BUILDING RIVERS OF INFORMATION: STEP TWO, CHOOSE YOUR TOOLS

Once you’ve tapped into a strong flow of information, you’ll need tools to help you
aggregate, filter, store, and pass on this information. The good news about this is many entrepreneurs have identified these needs as well, so we have new tools being provided constantly to help us do each of these tasks. Let’s take each area individually and look at how to
do it, and what tools can be helpful.

• Aggregating the information flow means using applications to consolidate many sources of information onto one screen. This is important because it takes too much time to scan your river for the important things if you have to go to 50 places to even find the information. It’s possible to actually have most of your information literally come to one screen using tools like Google Reader and NetVibes. There are also tools like Tweetdeck and HootSuite that we described earlier.

• Filtering information is the process of routing or highlighting bits of information that have a much higher chance of being important than others. This is where tools like the alert systems come in. Add to alerts tools like competitious.com, mentioned earlier, and you have the ability to highlight pieces of information that are the most important.
• Even within tools like Google Reader, you can do searches of your information streams to pull out keywords so you can more quickly see specific pieces of meaningful information. You can even set it up so content from your more useful sources is sent to your e-mail so you never miss seeing it.
• Storing information means having a way to archive information you run across that
might be needed later. Generally, the flow of information is so large, even when you take your small percentage, trying to go back and find something you saw two months ago is a challenge. For this reason, it’s helpful to have storage processes for anything you believe might be needed in the future.
• Do this by creating documents, presentations, and spreadsheets where you add pieces of information as you go along so that you’ve indexed documents by subject, which makes it easy to find something later. There are also tools like Evernote and Onenote that help
users quickly archive pieces rmation.

• Having ways to forward information is critical because as you see bits of information that you know would be helpful to others, you need “one click’’ abilities to route information to a person or a group. This helps you give back to the river by being a type of filter yourself. The people around you will place a high value on being connected with you because they’ll see you have a good eye for useful information.

Some people will want to use e-mail as a delivery source to redistribute interesting things they find. Others will want to create personal blogs, or use tools like Tweetdeck and TBUZZ to forward information to groups. Expose your people to the possibilities in this area, but don’t force them to use a specific tool they won’t be comfortable with.