Danny Brown

podcaster - author - creator

Business

Do Not Disturb

Your voicemail is permanently on (or your secretary is diverting calls). Your office is a no-go area except to the limited few. Your cell phone has dedicated ringtones so only three people get through (and they’re all “Yes” people).

You’re permanently in meetings that you’ve arranged that don’t need to happen – the earth won’t fall away if you miss one of them. Simply put, you’re so busy that your life is one big “Do Not Disturb” sign.

Your competitors, on the other hand, like to be disturbed. They like new ideas from the many. They like phone calls; emails; faxes. They like meetings that only happen when… well, when something happens or needs to.

In short, your competitors are busy being disturbed by customers. Isn’t it about time you unlocked some doors?

  • Note: This post originally appeared on my Posterous account. I?m still experimenting there and may remain using it, or move all posts here. In the meantime, I?ll be sharing the odd one here with you.

Bridge Builders

You don’t have to be a superstar. You don’t have to be the top dog. You don’t always have to be the number one.

It helps. It can offer kudos and creedence to your name. But superstars fade. Top dogs become old. Number ones can fall by the wayside and soon drop out the Top 10 altogether.

Stop solely concentrating on the numbers and positions. Instead, think about being a bridge builder.

We’re in a people business. Yes, people work from numbers but they really believe in the connection. You’re the bridge to that connection. The decisions you’re making today are being viewed by others, and they will come to you for their needs. Or the needs of their clients.

They may want you to help build the numbers for their company, but it still all happened because of your bridge.

Build the bridge right and the numbers will follow.

Something New, Something Old

It’s been a little quiet around here the last few days. And, for that matter, on Twitter as well (not so much Facebook, as that’s not one of my more popular haunts). Anyone that knows me will know this isn’t normal fare – I’m usually much more vocal (although the silence may be preferable to some!). The last week or so has been hectic, hence the silence.

Here’s why.

Following some conversations with both Shannon Boudjema and Maritz Canada, I’m really happy to announce that I have accepted the role of Social Media Strategist for Maritz. This is an in-house project (contracted) for the next six months, and will see me help lead Maritz Canada forward into the social space, as well as help with client strategies and campaigns.

The role was held by Shannon, but she’s moving back to the UK for family reasons. Shannon’s been key in developing how the next six months will look as well as helping to put in place in-house set-ups to make the transition as smooth as possible. I can’t thank Shannon enough for all her help here.

So, what does that mean here? Not much, to be honest. I’ll still continue to write about the topics I feel can help you gain the most benefit from the space, whether that’s tools, platforms or, most importantly, people. I may add in the occasional example from my new gig, if it’s relevant and acceptable to the companies involved.

I guess the main change is updating some bio/disclosure information and ensuring there are no conflicts of interest. But that’s a given anyway, so hopefully it won’t come up too often.

Anyways… now that I’m settling into the role and the crazy hectic days of early role changeover is becoming less manic, expect to see me back prowling an online corridor near you. I hope we can continue to learn together and here’s to some fun and interesting times ahead.

Get the Gist About Your Most Important Contacts

For anyone that struggles with managing contacts, new online service?Gist may be just the thing you’ve been looking for.

Working out of Seattle, Gist is a new start-up that takes the hassle out of connecting your online dots. It collates all your contacts – email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more – into an easy-to-manage web portal that then gives you a whole ton of features to prioritize which ones you keep track of.

What makes Gist interesting is the pedigree behind the company. Engineers from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Jobster, Infospace and more are the key minds behind Gist, and this shows with the sheer weight of information available to you once you sign up. It’s also incredibly user-friendly – another sign of the expertise putting the show together.

So what’s Gist all about?

From the company’s own description, Gist works by “connecting your inbox to the web.” So basically, anywhere you have an online contact, Gist transfers them to one point of contact to help you manage them better. Once you set up an account, you can then import your connections from the following services:

  • Email services Outlook and Gmail (with the option of importing others via IMAP)
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Salesforce

You can also upload Excel or csv files as well (so, Yahoo Mail contacts for example). Basically, your most useful social connections and email contacts are covered.

Once uploaded, you’re then offered a dashboard area which is where the real fun begins. Depending on the accounts you’ve linked to Gist, you can then see the latest blog posts, tweets, news and more about and from every contact in your list in the What’s New section. It’s like an RSS feed on steroids, and gives you an incredible amount of information.?There’s also a Google Search box open, so any information you need on a contact or connection is right in front of you.

The admin area is where Gist’s potential shines through. There are three sections – Dashboard, People and Companies. In the Dashboard area, you can tick boxes to check people, companies, blogs, tweets and news from the last 24 hours up to 90 days old. In the People section, you can see when you last contacted someone as well as the date of the most recent article about them. The Companies section offers pretty much the same as the People one, but ties them all under their respective corporate roofs.

The benefit of all this information is clear:

  • Get the most up-to-date information about a sales lead before a meeting or call
  • Send a solution to a problem as it’s mentioned, building your connection to that person or company
  • Expand your connections via shared contacts
  • Jump in to defuse situations and respond to both positive and negative feedback as soon as it happens
  • Keep in contact with your connections, customers and clients on a more regular basis, strengthening the relationship

Gist combines these features with the ability to prioritize which contacts are more important via a slider option where you can increase or decrease relevancy.

It’s clear to see that Gist has come out of the gates flying. The guys behind the company have realized that not everyone is a great project manager and that having an all-in-one solution to some of that is an attractive proposition.

The service isn’t quite perfect yet – it could offer more social networks, for instance, and I noticed some duplication of contacts from the same list when uploading. However, these are minor quibbles in a service that is still in open beta at the minute. As a first run, Gist is already looking like it could be one of my most used tools for connecting people, both personally and to each other.

Check out what founder and CEO T.A. McCann has to say, then have a look at Gist yourself. I’d love to know what you think of it.

Do Bloggers Make Good Authors?

After a period of separation the water tanks decided to organize a reunionHow many of you have read Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents? Or Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation ? Or Now is Gone by Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis? Or [insert title here] by [insert renowned blogger here]?

Here’s another question.

How many of you that have read (or plan to read) these books also read the aforementioned authors’ blogs? Now ask yourself one more question.

If you read the blog long before the book, did you learn anything truly new?

I ask not from a disrespectful view – I admire each and every one of these guys for different reasons, and for how they’ve helped move PR, marketing and the digital space forward via their thinking. Every one of them has a (usually) outstanding blog where you can find great information and maps on how to move you and your business forward.

But reading their books, I couldn’t help but feel that I’d already read the content over at their blogs. Even though I enjoyed the printed text, it felt like the digital version had been there first.

Which makes me wonder two things.

Are the authors looking for a new audience from their regular blog readers? And if not, if the audience is a mix of existing and new, do bloggers make good authors?

Again, that’s not from a disrespectful view – more a curiosity. If you have a popular blog with a high readership and regular content, what happens when it comes to writing a book expanding on the very topics you’ve been sharing for a few years? Have active bloggers already written and shared so much that it appears there’s nothing new in-between the pages of a newly released book?

I’m curious about your take on this.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Pulpolux !!!