Successful Blog

What Motivates You?

by

motivation sign
NewRichStrategies: Motivation

What Motivates Me?

Whether you go into an office on a daily basis, work from your home or travel the country and maybe even the world to do business, what motivates you?

It is a question that should be relatively easy to answer, yet many people probably scratch their heads when it comes to answering it. Really, folks, it should not be that hard to answer.

Although I am certainly not a motivational speaker by trade, I know what motivates me when I get up in the morning. Among the things:

  • Wanting to be productive;
  • Wanting to do more than I did the previous day;
  • Wanting to further my career opportunities;
  • Wanting to contribute in some means no matter how small to society;
  • Wanting to make sure that I take advantage of each and every day.

Now that I mentioned what motivates me, do any of those sentiments resonate with you?

What Motivates You?

In all honesty, all of us have days where we feel like we have to trudge through the day just to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Some days our motivation level is about as small as it can be. In those cases, how do you make it a productive day?

While this may sound a little corny to some folks, I always remind myself of how life could be so different, albeit not in a good way.

As I watch the fires on TV this week in Colorado, my heart goes out to those residents. I survived a pair of fires in the last decade here in Southern California, so I know very well what they are going through.

One woman being interviewed on TV was asked how she and her family are getting through this, wondering if they will have a home to go back to. Her simple response was that they had each other and their animals, so
they could rebuild their personal lives and their business if necessary. As she put, you have to keep going and appreciate each and every moment you have.

As you sit at work today or are traveling for a business meeting, keep in mind what this woman and tons of other people go through on a daily basis.

Everyone is tested in life, sometimes on what seems like an almost regular basis.

The key to succeeding is finding the motivation to overcome adversity, be it in your professional or personal life.

I’ll ask again…. what motivates you?

Author’s Bio:
Dave Thomas has more than 20 years’ experience as a writer, covering marketing, SEO, press releases, social media and more. You’ll find Dave at BeeMoreSocial

4 Steps to Declare Your Independence

by

INDEPENDENCE


Yes that’s me.

My birthday is July 3. The country’s birthday is July 4. I have a cousin who’s 361 days younger than me.
Those three facts added up to personal birthday celebrations that were often combined and moved around because of the holiday and the idea that one party — usually a picnic — meant less disruption for everyone.

As I got older, I reached adult birthday status much earlier than my much older brothers — whose birthdays fell on days that had no competition with other events. They got their private parties well through high school. My birthday more quickly became a piece of another event rather than my own day. We’d go see fireworks or a parade to celebrate, but those events were bigger than my birthday.

4 Steps to Declare Your Independence

The fact that I was born on the Eve of Independence Day was never lost on me. I was already saying “My birthday is the day before 4th of July.” when I was kindergarten. My birthday couldn’t compete. I was never at the center of my birthday. Being a painfully shy child, I have to think that worked for me.

But there comes a time in any life that we have to claim our own independence. We have to learn how to make ourselves the “center of our own life’s plan,” or we’ll end up spending the time of our life without actually living it. Here are 4 steps to declare your independence right now.

  • Decide who you are. At first it seems natural to let the people around us define us. Our family teaches us how to be social. Our teachers and peer groups tell us what they see. The universe is larger than the thoughts and images those groups put in our minds. Our potential is too. Don’t rely on the observations of the world to tell you who you are. They haven’t lived your life. The world can’t get together to take a vote on who you are. Choose your own best true story. Decide and show them instead.
  • Be that person now. Don’t try to be that person. Don’t work toward some future date when you’ll know you are. None of us have enough future to waste on getting there. You know what you value. You know who you admire. Define yourself with those and be what you’ve defined immediately.
  • Surround yourself with people who recognize you. Use your values to choose the people you trust. Shared values reinforce themselves. Time is unrenewable. Spend your time with people who make you feel proud to be who you are. You’ll know them because you’ll never have to focus on what you want or need. Being with people who see, hear, and understand us, frees us from having to highlight, underscore, or prove who we are. It move us away from living through self-consciousness, self-centeredness, and a conflict of selfishness with selflessness to consciousness, centeredness, and a balanced view of ourselves.
  • Own the good things about you. Influence yourself. Get to know and value what others see and value in you. That’s how you’ll grow what’s good in you naturally. You can’t share or give what you don’t truly own.

Somehow we have it backwards. We live as if at the end of our life, we’ll know …

who we are.
what we’ll do.
where we will end up.

Decide those things first. — The Problem Isn’t Not Knowing What You Want to Do …

Before I found my own independence, sharing my day always felt a bit disappointing. Hearing folks say, “enjoy YOUR day,” didn’t resonate with me. Yet once I decided who I am, began to live that, focused on people who truly see me, and learned from them what I offer, sharing my day — any day, any amount of time — became as easy as breathing. That’s how I learned to live the moments of my life.

Once I declared my independence, I learned how irresistible the people in my life truly are.

Have you declared your independence?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related: Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

5 Must-Attend Events to Understand Online Business Growth

by

by
Ann Smarty

Understanding Online Business

If guiding your business startup to the point that you’re breaking even is your first major hurdle, the second is focusing on sustaining that growth in order to turn your business into the profitable machine that you’ve always known it would be.

Just like the first leg of your entrepreneurial journey, the general idea of growing an online business covers many complicated fields and endeavors, often leaving you in the dark as to the best possible step to take in a given situation.

If getting bigger is what you’re about then you’ll need all the help you can get; check out these five must-attend events to understand online business growth:

1. SOBCon NW 2012

Business owners of all kinds are invited to attend this year’s SOBCon event, a conference that offers education and inspiration to startups, entrepreneurs and small business owners. Starting off with its theme of Starting Up Strategically, SOBCon NW 2012 will offer six unique “Mastermind Models” that focus on the key elements of a successful startup alongside interviews and talks with those in the know and panel discussions to allow you to benefit from others in your niche.

For those focused on entrepreneurial non-profit efforts, Give Back Sunday is set aside to provide you with the kind of information and insight that you need in order to achieve the best possible results with your charitable efforts.

When & Where: SOBCon NW 2012 is set to be held at the Urban Studio in Portland, Oregon, from September 28-30, 2012. Live chat with Liz if you have any venue and location questions.

2. The Conference Board – The New/Next CMO: What it Takes to Win in Marketing

Startup success and business growth depend, in the end, on marketing and marketing alone; buyers rule. With this fact in mind, it’s easy to understand exactly why a strong mind for advertising is a necessity, especially in today’s crowded business landscape, and The New/Next CMO conference offers marketing professionals big and small the tools and ideas they need to help their business to excel.

This event will help you to better spot and leverage marketing opportunities in your business, focusing on how to achieve real world results while giving you the take-home ideas and inspiration you need sell your brand to the world.

When & Where: The Conference Board Conference Center in NewYorkCity will play host to The New/Next CMO conference on November 8, 2012. There’s no official venue information at the event site but you can book a hotel using NewYorkHotels.org

3. Pivot Conference 2012

Speaking of marketing, Pivot Conference 2012 is another great event for brand builders and marketers, helping online entrepreneurs to gracefully tackle the many challenges and risks to be found in the rapidly evolving world of social media. Attended by some of the biggest and most successful names in social marketing and engineering, you’ll learn how to take advantage of emerging platforms in effective ways while never losing focus on the good old-fashioned art of connecting on a meaningful level with your customers.

When & Where: NewYork, NewYork is the city that Pivot Conference 2012, to be held on October 15-16, 2012, calls home, offerings attendees an exciting travel opportunity in itself! Here’s the official hotel and travel information.

4. Ignition: Future of Digital

In a world quickly moving towards paperless money, digitized business and technology-fuelled everything, digital media professionals need to stay educated in order to stay on top of their game! Ignition: Future of Digital promises to give attendees the information they need to stay ahead of the competition, no the matter the niche in question.

When & Where: New York City continues to hold the spotlight as it hosts the Ignite conference on November 27, 2012 at the Time Warner Center. More location information and registration is available here.

5. Business Growth Conference

Visit a city on the cutting edge of technology and digital media and rub shoulders with the best and brightest minds available by visiting the Business Growth Conference, a full day of professional development activities designed to help any business owner to grow surely and steadily.

When & Where: A visit to beautiful San Francisco, California on October 17, 2012 will be in order if you’d like to attend the Business Growth Conference. More info on the event location is available here. Union Square also boasts many other hotels.

Are you visiting any of the above? Please let us know in the comments!

Author’s Bio: Ann Smarty is a blogger and guest blogger with 6 years experience. She is a control freak and she loves when she is busy, so her hands are always full. One of her largest projects is My Blog Guest, the free community of guest authors and blog owners who preach the “high-quality” approach to guest blogging. Follow Ann on Twitter at @seosmarty and Google Plus


Thank you, Ann! Great information, Great guest post! Great birthday present to include SOBCon among them! 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

What Remarkable Footprints Have You Already Left?

by

A Minute Reflecting Can Change the World

Some mornings when I’m ready to be still and reflect, I’ll sit back, click over to my writing blog, and find something I’ve written before to see where I’ve been while I think about where I might be going next. This morning in seconds I landed on something called, “Remarkable Footprints.”

Whenever I’m in the midst of travel or meetings, it seems a nice way to explain how the world has supported me and how I rely on it to keep me going. Here it is.

Remarkable Footprints

I’d been watching the water since just about sun up. I’d been writing in my journal, thinking about life and stuff. A reoccurring theme kept playing in my head and on the page I was writing on. Like the waves on the ocean that theme kept repeating, repeating without regard to the sky, the sand, or my staring and wondering.

My life keeps circling round to lessons I’ve met before. The same mishaps keep happening. The same rugs keep getting pulled. Two years now had been as if all of the losing and learning had been wrapped and served up to me at once. This time it had come close to changing me. The concrete way down there was all that had kept the wolves from coming in.

I put my pencil down to watch the water. Watching was all I had been good at doing for quite a while there. I mentally let the waves wash away worries, clean off the weight of fears that I’d fought my through. I saw myself lean back on the surface to let my cares float to the sky to dissolve. The bubbles in the wavy foam would have done the same if they could have done what they wanted to. All things in nature know what they must do. People could learn something from that natural way of thinking.

People had told me I was too much or too little, too tall or too filled with feeling. They had made it clear that I couldn’t do what I do so well. I came close to actually believing them. What made me want to listen? What stopped me in the end from giving in, from giving up?

Who knows how long before I packed up my journal to walk back to life again. With a new resolve I set off. It was time to say, You’re wrong. I can. I will. Stand back, and watch me.

When I turned for a last look, I saw people caught in a conversation. They were gathered together at the path I had taken. Who could explain what they saw before them?

They were staring at remarkable footprints in the sand.


credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/500089

What Remarkable Footprints Have You Already Left?

Every step we take leaves a footprint.
We move the molecules of life, earth, air. People see where we got and are moved by our travels.
Others follow because we’ve made the way safer, easier, more meaningful because we’ve been there.

Have you thought about the remarkable footprints you’ve already left for others to follow?
Think about them again.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there back to your blog.

How to Drive Sales Using Pinterest

by

by
Richard Franklin

cooltext443809602_strategy

11.7 million unique U.S. Users had hit the social site in January, making Pinterest, the fastest website to ever exceed the ten million marks. The aforementioned is a report published about the growing popularity of the social site. This user attracting site has now become a great platform for marketers to generate sales online.

Pinterest users publicize their favorite images, and can also manage the subject groupings into their interests, such as hobbies, travel, favorite foods etc. People make use of Pinterest to promote their personal passions. And now, businesses have ventured with the expertise of a social media marketing agency to use this new social networking platform to earn exposure for their brands.

How to Drive Sales Using Pinterest

Here are few factors that will encourage you to incorporate Pinterest in your social media marketing:

Referral traffic more than any other site

Business on Pinterest can earn benefits from winning referral traffic. It has been discovered in the studies that Pinterest brought more traffic to the sites in comparison to Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn.

“Is your content pinnable”- this is the first requirement of tapping the referral feature of the site. For monitoring the transferring frequency of your content to Pinterest, you can install “Pin it” button on your toolbar. Besides, you directly install a “Pin It” button on your site.

Detailed information with quickness

You cannot just get advantageous with the referral traffic but you can also know what audiences think about your product. Being a great source of consumer insights; make a quick keyword research to expose with the facts what audiences are discussing and sharing about the keyword. You can investigate about competitor’s activities, and can also compare the products and services. There is a category search on Pinterest to get the insights or follow the pinners to get exposed to the things that are trending.

Gather ideas and thoughts

From color palates to food styling and camera techniques to dressing; Pinterest has become a diverse platform when it is about fetching the innovative ideas and inspiration. Companies cruise the site to get inspired with new ideas and also get exposed to the trends.

People on the social site not just share to inspire but also share so that they can be established as a thought leader in their field.

Ground for recruitment

Pinterest’s benefits are also actively utilized by many HR departments to appoint top talent. After all, it has become a medium to associate with people over shared interests. Besides, companies are also using it to flaunt their unique culture by pinning the highlights of the employees. Companies have grown creatively with features of Pinterest.

Author’s Bio:
Richard Franklin is a social media strategist and wants to share his knowledge with people who are about to hire a social media agency for their businesses. He writes about latest trends used in social media companies. You can find Richard on Twitter as @AgencySEO.

Thank you, Richard! Will you be pinning this?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 350 SOBs

by

muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

Fashion

Jobs and Careers

Business Culture and Behavior

Designer and Developer

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss