Podonomics

Tonight, Wednesday August 22, I’m hosting a fr’ee live call at 8pm ET. I’m going to interview a creativity coach who knows she needs to use the Internet to finds clients, but doesn’t know where to start. I’m going to coach her through the process and I invite you to listen in.

This call is in a series of weekly calls giving you a sneak peak at my Online Media Success Workshop taking place November 2-3, 2007 in Toronto, Ontario.

To get the call-in details, go to the Online Media Success Workshop webpage and sign up.

Debbie Weil, the author of The Corporate Blogging Book (of which I provided my feedback about her book), has gotten herself in a mess. She asked her colleagues by email to leave comments on a client’s new blog. Not everyone was happy about this and called her request backhanded. With the responses she has received, Debbie wanted to “crawl under a rock and pretend I’ve never heard of blogging.”

I know what it’s like to post something on your blog, only to regret it after seeing the reaction from readers, colleagues and other bloggers. While some crucify Debbie for her faux pas, I will instead post links to some of my not-so-flattering blog posts. There were only 2 that I can remember, so I posted them below.

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In my quest to go on a social media diet, I looked at all the social networking websites I belong to. I’ve been social networking since 2003 (first one I joined was Ryze), but only one has become relevant - Facebook. Facebook has become so relevant to me, I no longer accept invitations to join the others.

Here’s what some of my friends are saying about Facebook.

• Robert Scoble explains why Facebook has become relevant all of a sudden (it’s personal).
• Dean Hua says that Facebook allows him to make a connection with people which is more important than knowing there’s 2-million people within 6-degrees of you.
• Chris Brogan loves how the various applications not only make Facebook a richer environment, but a hopping place as well.

Chris Benoit is dead. One of the biggest names in entertainment wrestling was found dead along with his wife and son in their home of an apparent double murder suicide.

Pretty glum stuff, huh?

For a good majority of you, you probably have no clue who Chris Benoit is. Well, I do. Not because he’s a Canadian, but because I’ve watched World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) since I was a little girl.

My dad used to watch WWE religiously every week. Names like Hulk Hogan, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, the Hillbillies, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Jack “The Snake” Roberts and The British Bulldogs were the huge names in wrestling at the time (I did this all without having to Google the names). Because there was only 1 TV set in the house at the time, there was nothing to do but watch grown men jump around in tights.

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Jim Balsillie (seen right), co-CEO of Research In Motion, the company that makes the Blackberry, wants to buy the Nashville Predators, a National Hockey League (NHL) team.

Most media outlets are reporting that the Nashville Predators have already been sold, however, I heard on the radio this morning that the deal is awaiting approval from the NHL Board of Directors.

Guess what? A meeting set for next week Tuesday has been cancelled by the Board citing that they need at least 10-days notice to vote on such an important decision.

Why the hold up? You can blame Balsillie.

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Just to let you know, I‘m not the only one talking about all this digital noise in social media. I found some interesting posts from people who are also trying to put themselves on a social media diet.

• Chris Brogan talks about The Importance of Saying No.
• By way of Scoble’s blog in his post entitled Is Social Media Making Us Ill, Stowe Boyd has an awesome PDF of a presentation called Flow: A New Consciousness For a Web of Traffic looking at how social media affects our attention spans.
• By way of Michael Geoghegan’s Information Overload post, Brian Oberkirch lists about a dozen or so things he’s doing to curb the email overload in his post called Trimming the attention sails (Brian was also influenced by Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week book).

I’d love to add some more posts from you that describe what you’re doing to trim the digital fat. Please add your comments.

Last week, I complained about all this digital noise. I belong and use so many online social media tools that it started to affect my productivity. I was also getting very overwhelmed and burnt out by the constant need to always be “on” everytime I entered cyberspace.

At the insistence of my good friend, Jan Janzen, I listened to a recording of Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week. He was being interviewed by Yanik Silver.

It was probably one of the most profound recordings I’ve heard in ages. I immediately applied something he talked about to my own business with profound effects. I put an autoresponder on my email that now alerts people that I only check emails twice a day. I encourage people to call my toll-free number if they want to get in touch with me or just wait until I check into my email.

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Mesh, Toronto’s Web 2.0 conference, starts tomorrow. It’s sold out, so there’s no tickets left.

I’m leading a session called Podcasting 101. I’m looking forward to it as I’m going to test out a new presentation format. No, I’m talking about new presentation software. Instead, my presentation will be 100% visual and audio only.

Yeah, I know. Nothing new. But for me, it is. So many times, I’ve used slides with text to explain a concept. Anna Farmery and I chatted at length about how odd it is that people who rely on audio and video to make money and promote their businesses turn to such an antiquated approach - in other words, text on powerpoint slides - to present their ideas.

So, as a podcaster, I’m saying goodbye to text and hello to audio & video. Make sense, doesn’t it?

My website has been listed #1 in Google for the search term podcasting expert. It has been for about 12-months now. Being ranked that high has afforded me with media interviews and business opportunities that I would not have gotten had it not been for that #1 spot.

I desperately want to change that website into a blog for several reasons. Reasons I won’t list here, but I need to get it done.

I’m nervous about doing this because it could mean that I’ll lose my #1 ranking. Or, will I? Can anyone help alleviate my fears?

I picked up an issue of Time magazine while waiting at the doctor’s office this morning. It was the first time in months that I read one - a magazine that is - so I was curious to see what was going on in the pages.

Sadly, I was in the doctor’s office long enough to read the entire issue. I said sadly because it meant I missed out on 2-hours of writing. In any case, I came across an article looking at the number of Blacks in baseball. There was an audio series created by someone who looked at some of the Black baseball greats from the past.

I was intrigued that the article called the product - the audio series that is - Oral History. This brought up an interesting thought which is yet another reason why I love podcasting so much.

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