An industry colleague recently asked me how I keep myself apprised of the latest innovation and technology in my field as she prepared to host a roundtable on the subject at an upcoming conference. Given that this is a challenge many of us are struggling to tackle, I thought I’d document my personal process and solicit additional ideas from other colleagues.
My main approach is a twist on the ABC philosophy espoused by Alec Baldwin in his famous monologue in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. I believe it’s imperative to Always Be Curating, in a variety of forms. Curate the best network (in the form of connections and follows), curate the best content (to keep a steady flow of information about the latest technology and innovation being adopted and implemented) and curate the best tools to leverage your network and deliver the content in the most efficient fashion.
Characterizing the process of consuming content in today’s world as drinking from the fire hose is far from being hyperbolic. In fact, there’s such a deluge of content being published and information being directed at us that we’re all suffering from a condition commonly referred to as “infobesity.” It’s critical to find a method to ensure you’re receiving a steady diet of the most useful content or you’ll quickly be overwhelmed.
My recipe for achieving a healthy content diet calls for a multi-prong approach.
- I rely heavily on newsletters (like Chris Penn’s and Scott Monty’s), leveraging the diligent efforts of trusted colleagues in the digital marketing space to comb through materials and surface the best and most relevant reads each week. I also find it useful to receive digests of articles from across the web covering topics within my trade, such as the one from Social Media Today. As someone who’s been working in the field of Influencer Marketing for the past five years, I also subscribe to an industry specific newsletter: Influence Weekly. To learn about new product innovation and online tools, I subscribe to the Product Hunt Daily, which offers a daily digest showing the new entries on Product Hunt receiving the most attention from users.
- I have a roster of blogs to which I subscribe directly. Those subscriptions are managed using Feedly, which enables to cleanly filter unread posts and track my progress. Two examples of blogs that I’m regularly reading are Mark Schaefer’s {Grow} Blog (an excellent source for insights and analysis on trends within marketing) and Buffer’s Social Blog (a great resource for tactical advice derived from practical experience and research within social media marketing).
- In addition to Feedly, as mentioned above, there are a host of other tools and apps that I employ to help filter the noise. That said, Nuzzel is far and away my favorite and the one I find to be most invaluable. Nuzzel surfaces the content that resonated most with the network I’ve curated on various platforms. Obviously that means the relevance and quality of the content triggering alerts from Nuzzel is dictated largely by the network you’ve built on connected platforms. However, provided you’ve done your job with respect to curating your network, Nuzzel does an incredible job of delivering a personalized version of the top news being shared. You can even leverage Nuzzel to create and send your own newsletter in turnkey fashion. Want to level up on receiving emails and/or push notifications from Nuzzel? Take advantage of the Slack integration to receive alerts in a dedicated Slack channel and share access with your colleagues to keep your team informed as well. Nuzzel Media Intelligence (a product soon to spun off independently after Nuzzel’s recent acquisition) is also a valuable paid product I’ve utilized at times. I liken it to a curated version of Google Alerts, with powerful topic and keyword filters.
- In much the same fashion that I supplement the posts I’m learning about via newsletters and/or digests with direct access to the RSS feeds of certain blogs, there are some Twitter feeds that are worth directly monitoring, above and beyond any Nuzzel alerts. As the person whose been called upon to stay abreast of any social platform changes, API updates, feature launches, etc. to ensure my company reacts and adapts accordingly, my go-to Twitter follow for this type of news is Matt Navarra. Matt is always in the know regarding the latest platform updates and often receives tips about new features and beta testing from fellow users. Atlantic reporter Taylor Lorenz has become a must-follow as well, delivering top-notch reporting on current internet trends, in particular developments within social media and influencer marketing. Kerry Flynn of Digiday also does an excellent job covering the business of social media. Lastly, TechCrunch’s Josh Constine is a consistent source of timely and informative updates not only about social media, but technology in general.
Finally, I curate a network of trusted colleagues and friends who I can go to for opinions on new technologies and platforms if they’ve made use of them or with whom I can test them. I also seek out forums for likeminded professionals in similar fields and roles. I belong to a number of “mastermind” style Facebook groups, including one for social business professionals, hosted by Matt Navarra, who I mentioned above.
Of course, an essential ingredient to all of this is having a relatively insatiable intellectual curiosity and a willingness to tinker, test and explore. In fact, I could easily write an entire post about ABC, replacing curating with curious, and about how important it is to emphasize intellectual curiosity in the hiring process, but that’s a story for another time.
Now that I’ve shared my “ABC” approach to staying up-to-date on new technology and innovation in my field, what are some of the tools or tactics you employ to stay informed in your industry? I’d love to hear any recommendations you have to add to or optimize what I’ve outlined above. Let me know in the comments below or tweet them to me at @CutlerDave. Thanks for reading!
*This post originally appeared on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/always-curating-dave-cutler/
Leave a Reply