Successful Blog

SOB Business Cafe 11-21-08

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Career Renegade introduces the once-in-a-lifetime manifesto.
The economy has just served you up a big, fat opportunity! In fact, you may never get an opening like this again. A chance to make a bold change, take a shot at doing what you love, and not be judged for trying. You’ve got a once-in-a-lifetime window here created by a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Just Creative introduces secrets to the cutting edge of blogging.
Although these tips may sound common sense to some, for others it isn’t (hence the secret)… If blog owners implemented these 7 tips, their blog would certainly have an edge over the competition – The funny thing is, so many blogs don’t!

Presentations Zen introduces us to Tim Brown’s ideas about playing.
I often associate at least one aspect of play and playfulness with the old Buddhist idea of the beginner’s mind (or child’s mind). That is, in the child’s mind there are infinite possibilities, but in our adult mind (one filled with habits and routines) there often seems to be few.

Barbara Ling introduces us to our inner eagle and our inner turkey.
In other words, we might be eagles at heart, but if our circumstances plops us down among a flock of turkeys, we had better know how to happily peck for seeds with the crowd too.

Technosailor
The saga of cheatsheets and reference sheets continues with this outline of the hot new WordPress 2.7 which will be released soon. . . .

Termed “Crazyhorse” at the beginning of the cycle, the WordPress admin is the result of complete thinking outside the box, research and user testing. The concept began as “Let’s throw everything away that we assume to be proper and correct and see what we can come up with when we have no preset conditions”.

The result is a semantically, aesthetically and structurally different WordPress than you’ve ever known before. This is not your grandma’s WordPress!

Related ala carte selections include

Random Good Stuff introduces . . .

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

Epilogue: Motrin, Take Two and Don’t Wait ‘Til Morning

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The Headache Rx

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The folks on the Motrin team are suffering from a sefl-induced headache today. It was caused by being focused on the wrong things in their “WE FEEL YOUR PAIN” AD CAMPAIGN.

Now they’re at a crossroads where the social media sphere is watching for how they’ll respond. Will they apologize, explain, and move on? Will they love their ideas or love learning about their customers? Were I the healthcare practioner on this case, I’d suggest that they take two …

  1. Step away from the the clever ideas — build relationships not campaigns. Send out an actual human being to talk with your customers. They’re your heroes.
  2. Trust that human being, trust your customers, and give people every reason to trust you. Trust is the currency of lasting relationships.

Don’t wait until morning.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Motrinmoms: The Spectacular Opportunity to Rise from a Colossal Mistake

5 Doorways to the Power of Social Networks

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Are You Networking More and Enjoying It Less?

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Anyone in social media can tell you the power of networking for individuals and businesses. Social networks can fuel personal growth and business development.

From Linkedin and Facebook to Twitter and Ning, the quality social networks that we build can guide us, protect us, and help us stay our course … if we let them know how.

We have the networks already or already started. Now we need to engage in open, equal, and active relationships that move us all toward success.

5 Doorways to the Power of Social Networks

One bane of small and solo business is the isolation that can be part of our business life. We can hire lawyers and accountants, trainers and guides, marketers and sales folks … well, maybe not all at one time. Even if we can outsource in every direction, we need to know that what folks are suggesting is right.

We’re building communities and networks that have the experience and expertise we need. The key is to get our networks working with us. Here are 5 ways to do just that.

  • Listen for doorways being opened.
    Rather than trying to pry new doors open, find the doors that people are holding open for you. Social media folks and great networkers are always opening doors. We ask what they need or what they they’re working on. Sometimes it’s a simple, “How’s business?” Sometimes it’s a more direct, “What can I do for you?” Once I started listening for open doors, I realized folks were opening doors for me every day.
  • Value compliments.
    Compliments are a way that people reach out in good faith. Accepting a compliment elevates you and your relationship with the person who gave it. You show that you value the giver and the information. Compliments open doorways to find out what people perceive as your strengths. Think about them dispassionately. Be sure you know what a compliment means. Follow up later to ask if you don’t.
  • Talk about what you’re doing.
    Listen first, but let people know your quest. Open a doorway to let people know what you’re doing, especially what you’re trying for the first time. This week I’ve told everyone about my goal for 2009 — to find ways to get people working again. I’m glad and grateful that Gail jumped in with both feet to help. I might never have know that she had something similar on her mind.
  • Ask for help.
    Be a learner not a hunter. Open multiple doorways for people to let people see you learn. Most people rise to an occasion to help. Invite your network to be teachers, removed from the role of potential clients. When we start with “Would you help? My ideal client would look a lot like you, would you have five minutes to offer me advice?”
  • Turn interest into a way to invest.
    When someone likes your work, offer a doorway to a partnership. Sit on the same side of the table and enlist that client or friend in your quest. Too often we see ourselves as “less.” Yet, that person has something to teach us and we have something to offer in return. Ask about his or her goals and find how they align with yours. Use what you learn to follow Steve Farber’s advice. “Do what you love in service to the people who love what you do.”

Doorways connect.

We’ve invested in the network of people we call friends and colleagues — the people we respect and are happy to help. Why wouldn’t we offer them doorways to do the same?

How do you open doorways to enlist the power of your network? How else might we engage them in open, equal, and active relationships so that our barns and bridges are well built and successful?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help you find focus or direction, check out the Work with Liz!!

Related
6 Ways to Build Your Own Personal Developmental Network
Self-Promotion as Easy as Knowing What You Do
Money Strategy, a Dead Horse, and Folks
Are You a Freelancer or a Solo Entrepreneur? Use Guy Kawasaki’s Mantra as He Meant

Motrinmoms: The Spectacular Opportunity to Rise from a Colossal Mistake

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Savvy Companies Don’t Have to Do This

Tonight, a corporation made a colossal mistake. Motrin put up this ad.

The ad was meant to tell Moms with new babies that Motrin understood their pain. Except, in the process of building their campaign and that ad, they forgot to get in touch with new Moms and their pain.

I’m hoping this won’t scare off other corporations looking to enter the social media sphere. What happened here was problem with a team that didn’t do it’s job on two fronts.

Motrin didn’t do what they claimed. They also didn’t know the media in which they placed the ad. Savvy companies don’t have to make the same mistakes.

What Motrin Didn’t “Get” about New Moms

Some folks are saying that Motrin needs to understand social media. I’m with that. They blew it big. But social media only speaks to the size, speed, and volume of the response to their collosal mistake.

A company that claims WE FEEL YOUR PAIN. Better know what they’re talking about long before they get to the social web.

WE FEEL YOUR PAIN?
Motrin made it obvious that they don’t.

If you felt the pain of new mothers, then you’d realize that it’s off to use high heels and carrying a feverish child in the same sentence as examples of feeling underappreciated.

If you felt the pain of new mothers, then you’d see that the “fashion” of baby slings is a luxury very few new mothers think about. New mothers — with and without baby slings — are worried about more important things than that.

If you felt the pain of new mothers, then you’d understand that it’s not the ache in their back or in their head that makes them cry or say “what about me?”

The pain of new mothers is people who make light of their feelings.

It’s the hope that they’ll measure up and the worry that they won’t. It’s the folks who offer advice as if they know more than the new mom about what’s best for her child. It’s the people who say “Here, take a couple of headache pills and you’ll feel better after that.” It’s people who claim they feel her pain and don’t bother to find out what her pain is really like.

That’s the part that Motrin didn’t get about new moms.

What Motrin Didn’t “Get” About Social Media

The fundamental problem with the ad is that the “unique pain of baby sling” isn’t one of fashion or feeling underappreciated. The fundamental pain of a baby sling isn’t much more than “ouch, my back,” and then, only when the sling doesn’t fit.

That’s the kind of pain Motrin can fix. That story isn’t as glitzy or clever, but it is authentic.

Do you like the woman in the ad?

Was she joking? Do new moms say stuff like that? Sure they do — with their friends — not with strangers. Friends can say things because friends already know that I love my kid no matter how I joke. Strangers can’t because they don’t.

Here’s where social media savvy comes in. A company has to be a friend before it can communicate with customers like friends. THAT’s the part about social media that Motrin didn’t get.

The Spectacular Opportunity

What would I advise the Motrin team to do? Get over being clever and get serious about learning. Here’s a short action plan.

  • Read enough to understand the mistake. A wise, open-mind doesn’t have to read long to see what went wrong.
  • Admit the mistake and apologize. Say thank you to folks who pointed it out.
  • Read everything — every tweet, post, conversation about it. Put several folks on knowing every blog and blogger, every tweet and tweeter. Respond with appropriate apologies and a beginner’s mind.
  • Listen. Listen. Listen. Say thank you again.
  • Ask for help. Offer new moms a chance to make their version of what the ad might have been. Put serious resources at their disposal. Participate with time. Don’t just throw money at them.
  • Use as many of what they make as you can. Feature their ads on your site as big as your own. Pay the moms for their investment in you.

It’s a spectacular opportunity to learn social media and to turn critics into heroes. A company that does that with everyone watchng could win over the social web.

Got more ideas for how Motrin might recover from this?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

SOB Business Cafe 11-14-08

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Remarkable Communication is offering an intelligence hack.
In fact, he tended to think of his customers as an annoying necessity. They kept calling with their stupid support questions, keeping him from spending his time adding features no one had asked for.

Brain Based Biz and Brain Based Business are offering an urgency adjustment.
Ever experience tension as you wait and wish the world would move faster?

conflict zen is offering a resolution hack.
Recent research out of the University of Colorado at Boulder suggests that the degree of physical warmth you feel influences the degree of psychological warmth you experience.

Win Extra is offering a hacking story of hacking the definition of hacker.
If California prosecutors have their way, Digg founder Kevin Rose could easily be found guilty of felony computer hacking for widely-reported actions he took yesterday.

Kevin Rose set up a Twitter account Tuesday pretending to be his cold, which amazingly accrued during the previous 24 hours over 787 followers …

Related ala carte selections include

write from home hacks packs …
How about those clones? (You know, those guys who run in packs.)
Or how about the morons on twitter who keep direct-messaging me their free ebooks about How to Lose Weight While Flipping Real Estate?

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

6 Ways to Build Your Own Personal Developmental Network

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Not a Coach, Not a Mentor, a Network

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I had an exciting conversation Sunday with Debbie Lawrence. She told me via Twitter that she had an idea in need of thoughts. A few minutes later we were on the phone exploring fresh perspectives. She reached out to get input she needed, and I got to know more about her, about her dream, and about how she’s putting into action. Not a bad trade.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I did something similar. I reached out to people in my network to hear their thoughts on what I’m doing.

Every day I touch base with people to tweak what I’m thinking to check on directions I might go. I’ve done this consistently with the most important challenges I’m pursuing. The people I ask are my Personal Developmental Network — a small group of intelligent, incredible people, who help me stay on track with my goals.

6 Ways to Build Your Own Personal Developmental Network

Many folks find a mentor by accident. Some never had one. Some turn to the closest person they meet at a new job or choose to go it alone it. Others work with a coach or a trainer. A few make a commitment to a mastermind team. They’re similar, but not the same as a Personal Developmental Network.

In their Wall Street Journal report Kathy E. Kram and Monica C. Higgins defined a personal developmental networks this way.

A better approach is to create and cultivate a developmental network — a small group of people to whom you can turn for regular mentoring support and who have a genuine interest in your learning and development. Think of it as your personal board of directors

Kram and Higgins’ approach to building a developmental network is career and business focused — pointing out how network composition might change based on where we are professional path: entry level, midcareer, or senior manager. Their suggestions focus on career goals.

Their key steps match my own, but their execution is more narrow.

I need a more holistic approach. I don’t want a professional life that’s divorced from my life as a human. When I face down my hugest goals and quests, I want my whole life — head and heart — focused on the same purpose. So I suggest that we start with their key steps to building a Personal Developmental Network and expand them to include more than what happens under the heading “business / professional.”

For me, the purpose of a Personal Developmental Network is to offer guidance in becoming the best I can be inside and outside the world of business. My approach to building my network is life focused — I want a network that helps me grow as a human meant to achieve something and I believe that a network that grows with me offers depth and insight that are priceless.

Here are the five solid, complete, and intuitive main ideas Kram and Higgins put forward and suggestions after each for building your own Personal Developmental Network.

1. Know Thyself — Start with a foundation of concrete not sand.
— Qualitative Observations: Ask people who know you to describe your strongest traits — those that serve you well and those that get in the way. You’ll recognize the people who know you best by the way that you think, feel, and act in their presence. When we’re with people who know us, we don’t think about our responses or edit our behaviors. Explain why you’re asking and offer them more than one way to give you feedback: directly to you in person, on paper, via an interview by a mutual friend.

— Quantitative Assessment: Go over every test, performance appraisal, and personality measure you’ve taken. Check out others for a fresh view and learn what you can from them. Look for friends who have worked with the tools or tests you choose. You might try a combination of Strengths Finder, the Enneagram, and the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory.

— Personal Reflection: Spend an hour / day for a week thinking about past successes in your life — in personal and business situations. Look for traits and strategies that served you through all of them.

Know what you know and know its value.

2. Know Your Context — Pick your path.
Look three years down the road and visualize where you want to do be. Draw that picture out in as much detail as you possibly can. If you can’t settle your mind on one single path, perhaps that the first task to work on with your network.

3. Enlist Developers — Choose unique and valuable guides.
Choose people you would bet your reputation on — people who share your standards and have similar goals. Take care to choose people who also offer different views. A strong network might include:

— a close friend who knows you and your history, both business and personal.
— someone from your business industry who knows you less well
— two or three someones who are from other industries
— two or three someones you respect and admire, but don’t know well

Decide how you’ll keep them in your life. Will you meet with them when you have questions or meet regularly?

4. Regularly Reassess — Seek opportunities to learn what you’re learning.
Go back to the assessment in Step 1 on a regular basis. Check in with those close friends by asking, “How’ve I changed that you can see?”

5. Develop Others — Return the favor and pay it forward.
Be of service to the people who are helping you. Always reach out for ways to give back more than you receive. When someone teaches you a skill, ask how you might use that skill to help that teacher. Ask questions, listen actively, and be first to offer a favor without strings. People remember sincere curiosity and true generosity.

The best way to seal what we’ve learned is by teaching. Offer to help someone who thinks you’ve already arrived. Take every opportunity to reach out to offer what you’ve learned.

6. AND THE ONE THAT WAS MISSING — Communicate. Let your network know when you need help, when you have questions, or even when you need to vent in a safe venue. A developmental network that doesn’t know where we are can’t help us move ahead.

A developmental network is not made from casual friending or confirming of followers. It’s the people who understand why we’re passionate about our calling. Like a personal board of directors, a true developmental network is people who know us, who value our trust and our reputation, and who are willing to offer their best thinking to move us forward. If we choose them well, we grow in all facets of our life.

Watch for and welcome every wise teacher you encounter. Wisdom and experience are a prize. True teachers show themselves by offering advice, expecting nothing in return. Mentors who come your way, offering experience and connections, see something in you. Let them help you discover what that is and what it could be if you let it grow.

Welcome all wise teachers into a Powerful Developmental Network.

Nobody likes to go it alone, and it’s not a good idea. We need each other for information, insight, and inspiration.

I bet you’ve got some sort of Personal Developmental Network already started. What sort of teacher is missing? How might you more fully engage those important teachers and supporters in the quest you’re on?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help you find focus or direction, check out the Work with Liz!!

Related
Self-Promotion as Easy as Knowing What You Do
Money Strategy, a Dead Horse, and Folks
Are You a Freelancer or a Solo Entrepreneur? Use Guy Kawasaki’s Mantra as He Meant