Successful Blog

Beach Notes: Waiting

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

It might not look like it from this picture but there is a big surf running here at world famous Snapper Rocks. Usually we see the surfers just plunging straight in and paddling out to the waves. On this day, we noticed everybody waiting, waiting: nobody was trying to get out to the break until they could see a short respite in the pounding surf. A little while later they had all paddled out, but for those few minutes as we were walking by there was obviously a collective “let’s all not do anything stupid here” experience.

Fortune may favor the bold but sometimes it’s really smart to wait till the right moment, not just dive in.

Map http://bit.ly/fqMlzC

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-Suzie and Des

Thanks to Week 273 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

Open Letter to Entrepreneurs: You Don’t Hold a Monopoly on the Right Answers

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A Guest Post by Scott P. Dailey

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You want a new Web site. You’re the boss and the company needs a new site. The existing one is home to static and dated talking points and lately you’ve begun to suspect that it is shouting at visitors and is thus, not developed with an evolving 2.0 culture in mind. There’s nothing, you conclude, social about. Your wife, mother-in-law and golf buddies all agree. You’re the boss and this is your mandate.

You want the thing redone and you want it redone now. Details are someone else’s problem. That’s what you pay the worker bees to do. You make the demand, they make it happen. You don’t care how; you just want the darn thing done and done well. You assign a small gaggle of your most qualified people to the task and they immediately spring into action. At the outset however, you make it clear that you want every phase of the project to pass through you before moving through each milestone. You’re Teddy Roosevelt. That’s just the way it is.

The talented group you’ve assembled begin doing all the heavy lifting as you expect it to be done. They do the research. They poll the best resources. They draft the Gantt charts and project time lines that denote, in graphically rich detail, the mile markers that will comprise the job’s lifespan. They have drawn up the wire frames, and the site map too. Nothing is left to guesswork. Your people got it right the first time. And you insist on being involved in every discussion.

The presentation

You call a meeting to review the team’s progress. The team sits down with you and proposes the solution as outlined in the project management materials and research data they’ve spent the previous week developing. The team is pumped. They know they nailed this thing and confidently cannot wait to see your reaction. Your project lead places the plan in front of you and you dig in, allowing her no opportunity to present. You give the proposal a flagrantly cursory look and are quickly ready to respond.

Here’s your appraisal:

The wire frames are bland and unsexy and the sitemap is nothing more than a confusing bunch of boxes with if statements peppered throughout.

Hmmm. The timeline calls for a 12-week project lifespan. 12 weeks, you exclaim, seems an excessive period of time to launch a new Web site. You have no prior experience launching Web sites, but that doesn’t stop you from being thoroughly convinced that you’re right to expect and demand it be done faster.

You don’t known what the terms, CMS, 301, 401 or Gantt all mean and that frustrates you. Instead of learning however, you use your entrepreneurial brawn to deliver a brief and condescending lecture to the lead on why spelling things out in plain English was not achieved and time, consequently, has been wasted. Your untrusted lead cautions you that these materials are internal project guides, intended for the technical eyes of the team and not necessarily a high level presentation meant for non-technical leadership. As the lead, you assure the boss that you’re trying to explain things in digestible terms, but the boss filibusters time and again and silences you’re every effort to simplify the conversation.

Intimidated further by your lead’s sensible rebuttals, you’re the big cheese you recall. So you dig your increasingly fragile heels in and quickly, loudly move on, even more confused now than you were before your initial objection to the amount of nerdy mumbo jumbo in the plan.

Suddenly it dawns on you.

Where’s the layout concept? “What’s this thing going to look like?”, you ask the team. The lead explains that this is a planning meeting and in the timeline spreadsheet, all of these milestones are addressed in their logical order. This frustrates you even more and you again explain to the team that you think 12 weeks is excessive and you now begin to suspect why. All this planning. All these spreadsheets (one in total, mind you). All these wire frames are giving you a headache. There’s no fun in any of this! You insist on seeing ‘something’ (a layout) within the week.

The team lead tries again to explain that designing the creative at this stage puts the sensible order of milestones grossly out of sequence and thus, hinders the team’s ability to get things right. You scoff and launch into a less-than succinct rant about how you built the company and how you met deadlines and adapted to ungodly pressures in far less time than this project asks for. The team tunes you out and, one by one, slowly begin to accept that you don’t give a darn about their expertise in designing and developing great Web sites. You don’t notice, of course, that your team has abandoned you, because you are too busy being certain that this situation is not unlike any other professional crisis you’ve experienced and in each of those, you were 100% in the right. You merely want to control every facet of the job and consequently grant no one beneath you the authority to succeed on terms unfamiliar to you.

10 Months Later…

The site was designed according to your project management sensibilities. It possesses all of the social channels you demanded it possess. It even went live ahead of that senseless 12 week calendar your former team lead recommended. Oh yeah, she quit like six months ago. If you had listened to her, you ponder, you might still be waiting for a site to go live. Your wife and golf buddies think it rocks and while you now have Twitter, Facebook and YouTube profiles, you have no qualified traffic hitting your pages and you’ve ultimately learned nothing from the exercise.

Two Years Later…

You’re broke and out of business. You’re getting older and you haven’t the fundamental computer savvy to impress interviewers. You have enormous debts and the culture that rewarded your business ideologies so many years earlier has now made you virtually unhirable. Humility sets in if you’re lucky and it is then, if you’re luckier, that it dawns on you that you don’t possess a monopoly on the right answers.

That’s when you learn to listen again.
Listening leads to life-long learning.
It’s your chance to start over.

—–

Scott P. Dailey is a Web designer, copywriter and network administrator. Recently Scott launched ( http://scottpdailey.com ), his social media blog that makes connections between social networking etiquette and the prevailing human social habits that drive on and offline business engagement patterns. You can connect with Scott via Twitter at @scottpdailey.

Creative Commons License photo credit: bkang83

Thanks, Scott!

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

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Social Media Book List: Pink & Grow Rich and Putting the Public Back in Public Relations

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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 online book promotion and social media marketing. As part of my job I read a lot of books (I enjoy reading anyway!).

This week I will be highlighting two business books; ‘Pink and Grow Rich’ by Deepika Bajaj and ‘Putting the Public back in Public Relations’ by by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge.

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

‘Pink and Grow Rich’

by Deepika Bajaj

Here is Deepika’s promise:

Deepika, with this e-book can make one promise that if you had one reason for NOT living your DREAM – you will find that with the UNREASONABLE Rule Book – 11 UNREASONABLE RULES of success that will help you OWN your dreams. You will know how to live your life, use your own mind, go toward your dreams that you want to make REAL and SOLID.

Wonder if this ebook is for you?
* Are you looking to unleash your leadership potential?
* Have you been giving yourself perfectly valid reasons for why you cannot be the person you always wanted to be?
* Are you wondering what does it take to grow as a leader?

If your answer to ANY of the questions above is “Yes“, then Then this book is for you.

Think about it, for all the possibilities that exist in the world, if you give yourself one reason for why you cannot take responsibility to be that person – it makes you REASONABLE.

About Deepika*:

Deepika Bajaj is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley.  

Deepika Bajaj is the founder and president of Invincibelle, a company empowering diverse, multi generational workforce and women to thrive in a multicultural world. Prior to starting her company, Deepika has more than eight years of experience in telecommunications consulting nand corporate marketing.
Bajaj is also co-founder of ActiveGarage, a company that is recently launched 99tribes.com which is a premier site to increase your Twitter tribe and discover people who share similar concerns.

She has served on the board of various professional organizations including the National Society of Hispanic MBAs and Women in Intel.

Deepika is working on her second book which (yet to be named) speaks to her experiences of being a global citizen and what is shaping the new voice of diversity. She is the author of the book “DiversityTweet: Embracing Diversity in the world.” This new ebook “PINK and Grow RICH” speaks of 11 UNREASONABLE RULES for success for women leaders who live and work in a multicultural world.  She speaks and consults on diversity, blogs at www.deepikabajaj.com and writes a column on social media for ActiveGarage. She is the winner of 2010 IWE Entrepreneurship Achievement Award. You can follow her on http://twitter.com/invincibelle.

You can purchase a copy of ‘Pink and Grow Rich’ online from the author site, Active Garage. *I did receive a digital copy of this book from the author to help in the promotion of the book.

Next, I would like to introduce you to a book on my reading list – ‘Putting the Public Back in Public Relations’.

‘Putting the Public Back in Public Relations’

by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge

“Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is a passionate and persuasive case for rewriting the rules of public relations. Authors Solis and Breakenridge expertly combine third-party perspective with case studies and examples to paint a picture of a profession on the brink of reinvention.”
Paul Gillin, Author, The New Influencers and Secrets of Social Media Marketing

“I am thrilled that there is finally a book about the right way to approach PR in today’s world, where hyper-connected conversations trump the old school broadcast mentality. Everyone who wants to build a career in PR or marketing should read this book.”
Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com

About the Book*

Breakthrough Web PR 2.0 Strategies and Tactics That Work
Forget the pitch: Yesterday’s PR techniques just don’t work anymore. That’s the bad news. Here’s the great news: Social Media and Web 2.0 offer you an unprecedented opportunity to make PR succeed more powerfully than ever before. This book shows how to reinvent PR around two-way conversations with traditional and new influencers, bring the “public” back into public relations—and earn a new level of results that just wasn’t possible before now.

Drawing on their unparalleled experience making Social Media work for business, PR 2.0 blogger Brian Solis and industry leader Deirdre Breakenridge show how to transform the way you think, plan, prioritize, and deliver PR services. You’ll learn new ways to build the relationships that matter, and reach a new generation of influencers…leverage platforms ranging from Twitter to Facebook…truly embed yourself in the communities that are shaping the future.

Along the way, you’ll learn how to stop being a “publicist” or mere “communicator” and become what your clients or company really need: a genuine enthusiast for whom and what you represent.

What’s wrong with PR—and how to fix it
Leverage Social Media and Web 2.0 to reinvent PR, build meaningful and valuable relationships, and supercharge its effectiveness

Social Media PR—a complete primer
Build blogger relationships, reinvent the press release, and make social networks the hub of your online brands

Why it’s about sociology and anthropology—not technology
Master the art of listening and leverage today’s powerful, emerging micromedia

Real PR metrics for the Web 2.0 world
Measure the results that really matter–and demonstrate your value as never before

About Brian*:
Brian Solis is globally recognized as one of most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has influenced the effects of emerging media on the convergence of marketing, communications, and publishing. He is principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning New Media agency in Silicon Valley, and has led interactive and social programs for Fortune 500 companies, notable celebrities, and Web 2.0 startups. BrianSolis.com is ranked among the top of world’s leading business and marketing online resources.

Books:

Brian Solis along with co-author Deirdre Breakenridge released “Putting the Public back in Public Relations” in 2009. Published by Financial Times Press, the book has become a best seller and is highly regarded a must read by anyone in marketing, communications, and also journalism.

In concert with Geoff Livingston, Solis released “Now is Gone” in 2007, an early, award-winning book that helps businesses learn how to engage in Social Media. He has also written several ebooks on the subjects of Social Media, New Business, Customer Service, and Influencer Engagement.

His forewords are also featured in PR 2.0 by Deirdre Breakenridge, published by FT Press and MySpace Marketing by Sean Percival, published by Que, and Twittfaced: Your Tookit for Understanding and Maximizing Social Media by Jacob Morgan.

About Deirdre*:
Deirdre Breakenridge is President and Executive Director of Communications at PFS Marketwyse, a marketing ommunications agency in New Jersey. A veteran in the PR industry, Deirdre leads a creative team of PR and marketing executives strategizing to gain brand awareness for their clients through creative and strategic PR campaigns. She counsels senior level executives at companies including ASCO, Hersheys, JVC, KRAFT, and Michael C. Fina.

Deirdre is an adjunct professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in
Madison, New Jersey, where she teaches courses on Public Relations and Interactive Marketing for the Global Business Management program. She is the author of four Financial Times/Prentice Hall business books: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, PR 2.0 New Media, New Tools, New Audiences, The New PR Toolkit and Cyberbranding: Brand Building in the Digital Economy.

Deirdre has spoken publicly on the topics of PR, social media communications, digital marketing, and brand building for the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA), The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Strategic ResearchInstitute (SRI), Women’s Presidents Organization (WPO), Tier1Research, and at a number of colleges and universities. Deirdre is a member of the PRSA and has served on the Board of NJ/PRSA and the New Jersey Advertising Club.

Deirdre’s blog is PR 2.0 Strategies at www.deirdrebreakenridge.com.

You can purchase a copy of ‘Putting the Public Back in Public Relations’ on Amazon.

I truly hope you will check out these books and please comment and let me know your thoughts on them.

Everybody Pick Your Bloggin’ Buddy

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By Jael Strong

When I was a teenager, I spent every Saturday with my Nonna.  Her Italian feasts were a family delight, and I had a front row seat to the creative process. Unfortunately, I was a stupid kid and didn’t pay enough attention.  I recognize now that I should have been her avid student, but alas my opportunity to learn the great recipes has passed. 

It wasn’t a total loss though.  I did spend time with her bonding and learning about life, if not about cooking.  I have fond memories mixed with regrets.  This was real one-on-one time, a necessity to productive community.

The online community is missing…

Community! I know we have forums, comments, social networking, etc. Since the Internet is a relatively new venue, mankind has done its best to fabricate a real society designed to fill the human need in the cyber world. These are synthetic atmospheres at best.

Am I making this up? No. There is more to community than verbal communication. Emoticons can’t even begin to convey the gamut of human emotion. There is no place in the cyber world for human touch. Then there is the exchange of chemicals, imperceptible hormones exchanged between humans leading to feelings of empathy, contentment, and compassion.
 

We have to compensate

It is presently impossible to synthetically compose the type of environment I shared with my grandmother on Saturdays. However, in order to build a truly productive online community with other bloggers we have to compensate for the inadequacies of a fabricated world.

How can this be accomplished? Science will have to work on the intricacies. We have to focus on the social aspects that we can control. A primary component of a literal community is mentoring. It isn’t always labeled as such, but the time I spent with my grandmother could be called mentoring. For our purposes, we’ll call our mentoring process “Bloggin’ Buddies.”

How can you find a blggin’ buddy?

The first step is to identify where you fall in the program. Do you have years of experience as a blogger? Are you prolific in your writing? Are you an acknowledged success story? If so, then you would be a perfect mentor!

On the other hand, you may be a fledgling writer. Perhaps your experience is limited. Maybe you have been blogging for a while now, but with limited success. It could even be that you just don’t feel comfortable in the mentoring role, but could use some helpful advice from time to time. You could use a mentor.

Those who fall under the perfect mentor category should seek to help beginning bloggers. I know you’re busy! Consider it a community service. By making yourself available to other bloggers, you are helping to build that community. I know a lot of bloggers that do this, and fledgling bloggers are truly grateful for the help experienced bloggers are willing to offer.

On the other hand, if you are one of those inexperienced bloggers, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Dig for advice. Request opportunities to guest post. Observe the habits of successful bloggers. Don’t pass up the opportunity to learn from a great the way that I did!

Talk to us! What success have you had in building the blogging community through mentoring?

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—-
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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7 Steps Get the Best Leadership Thinking from Your Team

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10-Point Plan: Teaching Leaders to Think

“I Don’t Pay You Think” Doesn’t Work Anymore

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For years we marketed one-size-fits-all solutions, it worked to grow the numbers higher and higher by allowing companies and corporations to focus on how to give us more for less. We had access to more products at lower prices because of it.

And in that one-size-fits-all environment, it’s fairly certain that at least once in your career you heard a manager say the famous words, “I don’t pay you to think.” In fact the system relied upon carefully controlled decisions … only a few people were allowed “to think.”

Rogue thinking upset the carefully constructed system of industrial production that made the whole thing work. Even customer conversations were perfected down to scripts so that no maverick thought could undermine the “perfected” process of handling relationships.

Except customers never did find those scripts the making of a perfect relationship and now as customers have ways of connecting with each other, they’re letting us know that they’re spending their attention, time, and money with companies and corporations who build one-of-a-kind things, offer customized and personalized service, and develop true and loyal relationships.

What 20th century company or corporation was designed to manage that?

7 Steps Get the Best Leadership Thinking from Your Team

It’s been decades of businesses that have preached the mantra “I don’t teach you to think.” Leadership reaches out to build together what can’t be build alone. Ironically, it gets stronger when everyone thinks.

How does a leader build a team that leaves behind black-and-white safety of scripted relationships to the gray decision making that actually serves customers and the company? Without the right environment, support, and commitment in place it’s likely to be a mess of good intentions that foul up things.

Here are 7 steps to building a thinking, influential leadership team.

  1. Trust your team. It goes without saying that if you picked the right team, they’ll do the right job. If after reflection, you find that trust isn’t going to come. It’s time to change your own thinking about the people you want on your team.
  2. Start with a small crew. A change in management style cannot be made via a toggle switch or a pendulum swing. Rather than announcing new “rules of behavior.” Enlist a small crew who has already shown they understand both customers and what drives the business.
  3. Agree on the definition of a good result. Strategy always begins with knowing where we want to go. Set a goal. Define what a successful completion of that goal would be.
  4. Let the crew plan how to get from here to success on that one thing. You’ve agreed on the outcome and you’ve chosen the right crew. Let them show you their most efficient process for achieving it. Let them work out the details without you.
  5. Review the plan by asking questions. Have a short meeting for the crew to show you what they’re going to do. Limit yourself to questions rather than advice. You now have the benefit of being outside the thinking and so you can test it for holes and hidden assumptions — something you couldn’t do when you were part of building the plan. You can learn from the new ideas they bring to it.
  6. Stay out of their way as they execute. Ask them to keep you apprised via status updates and meetings, but stay in question so that you can be tester of the thinking rather than the only thinker in the room. When people look to you for an answer, answer with, “You have more information, than I, what seems the most appropriate action to you? Why do you think so?”
  7. Celebrate Success and Value What You Learn Every status meeting take a moment to celebrate successes. Invite the crew to do the same with you. Also take time to highlight and value new things, surprises, and misfires that teach what not to do.

The days of “i don’t pay you to think” are thankfully long over. True leaders are people who don’t want to do all of the thinking. Leaders are people who want to build something innovative, elegant, and useful that they can’t build alone.

Care-filled thinking, well-thought action, and thoughtful response has become the gold standard of business growth, innovation, and loyalty relationships. When everyone is thinking, the customer and the company become a community and the business thrives. Thinking is the new ROI.

The way and the level at which we value our teams’ thinking is directly proportional to the value of the thinking they return.

How do you get the best thinking from your team?

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

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