arts has yet to embrace outsourcing of core functions such as producing, administration and finances, still preferring to employ a small core team on a permanent basis. Why not use remote working to outsource all the core work of the organisation? Arts organisations have busy periods and fallow ones and yet staff are employed year round. With many commercial organisations seeing their staff as portfolio workers rather than permanent staff members, the arts in the future will have to embrace this as well. Portfolio working is something arts workers are very good!

Being Brilliant

As well as saving time and money, digital can also help outdoor arts organisations be brilliant and produce brilliant work. Three ways digital can facilitate this is: crowdfunding, mobile and social media.

Crowdfunding is a way of raising finances for a project through individual donations. Kickstarter was the first crowdfunding platform in the US and since its inception, many others have followed. In the UK, popular ones for funding the arts are WeFund, WeDidThis and Sponsume.

The outdoor arts have not yet utilised these platforms but I think they are perfectly poised to take advantage of them. Many of the festivals or artists have large, engaged followings that could be harnessed, one of the key ingredients of a successful crowdfunding campaign. Other key ingredients are not being too ambitious in terms of the amount asked for (many crowdingfunding platforms require that you raise 100% of the funds or return the cash) and having different levels of ‘goodies’ for your donators (The Age of Stupid film offerings ranged from £10 for a credit to £500 for a part in the film). The last essential ingredient is running a social media campaign alongside your crowdfunding pitch – just uploading your crowdingfunding video isn’t going to get you the cash, you need to engage your network and get them to tell their friends about it.

Mobile is an area that has great potential for ‘brilliance’ in outdoor arts both in terms of creativity and engagement. Gaming platforms such as SCVNGR enable you to build attractive experiences for your audience that they can access on their smartphone. Or use WordPress and one of the free or low cost mobile web apps to build project specific mobile websites where you can ‘push’ content to audiences or even use micropayments to raise funds on thr ground.

Lastly, the outdoor arts are not making enough of social media to promote their work, engage audiences and increase their profile. It’s not enough to just slap up a Facebook page and YouTube channel. As a visual medium, these platforms are the place to be, but you have to have a strategy for engaging your audience and pushing your content out. Be consistent. Post regularly and respond to comments. Make social part of your everyday workflow and it will become a habit.

What have I missed? What are you thoughts on how digital can help the arts be more resilient and brilliant?

[image with thanks to ArtsAgenda]

As a digital well-being coach and trainer, I often get rather blank looks when I say what I do for a living. "Digital well-being? Sounds interesting, but what does it mean?"

To me, digital well-being is the intersection of the things I believe in and that get me out of bed on cold winter days (like today); making the most of digital, work-world balance, and having freedom and flexibility in my business.

I believe that the World Wide Web and internet have given us unprecedented opportunities as business owners, workers, and people, but that we do not always make the most of them. Digital Well-being is about harnessing the awesome power of the internet to fulfil your work and life objectives and to design your business to suit your lifestyle.

Even since I picked up Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek, I have been convinced that it is possible to create new business models and new ways of working from digital. Businesses no longer need their staff to be sat behind a desk from 9 to 5 yet this still remains the status quo even through flexible working improves employee productivity and happiness.

With digital we can increasingly choose who we work for and how we create value and meaning in our work. It's never been easier to use the social web to set up your own microbusiness - all the tools are free, you just need a good idea. A digital microbusiness can enable you to work on something you are passionate about rather then having to leave your values at the door when you go to work.

With digital we can choose where and when we work. With faster broadband speeds, cloud computing and communications technologies such as Skype, you can choose to work from any where you like - your front room, your local cafe or another country. After the success of Amsterdam last winter and as someone who tries to practice what she preaches, I am relocating to Lisbon for five weeks in December/January to write, hang out and get a fresh perspective for 2012.

In the UK, we seem to be working longer and longer hours and our digital friends of mobile, laptop and iPad mean that we are never far from our work. When you receive hundreds of emails each day, it's tempting to spend our evenings on the couch head buried in our device instead of being with our family. Digital Well-being is using the web to work better, not longer; making smart digital choices that work for you. It's about taking control of your email inbox, making your social media into a fun habit not a time suck, and using the right digital tools and platforms so you can be super effective.

Digital Well-being is about recognizing that we live in a world full of ‘screen time’ and having the awareness and skills to balance our on and offline worlds. Getting offline is essential, for our health and for our relationships.

If you want to learn more about how you can improve your digital well-being, then do join me and a small group of friends for a cosy morning at The Hub Islington (with it's roaring wood fire) on Thursday 1 December. It will be 100% offline and great coffee is assured!

Early Bird tickets end today at midnight.

Today I am at Harnessing the Power of Technology and Social Media, a free event at the O2 workshop in Tottenham Court Road (where you can work with free wifi and coffee for two hours). This is the final event in a week focussing on how technology can help start up businesses in the UK.

This morning's sessions were a mixed bag with Twitter tips from self-described Twitter expert Mark Shaw, making the most of mobile from Blackberry employee Dan Sloshberg, improving your visibility online from The Good Web Guide's Arabella Dymoke, and lastly 7 social media tips from social media marketer Warren Knight. The afternoon was considerably more informative with Chieu Cao from start up business Huddlebuy showing real insights into how they have leveraged social media to grow, Chris Dodson from Concept Cupboard with an insight into some great social media tools, and lastly, Ural Cebeci from Skype highlighting some of the business features of both paid and free Skype accounts (look out for a post next week on this - I learnt there is more to Skype than chatting to Dad in Ireland!).

So live off the presses, here are some ideas and insights that got me scribbling:

Getting your house in order

Arabella talked abut the importance of getting your website sorted out before you send anyone your way. This is crucial. So often we forget to check our own website to ensure that it is giving visitors a great first impression.

Have you checked your website in a range of browsers? Does it work in older versions of Internet Explorer as well as the latest version of Chrome? How does it look on an iPad or a Blackberry? Are the links working on your site? Are your social media icons prominent and obvious for new visitors or are they hidden in the footer of your site? What are the top 5 things you want people to do when they visit your site? Write them down and test it out with new users.

Making the most of content

We all know content is king (or is it queen?) but are you making the most of it on the web?

You may have a blog but do you make it easy for people to find your great posts? Have a review of the titles of your posts - do you have the key words that the article is about right there in the title? Is your website so old that your permalink structure (the URL of your posts) are impossible to change? It might be time to build a new WordPress website.

Are you making the most of video? With YouTube being the second biggest search engine in the world after you know who, video can be a great way of driving traffic to your site.

Like to talk? Use iTunes and your podcast show to become know as an expert in your field. Have a look at the Smart Passive Income blog to see how Pat has used this strategy effectively.

Have great presentations? Upload them onto Slideshare and display them on your LinkedIn profile.

Get active on social media

Warren Knight confirmed the million dollar question: do Google take tweets and Facebook shares into account in their search signals. And the answer is yes. Being active on social media can help with your searchability and help your web profile.

Warren had some great advice about Facebook - post once a day to your Business Page - something with an image or video and a comment. Don't be tempted to post multiple times a day - this is not Twitter! And do not autopost your tweets onto Facebook - use the longer text capabilites of Facebook to your advantage.

If you can, tweet around 5 times a day (use TweetDeck or Hootsuite to schedule your tweets to go out throughout the day). But don't stress if you can't get on Twitter during the day or even for a few days. Don't add to the noise if you have nothing to say.

 

Think of social media platforms as dating

Chieu used a good analogy of comparing the holy trinity of social media platforms to dating avenues. Think of Twitter as speed dating. Short and sweet. Fast and furious. Be interesting and make an impression. Facebook is proper dating. You start to get to know someone and find out more about them. You want to engage more and increase interaction but still keep it light. LinkedIn is a marriage arranging service. It’s formal, professional and to the point. (Ok, so the last idea was mine, but I like the dating analogy!).

Understanding tradeoffs

Every speaker at the event talked about time. How much time to spend on social media and where to put your time.

Chieu made an interesting point that growing a business is about a balance between getting better at what is working and spending time exploring new things. This is a great point. How often do we chase new customers, brainstorm new products and services, or jump on new networks. We need to know what is working in our online activity (which is where measurement and metrics come in) and balance this with spending some time experimenting with new ideas. Chieu used the analogy of gambling – once you get back your initial bet, go play with the rest, but make sure you don’t lose your shirt.

That's it. Thanks to StartUp Britain for an interesting day.

Fast broadband, mobile technologies and social media have completed changed the way freelancers and small business owners work and communicate. We can (technically) work from any where with a laptop and wifi; we can collaborate with people on the other side of the world; we can use the web to create new incomes streams for ourselves. But these digital technologies can result in a daily digital deluge leaving less time to get things done and less time to focus on our core work.

Here are 5 tools and tactics to help you harness the power of the web to stay focussed, get more done and work effectively.

1. Gmail Priority Inbox

One of my favourite finds last year was the new feature from Gmail, Priority Inbox which has helped my transformation into an email ninja.

Priority Inbox learns which are your most ‘important’ emails and 'prioritises' them by posting them at the top of your inbox. Next are your 'read' and 'starred' emails i.e. those you have read and designated as actionable/important/stuff I must read etc. Lastly, comes everything else - 'unimportant' messages or important messages that have already been read.

I find that Priority Inbox allows me to see at a glance what needs to be responded to first and what can ‘go hang’ for a while. Gmail is fairly intuitive but you can also teach it by using the ‘important’ and ‘not important’ buttons. This way I can designate any emails directly addressed to me as ‘important’ and any emails I am copied into as ‘unimportant’, along with any newsletters or notifications.

Priority Inbox is a great way of ensuring that those important client emails or exciting opportunities do not get buried in your inbox.

2. Use Filters

In our increasing digital world, I am a big fan of using filters (see "F" in my free ebook From Apps to Zen: 26+ Ideas for Building A Business with Balance) to reduce the number of information streams coming into the day.

Filters are experts in your area who read and filter and best information about an area of interest. For example, a great social media filter is Pete Cashmore from digital blog Mashable. He consistently delivers the most up to date news and features on social media, online tools and the web. If you're interested in location independent living, Cory McKibben from Thrilling Heroics is a great person to follow.

Find out who your filters are in your niche and follow them on social media.

3. Equanimity App

Equanimity is a neat little app for the iPhone. Set a meditation time, for example 5 minutes, and a Tibetan bowl will ring once. Sit quietly, eyes closed and focus on your breathing. Focus on the sound of the breath as you inhale and exhale. Feel the cool air of the in-breath and warmer air of the out-breath as you breathe. After your time is up the bowl rings three times and it’s time to get back to work.

A great way to refresh, take a few minutes away from your screen, and refocus during the day.

4. Work in a Distraction Free Zone

Shutting down your distractions will help to focus your attention and supercharge your productivity, so shut off your email, turn your phone to silent and close down any social media if you have an important piece of work to focus on.

Brower extensions such as StayFocused for Chrome or LeechBlock for FireFox can limit your access to certain programmes such as Gmail or Facebook if you don't yet have the discipline yourself. For writing try WriteMonkey for PCs or OmmWriter for the Mac to provide an application free writing space.

5. Use Evernote to Combat Information Overload

We all suffer from information overload. The daily deluge of blog posts, email newsletters and useful links. You know the scenario where you take a short digital break from your work. One interesting blog post leads to another, and before you know it, two hours have past and you’ve wasted your morning. Sounds familiar? But how do you keep track of information that might be useful in the future without getting sidetracked in your day-to-day work?

Enter Evernote. Evernote’s CEO, Phil Libin likens Evernote to having an external brain – it remembers things so you don’t have to. Essentially Evernote is an information capturing and organization system .You can use it to type a text note, to clip a web page, snap a photograph of something, or record some audio. Evernote is cloud-based. So the information that you add from the web, or from your smartphone is automatically synched to your desktop. So you can capture information on the go, as well as at your desk.

Registration on Evernote takes minutes. It’s free, and you can watch a short, and funny, video explaining how to get started.

What tools and strategies do you use to work with the web not against it?

If you want to learn about more tools and tactics for supercharging your digital productivity, join me for my two-hour Build Your Productivity Toolkit workshop at The Cube in east London on Wednesday 21 September 2011.  

I've just got back from a wonderful two and a half week break in Vietnam (really recommend it as a country to visit - great people, great food, great places to see).

The trip and my return back to my 'normal' digital life had me reflecting this week on my digital use in a broader sense and specifically my digital use when travelling or vacationing.

Things have changed so much in the last decade for the holidaymaker or traveller. 11 years ago, I left Dublin to go travelling around the world for as long as funds permitted. Then, no-one I met on the road had a laptop or smart phone. On our short trip in Vietnam I met many backpackers doing the well worn South-East Asia trail and everyone had a laptop or smart phone. Whether you are travelling for pleasure or for business, it has become incredibly easy to take your digital life with you on the road. As a fan of location independent living, this is a huge benefit - being able to live and work wherever you wish.

However, there is a danger, especially when on holiday, of never really unplugging from the matrix.

So how can we strike a balance? Here are some suggestions based on my recent experience.

Email

On previous trips abroad, I have refused to look at my email while I was away and have come back to an overflowing inbox that takes days to clear. For this trip, especially as it was quite long, I used my iPhone in wifi-enabled cafes or airports every few days to keep on top of things.

Accessing my email while away resulted in something interesting happening. I realised how much non-important email I receive on a daily basis. Subscriptions to newsletters that aren't delivering value, Meetup notifications for events I rarely get to, and Linkedin digests for groups that I don't interact with.

Why not use your time away to reflect on your email usage? Too often as our email grows so does the value we place on how important or busy we are. Travelling to a country like Vietnam where the people have suffered so much at the hands of others gave me a valuable perspective on how I am spending my time, realising that there are better ways I could be spending my day rather than ploughing through hundreds of emails.

Blogging

Come rain or shine, I have been posting on this blog every Friday for almost a year now. Being away for two Fridays posed an interesting dilemma - to post or not to post? Would anyone really notice if I didn’t blog for a couple of weeks?

Maybe not. But perhaps that is the wrong question. It doesn't matter if no-one reads the blog while I am away. I made a commitment to myself and my readers that I would share a blog post every Friday. Having a regular posting schedule is something I always recommend to my clients for two reasons; writing and posting starts to become an ingrained habit, and your readers know when to expect your content.

So how to deal with this while you are away? Well, there are a couple of options. The first one is to ask fellow bloggers or colleagues to guest post for you while you are away. This is the tactic I used, asking simplicity expert Harry Mylonadis from design firm minimoko to write about information overload and creative coach Lucy Kyle for her thoughts on looking inside for what you need in business. I was thrilled with both posts and would definitely employ this strategy again in the future.

Another tactic would be to use the scheduling feature of your blogging platform whether WordPress, Posterous or Tumblr. Write your posts in draft form before you leave and set them to automatically post while you are away. Posterous even has an innovative autopost feature which will send your post out to your selected social services such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. You could also use the Scheduled Updates feature of TweetDeck or Hootsuite to do the same.

Social Networking

I made a conscious decision while I was away to not access any social sites. No Twitter, no LinkedIn and no Facebook. Facebook is actually banned in Vietnam so that one was easy! But staying away from Twitter was more difficult.

There is a fear with Twitter that if you are not tweeting constantly, you will be forgotten. And as someone who gets a lot of her knowledge and news from Twitter, there is the fear that I will be left behind. Being away gave some breathing space for these thoughts. Did it matter if I didn't tweet for two weeks? What information would I really miss? I could have used the scheduling option to set up tweets for while I was away, but what would have been the point? I wouldn't really be present; my tweets would be a ghost.

Feeling the pull towards Twitter everytime I looked at the iPhone also made me realise that I am a little addicted to Twitter and that I need to stay conscious of my usage. A useful lesson again in perspective.

How are you coping with your digital self on vacation this summer?

[image with thanks to brad.coy via CC]

 

This week I was invited to give a talk on social media to an audience of marketing and comms professionals working in the charity sector. Hosted by Third Sector Women, the session was a opportunity to 'lunch and learn' and network with other professionals.

Social media is such a well worn topic, so I wanted to give it a fresh spin. I have been learning more about The Buddha recently though reading Karen Armstrong's well researched book on his life and teachings, so I thought I would try a take on how The Buddha might use social media if he was alive today.

Who was The Buddha?

For those of you who may not be acquainted with him, The Buddha was an ordinary man who was born around 583 BC in what is now modern day Nepal. He came from a rich family and lived a comfortable but sheltered life. The stories of his early life tell us that disillusioned with all the suffering in the world he left his family and home at the age of 29 to see if he could discover the meaning of life that could transcend everyday suffering. Famously, one night while meditating under a bodhi tree, he achieved Nirvana or enlightenment and spent the next 40 years of his life teaching others how they could do the same. 

Commentators have said that if The Buddha was alive today he would probably be a world-class psychologist and famous author rather than a religious figure, as Buddhism is a practical philosophy and method of mind training unlike the 'divine' worshiping doctrines of the Christian faiths.

What is the Eightfold Path?

One of the major teachings of The Buddha is the Noble Eightfold Path. The Path describes a way to achieve enlightenment. It is a Middle Way between the extremes of excess on one hand and asceticism on the other. In essence, it provides a balanced methodology for living a better life. (You may also notice that this is where I got the inspiration for my company!).

OK, so how does this relate to social media? Social media is about connecting people to people. Can we use the Eightfold Path to be more consciously connected and to have more authentic connections online?

The Path has eight components each of which has a core lesson which I think we can apply to our online lives:

1. Right Understanding

Right Understanding is the foundation for the rest of the path. In the Buddhist tradition it means seeing and understanding things as they really are. In practical terms this means having a flexible and open mind to what arises and also to realise that nothing is permanent - everything in the world is in a state of flux.

In my experience engaging with social media can be very stressful for some people. We worry that we are not doing it right, that we are not in the right places, and that we are saying the wrong things.

Everything is impermanent. So you put out a tweet that your colleague thinks is rubbish. It will soon disappear into the ether. Having a playful attitude to social media, just like having a playful attitude to life, can take some of the stress out of it.

Lesson: Not to take it all so seriously!

2. Right Intention

Right Intention describes the mental energy that controls our actions and in Buddhist terms it means not harming and acting compassionately to others.

This is a beautiful sentiment for mindful social media. If our intention in using it is authentic and aligned with who we are, then everything will flow from there - content, conversations and connections. There will be no disconnect between who we are and what we are saying.

Lesson: Use social media from an authentic heart-centred place and everything will flow effortlessly.

3. Right Speech

Right Speech asks us to tell the truth, speak friendly and to talk only when necessary.

A lesson we could all learn and apply to our social media use (and I am including myself in this!). Speaking the truth is important. When you start to put forward your opinion and ideas, interesting things start to happen. Followers and fans appear and opportunities start to come your way. But the critics come too. And that can be a hard thing to deal with. Should we openly criticise others on social media or recognise that our perspective is only one point of view? I don't have the answer but it's an interesting question!

If we talk only when necessary, we can remember to pause before we hit the retweet, post or publish button? Is what we are sharing creating value for the reader or are we just adding to the noise?

Lesson: Think before you hit post.

4. Right Action

Right Action asks that we do not harm others and respect the belongings of others.

Social media is a smorgasbord of content and ideas and sharing is part of the game. But we need to respect other's ideas and intellectual property. Good social media etiquette (and karma!) comes from acknowledging the ideas of others. In a practical sense, this means using images from Creative Commons and name-checking the author when I share content on Twitter.

Lesson: Keep your karmic levels high and acknowledge the hard work of others.

5. Right Livelihood

Right livelihood asks that we earn our living in an ethical way.

The online space has attracted many people who act unethically and who use social media to persuade people to part with their hard earned cash. We should be using social media to create value for other people and to engage and help others without always seeing a return.

Lesson: Use social media in an ethical way, create real value for others and do not exploit other people.

6. Right Effort

Without effort nothing can be achieved. But misguided effort distracts us from our task.

Wise words. This is probably one of the most important lessons with can learn from The Buddha for our social media use. We need to work at social media for it to have an impact on our business or life. Just setting up a few profiles and waiting for the fans to come is not going to work. You must get out there and engage.

However, knowing where to focus your efforts is crucial. If you are spending all your time in the wrong places, than this misguided effort is a waste of your time and distracts from what you should be doing. Don't be using a social media platform just because everyone else is.

Lesson: By all means have a play and experiment with different types of social media but also know when to decide if something's not working.

7. Right Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the Buddhist practice of paying attention in the present moment. At its core, it is having a constant expansive awareness of what is actually happening, not what we may think is happening through our own narrative.

I believe that a mindful approach to social media is crucial. Social media, by its nature, is addictive. The anticipation of a reward or a feeling of belonging is a powerful pull that can distract us and take our focus off task. 

Lesson: Be mindful of your social media use. Question your time spent on it to ensure that you are using it in a useful and authentic way. Be present.

8. Right Concentration

Buddhists develop their concentration and powers of focus using meditation. We can use social media to also develop our powers of concentration and focus just as we use the breath as an anchor in meditation to bring our focus back to the present moment. Blogger Alexandra Samuel talks about Twitter as being a mini-gym for the mind:

"At its best, Twitter can be a tiny gym for your attention: one that continually strengthens your capacity to focus on what is crucial to accomplishing your personal and professional goals. The very qualities that often make Twitter feel so distracting — its brevity, its ubiquity, its irresistibleness — also make it the ideal platform for developing a practice around using social media with intention."

Lesson: Use social media as a daily practice and training ground to improve your concentration and focus.

 

PS: If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to receive posts direct into your inbox every Friday.

[image with thanks to timparkinson via CC]

 

Last night I attended a networking group for marketing and communications folk in the built environment (thanks to Cany Ash from Ash Sakula for the invite!). Held at the Camden offices of the Mace Group (project managers for The Shard - you might have seen their brightly coloured logo on Andrew Marr's Megacities this week), the event was a chance to share best practice and network.

There was a good introductory talk by Vicki Ansell of social media training company Happen Factory on location-based services (LBS) and the built environment. Alison talked about four areas of LBS: apps such as Foursquare or Facebook Places; QR codes; augmented reality; and group marketing.

She gave some great examples of how companies can use Foursquare to 'push' offers onto potential consumers who 'check-in' at a particular location. Brands such as Starbucks have used this extensively in the US to entice customers and reinforce brand loyalty. But, as Vicki explained, brands do not have to be a location, they can attach deals/offers/information to any location. Organisations such as the New York Times, The History Channel and Zagat Guides have all used this to good effect.

The second type of LBS is a QR code - a barcode that links to a piece of text, usually a URL (Here is a short article on QR codes for dummies). Many of the newer smart phones are coming with a QR readers already installed or you can download a free app (I use QRReader from the iTunes app store).

They are easy to generate and can be used in locations to provide more information or a web link about that location which is great for engagement. Tales of Things is a Digital Economy funded project that have used QR codes successfully to embed cultural memory into physical objects including buildings.

The third location-based service was augmented reality which uses the camera feature of your smart phone and layers information over the top, whether that's images of historical buildings (the Museum of London's Street Museum app) or where a digital nomad can find a good place to work with free wifi and great coffee (WorkSnug).

The final LBS was group marketing, the most famous of which is Groupon.

The reaction to Vicki's talk was mixed with the usual debate about how relevant any of this stuff is for the built environment. While I agree that not all industries can benefit from all aspects of social media, I tend to find that if you think creatively, there may be one or two aspects of the social web that work brilliantly to fulfil your business or project objectives.

So here are 10 quick ideas for how companies and individuals in the built environment can engage with the social web:

1. A project team within a architecture firm that uses a micro-blogging service such as Posterous or Tumblr to curate a rolling blog on a project from conception and design through to construction and completion. These services allow for almost instant updating with text, images and videos uploading straight from your smart phone. The blog can be used to engage the local community and stakeholders to feel part of the development and informed.

2. A built environment consultant who uses Twitter to keep up to date with sector developments so she is well informed when she speaks to clients (and she uses it to keep an eye on the competition too!).

3. A marketing manager who uses LinkedIn as a live database of industry contacts and connections.

4. An urban design firm who uses a Facebook Page to involve a local community in the vision and conception of a community space project.

5. A small group of niche architects or designers that use a group blog to position themselves as thought leaders and experts in a particular niche area e.g. sustainable build.

6. A construction firm using Twitter to provide real time updates to local people to reduce the impact of the build on them and to increase engagement.

7. An architect using a QR code (and web link) on the hoarding/perimeter of a new build site to show passers-by what the new building will look like.

8. A town planning consultancy that uses YouTube videos to illustrate the answers to common queries received by clients which has the added benefit of driving traffic to their website (YouTube is the second most popular platform for search after Google).

9. The property management firm that works with their tenants to help them develop offers and deals to 'push' out to location-based services such as Foursquare and Facebook Places.

10. The built environment networking group that uses Linkedin to host a platform for discussion and sharing best practice, e.g. BuildUp.

That was just 10 ideas off the top of my head and you could do the same exercise for any industry. Why not have a look at what other industries are doing and see if any ideas are applicable to your company. Also look at what platforms, apps and tools are out there and brainstorm potential applications for your company.

Thinking creatively about the social web could give your company a competitive edge.

[image with thanks to hellodan via CC]

Chris Sacca is a a venture investor, public speaker, and former employee of Google and was one of the early investors in Twitter. Here at the Wanderlust Festival in Vermont, CA last year, he talks to Soren Gordhamer from Wisdom 2.0 about being mindful in our Twitter and digital use.

As someone with 1.3 million followers and, by his own admission, a pretty busy guy, Chris gives a refreshing and candid perspective on his social media use and how he makes time for other things in his life outside work.

Enjoy!

Last night I gave a talk on Zen and Social Media at the Women's Business Club at 44 Portland Place. It was a great evening with a lively discussion on social media platforms, tools and techniques for being effective.

One of the women ran a Pilates practice and was very against the idea of engaging in social media, and was quite vocal about this in the discussion. I responded to this by saying that if you don't want to engage in this stuff, then don't. There are other ways of marketing your services and raising the profile of your business. At the end of the session, this woman thanked me for my presentation and re-iterated her dislike for social media. But then she added:

"But this is the way things are going, so I guess I'll have to get involved even though I hate it".

Hate it. These are strong words. I recall they were accompanied by a visible shiver. Is this really true? Does everybody who is running a business NEED to get involved in social media? I think it's a great question and a complicated one. I am lucky enough that most people who come to me don't need convincing that social media might benefit their business; they have already come to that conclusion and want concrete help with making their efforts more effective.

But what about those who are not convinced. Should they be told to just get over it and get on board? I'm not so sure.

Before anyone jumps into the murky but exciting world of social media, they need to really think about why they are doing it and what their end goal is. Only then can you be strategic about how social media can help you. Social media without a plan and system might be a big time waster for your business at best, and at worst, damage your reputation.

I think that you will agree that a major marketing objective of most businesses is to drive traffic to the company website. Here visitors can find out more about a company's products or services and possibly be moved towards signing up to a mailing list or even directed towards a purchase.

Social media is a great way of driving traffic to your website. Through following a link on a social network such as Twitter or Facebook, or reading a blog post or watching a video, potential customers become aware of your offering. Social sharing especially through the Facebook Like button and the new Google +1 button, adds another dimension to this as we tend to place more weight on things our friends recommend. This is becoming increasingly important as the amount of information we are exposed to on a daily basis increases exponentially. Social sharing allows us to cut through the noise.

Social media is great for increasing profile. This is especially important for individual consultants and freelancers who want to position themselves as experts in a niche area. Through creating or curating content with blogs, videos and podcasts, and sharing this through social networks, the individual starts to become known as a thought leader in their area. The benefit of this is two-fold: (a) their online profile and message is strong and clear with ample social proof for potential clients, and (b) opportunities for projects, speaking and joint ventures start to come their way.

But engaging in all this does take time but perhaps less than people think if done effectively. My advice to the Pilates practitioner would be to identify what's missing in the business and then look to see if social media can help with this, not the other way around. Then I would look at ways of engaging with social media that are fun. Perhaps Twitter bores her to tears but making videos for a YouTube channel might rock her boat.

I do believe that social media is revolutionising the way we do business, letting us connect with a global audience. Yet it’s also the biggest productivity killer created in our lifetime.

How do you reconcile the two? Come find out at my From Apps to Zen Bootcamp on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 June in London.

Watch this video now (it only takes 3 minutes), and I’ll tell you ALL about what’s in store for you.