Successful Blog

SOB Business Cafe 07-16-09

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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

Levite Chronicles
You are going to talk to some people this week who aren’t completely upbeat.

in over your head
If I do this boring job long enough and well enough, I’ll be promoted to the job that’s fast-paced and exciting. That’s the job I really want.

Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching
I doubt anyone micromanages intentionally. No one likes to think they are being accused of doing it, and no one wants to be on the receiving end of a micro-manager’s reach.

Virtual Impax
Social Media is shifting the balance of power in the relationship between consumers and the businesses that serve them from caveat emptor (buyer beware) to caveat venditor (seller beware) and the easy to use mass communication tool known as social media is the sole reason for this shift.

Remarkable Communication
Does any of this have anything at all to do with writing, blogging, or communication?
Of course it does, silly!

If you can’t dye your hair pink at the moment, you can still write like someone who does.

Related ala carte selections include

AdRants
Vandalism of a whole new kind?

Middle Zone Musings
And I remember when he wrote his first comment on this blog.

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

Social Media Road Trip

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I’m going on a road trip in the next few weeks. I’ll be traveling around on roads and paths that many have been traveled on by many others before. I will be on the same road but not for the same reasons. My reasons, my path, will differ from anyone else taking the same road.

I will, no doubt, meet many others traveling the very same roads I am taking. Those I meet may not be able to help with the path but they can help me with the road.

Along the way I will stop at cafes, rest stops, garage stations, shops and wonderful places to sleep. Each of those places will provide me with opportunities to meet others and engage in conversations. These people that I meet probably won’t be aware of the path I’m taking but they will know the road.
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The road they just came down might be the road I need to be on. More importantly, I can give them tips, (destinations, distances to places to see etc.) about the road I just traveled.

These roads I will travel are very much like social media tools.

We all have different reasons, approaches and things we wish to accomplish on our path, but we all use the same tools – road, to get there. Each of us, on our own individual path, has something to offer others traveling the same roads, or using the same tools, as we are. No matter what path you’re on, or even if you get stuck, there will always be someone coming along that can help you.

Have you stopped and helped someone lately?

from Kathryn Jennex aka northernchick

Thanks Joel Kelly for offering to drive.

SOB Business Cafe 05-29-09

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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

Art of Nonconformity
The title of this post is deliberately provocative. First of all, I know that marketers are people too, and most people are marketers of one kind or another.

But when I talk about hating marketers, you probably know what kind of marketers I’m talking about. I’m talking about car salesmen marketers who play on our emotions to get our money.

Riding Dragons
A small middle-aged woman wearing a white sleeveless shirt and khaki cargo pants appeared a few yards to my right. She raised a point-and-shoot camera to a foot or so in front of her face, aimed it at the mountain, snapped a photo, then retreated to her car and left.

IttyBiz
“Win-win” is one of those annoying buzzwords that you hear over and over and over again until you just get so mad that you want to punch Ashton Kutcher repeatedly in the face. But as I’m building these new little businesses of mine, I’m coming to realize why people say “win-win” so often.

Unconventional Thinking
In business, when we peel away all of the code, the rules, the myths, the jargon, the Harvard case studies, all we have to do is to find a code breaker: which is a single thing that if we do it over and over again, it will always be profitable.

The Fluent Self
Okay, so when people ask me about business-ey things, and — more specifically — how my own thing has gotten all biggified, I have to talk about the weird magical power of being yourself.

And not just being yourself, but being yourself out loud.

Even if that means that people know that I am a total mess talk to ducks, have monsters and completely fall apart sometimes.

Related ala carte selections include

From the Mind of Neenz
As I type this, I can hear my Mother’s voice as she delivered the news to me over the phone. As I type this, I recall the words of my dear friend Jan in an email, “Oh Neen, I almost want to ask…are you sure?” As I type this, I can hear his laughter as if he’s only down the hall in his bedroom. As I type this I am reminded, remembering is part of healing.

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

SOB Business Cafe 05-22-09

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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

Dosh Dosh
Experts have talked about this before. How many times have you read about the importance of ‘adding value’ for your audience? How many times have you read about ‘building trust’ with your readers/prospects?

TwitTip
Now that Twitter has several million active users, it’s no surprise to see such a variety of people discussing a wide range of topics. But while the content of all those tweets may be so different, they ultimately fall roughly into five categories.

Less Ordinary
Most Tuesdays I pay my grandparents a visit, and while I’m there I tend to take quite a few pics in my grandad’s garden. When I was there last week, as well as taking lots more photos of the beautiful flowers growing in the borders, pots and window boxes, I also took some shots in the greenhouse:

ChrisG
The way that UsefulTools is differentiating is through focus. By sacrificing the news, gossip and editorial, and aiming just for the review slice of the pie, they will stand out. Also, and this is just my hope, they will avoid the echo-chamber and TechMeme chasing behavior of some of the other blogs out there!

Related ala carte selections include

White Trash Mom
Mikwright Cards & Gifts is sponsoring a weekly contest every Thursday here on whitetrashmom.com!

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

SOB Business Cafe 05-15-09

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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

The Buzz Bin
Dale Carnegie’s principles have stood the test of time because they are about fostering better relations amongst people. And the classic mistake with social media is to treat it like a mass communications vehicle, when it’s a conversational form that builds relationships. Social media is about a larger community and its concerns, as opposed to a litany of messages. There is no better set of guidelines for this then “Friends.”

A VC
The WSJ gave its journalists some rules about conduct in social media this week according to Editor and Publisher.

Most of them are good common sense rules for everyone using social media. But there are several that I think are wrong and should be rethought. Here are four “rules” that I think should be reconsidered and why.

Mashable
But there’s so much info and chatter coming in through social media that it can overwhelm you, eat up your time, and ruin your productivity.

Simplifying will help you stay in touch, and continue to participate in the conversation, without losing sight of your mission and the important work you need to get done.

Social Media Explorer
Last week, David and I got the opportunity to hear Geno Church of Brains on Fire speak about word of mouth marketing and social media, courtesy the Louisville AMA and Social Media Club Louisville. He ended the presentation with the story of the role social media played in a pivotal, scary event in his own life as a parent. It got the gears turning in my head.

Marketing Pilgrim
Fizzle in 2009
If you’ve not stopped popping champagne since we published Forrester’s predictions for social media marketing, you might need the Alka-Seltzer after you see eMarketer’s contrary estimates.

Related ala carte selections include

Chrisg
All around the world people are very excited about Social Media Success Summit 2009 — the first major online event dedicated to helping you successfully market your business with sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. More than 500 people have already registered. Now you have the exclusive chance to win two valuable seats to the event for no cost!

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

SOB Business Cafe 05-08-09

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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

Sonia of Copyblogger
Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz is a genuinely remarkable voice in a sea of sameness. She’s a fantastic example of how content marketing can be used as the backbone of a real business that makes real money.

Seth’s Blog
Most marketers are organized around more. More share. More customers.

And if you want to do that fast, it means marketing to strangers. Strangers that don’t care about you, don’t trust you and aren’t listening to you.

The Fluent Self
So it kind of seemed like it might be time to a) pull back, b) add to the general knowledge base… and c) just try to give you a better sense of what these three methodologies/philosophies are. And why they aren’t really always that good for you.

iJump
One point from the Q&A roundup from Marketing Now bears deeper exploration: Online communities require investment in people.

Rick Mahn
That’s what lies before today’s C-Suite executives if they choose to explore it. What I’m talking about here, of course, is really about relationships. With the advent of social computing in the second half of this decade, the power has shifted from producers and marketers to people.

Related ala carte selections include

Being Five

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