E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Reclaim Blogging – On Why Your Blog Still Is Your Best Personal Branding Social Tool

Over the course of the years Hugh MacLeod has always been posting some of the most amazing content available out there on the Internet Blogosphere on various different topics, specially, related to Social Networking. One of the articles that I have enjoyed the most though was one he shared just recently, a couple of weeks back, under the title ““Reclaim Blogging”: Why I’m giving up Twitter and Facebook“, where he is stating, out loud, and very clearly, the main single use case of why blogging still has got a place within today’s Social Web: Your voice… Your blog *still* is your main personal branding tool!

Interestingly enough, plenty of people have been questioning whether, now that we have got Google Plus as well, it makes sense to dump your own blog in favour of your social activities in the various social networking sites. And Plus being the latest one joining the already existing crowded club. A few prominent bloggers have jumped the shark and eventually dumped their blogs and moved the conversations, and further insights, into G+. And a few people have been asking me for a little while now, on whether I’m ready to do that myself and move over to Plus as well … or not. Well, the answer, right now, as we stand, is No.

Yes, it’s true that I have dumped a good number of social software tools out there on the Social Web in favour of G+ itself, or, at least, thanks to it I have reduced my involvement with those social tools quite a bit. But there are two of them that I am not ready, just yet, to kiss good-bye and move them into SNS. One of them is my Flickr account and the other one, of course, is my blog. This blog. And Hugh explains it very very well how I, too, feel about it overall on why I still think there is a place and a time for blogging out there on the Internet, as well as the Intranet, by the way. Here are a couple of noteworthy quotes from his blog entry I thought were worth while sharing across:

“The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important.” [Emphasis mine]

Which he then develops beautifully with this other noteworthy quote:

“And as I’ve said many times over the years, Web 2.0 IS ALL ABOUT personal sovereignty. About using media to do something meaningful, WITHOUT someone else giving you permission first, without having to rely on anyone else’s resources, authority and money. Self-sufficiency. Exactly” [Emphasis mine, once again]

And I couldn’t have agreed more with that couple of rather inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. Blogging, indeed, does require a lot of hard work, lot of energy and effort about being constant, authentic (i.e. The real you!), honest, insightful, willing to learn and share plenty more, etc. etc. However, the returns have always been tremendously powerful. Blogging is your own personal voice (Whether internal or external), your own opinions on those subject matters that you are truly passionate about, your own real self. The individual that the world would need to figure out whether you are worth while reading or not depending on the nature and the insights of the stuff you share across. Blogging, in short, is your own personal branding tool. Your digital footprint out there. Your digital eminence in a place where your voice is heard loud and clear and where you call the shots on owning the conversation initially, inspiring others to improve your own thoughts and ideas over time, making it a tremendously empowering learning experience. Call it your own essential personal Knowledge Management / Sharing System, if you wish…

Very soon, in just a couple of months time, my blogging experience will make 8 years and, as you may have noticed, it’s still going rather strong, with the exception, of course, of those hiatus that I seem to embark on every now and then, specially, when I am travelling. Yet, I still feel as if it were my first few weeks of blogging. The excitement is there, the energy, the effort and the willingness to start a conversation and invite others to chime in, as they may see fit, are all still there, just like back in the day, because, a long time ago I realised that my blog, more than anything else, became my online business card, my dynamic and ever-growing curriculum vitae, my own virtual community of folks who care and are truly passionate about the same stuff as me. And that’s just priceless!

But if there would be a single reason as to why I still think blogging is worth while doing big time, picking further up from Hugh’s rather enlightening blog entry, is the fact of how of those last 8 years of blogging, my blog has managed to provide me with some pretty unique opportunities, both in a personal and work levels, including the last three of my own jobs, while at IBM, one of them being my dream job where next month will mark my 4th anniversary there!

That’s just one of the many many reasons out there why I, too, wanted to take this opportunity to remind people, like Hugh himself did on that article, “on why we all got into blogging in the first place, all of those years ago…” Perhaps it’s a good time now to remind folks about it and, just in case you may be new to blogging and would wonder how you could get things going to help you start finding your own blogging voice and blogging style, allow me to recommend the one single resource that has taught me over the years a whole bunch of hints and tips, tricks, good practices, and blogging techniques: Darren Rowse, the one and only, ProBlogger. It’s probably as good as it gets to help you get off to a really good start in building further up your own personal brand and digital presence out there on the Social Web.

Oh, and if you are in Google Plus, allow me to point you as well to this thread by Darren himself under the heading “Traits of Successful Bloggers” where he has shared plenty of insights and various different links to 12 different characteristics of (successful) bloggers:

1. Playfulness and Creativity
2. Innovation
3. Connectors
4. Community Builders
5. Information Mavens
6. Communicators
7. Interest
8. Entrepreneurial Spirit
9. Originality
10. Perseverance
11. Focus
12. Curiosity

Now, on to the final reflection that I am sure most of you folks out there are thinking about already… With this blog post on reclaiming blogging am I implying that I’m about to leave the various social networking sites where I used to hang out at? Well, I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m ready, just yet, to dump it all, just like Hugh himself. What I can tell you though, and share across happily, is how both this blog and Google Plus itself have allowed me to become thicker, instead of spreading thinner over and over, at my social interactions to the point where it looks like I may have reduced my online social activities out there on the Social Web to these magic three: my blog (with my Flickr pictures I keep embedding here and there…), my one single Twitter account over at @elsua (I’m in the process of deleting all other alter egos, so feel free to connect with that account or add it to a Twitter List near you) and Google Plus itself. And so far it looks like I’m enjoying it quite a bit. How about you? Does blogging still play a key part in your social interactions? If so, please do let me know! Would love to add you into my daily blogroll … Yes, I do still have one and maintain it as well on a regular basis!

Google Plus and The Enterprise – What’s The Deal?

(I was hoping to be able to share this blog post while I was on vacation with my family in León, mainland Spain, but apparently lack of reliable (NOT!!) Internet connectivity, provided by Movistar, le sigh, prevented me not posting it sooner… More on that in an upcoming blog entry though, but for now regular blogging will resume, once again from today onwards… Welcome back!)

As most of you folks know already, over the next few days, I will be on holidays visiting my family in mainland Spain and while it’s supposed to be a time where I will be doing plenty of disconnecting and unwinding from the Social Web, as I get to do some serious catch up with real life, and with the little things that matter, I just can’t help dropping by on this blog every now and then, and over the next few days, and share with folks some further thoughts and insights that have been in my mind for a little while now. And lately, my mind has been buzzing with how my overall experience with the external Social Web has changed rather dramatically thanks to Google Plus. Over two months on it and I am still having a blast. This time around though for business, too!

Yes, that’s right! A few days back a couple of folks asked me to comment on where I would see Google Plus in the near future with regards to other Enterprise Social Networking tools and my initial thoughts have been, almost from the beginning, that the potential to become rather significant is already there. It will be a matter of whether Google manages to let it grow in the right direction with some further innovations taking place, but at the same time while respecting the overall user experience we are treasuring quite a bit, and which distinguishes itself from other social networking tools right from the start.

My good friend Andy McAfee put together a rather insightful blog post a couple of weeks back under the heading “Google Plus and The Social Media Moonshot“, where he reflected somewhat on that potential Plus has got already embedded into it as a “great boon for enterprises and small groups of collaborators“. And I couldn’t have agreed more with him on that statement. In a way, it reminded me, quite a bit, on the huge potential of Google Wave for that same audience, although it’s probably just too bad it didn’t deliver that time around. He also comes to share his experiences with it and how he finds out he spends more time sharing Public posts rather than through Circles, which is quite an interesting observation, even more when everyone is talking about how transformative the whole concept of Circles has been so far.

I am not going to spoil it much more for you folks on Andy’s additional thoughts on how it is working out for him, but I would encourage you all to go and have a look through it. It would be worth while the read, for sure! What I found interesting though is how we are both sharing a very similar behaviour on how we are working around Circles themselves. I, too, publish most of my posts to Public and just restrict some of them to specific Circles in a very defined context. That one of business related updates. Indeed, one of my favourite circles that I put together a little while ago is one for Customers, as more and more of them are starting to come along and join G+ and so far I have been enjoying the interactions quite a bit.

In the past you would remember the series of blog posts I have been putting together so far, where I have been hinting how Google Plus is surely shaping up the way I interact with the Social Web out there. Some of those insights were highlighting how G+ could be used in a business environment with both public, private updates, hangouts, huddles, instant messaging, etc. etc. and one of the things I am finding out in the last few days is how those interactions are starting to be rather focused on business interactions. It’s been a bit over two months since it was launched and I am already seeing on my Stream how a large chunk of the updates do no longer have anything to do with how this new kid in the block works here and there. The conversation has moved on and once we have past the initial learning curve the really good stuff is starting to happen.

For me, that’s interacting with customers, business partners, and fellow IBM colleagues, but at the same time keeping up with industry thought leaders in an open, trustworthy environment where more in-depth dialogue is not only encouraged, but facilitated nicely altogether. A good number of those conversations are happening out there in the open, indeed, but at the same time a whole bunch of other interactions are happening privately, in circles, or through direct messaging, which is when it really gets interesting. With other social networking tools it was rather cumbersome to be able to successfully engage with people in meaningful dialogue for whatever the restriction. Some times it was the 140 characters limitations, or the private nature of the SNS (For family and friends, like Facebook), or the aggressive terms of service from a variety of social tools where you no longer retain the copyright of what you share. Well, Google Plus fixes all of that and so much more!

I have been having business related conversations with a few customers, where we have been capable of exchanging long-ish conversations in a natural way, without being forced to be concise, just letting it develop and see how far it could take us or worry about who owns the content shared. And those exchanges have been absolutely wonderful! What social tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Posterous, and a few others, haven’t figured out for years Google Plus delivers from day one! And all of that without taking into account Hangouts, Huddles, Instant Messaging and the like that add further up another key aspect missing from the Social Web: real-time interactions! Not sure what you would think about it, but I am enjoying it so far big time!

It’s that specific scenario as well that’s helping me shape up how I interact with Circles. Like I have mentioned above, most of my posts are Public, i.e. published to the world, but the way I consume content in G+ is rather specific on its own. I spend most of the time in Circles. To me, they are all starting to become channels of insightful information and relevant content that I can reuse / reshare again, or that I can learn some more from, or that I can help others with. But with a different twist. While most folks are interested in the content itself, my Circles are all based on a people centric approach, where what matters to me are the people themselves and not so much the updates. That’s why I am enjoying both business and personal updates, even those of a rather trivial nature.

Plenty of people keep saying that social networking is all about personalising your experience, to make it your own, to find a purpose for it (Whether business or personally related), to connect with those social tools in a meaningful way and keep the dialogue going and somehow I feel how Google Plus is helping me achieve that. It’s helping me, and those I interact with, become a whole lot more personal with some of our updates. And that’s what I am enjoying the most at the moment, that I am interacting with people, people who bring forward their personalities, their affinities, their passions, their selves, without pretending to be someone else they aren’t. It’s that going personal that’s helping me become more personal myself in trying to keep cultivating and nurturing those personal business relationships, because, at the end of the day, I guess that’s what really matters, right?

That’s why, to me, Google Plus, has got that huge potential from an enterprise perspective. That’s why, as soon as Plus starts integrating the massive Google ecosystem behind it, we will be having quite an interesting effect on how we conduct business, specially, externally. Can you imagine when G+ is tightly integrated with Google Search? Mind-blowing is one of the many words that comes to mind!

Now, I am sure at this point in time you may be wondering whether that means I will be leaving behind business related social networking environments like our external instances IBM Connections, which are still my preferred method for doing business, right? Well, not really. I still see both of them walking together, hand in hand, getting the job done. What I am seeing though is how most of my business interactions have now moved on from social tools like Twitter or LinkedIn into Google Plus and somehow that’s something that I’m starting to like quite a bit, since, once again, I no longer have to worry about having to figure out technology. I just have got to focus on the conversations and get the job done, which is, in my opinion, what the Social Web should be about.

Forget the social technologies at play and focus on living social. Do Business.

Vacation Is A State Of Mind

Indeed, while everyone tries to go and aim for that Work / Life Balance or, as of late, Work / Life Integration, I am starting to be more and move convinced by the day that there isn’t such a balance nor such integration after all. It’s all about a state of mind, whatever that may well be, whether you are at work, enjoying some great quality time with your loved ones or just simply away on vacation. Eventually, it’s your state of mind, something that no-one can take away from you; not your family and loved ones, not your work, not even your boss. And it’s just too funny that I have finally come to realise about that while I have been on vacation myself for the last few days, which is why you haven’t seen any updates on this blog for nearly two weeks. But I am now back and my state of mind is “back to work, back the social grid!”

Fully re-energised, batteries charged all the way up!, really excited to face, and embrace, the remaining of what’s left for 2011, for sure! In short, ready for plenty more! I must confess that I truly enjoyed though the time that I have been disconnected, unwinding from everything, going back home to visit my family and spending plenty of quality time with them catching up with real life, you know, the one I guess most of us keep neglecting time and time again, because it’s always going to be there. You know, they are always going to be there! Well, really? Who knows… Do you? Do you have that certainty? I surely don’t!

The thing is that this time around I thought about bringing with me my MacBook Air, so that, in between here and there, you know, those idle moments where nothing seems to be happening, I would have an opportunity to play catch up with work as well as do lots of the blogging I have meant to write over here for a long while. Oh dear, life has done it again. Life is wise. Life knows what’s best for you and for those around you. No doubt. Never question it, because by the time you do it, it would be too late!

In the whole time that I spent on vacation, this time around going back home to León, mainland Spain, I hardly managed to be connected to the Social Web. Yes, we all know it already, we are all interconnected, we have always been interconnected. Yet, our physical world, at least, in some parts of the globe that being connected to the Web reliably has got a lot to be desired for! And that’s just what I experienced while being away. After a couple of tries of playing catch up with the Social Web and gaining further frustration for not managing to stay connected, like I am used to, I eventually gave up and stopped trying to get connected. Instead, decided to switch off and enjoy plenty of physical, face to face, social networking with the kind of folks who are already interconnected amongst themselves, and for whom social technologies don’t seem to be playing a key role. At least, the one I thought it would. And I had a total blast throughout all of that time! Goodness! Did that experience change a whole bunch of things for the better?!? It surely did and I am very happy it did! It was also about time it managed to break through and go through that awakening phase that I guess most of us would need to go through every now and then to show us all what really matters. Yes, as usual, the little things!

To describe it all in a single blog post would probably take me ages to do, and perhaps you folks may be able to see it coming along in upcoming blog posts anyway, while I try to cover various different subjects and other interesting readings, as I will try to make a connection between this offline time, what I learned during such time, as well as how it relates to the Social Web, and my overall experiences, because, as usual, it does and big time!

However, in order to share with you some of the beauty and privilege of what I have enjoyed in the last few days, I thought I would go ahead and resume my regular blogging activities with the Inspiring Video of the Week, which, once again, is a rather short, but amazingly inspirational, thought-provoking and mind-boggling TED Talk by Ric Elias. I will embed the YouTube video clip over here that I bumped into before I started my holidays, while I will point you to the original Talk itself, but you will have to watch through the little bit over three minutes to get a glimpse of what this holiday has meant for yours truly. And, most importantly, how I am beginning to understand how that state of mind is playing with us all to really help us focus on the things that really matter: our personal / business relationships with others, whether at work… Or not.

(You would have to agree with me that just the Ted Talk / Video clip on its own would make us all reflect about a thing or two on how we currently view things, and where we should be placing, and focusing on, our *real* priorities, don’t you think? … Yes, it’s good to be back into the usual things of life and work, but with a redefined purpose altogether. Living Social FTW!

Ohhh, and talking about re-difining purposes altogether, take a look into this essential, must-read article put together by my good friend Dave Pollard on “Living Disconnected“. Perhaps one of the best, most fascinating, blog entries you will read this year. Without a single doubt. It will be worth while your time, for sure, with plenty of food for thought for all of us on what’s coming… if we don’t change our inadequate state of mind!)