Communication

There are many types of communication networks that people can interact through.  In the Wheel, all communication flows through one central person, who is probably the group’s leader.  The Y is slightly less centralized; two people are centralized, hierarchical.  The Chain offers a more even flow of information among members, although two people are close to the center

Forms of informal communication include that you may or may not follow official reporting relationships and or prescribed organizational channels.  It may ay have nothing to do with official organizational business, but promote a strong culture and enhance employee understanding of how the organization works.

A Grapevine is an informal communication network that can permeate an organization.  A gossip chain is when one person spreads the message to many other people.  A cluster chain is one person passes the information to a selected few individuals.

Management by Wandering Around is when managers keep in touch with what’s going on by wandering around and talking to people on all levels in the organization.  Informal Interchanges is the use of informal exchanges among employees that take place outside the normal work setting; promotes a strong culture and enhance understanding of how the organization works.

Nonverbal communication are any communication exchanges that don’t use words, or uses words to carry more meaning that the strict definition of the words themselves.  Much of the content of a message may be transmitted by facial expression alone or other message content is derived from inflection and tone of the voice.  Only a small portion of the message content is due to the words in the message.

• Images-the kinds of words people elect to use to give emphasis and affect what they say
• Settings-boundaries, familiarity, home turf are symbols of power and influence
• Body language-how people of different cultures and backgrounds physically position themselves and react to the stance and body movements of others

Barriers to effective communication

Individual can have conflicting or inconsistent signals, credibility about the subject, reluctance to communicate, and poor listening skills, predispositions about the subject.  Organizational can be based on Semantics, status or power differences, different perceptions, noise, overload, language differences.

How to manage organizational communication:

Develop good listening skills.  By encouraging two-way communication, it allows the receiver to ask questions, request clarification, and express opinions that let the sender know whether he or she has been understood.  Be aware of language and meaning, maintain credibility, be sensitive to receiver’s perspective, and be sensitive to sender’s perspective.

Organizational:

Follow up, regulate information flows-no overload, and understand the richness of media (face to face vs. written).

Active listening guidelines are intended to help the receiver and communicator clearly and fully understand the message sent.  Maintain attention, use restatement, show empathy, using direct probes, encourage suggestions, and synchronize the interaction.

Steps on using supportive communication:

Describe objectively the event, behavior or circumstance-avoid accusations, present data or evidence.  Focus on the behavior and your reaction, not on the other person’s attributes to describe reactions and feelings, describe the objective consequences that have resulted or will result.  Focus on solutions to avoid discussing who’s right or wrong, suggest an acceptable alternative, and be open to other alternatives.

Your free-flowing, sequential memories remind me of stream-of-consciousness writing by the “counter-culture” of the 60s.  Great fun to write with little concern for  standard syntax, proper names and balanced characterizations.

Seems like the best option for you is Transitional Membership (which I didn’t even know existed till now…). You receive all the same benefits as being a professional member but it’s a LOT cheaper.

Check out this link; it has all the info you need: http://www.iabc.com/student/membership/transitional.htm

On your application you’ll want to indicate you’re applying to be a transitional member to the IABC Atlanta chapter.

Once you’ve got all your stuff filled out and you become a professional member, you’ll start getting all the emails from IABC Atlanta about all of their meetings and events.

1. Direct Sales

As I’ve said many times, having something to sell directly to your audience is ideal. Even more ideal is to sell something your audience has told you—directly or indirectly—that they want to buy.

Many offline businesses fail in social media because they develop an audience that doesn’t necessarily want what they’re selling. From this, they incorrectly assume social media audiences won’t buy. If you have an audience but have nothing to sell, you have an advantage… you get to watch, listen and learn what your tribe wants, rather than trying to force something on them they don’t want.

2. Affiliate Marketing

The next best thing to having your own product or service is to sell someone else’s stuff on commission. In fact, it’s smart to see what your audience will buy via affiliate marketing before you commit to developing your own product or offering your own service.

The key to successful affiliate marketing is active influence. Pick a product or service that’s perfect for your audience, and one that you can stand behind 100%. Then become an advocate without becoming annoying. Smart affiliate marketers turn their vendor partners into the sponsors of their content, or into the content itself through tutorials and other educational content that communicates benefits and helps people buy.

3. Integrated Sponsorships

Along the same lines, if you’re going to seek fee-based sponsors for your site, treat them like true patrons, not passive advertisers. This means you need to seek out sponsors you are genuinely passionate about, and then communicate that passion at various times to your readers, watchers, or listeners. This is where your influence platform can truly benefit a sponsor, and make it worth it to them to pay you more.

Another way to integrate a sponsor into the fabric of your platform is to create interactive promotions in which your audience participates. Whether it’s a contest or a discount or a special bundled deal, remember… what’s in it for them matters way more than what’s in it for you.

4. Network Marketing

The network marketing industry has grown-up from dubious early days and become a legitimate marketing model and multi-billion dollar industry. Applied online, it’s really just a tiered version of affiliate marketing. And as with affiliate marketing, you’d better genuinely believe in the product or service if you’re going to become an advocate for it. In fact, unlike most affiliate programs, you’re often required to use the product in order to promote it under the network marketing model.

I’ve never done any network marketing, because I’m not about to harass my friends and family with the latest “opportunity.” But I’ve been watching the network marketing space online, and it seems an inevitable match for social media. Good ol’ content marketing removes the uncomfortable ickiness of personal pitching and amplifies distribution across the planet, and that’s too powerful to be ignored.

WordPress.org

WordPress.com

Photoshop

Illustrator

get page rank

Copyblogger!

The job of the headline is to get the first line of your copy read.

http://www.copyblogger.com/cosmo-headlines/

http://www.copyblogger.com/sex-and-the-city/

http://www.copyblogger.com/details-headlines/

http://www.copyblogger.com/smart-people-ninja-content/

Great content creates a high level of trust and rapport, and educates your potential client about all the benefits of doing business with you.  You need more than great content: you need a content marketing system.

A twitter ID is called an handle. Twitter helps share what’s happening as you see it (Tweet) or as others see it (Retweet) in 140 characters. Twitter is about communicating publicly – Interactions which comprise of  [ @ ] mentions or communicating privately – private communications can happen between two handles that follow each other (DM or Direct Message – this i believe will replace SMS in the future). Twitter is keeping tab on the information flow by either following news outlets, information givers , organisations and individuals OR just following hashtags (#) also called discover OR following lists that you or others create. As handles discover you, they will start becoming followers. You can lock your handle, deciding to allow follow requests or keep it open permitting anyone to follow without permission and see your tweets on their time-line. You can be blocked by handles who don’t want you to follow them or you can block handles you don’t want to be followed by. You can favourite a tweet for future reference with one click. Everything you type on twitter has the potential to travel far and wide and every tweet is archived by the American Library of Congress – so don’t say or repeat what others say if you would not in a public place Finally, no better way to learn than spending a few minutes on these powerful social network for 10 minutes every day and putting up one tweet – it will evolve over time. So start tweeting with few followers and then when you get it right more followers will come on board. Also, do not follow too many handles till you get twitter right. It can clutter your time-line (http://amithpr.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/twitter-in-nine-steps/).

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/story/2012-02-16/small-business-social-media-outreach-smachburger/53122300/1

http://en.support.wordpress.com/guided-transfer/ 

http://mashable.com/2012/02/20/facebook-marketing-small-business/

http://www.emailtemplates.com/samples.aspx

“Be interesting.”

It’s good advice, but it’s nothing new. You’ve probably known from the beginning that being able to interest readers is a crucial part of growing a popular blog. It’s pretty obvious that no one is going to stick around unless they find your blog interesting.

But how are you supposed to do it exactly? How can you “be interesting?”

Far too much of what we write about attention and interest is abstract. We talk about differentiation, value, and triggers — all useful concepts, but you can’t point to them. You can’t hold out your hand and say, “Give me some differentiation.” As a result, it’s hard to wrap your mind around what those things actually mean.

I’d like to change that. Over the past few weeks, I’ve paid attention to the things that command attention, both of myself and others, and I’ve made a list of 21 techniques that work. It’s far from all of them I’m sure, but it should be enough to get you started.

1. Be wrong: The world is full of people trying to do the right things. It’s become so common that many of us are bored by it. We long for someone that is willing to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, be the wrong thing. If you have the courage to be that person, you’ll find lots of people paying attention to you.

2. Be right: You can also gain attention by being right… but only if you’re more right than everyone else. Run a mile faster than anyone else, explain your topic more clearly than anyone else, be funnier than everyone else. Embody perfection, and people will take notice.

3. Communicate what others can’t: As writers, we take ideas from our heads and put them on the page. Sometimes we forget how difficult that is for some people and how valuable that makes us. Lots of people would give anything to be able to say what they mean. But they can’t. So, they turn to songs, books, and art that communicate for them. Be a producer of those things, and you’ll never lose their attention.

4. Do something: Everybody online is trying to say something important, but very few are trying to do something important. If you want attention, dare not to just give advice to others, but to live that advice yourself. Then blog about it.

5. Surprise people: Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, say that one of the best ways to set yourself apart is to break people’s “guessing machines.” Take a surprising position, making outlandish analogy, or otherwise do the opposite of what you normally do. As long as it’s unexpected, people will stop and pay attention.

6. Make people laugh: Bloggers are far too serious. We’re so busy trying to teach that we forget to entertain. As a result, large portions of our readerships fall asleep. And what’s the best way to wake people up? Humor. Public speakers have been using it for ages, and as long as it’s appropriate for your audience, humor can wake your readers up and get them paying attention again.

7. Offer them an aspirin: Some of the best blog posts ever written are simple as an aspirin. Your reader has a headache, you have a cure, so you offer them that cure in the form of a blog post. They pay attention… not because of how pretty or well crafted your blog post is, but because it cures their headache. Conclusion: try acting like a pharmacist, not a blogger, and you’ll never lack for attention.

8. Show a (half) naked woman: Ever noticed that a disproportionate number of advertisements feature a scantily clad woman? That’s because it works. It draws the attention of not only men (as you’d expect), but also women. For whatever reason, nearly everyone finds their attention drawn to it. Here’s proof that it even works with blog posts.

9. Tell them who they are: “Who am I?” is not just a question; it’s a universal quest that most of us follow for our entire lives, continually defining and redefining ourselves, always insecure about whether who we are being is really us. As a blogger, you can (and should) harness that insecurity. Turn your blog into something that defines your readers, like this one, this one, and this one.

10. Predict the future: Every once in awhile, use your expertise to make a bizarre claim about the future. If you have any authority at all, people will take notice. Imagine if Brian wrote a convincing, well reasoned argument that online courses are the business model of the future. Oh wait… he did, and some of the biggest names in Internet marketing continue to talk about it.

11. Unleash your inner dork: Many blog posts are like miniature textbooks; they’re instructive, well-organized, and put you to sleep with their lack of enthusiasm. If you want to become famous on the web, stop trying to sound like an all-knowing teacher and unleash the “inner dork” inside of you — the part of you that’s so enamored with your topic that everyone else thinks it’s funny… but they pay attention anyway. More on dorkyness here.

12. Be courageous: Most of the videos on YouTube are there to make you laugh, but amongst them, you’ll find this rare gem that has attracted the attention of over 9 million people. The fact is, pretty much everyone has felt the foot of adversity on their neck, but very few of us respond to it with courage and grace. Be one of those people, and you’ll find the world watching.

13. Be startlingly honest: Every once in awhile, tell the truth. Be so honest that you’re scared to click the “Post” button. Be so honest that no one knows what to say in the comments section. Be so honest that your lawyer tells you to stop. You’ll feel better… and people will talk about you.

14. Be irreverent: Want to stir people up? Make fun of their god, their politics, their family — anything they hold dear. Yes, they’ll be offended, but lots of other people will think it’s hilarious. If you can’t stomach being hated by a portion of the world and loved by another, then you don’t deserve to have a blog.

15. Tell a good story: This one has been drilled into us so many times that I almost didn’t include it… except for one thing: people still don’t get it. Yes, stories support your points, make solid openers, and teach people while entertaining them, but a good story can make you a legend. I’m not talking about the little anecdotes that pepper the blogosphere. I’m talking about the story that haunts you on your deathbed. Forget about all the others. Tell me that one.

16. Break an important piece of news: Every time Google does something new, thousands of bloggers write about it. That’s great for Google, but where’s the real benefit for the bloggers? The first one to break the story is the only one that matters. It gets all of the traffic, links, and authority. Everyone else is just an echo.

17. Disprove the proven: For a long time, everyone thought you had to be the best to be successful. Then Chris Anderson came along and turned the world upside down with The Long Tail. He disproved what a lot of people held to be true, and it made him (even more) famous. Granted, it’s hard to engineer a breakthrough, but if you run across one, people will talk about you for years.

18. Pick the perfect picture: Want to make a good post better? Pick a picture that expresses exactly what you mean, and put it at the top of your post. Yes, it takes time, but the extra traffic is more than worth it.

19. Master the metaphor: Metaphors are the paths we create to lead our readers to our ideas. Create one strong enough, and it will become a highway of attention, leading readers to your blog more quickly than any other technique here (except maybe the last one. More on metaphors here.

20. Create a work of art: Many bloggers crank out posts the way slaughterhouses crank out chickens. They’re ugly things, fit for nothing but consumption. If you want to surprise people, stop and put some actual effort into your blog posts, creating a work of art. You’ll be surprised by how many people remember it long after it’s been swept off your front page.

21. Put your readers first: Yes, you’re the blogger. Yes, you’re the one with talent. Yes, you’re the one working your tail off. But it doesn’t matter. The one and only thing of consequence is your reader. You can rail against this fact for as long as you like, but as long you do, you’ll never be interesting.

Twitter Hashtags For Writers

#amwriting / #amediting – Of all the Twitter hashtags that could possibly be relevant for writers, these two blow every other out of the water. Both #amwriting and #amediting are Twitter “chat” hashtags and you’re welcome to join in at any time. These two tags have grown so popular that there is even a web community over at AmWriting.org.

#writing / #editing – These tags are similar to #amwriting and #amediting. As far as I know, these are the less popular versions of the tag.

#wordcount – This tag is used by writers who want to share their up-to-date progress on whatever project they’re working on. Be prepared to see a lot of numbers!

#nanowrimo – If you’re a novelist, you’ve probably heard of NaNoWriMo. This is their community hashtag.

#ww / #writerwednesday – Every Wednesday, Twitter users use this hashtag as a way of giving shout-outs to other writers, particularly the ones that they enjoy following. At least, that was its original purpose. Nowadays, this tag is used for all manner of writing-related activities on Wednesday.

#writetip / #writingtip — If you’re looking for tips and tricks to apply to your writing, this is the hashtag you need. Great for newbies, amateurs, and aspiring writers alike.

#askagent / #askauthor / #askeditor — There are times when you have a question for agents, editors, and authors. Unfortunately, you may not know any agents, editors, and authors. Who can you ask? If you ever find yourself in that situation, use these hashtags. Agents, editors, and authors browse these hashtags and will often answer the questions that pop up.

#writingprompt — Writing prompts are a great way to jumpstart your creative juices. Search Twitter for this hashtag and you’ll find hundreds and thousands of great writing prompts that you can use.

#99c — Nowadays, a lot of products are priced at the $0.99 price point – and e-books are no exception. Many authors sell their stories for $0.99, and many of them use this hashtag to notify potential readers. Use this tag if you’re looking for something at this price, or if you’re looking to sell your own work.