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What is "valuable content", exactly?

January 15, 2013

Content marketing is all the rage today.

It's a geek marketer's favorite buzzword, more popular than SEO or social media (or so it seems to me; maybe I live in a content marketing reality distortion field).

Everybody is telling you - no, yelling at you! - to create "valuable content" and to promote it.

But rarely do you see specific examples of a valuable content piece, so I'm gonna give you a real one.

A lesson in content marketing from a live Google+ Hangout On Air (HOA)

Yesterday was the first time ever that I tuned into a Hangout On Air. If you've never participated in one, it's a live stream on Google+ and Youtube, used as a cooler alternative to webinars. A person organizes a hangout and invites smart people or celebrities to talk about an interesting subject.

Last night's HOA was organized by my good Google+ friend, +Martin Shervington. His guest was +Guy Kawasaki who spoke on the subject of self-publishing a book.

Guy is an entertaining fellow and as soon as he started cracking jokes and tweetable quotes, the nerd in me opened a text editor and started writing interesting quotes, while Guy was inventing them on the fly. After the HOA was over in an hour or so, I looked at my file and thought to myself: My my, that's a nice collection of informative, educational and entertaining quotes! I should totally publish them!

I knew I would never publish this stuff if I saved the quotes in a file and waited until tomorrow. I would probably just forget about it until it was too late or uninteresting.

So an hour after the hangout was finished, I published this original Google+ post with the link to a Youtube recording of the hangout.

People loved and shared my unique Guy Kawasaki quotes collection

And now, the lesson what "valuable content" really is.

Guy shared the link at the moment the hangout was going live. I shared the link after the hangout was over, and I attached the quotes collection in the form of a short, original Google+ post. Nothing fancy, nothing new on Google+.

Guy's link was reshared 15 times, mine was reshared 20 times. The image above is the snapshot from Google+ Ripples, a nice tool that shows you how many times a URL has been shared, and which Google+ user "seeded" the most shares.

Of course, at this moment Guy has almost 4 million followers, and I have less than 9000 followers.

Guy Kawasaki and me, we both shared the same link on Google+ (the link to a recorded hangout on Youtube). I'm not at all saying that what Guy posted wasn't valuable. I'm saying that my link + original content performed relatively much better share-wise, if you compare the strength of my network to Guy's demigoddery on Google+ (demigoddery? is that even a word? I'm so totally allowed to invent one new English word per post).

What was so "valuable" about my content, exactly?

My post was timely and fresh. I was completing it while the live event was taking place. I published it immediately after the event, while people were still thinking about it.

Everybody loves good quotes. And Guy's quotes are funny and smart. Some of them were even completely off-topic, like the quote about being lucky to have a heart attack in Canada, where it's cheaper to take care of it medically :) So, publishing the type of content everybody loves to read helps volumes.

My post was short and snackable. Just right for Google+. I've been on Google+ from day one, and I've learned what kind of content people love to consume and share. So, knowing the rules of the network and playing by them makes your content shareable, and you can't have content marketing without shareable content!

Nobody else thought of posting a quotes collection. I could have posted a review or a summary of the hangout, but these quotes - a product of my unique scribomania - were already sitting idly in my editor! I knew Guy would not publish a collection of his own quotes (because that would be lame), so I jumped at the opportunity. Originality is king, and timely, short and appropriate originality is queen!

It was in alignment with the type of content I usually post on Google+. People who read my stuff know I share links and publish my own original short-form and long-form posts about writing, publishing and entrepreneurship. If I had been posting nothing but animated cat gifs for the last two years, people would uncircle me (sadly, there was no mention of cats in Guy's quotes).

I did not publish my Guy Kawasaki quotes post because I wanted to "do content marketing". I published it because I loved the hangout, I'm a big fan of Guy Kawasaki, and because I love promoting good stuff from people I like (in this case, Guy's new book "APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur" and the event itself from my friend Martin Shervington). So there you have it, the final lesson about where valuable content comes from: from your inner passion.

Don't wonder whether it will be hard

December 30, 2012

Because it will be.

That thing you're afraid of: starting your own business, changing jobs, starting work on a new product... The truth is, it's harder that you can imagine it. If you knew exactly how hard it will be and how many problems you'd encounter on your journey, you'd probably give up because you're not ready yet for all of it.

But that's not the reason not to just... start. Hardships are like ocean waves: you will learn to surf the waves as they rush at you, wave by wave. Not all of them will rush at you at once: that's how you survive. That's how everybody who created anything meaningful survived.

Don't fear the killer tsunamis, for they are rare, and with time you'll develop an early warning system for them. While you're still inexperienced in the beginning, avoid known tsunami regions and you'll do fine.

Calm seas are rare too, so learn to recognize them and enjoy them as they happen.

Expect and accept the waves. Every wave is an opportunity for you to prove just how much you want to succeed with this thing.

Just start. It will be hard. You don't want to know just yet how hard it will be. You fear the hardships today because you know you're not capable of overcoming them. But your future self is, because your future self is stronger.

You stronger future self is waiting for you to embark on a journey today. Just start.

***

Creative Commons image credit: AliHanlon

How to Change the World

August 15, 2012

Recently I have become fascinated with what the future will bring. After reading Abundance, I have learned about what is possible in the next 25 years. I want to be a part of the movement which will make this abundance happen.

The abundance line

There’s a line above which the abundance starts.

Above it, humans have the time to collaborate and work creatively towards solving humanity’s problems.

Below it, humans have the time only to survive. This is no way for an intelligent species to live.

Where’s the problem, exactly?

I have identified that our most important problem is the need to work to just barely survive.

Nobody should spend their life to just barely survive. This is my deeply held belief.

We have to work 40 hours a week, 40-50 years a lifetime to get:

water
food
shelter
clothing
medicine
education

All of the above needs to be free or nearly free. This world is possible. It may sound unbelievable to some people, but after reading www.abundancethebook.com, I believe.

I have learned that the quickest path towards the abundance is to generating squanderable amounts of energy. When we have achieved that level, we will have developed technologies to create water, food, shelter, clothing and medicine almost out of thin air, almost for free. We’re now in the process of experimenting with energy.

We’ve already achieved the level at which we now have squanderable amount of nearly free education. It is called the internet. My internet costs $41 month. If all other bullet points I mentioned cost $41, I could survive with only $246 a month. Average net salary in my country today is exactly $899 a month (data for May 2012). This means that on average, people in my country would only have to work 6 days a month to have their basic needs met. The other 15 days a month we’d spend as we saw fit.

Today we work 21 days a month. Yes, we do afford to buy a little bit more than just basic needs. We buy smartphones, tablets, computers, vacations and school books for our children.

But the abundant world of the future I’m talking about is even cheaper to afford than a whopping $246 a month.

Being part of the solution

Before each and every one of use can start solving the world’s problems, we must first stop being the problem ourselves.

I can’t participate in solving world hunger if I have to work 40 hours a week just to feed and dress myself.

I personally have to achieve freedom first.

How do I achieve personal freedom

Right now, my streams of passive recurring income cover only a part of my expenses. I co-run a business and my business generates passive recurring income, but not enough. And I have to show up for work every day, 40 days a week just like everybody else, to maintain the current level of my business. I plan to change that in the future, but let’s go back to what a person without an existing business can do.

I personally need multiple streams of passive income which demand only the smallest possible fraction of my time to maintain them.

So phase one of being able to change the world, is to create anything that brings in the minimum amount a month just to survive, recurringly, passively.

When I have achieved that, I can stop “working” and I can start creating. Humanity has no use of me if I’m not creating. Humanity wants me to achieve my personal freedom, no: humanity demands I do it. There’s the purpose of life somewhere in the previous sentence.

I have identified a digital product business to be the solution to my personal freedom. All I need to do, is create a profitable one or more digital products which bring in a certain amount of money monthly. Currently I’m publishing an exclusive-to-Google+ post series describing the necessary features of my perfect digital business. Visit my Google+ About for links to the published posts.

After I have achieved passive recurring income, I can start participating in solving the world’s problems.

How do we change the world then, again?

Each and every living human changes the world by first achieving personal freedom from mandatory work for survival.

We’re not doing this to squander our life watching TV and partying all night. People are not a lazy species. People are a curious, imaginative, creative, fun and intelligent species. Suspend your disbelief for a second and kindly accept the idea that our current 40-hour work-sleep-work regime is killing everything creative in us. This regime is creating an illusion of people being lazy. We’re not lazy. We’re just exhausted.

Most people do nothing creative at work and that’s the main problem. I am not against work, I am against meaningless work. I plan to work till the day I drop dead. I don’t need to retire, ever. Why would I want to retire from anything I am passionate about?

Imagine if you didn’t have to work a day in your life any more, while having all your basic needs met. Do you honestly see yourself watching TV till the day you die? You’d be bored after a month and your creative powers would kick in naturally.

You could be the next hotshot entrepreneur. You could be the next Elon Musk. Hell, I could be the next Elon Musk!

But not before I’m free from things Elon Musk was free from before he sent a rocket into space. I cannot simultaneously work on rocket science and thinking about where my next meal would come from.

So, first we need free time. We will later decide what do we want to dedicate it to. There’s no shortage of problems to work on.

Me personally, I want to dedicate my free time to participating in making abundance for all humans possible. Abundance will lead to people devoting their lives to achieving longevity. We will soon upgrade ourselves to Human 2.0 - technologically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. We will have matured into a civilization able to conquer the Milky Way.

Creative Commons image credit: pasotraspaso

Interview with Ev Bogue, Author of "Minimalist Business", Part II: Building a Marketing Platform

June 9, 2012

It's was my pleasure to talk to Everett Bogue, who is one of my favorite writers.

Ev is the author of Minimalist Business, a dangerous ebook that just might talk you into that thing you want to do anyway: to ditch your crappy day job and go live and work your dream from anywhere in the world.

Ev is interesting in many ways, one in particular: he publishes books the way software developers ship software. He publishes updated versions of his ebooks.

Ev was kind to answer a few questions burning inside me: about his writing process (part I of this intervew), and about building an internet marketing platform for your writing business, you're about to read right now.

You'll enjoy this part of the interview if you want to build a community and followership around your book.

Everett Bogue on building an internet marketing platform

Me: I believe there are three major hurdles every author must overcome to get published:

Victory over their inner demons (or their lizard brain, how Seth Godin calls it)
Dedicating time to write
Bringing their work to people

Let's talk about number 3, which is basically marketing and sales. I see many authors still clinging to old beliefs about publishing their work, namely they outsource the most vital part of their business (marketing and sales) to third parties (traditional publishers and distributors). They don't perceive themselves as "authopreneurs" and I think this is a mistake, I think every author must take his book's success into his own hands.

Imagine you were starting from scratch today, from an absolute zero. Nobody knows who you are and nobody cares.

How would you do it? What would be the first step you would take, in order to assure you have paying customers for your work?

Ev: I get this question once a week. I can never answer it. I have no idea what it’d be like to be writing to zero people. It’s been three years since I started, and the landscape has completely changed. What worked for me three years ago will not work now.

My only suggestion is to find one person you trust who really enjoys what you’re writing, but will also be honest with you when what you’ve written sucks.

It can be incredibly hard to find a person like this.

Me: What percentage of your time did you spend on marketing while you were just starting out?

Ev: I’m not sure, it’s hard to remember.

Here’s my current strategy, because I think it’s useful and relevant right now.

I publish work on the public web in a place where people can most easily see it. For me, this means Google+, because many people are using it right now.
I gather permission to contact people who are interested in my work. This means asking them for their email address using Mailchimp.
Once I have permission to contact people, I can send them all sorts of valuable things straight to their inbox.

There’s a whole section in Minimalist Business about how to gather permission in this way on the web right now.

Me: How many readers, followers and subscribers you have right now, and how much time do you dedicate to promoting yourself today?

Ev: Readers don’t matter, dollars do. The most important metric to track, if you want to make it as a publisher in the world right now, is to track how many people actually buy the products you’re selling.

Me: Interviews work well for your bottom line. What else is working well for you?

Ev: Google+. I’m not sure why so many people are resisting joining. Anyone who isn’t on Google+ right now is becoming irrelevant by clinging to old platforms that aren’t evolving.

Me: Do you work on actively trying to find readers in any way, for example engaging people online, or actively participating in other people's communities?

Ev: I’ve tried "engaging people online", commenting up a storm makes people think they’re your friend. I have a chapter in Minimalist Business about how to identify who clients are. The basics are this:

There are three types of people who engage online.

Peers
Masters
Friends

Peers hang out with you to learn from you, but won’t buy your products because they pretty much understand what you’re teaching already.

Masters don’t care about you, they have work to do.

Friends are just chatting with you.

None of these three groups of people are your clients.

What I’ve found over the past three years is my clients aren’t chatter boxes. They’re people who buy my books, and do the work.

I don’t need to be online all day chatting with people. Whenever I’ve tried that strategy, it hasn’t been productive.

What’s productive is creating writing that benefits other people. Then it’ll spread on it’s own, because it benefits people.

Me: You're present on Google+, my favorite social channel. How much is Google+ contributing to your income, directly and exactly (for example, in percentage relative to what you earn - if you're tracking these numbers?)

Ev: The most important asset I have is the people I’ve asked permission to contact in their inboxes. There’s a lot of overlap in-between who follows me on Google+ and who receives my work to their inbox.

Me: Does Google+ have everything you as an authopreneur need from a social network, or are you missing something?

Ev: I know the Google+ team is working really hard, and they have some pretty brilliant ideas about how they want the network to evolve. I’m pretty fascinated by how they’re merging Google+ with almost every Google product I’ve used for years. I’m sure they’ll surprise me with new and interesting ways I can use the network.

Me: What platform-building strategies and tactics do you see yourself trying in the future?

Ev: I signed a personal NDA with myself, so I can’t speculate about the future. I am living pretty much day to day right now, so as things occur to me, I try them. Every day, I do the work.

Me: Do you plan to further upgrade your book "Minimalist Business"?

Ev: Yes. Like I mentioned above, Minimalist Business isn’t a bricked book. It will evolve and grow based on how my experience of the world changes. What I do have to say about it is this: if you’re waiting for the next version, you’ll be too late. Everyone who’s purchased is already implementing the work I put into the first edition, and you’re missing out.

Me: Are you working on something completely new right now? Any new books planned?

Ev: I’m always working on something new.

Maybe the most important question to ask yourself is this: what do you need to untether from before you can create something new? I always find I have an easier time coming up with what’s next when I’ve decided what I need to leave behind.

The world is changing faster and faster. In order to stay relevant, I have to keep untethering to evolve.

Read part I of this interview: the writing process

Read what Everett had to say about his writing process.

Meet Everett Bogue

Everett Bogue is a young author currently living and working in Tokyo, Japan. This is his personal website evbogue.com, and this is his ebook Minimalist Business.

If you'd like to hang out with Ev, you can find him on Google+.

Interview with Ev Bogue, Author of "Minimalist Business", Part I: Writing Process

May 24, 2012

It's was my pleasure to talk to Everett Bogue, who is one of my favorite writers.

Ev is interesting in many ways, one in particular: he publishes books the way software developers ship software. He publishes updated versions of his ebooks.

Ev was kind to answer a few questions burning inside me: about his writing process, and about building an internet marketing platform for your writing business (part II of this interview).

You'll enjoy this interview if you want to write your first book, or are currently working on it. Sometimes we all need a little encouragement and help with the writing process and the marketing part.

I didn't want to make the interview too long, so I split it in two parts. This first part is about the way Everett writes books.

Everett Bogue's writing process

Me: I believe every writer must come up with a writing process that is working for her personally. Sometimes it helps to hear about other successful writers and their processes, so let's talk about yours. How long does it take you to publish a 100 pages book, from writing the first draft of your first chapter, to having your book ready to download online?

Ev: Somewhere between 27 years and two weeks. I write non-fiction books with the intention of befitting people who are living and working in the world right now, so a lot of the content comes from experiences I’ve had in my own life. If I don’t have experiences, I can’t write the book.

Most of my books have taken around 2 weeks to write from scratch. I hide myself away, and just bang it out. However, it has to be the right time for the book to be written.

My experience in writing and publishing a book has shifted over the past three years. I no longer think of books as bricked objects. Instead, they’re more like software for me. I write and publish them, then I rewrite and publish them, then I rewrite and publish them. Every time what I’m attempting to transmit from me to you gets clearer.

I have never published a book on paper, I don’t intend to. It would be horribly irrelevant by the time it came out.

It’s important to note: whenever I say ‘book’ in this interview, I’m referring to the digital updated-like software kind. Not the dead tree irrelevant kind.

Me: How much time do you spend on rewriting, relative to the time you spend on writing your first draft?

Ev: My creative brain and my editing brain are very different. I keep them as separate as possible. Initially when I’m trying to write a book, I’ll not edit at all. Then I’ll go back over and read the entire book from start to finish and delete anything I hate, or that doesn’t work. I’ll fix almost all grammar problems later. If I do it while I’m writing, I’m interrupting my creative process, which always ends in disaster for me.

I use a writing editor called Scrivener. It gives me superhuman writerly abilities. Anyone who’s a writer without Scrivener is suffering (until something better comes along.)

Me: What's the hardest part of the whole writing process for you?

Ev: Figuring out what people will benefit from, then doing experiments to learn enough about a subject to communicate it in a way that will benefit readers. I have to constantly challenge myself, or I’m not evolving as a human being. No one wants to read a book written by a stagnant person.

Me: What one advice about the writing process would you give to a writer who hasn't published a book yet?

Ev: Stop thinking about books as dead tree bricks. They’ve changed. Books are digital now, meaning their content can evolve now.

The last full length book I wrote is called Minimalist Business. It’s also the same name as the book I wrote two years ago by the same title. The subject is the same, but the content has completely changed. I reworked it from scratch. I had to rewrite it for the book to be relevant for the modern age of right now.

If I’d published Minimalist Business to paper, it would be coming out in bookstores right now, and it’d be irrelevant. Printed books are out of date the moment they’re published. Digital books have an opportunity to be incredibly relevant and evolve through time. We’ve been updating software for decades now. Why not treat books the same way?

Part II of this interview: building an internet marketing platform

Read the second half of this interview, the one dealing with marketing your online writing business. If you're writing anything, you're a business person, you know that, do you?

Meet Everett Bogue

Everett Bogue is a young author who, at the time of publishing the first part of this interview, was living and working in Singapore. He is now living and working from Tokyo, Japan.

This is his personal website evbogue.com, and this is his ebook Minimalist Business.

If you'd like to hang out with Ev, you can find him on Google+.

Why I don't waste time writing in my mother tongue

May 1, 2012

I made my biggest business mistake 2 years before I even started my business 10 years ago. I met a guy who is today one of my two business partners, and he said to me:

"I'm making a ton of money running an affiliate website in English. Let's make a similar website, but for Croatian audience!"

I said yes. We were both fools. But we were 20 years old then.

It took me years to realize what a small town our country is. I'm writing this because I don't want other young people to make the same mistake I did, and in this post I've prepared the simplest math to prove my point.

I give you two words:

Pas
Dog

"Pas" means "dog" in Croatian. It took me the same amount of time to write down "pas", as it took me to write down "dog". It takes me twice the time to write "pas" and "dog" one after another. This simplified math becomes life-changing in the next few sentences.

The first word "pas" is understood by 22.3 million people in 7 South European countries (Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro). That's a whopping 0.003% of the world population.

The second word "dog" is understood by 1.5 billion people, spread across almost every country of the world. That's almost 22% of all the people living on Earth right now.

It's astonishing how a simple choice of letter combination magnifies my potential by the factor of 67. But, what's in a number, right?

Wrong.

For every 1 person that reads my blog post in the obscure language of my small country, there are 67 more people that can be touched, inspired and influenced by my ideas - but aren't, if I don't write in English.

For every like, follow, plus, comment and share I get from my fellow countrymen and neighbors who understand me, I can get 67 likes, follows, plusses, comments and shares from people all around the world - but I won't, if I don't write in English.

For every dollar I could make on the market of 22.3 million people in 7 countries, I could make 67 dollars selling to my fans everywhere in the world - but I won't, if my product is not offered to English-speaking people.

For every friend I make in Smallville, there are 67 new friends eager to meet me in Metropolis - but if I greet them with "Bok!" instead of with "Hi!", we can never be friends.

Oh, that reminds me!

Yesterday on Google+, I became friends with a guy from Greenland.

Greenland! Do you know anyone from Greenland? Well, I do! I now have a friend there! I could put that under "Bragging rights" in my Google+ profile.

Greenland might be the largest island in the world, but only 56.000 people live there - and they natively speak Greenlandic and Danish. My new friend spoke English when he talked to me, and that's why we were able to connect. Good for him!

Because, if he ever created a product or a service that was easily offered and distributed over the Internet, I could become his customer. If he chose to limit himself to 56.000 people speaking Greenlandic or Danish on a big wonderful icy world called Greenland, his chances of me ever buying anything from him come close to zero.

I have online friends in Finland, South Africa, United States, Netherlands, Italy... As well as in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. The neighborhood doesn't go anywhere if I choose so, and guess what? When us neighbors meet online publicly, we all speak English. This way, others can join our conversation - and they do.

One day, some of my online friends might buy stuff I make. One day, I might buy some of the stuff they make. For that reason, and because my life is too short for translation, I only create in English.

That is, until the Chinese decide to finally conquer the Internet.

***

Image: Touching Rosetta, credit to Namlhots on Flickr

What Guy Kawasaki does to sell shiitake-load of books

April 9, 2012

Yesterday I've read Guy Kawasaki's newest ebook "What The Plus!" in one sitting. The book is the missing manual about succeeding on Google+by attracting as many followers as you can.

I recommend that you read the book (it's only $2.99) and test everything he says. It works. I may not have 1.7M Google+ followers like Guy does, but everything he wrote worked for my Google+ presence as well.

This blog post is not a book review

Here I personally want to explore and write down things I think Guy Kawasaki does to spread the word about his books. Here's one book review by David Deal that Guy Kawasaki shared on Google+.

I'm writing this because I want to remember the following book marketing lessons from one of the bestselling authors in the world.

Give away book copies for FREE

Every now and then, Guy gives away hundreds of PDF copies for free.

Guy said in a recent hangout that the more he gives away, the more he sells. He has his own theories why this is so, and one of mine is that people who got the book for free do more than an average user to share the book. I got the book for free, liked it and felt like sharing. Also, knowing that Guy reads and responds to almost every mention of his name on Google+, this blog post I'm writing is a nice way to connect with a person I admire, and maybe get on his radar (because I will be mentioning this blog post on Google+).

Don't work alone on your book

Before Guy finished the book, he sent it to 200+ volunteers / beta testers. They checked the book for typos, factual and logical errors. Kawasaki basically crowdsourced bug fixing and attributed beta tester by mentioning people's names in the book.

I've seen other successful authors do this, and there's a good reason why this is good marketing.

First, other people lend you an objective pair of eyes and the book comes out better because of it. A good book gets more stars on Amazon.com.

Second, other people do your work for free. Time is money, and if I was Guy Kawasaki, I'd sure as hell tap the potential of 1.7M followers to do nice things for me. Guy shares so much quality information online that many people like to return the favor.

At last, but not the least: when Guy frakkin' Kawasaki mentions your name in his book, you're bound to tell everyone you know on Google+, Twitter and Facebook about it. Free, priceless word of mouth for Guy that helps his SEO as well, and powerful social proof for you.

Use other people's art and credit them

Guy used other people's photos wherever he could, and properly credited authors with links to their websites. This makes sense, especially for Guy - a photography afficionado. Why include your own photos if you can get a mention or a link to the book from one more artist, who you share a passion with?

Share, share, overshare - and be helpful

Guy's ebook is full of links to posts, books and other people. He shares lavishly. This makes the book a helpful resource, even to Google+ 1st generation users like me. I've visited almost every link Guy mentioned in the book and circled a few new interesting people.

People whose links and resources ended up in Kawasaki's book will most likely talk about it, buy a copy and write a review of the book on their blog.

So, why work in a vacuum, when you can share your knowledge and attribute people on every occasion you get?

Help people blog about your book by making the book awesome

Guy makes the book visually attractive by including relevant quotes at the beginning of every chapter and breaking long pieces of text with images and screen captures.

Also, a healthy dose of humor is present in every chapter. Just enough to turn yet another page.

An attractive book helps people finish reading the book, and people who finish reading the book will blog about the book. See what I'm doing here? Blogging about a book. If I read half through it, I would be ashamed to blog about a book I didn't finish reading.

Ask an influential friend to write a chapter of your book

Guy asked a few people to write chapters of his book:

A popular photographer Dave Powell wrote a chapter about sharing photos.
Peg Fitzpatrick, director of marketing and social media manager, talked about how to succeed on Google+ if you're not famous like Guy is.
Lynette Young, creator and curator of Women of Google+, explained how to succeed as a woman on Google+.

This is an awesome concept: the author does not pretend to be an expert in everything, and this very act makes him even more influential. Guy invites another expert to speak about his or her field of expertise, at the same time promoting those people, and giving them the chance to promote Guy's book. At the moment, 2 of 3 of those people have a direct link to Kawasaki's book in their About sections on Google+.

Three other people wrote 3 out of 14 chapters of the book. Again - don't work in the vacuum, promote other people's work, help them and they will in return help you. Guy's book "What the Plus?" is all about promoting other people on Google+ and collecting influence points for this free promotion.

Table of contents of the book "What The Plus!"

Here's what you can read about in the book:

Chapter 1: Why I Love Google+

Chapter 2: How to Get Started

Chapter 3: How to Master Circles and Streams

Chapter 4: How to Make an Enchanting Profile

Chapter 4+: How to Achieve Trustworthiness

Chapter 5: How to Comment

Chapter 6: How to Share Posts

Chapter 6+: How to Optimize for Social Search

Chapter 7: How to Share Photos

Chapter 8: How to Respond to Comments

Chapter 9: How to Hang Out

Chapter 10: How to Get More Followers

Chapter 10+: How to Be a Little Fish in a Big Pond

Chapter 11: How to Deal with Bozos

Chapter 11+: How to Thrive in the All-Boys’ Club

Chapter 12: How to Avoid Cluelessness

Chapter 13: How to Get Google+ Help

Chapter 14: How to Master Google+

Go get "What The Plus!" or read more on Mashable about how Guy launches books using social media.

Easy and high-quality content marketing: my "Always be upgrading" principle

March 25, 2012

This blog post is an experiment in a new way of creating content, so if parts of this post seem unfinished, I made it so on purpose and you are most welcomed to correct me in comments. Continue reading and you'll find a way to make your blogging easy, effortless and of higher quality than before.

We must create content if we want to build our internet marketing platform

But there's a problem:

Creating content continuously is hard.
Creating quality content continuously is even harder.

Content marketing is hard because we make it too hard. I decided I won't put up with this anymore and that I need to change my attitude towards publishing.

For me, the choice of publishing platform complicates publishing because it dictates the number of words I want to write well.

So, as an experiment, I was watching how my feelings change as I said the following two sentences to myself:

"I will sit down now and write a tweet."

"I will sit down now and write a book."

The first thought results in "Sure, why not".

The second thought results in "I'd rather have my nails pulled."

There's a scale of rising complexity to every piece of content

Tweeting is super-easy. I'm usually done in 10-60 seconds.
Google+ is easy. The post that got me the most shares, took me 20 minutes to craft.
Blogging is hard. The best blog post I ever wrote, took me a few hours up to a day to write.
Writing an essay is much harder than writing a blog post. I've never wrote a real essay, but I estimate it would take me a few days to write a 5000 word essay.
Writing a book is the hardest thing on the planet. Don't let 1+ million published Kindle ebooks fool you: there's still 7 billion people on this planet, and there are more people who do not write books, than those who do.

The most important part of this scale is the difference between posting on Google+ and posting on my blog. Why must Google+ be almost easy, and why does writing a blog post must be hard? What's the difference, when Google+ lets me write blog-length posts?

I noticed I never complicate things for myself when I start writing on Google+. A post on Google+ is fleeting, while a blog post is something set in stone, immutable, unchangeable. But does it have to be?

The best way for me to make publishing content easy is to change my attitude towards various pieces of content I create.

So, I decided to make blogging as ephemeral as a Google+ post. I decided to publish early and treat all my blog posts as content in perpetual beta.

My content creation rules

1. Publish as soon as I think my idea is worth spreading. (This blog post is an example of such an idea, and I hit publish before I was satisfied with its quality.)

2. Publish first with minimum editing, heavy-edit and upgrade later.

3. Every content piece can stay in perpetual beta.

A blog post does not have to be finished once I write it. I want to write a blog post and come back to edit it. That way, every blog post I write will become better with time. Every time I come back to revisit a blog post, I will have the chance to reference new content sources, enrich the blog post with news and fresher content.

Numerous advantages to treating blog posts as perpetual betas

Existing readers will have an incentive to return to the blog post and see what's new (my publishing platform will give them a clue about what's new in this particular piece of content since their last visit).
New visitors will stumble upon a version 1.x of my blog post and witness epicness under construction.
Google now rewards fresh content, and Google also rewards content sources who publish more quality stuff (Google calls this algorithm "Panda" - here's an easy-to-understand infographic about Panda)

There is one major disadvantage to my approach: my content won't be as good as if I sat with it for hours and edited it till perfection. But guess what? We all have "perfect" pieces of content sitting idly somewhere on our hard disk. "I'll get to it later, when I have time - I can't publish it yet, it's crap".

Well, an old Chinese proverb about software development says: "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." If I publish a piece of content I am at least a little embarrassed by, I have an incentive to return to it and make it better. But at least I shipped! I hit "Publish"!

What I expect will happen

Let's be frank: most blog posts are crap. Mine are too. But publishing anything is the first step towards content marketing success. Publishing quality content is the next.

So, by treating blog posts as ever-changing, flexible, variable and upgradeable, I expect the following benefits:

It will be faster and easier for me to publish a blog post. If I wait until I have enough time to write an epic post, it will never be published.
With time and continuous editing, I can upgrade my every blog post to epicness. I am willing to expose my editing process to the public. I've seen Leo Babauta do this: while he was writing one of his ebooks, he was publishing every new chapter of it, every day, for everybody to see it, for free. When his book was finished, he let it be free on his website, and offered to sell it for money on Amazon.com.
This is the best way for me to begin my journey towards gathering my 1000 true fans. This might not be the best choice for everyone, but it is for me - because I let too many good ideas in draft on my hard disk. Fuck perfection, real artists ship.
Crowdsourced content debugging. My readers will let me know if I made a mistake, a typo or a logical error. I can't control who reads my public posts: haters gonna hate, and most people will always be nice and friendly. Either way, others will debug my content, and this way I can be grateful even for trolls.

I give credit to Everett Bogue for inspiring me to this thinking. He said books can be published the way we create software. If it's ok for books, why wouldn't it be ok for content pieces and blogs?

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Image credit to just_a_name_thingie

Mind Reading for Web Designers

January 13, 2012

After days of sweating, swearing and panting, your proud Photoshop installation gives birth to a beautiful baby web. Instead of bursting with awe and promising more web project work to come, Mr. Jekyll - your favorite client - turns into Mr. Hyde and rejects your web design.

Yesterday's funny cartoon: not so funny today, because it happened to you (again). Now you have another disillusioned client and a few more days of expensive, unbillable work ahead of you. You wish you possessed the power of reading your clients' mind, so that next time you could nail the web design the first time around.

If you're a web designer or a project manager, I can imagine you nodding your head at the scenario above. If you're struggling with having your first web design proposal accepted by the client without additional work or a total bloody makeover, you should read my book "How (not) to run a web development agency". In it, I'm going to show and tell what I've learned about reading clients' minds in my 10+ years experience of running a web development company. Among hundreds of websites we launched, I can only find a few cases of a client taking advantage of our "satisfied-or-money-back" guarantee. I have acquired unique skills and shameless yet ethical techniques that help me deal with clients of all flavors. I'm ready to give my knowledge back to the community. I hope to help ease the stress and the frustration of less experienced, yet equally ambitious and talented web professionals, such as myself.

Hopefully you would like to know more about this topic. The bad news is: This is my first book, and it's far from being (self)-published. My plan is to put it on amazon.com by the end of 2012. I'm counting on the Universe to have accepted my order. The good news is that you can circle me on Google+ or follow me on Twitter right now, and I'll be happy to answer your questions about getting your creative web design work accepted. My background is project management and sales, and I co-founded an internet agency, so you can AMAA about running a web development business.

Dignity is for the unpublished. That's why I'm gonna flat out ask you right now - if you agree that web designers deserve less stress and more free time - to share this post with your audience across all your channels, or with anyone you think could benefit from reading my upcoming book. Thank you, and I promise I'm gonna make the book worth all your while!

Google Drive (GDrive): What I Want From It

January 4, 2012

There is no way Google could resist launching their own cloud storage service during 2012.

Mashable is almost teasing Google to go for it, after Techcrunch spilled the beans on Google Drive. Google's biggest competitors - Amazon, Microsoft and Apple - all have their own, more or less successful, versions od the cloud.

While I wait, I dreamed up a few neat features that our internet agency would very much profit from, mostly in terms of saved time. We are a project-oriented web development agency. Every internet domain is a project to us. All the information we keep about the work we have to do for clients, is organized by domain names, across many apps we use: Google Docs, a source control system, and our own project management and ticketing web application.

Right now, we are losing time copying and pasting attachments from clients' many emails. The thing is that we never liked the idea of giving clients access to our ticketing system - so we never implemented this. Access means managing their user accounts, answering to even more support calls about forgotten passwords, and writing extensive help and faqs about using our app. A simple, account-less and download-less way of securely uploading large files for clients would be a godsend.

So currently, most clients are emailing us pictures for website design, one picture per email, of course. Many of them are emailing us Word files with embedded BMPs. Some of them love sending us DVDs with 4 gigs of pictures to choose from. The more advanced ones are using a local uploading service that crashes more than it works.

On Google Drive, we would organize all the files and folders just like we organize our source control system: by projects.

Me wantz: tight Gmail + Google Drive integration

Every time a person sends a file, the file gets automatically synced to Google Drive. Minimum folder management is a must, of course: Let's say that Google Drive would let me create a new folder for a new, unrecognized email sender - right from the Gmail interface. I could rename that folder to a real project name later.

Sometimes a client sends us an email containing rich instructions about what he wants us to do. He usually sends a .doc attachment with text and embedded images. Gmail could recognize his email address, and Google Drive would know that attachments from his email (or his email's domain) belong to a specific folder on Google Drive.

So, when I clicked "Save this attachment to Google Drive" button located next to every attachment in Gmail, the .doc file would be 1) automatically converted to Google Docs native format, and 2) saved into the appropriate folder. This folder would be named after client's domain, and the folder would already be shared properly across my company.

Public upload folder

Oh, how I want this feature. It is one of the better things Dropbox does.

So using Google Drive, clients could upload files to our company's public folder. It's a "misc" folder, where we would allow upload only to users with a link to the folder. Clients would *not* be able to access nor see any other files but their own. We would move their files to a newly created folder as soon as we received their files. This way, files would be secure from prying eyes; Clients wouldn' have to learn a new upload application, nor would they have to download any application for uploading into our cloud. All they would have to have, is a Google cccount.

Use case: Let's say an email, containing attachments, arrives in our inbox. It's from a new potential client who wants us to use his files as documentation for creating a sales quote. Since he's a new client and never contacted us before, no folder exists for him on our Google Drive yet. Also, we don't want to create a new folder every time a person asks us fo a sales quote (If we had $10 for every person who did...). In his email, I could click "Save this attachment to Google Drive" and all the attachments would be stored in the public folder.

Google Drive API

We would need a good API in order to connect our project management app to Google Drive. This way, Google Drive would save us a ton of software development time, and we would continue to use Google Drive for storage of all project files. I was just in the middle of researching Dropbox as a solution for project files storage, when rumors about the probable existence of Google Drive broke out. I am waiting...

Source control / file version control in Google Drive

What version control systems mean to programmers, Google Drive would mean to project teams. Why should developers have all the fun?

The sender could use Google Drive's versioning system to update the files he sent to us. No resending over email necessary. Oh, what a dream come true that would be! Of course, Google Drive would have to somehow visually notify me that files have changed, and how they changed. Right now, Google Docs has only a very basic version control. Currently it allows you to upload the same file into the same folder twice, and treats those two uploads as two different files. This is bad, but I understand how complicated this must be for Google to solve (merging changes safely is one of the biggest challenges in fully-blown source control systems).

Support for all file formats

Right now, I hear that people are renaming unsupported file extensions and uploading them to Google Docs. While this isn't unusable, it's impractical.

Come on, Google, how hard can it be ;-)

I don't want to store my music online (I pay Grooveshark to stream it for me). I don't want any more picture album apps (I chose Google+ picture album app and that's it). I want a fully-blown, professional and for-business-use Google cloud, and I'm not afraid to pay for it. Someone please tell Google.