Successful Blog

Have You Thought about Surrendering and Living It Up?

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about surrendering and … living it up.

I’m not a knight or a warrior. I can’t fight another person’s fight.
Every time I do. I end up wrong.

I can’t wear their clothes. They don’t fit. I look silly.
I can’t walk in their shoes. When I try I fall down.

I only sound right when I sing my own song.

It’s not a selfish thing. It’s a surrender to who I am.

It took me a while to figure out that I can toss and turn, stretch and skew an idea, but I can’t change the way my brain works. I can walk all the way around and through a thought or a belief, but I can’t change the chemistry or the electricity of a single synapse — slow them down maybe — but not reroute and remap the system to work as someone’s else might.

I’m always going to be the one who sees an angel in the clouds.

Living up to who I am is a far better use of my life than trying to become something I’m not.

Have you thought about surrendering to your life and living it up to who you are?

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#SOBCon chat with @invisiblepeople @connieburke

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Mark Horvath and Connie Burke

Our October 20th, 2011 SOBCon chat (starting at 1PM EST until 2 PM) will feature special guests Connie Burke, Communications Manager from General Motors and Mark Horvath of InvisiblePeople.tv – At SOBCon Chicago, General Motors provided some very special support to InvisiblePeople.tv by giving Mark Horvath a “mobile office” aka a GMC Terrain. This support has made it easier for Mark to help more people in more places.

The SOBCon “fabric” has a “thread” of giving woven throughout. We think about how we can positively impact people and businesses, then we connect that to keys to success. The October chat will focus on the giving back feature of the live SOBCon Conferences. From what happens during the conference, to how it plays out afterwards. We will share some ideas about how you can get involved, start a giving back aspect to your business and how giving back stimulates the bottom line and contributes to the success of your business.

Should Your Company Be Hip to Online Marketing?

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With the different means available to advertise one’s small business, how much if any of a role should online marketing play?

As the economy continues to struggle and companies look to interact with current and potential customers, online marketing can provide a major helping hand in giving consumers valuable information regarding your business.

That being said, many experts of how to go about marketing your company will tell you there are pluses and minuses to online marketing. So, which side do you believe in?

On the positive side for online marketing:

  • You gain increased access to potential customers who are able to view your products and services, thereby enhancing the possibilities of more sales;
  • The cost to promote your business online is less expensive than other forms of marketing like print and television advertisements;
  • Given the 24/7 lifecycle of the Internet, you can talk with your customers and interested individuals in real-time. With a mass e-mailing, you can also reach out to far more people than you could with other mediums;
  • With 24/7 Internet access, you have the availability of instant feedback from your audience. With that in mind, you can make nearly instantaneous corrections etc. if needed to your product/s.

On the negative side for online marketing:

  • Having an Internet presence will also invite additional expenses such as running the company Web site, deciding who will oversee the online marketing efforts, and being able to instantaneously reach out to customers who will go to the competition if they don’t feel like they have received quick assistance;
  • Not everyone flocks to the Internet for their shopping needs. While the Internet presence is important, keep in mind that there are a number of other ways to make sales;
  • With online marketing or anything online for that matter, there is always the possibility of security issues. Fraud is a major issue to deal with online, so you could miss out on potential customers who would otherwise use the Internet to shop with you;
  • Technology mishaps can always lead to glitches in your site, including it being down for an undetermined amount of time. If interested individuals come to your site and are having problems with it, they could go elsewhere to handle their business.

At the end of the day, your company needs to remember that online marketing is not perfect, but it is a rather inexpensive and catchy means by which to reach out to consumers.

When engaging in online marketing, make sure your company checks out all its options, including pay-per-click and banner advertising.

Online marketing can be a great way for your business to get its message out to countless individuals instantaneously and at the right price too.

Photo credit: pinnacle-websolutions.com

Dave Thomas, who covers among other subjects’ vehicle insurance , writes extensively for business.com an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

 

How the Football Captain and the Guitarist Sold Out the Stadium!

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It Starts with Someone Who Cares about the Audience

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When I’m asked to do an off-site, I sit down the with event planner to discuss what the people attending might want or need to know. Hands down the most requested topic is how can they use social media to get people talking about the brand and their products?

It’s all about stories.
We’ve been hearing and telling stories all of our lives.
It shouldn’t be that hard.

5 Critical Steps to Spreading an Irresistible Social Media Story

If you remember back to university, you know the power of friends sharing stories. Good news, bad news, rumors and truths can fly through a school fast enough to make any news network jealous.

Here are the five critical steps to making that happen for you in the social business community.

  1. Build your network before you need it. It all starts with community. No matter how irresistible our message, we’ll have trouble sharing it without relationships. Building a network is more natural and easy, if we do before we need them to do something for us.
  2. Be known for one thing. Sure you can do many things, but many things are hard to remember. One thing stands out and is easily shareable. To go back to the college analogy, if I say he’s the captain of the football team or she’s plays lead guitar in the coolest rock band, you already know that other kids into sports they want to connect with him and other kids into rock want to connect with her.

    The same works now … If you are known for one thing, that one thing you are jumps to my mind when I meet someone who might need that one thing. If you’re a freelance blog writer, every time I meet someone with a growing blog, I’ll mention your name. If you’re one of a million writers who writes for blogs, magazines, websites, menus, and whatever. I’m less likely to remember exactly what you do and far less likely to share your name. When you’re one thing everyone knows what they can count on you to do and how you connect to their universe.

  3. Make folks feel proud, important, part of something bigger than then are alone when they do. Talking in the language of the people you want to help you. Make the message about them, not about you. The football captain who frames his message “Are you ready to rock the game tonight?” gets a better response than the one who says “Come to our game tonight. Show your spirit!”

    The savvy football captain says, “The team goes all out when you’re there! You rock the stands. We’ll rock the field!! RockTheGame!!”

    Let’s stay with the savvy football captain … he shows Booster Club how it’s in their interest to donate $500 worth of iTunes and permission for a concert by pointing out that they’re all on a quest to get folks to the big game. Then, he contacts the girl lead guitarist and persuades her band that a sell-out game would make a great after-concert venue.

  4. Make it easy, fun, and meaningful to share it. The Booster Club enlists the campus TV station to announce a contest for the entire school. Every ticket sold to the big game will be entered into a raffle for that $500 iTunes gift card to keep rocking.
  5. Reward and celebrate the people who do. When the game beats attendance records concert by the coolest rock band — after the game in the school quad to rock the school spirit!

We all value our friends’ attention.
We all value the time we spend with them.
We all value it when they engage with us and listen to what we’re saying.
It’s a natural next step to make it a value for them to invest in us too.

All we have to do to get them to share our story is to make them proud to be part of it.

How are you making your friends, colleagues, customers, and clients part of what you’re trying to do?

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

What If You Don’t Know What Your Passion Is? Where to Look

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True Story

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This is a true story related to me by the guy in the story. He told it to me in 2007 and I’ve been retelling it ever since. I’ve changed the names for his privacy, because well, this is my version of the story. Let’s call him Rick and her Julia.

Rick was driving Julia to client meeting about an hour from their office. They were talking of dreams, missions, strategies, and life goals. Highways and passing scenery provide a perfect backdrop for considering such things. The topic had gotten on to doing what a person is meant to do … the “follow your passion” thing. And Rick, the one who had found his path, was doing his best to avoid that over-used shallow description of what he felt he was doing.

But Julia was passionate about finding out how to find her passion.
And so she kept asking, “What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I hate that question,” Rick said.

“But you know the answer, don’t you?”

Rick started singing along with the radio.

“Listen to me!” Julia said. “I need to know. What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I’m not going to answer you,” Rick said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll get mad.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”

“No, I won’t. I promise. Just tell me. What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I’m telling you … you’re gonna get mad.”

“I’m gonna get mad if you don’t answer me,” Julia said deliberately. “What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“You do.”

“WHAT?!!”

“You know what your passion is — maybe you won’t admit it or you’re lying to yourself — but in your cells you know.”

“I think I hate you.”

“See, I told you you’d get mad.”

What Rick was saying is that our “passion” is the purpose written in our cells.

That thing that people keep telling us to follow is what we were built to do and what we naturally do well. Part of the problem in identifying it is that because

  • it’s so natural that we have trouble recognizing that it’s a value.
  • it’s something that comes so easily to us that we think that everyone can do it too.

Sometimes it’s easier to find and define if we kill the word passion and just look for

  • the helpful thing that we can’t quit doing.
  • the problem that seem to be solving for person after person because “it’s what we do.”
  • the subject that we get blissfully lost in exploring and innovating on.
  • the activity that ties to the people we most enjoy
  • the one thing we do that we would miss most if had to give it up.
  • what we’re doing when lose track of time and all self-consciousness

Look for your passion in the thing you do that makes you feel like the best version of yourself.

Be irresistible.

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

Thanks to Week 313 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss