Successful Blog

Social Media BookList: Let’s Talk Business, Tweets and Mojo

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A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors, writers, speakers and coaches. As part of my job I read a lot of books. I am here to offer a weekly post about one that I am working with and one I have put on my reading list. The books will cover topics such as social media (Facebook & Twitter), organization, career building, networking, writing and self development and inspiration.

#MOJOtweet

This week I would like to start with a book I’ve read and working with by Marshall Goldsmith, author of #MOJOtweet published by ThinkAha books.

mojotweet_cover_mid

In this fast paced world we live in and the need for great information that will lead us to action, is sometimes hard to find. Well, in the ThinkAha book series, this problem is quickly resolved by the format used.

#MOJOtweet is written in the template of around only 100 pages and formulated about tweets (also known as AHA’s) in 140 characters. 

You may be asking what is Mojo? Mojo is the moment when you do something that’s purposeful, powerful and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it.

Mitchell Levy, CEO of Happy About, Inc. and publisher of ThinkAha books,  summarizes the essence of the book in the forward, ” Mojo is that missing ingredient that is between you and your life filled with meaning and happiness. #Mojotweet provides that in bite-sized packages.”

Below are just a few of the wise, helpful and inspirational aha’s I found in the this informational compact book, #MOJOtweet.

~ We run everything through two filters: short-term satisfaction (or happiness) and long-term satisfaction (meaning). –>So true! When I first read that I thought, “no I don’t do that”, but when I thought about it again, I realized I certainly do.

~ Mojo is infectious. When people pass their positive spirit onto us; we feel like passing it back. –>Again, great insight in such a short statement. Positive breeds positive. If I am around a positive person, my outlook will change for the better which I will radiate to others around me.

~ When measuring your Mojo, do so in the immediate present, not in the recent past or vague future.–>this is something I struggle with sometimes. I worry about things from the past or worry how to correct things before they even get here…not to concentrate on what is in the now.

You can order your copy or download the ebook of #MOJOtweet.

Marshall Goldsmith, is America’s preeminent executive coach. He is among a select few consultants who have been asked to work with more than sixty CEOs. His clients have included many of the world’s leading corporations. Goldsmith has helped to implement leadership development processes that have impacted more than one million people around the world.

He has a Ph.D. from UCLA and is on the faculty of the executive education programs for Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan. The American Management Association recently named him as one of fifty great thinkers and business leaders of the past eighty years. Read more in his new book, MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It.

Crowdsourcing

The book on this week’s on my reading list is
Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of a Crowd is driving the future of business by Jeff Howe.

The book focuses on describing how to crowds are creating new sources of value than the specific ways to tap into that value. Chapters 1 through 5, the first half of the book, concentrates on providing examples of the crowd sourcing phenomenon. The second half focuses down on the impact of crowds to economic and business organization.

My thoughts: I believe there has always been an influence of the crowd.I remember when my mother would call her friends for advice or ideas for a new recipe, how to decorate, or who her friend used as a dentist. Society has drawn about the advice and influence of others (the crowd) for many years, however, I believe with the invasion of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, the importance of the crowd (crowdsourcing) is stronger than ever.

Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. In June of 2006 he published “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” in Wired. He has continued to cover the phenomenon in his blog, crowdsourcing.com, and published a book on the subject for Crown Books in September 2008. Before coming to Wired he was a senior editor at Inside.com and a writer at the Village Voice. In his fifteen years as a journalist he has traveled around the world working on stories ranging from the impending water crisis in Central Asia to the implications of gene patenting. He has written for Time Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Alysia Abbott, their daughter Annabel Rose and son Phineas and a miniature black lab named Clementine.

You can pick up your copy of Crowdsourcing on Amazon.

I hope you have enjoyed this new weekly blog post. Feel free to share your thoughts with me as I would be open to read them.

Twitter, Are You Listening?

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Listening Well Involves Knowing What Was Said

I ended an interview today with this idea.

As everyone now can add to the conversation. People overvalue the power of talking. They think putting words out makes it easier to be heard, seen and found.

Yet as the signal rises, I find folks passing on things that they couldn’t have had time to read, answering questions that they’ve misread. Other folks are taking a listening posture, but they they’re just looking for what to say or pass on next.

I’ve started to think of that as Twitter FAIL … pretending to listen to Twitter friends.

Some folks have unfriended everyone and started over. Maybe they found it easier to block out most of it.

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Lots of folks don’t worry at all as long as they feel heard.

Still I think the stronger power lies in listening … with both heart and head. When we listen we learn.

Are you listening? How can I tell?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

Where to Turn When Twitter Trust Isn't Conversation Enough?

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relationships button

Twitter Talk

I’m a fan of Twitter. Nothing beats it for quick, agile, and brief. Twitter is the king of networking at the Internet speed and reach. Want to share something? Want to get a quick problem solved? Twitter lets us tap into our linked networks and pass information along, but you can’t send a Tweet to someone who’s never signed on.
Twitter Talk is great for a fast moving volley around a narrow idea or collecting the opinions of a crowd. But the very speed and compactness keeps the rich and telling details out — the details that explain why and how. If an idea or a problem takes exploring or discussion, Twitter doesn’t measure up.

As much as we can trust that what folks send us publicly through Twitter is likely to be the truth — as they know it sometimes 140 characters isn’t deep or wide enough. And that’s something important to recognize.

If I’ve made assumptions about you, the message I receive won’t be the one that you sent. If we use language differently our communication can go woefully wrong.

Sometimes whole conversations are important

to get something done.
to clearly state a position.
to define a project and outline expectations.
to participate in a negotiation.
to coax, cajole, or romance.

and in many other situations.

I won’t marry you, buy a house, or sign a fine deal for a job based on your tweets. I hope you won’t either. Twitter comes with an inherent lack of depth that isn’t concrete and won’t stand by me.

Twitter doesn’t do whole conversations well. Trust interactions require more than 140 characters. Trust goes deeper and grows much broader. Twitter isn’t enough to inspire trust.

Where do you go when Twitter needs to change to a whole conversation?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

How To Announce Your New Blog Post In Your Twitter?

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This is a how-to post.  I’ll keep this post simple.

Background

I think I am a lazy person actually.  Whenever I write a blog post, I know that the next thing I must do is to tweet about it in my Twitter account so that I can let my followers know.  Such a task can be leveraged to the computer to help us do it since it is just telling our twitter followers about our new blog post.

Requirements

  1. You must be using a WordPress platform.
  2. You must be an administrator in order to configure this properly.
  3. It is ok if you are using the free wordpress.com platform, or if you have installed wordpress in your own domain name.

Let’s get it started!

Step 1: You will need to download “Twitter tools“.

Step 2: Unzip the contents of the entire folder “twitter-tools” and upload into your wp-content/plugins/ directory. (You’ll need to know how to use FTP)

Step 3: Go to the Plugins page in your WordPress Administration area and click ‘Activate’ for Twitter Tools.

Step 4: Go to the Twitter Tools Options page (Options > Twitter Tools) to set your Twitter account information and preferences as shown in the screenshot below.

twitter-tools-1

This is my way of tweeting automatically after adding my new post.  What other methods have you used?

This post was written by Charles. He has been an Internet reviewer since June 2007.  He pours his passion for Internet marketing and Internet branding into his Twitter account actively at @charleslau,

Why You Should Be Involved In Twitter While Having Your Own Blog?

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Blogging is fun! I started blogging casually since 2001, moving into my own domain name in 2004, and then decided to blog professionally on my own blog since June 2007.  For some reason or what, I checked out the traffic behavior of my blog.  I have come to realize that the traffic’s up and down has very much to do with the activity that I am doing inside and outside my blog.  The reason is very simple:  I started off without any traffic, hence I need to bring in the traffic!

Many ways to bring in the traffic

While you are blogging, you have unknowingly attracted crowd from the search engines.  You may have also attracted people to link to your attractive articles.  Or, you could have linked to an attractive blog post from a stranger, which caused a trackback link from that stranger’s blog.  Technically speaking, your blog posts are helping themselves to bring in the traffic. However, blogging alone is not enough.  You need to do more things to reach out to the untapped market out there waiting for you.  There are two ways you can do it.

  1. You can spend money to bring in the traffic.
  2. You can spend time to bring in the traffic.

By the way, I’m sorry to tell you that you have no choice but to choose “spend time to bring in the traffic” because I am going to talk about Twitter very soon. 🙂

Using social media to bring in the traffic.  It’s free! But it takes effort.

So far as I know of, the only way to reach out to the untapped market with a single cent is to participate in social media.  Because that’s the only way we can put in our information almost freely.  The social media website owners are more than happy to welcome you to introduce your sites to the visitors.  This is social media’s way of sustaining their businesses.

By the way, blogging is also a form of social media where people can comment on your blog and maybe providing links to their website.

Participating in the social media is all about building your own community who follows your thought leadership.  There are so many different social media websites out there of all kinds.  Well, it will be perfect if you can spend enough time to participate in all of them!  However, all of us  have less than 24 hours a day.  Hence, choosing one or two major social media is sufficient enough!  Or else, you may not be able to build a strong community supporting your thoughts. And I will strongly recommend you to participate in twitter as your first choice of building your strong community.

Why Twitter, and not other social media?

With more and more bigger players jumping into this large whale of tweets, Twitter is definitely a social media not to be taken lightly with.

Twitter has also matured over time.  I can still remember making my first few tweets and there is nobody listening to me.  I virtually have no local friends who can follow me on twitter.  I started to look out for the big names like Robert Scoble on Twitter.  I can still remember I can even chat with him back then.  Now, it’s so hard with so many people trying to talk to him on Twitter.  Back then, retweet was eventually invented by someone who just want to share a tweet he has seen.  It came in various forms such as “RT @charleslau the message”, “The message (via @charleslau)”, “Retweet the message (from @charleslau” and many more.  In fact, it is becoming more or less standardized now to be just “RT @charleslau the message”.

twitter-logoBecause Twitter is based on a very simple 140 characters, it turned out that there are a lot of growth to expand in Twitter because it provides a lot of API to leverage on to expand into different types of third party webwares.  As such, if you can establish your strong followers in time, you will soon be able to leverage on the future expansion that Twitter potentially has with many smart Social Media entrepreneurs out there! So far as I know, Twitter can be used show pictures, sound and links to your followers.  Some others even use Twitter to monitor certain things such as their health status, sleeping patterns, and even track what a plant wants to twitter about! With all the various tools establishing and more to come, your only goal today is to build a strong community around a certain topic which relates back to your blog!

How is Twitter linked to your blog?

While you may still be establishing your blog presence to the world, twitter is a good place to be more personal and to build your community with.  It’s like asking your interested visitors to subscribe to your blog posts, or even to subscribe to your newsletter via email.  Twitter is yet another form of establishment that you will want to work it out as you will learn and grow with this community.  Chances of them visiting your website is very high because they like you through your tweets!  Let’s see how you can start off by connecting yourself in Twitter…

Connecting yourself in Twitter

Twitter is indeed a whole new world out there where you are basically trying to woo more people into your own blog.  However, the methodology must be set properly.  First of all, you must not have the mentality of “What’s in it for me” in the twitter environment.  In twitter, it can be like micro-blogging where you get comments about your tweets.  It can also be like a chat room where you get to socialize with strangers (and of course your good old friends included). Let’s see some bad examples here:

  1. If you try to tweet the same message consistently over time, I can tell you safely that I will be the first one to unfollow you!  I am in Twitter to enjoy myself, while you are out there to hard sell me something!
  2. If you are caught tweeting affiliated links consistently as well, I will surely unfollow you!  It is so irritating to see affiliated links so many times.  Yes, I know you want to make money online… Can you just be more personal and talk to me with no money attached?
  3. Can you not be so robot?  There are some twitter accounts which are basically bots.  They do nothing but to churn out contents after contents.  If these contents are verified properly, I probably won’t mind to follow you so that I can retweet the benefits to my followers!  But if you are basically controlled by keywords, I will surely unfollow you!  That’s because keyword filtering is not always accurate.  I will rather follow people who are more human, and are willing to tweet quality stuff!

Now let’s see some good examples:

  1. If your twitter account is very clear about your topics, I will follow you because it’s part of my passion and beneficial to my followers.  You basically tweet really good stuff that it will not be good for me if I miss them!
  2. If you are really friendly to me, I would love to talk to you.  For that duration of chat, you can be really shocked that people may want to follow both of you just to listen to the conversation that they are interested in.
  3. Retweeted messages are very powerful.  They basically help me to transfer my friends’ tweets to my followers without much effort on my part other than just reading.  And because of the attraction in this tweet, it will just get retweeted a couple of times.  This will increase your followers pretty significantly.
  4. Tell your followers that you have just blogged a new post! We’ll love it!  Look! A chance to connect your blog to twitter.
  5. Do up your own Twitter wallpaper.  It really helps in your brand building for your overall business and eventually for your blog.

Conclusion

I wish to clarify that social media is definitely not going to be helpful to you if you are consistently looking out to make quick money out of it.  Social media is here to have fun!  It’s only with the more hardcore fans, they are more willing to spend some money to get a better deal!  Treat twitter as a brand awareness exercise for yourself.  Do everything that you can to get connected with the media with no strings attached.  Very soon, everybody will connect your blog and your twitter account as one brand! In other words, Think of what you can do to the social media, instead of what social media can do for you!

How has Twitter added to your blog?

This post was written by Charles. He has been an Internet reviewer since June 2007.  He pours his passion for Internet marketing and Internet branding into his Twitter account actively at @charleslau,

44 More Blue Feather WordCamp Chicago Tweeters

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Sweet WordCamp Chicago – Part 2

Last week I wrote about some of the great people we met at WordCamp Chicago. This week I send you the rest of them.

At WordCamp Chicago this year we shared our twitter names with our WordCamp “tribe.” WordCamp is the spirit of small business come alive offline. We work together to make a community event happen when just a short time before there was none.

We go home knowing we’ve learned. W leave friends we can still reach out to online. Here are the rest of the WordCamp Chicago Blue Feather Tweeters who left their information with me.

  1. Tom Attana, technical, @TomAttana
  2. Christopher Cross, serial entrepreneur @cmcross
  3. Lin Chen, web designer @linchen
  4. Tom Evans, Small Biz and Sports Athlete @timothymevans
  5. Debbie Kong, creative helpful @kongsterville
  6. Darren Champen, new blogger @dchampen
  7. Barbara Rozgoyni, PR professional @wiredprworks
  8. Tillman Bauknight family freedom @Tilly85
  9. Bryan Hauer, theme designer @bryanhauer
  10. ryan Imel, web designer @ryanimel
  11. Jeff Chandler, networking communication @WPtavern
  12. Steve Blaskie, Erin’s Cheerleader @zepphead
  13. Dan Schultz, forum junkie @Dan Schultz
  14. David Griffith, lifelong learner @DDGriffith
  15. Jason Pelker, freelance developer@dougdevitre
  16. Len Mason, bored weekends, @lenmason
  17. Alex Falkenberg, thank you, @JPelker
  18. Brian Lis, irresistible, @brianlis
  19. Beth McBride, need knowledge, @BethMcB
  20. Jeff Milone, theme builder @jeffmilone
  21. Cory Miller, Theme builder @CoryMiller
  22. Jeremy Wright … @jeremywright
  23. Alex Cancado, learn networking @acancado
  24. Hirsch Fishman, Passion for usable design @Addicott Web
  25. Dave Bost, technology evangelist @davebost
  26. David Lawler, learning experience @davelawler
  27. Mike McCallister, writer @workingwriter
  28. Jessica Searles, WordPress Security @techwriterjess
  29. Bob RandKlev, website development @BobRandKlev
  30. Grant Gannon, seeking epiphany @grantgannon
  31. Adria Richards, technology training @AdriaRichards
  32. Craig Tuller, Taking blogs to the next level @craigtuller
  33. Ashley Hittinger, student, philosopher @arae
  34. Darryl Markette, I sent my songs to the world. @DMarkette
  35. Theresa Christensen, to network for my blog @GradingGirl
  36. Gary LaPointe, WordPress convert @GaryLaPointe
  37. Paul Shailos, expand knowledge @Filthygoods
  38. Denise Hayes, @birdbeauty
  39. Matt Thiessen, open code @stillatmylinux
  40. Theresa Christensen, to network for my blog @GradingGirl
  41. Ellie Smith, learner @n2turtles
  42. Rachel Baker, IT consultant @rachelbaker
  43. HopeBertram, perky, smart, fun @interactivehope
  44. Beth Rosen, extraordinary @bethrosen

I connect things … and people.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!