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Resource blogs for business best practices

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The corporate blog.

It’s often a wasteland of promotional blurbs, outsourced marketing-speak, and keywords.

However, in the right hands, it can be an informative, valuable resource for all of us. Today, I’d like to highlight some of the corporate blogs that frequently share useful information and thought leadership.

Buffer Blog

The team at Buffer spends an insane amount of energy on well-researched, deep-dive blog posts. You’ll find yourself bookmarking them for later. They cover topics like social media, online marketing, and business in general. Bonus—there are additional blogs devoted specifically to workplace culture and engineering.

RingCentral Blog

RingCentral’s blog is focused on business phone systems, but it also includes examples of innovation, business strategy, and small business success that would be helpful to any entrepreneur.

Hubspot Blog

If you’re looking for great insights into marketing and sales (both strategy and tactics), the Hubspot blog is always full of tips, techniques, and best practices. You don’t have to be a Hubspot customer to access their great resources.

Orbit Media Blog

The Orbit blog is clear, concise, and super meaty. These are web design and content marketing posts you’ll want to bookmark, take notes on, and refer back to over time.

Moz Blog

One of my favorites, and the recognized authority on SEO. This is a blog with personality and true thought leadership in the optimization space. If you want to know the latest strategies for dealing with Google’s algorithm, this is your go-to blog.

 

Those are some of my favorite resources, please share your favorites in the comments!

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Featured Image via Flickr CC: bagsgroove

E = mc2 of Business — Better than Flow

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E = mc2

You’ve probably heard that.
In the world of physics, it’s explained as

Total energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

Not long ago, I had the rare and amazing experience of being in a group, with a group, part of a group of coworkers who are on common quest. They’re building a company and they’ve invited Amy Derby and me to join their social media quest.

The room was electric with ideas. The total kinectic and potential energy really did equal mass multiplied times the speed of light squared. I can’t stop thinking about what makes that happen — because when we went back it happened again.

  • The leaders are learners who liked learners around them.
  • Every person in the room is clear on his or her role.
  • Every person has the power to see what see and know what they see and know.
  • Information is the currency of getting thing done and the trust was the speed of execution.
  • Making progress and enjoying it is more important than being right.
  • They understand how to be personally invested without taking things personally.
  • The challenges were within reach for the skills and the time line.
  • Everyone knew which priorities came first.

The first four-hour meeting sailed by with total engagement, without self-consciousness or boredom. The seond one did too. It was group flow — that state of “being in the zone.” Twitter was discussed, but no one even thought of tweeting.

E = mc2 of Business is putting all of our social-relational team energy into our work. It’s better than flow, because it’s got the exponential power of a team.

I wonder if they were aware how much they smile.

Have you ever experienced the E = mc2 with the people you do business?
How do you know when you’re with a team that has it?
How do inspire it and fire it up?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

 

How to Wear the Hats of a Social Media Champion — 5 Key Traits of Credible Social Media Champions

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It Starts with Amber’s Hats

The Living Web

Last week Amber Nashlund wrote post about the hats a social media champion wears. Whether we’re working inside a company or independently, anyone who offers new ways to do anything knows the challenge is not meant for the faint of heart. Knowing which of Amber’s hats to wear and which skill to call on for each situation is part science and part art. That’s the expertise of a social media champion — it’s the key leadership trait of any business manager leading change.

The proverbial hats — the know how, the expertise — won’t get far with a group that doesn’t know and trust the person wearing them. I know that Amber agrees. We’ve talked about this on other projects we’re planning together.

Remind You of Anything?

In the early years of educational publishing, dedicated teachers wanted more authentic materials than those offered by big publishers. So they made their own tools, activities, and classroom materials. Soon other teachers noticed and asked to use them. A business was born. Teachers made products and sold them to other classroom teachers they knew. The products were handmade, bound with plastic, and copied somewhere like Kinkos.

Rough edges were a mark of authenticity. Hand drawings and low-design meant the quality was in the content. Those qualities said “A real teacher made this.” New customers knew the books were good because they knew the teachers who made them.

The best of those dedicated teacher-publishers gained experience and perspective. Some left their own classrooms to serve more classroom teachers full time. However, they found growing their business wasn’t as easy as starting their business had been.

Our dedicated teacher-publishers saw other dedicated teachers offering homemade products for individual classroom teachers. Inexperienced copycats and opportunists were selling look-alike products that made empty promises and offered bad practices. Big educational publishers began to make books for individual classroom teachers too.

Classroom teachers had trouble discriminating the value from the noise.

When their customers knew them, the “rough edges” had been a certain kind of credibility, now those same homemade values made their products look shabby. Dedicated teacher-publishers needed a new way to connect their expertise with the classroom teachers they served.

Remind you of a situation anywhere near us right now?

How to Wear the Hats of a Social Media Champion

In the early days of blogging and social media, people learned by trial and error and then taught other people. We read their blogs or worked with them personally. Only so many sources existed. Someone new could recognize a wise teacher from a fool by seeing what the wise teachers had in common. We knew who was credible.

Then the blogopshere and the world of social networking exploded. Whole populations exist that have no contact with each other. Anyone can put on the social media hats. It’s hard to discriminate the value from the noise. We need to find new ways to connect with the people we want to serve.

When faced with the same challenge, those teacher-publishers shifted their thinking. They took their expertise out of the handmade package. They raised their production values to match the market. The successful dedicated teacher publishers made careful choices to convey their shared values with their classroom-teacher customers.

They offered the same solid expertise, the same content, in a new presentation.

In any noisy market what newcomers first encounter is presentation. Presentation is more than first impression. Presentation lays the groundwork for connection and relationship.

The way we wear the hats of a social media champion — our presentation verbally, visually, in text, in tone, in personal relationships — is a vital part of the expertise those hats represent.

A social media champion is a living presentation of his or her social media expertise.

Our presentation shows whether we understand who we’re talking to and what they value. From the choice of the photos and the type on a blog — new design in the works — to the choice of whether to wear a grunge jeans to visit a lawyer client, the way we “package” a message communicates even before our first word is offered.

5 Key Traits of Credible Social Media Champions

I’m not thinking we should change our identity. Just the opposite. What I’m proposing is that we make our best traits visible — that we walk our talk in the following ways. I see 5 key traits of in the social media champions I most admire and so I recommend them here.

  • Know who you are. — Be a person, not a personal brand. People make credible relationships. You make things happen. Your brand is a reflection of that. Credibility is based in actions that build trust and relationships.
  • Communicate what you stand for. — Define social media in detail in clear terms. Expertise leads a champion to have opinions about what works and what doesn’t. Be certain about your philosophy so that like-minded folks can find you.
  • Connect through the tangible and the intangible. Social media is about connections. An expert connector is focused on meeting other people where they feel comfortable. Everything from the vocabulary we use to our choice in dress code can be a bridge that connects. Great connectors show relationship expertise by using every chance to relate.
  • Be able to explain the social media culture in concrete world terms. Incidents like what happened to the Motrin ad earlier this month cause concern. Champions offer a open doors and reach out with guidance. Give context and offer familiar analogies. You’ll build bridges to replace what was fear.
  • Value Their Expertise and Be Available to Them Champions know that every voice brings value expertise of its own. They see the potential of new ideas adding to the culture. Find small, low-risk ways to invite interested questioners to listen, watch, and participate. Be available to explain what they encounter.

Long before they offer us a chance to speak or show off our social media hats, people evaluate our credibility. By the time we talk, they’ve already decided whether they will listen. Jason Falls says it best,

“Social media, you gotta live it.”

It takes quite a skill set — and several hats — to be a social media champion: listening, understanding, building on what went before, showing proof of success, engaging skeptics in meaningful conversation, inviting them into new ways of participation, planning action appropriate to their history, demonstrating ways that make jobs easier, more effective, and more efficient, helping keep the focus, and cheering people on when they lose the faith.

That’s why it’s a called champion, not a manager.

What traits do you see in the social media champions you trust? Who’s earned your credibility?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

A 3-Step Social Media Reality Check

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Are We Listening to Conversations about Us?

The Living Web

We’ve had some time to learn the social media tool kit — sort the hammers from the levels, figure out which goes with which . . . People who’ve been watching are getting curious.

But don’t get confused. The folks from outside the social media fish bowl aren’t using the same yardstick to decide who knows what and what they need to know for their business.

Ever notice how human it is to forget to follow the same rules that we teach? We might be singing to the choir while we’re networking on the web, but are we practicing what we preach when we’re working with folks who want to join in?

In deliciously ironic way, the best example of customer conversation not being listened to might be those of customers WE are looking to serve. How do WE check?

We can’t Google folks who are talking about us offline.

A 3-Step Social-Media Reality Check

Everyone needs a reality check to stay on track. In a new industry, where the standards are being set and credibility is still a question, it’s vital to keep our game at its best. Here’s a simple way to ensure that we’re in touch with the world and not only hearing what bounces back. I’ve named it a 3-Step Social-Media Reality Check.

Make a point to have regular conversation with friends, acquaintances, and people you’ve just met. Plan to ask these questions and actively listen.

  • Three Buzz Words — Offer three buzz words that you use every day on social networking sites. Ask your conversation partners what each word means.
  • One tool — Name one social media tool that you use daily. Ask each person to say everything he or she knows about it and how it’s used. Then ask about the web tool he or she uses most.
  • The Internet — Ask each person to describe what the Internet is, how it works, and what it’s biggest impact is on the world.

If you made it this far only listening, you’ve got a wealth of information about how the rest of the world thinks.

If you didn’t, . . .

If you couldn’t resist telling folks about what the words really mean, what the tool really is, how the Internet is changing the world . . . hmmmm . . . I suspect you’re might have trouble explaining how social media is different from traditional push marketing.

Reality check: We tell people to listen first. Do we do that?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!