Everyone has secrets to their success. It’s what makes them tick and it’s what makes them get things done. I’d love to share with you the secrets to success that I have found and would love to hear about yours.

I think that regardless of what we do in business, be it blogging, administration, bookkeeping, etc., we still need to have that secret in order to push forward.

1. The Speed of Implementation.

I can’t take full credit for this. I mean, I’ve always done it but I didn’t come up with that line. I don’t really know who originally said it but I saw it on an Eben Pagan video and it resonated so well with me. To be successful, you must take your ideas and implement them - FAST. Don’t hold back and don’t dilly-dally with details and with trying to be perfect. Get it up there and out there and tweak as you go.

2. Using Your Strengths & Delegating the Rest.

Don’t try to do everything yourself. Let’s face it - we all know you’re brilliant but to be successful, you need to learn that you aren’t the best person to do everything in your business. Read the E-Myth Revisited for a great take on what it means to wear many hats as an entrepreneur. It’ll make you realize that you should focus on what you’re good at and then delegate out the rest. Find the right people and they’ll pay for themselves.

3. Surround Yourself with a Good Support System.

This is essential. I’ve always been blessed with a great support system. My family has always supported my dreams and has never held me back (even if some of them - like wanting to be a millionaire before I turn 30 - seems far-fetched) and my husband is numero uno in terms of providing me with space and time to grow and build my business. Learn to surround yourself with positive people and rid yourself of the toxic people.

4. Only Do What You Love to Do.

I try to implement this daily. I don’t do anything I don’t love to do. Why? If I do things I don’t like to do, I run the risk (the high risk) of doing a poor job at or taking light years to turn it around to my client. We’re not meant to do everything. We’re just not. It’s the same with clients - we’re not meant to work with everyone. We’re meant to do the work where our passion lies and where our heart is because THAT makes us successful.

5. Only Work With People Who Energize & Inspire You.

This is really important. While it sounds similar to the support system, this refers more directly to your clients and/or customers. I’ve had an interesting entrepreneurial life thus far and I’ve met both really amazing clients and other clients whose styles did not mesh well with mine. I’ve come to learn that I’ve got certain characteristics that not everyone can get used to - for example, I only do scheduled calls due to my busy work schedule - and if the people I work with can’t come to terms with that, we won’t work over the long-term. So, find people that you are inspired and energized by and who embrace your talents and understand the way you work.

6. Limit Your Overhead.

Don’t do things in a complicated way. I swear to you, for everything you want to do in your business, you can usually do it on the cheap AND get a really professional result. I’ve hardly spent any money on marketing or advertising for my business. Aside from my website, I have very little marketing overhead. My websites are done inexpensively too because I do them myself. I understand that not everyone has that talent but do your research, stay in the green and you’ll become more successful. Think of how much less stress you’ll have when money is not an issue!

7. Be Aware of Your Human-ness.

I love this one. I often find that in the land of the entrepreneur, too many people forget that they are human (or that those they are talking to are also human). What I mean is that often times, things are done or said that would never be done or said if both parties were standing in the same room. Treat your fellow entrepreneurs with respect and you’ll go a lot farther. This too is something I’ve learned as I’ve grown as a business owner and moved out of that ‘corporate’ mindset.

8. Be Generous.

Don’t be afraid to give away information or help out your fellow business person for nothing in return. I don’t mean start giving away your services for free but sometimes, provide advice or give away an ebook and do it for free. Don’t ask for a favor in return and don’t ask for payment. Just do it. It feels great and people will remember you. Michael Port, a past client of mine, used to quote often “Long after you’re gone, people won’t remember what you said but how you made them feel.”

What are your keys to success?

So first let me dispense with the obligatory acknowledgment that I’m sorry I haven’t blogged here in ages. I have wanted to often, but one thing and another…

On thing I’ve wanted to write about is Twitter. I’m hooked.  So far, I’ve seen precious few Tweets (as I gather its adherents call themselves) use it especially well for business communication. Mostly people complaining about being stuck in airports. Like the rest of us might find that interesting. One who does a good job keeping the posts interesting and on topic is Steve Rubel, not surprisingly.

Another shout out I’ve meant to give is the IAB’s new blog, the IABlog, under the stewardship of the IAB’s new, compelling leader, Randall Rothenberg, who also has his own blog. I’ve gotten to know Randall a bit in the past several months, and he’s a fun guy, a great intellect (excellent panel moderator), a strong leader for the IAB and really interested demonstrating the new directions of online media with initiatives like the IABlog.

When you click through to the blog, you’ll notice a photo of yours truly serenading the original IAB chairman Rich LeFurgy.  The uke is my new hobby for the past year-plus. Soon I’ll have to do a round-up of the many photos like this that already exist of me playing the uke at industry cocktail parties on blogs around the web.

The real point of this post, though, is that I’m currently at the IAB’s Annual Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0, in Phoenix, AZ. So far, it’s one of the most exciting conferences I’ve ever attended, really. Attendee list is who’s who of the industry. As I type this (blazing fast free wifi in the conference hall; see, they get it!), Randall is interviewing Susan Decker, president of Yahoo! and Jerry Yang, CEO/founder of Yahoo! You can see the other speakers yourself here, but they are consistent with these two.

Steve Rubel is here and we’re both giving running commentary on Twitter, plus the IABlog is providing updates, too. Keep your fingers crossed that they’ll post videos of the content. Wenda Millard’s speech last night, accepting the mantel as new chairperson of the IAB, was really great. I’ll post the link of the transcript or video if it’s made available.

Ok, actually no I won’t blog for steak. I’m a vegetarian. But I bet plenty of other bloggers would take up such an offer.

Rajesh Setty emailed Chris Pirillo’s Braintrust list earlier this month with an email titled “Bloggers - free steaks anyone?” to promote the site AllAboutSteak.com and its sponsor Kansas City Steaks. In it, Raj wrote:

If you are a blogger and would be willing to provide some visibility - KCS wants to reward you with a gift packet (of steaks) sent to your address.

His email conjured up in my mind an image of a homeless blogger holding up a cardboard sign “Will blog for steak” — rather than the more typical “Will work for food”. (NOTE: This could make for an excellent Halloween costume for you unabashed nerds out there!)

But it also got me thinking about what is the right way to approach bloggers to get them to blog about your company/products or a client’s company/products. Something about Raj’s email got me feeling a bit uncomfortable. Thankfully though, Raj followed up later with a clarification email to the list, stating:

I should have said it better. If you receive a “gift” of steaks, all you are promising is that if you like the technology and/or steaks, you would consider providing some visibility to their “We Care” campaign.

I’m glad Raj followed up with that clarification. I think it’s critical when doing blog outreach that you don’t tie compensation to positive coverage.

WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) developed a great set of guidelines — the Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines, which provides some guidance around how to reach out to bloggers. Some good advice there!

So… will you blog for steak?

When I saw the following “motivational” poster for Blogging, I would have sworn it was yet another brilliant creation of the folks at Despair.com. But no, it wasn’t. It’s part of a home-made series by Ishkur. Classic!

Hat tip to Ilker.

This is year 3 that my friend Alex Brown will be teaching an innovative undergrad class at the University of Delaware. Infotech Applications in Marketing and is probably one of the few of its kind that is required for marketing majors. In addition to presenting the lastest interactive strategies, including social media/blogs and search, students are required to blog their assignments.

Last year Alex used Shel Israel’s and Robert Scoble’s Naked Conversations along with John Battelle’s The Search: How Google And Its Rivals Rewrote The Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. Alex asked me if these books were still “appropriate” or if he should look at something different. Amazon lists 57 books for the search business blogging and 4734 for the search blog. So many books .. so little time!

What are your thoughts? If you were teaching an undgrad class on innovative internet marketing what books would you use? Keep in mind that the blog/social media aspect is a significant component of the course.

FYI - Alex is no stranger to online marketing, in addition to putting on the prof jacket, Alex is behind the highly successful Barbero blog, which last week pulled over 70k visits; and the Wharton Admissions Blog, the first blog that was developed as a value-add portal.

Good article over at eWeek called “RSS Offers Relief from Enterprise E-Mail Overload.”

It talks about how email has fallen out of favor as a way of distributing information to large groups of people, and how certain businesses are starting to use RSS.

The article also covers some negatives of RSS, including:

• Problems with adoption and inertia from some users
• How RSS feeds can reduce page visits, and
• How RSS can create bandwidth bottlenecks for popular feeds.

This definitely isn’t one of those “email is dead” articles, but instead shows how forward thinking companies are looking to RSS as a new distribution channel.

Tris Hussey today posted about a debate that has gone through the blogosphere like wildfire.  I too have been following this furor about the social press release and can see that it is clearly at a crossroad in its evolution.  I hear screams of kill the press release and others saying that the press release is not dead and each side has its own strong beliefs.  So as business blogging advocates where do we see the social media press release and what is its future?  I’m sure we could have numerous opinions within the small ranks here.

It seems that everyone has a different idea of how they want information to be presented.  The mainstream media has long had the press release in it’s bag of tricks, but with blogging becoming more and more of an information portal, their appears to be new players in the game that bring with them their own rules.  Bloggers want the information quickly and in such a way as to relay that information in a format that can be easily posted. I, like Tris, can see that a new animal will be launched soon with a new meaning and with different rules.  Until that time the debate continues and I will be sitting back to see the lines drawn in the sand.  What side of the line do you stand on and where do you see the social media press release finishing?

Tags: Tris Hussey, Social Media, Press Release, PR Blogs

Another CEO has thrown his hat into the blogosphere, and decided that a blog is the best way to communicate with the customer.  Bill Marriott, CEO and Chairman of Marriott International had his initial blog post on January 16, 2007.  He realizes the importance of blogs by telling us up front:

I’ve checked out Jonathan Schwartz’s blog at Sun Microsystems and "Randy’s Journal" at Boeing. I’ve listened to Senator Barack Obama’s blog podcasts. I know blogs will be a hot communications tool in the 2008 Presidential campaign.

He finishes this thought after what I consider to be a rather long post, with:

Bottom line, I believe in communicating with the customer, and the Internet gives me a whole new way of doing that on a global scale. I’d rather engage directly in dialogue with you because that’s how we learn and grow as a company.

At the time of this publication, he had already received 49 comments.  It seems that he has already made a big splash on his first day.  This is a blog that should be added to your feed reader to see if he actually posts regularly and how he does with the communication tool. Welcome to the blogosphere Mr. Marriott.  I wonder if all of the Marriott’s will provide free hi-speed wifi to every blogger now?

Tags: CEO Blogs, Marriott International, Bill Marriott, Jonathan Schwartz, Randy’d Journal, Boeing, Barack Obama, Wifi

Just wanted to point your attention to another in a great series of posts from Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

This one’s called Permission Marketing 2.0, a riff on Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing and the fact that anything being revisited today needs to have a 2.0 on it to be taken seriously. Kind of like dot com in the late nineties.

One of my favorite lines…

Somewhere along the way, people became overly obsessed with search and forgot everything else. Many businesses today would disappear if their rankings tanked. And that’s no way to run a business.

Too true.

So what is PM2.0? It’s all about RSS my friends. Read on….

We have told many of our clients that ask us about the Blogger platform that we would rather they did not use Blogger as the application for their company blog.  The reason was simple, it was a matter of branding.  We felt and still feel that blogging can help strengthen a company’s brand.  The problem with using the Blogger application was not that it was a free service or that it is not as easy to use, it was because the domain that was required had to have "blogspot" in its address.  This required companies to share their URL with another brand. 

The people at Blogger have upgraded their service to include the ability to now use a custom domain.

If you already own a domain named, say, mysite.com and want your blog to be served at that address instead of at a blogspot.com address, we can host your blog on that domain for you — for free. Your old Blog*Spot address will forward to your new custom domain, so the switch will be seamless for your readers.

This is a good move by Blogger and will open up new and possible future customers that will be using their service.

Tags: Blogger, Blog Applications, free hosting, business blogging

According to Nick Wilson of Performancing.com, the proposed purchase of portions of Performancing.com has not come to fruition.  Nick stated in his post:

After much discussion, we’ve decided that the deal proposed by PayPerPost just isn’t right for us or our community. It’s regrettable that we should part ways as I still feel that Dan and Ted are stand up guys breaking new ground, but in the end, the deal was just not right for them or us.

In addition, Nick reports that Performancing is no longer going to support their metrics application and are releasing the software to the community for their use while Performancing continues to lend a hand where they can and to hosting the package.  In a classy move, Nick refers people to the new release of the Feedburner stats package which was just launched. I’m hoping to see a review of that service from a few of the contributors here.

Nick goes on to reveal the future of Performancing stating:

Well, more details to follow but the short story is that we will continue to develop Performancing Partners, our growing blog advertising network and focus the Performancing domain entirely to that end as well as our "grassroots" community — We’re proud of what we’ve helped build here, and want to continue to evolve, develop and help the community grow — the business of blogging isn’t always easy, but it’s easier when you can get some help from peers

Finally, it is stated that the Performancing blog editor for Firefox, now known as ScribeFire will launched separately under its own brand.  I think this is the perfect move for Performancing and a smart business decision to leverage this tool that has been adopted by a great number of bloggers both professional and amateur. 

I am going to try to follow up with Nick as this story progresses as I’m sure there will be more information that will be of interest to those in the blogging community. 

Tags: Performancing, PayPerPost, PPP, ScribeFire, Feedburner, Performancing Partners, Nick Wilson, blog stats

The Daily ‘Dog, the daily newsletter from Bulldog Reporter that goes to over 40 000 PR professionals in the US has a Pulse of PR survey on the site right now that shows more than half of the respondents regard blogs and new media as the trend that will most impact PR in 2007.

Yes, it’s an informal survey, and we don’t know how many people have responded so far.  But it is an indicator.  The  number two item is ‘online media will continue to splinter into micro-granular niche outlets’.  So I htink it’s safe to say PR has got the heads up.  Online PR, new media, blogs and RSS feeds will be on their radar in the coming year.

About time, too. Marketers have seen the light - and it is a train coming the other way - the Cluetrain. Search results are affecting brand perception and conversations are in full cry online. Corporate communicators need to learn how to join the online conversation.

During the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago recently, the managing editor of WebProNews Mike McDonald did a video interview with BBC bloggers Stephan Spencer and myself about the “participatory web”.

Public relations agencies are scrambling and sometimes floundering at their efforts to use social media to further client branding and marketing goals. Mike asks some great questions ranging from “how do you make money with the participatory web?”, “What things should you do and what do you need to watch out for?” and thoughts on things like pay per post.

Stephan does a much better job at pronouncing “participatory” than I do, He also provides some great examples on how to be transparent as well as the consequences for not doing so.

Being good BBC bloggers, both Stephan and I mention Business Blog Consulting, in unison no less! Be sure to give it a view.

If you’ve been following the exciting world of search engines (only said slightly in jest) you know that Google keeps increasing its market share, and that the only way that wanna-be MSN Live is even getting any traction is by forcing everyone to upgrade Internet Explorer to IE7, which conveniently resets everyone’s default search engine to the Microsoft solution. Hmmm… okay.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Wales, the founder and creator of Wikipedia and the commerical Wikia, has come out with news that he’s building a human-powered search engine called Wikiasari (I have no idea what the name means, sorry) with funding from Amazon.com. Amazon, you might recall, have a failed search engine of their own called A9, and even with the offer of special discounts on Amazon.com purchased for A9 users, they still can’t get anyone to use it. No wonder they’re interested.

But should we be interested in Wikiasari?

I don’t think so.

The problem isn’t that the search engine might not be interesting or useful, the problem is that to even compete in the world of search engines you have to fight the incredibly strong powers of momentum, of people just not wanting to bother with something different. Regardless of how wonderful Wikiasari might be (and I’m skeptical it’ll work at all because of spammers and other cons) (recall that they killed DMOZ, for example), the only way people will try it is if Google really starts failing as a search engine.

The weird thing is that the media is writing about it with the sort of hype usually reserved for Google itself, talking about how Wikiasari might be a “Google killer” and a “serious threat to Google’s marketshare”. I just don’t see it.

What’s your take? Would you switch search engines “just because”, or do you find that your favorite search engine is hard-wired into your fingers at this point in the evolution of the Internet?

The analysts at Gartner have made their predictions for 2007 and they say that blogging will peak next year and all the hype will fizzle out.

One of their top 10 predictions for 2007 is that the number of bloggers will level off in the first half of next year at roughly 100 million worldwide. The reason: most people who would ever dabble with web journals already have. Those who love it are committed to keeping it up, while others have got bored and moved on, said Daryl Plummer, chief Gartner fellow.

“A lot of people have been in and out of this thing,” Plummer said. “Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they’re put on stage and asked to say it.”

Well, that certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons!

It got a flood of media coverage and many bloggers weighed in too.  Does this mean blogging will suddenly die and go away.  No, the Gartner gurus say it will level off and the rapid growth we’ve seen with the blogosphere doubling every 6 months will go away.

There may well be 200 million ex-bloggers, but dedicated bloggers with a real voice and an audience will continue to keep the conversation alive.  And many of them are business bloggers.  C level execs are only just getting comfortable with blogs and blogging. They’ve seen the success of business bloggers like Jonathan Schwartz of Sun.

“The trend is, I think, irreversible at this point,” said Shel Holtz in the USAToday article. “You’re having businesses that are showing some substantive results with well-thought-out, strategically planned corporate blogs.”

And that’s what businesses are after - substantive results.

Is there no end to the faux pas that corporate communications folk and interactive marketing and PR agencies make in the blogosphere?

Hot on the heels of the Wal-Mart Edelman flog fiasco comes the  admission that alliwantforxmasisapsp.com is a fake blog put up by sony and their agency Zipatonia. It’s no wonder that corporate executives in the US and the UK polled for the Bulldog Reporter/Peppercom business blog survey said blogs are not a credible source of information - with corporate shenanigans like this the public will soon feel that way too.

They have obviously not read all the data that clearly shows consumers want openess, honesty, transparency and authenticity.   It builds brand and engenders customer loyalty.

A commenter on the blog claiming to be a Zipatoni executive replied to criticism in the fake blog’s comments. “Please know that we approached the client initially with this scenario and they said ‘who cares if people find out? As long as it is funny, we do this stuff all of the time,”

And you guys thought that would be all right then?  If the substance hits the fan, we’ll duck and point fingers at the client.

It’s the job of an agency to advise the client on how to operate in the new social media environment.   Not to take their money and run when the project goes south.

Social media is a new playing field with new rules.  Ignore them at your peril.

“The blog world is a very open, self-policing and pretty unforgiving world when you try to trick them with things like this,” commented Cymfony’s Jim Naill. “I don’t understand why marketers, after all the different examples of this, don’t get the message that you can’t get away with faking these kinds of blogs.”

 Richard Nacht, president of Blogging Systems which specializes in blog strategies for the lending and real estate industries, has the following Top Ten strategic benefits of blogging,

1. Search Engine Marketing
2. Direct Communications
3.  Brand Building
4. Competitive Differentiation
5. Relational Marketing
6. Exploit the Niches
7.  Media & Public Relations
8. Position You as an Expert
9. Reputation Management
10.  Low Cost

Read more at the Daily ‘Dog

Over at SNCR, some of our fellow blog evangelists and experts are predicting what to expect in the coming year.  Our own Debbie Weil and Sally Falkow are quoted:

From Debbie Weil:

We’re unhooking from our computers and will be getting much more online info via our cell phones, PDAs, etc. Beware the marketer who doesn’t remember this and doesn’t format blog posts, etc. to be read
on a cell phone or Treo!

The corporate blogosphere has gone multi-media. If you’re not including podcasts, embedded video and cool images with your blog, then you’re soooo 2005.

From Sally Falkow:

This has been the year when RSS came into its own. The release of IE 7 with the reader built into the browser has finally made it really simple. Jupiter Research found that 30% of large companies are deploying RSS due to customer demand.

2007 will see an explosion of web content syndication with RSS and the sharing of content on social media sites. Already one in twenty web visits is to one of the top social media sites according to HitWise. And, these sites are driving traffic to search engines and verticals like travel and telecom.

Corporate communications professionals and PR agencies will have to wrap their wits around online PR and social media.

I would be curious what the rest of the group here thinks will be the outcome of 2007?  What are some of your predictions for the Blogging Future?

Tags: Debbie Weil, Sally Falkow, SCNR, Blogging, 2007

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Peppercom and Bulldog Reporter’s Business Blogging survey certainly turned up some interesting facts about how US and UK corporations see the blogosphere:

• Almost 89 percent of U.S. respondents and nearly 83 percent of U.K. respondents believe blogs are an important     digital communication
• More than half of all respondents admitted that no one is blogging on their or their clients’ behalf (U.S.: 64 percent, U.K.: 64 percent)
• Most respondents (78 percent for U.S. and U.K.) believe that the public relations department should handle fallout from bad news breaking in the blogosphere
• However, over 80 percent (U.S.: 87 percent, U.K.: 82 percent)Most respondents confess they or their clients don’t have an official blogging policy in place
• 63 percent have not adapted their communications strategy to include proactive outreach to blogs, message boards, and other forms of digital medium
• Half of the respondents (49 percent) are not monitoring blogs and online conversations 

So the vast majority think blogging is an important communication medium, but they are not monitoring the online conversation and they’re not adapting their corporate communicaiton strategy to include digital and social media. But if things go wrong, PR must handle the flap. 

We’ve seen a few of these examples of PR departments and agencies putting both their traditional PR feet in their social media mouths.  It’s way past time that companies make social media and online PR training a priority.

Business blogging is an important communication medium,  It’s not going away.  Markets are conversations.  Learning to particpate in the conversation effectively is a vital PR skill today.

Listen to the podcast for a full analysis of the survey.  It’s a little slow to load but worth the wait.

Yahoo has announced and it’s reported by Marketing Vox that Yahoo is going to produce its own answer to social media and the market place by creating what has been deemed Yahoo’s "Brand Universes".  Marketing Vox reports:

Criticized for missing the social media explosion, Yahoo plans to leverage its social properties, such as Flickr and Del.icio.us, on behalf of advertisers in the hopes of partnering with "passion brands" to generate more ad revenue.

In the coming months, Yahoo will begin rolling out the first set of what it calls "brand universes" - dedicated areas on Yahoo for fans of a movie or product to congregate, share and connect with each other, reports Adweek. Unlike the brand areas on MySpace and YouTube, Yahoo is not asking marketers for ad dollars to build the sites. Instead, it itself has identified a batch of 100 "passion brands" to build dedicated areas for.

This seems like a logical step given the number of niche blogging networks popping up all over the blogosphere.  I have predicted before that a new advertising medium with blogs will be leveraging categories of blogs for specific advertisers.  Be it a category or in their term "universes" with the likes of blogging parents, health bloggers, and in their launch, gaming bloggers, it’s time for targeted advertising in Yahoo’s plans.

Tags: Yahoo, Branding Universes, Marketing Vox, blog networks

As I indicated in a comment in a post  I read today over at Kian’s blog,  I had to make my own sound in the echosphere. Yeah, I called an "echosphere" for a reason because Kian is experiencing something I have also experienced and continue to deal with like the feeling of having my eyes pried open with toothpicks and forced to watch I Love Lucy 24/7. I can only read Scoble’s take on a topic, or Winer’s thoughts about this and that, and what Doc told me today, so many times before I start to think about jumping out my office window.  In this case only 3 feet off the ground but nonetheless, totally whacked.

**Please note that I am completely  hypocritical in that statement 1. because I am envious of their traffic readership, and 2. the reason they are so easy to link to is because all I have to do is Google there last names, or in Doc’s case the word "Doc" and I get a first page search response.  This is a result of the echo chamber I complain of and using blogs to my preached point about SEO.**

With that said, let me explain the blogging echo chamber dilemma.  Blogs are real time.  As fast as something can be typed and the publish button pushed, words can be transmitted to readers all over the world.  When you have people that are gurus as I have mentioned above, everyone is excited to report what exciting thing they read today over at this popular blog.  If they are excited to report it, and you are also excited, and both of you blog it and make me click to go read it, you can see where you get caught up in that echo chamber or the "blogging fissure" (my phrase).

In keeping up with the blogging fissure or echo chamber continue reading this article at Bloggers For Hire.