Successful Blog

  • Home
  • Community
  • About
  • Author Guidelines
  • Liz’s Book
  • Stay Tuned

Tailoring Twitter: The ROI of Curating Content on Twitter

April 25, 2011 by Liz Leave a Comment

What You Share Defines You

insideout logo

Last year, I started experimenting with curating content on Twitter. I had three good reasons. I realized that

  1. Twitter was no longer an extension of blog, but had become it’s own thing. Like a new summer home where I met a new neighborhood of people, many of them didn’t know my background, my skillset, my expertise, or my interests. A twitter bio doesn’t do much to fill in that.
  2. The weekly link post on my blog “The SOB Business Cafe” wasn’t as useful today as a filter as it once had been. Not every great post is evergreen enough to wait until Friday for sharing. And a single post collect such things needs to be targeted and niched well with a title that brings home their value. Rearranging that slot in that way would be turning it into a totally new thing. I had other ideas about using that space to feature members of the community.
  3. Becoming a blogger had given me a way to keep up the writer’s discipline of writing every day — a habit that had built my skills and served me for decades. The idea of curating great content would give a way to keep up the writer’s discipline of reading great content every day — a habit that would build my skills and keep me current in an ever changing business environment.

To say it paid off would be an understatment. While reading for articles to share, I found new thoughts to consider and new ideas to write about. And like blogging, curating content on Twitter taught me more about relationships, social skills and building a network than I might ever have expected.

Here’s how I did that …

Build a Stronger Network by Curating Content On the Go

Don’t think for a minute that I’m exaggerating about the “minutes a day” part. I curate content during commercials on TV and while I’m waiting for people to meet me in a restaurant. At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss …

I curate in the morning.
Breaking out save articles without warning.
I curate on a break.
I curate eating cake.
I curate near the lake.
Sometimes I save an article to read and curate while I wait
for a meeting, a phone call, an appointment, or blogger date.
I curate especially during commercial breaks …

Two Ways to Curate on the Go

Actually, I’m not quite as obsessed as all that. But I do curate in the minutes that I used to just sit. Here are two ways I do that.

  1. When someone shares a great article on Twitter that I don’t have time to read right then, I send the that article to my Instapaper account. When I find I have a few minutes to read a bit, I have a queue of articles that already have my interest waiting to be read. I share the ones I think serve my audience interests and needs.
  2. I also have a list of publications — standard publications in my niche, writers who say thought provoking and useful things, and outliers who connect ideas in interesting ways. I’ve collected them into sets of bookmarks. About once a week I visit their websites to see what they’ve been talking about and share what I find to be the most useful of their content.

Sometimes I tweet what I find at that very moment. Often I schedule the content I curate so that I don’t binge tweet. I also think about when an article might be most useful to folks. So I try to post articles that require more reading time at night, how-to and building articles or on the weekend, and ways to perform better at work during the week. [I use Tweetdeck to schedule these curated tweets and the only tweets I schedule are curated tweets.]

The ROI of Curating Content on Twitter

The discipline of reading regularly and curating what I prized had more ROI than I’d ever have guessed. Naturally I got closer and more up-to-date with great content, but the return was far more than that. Here are the direct benefits that were a result of investing a few minutes whenever I had the time.

  1. The content I curated defined me more clearly and differently to the people who follow my Twitter Stream. This single reason is huge. Don’t just be the “sales guy” be the “sales guy who’s up on the latest news and issues.”
  2. That content began attracting people who want to read the content I curate. I am pre-selecting the Internet for them. Twitter used to be the back door to my blog. Now that new audience sometimes starts at Twitter and then goes to my blog to check out what I’m about.
  3. When I keep what I curate consistent in content and quality, I find people share it often with comments and RTs.
  4. When I credit the Twitter name of the person who wrote the article — rather than the magazine or blog — it often starts a relationship between us that wasn’t there before I tweeted that person’s work. Some of those relationships have now moved offline to collaborations. A couple of nice interviews have resulted and some upcoming coverage for an event is happening because of those relationships.
  5. Offering great content from 8-12 other sources a day also makes it easier to share what’s good on my own blog without seeming a self-promotional jerk.
  6. I’ve become far more familiar with the “personality” of the publications in my niche. I developed a good sense for each publication’s strengths, standards, and content preferences. i’m still surprised to find how infrequently some of the huge publications on the web update their content.
  7. Curating content has kept me from staying stuck in the conversation fishbowl that can happen when we only talk with our friends. I’ve learned new points of view, new tools, new techniques, and new strategies from the articles I’ve read.

The ROI of curating content on twitter is the influence gained from incrementally staying in sync with the tools and the culture while still listening to the mainstream point of view. Those bits and articles that we take in from Twitter bring the latest from the self-sorted group. Those we seek out from traditional media bring the outside view. On the edges of each and in between them is where the new thoughts come through.

Curating content gets us to listen too.

The more we listen, the more we know. The more we know, the more we notice. The more we notice the more we can use to figure out what we need to know next.

How can you curate content to tailor Twitter — to make it faster, easier and more meaningful — for the folks who follow you?

Be Irresistible!

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

Related
Tailoring Twitter: Does Your Twitter Profile Attract the Right People?
Tailoring Twitter: Building a Powerful Network that Fits You Perfectly
Tailoring Twitter: Get Busy Folks to “Get” Twitter in 2 Minutes Flat!

Filed Under: Business Life, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: bc, curating content, LinkedIn, ROI, small business, Twitter

What’s the Most Surprising #ROI on Anything You’ve Bought?

October 20, 2010 by Liz Leave a Comment

This is a sponsored announcement, part of a paid promotion. It’s rare that I do those. But the question behind it is so worth pondering that I felt compelled to write about it. So it’s with pleasure I invite you to read along.

Win a Napa Retreat for 6 and a Tech Makeover!

Our desks and our offices are fitted and filled with tools and equipment that we’ve purchased to help us do business. Office supply stores, computer stores, furniture stores, and providers online and offline shower us with information about products and services that will make our lives easier, faster, and more productive. But how often do we stop to consider which of those we invest in have given us the highest return?

We know the ones we like and the ones we don’t. We know the ones we use every day and the ones we reach for in emergency. But if we lined them all up in a row, which would be the winner as the most surprising, great investment we’ve made so far? Was it …

  • that bus ticket that took you to the best project meeting of your career?
  • that pair of ice skates that inspired you when your feet almost froze?
  • that video camera that captured the first cut of your documentary?
  • that ticket to a conference where you sketched out the idea for your business launch?
  • that chicken that changed the world?

Think about it. Tell your story and you’ll learn something about yourself and how you work.

HP’s “Reboot With ROI” Retreat Giveaway

HP has posed the question and made it worth your while to answer. They’re giving away an amazing prize: a trip to Napa for six people on your team and a technology makeover for your team! To enter, all you have to do is share a story about surprising returns on something you bought.

hp_roi

Here’s how it works:

Tell Your Story

The best user-submitted stories of surprising ROI will be featured on the site.

Complete prize details:

Grand Prize
A five-day trip for six to Northern California wine country, including:

* Round-trip coach class ticket to San Francisco International Airport
* Two full-size rental cars for the duration of the trip
* Five nights’ accommodation at Fairmont Mission Inn & Spa (double occupancy in a Luxury Suite with a fireplace)
* Daily breakfast
* Six-hour wine country limousine tour, with tours and tastings at three wineries
* Ride on the Napa Valley Wine Train, including gourmet lunch and wine-tasting seminar
* Hot air balloon ride over wine country with Up & Away, including brunch
* $550 gift certificate per person for winner’s choice of spa treatments
* A gift certificate for dinner for six at a fine-dining restaurant in Yountville

And, after your refreshing reboot in wine country, go back to work with new HP technology.

Grand prize:

* Four HP ProBook computers and 1 Palm smartphone
* Two HP Color Laserjet CM2320fxi printers
* One HP Color Laserjet CP2025dn printer

Silver Prize:

* HP ProBook 4520s computer with broadband included and free case
* HP Color LaserJet CP2025dn printer

Bronze Prize:

* HP Mini 5103 computer
* HP Color LaserJet CP2025n printer

The contest closes on October 31, 2010. ( http://bit.ly/95QWoo )

Read the detailsand find out how to get your story with those already on the HP ROI Giveaway site.

Now that you’ve thought about it. Do it!

Read some stories and realize how they connect us to the people who wrote them. Notice how each business became more interesting because of the story behind it.
Your story is part of what makes your brand and your business one of a kind.

The real prize here is what you’ll get by act of answering the question — share your story and you’ve already won a great brand insight.

Share it with HP and you might get another huge ROI story about your brand — the story of how writing about surprising ROI became a business retreat for six and a makeover for your business tech.

So you see now why I wanted to share this sponsored event. The insight gained from participation is in itself a prize.

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

Filed Under: Business Life, Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, HP Reboot with ROI, LinkedIn, ROI

My ROI – SOBCon 09

May 7, 2009 by Guest Author Leave a Comment

The theme for SOBCon last weekend in Chicago was the Return on Investment (ROI) of Relationships. As we learned from KD Paine’s presentation there are many ways to measure ROI, and in a successful business model that is the goal – to measure output in relation to input. It’s a difficult issue because, first, there has to be a clear definition of relationship and then what does the return actually mean? Are we dealing with dollar and cents as our measure or are we calculating visits to a website as our return? The answer to the question is situation specific and, having said that, I can really only talk about my ROI as it pertains to my weekend in Chicago. 

I must admit I was very nervous about going to the conference. Although I have made lots of great connections online I am new to this and attending a “biz school” for bloggers was a little daunting. My take aways:
 
– Meeting people face-to-face strengthened relationships and took them to a new level of trust and support. And oh how we laughed! 
-I learned things about the business of blogging: how to make money, practical skills, new techniques, and of many new services out there. 
– I learned that having a lot of connections, investing in relationships with many different people from many different backgrounds and areas of interest’s leads to an incredible arsenal of resources. Putting these people in a room together created energy you could actually feel and almost see.  
– I made connections, which will lead to future projects that may provide
employment. 
–  Days later I learned that the best take away was the feeling of being revitalized and knowing of all the support available in the SOB community. 
– I learned that the conversation generated by the presenters, as with Brian Clark’s presentation, was even more valuable than the presentation itself.
 

I measured my ROI and am extremely happy with my return. The most valuable item? Definitely conversation. In the end isn’t that what we’re all trying to create?  A conversation around our post, service, blog, product, idea, or self? ? 

from: Kathryn Jennex aka northernchick

Filed Under: Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, blogging, Brian Clarke, Chicago, conversation, ROI, SOBCon 09

Who Is Coming to SOBCon?

March 24, 2009 by SOBCon Authors Leave a Comment

Andi Fisher
Andi Fisher

Andi Fisher is. And boy, is she excited about it. She wrote a post about making her decision and it carries some special meaning for me – because Liz had the very same effect on me last year.

Misadventures with Andi: My intuition is telling me to attend SOBCon09

Over the past month, since returning home from [another] conference, I have been visiting Liz’s blog and reading the information time and time again regarding SOBCon. But each time I have dismissed it as a conference for the “Big Dogs,” and as the owner of a personal blog that is less than a year old and a business that is just a little over a month old, I thought I didn’t fit the label.

But then a couple of things have happened.

A couple of months ago, I purchased a program from Naomi Dunford, of IttyBiz.com. I was in the incubation program with Ladies Who Launch for my business and was looking for resources to help me. I bought the information but didn’t do anything with it (dumb, I know, but the truth) and from time to time I think about pulling the materials out and going through them. Then on one of my lurkings on the SOBCon site, I saw that she was a sponsor, was this a sign?

I kept going back to the SOBCon event site, and then closing the window. This past Tuesday, I said, “Screw it, I am just going to email Liz and ask her about this damn thing!” And I did, and she answered, and she said (among other things):

“…Everyone is a big dog at SOBCon — that’s my rule. Check Naomi Dunford’s blog … IttyBiz.com She’s a full sponsor this year. Her business is just her….You won’t be sorry you came. You’ll leave with 100 or so very important friends. Some will be friends for life. ”

I thought about that all day, and Tuesday night I went to a Ladies Who Launch workshop, a workshop that I thought was about business strategies, but mistakenly (my misunderstanding) it turned out to be about honing and honoring your intuition. Now, I feel like I have pretty good intuition, I have hunches and feelings and I usually follow/honor them, but I was dismissing the feelings I was having around SOBCon, why? At the end of the workshop, we did a visualization exercise. Me, being the practical person that I am said, “oh here we go…” in my head, but decided to just do it anyways.

At the end of the visualization exercise, we were told to write down what came to us.

Mine was, “Go to SOBCon.”

Well, now. After reading this I needed to talk to Andi about her upcoming SOBCon experience. We had a great little chat on the phone and she graciously accepted my request to answer a few questions that I thought would add some punch to her post.

The Questions:
How has planning to go to SOBCon changed your outlook and your business model?

I am not sure it has changed anything significantly yet. My business is just starting out so I am still trying out lots of new things, whatever feels right. My business model is still taking shape and I think it is a great time to attend this conference because I am flexible and nimble enough to incorporate new ideas and concepts with having to “re-do” a lot of work.

After we spoke on the phone it sounded like you had to re-learn some things that you already knew in a different context. What insight can you share with someone who might be “on the edge” of deciding to attend a conference?

One of the key factors that someone thinking attending should consider is what the personal ROI will be? Will putting in the time, effort and money bring value to you and your business (blog, etc)? Also they need to consider what their expectations are in terms of what that ROI is. Are they in it for immediate gratification or do they understand that meeting people, making a connection, building a relationship with genuine context takes time and investment? I believe that those who are serious about their desire to connect and build their businesses through authentic means should look no further than Liz, her network of influencers and influencees, or her business community to find that. And SOBCon is the manifestation of those people, guided by authentic principles, which make this event a “do not miss.”

What is the main thing that you are looking to learn/discover/create at SOBCon?

I am interested in understanding the business-model of some of the tier-1 professional bloggers out there such as Chris Brogan, Problogger, Copyblogger, Remarkablogger, Havi and Ittybiz. The blogging community always amazes me in that the people within the community are constantly opening themselves up to new members, sharing their knowledge, and taking newbies under their wings. Having said that I want to know why they choose to do business one way over another, what knowledge have they gained along the way (that they are willing to share) and what are some pitfalls to avoid. I hope to engage in interesting conversations and suck up knowledge by osmosis just by being around some truly remarkable people.

Thanks so much Andi, I really appreciate your time and participation!

I look forward to participating and brainstorming, I enjoy these activities immensely (and I am secretly hoping that other people in whatever groups I am part of enjoy presenting because I abhor it!). It should be a conference of vibrant, intelligent people and the interaction should be fantastic.

I hope to gain ideas for mainly for my business, including my business blog, but also for my personal blog. I’d like to increase readership and marketing/co-marketing opportunities in the areas that I enjoy.

How about the rest of you? What are you looking forward to at SOBCon this year?

Filed Under: Attendees Tagged With: bc, Blog Conference, Community, Conversations, ROI

Recently Updated Posts

9 Reasons To Use WordPress

Useful Marketing Tools That Wont Bust Your Budget

Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Successful Blogger?

Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Successful Blogger?

6 Tips for the Serial Side Hustler

How to Make Your Blog Popular

Helpful Tips for Business Blogging



From Liz Strauss & GeniusShared Press

  • What IS an SOB?!
  • SOB A-Z Directory
  • Letting Liz Be

© 2023 ME Strauss & GeniusShared