My own personal branding and social media 2009 resolutions

Worst. Captcha. Ever.

I’m guilty of not practicing what I recommend.

I know exactly what I should be doing — tracking blogs and conversations around the latest in social media strategies and practices, sure, but, more importantly, commenting on relevant blog posts and becoming an active member of the online communities that are important to me. And my excuses are probably the same ones you’re giving for not getting into it. “I’m so busy,” “It’s too much,” “Who has time?” “What’s happening on Facebook?”

So, that said, I’m hoping a very public admission of my faults and the resolutions to fix (or at least ameliorate them) will lead me to doing what I give our clients a hard time for not doing.

1. Feed myself first (thanks, @jowyang) – I’m going to shut down my email before I go to bed at night, and I’m not going to look at it until I’ve taken 15 minutes to myself to peruse my RSS feeds and Twitter for good stuff.
2. Spend more time in conversation – Every day, I’m going to comment on at least one blog or forum or relevant post. And I’m going to do better job of @replying and retweeting on Twitter, too.
3. Get back into LinkedIn. I need to get into the answers more often, and maybe ask some questions, too. So I’m going to answer/ask at least once question every week.
4. Mellow the snark – I’ve noticed I can get pretty crabby when I’m writing about social media. I think it’s a combination of being immersed in an overwhelmingly large, nascent industry, being very busy doing strategy and execution, and having a low tolerance for clueless snake oil salespeople. But still, that crankiness can’t be terribly charming.
5. Actually post Examiner pieces at least three times per week. In other words, follow my own advice about keeping a steady stream of commentary in process.
6. I’m going to stop here. I meant to post this last week.