Successful Blog

Get Positive Attention in the Twitterverse and Other Networking Situations

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Anyone who’s spent time in the Twitterverse knows that every person uses it in a way uniquely suited to his or her own purpose. That’s the beauty of a great tool. But if your goal is social networking and conversation, you want to have folks around. Conversation without a few and followers is usually called a monologue.

The art of attracting fiercely loyal twitter followers can make the time we spend twittering useful, productive, and significantly more fun! Great Twitter followers are friends, business colleagues, and people who inspire us. Be a great Twitter conversationalist and those followers will bring their friends join in. These traits in a Twitterer always catch my attention.

Want to have new Twitter friends? Here’s how to be one …

  • Have a presence. Make a Twitter home page with some self-expression. Have a name that I can remember, even if it’s not the name your family calls you. Have a picture as your avatar to let me know that you’re serious about being around long to finish a conversation.
  • Don’t wait for people to talk to you first. Follow about 30 people who are interested in these same things you are. Find them at http://search.twitter.com Take a look at their profile or their blogs. Reach out to them using the @ sign and their name to share a comment on what you found.
  • Show up in new places. Sound obvious? Maybe it’s not obvious as we think. Most of us tend to hang where we are. If you want to make new friends, show up in new places and new times and talk to new people about new ideas. New situations stretch our brains.
  • Respond personally. When someone follows you, explore their profile before you say hello. Know who you’re talking to. A statement about something someone wrote will get you noticed in a way that a “Thanks for following” response never will.
  • Share your best ideas and strategies. Get them out there. Let other folks use them too. Everyone likes a generous soul. Generosity come back to you in the most interesting and intriguing ways. Just as @inspiremetoday about that.
  • Showcase great stuff. It’s charming to point to something another person has done well. It shows generosity, gives respect, and adds value to your conversation. Showcase the people you care about. Care about the people you meet.
  • Give credit, give links, give a hand. Be generous of mind and of spirit. People remember and respect generosity. It’s a statement of character. It also gets their attention. You never know who might want to thank you one day or what shape that thank you might take.
  • Treat everyone as an influencer. Everyone wants to feel a part of something bigger than they are. Let your influencers be a part of what you do in every way that you can. Encourage participation. The more they feel they belong, the more they will bring friends along.
  • Be passionate, fun, funny, and human, If you are, other people will feel they can be too.

Be the kind of fiercely loyal, intriguing follower-friends you’d want to have and you’ll find those are the kind of fiercely loyal, intriguing follower-friends who are attracted to you.

But you knew that.

What gets your positive attention in the Twitterverse?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Will I See You at WordCamp Las Vegas Jan. 10-11?

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Flying without a Net?


Just put the finishing touches on my presentation. conversation. It’s called, “From Blog to Community,” but I think of it as “Flying on the Interwebs Without a Net.” No powerpoints, it’s going be the speaker’s version of a blog post.

WordCamp Las Vegas is a two-day event being held at the Palace Station Hotel & Casino, just off the Las Vegas strip on January 10 and 11, 2009. You’ll find the complete schedule here. I’m speaking on Sunday after lunch and I plan on keeping every one fully engaged.

Anyone who’s been to a WordCamp event knows they’re a great deal. $20 gets you a t-shirt and access to some outstanding speakers, including Matt Mullenweg, Aaron Hockley, Lorelle VanFossen, Dave Taylor and many more. And did I say I’d be there?

Let me know if you will be there too!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

SOBCon09 is May 1, 2,3 in Chicago. Register before 2009 and save!

Thanks to Week 166 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

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.

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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

What Tony Lawrence Said … About Commenting on Blogs

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A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

Getting Folks to Follow You Home

When new bloggers ask how to get more readers, one of the first answers offered is usually to comment on other blogs. Connecting with like-minded thinkers with a thoughtful response to what they write is a strong way to let folk know who we are. The key is in the quality of the comments we write.

Here’s what Tony said . . .

I don’t think I like the idea of commenting on every post.

If you are really adding something worthwhile, fine. But how many of us have something useful to add on each and every post? And if it IS that useful, I’m probably going to blog about it myself and include a link back to my inspiration rather than leaving a comment. Of course that does zilch for building traffic links, but if I’m really saying something important, it may be better for me long term.

In fact, whenever I start writing a comment and it gets over a paragraph or two I start thinking “Shouldn’t this be a post?”

This comment qualifies, but I’ll leave it here just this once

I also don’t necessarily like putting links in my comments. If I honestly feel that I have something you really have to read, I might, but I’m more apt to just say “I do have a post on this at my site” or (most often) say nothing at all. I just don’t like using other people’s comments to promote myself.

When someone comments on one of my sites for no apparent reason than to get a link, I delete their comment entirely. If they have added something at least marginally useful, I’ll leave it be. I’m not draconian, but I’m not going to be spammed.

If somebody asked a question and I have a good answer on one of my sites, yes, of course I’ll link to it. But sometimes, and particularly if the post at my site is short, I’ll just cut and paste from the post instead of linking.

I’m probably too conservative in that regard.

Tony Lawrence from a comment on October 31, 2005

A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 12-26-08

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

COLOURlovers has a legendary gift.
Why does Santa wear red?

Believe it or not, present-day Santa owes his red robe not to an ancient legend or to an early myth but to …

How to Split an Atom has 33 gifts that worlk
Here are a few resources to help you out. This list focuses pretty heavily on design, development, marketing, advertising and “Social Media” jobs but there is something here for everyone.

mousewords has a gift for seeing things.
My synesthesia has been giving me troubles.

It’s not the sort of thing an aspirin will cure. Synesthesia—specifically, in my case, grapheme ? color synesthesia—is a neurological phenomenon that causes people to see letters and numbers in different colors.

Zocalo Group has a gift advice on behavior and a cool treehouse. One of the keys to successful social media for companies is to avoid being creepy.

The Viral Garden has a gift of intelligence.
Is he wrong? I would say his methods would work, at least in the short-term. But the idea that you ‘have to target the influencers’ is SO 2005.

Here is what I did; Instead of targeting ‘influencers’, I targeted smart people.

Related ala carte selections include

The Paisano has the gift of song …

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

A 5-Step Plan for Work in a Time of No Jobs and 25 Services that Could Be Sold Separately

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At times like this, you don’t need to be unemployed to need more money coming in. All of us have higher costs than we did a few years ago. My assessment just went up by $100 / month. It does that every year. How we approach this thinning cash flow is important to our future situation. It’s hard to be saving when the bills are growing faster than the income.

The answer used to be to find a job, but finding a job in a recession could take more time than we have available.

So I suggest we find work instead.

Here’s a 5-step plan for doing just that.

  1. Identify a problem everyone has … lack of time might be one.
  2. Choose a subgroup that knows you and your skills … let’s say, your network of business bloggers.
  3. Look how you might use your time to improve what they offer … find a problem or a wish they have in common that you can solve or make happen
  4. Package that problem or wish as a reasonable offer … be able to explain why it’s smart, appealing, and incredibly easy to hire to for that small thing you offer.
  5. Ask them to refer you to other folks who might benefit from the same offer.

and here are 25 services that could be sold separately

  1. True up my social media profiles.
  2. Keep follower lists up-to-date.
  3. Monitor the social sphere and clip posts.
  4. Set up interviews and guest posts.
  5. Update old content.
  6. Rewrite old blog headlines for more power.
  7. Identify archive posts that could be revised.
  8. Suggest and gather content for an eBook
  9. Develop a plan for a newsletter.
  10. Update and organize the pages in my sidebar.
  11. Make a blogger’s press kit.
  12. Write a Wikipedia page about the blog or the blogger.
  13. Shoot a video interview.
  14. Clean up the old code on my blog.
  15. Suggest a new color palette and header for an existing design.
  16. Research photos.
  17. Research trends and topics.
  18. Try out tools.
  19. Find and fix broken links.
  20. Delete dead content.
  21. Organize an editorial calendar.
  22. Set up a file system.
  23. Make a blog post like this into a slideshare presentation.
  24. Update my plugins.
  25. Suggest entries for a link post around a theme.

Most of the folks I know can’t afford a VA or a full-time assistant right now, but they could use some help on a discrete task or two on this list. If you chose those things you quickly and well, you price these tasks attractively and folks would feel good about the improvements you made.

I’m thinking of quite a few. I’d like to hire someone to do — one at a time. Are there other services you might like for you blog?

It’s good us and our blogs. It’s community-centered goal. How might we get some folks back to work this way?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!