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The Generosity Connection that Lifts Us Higher

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Community Raises People Up

At any moment, most of us are doing fine, but a few are feeling the hill’s too high or the burden’s too heavy. So those who can reach out to those who’ve lost the spirit.

At times like that, generous folks reach out to show us how to push through and climb up. It’s hard to know which reach will make a difference.
People get back on track and move forward, keeping their eye on the goal.
Sometimes on the way to that goal people get impatient, feel deprived, or forget the folks who helped.

Then someone generous of spirit stops long enough to say something like this

I wouldn’t have pushed through if you had not been there.

It’s a gift to hear that.

The generosity connection lifts us higher.

Tell someone …
you’re there to help.

Thank someone …
who’s been there for you.

I love you all.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
image source: sxc.hu gwyther77
Work with Liz!!

If you haven’t had a chance yet, add your $500 wish to the list. I hope you win!

Social Networking: If Someone Smiles on the Other Side of The World

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Guest Post by Vincent Wright

If you’re happy and you know it, thank your friends—and their friends. And while you’re at it, their friends’ friends. But if you’re sad, hold the blame. Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego have found that “happiness” is not the result solely of a cloistered journey filled with individually tailored self-help techniques. Happiness is also a collective phenomenon that spreads through social networks like an emotional contagion.

In a study that looked at the happiness of nearly 5000 individuals over a period of twenty years, researchers found that when an individual becomes happy, the network effect can be measured up to three degrees. One person’s happiness triggers a chain reaction that benefits not only their friends, but their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends. The effect lasts for up to one year.

The flip side, interestingly, is not the case: Sadness does not spread through social networks as robustly as happiness. Happiness appears to love company more so than misery.

“We’ve found that your emotional state may depend on the emotional experiences of people you don’t even know, who are two to three degrees removed from you,” says Harvard Medical School professor Nicholas Christakis, who, along with James Fowler from the University of California, San Diego co-authored this study. “And the effect isn’t just fleeting.”

For over two years now, Christakis and Fowler have been mining data from the Framingham Heart Study (an ongoing cardiovascular study begun in 1948), reconstructing the social fabric in which individuals are enmeshed and analyzing the relationship between social networks and health. The researchers uncovered a treasure trove of data from archived, handwritten administrative tracking sheets dating back to 1971. All family changes for each study participant, such as birth, marriage, death, and divorce, were recorded. In addition, participants had also listed contact information for their closest friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Coincidentally, many of these friends were also study participants. Focusing on 4,739 individuals, Christakis and Fowler observed over 50,000 social and family ties and analyzed the spread of happiness throughout this group.

Using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Index (a standard metric) that study participants completed, the researchers found that when an individual becomes happy, a friend living within a mile experiences a 25 percent increased chance of becoming happy. A co-resident spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance, siblings living within one mile have a 14 percent increased chance, and for next door neighbors, 34 percent.

But the real surprise came with indirect relationships. Again, while an individual becoming happy increases his friend’s chances, a friend of that friend experiences a nearly 10 percent chance of increased happiness, and a friend of *that* friend has a 5.6 percent increased chance—a three-degree cascade.

For the rest of the story, visit Science Daily.

Thanks, and Keep STRONG!!
Vincent Wright
Image: sxc.hu
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Vincent, you’re a happiness agent if I’ve ever seen one. Thank you for reminding us how this works.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

How Social Media Can Help You Build a Better Business

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Why Didn’t the People Come?

When people ask my help, it’s often to avoid or to remedy a situation like this one.

He had a dream, an idea, for a new business. It was a product and a service. He saw it in its glory. It was part store, part community bustling with transactions. He saw the people coming — they knew they couldnn’t wait for it.

So he got busy building that dream. He invested time, money, and enthusiasm in something …

  • that he thought was cool.
  • that was costly, but “worth” it.
  • that was harder to use than he realized.
  • that he didn’t know how to sell.
  • that he imagined would get people change how they do what they do
  • that someone else had already built — better, faster, less expensively.

Nothing happened. No one lined us. No bustling community developed. The dream was built and no one lined up. No one has noticed it. Why?

He didn’t remember to talk to the people who were supposed to come.

Get the People to Come Before You Build It

Suppose, instead of building that business and offering it to them, we invited the people we want to serve build the business with us? The culture of social media and social networking offer huge opportunities to build a business with a community rather than for them.

In the 18th and 19th rural North America, building a barn — the most important structure of farm — required many hands and many skills. Time was often short and funds could be tight. Barn raising was the work of an interdependent community that saw barns as an important part of life.

A barn raising used to be a one- or two-day event. Materials were purchased and plans were finished ahead. When the community came able-bodied and quick-minded members could start right in. Barn raisings were lead a barn raiser who with a well-thought plan who was paid to identify and manage crew chiefs, specialists, and volunteers for “pitching in.” New barn raisers were expected to watch before they took up their work.

A barn raising is the ultimate community collaboration to complete a common, organized goal.

Barn raising a business in the social media culture offers the business and the community members who participate clear benefits. Here’s why your social media business building should be a barn raising.

  • A community needs a plan and organization to build. We can’t fool a community by building parts that don’t work together. We can’t get stuck or be moved to fall in love with our own ideas.
  • Enlisting a barn raiser and crew chiefs keeps your plan organized and on schedule.
  • Ideas and costs get questioned.
  • We have to be able to explain how things will work, what makes them useful, and why they’re worth building
  • We all gain skills and relationships from participating in the process.
  • The final business reflects the needs and values of the community that built it.
  • Participants showcase their best work in a short-term commitment
  • The process provides a product or service has proven its worth by the community support.

Barn raising builds the community at the same time that it builds the business that will serve us. Everyone who has participated is invested in its success. Don’t just think … do.

Ever been part of a project that worked like a barn raising?

What would be the first step in helping some get a social media barn raising started for their business idea?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to build barn? Work with Liz!!
Image: Haussler Cluster Raising in CA

What Sheila Scarborough Said … About Getting Paid

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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.

Asking for What We’re Worth

When we take on the role and reins of a professional, not all of the skills come at the same time. Often we’re great the work, but not so good at asking to be paid what the work is worth. How do folks figure that out? It comes from experience and trust in our own value.

Here’s what Sheila said . . .

For one thing, people are rather itchy about giving specific amounts when discussing payment and salary, so we go around not knowing that there are some people out there getting paid pretty good money to do what we’re doing.

Once I finally figured out that .50-$1/word was more than reasonable and even low-end for most print pubs, I started doing the math for my online work, which is just writing, after all.

Holy cow, was I giving away the farm! That led me to turn down a few blogging jobs that sounded nice but just were not paying enough for my considerable efforts.

So, let’s be more frank about money so we know what is “standard” and reasonable to ask for.

Then, let’s realize how increasingly valuable our online savvy is to businesses that want to move online. Knowledge that we think “everyone knows” is in fact gold bullion to companies who have just found Web 2.0. I’m not saying overcharge “because they can afford it,” but we should really appreciate our unique skillsets.

The teacher/consultant role and the need to pay such folks seems to be understood, so I plan to lean more in that direction, and try to make a decent living teaching what I know.

Sheila Scarborough from a comment on December 29, 2007

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

What Mark Goodyear Said … About Blogging for Others

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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.

Blogging and Community

When we write our first blog post, we write for expression. We’ve something to say and we put it out there. Sometime along the way, people come to read what we’re writing — one person, many. Our blog turns from a website into a place where minds meet. How often do we consider the power of that?

Here’s what Mark said . . .

People want to do something meaningful. That is so true.

That’s why I love your site. You remind bloggers that this is only meaningful when we create in community. What we say must have a direct, positive affect on another person–or else we’re just stroking our own egos by building online archives of meaningless content.

Sure, we can pretend we’re writing for posterity. And we can overly fixated on a need for seeing with our own eyes how our work helps others.

But the central point remains. We are honest with others to encourage them to be honest. We give ourselves away to encourage others to give themselves away.

If everyone in the world did that, what a wonderful place it would be!

Mark Goodyear from a comment on March 22, 2007

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

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!