Successful Blog

How Will You Change the World By Noticing Someone Else?

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Change the World by Noticing Someone Else

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On Easter Sunday, we think about raising ourselves up to where we belong.

Today we remember Jesus a holy man who was about others. He made his way by saying “You’re as good as I am.” He believed in the good things that we all have to offer and challenged us to bring them to each other. He spoke of a world where faith, hope, and charity — love for others — were the cornerstone. That to live to a better purpose would bring great returns. It wasn’t easy then. Never has been.

That’s the sign of a leader — someone filled with passion fin service to a great vision who communicates how together we can build something better together than we ever can alone. You could say that was his brand.

And folks followed him, because he reached out to people who might see as he did. He supported them, told people about what they did, sent them off to tell their own stories and live their own versions of that same purpose. As great leaders do he had the long lasting effect that generations of those he touched are still talking about what he said and the vision he saw.

He made meaning that changed people lives.

We can do that same thing. We can offer our service by aligning our goals with good people and sharing their goodness with others.

Go out an raise up the people who are doing good things. Add meaning to the meaning they make. Find a way to be more than one by raising up someone else. Say thank you for their work and service. It will raise you up too.

How will you change the world by noticing someone else?

We can change the world just like that.
ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 04-02-10

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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

CNN
This is what inspired Google’s April Fools Event.

Time to Be Frank
I am not writing this post to blast the company involved, in fact I would like to congratulate them. I think we would have all loved to see the mistake not happen in the first place, but it did. Mistakes do happen. The reason I want to congratulate them is too many people are afraid to simply apologize.

V3 Integrated Marketing
I couldn’t sleep last night and found myself thinking of you. I love competition, both for myself and for my clients. It keeps me thinking (which I enjoy), on my toes (good, because I’m short) and adaptable (which I find, perversely, fun). And while I was thinking of you, I felt compelled to write, just to make sure we’re on the same page on a few things.

Michelle Lamar
Cottonelle’s “HOW DOES AMERICA ROLL?” campaign is brilliant. The Cottonelle campaign brings the product to the forefront in a self-deprecating way that is very engaging to consumers. That is no small feat considering the product is Toilet Paper—not exactly a sexy subject for most of us.

Attraction Marketing
The “Social” in Social Media is what makes this new media so attractive. It’s what draws people to you and makes them want to connect and interact with you. Recently it seems that with everyone (including the most recent explosion…businesses) jumping on the bandwagon, there is some sort of confusion.

ReveNews
Burger King, which is building a reputation at being very good at creating marketing campaigns that go viral, is now looking to make something out of nothing.

In a savvy new ad campaign released this week, Burger King has teamed up with Digg. Whenever a search result comes up empty on Digg, up comes a Burger King ad promoting the restaurant’s $1 double cheeseburgers.

Related ala carte selections include

@cr8tivejen
suggested this …

Let Out the Creative Beast

Let Out the Creative Beast

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
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

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Simple Social CRM Tool: Rapportive

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Rapportive
A Review by Todd Hoskins

If you do not use Gmail for personal or business use, sorry, this review is not for you. Please come back again next week. If you do have a Gmail account, or your business utilizes Gmail, install the Rapportive plug-in. Believe me, it will be worth it.

Why?

Rapportive removes the ads on the right column of your Gmail page, and replaces them with the social network information of the person sending you an email. This is simple social CRM, immediate information on where to find and interact with friends and customers outside of email. A field to take notes. And, it’s free.

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The latest tweets, job information from LinkedIn, and geographic location all help provide context. For a salesperson, entrepreneur, executive, or customer service representative, the value of getting information right within your browser saves time, can help you prioritize responses, and allows you to know more about your customer than their email address. The notes section is handy for recording birthdays, kids, and conversation cues.

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Takes less than two minutes to set up. Privacy concerns are minimal because Rapportive only has access to your contacts, not your Gmail password. (Thank you OpenID). The Rapportive extension is available for the Firefox and Chrome browsers.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 3/5 – more complex CRM’s are available, but this is simple if you have corporate Gmail.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – Bridges the personal and the professional and saves time.

Personal Value: 5/5 – Did you know Johnny had a Flickr account? Now you do.

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Thanks, Todd! You can find Todd on Twitter @ToddHoskins

I’ve installed the plugin. It’s not perfect, but it’s already way more useful than the ads it replaces!

What about you? Have you used it? What do you think of Rapportive?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

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9 Truths About Social Media Big Business Wants Us to Know and 2 Proofs They Want from Us

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Let’s Start Over with Them in Mind

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It’s a typical conversation. Try to explain why the conversation with with customers has changed and often the person listening will tell you why he or she can’t listen. It might sound something like this.

Chief Marketing Officer: [confused, frustrated] I don’t understand why this doesn’t work. I’m an intelligent person. I should be able to do this. Why don’t customers behave? Legal will never go for this.

Social Media Practitioner: Let me tell you what to do …

Chief Marketing Officer: [Not listening] But I have a business to protect and employees that I care about. I know my market and I’m fairly sure what they want. I have to manage up. Where’s the ROI?

Social Media Practitioner: Let’s start over. … Let me listen first. What are your goals?

That last bit is the moment at which you will get the attention of a big business.

9 Truths About Social Media Big Business Wants Us to Know

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Take a minute to to tap into the the CMO’s feelings of confusion, disappointment, and frustration. Everything that has made him or her successful is being challenged by social media and the Internet. Some of us find that exciting, invigorating, and inviting, but at times when we see our friends without work, it’s also downright perilous. Every marketing manager is being asked to succeed at things that have never been tried.

We sometimes act as if what big business needs is to learn from us. That’s where the misconceptions start. Here are some cold truths every big business wishes every social media marketer realized. By now it’s getting to a point where …

  1. Big Business “gets” that social media is not about broadcasting. They get that it’s about listening to customers. Great CEOs listen long before they make suggestions.

  2. Big Business brings an entire culture to the social media playing field. It’s a problem of training and re-processing, not just un-siloing and re-tooling.

  3. Big Business understands that we need to connect with individual solutions. Great social media practitioners offer a unique strategy to each company — one tailored to their goals.

  4. Big Business “gets” that content and networks connect. Yet, a social media strategy and the tactics that draw from it has to fit naturally and move slowly through a business culture that will execute it or the strategy will fail.

  5. Few big businesses undervalue their customers. That’s how they got to be big companies. The older and larger the company, the more they value and want to protect what they have. That they want to mitigate risk is a good thing. To value their hesitance can raise our game.

  6. A social media strategy is a business deal on which people’s jobs, people’s products, and customer’s satisfaction depend. Great social media marketers never lose sight of that.

  7. A business that already understands its community and it’s brand message knows more about how to lead a social media plan than we usually give them credit for.

  8. If you’ve not worked inside a company and talked to their customers, it’s naive to act as if we better understand how best to serve their national or international market. We can offer new options, choices, and opportunities that might suit them. We see from outside the system that’s our value and our flaw.

  9. Businesses dream about social media folks who do their homework, know the competition, and come to the process ready to join a working relationship.

“Great” social media strategies don’t mean much, if the company isn’t built with the processes to sustain them. You can turn a house into a houseboat without investing time. Great social media starts with understanding how a company functions and what is possible within the culture and the people who drive it.

The 2 Proofs Every Big Business Wants from a Social Media Mentor

So what does it take to get get the confidence of a big business?
You can overcome these cold truths with two proofs.

  1. Prove that you can connect with customers in ways that make the big business a hero, make the customers lives easier, faster, and more meaningful.
  2. Prove that you can listen long enough to understand the business, you’ll be pleasure to work with, and bring value to the process.

Want to teach social media to big business? Are you willing to prove it?

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

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7 Real Ways a Blog Raises Influence and Increases Expertise

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How to blog series

140 Ch Can’t Say It All Intelligently from the Heart

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Every day I greet the Internet with my coffee and a clear purpose and I find lots of opportunity — information, ideas, and input — offering itself. Never a question about finding that.

If I’m not focused my head is filled with thoughts and energy sparking and flaring in directions that look something like this …

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Unfortunately without focus so much can stay dispersed in that beautiful, but disintegrating way. I can end up responding to and considering bits of data like swatting gnats. Not much progress is made in a world of randomness.

Twitter, in particular, offers ideas I can encounter and pass along, but if I do that, most of what I think vanishes into past thoughts considered and soon forgot as unconnected bits.

If we want folks to know us we also need longer conversations in stronger venues. Telephones help. Personal conversations at meetings are great. If only we could stretch and scale our resources to share that way. So we write.

It’s why I keep my blog. In fact, that fact makes me passionate about why I write every day. But it’s not just the connections that keep me writing.

7 Real Ways a Blog Raises Influence and Increases Expertise

Writing is one way to share our thoughts with more folks more efficiently. Publishing makes the connection more natural and accessible. The words stay present and available through time for anyone who wants to access them. We get visibility and benefit others when we write, but we benefit ourselves as well. By recording our thoughts we make them more in so many ways.

  1. Writing gets us to clarify our thoughts. We have to find words to communicate ideas. We think the ideas through for ourselves. In that process we make them more concrete.
  2. Writing teaches how to see what we think. We have to find words to articulate what’s on our mind. We think the ideas through for ourselves. In that process we make our ideas more concrete, more transportable, and more memorable.
  3. Writing teaches us how words communicate meaning. Every time we write we choose the words we need to express a thought or idea. The more we practice the more we learn how to make choices that help people connect to what we mean.
  4. Writing helps us develop a voice that is natural and consistent, strong and confident. Even when we write for ourselves, we go back to read, listening to what we wrote. We question. We consider. We critique our choices.
  5. Writing teaches to manage our internal editor — to value our own thoughts and to be quiet until feedback is useful. Too often when we just think ideas we can shut them down before we’ve fully considered their possibilities. Trying to put them into words keeps us going to a longer process.
  6. Writing is an opportunity to share our expertise. Everything we write has an audience. Every time someone shares something that we write they add value to our ideas — when they change them and when they don’t.
  7. Writing makes us more thoughtful readers and responders. We bring the insights and appreciation of a writer to what we read. It gives us a venue to ask questions and solve problems with help from the world.

As efficient as Twitter is for conversation, it’s not enough for working out ideas. 140 characters can’t express a full-on deep thought. A soundbyte might get attention, but it doesn’t show depth of knowledge.

Writing is clear thinking made visible. — Bill Wheeler

 

I heard that quote a long time ago and I hold it close every day on the Internet. It keep as a reminder that writing raises my game.

We meet more people in print than we can ever possibly meet face to face. Many people will know our written voice as well as they know our names. Writing is a huge opportunity in a noisy world to teach what we know and to learn from the best of the people we meet.

What sort of thinking have you shared today?

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

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Forget About Your Ship Coming In – Think about the Captain

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For @ChrisCree , @SheilaS , and @BeckyMcCray

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about how often we end up looking and caring in the wrong direction.

A friend is going for a job or a contract and does everything she can to be all that person wants. Then hears “I’m sorry, but you’re just not a great fit for this job.” She’s so involved in that one position that she’s crushed and any other option is a loss.

Another person so needs a sponsor to move his project forward. He puts together what is a most compelling argument. The potential partner, unfortunately, doesn’t have the resources to help. He sees time lost and his inability to convince someone.

Both are waiting for their ship to come in.

Every day I talk to someone who’s got a grand plan for how things will lay out or how things should be, will be, if only that ship comes in. Listening to them talk you can almost see that ship in the distance on the horizon. The hidden assumption is that the ship will come in and pick them up.

That’s the problem, even if that is a ship in the distance, you don’t own it. Who knows where it’s going? Even if it comes in, where it goes is up to the captain.

What if we slightly shift our vision — stop looking at that one ship and starting thinking about a world full of captains?

Sometimes the harbor is filled with ships waiting to take on working staff and paying passengers. Sometimes is not. But one thing’s sure more than most. Some of people who run the ships have gotten to know each other.

It’s the person, not the job or the sponsorship, that my two friends should be tracking … care about the “captain,” not the ship. Lots of folks have reasons to want to ride along with them for some reason. You can’t negotiate your way on board if the right person doesn’t care about you.

If you want a chance at the real opportunity …

Get the “captain” to fall in love with your vision and to believe in its reality. Move the “captain” to feel like a hero and smart for helping you.

You see …

Even if the captain’s ship isn’t going where we’re going, that person still knows a whole network of other “captains.” If we communicate the value of what we’re doing, chances are most captains will start looking for a ship going in our direction.

Care about the captain and not the ship.

How can you shift your vision to the people who can get you where you’re going?

Liz's Signature