Successful Blog

Call for Donations for Liz Strauss Fundraiser

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Earlier this month, many of you had the opportunity to attend the tenth SOBCon event in Chicago. It was a fantastic weekend, and we were thrilled that SOBCon’s co-founder Liz Strauss could join us. As many of you know, Liz has been dealing with throat cancer for the last few months. So it was wonderful to see her out and about, proving that Liz doesn’t back down from any challenge.

Following that event, a group of SOBCon folks and other friends who couldn’t be in Chicago had an idea. Liz has given so much to so many in the community, what if we did something for her?

Liz’s diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer last fall came with both physical, emotional, and financial burdens. To fight the cancer required extensive chemo and radiation. On top of her treatments, Liz also suffered a fall that broke her hip and shoulder. As a result, Liz was confined to the hospital from December through March. She has been through the crucible.

So while a recent CT scan and laryngoscopy both showed no signs of cancer, Liz is still dealing with the fallout of cancer treatments and broken bones. Liz’s ability to travel and speak professionally, her primary source of income, has been placed on hold as she continues to heal. For the next few months, Liz finds herself in the incredibly frustrating situation of needing to work, but not yet having the physical strength to do so.

So when we asked the question, what can we do, here’s what we came up with. We can’t help Liz heal faster, but we can ease the financial stress. To that end we’re creating an auction fundraiser with all proceeds from the fundraiser going to Liz.

We’ve received some wonderful and generous donations. In fact, a few items that came in were so generous that it just confirms how much people love Liz and want to show their support. And based on the response we’ve gotten to our initial request for donations, we wanted the community at large to have the opportunity to participate and show their support, too.

If you have an item that you’d like to donate for the auction fundraiser, please fill out this form on Podio.

The auction will launch in early June, and we’ll provide more details shortly on when and how you can participate. We’ve also received requests that we make an option available for people to donate directly. That donation link will go live in early June, too.

Again, thank you all for the support and know that Liz appreciates all the many kindnesses that have been sent her way in the last few months.



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3 Steps to Finding Your C-Spot

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I’m talking about blogging, people.

Your C-Spot is your creativity spot, your happy place, where you feel your flow, mojo, juices, ideas, you get the picture.

Sometimes it feels as though great writing is like lightning in a bottle–fleeting and electric. But I think you can do some specific things to capture the lightning.
Writing is like capturing lightning in a bottle

This is our homework assignment for the coming week.

Step One – Find the Perfect Time of Day to Create

Let’s use a sample writing prompt (in case you need one). Write for 30 minutes on the subject of “what I learned from my first job that I’m still using today.” Liz has written some inspiration for finding your writing voice. When you’re ready:

  • Day 1, write first thing in the morning, right after you eat breakfast.
  • Day 2, write in the afternoon, after you’ve already gotten your non-writing tasks done.
  • Day 3, write just before bedtime, when it gets quiet in your house.
  • BONUS Day, if you normally write during the week, try a weekend (or vice versa).

Take note of how your “flow” feels in each time-frame. Was it easy to write, or did you stare at the screen for a bit?

Step Two – Find the Perfect Physical Location to Create

Using the same writing prompt (substitute your second job), choose three different locations where you can write. Try your dining room table, your desk at work, in bed with your laptop, out on the porch, wherever you feel comfortable.

Did this affect your writing?

Step Three – Add Ambiance for Creative Flow

Some people need to have music playing in the background, and some need to write in absolute silence. Using what you already know about your style, experiment a bit with your writing environment. Light candles, turn the TV off or on, put on noise-canceling headphones, try writing with pen and paper instead of a keyboard…go crazy.

How did that work? Did changing the ambiance change your attitude? Did it spark new ideas?

At the end of the experiment, you can try mixing and matching your time of day, physical location, and ambiance to find your perfect “C-Spot.”

Want to share yours?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Image: Flickr CC

The Sure Bet: 4 Reasons Putting Profits Back Into Your Business is a Sound Strategy

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By Angela Freeman

The ultimate goal of any company is to generate profits. This leads to an important question: what do those companies do with the profits they create? These 4 reasons should convince you that putting profits back into your company is a sound strategy that will improve your business’s future success.

1. It Gives You the Opportunity to Grow

Your company thrives at what it does right now, but will it continue to thrive in the future?

All companies must grow to experience continued success. When you put profits back into your company, you can use the money to explore new industries or improve on the services and products that you currently offer.

For instance, you could use the money to purchase new lab or tech equipment that will let you conduct more of your own research. That reduces the amount of money that you have to give other companies to conduct research for you. It also gives you more control over the quality of your research.

Both of these advantages will help your company succeed in the future.

2. It Lets You Spend More on Advertising

If your company is earning profits, then you know it has something special to offer clients. Putting money back into the company could help you pay for advertising that lets you reach even more consumers and businesses that want to use your services.

No matter what kind of advertising you choose, it will take a sizable amount of money. Radio, print, and Internet advertising can quickly add up to thousands of dollars.

Spending that money on something intangible might feel like a waste, but it’s the only way to get a bigger segment of your target market. If people don’t know you exist, they can’t choose your services.

3. It Helps Improve Training for Employees

Without properly trained employees, you can forget about continued business success. Every person working for your business plays an important role, so you must place an importance on making sure every person receives good training.

Good training costs money. Depending on your company’s size, you might decide to build your own HR department to handle training, or you might hire an outside contractor to do the training for you. Regardless, you’re going to need to put your profits into the training program.

In the long-run, you’ll see good results, because you won’t have to worry about employees who don’t know how to do their jobs.

4. It Means You Can Avoid the Pitfalls of Debt

Many companies borrow money when they want to expand, investigate new opportunities, or upgrade their training programs. Borrowing money, however, means paying interest. That can weigh your business down for decades.

Even if you get a good interest rate of six percent, which is really quite good, on $100,000 that you pay back within ten years, you still end up paying over $13,000 in interest. You’re better off putting your profits back into the business so you can avoid that extra expense.

What have you done with the profits your company made in recent years? Have you put the money back into your business, or have you made other decisions?

Author’s Bio: Angela is a freelance business, tech and travel writer. When she isn’t writing she is being a science nerd, messing around with her lab equipment, and attempting to bake. Follow her on Twitter @Ang_Freeman3.

How to Develop Your Writing Through Inspirational Self-Critics

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By Leslie Anglesey

All writers have some type of inner editor. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have the discipline necessary to stay on track and on topic to either work for clients or focus on their own projects. At first glance, having this built-in critic might seem like a recipe for squashing creativity, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be something that will stop a writer in his or her virtual tracks.
Develop your inner critic
At times, self-criticism has been blamed for the famous “writer’s block” but it may not be fair to blame getting stuck on the inner editor.

Many factors can contribute to a creative person having trouble getting into the groove of a project or having trouble getting started.

The issue may be:

  • fatigue
  • boredom
  • stress in another area of the writer’s life
  • creative process the writer needs to go through to get a flash of inspiration hasn’t resulted in an “a-ha” moment yet

While the internal editor can’t be shut off entirely, there are ways to work with it to develop your writing. Keep in mind that it exists for a purpose, and you want to make sure that it doesn’t become so powerful that you are reticent to let anyone see your work.

Use a Diamond Shaped Model When Listening to Your Inner Editor

When you are thinking about how and when you should listen to your inner editor, consider using a diamond-shaped model to keep you on track with your writing projects. It should help you determine how to proceed.

When you are contemplating a project or thinking of making a pitch to an editor, keep your inner editor firmly in the background. This is the narrow part of the diamond shape. Don’t let it get in the way by telling you that you are wasting your time or that you aren’t good enough, so why are you bothering to apply or contact that editor. As a writer, you will get rejected, but you have no chance of getting anywhere if you never make a move toward your goals.

As you land a project and move into the broader part of the diamond shape, you want to start listening to your inner critic more. If you are ever tempted to stop digging in your research or not to go the extra mile because, “It’s probably good enough,” allow this part of your mind to poke or guilt you into giving your work that little bit of extra effort to make it the very best you can produce.

Likewise, don’t let any piece of writing leave your desk until you have taken the time to proofread and edit it carefully. This piece of advice also falls under the category of listening to your inner editor in the middle of a project, whether you are working on something for school or on a professional basis. Good enough simply isn’t good enough. Your inner editor should be on high alert at this stage of the game.

Confidence above All

As you proofread and edit your second draft, you should be able to feel a bit more confident about your work. Using the example of the diamond shape, the editor should once more start to go back toward the background, and you should be able to focus on your voice in your writing when you read the final version of your work. By the time you get to the version you are ready to turn in to your instructor or the client, the internal editor should be firmly in the background, leaving only your voice in place when you read through your work.

Will your work ever be exactly perfect as a writer? There will always be something that you “could” be doing to alter, fix, or tweak a piece of work to make it better, more interesting, or more “something.” There will have to be a point at which you may need to simply tell your inner editor that you have done your best and that it will have to be good enough. That’s all anyone can do, and you will try again with your next piece of writing, which is how writers grow and develop their craft.

What are your tricks for dealing with the inner critic?

Author’s Bio: Leslie Anglesey, PhD, is an affiliate professor who loves to dedicate all her free time to writing. She is an editor at http://www.essaytigers.com and is always helping others to bring passion to their writing.

Image: Flickr CC

Big Data for Bloggers

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Have you noticed? Big data is the new buzzword. Apparently, it’s so hot you should “make out with it,” according to Mitch Joel in his new book, CTR ALT DEL.

But if you’re like most entrepreneurs, bloggers, or small business owners, you have no clue what big data is, or how it might apply to your business.

So here is my all-access definition: “big data” is sets of information that are way too large to be accessed or analyzed on your average computer or set of servers. Think of data being fed from RFID tags globally, or all of the data in Facebook’s open graph, or earthquake sensor networks. You’re probably contributing to big data yourself, whenever you serve up an ad on your site from an ad network.

Big-data-for-bloggers
Perhaps none of these big data sets apply to your blog site, but the wider discussion about how to draw business insights from big data absolutely does apply.

Maybe we should call it “medium data.”

Here are three ways you can use medium data to draw insights for your blog.

Google Analytics

It’s free, and it’s getting deeper every day. If you haven’t signed up yet, here’s a quick tutorial on how to get started with Google Analytics.

At the most basic level, you can draw insights on who is visiting your blog, which content is the most popular, and where you can improve.

Once you dive deeper into the data, you can figure out whether all that time you spend on Twitter is actually driving people to your blog using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics.

Customer Surveys and Interaction

If you’re a blogger, your customer is a reader, perhaps a commenter or member of your community. Maybe they downloaded your eBook or signed up for an online course. Every time you interact with them, you have an opportunity to gather intelligence.

Whether it’s a quick one question “how did you like that book” sent in a followup email, or a more in-depth customer survey, you have the ability to pull together data to feed your future efforts.

John Jantsch said in an article a year ago, “Until a business of any size gets serious about listening to their customers, talking to their customers, and measuring every possible data and touch point, the promise of more data will only serve to distract.”

Accessing Big Data from Researchers

All of the data you use doesn’t have to come from your own blog site or customers. There are myriad free or inexpensive resources out there that can help you build business insights on your subject area.

Organizations like Edison Research, Gartner, and The Social Habit routinely produce scientifically valid research based on a much wider data set that you can access on your own. Find a research outlet that covers your industry or topic, and leverage their reports to come up with blog post ideas, watch for future trends, and increase your own utility to your audience.

Are you using data (small, medium, or big) to draw insights for your blog?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Image: Flickr CC

On Being the Kind of Boss People Want to Work With

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By Stacey Thompson

More often than not, the average employee views management in a negative light. Feared, resented, or even reviled, bosses are seen as cruel, unfeeling taskmasters that care only for the bottom line and will readily sacrifice any of the rank and file to attain their objectives.

This culture of hating on the management can go two ways: either employees aspire for these positions in order to propagate the perceived cycle of tyranny, or they will not make the effort to become better workers, seeing that promotion will only turn them into the same monsters they so despise. Neither of these attitudes does justice to the employees, the management, or the company they work in, for that matter.

Are you a boss people like to work with?

In the case of companies, I firmly believe that the culture is propagated from the top down. This places the responsibility of maintaining a prosperous and positive work environment squarely on the shoulders of the managers and supervisors. Just as bad habits and mentalities spring from negative examples provided by the people on top, productive and motivational attitudes are spread by good bosses.

Many people have plenty of theories on what managers should be doing to keep their people motivated, happy, and productive. In my own experiences as both a subordinate and as a manager, I can summarize all these lessons into four pieces of advice:

Open Lines of Communication

No amount of mutual understanding and teamwork will happen if the boss doesn’t even talk with his/her subordinates. This isn’t limited to meetings or official office correspondence; the ability to be able to shoot the breeze with the troops at the water cooler is an important ability to have, if you want to be an exemplary manager of people. It will give you more insights on what motivates (and de-motivates) your people, and in turn, it will humanize you in their perceptions. You’ll cease to be a cruel monster in their eyes, and that can’t be all bad.

Try smiling a little more, too

Though you want to appear a tad more friendly and approachable, do not overdo this, either. Being too chummy with your subordinates will often result in them respecting you less, and your ability to reprimand or correct them will be severely hindered. This does make things lonelier at the top, but remember, this is for the sake of all of your livelihoods.

Give Them a Chance to Shine

You shouldn’t be taking all the glory and credit for yourself, either. This is probably one of the fastest ways to lose favor with your constituents. When they do something above and beyond the call of duty, or have stayed consistently productive and cooperative, give them due praise, and possibly even a material bonus. Let the entire team know when one or more of them have done well, and if your own boss recognizes your team’s accomplishments, let them know where the credit should go.

Allowing them to take the lead and enjoy the benefits of their own achievements will inspire them to work more effectively, and it will give them lessons that will be of use to them when they become managers and supervisors themselves.

Be The Final Word

The two previous bits of advice portray a softer, more yielding kind of management strategy. One cannot be a boss without putting one’s foot down, however. The final lesson on being the boss your people can respect involves being the authority within the team or organization. You are the go-to guy/gal when they want a decision made, the King Solomon that will decide who gets the baby, so to speak.

As a leader, it is on you to set clear goals for you and your team, and you have to be firm when it comes to these things. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to change your mind; it means that you will only do so if your colleagues make a strong enough case for an alternative, or if you yourself have evaluated the factors and have found that a course alteration is in order.

Are you an effective boss? What are your strategies for leadership?

Author’s Bio: Stacey Thompson (@RedHotStacey) is a professional writer, marketer, entrepreneur, and a lover of weird little animals. She is based in San Diego, California, and aspires for her own little company to grow successful enough for her to qualify in entering an elite CEO peer advisory group, one fine example being The Sage Executive Group.

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