Successful Blog

Thanks to Week 279 SOBs

by

muddy teal strip A

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.

muddy teal strip A

tweet-this-not-that
geewhiz-to-roi
kelly-croy
mitch-neff
seo-theory-and-analysis-blog

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.

deep purple strip

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

The Book List: ‘Fast Track Guide to a Professional Job Search’ & ‘Enchantment’

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A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow of Key Business Partners, LLC

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors & writers to help them with their book promotion and social media marketing. As part of my job I read a lot of books (I love to read anyway!).

This week I will be highlighting two books; one is with an author I am working with and the other is on my “reading list”.

The books in the Social Media Book List Series will cover a range of topics such as social media, product development, marketing, blogging, business, organization, career building, finance, networking, writing, self development, and inspiration.

‘Fast Track Guide to a Professional Job Search’

by Joanie Natalizio

Fast Track Guide to a Professional Job Search

“Joanie Natalizio’s Fast Track Guide to a Professional Job Search offers extremely timely and practical advice for all stages of a job search. Her no-nonsense approach will save time, reduce stress and, most important, provide results. The ‘Take Action’ feature of her book will get to the core of what needs to occur while one is in transition. Not only will the executive learn how take charge of his or her job search with this action-centered book, he or she will learn to navigate a myriad of career challenges one faces, especially in a difficult economy.”
Victor C. Massaglia, M.A., Career Counselor, Career Center,
University of Minnesota Law School

“The ultimate guide book on how to conduct a professional job search from beginning to end. Each chapter provides you with ‘take action’ steps and insider ‘hot tips’ so you’ll be sure to get everything you need to know to conduct a successful job search. A book no professional should be without.”
Barbara Rosenzweig, Owner, Dental People, Inc.

About the Book*:
‘The Fast Track Guide to a Professional Job Search’ was written to take the guesswork out of finding the right executive-level position for you. Serving as your handy guide and indispensable companion, it contains everything you need to drive your job search and career forward. It takes you all the way from setting your career path, through the planning and strategizing, the execution, the emotional rollercoaster, and all the way to offer evaluation and acceptance.

Written by Joanie Natalizio, a professional executive coach who steers a successful business coaching practice, ‘The Fast Track Guide to a Professional Job Search’ teaches you to distinguish yourself, present your unique strengths and capabilities, and make sure an offer is a good fit for you before you accept it. All through the book, the easy to use checklists make sure you stay on track. How to create a professional biography and tips on evaluating compensation packages are just a few of the many executive job search topics discussed.

Joanie reveals little known tips traditionally restricted to executive career coaching sessions, so that you have an extra edge in your job search. With ‘The Fast Track Guide to a Professional Job Search’ at hand, you can proceed in your executive job search with clarity, competence and complete confidence.

About Joanie*:

Joanie Natalizio, President of Defero Business Coaching and Seminars, has over 15 years of combined experience in both business and executive coaching, and has worked at some of this country’s top Fortune 500 corporations.

Along with her corporate experience, Ms. Natalizio holds a Master’s degree in Counseling, and is an accredited Job and Career Transition Coach and a Certified Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Practitioner. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Anoka Ramsey Community College teaching Career Development courses. Her specialty seminars including employee training and development, change management and one-on-one executive coaching make Joanie Natalizio one of the Twin Cities’ most respected business advisors in the areas of professional executive development.

You can purchase a copy of ‘Fast Track Guide to a Professional Job Search’ online from the publisher site or on Amazon. *this information came from the author’s website.

Next, I would like to introduce you to another book on the business book list on Amazon and on my reading list: ‘Enchantment’.

Enchantment

by Guy Kawasaki

enchantment

“Kawasaki provides insights so valuable we all wish we’d had them first.”
-Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence: Science and Practice

“Guy teaches you how to pull gems from people’s hearts and minds and how to become an effective practitioner of life’s crucial domains. Clearly, I taught him well.”
-Dr. Phil Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology, Stanford University

About the Book*

Enchantment, as defined by bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes the skeptics and cynics into the believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it’s more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.

Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions. For instance, enchantment is what enabled . . .

* A Peace Corps volunteer to finesse a potentially violent confrontation with armed guerrillas.
* A small cable channel (E!) to win the TV broadcast rights to radio superstar Howard Stern.??
* A seemingly crazy new running shoe (Vibram Five Fingers) to methodically build a passionate customer base.??
* A Canadian crystal maker (Nova Scotian Crystal) to turn observers into buyers.

This book explains all the tactics you need to prepare and launch an enchantment campaign; to get the most from both push and pull technologies; and to enchant your customers, your employees, and even your boss. It shows how enchantment can turn difficult decisions your way, at times when intangibles mean more than hard facts. It will help you overcome other people’s entrenched habits and defy the not-always-wise “wisdom of the crowd.”

Kawasaki’s lessons are drawn from his tenure at one of the most enchanting organizations of all time, Apple, as well as his decades of experience as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. There are few people in the world more qualified to teach you how to enchant people.

As Kawasaki writes, “Want to change the world? Change caterpillars into butterflies? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to convince people to dream the same dream that you do.” That’s a big goal, but one that’s possible for all of us.

About Guy*:
Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also a columnist for the Open Forum of American Express. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple.

Mr. Kawasaki is the author of nine books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

Guy Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

*courtesy of book website and Amazon

You can purchase a copy of ‘Enchantment’ at Amazon.

B-L-O-G, I’ll Tell You What It Means To Me

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cooltext455576688_blogging

—-
By Jael Strong

One of history’s greatest difficulties is defining new things.  The internet has expanded our vocabulary by opening a universe of new ideas, tools, and products that only exist because of and for the world wide web.  Blogging is one of those new tools.  While the internet abounds with definitions for this activity, that definition is so multifaceted that individual definition may best apply. What does blogging mean to the blogger? 

What does blogging mean to me?

I think of blogging as an editorial. For me, it is an opportunity to present information and to add my own commentary.  It is a chance for me to quietly spout off.  What is my simple definition for a blog?  A blog is an online venue that allows the writer to present his/her viewpoint paired with evidential facts.

Of course, I recognize that this definition doesn’t fit every blog.   For example, there is a thin line between an editorial blog and an advertising blog.  An editorial blog may lean in one direction as opposed to another (For example, a blog post may lean toward liberalism as opposed to conservatism.).  An advertising blog though is promoting one product at the exclusion of others, often without even acknowledging the competition’s validity. 

There are blogs also that do neither of these things directly.  There are blogs that are truly online diaries, a catalogue of the events in a writer’s life.  There are news blogs that are designed to only inform the reader of what is happening in the world.  Any political, social, or personal leanings are incedental to the blog and not the thrust of the blog.   

So…What is a blog?

There are millions of blogs, just as there are millions of books. “Books” used to be parchment with writing on them.  Then they became hard-covered, bound volumes with printed words on the pages.  Now, we have electronic books.  A blog is like a book.  A blog is a means to an end, something that holds content.  But what it holds is up to the writer and is defined by the writer.

There are of course some key elements to blogs. For instance, they only exist online.  You can’t run to the book store and buy a blog.  You won’t find it on the magazine stand.  Also, the response of readers is essential to a blog.  The interactive nature of blogs makes them so appealing.  Something can hardly be called a blog if the readers aren’t allowed to respond to the blogger. 

Saying a blog has comments is like saying a book has page numbers, or pages for that matter; it doesn’t really provide a definition.  So, tell  us, how do you define your blog?

Jael Strong writes for TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility.  She has written both fiction and non-fiction pieces for print and online publications.  She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas .

Thanks, Jael

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

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5 Critical Questions for Your High Performing Team of Volunteers or Employees

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10-Point Plan: A High Performance Team

Keeping the Focus Is Fun

cooltext443809602_strategy

Whether we work for huge enterprise or help build the economy from your home, leaders know that we can only do so much on our own. To build a business that thrives, we need to rely on employees, partners, vendors, volunteers, and customer who pitch in to help us grow. It takes a team, a community to build anything that resembles a business. A great team can build a great business.

Anyone who’s assembled a great team knows that when you get the right people on the bus you make amazing things happen. And if you’ve been part of a team like that you probably also know that money isn’t what moves a team to greatness. As Peter Drucker realized, “money is a disincentive.” People notice when there’s not enough and it brings them down, but more doesn’t improve their performance in any predictable wya.

Those right people on the bus work for less money when they can do more …
more of the things that work,
more of the things they do well,
more of the things that get more done well,
more of the things that put meaning into what they do.

Those right people on the bus work for less money when they can do less …
less of the things that don’t work,
less of the things that they don’t do well.
less of the things that get in the way of great work — the meaningless work-like, useless,
out-of-date, without purpose, policy-driven, time-wasting, relationship-breaking, stupid tasks — in other words, things that make work rather than get work done.

Getting the right team going in the right direction is challenge in time when time is at a premium. It takes more than just telling everyone “Do what you do well. Delegate to others what they do better. And don’t do what we don’t need to do.” Still, if we can get that kind of focus and momentum going, we’re well on our way to business that is responsive to customers, highly performing, and structurally sound.

Nothing beats reflection, checking in regularly as benchmark test to be sure we’re moving in the right direction. Here are five questions you, your team, and your business should be asking and answering at least once a week.

  1. What is the goal? What are we trying to do or say this week?
  2. What is the strategy that drives us? Where do we want to be by the end of the week?
  3. What’s missing from the team? Have we got the right people doing the right things? Do we have too much of one skill set and not enough of another? Do we need to rearrange things?
  4. What’s right / wrong with the process / structure / culture? Who needs resources, room, or support to do their best work? Who’s doing the wrong work?
  5. What rewards are ours to claim? How can we leverage them? Do we define, measure, and reward the outcomes we seek?

People, teams, and businesses can get off track in big leaps, but we usually lose our way incrementally by losing focus while doing what worked in the past. If you use the five questions to keep challenging your direction, you’ll find that the team soon will see every decision strategically.

How do you keep the focus to grow the high-performance business you want?

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

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Liz Strauss – Titan of Web 2.0! Thank You, Davos, for the Honor!

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It Started with an Invitation to Speak in Davos

Davos, Switzerland, 21 February 2011, II World Forum “Communication on Top” took place in Swiss Davos at the end of last week. Trend-makers and key figures from communications industry participated in the Forum. Among them are top-managers of world-known companies like GALLUP, ENEL, EDELMAN, SPN Ogilvy, DELL, leaders of large-scale political and social projects in various countries, and world-famous “stars” in the area of consultancy and communications.

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Last year, I received an invitation from the project manager of the annual World Forum “Communication on Top”, held in Davos, Switzerland. The content is in the field of Communications, PR, Marketing, Social Media, and Corporate relations: http://www.forumdavos.com

The invitation offered me a keynote session and asked if I would be willing to participate as a nominee for the C4F awards ceremony in the category “Titan of Web 2.0.”

Being asked to speak in Davos is quite a heady experience. Switzerland is famous for great minds meeting at important events.

Such as this interview in which:
Garrett Johnston discusses

  • aritificial intelligence and the singularlity
  • understanding the reasons people consume what they consume
  • creative and uncreative consumers.
  • companies who do well in the crisis

 

“It’s a question of making the choice easier and more accurate for the consumer. It works for everybody and reduces friction.” he says.

Who Wouldn’t Want to Be at an Event Like that?

Unfortunately Switzerland is also an exclusive ticket to an entrepreneur in the launch phase of a new business. Though I’m usually quick flexible and creative at solving problems in ways that everyone wins, I also had a prior commitment to speak on the other side of the world in Las Vegas during the Davos event.

And my word is my word.

So we agreed that the keynote might wait until next year. Then we’d have proper time to plan for the event. Participation in the nomination moved forward, I met with Helen Brandt of the Davos Top of Communication World Forum Team — It was an early morning interview — 7 time zones apart — on Skype about what being a Titan of the Web might mean.

Here’s a bit of that … Liz Unplugged.

  • a titan – brings images of building things with elaboration and fluency
  • It’s not a titanic labor to raise a blog; it’s a titanic responsibility. You write a blog to connect with people. It’s conversation.
  • I love to show companies how an invitation is more exciting than a pitch. I love to teach the fun of negotiating from the same side of the table.
  • I love showing people how their values attract people who have the same values as they do.

 

“I love bringing people back to the common sense. There’s so much we can do to bring the world back to the community,” I said.

I had done all I might do to be ready for the Titan of Web 2.0 nomination. Now what was left was to be online during the presentation.

Enter the Titanic in the Titan

When I got to Las Vegas, I was set and ready. I tuned in before my event to watch an learn from the speakers. All was well. Then came the time for the presentations — 7pm in Switzerland / 10am in LasVegas and the livestream in my hotel crashed.

The rest is history. I wasn’t a part of the awards — the skype connection we prepared disappointed us with no service. It was time to go speak on my panel before the wifi came back up.

The panel at the conference in Las Vegas went well. The people were outstanding both on the panel, including that Leadership guy Terry Starbucker, and in the audience. We talked about how social media can change the face of a business and bring customers closer — close enough to build a brand up.

An hour later, when the panel was over, I discovered via Twitter this lovely tweet …

banner1-uus1
and-the-winner-is

 

And my partner, Terry, who was the first to say “congratulations,” now calls me Liss.
And every life event is worth the worry if you get a great story out of it.

Will I be at Davos next year? You can bet on it. I will be there not only to give that keynote, but to say a proper thank you, share my gratitude for this prestigious recognition

And I’ll try to learn some titan speak.

Blushing just a little, and saying thank you to the Davos Forum, to my friends, partners, and readers, — all of you who make everything I do worth every minute I spend doing it.

You’re the titans that keep this titan on the web.

Related links for more information about World Forum, “Communication on Top,” Davos, Switzerland:
http://forumdavos.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/comm_on_top (hashtag #topcom)
http://www.facebook.com/ForumDavos
http://www.youtube.com/user/forumdavoscom

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 278 SOBs

by

muddy teal strip A

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.

muddy teal strip A

ann-tran
cloud-ave
jack-lynady
jungle-of-life
martin-stellar

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.

deep purple strip

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