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SOB Business Cafe 01-08-10

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Pick the Brain
No one actually wants to encounter failure in their life. That’s because when you look at the isolated incident, it means that you haven’t found success. However, with the right attitude, you can use your failure in order to get yourself to success in an accelerated fashion.


Punctuality Rules


It’s so easy to tell writers that words are tools and it’s good to have as many in the toolbox as possible. Mixing and matching words to form the perfect sentence, after all, is what writers DO.

But what if your vocabulary is actually getting in your way?

CKs Blog
As we wrap up this year and gear-up for the next, I’ve compiled this nifty slideshow featuring 20 helpful B2B social media posts, presentations and series to help B2B marketers start the new year off ready to integrate social media into their marketing mix in a way that helps them transition their marketing (and their mindsets!) to the Web 2.0 environment and works to increase their rates of success within it.

Communication Overtones
It has always been hard to get people to do what you want them to do.

In fact, if you try to get me to do something, chances are I won’t. It is one of my fatal flaws. I am stubborn like that, but I am willing to bet that a lot of you are, too.

Midcourse Correction
Traditional conferences versus social conferences. Which will you plan this year?

Not sure about the “Social Conference?” Read this post on “Screw Your Event Resolutions. Do You Conference Social?”

Related ala carte selections include

Itty Biz
OK. I realize you’re backlogged on your reading. And I realize that you’re going to be so sick of the G word that your brain is going to bleed. And I realize that all you really want to do is forget the holiday season ever happened and hurry up and get to February already.

How to Make Unstupid Goals

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

SOB Business Cafe 12-18-09

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

MuMBRELLA
And as Saatchi & Saatchi has demonstrated, it now goes without saying that you actually need to understand social media before you start. You can’t start learning on the client’s time.

Altitude Branding
Information hoarders are an endangered species. It’s not enough to know something anymore, because the internet knows it, too. If you don’t share it, someone, somewhere, will. Your value to a company is no longer your tribal knowledge, because knowledge is currency now, and it’s traded on a massive free market.

Grow Map
Most of your market is trying to find you by searching somewhere – whether that is on a search engine, blog search, on their favorite Social Networking sites, using search tools like FeelTipTop or in Local Search Directories.

Small Biz Survival
We’re 15 days from 2010. It’s time to give your small business a jump start. That means planning, record keeping, and goal setting. I have four suggestions for you.

Adam King Studio
If you’re a professional interior designer or architect, you no doubt are aware of helping your client express themselves with the overall design of their home. In essence you’re providing an expression of your client’s values, beliefs, and principles. Hopefully, you’re also working with the rare customer who is employing you to design around their passion as well.

Related ala carte selections include

One Mann’s Opinion
Seth Godin is one of the most creative minds we have in this world.
He is not curing disease or changing the trajectory of war, he
makes us think and create.

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

SOB Business Cafe 12-04-09

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Abundance Highway
Like many people whose parent came out of the Great Depression, I was bought up very abundantly, but with a sense of caution,

“we can’t afford that” ” Money doesn’t grow on trees”

and other such limiting beliefs

Catskill Cottage Seed
That being said, the most interesting social media plays I’ve been involved in had noting to do with pre-existing relationships. They were spontaneous and unpredictable.

chrisg
Are you afraid of what people will think of you?

I bet you have skills, knowledge, experience or time that you could share with others, that you could offer to people to help them, but something is holding you back.

The Fluent Self
Me: It’s like I don’t want to put it out in the world yet. I love it. It’s beautiful. And there is something there that is just… not ready.

CK’s Blog
… it’s imperative that those of us who have been working and participating in social media for years take a BIG step back and remember that this space is still brand new to most B2B companies… and change takes time (and comes with objections aplenty). That’s just the nature of change.

siliconANGLE
We spent a lot of time talking about the FTC blogger guidelines when they were proposed and approved over the last several months. The new rules, in case you missed the news, went into effect a few days ago, with more or less a whimper.

Related ala carte selections include A SPECIAL OFFER!

Get to be a Super Genius!!
I’ve been invited as a guest to be part of Word of Mouth Supergenius Seminar on December 16th!! 12 How-To Classes, 12 Case Studies, 6 Authors Word of Mouth Supergenius!

Here’s the important thing: IT’S NOT ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA.

Social media is an incredible tool. But social media is not word of mouth marketing. It’s a tool we can use for the online portion of word of mouth. But it’s not even the main tool there. I would argue that more recommendations go by plain old-fashioned email than all the social networks combined. …

The point of word of mouth isn’t ecommerce; it isn’t to count clicks and CPAs.

The point of word of mouth is to be a brand worth talking about. To be a company that people are proud to tell their friends about. It’s to replace paid marketing with personal connections. To replace cash with love. To be fantastic.

And that’s what this conference is all about: A revival of TRUE WOM. A home for the simple idea that HAPPY CUSTOMERS ARE YOUR BEST ADVERTISERS.

True WOM is a movement.

It’s a movement that makes things better. It teaches companies to treat people better. It shows us that customer happiness is what it’s all about – for all these warm and fuzzy reasons… and because companies that are nice to people make more money.

You can attend too for a discount price of only $144 — that’s almost 1/2 price!! — if you use the code VIPSUCCESSFULBLOG. The discount goes all to you. I just get the pleasure of passing it on. Check it out here!

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

SOB Business Cafe 10-23-09

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

John Haydon
I was on the phone yesterday with a prospective client who expressed concern from her board about losing control. “I know that we need to eventually start blogging and tweeting,” she said. “but our board members are concerned about losing control.” She went on to describe what I think are extremely valid concerns:

Beth’s Blog
This morning I gave a presentation for a group of senior marketing people from performing arts centers around the country on social media. I’ve done a number of presentations and workshops for arts organizations over the years and have even created a wiki “Social Media for Arts People” with stories, links, and other resources, but haven’t spoken to arts organizations recently. It was a good opportunity to see how things have changed.

the incslinger
Social Media is the new darling of many brands, the silver bullet that will fix all ills. While some brands have made major in roads in discovering a new method of expanding their ability to reach their customers and potential customers some have quite obviously become so over enamoured with Social Media that they have forgotten the basics of managing a brand.

Barry J Moltz
To conquer the feeling of the “Beyond” you have to be “Above and Beyond”…. If you look at the most successful people throughout history, most have something uniquely special about them that makes them stand out….

Sheilas Guide
While I’d love to have unlimited funds, piles of frequent flyer miles and telepathic powers, I have to confess that I’m “attending” these conference by watching their Twitter hashtags, and you can, too.

Related ala carte selections include

Logic + Emotion
I recently returned from Blogworld 2009, a mix of business, social media and social events which spanned nearly 4 days taking over much of Las Vegas. It was a flurry of activity and got my gears turning—here’s a few things that caught my attention:

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

SOB Business Cafe 10-16-09

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are some of the SOBs of BlogWorldExpo

ChrisBrogan
To me, this is a large tapestry and we’re weaving the fabric of new stories together a little at a time. It’s okay if you don’t see it this way yet. I just want to share my perspective, if only to give you a fuzzy squint into what I believe is here, and what I think is coming with all this

Web Strategy
Whether you’re a professional speaker, company representative, or panelist at a conference, you must develop a social strategy during your speaking.

Copyblogger
As I said, the question headline is very powerful. When used properly, it creates an almost irresistible draw to prospective readers, no matter how busy they are.

altitude
When it comes to social business practices, some companies just seem like they’re made to tuck them right in and truck along, uniterrupted. Others have a harder time shifting the tide, and this whole social media thing has got them paralyzed and flustered and wondering what the hell they’re going to do.

Socialmedia.biz
While I think skepticism is in order, and the specifics of the government’s involvement need to be more clearly defined, in the end I believe the FTC’s move is a healthy and welcome development for social media.

The Bloggess
Sometimes when I’m on twitter I forget that I’m looking at the home page and I think I’m in reply mode and I’m looking at all these responses and I’m all “Oh my God, these people love me. Just look at all of these new responses” and then I look closer and I’m all “WTF?

Related ala carte selections include

Congratulations to Snippets of Life!

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

SOB Business Cafe: 10 Posts that Inspired My IZEAFest Talk

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

IZEAFest Edition

This weekend I get the pleasure of speaking at IZEAFest at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida. What an awesome experience that was and how cool to be among so many Internet friends. You can out more about the experience and how to be part of it at IZEAFest.com

izeafest

My conversation, Navigating and Networking in the Seamless Concrete-Virtual Universe, is about the question How can you leverage relationships to become successful in business? Naturally personal identity, an irresistible offer, conversation, and community online and offline will be important and featured throughout.

The Specials this Week are

Ten posts that inspired my IZEAFest talk.

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. …

I call him up. He answers.
I say, “Hi, Eddie, how am I?”
He replies, “Oh, you’re fine. What do you think of me?”

I heard them talk and laugh. They were talking “cool talk” about how cool they were and how cool I was not.

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.

I was in the game, but I wasn’t playing with all that was in me.

I looked around and saw I wasn’t the only one that was holding back.

He was instant community. He was kind of like Tom Sawyer. He could smile around a corner.

Strategy isn’t a plan, a decision, a goal, a destination.
It’s a tool for leveraging who you are, what you know, where you are, the environment, and how people think and respond to each other. Strategy is a system for improving your position.

The Traffic Game, Auditioning Ants, and How Communities Grow

… by the time I came along, the neighborhood wasn’t much more than a huge space that people came to eat and sleep.

The beauty of enlisting a social media community from the start is that communities only have time for ideas that will work.

Because deeply knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.

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