August 8th, 2008

Do you have ‘development plan’ in place mapping out where you want to go professionally and what you need to learn in order to move forward in that direction?   In today’s business environment, you need to manage your own learning.  When you are managing employees, you think about their development within the organization.  What about yours?

Managers generally don’t think in terms of a ‘development plan’ for themselves   If you one of the few that do, you know that you have to map out career development strategies and increase your knowledge and skills in order to meet your goals.

What would a ‘development plan’ include?

• Where are you now in the organization?   What aspects of your current role do you like and what areas do you find more challenging.
• What would be motivating you to create a ‘development plan?’   Are you receiving feedback around performance or do you desire to build a bigger career for yourself?
• List your strengths and ‘needs to improve’ — knowledge and skills.
• What is your ideal career choice – either within the organization or outside or potentially a new career choice?
• What steps will you need to move through to be at your ideal position?  For example, you are currently Manager, North American Sales.  Your goal is to be Global Sales Director.    In your organization, are their career steps in place?   If so, for the next rung on your professional ladder, what skills and knowledge do you need to have to meet the requirements?  If not, how can you find out?
• Networking – connect with others who can help you with your career goals or individuals in the company that can mentor you in moving forward in your career goals.

Create a Plan

• Objective – what are your career development goals
• What steps will you have to take to reach your career goals?
• Start and end dates for each step
• What will you need to learn – knowledge and skills you will need to have in order to perform each step of your development plan?
• What learning method will you use to increase knowledge or skills? 
• How will you financially support your plan?
• Who will be your partners in your career development plan – your manager, mentor within the organization, career coach, outside mentors, and learning organizations?

Ways you can gather knowledge:

• Books
• Seminars
• Degree focus
• Certifications
• Varied responsibilities that teach ‘on the job’ lessons.  Take on new projects or assignments.

Outside sources

• Read about career development – the internet and books can provide you with a wealth of knowledge and help you create your ‘development plan.’
• Find a career coach to support you through the process as well as keep you accountable to your overall development goals.

Final Thoughts
Creating a ‘development plan’ doesn’t have to be perfect.  Rather you want to start on the journey of being proactive in building the career you want.    Your manager is not in charge of your career.   They can be helpful in guiding and supporting your goals, but you need to create your own career by maximizing the opportunities that are presented and creating new ones.  You need a plan to know how to do this.

Question
Do you have a ‘development plan’ that you want to share with others in the community?
Maybe you want to add additional thoughts to this posting…just go to the end of the post and add your comments.

Next Topic
What if you don’t like to manage employees!

Pat

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BrianTracy.com – Accelerated Learning (Six CDs,workbook) Learn a system of proven, practical techniques that increase your ability to learn and remember names, facts, figures and business information 400 percent faster than today. Learn how to memorize quickly, speed read, improve your brainpower and multiply your intelligence.
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Other Topics:

What is Your Management Style? 
Asking the Right Questions
What Is Your Learning Style?

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August 6th, 2008

Many have made money and built reputations by solving problems. Doctors cure the suffering of illness, psychiatrists help heal the troubled mind, lawyers protect names from being tarnished, consultants offer marketing advice and a dazzling array of products help to remove any inconvenience you might possibly encounter in your daily life.

Many people are solving problems. They’re all offering solutions to people who need them. Some are giving them away for free. Others are selling them for a price. When problem and solution is a perfect fit, a relationship of trust is built between two parties. If this helps me now, it might help me again. If this solves my problem, it might solve my friend’s problem too.

There’s a connection. The problem solver becomes more popular as more problems are solved for more people. Every time you solve a problem in a way that’s better than others, you add undeniable value to the person in need. After performing a search engine query on a topic, what pages do you bookmark? The ones that offer you the best possible solution.

As a business or website owner, you have to face the challenge of getting people to consume what you’re offering, be it free content on your blog, a piece of merchandise or premium service. You’ll have compete with other problem solvers in the market. Other blogs, other companies in the same field, other service providers. All offering different solutions.

For instance, there are many different products to solve the problem of dirty dishes. A plethora of different washing fluids, sponges, machines and racks. In most scenarios, there are more solutions than there are problems. Solutions themselves become problems to be solved.

Most of the time problem-solvers are already engaging your target audience but that doesn’t mean you should stay away. There’s always room for another solution, especially when its one that addresses the problem with more elegance, more force, more precision or more style.

First, identify the problems facing your target audience. Go deep into the user-generated recesses of the web: monitor forums, social networking websites, blogs and places where people interact and talk online. Understand the problem more deeply than your competitor. Go after nuance. Absorb feedback on current solutions. Know what they want but isn’t available.

Then, create a solution that builds on the flaws of other solutions. Or one that completely circumvents the existing paradigm by addressing the problem from a different angle, using different methodology or a combination of existing solutions. Be daring and creative.

Try going wider for broader appeal or swim in narrower channels to reach hardcore fans in order to gain a support base. The same applies to online publications like blogs on specific topics. What problems do your readers have? How are you solving them with your content? If solutions already exist elsewhere,  how can you do better so you’ll be the go-to site?

Nobody is able to constantly solve problems in the best possible way to please every single person. All solutions have flaws because consumers evolve. People are also going to look elsewhere because of of boredom. But understanding exactly what problems and solutions are out there, allows you to better score points or gain favor with any audience.

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The Power of Understanding and Solving Problems

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August 1st, 2008

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July 29th, 2008

Viral marketing is the process of using peer-to-peer communications in order to rapidly spread information about a brand or message. The term ‘viral’ stems from the concept of a ‘virus’, a self-perpetuating phenomenon which infects whatever it comes in contact with, spreading itself in an expanding outward arc. Your message is the virus. The carriers are your audience.

People encounter specific data or ideas daily and pass it on to their friends and other people in their network. All things equal, one can say that information is shared more rapidly when the recipient has a strong emotional connection with the specific message. They adore it. They despise it. They are deeply puzzled by it. It makes them upset. It makes them happy.

Emotions are inextricably a component of social communication. As humans, we share our emotional experiences as a way to express our individuality and maintain our relationship networks. In a 2007 Indiana University study (paywall), researchers pinpointed the six primary emotions with a strong influence on viral referral behavior.

These are surprise, fear, sadness, joy, disgust and anger. In many cases, the more disruptive the message, the sooner it is shared. Surprise, the first emotion, is an essential element of all viral marketing campaigns. It works as a foundation alongside other emotional triggers. Here are the researchers recommendations on each emotion:

1. Joy. An emotion suited for irrelevant or fun brands and brands who want to revitalize their image. Suitable for products which promise life enhancement.




2. Sadness. Suitable when seeking an immediate response to unfortunate events. Consumer reactions may result in short-term commitments instead of long term patronage. Best to balance sadness with messages of hope or change.




3. Anger. Best suited for single issue campaigns that require an immediate reaction to perceived injustices experienced by the target market or general environment/society. Anger is a fleeting emotion and is not suitable for campaigns which require long-term action. Also does not work well with complex or subtle issues.




4. Fear. An emotion that is a short-term response to a perceived threat. Must be used carefully and sparingly. Likely to receive mixed responses from target market and best accompanied by proposed solutions which solve the fear-causing problem.




5. Disgust. Best targeted towards young males. Suitable for brands with a rebellious image. Should only be used intermittently to avoid unnecessary offense. Males are twice more likely to pass on messages involving disgusting humor than females.

The goal to understand the psyche of consumers has always been a goal for marketers who want influence people. Numerous studies have been conducted by academics/experts and they each give us a snapshot of how people within a specific demographic think.

But bear in mind that the few emotions mentioned in the study cannot define the parameters of each individual’s possible actions and hence, should only be taken as rough guidelines.

Human beings are far more likely to communicate ideas and information with others when they are emotionally engaged. Find the key issues that concern your audience and then inculcate them within your marketing plan to get an emotional response. But know that emotions themselves are fleeting and they can be exhausting enough to be abandoned over time.

I think the element of surprise, either pleasant or nasty, is incredibly important. It jolts people out of their habits of perception and can instantly trigger the instinct to share. This is something I’ll like to talk about more in a separate article tomorrow. Stay tuned!

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The Key to Effective Viral Marketing is Emotional Engagement

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July 28th, 2008

Ambush marketing is a strategy used by companies to promote their brands at events without paying any sponsorship fees. An example: “Dutch buyers of Heineken beer were given green hats to wear to the recent Euro 2008 football tournament. Anyone who tried to enter a stadium wearing one, however, as many fans did in 2004, was asked to remove it.

The hats were an “ambush marketing” campaign… Heineken’s rival, Carlsberg, was an official sponsor of Euro 2008, paying $21m for the privilege. A few TV close-ups of fans wearing Heineken hats would have cost very little by comparison”

China, the host of the 2008 Olympics, is aware of these tactics and has taken precautions to control ‘all prominent advertising sites in the Chinese capital’ in order to prevent other companies from putting up or buying ads to take advantage of the massive increase in human traffic. They don’t want their official sponsors to be upstaged by other competitors.

Ambush marketing is opportunistic. It’s goal is to take advantage of situations which allow brands/products to get extra exposure at minimal cost. Sometimes that involves going right into the lions den and clashing head on with a competitor who dominates the main message dissemination channels. Sometimes it requires stealth and more guerrilla-like tactics.

What marketers and anyone who wants to promote themselves can learn is the strategy of seeking out people-saturated public spaces (online or offline) and seek to populate that area with your message. Buskers, beggars and poster street teams are all familiar with how to promote their agenda or needs in areas where people frequently pass through.

Contextual relevance is also important. Selling is more natural and persuasive when it flows alongside the momentum generated by the immediate environment and current news/trends.

Just the other day, I went to a rock concert and was waiting in the queue when I noticed a guy from a local radio station standing at the side of the road. As people passed by, he gave them each a high-five while saying out the name of his station.

It was innocuous enough, everyone took it in good taste. After the concert finished, I left the venue with my friends. While walking on the path out, we were stopped by three guys who handed us each a flyer for their band. On it was their band logo as well as their myspace and facebook URLs, along with a link to a free download of some tracks from their latest album.

These people anticipated an opportunity: a rock concert would bring out hordes of music fans, many of which are targeted high-value prospects. The right pitch at the right time/place.

Can Ambush Marketing Actually Work Online?

Image Credit: one nation under CCTV

Let’s talk a little about ambush marketing online. Is it even possible?  Maybe. Take the example of sneaky link insertions. Some people carefully monitor the upcoming stories with the most votes on digg.com or other popular social news sites and insert comments with links to their website. When the story hits the frontpage or gradually accumulates visibility, the well placed links can each easily net you upwards of 1,000+ visitors.

This is a tactic that piggybacks on an existing occurrence. To do this effectively, you should constantly push news/events related to your target market and specific keyword-relevant searches on major online communities to a central location, like an RSS reader or dashboard. Monitor this repository of occurrences constantly. Or get someone to keep an eye on it.

After which you need to be prepared to rapidly develop ways to leech the attention from the traffic that’s focused on a specific webpage or occurrence. Sometimes that involves creating specific landing pages that diverge from your website’s original theme/focus.

For instance, to take advantage of the buzz around the iPhone 3G, a website about fitness can create a stand-alone page about iPhone tips/hacks and push it out to not only the popular blogs but every single hobbyist/small-time blogger who has ever expressed an interest in it.

There’s a disconnect between your actual site theme and your specific article/landing page but you are relying on the fact that some of the traffic going over to the specific page will click over to your homepage and end up viewing it. A large amount of non-relevant traffic will eventually allow you to hit a smaller amount of prospects actually interested in your site’s actual focus.

Of course, this isn’t ambush marketing per se, but rather something that builds on the opportunistic mindset which underlies it. The tactical principle is simple: stay in the loop and watch for openings to divert attention towards your brand. A rule of thumb: where people gather online in large numbers, you should be there with a relevant message.

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Ambush Marketing: The Art of Diverting Attention

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July 24th, 2008

I’m one of many informational sites that provide knowledge around managing employees.  I found these interesting and thought-provoking sites and thought they had something to offer you in your quest to being a great manager.

Extreme Leadership – Steve Farber
Steve is an expert of leadership development and his approach is to bring out the passion in your employees.  He is the author of “Radical Leap.”

Leading Blog…Build a Community of Leaders
Leadership is everybody’s business. It is for men, women and children. It is for families, business and communities. It is for you.   They do a good job in reviewing different books on leadership and change.

Slow Leadership
Developing your leadership skills takes time.  Why caught my eye was their article on “Why People Resist Change.”  All managers bump into the employee’s resistance to change….as well as our own resistance.  They have strong articles – Boss-ology 101.

Chief Happiness Officer
Business today is fast paced with the bottom-line the focus.  Companies are becoming smarter recognizing that the level of the employee’s happiness directly affects the bottom-line.  I thought this site would add a ‘fun’ perspective.    The author has a book:   “Happy Hour is 9 to 5” – learn how to love your job, create a great business and kick butt at work.

Women’s Leadership Exchange
This blog focuses on the unique challenges of women in business.  They offer conferences, articles as well as interesting blog posts that focus on the cultural image of women.  

Next Topic
The Art of Discipline

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21 Great Ways to Become an Outstanding Manager   by Brian Tracy
With this valuable step-by-step program, you will learn how to: -Lead your team to maximum results - so you can stand out
above the rest
-Keep your team happy and motivated
-Maximize your natural leadership capabilities
-Build a team to take you to the top
-Make your profits soar
*************************************************************

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July 16th, 2008

A while ago I wrote about using selective reporting to frame news, grab attention and make your content stand out from the rest of the competition. Now lets looks at creating original content specifically for a social media channel. How do you increase the chances of your article striking a nerve and spreading like wildfire within a specific community?

The answer is simple. I’ve mentioned it before. First of all, you need to start by gathering tactical knowledge on the specific website. Know your audience’s fetishes. Know what they love/hate and know what they talk about. Know what cliques exist within the community. Know what totems,  symbols, personalities and ideas are embraced by the general populace.

After knowing that, you can start to create content that is angled towards the specific audience. The mistake that most people make is not having broad appeal. A large general community has many members, each with different interests but a microscopic and overly technical focus on a small topic area may rob your content of the chance of truly going viral.

So what do you do? One method that works is just to use references to heighten content relevance and styling your articles in a catchy format that is easily accessible. What this template looks like will of course, depend on the specific website you are targeting.

Let’s use Digg as an example.

I’m not going to go into all the details on creating digg-friendly content (all that jazz about writing good headlines, using attractive pictures blah blah), instead I’m going to point you to Cracked.com, an example of a website that has perfected the art of writing original content that is attractive to not only Digg but many other channels like forums, blogs and social sites.

A general humor site, Cracked has gradually learned to create a template that works perfectly for a broad range of topics. Their content style does not vary from article to article: they use a more or less fixed template while inserting their topic-of-the-day into it.

What does this mean? That content producers in every conceivable niche/field can create content that will be appealing to a broad audience, just by learning how to use an attention grabbing frame. No more complaints about your site topic being inherently boring or obscure.

Cracked.com publishes a few articles everyday of the week and without fail, almost all of them will get to the frontpage of digg and sometimes, sites like Reddit. It’s a given that they’ll get frontpage glory, the only question is how many hours it’ll take for them to get there.

Like many other popular sites on digg, their success is accumulative: digg users see their content on the frontpage, read it and subscribe to their site via RSS or bookmark. They then visit it when new articles are published and end up digging them. And it goes on and on, untill a sizable number of digg users have become regular readers of their publication.

A lot of their initial success in the beginning was due to the fact that they wrote interesting content which was supported by a few power users who started submitting their stories. Over time, their integration with digg grew deeper and now every morning you’ll see users refreshing the Cracked.com homepage repeatedly just to be the first to submit the new article.

So apart from having supporters early on, how did Cracked.com take off? Mainly through good writing/ideas and the use of a sensationalistic, list-based content template. Instead of analyzing their website myself, I’ll refer you to two key articles they’ve written on the very topic of creating digg-friendly content and getting it to the frontpage.

The first one talks about writing a cracked-style list post and this quote here is most useful:

There are incredibly important questions in the world that need to be answered, which is why people read the The New York Times. Often when writing a list, your goal is to come up with a question that nobody on the face of the earth would ever actually need the answer to–a question that may in fact have never been asked before in the history of the human race.

This might sound easy but think of it like this: Real newspapers give people answers to the questions they’re already asking. What’s going on in Iraq? What’s up with this Bin Laden guy? It’s easy to know what questions to answer when they’re being asked of you.

But nobody’s asking Cracked and me “Who ARE the Top 10 Greatest Character Actors Who Ever Played Ninjas?” or “What DOES Science Have to Say About the Likelihood of a Zombie Apocalypse?” Journalists have it easy.

They even developed a tongue-in-cheek popularity equation for their list posts:

The” + (Number) + “Most” + (Over the top adjective) + (Subject) + Of All Time (Synonyms like “in History” or “Ever” will also be accepted) = Popularity

The second article (published today) talks about the 7 cheats for hitting the digg frontpage. This is more of a satirical piece and has only two points which are useful. The first is to use to talk about and reference Digg. I’ve talked about this before. The other point is to play to the crowd’s interests. Here’s an exaggerated mockup of a story that does that:

Note how the title crams in some of the big issues that Digg users care about.

Many people have written about content creation for social media, site optimization and ways to leverage digg. The hundreds of guides or tutorials out there are great but you’ll learn the fastest by observing the best. Apart from regularly watching what goes popular on various social channels, sites like Cracked.com can help you learn how to make even a small topical focus attractive to a general audience. And that’s what you need to reach more people online.


By the way, you might want to add me as a friend on Digg.

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How to Create Digg-Friendly Content: Cracked.com’s Template

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July 14th, 2008

Wouldn’t it be great if we only had to do what we do best?  This may not be feasible for you, as you have varied responsibilities as a manager.  What you can do is focus your energies on your strengths when managing employees.

What are you best at?  When you are managing your employees, where do you feel most comfortable in interacting?   If you focus on your strengths, you will enhance your management skills and guide the performance and well-being of your employees.  

Most managers find managing employees their greatest challenge as people can be a bit chaotic, and you may not always know what to do.  Since you can’t delegate this responsibility, you can choose to reframe your view of this challenge. 

Like each member on your team, you have your strengths as well as areas you are less comfortable.

All managers have some skills and knowledge around managing employees.  What if you were to select the one skill that you feel most confident when managing your team and fully develop that one strength…and do it until you see results with your team.   

You may be a new manager where every aspect of your role as a manager seems challenging.  Take one function and do your best.  This way you minimize the overwhelming feeling that comes with managing employees and start to maximize your results.

Here are skills that you need in managing people:

• Recruiting – find out all you need to know to find the best talent.   Select employees who are high performers with strong communication skills.  Be clear on what functions within your department are needed to meet your deliverables.   Learn about behavior-based interviewing techniques to develop your recruiting skills. 
• Motivation – Do you naturally encourage and motivate others?  Technically motivation comes from the individual, yet the manager can open or close the ‘motivation door’ within each person.    
• Coaching – focus your attention on the details of each person’s performance and guide them to the best of their abilities.
• Conflict Resolution – do you have strong negotiation skills and enjoy creating a win-win for both sides.
• High Standards – Clear about what performance levels are critical to succeed in business.  Are you willing to follow up to insure that your team members are clear about the performance expectations.  Respect for the individual and their strengths is important in this area.
• Listening – is this a strong skill for you.  Do you have the ability to slow down and hear what others say?    This is an important skill and worth the effort to fully develop it.
• Organizing – you are great at organizing and you can mentor and help your employees become more productive.  In addition to organizing, you will also need to be proficient in understanding other’s work styles.

Select one function above where you are most skilled and fully develop your knowledge and delivery.  If you take one area and build your knowledge and skills, you will find that the other functions of a successful manager will become stronger. 

When you are focusing your attention on your strengths, you increase your confidence, feel better about yourself, and in turn increase the well-being of your team.

Take the time to evaluate what you do best in managing employees.  All managers have strength in at least one area…find out what you like best and what you currently offer your employees.  Then provide your employees with the best you have to offer.

Pat

Next Topic
Different Resources For Your Learning

************************************************************
21 Great Ways to Become an Outstanding Manager  by Brian Tracy
With this valuable step-by-step program, you will learn how to:
• Lead your team to maximum results - so you can stand out above the rest
• Keep your team happy and motivated
• Maximize your natural leadership capabilities
• Build a team to take you to the top
• Make your profits soar
*************************************************************

Other Topics
Can I Make Mistakes With Employees?
Coaching Your Employees Can Be Fun
Help, I’m A New Manager

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June 29th, 2008

Employees have so little time to learn and they have to eat…so why not put the two together.    Lunchtime seminars are great way to share in-house knowledge as well as bring in external business tools.

Like any program, you have to market it….what’s the value to the employee to give up their lunch or to stop working. What’s the value to the company?

More and more employees eat while working.  You want to manage the employee’s effectiveness on the job.  This could be a nice break for them.   Visually I believe that we need a change and taking employees away from the PC for an hour gives such a break. 

The most important reason is that you are providing the space for them to develop their knowledge and skills…that’s a win-win for everyone.

What ideas work for lunchtime seminars?   Well you can do a one-time only seminar or a series of seminars to build knowledge on a specific topic.

Here are some great topics:

• Technology – do you have an expert on staff for a particular form of technology?  This is great way to bring the other employees up to speed on what is new.  Since the employee may put in some time creating the presentation, give them a ‘thank you’ bonus of gift certificate to a technology site.
• Careers – bring in HR or a strong manager who can provide ‘how to’ build your career.   This is a great topic for a series.    First, the employees define what they want and continues with further lunchtime meetings to learn how to build their career.  Encourage employees to take control over their careers.  Yes, it’s great if the manager drives it, but ultimately the employee is in charge of their careers.  Give them the tools and it will make your life easier.
• Time management topics – this is a broad subject as there are different models of time management.  Find one that works for your company.
• New industry trends – Great topic for a senior manager to present.  The senior manager provides industry direction as well as meets with employees and interacts with them.  
• You can also bring in a guest speaker…a well-know author in the field.
• Company financials – companies have different opinions about this subject, yet informed employees make better decisions. 
• Business change – bring in lunch and communicate to the employees what the changes are about and how it will affect them.    Have several meetings to continuously communicate the change and gather feedback. 
• Community participation – how the company supports the community as well as helping employees find ways to volunteer in non-profit environments.   
• Work/Life Balance – most companies initially see this as counterproductive because they automatically believe the employee will work less.    If you are managing employees, it’s not the time in the office, but rather the effectiveness of the time. 
• Health & Wellness – bring in a health fair or have a professional come in to speak about exercise, nutrition or other topics that are important to your employees. 
• Allow employees to take teleseminars in their profession.  For example, Society for Human Resource Professionals has several hour-long teleseminars during the month.   Guest speakers provide current information on pertinent information for HR professionals.   
• …and more. 

What To Do 

• Set up a committee of managers and employees to brainstorm around what topics are valuable for the company and employee.
• Select a list of your top subjects.
• Create a list of potential teaching resources – internal and external.
• Create a budget because every action within a company costs money.  The question is the return on the investment. 
• Find the teaching resources that fit your budget
• Create a calendar of lunchtime seminar dates
• Publish the calendar with description of the seminar
• Market to employees and encourage them to participate – this you will need to do on a regular basis.

Final Thought

Knowledge is driving business now and your employees are the keepers of the knowledge.   Anytime you can provide additional development for your employees, you benefit in multiple ways.  First, the employee is able to perform better and they are interested in staying at a company that creates a strong ‘learning’ environment. 
  
P.S.   Each state has a different legal requirement around lunchtime for hourly employees…so check out how you can offer your hourly employees the same opportunities and still be within legal boundaries. 

Next Topic
In Managing Employees, How Much Can You Manage?

Pat

Book Recommendation:
Coaching for Performance, Third Edition (People Skills for Professionals) by John Whitmore.   Managers need to build their skills in maximizing employees potential.   The business environment is very competitive for dollars and for talent.   John Whitmore provides concrete information to build your skill in coaching.  If you think like a coach, you have the ability to groom your employees to produce their best. It’s all about asking the right questions and listening to the answers.   Easy to read and incorporate your new knowledge quickly into action.

Other Topics:
Create a ‘Learning Plan’ For All Employees
Help Your Employees Build Their ‘Confidence Muscles’
Asking the Right Questions

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June 27th, 2008

Blogs are quite often a one-person show. The owners maintain the blog, write the content and promote the site themselves. They switch between different roles whenever necessary and that’s the natural result of a DIY system where one is personally in charge of everything. Sometimes, we tend to see themselves more as writers and less as executive editors.

We are more occupied with the process of developing an article idea, writing the blog post and then doing some minor editing to correct inaccurate usage of grammar, spelling or punctuation. To us, editorial work mainly involves prepping a post for eventual publication.

For bloggers, the editorial and writing process is intertwined: an efficient setup that works tirelessly to churn out content. We are editing and writing at the same time, seamlessly transitioning from one role to another in a instinctual instant. This usually happens when both the writer and editor are the same person.

Ive been writing on this blog for over a year. The writer in me has matured, while I feel that my editorial vision remains limited to the usual adminstrative concerns involved in day-to-day publishing. Somehow I think I’m not living up to my full potential. Maybe its because I’m not thinking like an editor-in-chief, like someone with absolute power over doshdosh.com.

I can do anything I want with this blog. It is all mine. But yet here I am, still thinking like a freelance writer who finishes an article and leaves it at that. Where is the competitive development strategy? Where is the expansion plan? Where is the readership analysis?

I’m thinking like a foot soldier and not a general. I throw out article after article against the wall, hoping that some of them will stick. But I’m not strategizing or thinking in the long-term beyond the immediate present, beyond the comments I have to reply to and the emails I have to write. There’s something more to that. Perhaps I’m missing the executive perspective.

Image Credit: crazy autofocus

The editor-in-chief is the person who ultimately decides the content direction of the publication in the long run. Like a curator of some sort, the editor-in-chief determines what topics to cover in the editorial calendar and decides how content is arranged together in a way which coheres with the standards of the publication as well as its overall strategy/purpose.

The editor-in-chief is responsible for keeping up to date with reader needs, industry news and competitor publications. He/she is a specialist in analyzing and framing news sources in order to emphasize specific unique angles. This is the person who looks at a piece of writing, thinks beyond copy, and asks: How can I best use this to improve the publication as a whole?

What are you publishing? Does it differentiate you? What image are you trying to cultivate? Who are you trying to reach? What works for others and how can you learn from them? How do you repackage old information in new ways? Who can you collaborate with?

I’ve written many times about having a strategy when it comes to creating content. Too many times. Now I just need to remember that I’m not just a writer but an executive editor. Someone who’s actually in charge. Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget .

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You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief.

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