Chris Perrin and I had a discussion about how your Productivity practice needs to include methods and tactics for managing interruptions.

Download the podcast

Some of the take-aways to listen for:

• Have a Twitter “protocol” – using Twitter as a communication tool or lead generating vehicle doesn’t need to take all day
• Manage your presence so you don’t lose track of time
• “Do” some of your Most Important Tasks before you even log on to Twitter
• Don’t be afraid to stay offline if you can do your work without it
• Thinking about e-mail and the importance of the subject line
• Set yourself up for success tomorrow, by being prepared today

As always I would love to hear your thoughts. You can listen to all of out podcasts on the Productivity Podcast Channel.

As a recent contributor to the Age of Conversation 2 “Why Don’t They Get It?”, I thought I would provide some little summaries of the the articles this remarkable book contains (You can order a copy of Age of Conversation 2 here, all proceeds go the the children’s charity Variety)

It’s Not Just Talk by Susan Willett Bird www.wf360.typepad.com

Susan Willett Bird writes about how the concept of “corporate communications” is over and done with, replaced with the new idea of genuine conversation. Susan makes many points including the fact that meetings should become open conversations in which every employee participates, encouraging original thought and the growth of new ideas.

I would love to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment.

Chris Perrin and I had a discussion about taking on new commitments, how and when to say ‘no’, and the opportunity costs of saying ‘yes’.

The podcast is about 28 minutes long, we would love to hear your thoughts on these subjects:

Saying “No” to New Commitments

Are there activities in your life that you wish you were doing but didn’t have time to do it? Time on projects that you want to do on but can’t? Time with friends or family? Time with yourself?

If this sentiment is strong with you, then you most likely are saying “yes” to too many commitments. Realize that when you say yes, you are saying “no” at the same time to all the other possibilities that were your options without realizing it.

When you say yes at work for a task, you are saying no to other tasks that may be more valuable to you and your company. When you say yes to working late, you are saying no to either your friends, family, or yourself for personal time. Since you’re already saying no to something all the time, the key is to learn when to say no.

There is an art to saying no… here are seven ways of saying no to a new commitment:

1.Be Honest: Typically this is the simplest and best approach. If they know the true reason why you aren’t saying yes, then they can judge whether to approach you for the next situation, which actually might be for a good opportunity where you would want to say yes to.

2.Refer to someone who can say yes: Point that person to a direction (another person, another approach) where they will have a better chance of finding a yes. If you are a person who can redirect someone to an effective alternative, you will still be considered valuable.

3.Letting the other person say no for you: Watch out for being passive-aggressive, but you can describe your situation. If you know that saying yes in this situation is saying no to a more important situation, then just present your case and let the other person say no for you.

4.Not now, but later: The word “maybe” is sometimes a good euphemism for “no.”

5.Circumstances: Sometimes it’s not a choice at all… you have prior commitments, or conflicts of interest, or whatever. Circumstances are saying no, not you. Make sure it’s legitimate though, since integrity is also important.

6.Be Polite: If none of the above options are viable, then a polite “no” should do the trick. You risk the chance of being perceived as an unhelpful person, but sometimes you simply have to politely say no without going through the messy details of the other approaches.

7.Be Blunt: This is the tactic against the persistent salesperson. Sometimes the emphatic “no” is the only “no” they’ll hear.

This post material originally shared by Al at 7P Productions at Productivity in Context.

Download the podcast

Please leave a comment.[podcast]http://stephenpsmith.com/downloads/saying-no-podcast.mp3[/podcast]

They seem to think so over at HubSpot: Why Twitter Hashtags and Trending Topics Are Useless to Marketers by Dan Zarrella:

Why Hashtags Are Useless

Many marketers think of hashtags first when they think about “going viral” on Twitter.

A hashtag is a word or string of characters that starts with a number sign [like #tcot or #gtd, Ed.]. When a hashtag appears in a tweet, it links that word to its Twitter Search results page.

That’s initially pretty appealing from a marketing perspective, but there’s a problem: Twitter Search doesn’t explain what the hashtag means.

Unless you’re already involved in the conversation, the Twitter search results page is usually useless — so useless that you often see Twitterers asking “What the heck is #suchandsuch? And why is it a trending topic?”

There are a couple of ways to read this, and a comment by Christopher Drinkut gets right to it:

” hashtags are pointless,” Oh really?

Look, I’m not in love with hastags – I really could care less – but to say they are pointless, that’s insane.

1. One reason they are not pointless is that people use them. If you want to talk about the culture of a community hashtags matter.

2. If your logic is – “hashtags are pointless because I can’t leverage them for my own marketing” – you need to reevaluate. Marketing in the future (and today) requires a lot more consideration of the marketed to.

3. Why am I even writing all of this? …So it’s not something you are going to use – I wouldn’t necessarily call it pointless.

hashtags are pointless because I can’t leverage them for my own marketing

I believe that this statement is the sum of the argument that Dan Zarrella is making. Unfortunately Zarella is missing the point of the hashtags – creating a link to a set of related tweets by people who may or may not be following each other. This makes the hashtag a fantastic resource for marketers doing research on a topic or product. Take a look at “#Quiznos” for example, quite a bit of conversation where people are taking the time to tag their tweets with that particular hashtag.

If I worked for Quiznos I would be keeping an eye on that search stream and using that list of customers to make something happen. Like following those folks, for one thing. And doing a little more digging into this tweet for another:

What kind of marketer could resist knowing about what came before and after this tweet? And you can just go ask him. Useless?

Did You Etsy Today?

And then we have this from the WSJ on Friday, 24 April:

How #etsyday Grew on Twitter

Image: schugirl08 via Flickr

Internet companies shell out millions to build buzz by buying keywords on Google or (back in the day) placing weird 30-second ads during the Superbowl. On Friday, e-commerce site Etsy.com – the eBay of handmade crafts – got a huge dose of buzz for free.

For much of the day, #etsyday has been the top-trending topic on Twitter, the social short-messaging juggernaut. The mysterious term refers to a day to celebrate the online store Etsy.

Etsy spokesman Adam Brown says his company had little to do with it. The idea for Etsyday came from Susan Schumann, a 37-year-old teacher and photographer in Newport, Rhode Island. She started selling prints of photos from her Peru vacation on the site in February, but was surprised that many of her friends hadn’t heard of the site. So she posted a message on Etsy’s user message boards suggesting that the community of users do some grassroots marketing of their own.

As of this writing it is too soon to tell what impact this may have had on sales at Etsy.com, but judging from tweets and comments on the blog, it has people pretty excited:

and:

“Endless Possibilities in Vinyl Lettering Design”?? How about endless possibilities in cross-linking and free promotion?
Keep in mind that you simply cannot buy that kind of excitement. And it’s all because of a “useless” little hashtag.

What say you? Leave a comment.