Flavio Frohlich - Network Neuroscientist
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10/11/2019

Week 5: Being real online without oversharing.

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Welcome to Week 5 of our 8-week program! This week, we are talking about how to raise your profile online by being human... Sharing with the world not only your message but also your own story behind the message is a very powerful approach for engaging your audience. Here are the most important do's and don'ts for being real online without oversharing. Now, many of the items below are a matter of style and I expect that not everybody will agree, so let's discuss in the comment section below.

Do's
  • Use a portrait picture (only if you are comfortable). Our brains are wired to be interested in faces!
  • Personal experiences (that you are able and willing to share) help build emotional connections with your audience.
  • Feel free to express your honest emotions (#excited, #frustrated), but see below.
  • Focus on what your audience is interested in and enhance the content with your own personal touch.
  • Find your own voice and proudly carry it. Do not listen to the naysayers. Be authentic!

Dont's
  • Do not share information that could become a safety hazard for you or your family.
  • Do not communicate emotions (especially negative ones) unless you had enough time to reflect and still feel it is important to share.
  • Do not feel pressured to create an "perfect version" of you online. You are perfect the way you are. Pretending to be somebody else online is exhausting and may damage your mental health.
  • Do not brag. No go: #soshumbled #sohonored to be the best and brightest of you all!

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9/22/2019

Week 4: Videos>Pictures>Words

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Welcome to Week 4 of our 8-week program on how to build an online audience! This week, we focus on how to choose the right medium for your content. The title of today's post summarizes the overall premise:

Videos > Pictures > Words

What I mean with this equation is that video has more impact than pictures, which in turn outperform words. I do not want to discourage you from writing inspiring and beautiful prose. However, you need to accept and understand that the human brain is optimized to detect signs of both opportunity and danger. Something colorful that moves clearly falls into that category. So, what does this mean for you? It means that you should learn how to create videos on the cheap that you can use to garner attention for your other, richer in fiber (ahem, text) content. Fortunately, creating decent videos these days has become very easy thanks to the ubiquity of smart phones. However, many of these videos are of very poor production quality and with just a little bit more effort, you can do much better with the following accessories. Here is how:

  1. Think about the background. The video should show you or whatever you want to show. Nobody is interested in your furniture and other stuff that provides visual clutter. One way to solve this problem is to get a backdrop for your videos. Here is an example of something akin to what I use for some of my videos, in essence a large piece of cloth that makes a uniform background (you should get something like this for less than $20). You can also get a nifty system to hold up the background fabric in case you do not have a wall on which to hang the background. Here is an example of such a support system that costs less than $40.
  2. Sound. You want to make sure that the sound is your voice and nothing more. Again, as for the visual aspect, avoiding the clutter will greatly enhance the appeal of your video. I recommend a microphone that attaches to your shirt/dress and is optimized to record voice. This type of microphone is called Lavalier microphone, here is the one I am using for many of my videos (less than $25). Of course there are much more expensive and perhaps much better microphones available, however, I do not think this needed if you are just getting started.
  3. Editing. Basic editing of videos is very simple and will make a big difference. I am not talking about professional editing, which requires lots of expertise and practice. Rather, I want you to consider how much better your videos will be if you manage to cut out the usual "oh, I think the camera is on, OK, let's see, here is what I want to say" style by cutting together the key clips that you like and create a decent finished product. I use Adobe Premier Elements, which is reasonably priced (less than $100) and easy to use. 
  4. Now all you need is a youtube channel to upload your videos. You can then link to them, for example on your website.

I am looking forward to seeing your videos and I hope you will enjoy this creative activity as much as I do.

Take care,

Flavio


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9/19/2019

Week 3: Stepping up online engagement.

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Welcome to Week 3 of our 8-week program! This week is all about increasing engagement online. By now, you have your own web presence, started to build an email list (and are sending our email newsletters), and have Twitter account. Now, it is time to engage online. Bottom line here is that you will need to find your audience when you start. Once you are established the growing audience will find you. Today, I am giving you my 10 essential rules of online engagement (with focus on Twitter). Enjoy and please let me know how things are going for you!
  1. Do not use social media when hungry, tired, or upset. The temptations are too strong. One nasty/stupid/hurtful Tweet and there is a lot of damage you will need to control. Also chances are that if you are not at your best, you will use Twitter to sooth your mind self-medicate, which is not the same as building an online audience in a smart and targeted way.
  2. Lift up, inspire, and thank others. In other words, try to avoid the usual tweets akin to "So proud and honored to be awarded the something something boring blablabla award". Rather, if somebody else provides something interesting or useful, thank them and distribute to your audience (retweet).
  3. Follow as many voices as you can in your specific field. This will provide you with interesting content to distribute to your followers, inspire you, and also teach you what a good tone and style for your particular community is.
  4. Give ample credit. Do not tweet images that you randomly found on the internet without giving appropriate credit to the artist or source of the image/content.
  5. Mention other people (by including their twitter handle) who you think are interested in your content. This will draw them into the conversation and increase the reach of your message.
  6. Post meaningful content that interests your audience. Do not waste your time with mundane and trivial things, there are already more than enough Twitter accounts that do that.
  7. Do not be shy and approach people you respect on Twitter (such as for example authors of books/papers you read and liked). Great new connections can emerge from such interactions. You will be surprised by how many seemingly very famous and busy people will be willing to engage with you online, after all we are all playing the same game of increasing our audience.
  8. Provide links that point to new content on your website.
  9. Limit your time on social media to protect you mental health. Spending too much time on Twitter can easily get you trapped in an unhealthy state of chasing micro dopamine rushes from retweets and likes. Also, seeing seemingly everyone else on Twitter succeed and have a great life (not true, we all struggle in one or the other way) can be detrimental for your mental health. 
  10. Do not install the Twitter app on your phone. See the rule above for why that is important.

I hope these ten rules will get you start and help you build your audience.

Good luck!

Take care,

Flavio

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8/28/2019

Week 2: Power of email (continued)

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We are in the middle of Week 2 of our 8-week program. In the last post, we discussed the importance of collecting email addresses and sending out emails such as newsletters and updates Yes, even in today's world, sending out emails gives you more return that the fleeting "likes" and "retweets" on Twitter. Now that you have the infrastructure in place, it is time to talk about content!

Any email you send should contain information that is of potential value to the people on your email list. Thus, creating content always starts with defining and knowing your audience. Emails are usually created in a way that they point to few new stories on your website. This way, you are providing an assembly of exciting, new content and the recipient can click to the content of interest. Here are few basic rules to follow:

  1. Provide value (instead of just self promotion). You want to convince by the value of your content. Do your research or write about something personal. Create content that it is not easy to get otherwise. You have a unique set of experiences, perspectives, and pieces of knowledge. Combine them in an interesting way and share it with the world. Most of the web today is copy/paste the same old garbage. It is easier to stand out than you think if you provide quality and novelty!
  2. Add visuals. Make sure that for every post for which you have a "teaser" in your email (first few sentences and a link) has a powerful image. Get your hand on some good (free) stock photos.
  3. Learn how to write catchy headlines. For this, my advice is not to be afraid to sound like clickbait. After all, if you follow up with real content, this is justified.
  4. On your site (where the readers land after clicking on your email), make sure there is more to do than just read the one article of interest. Make sure there are ample links to explore other aspects of your site. Ask for readers to engage by leaving comments and following you on Twitter.
  5. Do not worry about the metrics. A newsletter email sent to 20 people may change the world, depending on your content. You need to be patient with this. Trying to grow rapidly can easily damage the quality of your content. Do not do that. There is already enough competition online for low quality, boring content.
With all this, I invite you to send out a first email that highlights your (perhaps new or upgrade) site and report back how it went either via Twitter or in the comments below.

Take care,

Flavio

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8/27/2019

Week 2: The Power of Email

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Welcome to Week 2 of our program. In Week 1, we chose platforms (web and Twitter) and started to develop our own content. Congrats to all of you! Well done. In this week, we will work on .... email!

Most of the time, email is a hassle for us. In fact, I have written about how to deal with the daily flood of email before. Today, however, we are taking a different viewpoint. I will teach you how to use email to gain and amplify your voice.

Having a list of email addresses (and names, ideally) of people who are interested in hearing from you is more powerful than having the same people as followers on your social media platform. Why? Email carries more weight, if you are able to put your thoughts in somebody's inbox, you have managed to reach their to-do list. To be clear, I am not talking about spam. I am talking about delivering content that is meaningful to the people on your email list.

Today, I will teach you the basic infrastructure you need for this. Later this week, we are going to watch this in action when I send out the next monthly Network Neuroscience newsletter. In case you have not already signed up, I highly recommend you sign up here.

I use Mailchimp (no commercial interest). I am sure there are other free tools. In essence, Mailchimp gives you all the features you need to manage email campaigns. You can sign up for a free account. Be aware that the email address you use will be the one that shows up as the sender email address once you send out a mass email to your list. Once singed up, you can create a sign up form (see mine, as an example) that you can put on your website. Simply cut and paste the html code into your website. Make sure the sign up window on your site is super prominent. Then, on your site, you make reference to the email list and make sure your readers understand that they will have privileged access to more content by signing up.

Give this a try and see how this feels. In the next post, we will talk about creating a newsletter and the logistics around that.

Take care,

Flavio

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8/19/2019

Week 1: Getting the tools ready.

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Part I

Welcome! Thank you for joining us for our unique and slightly eclectic 8-week program that helps you find and build an audience online. We are beginning today! My motivation to teach you is that there are so many people who have unique knowledge and perspectives that we all could benefit from. However, unfortunately, most of the online content is some form of click bait that tries to steal attention and money instead of provide something meaningful to the global conversation.

I have developed this course with trainees in academia (especially underrepresented voices) in mind, but I hope that it will also be of help to others. In contrast to all the bad writing about how to "trick" search engines and other usually meaningless tools derived from the (shady?!) world online advertising, my course is focused on few solid strategies that help you get started. There is no success guarantee since there are many factors beyond my control that determine the outcome of your efforts. I hope you will find this exciting and helpful. I always appreciate feedback, best way to reach me is on Twitter @FlavioFrohlich.

Let's begin! Today, we are taking our first two steps of week 1.

Step 1: Decide on social media platform and sign up
There are a gazillion of online platforms and one mistake I recommend you do not make is to sign up for too many of them. After all, you do not want to waste hours of pushing content to all the numerous platforms and spend even more time engaging with your audience on multiple social media platforms. Many of these platforms can be very addictive (I once deleted my Twitter account to take a break from some unhealthy habits) and the more platforms you use, the more likely you are to get trapped. Your goal should be to identify the one platform that is most used by your audience and to focus on quality content and engagement for that one.
For me (and likely for you, too), the one social media platform that stands out is Twitter. Like it or not, this is the place where the conversations are taking place, including exchanges about training and research in STEM. But here is the key: one such platform is enough. For example, many years ago my research group at UNC set up a Twitter and Facebook account. We struggled to create enough content for both platforms, so we decided to delete our Facebook account. We never looked back. So simple. 
So, if you have too many accounts on different social media platforms, disable all of them but the one on which you are most likely to find your audience. Also, delete the corresponding apps from your phone and get some hours of real offline life instead. If you do not have yet such accounts, I recommend you sign up for a Twitter account. We will spend quite some time these next few weeks talking about how to (not) use that account. Building an online audience is fun but your mental well-being should always have priority.

Step 2: Buy a web URL and (learn how to) set up a basic website
Part of our program is to create a more stable presence online that does not require you to constantly create new content in the form of posts and tweets. And yes, there is nothing better than a good old website for this. It used to be that creating a visually appealing website was hard and cost money. Thankfully, today things are easier. If you can, I do recommend you spend money on buying a URL. If not, no reason to worry. Most website providers also offer free URLs but they are not that memorable (e.g. www.whateveryourURLis.weebly.com instead of www.whateveryourURLis.com). For example, I have purchased a long time ago the URL that spells out my name (www.flaviofrohlich.org) and one that spells out who I aspire to be both online and offline (www.networkneuroscientist.org, the site that hosts this blog). There is a seemingly unregulated business with URLs, so do not spend more than $20/year on a URL (I guess technically you rent and not buy them, so set them on auto renew such that you do not loose your precious URL in a year from today). Most website hosting companies (I use weebly, no commercial interest) offer the option to buy a URL, this is the easiest approach. It will take a bit of time to find a good URL since all the obvious ones are long gone. One option to consider that few people know about is to make use of all the new(er) domain endings (beyond your standard .com, .org etc). For example, I recently started two new websites with - what I think - really cool URLs using some of these new top domains: flavio.network and tACS.academy.

Once you have this all set up, you are ready for the next step, which we will cover tomorrow. If all of the above is old news to you, my task for you is to think about your online presence in terms of how you can reduce your broad but likely shallow footprint to few points of focus to build on during the coming eight weeks.

Take care,

Flavio

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8/15/2019

Upcoming: 8-week program on building an online audience

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Welcome to a new series of posts on how to build an online audience. As a reader of this blog, you surely have a message and a vision that you would like to share with the world.

How do you do this?

You need to develop a network of tools to provide value to your audience. You think the internet has everything covered and you have nothing to add in terms of relevant content. Wrong. There is shockingly little independent information presented in a user-friendly way. Your opportunity is to find your unique voice and provide content that nobody else can provide, your voice!

To help you build your audience, I am taking you on an 8-week tour of how I approach this. Few months ago, I deleted my personal Twitter Account @FlavioFrohlich in order to regain my sanity. I have now activated a new account with the same handle, which has already accumulated a mind-boggling 20 followers! We will use this account to try out and demonstrate a set of different strategies to find your voice and build an audience online.

You may wonder why you would want to endeavor on such a project that can be misunderstood as a vanity project. My answer to this question is that the internet is full of regurgitated, often incorrect, often extreme content. The world will be a better place if we succeed in adding more perspectives, more diversity, more nuances, and more thought to the online conversation. In other words, I am saying the world is waiting to hear from you!

Here is our 8-week playbook. We are starting on August 19th:

Week 1: Getting the tools ready.
Week 2: The power of email.
Week 3: Stepping up online engagement.
Week 4: Videos > Pictures > Words ?
Week 5: Being real online without oversharing.
Week 6: Mindfulness (online)
Week 7: Amplifying your voice with $
Week 8: Reflections: Lessons learned.
 
I hope you will join me for this exciting adventure!
 
Take care,
 
Flavio

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8/4/2019

Email II

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In the last post, I explored some of the underlying dynamics that are a likely culprit / source of our trouble with email. Today, I will further develop this theme and offer a set of practical solutions that have worked for me.

One important angle to the email trap is that promptly answering (all?!) emails feels good for a quick moment because we take it as a sign of how kind and engaged we are. Unfortunately, by replying to all emails (for many years my Sunday afternoon activity), you are soliciting the next volley of emails. You can get easily swept up by those dynamics. All humans crave in one or the other way for a feeling of belonging and of purpose. Creating an internal model in which we are inundated with emails that require our attention gives us the feeling that we are important and thus live a life of purpose. Replying to every message as fast as possible is giving us the feeling that we are connected and part of a social network. Yet, these positive emotions are not sustained in this process. Rather we increasingly loose our internal agency by replacing it with an external agency. We rely on what others drop into our inbox and pay with a lack of time and focus for the important priorities in our lives. As a result, we are getting more stressed and less happy, with the consequence that we are even less like to succeed with a more rational approach that requires more of our prefrontal cortex.

Somebody must stop this. Here is the system that I have developed. Give it a try and let me know how it goes by leaving a comment below.
 
  • It is important that you process your emails in blocks. Decide ahead of time what your email slots are and only work on your emails in these slots. For many of us, a morning and afternoon slot is more than enough. With this system, you will accelerate your career since you will have much more time to work on the truly important items.
  • Make sure that the key people in your life who may need your attention more urgently, let’s say your family, your boss, and your mentor have you cell phone number. Tell them to feel free to text or call when they have something urgent for you.
  • Before you open your inbox, review your written big goals (more on that in a later post) and make sure you have internalized them. This is an important step since it helps you make good decisions about which emails are important to you.
  • Open your inbox, start with the newest messages. Go message by message and make an immediate decision on all messages. For every message, you have three options to choose.
    1. Delete (and unsubscribe if applicable). This should be the default option for the majority of messages you received. Do not be afraid, keep on deleting as many as you can.
    2. Important to you and can be dealt with in less than 60 seconds. Do so immediately and archive the message when done.
    3. Move out of your inbox onto your to-list. This option should be reserved for truly important messages that will help you reach your goals.
 
Bonus tips:
  • If things are getting overwhelming, empower yourself to declare email bankruptcy by deleting all the message in your inbox. You will be surprised by how few will follow up or are offended that you did not reply to the message.
  • Unsubscribe from all the marketing emails that you receive. Yes, this takes ten seconds for each email, but it will really help with keeping email clutter low. Stop signing up for new email lists, they are almost never worth your attention. Rather buy a book on the topic of interest.
  • Never apologize for “the delay in my answer.”
  • Stop right now today the use of the silly lie of “just found it in my spam filter”, even if it is true.
  • Turn off email notifications on your mobile devices.
  • Resolve important things in person or by phone. Let unimportant things be instead of sending an email.

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8/1/2019

Email I

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When I went to college, email was brand new for me. I remember checking my email inbox multiple times a day in the hope that I would find an exciting message there. In many ways, this was a continuation of how I felt about my family’s (physical) mailbox when I was growing up. Every day, I was eager to get the mail to see if there is something interesting there. Rarely every was there mail for me (why should there!), so I started to write letters to an organization that was dedicated to the protection of birds, my favorite animals when I was a child. With my dad’s electric typewriter, I would write formal letters to ask questions about birds. It usually took a week or so to get a thick envelope back with an encouraging letter and some interesting booklets and copies of research publications. What a joy! With emails it was a bit different since as a student I did not find the time to engage people by email and thus the inbox was often empty.
​
Today, twenty years later, things are very different. For sure you will never hear me complain about a lack of emails that I receive. Quite the contrary, I am no exception in terms of the flood of (work) emails that I get every day. What might have stayed is the same is the thrill of opening the inbox to see if something magic has happened. Perhaps a paper we have submitted got accepted?! Perhaps I receive an invitation to give a keynote address at an international meeting?! This is one of the many reasons why most of us want to get email alerts and monitor our inbox(es) throughout the day, often also at night, on weekends, and during vacations. Yet, this attitude is bound to make us unhappy and unproductive.

It is hard to overstate how much email has changed our lives. The main point is that I can put something into your inbox in seconds that may take you hours to resolve. I can write “Please provide feedback”, attach a twenty-page draft and send it to ten people, creating a situation where I am stealing multiple hours from ten people, without any cost to me. This is grotesque but how this game works. Yet, most of us struggle to escape this game and find a healthy approach to email.

Let’s start with probing a bit deeper how many urgent and important messages I have received in my time as an academic so far. It is worth noting that email communication is a key pillar of the academic research environment. OK, let’s count. (1) The email telling me that I was admitted into graduate school. (2) The email telling me that I was hired as a postdoctoral fellow. (3) The finalized offer letter for my faculty position. One – two – three. These are important (and rather urgent) emails since they were of big impact for me and required a prompt response (1) Accepted – thanks. (2) Accepted – thanks. (3) Accepted – thanks. To be clear, I have received numerous emails that were urgent and not important. My favorite example: please review this document (only 10 pages!) by tomorrow. It is urgent since the sender has been procrastinating for weeks. Also, there are numerous important but not urgent messages (“We would like to invite you to give a keynote talk at [fill in fancy meeting] this fall”). See? The problem thus with treating emails (without discrimination) as urgent and, we are missing the chance to work on items that are truly important for reaching our goals.

Dealing with emails is often more than just work that does not advance you towards the realization of your visions and big goals. Rather, it can become a source of stress. I used to make the distinction between “looking at my emails” and “answering my emails.” I would open my inbox to quickly check if there is something that I felt like dealing with on the spot. Often, I would do that on my smartphone. Very few emails did get resolved when I looked at them. First, I did not have the right software tools and files available to truly process a message such that I could consider it to be resolved (and archived). Instead of forgetting the message until I found time to sit down at a computer, rather the message was playing games in my head and I would remember it and think about it multiple times until I finally sat down to deal with it properly. Just picture this. Anyone in the world with an internet account can easily find my work email address online and send me a wonderful but perhaps slightly lengthy email that includes requests that will get stuck in my head and ultimately rob me of a substantial amount of focused time. This gets compounded by the fact that many (including me for a long time) use their inbox as a never empty, stress inducing inbox. With this, anyone in the world can plant something directly onto my to-do list. Maintaining your own priorities that advance you and your work is very tough this way.

In the next post, I will provide you with a complete and practical strategy how to improve your life by dealing with email in a new way. Stay tuned.

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7/18/2019

Top 3 Ways to Improve your Relationships at Work

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How we feel is a mostly a function of if and how we feel connected to the people around us. Building, maintaining, and growing relationships is thus key to how we feel and also how successful we are. Academia is in many ways an unusual place since careers are enabled by scientific publications and discoveries, and not by people skills. However, it is never too late to learn. Here are my top three ways how to become more successful by improving your relationships at work.
  • Be curious. Often, we forget to be curious about why other people around us act the way they do. We forget that the "inner models" people have of the world are very different from each other. Trying to project your model onto somebody else is often the cause of substantial misunderstandings, leading to conflict and unhappiness. Rather, take your time to truly be curious and ask the people around you about how they see things and what motivates them to act in a specific way.
  • Be consistent. There is nothing more challenging than a boss/supervisor/colleague who one day is super flattering and excited, then the next day very abrupt and seemingly impossible to please. We all have natural mood fluctuations, however as a leader it is your responsibility to deal with them in a way that they do not affect your work relationships.
  • Be honest. So often, it is much easier to slightly distort reality to make a difficult conversation a bit less difficult. The problem with this approach is that over time these little deviations from the truth start to accumulate and ultimately erode the trust people have in you. The better strategy is to be honest (and compassionate when you have to deliver bad news). In addition, if you promise less but put extraordinary effort into keeping all your promises, you will feel better and be more successful in the long run.
Try these strategies and please let me know how things go, either in the comment section below, or you can always reach me directly here.

Take care,

Flavio

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