Successful Blog

Missed Opportunities and High Returns of Attending a Conference

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With a Little Help From Friends — Old and New Ones!

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Deciding to go to SxSW was easy. Well it was easy last summer when Sheila Scarborough and I had this master plan. I would go down to Austin and stay at her house. We’ve known each other since two days before forever . . . it seemed a logical next step — everyone says it’s the show for bloggers. Everyone seems to go there. It seemed that I should too.

Sometime in January, I started to wonder, why was I making this significant investment? Would it really help my business? Adding friends to my Twitter account didn’t seem like enough reason to melt my credit card for a trip to Austin. At best, my answer was nebulous.

I was torn. I saw serious potential, but I’ve also gone to conferences where no business happened.

Missed Opportunities and High Returns of Attending a Conference

I had to be sure before I registered that serious business conversations would happen. I needed a high return on my investment. The registration would be more than worth it, if I could grow my business and add more value to SOBCon08.

I realized the only way to ensure a high return was to plan one. Here’s how you might do the same when you come to SOBCon08 or any upcoming conference you’re considering.

  • Know what you’re investing in. Ask yourself these questions:
    • Is the value for me in the speakers? the workshops?
      the chance to meet other folks there?
      How can I make the most of those opportunities?
    • What do I want folks to know about me and my business?
    • What do I want to learn from the people there?

    I knew I was going to SxSW to let people know about my business and SOBCon08. Just being clear on that made a difference. It affected what I put on my name tag and which business cards I took.

  • Touch base with people you want to meet and let them know why you want to meet them.
    • Most conferences have blog or a wiki where you can do that.
    • Or write a blog post inviting folks to let you know that they are going.

    I contacted certain folks that I wanted to see — Ian Kennedy, Chris Brogan, Fraser Kelton, Alex Iskold. We made plans.

  • Know which sessions you want to attend. Every conference offers different value in content and session format. I knew that SxSW panels would be podcast later. So I carefully chose the few I really thought were important to see in person.
  • Don’t overschedule. Leave some room for folks you don’t know will be there . . . I got to meet Jason Falls, J.C. Hutchins, David Beaudouin, and Beth Kanter.

Simple enough suggestions, but I asked — lots of folks came without a plan.

Frankly I’ve had my share useless, no-return conference experiences. They make it easy enough to convince myself that I can’t afford the time and cost of any conference. One thing they have in common is that I was a passive attendee — not invested in my own attendance.

It’s the plan that ensures the return. Now I pick the conferences most relevant to my business. Sometimes I suffer a pinch of cash flow, but I make a plan to ensure a return on my investment. My business grows, my network gets richer, and my blog gets more traffic. The plan keeps me focused, organized, and feeling in control of capturing what I’m after.

SxSW was a high return investment experience. I had fewer than 50 conversations, but they were the right ones with the right people. I came home with two new clients, another sponsor for SOBCon08, and a new project that I’m working on. That would have been a lot of missed opportunities had I not made the commitment.

Getting a return on our investment is the core of business. Key to investing is identifying true opportunities. Without investing we’re just going, moving forward not growing.

No one can attend every conference. But when one offers real potential, it’s worth thoughtful consideration. With a plan, we can ensure a high return on our investment. Missed opportunities are expensive too.

How do you decide between the high returns or missed opportunities of attending a conference?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. All that expertise in one room! Register now!

Your Personal Tale of Survival — and Success

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Yesterday J.C. Hutchins told his personal tale of survival. Today I asked him to say a few words how we might use his model in our own lives.

So J.C.’s brought us this.

Your Personal Tale of Survival — and Success

by J.C. Hutchins

Now to your personal tale of survival and success. We all have had a creative idea, or business model, or blog concept that we’re ferociously passionate about. Often, we don’t pursue that passion because it is untested — in fact, it probably appears to be doomed before launch, when viewed through the filter of conventional wisdom. After all, if it doesn’t already exist, how could it possibly be profitable?

My suggestion: If you are soul-certain that your idea is a great and sustainable one, tell the world to bugger off. Ignore the “no” noise. Say Damn It All and make the leap of faith in yourself and your work. And if you make it to that point — the edge of the precipice, the moment before you take that leap — remember these things:

  • You’re going to work harder for this than you’ve worked for damned-near anything else in your life: In the beginning, this passion project will be yours, from soup to nuts. You’re the one-man band: the boss, the employee, the cheerleader, the bookkeeper. It’ll suck more time than you’ll anticipate, it’ll be in your capillaries, and it’ll be exhausting.
  • You’re going to doubt yourself, your idea, and the commitment you’ve made: It’s okay to slip into “what am I doing?” mode. That’s human nature, particularly if your project’s success hinges on the long tail (as so many online businesses do). But as Journey once famously sang, “Don’t stop believing.” You’ve got a killer product, and you’re soul-certain of it. Which leads us to …
  • Do everything you can to evangelize your work: You’re a one-man band — a frickin’ maestro! — but what good is that if you’re playing to an empty room? Reach out to friends and family to spread the word. Invite online influencers to either blog/podcast about — or participate in — your endeavor. Find creative ways to engage your audience and these influencers. Answer every email. Make yourself available on platforms such as AIM, Twitter and Skype, should it be appropriate for your project. Promote your availability.
  • Empower your audience to become participants: If you do indeed have a killer product, and you’re funneling your energies into promotion and making yourself available to consumers, you will indeed find an audience. They’ll be supportive, emotive and hungry to contribute. So let them! Welcome them into your sandbox, beyond mere blog comments. Liz does this with great effect with her Open Comment Tuesdays, in which she’s there, interacting with you, during the experience. For “7th Son,” I solicit fan-created fiction, artwork, music and voice mail recordings that are inspired by the story, and post them on my site. This builds a community that defies the geography and ones and zeros that separate you from your consumer.
  • Ask your audience to evangelize on your behalf: There is no shame in questing for success, and there’s no shame in asking your consumers (who are now hopefully “fans”) to spread the word. Doing all of the promotional on your own will likely burn you out … and worse still, denies another opportunity for your audience to contribute. If appropriate, create an online street team and offer fun incentives for your community to participate. (I have a “Ministry of Propaganda” that offers branded swag to helpful evangelists.) If you’re audience is engaged, they won’t be spreading the word for the prizes. They’ll be doing it because they believe in you, and what you’re doing.
  • Don’t be afraid to experiment: Be wily with your promotion, your content and your relationship with your audience. Find what techniques work best to further your influence in the space, and enhance your relationship with your consumers. If you’re a blogger, try releasing a pod- or vidcast post, just to shake things up. Be daring. Never sit still. Solicit feedback. See what sticks.
  • Finally: Don’t be afraid to shift your goals: If your project is more (or less) successful than you originally anticipated, don’t be a bonehead and squander an opportunity to ramp-up (or scale back) your ambitions. Too often, we commit to a course of action and — through either stubbornness or inertia — forget that we are empowered and can control the direction of our endeavor. When I launched my podcast novel in 2006, I did it as a lark, to see if I could find an audience for my work. When that goal had been attained, I shifted priorities and began questing again for publication. I heard more than 100 more “no’s” from literary agents my second time around, but I persisted and eventually found an agent, and a publisher. You can similarly find opportunities to change your own course when needed, while remaining faithful to your original concept.

Remember that you already are a walking, talking survival story, and that you claim victories every day in your life. But if you have an idea for a great business, service or blog — that untested thing inside your mind that just won’t shut up — and have the gumption to pursue it, do it. Let your passion drive you, and know that you’re doing a brave thing, one that may be filled with risk.

But bravery, risk and beating the odds are the best part of every story of survival — and success.

What’s your great idea? What other suggestions do you have for saying Damn It All, making the leap of faith, cultivating communities and evangelism, and realizing your goals? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

——
Thanks, J.C.! This is just what we need to do to invest in our ideas.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Invest in Yourself! Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

Personal Survival Stories: Saying "damn it all" and tuning out the "no" noise

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I met J.C. Hutchins at SxSW, but I’d heard of him weeks before that. His is a powerful story. So I was delighted to meet him and to have a chance to talk with him about how he made his success happen on his own.

J.C. choose a path that the big publishers said wouldn’t work. He took it anyway and won. I’ve asked him to tell his story. This is Part 1 in a two part series.

The power of survival stories, saying “damn it all” and tuning out the “no” noise

by J.C. Hutchins

Stories of survival capture our imaginations like no other.

We’re awestruck by the life-and-death struggles seen in man versus nature tales (such as “Into Thin Air”). We’re smitten by the stories of underdogs overcoming insurmountable odds (“Star Wars”). Equally captivating are tales of forbidden romances that thrive, despite the establishment’s protests (“Romeo and Juliet”). A great many of us are fascinated by nature documentaries, too: primal survival, right there on your TV screen.

Why do we love these stories? It makes for great drama, no doubt. But I have my own pet theory: Survival equals success. And in a world where the odds are often stacked against us in nearly every endeavor we pursue — be it in business, love, parenting or personal relationships — we hunger for that, for victories. (“To Do” lists rock for this very reason.) The world is programmed to tell us “no.” Every day, we scrap and scratch to make it say “yes.” Even with our creature comforts, we are all walking, talking tales of survival.

Since you’re a reader of this blog, you know that Liz regularly provides insights on how to transform your blog or business into a more successful one — how to turn little “yeses” into bigger ones. But I’d like to share a lesson I’ve learned during my two years as a podcaster and blogger. It’s the lesson of “Damn It All,” of tuning out the noise of “no,” and taking the greatest gamble in your personal tale of survival: making the leap of faith in yourself, and your work.

In 2005, I completed a thriller novel of epic length titled “7th Son.” It took me three years to write and edit the 1,300-page manuscript … and a year of hearing dozens of no’s from literary agents to realize that my novel, as clever as I thought it may be, wasn’t going to get published. It was too long. Its mashup of genres (present-day thriller, science-fiction, human cloning, government conspiracies) wasn’t marketable. My aspirations of being on bookshelves was DOA, baby. “7th Son” was deader than disco.

And yet, I’d seen podcasting blossom that year, and keenly observed the word of mouth success of three novelists (most notably Scott Sigler, http://scottsigler.com whose novel “Infected” will be in bookstores everywhere this April). These writers were releasing their independent books as free serialized audio podcasts. In 2006, I realized that if I couldn’t sell my novel, I could share it in a similar way. I’d let people — not the publishing establishment — decide if the work was a good read or not.

I wanted my book to survive.

Thanks to that decision and a great deal of zero-budget social media marketing, my free “7th Son” podcast audiobook now has nearly 40,000 listeners worldwide. Next year, the first book in the “7th Son” trilogy (I chopped my monstrously-long manuscript into thirds for podcast release) will be published by St. Martin’s Press. I’m currently writing the debut novel in a new thriller series, which will also debut next year from St. Martin’s Press.

I’m no braggart, and I don’t intend my story to be a shill-fest for my work. Rather, view it the recollection of a guy who got so sick of hearing the word “no” — and was so convinced that his work deserved a chance to be enjoyed — that he said Damn It All and did whatever he could so see it soar.

Which brings us to back to your personal tale of survival and success. What are your great ideas? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

——
Thanks, J.C.! Your story still inspires me. Tomorrow, in Part 2, “Your Personal Tale of Survival — and Success,” J.C. offers a few words on how to do what he did.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Be Inspired. Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

April Fools' Jokes — Great Publicity, Fun, or Maybe Not?

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The Net Was Filled with Fake Fake News

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I’ll never forget one particular April Fools’ Joke during my college years in Peoria. That Midwest city is the home of the famous Caterpillar tractor — five major plants in the metropolitan area produce monster land moving equipment of a trademark yellow color.

One April 1st, the Penny Press, the free newspaper. ran a front page article describing how market research revealed that the famous yellow color was dangerous in large construction sites, particularly in non-English-speaking parts of the world. The article said, with all dry humor, that as of certain date Caterpillar Tractor would be changing their signature color to HOT PINK. Most readers didn’t know the article was a joke.

As I recall, the article caused quite stir in the metropolitan area dependent on the tractor company for a disproportionate part of its thriving economy. Folks were talking about losing their jobs.

The Penny Press, a weekly paper, had to wait to before they could let folks know it was a ruse. Was the article good publicity for the Penny Press?

Here are five April Fools’ Jokes from this year.

What makes a great prank and what makes one great? How credible do they have to be? How easy to figure out? When do they make good press? Is timing important? When do they work for or against the prankster? Which April Fool’s joke will you remember most from this year?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Know that the message you send is the right one. Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

De-mystifying PR: 7 Secrets to Becoming an Expert News Source

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Getting your blog out there! Getting noticed something that Barbara Rozgonyi and I have been talking about lately. The conversation has been bright and vibrant just like Barbara herself. Listen in.

De-mystifying PR | 7 Secrets to Becoming an Expert News Source

by Barbara Rozgonyi

There’s something magical about seeing your name in the news. All of a sudden, people think you’re an expert. Getting covered in a good story conjures up all kinds credibility. But, you don’t have to have a journalist to tell your story.

When you submit your story to a news wire service, they automatically send your news out via search engines, newswires and RSS feeds.

All you have to have is news to get attention.

Want to be news-worthy?

Print out this blog post, follow the directions and you’re on your way to becoming an expert news source.

7 Secrets to Becoming an Expert News Source

  1. Change your PR mindset
    PR is about more than public relations and press releases. PR is about promoting relationships, publishing for readers, providing references, packaging for readability, inviting a proactive response, attracting prospective referrals and achieving an almost overnight page one page rank.
  2. Collect keywords
    Choose a small group of 3-5 keywords and plan on testing and tweaking until you get an optimal mix. You want to do more than carve a niche. You want to be the groove-maker.
  3. Be prolific
    Distribute at least one news release every month. To reach a variety of audiences, reframe a main release with benefits or tangents that appeal/apply to each group within your group.
  4. Crown your stories with catchy headlines
    Start out, if you can, with your key search term. Limit total characters to 80, the shorter, the better. Here’s one that worked well for a restaurant opening: 50 Pizzas Rolled Into One Pie [29 characters, including spaces].
  5. Lead with a summary
    Your first paragraph must say it all in 3-4 sentences. Make the last sentence your call to action. Ideas: invite your reader to request a free report, add your blog to their RSS reader, get a complimentary consultation or enter a contest.
  6. Sustain interest
    Contain your content to 400 words and cover one major point. Have more to say? Write another release. Use bullets to point out benefits. Quote an outside expert to add credibility and bring in another voice. In the closing line, mention a way to contact you/your company. Add in images like your logo and photos to make your release more life-like.
  7. Distribute where your community can find you
    Is your community local, offline, global or online? Where do they get their news?

Answering these two questions helps you develop a media contact list. You can send your stories directly to this group – after you call and introduce yourself to make sure your news stories will be relevant to them and their readers, listeners or viewers.

Distributing your news story online can be paid or free. It’s worth investing, at least at first, to get a more analytical analysis of how your releases perform in search terms, location of readers and number of prints and downloads.

Considering the cost of advertising, the minimal investment can be well worth it. In one case study, the release came in at 5/92,000 results on Google News for a key search term. How much? $200 How long? within 24 hours of release. Mixing online distribution with personalized direct media contact gives you the most complete coverage. Remember, all you have to have is news to get attention.

Ever wished you could get your name in the news but didn’t think you had a news-worthy story to tell? To help you find out, Barbara’s holding a free question and answer teleseminar on March 17 at 10:00 CST. For information, visit http://barbararozgonyi-wiredprworks.com/2008/03/05/pr-teleseminar/

Barbara Rozgonyi is the brilliant writer and thinker behind Wired PR Works. Work with Barbara to extend the reach of your blog’s voice in new ways.

Thanks, Barbara!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Get the Most Out of Your Network with a Mastermind Group

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When Wendy and I had a great conversation not long ago about mastermind groups. She’s been in groups for different purposes and of different configurations. So when I wanted someone to explain the concept is was Wendy I asked to do me the favor. She graciously said she would.

Get the Most Out of Your Network with a Mastermind Group

by Wendy Piersall

I have a close circle of friends here in Chicago that have known me for several years – whenever we get together they like to take credit for eMoms at Home, even though they have never worked for me. I actually totally agree with them – the reason is because this group of friends was my Mastermind Group when I was first started my business.

I wholeheartedly advocate being in Mastermind Groups, and I’ll go so far as to say that yes, eMoms at Home wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for the groups I have learned from along the way.

So What Exactly is a Mastermind Group?

Although Mastermind Groups can take a variety of forms, most function as basically a group that co-mentors each other. Participants will always get the most out of a mastermind group when they put a lot into the mastermind group. I currently participate in a weekly call with Dawud Miracle, Char Polanosky, Edward Mills, Gayla McCord, and Easton Ellsworth. We set up the group with the following ‘ground rules’:

  • Participating in the call is close to mandatory – though we’re flexible when ‘life happens’
  • We start on time and end on time – no exceptions
  • We take turns each week, and two people get 30 minutes every call
  • When it’s your ‘turn’, you get to bring a question to the group and we all brainstorm together to help each other come to a solution – any question is game
  • There are no stupid questions and there are no stupid answers
  • What is said to the group stays with the group – confidentiality is important when we are talking business strategy

We’ve been conducting our conference calls for about 9 months or so – I think the reason it has worked so well (and continues to work) is because:

  • We work hard to give each other really great input, basically giving each other free consulting
  • We keep a good structure in place to make the most of our time
  • We have really learned from each other – probably more from giving advice than from getting it

I think that last point is really key – we give a lot of ourselves in our calls. I’ve participated in very expensive paid mastermind groups that weren’t half as valuable as this group of friends. I really believe it was because everyone paid money and came to the group expecting to get something, rather than coming together to give to each other.

So, How do I Start a Mastermind Group?

Finding a committed group of individuals isn’t easy, but it’s not hard, either. A few tips:

  • Contact people that you want to learn from, but who still realistically also have something to learn from you
  • Lay down some sort of ground rules in your invitation so that people know what they are committing to
  • Let people know that participation is expected on a regular basis, and if they can’t commit to at least a 6-10 week initial time frame, they should probably pass
  • Meet at the same time every week/two weeks/month – either in person, or use a free conference call service like FreeConferenceCall.com
  • Have group members take turns leading the group to give everyone a chance to develop their leadership skills
  • Play with the idea of holding each other accountable to tasks or results if you really want to push each other to succeed

The blogosphere is a very close community, and filled with some of the most talented and brilliant people I have ever met. I’ve learned a ton from reading all of your blogs – and I’ve learned just as much when I’ve thrown my heart and soul into writing a post that teaches. Great Mastermind Groups work because we teach best what we most need to learn.
—
Wendy Piersall is the Chief eMom at eMoms at Home the business blog network for moms and dads who balance business and life at home beautifully.

Thanks, Wendy!

–ME “Liz” Strauss