Successful Blog

The Mic Is On: We're Talking Online and Offline Cultures

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It’s Like Open Mic Only Different

The Mic Is On

Here’s how it works.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

It’s Not a Another Life …

When go to another country, when we talk on the telephone, we don’t say that we’re not in real life. But somehow we’ve started thinking that because we’re using our minds to connect online, we’re not in the real world. It’s a different culture with different rules that’s all.

  • How does trust work differently in different cultures?
  • How is coming online like going to another country?
  • How do you figure out who’s good and who is not in different cultures?
  • What makes relationships faster online?
  • What makes relationships misfire in person, on the phone, and on the Internet?
1045178_strange_world

And, whatever else comes up, including THE EVER POPULAR, Basil the code-writing donkey . . . and flamenco dancing (because we always get off topic, anyway.)

Oh, and bring example links.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
image: sxc.hu
Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

How Do You Keep Negative Comments from Turning You Around?

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Sometimes It’s Semantics …

Who hasn’t had the joyous experience of a negative comment? We overhear them around the corner, confront them in conversation, and find them written boldly on our blogs. It helps to remember that they’re often more about the person talking … what that person heard, misheard, or never listened to from the start.

It helps a lot if we don’t make such things about ourselves.

A friend asked me once how I handled negative comments on my blog. My first sentence was, “Well I’m a saloonkeeper’s daughter and I used to teach first grade …” I had no idea how that sounded until she laughed out loud.

How do you keep negative words from turning you around?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence!!

Open Mic 7pm Chgo Time: Comparing Online and Offline Culture

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Join Us Tonight

JOIN US TONIGHT AT 7PM

It’s Not a Another Life …

When go to another country, when we talk on the telephone, we don’t say that we’re not in real life. But somehow we’ve started thinking that because we’re using our minds to connect online, we’re not in the real world. It’s a different culture with different rules that’s all.

Join us tonight to talk about it. 🙂

Oh, and bring example links that explain your thoughts. .

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

What We Gotta Know about These Tools

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It’s Not What Comes After Twitter …

With the advent of SOBCon Hands-On event partnerships, I’m enjoyng the pleasure of forming relationships and working alongside people who share my business passions organizations, businesses, and individuals learning to serve their markets by working online and off seamlessly. Watch for them in the next few weeks.

The authentic candor of the conversations with Susan Kuhn Frost, Gio Galluci, Erica O’Grady, DDGriffith and Starbucker has totally convinced me that teaching the tools isn’t an end in itself.

Businesses of every size seem confused about integrating the Internet — they see social media tools as key drivers of business. Social media tools don’t build a business.

I keep thinking of an editor with a writing assignment. She had talent, experience, and the best equipment to use to write the piece she was assigned. She came to me on day three, saying that she just couldn’t do it.

After a few minutes, the problem was easy to spot. All of the tools in the world wouldn’t fix it.

She hadn’t decided — didn’t know — exactly what she wanted to say.

You can’t use the tools of a writer if you don’t know that.

Gotta Know the Goal Before the Tool Is Gonna Help

To bring it down to it’s most basic form, the business that picks up the tools first without setting goals first won’t don’t do well.

Email, telephone, Twitter, any tool is only as useful as it match to the purpose. Not the other way around.

If we want to be successful using social media tools, we need to know a few things to make the tools work:

  • Who we are.
  • What we offer.
  • Who we’re offering that to.
  • Which tool is a match.

Just like the editor, who had to know what she wanted to say to use the tools at her disposal …

I’ve decided to let the other guys worry about what comes after Twitter … from the pencil to to the typewriter to the telephone to the computer … they’re all tools.

We gotta know what we’re using these tools to do.

Have you seen people get so involved in a tool like Twitter that they’ve used it without really having a goal?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence!!

Thanks to Week 193 SOBs

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muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

media-mensch
cash-flow-hero
jacob-morgan

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss