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Social Media BookList: Let’s Talk Business, Tweets and Dreams

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A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors, writers, speakers and coaches. As part of my job I read a lot of books. I am here to offer a weekly post about one that I am working with and one I have put on my reading list. The books will cover topics such as social media (Facebook & Twitter), organization, career building, networking, writing and self development and inspiration.

#DreamTweet

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This week I would like to start off with a book I have read and working with entitled #DreamTweet by Joe Heuer, aka The Rock and Roll Guru published by ThinkAha books.

Last night while watching TV, I began to notice the commercials were predominately about the Winter Olympics. I watched and listened to the athletes as they talked about what it meant to them to be a part of this worldly event. The described how much dedication it took for them to reach this goal of a lifetime but they wouldn’t have it any other way because it was their DREAM. It was so important to them, that no matter what, it was the one thing they wanted to do it was a part of who they are as a human being.

Well, this is the kind of advice, tips and inspiration you will receive when you read, #DreamTweet by Joe Heuer.

Here are just a few of the wise words from Joe in #DreamTweet:

  • Be specific in creating your dream. Clarity provides tremendous power. (pg 3)
  • Find people who are living their dream and study them. (pg 19)
  • You absolutely, positively gotta be the number one believer in your dream. No ifs, ands, or buts! (pg. 28)
  • Fear is your dream’s adversary. The most effective technique for casting off your fears is to bathe them in the
    light of love.     (pg. 49)
  • Each day spend time imagining your dream in all its resplendent glory, while feeling the rush of positive emotion that accompanies it. (pg 74)

And Joe is a great role model for his kids because they had this to say about their dad:

“Our dad is the perfect person to write ‘DREAMtweet,’ since he’s living his own dream as the Rock and Roll Guru!” –Alex and Rachel Heuer

What else more can I say? So Rock on and live your dreams!

You can order your copy of download a copy of #DreamTweet at ThinkAha website.

Joe Heuer, is known worldwide as the Rock and Roll Guru (http://RockandRollGuru.com ). An entertaining speaker, author, and full-time rocker, he shares the nuggets of wisdom he has gleaned from Rock & Roll with professional audiences throughout this third rock from the sun.

He believes that in addition to being a groovy musical genre, rock and roll is a way of life that has served as his constant companion and inspiration. Joe has lived numerous dreams, including a stint as the youngest collegiate head basketball coach in the country… who never played the game.

He has written several books, some of which have actually been published. Recent titles include ‘The NEW Idiot-Proof Guide to Customer Loyalty’ and ‘The Rock and Roll Guide to Patient Loyalty.’ He also has several rock and roll books in the works.

His wife calls him an idiot savant for his uncanny recall of obscure rock and roll lyrics and trivia.

Good to Great

Now is time for me to showcase a book I have not read but it is on my reading list. This week my choice is Good to Great by Jim Collins.

When I picked up this book off my shelf, I happened to open the pages to the beginning of Chapter 6, subtitled The flywheel and the Doom Loop. There is a image there of a flywheel which portrays a timeline of buildup to breakthrough and discipline of people and action. But this is not what caught my eye. The saying, ” Revolution means turning the wheel”  by Igor Stavinsky did.

Sometimes, it does amaze me how things happen they way they do. I mean how pertinent that the page of Good to Great would up to that saying. It is so relevant to living your dream. You can not start living your dream unless you start somewhere living it. Change can not happen without action.

If each day you take a step toward your dream, you are one step closer at achieving it. But if you don’t do anything, you are still where you are right now-wishing and waiting for the dream to happen.

I look forward to reading this book because each of us can always strive to improve something in our lives.

Jim Collins is a student and teacher of enduring great companies — how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies. Having invested over a decade of research into the topic, Jim has authored or co-authored four books, including the classic BUILT TO LAST, a fixture on the Business Week best seller list for more than six years, and has been translated into 29 languages. His work has been featured in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Harvard Business Review, and Fast Company.

You can pick up your own copy of Good to Great on Amazon.

Social Media BookList: Let’s Talk Business, Tweets and Mojo

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A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors, writers, speakers and coaches. As part of my job I read a lot of books. I am here to offer a weekly post about one that I am working with and one I have put on my reading list. The books will cover topics such as social media (Facebook & Twitter), organization, career building, networking, writing and self development and inspiration.

#MOJOtweet

This week I would like to start with a book I’ve read and working with by Marshall Goldsmith, author of #MOJOtweet published by ThinkAha books.

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In this fast paced world we live in and the need for great information that will lead us to action, is sometimes hard to find. Well, in the ThinkAha book series, this problem is quickly resolved by the format used.

#MOJOtweet is written in the template of around only 100 pages and formulated about tweets (also known as AHA’s) in 140 characters. 

You may be asking what is Mojo? Mojo is the moment when you do something that’s purposeful, powerful and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it.

Mitchell Levy, CEO of Happy About, Inc. and publisher of ThinkAha books,  summarizes the essence of the book in the forward, ” Mojo is that missing ingredient that is between you and your life filled with meaning and happiness. #Mojotweet provides that in bite-sized packages.”

Below are just a few of the wise, helpful and inspirational aha’s I found in the this informational compact book, #MOJOtweet.

~ We run everything through two filters: short-term satisfaction (or happiness) and long-term satisfaction (meaning). –>So true! When I first read that I thought, “no I don’t do that”, but when I thought about it again, I realized I certainly do.

~ Mojo is infectious. When people pass their positive spirit onto us; we feel like passing it back. –>Again, great insight in such a short statement. Positive breeds positive. If I am around a positive person, my outlook will change for the better which I will radiate to others around me.

~ When measuring your Mojo, do so in the immediate present, not in the recent past or vague future.–>this is something I struggle with sometimes. I worry about things from the past or worry how to correct things before they even get here…not to concentrate on what is in the now.

You can order your copy or download the ebook of #MOJOtweet.

Marshall Goldsmith, is America’s preeminent executive coach. He is among a select few consultants who have been asked to work with more than sixty CEOs. His clients have included many of the world’s leading corporations. Goldsmith has helped to implement leadership development processes that have impacted more than one million people around the world.

He has a Ph.D. from UCLA and is on the faculty of the executive education programs for Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan. The American Management Association recently named him as one of fifty great thinkers and business leaders of the past eighty years. Read more in his new book, MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It.

Crowdsourcing

The book on this week’s on my reading list is
Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of a Crowd is driving the future of business by Jeff Howe.

The book focuses on describing how to crowds are creating new sources of value than the specific ways to tap into that value. Chapters 1 through 5, the first half of the book, concentrates on providing examples of the crowd sourcing phenomenon. The second half focuses down on the impact of crowds to economic and business organization.

My thoughts: I believe there has always been an influence of the crowd.I remember when my mother would call her friends for advice or ideas for a new recipe, how to decorate, or who her friend used as a dentist. Society has drawn about the advice and influence of others (the crowd) for many years, however, I believe with the invasion of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, the importance of the crowd (crowdsourcing) is stronger than ever.

Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. In June of 2006 he published “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” in Wired. He has continued to cover the phenomenon in his blog, crowdsourcing.com, and published a book on the subject for Crown Books in September 2008. Before coming to Wired he was a senior editor at Inside.com and a writer at the Village Voice. In his fifteen years as a journalist he has traveled around the world working on stories ranging from the impending water crisis in Central Asia to the implications of gene patenting. He has written for Time Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Alysia Abbott, their daughter Annabel Rose and son Phineas and a miniature black lab named Clementine.

You can pick up your copy of Crowdsourcing on Amazon.

I hope you have enjoyed this new weekly blog post. Feel free to share your thoughts with me as I would be open to read them.

Is Influencer Marketing Limiting You?

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We Limit Ourselves When We Limit Our Words

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UPDATE:
What is an influencer? Traditionally it has meant someone or something with psychological and social power to motivate change …

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These days the word, influencer, has become almost a proper noun. Use it in the social media world and we assume that it tags a person who has a close relationship to folks we want to reach and the word, influence, has become an active verb, something we do …

When we talk about influencers in the social media space what we’re really talking about is influencer marketing … looking for people who have an advantage, authority, the agency to cause others to act.

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. —Wikipedia

If we check with folks and references who live off the Internet, influence has a much larger definition than that. Think about “driving under the influence of alcohol” and you’ll get grounded again. People who get folks to buy are not the only influencers at work in our world. And for every influencer / person we would like to move, someone or something is influencing us to choose them too. Here are a few influencers we don’t talk about enough.

  • Overheard conversations and subliminal aggregations of things we hear
  • Conditions in our environment, such as energy, time, resources
  • Assumptions in our thinking, including bias, curiosity, and ignorance
  • Emotional attachments we don’t suspect or those we have strong commitments to
  • Genetic disposition, such as fear or self-preservation
  • Our unique experiences, memories, and skills which shape our entire world view
  • The individual wiring of our brains and our cognitive processing
  • Books, movies, ideas, music, art, conferences, seminars, educational events
  • Compelling stories, even advertisements

Influence is what we allow to move our actions and thoughts. It’s all around us and available to explore in ways that provoke new thoughts and experiences. We limit ourselves and our thinking when we limit our words.

We limit our marketing by limiting how we define influencer too. Great strategy looks farther and deeper than that.

What influences you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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What If the Social Web Froze Over and No One Came?

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cooltext443860173_ive-been-thinking about communities and harbors online and off.

I like watching the harbor out our window change. A recent snowfall covered it. The foggy diffused sunlight softens it, and tricks my eyes into thinking the whole world has gone black and white. A faint shimmer on the icy snow calls back to last spring when sailors filled it with life.

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I suppose few sailors who keep their boats in the harbor ever have a chance to see the harbor this quiet way. I wonder how it might change their experience next spring if they were looking at the lonely, frozen-over beauty I see out my window today.

The harbor is a community. I watch it as the boats come to take their places each season. I see the people with so much and so little in common take their places and have conversations. I see other people sail and watch without saying much of anything.

Can’t help but wonder what a sailor or two might do if when they returned next spring to find the harbor somehow was forever frozen over and empty.

Then this morning I read this morning that Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month.

What if the social web froze over and no one came? Would you read and blog anyway? Would you just visit your harbors offline?

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15 Ways to Help the People in Your Business and Your Life

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A Guide to Customer Service and Relationships of Sorts

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Our economy has become so self-service, we’ve all gotten good at knowing what we need and how to get things done for ourselves. Yet, the social business culture has also taught us that the most powerful question in business is “How can I help you?” Imagine if we took that “help you” view to every person we know.

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In his book, B-A-M!: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World, business author and entrepreneur Barry J Moltz replaces customer service myths with a tactical approach that shows companies how to make more money through attitudes and actions that will help their customers feel satisfied in good times or bad. Creating satisfied customers is the only enduring competitive advantage left in a world market where virtually everything is a commodity. His advice applies to every blog, every business and every life.

He’s talking about treating customers — people — as if they count.

I’ve read Barry’s book twice now. Once as a manual on customer service and again as a guide for relationships of every kind. The validity of his guidance is that the advice works both ways. I don’t think he’ll mind if apply his customer service ideas to business relationships and replace the word customers with the word people when I restate of few of his ideas.

  1. Define your relationships deliberately, conversationally, and indirectly by observing and listening to what people say to and about you.
  2. Be personable and gracious toward every person at all times.
  3. Treat people with dignity and respect.
  4. Consider the other person’s needs, deadlines, goals, and point of view first.
  5. Encourage them to talk and listen carefully to what they say.
  6. Understand their expectations before we go beyond them.
  7. Anticipate in good ways with friendliness, openness, and patience.
  8. Talk to people one at a time and treat every person as an individual.
  9. Build trust by letting them be part of a balanced give and take.
  10. Remove negative talk and negative views from all of your interactions.
  11. Put quality in everything you do.
  12. Find some quality to admire in the actions of everyone in your life.
  13. Offer training or guidance and leave room for people who color outside the lines.
  14. Celebrate your advocates and fans. Get to know your critics, they understand you better than you might suspect.
  15. At the end of each day, measure your success by looking in the mirror.

Not every person’s opinion is of equal value, of course. Not every one will see you as you truly are. But every person is a human, at the very least find room to respect the lifeform.

People don’t care how good we are, until they know that we care. It’s the care that drives the service. A problem handled with respect and care brings us closer. It’s the care that keeps them with us even when things go a little wrong.

We’re learning about that “how I can help you”? question. Have you found it has power in your life too?

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How Grandma Inspired a Geeky Amazon Gratitude Gift Guide

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Wishing, Buying, and Don’t Forget the Wine for a Cause

The Living Web

Every year, grandma gives me a list of holiday gifts to buy from my Amazon Affiliate Store. She wants a few pennies to come my way too. Thanks Grandma. I’m grateful for your thoughts.

Every year while I shop, I’m always distracted by thoughts of the people I wish I could be buying for. I see the laptop that one friend could use and that Kindle that one reader can’t quit talking about. My heart gets filled with gratitude for the folks who’ve made my life, my business, and my blog so lovely all year and I want to demonstrate in a very real way.

And after my unexpected hospital vacation this year, the feeling is huge.

Of course, it wouldn’t be wise, practical, or even possible to share the gratitude we all feel by buying everything we might. But the good thoughts of the giving are still awfully nice.

So here’s to dreaming of the recovery, the new clients and new jobs in 2010, or the new ideas we come up with venture and partner to raise each other up again. Here are the things I would love to get for my friends with my wishful big spend.

Maybe this list will give you some ideas and great thoughts of those closest to you.

Take a Peek and Wish

Of course the list starts with books and social media gifts, you can find lots of my favorites — including everything Twitter — at my Blogger and Social Media AStore.

I’ve tried to feature there all of the contributions by my incredible friends — if your Amazon products aren’t there, please email me so that I can include you. What fun to have a store filled will products by people I know and trust. I recommend those all to you.

And here are some other fun things I’d love to put in my “big spend.” Soon … maybe soon …

Okay, my wishing for what I would get my friends is over. What would you do with your wishful big spend?

We’ll Be Together on the Holidays

Don’t tell Grandma, but she’s getting the book she wanted and another. I thought a movie and some snacks to share while watching might also be good. Meanwhile, I’m bringing over our favorite OneHopeWines … it’s always a good choice and a great cause.

Most of all, we’ll be together on the holidays. I hope you will too.

PS. If you get underwear and socks, before you return them … consider offering them to the nearest homeless shelter. Cold weather makes them a priceless gift.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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