Successful Blog

What Rick Cockrum Said . . . about Dreams and Roadmaps

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A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

Dreams and Roadmaps

Some dreamers put their dreams on the horizon and talk about what they wish. Dreams require a life to be more than a wish. If we only look at our dreams, we’ll see them fade into nothing. What does it take to live a dream into reality?

Here’s what Rick Cockrum said . . .

The most important thing I learned in school was how to learn, Leon. What your degree is in doesn’t matter. Dreams are NEVER smashed, though the implementation may have no resemblance to the original.

The best thing about having a roadmap and a strategy isn’t to stick to it slavishly, but to have taken the time to consciously decide where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, then how you’re going to act on the inevitable changes that have to be made, rather than just reacting to circumstances occurs.

Rick Cockrum from a comment on March 20, 2007

A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 11-07-08

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Copyblogger describes how to move people to action.
The right message at the right time can start a movement that changes the world, in both big and small ways. And social media has the ability to spread that message and organize that movement in ways not possible in the recent past.

davidbullock describes the key factors that made success. Be sure to follow the link inside the post to Using Social Media As A Promotional Strategy.
To learn any new skill, I find it is best to follow those who are actors in the marketplace. These are the ones who have uncommon practical experience that will never be found in a book and most times will never be documented and you have to engage them in the moment because it is easy to forget the details and thinking that surrounds a successful project.

Seth’s blog describes how to turnaround your life.
And for everyone else, effort is directly related to success. Not all the time, but as much as you would expect. Smarter, harder working, better informed and better liked people do better than other people, most of the time.

Confident Writing describes our resposibilities.
When thinking about writing and responsibility, let’s not forget this part. Your responsibility to shine. To lift the lid off. To write your most brilliant, sparkling stuff. To move mountains, and soften hearts. To write the words that’ll make the difference.

Related ala carte selections include

And BeingFive introduces

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

A Barn Raisers Guide: 7 Ways to Leave the Field of Dreams to Build a Thriving Reality

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Field of Dreamers and Barn Raisers

For quite a while, I’ve been working with businesses who have or are preparing to build or expand a web presence or social community. They ask me to help focus their strategy and to help bring people to their communities. They want to attract, impress, and ultimately engage fiercely loyal participants.

If you’ve been online for a while, you’ve probably noticed that a percentage of new arrivals get a key strategic point of community sites out of order. Field of Dreamers are sure if they build their idea their way the people will come. Except the people don’t necessarily see the same thing.

More strategic folks Barn Raisers avoid the risk by building the community as they build the site. They believe that people will help build a powerful idea. Barn Raisers invite collaboration from the people they’ll be serving and so what they build is often a gathering place for people even before it’s fully finished.

A Barn Raisers Guide

Here are 7 ways to leave a field of dreams and get people to help you build a thriving reality.

  • Look for similar dreams and listen to everyone who knows about them.
    Ask, search, and explore to find every reality that has the slightest things in common with your dream. Spend some time at each site you find. Meet the people there and see how they use each site. Hear every other guy’s dreams, wishes, needs, and point of view. Get curious. Ask questions constantly. Wonder about what people think of what’s old, what’s new, what’s in every space in the market. Have some ready questions such as this one: If you were going to build a space for people who like to imitate frogs, what features would consider important to include?
  • Turn your dream into promise to do one thing better than anyone else.
    Be able to articulate exactly what that is, why it’s important, and how fits in to a person’s life. Check back with those you spoke to and tweak your promised offer until the folks you’ll serve say it’s relevant to them and fits their lives.
  • Plan from conception to launch.
    Invite people from your outside usual circle to check in on what you’re doing along the way. Weigh their comments for value, sort them, and remember to put the good one to use. Thank everyone of them.
  • Turn your promise into a space for conversation, interaction, creation, and sharing.
    Build a connection conduit. If your promise becomes a blog, keep it sleek and without barriers. Make it easy to see and interact with you. Offer variety in resources and multimedia. Find ways to interact through events. If you’re building a community site, go easy on bells and whistles, execute your promise clearly, and better than anyone has before. Then use extra resources to find more ways for people to converse, interact, create, and share while on your site.
  • Be obsessed with easy.
    If you think something is easy, make it easier. When you’ve done that all you can, ask your grandmother or someone who’s never seen it to try using it without directions. If they don’t breeze through it, go back to the drawing board to make it easier.yet
  • Ask visitors for feedback and ideas on new ways to use the site.
    Let the rule be that everyone gets to pick their best way to do things. That develops into the kind of space that has the climate for relationships.
  • Build ways into your site to link out to and to celebrate your participants.
    Showcase your heroes. Begin with the folks who help you build the site. Give away five great referrals every morning and five more in the afternoon or evening. People notice folks who appreciate others.

If you invite folks to be part of a powerful idea, you’ll find that you suddenly have a knack for making spaces where people collect, connect, and start conversations. It might have something to do letting people help form the environments that they’re going to inhabit. It’s like painting a house that we’re going to live in — pride of ownership.

Barn raising has always been a brilliant strategy — building the relationships while you’re building a site.

It takes a little practice. And it takes leadership to let go enough to get the good stuff without getting the chaos. The best results always calls for the best from each of us.

I’m hoping as we build barns we might bring some Field of Dreamers to work with Barn Raisers on a community site. I thought maybe they might like the process. Do you think the two together would have a chance of success?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

It’s Time to Reach Our Best Hand Out to the Folks Coming In

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Did You See the Discussion?

Yesterday’s discussion about playing for keeps was a peek at a the idea it’s important to our best selves to what we do. The best people connections in life and business happen when our inside values are visible on the outside. Or as John Haydon said in the comments:

… whenever I am being honest with myself and authentic with others, I don’t even have to ask if I’m walking the walk.

Why Here? Why Now?

Each wave of new bloggers and social media practioners finds a different socialsphere. They arrive a little further from where it all began. The information, tools, and practices change and move from hands to hands. People find new uses for the tools. People use the tools and application in unintended ways.

The socialsphere changes a little with the integration of each new group.

It’s getting harder to tell the authentic practioners from the frauds. One cause could be that not enough of us are clear about the expertise we offer or how competent we are.

Soon the waves will be larger — more in the form of companies. The companies will come with goals / plans, money, and their own traditions and histories. Some wlll learn the tools, join communities, and understand the cultural shift the tools were made to facilitate. Some will learn the tools, but succeed by applying them in old culture ways. It’s likely some will try the tools and fail miserably.

And a new generation is arriving who’ve been using and testing the tools while they get their degrees. What changes will they bring?

We want mainstream arrivals to succeed and to grow what we started rather than accidently knock it down. Yet, it’s almost as if we’re the company and they’re the customers now. Like customers responding to a product, they’ll decide whether social media works for them.

Mainstream definition of social media and its success or failure will define the culture of the Internet.

In an apprentice environment such as this, new arrivals are only as good as the one who teaches them. It’s natural for people to study the folks they connect with most quickly and trust the most. That would be the first people who look competent, who talk with intelligence and confidence, and if at all possible, who already know their friends.

Right here. Right now.
It’s time to reach our best hand out to the folks coming in.

4 Steps to Raise a Barn and Build a Bridge

The plan that is unfolding begins with this model project. It’s planned to be the first of many projects for many people on the Internet. If you have a dream project on the shelf, you might start yours and track it alongside this one of mine.

This project that I’ve named “Don’t Tell ’em, Show ’em” involves bringing out the best of this blog, of myself, of the SOB list, and in a second part, help for others to do the same. It’s a barnraising and a bridge building endeavor that has these four traits.

  • The project is a business and community idea.
  • It’s a barnraising in that the community is invited to participate in building the space made for them.
  • It’s a bridge building in that businesses and individuals offline and outside the community are invited to participate. It’s a natural way for new arrivals to learn culture of the social web.
  • The project will have a date upon which it will be complete so that everyone gets the payoff of feeling and seeing success.

Then the folks who can will raise more barns and build more bridges on the next projects.

The process will be open. I’ll keep you in the plan as it unfolds. I’ll tell you what’s happening. I’ll ask for help when I get stuck. I plan to get attention, raise the bar, and show the value of what we’re about. If you have ideas how to do that better, faster, louder, or more efficiently — where to go what to start — if you have skills to volunteer, or if you want to track a project of your own, I’ve a comment box below. C’mon let’s talk.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related:
Why Play the Game, If We Aren’t Playing for Keeps?

5 Keys for Positioning Your Successful Blog

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Choose your position carefully
Choose your position carefully

Last week we talked about how you can drive a successful business through your blog and without being a salesperson. Today we will go over some of the steps that you can take to position yourself as an expert and your blog as a valuable resource.

Remember, while the goal is to increase the presence and reach of your blog in order to grow your business, it is not all about you. It is about getting positioned properly to showcase your customers and how their problems were addressed successfully.

Creating Value as an Authority

  1. Use your blog as a platform to communicate value. What benefit do your readers get from coming to or subscribing to your blog? Is that benefit immediately obvious? Is there a suggested path that readers can take to find the information that they are looking for? Also write about your customers and vendors, featuring them as the hero of the story. They will spread that story around for you.
  2. Use offline resources as well as online. Newspapers, while losing circulation (and, increasingly, any objectivity or relevance) still have some readers, and may be your only method of introduction to the less-than-savvy consumers that are not frequent blog-readers.
  3. Offer your services as a speaker. Your local Chamber of Commerce is an ideal resource for networking and exposing yourself to the business community. The Chamber is always looking for speakers and presenters at a variety of events. Your presentation should focus on an aspect of the business market that showcases your knowledge and expertise, but not your business specifically. For example, if you are a motivational speaker or job coach, you could give a presentation on employee morale and how its ups-and-downs affect productivity and the bottom line.
  4. Become active in your trade association. There is an association for nearly every industry and professional service. Get involved. Go to the meetings, volunteer to lead a group or head up a project. Get to know the movers and the shakers, and learn from them. Soon your knowledge and credibility will be at a point where you can offer to teach courses or give a presentation at a regional or national conference.
  5. Cultivate a different presence. I am not advocating crazy or risque attire, rather something that sets you apart from the rest of the pack. Everyone has a business card, you can hand out CD-ROMs, or flash drives, or something else particular to your industry. Computer-related items are particularly useful for adding value to your marketing, as they can include links to your blog, your portfolio, and other examples of your online presence.

I happen to know that the SOBCon crowd is particularly innovative – and I invite you to share your own positioning tactics. What would you add to this list?