Successful Blog

Is Productive What You Really Want to Be?

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I've been thinking . . .

about being productive.

I am competent. I get things done well, on schedule. I keep my promises and keep my clients happy. I don’t spend time on things that don’t move the game forward. I don’t spend time on things that get me looking in the wrong direction.

Is that productive? It seems so.

When I hear the word unreliable I get an image of a boy skipping his chores and sleeping under a tree. I sure am not unreliable. I just couldn’t bail when I knew someone was waiting for something I’m supposed to do. I value my credibility.

That’s probably productive too.

On a Friday when the sun is shining, I wonder whether I get so invested in productive endeavors that I forget to refuel. Do I really have to be productive every minute of every day?

I’ve slept under a tree. It’s a most relaxing way to spend time. Maybe this weekend I’ll be unproductive. Unproductive sounds like a synonym for free.

Are you productive? Can choosing to be unproductive be a good thing?

Liz's Signature

Drafting – Do Your Social Media Profiles Raise Your Net Worth?

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Introductions in Person and in Text

The Living Web

I’m on a quest to organize my social networking. I don’t want a model — one that balances relationship and connection to ensure high return on the time I invest — not a dashboard that tracks everywhere I’ve been. To that end, a modified version of the writing process is working well.

In a recent discussion about networking, we talked about how to introduce ourselves. We agreed that it helps to know about the person or the situation that brought us to the introduction. It seems obvious I would introduce myself in one way to a client and in another way to my son’s newest friend. Introductions are relational and situational.

We know to adapt our personal introductions when we’re face to face, but forget online. Text looks like text.

Do Your Social Media Profiles Raise Your Net Worth?

What’s the first thing we do when someone we don’t know asks us to connect? It makes sense to go to their page to find out who they are. Unfortunately, most of us wrote our profiles before we knew anything about the people on the site. Have your read your profile the day you signed up? Have you thought about the people who have?

The second step in the writing process is Drafting. I’m using this stage to define settting up our presence on a social site. Possibly the most important thing we do in developing a successful presence is define who we are on our profile page. The profile pages serves as an introduction for anyone who wants to know who they’re about to meet or who they’ve just met. Does your profile raise your profile

Use these tips to get more mileage from your social media profile pages.

  1. Research the culture of site.
    • Form a description of the primary group and secondary groups who use the site.
    • Make note of the groups they form and the kind of activities and information they share.
    • Most importantly, read their profile pages to learn the customs and language of the site. Read how your heroes and friends describe themselves and decide whether what they’re doing works.
  2. Write an authentic, but targeted profile for that social group. Think about how you would introduce yourself if you were in the same room.
    • Choose a picture that reflects the spirit of the social group. Including a picture makes your profile more memorable. Including the right picture makes that memory good.
    • Write formally or informally to match the culture and your goals. If you could only say one thing to this group, what would it be? Underscore that idea in the information you choose. Limit the extraneous details that might distract someone from seeing your most important thought.
    • Check the amount and type of information you share against the profiles that impressed you most. It naturally follows that the folks you want to connect with will find the same things important.
  3. Check back often to review your profile to be sure it’s still relevant and up-to-date.

A great social media profile can open doors and make connections that we might have missed had we done less. Like the about page on a blog, it represents us when we’re not there. Time spent to communicate with the audience who visits is a high-return investment.

Have you checked whether your social media profiles add to your net worth?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Need help with your profile? Ask Liz!!
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Find the Extraordinary in You!

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Do the Work of a Master

Church in South America

In the early evening, the natural light is just so that a photograph taken by a master will be stunning in its beauty. Every photon and atom aligns to make what might have been lovely or dramatic become even more. It’s the power of talent, skill, energy, and a giving up of oneself to the work.

When we do something with whispering passion the universe responds.

We see it in the church that isn’t our own that makes us feel still, as if we know something holy. We hear it in the unfamiliar music that brings us home. We feel it in the fabric so well woven that it feels like a child’s face when she’s smiling. We smell it, taste it, days after a fine meal has been shared.

Human hearts, human thoughts, and human hands consume themselves to make something of integrity and love. If we start with the integrity and the love, the rest comes without a glance. It becomes just what we do. We breathe the difference into life.

It’s extraordinary — extraordinarily human.

When we hurt, when we laugh, when we win, lose, or learn something we never knew, we look for each other. We look for what only another person can add.

We change the world just by being. Imagine what happens when we do what we’re meant to do.

It’s not ordinary.

Nothing human is ordinary.

Find the extraordinary in you.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!
Image sources: top-ETStrauss

Internet Fame, Leaps of Faith, and the Truth from Guy

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Famous? Dirt Poor?

insideout logo

In a recent conversation, a client made the following observation.

So many businesses seem confused about how to use the Internet. They appear to know their own product or service, but they don’t have clients or customers. They built it, and no one came. Has no one found the right model?

Some folks think the answer is to get famous. . . .

A strong personal brand and passion for your niche teamed is what makes a blog a powerful New Media marketing tool. That’s what will build trust, rapport, and reputation equity. Once you have those things, it’s a relatively straight forward process to turn those assets into profit. — Tribal Seduction

I’m with Tim Bourquin’s observations about that.

Twitter, blogs, podcasts and new media in general have created a wave of “famous” people – people with a “wealth” of attention and inbound links, but can’t pay their bills at the end of the month. Worse yet, some seem to think that if you do find a way to make your living successfuly, you’ve “sold out” and are no longer true to your audience. That’s a shame and it needs to change.

The “link” and “attention” may be the currency of the Internet, but until someone can show me how to pay my mortgage by linking to my bank once a month, that just doesn’t fly with me.

Internet famous isn’t “Oprah famous” . . . not even close . . . and the Internet forgets quickly.

When I asked Internet Rockstar, Guy Kawasaki, about what bloggers should know about blogging as business, he said.

The truth is that it’s very difficult to monetize a blog. I have a fairly popular one and sell less than $100,000 of advertising per year on it. It serves other purposes though for my activities as a venture capitalist, author, and speaker.

So to some extent, a blog can help with the overall branding and marketing of a company, but it’s a leap of faith.

A blog by itself isn’t a business. A product without customers won’t sell.

What do you see when you look at online businesses?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

Tunnels, Flying, and Where You Belong

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Building a Business Is for the Birds

Central American Archway - ETStrauss photo

Ever find yourself lost in a tunnel? Lost your job. Lost your best client. Lost your trust in yourself. How you got there isn’t the point. The problem is whether you’ll find your way out.

You’re faced with a choice. Do you keep walking forward, lay down in the dark, or try to blast through to the outside?

The voices in your head tell you that you’re foolish to think that anything but walking will get you anywhere. The voice in your heart is broken and tired. Yet the voice in your soul whispers, “Don’t give up.”

And you have this thought that maybe . . . well, they say that there is always a darkest hour . . . but you wonder whether the world you believe in exists only in your mind.

I’d like to offer one word.

Fly!

Fly out of that tunnel. That’s what the birds do. They take a deep breath, look to the light, and keep flying until they’re in the sun again.

Oh yeah, it’s work. Oh yeah, they get tired. But every instinct tells those birds to keep flying on, . . . and oh yeah, they sure seem to know when they get where they’re going. And when they get there, they sure look like they belong.

The world needs your song, your determination, and your laughter. The world needs you to “Build and Become.” No one else brings your version of clever.

Fly.

We’re waiting for you.

You belong in the sun.

Seagull landing

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!
Image sources: top-ETStrauss; bottom-sxc.hu