Archives for August 2011

The Unspoken Crisis in America

As a 30-something in the US, I find myself and my generation in a bit of a strange conundrum. For the first time perhaps ever, our generation is facing a reality where we might be worse off than our parents. This fact is mentioned to us all the time. It’s on the news. It’s in the reports the Department of Labor sends out. It’s in economic and healthcare forecasts. It seems to be everywhere.

How did we get here? How is it that we ended up on this path? There are a lot of answers to that question, but the ones you tend to hear the most about are the Baby Boomer generation growing older, our college loans growing bigger, childcare and healthcare costs skyrocketing, and the economy declining.

It is with these thoughts in my mind that I begin to approach Ann Odle’s topic, which is caring for and relating to aging parents.

Margie’s Ten Favorite Books

by Margie Clayman

So Gini Dietrich asked me what my ten most favorite books are. It seems like a super easy question, but that Gini, she has the devil on her shoulder. As it turns out, narrowing down all of my favorite books down to a list of 10 is pretty well nigh impossible.

Since I have a bit of the devil on my shoulder too, I found some super secrete loopholes that will allow me to answer this question successfully and frankly. So here we go.

Don’t search for mavens. Be one.

by Margie Clayman

The lovely Nicole Fende asked me to write about how to find and leverage the mavens in the online world. If you’ve been reading blogs for awhile, whether here or elsewhere, you know that conversations about the “mavens,” “a-listers,” “superstars,” whatever you want to call them, often get heated.

After reading all of these posts, all of the comments they get…after writing some of my own posts and reading those comments, I’ve come to the conclusion that what is most important in the online world is working on becoming a maven yourself, however you define that term.

Understand that I am well aware of how omnipresent people with a huge number of followers and subscribers are in this world. I know that it seems impossible to get traction when there are people who have hundreds of thousands of people retweeting their every word. But as I spend more time in the world of Social Media, I’m beginning to see that that whole facet of this world isn’t what matters. The number of followers doesn’t matter. The number of subscribers doesn’t matter. Even the number of comments you get doesn’t matter. They’re nice benchmarks, but there’s a lot more to strive for. And that objective – that point where you will feel successful – that is what really matters.

Three Ways Social Media Becomes Real

by Margie Clayman

Bill Dorman asked me to write a post about “the new real.” With so much interaction happening online, it seems sometimes like the word “real” is shifting in meaning. Is this the new way we relate to people? Is this the new “real” us?

I’ve been thinking about this question for a long time, but I’ve had a few experiences along the way, happily enough, that have brought me to the answer I’m going to share with you here. That answer is that Social Media is as real as you want it to be. The people you are engaging with are as real as you want them to be.

What the Cleveland Indians Can Teach You About Blogging

by Margie Clayman

David McGraw asked me to write about the Cleveland Indians actually making a run for the pennant this year. Now, at the time, the Indians were reigning supreme in the American League central, ahead of Detroit and everybody else. Of course, now we are biting at the Tigers’ heels, but we are in second place. Every game seems to go right down the last strike, and we don’t seem to be playing particularly well.

In other words, this season is making me a nervous wreck!

Because of the fragile state of my nerves, I can’t think too much about whether the Indians will actually end up making a real run for the pennant. We still have 10 games against the Tigers and Chicago may well give us a run for our money. However, in thinking about this baseball season, I realized a lot can be learned from the Cleveland Indians if you are a blogger. Here is what I came up with.

Measuring Your Online Footprint

by Margie Clayman

Tom Redwine submitted a topic idea about how we measure our online influence. I’ve been thinking about this concept for a long time. On the surface, it seems like an easy question. I thought, “Well, this will be another sort of “resource” post.” But the more I thought about it the more I thought that I really didn’t just want to list the expected answers. As I thought about that, I realized that measuring our online influence is a lot like measuring aspects of our real life, like what impact we have on other people, for example.

Because I’m torn, I’m going to answer Tom’s question in two ways. First, I’ll provide some ideas on how you can sort of start to get your arms around how you might be influencing people online. Then I’ll talk about some ways that aren’t as tangible but are just as (if not more) valuable.

Archives for August 2011

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