Successful Blog

30 Twitter Apps We Actually Use and 140 After That

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At Open Comments this week, we talked about the Twitter Apps we find most useful and most fun to use. If you are a Twitter maven, you’ll see immediately that this is not a comprehensive list, but as a maven, you’d also know that many apps do the same things. At the end of the list I’ve included a reference to a longer list for you.

It was a fast conversation that brought together the best Twitter Tools of the group. Hope they help you tweet in style.

Are your personal favorites on the list? Feel free to add the best in the comments if they’re not here.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Image: ADOdesign

What Glenda Watson Hyatt Said … About a Smile

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A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

A Smile Is a Powerful Tool

If only positive things happened, we have no worries about what other people were thinking, what could go wrong, or what the future might be bringing. We’d also never learn about strength of purpose or facing down adversity. No one has courage every minute, but when we need courage, a smile can be a powerful tool.

Here’s what Glenda said . . .

“What do you do when people are looking at you?” Being in a wheelchair with an obvious physical disability, people look or stare most times I head out my front door. Generally, I take deep breath, hold my head up, slap on a smile and carry on! Most times it works. . . .
Glenda Watson Hyatt from a comment on April 22, 2008

I so believe in the power of positive thinking. Sometimes it does take some effort, like slapping on a smile when I don’t really feel like it. But, when I am truly in the zone of positive thinking and being grateful, amazing things happen!

Glenda Watson Hyatt from a comment on April 20, 2008

A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Mic is On: We’re Talking About Twitter Apps

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It’s Like Open Mic Only Different

The Mic Is On

Here’s how it works.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

Let Me Call You, TweetHeart

Twitter. Everyone is tweeting — well, almost everyone. Now we have our twitter accessorires. Over 200 applications have been added to the Twitterfield.

  • How do you use Twitter?
  • Which apps are your favorites?
  • What’dya wish for?
  • What happens if Twitter starts charging?

And, whatever else comes up, including THE EVER POPULAR, Basil the code-writing donkey . . . and flamenco dancing (because we always get off topic, anyway.)

Oh, and bring example links to share —

–ME “Liz” Strauss
image: AODdesign
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How to Focus Your Creative Energy to Build that Dream

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Managing Time Creatively

Paradoxical Creativity

When it comes to raising barns and building bridges can be a major drain. We have to fit our dream inside, beside, and often outside of the work we do to pay our bills. Just when we find the time to put forward on our sweetest idea, we also find that our minds and our creativity have been overspent.

In Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlined The 10 Dimensions of Creative Complexity, which I call the Ten Paradoxes of Creativity. Each paradox describes the ability to use a repertoire of thought and actions between two extremes — where most people show a distinct preference highly creative people prefer “both and.”

The first paradox that Dr. C reported is that:

Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they also are often quiet and at rest. p.58

What he offered three facts and observations about energy that seem most worth exploring.

  • Their high energy due more to their focused minds than their genes.
  • They often take rests and sleep a lot.
  • Their energy is under their personal control.

Creative individuals learn to manage their energy by trial and error. This highly productive, focus / rest process is something they develop as a strategy to reach their goals.

How to Focus Your Creative Energy to Build that Dream

Managing focus and rest is a high performance skill. Our genes don’t have to align in a certain for us to master it. We start by raising our awareness, seeing the times when our creative energy naturally runs high and when we’re drawn to “a little down time.” Imagine how much more productive we’d be if we got in sync with our personal creative energy?

Here’s some things we might do . . .

  • Pay attention to the ebb and the flow.
    Granted we don’t have perfect control over our schedules. Still, we often fit ourselves to the work rather than find our most productive times for the kind of work we’re doing.

    Are you more creative at night or in the early hours? It’s worth it to get up early to take advantage of what you’ll accomplish if you do.

    Watch what you do every day and especially on the weekends. When do you naturally rest and when do you naturally play?

    Are you checking email when your best ideas could be coming? Save the boring stuff for when your creative energy is lower.

    Do you do better if you put your meetings and phone calls in the morning or the afternoon?

    Play with the order of what you do until you find you’re breezing through the tasks that wear you out the most.

  • When energy gets low, stop for fuel.
    When you feel your energy draining, take a break, power nap, or walk around. Plodding on only moves forward more slowly with less efficiency.
    How often do you stop for refueling? A few minutes refueling makes the time that follows more productive.

    What sorts of activities recharge your brain? A well chosen activity can supercharge our brains, our creativity, and our resolve. We recover the time away in higher performance when we return.

    If you’ve working on the computer with words or spreadsheets, you might do something colorful that requires not words or numbers.

    If you’ve been doing design work, you might stop to do a crossword or read a magazine article. Using the other side of our brain can be the best way to refuel.

  • Leave your work at an inviting unfinished place. At the end of a work session, we often hurry or push through to finish up something. Try this instead. Choose a point in the work where a part of the project will be “almost finished, but not quite.” When you return, you’ll finish it quickly and move forward with the extra charge of that accomplishment.
  • Plan to be creative.
    When a project inspires you, plan large blocks of uninterrupted time to devote as much energy as you want. Keep your creativity climbing faster by making sure you don’t have to stop just when the going is good.

    Eat well and sleep well before you start.

    Set up the atmosphere with minimal distractions.

    Make creative work an occasion worth planning.

  • Hang with high energy folks..
    Spend time with people who energize you. Schedule your “catch up” phone conversations with upbeat friends during hours when you’re mind is lagging.
    Ask them about their creative projects. Creativity is contagious. Take advantage of that.

Highly productive creative people focus like a laser beam when they’re working and they take energy from being fully engaged. (See Flow, also by Dr. C.) As soon as they’re not, they rest. That’s how they harness their creativity to produce their dreams.

We can do it too.

When does your energy rise and fall? What strategies can you offer to help us channel our creative energy?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Work with Liz!!

Enlist, Engage, Empower

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What is your answer to your Community's call?What do you do with those that you attract to your community? The short answer is “Talk to them!”

The long answer is that you treat all of them with respect and dignity, find out what it is that they are looking for, and help them to find it.

Once you begin to build a community, you will find that there are some that are more interested in getting involved than others. One of the things that this kind of community member is looking for is Engagement. These readers and “doers” will enlist in your community expressly to get involved with other people – to talk, to listen, to help. They are looking to be a part of something larger than themselves.

Your goal should be to empower them to do so

How does your blog or website deliver to this type of reader/community member? Is there a comments feature that allows people to post their own opinion? How about a forum where the members can engage each other in a much broader fashion?

There are two schools of thought on allowing comments on a blog. One holds that it allows the readers to engage the author, and each other, in a discussion – a conversation – about the topic of the post. This can be a very powerful method of getting the word out about your site, as more people talk about and comment. The downside of this is the possibility of spam – fake comments from pr0n sites – and that you need to monitor the comments for inappropriate behavior. This is the primary rationale for the second school of thought on comments – don’t allow them.

How should you manage your empowered community?

Creating and nurturing a community takes time and effort. It means that not only do you need to give of yourself to create the content that the community is looking for, you need to share part of your creation with the community. A Web forum is an excellent tool for sharing this content and the responsibility for managing it. Sometimes called a bulletin board or message board, a Web forum is an online center for ongoing, in-depth discussions of specific topics and issues.

One of the more interesting features of the Web forum membership is that users frequently self-select for monitoring what is going on. As the “leader” of the community you can enlist these active volunteers to become moderators for the various topics and keep an eye on the postings and comments.

Seek these people out, encourage them to take the next step. Share of yourself and see what happens!