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Fran Stephenson April 10, 2020 Leave a Comment

What Can You Do when your Social Schedule Is Altered by a Global Crisis?

Part 2 in a Series

No one ever expects the kind of crisis that is pervasive to every community and industry like this health care epidemic is right now. So if you’re struggling with how to cope, you are not alone. A lot of organizations are using their social media channels as their first, or maybe their only, method of communication right now.

If you are pursuing a schedule on your social channels during this crisis, MAKE IT COUNT.

Say Less, Share More

Stop promoting yourself and start helping your community. What can you do to be part of the solution? Here are some examples you may have seen in your community.  

Restaurants who cannot fully operate have moved to online ordering, contactless delivery and even “make at home” meal kits with key add-ons, like eggs and toilet paper.  

Arts organizations are sharing live concerts, behind the scenes tours and developing curriculum to be consumed from home.

Sports teams, who were among the first to take action, have propped up their service workers with pay checks; many sports celebrities are doing public service announcements and other work to help their communities.  

Nonprofits have pursued a variety of options – some are fundraising to assist in the health care space or keep vital services going while others are being creative to fulfill new challenges.

Large scale manufacturers have rapidly re-tooled their plants to make key goods and services available to frontline health care workers.  Smaller cottage industries have redirected machinery to sew masks and create face shields, which are in severe shortage.

Someone in your online community is doing these things. Instead of talking about yourself, talk about them. And what they’re doing to help us get through this crisis. Because sharing their work can help them. 

Say Less, Do More

Be a link in the chain of helpers around the world.  Everyone can do their part. Can your organization support one of these community helpers?

If you’ve already shared good works happening in your community on your social channels, what else can you do? 

Can you match these organizations with the resources they need to continue?

Can you donate money or help them raise money for what they are doing?

That is what real community is about. This is what the social networks were built to do. Connect each other and help each other. Forget selling, and start helping.

We’d love to hear your creative ideas for helping your community.

ICYMI: What Should I Be Doing on My Social Channels During a Pandemic?

Next time: Will Your Get Your Audience Back?

To read more about social strategy from Step In Communication, check out our social strategy posts.

Filed Under: Crisis Communication, Social Strategy

Fran Stephenson April 8, 2020 Leave a Comment

What Should I be Doing on My Social Media Channels During this Pandemic?

Part 1 in a Series

As the public health crisis of 2020 began to unfold, many communicators struggled with how to manage communications in an ever-changing environment.  By the time you had something drafted and in the approval pipeline, the recommendations or guidelines changed.

It’s really hard to pivot so quickly. And in case you were wondering, crisis communications is not usually that fluid.  Even skilled crisis communicators have been challenged to stay on top of a virus which we seem to know nothing about. 

Your social channels might be idle already, so this piece might help you reinforce why to your leadership. 

But if you’re struggling with how to remind your audiences that you’re still alive, here are some suggestions and ideas to make that happen.

At this point, you should be evaluating three things:

Should I be posting at all?

Do we have something helpful to add?

Do we need help right now?

Are You Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

This is a tough question to answer.  If you’re a school district, health care system, public information office of a local or state government, then you are no doubt churning out information, resources and links at a more rapid rate than ever before. As well, there are numerous nonprofits who have vital services that need to continue. Recommendation: you should be posting, frequently, humbly and honestly.

But if you’re not, what are you doing? What should you talk about?

If you’re a local-based brand, you can point people to those local resources and reiterate the current “stay at home” guidelines.  You can also express a degree of emotion at how much you miss “seeing” your audience, especially if you’re a business that is closed or altered because of the guidelines.

But before you do that, ask yourself another question. 

Will your customer cringe if they hear from you now?

It’s really easy to get your messaging wrong right now.  Like everyone else, I’ve seen countless businesses that are using the public health scare as a value proposition. This is risky, especially for high ticket consumer goods and services. Many consumers are limiting their spending to draw out their paychecks or manage savings amid uncertain income. Some have already lost their income, so tread carefully on any overt marketing messages.

When Communicating is the Right Thing

Depending on your industry and brand, it might be the right thing to continue communicating with your audiences.  Examine what you were doing before and compare that to today’s environment. That comparison should help you decide.  

If you can be helpful and offer something of value to your audience while they are staying home, what is that?  We’ve already seen numerous museums and zoos doing virtual tours with surprising elements that would certainly keep people entertained.  We’ve also seen entertainers of all types doing mini concerts, musical challenges, puzzles and amazing creative content to keep us distracted.  Some of those creative challenges have also raised money for causes too.

If you can find a creative way to connect with your audience, you may find a receptive audience. Recommendation: always check your tone before posting. Your audience’s needs and capacity to absorb information is changing so rapidly that what might seem humble and service-oriented one day could be considered tone deaf the next.

Beware of Overscheduling

This is not business as usual, so set aside the usual pace and pulse of your channels.  Create mental space and distance around your channels, by looking critically at your schedule and determining what people really want to see right now.  Recommendation: use a thick red Sharpie marker (virtual or real!) to edit your schedule, providing your audience with quality content.

Later This Week: What Can You Do when your Social Schedule Is Altered by a Global Crisis?

Filed Under: Crisis Communication, Social Strategy

Fran Stephenson April 2, 2020 Leave a Comment

5 Ways for Communicators to Cope in a Prolonged Crisis

Communicators are struggling to keep up the pace of a crisis that seems never ending. Here are 5 ways to help you go the distance during this public health crisis.

Trusted Advisor

Communicators need advisors too. Find a colleague in another industry or state to  Share Ideas and Test Messages

Check-In

This is NOT your daily press briefing.  Do daily “mental health” check-Ins with your internal and external teams and your fellow communicators

Step Away

Distance Yourself from Extraneous Noise and bad information and focus on trusted outlets and sources. 

Take a Break

Give you and your spokesperson and your team small but frequent breaks and listen to or participate in something that is unrelated to the crisis.

Course Corrections Prevent Whiplash

Taking small steps and little course corrections every day can prevent the exhaustion of major changes.

Download this Infographic and Save it to your computer or SHARE it with a colleague for your future gut checks!

For more crisis resources, check out more helpful posts here: bit.ly/crisispro

Filed Under: Crisis Communication

Fran Stephenson March 19, 2020 Leave a Comment

Work From Home: Sharing Our Virtual Team’s Daily Tips

New to working from home? We’re not! Our team is virtual and geographically dispersed across three time zones! And we have spouses, kids and fur babies in the mix too!  Earlier this week, we shared our top tips on Working from Home on our Facebook page . We got a lot of positive feedback on them, so we have combined them here into a brief bulleted list.  Questions? Ask away and we’ll do our best to help.

Fran Stephenson, Texas

10 years in a Home Office

  • Use the time chunking method
  • Minimize distractions like answering the door, picking up mail, etc.
  • Be aware of how much you are sitting and change position/location frequently
  • Don’t forget to eat lunch.

Jennifer Hatton, Colorado

9 Years in a Home Office

  • Prep family lunches and snacks the night before
  • Use an app like boomerang for reminders
  • Be realistic about “to do” lists
  • Use a planner for “All the Things”
  • Set time blocks for working and schedule things for my kids.
  • Be flexible to change up kids activities as needed
  • Your pets will tell you when it’s time to take breaks!
  • Set up a place to work, even if it’s small. Make it pretty!

Brittany Perry, Texas

5 Years in a Home Office

  • Shower and get dressed every morning, even if you’re not going anywhere
  • Make your work station personal – candles and an awesome playlist are my faves.
  • Take breaks and spend intentional time with your family.
  • Family communication is important too. Check in with everyone.

Claire Larson, Maine

6 Years in a Home Office

  • Doors are your friends. Everyone needs some space. 
  • If you can, get your kids outside in the yard or driveway, in a space where you can still see them. Set rules for when yard time is up.
  • Be creative with phone meeting locations – I’ve used the shower and a closet in a pinch.
  • Use an online calendar to help structure your day and schedule your tasks into time blocks.
  • Give yourself a start and end time to your work – you now live in your office and have to create boundaries for yourself (and others)

Most Valuable Takeaways

  • A space with a door, but improvising works too
  • Routines but with flexibility
  • Organize, organize, organize

Final Thoughts

Our virtual team is amazingly productive and so flexible. We cover for each other when someone has a sick child, a family emergency or just needs down time.  When your team is this fabulous, it’s easy to take them for granted. I try to find unique ways to connect with these three valuable women. We’ve sent care packages with themes like “it’s time for Fiesta” and “Summer Survival Kits” and check in via text and call.  Memes keep us laughing too.

Are these coworkers amazing or what?

Filed Under: Professional Life, Project Management

Fran Stephenson March 2, 2020 2 Comments

Checklist for Communicators: Prepare for A Prolonged Crisis with these 5 Tips

Here’s a checklist for crisis communicators to assist them in being truthful, succinct, accurate and understandable as they gear up for prolonged crisis communications in anticipating the spread of Covid-19.

Lead with the Headline News

  • Start with the items that will reassure and calm the general public. The first broadly communicated information from the CDC unfortunately led with the possibility of widespread closures and then, midway through their communications, stated that the risk to the general public was still low.
  • Say it and say it again!
  • Many news outlets are live-streaming these events and people come and go throughout the webcast and can miss the important news. If possible, have someone from your team re-stating the key message on the live feed, so they appear as your audience appears.

Create an Information Hub

  • It shouldn’t be too hard to create an online information hub. Update as often as possible. In short form communications, always link to the hub for the full story.
  • Make the hub easy to read and visual.

Point to Authority Sources

  • Who is leading or from whom are you getting instructions? Point to the local, regional or statewide authority.  Audiences often believe trusted officials at the local level as they are known faces. 
  • Here’s one local hub, but it hasn’t been updated for two weeks:

https://www.sanantonio.gov/Health/News/Alerts/CoronaVirus

  • Here’s the CDC hub with a date stamp right under the headline:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html

Check All Outgoing Communications

  • It may seem like a carnival game of Whac-A-Mole, but as communicators we have to try to correct the most egregious misinformation when it is on our owned or social media sites. You can’t be everywhere, but you can enhance monitoring on your own properties in a professional manner and move people to your information hub.
  • Scrutinize your communication pieces more thoroughly – read everything out loud to eliminate jargon and tongue twisters.
  • Date and time stamp everything so the newest info is first.
  • Prepare to keep repeating your key messages or latest information
  • Assign someone to screen all incoming communication

Breathe

  • Take a deep breath.
  • Clear your head and clear your desk.
  • Wash your hands. You’ll be at this for awhile.

What would you add to this checklist?  Drop a comment below to help everyone with their latest crisis challenges. Or share a resource that will help others with better communication.

Resources

***Updated with new resources on March 5, 2020***

From Doug Levy, author of Communications Golden Hour, a tip sheet for prolonged crisis:

Communication Resources

https://on.douglevy.com/long_duration_communications

From Seth Godin, some interesting thoughts on the spread of viruses in general.  Good read to center your thinking:

Thoughts on a virus

An example of an organization being proactive, without being scary or alarmist:

http://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_mobile_web_version.cfm?recipient_id=4144780198&message_id=18249834&user_id=AFPNET&jobid=47142319&fbclid=IwAR3OO-PZZrn315XrI6IUBaQew2haLOSDW1jwYeVf7R5flSCmCG3Hr5R-OU8

Associated Press communications guidelines:

https://www.apstylebook.com/topical_most_recent

Resources about COVID-19

A continuously updated document on meeting cancellations:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oPL0-Q9lIMm-dWouTqEpCHQeNvUQRzjSzzFCxpg16NU/edit

A Seattle high school student has build a real time website tracking the virus here: https://ncov2019.live/data

Filed Under: Crisis Communication

Fran Stephenson February 13, 2020 Leave a Comment

Four Tips to Manage A Facebook Page in Meltdown

I recently assisted two small business owners with crisis response.  While I’m still processing everything that happened for one of them, we could actually see it coming and were able to do several things on social media to prepare for critics bombarding their Facebook page (which they did for 7 straight days!)

This owner posted a response to a tragedy that happened at her place of business. We all thought this would give a bit of closure to everyone involved. Nope.

Within the hour, a very long, inflamed and inaccurate post was shared by someone who was a third party to the tragedy. We starting watching the page very closely. Soon, the mob appeared and started a cycle of heated words, accusations and (wait for it) more inaccurate information.

While the response was complicated and involved, here are the four things we did to mitigate the public outcry.

  1. Enhanced monitoring on the channel for 48 hours and aggressively remove anything that was clearly profane, spam or plagiarized.  
  2. Used the “three strikes” rule. Any person who posts the same message three times on the page, is banned. This is a common protest tactic and is meant to spike the Facebook algorithm.
  3. Turned off the Reviews function because they cannot be removed and in crisis, people leaving a rating have rarely used the business. They are merely expressing their discontent.
  4. Changed the page settings to moderated. So no one could make a post to the wall, only comment on existing posts.

So how can this help you during your next crisis? Now is a great time to check your settings and make sure you know how to turn on and off all these features if and when you need them.


Filed Under: Crisis Communication, Social Strategy

Fran Stephenson October 9, 2019 Leave a Comment

10 Questions to Help You Evaluate Your Social Media Performance This Year

It’s nearly the end of the year and many organizations are taking stock of how they did this year and making plans for next year.  If you’re a social media manager for an organization, you should be doing the same. But what questions should you ask? What should you look at to gain insight into what’s working and what’s not working? 

Social networks make changes all the time, so you need to continually look at your channels, evaluate results and make changes to stay ahead of the game.

Here are 10 questions you should be asking as you evaluate 2019 and begin to prepare for next year.

  1. How is my engagement on Facebook? Is it better or worse than it was at the beginning of the year? Should I trim the output on this channel?
  2. How are my posts doing on Instagram? Are they getting seen in the feed and getting lots of comments and likes? Am I overposting on this channel?>
  3. How are my Instagram stories doing? Are they getting seen more frequently or less frequently than my Instagram feed posts?
  4. How am I doing on Twitter? Can I see a difference now on RTs and likes compared to where I started earlier this year?
  5. Is LinkedIn a viable channel for my organization? How is it different? Did my content stick this year and what kinds of views, likes and comments did I get on my posts?
  6. If you’re on Pinterest, what is the standout pin of the year? Which boards are getting more traction? Can you see improvement over time?
  7. What types of content are the best performing content on each channel? Why?
  8. Are all my channels performing to set objectives? If not, what changes are indicated for next year?
  9. Should I launch a new channel or a new group in the coming year?
  10. How will I report on these successes and challenges? What metrics will help me explain success to my leadership?

Answering these ten questions will help you start evaluating your social channel performance this year. What other questions are you asking about your social media ecosystem this year?

Filed Under: Social Strategy

Fran Stephenson September 14, 2019 Leave a Comment

The Complete Guide to Disclosure for Brands and Influencers

Disclosure is the hottest topic in social and digital media and is the least understood by brands AND by influencers. 

Full Disclosure: I am not a lawyer and am not offering legal advice.  Anyone who has questions about disclosure and how the law applies to them, should consult a licensed attorney.

Now that’s out of the way. (See what I did there!)

So, what is disclosure? By definition, it’s identifying or exposing an act or instance of something. In today’s social media environment, its theoretical underpinning is this: to help social media users identify and separate organic posts, stories or videos from posts, stories or videos for which compensation has been given. But it’s not just about compensation. The law covers material relationships which include gift cards and discounts.  It also covers family and business relationships too.  

In practice, the term “Wild West” doesn’t even begin to describe how it’s really being used.

What is the Law?

The “law” comes from the Federal Trade Communication and has been revised several times, as social media has grown and changed. The most recent update was September, 2017. Their website features a set of Endorsement Guides which give examples for a wide range of situations including payments, contests and soliciting product reviews. 

You should bookmark this link FOREVER.

In case that feels like a bit too much to digest, the Truth In Advertising organization has distilled it to a set of bulleted lists that explain what they call the “material connection” and offers suggestions on how to comply with the law.

The Scoop on Social Media Influencer Disclosure Requirements

Disclosure for Agencies and Brand Representatives

Full Disclosure-AGAIN: I am not a lawyer and am not offering legal advice.  Anyone who has questions about disclosure should consult a licensed attorney.

As a communicator, I am extremely motivated to follow the law. So I counsel my clients to do the same. But every day, my team and I see examples that are clearly paid engagements that lack the necessary disclosure. 

Examples:

  • Facebook and Twitter posts that feature a company that the poster clearly represents with no disclosure.
  • Agency comments on an Instagram post where there is clearly a client relationship and no disclosure.
  • Sending products or services to influencers to use/share/discuss and telling them – don’t bother to thank us or mention we gifted this to you.

Disclosure for Influencers

If you accepted something, you need to disclose it. It’s that simple. Familiarize yourself with the guidelines and start to implement them on your next brand activation.

And you need to make sure that the contracts you sign with brands contain disclosure requirements. We use disclosure language with a link to the FTC Guidelines in every influencer contract we manage.

Our team is hyper-aware about this topic. One of our team members participated in a course by a major Instagram influencer who is making significant income from paid engagements there. She was horrified to see a thread in the accompanying private group in which the group advised in a q/a that there is no need for disclosure when a brand “gifts” something to you. Others in the chat advised “it’s up to you if you share that it’s a gift or not.” And they even suggested that you should post something about the gift, then show the post results and pitch further business to the brand. Every single piece of advice in that thread violates the disclosure laws.

My team member was horrified.

Besides the complete ignorance about the law, the additional issue is that this group is selling their “expertise” to others who are following their advice, perpetuating bad habits and encouraging others to do the same.  

Here are some examples of disclosure featuring influencers I know and have worked with regularly.

A disclosure from Jill Robbins of Ripped Jeans and Bifocals
The disclosure on a Facebook post from Sara Phillips of Sensibly Sara
Another disclosure on a Twitter post from Sara Phillips of Sensibly Sara

It’s not that hard.

“I see a lot of influencers use brand partner, hosted, or my personal favorite, “spon” to disclose the relationship with the brand, says Jill Robbins of Ripped Jeans and Bifocals. “My interpretation is that only “ad” or “sponsored” meet the FTC’s disclosure requirements.” 

What if You Are Not Sure?

It’s anyone’s guess who the FTC might fine when disclosure isn’t obvious.  The agency has been criticized for the guidelines being confusing and open to interpretation.  Government agencies are often very measured in the actions they take to enforce laws and this law is no exception.  Since the September 2017 guidelines have been released, they’ve sent 22 “educational” letters (which is the step prior to a warning letter) to celebrities, according to this story in the Morning Consult. 

Just because you’re not a celebrity doesn’t mean you should ignore the law. Overcommunicating your relationships in social and digital posts is better than no disclosure at all.

I’m a community manager for Texas Travel Talk, a community of travel influencers.  We work with brands to bring bloggers to Texas destinations and tell the destination story through blog posts and social media blitzes. These are paid relationships. We’re not perfect but we constantly review and revise our disclosure guidelines. For example, we used to put the disclosure about our financial arrangement with a destination at the bottom of each post, but because the requirement is for a disclosure to be up front and clearly noticeable, we’ve moved those on all blog posts to be right after the first paragraph and in bold font. 

Disclosure on a blog post from Texas Travel Talk

We also struggle as to the appropriate disclosure that we, as community managers, need to pursue.  Since I’m not the actual influencer, I often use a more narrative disclosure like “So thrilled to be working with #client [insert name] or something like the tweet below. 

If you’re not working with influencers or find disclosure necessary, I am willing to bet that you’re following someone on Instagram or Twitter who talks about products, restaurants and experiences.  Are THEY getting paid to promote those things?  Maybe it’s worth asking. 

Just last week, The Truth in Advertisiing group (the same one we linked to earlier in this story) filed a complaint with the FTC against Ryan ToysReview  You Tube channel managed by the parents of 8-year-old Ryan who is often cited as You Tube’s highest performer with 21 million followers. They argued that children under age 5, the primary target of this channel, could not possibly know the difference between paid and organic content there.  Read the full story here on the Today show website.  

If there’s one thing you can take away from this discussion on disclosure, there’s a lot at stake. So, let’s go out there and be law abiding social media users.

How have you struggled with disclosure?

Filed Under: Influencer Outreach, Social Strategy

Fran Stephenson June 26, 2019 Leave a Comment

Impressions: The Metrics Clients Love and the Measurement Standard We Need to Stop Abusing!

People forming the shape of the Earth's continents

Impressions are becoming an increasingly attractive metric for clients who are trying to distance themselves from using the outdated Advertising Value Equivalencies (AVE).

It’s hard not to love a metric that has the ability to be gleaned from websites, digital publications and every social media channel we’re using. But guess what? The way many organizations are reporting impressions today is as convoluted and inaccurate as the AVEs are.

How did we get to the point where impressions became the answer to all our measurement problems? 

The Rise of Impressions in Reporting

Digital advertising is the first place I recall seeing this metric used. Particularly when paid media teams began to report on digital success.  In some ways, we traded circulation figures which were used in print magazines and newspapers for impressions. The difference is that circulation figures were careful vetted by an audit board. A third party verified that you sold the number of magazines you said you sold. There is no such third party for today’s digital publications. We are reliant on in-built tools that report page views, impressions and others.  

At some point, someone got the brilliant idea to add them all up. It’s a bigger number, it’s more impressive and summarizing a campaign is so much easier with a single large number. Clients love it! Donors are impressed. Awards panels say wow! This is the point at which the “sin of measurement” becomes widespread.  The simple math equation is almost always overinflated just for that wow moment.

How NOT to Count Impressions

When we take a series of publications and add up all the impressions to get a campaign total, that’s when we get into trouble with using the number. Here’s an example of how impressions should not be counted.  

Everyone loves football.  In July 2015, the Washington Redskins communications team released a report on the coverage they received during the previous years’ training camp.  Dan Steinberg reported on it in the Washington Post. You can read the full article here but this is the key quote that sums up the simple math we’re getting wrong with impressions.

“With the help of third-party media monitoring services Meltwater and TVEyes, the team put out a fancy 13-page report on its findings. That report determined, among other things, that there were “7,845,460,401 unique visitors of print/online coverage of the 2014 Bon Secours Washington Redskins Training Camp from July 24-Aug. 12.

That’s a big number. To put it in perspective, that’s considerably more than the population of Earth, which the Census Bureau estimates at 7.26 billion. Apparently, a lot of folks on Pluto were really interested in Colt McCoy’s progress.”

Dan Steinberg in the Washington Post

Further down in the story, the reporter shared that when he contacted one of the monitoring services, they explained that the number was a count of impressions, so anytime a person saw a story about the event, it counted.

The report concluded that the value of that media coverage was more than $76 million. 

What the report didn’t show (and what the reporter identified himself) is that during a campaign, some of your fans/followers/readers will see your message multiple times. Raw impressions don’t solve for that. If you keep adding up impressions, giving a cumulative value over time, it becomes statistically inaccurate – like more than the number of people on Earth inaccurate.

What You Can Do TODAY to Make Reporting Impressions Accurate and Meaningful

  1. What would have made the Washington Redskins team report more meaningful is taking the sum total of impressions and dividing it by the number of news stories generated to derive an average. Then next year, you do the same thing.  Is the average higher or lower?  Now you have a benchmark.
  2. Track how your total impressions move up or down over time. For example, if you log the impressions you receive each month on Facebook and it’s around 10,000 and then one month, it’s suddenly 50,000, that’s a cue to look for a reason for the sudden change. It might be a key piece of content, conversation or ad.
  3. Use impression reporting as a gateway metric to dive deeper into more meaningful measurement like engagement and engagement rate on your social channels and in digital content.  

Stop adding up those impressions because before you know it, you’ll have more impressions than there are people on Earth. And that’s out of this world.

Filed Under: Measurement

Fran Stephenson April 12, 2019 Leave a Comment

Time for Digital Spring Cleaning

Are you a digital hoarder? I know I am.  I save news stories to read in Facebook later (and never do), I have an RSS reader with dozens of blogs rolling up just waiting for me to read it and yet, I can never find anything.  I just got a new laptop, so it was a great time to do some digital clean up.   

Here are 5 things I’ve done this month to free myself from the digital clutter.

Purge Client Files

It’s so rare to go back to a former client files to retrieve anything, so get them off your desktop and file them in Dropbox or somewhere else in the cloud under one folder called Archive.  I usually save all work from clients for a year, but delete the email folder for that client after three months.

Save the Good Stuff

Before you go crazy and start deleting, is there one thing or a couple of things that you might use as a sample later on or as a guide to format another clients’ communication need? File it on your desktop in a new file called Samples. I started this about a year ago and it’s made building new powerpoint presentations and sharing templates for editorial calendars or other work so much easier.

Filter Content

I am overwhelmed with the number of stories I should be reading to keep current in my field. For the digital stuff, I roll blogs and news feeds into Feedly into categories that are important to my client work and to my learning.  The trick is, to go in and purge the feeds out when you no longer need them.  Done with the client in a specific industry? Trim it down.

And all those newsletter subscriptions? If you’re not already using Unroll.me, you’re missing out. IT’s an add on that puts every newsletter to which you subscribe into ONE. DAILY. EMAIL.  Since I’m now getting a thousand or more of these things, it’s the only way to get your head above water.

If they are so valuable that you want to save it for later, start a Diigo library and keep them all in one place.

Update your Profiles

Now is a good time to check your Twitter Bio, your “about” section on Facebook and your Linked In headline.  I would recommend you get new headshots too, but that would just be crazy talk! (It takes me forever to change out headshots. No good reason)

Check Your Privacy Settings

I almost never do this, but this recent story in the Washington Post with EXACT Instructions on a couple of things made it easy. Took me five minutes. Do it now to clear advertising clutter out of your feeds!

Filed Under: Project Management, Uncategorized

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