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Social Media and Promotion: How to Get Your Network Pulling for You

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 17 Comments

Think Teamwork, Not Self-Promotion

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A friend emailed me asking if I would pass along information about a product just coming out. The email was a sale pitch I could pick up and pass on. The rest of the message was over the top for me — kind of pushy and kind of “wink, wink, nudge, nudge — you help me and I’ll help you later.”

I didn’t find that compelling. What I found was a way to say, “I’m sorry, not this one.”

It takes time to build a network. No one wants to abuse theirs, but wasn’t investment partly for support when we need it? What’s the right way to enlist the support of the people we call our colleagues?

I asked a few friends . . . they led me to these steps.

In his blog post, War Paint and Promotion, Todd Jordan offers these words of wisdom . . .

It’s partially about having something great to say, but it’s equally about sharing your story and making them a part of it.

Keep them as you read through these.

    0. Seed the garden. As Dave Navarro said, ” . . . Spend time either a) getting *their* name out or b) helping them move forward on their site goals … well before you need promo.” via Twitter.

    1. Offer something worth sharing. Sure I love you, but if your product is bad or boring. I’m going to find it hard to pass it on to the other friends in my network. <

    2. Show confidence and courtesy. If you get nervous, self-conscious, or overly humorous, It makes it seem like your products can’t stand on its own.

    3. Let me opt in! Tell me about what you have in a way that leaves me lots of room to choose for myself. If you hang your promotion on our relationship, you might find that our relationship wasn’t strong enough to carry it.

    4. Make it easy to talk about you — have a simple message. You can offer me the way to say what your point is, but don’t give me a speech.

    5. Give me a way to feel proud. I’m going to be sharing your message with other folks I care about.

And Don’t forget . . .

what. Martin Neumann said.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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The W-List: Gathering a List of Outstanding Women Bloggers

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 110 Comments

Hear the Women

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Meet some spectacular women in blogging.

ToddAnd made the Marketing Power150. It was built to offer some organization and respect to the wide world of marketing blogs. The Power 150, based on an algorithm of five ratings, is now a partnership between ToddAnd and AdAge.

Yesterday, Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent shared the list of Women’s PR blogs that was originally pulled from Todd’s list by Kami Huyse at Communications Overtones. Valeria points out the focus on and the power of male bloggers in the blogosphere.

The statistic Kami drew out is valid pretty much all over the place. Go to Fast Company Expert blogs where I post every Thursday and count the males and female bloggers — 26 to 6.

Are there truly 5+ to 1 men bloggers to women bloggers? Why should we care?

We should care because women are great at conversation, strategy, and writing. We should care for the same reason that no one should be overlooked.

So Valeria has made a suggestion.

Maybe we can start a W-List to help us all discover great blogs authored by women.

I’ve been exploring these blogs since yesterday. I’m proud to present them. I’m surprised at the one I didn’t know were out there. With that in mind, I’m passing on the entire list with these additions:

The W-List

I’ve incorporated the above blogs in the list.

Now the list seems to be filling out nicely. What women bloggers can you add?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

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121: What’s the Key to a Promotion Strategy?

Filed Under 121 Conversation, Business Life, Successful Blog | 5 Comments

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A Strategic Conversation

Where we left the conversation, DAWUD MIRACLE asked me (and you),

What do you feel is necessary to create an effective strategy to promote a business?.

Wow! I’m grinning. Okay, Dawud, you’ve got me now. Strategy and promotion in one question. Hmmmm. I bet my readers will do better than I do on this one. Maybe I’d better unpack the question first.

Strategy . . . I’ve always liked the idea but forth in the book, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Much of why I like it is in the title — find an uncontested space where competition is not. The idea is simple. . . . Why swim in the shark invested blood-red ocean where the fight is always on? Why not swim in the calm blue ocean where I can be a category of one?

For once in my life, maybe the fact that I’m different (you are too — right?) can be a fabulous plus if I turn it to my advantage. That’s a strategic thought!

Strategy for promotion . . . As I look back I see a two-part blue ocean-type strategy that has been a part of tpromoting the business I’ve built behind Successful-Blog.

A great product is its own promotion. I’ve created unique value my ideal customers love. The Perfect Virtual Manager — even the concept that we all deserve a personal manager as a rock star might have — has been helping entrepreneurs, small businesses, and a corporation or two take a new look. We’re working as partners to focus their business and find their ideal customers. The PVM is a one-of-a-kind business support structured around a foundational plan I’ve built during 22 years of training people who teach.

The new series, Inside-Out Thinking, in like manner, is unique in an Internet of “me too” content. It promotes itself. The series is something readers need and hasn’t been offered before. The series provides the hows and whys about building a solid business foundation and finding the ideal customers who love what we love to do. By conceiving and designing from my own experience and proven track record — yours might not be where mine is, but you have yours — I’ve created something others cannot also create. They can follow, but they can’t duplicate it.

Open Comment Night, the Virtual Conference last March, this one2one conversation that we’re sharing are all value offerings that I can create unique customer value. Soon enough as I focus my content in the areas that reflect what I’m particularly good at discussing, my competition begins to fade.

Promotion. Promotion is easiest when you ask cusomters to choose between two options:

  • A. YOU
  • B. Everyone else in the world.

Here’s my most effective promotion strategy.

Set up a choice between me and the rest of the world. Then promote the rest of the world.

And since this is a one2one conversation… to Dawud, (and you too)

How important is strategy to your business? How does your strategy get built?

If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear your answer too.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

One2One is a cross-blog conversation. You can see the entire One-2-One Conversation series on the Successful Series page.

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Writing YEAH! 10 WHOLE NEW Reasons to Get Jazzed About Writing

Filed Under Basics, Branding, Marketing, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, Writing | 21 Comments

Writing in Times of Cabin Fever

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Artists, designers, painters, woodworkers, crafters . . . all of us who put our hands in our heads . . .

First we learn the habits and tools of what we do.
Then we take on the values they represent.

The real tools of writing are thoughts and ideas.
The real values are the relationships we make with them.
–ME Strauss

We call the time cabin fever. It’s the end of Chicago winter — no sun, not much sunshine in people. Everyone’s tired of being cooped up. One dismal Sunday last March, I wrote Writing–Ugh! 10 Reasons to Get Jazzed about Writing.

Jazz helps when you’ve got cabin fever.

Then it was over. The sun finally came, and we wrote. We wrote through spring tulips, young love, and baseball season. We wrote through summer vacations, the World Cup, and fireworks. We got into some serious writing.

Like everyone who’s been busy writing, I didn’t stop to notice much. Until today, now I’m jazzed all over again!

YEAH! Now I’ve got . . .

10 WHOLE NEW Reasons to Get Jazzed about Writing

The original 10 reason still hold fast. Writing is a phenomenal tool. What I’ve discovered are new reasons are about how writing has made a difference in our lives.

Here’s what I see and why I’m jazzed all over again.

    1. Writing has given us a place we can meet. We talk about writing — in public now. Think back a few months, a few years, talking about writing was something that got left behind in school and in writers’ groups, or it was the private venue of folks who worked in intellectual property. Now it’s become the conversation of regular people.

    2. Writing has led us to read more. In order to write, we read. Many of us read more than we ever did before. We read to find out what folks write about. We read to find ideas. We read to find out our own thoughts. We read more than we would if we didn’t write.

    3. Writing leads us to read like writers. “If it’s in print, it must be true.” Remember that? Writing takes the shine off the coin and the glamour off the print. We’re not so quick to be taken in by words that “look” good. We’re separating fact from opinion more quickly and more accurately, and letting folks know when they get mixed up about them.

    4. Writing has brought more of us to care about how we write. Good enough isn’t the standard any more. What once was a “have to” has become a “want to.” We’re learning to write for ourselves and our readers, not for our job roles and our teachers’ approval.

    5. Wrting is making us better communicators. People talk back and push ideas forward. We’re having conversations we never would have had were we not writing. Each communication offers a secret something new that adds to what we already know about writing and people.

    6. Writing builds confidence and expertise. Every piece we write is just that much better than the last — over time it shows. Go back and look. Have you stopped to see how much better your writing is since you started? . . . how much more you know? Other folks have. That’s why they read what you write.

    7. Writing allows us to think more deeply — a crucial skill. People don’t spend time typing “small talk.” Only weather folks type about the weather, and when they do, they’re not having casual conversation. We organize our thoughts before we publish them. We consider the world differently in search of ideas and points of view to write about. We think about the folks who will read what we write. We no longer think on the surface of ideas. We’re learning to push past sound-bytes and infosnacks, so that readers have something to respond to.

    8. Writing can make us better listeners and better people. We’re finding out people say the same things in different ways. Writing is the best way to learn that different doesn’t mean wrong, and letting go is the first step in learning. Sometimes folks send our message back in entirely new ways — they hear something valuable, but not what we said. We learn to listen to them and to ourselves as well.

    9. Writing is contagious, builds relationships, and changes lives. Writing great content still means search engine ranking and link popularity. It also means people — real human beings. People come who take an interest in the writer. Writing begets writing. Conversations lead to conversations. Relationships grow between like minds, and people meet. How many folks have you written to in the last week? How many of those people will you meet in your life? How many folks have you met that you trust?

    10. Writing can break down walls and build communities. Corporations are finding that customers write. Big companies are taking down their brick walls to listen and starting to write back to us. Walls are falling down all over the Internet. Communities are replacing them. There were 456 comments from people across the world who were talking to each other about their favorite neighborhood. Enough said.

You might find other ways on the Internet to communicate — podcasting, video — but they’re not the same.

Writing is interactive, individual and social, makes a person think first and filter out thoughts that don’t matter. What I realized today is the greatest way that writing is changing us.

We’re becoming literate people who know more about ourselves, the world, and each other.

Now . . . . I’m even more jazzed about writing than I was last March.

Can you blame me?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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9 + 1 Things Every Reader Wants from a Writer

Filed Under Basics, Comments, Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 68 Comments

Where to Start

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It can seem complicated to write for a readership that includes beginners to experts. I’ve done it for over two decades. It can seem like there’s too much to consider to meet them all at their own level.

My experience is that beginners and experts are not that different when they read. They might choose to read different things, but we all do. Beyond that difference of content, beginners, experts, and those of us in the middle — all readers — want the same things from a writer. Read more

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