Thanks to Bitwire Media and NewTek for presenting the livestream of SOBCon Chicago 2011. (FYI, our Twitter hashtag for the event itself is #sobcon11)
If you want to make sure you don’t miss our great speakers & content, the event schedule is HERE. Our thanks too to our sponsors GMC, GoToWebinar, Network Solutions, and Glam Media, and our event partners SmartBrief, Freshbooks, and No Limit Publishing.
Here’s the stream – enjoy! (If for some reason the screen is blank below, go HERE)
By Terez Howard
One of the editors that I write for usually doesn’t get back with me about my articles until right before publication. That means that I have to scramble to make any changes. She hardly ever responds to my first e-mail, and oftentimes doesn’t “get” the e-mails I send. I’ve had so many issues with this woman, from getting no check at all to getting double on my check, that I’ve contemplated ceasing my business relationship with her.
I love to write. But when I have to deal with someone that doesn’t seem the least bit organized, I don’t want to deal with them. I feel like not responding to her e-mails or only doing half the work Iâm asked to do. I know that’s a horrible attitude that will make her feel that I am unworthy of writing for that publication. That attitude would get me bad reviews from a higher up.
No matter how angry and wronged I feel, I tell myself that I have to maintain a professional demeanor.
Do you pay in kind? Or, do you turn the other cheek?
In the blogging business world, you might feel that paying in kind is a necessity. With your blog, you have a means to communicate your unbridled ideas and opinions with the world. You might feel that it’s your duty to be brutally honest.
Personally, I agree that a blog should keep it real.
On the other hand, perhaps you are more of a turn the other cheek person. It’s not that you aren’t being true to yourself. Being yourself just means avoiding confrontation. You actually just might not care about an issue one way or the other. You might prefer to ban ranting from your blog.
That’s OK, too. Once again, be real.
With a blog, you don’t usually get more personal than comments and e-mails. What are people saying about what you write? What are people saying about you?
You can choose to take offense on a personal attack and dish what they serve, or you can choose ignore ignorance, or do something in between.
The in between approach is best. When you deal with a confrontational reader, you have to always be tactful. Just because a person is rude to you, does not mean that you have to be the exact same way. Say how you feel as professionally as possible.
Be careful when you choose to ignore a person. That individual, while agitated, might be expecting a response from you. If that is the case, do so in the same tactful spirit I mentioned before. If you still just don’t want to deal with it, you can still let a person know that you are not going to respond to that type of negativity and leave it at that.
I’m still not sure what to do about writing for this editor. I try to be a very organized woman, and when that organization is dramatically disrupted time and time again, I have a difficult time rolling with the punches. I probably will not dish what she serves. I probably will not try to approach her again about these issues. (Yes, I’ve already made some attempts to smooth things out).
What would you do? Do you dish what people serve?
—
Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She has written informative pieces for newspapers, online magazines and blogs, both big and small. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas. You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger.
Thanks, Terez!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
Whether you’ve been on social web from the beginning or you just got here and whether you work for yourself, for clients, or an employer, if your goal is to grow your business or cause — and if it’s not, why isn’t it? — being able to spread your positive message is critical.
Social business and social media can business development, brand awareness, and marketing so much easier because of the people-centered, networking nature of the tools and culture. What drives social media and social business is the idea that people like to connect with and talk to other people.
The messages we share are important and vital to the causes we care about. Often they’re urgent and vital to the success of the projects and campaigns that we’re working on. Yet we need the help of our networks — our communities of colleagues and friends — to get them out, hopefully to take them viral.
So we put together an idea to spread, a call to action that our advocates and evangelists might talk about and share. The problem is that everyone is trying to be subject of the hour as much as we are and true advocates and evangelists are few. So we reach out further to find volunteers in hopes that they will help us as well.
The problem is that we can get so wrapped up in the value of the “goodness” of what we’re doing that we can forget to pass that goodness on it with our request for help. We use the time to detail the “ask,” without letting the people we’re asking know how and why it’s about them to follow through on it. As a result, the request to help us with our cause, our launch, our contest, and sound selfish and leave folks wondering why they should take time to do it.
We can’t ensure a message with take off like wildfire, go viral, with certainty. It’s a combination of timing, connection, resonance, and a perfect match to the audience. Here are three reasons why a request won’t get much attention at all…
All three messages stop short. They literally leave out what’s need to connect in way that resonates. If we want the potential to go viral, we need that connection in a human to human way.
These messages ask the receiver to choose between helping out and interrupting, nagging, possibly irritating their own network of friends. That’s pressure that no one enjoys and it often backfires on the sender who may have had the best of intentions.
Very often when I get messages like these, I wonder whether the sender has considered me at all in what they’re asking. I want to reply with “Why should I promote yours and not the other ten I just got? I can’t spent my time or bother my friends promoting all of them.”
As they stand all three messages are missing one powerful piece that is crucial to taking a message viral – a connection to the person we’re asking to pass it on. To make it much more likely that your message will get a chance a long and viral run make the act of doing what you need about the people you ask not about you or your cause.
Be a hero by pitching in $1, http://hero.link [someone will sleep in a warm bed tonight]. Pass it on to heroes you admire.
When you make it easy and help folks like heroes for helping, they more often do.
How often do help and RT requests that make you feel proud to pass them on?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
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Last year, I started experimenting with curating content on Twitter. I had three good reasons. I realized that
To say it paid off would be an understatment. While reading for articles to share, I found new thoughts to consider and new ideas to write about. And like blogging, curating content on Twitter taught me more about relationships, social skills and building a network than I might ever have expected.
Here’s how I did that …
Don’t think for a minute that I’m exaggerating about the “minutes a day” part. I curate content during commercials on TV and while I’m waiting for people to meet me in a restaurant. At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss …
I curate in the morning.
Breaking out save articles without warning.
I curate on a break.
I curate eating cake.
I curate near the lake.
Sometimes I save an article to read and curate while I wait
for a meeting, a phone call, an appointment, or blogger date.
I curate especially during commercial breaks …
Actually, I’m not quite as obsessed as all that. But I do curate in the minutes that I used to just sit. Here are two ways I do that.
Sometimes I tweet what I find at that very moment. Often I schedule the content I curate so that I don’t binge tweet. I also think about when an article might be most useful to folks. So I try to post articles that require more reading time at night, how-to and building articles or on the weekend, and ways to perform better at work during the week. [I use Tweetdeck to schedule these curated tweets and the only tweets I schedule are curated tweets.]
The discipline of reading regularly and curating what I prized had more ROI than I’d ever have guessed. Naturally I got closer and more up-to-date with great content, but the return was far more than that. Here are the direct benefits that were a result of investing a few minutes whenever I had the time.
The ROI of curating content on twitter is the influence gained from incrementally staying in sync with the tools and the culture while still listening to the mainstream point of view. Those bits and articles that we take in from Twitter bring the latest from the self-sorted group. Those we seek out from traditional media bring the outside view. On the edges of each and in between them is where the new thoughts come through.
Curating content gets us to listen too.
The more we listen, the more we know. The more we know, the more we notice. The more we notice the more we can use to figure out what we need to know next.
How can you curate content to tailor Twitter — to make it faster, easier and more meaningful — for the folks who follow you?
Be Irresistible!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
Related
Tailoring Twitter: Does Your Twitter Profile Attract the Right People?
Tailoring Twitter: Building a Powerful Network that Fits You Perfectly
Tailoring Twitter: Get Busy Folks to âGetâ Twitter in 2 Minutes Flat!
Limbering up. Surfer doing his stretches before hitting the waves.
How will you stretch yourself today?
Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,
I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.
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.
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