There is a huge difference between doing your job well – and doing it well while knowing your industry inside and out. The more you know about the business space you live in, the more invaluable you become. When you learn about the events that impact your industry and your competitors, you gain powerful context in determining how your business can best succeed. While this all sounds like a tall order, you can easily become an industry expert before you finish that first cup of Joe in the morning.
With the amount of information out there, you may not know where to start. Luckily, you just need a few key pit stops for your morning online travels starting with a few that you probably visited a few minutes ago.
Specific publications and bloggers are dedicated to your industry and its happenings. Since it’s their job to know the latest news, they make your job easy. Compile a bookmarked list with your go-to resources and quickly do a breeze-through first thing in the morning. You can even make this process more effortless by utilizing bookmarking apps to give you a snapshot view. And, don’t forget about Alltop, a site that allows you to create a “personal, online magazine rack” of your favorite websites and blogs from over 32,000 information sources. It should be your best friend if you want to become an industry maven.
In any industry, there are always specific keywords and phrases that matter most to you and your business. Bring these directly to Google Alerts. By setting up alerts for relevant terms you want to know about, you can have news delivered to your inbox either as soon as it happens or on a more infrequent basis. Make sure you’re using the right terminology and the best phrases, including options (such as the word “OR” in the alert set-up) to get the most useful results.
Finding people on Twitter is so easy, right? You could probably follow 100 people in five minutes if you’re quick with the click, but that’s not the point. To get the most out of this social media vehicle, limit the people and businesses you follow to the most relevant and informative within your industry. This list will take time and research to build, but it will be immensely more valuable than a random mish-mash. Soon, your feed will be filled with tweets that actually matter to you and your business. With one quick scroll through, you will undoubtedly come away with something useful in a short amount of time.
Books can seem so “old school”, but these are often the best resources especially if an industry expert writes them. Keep up-to-date on the latest published books and rely on sites like Amazon that can give you relevant suggestions based on books you already love. Many of these authors also have blogs and Twitter accounts so be sure to look for them at all of their “homes”.
At every turning point in your business – from new product launches to website design – research reigns supreme. Since you don’t have hours to head to the library (and maybe only 30 minutes before a new client pitch) become good at conducting research in no time. Rely on Google searches (with the right phrases and lingo that will get you relevant results on the first go) and other sources such as highly cited articles on Google Scholar. Once you have some solid resources, let social bookmarking services do the heavy legwork. Sites such as Delicious and Pinboard make it easy to save materials for future reference without printing 100 pages that you’ll end up misplacing or throwing away. Use online tags to organize your research in relevant categories; doing so will make it easy to find what you’re looking for in a time crunch.
If you don’t share the information that you find, it’s like a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it. To make it count, send these breaking stories and research tidbits to your colleagues, managers, and clients. However, never send the link without your context. Most people don’t have the time to read a forwarded article or open a story link, so tell them why this content matters and how you can best use this for your company’s advantage. In one or two sentences, you are proving your deep value to your organization and to your clients. Suddenly, you become the go-to industry resource first thing in the morning for very important people. Not too bad for a little work done over a good cup of coffee, right?
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References:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belle-beth-cooper/how-we-research-a-look-in_b_5080070.html