If you spend any amount of time online using social media, you are highly likely to have come across the name Chris Brogan; if not, then this is hopefully a great intro to somebody who is often considered one of the “A listers” in social media circles.

Chris is currently the President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency and is a 10 year ten year veteran of using social media and both web and mobile technologies to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations and individuals. His new book “Trust Agents” is about using the web to “build influence, improve reputation and earn trust”.

Aside from his social media expertise however, one of the reasons I wanted to interview Chris here was to introduce the concept of “workshifting” to you. In a similar move to Dell’s Digital Nomads venture, Chris has partnered with Citrix to build a Workshifting community – web commuters, remote workers and digital nomads who “work out of coffee shops, hotels, airports and their homes every bit as much as the office”.

It’s a concept in a similar vein to location independence – and may be a great solution for those of you seeking a little more freedom but without jumping in feet first to go the whole hog as a nomadic, world-roaming online entrepreneur.

Read what Chris has to say about workshifting, social media success and more, in the interview…

Working away from an office can come with its unique challenges. What type of people do you think thrive in a workshifting environment?

Chris Brogan: In many cases, the flexibility of presence affords a whole list of follow-on benefits. It saves me almost 2 hours of driving each way, which gives me (and my company) back almost 4 hours of productivity. Also by workshifting I’m not exposed to generic chit-chat, so I get a lot more heads-down focus time.

Further, I find that workshifting lets me feel a lot more flexible with hours and I actually turn in more hours when I’m not tied to a desk.

Part of the concept of workshifting, as with location independence, is freedom – maybe this is one of the main reasons many companies are reluctant to embrace it as a way of working. As a business owner yourself, what are some of the benefits you feel it brings your company? Any disadvantages or challenges you face?

Chris Brogan: My guys work much harder when they know I trust them to turn in good work no matter where they are on the planet. The trick is in transitioning from that sense that “your butt in a chair equals work” into “turning in work equals work.”

Once you get things calibrated to that kind of lifestyle, that’s where things cook. I live on that edge, where I can get a whole network of people working from wherever, such that we can get more done through the clocks.

What productivity tips could you share for getting things done whilst being on the road so frequently?

Chris Brogan: We’re rocking Socialcast.com really hard. It’s like a private Twitter for business that lets me ask the guys where they are (we use a hashtag of #where) and it lets me get instant status updates on various clients (hashtag of #clientname).

We try to keep things fairly flow-based. For instance, our sales platform is PipelineDeals.com which lets us see at any point where our deals our. We all have a corporate email account but we tend to use gmail and other Google apps because it means we can flex anywhere there’s a web.

Me personally? I work on jamming. I try to shove out work in order of what seems to need doing. If I get a bit lost, I double check my tasks buffer (I use Evernote) to see what I haven’t done that’s getting towards overdue.

One of the aspects we emphasise about being location independent and working on the web is the need to be fairly web & tech savvy. You wrote about 5 things in your work bag but what are the key tools/apps/services you use to run your business when on the road workshifting?

Chris Brogan: Wow, so if we run down the web apps it looks like this:

• Seesmic Desktop / Twitter – this is my pulse to the whole world. If you’re not on Twitter, you’re invisible to me most of the day.
• Google Apps – fastest way to pass stuff around and collaborate in-line.
• Socialcast.com – in-house workflow pulse
• PipelineDeals.com – sales flow
• Blue Sky Factory – email marketing platform
• iPhones – we all have them, they’re our required guns for the battle

And a whole host of other things I’m sure I’ll regret not mentioning once this is live.

Many of our readers are looking to use social media and online marketing strategies to build their location independent businesses and workshift across the world. You wrote a great post on 100 personal branding tactics using social media – as somebody who has very effectively created a well-respected personal brand, what do you feel have been the cornerstones of your success and what tactics or strategies have brought you the most ‘bang for your buck’?

Chris Brogan: The best thing you can EVER do is be helpful. Share as much as you can and then dip in there and share some more. ALL my business success comes from being helpful, being there and being the guy who gets the job done.

That’s repeatable. It has NOTHING to do with Twitter, blogs, whatever. It could be done with paper and crayons. Behind my success is the simplest of truths: love humans and serve them well.

And for a bit of fun, where in the world would you choose to work from tomorrow if you could teleport there instantly?

Chris Brogan: My workshifting gold standard would be alongside a swimmable lake within a few miles of a small town. I was raised in New England. It’s not too much to ask, is it?

I’d like to say a big “thank you” to Chris for kindly agreeing to be interviewed and sharing some of his perspectives and expertise with us all.

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