A few months ago, I read Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and it was just what I needed. This book truly is a gift and is one of Godin’s best to date. If you’re doing important work (or want to), pick it up and dedicate some time over the next week to read it. I promise that you won’t be disappointed.

The book addresses why we need to be doing important work and what kinds of challenges that we’ll face along the way. As it turns out, evolution, society, and your mind want you to fail. It’s kind of humorous once you’re aware of what your mind does to you when you’re taking risks and really challenging yourself.

Onward with your emotional labor. Let’s change the world together!

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You’ll notice that they don’t really explain it. They show the info that you need to know and help you get to the next step, which is gravatar.com. And gravatar.com does a really good job of explaining how it works.

Sometimes the best way to explain something is to not explain at all.

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1. Silverback by Clearleft

They give us a sentence, 6 bullet points, and a dead-simple diagram showing what it does. They even show us a video demo that was created using the product itself. Brilliant.

2. iPhone by Apple

The product is so great that their TV commercials don’t do anything other than show the product in use. And it sells itself. When I first picked one up myself, there were no surprises on how it would work.

3. Getting Real by 37signals

37signals lets you read their book online for free. If someone really wants to endure the eye strain or read it slowly, it’s there for the taking. But those who love having a memento or reading a print version can buy those. This works especially well for 37signals because they have other products that others may want to check out.

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Umair Haque @ Daytona Sessions vol. 2 – Constructive Capitalism from Daytona Sessions on Vimeo.

I like the idea that idealists will lead the real innovation/revolution. We’re already seeing it out of companies like 37signals and Google.

Spare 50 minutes and give this one a watch.

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If you have a big idea, do it now. Don’t feel like you have to save your best stuff for later. And don’t put it off. If you get in the practice of coming up with great ideas, then you will find ways to outdo yourself later.

It’s funny how some lessons can stick with you years later.

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Video

Video on your website and landing pages causes conversion rates to soar. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. OK, so it has to be at least a decent video, but it really does help. And people are gobbling up video on YouTube at astronomical rates.

Record voice narratives and screencasts using software like Camtasia, Captivate, or Jing (if you’re on Mac).

Record yourself on your webcam while talking about a topic that your audience would be interested in. It can just be 3-5 minutes. Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich demonstrates how effective you can be with a webcam and small whiteboard in a simple video about automating your finances.

Learn how to be a good marketer via video because this is more highly effective than you can imagine. And post everything to YouTube where more people will find it!

Audio

Maybe not a full-blown podcast, but you can come up with some good stuff using the poor-man’s alternative to video. A good free choice for souped-up editing is called Audacity.

Articles

I think that article-writing is different than blogging. In fact, what I’m doing right now should probably be an article and not a blog post. Do as I say, not as I do. I really need to fix this!

You (and I) should probably be writing more articles for other websites as well.

Presentations

The opportunity to give presentations online is becoming more common. Some bigger companies host speakers via webcast conferencing software like WebEx and Acrobat Connect (amongst others). And there’s always the old-fashioned way: doing them in person at local networking events.

If you don’t have an audience, post some captivating PowerPoint slides on SlideShare. This presentation on SlideShare about The Brand Gap is one of the best I’ve seen on there.

Be creative. Use plenty of imagery.

Blogging

Yup, a good way to reach out if you can stay consistent. WordPress is by far the best platform for doing this.

Document Sharing

Kind of like articles and blogging. But sometimes you can make cool documents, spreadsheets, and flowcharts that people would find interesting. Like all of this stuff, a little creativity can go a long way.

Aaron Wall did a great flowchart about SEO a while ago.

You can also share your documents on Scribd. Their documents sometimes get you some extra exposure in Google and Yahoo!.

The hard part: commitment

For some reason, I’m really fired up about this tonight. I probably won’t be as fired up in a couple days. I should be producing and planning more than one social artifact when I’m in an over-caffeinated mood like this. I’ll probably stay up late tonight and work on it some.

I hope that you’ll see more from me, and I hope to make announcements of a variety of social artifacts that I produce and how you can get your hands on them. I’m really going to try to lead by example here.

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If you haven’t taken the time to download and read 279 Ways to Overnight Success yet, I am another person telling you to do it. If you’re doing any kind of social media (blog, Facebook, Twitter, flickr, etc.), then you’ll want to read it.

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When your vision of what you want to do is what you can do single-handedly, then you should pursue it. The day your vision, what you think needs to be done, is bigger than what you can do single-handedly, then you have to move toward management. And the bigger the vision is, the farther in management you have to go.

The bigger your vision is, the bigger the ship that you need to steer to get to that ultimate goal. Just this idea alone can tell you where you need to go in your career and whether you’re on that path.

It can also be a criticism of leaders that have no vision. Why are managers in their current positions if they have no vision of where to go?

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The theme of the campaign is What will you do? It encourages students, staff, and alumni to answer the question via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and via their desktop wallpaper. The prompt is simple: start a short post, a photo, or a video with the words “I will.” This simple prompt is actually very inviting and powerful at the same time.

This is a really cool way to reach out to an audience that is increasingly becoming more social online. And the execution of having so many community touchpoints is slick. I found out about the campaign through Facebook, but I very well could have found out about it on any of the other sites.

Kudos to Capital for making me proud.

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ESPN (and any other sports production, really) inundates you with statistics. They do a great job of pulling up numbers that are relevant for any given moment and use them to diagnose problems and identify opportunities.

Imagine all of the work that goes into collecting and entering those numbers into a database. Sure, they probably have help from the sports leagues themselves, but someone is doing that work.

All of this happens for events that appears to be an art. The players need to make split-second decisions based mainly on instinct.

Tie this into marketing. So many things to measure, yet so many opportunities for creativity and execution. Individual parts of your initiatives that need to be tweaked. You probably have a role where you’re like the coach or the person collecting and presenting the statistics. Or maybe both.

Are you presenting your statistics like ESPN.com? Take a look at their site. So much data all presented at relevant times. Look at the Ohio State Men’s Basketball Team page for example. Relevant statistics are highlighted. Enough data for this context. No more, no less.

You may or may not like sports. But you have to admit that ESPN has it together in this regard.

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