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!

Being Hip Offline Doesn't Make You Hip Online

I have bad news for you.

Being a hip person offline doesn't mean you're suddenly hip online.

Same goes for being funny, deep, interesting or another quality you're known for and proudly own offline.

To be so in online spaces actually takes effort and awareness to build up your faculties on the web and with online tools for expression.

To be hip (etc, whatever!) online you'll have to interact in places appropriate for your qualities with a freshness and understanding that telegraphs your au courant nature, for instance. You'll have to display how on-trend you are from concept to execution. You have to prove it.

You can't just declare your qualities in your digital bio and assume because you've logged on you've automatically brought online everything you are offline. No, your work has just begun.

Blueprint For Building Global Community With Free Web Tech

When the Global Women's Leadership Alliance announced a brainstorming challenge* to gather ideas about how to create a platform for five million women change agents, my partner Tara Agacayak & I were excited to share what we’ve learned about using technology to build global community over the past four years. We've experienced that the way to impact change is with an activated global community connected through social web technology.

Our biggest lessons for creating an activated global community are that people need

1. synchronous and asynchronous ways to gather
2. prompting and encouragement to do so
3. a way to get to know one another
4. a common purpose for gathering

See GlobalNiche's blueprint for building global community using free web-based technology (G+! YouTube! Linqto!).

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*This challenge was also sponsored by Global Fund for Women, Global Leadership Advancement Center at San Jose State University, Mills College, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Public Health Institute, World Pulse, and Salzburg Global Seminar at San Jose State University.

Your Content Adds Up. Now Make It Discoverable, Too.

We're born content producers. The more prolific among us are literally volcanoes of content.

Yet, what you’ve generated probably isn’t working for you.

It’s probably not laid out as a path where you want to go, nor presented as an invitation to other like-minded souls and interested parties to join you in your journey. It’s not contributing to the discoverability of you.

Do you have shelves full of:

• paper, boxes and binders, clippings, photos, slides, sketches and notes
• memorabilia and scrapbook materials

What about in the hall closet, and all that stuff in the basement?

• floppy disks
• hard drives
• external drives
• CDs, cassette tapes, video tapes

I bet you have a bunch of content stored here, there and everywhere. There’s a reason you haven’t gotten rid of it.

That mountain of stuff represents your effort and interest, and independent research. 

That mountain represents the things you chose to do because they make you feel alive.

Think of all the activities you’ve poured yourself into and how you’ve retained the evidence of them.  Anything that represents your experiences, your thinking and feeling on certain topics. All those photos of people and places and things that hold meaning and jog memories, yet haven’t seen the light of day in practically FOREVER. Some of it may represent creative failures. False starts. Ancient history. That's okay. Include it.

Maybe now you’ve got a mental image of your piles of creation, content associated with the life you’ve lived and the things you’ve loved (or hated, who knows).

At GlobalNiche we believe it’s forgotten gold. (Don’t feel too badly. We all have similar piles that we haven’t used for much of anything. YET.)

So, next question.

Are you sitting on that mountain of content -- and also wondering how you’re going to make ends meet, effect a career change, or achieve a goal?

Maybe you’re thinking you can’t do what you yearn to because you live in the wrong place and don’t have the right contacts and there’s no opportunity to pursue that interest where you are. As an expat for 14 years, I spent a lot of time wondering if my location was a disadvantage to what I want to do. The answer was "yes" most of the time. But no longer.

If we consider that earlier output and experience not as failure or a waste of time, but instead a chain of events that make us who we are today, then we can start to get an idea of the arc of our lives and how what we’ve done in the past can help us get where we want to go in the future. No matter where we are -- with the help of the web and the platform we build on it.

What if you were prominent and findable in your chosen field of interest or activity? 

How might your opportunities change if you let your content support your aims? <---Tweet that.

Whether you’re positioning yourself to land jobs or funding or a book deal, or you’ve got a completed book or other product or service to sell, it will make a difference to your results. If you’re findable and well-represented, you have a chance. If you’re unknown, unfindable, and a jumbled mess when people DO happen to stumble on you, you won’t make much of an impression.

Whatever you want to do, you’ll need help and support. An important part of gathering support is going public with your process, to attract likeminded people to your cause and to involve them in your journey. The kind of people who are interested your vision and your way of thinking and feeling, parties who can help you develop your plan, the kind of peers and confidants and guides who will form the basis of your network.

We've entered a golden age for content creators. Do you know how to wrap your arms around your content, see the story it tells, and link it with your goals?

A version of this post originally appeared at Kristin Bair O'Keeffe's Writerhead, September 7, 2012

Why Social Media Is Perfect For International Professional Women

I sent this list to the group International Professional Women of Istanbul in advance of the social media panel I am conducting for their membership.

Social media is all about making personal connections, fostering them, benefitting from them. Women excel at this type of interaction.

If you think you’re ‘too old’ to learn you'll be surprised to hear women over 40 dominate social media!

If you feel limited by life abroad: using social media’s networks to meet your career development needs and pursue your interests is a natural fit.

If you feel disrupted by numerous location changes, social media can provide consistent connection with your communities worldwide.

If you're a professional person, knowledge of social media offers you a relevance unmatched by any other skill or tool available today.

(image is from the IPWIN social media workshop I conducted with Tara Agacayak)

Here's the announcement for the event

BUILD YOUR PROFESSIONAL WEB PLATFORM: (Saturday, January 22nd, location TBA, 75TL/person)

If you want to test the social media waters beyond your personal Facebook profile, consider this two-hour interactive event about creating your professional path online.

Using the principles from their “Mastermind Program for Creative Entrepreneurs”, Tara Ağaçayak of Turquoise Poppy and Anastasia Ashman of expat+HAREM will demonstrate how social media, web technology, and a community of globally-diverse creative professionals can help you design a location-independent career.

In the first hour they’ll walk you through the growth process of a local entrepreneur building her personal brand on the web. In the second hour, *you* will each become a case study as Tara and Anastasia moderate a live mastermind session.

What you’ll take away from this event: a better connection to your professional passion and a clearer understanding of how social media tools and techniques can be used to develop this passion through the web.

In order to best benefit from the session, participants should have at least two of these: social media accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook), a blog or website, or an email newsletter.

Here's our write up of the event for the Lale magazine:

IPWIN MEMBERS FINDING THEIR GLOBAL NICHE -- ONLINE!

On January 22nd IPWIN hosted a social media workshop:  “BUILD YOUR PROFESSIONAL WEB PLATFORM” for women interested in building a serious online presence. Tara Agacayak of web consultancy Turquoise Poppy and Anastasia Ashman of expat+HAREM, the global niche gave excellent support and advice to 20 participants on how to grow their professional selves on the web.

We started with a round of introductions and got an overview of the various enterprises run or being developed by IPWIN members. We heard distinct stories, and overlapping concerns. “How can I sell my service when the local market doesn’t value it yet?” “How much of myself should I expose?” “I had to take time off to raise my family, and we moved a lot but I want to get a career started in Istanbul.” “How do I present my company, my product, my idea, my brand?” “I run multiple businesses, should I merge them in one site or have separate Facebook pages?” “Which language should I blog in, how do I decide if French or Spanish is best?” “I’m trying to figure out what new business is going to last.”

Here are some of the issues we discussed during the meeting.

Why is social media important today?

Social media used professionally is an unrivaled way to become visible to a global audience at very low cost, by building a virtual network and sharing your expertise. People now want to do business with people, not faceless corporations. Even big companies are now trying to appear “more human”. Solo entrepreneurs everywhere can thrive in this new online environment.

What does the ‘social’ part of social media mean?

It means user-generated web content -- as opposed to static web pages -- that allows us to interact with each other through various web technologies. Think of “liking” a Facebook page, or tweeting a blog post, or even commenting on a blog. We can get feedback on our work, we can respond to customers in a public forum and demonstrate the quality of our service, we can meet and learn from others who are interested in the same things, and we can share our best discoveries on the web with our own networks.

What is creative entrepreneurship?

A successful business provides a product or service that solves a problem or fills a need. Creative entrepreneurs design offerings based on their personal inclinations, skills and talents. Often these develop out of a need to live and work in non-traditional situations. Social media is a wonderful vehicle to build professional projects on the web regardless of your location, time or language constraints. Creative entrepreneurship is a perfect solution to the problem faced by people who move around a lot or live in cultures not their own. It’s how to “bloom where you’re planted,” as Tara’s Turquoise Poppy catchphrase suggests.

What is a global niche?

Coined by Anastasia for global citizens to feel at home,  a global niche is where you uniquely belong in the world, both personally and professionally. Your sweetspot. A place occupied completely and perfectly by you -- so naturally there are no competitors, there are only neighbors. It’s where you can operate to your potential, and embrace all the worlds you love to belong to. Finding your global niche is part of being a successful creative entrepreneur.

How do I define my profile on the net?

Building your global niche -- in this case, a professional web platform --  involves uncovering your place in the world and defining that place on the web. Inevitably one of the first steps in establishing your digital profile is communicating who you are in a way that others can relate to and may include using text, images, audio or video. For those who are in the process of self-discovery, social media is an extremely useful tool to explore and have conversations with like-minded global citizens.

Does being accessible on the web require extensive personal exposure?

Social media facilitates your interaction with others. People want to know who you are before connecting with you whether personally or professionally, help them find ways to relate to you. You’re not required to share private information that might compromise your security. By using a clear photo of yourself in your profile and including a link to your hub site people can learn exactly what you want them to know. (Don’t know what a hub site is? Find out in Tara and Anastasia’s free email tutorials.)

How can I find potential clients, customers and collaborators using social media?

Your ideal customer or client (or employer, if you’re a job seeker!) finds you by entering specific keywords into a search engine like Google. By entering these keywords yourself you’ll learn where you rank amidst the competition and you’ll also see where conversations relevant to your niche are taking place around the web. Social media enables you to monitor these conversations (with tools like Twitter and Google alerts) and participate in them with your own ideas, expertise and professional solutions.

How do I fit social media into my work day?

Social media is useful to creative entrepreneurs because it allows you to work in a way that suits your lifestyle. Setting your own schedule for publishing content as well as interacting on sites like Facebook and Twitter means you can work at your own pace. Keep your posts short and “mindcast” rather than “lifecast”. Share important thoughts, what you are reading, what moves you -- not mundane things like what you had for breakfast. Give your network value through the things you share. Use automation and syndication services to reach relevant audiences at key times around the world -- without actually working around the clock!

What is my ROI for the time I spend using social media?

Using social media to build your network and reputation is an investment in yourself. The time you dedicate will pay off when you want to sell your product or service - whether it’s a book, a necklace or a coaching program. Use social media to educate yourself and stay on the cutting edge of your field. In today’s market, trust and attention are valuable commodities that you can only develop by being well-informed, authentic and providing useful, accessible content.

What is the Mastermind Program for Creative Entrepreneurs?

Anastasia and Tara’s mastermind program brings people together into a virtual work group (conducted on LinkedIn over a few weeks), where each participant contributes to the solution of a problem; like a combination of a brainstorming session and focus group. The success of this technique for creative entrepreneurs relies on the diverse expertise of the group, and your connection to peers you can continue to grow with.

Artist, illustrator and writer Rose Deniz demonstrated the power of the mastermind program when she described how her creative business changed after participating in Tara and Anastasia’s “Build your global niche” program. She wondered how to effectively present herself as a multifaceted artist, graphic designer, writer, blogger and handbag designer. Rose was able to see that she needed a unified platform to integrate her work and audiences in one place. Within three months of completing the program she was able to craft her own solution at the site Love, Rose.

This IPWIN workshop was very motivational and informative and the spirit is still present. Our members have already asked us to organize a follow-up event! Tara and Anastasia provided the participants with free, on-going tutorials by email which everyone in IWI can access by signing up for their “Build your global niche” mailing list. They’ll also alert you to upcoming mastermind sessions and other resources that will help you get serious on the web.

Useful links:

EMAIL LIST for free web platform tutorials: on.fb.me/globalniche

Turquoise Poppy: www.turquoisepoppy.com

expat+HAREM, the global niche: www.expatharem.com

Love, Rose: www.rosedeniz.com

Creative Entrepreneurs on LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/creativeentrepreneurs

Global Niche Mastermind: Jet Fuel Combo Of Tools, Techniques, And Peers

This announcement appeared in the International Professional Women of Istanbul Network bulletin. BUILD YOUR PRO WEB PLATFORM: The Global Niche Mastermind (Saturday, January 29th 30TL/person)

Join a no-nonsense 2-hour exhibition with local social media experts Tara Agacayak of Turquoise Poppy and Anastasia Ashman of expat+HAREM.

They'll demonstrate the jet-fuel combo of tools, techniques and technology -- and peers -- that you can expect in their new "Build Your Global Niche" mastermind program.

That's an upcoming 8-week online offering to help creative entrepreneurs build your personal brand on the web.

(Requirements for Jan29 event are a basic web presence with 2 of these: blog, Twitter account or LinkedIn profile. Sorry, no exceptions.)