via GIPHY

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve had my head down writing an ebook on Snapchat.

The ebook is titled How to Use Snapchat to Show and Share Your Work (the title may change).   It’s being written for an audience who may be aware how to use this social medium but may not why or how to use it for the purposes of knowledge or skill sharing, to find work, build a reputation or create a network of people who would support them in their personal or professional development.

For example, I’m thinking it may be for:

• Millennial employees who join their profession, or work in organisations and who want to start building a personal brand and influence around the knowledge, skills, experiences and capabilities that they possess outside of work that their managers and leaders may be unaware and who can help to solve organisational problems with a different perspective.  (For example, millennial employees are likely to have new media and technology skills, large dispersed networks and followings with peers of similar ages or working on sideline gigs or community service projects).  
• Women or other minority or disability groups within the organisation who typically feel they don’t have a “voice” inside their company
• Employees who have been in their organisation for many years who have subject matter expertise and who would like to educate others inside their company
• Senior leaders who are open to exploring and using the technology to share the company story as well as sharing their life and work.

In effect, it could be any individual or business who is keen to use Snapchat as a means for promoting their knowledge or expertise to a potential new audience who may not be using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and who is not afraid of showing a bit of their own personality in the process.

Writing it has been a bit slow because I’m constantly changing my mind.  I waste hours considering the platform on which it should be written rather than just starting to write.

Should I use a Google Document?

Should I write it as a series of blog posts?

Should I create it in iBooks Author?

How about CreateSpace?

Maybe I should just write it in MS Word?  

Argh.

Finding the Right Platform to Suit Our Needs

This is quite typical of my approach in general for a lot of things.  The amount of tools and platforms that are out there are HUGE so we need to know exactly what our intention is to find the right one that suits our needs.

At first, I always want to explore the different tools and platforms so that I know what I’m dealing with and then understand the opportunities and constraints of each tool dependent on how I want the outcome to be achieved.

For example, in this case, the outcome is the book.

I want the book to be easily created as a PDF and eBook file, published across different eBook platforms, not be detrimented or punished by any platform provider that I’m reusing content from my blog.  It has to be simply created, published, distributed, low cost for me as well as generate a file that I can sell both in an ebook marketplace (I figure this ebook may have a wider audience outside of my usual customer group which are learning and development teams) or sell from my website so that it generate some passive income for me – at least enough for me to buy a cup of coffee every so often!

It’s true I tend to get bogged down into the details and spent ages figuring out that I should try iBooks Author only to change my mind half way and go back to writing it in MS Word using the Lulu template so that I have more options to be able to sell it across different book platforms.

Certainly, the book isn’t War and Peace if that’s what you’re thinking.  After all, it’s an ebook about Snapchat which like any social medium has a limited life span.

However, the difference here is that I have written it from the point of view of how we can create and share our own content using some snappers I found who are generating their own unique content that is both educational and informative – and in so doing generating their own channels of content – and who have been instrumental in my own learning process of this tool.

Why Snapchat?

To me, it’s simply another tool in a mind-boggling repertoire that you can use and access to share and show your skills, knowledge and expertise to others.   Whether it’s Twitter, Periscope, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube, whatever – we’ve gone beyond the question of what tool do we use anymore.  We go to where the people happen to be who educate, inform or inspire us – and where our audience or customers are.

It’s a community that allows me to connect one-to-one with a wide and diverse group of people without the noise or others getting into the conversation (sometimes you need this).

It allows storytelling and content creation – and it works like a conversation with another person.  Content is changing all the time and constantly evolving.  It allows people to express their unique style and personality.  The richness of the functions from audio, video, stickers, emojis and annotation tools allow the platform to work like a real conversation as well as a community where you can easily tell the snake oil salespeople from the genuine connectors.

Sure, it’s not for everyone but it’s another platform that you can use to show and share your work in ways that will help support your brand, reputation, professional and personal development.

If you’re interested in learning more, write a comment below and I’ll let you know when the book is ready for purchase.

The first 10 comments will get the book for free!