Successful Blog

Open Mic 7pm Chgo Time: Comparing Online and Offline Culture

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Join Us Tonight

JOIN US TONIGHT AT 7PM

It’s Not a Another Life …

When go to another country, when we talk on the telephone, we don’t say that we’re not in real life. But somehow we’ve started thinking that because we’re using our minds to connect online, we’re not in the real world. It’s a different culture with different rules that’s all.

Join us tonight to talk about it. 🙂

Oh, and bring example links that explain your thoughts. .

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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What We Gotta Know about These Tools

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It’s Not What Comes After Twitter …

With the advent of SOBCon Hands-On event partnerships, I’m enjoyng the pleasure of forming relationships and working alongside people who share my business passions organizations, businesses, and individuals learning to serve their markets by working online and off seamlessly. Watch for them in the next few weeks.

The authentic candor of the conversations with Susan Kuhn Frost, Gio Galluci, Erica O’Grady, DDGriffith and Starbucker has totally convinced me that teaching the tools isn’t an end in itself.

Businesses of every size seem confused about integrating the Internet — they see social media tools as key drivers of business. Social media tools don’t build a business.

I keep thinking of an editor with a writing assignment. She had talent, experience, and the best equipment to use to write the piece she was assigned. She came to me on day three, saying that she just couldn’t do it.

After a few minutes, the problem was easy to spot. All of the tools in the world wouldn’t fix it.

She hadn’t decided — didn’t know — exactly what she wanted to say.

You can’t use the tools of a writer if you don’t know that.

Gotta Know the Goal Before the Tool Is Gonna Help

To bring it down to it’s most basic form, the business that picks up the tools first without setting goals first won’t don’t do well.

Email, telephone, Twitter, any tool is only as useful as it match to the purpose. Not the other way around.

If we want to be successful using social media tools, we need to know a few things to make the tools work:

  • Who we are.
  • What we offer.
  • Who we’re offering that to.
  • Which tool is a match.

Just like the editor, who had to know what she wanted to say to use the tools at her disposal …

I’ve decided to let the other guys worry about what comes after Twitter … from the pencil to to the typewriter to the telephone to the computer … they’re all tools.

We gotta know what we’re using these tools to do.

Have you seen people get so involved in a tool like Twitter that they’ve used it without really having a goal?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence!!

Beach Notes: Beach Gallery

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

We sometimes go to galleries where there are sculptures and artworks that are made from materials that have been found in nature, recycled and then as art installation sold for thousands of dollars..

Recently we had the pleasure of enjoying a sculpture made by nature for a week or so on Rainbow Bay Beach for free. We now think of the beach as natures gallery.

seasculpture

What uncommon sights of art have found in nature?

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Thanks to Week 193 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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media-mensch
cash-flow-hero
jacob-morgan

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

How to Blog Like a Beginner …

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A few words I’ve said before that I want to share on my birthday …

Something blogging has taught me a lot about — not just the beauty of paying attention to one thing at a time — but the fulfillment of offering other people a chance to talk.

Half the show is in the comments. Thank you HART for saying that!

That was one of the first things we discovered here.

When I first started blogging, I often tried to do too much. I’d write a post that carried the load of too many thoughts at one time. Those blogging posts went both deep and wide. They were so complete, I left no room for readers to add their thoughts.

It’s not a conversation when all a reader can say is I agree with you, Great post. or You covered that subject really well. There’s just nowhere for a conversation to go, if I don’t leave room for a reader’s thoughts to squeeze in between my own. Now I know to think about the conversation when I write.

Here are a few things that I do differently now. What they add up to is staying in the mind of a beginner.

  • I ask more questions without answering them.
  • I don’t try to think through every possibility as I used to do. I write what I know and I let other folks add what they know to that.
  • I’ve backed off on holding myself accountable as an expert on the what I write about and instead, think of myself as one of the audience talking to another reader about an idea, waiting to hear his or her point of view.

The result? This social media beginner is having so much more fun than any teacher … and feeling so much more authentic.

What do you do to stay a social media beginner?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!