How To Become Your Own North Star On The Internet

If you aren’t thinking deeply about how and where and w/whom you appear and interact on the web, you need to start. http://t.co/t5ncPjzIUV — ken_homer (@ken_homer) October 15, 2014

We're all digital strategists now.

In fact, if you aren't thinking deeply about how and where and with whom you appear and interact on the web, you need to start.

Today. You can and should be using your online presence as a 21st century life & work skill to connect with relevant people, information you need and enriching opportunities. I'm going to help, so you can get started today. (And the resources I'm sharing with you are completely free, so if you want to buy something you'll have to go find a different post.) I've been saying all of this for years. Doing it for years. As a content and digital publishing specialist, I've been showing people how to use their own content to connect purpose and action in digital spaces, for 5 years, both in private and group coaching environments. Along with Tara Agacayak and Tanya Monsef Bunger, I built a curriculum at GlobalNiche, a social web training company that's now shifting into an empowered digital life movement, so you can do it on your own, or in groups, wherever you are and whoever you are and whatever you do. If you are a person active online, this training will ask you the strategic questions you need to be thinking about. If you're not yet active or don't love being online, this will help you figure out what makes sense for you. Our combined 25 years of experience, including major expatriate life and work challenges, forced us to tap our backgrounds in culture, info tech, media & psychology to create this network-activating system using the backbone of the social web. We've used this method to survive. No matter who or where you are, you can use it to thrive.

I'm now making that training perfectly free, so you can take advantage of all our guidance immediately.

Want to learn how? It's my gift to you! Start by downloading the handbook

  When you download this powerful free handbook you're going to start to transform what you do, how you do it and with whom. This repeatable, dynamic six-step method will help you become your own North Star on the Internet and bring you closer to the people and things you care about. You'll emerge with inspiration, direction and confidence:

• a vision that lights you up and goals you can measure

• a do-able plan and digital skills you need

• and a practice and peer group you can rely on to keep going

Here's what people who've done it say:

• "I felt I couldn’t catch up. The way GlobalNiche describes social media – it’s about using technology to communicate naturally – clicked for me." ~ paralegal

• “Opened my eyes to my own assets. It has given me the confidence to bet on myself.” ~ work-at-home parent

• “I doubled my Twitter presence just by learning about good Twitter etiquette.” ~ scriptwriter

• “I’m blown away by the possibilities. I now have an action plan. I feel a huge shift in my life." ~ academic

• "For people who are wondering if what they have to say is valuable.” ~ financial officer

• "Helped me to recognize and own how I am being virtually “seen” and make positive and educated changes." ~ landscape contractor

With this non-dogmatic foundational method you'll:

• uncover the real value you've already created: by taking inventory of what you've been doing, detecting the patterns in your activities, gaining insight into what you're drawn to

• put your mountain of natural resources to work for you: by acknowledging all that you’ve created and use it to gain insight into who you are and who you want to be

• show the world how you make sense: by linking what you've done in the past & are doing today with your wider goals

• recognize that you need to become visible to meet people you want to collaborate with, work for, hire

• combine who you are and where you want to go with the tools available to express yourself

• make empowered, focused decisions about how to operate online

• go beyond managing your reputation online to using social media to represent your best self

• meet and enter conversations with your peers, mentors and customers on the web

• get recognized by authorities & peers in your field, recruiters, the media

• identify how to use existing materials as building blocks for future projects

• identify new ways to use social media, which platforms work for you (and which do not), and how to use those platforms to your advantage

• express yourself with the best social web tools available, including how to use Google+, Quora, ScoopIt and Storify to your benefit

• gain a new understanding of the best social media and content management and strategy tools, formats, methods to try

• establish an interactive calling card at a site like About.me

• learn best practices for blogging frameworks like WordPress and Thesis, blogging services like Twitter and Tumblr, social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram

• learn best uses of video and slideshow sites like Animoto, YouTube, Vimeo, Slideshare, email service providers

• grasp a new perspective on yourself as a content creator, realize the energy you generate around your interests IS content

• publish, record, remix, repackage, reformat your content

• design and implement a do-able plan with small steps to get your creations into global circulation in alignment with your larger goals

We're all digital strategists now. Here's what you, personally, need to do to win the Internet. https://t.co/EBxi9xPJhs by @AnastasiaAshman

— E.B. Boyd (Liza) (@ebboyd) October 16, 2014

Want more?

If you want more guidance, get the free multimedia curriculum which expands on the handbook with video coaching and other materials. You'll have lifetime access to the self-paced course, 24/7, on all your devices. I'm making that entire program perfectly free for you, so join with a friend and do it together! 4,700 people already cashed in this free coupon to get connected & effective. Did you? Let me know how you're liking it!

A Simple Strategy For Building A Global Network Isn't About You. Your Plan Has To Make The Network A No-Brainer For Its Users -- Not Its Builder

Which one of these is a 'simple' strategy for building a global network of people who have a range of digital abilities: a pervasive, cohesive presence with many online doors -- or one room in graveyard of the web?

Which one of these is a ‘simple’ digital strategy (true story!) of an organization that aims to build a global network from a millions-strong list of women it’s loosely associated with:

• a pervasive, cohesive presence across multiple social networking services, a community with free flow of information -- with windows into other related rooms of your peers and corridors you can go down if and when you are ready, willing, able, that is, when are you motivated and enabled to connect and pursue what appeals to you about this gathered community,
• OR, one room on a service known for not-loving its group functionality, a service littered with the skeletons of well-intentioned groups, a room that is 'easy' to open?

When you find yourself looking for a simple strategy to connect all your important people so they can finally get off an inert list of names and start to build closer ties, so you can ambiently be aware of your peers on a consistent basis, so you all can see each other and learn what everyone is up to, so you recognize your commonalities and your opportunities to collaborate, and so you can TAKE ACTION on your shared goals using the cost-effective, labor-saving, reach-amplifying online communication tools available in 2013, ask yourself this.

Simple for whom?

Is your plan simple for you, the community builder? Or is it simple for the community waiting to happen?

We're All Digital Strategists Now

With the web's power, reach, and endurance, we're all digital strategists now. And if we go online (or don't go online!) disregarding this fact, we miss the boat, and the point.

My Advice To 40,000 Professional Services Pros On How to Make Your Digital Strategy Sustainable

Thrilled to contribute my perspective to this month's "Ask The Expert" column on how to combat digital overwhelm in the business-to-business (B2B) space.

I answer this question from the community of executives and services professionals:

"I’m mentally exhausted from my social media responsibilities. What can I do differently with my digital strategy to make it more sustainable? Automation? Passing it to the intern?"

As you can imagine my approach and method for sustainability hinges on making your engagement with your online social networks one that nourishes you rather than depletes you.

Your network should delight and challenge you; bring you fresh insights and curated news you can use; it should activate you and engage you.

Once you start receiving true value from your network by curating your connections, you’ll have a better sense of how to provide value in return.

As your online communities begin to sustain you, participating in them will become sustainable.

Thanks to my fellow editorial pro Meryl Evans (who I met on Twitter many years ago!) for the invitation to share my perspective with the 40,000 subscribers of this 11-year-old newsletter for consultants, lawyers, accountants, architects, and other professional services professionals.

New World Order Deja Vu

"We have built around us a borderless global society, without the need for proximity to connect," announces social business strategist Bryan Kramer in today's post "A New World: Proximity Redefined". "Social, mobile & online today has redefined how proximity inhibits our abilities to connect anywhere & anytime."

Globally unbound. Unconfined by traditional limitations. That's exactly what I've been saying and demonstrating for many years as an expatriate devoted to using social and mobile as a survival skill and tool.

But borderlessness is not just about using the tools. It's a mindset. And it's a need.

At GlobalNiche.net I teach others how to adopt this stance -- which, as Kramer points out, is a future work skill -- by committing to an intentional online life in which we see ourselves as unlimited, and build our social capital and connect to our broader networks for personal and professional development.

Kramer calls it a new world order.

That's exactly what I termed the phenomenon in 2009, of common interest and experience connecting us more than geography, nationality, and even blood when I introduced the group blog ExpatHarem.com to discuss the issues of hybrid identity, global citizenship, mobile progressivism, Third Culture.

With wider adoption of the technologies, more people can be here now. They join those of us who have been operating with this mindset for a long time already because it's a survival skill.