Successful Blog

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

How Much Digital Clutter Can You Delete Today?

June 7, 2012 by Rosemary 3 Comments

by
Rosemary O’Neill

It’s Not the Equipment. It’s You

The garage is filled with racquetball rackets, tennis rackets, several bags of golf clubs, jump ropes, a dusty Bowflex machine, and stacks of exercise videos in formats ranging from Betamax to Blu-Ray. This is the debris of good intentions.

Is your hard drive full of unread PDFs, video training sessions, free eBooks, and email offers that you thought would help your business? Yup, mine too.

We need to clear the decks and make room for real progress. The only “equipment” you really need is your brain. So if those digital support systems are creating mental drag, hit delete. I promise you’ll feel better.

In 2011, The Princeton Neuroscience Institute released a study that concluded (I’m paraphrasing in English), “too much clutter in your visual field prevents you from focusing effectively.”

All of those unorganized files are like mental clutter. They are in your subconscious “to read someday” list, which grows every day. Eventually you’ll be that guy who has 10 years worth of National Geographic magazines saved in the basement. Don’t be that guy.

Do these three things today. It will allow you to start next week with a clear field of vision.

  1. Do a full search of your computer for anything with a .pdf extension. Any PDF that’s more than two weeks old, delete. Be ruthless. If you haven’t read it yet, you’re not going to read it.
  2. Any emails that you’re holding on to because they have links to interesting videos or white papers, run through them quickly and delete as many as possible. If there are very useful items in them, go to the web page and use StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, Instapaper, or some other bookmarking tool to save or share them.
  3. Once you’re purged, create one central location for things you want to read (an Evernote folder, Dropbox folder, or just a folder on your computer). Put things in there when you run across them, and once a month, clear it out. I like to use the last day of the month, so that I can start fresh each month.

Here’s your challenge: how many unread pieces of digital clutter can you delete today? Post your results here, if you dare.

_____

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

_____

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Filed Under: Blog Basics, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinkedIn, Rosemary O'Neill, social business

4 Points of Clear Thinking in Social Business Times of Fleas and Mosquitoes

March 27, 2012 by Liz 2 Comments

Don’t Let the Adrenalin Cloud Your Thinking

cooltext443809558_authenticity

The biggest part of my business life takes place offline. For as much as I’m visible on Twitter and my blog, I’m most often on the phone or in offices listening and talking about how people think and respond in business situations — how we buy, how we create communities, how we rally to cause, and how we are moved by influences.

In those ongoing business conversations, people I work with and for sometimes bring up cases of negative social business behavior. I bring up a four points that we often lose sight of in such situations.

  1. It’s rare that someone dies or company goes bankrupt because of comment made on Twitter. From the words “Dell Sucks,” through the first time prominent bloggers chose to use and post about K-mart gift cards, to the Motrin ad about “babywearing,” and every iteration large and small debated in the online social business — none that I recall were a life and death situation. And some were obvious attempts by individuals to gain visibility and attention.
  2. Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. Find out more about everyone and everything before you respond. It’s rare that we work with complete information. Every story has many layers and it’s human nature to lose sight of or devalue the parts that don’t support the position that we favor. If you haven’t considered the restraints and possible good intentions of what you’re criticizing, if you can’t offer a possible way to solve the problem, if you can’t articulate your own version of the same behavior you’re criticizing, if you only have third party access to what happened, then you probably don’t know enough about the situation to call what you’re thinking an informed opinion. It’s impossible, arrogant, and dangerous to think you know other people’s intentions.
  3. Consider the reliability of the source and what the source’s purpose might be. Who brought the first complaint and what might be their gain for complaining? I’ve seen someone ask “innocently curious” questions on Twitter to start a debate, designed to raise his own profile by rallying folks to kick and scream about something that was really none of his business. Very soon a pile-on occurred. If the questions were really so innocently curious, I wonder why they weren’t asked via email? The difference between innocent curiosity and manipulation in this case was the intent of the asker — he wasn’t interested in the answer. He was interested in the debate and gaining more followers.
  4. People can see what you do, not why you did it. Stick to your values and your actions will prove them true. Each time an issue occurs I watch social business experts lose sight of how social media tools work. We tell people to listen. Then we forget that they’re listening. What CEO wants to work with the guy who claims on Twitter to be the only person who understands business? What C-Suite executive or small business owner who’s listening will trust the opinion of a person who tears down a company or rants unmercifully on an individual’s opinion? If you know how the tools work, you don’t lose that perspective to join a witch hunt because someone choose to write an ebook.

What to do about negative social business behavior?

Try the rule of fleas and mosquitoes.

What do we do with fleas and mosquitoes? When they keep their distance, we don’t even think about them. They’re irrelevant. When they bite us, we build environments where fleas and mosquitoes don’t thrive and flick them away on occasions we must. Then we get on with what makes our lives worth living, not bothering.

It’s easy to have a knee jerk reaction in a situation where many have tools to reach a few thousand people. So those fleas and mosquitoes, who choose to suck bits of blood for their own advantage can appear to be powerful. But only have the power that we give them. Be aware of what feeds them and remove it from your environment. Starve the fleas and mosquitoes of attention. Gratefully thank them for their wisdom and move on. The folks you want in your community don’t like fleas and mosquitoes either.

Focus your attention on giving food to what keeps you strong and protects you — the folks who already love you. Give the folks who love you even more attention. They’re the ones who deserve the explanations. Give them your commitment to continue doing what they already love about you. Let them know your trust won’t be bent or broken by voices who yell louder than they might. Invite them to be closer to you. Reward them. Celebrate them as heroes.

You’ll never go wrong by valuing the people who love you more than the fleas and mosquitoes.
Keep your head, your heart, and your adrenalin on the mission of the people who share your values.

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Filed Under: Audience, Personal Branding, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinkedIn, negative behavior, social business

25 Signs #yourenotreallyontwitter

February 28, 2012 by Liz 54 Comments

Twitter Is Pencil and Paper

cooltext443809437_relationships

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 –

  26. @NarissaTweets reminds us: If you’ve never made a #TwitterTypo #yourenotreallyontwitter
  27. 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!!

Filed Under: Community, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinkedIn, social business, Twitter

27 Things to Know Before You Work in Social Media

January 24, 2011 by Liz 57 Comments

Let’s Be Honest

cooltext443794242_influence

Every day, I’m immersed in social business. I spend as much time on my computer as some people spend in their shoes. I rarely talk about “social media” except with clients, because to me that’s like talking about “pencils.” I’d rather be using one than talking about what they do.

I use social media tools to work on SOBCon with @Starbucker, to build communities and brand visibility for clients, to write blog posts and to curate content for people with similar interests. Social tools are business development, customer service, marketing, pr, community building, change management, and leadership — all at the speed of the Internet.

So I guess you could say I work in social media. If that’s your reality, your goal, or even a possibility for you, I’d like to point out a few things about working in social media worth knowing. This is not a rant, simply a set of observations which are quite similar to the challenges of any communication-based, people-centered endeavor.

The purpose of this list is merely to share that most people who are in this new and quickly changing area of business are finding that the work often has more nuances and challenges than we expected.

The problem with working in social media is …

  1. that, when you start, no one will believe you know anything useful — and you might not.
  2. that you’ll have to be multi-lingual, speaking and translating between two vocabularies — that of the social media culture and that of the people who’ve little to no experience with it.
  3. that you’ll have to figure out how to measure something that traditionally hasn’t been measured and to explain why those measurements are valid — you’ll have to have goals, tools to match the goals and reasonable expectations — without history that’s hard to do.
  4. that some folks will believe that impressions, eyeballs, and broadcasts are the best use of the tools.
  5. that, though you were enlisted to bring about change, the very folks who enlisted you might be the most uncomfortable with changing — one friend advises you might take care if you’re hired to be the “heretic” because heretic stories don’t end well for the heretic.
  6. that some people won’t be able to see the value of making relationships to growing business and keeping satisfied customers — even though relationships have fueled the businesses based on decades of trade shows and sales calls.
  7. that, when you do social business well, it looks easy, but it’s not — and no one will care how hard it was.
  8. that some people will misread safe responses as dangerous ones and dangerous responses as safe ones — understanding the culture of social business online is a learning curve that most folks acquire incrementally.
  9. that you’ll find most folks have a different sense of urgency — their sense of urgency will change some as they experience the speed of the Internet.
  10. that social media work isn’t glamorous.
  11. that the pay for the hours worked is even less glamorous.
  12. that, if you build a strong public presence, your mistakes will be public too.
  13. that, if you build a strong public presence, some folks will think you are all about making yourself “internet famous” — and that could be true.
  14. that some folks will be confused when you promote what other folks are doing — you might accused of “going native.”
  15. that you’ll need to personally invest and be detached simultaneously.
  16. that you’ll be critiqued by people who don’t know how to say things nicely.
  17. that you’ll be critiqued by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
  18. that you won’t have resources to bring all of your strongest ideas to life.
  19. that some of your ideas will be out-of-sync, out-of-reach, or out-of-date before you have them.
  20. that only other social media advocates will “get” what you do — you won’t be able to explain the thrill of a ReTweet from someone you admire.
  21. that your significant other may think you care more about your online friends than your offline friends — your significant other might be right.
  22. that being social online means you’ll have to be social offline too.
  23. that no one human is good at every aspect of social media interaction.
  24. that no matter where you sit, stand, listen, or talk, you’ll have to change your point of view to see and respond to the whole picture.
  25. that the second you forget that social media is about the people, the people will find a way to remind you — sometimes they’ll remind you even when you haven’t forgotten.
  26. that each day will require that you focus fiercely, that trust yourself so that people can trust you, and that you learn more things faster than ever before.
  27. that, if you’re the person introducing social media to a business, you face the challenge of getting people to imagine the possibilities of something they’ve never experienced.

So there you have 27 things to know before you work in social media and here’s the one that makes those 27 worth it.

Inside each frustration is a chance to be a leader, to reach out and invite people to help build something we can’t build alone. The effort, the explaining, the energy can transform a a business by enlisting and celebrating customers, employees, vendors, partners who help it thrive. The first connection occurs when we show folks how these new tools make what they do faster, easier, more efficient, and more meaningful.

Soon enough, I hope we lose the term “social media” in the same way that we no longer have classes in “computer” or people who teach “email.” In the meantime, I tell my family that I write spy novels. It’s easier.

Bet you could add to this list. What do you think people need to know about working in social media?

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinkedIn, social business, social-media, working in social media

3 Key Strategies and 3 Crucial Insights to Growing Business on the Social Web

August 30, 2010 by Liz 9 Comments

What to Keep and What It Means Now

insideout logo

At the Social Media Masters Summit, I spoke about three crucial business growth strategies.

  1. Make an irresistible offer. Remove things that customers don’t want. Enhance and expand what they love. Then find ways to add in extraordinary value that only you can provide.
  2. Grow products and services as you grow (and get to know) your customer base. Review. Revise. Repackage. Be on a continual cycle of offering something new for old customers and something revised or repackaged to new customers. Avoid dying by offering old product to old customers for too long. Avoid the huge risk and expense of building something new for a whole new market — dividing your resources while trying to attract people to something new.
  3. Value loyal customers. We never recover the lost of replacing one who deserts the fold. The loss of revenue over time is high and noticeable. When it is combined with the opportunity loss, the cost of acquiring a new customer, and the negative word of mouth (the average deserter tells three friends) the impact is huge.

I also spoke about three key insights we need to fully leverage the speed and reach of the social web …

  1. Solution is the new location. Once it was important to be at the corner of State and Main. Now it’s important to be at the top of a search engine when people type in a problem they’re looking to solve.
  2. The attention economy requires a clear message sent to a clearly defined customer group. The social web makes it easier to amplify our message and to reach out to the ideal customers and partners we want to attract. In geographically limited marketplace, we could claim to serve a less-clarified market, because the community was limited. The loss of limits leaves a lack of definition in a position to be entirely overlooked. The value proposition for a specific niche is what makes us different from all other competitor’s on the web.
  3. Narrowing a niche widens opportunity. Geography no longer limits our community and customer base. A clear narrow niche works like a laser beam to focus attention on what we offer and our best value proposition for the ideal customers that we’re trying to attract.
234036_laser_green_light_2

No wonder the social web has become such a revolution. Once a brick and mortar store could count on a limited number ideal customers and be required to offer products and services beyond their needs to less ideal customers just to survive. The freedom of the Internet offers us an opportunity to choose the exact ideal customer base we want to serve. We can hone and tailor our products and offers to reach out with intention, knowing that the world market has far more customers of that description than any single geographic location ever could.

It’s the beauty of direct mail with out the cost of the catalogs … without the long development time between offers and seasons.

What businesses do you see demonstrating that they understand the reach of Internet? Not many I bet.
How are you leveraging the opportunity that the social web represents?

–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: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinkedIn, social business, Strategy/Analysis

Social Media: Don’t Look for a Unique Message

February 15, 2010 by Liz 8 Comments

Conversation Leads to Relationship

cooltext443809437_relationships

Last December I had the lovely experience of hearing both Shel Israel and Erik Qualman speak at the Social Media Club Chicago event.

Shel co-wrote the book on social media, before it was called social media Naked Conversations. He also wrote the book that defines Twitter — Twitterville. His stories share the real time, real life experience of living on the social web as a brand and a human.

Erik wrote Socialnomics. He details how the social web has changed the way we live and do business. This presentation is one he uses when he speaks.

After the SOBCon2010 webinar this morning, I thought of how we’re all saying the same things in our own ways. It’s how we translate the tools into real, thriving relationships that move us all forward.

Look for the customers who understand the way YOU explain it and relate to them.

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Register Now!! for sobcon-vmc

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Erik Qualman, LinkedIn, Shel-Israel, social business

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 7
  • Next Page »

Recently Updated Posts

6 Keys to Managing Your Remote Workforce

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



From Liz Strauss & GeniusShared Press

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

© 2023 ME Strauss & GeniusShared