10 Steps To Get Active Online Without Writing A Word

Small reminder why we are talking about social media in the first place:

When we are communicating it’s not just the message we use, but we also use a very large amount of context to interpret this message. Basically we use all kinds of cues (visible, body language, group associations, etc) we can pick u from the person communicating with us. With the rise of internet, we also use a lot of information we find on the internet about the sender. Especially when we are using virtual channels with remote teams, digital cues are getting important. If we like it or not.

If you are looking for a first and easy step to get active online, a good way to start would be to become a resource for good information. You don’t need to write content, you can also become some kind of librarian, pointing people to stuff that might interest them. After a while you can add your own comments and content. But only if you want to.

I like the way Google Reader allows you to do this. You can read blogs about any topic at one single location, and if you like the post, you can share it with your audience. You are basically creating a page where all your selections are aggregated. You can click here to view my shared item page.

In this post I describe how you can get started in 10 easy steps.

Step 0 is to go to Google Reader and sign up for an account (it’s free).

Step 1

In the main window click on “View all recommendations” at the left side and on the “search” tab in the right menu.

Step 2

Enter the topic you would like to know more about. In this example “personal growth”. Press “search” to look for blogs about this topic.

Step 3

Select the blog that seem interesting to you by pressing “Subscribe”.

Step 4

You can know start reading the blog posts from the blogs you subscribed to. New posts will automatically pop up in this window.

Step 5

If you like a post and think it’s worth sharing, select on the bottom of the text “share”, or “share with note” if you want to add some opinion of your own (this will only be visible on your own shared item page).

Step 6 (optional)

I said you can start without writing a word. And you can. But if you would like to add your own flavor, you can add a small note to the post by clicking “share with note” and entering a small comment.

Step 7

Step 1-6 are your normal flow. That is what you do all the time. The last steps are just done the first time, to get the web address of your shared item page. The url that you will share with your friends and colleagues.

Click on “shared items” on the left.

Step 8

Select “shared settings” on the right.

Step 9

You will find the web address under “Select a custom URL” (pick the easiest one to remember).

Step 10

Share your page with the world!

You can click here to view my shared item page.

You’re all done!

If you like you can put the address of your shared items page in the comments of this post. Include a short description of the topics you like.

(I wrote earlier about how I use Google Reader in this post: Free Project Management Education – Subscribe To Feeds. It explains some additional uses.)