Jim Ierley is a Web Developer who enjoys helping people discover ways to improve their work with the Web.
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Making Work Flow
Jim Ierley's links and thoughts about work and the Web
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Social Media Usage Policies: Less Lawyering, More Encouraging (via HarvardBusiness.org)
"Do you spend much time on Facebook?"
It was a standard question in our hiring process, but the job candidate visibly stiffened and said, "A bit, I guess. But not every day. And only after work. I mean, never at work. I mean, never on my work computer."
And that was a standard response. I let her off the hook. "I'm not asking because I'm worried about you wasting time," I said. "I'm asking because we like to hire people who enjoy using social media tools."
Alexandra Samuel shares some great starting points for developing the right attitude and educational effort around your organization's use of social media.
The future is just like the past (but shinier) | Seth Godin
Your industry has been completely and permanently altered by the connections offered by the internet. Your non-profit, your political campaign, your service business. Not a little different, not just email enabled or website marketed, but overhauled.
read more at Seth's blogWhy New Ideas can be Painful to Pursue
via siliconangle.netJames Watters cites this video of Robert Cialdini to make the point that,
Being out of step with a group causes us literal physical pain on a small scale. The bigger the social burden in explaining our creative ideas, the less likely we are to pursue them. What’s that mr MBA? You didn’t have that as a project cost on your spread-sheet? Exactly.
The Surprising Science of Motivation (via What’s Best Next)
Dan Pink makes the case that the 20th century concepts of management and employee motivation have been proven ineffective for tasks that require creativity and decision-making in the face of even slight uncertainty. Instead, he says that effective work environments need to focus on converging autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
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How to Synchronize Bookmarks Between Work, Home, Laptop, and Smartphone - Gina Trapani
You've got company intranet pages, online banking sites, recipes, wishlist items, and articles to read bookmarked in your web browser. But when you go home, those precious links you bookmarked at the office aren't available and vice versa — unless you synchronize them, that is.
Several products offer browser bookmark synchronization capabilities; my favorite is an add-on called Xmarks. Available as a free download for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and the Safari browsers, once you install Xmarks and create an account, it saves your bookmarks online. Every time you start up a browser on any computer you've installed Xmarks on and linked to that account, it synchronizes your bookmarks to that browser. That means any new bookmarks you added at work show up at home, or any you deleted from your laptop browser also get deleted on your home computer.
Check out Gina Trapani's explanation of tools to sync your bookmarks on multiple computers. Personally, I use Xmarks on Firefox. I haven't had great luck with getting it to work perfectly on Internet Explorer, but I've heard Windows Live and Skydrive allow you to sync favorites.
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Personal Brands are Like Belly Buttons
Do you have a personal brand on the Web? In this post, I’d like to convince you that personal brands are like belly buttons; everybody has one. If you don’t believe me, consider this question: Have you ever used your real name while doing any of the following activities?
- Entering comments on a news story or blog
- Participating in a public discussion board
- Keeping an account on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn
- Blogging about your profession, hobbies, opinions, or family
If you answered “yes” to any of those items then you have a personal brand, in other words, an online perception of who you are and what you do. Brian Solis calls this your digital shadow that follows you into the future. He notes that in a survey of hiring managers in 2009, 38% admitted to using social networking technologies to research job candidates, a rise from 22% from the previous year.
If you answered “no” to all of those items, you might be surprised to learn that you also have a personal brand. The content of that brand might just be a set of ten search results after someone has searched your name on Google. Try a search like that right now. If there's not something on the first results page that you've hand a part in creating, then it's as if you're letting random people control your Web identity. This may lead people to assume that you're not very unique, notable for certain strengths, or interested in making a good appearance.
I hear some people saying, “Wait a minute, those results don't reflect me! That’s not even fair!” Understandable reaction, but the reality is that more and more people will be using online tools to form an assessment of you even if you don't work in a technical field. (Attention, all you “John Smith's” that are buried by people with the same name: there's still no excuse for doing something to create a personal brand with a Web page address that you promote on your resume. Try using your middle name to make it more searchable.)
There are a number of simple and free ways to refine your personal brand without spending a lot of time or money. It's easier than you may realize to influence what the Web says about you. Stay tuned for future posts on this blog under the category of personal branding.
What about privacy?
Maybe you're concerned about having your name on the Web. Consider this, though: your name is already shared publicly in offline world as you interact with co-workers, customers, and employers. Just because you interact with people in the workplace under your real name, it doesn't mean that you've surrendered all of your personal information. It just means that there’s a part of you that is known for something by the world around you. Michael Roe, one of my favorite guitarists, once said from the stage, "I know some of you out there...and you all know some of me." Having a personal brand is just an extension of that principle.If you shudder at the thought of people finding lots of information by searching for your name online, then just put that aside for a minute. Instead, think about whether there are advantages and opportunities you will lose because someone interpreted your lack of an online identity as a sign that there's nothing exceptional or interesting about what you do. Are you prepared to prevent this wrong impression with even a single Web page that shares accurate, basic information about what you do? If not, then ask yourself if there's anyone more qualified than you to decide what goes on that page.
There's a ton of information out there about creating your personal brand. Here are are some good overviews:
- Casting a Digital Shadow; Your reputation precedes you | Brian Solis
- Forget the Business Card, Just Google Me | Gina Trapani
- Have a Say in What Google Says About You | Lifehacker
- Manage Your Online Reputation | Lifehacker
- If you are laid off, here’s how to socially network | Robert Scoble
- Personal Branding Becomes a Necessity in the Digital Age | Mediashift
- Slack | Seth Godin
- The 90/10 rule of marketing a job | Seth Godin
- How to Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn | Mashable
How to Master Text Highlighting with Your Mouse and Keyboard
Good posts from Lifehacker on selecting text from documents and the Web more efficiently:
Download Chris Anderson's FREE Book (for a limited time) -- Even the Audiobook!
It would be hypercritical, to say nothing of cowardly, to argue that you can make money by giving things away and not practice what I preach with my own book.
Chris Anderson via booksearch.blogspot.comI haven't read this, but now I will at least listen to it as an audiobook.
Check out the download options at the bottom of this page.
Other notable conversation about this book:
Too Efficient for Your Own Good?
Matt Perman makes an interesting point about efficiency undermining effectiveness in the case of the "lost tapes" of the 1969 moon landing. -
Jim Ierley's Posterous
Jim Ierley is a Web Developer who enjoys helping people discover ways to improve their work with the Web. 
