Successful Blog

Thanks to Week 189 SOBs

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The June 6th Edition

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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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blondishnet
consumercentric

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

What Is an Online Social Media Conversation?

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The LANGUAGE of SOCIAL MEDIA

Words have a deep effect on
how we interpret and interact with the world.
The words we use and how we define them
reveal our interests, concerns, and values.
This series explores the words of social media.

social media conversation

When two or more people talking communicate ideas, we call that a conversation. The dynamic of a conversation works most successfully when the people sharing their thoughts reach a balance of contributing and exchanging ideas. It’s been said that conversation, “dialogue,” is the highest form of learning because it allows immediate response and clarification as questions are answered and messages are sent and received. Great conversations connect people on point of knowledge, values, and feeling.

Wikipedia suggests that conversation takes four major forms:

The Majority of conversations can be divided into four categories according to their major subject content:

  • Conversations about subjective ideas, which often serve to extend understanding and awareness.
  • Conversations about objective facts, which may serve to consolidate a widely-held view.
  • Conversations about other people (usually absent), which may be either critical, competitive, or supportive. This includes gossip.
  • Conversations about oneself, which sometimes indicate attention-seeking behaviour.

In the real world, few conversations fall exclusively into one category. Nevertheless, the proportional distribution of any given conversation between the categories can offer useful psychological insights into the mind set of the participants.

In a fluid, flexible conversation no one is in constantly in control. Control passes as the conversation moves from speaker to speaker. Ideas and thoughts attach and change the direction of the conversational thread to take in a direction the the speaker wants to go.

In online social media experiences, conversation is often input via keyboard within the context of a blog comment box, a Twitterstream or a social networking site thread. Not all such social media inputs really qualify as conversations. Individual comments that stand alone are better defined as remarks than as conversations.

Here’s how some folks define their online social media conversation.

@hdbbstephen: “To start with it doesn’t work like this http://bit.ly/AlTEr”
@nanpalmero: “a two way conversation begun on some type social media platform”
@storyseeker: “A conversation with everyone but only the intelligent and good looking reply.”
@gerlaineTalk: “Social Media Conversation definition? Good question. Hmmmm…. A talk of interest and creation of buzz.”
@Thandelike “SM conversation: starts publicly,@lizstrauss, at any point new interlocutors feel free to join in, embellish, pursue with their own ppl.”
@Matthew_T_Grant : ” its a combo of eavesdropping, broadcasting, and direct address (narrow-casting) – public intimacy”
@bethbeck : “Social media: Some call it noise, chatter. 4 me: enlightening, informative, eye-opening, boundary-less. World @ my fingertips!”
@storyseeker: “A conversation with everyone but only the intelligent and good looking reply.”
@tomaplomb: “Listening to a stream of voices, inserting yours into that stream, and watching the ripples.”
@BranislavPeric “There is no such things as “social media conversation”. Conversations, using digital tools, are social media.”
@Matthew_T_Grant : ” its a combo of eavesdropping, broadcasting, and direct address (narrow-casting) – public intimacy”
@lindsaydavies: “Social media conversation is a bit like morse code, short & useful but you really need to be involved to understand it.”

How do you define online social media conversation?

For more information see:
Princeton WorNet
Wiktionary
Wikidpedia
Discussion on Conversation (powerpoint)
Etymology and definition of the term “conversation”

SEE ALSO:
What Is Social Media?
What Is Social Networking?
What IS a Social Community?

Got more to add? C’mon let’s talk.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Setting Goals for Your Business Website

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goal-postsThis is the question you should be asking yourself every day:

How effective is your website at achieving the goals you have for your business?

If you do not know the answer, it may be because you have not set your goals properly. Do you know what the purpose of your site is? What are the benefits for you and your business?

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Lets take a look at these questions, and potential answers.

  • Your website should position you as an expert in your field. Perception and reputation are everything to your potential customers and clients. Having a website that effectively conveys that expertise to your visitors improves your visiblity in the marketspace, your credibility as a business-person, and begins to build trust in your products/services.
  • Your website is a starting-point for the identity of your brand. It is a starting point because it is impossible to control all aspects of your brand identity anymore. Your customers have blogs, forums, and Twitter now – where they can and will discuss your product’s price and quality, your customer service interactions, even your advertising strategies.
  • Your website expands your marketspace beyond yesterday’s geographical boundaries. Depending on the products and services that you offer (shipping may be a consideration) you can now offer the services of your business to a global audience, not just the people within a few minutes’ drive.
  • Your website is a tool for expanding your list of potential clients. Due to the expanded nature of the marketspace and the rapidly growing number of people who do their research online before making a purchase. Having an e-mail capture/site registration application on your site can help you to build a list of self-selected potential customers.
  • Your website is a venue for providing value to your market before you ever make a sale. E-books, white papers, product reviews, service explanations – all of these marketing tools can be made available throught your site. For free, or for the price of an e-mail registration. When your visitors see your site (and your business) as value-added then doing business with you is an opportunity, not a risk.

Does your website do these things? If not, do you need help putting them in place? Let us know how we can help.

For Your Ears Only

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Why Blogging and Guitar Playing Spell Double Trouble
a Guest Post by Alex Beattie

There are many parallels with ‘blogging’ as a craft and ‘guitar playing’ as a craft.

Both the ‘blog’ and the ‘guitar’ are similar in many ways. However, it is important to point out that the ‘blog,’ in the sense of ‘advertisement’ posts or splogs are not the type of blogs I am referring to. The same holds true for the guitar. A guitar you got a for Christmas, and is still in the case is not the ‘guitar playing’ I am referring to – or if you simply happen to own a guitar.

For the Connection

I am pointing out that these 2 crafts (as I see them) are only comparable, inasmuch as the person (and I stress person) works, cultivates, nurtures, hones, errs, loves, promotes the blog and / or the guitar.

Take Seth Godin, for example. He has a blog and has written over 2500 posts (in a row!!!) and has a well-maintained, beautifully written, insightful, and quite an enjoyable blog – let’s not forget he also has an enormous readership.

Then take the band Widespread Panic. They have been playing music together and in front of audiences since 1986, and have amassed a cult-like, Grateful Dead-esque following. They have never, by choice, had a hit single or a number one hit – by choice. They even turned down a gig opening for the Rolling Stones because they (the band) felt that it wouldn’t be fair to their fans. Fans of Widespread Panic enjoy long jams and 3 hour shows.

One most first be drawn to the crafts for the right reasons – one of them is not money. In order to blog successfully (which could mean many different things), one must do it for the right reasons. (i.e. something to say, a cause, a message, a desire to connect to people and to connect people, or maybe just because one likes to write).

The first comparison I would allude to would be neither offer what the ‘knowledge workers’ understand to be a direct path to monetization.

For the Understanding, Appreciation, Motion

The second comparison I would draw is both require a tremendous amount of studying other blogger’s or guitarist’s works. This doesn’t mean plagiarism or blatantly ripping off licks and melodies, but it does require a deeper understanding of composition – whether it is in the form of melodies, notes and rhythms, or HTML code, paragraph structures and the assembling of jpegs, gifs, png files in a 3 column layout composite.

The third comparison would be that both have enormous rewards when another (especially people of the same ilk) appreciates the sound or the blog. If someone attending a show I played approached me after a show and I was playing for beer money and gas, that made it all worth it. All the years practicing was worth it at that moment.

The same holds true with a blog. Nobody read my first post, maybe nobody reads it still, but a few people have stumbled across something I posted and said, “Hey, that was great work, it really made my day.” Or, “That was insightful, Alex, thank you so much.”

The fourth is that they are both a manner of record. While not all passionate guitarists record or want to record, most do at some point. Both the blog and the guitar are public record which gives them some sense of levity or motion. Listen to The Beatles’ earliest stuff like A Hard Days Night and compare it to Tomorrow Never Knows. The Beatles evolved in real time and it was recorded. The same is true with a blog. It is constantly in motion. This is part of what makes them attractive to passionate people.

There are certainly more comparisons here, but at the risk being too creative, I will stop.

For Your Ears Only

A blog is only worth reading if you can tell that someone (the author or authors) really cares, or really wants to transfer an emotion through your viewport. Music and guitars are only worth hearing and listening to if when you hear it, something stirs about you and brings forth something you didn’t have access to until – Voilá ! – the end of Stevie Ray Vaughan‘s Life Without You comes and on you find yourself teeming with heartache, joy, and happiness which once was recorded by someone who felt the same thing, as if it were meant for your ears only.

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Alex Beattie writes about music and life at the Hound Dog Blog. His twitter name is @rubybluesox

Brilliant, Alex! Thank you!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

What Would Need to Drive a Sexy Yellow Sports Car?

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Context

All our lives we hear this statement.

Tell me what you need.

Do you hear it differently depending on the context?

When Is an Offer an Offer?

In the office supply store, “Tell me what you need.”
“I need a box of gel pens, colored file folders, and a nice notebook.”

In a project meeting, “Tell me what you need.”
“I need three months, two more designers, and a traffic manager.”

Planning a conference, “Tell me what you need.”
“I need a 3200 sq. ft. room with 30 small conference tables and 5 elegant executive chairs at each.”

Simple. Someone asks. We tell them what we require. We find out if our needs are available or if adjustments are in order.

But Then

When someone makes an offer of work to “die” for …

It can sound like this.
Would you like to

  • speak at the palace?
  • travel with your favorite rock band?
  • visit all of your friends around the world?
  • tour the vineyards of Europe?
  • drive this sexy yellow sports car for a year?

“Um, sure!”

“Tell me what you need.”
“I’m there!”

“Tell me what you need.”
“Whatever you’re offering.”

We wouldn’t use that response in the office supply store. “Tell what you need.”
“Whatever you’re offering.”

Not so simple. Not the best answer either.

Reality Check

Someone asks what we require. Do you give up your needs because the offer is cool?

Attractive work doesn’t stay attractive
when you work for less than you need.

Overlook the delightful; see past the golden; think through what it will cost you to explore that delicious adventure. Then you’ll know how to answer. “To drive your sexy yellow sports car for a year, I’d need … ”

Have you ever talked yourself right past the words, “Tell me what you need”?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Did you buy the ebook yet?

Do it for your blog.

Will I See You at WordCamp Chicago?

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Sweet WordCamp Chicago

Whenever, I get a chance to speak in my hometown you can bet it’s a big deal to me. WordCamp Chicago organized by Lisa Sabin-Wilson and Brian Gardner two folks I admire, raises the bar even higher. Look at the roster of speakers they’re bringing to the microphone.

  • Matt Mullenweg, founder of our favorite blog/CMS platform, WordPress
  • Jeremy Wright, CEO of one of the largest global new media blog networks, b5media
  • Jim Turner, business and social media blogging consultant at One By One Media
  • Erin Blaskie, CEO of global internet marketing strategy consultancy, Business Services, ETC
  • David Dalka, marketing and digital technology coach and founder of, Search Engine Marketing Strategy
  • Liz Strauss, online business strategist and owner of Successful Blog and SOB Con
  • Micah Baldwin, VP of business development of search-powered web application, Lijit
  • Tim Frick, who creates design-driven communication solutions with his company, Mightybytes
  • Doug Hanna, head honcho of running the day-to-day operations of the WordPress showcase
  • Kevin Palmer, social media expert consultant and talent behind Social Media Answers

You can bet I’ve planning my WordCamp Chicago presentation for quite a while. It’s called, “How WordPress Took Me Out of the Gutter and Made Me What I Am Today” It’s going to be an audience interactive conversation about what we build during the life cycle of a blog.

WordCamp Chicago is June 06 and 07, 2009 in the Michigan Ballroom of the UBS Tower Conference Center, One North Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL. You’ll find the complete schedule here.

I hear it’s sold out! Will I see you there?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Raise your influence and income. Be Seen! Be Heard Be Hired!