Question from my colleague, Freddy: “How do you keep up with all this [Tridion] content, Alvin?”
I was just pointing out an SDL Tridion 2013 Preview post by SDL Tridion Community MVP Rob Stevenson-Legget, which happened to have a Bing Background ECL provider Freddy had written.
“It’s like sports with teams and players I follow,” I suggested. I’ve also used “Tridion’s a hobby of mine,” but that only answers my motivation rather than how or why you should keep up with your industry.
I was just pointing out an SDL Tridion 2013 Preview post by SDL Tridion Community MVP Rob Stevenson-Legget, which happened to have a Bing Background ECL provider Freddy had written.
“It’s like sports with teams and players I follow,” I suggested. I’ve also used “Tridion’s a hobby of mine,” but that only answers my motivation rather than how or why you should keep up with your industry.
How to Keep up
- Listen. Make a Twitter account. In 60 seconds, you’ll now be able to search and follow #SDLTridion (or #Tridion) or any other topic. Follow tags on Tridion Stack Exchange.
- Watch the watchers. Follow the corporate blog or look for internal announcements if you work for SDL.
- Engage. Leave a comment on someone’s post. Check the send me email option on some posts.
Update: Forgot to mention SDLTridionWorld has a dynamic blog roll on the homepage and a (now outdated) list of Tridion-related blogs.
Why You Should
- Work news matters. Technical community news and examples directly impact your work, from examples that you might need to new developments. Imagine knowing what you’ll be working on in a year or so. To become an industry thought leader, you have to follow your industry first.
- We’re sized right. The SDL Tridion community is big enough (and growing) to have daily activity, but small enough to be heard, helpful, and visible. Compare 790 on Tridion StackExchange to 68145 pages of users on StackOverflow.
- Colleagues could use your feedback. Being able to celebrate your work friends’ successes online is a great way to acknowledge their contributions, offer help, or ask for help.
- Be “in the know.” Customers have more questions about your software than you could have possibly written. Knowing who has shared what (or the right terms to Google), shows your clients you know that work news matters in a right-sized community and that you’ve supported your colleagues online efforts.
Oh and in terms of also having time to post, I showed my colleague how to send an email to start a post. My next one is queued and just needs some editing. However this post is pretty much done since I started it as an email, rather than a post.
How many emails do you write a day?
See how to post by email in my other colleague’s blog.
What's your trick at keeping up with work and industry news? Leave a comment below.
What's your trick at keeping up with work and industry news? Leave a comment below.
Back when I was a social media marketer full time, I set up Google Alerts for certain keywords relevant to my company's industry, problems we solved etc. . I would then receive an email (you can set the interval, i.e. daily, as it occurs, etc.) when Google indexes a new reference of web page, newspaper article, or blog using the keyword. The alert allowed me to get timely news on certain topics (for sharing or blogging) or identify online conversations (for commenting.) The key is identifying good keywords. Google Trends is a useful tool for a keyword's interest level and related searches. Lastly, alexa.com provides a wealth of keyword info such as the amount of competition for a keyword.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! I updated my alerts to include the latest industry terms. It's definitely getting harder to follow news and online conversations manually.
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