Posts Tagged ‘blog’
Herding Consultants 2.0
What kind of title is “Herding Consultants 2.0″? I suppose for search engine optimization reasons I should have used “aligning” instead of “herding” but at some point the whole alignment theme can get boring. I’ll stick with “herding” this time. Having been on both sides of the consulting table leads to some firm convictions about what that means in an era of highly available sources of judgment and advice. In the “old” days (before the late 1990’s) consultants found consultants based on their business offerings, sales campaigns and contacts. A relationship was built based on repeated personal contact. The competitive differentiator was the consultant’s previous work and their skills inventory. That ultimately led to a “resume bake off” when consultants competed for your business. That model is still viable to a large extent.
A new model has appeared over the last few years based on Internet based tools and virtual presence. Blogs have grown rapidly and any consultant worth his salt has one (me included). We use some tool to subscribe to the blogs that interest us, such as our email clients, browsers or any number of other tools. My preference is a tool called BlogBridge. That keeps the blog posts out of my inbox which reduces clutter and makes them easy to scan. The end result is that I now have subscribed to many blogs. I did that because there are many topics about which I want to stay current or have an interest. That creates a need to assign levels of credibility to each blog. BlogBridge makes the assignment of a ranking very easy. It’s the deciding on a rank that’s hard.
My current technique is to look over my “herd” of consultant blogs to spot trends. Once I do that I decide if I’m in agreement with the consensus. If not, I research the topic more to validate my opinions. I’m not trying to be a technical expert but I am trying to understand the topic well enough that I can offer my own options and judgment in a way that adds value for my target clients (C-level executives in mid-market manufacturing or manufacturing related service businesses who are trying to make decisions on the use and deployment of technology tools). I will then vet my opinions with a few people whose opinion I trust and who have differing backgrounds.
This just reinforces the point I have made before. It’s the personal relationships that matter most. It also reinforces the idea that there is just a huge amount of opinions and “experts” out there. Another way of “herding” all of the consultants you rely on for advice is to let the large consulting companies do it for you. For example, both Gartner and Forrester have become active bloggers. You can also just sign up with either of them and get even more information. Essentially, by relying on their blogs you are letting them do the vetting for you. There are other, smaller consulting groups like ebizQ and TechRepublic, which offer similar capabilities. I watch some consultants from each of these.
In summary, my point is that we need techniques to vet the web-based consultants we have all come to rely on. We each need to decide how much effort to apply to that vetting exercise and how to leverage our own personal networks. I have my approach and I recommend that you develop one that works for you.
Thanks for stopping by. Stay tuned for more…
The new blog is now up
This is just a short notice that our new WordPress-based blog is now operational. Over time, we will work on making it more consistent with the branding of the main site.
Adventures in Social Networking
Originally posted on 7/2/09
I want to admit up front that I am no expert on social media. My goals are simple. First, I want to leverage social media in a way that helps my business. Second, I don’t want to lose touch with friends and colleagues made over the years. I am indifferent about notifying people of my current location, random thoughts or irrelevant personal information.
Given those simple goals, I began doing research on what parts of the vast social media landscape make sense for me to pursue. After some investigation my list has narrowed down to four entities, excluding this blog (we’ll discuss that later).
First, and my primary social site, is LinkedIn. My page there is http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnpattison. It contains the most useful personal information. It seems to be the social network of choice for professional people of my age group (50+++) and younger. LinkedIn is best suited to both my primary goals. If your goals are similar to mine you should check it out.
Next is Facebook. For me, it is a distant second to LinkedIn. My page there is http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1388328440&hiq=michael%2Cpattison. Certainly professionals use this one as well but business connections are not its primary focus. I see it as a more general purpose social media experience to stay in touch with personal friends outside the context of a career.
Next is Ning. It is fairly new for me but is interesting in that it offers a tool to create a fairly exhaustive, branded personal social networking experience. My page at Ning is: http://www.ning.com/michaelpattison. For me, the jury is still out on Ning. I am involved with the CIO Innovations Institute at http://www.cioinnovations.com/ . It’s fairly new and needs time to mature. We’ll see how it goes.
Last, and least, for me, is Twitter. I keep hearing about how valuable Twitter is for business use. My page there is http://twitter.com/mnpattison. I’m sure that it works well in some cases where companies benefit from viral networking and good buzz. That certainly wouldn’t hurt my business either. It’s just that I struggle with the notion of being associated with what I see as the more adolescent nature of what goes on there. I know people who would strongly disagree with that statement. They are spending a lot of time and effort on Twitter. With the other social media sites I’m interested in, I can’t justify this one being ranked any higher than fourth on my list. The amount of time I spend on Twitter is proportional to its ranking. Maybe that will change some day but it’s not today.
Speaking of this blog, I am currently using the simple blog plug-in supplied with my web site development software, WebPlus X2 by Serif (http://www.serif.com/webplus/ ). For those of us who don’t want to get our hands dirty with HTML programming or tools designed for web developers, it’s a pretty good tool; not perfect, but competent and simple to use.
Clearly there is more widely used blog/content management software out there and I should at least know if that would be a better choice than the one I’m using. First is WordPress. It is probably the most used, open source tool available. It is competent and free. I have installed it and have a test blog that I’m playing with. Since it’s a separate product, the search engines have already found it as the blog for StrAIT Advisors, test page and all. It may become my blogging tool someday but I’m going with simple and easy for now.
The other tool I’m looking at is Joomla! (I love that name). It is a CMS (content management system) from the ground up and can do many other things including complete web sites as well. I have installed it next to WordPress and will be evaluating it as I get time for its blogging capabilities. Stay tuned for progress reports…
So that’s a wrap for this installment of my adventures in social media. Please feel free to comment with advice or opinions.
Thanks for stopping by.