Sacred Business Part 4

Google Sacred Business

In this Sacred Business series/conversation we’ve been having we started to hash out ideas for the future of Business. We’ve begun to ideastorm about the concept of Sacred Business, Conscious Capitalism, or being an Enlightened Entrepreneur.

And really what does all that mean and how does this apply in simple terms to you, me and the person next door?

What about all those people, including myself, who are wracking their brains trying to come up with an idea that will not only pay the bills but do a little good within the world as well?

What can we do?

So to answer these questions we’ve been staying up late, 3am late, doing our little part to create a new blueprint for the world of business.

Right now I’m about halfway through Jeff Jarvis‘s awesome book What Would Google Do? and I have to say that this is one of the most exciting books I’ve read in a long time.

It’s a complete paradigm shifter. Jarvis’ insights will literally keep you up late at night and turn you into a page turning fiend.

At about 20 pages into the book I already began preaching and pimping it to anyone that ventured into my Business section of the World’s Biggest Bookstore.

So, I began to skim the back of the book to see if Mr. Jarvis had placed a recommended reading list of books to further quench my thirst for all things Business 2.0/Sacred Business/Conscious Capitalism.

Unfortunately nothing of the sort. :(

What was there though was his blog address (http://www.buzzmachine.com) to join in the conversation about the ideas in the book and info to check out his Five steps to a Googlier you.

Create. Listen. Link. Join. Innovate.

I believe that the ideas listed below will help to forge the new Sacred Economy. They have already begun to and will continue to gain momentum everyday. Google is an innovator and maybe more of us should be asking the question Jeff Jarvis asked, ‘What would Google do?’

And maybe, just maybe, Mr. Jarvis may share his wisdom with this author to help shed some light on a couple of crazy ideas that are bouncin’ around his head.

Below you’ll find Jeff Jarvis’ 5 Steps. Please read slowly and digest well.

Five steps to a Googlier you

Source: http://www.buzzmachine.com/tips/

The Googlification of the world affects not only companies, industries, and institutions but individuals. It brings new means and expectations for how we can advance our careers, lifestyles, and agendas. If we want to be Googley and take advantage of these new opportunities, then we need to understand how Google values creation, openness, connections, uniqueness, collaboration, and invention.

Create. The best way to be found via Google is to make something of value and make it public: a blog, a feed of photos or videos, a contribution to a discussion, an opinion, an application, a product, a company.

You may protest that you’re not creative—“I’m no writer,” I hear people say all the time. But you talk, don’t you? Think of the web as a conversation. If you have something of interest and value to say, say it. Others can hear you via links and Google. Your online portfolio becomes your persona, your résumé, and your personal brand: You are what you do, what you show, and what you say. Nothing can stop you.

To get started, go to Google’s Blogger, WordPress.com, Typepad.com, or MySpace. It will take you—I guarantee—only minutes to publish to the world. Share what you know and what you care about, whether that is your profession, your hobby, your town, your taste in movies, or your pets. Be open and generous. If you are a teacher, talk about life in the classroom and how children learn; parents will read it. If you’re a gardener, share your secrets. If you’re a veteran, share your memories. If you’re a tattoo artist, show us pictures of your oeuvre. If you’re a birdwatcher, give us a Google map with your best spots. Everybody knows something others want to know. Whatever draws you into the conversation will help you understand the internet better. That’s how I did it.

If you want to stand out, specialize—think small. If as you search for sites of interest you find a void, fill it. Maybe you’re a First Amendment expert and you find tons of blogs about it but none about your real specialty, free speech and comics. Grab it.

You don’t have to blog. You can leave comments on others’ blogs when you have something to contribute: a fact, a correction, a new perspective. Can’t stand to write? Then talk. Go to Google’s YouTube or to Seesmic and say what you think to a video camera. Take photos of your vacation, post them on Flickr, and tag them with the destination; they will help someone else decide whether to go there and you’ve become a travel writer. Leave a restaurant review at Yelp.com or TripAdvisor or a book review at Amazon and you’re a critic. Just create. That is the way to Google’s world.

Listen. Before you write, read. Use Google blog search, Technorati.com, Blogpulse, Icerocket, and the other sites to search for topics that interest you. I’m asked all the time for one place to get started reading blogs. There isn’t one because the web is filled with as many conversations as there are interests. The trick is to find someone writing about what you like and to follow links from there to find more people and sites.

You can keep up with these blogs, people, and topics using RSS, an elegant technology that simply lets you read constantly updated feeds of the latest from most any site or search. I use RSS every day to keep track headlines from publications and blogs I like, to follow what’s new about topics (companies, people, places, and words like “Google” and “journalism”), and to see what’s being said about me and my blog. You can get started with RSS at Google Reader.

Link. Here’s the single most important and counterintuitive lesson of the age—the Golden Rule of Google: Link unto others if you want them to link unto you. Linking to others is how they discover you. Other bloggers and sites use search and RSS to keep track of conversations about them. If you link to them, they may see what you have to say. If you add something of value to a conversation, they may link back to you—and their readers will also discover you.

You may link directly to a post a blogger wrote to add your knowledge or perspective. You also may curate a list of good sites you find as a service to your readers.

Remember that Google values links, which power PageRank and determine which sites are listed higher than others. Links are Googlejuice.

Links are like invitations to a club. Through them, you may join a network of bloggers writing about your area of the law or shows you love or a medical condition you have. I learn via links. I make friends via links. Linking is social.

Join. The internet is not just about data. It’s about people, connections, relationships. You may join Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, and other social services to link up with people you know and to meet more. You can have these services check your email addresses to see whether there are people you know already there. You may be surprised at how many you find. When you do find a friend, you ask to connect and both parties must agree. Then you may invite others in. And you can search for interests—marketing or BMWs or France—and join groups.

Some people connect with anyone and everyone, others only with people they know. I am among the latter. So don’t be insulted if you contact me on Facebook and don’t hear back. That’s because I use Facebook and LinkedIn to organize people I work with. The services are especially valuable at reconnecting me with former colleagues so we can keep up with each other.

Innovate. You need your personal 20 percent rule. Spend some piece of every week doing something new: research, learn, experiment, invent. You don’t know where it can lead. But you do know where doing the same old thing week in and week out will take you: nowhere.

My blog has been my 20 percent rule. I didn’t know that when I started. I thought I would blog for a few weeks until I ran out of memories to share from surviving the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. But it soon filled all available time and changed my view of the world and my career.

My blog taught me a great deal. It allowed me to experiment and to explore new ideas. It helped me connect with a new professional network. It enabled me to advise old media companies and new media startups. The blog helped me build a new reputation and to launch new careers as a teacher and now an author.

Your 20 percent doesn’t need to be a blog. It could be a company, interactive art, how-to videos, an online group, or something I can’t imagine. But this much I know: You must create, share, link, connect, and join if you want to succeed in the Google age.

Some kind Blurbs about the Book:

Google is not just a company, it is an entirely new way of thinking about understanding who we are and what we want. Jarvis has done something really important: extend that approach to business and culture, revealing just how revolutionary it is.”

— CHRIS ANDERSON, AUTHOR OF THE LONG TAIL

“What Would Google Do? is an exceptional book that captures the massive changes the internet is effecting in our culture, in marketing, and in advertising.”

— CRAIG NEWMARK, FOUNDER OF CRAIGSLIST

“Jeff Jarvis has written an indispensable guide to the business logic of the networked era, because he sees the opportunities in giving the people control, and understands the risks in letting your competitors get there first.”

— CLAY SHIRKY, AUTHOR OF HERE COMES EVERYBODY

“Jeff Jarvis’s What Would Google Do? is a divining rod for anyone looking for ways to hit real paydirt in the new territory of Web 2.0 marketing. Jarvis has a sharp eye for what is relevant, real, and actionable. Isn’t that what we all need today?”

— MARC BENIOFF, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, SALESFORCE.COM

“If you want to understand how the innovation around the New Web is the anithesis of the dot-com period, read this book. It’ll open your eyes to a ton of real possibilities for your business in a new world.”

— Don Tapscott, coauthor of Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital

And…

Check out Business Weeks cool little special they did about the book http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/01/0129_google/index.htm