Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Underway
Holidays, they are the high points of the year, where everyone celebrates. The Fourth of July is the largest national holiday of the year in the US. Many people plan for months for the perfect evening out.

Carol Roth
Anyone who says otherwise is lying

There’s a big white elephant in the room (or sometimes a tiny white elephant in the room) and that is size. You keep hearing people say that size doesn’t matter- in business, in social media, sometime in boxer briefs- but let’s call it like it is- it’s not really true. When you get to the debate of quantity vs. quality, the real answer is that both matter.

McCurry’s Corner
The problem is sometimes people working in service businesses get so wrapped up in following instructions, or completing the task at hand, that they forget about the most important part, the customer experience. It happens all the time, especially in a society where speed seems to take precedence over everything else.

We Blog Better
You sit down at your desk, turn on the computer with your to-do list in hand – all set to knock out a few blog posts and then maybe work on an ongoing project or two. You start your post, and then decide to do some quick research to validate a point you want to make.

One minute you’re finding interesting information that you’ve definitely got to integrate into your post but then you notice a few mentions on Twitter you’d like to respond to…

Todd Weiss, C.F.A.
In all seriousness, how does one write a good blog article? How can you quickly draw in readers and keep them reading? Or better yet, make a comment? A Re-Tweet? Or Subscribe to your RSS feed?

Harvard Business Review
Susan Harrison, my mother in law, died several months ago after a long and courageous battle with cancer. Like most of us, she was not famous. If you didn’t know her you probably didn’t know of her. She lived in the relatively small community of Savannah, Georgia.

Smart Blog on Social Media
LEGO is a classic example of how a focus on your fans can change everything for a brand. In the late ’90s, sales were down, product innovation was low, and the big retailers they relied on were telling them they didn’t know enough about their customers.

Related ala carte selections include

Congratulations to Eric Lukazewski
on his new photo blog!

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Copyblogger
Are you evil enough to join us?

Or more customers. Whatever.

Conversation Agent
Geolocation services are not about giving us something to do, as Joe Chernov writes, although I think that’s a pretty good insight. They’re also about giving us something to talk about. That something is status, it comes with the territory.

Need a Little Advice?
If you’ve got a small business – be it brick and mortar or a home business – there’s a very real need to present yourself to the community. There’s many ways to accomplish that task – and it’s a task you will do over and over.

Jonathan Fields
I’ve invested a lot in understanding the psychology of persuasion and learning how to present facts and interactions in a manner that will be more likely to persuade somebody to my point of view.

I’m actually far more effective at this in print than I am in face-to-face conversations, which is probably why, for years, I’ve resorted to print as my prime tool for both expression and persuasion. It also is one of the things that has led me to be reasonably successful writing copy.

The Intersection of People and Process
I thought about the passion that was inspired by several groups imageseeking our Crowd Sourced advice on how they might want to move their efforts forward. We focused on Vitamin Angels.

We didn’t have much time to come up with ideas so I used a model that I have been using for a few years for capturing customer evidence. In this case I was thinking of Stephen Covey’s “Begin with the End in Mind” mantra.

Halogen Software Blog
When Sterling Cooper’s new management, personified by Lane Pryce, criticizes the ad agency’s creative department for being a bunch of lazy alcoholics, Draper defends his team with a statement I’ll never forget:

“You came here because we do this better than you, and part of that is letting our creatives be unproductive until they are.”

Related ala carte selections include

Jason Falls
But there was one subtlety that I noticed watching the U.S. vs. Algeria on Wednesday that made me almost as ill as watching my country’s team’s defense allow counter chance after counter chance from their opponent. It wasn’t probably noticed by many others, though I’m certain the director of the broadcast was likely fuming over it as well.

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

I’m a proud affiliate of