Successful Blog

The WHOLE WORLD Is Playing Today!!

by


Worldwide Day of Play

KaBOOM!

That’s right! Today is the day to get serious about playing. Yeah, I didn’t know either until I met up with Annie from KaBOOM! She let me in on the news that today is the Worldwide Day of Play. Here’s the news about it.

Now that you’re in the spirit, how’re you going to celebrate?

Don’t forget to play — at least a little!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

SOB Business Cafe 09-26-08

by

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

skelliewag reveals the power of breaking the rules.
It was a little painful to read Darren Rowse’s series of posts on letting your blog go. It hit a nerve with me for reasons that are probably self-evident: in the last four months there have only been eight new posts at Skelliewag.

Writing on the Web reports and reminds us that we work to get paid.
Because that’s how blogging works. You write relevant content to make your readers’ lives better and one day, they respond to your offer of a service or product. There’s more to it than that, of course.

Pajama Professional reports and details two ways to right a wrong.
I wanted to build a list to occassionally share information outside the blog and maybe promote a few products. I wanted it to be an avenue for useful information, but I felt like “saving” stuff for my list might lower the quality of the information on the blog.

Read, Write, Web reports and reveals the benefits of a feedreader at work.
We recognize that the single biggest barrier to feeling justified in reading blogs on the clock may be that most people simply don’t know how to find the best blogs that are relevant to their work. For that we refer you to our recent post Comparing Six Ways to Find the Best Blogs on Any Topic and we discuss specific tactics you can use below.

Marketing Diva reports, relates, and tosses out a few pink boas.
Networking on iPhones and Blackberries. Networking in-person. Tweets on screens. Tweets on cells. Parties and People. An industry finding its way. New companies. New technology. New bloggers. Conference Word: Vulnerability

Related ala carte selections include

Six Revisions goes gorgeous.

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

Get Enough Sand

by

Through an Hourglass

hourglass

People once used sand to mark time in an hourglass.

Marking time doesn’t seem to be living.
An hourglass hardly seems joyful.

Where I grew up the sand is rich, white, and unique. Its rounded grains of clear colorless quartz, diamond-like in hardness, are pure silica (silicon dioxide) uncontaminated by clay, loam, iron compounds, or other foreign substances.

White silica is sand for windows and marbles. As kids, it was cool to see the local factory logo on every car window in the nation. It was also cool to grab rejects behind the marble factory — flat disks of colored glass are fascinating to any kid not yet age 10.

Sometimes we wondered how tiny salt-like grains could become clear windows and colorful marbles. Most times we never thought about it at all.

The local dairy built a recreational lake on their property. They floored and bordered it with the pure white, clean, clean sand . . . Swimming lessons, dates, beach parties, even weddings took place there. Famous rock bands played there while we danced by the lake.

We had more than our share of sand in our shoes and our hair. That fact was pointed out nearly every time we walked within 20 feet of an adult.

Sand, grit, guts, gumption, moxie . . . We found those vibrant synonyms in a book in high school — the one with the metaphors. The same words might describe a well-lived life.

Where I come from the sand is unique.
I bet it’s unique where you come from too.
What if we take the sand out of the hourglass this weekend?

Get enough sand and we’ve got a beach.

Ever built a castle?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

What Parts of Your History Are You?

by

We Are Who We Were

Missing_brick_by_sxc.hu

When I first came to blogging, I had decided to write my way into a new career. I was lucky enough to have a background that such things might be possible. So I set off with the metaphorical wind in my sails. It was working well for quite some while.

I was sure. I was certain. I put myself out there. I brought my “beginner’s mind” to the situation. I brought my best thinking to the new problems that I eagerly came to conquer and solve. It was refreshing, invigorating. I was in the game again. At least I thought so.

Then I woke up.

I realized something was missing, more than something — whole parts of my skillset, my experience, and my history. I wasn’t talking about or using what had taken me a career to acquire. When I left my old situation, I left behind useful parts of me.

Twice in the last week, I’ve had a conversation with people who’ve done the same thing I did — walked away from talents or skills when they walked away from a situation that no longer gave them room to grow.

An intelligent someone said last night, “All of this time I’ve been totally missing what I love to do.”

Sometimes life is so much about learning and building that we totally miss the hole in the wall. We forget that we build our future on what we’ve learned and accomplished before. Our skills and talents become part of who we’ve always been and who we are.

Our experience is the mortar that holds us together. Our history is the glue that connects us to each other. Fashion and buzz words fade away. Memories and learning are what remain.

I’m a teacher. I’m a writer. Try as I might to do other, in some way, those are what I’ll always be.

What parts of your history are you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buyers, Readers, Buzz Snackers and Bandwidth Bandits

by

Not Live, but from Blog World Expo

Some asked that I post my slide deck. I’m delighted to say an hour after I put it up on slide share last night it was featured on the front page.

The Presentation had two parts.

The main points of Part One are about stats.

  • Stats are great for drilling down and sorting information.
  • We can learn about past behaviors from statistical data.
  • Statistical data does not aggregate into something human.
  • People don’t behave like stats.
  • People are important for many reasons stated on slide 8.
  • People are also important because they make exclusive relationships, understand / interpret your intentions and can tell you what you’re doing wrong.
  • The web talks a lot about traffic. Traffic comes in more than one kind.

The main points of Part Two are about strategically using stats.

  • Use them to know your position
  • Understand your objective.
  • Know the players and their objectives.
  • Then use statistics to choose your tactics.

The rest supports those points.

Buyers Readers Buzz Snackers Bandwidth Bandits By Liz Strauss

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: strategy business)

Note: Clicking the little screen next to the x/23 pages allows you to see the show full screen.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!