Yet another list of New Year’s resolutions

We are already 8 days into 2010 and I am just getting around to posting a condensed version of my New Year’s Resolutions list.  While I did prepare a list of resolutions on the first of the month, I have decided to share only those related to my online life.  It’s interesting that many of these resolutions are related to topics I tweet or write about regularly.  As my father used say, “Do as I say – not as I do”.

Not my list of resolutions, but not too far off

I will become a Gmail power user.  I have used Gmail and many of the other free Google services for years. Yet I continually find myself relying on the very basic features.  Of all the Google services, Gmail in particular has a tremendous number of add-ons, browser plugins and disabled features that make the Gmail experience much more powerful and productive.  While I have used some of these features over the years, there are plenty of tweaks I have been putting off for quite some time.  So I resolve to utilize the information and resources at Lifehacker to turbo-charge my Gmail experience.

I will redesign my blog for a phase 2 rollout. When I originally launched AlertPresence.com, my plan was to focus on the content rather than the design.  As you can see, I stuck to the plan.  As the volume of content continues to grow during the first quarter of 2010, there will be an increased need for a redesign.  Fortunately I am using the Thesis theme for Wordpress so when the time comes to freshen up the site, it should be fairly painless.

I will update my blog 3 times per week. As I am not a full time blogger, it can be difficult to find the time for writing and posting new articles.  Nevertheless, I am committed to growing the readership and extending the mission of AlertPresence.com so I resolve to write at least 3 articles per week for the first quarter of 2010.

I will find a way to manage my business and personal contacts effectively on Facebook and other social media sites.  Like many of you, I like to keep my personal life and my business life entirely separate.  On some social media sites it can be difficult to accomplish this.  For example, Facebook’s terms and conditions require you to have only account.  Therefore, my only choices for having a business presence are to create a fan page (not really a good fit for me) or mix my personal friends with my business associates.  Some of the recent changes made to Facebook will actually allow me to accomplish this.  So I resolve to create detailed group lists on Facebook in order to effectively manage my communications.  This way my business contacts only have access to my business content and my personal contacts only have access to my personal content.

I will develop and implement a personal branding strategy. Over the past 2 years, I have spent a lot of time researching social media marketing and reputation management.  I have helped others create an online presence and monitor content related to their own brands.  In spite of that, I have completely ignored my own personal brand.  I have many social media accounts that were created (for experimental purposes) and then left largely ignored.  My Google profile is nearly blank and I have done little to connect my blog to my professional life.  That being said, I resolve to use resources such as Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook and Developing a Successful Personal Brand in order to build a better personal brand.

I will spend more time developing my social media business relationships.  It didn’t take long for me to lose interest in social media with regards to my personal life.  In the early days, I was genuinely interested in reconnecting with friends from 20 years ago and learning where their lives have taken them.  My interest since then has shifted primarily to the opportunity of making new professional connections and continuing to learn about my industry.  I believe that is the most beneficial aspect of social media today.  There is so much great information available from so many industry professionals.  I resolve to continue developing new relationship through social channels and growing those relationships for the future.

I will become an Evernote junkie.  We are all inundated with ridiculous amounts of online information on a daily basis.  Despite the fact that I have been using Evernote for 6 months in order to help manage all my data, I haven’t begun to unleash its potential.  I recently discovered that Evernote has an official tumblelog that is full of great tips and tricks for getting the most out of their service.  In 2010, I resolve to become a proficient Evernote user.

Does your business have a strategy for leveraging these opportunities?

Every now and then, I like to take a step back and get a “bird’s eye view” of the Internet.  It serves as a nice reminder for why I spend so much time and effort finding ways for businesses to utilize existing and emerging technologies.  The following image from OnlineEducation.net does a nice job illustrating the massive amounts of data that is shared via various Internet technologies.

Although this is just a random collection of statistics, they are strong motivators to continue developing creative online marketing strategies.  What percentage of the 300,000,000 users on Facebook would be interested in your business?  Maybe it’s time to find out if you haven’t already started.

Turbo-charging your daily knowledge absorption

Every day for me starts as a learning quest.  The same is true for most people.  If you listen to the radio, watch morning tv news, read the newspaper or get online each morning you are absorbing information.  In today’s world, we are bombarded with so much information it’s common to become overwhelmed with it all…especially online.

How do you find the good stuff?

Accessing the large volumes of good information scattered about the Internet requires skillful searching, diligent reading and your most valuable asset – time.  Fortunately, there are some excellent free online tools that will save you significant time and effort when it comes to consuming and organizing content.  Here are 4 such tools I use on a daily basis to keep current and continue learning.

1) Google Alerts

Life became much simpler when Google launched their Alerts service.  Most informed users on the Internet use it in some capacity.  It eliminates the need to search for the same topic regularly by automatically delivering the results to you.  The power of using this service is in the specified search term itself.

Just like a standard Google search, Google Alerts will deliver more accurate results if the search terms have been optimized.  Becoming familiar with Google’s advanced search tips will help you immensely.  The primary advantages of Google Alerts can be summed up by the following points:

• Save search terms and have them delivered to you daily or weekly
• Choose from news, blogs, web, video, groups or comprehensive (all) as targets for your search
• Choose between email or rss feed for delivery method

2) Feedly

I’ve been using Feedly now for over month, but I was sold on its effectiveness immediately.  As a long time Google Reader user, I never really considered using other RSS readers since none of them seemed to stand out.  Feedly, on the other hand, has found a cleaner and more organized way to present RSS feeds in your browser.

You can access the tool via their website (link provided above) or install it as an add-on to your browser if you use Firefox.  If I come across a blog that I find interesting and useful, I simply add the RSS feed so I can access new posts via Feedly.  For a quick overview on how I use Feedly you can watch the following video.

3) Twitter Search

In my opinion, Twitter would be a useless novelty if not for the search functionality. If you are interested in any particular subject, there is probably a community discussing it on Twitter.  This is a great way to discover good information on a topic and connect with those of similar interests.  Hashtags are the key here.  To find hashtags regarding a particular subject you can visit TagDef or TwittGroups.

Example:  I happen to have a strong interest in the use of social media for the health care industry.  Leaders in the field regularly add the hashtag #hcsm to their tweets so that their tweets can be easily identified in search.  Therefore, I have a saved Twitter search that shows me all of the tweets tagged with #hcsm in real-time.

4) Evernote

Have you ever read something online that you’d like to store for future reference?  In the old days you would probably bookmark the page for future reference only to have the bookmark disappear into a jungle other forgotten bookmarks.  Evernote solved that problem by creating a brilliantly effective tool for saving and organizing useful information.

Now you can “clip” a portion of an article or site and store it in a digital file cabinet on Evernote.  The nice thing about this solution is that you can access it at any time from any computer or even on an iPhone.  The following video does a great job demonstrating how Evernote works and how it can help you organize your informaiton.

If you are trying to stay up to date and learn more about your industry, these tools can save you a significant amount of time.  There are plenty of other comparable tools available, but I have found these to work the best for me.  Let me know what tools you have found to be effective in the comments section.