DazzlinDonna » conversations

eBusiness Tips: Social Conversations

Donna — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:13:07 +0000

Today’s wise words from ’round the web focus on the conversations that take place about us and with us (if we so choose). How we are perceived is often dependent upon how we participate in that social interaction. See if either of these resonate with you. They do for me.

5 Marketing Lessons from Online Dating

Whether it’s an online profile or your website, visitors usually don’t know a single thing about you – and they’re pretty skeptical. After all, everyone’s been burned by reality that didn’t end up matching the hype. Double-Duty Tip: Being authentic and real will go a long way in winning them over.

>> Follow Tracy Needham

Do You Have a Conversation Strategy?

You still need two things to succeed. Even when you become really smart about the tools and implement repeatable processes that allow you to track interest, and get people to your business, you still need two things to succeed with sales. You need:

1. a steady pipeline of great new content that keeps people coming back to interact

2. a conversation strategy to make that interaction helpful and memorable

>> Follow Valeria Maltoni

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: conversations, social media, Tracy Needham, Valeria Maltoni
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Do You Recognize Yourself?

Donna — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:21:03 +0000

I’m a big Reality TV fan. I love watching people carry out their daily lives for all the world to see. I often think, when she sees the playback of how she acted, she’ll realize what a jerk she was. What would happen if each of us could rewind our days and watch the playback of everything we said and did? What would we learn about ourselves? I’d bet we’d learn a lot! In fact, I’d be willing to bet that many people are completely clueless about how negative they are on a daily basis, and how that negativity impacts their ability to succeed.

How many times a day do you think negative thoughts? How many times a day do you gripe or moan about how bad things are? How often do you make remarks that make people wish they were somewhere else rather than there listening to you? How many of you think you are an extremely upbeat, positive person, so those questions surely don’t apply to you?

Contestants on reality TV shows have cameras and microphones surrounding them 24 hours a day. It’s highly unlikely the rest of us would ever be in that situation, but we could choose to use a digital voice recorder to record what we say all day long. I think it would be a fascinating experiment for each of us to try.

These days, digital voice recorders have the ability to know when to record and when to stop recording, so they skip silent moments. How interesting would it be to place one on your desk at the office, or on the coffee table at home, where it could record your conversations during the day? It would be nice if technology was advanced enough to also record our thoughts, because no doubt they can be even more revealing, but obviously that’s not going to happen any time soon. Still, the words we speak aloud can be extremely revealing…if only we could hear them played back to us. Trust me, other people have already categorized you based upon the things they’ve heard you say, and it’s very likely you’d be surprised at the categories they’ve placed you into. If you were to sit back one day, and objectively play back the various bits of conversation you’ve had, you might be surprised at what you hear.

I doubt many of you will actually go through the trouble of trying this experiment, but if any of you are brave enough to do it, I’d love to hear how it turned out for you. When you played back the recording:

Did you recognize yourself?

If you didn’t know it was you speaking, how would you categorize the person, based on the words spoken during the day?

I believe many people fail because they think they will fail. I believe many people set themselves up for failure by doubting themselves, and by constantly being negative. And I believe that most of those people have no idea just how negative they really are. If they knew…really “saw” themselves…would they change? Could they? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do think that knowledge is powerful, and that with knowledge, we can at least try to change.

So how many of you would be willing to undertake this little experiment? Anyone? If you do, please share your thoughts and discoveries in the comments below.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: conversations, failure, positive thinking, Reality television, recording life, success
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Finding Relevant Conversations

Donna — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:01:07 +0000

As I’ve previously mentioned, networking with others in your topic area is extremely important for building your base of site visitors. If you haven’t already established yourself as a regular within the communities that serve your niche, you may be wondering how to find them. Here are just a few examples of searches you can run on your favorite search engine to find the communities you should participate in. Undoubtedly, these searches will turn up many, many networks of people who are all interested in your niche topic, but you’ll need to pick 2 or 3 that appeal the most to you. Look for those communities that are active and that seem to have intelligent conversations amongst experienced people.

Search for: (obviously, you’ll want to substitute “your topic” with whatever word or phrase fits your niche)

your topic + forum
your topic + message board
your topic + chat
your topic + community
your topic + network
your topic + blog
your topic + expert

The last two (your topic + blog and your topic + expert) are good ways to find the leaders of your niche, so that you can possibly interact with them on a one-on-one basis.

Whether you choose a couple of forums, or several expert blogs as your starting points, you’ll want to join in on the conversations. Make intelligent, well-thought out comments. Participate often. Defer to the old-timers for the time being, but begin to establish yourself as a knowledgeable peer. DON’T spam the boards or blogs with your advertising. Simply join the conversation, and let your signature or comment URL do the advertising for you. Be respectful and friendly, and if for some reason, one community ends up not being right for you, find another.

By joining in the conversation, you are acquiring contacts that you can leverage later, as well as simply letting others know that an intelligent, knowledgeable person has a site they might be interested in. Again, you don’t have to shove that information in anyone’s face. Just by participating, they will know.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: commenting, contacts, conversations, favorite search engine, networking, niche communities, search engine, search terms, social networks
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.