Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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

How Many Ways Do You Offer Your Content?

Filed Under Marketing, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 11 Comments

Repurposing Content Is a Service

relationships button

If you watch cable television carefully, you will see an interview clip from one program replayed again in another program. Perhaps you’ve had the feeling you’ve seen a show before, but then again . . . maybe not? Packaging and repackaging bits of content makes it worth more and last longer. Five uses for the same content stretches the corporate dollar.

It seems backwards doesn’t it . . . to reuse content in a time when there is so much of it? But it makes sense. If I know my content is accurate and high quality, I should share it with as large an audience as I can — particularly in this time of attention economy.

So Much Content . . . Why?

The amount of content and information available is more than anyone can read, yet we are all being asked to know more, and more, and more. If there’s so much content already, it seems miserly to repackage what is already published?

Not necessarily.

There are valid reasons to repackage content in this age of attention economy. Repackaging and repurposing content allows a publisher

Granted, those three points actually say the same thing in different ways. That’s exactly what repackaging is — tailoring content to suit the needs of the audience.

Just as some conversations are meant for an email, some for a meeting, and some are meant to be shared in person … content can be designed to fit the needs of the situation.

Giving the readers what they want instead of what we think they need — that’s a concept worth exploring. Much of existing content probably suits existing needs, if only we would structure it in way that our readers found it relevant and offer it so that they could use it as they want to rather than as we think they should.

How many ways do you offer your content? Just one? Is that enough?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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Muppet Metaphors of Social Media

Filed Under Outside the Box | 43 Comments

Sometimes I meet Liz – in the city, or on Twitter – to talk about not talking about social media.

“So here’s what I want to know,” I asked one night, “Does talking about not talking about social media count as talking about social media?”

“I think I talk more about the muppets,” she responded.

We decided I’m Cookie Monster. She’s Grover.

I giggled a little as I wrote back, “This is you.” And I linked to this video:

She proudly retweeted. Because this is who we are. And this is what we do.

We go around and around, thinking up ways to change the world by connecting with it. Talking, walking, sometimes getting tired…

I don’t know much about social media.
I know more about cookies.

Since I was a kid I’ve had a delicious talent for intuitively choosing the best cookie in the jar. And as a kid, if you were my friend and I only had one cookie, I’d always give you the bigger half. I like to think that’s the most valuable thing Liz and I have in common. (I mean, who needs tools when you’ve got COOKIES? Ahem.)

Liz knows how to share, how to connect, how to get people through things – how to get to the core of who they are and walk them through the stuff they need to do to get to the places they want to go.

Sometimes she speaks in metaphors. Sometimes she’s like Grover. Sometimes the other kids don’t understand her. But the ones with the best hearts love her, because she’s like them.

Liz once told me, “Every star shines — brilliance is relative.”

I don’t remember why she told me that, except that that’s who she is. Her heart is always golden. Even in the moments I have no idea what she’s talking about, I trust her with all my heart because I know she would never let me fall.

We don’t have to talk about social media to teach social media. But to learn it, we’ve got to live it.

That’s what Liz does. That’s what Liz helps me do.

So when Liz asked me, “While I’m at WordCamp Las Vegas, will you hijack my blog? Maybe you could write five things people don’t know about me, like I wrote 5 Tips about Surviving on the Road with Lorelle that one time?”

…. And my response was….
“Huh? You did what? Who’s Lorelle?”
… “I don’t know five things!”

… I knew I probably know just this one:

I’d rather learn the Muppet Metaphors of Social Media than bang my head against the wall studying the Cruel Calculus of Communicating Online.

I’d rather share cookies with a friend.

What has Liz taught YOU?

Or, um, who’s your favorite muppet and why?

Critical Skill 9: How to Have Positivity and Confidence Making Tough Decisions

Filed Under Outside the Box, Successful Blog | 14 Comments

Let Me Think about That . . .

Future Skills

Life is a never-ending series of choices and decisions. Do I get up now or wait another minute? Do I sign this contract or hope for a better offer? Do I buy a new desk or upgrade my computer?

Some choices are fun . . . Where do I take my friends when they come to visit?
Some decisions are not so . . . Do I uproot my family or give up the great job in another city?

The fun ones speed up our thinking with endless possibilities. The not so fun ones mire us in thoughts of dead-end alleys. Sometimes, we forget that we have options about how we consider and respond to choices and decisions.

The Dilemma of Logic and Emotion

It’s almost impossible to find a child who doesn’t like to solve a puzzle or a riddle. Children usually find choices fun too — when the choices are simple or they can choose again. Decisions are a little trickier, because decisions cut off other options. Most adults don’t like big decisions any more than children do.

It’s the cutting off other options that often finds us in a dilemma. No answer seems the right one. Or worse, no answer even looks a glimmer better than another.

Our brains are made to sort information, make choices, and come to decisions. No decision is particularly frightful when we face it with raw logic. But logic alone omits a good part of what makes us human. We need our hearts and our personal goals to get to a grounded, well-rounded decision.

The issue is that our logic can be at odds with our intuition and emotion.

How to Have Positivity and Confidence Making Tough Decisions

A great decision is made from what we bring to the situation. We can’t change our views in response to every decision, but we can check our own and other folks’ views. If we open ourselves to test our thinking, a tough decision process can be one of positivity and confidence. Try approaching your next tough call in these ways.

Head - Heart List


These approaches to tough decisions help us stand outside our thinking. In the chart of Logic and Emotion, we weigh our head and heart, but we also see our intuitive or experiential bias. Revealing that subconscious bias can help us sort more quickly than the information on the list itself. When we consult our Internal Board of Directors, we open our minds to new ideas and new views.

Those new ideas and new views offer a wealth of contingencies and possibilities. The decision made from them will be grounded and well-thought. We can move forward with positive confidence about what we’ll do.

How do you get through tough decisions with confidence?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Need help sorting decisions? Click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.
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The Game of Life

Filed Under Idea Bank, Outside the Box, Successful Blog | 14 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

how we make things work.

We finish a day’s work exhausted, burnt out, bone tired. If we were asked to keep going, it would be a stretch — nor a healthy thing. Do we go home to rest? Do we take a nap, rejuvenate and refuel? No, most of us don’t. An hour or two later, you’ll find us out dancing, playing ball, or at the gym lifting weights.

Many of the sports and activities that we do for fun require more physical and mental energy than what we need to invest to get through a work day. Yet, they don’t wear us out nearly as much, and in some cases, they pick us back up.

How is that? It’s no surprise that it has to do with how we think about work.

Years ago, Charles A. Coonradt tested his idea by turning work tasks into measurable self-competing contests — games that could be won. Folks were asked to weigh the paper they filed every day. Within 3 weeks, a department that had overdue filing for 3 years was ahead and found itself with 3 hours extra each day. The people in the department asked for more work — new work — that they could measure that way. [He called his book, The Game of Work.]

elevators-going-up-a-wall

Sometimes I use this technique to get myself to conquer tasks I’m not fond of doing. Today I’m wondering what life would be like if I took the same approach to everything I do?

Have you thought about that? What problem would be easier if you thought of it as one more level, challenge, quest, in the game of life?

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How I Chose 18 Thought Leaders to Follow (and Their Links)

Filed Under Idea Bank, Outside the Box, Successful Blog | 28 Comments

Business, Blogs, Living

Outside the Box logo

Yesterday, I talked about

How to Play Follow the Leader to Kick Start Your Brain

Today I thought I might take that further and tell how to choose who to follow.

How I Chose 18 Thought Leaders to Follow

Great leaders don’t have the answers. They have the questions. They seek the answers. They look at who came before them. They talk, but listen more. They write, but not as much as they read. Great leaders are a curious lot.

They encourage us to do our own thinking. Here’s the criteria used to choose 18 Thought Leaders and links to their blogs and blog posts to demonstrate what I’m saying.

Follow the folks who like ideas and learning.

Follow the folks who are curious and curious about you.

Follow the folks who are positive.

Follow the folks who are jazzed about what they do.

Follow the folks who know where they are going.

Follow the folks who’ve made it and are still there.

Need I say more?

The number of leaders on our doorstep is unimaginable. We could be inspired every minute.

Think of the leaders you recommend. What qualities do you use to choose who you follow?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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I Have an Idea — I Have Lots of Them!
Don’t Hunt IDEAS — Be an Idea Magnet

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