Thinks I find along the way
Amazing story! I’m equally impressed by the kindness and courtesy of the judges. Different culture I guess — so much for the Simon Cowell approach…
Algoma freshman Kennedy Blahnik, that is, who won the girls’ state shotput in LaCrosse this morning. Here she is last summer. Can you say Olympics? I knew you could…
…and every day I am reminded that ‘I am my father’s son’. As I get older, I am more and more aware of the positive impact he has had on my life…
Recently, I attended Mass with my parents and there he was again — reading the Epistle at Church [photo above]. It gave me pause to think about his influence on my life. Here are just a few of the many of the things he taught me:
A Lohenry’s place is at the front of the room.
I don’t mean this in a vain way. In a world where most people would rather die or have a root canal than speak in public (Seinfeld reference), my dad modeled public speaking as a way of life for me. My earliest public memories of him are like this — reading at church, leading the worship team, etc. Because of his example, I became a consultant, a teacher and a public speaker who thrives on being in the front of the room. I am my father’s son…
It’s ok to have a big vocabulary — words have meaning and it’s good to know what those meanings are and be able to use them effectively.
I remember sitting around the dinner table and my father would bring up a ‘word of the day’ — some new word that had interested him recently. Sometimes, it would be a joke with a fractured pun with a punchline like ‘people who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones’. He passed on a love of language and wordplay that has become my passion and my craft. In my academic career, I studied German, French, Russian, Croatian, Norwegian and Italian and my mastery of English vocabulary is well-known — I can only trace this love of language and communication to his influence. I am my father’s son…
Technology is fun and awesomely powerful.
When I was in college, I was a German major and my father was a systems analyst working with mainframe computers in the ‘glass house’. Every time I wanted to understand more about his passion, he’d sit down and start drawing diagrams to explain computers at the machine level and it would go nowhere. Later still, I used one of my electives to take a FORTRAN programming class back in the day of punch cards and mainframes because I wanted to better understand his world. I gave him the final project for that class on Father’s Day 31 years ago and told him ‘I don’t ever want to have anything to do with computers ever again’. Well, it would seem that he had the last laugh on that one! These days, among other things I am a website developer and I just launched his new site yesterday. The business blogging that I do is the perfect marriage of communication and technology — again, I am my father’s son…
Adoption is a loving option.
My father met and married my mom and me when I was around three years old and he adopted me at the age of five. There was nothing in his life that prepared him for this situation but he stepped up to the challenge. I still remember going before the judge and having him ask if I wanted this man to be my father. I don’t know if it would’ve made much difference if I said no but I do know that saying yes has made all the difference in my life. Not only did my yes open the door to a lifelong relationship with a man who always did his best to be a dad but later in life when I fell in love with a beautiful single-parent much like my mom I did not think twice about whether I could adopt her son. We have formed a family of eight people who would not exist without his example. I am my father’s son…
Real men cry.
That’s all, real men cry and it gives me great pleasure to know that he’s crying as he reads this just as I am crying while I write it…
I could go on and I will at some point I’m sure, but as I reread this before clicking the publish button, I’m reminded of the song ‘Leader of the Band’ — perhaps one of the world’s greatest musical testimonies to fatherhood…
The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through
My instrument
And his song is in my soul —
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy
To the leader of the band.
I may not play guitar like Dan Fogelberg, but my ‘instrument’ is my words — spoken and written — combined with my computer skills. ‘I’m just a living legacy’ and I AM my father’s son…
Internet marketer Jack Humphrey has curated some great content in a post called “The Content Guide for Bloggers” which I in turn, have curated for you…
“Content curation as a blogging model is widely misunderstood by most bloggers and marketers. Many people would tell you that curation is about finding and posting links of related material around a certain topic or keyword.
And they would be wrong if the goal was to get people and search engines to appreciate and react to said content. (And if your goal is to use curation as a means to get attention, then make money, from what you are doing.)
Real content curation is a set of links and snippets to other material on the web along with insightful, expert analysis provided by the curator.
There’s been an explosion of content on the web around “curation.” And new services that seek to make the process easier for different groups of users.” Source: The Content Curation Guide for Bloggers | Internet Marketing Consultant Jack Humphrey
In the model I teach my students, there are two main types of blog posts; creation and curation. Optimally, in my model, about 5-10% of my posts are creation posts. The rest is all curation. Why? Continue reading “Why curation rocks, part 1”
Please forgive me, but it’s not my title! The content is that good…
You can read the transcript if you click ‘continue reading’… Continue reading “What the hell is social media?”
The story has it that when Michelangelo was commissioned to do the sculpture of King David he looked at hundreds of blocks of marble before he decided on the “right” one. To most of us all those blocks shown to him would have looked more or less the same but for Michelangelo it needed to be a certain piece of marble – nothing else would do. Why was that? It was because he knew exactly what he wanted his David to look like. He could see the end result in front of his eyes.
When asked how he was going to create such a fine figure as King David out of such an enormous chunk of marble his answer was: “That’s easy. All I have to do is chip away everything that is not David.” Isn’t that incredible? And so easy…
But why am I telling you this story? Do you know what your David (end result) looks like? Do you know where you are going with the actions you take every day?
Did you know that about 90 % of us do not have a clear goal; do not have a clear vision of what we want?
But if we don’t have a very clear picture of what we aim at how can we reach it? How can we chip away at the rock to create our David if we don’t know what David is supposed to look like? That doesn’t make sense, does it?
Let me take a minute to illustrate a point. Because I use Google well, I was able to find a story to illustrate a point I’m trying to make for a meeting this afternoon. If I curate the content and post it to my blog, it lives on as part of MY site. Who knows how many times Google will bring people to my site to hear this story?
Setting up a blog is not that difficult. In fact, most people can easily use WordPress or Blogger to set one up in a matter of minutes.
With the sheer number of blogs today, estimated at 126 million by BlogPulse, only a very small percent of them are actually active and good. The vast majority of blogs are dead or dying on the vine.
Like a garden, you must tend to your blog; water it, give it sunlight and proper care.
So how do you ensure your blog will grow like a healthy garden?
Avoid these 7 causes of blog failure and you are off to a great start. Check out the tips for correcting the mistakes and then see how other bloggers have expertly done so and have planted their seeds to successful blogging.
I don’t know why your blog is failing until I take a peek at it. I do know, however, that this blog is succeeding thanks to our ‘e1evation workflow’. It’s currently ranked very highly by Alexa as you can see…
The best part is that the success is all a part of a repeatable process so we can help your blog succeed as well! You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you want to know more about the 7 reasons but if you want a successful blog, comment or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…
We preach it every week.
Attract the right kind of traffic by creating exceptional content.
Engage your audience so they know, like, and trust you. Let them know you’re the likable expert who’s going to give them the information (and eventually the products and services) that won’t let them down.
Then use smart copywriting and conversion techniques to turn those raving fans into customers.
No, it’s not paint-by-numbers, but it is a proven, systematic way to build your business.
But sometimes I hear people say, “Geez, that sounds like a lot of work.”
Well, ok, I’m going to give it to you straight. It’s work.
But a lot of work compared to what? Digging latrines? Losing your mind in a cubicle farm? Spouting half-baked opinions on a reality TV show?
So let’s break it down … building a business our way versus building a business by other people’s methods.
Want more? Follow the ‘via’ link…
I don’t comment on politics often here, but here’s a politician who gets YouTube! Ex-reality tv star cum DA Sean Duffy is a former client of mine who looks like he’ll have a new zip code in January — although he’s no technologist himself, at least he understands the value of social media in getting his ‘awesome’ out. Comment, call or use the contact form to discuss how this applies to your business…
I’d like to call your attention to a new webinar being offered by Dana VanDen Heuvel of Green Bay. In a couple of weeks, Dana will be speaking on the topic of business blogging for thought leadership and few people know this topic better than him. Dana says…
“Blogging is one of the most important aspects of a thought leadership or social media presence, yet so many organizations struggle with blogging or decide to dismiss it altogether because of the content publishing demands of blogging. Blogging doesn’t have to be hard, take a lot of time or take an entire staff to publish.
The Blogging for Thought Leadership webinar will take you through the steps from developing your thought leadership position to creating a realistic publishing plan that any organization can manage.
Some of the highlights that we’ll cover in the webinar:
- Developing your thought leadership and blog point of view
- How to use insurgent marketing to claim a thought leadership position in a crowded market
- The social media thought leader’s equation
- The weblog publishing roadmap
- 20 types of blog posts to take your blog to the next level
- How to create your own efficient blogging process
- How to create the ideal social media publishing calendar
- Getting the most from your chosen blog platform
- How to connect your blog to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
- Case studies of organizations with highly successful thought leadership blogs”
You can go to the source to sign up. Whether you can attend in real time or no, you’ll still get the content to view later…
This humble blog is one of the highest ranked websites in the US thanks to business blogging…
…and many of the concepts Dana will be presenting are ones we both consider to be ‘common sense‘ in this space — I wholeheartedly endorse his content and recommend it to you without reservation. Understanding the connection between business blogging and thought leadership could propel your online presence to new heights and there are few people better suited to explain it than Green Bay’s own Dana VanDen Heuvel. Be there when he lights it up…
I had an interesting discussion about privacy at Agritechnica with a strong proponent of privacy on the internet. To me, however, having let that Genie out of the bottle long ago I’m a strong proponent of transparency on the internet. I see it as being a competitive advantage because “consumers can relate to people much more effectively than they can a logo or brand.”
“It’s the same reason why we tell our children not to lie. It’s human. It’s in our DNA; and unless you’re a habitual liar, you practice transparency everyday in your personal relationships. Why should it change on the social web?
I just got off the phone with Wailin Wong, who is a Technology Reporter at the Chicago Tribune. She is starting a new column at the on social media/networking and we had a brief discussion today about the importance of honesty and transparency in the social web (I’ll link to the column when it is live). My brief response – since our call only lasted about 15 minutes – was as follows, and I am going of off memory here:
The concept of social media is not new. By nature we are social in the way we interact in our daily relationships with our friends, colleagues and loved ones. And generally, in those relationships we do not lie or deceive because nine times out of ten people get caught. Personally, I think lying is wrong; and it also has a tendency of pissing people off. This valuable life lesson should also be practiced in social media. For those companies that choose to ignore the simple concept of “transparency” can find that their company or brand will indeed go viral but not with the message they were intending. Social media is an opportunity for companies to represent themselves as real people and build real relationships others. Consumers (and I hate that word) can relate to people much more effectively than they can a logo or brand.” Source: Why is transparency so important in Social Media?
One of the reasons I’m a solopreneur is so that I can work with the kind of people I want to work with. In my case, my transparency is a filter that eliminates bad matches from the beginning. If someone doesn’t like my politics, my faith, etc. they probably won’t like working with me…
Now that I’ve exposed by bias, I’d like to talk about how I do it. One of the problems with social media is that each service has a profile they want you to fill out. The problem is that if you do something like change your tagline, etc., you have to remember to go back and change it at every service you use. For that reason, I’m in favor of using a few that I find useful and trying to refer people to those profile sites whenever possible. A few sites that I use and recommend follow…
Google Profiles
I am the only ‘Todd Lohenry’ in the universe [thanks, mom!] so I don’t have any problems being found on the internet [although sometimes I wish I did]. If you, however, have a name like ‘Mike Brown’ and want to be found in Google Search, nothing it more important than populating your Google Profile…
Retaggr
Long before Google Profiles became available, I was using Retaggr which is kind of a web 2.0 business card. Retaggr allows you to fill in your user name info for hundreds of social media sites so that people can see where you hang out on the internet and connect with you there. Furthermore, Retaggr provides code for your signature file that can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook, Google Apps, Gmail, etc. [I wrote about this in the post ‘Socialize your email‘]. Using the WiseStamp Firefox add-on, I’m not only able to re-express the Retaggr information, but even tell people what chat services I use and what my last blog post was [but I digress]…
For many years, I've had the goal of developing a system and process that would drive traffic so well that my site would be ranked within the top 100,000 sites in the US. This morning, I reached that goal. Why should you care? Because this is a simple, repeatable process that I can teach anyone to use — comment, call or contact me to learn more…
I use 4 out of the 5 platforms daily. WordPress is the hands down favorite of most people in this poll, but the real winner is anyone who uses both Posterous and WordPress together to drive traffic…
In case it’s not obvious by now, I’m very passionate about ‘enabling’ technology – technology that enables people to go beyond themselves and accomplish great things. My favorites sites are sites like Lifehacker, Mashable, Stepcase Lifehack, etc. – you get the point! I read the geeky stuff looking for good, fast and cheap tools so that my clients don’t have to – I keep my fingers on the pulse of what’s happening technology and productivity-wise for you…
Because I’m out there on the cutting edge, I see a lot of great stuff come and go and each year it seems there’s ONE BIG THING I discover that changes the way I work forever. Last year for example, it was ‘mastering’ WordPress – that one thing had a fundamental impact on my business and my life, in fact, most of my business now revolves around WordPress in one way or another. Well, if someone asked me what is the coolest tool or technology I’ve mastered in the past five or ten years, my answer, without a doubt would be rss feeds and readers. RSS? Yes, RSS! Continue reading “Tactic #2: ‘Listen’ to the internet…”
The beautiful view from my deck in rural northeast Wisconsin is a great reminder of the power I have to publish and promote; from anywhere to the ends of the internet!
I’ve worked hard to develop a simple blogging workflow that can empower even the most basic computer user. I don’t care if you’re Mac, Windows, Linux, or even Smartphone or iPad — my practical, tactical approach to social media can help you publish and promote your passion whatever it might be. But “Wah!”, you might say, “I don’t want to learn anything new!” Can you send an email? Can you save a bookmark? Then I can teach you how you can leverage social media to help establish your thought leadership position…
We’re now in an unparalleled time in history where everyone has the power to publish — the question is, will you take advantage of it? I post here every day, day after day, the best of the insight God has given me into leveraging these new media tools. If it makes sense to you, use it, great! If not you know the drill — comment, call or contact me and I’ll be happy to net it out for you!
Posted via web from e1evation, llc
It’s a well known secret in real estate that the three most important aspects of a property are ‘location, location, location’. In social media, there’s a similar mantra. It’s called ‘share, share, share’…
“If you step back and take a look how information moves in Social Media, it’s quite different than “Traditional Media.” Back in the day, most people got their information from newspapers or magazines. The direction of information is from the few (the writer or publisher) down to the many. We’ve all seen this in action in our daily lives, maybe to the point of not even noticing it anymore. Got a favorite newspaper columnist or TV show host? One single person communicating to possibly millions of people with little interaction between the communicator and the listeners.
As we step into the Social Media arena, the direction and flow of information is between the readers and the writers. The interaction (thanks to the internet) tends to be instant and the ripple effect from this sharing of information can spread far and wide. With the users of Social Media able to contribute news and information to anyone willing to listen, we now have a conversation. Just like the conversations you are already having at the local coffeeshop or at work.
The recent buzzing and tittering by the media about Twitter and Social Media in general, it’s no wonder business owners may feel forced into using these internet-based communication tools, or perhaps miss sales opportunities their competition is getting instead of them. Not being familiar with the landscape, many make that sometimes fatal error of confusing Social Media with traditional advertising.” Source: The Secret to Social Media – Business Networking – Biznik
This isn’t something to be afraid of — it’s something to be embraced and leveraged. Using the right set of tools, sharing is easy…
As the internet marketing gurus at Hubspot say ““Each thoughtful post on your blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership, personal integrity, humor, and professional insights. You don’t have to refute one of Einstein’s theories to get respect.” To that I would add each thoughtful ‘share’. In my seminars I ask people how many of them have ever forwarded a link to their friends or saved a bookmark. Of course EVERYONE has done that. What differs is the efficacy or efficiency of their tools.
Shareaholic
Shareaholic is my personal favorite and one of the first Firefox add-ons I install whenever I move to a new computer. I also recommend ShareThis, another Firefox add-on as well…
ShareThis
In closing, I’ll share with you one of my most important tactics. I’m always on the lookout for something good to share — it helps establish my thought leadership position. If something is really good, however, I’ll do a blog post FIRST and THEN share that post with others. Yes, it’s important to share but it’s ok to be a little selfish in the process by sharing something from an internet property that you own so that it drives traffic to your homebase, wherever that may be. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…
John Jantsch recently wrote on the topic of “Profiting from other people’s content”. He says…
“Don’t be alarmed by that title — I’m not talking about stealing content for gain, I’m talking about adding the filtering and aggregating of content to your content consumption, creation and sharing routine.
Pretty much everyone has bought into the idea that they need to produce lots of valuable content in order to build the trust and search engine eyes of today’s online prospect. One way to supplement your content strategy while still providing lots of value, is to get good at finding and filtering other people’s content that your prospects and customers will find useful as well. (Done right, the other people will thank you for giving a wider audience to their content).
It should go without saying that giving credit to the original source and full attribution to the author when appropriate is a must.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
John talks about his “consumption, creation and sharing routine” — my mantra is ‘listen, publish, promote’ which is a little more elegant in my book but we’re both trying to say the same thing and use an alliteration in the process. If I were John, I might go for ‘consume, create, communicate‘ — in fact, I might start using that instead. Either way, the point is that gathering good content effectively and commenting on it is a great way to build your personal brand. I’ve been using this strategy for years — most recently, I amped it up by using Posterous [another tool that John advocates] and saving more content directly to my blog instead of shared bookmarks as I used to do. Here are the results:
I think the results are really quite good for an ‘army of one’, don’t you? I do all my ‘creation and communication’ as a result of my daily ‘consumption’ — because my system is easy to implement and use, I work it frequently. I call quoting other sites ‘curation’ and my rare original thoughts ‘creation’. The curation works to draw people to my creation. Does it work? You betcha [you’re reading this, aren’t you?]. The average person drawn into my blog through effective communication reads 3.3 pages and spends 2:52 minutes on the site, while only 4.75% ‘bounce’ to another site. Over 71% are new visitors…
Jantsch goes on to give three tactical implementations of his ‘profiting from content’ suggestion. They are…
“Make yourself a better resource
Creating a habit of filtering content related to your industry, products, competitors and customers will make you better at what you do, allow you to keep up with trends and give you data to help you build deeper relationships with customers.
Share content to draw attention
Pointing out useful resources and good finds is a great way to build your social media and blog followings. Consistently sharing relevant links and sharing them on Twitter is a strategy that many find helps them be seen as follow worthy. Creating a once a week blog post roundup of good stuff is a great way to add content and keep readers engaged.
Filter personalized content
A more advanced strategy is to use your filter skills to create your own industry research briefs. If you specialize in several market niches you can create laser specific new pages and email newsletter roundups that feature the best of what you find each week. You can even use RSS technology to deliver dynamically changing web content password protected for your best clients.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Clearly, John and I share a lot of the same ‘common sense’. He goes on to list 10 different resources [you can follow the link] you can use as tools to find other people’s content. One of them — Kurrently — is one I’ll have to add to my toolkit. For me, however, this is where we part ways. My paradigm is “Google Reader is the answer. Now what is the question?“.
I use Google Reader like a tactical nuke. It’s the one tool I use to manage the ‘rest of the internet’ and I use it like a virtual newspaper or better yet, news bureau, where I manage hundreds of little newsbots that do my news aggregation for me. I have 5 great ways to get relevant content into Google Reader and they include most of John’s 10 tools — it’s just that in my book, Google Reader is the one tool that rules them all. It really is the driver in my ‘e1evation workflow’ outlined below. Either you get it and you can use it or I can help you implement it but the point is that if you have a brand and you want to build it online, we can help…
Yesterday, I passed the 400 post mark. 400 posts over 18 months. Wow! Roughly a post a day for a year and a half. Is that a lot? Is that too little? I really don’t know. What I do know is this — when I use my ‘pass or play’ methodology, traffic to my site increases and my ‘pipeline’ fills…
My good friend [and brother in law] Jim Gilligan has a blog that he’s starting for his life coaching business at EffectiveLiving, LLC. Jim asked me how many posts he should create before he goes ‘live’. I told him a dozen or so is enough to get started but recently I did an experiment and I believe the number at which you start to see good results is closer to 100 over a 3 month period. Here’s a real world case study… Continue reading “400 posts”
Stay on top of your industry, that is. If you’re a business professional in any category and you’re not using Google Reader or some lesser tool to monitor newsfeeds, I’m very concerned about your future. Whoa. What did you say, Todd? I said, I’m very concerned about your future!
You see, unless you’re working on a production line somewhere making widgets for an hourly wage [not that there’s anything wrong with that — I’ve done it myself] your growth and advancement in business and in life [see this if you don’t believe me] depends on your ongoing professional development and that depends in large part upon your ability to aggregate, manage, and leverage relevant information…
Bright, shiny objects! 
You must be logged in to post a comment.