Successful Blog

Social Media Book List: #PROJECT MANAGEMENTtweet and The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web

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A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors to help manage their online book promotion. As part of my job I read a lot of books (and I love to read anyway!). I am here to offer a weekly post about one book author I am working with and one book I have put on my reading list. This week I will be highlighting ‘#PROJECTMANAGEMENTtweet’ by Himanshu Jhamb and Guy Ralfe. and ‘The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web’ by Tamar Weinberg. The books I discuss will cover such topics as social media, marketing, blogging, business, organization, career building, networking, writing, self development and inspiration.

‘#PROJECTMANAGEMENTtweet: 140 Powerful Bite-Sized Insights on managing projects’ by Guy Ralfe and Himanshu Jhamb

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“Jhamb and Ralfe have provided a real treat with this book. Each PM tweet provides a rich mini-lesson on how to succeed as a project manager.”
Anthony C. Mersino, author of ‘Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers’ and President, The Project Advisors Group, Inc.

People are transcending cultures and geographies and are embracing diversity in their experiences and interactions with others. Most importantly, this book is a thought provoking resource for managers and those who work with a diverse group of people, be it in the workforce, community projects, team building assignments, social gatherings, or business meetings. Organizations need to know how to manage diversity to be successful in the future, and in today’s competitive age, the flexibility and creativity augmented by diversity is crucial for success.

‘#PROJECT MANAGEMENT tweet’s’ quick-read and accessible format makes sure that you immediately ‘get’ the authors’ thought-provoking and time-tested insights and apply them directly to your own project management situations. Its tweet-sized wisdom keeps the reader’s perspective firmly in mind. In concise chapters, the authors cover what your bosses, your team members and your customers would wish you to know about project management. Among the many gems the author share is this takeaway: Every ‘unknown’ in a project can be guaranteed to introduce a ‘known’ risk. But, with ‘#PROJECT MANAGEMENT tweet’ near at hand, you can be assured of immediately minimizing your risks and multiplying your successes in project management.

Here are a few tweets from ‘#PROJECT MANAGEMENT tweet’ I would like to share with you:

#6 Testing without test plans is like landing in a new city without a map.

#15 Four key questions on a task:
What is being done?
How is it going to be done?
Who is going to get it done?
When will it be done?

#24 Acknowledge breakdowns, as soon as they appear, to the customer; but more important, to yourself first!

#36 Team members live in their own worlds. It’s the Project Manager’s responsibility to make the project a
part of their world.

#52 Pay close attention to the “Opportunity Costs” of your commitments to clients.

#77 Always try to recover any delay at the start like it was the last day of the project.

About the Authors:

Guy Ralfe, has worked on global projects for over a decade. At Starr Specialty Coatings, Guy manages project delivery. He is an active contributor on ActiveGarage.com, a web portal he co-founded to address the fundamental concerns of business.

Himanshu Jhamb, thrives on challenges in Software Project Management and has successfully led global teams in industries ranging from Telecommunications to eCommerce. Himanshu is Senior Project Manager for Atypon Systems and co-founder of Active Garage, where he frequently writes about Projects and Project Management.

You can purchase a copy of ‘#PROJECT MANAGEMENT tweet’ online at ThinkAha Books or at Amazon

This blog post is part of a virtual book tour done by Key Business Partners, LLC and I have received a complimentary copy of ‘#PROJECT MANAGEMENT TWEET’ by the authors.

The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg

Now I would like to highlight a book on my “review” reading list–The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web.

Here is partial book description on Amazon.com:

Written by an expert in social media and viral marketing, this book cuts through the hype and jargon to give you intelligent advice and strategies for positioning your business on the social web, with case studies that show how other companies have used this approach.

The New Community Rules will help you:

* Explore blogging and microblogging, and find out how to use applications such as Twitter to create brand awareness
* Learn the art of conversation marketing, and how social media thrives on honesty and transparency
* Manage and enhance your online reputation through the social web
* Tap into the increasingly influential video and podcasting market
* Discover which tactics work — and which don’t — by learning about what other marketers have tried

Many consumers today use the Web as a voice. The New Community Rules demonstrates how you can join the conversation, contribute to the community, and bring people to your product or service.

About Tamar:

Tamar Weinberg is a freelance writer and author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web (O’Reilly, July 2009) who specializes in social media consulting and strategy, blogger outreach, reputation management, and search engine marketing (SEO, link building, and Pay Per Click Marketing). She has been involved in the Internet since the early 90s and has dabbled in social online interactions for more than fifteen years. Tamar has been working nearly exclusively with Internet Marketing side since 2006, though she also has experience with web hosting and technical support and can handle complicated WordPress installations and configurations with ease. At the present time, Tamar is the community & marketing manager of Mashable and consults at social media marketing agency M80, in addition to working alongside other companies in her own role as a consultant.

Read more: http://www.techipedia.com/about/#ixzz0t0VnajSg

*courtesy of Amazon

You can purchase a copy of ‘The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web’ on Amazon.

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

#DellCAP: Have You Got the Right Model for Your Ideal Customers?

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Have You Really Thought about the People You Want to Reach?

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At the recent #DellCAP Days meeting in Austin, we — 15 customers and C-Level folks from operations and customer service — had an interesting discussion about sending customer service offshore.

When asked about it, the Chief-of-Staff gave a most honest and simple response that they felt that people wouldn’t be willing to pay the higher price for computers it would cost to keep those services in the U.S.

DELL is going for operational excellence in delivering there product. Operational excellence is a low-cost, reliable product with less customization and lower service.

The question came up … Is that attracting the market you want?

list-diagram-3_market_tiers

Every market falls into three tiers:

  • operational excellence … think Southwest Airlines
    An operational excellence model attracts customers who care most about price. Their loyal is lower. A second high value needs to hold them when a still lower price becomes attractive.
  • customer relationship … think Zappos
    A customer relationship model attracts customers who care about their individual experience. They want customization that suits their lifestyle and their values. They’re willing to pay more for what they value — service or commitment that is tailored to them.
  • product innovation … think Apple
    A product innovation market attracts early adopters and prestige buyers. This group is willing to spend more to get high performance and to be the first on the block who owns the shiny new object. They are also willing to pay a premium price for a one-of-a-kind experience.

As you can see each tier’s model attracts a different customer.

Whether we’re DELL or a solo service professional, we need to make sure our price / value model matches the customers and the market we can reach and those customers we want to attract to us. If you want fiercely loyal customers,

  • Know why people are buying what you offer and know that price will always drive your loyalty relationships. If you attract people who buy for price, they will leave if you no longer hold the lowest price in the market. Build in other values to protect your loyalty. Southwest has outstanding “fun” as their price value-added.
  • Incorporate barriers to entry to reduce the threats to your value-added. Zappos has established a “story of service” that underscores their outstanding commitment to relationships and empowered, happy employees who serve individual customers in unique and personal ways.
  • Be the “first hired and first trusted” to serve your most loyal fans. Value what your customers value. Apple doesn’t appear to let other price points or other offers change their dedication to building in “childlike wonder” into every innovate design they offer. They also realize that their most raving fan- customers will forgive a few glitches to be the first to own the newest Apple products.

All three tiers can offer great customers for the business who serves them.

Have you got the right model for your ideal customers?

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

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The Declaration of Social Media Business Interdepence

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Forgive Me Thomas Jefferson …
but we do share the same birthday.

declaration-of-independence

On the Internet, July 4, 2010

The Declaration of Social Business Interdependence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for people to band together, to connect, and to assume among the powers of the market, the innovative, competitive, and collaborative marketplace to which the Laws of Economics and of Human Behavior entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of all — customers, vendors, clients, coworkers, partners, competitors, consultants, C-suite executives, family members, friends (excepting the unethical, the liars, thieves, and gamers of the system) requires that we should declare the causes which impel us to the do business.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that life online and offline are both real life, that each is endowed with certain unalienable connectivity, that among these are conversations, relationships, transactions, and the pursuit of bandwidth to build dreams into realities.

–That social networks are instituted among creators, curators, crowds of fans, leaders, listeners, thinkers, and caretakers deriving their just powers from the consent of the community.

–That whenever any business, any site or any platform of interaction, any relationship becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to abandon or to abolish it. They may lay a new foundation on like values and organizing its powers that protect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence dictates that long established platforms should not be changed for light and transient causes — with the result of exporting information and friendships into chaotic ubiquity; and accordingly experience hath shewn, that people are more likely suffer bad code and crashing sites, than to change their social networking habits and passwords.

But when the possibility of abuses, misuses and usurpations — particularly of personal information, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off what might harm their reputation and their future security.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the social web, solemnly publish and declare,

  • That these social networks are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent (excepting those offering extraordinary paid content).
  • That we will navigate the social web with appropriate caution tempering our transparency, rising to the belief that TMI can be not only dangerous to personal identity, but a passive invasion of others’ privacy.
  • We throw down, block, and abolish all content thieves, spammers, scrapers and people who hijack our Twitter streams to try to sell things as soon as they meet us.
  • We shun people who get to know us for the purpose of exploiting our networks.
  • We ignore Twitter breakdowns and glitches at our pleasure and make no promise to continue to do so.
  • We distrust people who say they know social media, but have no online presence and no social networking profiles.
  • We curse bad links and outages that interfere with getting our work done so that we might spend time with our families.
  • We will never forget that no amount of talking or attention getting will help a product or service that is woefully lacking. Social media cannot fix bad hires, faulty product, or other failings..
  • We commit to being social offline and online in equal and equivalent measures to build trust through predictability.
  • We protect each other when we see something happening that could cause a fail. We will not take pleasure or participate in huge social media bashing sparked by bad advertising, bad employee behavior, or human error. Discussion will not require beating a horse that is dead already or fueling a fire unnecessarily.
  • We refer business to the people most qualified in our networks by value of their intelligence, competence, integrity, and interpersonal skills, not by value of their number of followers or their friendship.
  • We strive to grow our businesses, our relationships, and our personal awareness so that we might have more to offer. That growing and knowing will allow us to align our goals with strategic partners to build stronger business, relationships and communities.
  • We do not click links or open attachments from people we do not know … ever.
  • We recognize the value of our cooperative, respectful, authentic interactions with like-minded people and value every tweet, comment, blog post, and that we share as we build our businesses and rebuild the economy of the world interdependently. .

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other time of our Lives, participation in our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

We declare our interdepedence as people who work on the web.

—–
We’re not starting a revolution. It’s already started.

What will you declare?

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

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The Declaration of Independence

Thanks to Week 245 SOBs

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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.

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janet-clarey
justin-kownacki
oneorganizedbusiness
slymarketing
technology-for-mommies
upmo

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

SOB Business Cafe 07-02-10

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Underway
Holidays, they are the high points of the year, where everyone celebrates. The Fourth of July is the largest national holiday of the year in the US. Many people plan for months for the perfect evening out.

Carol Roth
Anyone who says otherwise is lying

There’s a big white elephant in the room (or sometimes a tiny white elephant in the room) and that is size. You keep hearing people say that size doesn’t matter- in business, in social media, sometime in boxer briefs- but let’s call it like it is- it’s not really true. When you get to the debate of quantity vs. quality, the real answer is that both matter.

McCurry’s Corner
The problem is sometimes people working in service businesses get so wrapped up in following instructions, or completing the task at hand, that they forget about the most important part, the customer experience. It happens all the time, especially in a society where speed seems to take precedence over everything else.

We Blog Better
You sit down at your desk, turn on the computer with your to-do list in hand – all set to knock out a few blog posts and then maybe work on an ongoing project or two. You start your post, and then decide to do some quick research to validate a point you want to make.

One minute you’re finding interesting information that you’ve definitely got to integrate into your post but then you notice a few mentions on Twitter you’d like to respond to…

Todd Weiss, C.F.A.
In all seriousness, how does one write a good blog article? How can you quickly draw in readers and keep them reading? Or better yet, make a comment? A Re-Tweet? Or Subscribe to your RSS feed?

Harvard Business Review
Susan Harrison, my mother in law, died several months ago after a long and courageous battle with cancer. Like most of us, she was not famous. If you didn’t know her you probably didn’t know of her. She lived in the relatively small community of Savannah, Georgia.

Smart Blog on Social Media
LEGO is a classic example of how a focus on your fans can change everything for a brand. In the late ’90s, sales were down, product innovation was low, and the big retailers they relied on were telling them they didn’t know enough about their customers.

Related ala carte selections include

Congratulations to Eric Lukazewski
on his new photo blog!

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Collaboration: How to Bring Back that Brand New Blog Feeling Again

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A Guest Post by Alexis Bonari

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If a blog is suffering from low readership, repetitive posts, or a general lack of innovation, chances are that it also lacks collaborative strategies. Some bloggers may be hesitant to even explore the idea of collaboration, foreseeing a loss of readership if they point out a better blog. However, experience shows the opposite: readers enjoy being introduced to new bloggers, so they’ll keep coming back for more.

Collaboration in Action

As an example of collaboration in action, take a look at remarkablogger and problogger as resources on blogger collaboration.

Setting Collaborative Readership Goals

From a remarkablogger post comes the idea of setting specific goals among bloggers for increasing their readership. A group of personal finance bloggers, inspired by a single challenge posted on Financial Samurai, agreed to increase their Alexa readership ratings within six months. Some aimed to join the ranks of the top 200,000; others challenged themselves to reach the top 50,000. But all 49 personal finance bloggers who answered the challenge observed significant increases in readership due to the collaborative nature of the goals they had set for themselves. One blog even managed to increase its rating from #1,432,262 to #215,606.

How did they manage this?

  1. They started right away without procrastinating. They didn’t make excuses about needing to think it over or question the feasibility of the task. They just joined up.
  2. They tracked something tangible. Whether it’s page rankings, readership, number of Tweets, or any other popularity indicator, this is an important factor in goal-oriented blogger collaboration.
  3. A concrete and desirable goal was set. Without focus, collaboration loses some of its efficacy.
  4. Keeping it casual enabled these bloggers to just “let the magic happen” as members of the challenge group created blog badges and set up tracking pages for collaborative commentary.
  5. They promoted each other. Small increases in readership added up for everyone and created a more synergistic partnership among bloggers.

Fresh Ideas for Effective Blogging Collaboration

A refreshing perspective characterizes problogger’s post the subject of collaborative blogging as a way to combat writer’s block. Recommendations include

  • guest blogging,
  • blog swaps,
  • joint posts,
  • interviews,
  • joint blogs,
  • joining a blog network,
  • chatting on IM or e-mail,
  • and participating in discussion forums.

    • Trying a blog swap (switching blogs for a day with another blogger) or joining up with another blogger to write interview posts about each other can liven up a boring blog. There’s no way to lose with these helpful strategies, so win-win collaboration makes immediate improvements for the savvy blogger.

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    What collaboration ideas have you helped you get back that brand blog feeling and reach for newer higher goals?

    ———-

    — Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching areas of online universities . In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

    Thanks, Alexis! You’ve cited two of the best blogging collaborators I know!

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

    It’s the people and the great information inside that make me a proud affiliate of …

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