Ok, Ok, so this is not my normal kind of post but I am feeling a bit off topic today after the long 4th of July weekend...
How did this lead to an Ass Hat?
This morning, I opened my email and was of course caught in the avalanche of electronic stress messages. (Why don't I listen to Tim Ferris of the 4 Hour Work Week?).
One of, well, several of these emails - 12 to be exact, was from LinkedIn. LinkedIn was informing me that I had 12 people who "had asked to be part of my network" - ahhh this is nice, lets do that for some easy mindless wakeup data processing...
As I worked through the invitations and replies (mostly from colleagues at the Examiner.com), I came across one particular invite that caught my eye.
And no... not just because this person is an attractive blonde...
First thing that caught my eye was the tag line...
"Creator and Owner of the Daily Blonde blog".
In today's world you must be unique and you must say something in a short flash of time to catch peoples ever crowded trains of thought. Cheryl Phillips says to the world that she is a blonde on a daily basis - not that there is anything wrong with that... (Paraphrasing Seinfeld).
To me this says Cheryl has a sense of humor and... the moxie to make something of it. I dug deeper, which in today's world is not a huge demand on journalistic resources... What I did was follow the link, on LinkedIn (get it) to the Daily Blonde Blog.
The first story on The Daily Blonde was a bit of a trend follower, a cynical view of the recent Sara Palin story (Sara Palin Leaves Office Early), but something else on the homepage caught my eye. What I saw was another story of interest, which of course lead me to click another link.
AssHat of the Week.
From the Daily Blonde
The Asshat of the week story leads in with:
...I realized that it was time to pay tribute to the irresponsible parents that seem to think I run a home daycare and restaurant for their children. So, this week’s AssHat award covers quite a few heads. It’s a big hat so there’s no problem making sure everyone fits under it.
The story goes on to describe -in letter form - to the irresponsible parents in this single mothers neighborhood, not only that she is not the summer day care provider, but more so, that these other parents should be responsible for their own kids. Parents should feed, bathe, and make sure that their own children are safe, not pawn them off on another parent for 10-12 hours without a care. It is an article that any responsible parent in any neighborhood in America can relate to these days.
Why am I writing about this Asshat Award thing?
- It is a unique article with humor and touches on a subject many of us parents have wanted to say out loud, but never had the moxie to do ourselves.
- The entire idea of the blog has originality and style, coupled with humor and caring. It is a recipe people obviously like.
- I only found this blog through Social Networking and LinkedIn, now I am writing about it - This is how the Internet of Today works!
The last point is what I wish to stress in this article.
People are searching the world we call the Internet for information.
No matter what business you are in, no matter what you sell, no matter who you work for or if you are an attorney or a broker or a architect or a ditch digger - there are people out there that want to know what you know and they will find the information you publish - if you leave enough "clues" to follow.
Clues in the form on links, links in the form of: LinkedIn profiles, Twitter accounts (with active tweets), Facebook profiles, forum posts and more...
People will follow these clues, bread crumbs, links, Tweets, opinions... all back to you.
These are the people you are looking for as an audience, they will find you and see you as a leader if you publish the information they are searching for. Without an audience, there are no leaders, without leaders the audience continues to search... Find your audience and help them to make you a leader, let them stop searching for your information, give them what they want no matter what that is.
Just Do IT!
Get out in the world and write something, post a video or take a picture - people will find and admire what you have to say or share, if you make an effort to share good things and if you spend some time contributing to other peoples lives by sharing and recognizing others that share as I am doing today.
I had never even heard of Cheryl Phillips and the Daily Blonde before, even though she is a blogger of note and one who should be followed:
With an Alexa rating of approximately 150,000, over 1600 email subscribers and an average “stay” on The Daily Blonde by readers of over 3 minutes. She also spreads the word about her blog to over 16,000+ Twitter followers every day. Cheryl is currently ranked in the top 50 Twitter users and was written up as one of the Top 10 Women on Twitter in the world.
Cheryl is a stay at home mom with more kids than she should be able to deal with and she is cranking out quality blog article posts that bring her an every increasing audience - is there really any reason why you can not do this for yourself or your business? Cheryl Phillips and the Daily Blonde are not just one isolated story of the power of Internet self publishing, she is but one of millions of people who have found notoriety and possible success with social media and blogging.
With the tools available to everyone in today's world of CMS publishing on the net, using platforms like WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal to name a few, there is no reason why any business or professional person should not have the ability to share and inform on a daily basis, just as the Daily Blonde does.
