I just got a very nice email from someone who found my blog and is interested in moving into consulting as well. I sent them the following thoughts that I think could be of interest to more people than just that one aspiring consultant.

The keys in my mind to being a good and employed new media consultant are:

1. Learn how to do cool new things and blog (well) about them.
2. Let people know that you are a consultant.
3. Make sure you deliver clear value to clients that extends beyond your time with them. Search engine optimization and pageviews are the most common things that consultants try to deliver to clients, but I prefer aiming for education, excitement, comfort with new tools and a sense that they can now be full fledged actors in the social media market themselves. My past clients are now happily reading OPML files I built for them, they see the value of and aren’t afraid of Twitter and they have more skills to use in their own work than they did before we worked together. (They are also doing more complicated things like this, in some cases.) I always aim to over-deliver and I don’t worry about giving clients almost everything I know – this market is too new and too big to worry about teaching yourself out of a job.
4. Stay visible by consistently sharing valuable information with other people. I don’t do that so much on my personal blog these days, but I do it on Twitter, on ReadWriteWeb.com and in face to face conversations.

That’s what’s worked well for me so far. Do other consultants reading here have other high-level points that they think are important to communicate?

I didn’t mention it in that conversation – but I do provide training and advising to other consultants sometimes. (As well as working on projects with clients together.) If you’re a consultant interested in some training on the particular things that I’m good at teaching – feel free to drop me a line.

One of my fantasies for awhile has been to hire other consultants for an hour of their training in whatever they do best. I think it would be awesome to do that once a month. Maybe a trade would be good. Oh, the possibilities are nearly endless. It’s an exciting time to be learning about the internet.

How useful can social media be for work? This afternoon I had a wonderful time writing a post over at ReadWriteWeb called Toward a Value-Added User Data Economy with the help of probably 15 people around the world, in real time. I started up a live video broadcast on UStream over EVDO from a cafe in downtown Portland, started writing the post on a publicly available wiki and then Twittered both URLs inviting people to join me. Over the next two hours a got all kinds of help, feedback and semi-related conversation to help round out what I think became a very good post. At one point I sent out a message over Twitter requesting that anyone with a background in the philosophy of economics call me to discuss a question I had. Two qualified and helpful new friends called me on the phone and are quoted in the post. Here’s the last 10 minutes of putting the post live.
(more…)

I had an opportunity to comment today on the question of how a company ought to respond to bloggers who have damaged their reputation. Below are my thoughts. I’d love to read yours, too.

The best thing that companies can do in response to bloggers who have done their reputation harm is to take the bloggers’ complaints as seriously as is appropriate. Readers will determine the validity of blogger criticism for themselves, but if the criticism is valid then there’s no hiding from it any more. It’s best to be publicly responsive, on the critical blogs and on a blog of your own if you’re that concerned about it. You may need to change your practices, just like you’d have to if a journalist in the traditional press criticized you in a way that you take seriously.

You may have to just agree to disagree. That’s ok. It’s good to presume that all parties involved are adults.

One way or the other, if you can engage and win over bloggers with honest communication then you’ll become the darling of the blogosphere among your competitors and you’ll be in a better place than you were before any of it ever happened. Imagine it’s the dawn of cable TV and a young CNN criticizes you publicly. Are you going to say that no one consumes that media so it’s not significant or are you going to try to trick CNN into believing you’ve changed your practices when you haven’t? Probably not. You can act with the benefit of hindsight today since this isn’t the first time that media has expanded dramatically to include new voices.

I’ve been asking PR people lately to send me an OPML file of their clients’ blog feeds. One person sent me a list of links to their clients’ blogs in an email tonight, but other than that no one has been brave enough to try. This is something that everyone could benefit from knowing how to do. That big blue icon is the proposed icon for OPML, which stands for Outline Processor Markup Language (stay with me here, non technical people!).

An OPML file is an outline. In this case, it’s a bundle of RSS feeds that can be moved into and out of any RSS reader as a group. No matter what RSS reader you use, it can import and export OPML files. It’s real handy. If PR people, for example, would send me one OPML file of all their clients’ blogs and a news search feed for each of those clients’ company names – I would throw it into my reader and have a long term connection with all their news. It would build name recognition if nothing else, but I’d likely find something in there someday to write about too. There’s a billion other reasons to use OPML – just ask yourself in what circumstances you can imagine sending someone else one link or file that contains a collection of dynamic sources on any topic. I know these are the sorts of questions that keep me up at night.

Here’s how you do it…
(more…)

I wear two hats. I consult for companies on usability, market intelligence and launch planning. I also blog about new web applications and internet industry news over at Read/WriteWeb. I don’t write about my consulting clients, but after several years of experience working on both sides of the promotion game – I think I’ve got some pretty good advice. At least on what not to do!

I want to post here about some pitches I’ve gotten from PR people and I don’t need to look back further than 24 hours to find most of them that I want to use as examples. I look at probably 30 pitches a day, sometimes more.
(more…)

Update: I have to update this post in July of 2009. Today I get the keys to the first house my wife and I have ever bought! No more paying rent, thanks twitter!

This weekend will mark one month that I’ve been writing over at Read/WriteWeb and doing consulting. In my previous stints as an online news writer (which I missed very much) I was often able to break news faster than my tech blogging competitors primarily through some advanced use of RSS feeds, which I wrote about here. I’m still doing that in this job, but there’s a new tool that’s making a huge impact on my reporting – Twitter!

I’m @marshallk on Twitter if you’d like to connect.

People laugh at Twitter, and they can go ahead and laugh for all I care, but I’m here to tell you that it can be invaluable. Aside from the personal connectedness and relationship maintenance it’s good for, let’s be honest – it’s paying my rent. (Thanks Twitter!) I don’t mean they’ve hired me as a consultant, though I would love that, I mean Twitter is great for news discovery. Read on for my thoughts on how you can use Twitter more effectively, but keep in mind that communication has its own inherent value – I swear that’s what I like best about Twitter!
(more…)

In case you’re interested in joining us for any of these, I recommend them all highly. Big thanks to organizers for the invites.

New Media for Nonprofits
Meyer Memorial Trust

I’ll be leading a session on “the ROI of blogging.” There will be 3 or 4 other sessions as well, about things like online video and RSS. If you’re in Portland and into npo work, you might like to join us.

Friday, October 19th at PNCA in Portland

Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey
mediasurvey.com

Sam Whitmore does weekly by-subscription teleconferences with media pros (including new media ones, apparently!) and has been one of my heroes for some time. It’s a real honor to be a guest there. Sam’s site is by subscription only (free trials available) but he does have a new, public blog that’s worth subscribing to. If you’re not familiar with Sam, you’ll start noticing his name around some of the best tech podcasts on the web now that you’ve read it here.

Phone call is Tuesday, October 16th at 1:00 PST

Blog World Expo
blogworldexpo.com

I’m speaking a couple of times at the BlogWorldExpo on November 7th through 9th in Las Vegas. It’s going to be a very good conference, judging from the speakers list and the background of organizer Rick Calvert, a long time trade show man who has dove in head first to social media.

November 7th – 9th in Vegas, flights and registration are inexpensive – you should really think about going. See http://blogworldexpo.com