Successful Blog

Be Healthy

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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Sometimes, you’re cruising along at light speed, taking names and kicking butt, and all of a sudden…bang, you’re sick as a dog.

You suddenly have to rely on others, an uncomfortable position for anyone who is used to being in charge at all times.

In my particular case, I lost my voice completely. No teleconferences, no drive-through ordering, no chatting with friends or reading to the kids. It was humbling and jarring.

But here’s what I really want to share—in the midst of this, I had two different situations where friends stepped in and took over for me, and both times, I had to be almost physically restrained from jumping in to help. (My wonderful husband was on the other coast, providing moral support via text.)

It finally sunk in. While you’re trying to be a human-centered business, don’t forget that you are one of the humans in the center of it! If you aren’t taking care of yourself, and letting your friends take care of you, then you won’t be there for the long run.

So today, go quaff some orange juice, get out the Purell, and if you do get sick, admit you’re human and let someone take care of you.

Heartfelt thanks to my friends Coleen, Elyse, and Susan for coming to my rescue this week!

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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7 Real Ways Writing Increases Expertise

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Each morning, I greet the Internet with my coffee and a clear purpose. I say “Good morning, Twitterville!” share the view in the harborhood, and check in with my friends. I find lots of opportunity — information, ideas, and input — offering itself.

If I’m not focused my head fills with thoughts, energy sparking and flaring in every direction.

Fast and fun, but too shallow to be satisfying in the long hall.

Real conversation offer more than a sound byte. Real ideas are worth more than a passing thought.

It’s one reason Twitter never will win out over my blog.
Of course, Google is another.

7 Real Ways Writing Increases Expertise

Writing is one way to share thoughts with many folks efficiently. Publishing makes the connection more natural and accessible. The words stay available through time for anyone who wants to access them.

Sure we get visibility and offer value when we write, but we get a huge payoff ourselves.

By recording our thoughts we make them more.

Here are 7 real ways that writing increases our expertise.

  1. Writing clarifies what we know. If you know something and can’t explain it, do you really know it? We tell ourselves that we know what we know how to do laying it out. Writing won’t let us do that. We have to find words to articulate our ideas.
  2. Writing moves become familiar with degrees of difference. Want to be more fluent on a subject? Write about it. Every time we write we choose words to express a thought or an idea. Writing teaches us how words communicate meaning. The more we practice the more we learn which word choices connect people to what we mean.
  3. Writing leads us to explore different answers. Leave ideas in your head and you can shut them down before you’ve fully considered their possibilities. Writing brings us to see what we think. When we find words to articulate what’s on our mind, we take the words out of our heads. We make them more real, more transportable, and more memorable. When we put ideas on the page they take form –we can shuffle them, change them, improve them.
  4. Writing helps us develop a voice that is natural and consistent, strong and confident. Talking to yourself might not be … um … acceptable, but write and you’ll know your and how to express them. Even when we write for ourselves, we go back to read, listening to what we wrote. We question. We consider. We critique our choices. We start to recognize what’s our own way of saying things.
  5. Writing challenges us to set fear aside, yet maintain discipline. A clear sentence requires structure. A sentence that moves people is expression. Once we find our voice, we see how expression needs structure, and that structure without expression is listless and boring. Over time writers learn to value our thoughts and hold the editor quiet until feedback is useful. The act of writing builds thoughtful integrity. Putting thought into words builds confidence.
  6. Writing offers us 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. Writers get the space of mind to show what we know in ways that can help people we’ve never met.
  7. Writing makes us more thoughtful readers and more aware responders. Write for a while and you’ll find you bring the insights and appreciation of a writer to what you read. You’ll start to notice that the way a writer writes makes a message stronger, weaker, more meaningful to you. You might even begin to recognize their *voices* in what they write. Writing gives us understanding of nuance and a sensitivity to what we read. We ask better questions.

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

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 share what we know and to learn from the best of the people we meet.

What sort of thinking have you shared today?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

6 NICE Marketing Tricks to Boost Your Small Business

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If you are the owner of any small business, the most serious problem that you face is to arrange the required finances. This is very important since you require fixed as well as working capital to run your business. Here, it is to be noted that you have a wide variety of financing options too. You can take out a commercial mortgage loan or you can opt for a commercial mortgage refinance. But, anyways, you need to ensure that you can repay the mortgages. Besides this, another thing that you must look into very seriously is the marketing. Through proper and intelligent marketing you can open the various channels to sell your products. This in turn helps you raise your business revenues. Here we discuss about some successful marketing strategies that you must take into consideration.

Use free classifieds

One excellent marketing strategy to promote your small would be to use free classified ad services. You can explore various online classified ads to prop up your business. Apart from these, there are some other free offline classified ads options in your local area. Even options are there for free inclusions of ads in local print media. Through these routes, you can indeed boost your business. In order to know more about these options, you can conduct online searches.

Tread social media routes

In modern times, social media platform has opened up excellent opportunities to promote your business. Various social media websites offer you wonderful and free way to market your products and services. This platform can be gainfully utilized to enhance business connection, gain leads and to bring in more customers. You can also participate in various online forums to enhance your knowledge.

Resort to mutually beneficial advertising

One smart way to market your products and services is to engage in reciprocity advertising. You can look for cross promotion of the products and services with other business owners located in your area. You can easily find out some business owners who are also willing to do this. The aim of this marketing strategy is to raise the customer base of your business.

Marketing through writing or blogging

If you have knack of writing, you can take the help of different article writing and blogging websites and can write articles about the products and services that you sell. This way you can surely bring in some customers for your products and services.

Advertise through press releases

You need to regularly write press releases and need to send those releases to appropriate routes. After going through those press releases, many buyers may become interested to the products and services that you offer.

Explore networking options

You need to keep yourself updated about various networking events that are taking place in your locality. These events and meet ups are like mini-marketing campaign. Moreover, these help you keep yourself updated about different developments related to your business.

These are only few marketing strategies which help you raise your sales volume. Apart from these, there are various other marketing strategies that you can follow for your small business.

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Author’s Bio:
Samantha Taylor is the Community Mentor of MortgageFit and has been contributing her suggestions to the Community since 2005. She has made notable contributions through the articles written on subjects related to the mortgage industry for the MortgageFit community.

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

Five Timeless Tactics Link Builders Could Learn from Spammers

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Finding the Lessons

Note: of course, this post is not meant to idolize spammers; however one should never shy away from learning a thing of two, even if it is coming from the devil itself.

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Internet and spammers are inseparable. If you are online, you’re bound to come across some spam every now and then, be it your inbox; forums, blogs, website, or social network, no place is out of spam’s way, just a little opening or negligence on your part can result in a flood of spam emails, posts, or comments … but no matter what form it takes, the spam continues to be a nuisance, especially if it is carrying Trojans or malware with it.

But this post is not about the evils of spam; instead it is an earnest attempt to wheedle out some invaluable lessons out of the adventures (rather misadventures) of these spammers. When we look at it, there’s a lot to learn for link builders in the shenanigans of spammers, let’s take a look at some of these lessons.

1. Tireless approach:

It’ll be interesting to try and find out the first spam message that was generated over the Internet and the first lucky recipient. But whoever it was, the spam has continued to exist for ages. One of the most impressive things about these spammers is that they never get tired of sending spam, then following it up with more spam, and then following up the “follow-up” with even more spam. That’s dedication for you, and that’s what you need to learn. Please remember that I am not directing you to start spamming the hell out of the website owner with a request to link to your website, I am just telling you to take inspiration from the dedication and apply it on your link building strategies.

2. Lack of remorse:

A good salesman is never shy of marketing its product or services at whatever platform or opening it gets. If you are a blog owner, you must have got some of those spam and promotional articles that make you wonder if the sender really thinks that you are going to publish this crap on your blog or website? But a spammer doesn’t think that way; they will give it a try without bothering much about the receiver’s reaction. Again, the lesson is not being indifferent to other’s feelings or thoughts, but to be a little bolder in your proposals and link building efforts.

3. Opportunism:

Spammers have this tremendous ability to sense the opportunity, as soon as they find a little opening, they’ll fill in the inbox with dozens of spam messages. When they look at a certain platform like social media websites, blogs, or forums, all they have in mind is to see if there’s an opportunity to spam. That’s the kind of “eye” you need to have, only difference is that you will be looking for a way to acquire link and not spamming.

4. Reach:

Spammers are good at reaching out and finding new platforms all the time, they can crawl the internet with the ferocity of Google’s crawler. They won’t spare a website in a foreign language, they won’t shy away from spamming an abandoned blog, and they won’t think twice before promoting a link building service to a link building agency. That’s the kind of reach or coverage a link builder needs to have to keep finding new domains and opportunities for getting a link.

5. Flexibility:

One of the most admirable qualities of spammers is to quickly adapt to all new technologies and shifts in trends. No matter how complex is a system, and no matter how many checks are in place, they will still find a way to spam. And even if they can’t find a way to spam, they will keep trying to find one. They are also the fastest in adopting to new changing trends, from email to social networks, and from forums to blogs, they have managed to leave their marks on each and everything which has exist on Internet. What a link builder needs to take out from all that is the flexibility to adopt with the new technologies and trends taking place, and finding a way to build their link building goals around these trends.

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Author’s Bio:

Rahil is an online entrepreneur. At his website Weight Loss Triumph you will find a 6pm promotion and you can redeem a discount for Shoe Buy. In addition to current deals and discounts, you will find many different coupons to help you save big on your shopping.

Be Prepared

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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Within the last year, I lost a cyber-friend unexpectedly. I use the “cyber” qualifier only because I never met him in person, and I never even spoke with him on the phone. However, we frequently connected on several different social platforms, and he was a long-time customer as well. Imad Naffa was an intelligent, energetic, and prolific person, and I miss him still.

Even though he passed several months ago, I still see his face or his name pop up from time to time in notifications, buddy lists, and my old content. Each time this happens, I take a moment and offer a little prayer for his family.

But it really started me thinking about the consequences of our digital lifestyles. I don’t use pre-scheduled content very often, so when I pass, my voice will stop rather abruptly. However, my hope is that I’ve built a legacy of relationships, useful content, and a company that endures. Imad built an amazing, valuable company and community for those who deal with building codes and permits (http://www.naffainc.com/).

I also want to ensure that those I leave behind can pick up the ball gracefully.

Here are some ideas and resources that can support your digital legacy planning.

Great blog post about digital wills
http://socialimprove.com/blog/can-you-profit-from-a-digital-will

Four steps to manage your digital afterlife, from CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505146_162-57368367/4-steps-to-manage-your-digital-afterlife/

How to notify Facebook of death & account memorials
http://blog.entrustet.com/digital-executor-toolbox/how-to-delete-and-memorialize-facebook-accounts/

Can your heirs inherit your digital downloads?
(Note the response from the anonymous iTunes support employee in the comments)
http://conversation.which.co.uk/technology/digital-download-legal-rights-after-death-amazon-itunes-apple/

How to notify Twitter of death
https://support.twitter.com/groups/33-report-a-violation/topics/122-reporting-violations/articles/87894-how-to-contact-twitter-about-a-deceased-user

Mega-resource list of digital death, memorial or afterlife services
http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/online-services-list/

Have you created a plan to ensure your digital legacy endures?

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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25 Signs #yourenotreallyontwitter

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Twitter Is Pencil and Paper

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m a first grade teacher. I see Twitter as a 21st Century version of pencil and paper. I do believe that we can invent millions of ways to use paper and pencil. No rules are the right way to use it … draw, write, scribble, make circles over and over, be a poet, be a novelist, make a journal. Twitter is just as open and flexible.

I’ve never been one for rules.

What prompted this list was not a rant.

Here’s what happened.

About a week or so ago, on a Saturday, I was going through the people I follow on Twitter — people I’ve met at events, people I’ve talked to on Twitter, or people who follow me that I follow back. Over the course of a few hours, I reviewed 61000+ accounts to find those who were no longer active. I started by sorting out those who hadn’t tweeted for 90 days or longer. Then I started looking at their tweet counts — some tweeted less than once a day. That’s less than 365 tweets in a year!

As I was deleting the Twitter Quitters, I started thinking of people — some of them on TV — who say

  • “I tried Twitter and I don’t get it.”
  • “No one would talk to me.”
  • “It’s stupid and silly.”

or things like that. Which led me to think, they weren’t really ON Twitter, meaning some people leave Twitter before they figure out what all of the excitement is about. They never get the Twitter experience. And that happens because they approach thinking it’s supposed to be something different than conversation.

And at some point memories of Jeff Foxworthy’s litany of ways to tell “You’re a Redneck” popped in my head and I was suddenly channeling him and tweeting with the hashtag #yourenotreallyontwitter and some folks joined in.

  1. If you average less than 1 tweet a day, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  2. If you haven’t tweeted since 2011, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  3. If you never tweet about anything but yourself, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  4. @mikeyb95 pointed out: If you haven’t connected 2 total strangers #yourenotreallyontwitter
  5. If your avatar is still an egg 6 months after you got here, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  6. @jfouts noted: If you don’t reply to mentions. Ever. #yourenotreallyontwitter”
  7. If your avatar is a picture of someone else, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  8. @ValaAfshar added: If you use twitter as a megaphone, instead of a telephone, then #yourenotreallyontwitter
  9. If your only follower is an account you also own, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  10. If someone else tweets for you, #yourenotreallyontwitter , they are.
  11. @Tivitamivita added: If you never tweet about anything but #social media bla bla, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  12. If you’re only talking to certain people because you know it will raise your klout score, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  13. @MaureenAlley contributed: if all you tweet are Pinterest-only tweets #yourenotreallyontwitter
  14. If your every tweet is 1 link and 9 hashtags, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  15. If you think of your follower group as your “list” my guess is that #yourenotreallyontwitter
  16. @CraigFifield cited: if you tweet a large % of famous quotes #yourenotreallyontwitter #youareactuallyboring
  17. If your last 40 tweets went to strangers you don’t follow and all say “buy from me,” #yourenotreallyontwitter , you’re a spammer
  18. @Theatresaurus made the observation that: if you think you know the rules of twittering #yourenotreallyontwitter
  19. @erin_mcmahon threw in: If you think you can make one-size-fits-all rules about what it is to be on Twitter, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  20. and I replied: and if you think there aren’t any rules #yourenotreallyontwitter — treating people like people counts here too. 🙂
  21. @CarltonHawkins remarked: If your every tweet is 1 link at 9 hashtags, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  22. If you only ask for retweets from famous people #yourenotreallyontwitter
  23. @mikeyb95 stated: If I can’t learn about you from your bio #yourenotreallyontwitter
  24. And finally, if you unfollow someone as soon as they follow you back …. #yourenotreallyontwitter but you already knew that.

    25. And one for those who already know all of those –

  25. @NarissaTweets reminds us: If you’ve never made a #TwitterTypo #yourenotreallyontwitter

    26. Now of course if you have a Twitter account and a password that hasn’t been hacked by a phishing scam link you clicked in an AutoDM discussing the nasty things being said about you, you’re probably on Twitter.

    What I hope is that you’re talking to folks, finding great content, learning things you wouldn’t find anywhere else, and building a neighborhood on the Internet that reflects you most uniquely and doing it just the way you find right.

    After all my Twitter isn’t your Twitter and you get to pick. 🙂

    But I hope you won’t be a Twitter Quitter until you find out what it could be about.

    Be irresistible.

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