Successful Blog

Using CoolIris to Make Customer Heroes — in more time than I have! Ma

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Brand New Today

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Social business has left the world of broadcasting to enter the world of making customers into heroes and celebrities. Every chance we get to bring them together and allow them to shine, shines well on our business too.

Our customers are the fuel that lead our businesses to thrive. Why not give them some traction and support by letting the world know what they mean to our success?

One easy way to do that is choosing great tools from those the social web supplies.

Meet Cooliris and Make Social Heroes

Cooliris , innovator of the fastest and most stunning way to browse photos and videos from desktops or mobile devices, today announced Cooliris Express, a free tool that lets non-technical users create compelling digital experiences that showcase their photo and video content.

With Cooliris Express users can easily build and share fully customizable, cohesive, and immersive walls of photos and videos – not just a single photo or album – to websites, social networks, and blogs.

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Customized Media Walls in Seconds
Cooliris makes it easy for users to get started creating custom galleries by providing a simple to understand, intuitive, step-by-step wizard that walks them through the gallery building and posting process. First it prompts them to locate their personal media-rich content, then it provides options for where the content will be viewable, and finally with just one-click post they are able to share their custom galleries to the world, or just to their friends.

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A typical use case to share rich media involves selecting content from Flickr. So I’m making a Flickr Set from SOBCon09. I’ve been playing with it to see how I might include some SOBCon09 heroes in my blog …

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I couldn’t find a way to fully integrate it yet, but I hear that’s coming … meanwhile, click on the screenshot above to see more.

Leaves ME Feeling like not such a Hero

Another compelling feature is that the Cooliris Express galleries are dynamic. Once you create and post a gallery you can update it at the content source (ie: YouTube or Flickr) and the galleries you have posted to your blog or social media sites will be automatically updated with no additional steps required from the end-user.

Express works across the web
Incorporating Gigya social media technology, Express supports social media sites and blogs include: Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, TypePad, Netvibes, Yahoo, Hi5 and Orkut.

In addition to social media sites and blogs, Cooliris Express also allows uss to intntegrate the Cooliris Wall into their person websitetes. Instead of selecting a social media location, the user would select a personal site and the tool automatically generates the code they need to copy and paste into their page for the Cooliris Wall to appear.

Hold , cowboy! I have to go somewhere else to make it work on my blog? Not cool.
I just spent more time than I had trying to make this work.

You didn’t make that clear in the demo. This program has power and I can’t wait to learn more about how to get it into my blog!

Thanks to Matt from Cool Iris who brought me the directions on how to make the rest happen.
See part two of this post …

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversion. .

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How to Deliver Yourself to Your Dream Everyday … in Small Amounts

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What Are You Doing

When I was young my dad used to say, “If you’re going to be a teacher, own the school.”

I’d explain that’s not how schools work — that schools provide a place to do what I want. I’d tell him about what I’d teach and how what kids would learn would change the world.

He said I had my dreams in the clouds.

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My dad proposed.

  • In our own ways we can make any place our own by filling them with ideas that turn into action.
  • It’s the action not the ideas that make the difference, the difference that wouldn’t happen without us alone.
  • People who do things build their future by delivering value that would be missed if they weren’t there..

Whether we work in the most obscure company, or work for ourselves at contract jobs. People notice value added contributions. People look for folks who offer them unique value.

Value added is an irresistible contribution and it brings surprising opportunities as a reward.

Don’t wait for your dream to deliver … deliver yourself to your dream everyday … in small amounts.
It’s easy to get where you’re dreaming by always showing up with your dream work. Every little value will bring you closer to that dream you’re after.

How do you add a little of yourself to what you deliver today?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

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Twitter, Are You Listening?

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Listening Well Involves Knowing What Was Said

I ended an interview today with this idea.

As everyone now can add to the conversation. People overvalue the power of talking. They think putting words out makes it easier to be heard, seen and found.

Yet as the signal rises, I find folks passing on things that they couldn’t have had time to read, answering questions that they’ve misread. Other folks are taking a listening posture, but they they’re just looking for what to say or pass on next.

I’ve started to think of that as Twitter FAIL … pretending to listen to Twitter friends.

Some folks have unfriended everyone and started over. Maybe they found it easier to block out most of it.

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Lots of folks don’t worry at all as long as they feel heard.

Still I think the stronger power lies in listening … with both heart and head. When we listen we learn.

Are you listening? How can I tell?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

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Thanks to Week 215 SOBs

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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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5erg-2009
the-business-execution-blog
the-business-of-creativity
joel-on-software
unbounce

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 12-04-09

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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

Abundance Highway
Like many people whose parent came out of the Great Depression, I was bought up very abundantly, but with a sense of caution,

“we can’t afford that” ” Money doesn’t grow on trees”

and other such limiting beliefs

Catskill Cottage Seed
That being said, the most interesting social media plays I’ve been involved in had noting to do with pre-existing relationships. They were spontaneous and unpredictable.

chrisg
Are you afraid of what people will think of you?

I bet you have skills, knowledge, experience or time that you could share with others, that you could offer to people to help them, but something is holding you back.

The Fluent Self
Me: It’s like I don’t want to put it out in the world yet. I love it. It’s beautiful. And there is something there that is just… not ready.

CK’s Blog
… it’s imperative that those of us who have been working and participating in social media for years take a BIG step back and remember that this space is still brand new to most B2B companies… and change takes time (and comes with objections aplenty). That’s just the nature of change.

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We spent a lot of time talking about the FTC blogger guidelines when they were proposed and approved over the last several months. The new rules, in case you missed the news, went into effect a few days ago, with more or less a whimper.

Related ala carte selections include A SPECIAL OFFER!

Get to be a Super Genius!!
I’ve been invited as a guest to be part of Word of Mouth Supergenius Seminar on December 16th!! 12 How-To Classes, 12 Case Studies, 6 Authors Word of Mouth Supergenius!

Here’s the important thing: IT’S NOT ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA.

Social media is an incredible tool. But social media is not word of mouth marketing. It’s a tool we can use for the online portion of word of mouth. But it’s not even the main tool there. I would argue that more recommendations go by plain old-fashioned email than all the social networks combined. …

The point of word of mouth isn’t ecommerce; it isn’t to count clicks and CPAs.

The point of word of mouth is to be a brand worth talking about. To be a company that people are proud to tell their friends about. It’s to replace paid marketing with personal connections. To replace cash with love. To be fantastic.

And that’s what this conference is all about: A revival of TRUE WOM. A home for the simple idea that HAPPY CUSTOMERS ARE YOUR BEST ADVERTISERS.

True WOM is a movement.

It’s a movement that makes things better. It teaches companies to treat people better. It shows us that customer happiness is what it’s all about – for all these warm and fuzzy reasons… and because companies that are nice to people make more money.

You can attend too for a discount price of only $144 — that’s almost 1/2 price!! — if you use the code VIPSUCCESSFULBLOG. The discount goes all to you. I just get the pleasure of passing it on. Check it out here!

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

December Content Strategies

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Mack Collier, writing at The Viral Garden, has a very informative post about how to get the most out of the blogging “lull” in December:

Use December’s blogging lull to your advantage – The Viral Garden

Here’s five ways to make the most of December’s blogging lull:

1 – Re-evaluate everything. Go back and look at what your blogging results have been for 2009. How did traffic do? Subscribers? Comments? And how did these metrics tie back to your blogging goals? Put your blogging strategy for 2009 on trial, and then tweak it for 2010. Set goals for your blog. But make sure that those goals tie back into your larger focus for your blog.

This is always good advice. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”, right? Have you done your measurement? How do you track your traffic and how your readers navigate your site? I use a combination of Sitemeter (the free service)and Google analytics. Sitemeter is great for me because it is much closer to real-time than Google, and I like to keep an eye on my referral logs.

2 – Ramp up content. David Armano advises doing this, using the Holiday vacation to push out as much if not more content than usual, with the thinking being that since many other bloggers are slacking off, your content can more easily be seen. We are going to keep looking for content to share with our networks, and if you keep creating great content while everyone else slacks off, guess whose posts will be shared with my network? Use December to increase your blogging visibility.

This is a no-brainer, but time can be an issue. Like the old saying goes, the best time to plant an orchard is 10 years ago, the best time to prepare for the December lull is earlier in the year. How do you do that? Well, for one thing you can compile your posts on book reviews as you do them, creating an uber-list for gift-giving ideas. And use those Amazon links to generate a little extra money for your own holidays…

3 – Use December to get a blogging jumpstart on 2010. Hey we all want to spend time with friends and family during the Holidays. Work in all forms seems to take a backseat…But if nothing else, use that last week of December to get your content in order to hit the ground running in January. Most people won’t begin to get back into reading blogs regularly until Jan. 4th (a Monday), and this is when many bloggers will begin to get back to writing. Use December to have at least one week’s worth of posts already written for January, so that way first thing on Monday the 4th, you’ve already got fresh content waiting on readers, while many other bloggers are thinking about getting back to writing.

Again, get out your calendars right now and jot yourself some notes for August, September, and October 2010 to write some draft posts that you can complete for that first week of 2011. Getting a head start like this is a real motivator and can help you get a jump on your competition next year. And remember, in the US November 2010 is an election for the Congress, who knows what might happen. Uncertainty will likely be highin January 2011 – think about how your business can capitalize on that.

4 – Experiment. Every year I spend the final week of the year spending time with social sites/tools that I’ve been meaning to try out, but just haven’t had the chance. … December is a great time to examine different tools and see if they work for you to complement your blogging efforts.

If you have done your homework and prepared for your December/January content, then this is a great time to play around with all of those applications that you have been meaning to try. In addition, this is great new content! Blog about your experiments, and create conversations with your readers and social media network about what works and what doesn’t.

5 – Become a commenting superhero. Remember, traffic is going to come to a crawl on many blogs. … If many people aren’t commenting, this is your chance to get noticed. And not just with other readers, but by the bloggers themselves.

Commenting is definitely one of the best network- and traffic-building strategies. It is time-consuming and feels like real work sometimes, but it can also be fun and can pay off in increased traffic for your site, increased credibility and authority for yourself/your company and may even lead to guest-posting offers.

What is your December strategy? It’s not too late to do at least a couple of these activities this year.

(cross-posted at stephenpsmith.com)