Successful Blog

Are YOU in on the Link Leak Project

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What’s Your Idea

The only way that we can own our part of the Magic Middle is to link together.
Remember the post Link Love Raises Your Property Value? Easton Ellsworth invented a Link Love Event called Blogtipping the very next week–the blogosphere was starting to share links. It was so cool. It was made a monthly thing.

Mike Sigers named this phenomena Link Leak.

What Is Link Leak?

Mike Sigers wrote a post explaining Link Leak. He said it was for Martin Neumann at the Small Office Herald, who then named it the Link Leak Project.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Sigers’ own blog started springing leak after leak.

How Will You Be Leaking Links?

Successful Blog has been leaking links to SOBs since I’ve been here.
Business Blogwire is Leaking Blogtipping Links.
Simplenomics is Simply Leaking Links. Stop over there and tell Mike what your part will be in the Link Leak project. Then come back and leave a comment here to tell me.

Who knows maybe you’ll make the front page of the Small Office Herald. It surely would make you look like an SOB.

–ME “Liz Strauss
Blogtipping Makes Cowtipping a Thing of the Past
Blogtipping Day–Where’s Yours?
Cow- . . . Er . . . Blogtipping
Link Love Raises Your Property Value

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO, Expert Corporate Blogger

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CEO of Sun Microsystems

I’m sure that Jonathan Schwartz has plenty to do. After all, he’s CEO of Sun Microsystems, traveling the world and talking to the media comes with the job — not to mention running that Fortune 500 company. When he took on the role, people wondered whether he would continue his other role as writer of Jonathan’s Blog.

His answer was a lengthy post that said emphatically, “YES.”

That’s because Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems gets what blogging is about. In fact, he takes his blog to the state of the art in corporate blogging. If you’re working with new corporate bloggers or are one yourself, this is the blog to watch. [Read more…]

Helping Clients Get Past Blogaphobia

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Enthusiasm Can Kill

Customer Think Logo

Just today I wrote an email to a potential client I met with two weeks ago. In it I wrote this phrase I know my enthusiasm can be huge. We’d gotten into a conversation about blogs and how they were changing the world.

I wish that I had read the article I found exploring later that afternoon. It’s a piece by Anil Dash at Six Apart News called How to keep blogs from scaring the hell out of people. It’s just packed with truths. [Read more…]

Quality, Schedule, Budget

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Taking This Show on the Road

Customer Think Logo

In an hour or so, I move my computer downtown to a hotel in Chicago while I attend a literacy convention. I know. I know. I live here. I could stay at home.

It’s a bit of a financial hit. Convention hotels in Chicago aren’t particularly inexpensive, but I see it as an investment in my customers and myself.

It’s hard enough to give my clients my undivided attention at a convention of 15,000 attendees. I want to have the flexibility to be at their exhibit booth when meetings inevitably are rescheduled. I want to be around for the after-hours events when relationships become real.

An adage in publishing, perhaps in every business, says:

Quality. Schedule. Budget. Pick Two.

What’s the right choice? Is it always the same two?

Besides it will be fun, sending you notes from the convention. Any advice you have for me while I’m there?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Don’t Pay Attention — Are You Curious?
Better Than Hi! How Are Ya?
Do You Know a Customer When You See One?

Critical Skill 4: Part 2-Designing a Complex Process

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One GIANT Flow Chart

Future Skills

It was an interview with the Chairman of the Board of a publishing company. We had just taken a break. I came back from stretching my legs to find six 4ft. x 8ft. foam core boards that made one GIANT flow chart, supposedly outlining the publishing process in complete and total detail.

I thought, “Ohmygod. They’re one of those kinds of companies.”

He said, “So, what do you think of that?”

I said, “I believe it was very useful for the folks who put it together.”

I usually think of work situations like I would a dating relationship You don’t date a guy thinking you’ll change him. That I took this job thinking I could change this company was just wrong. [Read more…]

Don’t Pay Attention — Are You Curious?

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Pay Attention!

Pay attention.

How many times have you heard those two words?

What did they really mean?

To me they meant sit up straight; fold your hands; and be quiet. Look and listen?

I used to think life was all about paying attention. I don’t think that anymore.

Paying attention is passive. I don’t wait for things to come to me.

Are You Curious?

The world moves faster than waiting allows. If you want to know things, you have to do more than pay attention. Observing only provides half of the story. You have to get out there and find out things. That means you have to be active–get curious. Ask questions. Get interested in everything. Don’t leave an idea uncovered.

Pick a block of time today. Question everything you do. Use curious questions like these to build your business.

  • Do I always do this task this way?
  • Is this a habit or do I have a reason?
  • Is there another way to do it?
  • Do other people do it the same way? Get curious. Don’t just take your own word for it. Check it out.

We have this way of fooling ourselves into believing that everyone thinks as we do.

After you’ve gotten curious about how you do things, check out whether other people do things the same way as you. That’s the whole point, you see.

Curiosity As Influence

I need curiosity to know my customers, my readers. I’m lucky. I’m weird enough that people have made it clear that I’m not focus group material in any way — but my curiosity is influence. It changes how I think and how people see my business. Curiosity connects. It forges links. My curious questions establish my interests and seal my one-of-a-kind value.

Still, you’re one of a kind too. Things you do in your own way or in a way that’s different from many of your customers, deep curious questions you ask establish that. Sharing your curiosity adds value to a business.

As a customer, I value a brand that’s curious about what I like. It makes me curious about the people behind the brand. I want to get to know them and once that happens, I want to do business with them too.

How might you use curiosity to promote your brand?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!