Successful Blog

30 Blog Posts to Get Strategy and Celebration Back into Your Business and Your Life

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That Fireworks Feeling of Celebration!

Remember when you first were going to see the fireworks? It wasn’t that different from the first day of school or the first day of that new fabulous job! And if you’ve ever started your own business, the first day you’ve got things in order to launch is certainly a time worth celebrating with fireworks!

Then come the days that follow that often get filled with more work and a little less of that brand-new feeling that made everything easy at that very first. I’ve been taken by the thought of how much fun it is when we get back with our heads, hearts and our hands in our business and everything once again works.

Here are 30 blog posts based on solid strategy — a realistic plan that moves you forward over time by taking advantage of the opportunities that are uniquely yours.

  • Stating your mission and sharing the vision
  • Seeing and levering your unique position
  • Finding opportunities in changing conditions
  • Bringing leadership to decisions
  • Building networks and systems to align your goals.

These five strategic steps and the blog posts that explain them are yours for building the kind of business that feels great every day when you walk into work. So get ready to strategize some, to make some plans, to explode your business and then once again you can celebrate!

Be of the Right Mind

  1. The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it. Here are 10 Ways to get a life and start living it.
  2. 5 Ways to Take the Work Out of Work and Connect with Life Ever notice that some of us live, some of work to live, some of us live to work … and one or two of us seem to BE a piece of work?

Stating Your Mission and Sharing the Vision

  1. Why Play the Game, If We Aren’t Playing for Keeps? Why should anyone believe the shoemaker makes fabulous shoes if his own shoes are ratty?
  2. Is Your Strategy About Winning Opportunities?Tactics are interesting. The accomplishments they bring can be thrilling. But the bigger picture that a strategic mission lays out is powerful and amazing thinking.
  3. How to Make Your Dream Come True — Thought, Strategy, Action You can wonder. You can wish. You can wait for help. Say that you will, or say that you can’t right now. The most important key to a dream come true is personal investment
  4. How to Share the Vision and the Plan with a Business-Building Community We have to be able to explain — what we’re building and what roles others might play.
  5. WHY Doing What We Love Is Solid Business Thinking Because it’s how we’re wired as humans. We bring our best to whatever challenge we face. We’re better when we’re inspired by deep feeling.

Seeing and Leverage Your Unique Position

Position is the unique combination of where you stand in your field and what you bring to it.

  1. Are You Seeing So Much That You’re Blind? With or without a real itinerary, traveling too fast made see so much I was blind to the people around me.
  2. 8 Powerfully Subtle Ways to Let Your Work Show Your Expertise To be recognized as a expert requires communication skills and social skills as well as technical expertise.
  3. Marketing Strategy ala Mickey Mouse Eisner didn’t make random decisions. He followed solid business strategy. Anyone can use these strategic principles for success in any enterprise from a service business to a blog.
  4. Checklist: Opportunity Is Knowing Your Position on the Playing Field Think through where your brand and your business is right now.

  5. Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool     Here’s a tool to help you assess what you have to work with.

Find Opportunities in Changing Conditions

Every business faces change in cycles, climates, and shifts. That change holds opportunities that are fit our unique position and skills. Working with change grows a business.

  1. Change As Influence: How to Get the Attention of Deniers, Followers, Dreamers, and Leaders? Every now and then, something happens that pulls the rug out from under us …
  2. How to Claim Your Ground and Own It It was still the 20th Century when someone told me that I could count on these four words to always be true … This too will change.
  3. Do You Sleep in the Freeze or Invest in the Spring? The sailors who love sailing know just saw it as part of the yearly progress of the sailing “routine.”
  4. Stop Thinking Poor – Start Irresistibly Growing Your Business Something negative happens. People hit a wall with their business. They pull back, retreat to safer ground to protect what they have.
  5. The 5 Step Strategy that Saved a Company Can Also Get You to Your Dream Working with strategy of any kind, it comes with the territory to know that, the minute a strategy is worked out, it is outdated. That’s because the information on which the strategy is based has already moved and changed.

Bring Leadership to Decisions

Making command decisions is about understanding the role of a leader and the people who can help a business thrive.

  1. Leaders and Higher Ground There’s not a person on the planet
    who has not been a jerk.
  2. How Do You Recognize and Attract Heroes and Champions for Your Brand? Before you try to create evangelists why not reach out the ones you already know?
  3. Strategy: All of the Information Available Strategy is setting a vision, making a path, knowing what we can know, and planning for the variables. To know what we know . . . That means having command of the information available.
  4. Have You Tried the DO Strategy of Social Business Success? People who succeed DO what the work to get themselves where they want to be.

  5. Money Strategy, a Dead Horse, and Folks     The key here is whether the new upgrade will pay for itself in productivity, quality of life, or other tangible or intangible benefits. In circumstances such as this, here are some of the “go or no go” questions.

Build Networks and Systems

Networks and communities are the people who help the business thrive. Systems and processes are the ways of doing things that support the work people are doing.

  1. The 5-Point Strategy to a Powerful Network Networks of people can be powerful influencers. A network of influencers expands our knowledge and our reach by engaging the power of “WE.” The problem is that networks take time to build and require attention.
  2. How Do You Get a Community to Help Build Your Business? The beauty of enlisting a social media community from the start is that communities only have time for ideas that will work.
  3. A Barn Raisers Guide: 7 Ways to Leave the Field of Dreams to Build a Thriving Reality Barn Raisers invite collaboration from the people they’ll be serving and so what they build is often a gathering place for people even before it’s fully finished.
  4. Where Would a 30-Minute Strike Force Strategy Increase Your Productivity? When the piles start to slow down progress try this 30-minute strategy to get back to a Command Center that works for you and your productivity.

  5. Building A Powerful Personal Developmental Network – Is Your Next Teacher on Twitter?     Whether we’re a company or an individual, it’s easy to find reasons that we made our successes, but that our failures were due to other circumstances. That’s where a powerful personal developmental network can keep things real.

The Challenge

Leave hesitation behind. go for the win and claim your successes.

  1. Extreme Hesitation and Extreme Strategy: Are You Willing to Own Your Life? Because deeply knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.
  2. How to Turn a #Fail Position into a #Win Then it struck me that how I was looking at the problem was what was keeping it a problem.
  3. Are You Ready to Claim the Right Things You’ve Done? We’re great about learning from our losses. We’re not so great a learning from our success.

It’s a true calling that allows to serve other people by providing a service that make’s other folks lives easier, faster, and more meaningful. That kind of calling is worth celebrating because it makes us all feel more alive. Other people find a living soul irresistible, fascinating, and attractive. They come to see what makes a person so engaged, directed, energetic, and calm. The best part of bringing that kind of true strategy to work is that it is contagious and explodes into that a fireworks feeling that we all can paint the sky with light!

It took a few years to write the blog posts I gathered here for my birthday. It took a lifetime to learn what they say … what will you do with them?

Be irresistible.

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

How To Connect with Your Customers Where They Already Are

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A Guest Post by
Nisha Sandhu

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If you have an e-commerce business, many of the consumers who visit your website, regardless of the demographics, are participating in social media networks and sharing information on the internet. This means that the possibilities for marketing your products and services online are virtually endless, and there is a vast array of social networking channels for you to leverage, including YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

With e-commerce, the most important factor in marketing via social media is selecting the best channels to reach potential customers. You can discover where your target audience likes to congregate by doing the following:

  • Polling those who visit your website or asking them to complete a formal survey to learn more about them.
  • Using Trackur, Social Mention or a similar free tool to get the information you need.
  • Leveraging relevant user information, which can be easily done with Facebook.
  • Studying the job postings, back links, keyword rankings and special announcements regularly to determine what they are doing in regard to e-commerce.

You should also conduct a “competitive audit” of your most serious competitors. Include the social networking sites where they participate, study the content they use, the number of hits they receive on every site, and the methods they employ to promote their products, services and special events on social networking sites.

In order to grow your business regardless of the social channels you use, attract consumers by offering them something they will never find anywhere else, such as promoting a contest. This should drive more traffic to your website and add to the number of your Facebook fans as well, if that applies in your case. You should also consider offering some incentive to those who follow you via social media, such as a discount coupon or free shipping, provide advance notice of a new product that will soon be available, or invite your customers to learn more “about us.”

  • Along with that, you might want to take the following steps as part of your online marketing strategy:
  • Share interesting news stories or messages that you gather from external sources.
  • Add a blog to your website and send the content to your e-commerce marketing accounts.
  • Ask for feedback from those who visit your website.
  • Include relevant videos and pictures to create interest in your company.
  • Make it easy for customers to buy the products you highlight by adding a link to the order page.

These are just a few ways to connect with customers where they already are.

Have you tried others?

—–
Nisha Sandhu is an Editor at merchantaccountforum.com, where she researches and writes online business advice for new and growing businesses.

Thank you, Nisha!

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

Bid for the Presidency…Tweeted? What Does that Mean to YOU?

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Guest Post
by Riley Kissel

On May 11th, House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced he’s running for President of the United States. According to CNN, he officially announced his intentions to run via the popular social networking site, Twitter.

Anyone who takes their online marketing seriously needs to pay attention to the 2012 election starting now. Political action at the national level was always executed with the intent to cast the biggest net possible, similar to business advertising, but those tactics are changing. In traditional politics the customers transcend all market “types”. There’s a particular focus put on the means to reach everybody all at once through television or radio, because votes can come from anyone, kind of like how money can leave anyone’s pocket and go into your business. But today’s political arena is focused on strike force access to niche markets through social media, with the expectation that these strikes will go viral and the effort will be more cost effective than alternative mass-media means. Your entrepreneurial arena is undoubtedly the same.

President Barack Obama is estimated to raise $1 billion dollars for his re-election campaign. This number is unprecedented in presidential politics, but it won’t be for long. President Obama’s comparatively enormous war chest is the result of his presidential efforts back in 2008. Obama was the first national politician in American history to utilize the power of social media and social networking effectively. Nearly half of that figure was attained through donations of $200 or below made online. It wasn’t that Obama pulled the right strings, it’s that his team saw the possibilities of these online marketing techniques when opponents hadn’t yet. Never again will a serious presidential contender not have Twitter and Facebook accounts.

What about You?

Consider then, what this says about the future of social media marketing as it applies to your business. I’m assuming you don’t have presidential ambitions, but you can still relate. If no competitor is Tweeting or updating a Facebook status, why aren’t you? If they are, you need to right away. It’s going to be hard to compete against someone who can instantly notify their customers of sales when all you have are weekend coupons. Find an online marketing consultant who can help you get started. Once you’re active in social media, it’s time to utilize it effectively. Big announcements need to be made on it. Subscribe to competition and do a little (perfectly legal) espionage. These are important tasks to achieve when you’re getting your social network foot in the door, and consultation will help.

Television was perhaps the most important communications invention of the last century. People often forget that it wasn’t until the Nixon-Kennedy debates of 1960 that the world began to understand the potential of its power to influence and persuade. The Internet will no doubt be the most important piece of communications technology for at least the first half of this century. Don’t wait to let its power start working for you.

——
Riley Kissel is a freelance writer who covers many industries with style. You can find out more about him at RileyKissel.com

Thanks, Riley, for simply showing how great thinking has built great success.

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

What George S. Patton Said That’s Crucial to Your Business

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A Historically Relevant Guest Post
by Terry Crenshaw

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Historically Relevant

Generally speaking, it’s probably fair to say that the principles of success possess a kind of across-the-board relevance, an applicability to most any endeavor you could mention; while the particular precepts of success may vary from one enterprise to the next, the universal concepts are basically the same. Maybe it’s for this reason the business world is one so pregnant with analogies. Sports metaphors come into play in the business world all the time, but even more prevalent might be military analogies – metaphors suggesting that the very traits that make for a successful general might also yield an effective business owner.

Loyalty

In that spirit, there’s a familiar quotation from General George S. Patton that’s worth mentioning in the context of business success. The war hero once famously said,

“There’s a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.”

Loyalty – not from an employee to the company, but from the company itself to the employees. What a novel concept.

I can’t help but think of this principle as I consider the examples of businesses such as Whole Foods – a company that is consistently voted one of the Top 100 best places to work, and a company that performs well against its many competitors. There’s something to be said for Patton’s philosophy, and it seems like no big stretch to say that it’s applicable to companies like this; could the fact that it’s both a highly profitable business and a business that treats its employees well truly be a coincidence?

I doubt it. At any rate, the factors that could be at play here are numerous, and while they’re not particularly obscure or hard to deduce with the simple tools of common sense, they might warrant a brief repetition. For starters, there are some obvious financial considerations to be made here. We know that happy employees are more likely to stick it out with their jobs rather than go looking for employment elsewhere; less turnover means less time wasted on the recruiting and training of new employees. It means a more streamlined and efficient business in general, even.

And if you think that loyalty is the only military virtue that translates into a business setting, just consider these further examples – historically relevant business strategies that resonate even today.

Adaptability

For one, we could champion the virtue of adaptability. This is obviously a crucial military trait; a strategy must be altered to fit the nature of the enemy forces, and even the terrain on which the battle is being fought. In much the same way, a business has to adapt to the times, and to its competitors. We have seen airlines adapt to the changing demands of air travel – in particular, we’ve seen Southwest abandon the hub-and-spoke model, and they should at least be given credit for trying to change with the times. On the flipside, we’ve seen McDonald’s adapt to the changing needs of consumers, and to new economic realities; they’ve cashed in on the premium coffee and smoothie trends furthered by companies like Panera, but also ensured that these products are priced to meet the budgets of recession-affected diners.

Strategizing

We could go on. What about strategizing – the importance of long-term thinking about the future? Barnes and Noble did it with the introduction of their E-Reader, the Nook. They saw where technology and reading were headed and jumped on the bandwagon – leaving companies like Borders to flounder

Expansion

And what about expansion? The history of military conquest is one of empires gradually expanding their domain, in much the same way that Amazon steadily grew from a bookseller into a merchant of just about anything you could name.

These are all companies that have learned from the military – and more broadly, from history in general. And what they have to show us is that changing with the times – strategizing, planning, adapting – is important, but there’s also something to be said for time-honored principles. This fine line is tough to walk, but of course, we can always look to the past for sterling examples of how it is done.

What have you learned from history?

——

Terry Crenshaw covers economic trends in the United States and writes for www.peterorszagsite.com. Terry is especially interested in tracking the ideas of Peter Orszag and other economic experts as the economy attempts to recover from the recent recession.

Thanks, Terry, for the reminder that great thinking has always been what wins the day.

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

5 People Who Can Turn Your Community into a Focused Influence Network

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It More Than What Naturally Occurs

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I sat at Brogan’s Roast earlier this month and the thought struck me how much we depend on each other. No one would question that our friend, Chris, enjoys the friendship of thousands of folks who would stand by him and help whenever he needs it. All you had to do was be there to feel the expanse of love in the room coming from the countless people who are in his massive network of colleagues, friends, coworkers, family and people who consider him their teacher.

Numbers like that can provide a huge pool of energy when you want to help a cause, make something happen, or move an idea across the internet. Certainly that’s true. But knowing a lot of people and even having a lot of people who know you is not the same as having a strategic network. To be strategic, we have to look how we the sort of individuals in our networks into groups. How we sort our networks into groups can support or thwart our goals. Our choices in mentally forming those groups inform our decisions about who we listen to and what we do.

Most people consciously or unconsciously group their community in an outward fashion. If you ask, they can see how the community becomes part of what they do. Who are the people in your community groups?

  • Chris will always have people who are like him, those who aspire to be like them, and those who can’t or won’t ever do the work to get where he is or is going to..
  • Cult leaders see their community as those who spread the message, those who follow the message, those ready to be converted.
  • Builders see their community as those who provide resources and funding, those use the tools, and those who buy and use what they build.
  • Financial analysts see their community in three groups: those who can count and those who can’t. (and the rare group who notices that was only two.)

That sort of grouping naturally occurs in any community group.
It takes more — 5 particular types of people — to turn that community into a focused influence network.

5 People Who Can Turn Your Community into a Powerful Influence Network

Strategy looks at building something with thought and opportunity to strengthen the network and build a well-rounded group. Rather than looking who shows up in an outward fashion. Strategy builds with a plan of action. Strategy chooses five types of people who can provide infrastructure and stability that power the network with information and communication when we want our networks to help that cause, make that something happen, or move that idea across the internet.

Look at successful leaders — people you think of as influencers and people who enjoy repeat success. They’ve gone past community to developed information channels. They have skills at collecting and managing their contacts. They also include five kinds of people in their networks to keep the systems working fluidly and with balance. Can you spot these five in the successful communities you know?

  • Leaders – Leaders exemplify the vision and clearly articulate the mission. In a company or community, they live the brand. Leaders know where we’re going and what to do when the unforeseen appears. Leaders are masters at integrating information into a whole picture and communicating how nuance of a small change might or might not affect an overall plan.
  • Scouts and Guides – Scouts know the terrain that must be covered. They keep an eye on the competitive ground. They understand and translate new territories. They know where the shortest paths can be found. They see the possible opportunities, pitfalls, and possibilities for ambush.
  • Sleuths and Spotters – Sleuths are fascinated by changes that dicrupt and catch fire. They stay close to the competitive edge, monitoring what is becoming popular. They’re first to know that a new tool is gaining traction and the first to try it. More than early-adopters they gather the global intelligence of the group to report on the fever behind the trend.
  • Insighters – Insighters are the perceptive and well-connected people who can give you the inside scoop and insight into how an influencer or decision-maker might view a situation. Their skills are particularly useful when someone’s decision or response to your actions might affect you in significant ways.
  • System Pros – Systems pros know every detail of a particular system and every role that make it work. They ensure fluid, efficient operation and tend to potential breaks before they occur. Systems pros are driven to tweak the system to constantly and consistently meet and exceed the goals of the network to reach out in connection and communication and gather information to improve performance overall.

It takes a focused team to manage the firehouse flow of information that comes at us from every direction. It takes that same kind of focus to deliver on a promise of service that will scale beyond the one Chris Brogan or even that brand team that might want to be everywhere doing everything in the best way we know. The people who celebrated this guy we all admire and love came in many types and play many roles in the community that is Team Brogan. We’d all be wise to find a few of those types to support us too.

If you look in your community, I bet you’ll find that you’ve got a few of them already there. How will you introduce yourself and invite them into your brand?

Be Irresistible.

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

How to Turn a #Fail Position into a #Win

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Whisperer

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Anyone who’s spent time with me knows that the combination of hotels, airplanes, and my llergies is likely to be disastrous for my voice. Don’t get me wrong some folks are grateful that they finely get a chance to get a word in edgewise, but even they wish I was being quiet by choice. It’s been a problem for as long as I can remember. Back in the 1990s, the executive team where I worked used to put together a betting pool around our biggest conference to pick the exact day and time my voice would abandon me and I would become a whisperer for a few hours.

At SOBCon this year, it happened at the most inappropriate time.

My important talk of the event was scheduled for the afternoon that I lost my voice.

Doing Right Things, Wishing, and Asking the Wrong Questions

It made me worried and cranky to think that I might be letting down a roomful of people I so admire. It made me disappointed in myself that I wasn’t going to be able to deliver the value I’d worked on to deliver. And I’ll admit it took the wind out of sails to think that I couldn’t bring it back. (I’ve since mastered the art of regaining my voice – ha! – so I’ll not be there again.)

I did right things …
I took my allergy meds as directed.
I stopped talking — well whispering — as much as I was able.
I drank tea with lemon and honey.
I mainlined honey after that.
… ineffective right things.

For about three hours, I thought of what I might do to deliver in that last session.
I kept thinking of our friend, Glenda Watson Hyatt, who once wrote to me, “I know why I blog, Liz. Why does blogging do for you?” She knows what it’s like to have so much to give locked in her head. I was wishing her with me, wishing her technology to turn my thoughts into communication, but that wasn’t to be had.

In my head, I kept asking questions …
What can I do to make this situation better?
Who can I ask to help?
How can I get my voice back?
… the wrong questions.

… but the answers all came back as less than what I wanted to deliver. less in this case was even less than missing my best. It was a fail not a win. The people in the room deserved a win.

Then it struck me that how I was looking at the problem was what was keeping it a problem.

How to Turn a #Fail Position into a #Win

I’ve often had amazing people around me who give me great advice — my mom, my dad, yeah my brothers, VanFossen, Starbucker, Roth, and many others, including a guy named Fred. I started thinking about things they’d told me at times like the one I was in.

  • You’re always cooking up brilliant strategies for other people. Be brilliant for yourself! – Lorelle VanFossen
  • Do you remember that Sesame Street skit “which of these things is not like the others”? — Carol Roth
  • Decide what you want to do and you’ll have all of the help you need. — Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie
  • I love your brain! — That guy named Fred.
  • Call me back, I hung up on you by mistake

That’s when I literally turned a full circle, tilted my head, and looked again.

After hours on the wrong questions, the right question came.

How could I turn having no voice into a strength?

My brain started conspiring.
My eyes lit with mischief.
My feet started dancing with enthusiasm.

I went into the main room,
asked someone to hand me a flip chart and a marker,
and returned to the side room to write 27 pages.

Those 27 pages became a keynote titled “Not Speaking is the New Black by the Event Whisperer and Friends”

And ironically, as I wrote my thoughts filled with meaning, my voice came back … probably because I realized I didn’t need it to share what was in my head.

Terry asked 28 people from the room to participate by reading one page aloud to the room for all of us. If you follow the link above you’ll see what it said, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that

No matter what you think is working against you.
No matter what you think is your weakness or your lack.
It’s the way you’re looking at it that’s holding you down.

Step back, do a complete turnaround, tilt your head, and look again.

You can turn that #fail position into a #win.

I bet you’ve done that at least once. I’d love to hear your story.

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

Related:
Not Speaking IS the New Black