Platform Building – Page 2 – Management T̶h̶i̶n̶k̶e̶r̶ Linker

Are You Building Your Platform Toolkit?

If you’re serious about building your platform, then building your toolkit as you go is almost as important as your content. Trial and error or ad-hoc tools will only take you so far.

You could refer to the resources pages / suggestions that experts in the Online publishing world give such as Michael Hyatt, Pat Flynn. As far as I am concerned, I have found the following tools extremely helpful in building my platform. Best part is that most of these resources are free to use or at least try.

Freemake Video Downloader – Easy way to download your favorite Youtube clips as an audio or video.
Free Sound Recorder – Excellent quality voice recording of any length in MP3 format.
Debut Video Capture Software – Another one of my favorites to capture the computer screen, make home videos and convert recordings into other formats.
Facebook Cache Refresh: Shrug off that sticky cache from Facebook before you share your blog-post on Facebook.
ZAMZAR: Convert documents and PDFs into music files (MP3 and other formats) without the need to download software
NOZBE: Best way to keep track of your To Dos.
FEEDBURNER from GOOGLE: RSS Feeds and Email Subscription Management.
Audio Joiner: Lets you cut and join MP3 audio files.
Analyse your Blog’s Headline: Check your headline before posting your blog. Get a score and recommendations!
750Words: I started blogging using this site. I recommend it for those who are getting started to take up the trial version.
Wordle: Create your own word cloud!
Trello: Agile Scrum based Project Management tool. Let’s you manage multiple projects and product backlogs!
YOUTUBE to MP3 converter: Works specially well for long (I was successful in converting a 6 hour video) Youtube video to audio conversions.

Question: What other tools are you using to build your Platform? Please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

How to Create Two Blogs on Your Site?

For a very long time, I thought there is no way I could create two proper BLOGs on my wordpress site.

What I wanted was simple (at least I thought so):

Blogs related with parenting and relationships appearing as one category.
Blogs related with Platform Building (such as this one) as a separate category.

At best, I could create Menu’s leading to pages (instead of posts). But Pages are Pages are Pages! They are not anywhere close to blog-posts. There is a lot of wasted effort in turning them into something that looks close to blogs.

Steve Jobs once said: [bctt tweet=”If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”]

Being a hardcore fan, I didn’t settle easily and kept looking. Simply put, here are the steps to create (or give an illusion of) two or more blogs on the same site:

Create two (or more) categories: Go to Posts -> Categories and create two (or more) categories corresponding to the Blogs you would want to create. In my case, I created BLOGS and PLATFORM BUILDING as two categories.
Add newly created categories into the Menu: Go to Appearance -> Menus and click on the arrow to show the Categories. Select the newly created Categories by checking the box against it. Press the “Add to Menu” button to move these new categories into the Menu. (In case you want to change the text on the site for the categories, you can change the categories details on the Menu widget.)
Select the category for each blog-post: Open the Posts page, Edit (or Quick Edit) has the select the category. In my case, I selected BLOGS for my parenting and relationships related posts and PLATFORM BUILDING for posts such as this one.

That’s it! You’re all set. Open your site and you’d see two (or more) menu items – “Blogs” & “Platform Building” in my case.

Resources That Helped Me:

Video on the BobWP site. Follow the link.

The ‘Research’ Trap!

Every presentation goes through three phases before it is ready for delivery:

Research– That’s where we research the content
Structure– Create our point of view (PoV) and structure in our head/ paper/ mind maps/ other tools
Package– Put it together in MS Powerpoint / Prezi/ other presentation tools. That’s also where we review and improve it further

(not necessarily in that order, there is usually back and forth.)

The problem I have seen is that it’s easy to be lured into getting stuck in Phase 1, ‘researching’ – Google, talking to colleagues, VOX, BOX, crowd-sourcing, Google, Books, Google, emails and more Google… ! There are so many sources and so much material available after all!

To make matters worse, one tends to digress into other seemingly more enticing topics. We end up not even looking at a lot of that downloaded research!

BEWARE – This is “the infinite research trap!”

Nothing wrong with researching, in fact it is an important part of a good presentation. However, one has to be conscious that time to deliver is limited. The temptation to research more eats into the time that should have gone into Phase 2 (Structure) and Phase 3 (Package). These two phases are equally important for your overall success.

If you have 10 days to complete your presentation, this trap can lead you to a point where:

You spend over 9 days researching and
Still having a feeling that there is lot left to download until
An uncomfortable feeling tells you something like, ”Shit! How will I present tomorrow!”

With only few hours left, you will try to put something together, anything that can get you through this time. “I will do better planning next time” syndrome. You find anything even remotely close to what you needed and convert it into the organization template. You may add some random pictures to get by.

This creates a shoddy presentation which is nowhere close to even your own expectation.

If this sounds familiar, then congratulations, you are a victim of the research trap!

The good news, though, is that you can prevent yourself from getting into this trap with nothing more than a little discipline.

Apply the 30:40:30 RULE:

Spend no more than 30% time in research!
Spend no less than 40% time for putting together your viewpoint (pov) and structure. This is most important and most ignored step.
Spend no less than 30% time in packaging – putting it on PPT, self/ peer reviews, changes, improvement. Use this time for include more examples/ graphics/ Speaker notes which creates a powerful presentation.

If you have 10 days to deliver a presentation, spend ~3 days on researching, ~4 days on structure and ~3 days on its packaging.

This approach requires discipline but ensures timeliness and quality. I try to follow this rule and whenever I am able to, it serves me very well. This simple discipline can not only save you from embarrassment but it creates world class presentations.

Do try this and share your experiences. What other techniques work for you while creating presentations? Looking forward to hear from you.

By the way, this comes as a learning from my ex-employer where we did Quick Consulting. It was a mandate to follow this rule. Had to be, when the expected turnaround time for presentation submissions was 1 day!

If I Can Write, You Can Too!

I love to write blogs in my free time. Well, actually, there is no free time in life.

Don’t you hate it when someone pings and says , “Are you free?”

(Yes, I’m completely free. I was just waiting for you to ask. Thank you so much!)

One has to make time for everything one wants to do.

Haven’t called your good old college chums in years?

You didn’t have the time? Well, reality is that you didn’t make the time. Possibly because it was way down on your priority list.

It’s life. It happens. No need to feel guilty about it. If you wanted to call, you would have.

The point is, if you want to write, then all you need to do is make time for it. And if you are able to do just that, then congratulations! You are already a writer!

I am happy to share my writing process with you. Your’s could already be or could end up being better than mine. Please share with me if it isn’t too confidential.

My Six Step Blog Writing Process:

1. Capitalize on Your Trillions. There are trillions of thoughts that run through our mind each day. All I do is be conscious of these and not let all these thoughts just come and go. I draw a vertical line on my notepad to capture some of these ideas as the day progresses. I call this notebook section ‘—live streaming—‘!

2. Bring it Down to a Title! These are still many random ideas and thoughts. One can’t possibly use and write about everything. I capture over a couple dozen such thoughts per day. I let these thoughts play together in my head generally in the alone time. The time when I am taking a walk or driving alone. After some playtime, I pin all these down to a “theme”, followed by a “title”.

3. Speak it Out. Crazy as it may sound, but it works! Don’t prepare before your recording. All the madness automatically arranges itself in a beautiful fashion. The relevant ideas crystallize and the unimportant filter out. Fresh new ideas add! It’s like magic!

4. Use Your Toolkit. I use many tools. One Note, Mind-mapping tools like IDEAS i-Phone app, Quotes app, InStatus. Use whatever works for you but don’t get carried away or go overboard. If a journal does it for you, that’s perfect too. This is just to help add toppings on top of your pizza when it is ready.

5. Let it Cook! Don’t do anything for a while about this. May be go to sleep. I do that and when I get up, I play my recording and write it down verbatim. While I was asleep, my subconscious mind had done a lot of processing on its own.

6. Garnish It. Your pizza is now ready. Add the toppings. Read it like someone from your audience was reading it. Request someone else to review it. I ask my wife. She always beings in a different perspective! Add some quotes and images.

That’s it!

Press the Publish button. Post the link on Facebook and Twitter!

Celebrate and be thankful for each like and each comment you get.

Consider the feedback but don’t kill your self or your blog over it.

Many people stop writing after one critical comment. Worse still, many people who get wonderful feedback think this writing was their life’s masterpiece. So, even they stop writing!

Remember, this is just the beginning and there is no end…!

Well, that’s it. Welcome to the club. The Blogger’s Club!

Hope you like this post. I am so looking forward to hearing about the method you use in your writing.

Until then, keep writing..!

Hello World!

The phrase “Hello World” holds a special meaning for people born in my generation who happened to be students of computers. This was the name of the first computer program we wrote when ever we learnt a new computer programming language. It used to give me and all of my friends a sense of joy and accomplishment to see these words showing on the blue computer screen on ‘executing’ our programs.

I still get the same sense of joy on having my site up and running today, and more glad to see the same text on my site as it launches – H E L L O W O R L D.

Today, world has changed and my 4 year old son, Tanav, is sitting next to me, assisting me with the teething problems using this site while in parallel playing on the i-Phone which he knows like the back of his hand. I doubt if “HELLO WORLD” will ever hold any relevance for his generation or generations to come.

As for me, it has taken my Rocket a lot of energy to attain this Escape Velocity, and it will need your love and support to keep spinning in an i-orbit around the planet where it can be used for some blessed purpose. Amen!