Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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The ROI of Relationships: David Bullock Talks with Jay Deragon

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The theme of SOBCon09 is the ROI of Relationships. To underscore the importance of relationships in business and to have a chance to make and celebrate a few while we’re doing that, I’ve opened up this series by successful and outstanding bloggers like you.

The ROI of Relationships — David Bullock with Guest Jay Deragon

Until they heard him speak at SOBCon08, people thought David Bullock was the SEO guy I brought in to teach them about analytics. He changed their minds and their hearts by showing that analytics is about relationships with people. Listen in to what he’s doing now.


David will be back at SOBCon09. Can’t wait to see him there!

David Bullock explains the analytics and intelligence of social media at DavidBullock.com and now at Social Media Connection.com His Twitter name is: @DavidBullock

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Experience the ROI of Relationships

Be There Before the Sale

Filed Under Guest Writer, Marketing, Successful Blog | 6 Comments

The theme of SOBCon09 is the ROI of Relationships. To underscore the importance of relationships in business and to have a chance to make and celebrate a few while we’re doing that, I’ve opened up this series by successful and outstanding bloggers like you.

Be There Before the Sale
by Chris Brogan

Greg Cangialosi is one of the very best salesmen I know. He hasn’t sold the biggest dollar product ever (I think that would be David Bullock). He doesn’t sell thousands of accounts a day. Instead, he gets the title from me because he taught me a powerful sales technique, so powerful that Julien Smith and I wrote about him in our upcoming book, Trust Agents. He taught us to be there before the sale.

Greg was one of the very first confirmed sponsors of PodCamp, long before anyone knew that we’d have an international success story on our hands. When we called Greg, we had never run an event, didn’t really know what sponsors wanted, and had no idea how to communicate professionally about the give-and-take that is event sponsorship. Greg was kind, friendly, and supported our event. He didn’t ask for anything unreasonable in return.

Since that point, I’ve run into Greg at several events. He uses another trust agent move, be one of us, quite often as well, by hanging out at our events, by creating content and contributing to our space. He’s not some company owner; he’s a guy who spends time with us, has drinks with us, and who we know and care about.

The ROI of Relationships

Greg also gets the sales. I am personally a customer. I bought another account for my company. PodCamp co-founder Christopher S. Penn is a customer, and has sold the service to his company as well. Both of us refer Blue Sky Factory to anyone asking about email marketing. We love the service, and it’s cost-effective and all that, but most important to us, we have a relationship with Greg, and his service is the product of record for us with regards to email marketing.

Given Chris’s audience, my audience, the people who will buy Trust Agents, and all the time between now and the end of his business, Greg gets free, passionate advertising all the time from a growing legion of fans. For the price of a few beers here and there, Greg has an army.

If that’s not a return on investment, I don’t know what is.

Chris Brogan blogs at [chrisbrogan.com]. He is president of New Marketing Labs.
His twitter name is: @chrisbrogan

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Hear Chris Brogan speak in person!

Sponsor Love: Buzz Corps and Allstate Join the SOBCon Sponsor List!!

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Sponsor Love Is Contagious

At SOBCon09 What fun to announce this! SOBCon09 has two new sponsors!!


My relationship with Buzz Corps started with track I managed for BlogWorld Expo. I asked Geoff Nelson if he would speak on a panel about the sponsoring deals Buzz Corp makes For, By, and With the community of Blogger. One of the first things he said to me was that he and his partner Chris Aarons are champions for bloggers because they believe they learn most of what they know from blogs. We got to know each other at Gnomedex and through the months after — Geoff, Chris, and Nick, their third partner talked to introduce our event. I’m thrilled Geoff and Chris will be joining us at SOBCon.
Their contribution will provide


Kudos to Beth Rosen who helped connect me back with Marcia Hansen, a woman I sat next to at BlogWell. Marcia and I got a chance to extend our relationship recently and now Allstate is sponsoring SOBCon. I’m delighted that Marcia will be fully participating in our event including

Because They Invested in Us We Can Invest MORE in YOU!

Thank you to our new Sponors!!

Thank you also everyone who took the Blog It Earn It!! Discount

If you don’t have your promo code, please leave a link to your post below (with your email in the form) and I’ll make sure that you get it.

We’re sincerely grateful to everyone who makes this such an incredible event!!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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That many incredible people make it incredible!!

Would You Do a Working Weekend with a Dream Team in Social Media?

Filed Under SOB Business, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

150 People Looking in the Same Direction

TIME.

It’s only resource we can’t get more of.

Suppose you could take a weekend retreat away from the noise

A weekend learning with Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
Brian Clark Liz StraussBrian Solis Kali Evans-Raoul KD Paine Geoff Nelson and Chris Aarons Denise Wakeman Wendy Piersall and David Bullock Stephen Smith and Michael Martine Glenda Watson Hyatt, Karen Putz, and Stephen Hopson
Saul Colt and Terry Starbucker Glenda Watson Hyatt, Karen Putz, and Stephen Hopson — 150 person dream team.

Would you invest in your business to experience that?

Thank You, Buzz Corps!!

I’m delighted to announce that Geoff Nelson and Buzz Corps have stepped up to make it easier.


Because They Invested in Us We Can Invest MORE in YOU!

We’ve had great response to the discount we offered last week, almost more than we could afford. With the help of Buzz Corps, we’re able to keep our promise bright and shiny in every way. Thank you, Buzz Corps!!

The BlogIt EarnIt Discount

It’s called the “Blog It, Earn It” discount. We’d like to hear from you about what “The ROI of Relationships” means to you. Tell us why relationships matter. How they affect what you do every day and how you do it. Maybe you can tell us how you see them changing the face of tomorrow’s businesses. We want to know how relationships and personal connections shape your world.

Heck, you can even write a love letter to a sponsor you’d like to have a relationship with. Pick a company that’s done something great for bloggers in the past and tell them why you think it was important and valuable that they did what they did. Propose an idea for how you might do something a SOBCon sponsor already listed on the SOBCon blog.

Blog your thoughts, share it, link it back to this post, and broadcast it on Twitter (hash #blogitearnit). We’ll also link to you on the SOBCon blog for others to see and learn. And as a thank you for sharing your story, we’ll send you a special code to take $200 off the $795 FULL conference rate - that’s over a 25% savings!

Or, if you can’t make to SOBCon09, you could “pay it forward” and pass the discount on to one of your friends — or offer it back to us as a gift for us to pass on for you.

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 2009.

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

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

Make the investment.

Anita Roddick’s “The Body Shop” Was Built on Relationships

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog | 9 Comments

The theme of SOBCon09 is the ROI of Relationships. To underscore the importance of relationships in business and to have a chance to make and celebrate a few while we’re doing that, I’ve opened up this series by successful and outstanding bloggers like you.

Dame Anita Roddick, Business As Unusual
by Gerald Neo

“The old views of business as a jungle where only the vicious survive will, I hope, soon be giving way to a new view of business as a community where only the responsible will lead. If yours values are heralded and if your heart is in the right place, if your feeling are recognized and your spirit at play, I believe there will be footprints out there for all of us.” –Anita Roddick — Business As Unusual

The late a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Roddick”>Dame Anita Roddick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Roddick) is one of those few business person whom I always admired. She had built a business empire The Body Shop not just on making profit out of producing cosmetic products but also an ambassador for fair trade, environmental awareness, animal protection and respect for human rights.

Anita had always being known for her campaigning work on social and environmental causes. And through campaigning, she had caused multi-national companies like Shell and government to take remedial action on the things which they have done wrong.

In one of her books “Business As Unusual”, she mentioned the following reasons as how The Body shop maintains their identity in a business environment that usually alienates humanity in every way.

  • We didn’t know how to run a conventional business. We had never read a book on economic theory and had never even heard of Milton Friedman.
  • We valued and respected labour as fuzzy and cuddly, nerdy as that sounds. We understood that life was no more complicated than love and work.
  • We had no money. Every original was based on reusing everything, refilling and recycling we could.
  • We were naïve. We didn’t know you could tell lies. That grace has stayed with us to this day.
  • We loved change. We believed everything was subject to change.
  • We had a secret ingredient called euphoria. We shared an extraordinary level of optimism, and we still do.

Finally – and this was the main ingredient – we couldn’t take a moisturizer seriously!

Anita had built every business relationship on those reasons. And those reasons had also become the foundation for the values, which every employee of The Body Shop used to guide them as they worked with each other.

In the ever-changing business world, companies can only be successful if the people running it are true to their values. And usually how are they being judged on that? It’s not based on their bottom line but how they maintain their business relationship with everyone from business partners, customer, vendors and even their employees.

Gerald Neo can be found at geraldheralds where he
writes about anything from leadership managment and organizational
managment to online marketing and social media.
His twitter name is @gneo

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

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