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Social Media Book List: Community 101 and The Digital Handshake

October 20, 2010 by teresa

A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

Iâm Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors by managing their book promotion and publicity. 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 author I am currently working with ‘Community 101′ by Robyn Tippins and Miranda Marquit and one book on the social media Amazon list ‘the Digital Handshake’ by Paul Chaney.

The books I discuss 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.

‘Community 101’

by Robyn Tippins and Miranda Marquit

“Finding and connecting with the right people is part of the social gluethat hold personal and professional relationships together on the Internet. Robyn and Miranda go through a detailed process of identifying, establishing and building an online presence by combining various strategies and tools to enhance your success.”
~Andrew Wee, Blogger and Business Consultant
WhoIsAndrewWee.com

“Robyn and Miranda have simplified online communities in a way that any business owner can understand. Community 101 is filled with gems to help your community thrive in the online space.”
~Tamar Weinberg, Techipedia.com

Few great tips from this book about building an online community:

1. Use straight talk.
Tell it like it is.
Teresa Tidbit–>yes, authenticity is key with online communications.

2. Use your community members for positive change.
Invent ways for your community to be more involved and use their
information to improve your product and website.
Teresa Tidbit–>Get people involved in something bigger than themselves.

3. Visibility.
Get out there. Be seen.
Teresa Tidbit–>Again, no one knows you are online unless you are really involved.

4. Tweak.
Be willing to change things to better suit the needs of your community.
Teresa Tidbit–>Flexibility and compromise, the cornerstones to any relationship, even an online one.

5. Remember the Golden Rule.
Think about how you want to be treatedâthen treat your community members the same way.
Teresa Tidbit–>Think before you put something out there. Focus on resolutions, not the issue.

About the Book*:
Making an online community that grows and survives isnât easy. It takes planning, vision and dedication. Most companies arenât prepared to invest the time and manpower it takes to make it happen, and when their communities fail to prosper, they blame it on chance.

But chance doesnât play a part in whether or not you respond to your communityâs needs. Successful online communities donât just happen, but with proper care and feeding your company can build a community that surpasses all of your expectations. If you are kind to the people who make up your community, youâll gain a sold-out customer base and your business will be the beneficiary of increased sales, increased loyalty and increased customer satisfaction. This book isnât intended to tell you what a community is, it will explain what a company can gain from a great online community and it will give you the education and tools you need to make it happen.

This book is for anyone who wants to build a fantastic online community. From Product Mangers to Executives, from Entrepreneurs to Evangelists, anyone can make their companyâs community thrive. Community management isnât about trickery or contests, but about treating your communityâs members as if they matter to you. After reading this book, you have no excuse not to build your own thriving online community.

About Robyn Tippins*:
Robyn Tippins is a community advocate with over 10 years experience in the social media space. From her early days marketing her own small business using forums and email lists, to blogging, podcasting, vlogging and video game immersion, sheâs often used social networking to engage and communicate. In her current role, Robyn oversees the community aspect of the external developers on the Yahoo! Developer Network.

Robyn has blogged for blog networks and corporations, podcasted for small and large businesses, worked closely with social networking sites, and advised Fortune 500 companies on social media and community. Her early podcasts featured some of the webâs most interesting and well-known Web 2.0 experts in fields such as VoIP, Technology, Open Source, Marketing, Social Networking, Video Games and Blogging.

About Miranda Marquit*
Miranda Marquit is a professional blogger and freelance writer working from home. She has five years experience in the blogging and social media space, mainly providing content and support for corporate blogs. Miranda understands the importance of blogging and social media in online marketing and community building, and enjoys interacting and networking via the Internet.

In addition to professional blogging, Miranda is a freelance writer with a Journalism degree. Her work has appeared in national magazines and on news Web sites. She is also a columnist for her local newspaper. Miranda enjoys reading, music, travel, and the outdoors. Her favorite activities involve using her hobbies as a way to spend time with her husband and their six-year-old son. Miranda lives with her family in Logan, Utah.

You can purchase a copy of ‘Community 101’ online at Amazon or on the publisher site, Happy About.
*courtesy of book website and Amazon

Next, I would like to introduce you to a book on the social media list on Amazon and on my reading list is ‘The Digital Handshake’.

The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grown your Business using Social Media

by Paul Chaney

One Amazon reviewer

stated:
“I really enjoyed reading “The Digital Handshake” and learned quite a bit about how to use Social Media to grow my business. I’ve read other books about Social Media before but they were geared toward corporations and very large businesses. I found there to be much more information that was relevant to my small business. This book not only gave me specific ideas about how to use social media for marketing my small business, but also taught me more about the nuts and bolts of each medium so that I can better understand how to create content.”

About the Book*:

Practical applications for using social media to boost your business

Even today’s most successful businesses are seeing shrinking returns on their advertising and marketing dollars. The Digital Handshake explains why advertising and marketing are losing their effectiveness and how to solve the problem using social media to corral elusive consumers. It explains the best practical business applications in current use and how you can use them to ramp up your business.

Using case studies gleaned from real businesses, author Paul Chaney shows you how companies both large and small that can tap social media to mitigate market changes and reap valuable business benefit in the real world.

* Explains how you can use social media to grow your business and connect with consumers
* Author Paul Chaney is a leading authority on blogging and social media
* Covers practical, effective business applications for blogging, social networking, online video, microblogging and much more
* Shows how to design a comprehensive marketing strategy using traditional and new media platforms

Today’s technology can either undermine your marketing efforts or enhance them. The Digital Handshake helps you make sure the Internet grows your business for the long run.

About Paul Chaney*:

Paul Chaney is Internet marketing director for Bizzuka, a Web design, content management and Internet marketing company based in Lafayette, LA.

Prior to joining Bizzuka Paul was co-founder of Blogging Systems, a blog software company that significantly impacted the real estate industry by encouraging Realtors to adopt blogging as a marketing strategy. He is the co-author of Realty Blogging: Build your Brand and Outsmart Your Competition, which similarly impacted the industry and which was the first blogging book to target a specific industry vertical.

Paul serves as president of the International Blogging and New Media Association (IBNMA), an organization dedicated to advancing the growth of blogging, podcasting and social media as an industry. He sits on the board of advisors for the Women’s Wisdom Network, the Social Media Marketing Institute, and SmartBrief on Social Media.

He is a feature writer for Practical Ecommerce magazine on the use of social media for marketing purposes and blogs for MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog. Paul has led numerous blog and social media workshops and seminars, including the first ever such seminar to be held in Asia. He has also blogged professionally with Weblogs, Inc., as well as with Allbusiness.com.

Paul has served as Technical Editor on a number of For Dummies series books related to blogs and Internet marketing, and was contributing writer on Buzz Marketing with Blogs For Dummies, published by Wiley.

*courtesy of book website and Amazon

You can purchase a copy of ‘The Digital Handshake’ on Amazon.

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

What’s the Most Surprising #ROI on Anything You’ve Bought?

October 20, 2010 by Liz

This is a sponsored announcement, part of a paid promotion. It’s rare that I do those. But the question behind it is so worth pondering that I felt compelled to write about it. So it’s with pleasure I invite you to read along.

Win a Napa Retreat for 6 and a Tech Makeover!

Our desks and our offices are fitted and filled with tools and equipment that we’ve purchased to help us do business. Office supply stores, computer stores, furniture stores, and providers online and offline shower us with information about products and services that will make our lives easier, faster, and more productive. But how often do we stop to consider which of those we invest in have given us the highest return?

We know the ones we like and the ones we don’t. We know the ones we use every day and the ones we reach for in emergency. But if we lined them all up in a row, which would be the winner as the most surprising, great investment we’ve made so far? Was it …

that bus ticket that took you to the best project meeting of your career?
that pair of ice skates that inspired you when your feet almost froze?
that video camera that captured the first cut of your documentary?
that ticket to a conference where you sketched out the idea for your business launch?
that chicken that changed the world?

Think about it. Tell your story and you’ll learn something about yourself and how you work.

HP’s “Reboot With ROI” Retreat Giveaway

HP has posed the question and made it worth your while to answer. They’re giving away an amazing prize: a trip to Napa for six people on your team and a technology makeover for your team! To enter, all you have to do is share a story about surprising returns on something you bought.

Here’s how it works:

Tell Your Story

The best user-submitted stories of surprising ROI will be featured on the site.

Complete prize details:

Grand Prize
A five-day trip for six to Northern California wine country, including:

* Round-trip coach class ticket to San Francisco International Airport
* Two full-size rental cars for the duration of the trip
* Five nightsâ accommodation at Fairmont Mission Inn & Spa (double occupancy in a Luxury Suite with a fireplace)
* Daily breakfast
* Six-hour wine country limousine tour, with tours and tastings at three wineries
* Ride on the Napa Valley Wine Train, including gourmet lunch and wine-tasting seminar
* Hot air balloon ride over wine country with Up & Away, including brunch
* $550 gift certificate per person for winnerâs choice of spa treatments
* A gift certificate for dinner for six at a fine-dining restaurant in Yountville

And, after your refreshing reboot in wine country, go back to work with new HP technology.

Grand prize:

* Four HP ProBook computers and 1 Palm smartphone
* Two HP Color Laserjet CM2320fxi printers
* One HP Color Laserjet CP2025dn printer

Silver Prize:

* HP ProBook 4520s computer with broadband included and free case
* HP Color LaserJet CP2025dn printer

Bronze Prize:

* HP Mini 5103 computer
* HP Color LaserJet CP2025n printer

The contest closes on October 31, 2010. ( http://bit.ly/95QWoo )

Read the detailsand find out how to get your story with those already on the HP ROI Giveaway site.

Now that you’ve thought about it. Do it!

Read some stories and realize how they connect us to the people who wrote them. Notice how each business became more interesting because of the story behind it.
Your story is part of what makes your brand and your business one of a kind.

The real prize here is what you’ll get by act of answering the question — share your story and you’ve already won a great brand insight.

Share it with HP and you might get another huge ROI story about your brand — the story of how writing about surprising ROI became a business retreat for six and a makeover for your business tech.

So you see now why I wanted to share this sponsored event. The insight gained from participation is in itself a prize.

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

A Vacationer’s Guide To Blogging

October 20, 2010 by Guest Author

by Jael Strong

—-

The sun, the sand, the relaxing rhythm of the crashing waves – this is paradise. The cool drink on a hot day, the delicious food, the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that keeps reminding me that there is something I just have to do! What is happening to my vacation?!

Here I am in sunny Florida, sleeping in everyday, and I should be thrilled to be a thousand miles from Ohio (and I am, mostly), but I have sabotaged my vacation. I should have done one of many things to avoid working while on vacation, but I didn’t, and so for at least a few minutes everyday, I pay the price for not planning well enough in advance.

Blogging is a regular gig. Whether we blog daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonally, the expectation is that our blog will show up when it is supposed to show. Blogging inconsistently isn’t an option since we hope that readers will come back at the expected time to read more of our great content. If we’re a no-show that is bad for business.

But vacation is a chance to get away from it all, even blogging. So, what should I have done to keep myself from having to work while on vacation? Oh, to be able to travel back in time…

Trading Places

If you’re fortunate enough, as I am, you have at least small network of individuals with whom to trade work. I had many opportunities to cut back on my vacation workload. During the planning phases, I should have said to Terez Howard, my writing cohort, I’ll take that assignment if you take this assignment. Even as my vacation days approached and I saw that I had work scheduled during vacation time, I could have given Terez a quick call to ask for a switch, but I didn’t. So sad, so sad…

Doubling Up

I know someone who always has their work done well in advance. That is great! If you can get the writing out of the way before vacation, then you certainly don’t have to worry about it while on vacation. This would have been a wonderful option for me.Â I could have organized myself so that I did twice as much writing the week before my trip, freeing up vacation time. Even if I had done a portion of the writing in advance, it would have lightened my vacation workload.

Paring Down

Admittedly, this is what I did. I didn’t trade or double up, but it is never too late to decide that something can wait for later. Obviously, if you are writing for a client or for someone else who is relying on you, you can’t short change them. But I took a look I my “to do” list and decided that some of the behind the scenes activity could wait until I was back home in Ohio, enjoying the warmth inside as the frigid air blows outside.

I really must go now. There is going to be live band playing poolside soon and I want to reserve my place in the sun. In the meantime though, how do you organize your blogging around vacation time?Â

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

Thanks, Jael

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

How Do You Recognize and Attract Heroes and Champions for Your Brand?

October 19, 2010 by Liz

(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

10-Point Plan: Enlisting Heroes and Champions

Those Who Are Waiting to Lead

Finding the heroes and champions who already love what you do. It seems every time I give a presentation about growing business and social business a few CEOs and business owners find me to talk. They want to know to get started raising a barn — a vibrant internal community of fans focused on growing their business — rather than building a coliseum — a huge endeavor that employees work on for them. They want to use social tools to connect all of the people — employees, vendors, partners, and customers — who might have ideas and insights that will help their business thrive.

The first question is how to find and attract those heroes and champions.

How Does a Business Identify Heroes and Champions?

Last week, I wrote about assessing and benchmarking the community with two informal tools that allow people to offer their opinions on the state of things. The second tool, a sociogram, is often used in education settings to determine social networks and influencer hierarchies. It’s a gem of a tool for finding out who already has influence within a group.

To find the heroes and champions of the change toward a stronger community look to the sociogram to find the people who were chosen most often as

people others would ask to teach them something new. (training stars)
people others would invite to attend or a gathering of your friends. (social stars)
people others would ask to offer you a recommendation on the quality of their work. (leadership stars)
people others would ask to to do all three. (influence stars)
Identify and enlist a core team of champions to lead the quest.

It easy to see how these four groups, particularly the last would be the people that your team and your community look to for answers, advice, and how to evaluate and navigate change.

So it follows naturally that the people who scored highest in these groups might be the first team of heroes and champions that we bring together to talk about the brand values they believe in and those that are the new mission.

Look for the Leaders You Already Know

Attracting and enlisting these heroes can be natural and easy if we really are set on raising on barn, not building a coliseum. We lay out the vision clearly, explaining the goal and the rewards of getting to it.

We’re going to build a business that will make work easier, faster, and more meaningful for us and the people who work with us. AND We’ll do it by aligning our goals and building something that none of us could ever build alone.

Are you in? What skills do each of you bring? What are the minimum processes and rules we need to keep honest, respectful communication? What problems do you see? How might we solve them before they begin? How can we best bring this message back to the rest of the team?

Yet people can respond to a clear vision for many reasons. Some are drawn to the work. Some come for personal reasons. Some come to build something they can’t build alone. Some may come because they seek approval and attention.

Look for those who show leadership qualities of their own.

Competence and core values – champions who love your business understand what moves the business you’re in. They add insight into how to bring the vision to life. They have integrity, are trustworthy, and respect others. They are examples of intelligence and heart.
Positive energy – heroes and champions bring out the best in others. They have the energy to invest in big ideas with a spirit of inclusion, gratitude, and generosity. Curiosity fuels their solutions, inviting ideas from all sources.
Strength of character– leaders who can carry a vision have a strength of conviction, no matter the power of their role or position.

Before you try to create brand evangelists why not reach out the ones you already know? As you look for the people you would call heroes and champions, you’ll find they’re connected to others who are much like themselves. Invite just a few to a meeting and begin planning a barn together.

How do you recognize the brand evangelists you already know?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss – Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How Do You Know When Quitting that Quest Is a Good Idea?

October 18, 2010 by Liz

It’s Something Like Business Infatuation

I just spent an hour working on art for a blog post that I couldn’t write. The concept was too hard, to convoluted and too stupid to deserve the time and space it would take to explain it. It didn’t deserve a diagram. It didn’t even deserve a blog post.

I’ve done that before. It happens when I get too involved with my own ideas and lose sight of the people I’m writing for. Lucky for me, I recognize the symptoms sooner and sooner each time.

Most of them have to do with working too hard to make something work right.

How to Know When to Quit

It happens with ideas, with projects, and with relationships. We get started on something small or something big. Somewhere along the line infatuation sets in. We’re inspired with a foolish or extravagant love for some part of it.

It may be that we’ve discovered a little known fact that’s fascinating to think about.

Why your friends will always have more friends that you do.

It may be the most musical sentence we’ve ever written, that doesn’t fit inside any paragraph of what we’re writing now.

When I give my soul room to breathe, everyone I know gets nicer.

It may be the person, the career, or the company that immediately caught our attention and got us thinking new thoughts. It may be the project or idea we just thought up that moved us to get to doing our most outstanding work.

Whichever it is that has captured our inspired commitment to work at some point, when things stop working, we don’t want to believe we were wrong. Rather than recognizing the problem, we keep fighting to make it right again. We unconsciously find ourselves committed to a failing course. It’s an emotional response. It’s irrational and time wasting at best. Costly at worst.

When we’re on a quest, we’re emotionally involved. Emotions filter judgment and skew our evaluations. They build cognitive bias which reinforces our beliefs and often clouds the truth. How do you know when to give it up? Here are questions you might ask to figure out if you’re working too hard to make something work.

Do you find yourself moving things around more than you’re moving things forward? Measure the time and effort you’re spending compared to similar situations.
Do you find that you’re talking more about how things could / should / might work than talking about the work itself? Talking about behavior and process is not the same as talking about the work.
Do you find that you’re spending time rewriting or reworking all around one detail, one person, one idea that you love? When a detail becomes more important than the work, stop to remind yourself of your goal.
When you try to explain to others what’s holding you up, do they suggest that you lose the exact piece that you care about most? Do you hear yourself arguing for the problem rather than looking for a solution?

If you’re finding yourself saying “yes,” you might want to get some distance to find a less personal view. Imagine what the situation or the project would be like without the part or person that you have formed a personal relationship with.

Suppose you were offered the option to move that “lovely dear” to another project where he, she, or it is a far better fit? If the feeling you get in thinking of your answer is relief, then you know you’re working too hard to make things work.

How do you know when quitting your current quest is a good idea?

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Successful-Blog is a proud affiliate of

Thanks to Week 260 SOBs

October 16, 2010 by Liz

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.

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.

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