Reading Time: 2 minSocial media is often filled with memes and information that are just flat-out incorrect. Most of it comes from one type of sharing: “That fits my viewpoint, so I’ll pass it along!“. Truth becomes secondary to speed. That’s not to say you shouldn’t share things that you agree with, but taking a moment to verify […]
Social Media
The public to private bridge
Reading Time: < 1 minSocial media can be great, but as I’ve said on here many times, it’s not yours. Using social media to grow your audience can be a very beneficial thing, but moving your audience from that public network to a private channel (such as an email list) is essential to your long-term growth. We saw this […]
Why most blogs should allow comments
Reading Time: 3 minOver the past decade, I’ve seen more and more blogs get rid of their comment section and simply say something like “go discuss it on Facebook”. I think that’s a bad move, at least in most cases. At a high level, it’s because I still think we need to take back our content. Taking back […]
Tell me about your research
Reading Time: 2 minI’m seeing more and more people claiming to have “done the research” to support some kind of claim, and I suspect most of the “research” there is rather dubious. In most cases, they’re simply saying “I believe the views of person x instead of person y” — and that’s mostly ok. If you trust one […]
Building castles out of sand
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen it comes to building your presence online, you can build it out of rock or out of sand. Naval said it well on Twitter a few years ago after Alexander Cortes was kicked off of Twitter: Building a following on Twitter is building a castle out of sand, as the implacable tide shifts in […]
Facebook still isn’t listening to you
Reading Time: 3 minIt’s a common joke (or sometimes a fear) to “be careful what you say, because Facebook (or Google) is listening to you“. While it may be often intended as a joke, there are many people that think it’s true and there are some decent reasons to believe that it might be. However, I don’t think […]
Where do you really get your news?
Reading Time: < 1 minAlmost every day I see someone complaining about “the media”, and the lack of coverage on a particular story or the slant given to something that happened. Despite that, I still maintain that you are the media. It’s important to have professional news organizations out there, for sure, but they no longer have very much […]
Shiny, happy, fake people
Reading Time: < 1 minWe all know it’s true, but we all do it anyhow. We know that people only show their best side on social media, yet we compare our own lives, and our messiness, to the perfectly curated feeds from others. In the book “Back to Human“, author Dan Schawbel points to a study from a few […]
Blogging isn’t a tech issue, it’s a fame issue
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve said on here quite a few times that most everyone should have their own blog, and they should use it as the central place to share their ideas. I still fully believe that, but a recent post from Manuel Moreale has me rethinking my perspective a little bit. Here was his main point: No […]
Spam makes it harder for the good stuff to shine
Reading Time: 2 minSpam is just a bad thing. We all hate it. The problem I’m finding lately is that it’s also making good things appear to be more questionable. “Why did you write about that?” A while back, I shared on my Facebook about some great new charging cables we bought for our devices around the house. […]