SOBCon2010 Webinar
Mon, Feb 15, 2010 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM EST
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/197073915

We’ll be talking strategy and tactics for our online business.

We’re doing everything we can to bring you all the value, the experts and expertise, and the time to work and network that you need to make your business outstanding and extremely profitable in 2010.

What could you do with a weekend of the time, expertise, and support you need to focus your business?

We’re all coming for the same reasons.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Only Way to Attract a Vibrant, High-Trust Community

Filed Under Comments, Community, Design, Inside-Out Thinking, Liz Talks Corporate, Marketing, One Way to CC It, SEO, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools | 35 Comments

Last summer at AdTech, a VP at huge corporate brand extended her arms completely — way out in front her — and used her hands to gesture as she said something close to this about her goal for building a community:

I want to build a community in which peers are talking to peers openly.

I’m sure she didn’t mean it the way it looked … Her hands were so far away from her. — or sounded … peers talking to peers?

I couldn’t help thinking … Where will YOU be? Studying me? Is that what you think of me? I’m not a peer. I’m a person. I only do well in places where people “get” me.

Users. Consumers. Buyers. Customers. Leads. Eyeballs. Peers. Those are faceless, flattening labels. They come from the time of one-size-fits-all.

People are individual human beings complete with aspirations, intentions, ideas, opinions, habits, behaviors, thoughts, and emotions.

Which community would you join?

More Communities and More Time for Them

Online social communities aren’t a new thing. People have been linking and sharing via blogs since the 20th century. Organized social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn have become a part of our lives.

Our communities are becoming more about communicating and being creative about what interests us. It’s all about making it relevant to the people we want to attract. As this Pew Internet Slideshare describes …

Social Media – Making it Business Relevant

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

We’re participating more. We’re spending more time in communities. We’re building more of them. How do attract people to the communities we’re building that are perfect for them?

The Only Way to Attract a Vibrant, High-Trust Community

Just as a building is not a business, a community is not a collection of profiles or a url. People won’t visit our community because it’s pretty. People will come because it offers them something they value.

From two people to more than plenty, a community is a social structure that shares personal values, cultural values, business goals, attitudes, or a world view. What binds it is a culture of social rules and group dynamics that identify members. In the most concise terms, an online social community is a group of like-minded individuals connected by relevant interactions and protected by a high-trust environment.

A high-trust community is an agreement, a pact or contract, like love or friendship. We can’t order, build, or wish our way to one. What we can do is attract people who want to join what we’re doing. The only way to do that is clear passionate commitment, obvious generosity, trustworthiness, and a touch of intentional serendipity … which looks something like this.

1. Be a person (or people) who likes people. People work with, talk with, and relate to other people not a business.
2. Articulate a clear and passionate vision worth investing in. Live your commitment. Get your hands dirty.
3. Seek out people who would love what you’re doing. Find them where they are already gathering and talking. Join THEIR conversations. Get to know them.
4. Be a beginner, but keep the vision. Learn from everyone who’s been anywhere near where you’re going. Learn to sort wrong from unexpected or different. Ideas that jar you could be the best ones.
5. Invite everyone who “gets” the vision to help build this new thing. Look for ways to include their skills and their passions.
6. Keep participation efficient and easy. Curb the urge to add cool things that get in the way of conversation and sharing.
7. Let trust sort things. Model the standards of behavior. Keep rules to a minimum.
8. Be visible authenticity. Lean toward full disclosure, but avoid over-exposure. Most of us look better with our clothes on.
9. Protect everyone’s investment. Forgive mistakes. Ignore little missteps. Eradicate what is destructive. Know the difference by holding thing up to trust, values, and the community vision.
10. Stop doing what isn’t working. Be lethal about keeping things easy, efficient, and meaningful.
11. Promote your members … and honor your competition! Secure communities need both to thrive and get new ideas.
12. Encourage mutation. Let the environment change to meet the changing needs of the people it serves.
13. Celebrate contagion. Make it heroic to share what’s going on!
14. Be grateful and always about the people. The community wouldn’t be a community without them.

An online community isn’t built or befriended, it’s connected by offering and accepting. Community is affinity, identity, and kinship that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions. –What Is a Social Community?

We create vibrant, high trust community by letting other folks raise the barn with us, by being their first offering trust and a passionate vision, and valuing the trust and energy they give us.

What attracts you to a community? What keeps you coming back again?

-ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I’m a proud affiliate of

Why Can’t We seem to Keep Things Simple?

Filed Under Design, Marketing, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

A Guest Post by Kyle Lacy

I was asked to write this guest post about the power of simplicity in blog design and honestly, I was at a loss for words. What does it mean to have simplicity in blog design? Are we discussing the concepts of the layout design? Or a universal view of all things blog? I am not here to talk about the back-end coding of a blog, the rules of user interface design, or minimalistic thoughts on design…but the ability to give your readers the easiest way to read your valuable CONTENT.

It is easy to say that the simpler the design the better. I mean… look at Google and Yahoo. Google has one of the simplest website designs… ever. The design hasn’t changed much since the creation of the search engine. While Yahoo… in all of the search world glory… has everything but a kitchen sink. Google has proved that simplicity wins in design but where does simplicity fit in blog design?

I could give you a list of the top 10 reasons why blog design should be simple… but honestly… we don’t have the time. There is one reason why your blog design should be simplistic in nature…

Readers should have the ability to scan your content without experiencing a headache or stress… which will eventually lead to a heart attack.. which none of us want…NO READER DEATHS!

I’m taking the Google route. Simplicity in blog design is key because YOUR content must be easy to scan by the reader. I am not here to preach. In no stretch of the imagination is my blog even close to simplistic… but it is closer than most. What do you want the visitor to experience when surfing your blog and your content?

Remember, your content is king. Design around your content.

Since design is the main topic of conversation in this post.. I wanted to share with you 5 blogs I find extremely BRILLIANT when it comes to simplistic design.

1. Blog What? Design

2. AI Alex

3. Dive Into Mark

4. Design Intellection

5. I am Neato

They focus on the content… period.

——
Kyle Lacy oversees a company called Brandswag, which focuses on design, branding and social media education. With offices in Indianapolis and Oklahoma City, Brandswag helps business owners connect with their customers and sustain profitability by presenting consistent images and messages in the marketplace. He recently finished writing Twitter Marketing for Dummies which can be found on Amazon.com
——

Kyle, thank you! This is the best on the subject I’ve seen in a long time.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I’m a proud affiliate of

Design, Function or Content — Which Is More Important?

Filed Under Design, Successful Blog | 34 Comments

I asked a question the other day on Twitter: What would you respond to the comment, “Content is more important than design.” The first response I usually get is content - content is king. If you go to a site and there isn’t any content to engage with or provide value, and it doesn’t get you thinking, there’s really no point or purpose to it. Content that changes, gets updated frequently and is genuine is usually the first element in any order of importance in relation to what people want to see when they visit your site.

Kyle Placy, a friend and designer responded, “Hmmm, content is more important than design… I think that is a relative statement. You can have great content and a terribly designed blog and the content is moot. I would say on a sliding scale content is more important but there is a fine line to draw between clean and easy design to terrible design.”

Vicky Hennegan said that content is more important but a good design can affect how long you stay on a site.

I read a lot of blogs and visit a lot of websites. We all do. Sometimes it’s part of my job to go find information from a website and sometimes that is all I’m there to do. If I like the look of the site I might spend a little more time and read some posts. If the site is appealing either because of its design or function capabilities I might click through and check out some features. I will definitely return if I like the content but I will also return if I liked the look (design) and feel (function) of the site. Things to consider:

1. Does everything your site/blog “say” it can do work? For example, links, pages, signup for RSS feeds, newsletters etc.? Do all the functions work the way they were intended to?

2. Do you have your contact info somewhere easy to find? You may not want people emailing you; that’s fine but chances are at some point someone is going to want to reach you. Will they easily be able to find this information? I sometimes have to collect contact info from websites and am so surprised when I have to hunt to find it. Home page is best if you want to be found.

3. Do you have all your social platforms listed on your site somewhere?

4. Not everyone has a designer. Not everyone needs one, in fact. Wordpress, Blogger and Thesis have made it really quite easy and painless to customize your site. Twitter is a great resource as well – ask for help and you’ll get it!

Design, function, or content, which is more for you?
 

from Kathryn Jennex aka northernchick

photocredit - Anna Hape

Above the Fold: Everything in Order

Filed Under Design, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

What a Few Tweaks Can Do

I met Carole Hicks on Twitter. Then she asked a question via email and, before I replied, I made her an offer. I said I have this feature called, Above the Fold, I’d like to bring back to my blog. Would you be game for consultation? She was most agreeable. Thus starts the saga of tweaking her blog with the fabulous title –

Everything in Order [dot] com
But the fabulous title was outshouted by some noisy color …

So we got to work together. Here’s how the Above the Fold Tweak Process works

1. I make a “before” screenshot.
2. We talk through some changes for readability.
3. The blogger makes the changes. (In this case, Carole took notes for her developer.)
4. We talk while the tweaks are in process. (She passed them on.)
5. I take an “after” screenshot and share the results in a post.

Tweaking Everything in Order

The blog: Everything n Order . com
Everything in Order, creative problem-solving…beautiful ideas.
URL: : http://www.everythingnorder.com
Blogger: Carole Hicks

Before

This is EverythingnOrder.com before we started.

Three Tweaks that We Agreed Upon

In this series, we’ll concentrate only three important tweaks for each blog that is featured. On Carole’s blog, those three tweaks were these.

1. The backgrounds were overpowering — the coral wrap and the coral type were too vibrant and vibrating.
2. The sidebar needed focus and less text / and disappeared on the post page. (Sorry I missed the sidebar in the screen shot.)
3. A search box and ways to subscribe were missing.

Carole and I discussed how the true black background played into the bright shade of the coral outer wrap to make it almost vibrate. I suggested another shade of color with a touch more black in the coral and a black background that was a little more charcoal. blink test, the feed button wins. We decided that it would be a much stronger presentation if the title got that first attention. Folks would remember where they were and where they wanted to return.

We talked about the tag cloud and other sidebar information. I mentioned that the large tags seemed to be saying that’s all or mostly all she talked about — was that the first impression she wanted to be giving? Carole decided that might not be her whole story.

When choosing text the type size needs to match the line length. If they don’t match, the eye has trouble doing the “return sweep” to the next line correctly. As often happens, the line was too long for the size of the type in the body text. We shortened the main body copy block and increased the type size.

We talked about reasons that a search box and subscription options were important.

We made other changes. Can you see them?

For the results, turn the page now. Read more