Reader response has been positive since we launched Bright Ideas, the newsletter for Thought Stars, in February. But we’re always looking for ways to improve, so in last month’s issue we posted a survey about the topics we cover, the type of content we provide, and how often we publish.

Here are the results.

First, we asked what topics readers would most like to see in the newsletter.

• The clear leader was blogging & social media, which captured two-thirds of the votes.
• Book publishing and video creation & distribution tied for second, each with 39%.
• Audio production & distribution trailed the pack with 5% of the vote.

Second, we asked what types of content readers would like to see in the newsletter.

• More than 70% said they’d like to see reviews of helpful apps & tools.
• In second place was a selection of best articles from around the web, with almost 60% of the vote.
• Book reviews garnered a slim 18%. Eeep!

Third, we asked how frequently readers would like to receive the newsletter.

• Most thought the current monthly schedule was just fine.
• Each of the other options (quarterly, bi-weekly and weekly) garnered just a handful of votes each.

Interesting statistics, but what are we going to do about them? We’re going to listen.

Starting with the July issue of Bright Ideas, here’s what you’re going to see:

• Coverage of multiple social media tools and techniques
• More content on book publishing and video creation
• More curated content, drawing in helpful articles from a wide range of sources
• A new Resource Spotlight that takes the place of our monthly book review. We’ll sometimes feature books if we find one you should know about, but more often we’ll point you to the apps and tools you asked for.
• A new section in the right-hand column called Thought Bubbles, featuring short ideas such as links, questions, quotes and statements to spark your thinking.
• An issue on the first Tuesday of every month, just like always

If you’re not yet a Bright Ideas subscriber, you can sign up now to get the next issue, coming on July 5.

Comments or questions about the newsletter? Leave them below or send them our way: knowledge@highspotinc.com

Publishing Perspectives posted a fascinating interview with Seth Godin about The Domino Project, the company Godin started after announcing he would no longer issue his books through a traditional publisher. The first book that Domino released was Godin’s Poke The Box.

The complete interview is well worth a read. Below, I’ve highlighted a couple of choice excerpts that might get you thinking about how you write your book.

“So what I’m thinking about when I write a book like Poke the Box is not “How do I write this for the person who will be easy for me to sell it to?” but “How do I write it so once that person reads it, they’re likely to give it to someone else?” And that second order sale, that idea that books are actually manifestos organized to spread, really changes the way you think about writing a book.”

“…my chapters are now down to 2-pages long, or 3-pages long, and the reason is that’s the way we have trained people to think. We think clearly at a different rate than we did 80 or 90 years ago.

No one buys a book anymore if they don’t know what the book is about, if they don’t know what the idea in the book is before they even got it. And so what that requires authors to do is figure how to make their ideas spread so that they get a chance to hammer those ideas home in book form.”

Godin takes a lot of flak for producing books that others don’t consider worthy of the name — books that are small and short, with miniscule chapters or no chapters at all. And yet his sales are through the roof, outstripping, as Godin notes in the interview, even New York Times bestsellers.

Godin focuses on making his ideas sharable: succinct, easily explained, easily accessible. If you started with sharing as your focus, what might you do with your information?

The newsletter, that is.

We launched the publication four shortsmonths ago, covering topics such as the power of web video, dwindling shelf space for self-published authors and what agents look for in a manuscript. Have a dig through the archives and let us know what you think by leaving a comment on this post.

The next issue will hit email in-boxes everywhere on June  7.

If you’re not a subscriber, here’s your chance to get in on the mailing AND scoop a product from the Highspot store. Between now and June 7, we’re offering every new newsletter subscriber a $9.95 coupon. Use it to buy whatever you want from the store.

Maybe you’ll grab this 60-minute recording on developing audio products.

Or maybe you’ll choose the first module in our report on how to successfully self-publish.

You decide.

Here’s the sign-up page.

Crowd Accelerated Innovation recently hit my radar. This is the concept described by Chris Anderson in his TED Talk on web video, which I blogged about not long ago.

Today, I stumbled across a connecting link. Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, says this: An idea is a network. Innovation most often occurs when people can share and discuss ideas freely, in coffeehouses, in break rooms and around water coolers.

If you tie Steven’s findings to Chris’s idea, you see why web video facilitates innovation so well: it allows people from all areas and walks of life to share and access new ideas rapidly. It also partially explains the explosion of innovation that has occurred with the rise of the internet, why social networks are useful, why blog comments are important. An idea is a network.

Here’s another look at Steven’s work on where ideas come from.

Where do your ideas come from?

Today I watched a TED Talk from Chris Anderson on the power of web video to spur global innovation. On the surface, the idea didn’t seem too mind-blowing to me: yes yes, global sharing, people watch a lot of video, yadda yadda.

But I can’t stop thinking about the talk.

Chris opened with the example of a 6-year-old Japanese boy showing off eye-popping dance moves in a home video. He explained how watching that clip was a watershed moment for filmmaker Jon Chu, who realized that the internet was evolving dance:

Dancers have created a whole global laboratory online. Kids in Japan are taking moves from a YouTube video created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style.

Something clicked with me. I caught an exhilarating glimpse of what web video might represent.

As the talk continued, a second idea caught my attention: Chris spoke of web video representing a communication shift as powerful as the invention of the printing press.

For millennia, humans have communicated face-to-face. The rise of the printed word a few hundred years ago allowed us to spread our ideas farther, sharing them with more people. Now we have the technology to bring those two worlds together: the power of face-to-face communication and the ability to spread that communication far and wide. Even better, we can distribute that communication instantly.

The globe is responding eagerly.

So many search queries are made for YouTube content that it can be considered the #2 search engine in the world. Did you catch that? Apart from Google, there is no other site that users search more often for content. Other staggering statistics: Users collectively upload more than 35 hours of video to the site every minute of every day. And the world watches 80 million hours of YouTube video per day.

Before watching Chris’s talk, I’ll admit I considered video an adjunct strategy for disseminating information. I know some people like to acquire information through reading it, some by hearing it, others by seeing a live demonstration. There are also the people that like to learn by conducting their own experiments. Well and good. This is why it makes sense to package your intellectual property in multiple formats, to appeal to multiple learning methods.

But now I think web video represents a much larger and more significant opportunity than I previously believed.

Watch Chris’s talk and see what you think. How could video blow your industry wide open? What could you share in a video that would allow people here and abroad to collaborate with you in advancing the world’s pool of ideas or processes or skills? What could Highspot share?

I’m excited to hear your thoughts.

Consistently producing and sharing content is essential for any Thought Star — yet finding time to create content can be a challenge when you run a full-time business.

I’ve certainly had my own struggles with finding content time. I’d have multiple tasks to complete in a day — for example, writing something for the Highspot website, editing a Highspot special report, and reviewing a client manuscript. If time ran short and I could only do one, guess which one it was? Clients invariably came first.

Talk about the shoemaker’s children. I slowly (embarrassingly slowly) came to realize that if I didn’t make a change, Highspot knowledge products would never get done at the rate they needed to.

From Focus Days to Content Days
My business partner, Ross, is an associate coach at the Strategic Coach, a program for entrepreneurs. He’d told me about Focus Days — time that’s blocked off for productive tasks — but I hadn’t put them into practice because something about the concept didn’t quite fit for me.

Somewhere along the way it occurred to me to shift the idea slightly from Focus Day to Content Day — one day a week where I’d do nothing but internal Highspot work. With that subtle change, the penny dropped, or rather, what felt like a whole sack of pennies.

It felt ridiculously freeing to have one whole, uninterrupted day to dedicate to internal projects. I could take that extra 30 minutes to noodle an argument or that extra hour to finetune a report, and I didn’t have to feel guilty about what I wasn’t doing. Client work would get done — the next day. But for that eight hours, if I was working on an internal piece, I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

Since implementing Content Days, my productivity has soared. Best of all for me, though, have been the emotional benefits. I feel excited and energized at the end of every Content Day. Where before I’d feel guilty for “stealing” time away from client projects, now I feel great about staying on task.

On the flip side, on non-Content Days, I’ve stopped feeling guilty about the internal projects awaiting my attention. I know they’ll get their time. That lets me focus fully on client work, which has boosted my productivity on that side as well.

Make It Your Time
Regular content creation is critical for a thought leader. If you don’t already dedicate time to the task, make it a goal to start.

Can’t spare a whole day? Try half a day. Or two hours twice a week. But be firm with yourself about keeping the appointment. Block if off on your calendar like a meeting, and make sure your assistant and the others around you know you’re not available during those hours.

If Content Time doesn’t feel right for you, experiment with the focus. Maybe for you it’s Book Time, where you allow yourself the freedom to work on anything that will advance your book project. Maybe it’s Writing Time or Blog Time. Adapt the focus until it fits.

Let us know how you make out. If you already have a focus system, what are the factors that make it work for you?

The other day I was asked for my definition of thought leadership (what we here at Highspot call being a Thought Star). Here’s what I said:

A thought leader is someone who is recognized as influencing others by articulating, sharing & evolving ideas in her area of expertise.

My definition had to be 140 characters or less because I tweeted it, but now that I have a bit more space, let’s look at each component of that definition.

Thought Stars have ideas. These come from studying (reading, learning, listening) and from experience (applying knowledge in the real world). In other words, Thought Stars are both knowledgeable and experienced in their subject matter.

Thought Stars articulate and share their ideas. They write books, blog posts and white papers. They tweet, speak and give media interviews. They comment, debate and interact with their communities. Thought Stars put themselves and their ideas out there.

Thought Stars influence others. When Thought Stars talk, people listen and often shift their thinking or adopt a new behavior based on what they’ve heard.

Thought Stars are recognized for their ideas and influence. Rock stars aren’t just musicians who strum a guitar in their living room. Rock stars sell millions of albums and fill stadiums with their fans: they’re well-known names. Similarly, being a thought leader requires recognition from others.

What’s your definition of thought leadership? Have I missed anything important?

Nearly every entrepreneur has knowledge that can be identified, packaged, and shared. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look. Here are 6 questions to spur your creative thinking.

1. How do you do what you do?
You likely spent a great deal of time and effort learning how to do what you do. Others will pay for that knowledge—to shorten their own learning curve, avoid costly mistakes, and achieve greater success than they could on their own.

2. Have you created new ways of talking about old issues?
For decades, people have been writing about how to lose weight. You’d think everything there was to say had already been said—yet new diet books come out every single year. That’s because people are always coming up with new theories, methods, stories, or perspectives. You can do the same in your industry.

3. Do you have new insights into your business, industry, or clients?
Share them. Hint: You don’t have to wait for insights to hit like lightning bolts. There are ways to cultivate them, such as looking to completely unrelated industries to see what ideas can be adapted to your own business to create new approaches.

4. What do people outside of your industry not know?
What’s standard knowledge within your industry but virtually unknown outside of it? Open the door on this insider information. It’s fertile ground for training and education products.

5. Can you ask questions that will help others come to useful insights?
You don’t need to have all the answers. Often there is value in asking the right questions and helping people find the answers themselves.

6. Can you anticipate the future?
Look at what’s happened within your industry in the past. Examine factors that contributed to its formation and growth, revolutionary changes that have altered the field, and important developments that have already occurred, especially over the last 12 months. If X led to Y, and Y led to Z, what can you guess about where Z might go? Help people prepare for, or participate in, that future.

What are some other questions that have been helpful to you in developing knowledge products?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal underlines what we’ve been saying for years: the book makes the expert. Business people with books get noticed.

Think of it this way: When it comes to your business reputation, you’re either a rock star or a wannabe.

If you’re like the vast majority of the people in your industry, you’re virtually anonymous. You might have lots of expertise, great ideas, and new methodologies, but you’re not making the most of them. You feel frustrated because you know you could take your business farther—you just don’t know how.

Rock stars, on the other hand, are celebrities. They stand out in their market against a sea of faceless competitors.

Very few business people ever garner the reputation of a rock star. But you can bet that those who do, have knowledge products of one kind or another. A book is still the most prestigious but other products work, too. What’s important is that these products serve as springboards, continually pushing their author’s message to more and more people, and continually propelling the author’s reputation to new heights.

Is it time for you to break out and become a business rock star? (Or, as we like to say here at Highspot, a thought star™.) What steps will you take in 2011 to get you there?

Helienne Lindvall, a columnist for guardian.co.uk (who also happens to be a musician), recently wrote about people who advocate for free content but charge high fees to share their expertise. In her view, this practice is “ironic” and she decries the fees such speakers earn “peddling a utopian, and some would say fictional, business model to increasingly desperate music and media companies.”

Lindvall has entirely missed the point. The speakers she targets — Cory Doctorow, Seth Godin, and Chris Anderson, among others — aren’t suggesting everyone give everything away at no charge. They’re not saying people don’t deserve to get paid for their creative efforts. What they’re offering is the idea that giving something away for free can lead to making money on something else.

Take Seth Godin for example. His book, Unleashing the Ideavirus, is the most downloaded e-book in the history of the internet. Let me repeat: in the history of the internet. It’s a free download and always has been. The visibility and reach that the free e-book has given him has generated far more for him than selling the e-book for $10 a pop ever could. In this instance, free works for him. But he also sells print copies that he does charge for. Is this irony? Hardly. Godin simply recognizes that free can work wonders.

Authors can choose to give books or other content away for free and often they do so precisely because there’s some other sort of payoff: exposure, reputation, the ability to charge more for consulting, an increased demand for consulting, or even — gasp! — paid speaking engagements.

In fact, Doctorow, himself a guardian.co.uk columnist, wrote that while giving content away for free may not always help the bottom line, it certainly can’t hurt. (Read Doctorow’s thorough and articulate rebuttal to Lindvall’s article here.)

Have you tried giving away content for free? What were the results?