150 People Looking in the Same Direction

(post borrowed from Liz Strauss, because I am too buried in moving to write for myself right now)

TIME.

It’s the only resource we can’t get more of.

Suppose you could take a weekend retreat away from the noise…

• to focus entirely on your business
• to work with the support of a team
• to get quality time to interact with the best names in social media
• to get the best information AND time to dicuss how you’ll apply it
• to work with sponsors in the social media space
• in a room that only holds 150 people — all focused in the same direction
• without worry because the food and the wireless are outstanding.

A weekend of learning with Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, Brian Clark, Liz Strauss, Brian Solis, Kali Evans-Raoul, KD Paine, Geoff Nelson and Chris Aarons, Denise Wakeman, Wendy Piersall, and David Bullock, Stephen Smith and Michael Martine, Saul Colt and Terry Starbucker, Glenda Watson Hyatt, Karen Putz, and Stephen Hopson — and a 150-person dream team.

Would you invest in your business to experience that?

Register for SOBCon 2009 here.

There is an excellent post at Seeing Good: 10 Reasons It’s Awesome the Economy Sucks – The Bright Side of Life
The author gives some very compelling reasons to change your perceptions in order to change your direction:

we’re faced with two choices: a.) Worry, complain, and go prematurely grey or b.) See reality from a different angle and benefit from this experience. Not sure how to change your perception? Allow me to offer some suggestions.

It’s awesome the economy sucks because:

10. You’ll become more resourceful. I’ve always preferred a barter system to the actual exchange of money (mostly because I like to roll around in dollar bills and I can’t do that if I give them all away.) Here’s an example: the day I lost my job, I arranged to do laundry at my yoga studio in exchange for free classes. You got skills—use them. You never know where you could save a little cash.

9. You can redefine success. Most people file this type of thinking right next to, “My mom thinks I’m special” and “Money can’t buy love.” But really, if you lose your job or take a pay cut, count all your other successes. You have friends and family who love you. You’re awesome at poker. You make a mean bratwurst—whatever! Anything you do well other than earn and buy stuff, appreciate that right now.

8. You have an opportunity to minimize. Buying, having, and maintaining a wide selection of stuff consumes a lot of energy. A bad economy is the perfect opportunity to rethink what you really need.

After being “jobless” (and essentially homeless) since October 2008, the Lovely Bride and I have been doing these things as a matter of survival. In fact, more than one of my friends has begged me to write a detailed account of our travels and how we managed to find a job and move to a new state without our marriage imploding.

Let’s have a vote in the comments, do you want to know more about the trip? We both kept fairly detailed journals and took quite a few pictures.

From Website Magazine: Conversion Critic: Analyze Landing Page

Search marketing agency Engine Ready released ConversionCritic today, an online tool for search marketers designed to help them analyze and improve landing pages. The service is free of charge right now and is definitely worth a look if you’re aiming at generating a few more sales from landing pages.

ConversionCritic scores pages based on 37 criteria, for example, “Does the copy focus more on selling the benefits versus the features of the product or service?” The tool then provides feedback on the marketing effectiveness, offer clarity, readability and engagement or suggested modifications of the landing page. I tested Website Magazine’s new professional membership landing page and was pleased with the results, but did see some room for improvement.

“The dynamics that persuade a visitor to be your customer are numerous and complex, and depend on your product/service offering, competitive influences and the demographics of your target audience,” reports Engine Ready’s CEO Jamie Smith. “ConversionCritic is a great online tool for search marketers to see exactly which on-page factors are contributing to higher conversions and what improvements are needed to further increase the conversion rate.”

The service is free with registration, and it gives you an excellent list of questions to answer about your page, things that you may not have considered.

Innovate – and plan your own economic stimulus

Yet success will depend on transforming rhetoric into action. Innovation at a national or even regional scale may seem hard to grasp when you’re focused on the immediate needs of your individual business or organization. But, in fact, new products, services and processes (even those that may fail) are linked and need to be continuously introduced to keep our economy – and our society – moving forward. [...]

Get focused, fast. Most innovation programs are exploratory in nature, and the scope of inquiry can be quite broad. Instead of tackling everything at once, think about your best customers – who are they and how do they experience your product or service? What are the “moments that matter” to them? Anything that’s extraneous to addressing their most pressing needs will not only consume resources but also leave you vulnerable to competitors who are vying for their loyalty.

Leverage what you already know. When it comes to innovation, there is a tendency to believe that insights and know-how are the domains of outside experts. Take the time now to improve internal networks for communicating your ideas in order to more effectively mine in-house knowledge across as much of your organization as possible. You may know more than you think, which will help you get focused on what’s missing and eliminate the cost of reinventing the wheel.

[...]

Be compassionate with yourself. Innovation at its core is about putting new ideas into action, repeatedly, resulting in some kind of change in the world. If you’ve engaged in a conversation about doing something differently, and then taken the first (or next) step with conviction, you’re an innovator.

Today we need to think differently about the practice of innovation. It’s not just about conceiving the next bright shiny object; rather, it’s about actively making smart investments now that set a course for the future and get your business in position to take advantage of that eventual upturn – even if it’s going to be after a very long economic winter.

Laura Weiss specializes in the design and management of the innovation process. She is based in San Francisco and can be reached at laura@lauraweiss.net.

(Cross-posted at the new home for all content – …words)