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Influence: 5 Ways to Check Whether Your Online Business Relevance Is Eroding

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Offering Value and Meaning

As more tools and algorithms surface for the purpose of rating influence, across each measure and metric the hardest factor to isolate and measure is topical relevance. I may be influential to the SOBCon on the subject of strategy, small business, start ups, and entrepreneurship, because I’ve established expertise in the area of starting and growing a business. However, I wouldn’t have the same influential relevance on the topic of gourmet cooking or restaurant management.

Without relevance, there is no influence.

5 Ways to Check Whether Your Business Relevance Is Eroding

Eight to ten years ago, the social business Internet was centered in the blogosphere. Blogs were the most common vehicle by which online business people established their identities, connected, and conversed. Individuals picked up the tools and learned the culture from the people they met while using them. Now, this Insane Infographic-of-the-day: Social Media shows the complicated space the social business web has become. …


Click the image to view a larger format.

Blogging platforms have become one unit on a hugely varied landscape for sharing content.
Blogs were once a highly relevant main idea in a chart like that.
Now they are more of a secondary detail in relevance.

Keep up with the changing landscape or lose relevance. Keeping up requires participating and adding unique value to channel and enhance opportunities as the environment changes. Here are 5 ways to check whether your online business relevance is eroding.

  1. You (your brand or your business) spend more time sharing content than reading it. Strategic sharing can enhance relevance. Through focus and filtering, a business can underscore brand identity, values, expertise, and a service ethic. All of which builds trust and attracts a self-sorting group of ideal customers or clients.

    Oversharing without filtering, such as retweeting without reading first, adds noise not value and erodes relevance. Promiscuous sharing destroys relevance.

  2. You (your brand or your business) value social scores and metrics, such as Klout and follower counts, MORE than conversations with the people who help your business thrive. We can use metrics to fine tune our relevance. Metrics can reveal “who, what, how, when, and how many”.

    All metrics and algorithms carry the bias of assumptions about what is being measured. Beware of how metrics flatten data by removing individual particularities. To stay relevant, keep a continuous dialogue with individuals represented by the data. Balance in the people-data equation is foundational to relevance.

  3. You (your brand or your business) make decisions and develop expertise based on 2nd-hand experiences. Research and reading focused on current cases, predictions, trends, cycles, and conditions can increase relevance. Understanding the breadth of an industry environment extends our ability to recognize and leverage opportunity. Still vicarious knowledge is shallow, fades quickly, and lacks insight.

    Turning acquired knowledge into experience by applying it, trying it, testing, and measuring our outcomes increases relevance exponentially. Through application we develop the intuitive detail of experience and the ability to recognize nuance. In that way it erodes relevance.

  4. You (your brand or your business) have more answers than questions. Sharing answers and solutions is highly relevant. Doing so in the spaces where customers meet to talk — in their language — makes those answers even more relevant.

    More powerful than answers are the compelling questions that keep us connecting and searching. Working out and working on deep questions that are critical to our customers’ mission — how they will raise their families, how they can grow their business — offer the people we serve the most relevant connection to our business.

  5. You (your brand or your business) develop social marketing plans around “online and offline channels” rather than using connect more deeply with the people who build your business. A well-designed outreach strategy can spark relevant human connections.

    Reframing social business as customer connections rather than channels, we can build true “other-centered” intimacy into the way we reach out, A view to why people meet in each space changes the way we talk and the topics we talk about. Relevance online and off starts with caring about people.

As information and technology change at the speed of the Internet, staying relevant is a constant and always current criteria of true influence. Focused attention to the new problems, new solutions, and new opportunities that surround them is essential. Without that focus and a clear intention to acquire new competencies, internalize current culture, and cultivate new thinking, that same speed of the Internet can erode, as we continue to do what once made us successful but is no longer needed.

How do you stay irresitibly relevant to the people who help you thrive?

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

5 Tips to Start Your Small Business in the Strongest Way

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Abby Evans

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Your dreams of starting your own business may be the result of one or more factors; a life –long desire to make a career out of something you’re good at or a need to supplement your current income are two very popular reasons. The jobs we have may not always be the jobs we want and starting your own business, be it small or medium sized, may provide you with the career enrichment or financial autonomy you’re hoping to achieve.

Your Input Determines Your Outcome!

But don’t be fooled…don’t think that starting your own business will be any easier than working for someone else. The only way to guarantee your own success is by hard work. Sometimes the input required is more arduous than jobs(http://www.jobs.ca) you’ve had or have. At any rate, it requires dedication, thoroughness and a follow-through attitude. Here a five key tips to give your business starting efforts the jump start they need to be rewarding and triumphant!

1. Give The People What They Want!

It is a regular occurrence that when starting their own business, many people center it around a product or service they think will be successful rather than on an already existing idea that has a proven and functional market. Think about it – it’s much better to grab a slice from a large, thriving market than from an industry with no market standing at all.

2. Keep Your Costs As Low As Possible

Stimulating a steady cash flow will be moot if you’re spending more than you’re making. Especially where starting a new business is concerned, you don’t want to spend the formative portion of its inception in debt. One simple standard to adhere to at any stage of your business’ development is – Don’t Pay Retail! Wherever possible try to source wholesale prices on your purchases and always try to negotiate a discount. Trust us, it adds up.

3. Too Much, Too Little…

This one’s pretty basic but is a useful maxim to apply when you’re starting your own business – overestimate your costs and underestimate your revenue. Being conservative in your incoming revenue expectations isn’t saying that this is what you’re hoping of aiming for; at the start of your own business it just gives you a greater wingspan with which to maneuver. Likewise, overestimation of your expenditure is just plain smart – how many times have you PLANNED on spending XXX amount of dollars on something and by the end you have to shell out three times that amount?

4. Testing Testing!

Whatever you spend your money on must directly and consistently prove and maintain value. Don’t let emotion or tradition be the rationale behind what you fund within your business. Test that what you’re paying for is actually commensurate with a real, functional value. For example, don’t spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on a marketing scheme that isn’t bringing customers to your door for the sake of it. Constantly evaluate the return statistics of every level of investment you make in your business.

5. When In Doubt, Ask!

If you’re worried about making a certain move or you just plumb don’t know what something will mean to your bottom line, seek professional help. There are a plethora of free SMB mentorship programs available that can pair you with seasoned professionals. These people provide valuable advice and perspective and can save tons of money and prevent you reinventing the wheel.

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Author’s Bio: Abby Evans is an avid blogger who writes on everything from how to find jobs in Toronto to outlining the principals of how to write a killer blog post.

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

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

Influence Yourself

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Who Influences You?

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I’m proud of you. You inspire me. You’re a treasure.

Have you ever heard those words?

How nice it is to know that in some life you’ve been a treasure, a thing of beauty or inspiration. I never cease to wonder what prompts such a feeling, what someone saw in me. What does it mean to make another person proud?

Words like that influence me.
They change how I think, how I act, what I believe and what I do next.
They make me stop, think, and wonder what I did to earn them.
A powerful statement can change doubt into confidence.

When I get a response that says I’m valued, I’m influenced to do things that will earn that feeling again.

But …

Some folks think I’m brilliant and creative and other folks, well, think I’m … um … not.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

And on that idea, I figured out something when I was looking at the the stars.

When stars die they leave behind space debris. Space debris is gorgeous colors and shines with its own bright light. The wispy, windy patterns and reflections energize filmy fibers in the endless space night.

What (hu)man named it trash?
It’s a treasure for the heart and the eyes.

People and stars are made of the same stuff.
The carbon that makes cell in our bodies came from the same stuff that makes stars.

It’s true about stars.
It’s true about people too.

Stars shine no matter who is looking.
No one has to call them a treasure.
They shine because that’s what stars do.

Influence Yourself

This week …

Be a treasure.
Start a quest. Create and conspire.
Be a mentor, a leader, a teacher. Inspire.
Be a beginner, a learner, an adventurer. Aspire.
Shine at being you.
Shine because being brilliant is what you do.
Do it because YOU have decided you’re living up to being a treasure.

Influence yourself.

Be irresistible.
— ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

5 Steps to Increasing Your Blog Comments

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How to blog series

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Virginia Cunningham

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You’ve created a blog, made a few posts, maybe even installed some ads for the extra income. You’re locked and loaded to take the Internet by storm. But where are all the comments? Where is the dedicated audience breathlessly hanging on your every word?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to succumb to the tumbleweeds just yet. If you’re eager for more fans, here are five steps to increasing your blog comments.

1. Comment On Other Blogs

Before anything else, you need to establish your presence in your field. This is most easily achieved by commenting on other blogs and making a name for yourself as someone worth listening to. By making smart, funny and helpful comments on other blogs, readers will be interested enough to follow you back to your own.

2: Respond To Comments

No one likes to be ignored, and if your commenters feel like they’re shouting into an empty void, they become much less likely to comment in the future. To gain (and keep) an active community of followers, you’ll need to make a habit of responding to their comments. Answer their questions. Suggest new tech. Outsource their problems if you have to. Regardless of the content, just make sure their comments don’t go unnoticed. They’ve taken time out of their lives to comment on your blog; the least you can do is offer them the same courtesy.

3. Create A Community

It’s basic psychology: people like to belong. Take advantage of this by turning your commenting pool into a community – a place with its own language and lingo, a place where people can build friendships and swap stories without feeling out of place. If something happens to one of your followers, spotlight it. If you think two people would really get along, mention it. Make introductions among your followers. Create memes. Reference inside jokes in your updates. When new visitors feel the urge to “fit in,” you’ll know you’re doing it right.

4. Ask For Opinions

The best thing that can happen to any blog is a lively debate, so inspire some passion by soliciting the opinions of your followers. Make polls, ask leading questions (“what do you guys think?”) and encourage the most vocal of your readers. Don’t be afraid to touch on scandalous topics, because those often create the most heated (and long-running) exchanges.

5. Be Interesting

What makes you comment on a blog? What pushes you from a mere reader to an active participant in an exchange of ideas? It wouldn’t have happened if the blog wasn’t interesting or engaging enough to merit your response.

To this extent, if you want comments, you just have to be a good blogger. You need to be active, interesting, and well-informed in your field. Your post should be entertaining and relevant. Your comments should be smart and useful.

Simply put, if you want more comments on your blog, make your blog worth commenting on.

Author’s Bio: Virginia Cunningham is a freelance technology writer based in Los Angeles, California. She currently blogs about id security, social media and gadgets.

Thank you, Virginia! Engagement is always a noble quest.

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

Be Weird

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Rosemary O’Neill

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When I was in fifth grade, my mom sent me to school with my lunch in one of those silver ice cream bags from the grocery store. I was already “the new kid,” so this cemented me as “Silver Bag.” It started as a put-down, but grew into a term of endearment. I was weird, but weird-good.

As a new person encounters you and your business, do they think you’re weird? Do you allow them to see your weirdness?

It can be a secret weapon that throws people off-guard, especially in a purchasing situation. When people approach a new company, or new business contact, they try to put it in a bucket they’re familiar with. If you refuse to be categorized easily, their brains will keep processing you, trying to put a button in you.

Seth Godin’s book “We Are All Weird,” seems almost contradictory…if everyone’s weird, how does weirdness get recognized? And yet we are in a time now where off-beat is celebrated. How else to explain the rise of Nyan Cat?

One of the defining characteristics of Instagram is that you can do odd things to your photographs. They are also weird because they don’t have a web component—it is strictly a mobile application (we’ll see if Facebook removes some of that weirdness, I hope not).

Most businesses actively try to suppress their weirdness; I say “let it out!” Your target audience will have a much easier time finding you if they can see and relate to your particular brand of strange.

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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 the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Have You Promoted Your Company Today?

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The old adage that you have to spend money to make money is very true, yet we all know businesses that do not adhere to this belief.

So, stop what you are doing for a minute at work and ask yourself a very simple question, is my company doing all it can to promote itself? If the answer is no, now is the time to speak up.

One of the first things you may hear from upper management is that we’re promoting the company within our budgetary means, aka we are spending as little money as possible to get our brand out there.

While it is understandable in a troubling economy that small businesses especially will want to refrain from large promotional expenditures, this would actually be a good time to be using promotional items in order to improve the company’s brand recognition.

Keep in mind that many other businesses are also probably thinking that everyone else is not spending money, so why should we? The simple response to that line of thinking is that while other businesses are holding back on promoting their companies, now is the time to strike.

Whether you are an administrative assistant, an upper management employee or even a company intern, don’t be afraid to offer your two cents as to how your employer can better promote the business.

Among the simple ways to do this include:

  • Social media – I’m still amazed when I peruse various sites on Facebook and Twitter,the two biggest venues for social media, and see that companies are missing the boat. I often hear that management feels it cannot get a true reading of return on investment (ROI) on its social media efforts, so the decision is made to bail on any additional SM work. The bottom line is that social media is essentially free, a great way to promote one’s company, allowing companies to appear as an authority in their respective industry by sharing worthwhile information for current and potential customers. Whether you are active or not in your company’s social media efforts, visit the company Facebook, Twitter, Google+ pages and any other sites your employer is on. Question the individual or individuals in charge of such sites if the pages are not updated regularly;
  • Community events – Getting involved in the local community is a great way with which to promote your business. Such opportunities are not only a way to build up goodwill within the community, but also to network with other local businesses. In the event you run a local cell phone business, get together with your area realtor, florist, eateries etc. to promote each others businesses. The old adage of scratching one’s back while they scratch yours is very true. Before you know it, you will have community members coming to you for business; hopefully you are returning the favor. Small businesses in a local community tend to stick together and patronize one another in order to keep the bigger corporations out, so be a leader in this area;
  • Use bumper stickers, buttons, business cards, T-shirts, etc. – These are great means by which to spread the word about your company. Imagine the potential response rate your small business could get around town if just your employees alone were sporting bumper stickers on their cars promoting your Web site, wearing T-shirts to the local stores and more. It may sound hokey to some, but making up such items is relatively cheap and can be very beneficial to those not aware of what your company does;
  • Buy local air or print time – This means to promote your company obviously involves some funding, but it can be money well spent. Even though many people tune out radio/TV commercials, and even though many newspapers are finding their numbers down these days, there still is a sizable audience that turns to these venues for news and information. Target the most effective times to promote your business, such as radio ads in drive time and coupons in the Sunday paper.

There are a variety of other ways you can employ in order to promote your small business, some of which may or may not get the owner’s approval. Remember too to never overlook your community’s Chamber of Commerce.

The bottom line is ALL employees need to be thinking about ways to better promote the companies they work for.

Remember, each and every employee has a vested interest in the company doing well, so promotion is everyone’s job.

Dave Thomas, who discusses subjects such as online marketing, writes extensively for San Diego-based Business.com.