As many of my readers know, each week I have an email newsletter that I use to update folks about my latest posts. (You can to sign up at this form.)

But today it struck me that, while many of us are very active in social media, our newsletters are often not very social at all. They’re just vehicles for me to push my content to you. Yet, in social media, it’s all about sharing and using shared content to build relationships and trust.

So I decided to change strategies a bit, and make sure that within my email newsletter, I am still sharing the work of others. Here’s how I put it in today’s edition:

The essence of social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is sharing – of your own work as well as that of others. Yet, for many individuals and organizations, our subscriber emails, like this one, remain avenues solely used for self-promotion.

How can I ask you to share this newsletter without doing the same myself? Why should this only contain my own work? Obviously, those are rhetorical questions.

From now on I will include some of the more interesting links and articles – by others – that I have posted in my various online streams over the past week. I hope that you might find one or two interesting.

Other Interesting Links By Others

Without further ado, here are some of the links I’ve shared this week:

• My good friend John Creighton as a collaborator with me on the Washington Times Communities social journalism effort. He writes a column called Dispatches From The Heartland. His latest piece, titled “Is Sarah Palin Narrow Minded? Are You?” really struck a nerve with me. Read it here.

• Australian Telecom giant Telstra trains every one of its employees in social media use. They’ve made their training manual available. Read it at Mashable.

• Twelve Job-Hunting Myths debunked, read it from USAA.

• Community benefit organizations need to stop thinking “fundraising” and start thinking “financing.”Read it by Nell Edgington.

• A highly successful blogger revealed that he is really a woman who has taken a man’s pen name. Before the pen name, she was scraping for revenue. After donning a male moniker, success after success rolled in. Read it at Copyblogger.