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How to Enter the Social Media Space Gracefully

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Start by Learning the Culture

A few months ago, Jim McGee and I were talking about how businesses and individuals have different experiences upon first entering the social sphere. It wasn’t long before we were into the usual cocktail party analogy.

The problem seemed to be as simple as this.

Two people, both new to a group, attend a social gathering.

The first person is interested in who will be there. She dresses nicely with thoughts about the people attending and the venue — as she would for any event. She comes alone. Most folks don’t notice her entrance. She smiles when someone looks. As she walks over to say “hello” she trips on a loose rug. Someone who caught that friendly smile reaches down to help her up.

A nice person … We identify with her. We’d want help too.

The second attendee wants attention. She floodlights her walk as she enters dressed in sequins and stars. She’s followed by an entourage who are flashing cameras and opening doors. She’s noticed long before she trips.

Think about which person is likely to get helped up and which is likely to be left on her own.

To pull off stars and sequins in a social situation, you have to be friends with the folks you’re meeting. Shine the lights on yourself before people know you, they’re unlikely to see fun and clever. They’ll see disrespect or arrrogance.

Grace enters quietly reflecting light on everyone.

@comcastcares entered gracefully. You’ve probably seen example of folks who made their entrance with too much noise.

How would you counsel someone looking to enter social media gracefully?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Hate Self-Promotion? … Could Trust Be the Issue?

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Deliverables Depend on Trust

Ask a venture capitalist what moves him or her to invest, what you’ll hear is a definition of the word trust. How could it be otherwise? A VC is betting on an investment to pay off. It’s a trust situation. A sure thing doesn’t exist in business.

Trust is part of most every purchase decision we make. We trust that we get what we paid for in working order. We trust that the people who offered it will stand behind their offer.

Trust is also part of the offering. Marketing and promoting what we do also requires trust — trust in ourselves, trust in our products and services, and a bond of trust with the person we’re telling about them.

  • If we trust ourselves, we’re confident that we’ll deliver on the promises we make.
  • If we trust our products and services, we know they’ll meet and surpass the expectations of the person who invests in them.
  • If we have a bond of trust with people about what we do, we’re not worried about our credibility. We talk to them as we talk to our friends, fully expressed and enthusiastic to share something we believe will help. They hear us as we want to be heard.

Do you hate self-promotion and marketing? Could it be that you’re trying to sell before you know the potential buyer trusts you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your irresistible offer.

World Business Forum: A View from the 3rd Mezzanine

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Up here the front row of the third mezzanine of Radio City Music Hall, world leaders speaking on the stage look like miniatures. On the video screen behind them, they appear larger than life.

I can’t help but notice the lovely irony that to us invited to blog about this event, the video version is easier to see and identify with.

rWe stepped out of the online culture to listen in here and report back. We’re tweeting, writing, and making opinions … listening to statements from a world of experience.

Most profoundly I see some connections that only we online might see. From Bill George challenged us Who’s going to step up today and make a difference?
Bill Conaty spoke of CEOs who need to support truth and candor. Patrick Lencioni said, We spend a lot of time making an organization smart, but not a lot of time making them health.

and Kevin Roberts brought it home with these statements …

reason leads to conclusions
emotion leads to action
inform … inspire …
do one thing

The chance to listen to outstanding people speaking about what they know has been huge and hugely thrilling. I’m sure many will detail the report of what was said.

What I notice is how, when we meet at the core of the matter we’re not so different online or off.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence.

How To Announce Your New Blog Post In Your Twitter?

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This is a how-to post.  I’ll keep this post simple.

Background

I think I am a lazy person actually.  Whenever I write a blog post, I know that the next thing I must do is to tweet about it in my Twitter account so that I can let my followers know.  Such a task can be leveraged to the computer to help us do it since it is just telling our twitter followers about our new blog post.

Requirements

  1. You must be using a WordPress platform.
  2. You must be an administrator in order to configure this properly.
  3. It is ok if you are using the free wordpress.com platform, or if you have installed wordpress in your own domain name.

Let’s get it started!

Step 1: You will need to download “Twitter tools“.

Step 2: Unzip the contents of the entire folder “twitter-tools” and upload into your wp-content/plugins/ directory. (You’ll need to know how to use FTP)

Step 3: Go to the Plugins page in your WordPress Administration area and click ‘Activate’ for Twitter Tools.

Step 4: Go to the Twitter Tools Options page (Options > Twitter Tools) to set your Twitter account information and preferences as shown in the screenshot below.

twitter-tools-1

This is my way of tweeting automatically after adding my new post.  What other methods have you used?

This post was written by Charles. He has been an Internet reviewer since June 2007.  He pours his passion for Internet marketing and Internet branding into his Twitter account actively at @charleslau,

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

Have You Tried Letting the Other Guy See Why You're Invested?

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What If You Let Them See?

Change the World!

His name was Michael. He was all of six years old, and he had a crush on me. That was only right I was his first grade teacher and I had a crush on him and every other kid that sat in the classroom with him.

Michael was a beautiful, logical, and thoughtful young student who liked to help make things go the way they should. I was young enough to think I could control things.

Every time we’d go as a class to anywhere, Michael would somehow end up at the front of the line. At some moment he’d get about four feet ahead of me … I’d make a point of NOT telling him where we were going, but he’d still take the lead.

Some days that bothered me. I thought about what that meant about me, about what that meant about him. Why should I care about a six year old wandering ahead of me? But I did. I wanted to lead the line. It was as simple as that.

One day, I stopped the line. I got down on my knees and looked Michael in the eyes with as much gentleness as I could muster.

“Michael,” I said, “How old are you?”
He proudly replied. “I’m six years and 12 days old.”
I said, “Four years is a long, long time, isn’t it?”
He thought and replied, “Yes.” (Four years measured 2/3 of his life. I had him there.)
I quietly put forth this request. “Michael, you see, I went to college for four whole years so that I could lead the line. Would you let me lead the line?”
“Oh yes,” he answered.

He was generous in letting me lead the line from that moment forward. Sometimes solving a problem is as easy as letting the other guy why we’re invested in the outcome.

Have you tried letting the other guy see your investment?

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.