Here’s I typically put together a post.  Or at least how I should.

It starts with an idea for a post and those often come while I’m driving for some reason.  To capture the idea, I’ll leave myself a voicemail.  Then when I’m at my desk listening to my voicemails, I’ll stick an item on my to do list in Remember the Milk with the label “Blog post – working title goes here”.

But sometimes it comes while I’m reading something online.  In that case I’ll bookmark it in Firefox in bookmark folder called “Blog post research – working title goes here”

(Hopefully you grasp the fact that I’m replacing the term working title goes here with the actual working title)

Then a couple things have to happen.  Sometimes in a linear order, sometimes in parallel.  I need a quick and dirty rough draft.  I open up Windows Live Writer on my netbook or desktop and crank out a quick outline or super fast draft.  I then do some web surfing to find reference materials, photos I might want to use, links to go into the post, and more and save into that Blog post research folder I created in Firefox.  I use the XMarks synchronization system so if I’m switching from my desktop to my netbook, my reference materials are there.

When I need a photo, I prefer to use some a picture that I’ve taken.  But since 85% of the pictures I take these days are of my children, that’s pretty rare.  So I use the Flickr photos search tool Compfight to find a photo with a usable Creative Commons license.

I then take my second pass at my post, expanding the outline into a decently constructed piece of writing while also adding in my photos, hyperlinks, and more. 

Then I walk away.  Or at least I should.  Two hours at a minimum.  Ideally at least a day.  When I return to the post its time for a last iterative read, while also making sure I have good spelling grammar.  To be honest, I don’t do this part of the cycle enough.  With two kids, I’m always amazed when I get anything done, so when I’m done with that second pass, I like to feel good about myself and hit publish.  That is a misatke.

Finally, it’s time to categorize the post, tag it…then hit publish.

Ideally, I perform the “one to four” routine on the post.  After publishing a single post, go leave 3 or 4 comments on other blogs.  There’s a lot of reasons for this.  If you want to know more about that strategy, you should check in with Dave Peck as he’s the one who shared it with me. 

There you go. My blog post writing workflow.  What’s yours?

Before I forget, I should mention that you can see the work in progress by going to http://www.netvibes.com/shinynewtoy

The next step is to add some rich media results to this, by grabbing tag search results from Flickr and YouTube. In addition to providing monitoring information, this will also help make the dashboard more visual appealing and engaging – potentially paying dividends down the road when sharing the dashboard with executives a little less familiar with social media tools and web monitoring.

Let’s work on adding Flickr first.

Go to Flickr.com and search tags only for “Tesla Motors”.  Now there’s no RSS feed link for these search results, but you can use the NetVibes Flickr widget to insert the images into the dashboard. 

You’ll then go to NetVibes and..

1. Click Add Content
2. in the search box in the Add Content drop down, search for Flickr
3. Add the Flickr module to the dashbard
4. Edit the Flickr Module and type in “Tesla Motors” in the Tag field
5. Change the layout to Thumbnails
6. Choose Open Pictures to “Full Resolution”
7. Click OK

Now onto YouTube

This is going to utilize Yahoo Pipes.  (More on what pipes is in a future post)  Specifically, this pipe that converts a results of a YouTube tag and converts it into an RSS Feed.    Once you’re there, insert “Tesla Motors” into the tag field and click run pipe.  The results will give you an option to grab it an RSS feed.  Just like adding RSS feeds of Twitter search results, we need to copy the link location of the URL and add it to NetVibes.

After a little rearranging of the NetVibes modules, our dashboard now looks like this:

Would I want my mother to know that I did this?

It’s an excellent question to ask and, as a rule of thumb, I do think it works.  But the minor flaw it in is that our mothers have the full, complete context of who we are.  I can drop an F-bomb at the dinner table with my mother sitting across from me with little repercussion other than a quick, disapproving sneer.  But drop an F-bomb at a new business pitch with people who you’ve known for less than 30 minutes and it could mean the loss of a new client. 

It doesn’t stop with the language we use.  With Social Media tools, the content that we choose to publish and share represents who we are.  If you visited my Flickr stream and saw that my photostream was full of amputee dogs trapped in fishing nets, you’d probably have some serious character questions about me.  (And rightfully so, by the way.)

In the many years that I’ve been maintaining a blog and publishing photos, I’ve realized that there’s a challenging to representing your professional self in addition to the true “social you.”  The “professional you” is the you that leaves the baseball cap sitting at home, tucks in his shirt, and generally presents an image of professionalism so that people want to work with you, to trust you, and to look to you as a subject matter expert.  But does this help people really KNOW you? 

The “social you” are things like the movies you’ve seen 20 times, your favorite beer, and the music you can’t live without.  Not to mention the subtle little nuances of everyday life that you, and perhaps only you, truly appreciate.  But you continue to share with others if only for that remote chance that you will connect with someone around it.  Like the time you found the free parking downtown.  You share these things because they complete you.  Without them you are only a shallow representation of who you are.

The key to truly participating online is to figure out the correct mix of all aspects of you.  In a manner that achieve your goals and, most importantly, allows you to be yourself.

A closing thought from the film High Fidelity:

What really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films — these things matter. Call me shallow but it’s the f—-n’ truth,