Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

Building a Career: Combining a Personal Blog and a Company Job

Filed Under Branding, Marketing, Successful Blog | 5 Comments

When we are talking about building your own career, there is nothing more personal to you than your own blog.  When you are working for a company, there are many different kinds of situations which may cause you to leave or to stay temporarily.  But as you are building your career in the “real world”, you can start picking up your working knowledge and build them into useful information around your own blog in the “virtual world”.

Start building a career around your own blog today!

4 Do’s and 4 Don’ts in your blog while working on your job

Do’s

  1. Ponder about what you have learned today.  Start taking down notes, and build useful information that people will love to read about.
  2. Be an expert in your own topic.  This is your time when you can show off what you have learned.  Even though you may make mistakes at your own job, this is the time when you can learn from your mistakes and blog them.
  3. Start building your community and help people to build theirs by contributing your efforts.  Help others when you are approached if it doesn’t take you much in your time and money.  Be real and treat this like a hobby.
  4. It’s good to leverage on useful software and other people’s services.  You have a job, so start investing time and money in yourself to build a good portfolio!

Don’ts

  1. Don’t be influenced too much by all the hype about making money online. It can cause you to have information-overload syndrome  Good to listen, but just carry on building your blog.
  2. Don’t be fake.  If you are just not that kind of person, don’t do it!  If you are not the kind who will want to excel in your job, you probably won’t create a great blog anyway.  Very soon, your blog may just fade away.
  3. Don’t expect immediate results.  Blogging is just for building personal brand awareness.  If people like what you are blogging about, you will get your audience for sure.  It may take a while for the traffic to be aware of you.  Hence, start blogging if you have the patience to build it one post at a time.

Linking social media back to your blog

There are tons of networking opportunities in the social media through the exposure of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Social media brings the world even closer now that we are able to communicate and do business together in two different worlds of ours.

As you are communicating more and more in the social media, people will tend to find your blog if they have connected with you socially via an exchange of messages.  The blog can offer assurance to visitors about your worth in that industry you are in.  

Today, there are a lot of attractive blogging themes that we can leverage on, both free and paid versions.  All we need to do, is to populate our social media profile in our own blog accordingly, and to start blogging!

What may happen when you continue to do this?

  1. You may be able to make some money out of it through the huge audience that you may have created.  There are more and more people who seem to be able to work full time on their blogs just because of what they have shared.
  2. Or, you have actually done yourself a very big favor in your career path because this may lead you into a job opportunity or even a business opportunity!
  3. Or if you have gotten far enough in your blog and your industry, there are tons of businesses out there who are looking for bloggers who are either influential in their blogs, or are experienced in the social media.

Is this for real?

Seriously speaking, it is not easy.  The whole journey can be really tough and unexpected.  As for myself, I am actually perform a full time job e-marketing while I am blogging about what I have learned from my job experience.  In fact, I got my job because I used my blog as my resume!

My job is helping me to learn a lot more about the Internet, making my exposure even far greater than I have thought I would achieve on my own.  And with that experience, I actually “document” them down in a meaningful way in my blogs, and allowing my visitors to enjoy what I have learned so far.

Even if I am not going to be able to make a full time job out of blogging, I still get to know more and more fantastic people (such as Liz Strauss here!) through my online journey.  I really thank God for that.

The whole blogging experience is really a fruitful one for me, and I will continue and do even more than what I am doing today!

My question to all of you: What career values or opportunities have your blog brought you today?  Do share with us, I will love to hear about it  too!

This post was written by Charles. He has been an Internet reviewer since June 2007.  He pours his passion for Internet marketing and Internet branding into his Twitter account actively at @charleslau.

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Where to Turn When Twitter Trust Isn’t Conversation Enough?

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

relationships button

Twitter Talk

I’m a fan of Twitter. Nothing beats it for quick, agile, and brief. Twitter is the king of networking at the Internet speed and reach. Want to share something? Want to get a quick problem solved? Twitter lets us tap into our linked networks and pass information along, but you can’t send a Tweet to someone who’s never signed on.
Twitter Talk is great for a fast moving volley around a narrow idea or collecting the opinions of a crowd. But the very speed and compactness keeps the rich and telling details out — the details that explain why and how. If an idea or a problem takes exploring or discussion, Twitter doesn’t measure up.

As much as we can trust that what folks send us publicly through Twitter is likely to be the truth — as they know it sometimes 140 characters isn’t deep or wide enough. And that’s something important to recognize.

If I’ve made assumptions about you, the message I receive won’t be the one that you sent. If we use language differently our communication can go woefully wrong.

Sometimes whole conversations are important

to get something done.
to clearly state a position.
to define a project and outline expectations.
to participate in a negotiation.
to coax, cajole, or romance.

and in many other situations.

I won’t marry you, buy a house, or sign a fine deal for a job based on your tweets. I hope you won’t either. Twitter comes with an inherent lack of depth that isn’t concrete and won’t stand by me.

Twitter doesn’t do whole conversations well. Trust interactions require more than 140 characters. Trust goes deeper and grows much broader. Twitter isn’t enough to inspire trust.

Where do you go when Twitter needs to change to a whole conversation?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Do You Twitter at Conferences? Why I Don’t …

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 29 Comments

I Can’t Be There and Be Here Too

Some folks, when they travel, keep track of the timezone they left. They’ll tell you what time it is at home and then talk about how tired they are. I find what works for me is to be in the timezone I’m and to leave the other timezone behind totally. Jet lag is much less when I let my mind adjust to the time I’m in.

I get more from the experience if I live in the moment.

I’ve found I can’t be two places at once efficiently.

In the last two weeks I’ve been to three conferences and I’ve realized that the same is true about trying to twitter my experiences as I listen and interact. Each time I look down to type what was just said, I miss the next moment that is happening. I miss being where I am.

And what I send back to Twitter is only a glimpse out of context.

I admire the folks who can Twitter events and feel that they’ve attended them. I can’t.

Do you Twitter at conferences?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Going Bankrupt in the Relationship Economy

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A Guest Post by Linda M. Lopeke

relationships button

Running a successful business comes down to how well you manage your numbers. Social media enthusiasts often rave about the new medium as an expressway for growing higher revenue. But building successful networks and communities is not about numbers, it’s about creating and sustaining high-trust relationships. Building relationships takes time and energy in both real life, business, and social media. Your statistics, as in “number of friends”, “number of social engagements attended”, and “number of followers” are not an indicator of your success in the relationship economy.

Businesses and marketers will spend over $350 billion on slick campaigns designed to attract you into entering into a relationship with them in the coming year. They want you to spend your conversational currency interacting with and responding to their ever growing number of advertising messages.

Some will produce meaningful and worthy content to seduce you into engagement. A few will respect and perhaps even admire you for the unique person/prospect/customer you are. Many will only add to the noise and clutter that bloat Twitter and every other social networking site in the universe; to them you’ll just be one of a number. Even fewer will get it right (after all Liz Strauss, Chris Brogan and others like them can only help so many people understand how to use social media properly at a time).

If you talk to everyone, how long will it be before your time and energy are exhausted, leaving you emotionally bankrupt, with nothing left to share with those with whom you once had a meaningful relationship?

____

The SMARTSTART Coach, Linda M. Lopeke, writes at SmartStartCoach.com Her twitter name is @smartstartcoach

____

Thank you, Linda!
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Ever Been on a Blog That Was Laid Out Like Las Vegas

Filed Under Basics, Marketing, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

A Navigational Crap Shoot

blogworld1

I’m leaving today for BlogWorldExpo in Las Vegas. The convention is a treat of Blog and New Media conversations, exhibits, and information. I look forward to catching up with old friends, getting some work done, and making some new things happen.

What dread is what it takes to navigate that city.

In Las Vegas, the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line. They’ve purposefully made it that way. I’m frustrated, beat up, and lose time whenever I try to find anyone or anything that isn’t the nearest casino. A round trip from the front desk to a hotel room easily can steal about 20 minutes.

Las Vegas is like a blog filled with shiny things that distract and divert people. Ever been on a blog or website like that?

Las Vegas doesn’t want me to be in my hotel room.
Some blogs don’t want me to read them.

545561_las_vegas

When we have all of the time in the world to get where we’re going diversions can be interesting and wonderful. But it’s not often that the luxury of time is with us. Make it easy for folks to find what they came for and they’re like to come back again to find the next thing.

Unless you want them to be lost in your casino.

Ever been on a blog like Las Vegas?

Hope to see you at BlogWorldExpo!

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

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