Are Your Bookmarks Working for You?
Are you reading more and enjoying it less? Are you voting up links that you haven’t read as a favor to a friend? Has the social part of social networking overtaken the information exchange that once was there? Do you race to read headlines and never finish the post that they name?
How many thousands of links do you suppose are recommended on SU, Digg, Reddit, and Delicious? After you put one there how often do you go back?
Chris Miller brought up a great point . . . Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?
Did you / will you go read Chris’ post or just take my word?
We don’t try to see every movie. We don’t try to read every book. We know that life isn’t long enough for that. But for some reason, many of us seem to think that we need 700 feeds and to bookmark them all for thousands of friends.
I’m learning that the best use of bookmarking sites — to manage my reputation and focus my efforts — is to capture information I want to keep.
I’m only capturing to a specific list of criteria.
- I capture information that I know will be useful for a project or a proposal that I’m working on or about to write.
- I capture blog posts that I hear myself quote in conversation, because I know I’ll want to find them again.
- I capture well-written articles that change the way I think about my work or my life.
- I capture anything that makes me think, “I wish I (wrote / thought of) that.”
You might note, I didn’t say that I capture things because they were written by a friend.
This change in my bookmarking behavior has made a significant difference in two critical aspects of my online presence.
Reputation Online reputation is made of everything we put under our name. Now what I bookmark naturally reflects me. When potential friends and clients visit my page they see something that is consistent with who I am, what I do, and what I’m working on.
But even more . . .
Focus I’m more focused on my business goals. I don’t spend time on information I don’t need. I find that I read more carefully what I choose to read. I also stop to think about why I bookmark what I capture and keep. Sometimes I only clip a quote. Sometimes I keep an entire piece. I even think about where I put things based on the people who use that list.
I’ll still vote up your work, if you call to my attention things that match my goals, values, and who I am.
What do your bookmarks say about you? How might you use them to manage your online presence more successfully?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!