Conversations to Participate In
In order of usefulness:
Blogs
Use Google Reader (or another RSS reader) to subscribe to a number of large and small blogs in your industry and closely related fields. When appropriate, comment on posts.
Commenting on blogs is easy, fun, and incredibly useful. Most bloggers love to get comments, and they don’t get as many as they would like, so they will often respond personally. Many bloggers will even start reading your blog, which is fantastic.
You can also retweet or repost blog posts that you like or find particularly awesome. This is a way to tell anyone who happens to be listening, “This is really cool— read this.” Obviously, the original poster loves this, which can only be good for you.
If you’re still wondering how to find interesting blogs in your field, then you haven’t figured out how to Google.
Expert Answer Forums
Answer forums provide a place for people to ask questions to the whole world, and then anyone who wants to can post answers. This is great if you have expertise in some area (which you do).
Generally, answer forums let you search by topic, so that you can poke around looking for questions you know the answer to. Also, there is usually a way for the asker and the community to vote on which answer is the best.
Answer forums are pure Thought Leadership.
LinkedIn and Yahoo both have excellent Answer forums, and a number of niche sites have industry specific forums. You can find them by (guess…) Googling.
Message Boards and Forums
Message boards have been around forever, and can be a great tool for building relationships. If you’ve never used one, they are essentially a place where a large group of people can have ongoing conversations about a loosely defined set of topics.
Good message boards are about sharing ideas, asking for and giving advice, and learning new things. If you can find message boards like that in your industry, then you should join and contribute.
Bad message boards are about complaining, whining, insulting, and drama. Steer clear of these boards, no matter how helpful you think you could be to whatever problem people are having.
And steer clear of all drama. Even the best message boards have drama. Do not participate. Do not engage. Do not try to help. Do not try to peacemake. Ignore it. Really.
