Successful Blog

How Would Changing Your View Change What’s Happening in Your Life Now?

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Yesterday, I had a change of plans. A simple flight from NYC to Chicago turned into two cancellations and a few hours of waiting that weren’t on the program for how I’d had my day laid out.

I had no choice about the horrible weather that was changing airline schedules making no certainty of arrival. Saying “Rain, rain go away,” has never worked for me. All I could do was repaint my picture of how the day might go.

More than anything I try to change how I’m seeing the world …

  • Be a big fan of seeing unplanned interruptions as adventures. Adventure mode helps me gather good energy. My quest is usually to get to the end of the adventure with my good humor still going.
  • Like watching how other folks respond. Watching other folks I can see how they make their situations worse. That woman on the phone complaining about the weather and the delays isn’t having nearly as much fun as the one who is playing with her child in the airport. The conversation I had with the off-duty pilot would never have happened if I stayed inside a world of my own.
  • Get into discovering new opportunities. A walk through a bookstore gave me ideas for my blog. A dinner in the sports bar gave a celebration of an overtime game in the world cup with an excited, engaged crowd.
  • Watch for other possibilities and fuel them with a smile. In the shuffle of several boarding passes my baggage claim check left me and my bag wasn’t on the carousel when I arrived home. I gave a second’s thought to the contents of the bag; then went on to the possibility that my “adventure-inclined” luggage might have taken a route of it’s own. Sure enough it was safely waiting for me in another part of the airport.

Now I’m not saying that a wider world view or adventure mode will win anyone a ton of money or change the weather to a sunny day. But I’m saying that it will make what comes a lot easier to work through.

Living in the opportunities is always more fun than being stuck in a problem.

It’s all in how you view the world. When you have room to move, breathe, and smile, people respond.

How would changing your view change what’s happening in your life now?

Liz's Signature

Thanks to Week 242 SOBs

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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.

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big-fat-finance-blog
escaping-mediocrity
grange-website-design
pingdom
savvy-b2b-marketing

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.

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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

SOB Business Cafe 06-11-10

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SB Cafe

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

Freelance Writing Jobs
None of these strategies are any great secret. They’ve been recommended by top bloggers and social media strategists for years. In fact, the last strategy is something I used to do on a regular basis but stopped for a while. Once I began implementing it again, the effort paid off.

the BrandBuilder
We had to put our golden retriever to sleep this weekend, our friend of fifteen years, our family’s faithful guardian and companion, and one of the kindest, most loyal and giving souls I have ever met. True to her breed, Sasha was a courageous, tender and selfless until the end.

John Haydon
Setting a Facebook Page can be one of the most confusing tasks – for most people.

Not just you.

The starting point is hard to find, selecting your Page category can be tricky, and even finding your Page once it’s created can be a chore.

Un-Marketing
Recently I surpassed the 50,000 tweet mark.

Holy monkeynuts.

That’s roughly 5,000,000 characters of typing, assuming an average of 100 characters a tweet.

And it’s been worth every one of them.

Seth’s Blog
There may be no bigger opportunity online for bootstrappers than finding people who would benefit from being connected and then connecting them.

Not so they can waste time sending digital love notes back and forth, but so they (and you) can create value for others.

Marie Forleo
I’ll be the first to admit I feel like a failure. Often.

You’d be shocked and likely want to shake me silly if you knew how much money and time I’ve wasted on “information products” and “business systems” that didn’t work.

Related ala carte selections include

Social Times
Ridiculous? Or Genuis??? via Jim Kukral

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

third-tribe-marketing

Cool Tool Review: Bit.ly

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Bit.ly
A Review by Todd Hoskins

If you’ve been cryogenically frozen for the past two years, the discovery of URL shorteners would be confusing. Why are there all these nonsensical domains appearing on Twitter, Facebook, and even in email?

Prompted by the 140 character limit, the early URL shorteners (we’re talking 2008) served an important purpose – freeing space for you to get more words and letters into a tweet. You want to share Lady Gaga’s controversial Alejandro video, for example, but simply sending the link is not enough. You want to offer your endorsement, commentary, or related questions (and for this video, there are many). Shortening the URL gives you the chance to do this. Otherwise, the link itself will take up half of your tweet characters.

So, thank you SnipURL, urlBorg, Cligs, is.gd, Su.pr, TinyURL, Ow.ly, and all the others for allowing me to add my two cents.

There is also a business utility to URL shortening, and Bit.ly remains the leader. Bit.ly and it’s companion service J.mp (which I use) shorten nearly 5 billion links per month. Why are so many people using Bit.ly? First, it has been Twitter’s default shortener. But also, Bit.ly offers analytics on your links that can be endlessly fascinating and valuable to your business.

When advising clients on their microblogging efforts I start with two main focal points:

1) Accessibility of your voice (warmth, personality, interactivity, humor)
2) Relevancy of your content

Bit.ly analytics can give you real-time and cumulative feedback on the relevancy of content. Are people sharing what you have shared? Are they clicking on the link? What types of content do your readers find compelling? What conversations take place around these links?

Once you have an account and shorten a URL, either with the Bit.ly sidebar or at their domain (also Tweetdeck has Bit.ly integrated), you can track and manage the links to see when and how often people have clicked through, as well as the ratio of the traffic you are driving compared to the rest of traffic monitored through Bit.ly.

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You also get posts and tweets that have used your shortened URL, so you can see who else is distributing the content and in what context. It’s a great way to discover influencers and fans. Don’t fall into the trap of measuring your online presence based on click-throughs, but it is a fast way to learn and adjust for the content your company is creating or distributing.

One more note . . . I will also use URL shorteners within emails sent to clients. If you send an email to five colleagues, for example, and want to see not only how many people are reading what you have highlighted as important, but how often that email has been forwarded, Bit.ly provides an easy way to see whether the article you recommend is being digested.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 5/5 – Dashboard and branded short links with Bit.ly Pro

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – Improve your content. Inform your voice. Analytics help.

Personal Value: 3/5 – Effective replacement for bookmarking (Like a site? Article? Shorten it and it will be archived.)

A Memorable Blogger Is A Guest Under Many Roofs

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By Terez Howard

You are a blogger. You want people to know who you are. You want the sight of your name to instantly remind readers of your brand. You want to be memorable.

The people I remember are the people that are everywhere.

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Bloggers that guest blog here, there and everywhere stick in my mind. They are the ones hat offer their insights on their own blog but aren’t stingy with their wisdom. They willingly share their expertise and musings with the audiences of other blogs.

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The beauty of guest blogging is that a well-established blog already has regular readers, and they flock in droves daily. They talk; they comment; they tweet about this blog. Then one day you get to write for this blog, and you’re the talk of the town.

One Guest Blog Post Increased My Twitter Followers Sevenfold from writing at this very blog.

Not only that, I recently established a relationship with a blogger I met on LinkedIn who also wants to blog for businesses. Guess how she heard about me? Liz Strauss!

Guest blogging gets your name known, or at the very least, recognized. Don’t expect an instant surge in traffic to your blog or tons of requests for your services from a single guest blog post. While these are possibilities in the early stages, they are results that should come gradually… and not from just one post.

Get under many roofs

If you want to spread your image around, guest blog for several blogs. Choose blogs with readers that will be interested in what you have to say and that will benefit from your knowledge and experience.

If you know nothing about reverse mortgages (I don’t!), then don’t try to write for a blog about them. Readers will wonder why they are reading general, rehashed information from you. Further, you won’t have any fun writing on a topic that bores you to sleep. You’ll find yourself staring at the computer screen, waiting for the words to magically appear. They won’t.

If you hope for traffic from your guest blog post to go to your blog, then the topics have to compliment one another. They don’t have to be carbon copies. But I’m not going to click on a mesothelioma lawyer blog after I read post on summer hair care.

Be a good guest

When I am a dinner guest at some else’s home, I take off my shoes, compliment their décor and be as polite as possible. Hosts expects these pleasantries when having guests in their homes.

So a guest blogger should give her host respect. Even if you guest post for a blog just one time, you must give it your all. Your guest post on a heavily trafficked blog might get viewed hundreds of times over the course of time.

What do you want visitors to see below your name? An engaging post with little to no errors which provides readers of that blog with practical content. That’s it.

Do you want to get started guest blogging? We’ll talk about how to do it next week.

In the meantime, what do you like or dislike about guest blogging?

—
Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas . You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

Thanks, Terez!

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

Social Media Book List: I’ve Landed My Dream Job, Now What? and The New Influencers

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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 and writers by managing their online promotion. As part of my job I read a lot of books (and I love to read anyway!). I am here to offer a weekly post about one book author I am working with and one book I have put on my reading list. This week I will be highlighting ‘I’ve Landed My Dream Job, Now What?’. and ‘The New Influencers’ by Paul Gillin. The books I discuss will cover topics such as social media (Facebook and Twitter), organization, career building, networking, writing, self development and inspiration.

I’ve Landed My Dream Job, Now What??? by Scot Herrick

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‘I’ve Landed My Dream Job–-Now What???’ is designed to be your constant companion during the first thirty days at your new job. It will help you think through what you’re going to accomplish and how to measure your accomplishments, right from day 1 all the way to day 30. Weekly tasks and action items make sure you are on track and end-of-week reviews help you assess how closely you are meeting your goals. With Scot Herrick’s book at your side, you can be sure to survive and thrive in your new cubicle.

About the Author:
Scot Herrick, founder and owner of Cube Rules, LLC, provides online career management training for Cubicle Warriors, his catchy term for today’s knowledge workers.

Scot has a long history of managerial and individual contribution in Fortune 100 corporations. He has implemented individual products for customers and enterprise-wide customer relationship management systems. At CubeRules.com, Scot shares his wisdom and experience to provide career management guidance for all cubicle warriors, to survive and thrive in these turbulent times.

You can purchase a copy of ‘I’ve Landed My Dream Job, Now What??? How to Achieve Success in the First 30 Days in a New Job’ online at ThinkAha Books or at Amazon.

This blog post is part of a virtual book tour done by Key Business Partners and I have received a complimentary copy of ‘ I’ve Landed my Dream Job, Now What??? ‘ by the author.

The New Influencers

Now I would like to highlight a book on my “review” reading list–The New Influencers.

Here are some editorial reviews shared on Amazon about the book:

“This is essential reading for anyone who missed the blogging train when it left the station.” —Seth Godin, author, Small Is the New Big

“Offers practical advice for anyone to increase brand presence and capture new audiences in the online space . . . Gillin’s in-depth analysis, research and insights remain strong and reliable.” —Fast Company

Want to know more? Read here–

Exploring how and why online forums such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs have gained such popularity—and credibility—with consumers, this practical guide offers proven strategies for organizations to leverage these new internet-based social media outlets. The differences between traditional and new media are explored, as are simple ways business owners and marketers can use these new resources to communicate with their customers. Practical tips on gaining the attention of and interacting with influential bloggers, the pros and cons of creating a company blog, guerilla marketing on the internet, and restructuring marketing expectations are also discussed.

About Paul:
Paul Gillin is a writer, speaker and online marketing consultant. He specializes in social media and the application of personal publishing to brand awareness and business marketing. His books includ The New Influencers (2007), Secrets of Social Media Marketing (2008), The Joy of Geocaching (co-authored with wife Dana in 2010) and Social Marketing to the Business Customer (co-authored with Eric Schwartzman, January, 2011). Paul is a veteran technology journalist with more than 25 years of editorial leadership experience.His website is www.gillin.com and he blogs at www.paulgillin.com*courtesy of Amazon

You can purchase a copy of ‘The New Influencers’ on Amazon


I truly hope you will check out these books and please comment and let me know your thoughts on them.