Special Events

So, I have some special life events right now and I've thought a lot about how it has an impact on my upkeep of the site.

It makes it highly important to keep content updated and things rolling in such a way where it shouldn't matter if I'm unavailable to make updates for a few days.

I'm learning a lot about autoresponders and that will be one way to set up meaningful communication using automatic scheduled content delivery methods.

It has also been great to see a few people acting on the nudges I'm giving them. Sometimes we just need permission to act on a good idea.

Well, more later, but wanted to be sure to capture parts of the journey. (-:

Exhaustion and Ideas

So, where do I start?

The last couple of weeks has included lots of visitors, sickness, and participation in a 10.5 hour traffic pile up!

My mind hasn't had much time to think about Nudge Village, though I have tried to post a few entries here and there.

I'm left to question - how do I create enough interest and content to keep moving forward when life throws me "stuff" that requires time away from the business?

Hmmmm.

I keep coming back to a few things:
- Write a supply of daily nudges ahead of time and then click "publish" every few days.
- Give a few guest writers accounts so they can keep the site fresh while I'm out of commission.
- Plan my day better - take 15 minutes at the beginning or end (no matter what) to share and idea, thought or quote.
- Pull in content that I like from other sites when my brain is fried.

All good ideas and I'm not looking for one solution, but a "bag of tricks" to keep me going when the brain is empty.

Luckily, it is the weekend and I don't feel so hot and that means I'm here in bed with my laptop. And, believe it or not, I'm having ideas.

In fact, I put together another SlideShare presentation while I was laying here this morning. Not bad folks, not bad.

Giving the Good Gift - thoughts from Nudge Village

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Giving the Good Gift - thoughts from Nudge Village

View more presentations from nvillage.

Testing out Slideshare - as a tool for sharing storys

Meet Danielle - a Nudge Village member

View more presentations from nvillage.

It's been a while

Wow! How could I let two entire weeks go by without writing in this blog!

It is easy really - two weeks of surprise visitors came to town and threw my Monday-Friday hours after work out of whack.

However, I am moving forward with the site and finding out a few things:

• Simplify - the more I look at other sites, the more I realize that it is indeed ok to have white space on the page and keep focused. So many good things to share, but people thirst for simplicity with all the info out there.
• Topics - the need to have a continual flow of good topics. I have an entire list I haven't written about yet, but all I can do sometimes is get the name of the topic written down on my to do list and I get back to it when I can.
• Guest Writers - The Senior Nudger wrote up four entries about one topic. I'm figuring out a way to post them in a meaningful way on Nudge Village. Do I post them four days in a row? Do I spread them out for once a week? Do I provide them under a special tab? These are all important questions.
• Nudgers are a nudging - slowly but surely, people are starting to send out "nudges" on Facebook in the group and in the "like" page. So, we'll see how this builds over time.
• Automatic - I'm going to set some things up so that content goes out all week even if I have a busy day job week. For example, if I can write up 4-5 daily nudges on Saturday, I can use the date/time feature to decide when they are shown to the audience. So, one can go out daily even if I'm not online. Pretty cool. However, probably won't go out further than that because what if I died - it would be a bit creepy to see posts coming from me weeks after my death. Yikes. Off this topic.
• Video - I'm excited to use more video soon, but only in areas where it will help the content. Such a powerful tool when used correctly.

Facebook - like or group or both

I've set up two things on Facebook for Nudge Village. One is a group where I invited people in (without choice) and one where I invite people to "like" a page if they so choose.

So far people have commented on the group and added their own entries, but not on the "like" page. Interesting.

Will keep them both up just to see what is most effective over time.

Editing and Revising

While driving home from my day job I got all kinds of ideas on how to improve the site. Here are a few changes that I made today that may help.

• Navigation - changed "Village Stories" to "Villagers" - thought it might have been a confusing title. Plus, I may want to use "Village Stories" at another time for something else, like actual village stories.
• Nudginary - took Brett's comment from the "Post a Nudge" section and made a resource link called "Nudginary." We'll see if people are interested in forming some words for the community. If not, no harm done, but it could be a fun activity for some.
• Daily Nudge from a Nudger - Anthony wrote a great piece on logos in the "Post a Nudge" section and so I pulled it and turned it into a daily nudge entry for today. This is what community is all about - sharing knowledge and learning from the knowledge others provide. Great stuff!
• Navigation - Opportunities became Help Wanted - not sure what difference this will make, but wanted to have a new title for this section. Perhaps people will want to post things they need help on here instead of making it like a job site. After all, we are hoping to get people pursuing passions instead of perhaps a cubicle job...unless people work well in cubicles.
• Navigation - took "Sandbox" out of the main navigation and put it as a sub-resource page. This blog will feed into it - if I can figure out how to keep it going continually instead of manually. I like the idea of people sharing in the journey of the site creation (if they want to) and it may help me capture moments that might get forgotten along the way.

Whew! Two hours on this and it doesn't feel like it, but all good.

Oh, I also posted the latest "Daily Nudge" links on Facebook. We'll see if anyone comes to the site from it.