I’ll be speaking at Connected Marketing Week tomorrow in a session called “Small Voices, Big Results” at 1pm. Specifically, I’ll be discussing blogging rules that I’ve seen work over the years.Since I started blogging publicly in 2007, I’ve learned a lot about blogging and blogging culture. Along with things I’ve learned about myself and my own style there are some universal rules to follow to be a successful blogger, no matter who you are or what you’re writing about. Today I thought I’d share a few lessons I’ve learned and start a discussion. If you’ve got any additional bits of advice you would have given yourself when you first started blogging, please share them in the comments. I’d love to hear them. I don’t pretend to be an expert. I’m always learning like the rest of you.
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19 PostsAutonomy In Your Work
When it comes to our work, wouldn’t we all be happier and more motivated if we were given the freedom to chose what we do, how we do it, when we do it and who we work with? What does having autonomy at work mean to you and where’s the sweet spot?

Special thanks to Daniel Pink for inspiring me to doodle this in my moleskin this morning. I’m half way through his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and the “4 T’s” he discusses in the context of autonomy has got my brain buzzing. I thought the sketch I did was worth translating to powerpoint for a discssion this morning.
This makes me wonder if the desire to get to that red dot sweet spot is the very essence of what drives people to become entrepreneurs. What do you think?
Achieving Empathy
There’s a reason people say “try walking a mile in their shoes“. Achieving empathy isn’t just about putting yourself in someone else’s position, it’s also about seeing that position from someone else’s perspective. True empathy is being able to strip away your own thoughts, feelings and judgment in order to clearly see a situation through someone else eyes, with their heart, filters and experiences taken into account. Most people make the mistake of just putting themselves in another’s position and saying “what would I do if I were in this situation?”. This approach often leads to poor judgment calls, misunderstandings and bad advice. Why? Because experiencing empathy isn’t about how you think or feel at all. It’s about simulating what they are experiencing and relating to it. Even in an identical scenario, they’ll never think, feel or behave quite the same way as you would.
Of course, we’ll never get perfect at achieving empathy – our brains are (sadly) wired to put ourselves at the center of the action. The good news is that we can take steps to improve our approach to get better insights into the hearts and minds of others. It starts by first taking ourselves completely out of the equation and then asking “what is this person feeling/thinking based on their experiences, and how can I relate to that”. This is hard to do, but it’ll get you off on the right foot. Once you focus on the shoes, you’ll be in a much better position to know what it really feels like to walk the mile.
5 Unmissable TED Talks On The Future Of Technology And The Web
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#1 Tim Berners-Lee On The Next Web of Open, Linked Data
20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: Unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. (Recorded at TED2009, Feb 2009)
The Cookie Jar Principle
[tweetmeme]Give more than you take. It’s as simple as that. If we embrace this one powerful principal in our lives, individually we will enjoy meaningful, vibrant relationships and collectively create a culture of abundance. If we can’t, we end up with an empty jar.
We can all point to a friend or colleague who breaks the rule repeatedly. They call only when they need something and they only show up or participate when it benefits them. They forget that the act of taking from the jar implies that they will one day put back more than what they took. In many ways selfishness is failing to recognize that when you chose to benefit from the effort or contributions of another, you become part of a self-sustaining cycle of give and take, and that your actions alter the system’s balance. In the fog of self-absorption we can loose sight of the truth and reality of the circumstances of both others and ourselves. When we take more than we give, everyone that depends on the contents of the jar loses.
Remember that every one of your relationships has its own jar. We fill them with our time, energy and love. Sharing, participating, and giving before we take signal our good faith – they are small promises that when it is our turn to take, we have not forgotten our responsibility to keep filling the jar. What we do take, we should always strive to return with interest. This simple principal is as true for individual relationships as it is for groups, families and communities of any size. When we agree to be a part of the group, whether the group is 2 or 2 million, we accept an equal and shared responsibility for the jar.
How To Use Google Trends Like A Pro
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Google Trends is one of my favorite tools to come out of the Google Labs. While we data junkies are forced to envy people like Bill Tancer who have access to tons of rich, real time data about what’s going on on the web, Google Trends is the best thing that we can get for free, and it’s still very useful for basic analysis and research. In this post I’ll show you a few great ways you can use Google Trends to do research on the web like a pro and give you a quick list of hacks you can use to build your “Google Ninja” skills.


