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Stories about social media and the way it is affecting our lives are circulating around and around the web right now.

Yesterday, my friend Julie told me that she literally feels her brain reaching to understand how it all works. She also said something very intriguing. Julie notices that the more she learns about using technology to communicate, the better her brain capacities are in other, unrelated areas. I’ve had the same experience. Confronted with some little mechanical problem which would have frustrated me in the past, I find I have a little more capacity, a little more patience, and a little more curiosity to see if I can fix it myself. This makes for a sparkly little moment.

The key is to give yourself very manageable goals that you can approach without overwhelm. Then, the brain will engage this playfully—and that is the onramp to successful participation in social media. Here I offer little goals that can be broken down into even smaller parts. Relax when you read, nice deep breath, let go of tension. Okay. Here we go.

Three little social media goals

1. Become visible in social media.
2. Include yourself in the conversation.
3. Give your brain a chance to expand its innovative capacity by using these tools.

Become visible

Simple. You have to participate to be seen.

Include yourself

Once you start sharing on Facebook, for example, the door is open to the kinds of conversations that you want to develop for your goals. Don’t be deceived by the openness of these platforms. It may seem awfully loose and unformed, but you can place parameters of your own so that your activities are focused and productive. People are doing it right now, very effectively.

Give your brain a chance

In order to grow a thriving business in the 21st century, you must develop your capacity to innovate. Without these skills, your ability to steer your own life is greatly impaired.

Getting involved in social media is the best way I know of to get your own brain into the game of innovating appropriately for your business. Facebook is probably the fastest-moving, highest-visibility, easiest-learning curve platform. It is designed to give you options to fit your own goals and your mindset.

Initiate contact. Play with it for a while, keep an open mind, search for like-mindeds. Be patient and give it a little time. Soon you’ll understand how people are using it. There’s a bonus, too. Your brain is forming new areas of understanding that, as I mentioned above, can extend beyond technology.

A few puzzle pieces to consider:

Inventiveness is a 21st century mandate for a prosperous life.

Don’t let your brain convince you that old habits are good habits. Thriving in these times demands that you rise above the status quo.

Social media is just a normal, human conversation

You already know that the best marketing for any business is word of mouth. Referrals. What has always been in place is the exchange of experiences. We talk. We share.

Check that: Just a normal, human conversation. On warp speed.

It’s not just that technology puts the conversation into the exponential realm, it’s the speed involved.

Exponential potential: From 1 person to 1000 in eight steps.  Now add the speed of an instant message. What’s that speed? It’s very close to “now.” Still with me? One person to a thousand people, off goes the message you’ve delivered, now. You probably understand the “viral” nature of online interactions, but I want to highlight that as a real challenge to our brains.

You just have to start somewhere: 3 more tips to get you going

Find a buddy to play with, and see how far you can get just using the simple tutorials offered on Facebook and Twitter, for starters.

Learn from people more advanced who are teaching social media to their communities.

If you enjoy writing, start a simple blog and experience the little thrill of online publishing.

Most of all, smile, and keep breathing. Your brain loves that.

Suzanna

Learn to write practical online content

Smarty-britches Search Engines

Ah, the refreshing insanity of search engines and their algorhythmic wheezing. A few months ago I read Darren Rowse’s hilarious account of the weird choices sometimes made by Google Adsense in terms of those ads that show up in the right column. I’m no stranger to this dynamic, having made the bizarre discovery of my book, “Little Shifts,” translated into Portuguese. Actually, I didn’t find it. A friend did. Imagine my surprise… “Congratulations about your book being printed in foreign languages.”

HUH?

Bizarre, because hello, you’d think my publisher might have mentioned it, and hysterical because the reverse translation has a – well, let’s just say a wisdom of its own. Besides announcing in their press release that I am the author “Suzanna American Beth Stinnett,” there were these loose-as-marbles interpretations. Check it out:

“To change some things of place, to move in the closet, to revirar the drawers and the garage, also are small significant changes. This because the context where everything before existed also dumb.”

Okay, I admit to writing a chapter about clearing clutter. But I never said to revirar. And what about this one, so uplifting, yet so final:

“The communication potential finishes to grow. It says: `You is very legal. It breathes! Everything is well’.”

And this last little set, well, I might have to use it in my next book. Somehow the valley reference just rings. So remember:

“Open the doors to the changes. Valley everything to remember its interior process; of its axle and balance.”

Yes, indeed. Valley everything! And don’t forget the guacamole!

Suzanna “It must be love” Stinnett

To check out the REAL book, see the Little Shifts page. You is very legal!

By the way, I hope you don’t let a little digital misfiring discourage you from all the other glories of online communication. If you are working on content for your blog, for Twitter, or any other vehicle of modern communication, you’re invited to come check out my audio for my Content Guide, “The Writer in the Blog.” The audio supports the writer’s process. See the first few short (3 minutes or so) installments here on my audio blog: Spoken for You.

And don’t forget: Valley everything!

Yours anagramatically,

Suzanna Stinnett

p.s. Be sure and get your copy of Cloud Alchemy by joining my web family here at Great Adaptations.

When Love Comes Back

Happiness is a physiological process which may enhance creativity. The happiness that comes from having your love returned is like a chemical elixir, pumping endorphins and other hormones through the brain, keeping neurons firing at top capacity. Neurons work with information, and the memories that are forming during the course of a good relationship are very strong creative enhancers.

Depth Works Both Ways

Ever wondered why it takes so long to get “over” a long-term relationship? That’s the depth of the neurological involvement showing its less-than-lovely side. As long as the relationship continues, however, that neurological development goes on at many different levels.

Empathy is an Excellent Challenge

We know that newborn babies who are unloved or separated from family because of illness or other misfortune suffer a low rate of neurological growth. Some mental processes, such as empathy, do not ever reach full development in the absence of maternal love in the first six months of life. Empathy, for example, is a prime ingredient in the writing of a great novel or short story. A fiction author cannot create compelling stories without being able to step into the shoes, minds and heart of their characters. This ability is called empathy. The bloggers who seeks big-time success must develop his sensitivity to his readership almost to the level of telepathy!

Images and Sound Enhance the Brain State (but you knew that!)

There is even a way to develop a mental state that is exhilarating in the way falling in love stimulates the brain. Realizing that you have this choice can lead to some fascinating experiments. You can experience what is called the “loving” brain through viewing a photograph of a beloved, through the use of music and dancing, through a commitment to selfless acts, and through simply contemplating this choice. Becoming more aware of love and positive experiences will also enhance the brain’s creative capacity. And inspiration, wherever you may find it, is a premium agent for development of the brain.

Blogging Makes Brains Grow

These physiological responses to information make it easy to understand why blogging is such a phenomenon. Available to just about anyone, the ease of communicating is fostering a torrent of imagery, storytelling, sharing, and general reaching out to the world. This mimics the brain’s activity when we work to understand something new. The neurons literally reach, stretching to the goal.

Fall in Love

Get inspired, fall in love, and share it. Tell me what is inspiring you right now. What is keeping you reaching for your goals? Is it love? Money? A desire for freedom or travel?

Suzanna

New blogger? Congratulations. And uh-oh.

Watch out for the New Blogger’s morass.

Right there! By your left foot! Careful or you’ll slip right in, and then how we will ever find you?

I’m excited about the opportunities popping up for people who want to communicate through blogs. Teaching, tutoring, “knowledge transfer,” building communities – these are just a few of the creative options for working and playing online. And the main way people seem to be getting into this business nowadays is through blogs. Even big businesses are starting to understand the value of a well-appointed blog. Blogs are the portal, and the blogosphere is the big brawny planet of creative adaptation. And by the way, “blog” is really just another name for a website. What I’m referring to is a website that uses devices made for blogging as its way of communicating with the world. That world of devices, and a whole philosophy that is emerging through it, is the blogosphere. It’s a big place.

So, transporting into the online world through a blog is good way to do it, right?

Maybe. Probably. But only if …

Yeah, you’re ahead of me. Only if you have some idea of what you’re doing. If you are thinking that this might be a way to make a living, and have fun at the same time, well, you’re right.

Maybe. You’re right if you know how to figure it out. Where to look, who to read, what to buy into, how the heck the whole machine works.

I’m going to make it a little bit easier on you.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a sales pitch. You can learn for a long time without getting out your credit card. What I can do is lift the veil for a moment, take your hand, and give you three keys to the kingdom. These keys are people. All the keys are people. People who have been around a while, innovating, articulating, brainstorming, putting the pieces together. I want you to know about them because they are some of my best resources.

Allow me to introduce:

Yaro Starak, whose site is www.entrepreneurs-journey.com,

Darren Rowse, whose site is www.problogger.com, and

Brian Clark, whose site is www.copyblogger.com.

You can learn pretty much everything you need to know from these three guys.

But now there’s another problem.

The problem is information overload. And even narrowing it down to three people I totally trust and highly recommend, well, you’ve still got a problem. Any idea how much information is on those three sites alone? Well, the posting rhythm varies, but it’s typical to see at least two or three articles a week from these guys, sometimes more, and these are not two-minute reads. Everything they produce is relevant to growing a successful blog. Everything. So do the math. How long will it take you to get a feel for what they are telling you? They’ve been at it for a few years, and the last two years in particular are full of innovations and revelations. Got time to read oh, say, about a thousand content-rich posts? No? Uh-oh, morass again.

So I’m going to help you with this one too. You cannot afford to miss what these guys have to say, but you can focus in on what is relevant to a total beginner. They’ve made it relatively easy to do that, and I’ll just hand you the links here so you can relax, point, and click.

Start here. Read these three blogs, and you’ll have the door open to your own portal to the blogosphere.

Darren Rowse has created a whole system for introducing people to blogging. Here is a great place to get familiar with his style:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/14/is-a-blog-right-for-you/

Yaro Starak has a fantastic free resource that is very revealing about taking the leap to a monetized blog. Go on his website at the link below, and get a copy of his “Blog Profits Blueprint.” You’ll find it in a box in the right column on his home page.

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/

Brian Clark also has a free resource for you to look at. His program, “Teaching Sells,” describes a system for building a learning community. I think we are going to see this blossom into an entire culture. You can get this one on his home page:

http://www.copyblogger.com

If you’d like to continue learning about bloggers and their brains, I’d love to have you in my writing community. Subscribe to my list, (by typing in your email in the right column there where it says “We’d love to have you”) and I’ll respond with some special stuff of my own.

So there you go, be fearless, and don’t forget to take your brain breaks. Come back and let me know what you think about these three resources. And here’s my question for you: What would you like to tell the world as an online communicator?

Best regards,

Suzanna

When I responded to Darren Rowse’s call for videos on his Problogger site, my experience in making videos amounted to a three-second pan of thread spools in my sister’s sewing room in Duluth, Minnesota, shot on my cellphone. I had never even held a camcorder. At least not while it was running. So Darren asked his readers to do a video on “Why I Blog,” and post it online for him. Well, I could not miss out on the opportunity to be part of this project. So what if I had less than a week to do it? How long could it possibly take? Yeah, some of you are chuckling already. Well, buck up. I did it. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. So here is my mini-manual for all you newbies out there who have no idea where to begin. Ready?

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1. As soon as you see the project announced, recognize that there are only six days left before the deadline, and know that it’s not enough time. Conclude that you are doing it no matter what.
2. Continue with whatever you normally do for two days. Let your idea gestate. Make some notes about the story you want to tell. Take all the time you want to let your imagination run. Look at a few random videos on Youtube.
3. Decide your video has to be a tour-de-force. Note that some have already posted their short, neat videos, filmed in their office or living room, just relaxing and answering Darren’s question. Decide this is nowhere near good enough for you.
4. Spend a couple of hours watching funny dog videos.
5. Now that you’re totally inspired, start looking at old National Geographics for the elements of your visuals. Tear out a few dozen great pages and stack them on the kitchen table.
6. Go to the thrift store and find a book on animation. Clay animation. Read the entire book.
7. Start creating your visual background before you’ve finished your script. What the heck. It’ll look good anyway.
8. Cut a bunch of images from old maps. Spread little paper corners and wedges all over the house.
9. When your partner comments, “That looks interesting,” frown and nod without speaking, giving off the impression of confidence and intense focus. No one will bother you after that.
10. Take one whole day to cut out and assemble your set. Make stick puppets using wire and wooden shish-ka-bob skewers to create handles for them. They won’t be quite long enough, but that will add to the excitement when you film.
11. Over the weekend, when you have a whole day you could be completing the video, go flying instead. While you’re at a distant airport, leave your only good pair of glasses in the ladies’ room.
12. Be sure and borrow a camera from someone else. It’s best if they also do not know how it works. (The creative process loathes certainty.) You’ll need the manual. Read it before bed so you can wake up knowing what to do next.
13. Don’t bother to find out if you have the cables and plugs to load the video from the camera to your computer. You can deal with that later.
14. Scribble out another outline of your script. Try to match it to the collage pieces you’ve arbitrarily created. The decision making process is streamlined by your blurry vision.
15. Set up your filming area in the stairwell. Put the camera on the tripod above the top stair, so people coming upstairs get the message. You can balance a hot light on the upper railing. If you live in earthquake country, like I do, this just adds to the joie de vivre of the whole thing.
16. Filming! Do a couple of run-throughs so you can see where your arms and head will show while you’re moving the puppetry. Promptly forget this information. Have your partner stand on the stair below and try to reach across the artwork without getting in the picture. Be sure you have to reach from the floor and twist awkwardly to do any zooming or help with the puppetry. This creates a lot of extra muscle strain which helps justify any drinking you might want to do at this point.
17. Realize that editing will take way too long, so you’ll have to go for one perfect take, sound and all.
18. Continue doing takes until at least 2 a.m. The really good stuff happens in the madrugada.
19. Re-confirm that it’s a good idea to film in one take. Knowing how to edit just takes away from the spontaneity of the final product.
20. Now that you have one usable take, get some sleep. It will look even better in the morning.
21. It’s time to start getting your great video off the camcorder and into your computer so you can show it to the world. Realize that the manual is for a different model. Figure out how to do it anyway, and then realize that the computer needs a completely different connection. Firewire or something.
22. It’s never too late to switch to the other camcorder. Get your partner to quit what he’s doing and help you reshoot in the middle of the day. Decide that the mid day glare is actually a good thing.
23. Take two shots and realize that you have less than an hour to get it loaded before the deadline. Call your film making friend and beg for instructions.
24. Load your video onto YouTube. Ignore the various warnings about compression and all that stuff.
25. Watch the loading bar like a hawk. After half an hour, when nothing has happened, panic. Stop the loading and start scrambling to figure out how to compress the video.
26. Go online and find all the free video compression programs available. Load four of them onto your system.
27. While they’re loading, it’s time for a snack. Get really tense with your partner in the kitchen, and drop the cutting board on your toe. This will clarify everything you’re doing. Now you are ready to upload to YouTube.
28. Talk to your film maker friend who decides you can probably just upload the video. Maybe YouTube is doing maintenance or is busy right now, she says. Decide this makes sense, and upload to YouTube without changing anything on your video.
29. Be amazed when it uploads easily and appears on your YouTube account.
30. Breathlessly following the instructions, go to the website that is running the project and add your video to the comments list.
31. Discover that the project is already closed.
32. Double check your timezone calculations. Realize that Australia is actually 17 hours ahead, not eight. Notice that you knew this, but ignored it somehow when you were starting this project.
33. Attach your video to a different blog post, and beg to have it included in the group project.
34. By some miracle, your video is accepted. You’re a success.

Break out the champagne!! No one will want to talk to you now, so you can have the whole bottle to yourself.What are you waiting for? Get your video done! And share your story: Tell me about your worst video-filming experience. But first, go see the result of my efforts here: Because They Blog. Suzanna

Internal versus External Bloggers

Blogger in a Cave

Internal bloggers love blogging because they get to talk about their lives, stay focused on what they are doing, and pretend that someone out there cares one whit about their daily challenges. A diary with an audience… maybe.

Internal blogging is a growth tool, a catharsis, a place to experiment, and somehow feel connected, even if not one person is actually reading your stuff. most writers are much more natural at this kind of blogging. It is set up like the writer’s brain, endless inner routes traveling around the mental terrain of experience, matching strings of words to the sensation of self.

Beautiful but Limited

A beautiful world, but internal blogging has limited flows, that is, by definition it resists the intrusion of the outside world. Limits on the flows are all-inclusive. Limiting any flow on communication will limit the possibilities, opportunities, and the potential for money. Money is just another energy flow, and it is magnetized by other flows. Money loves to go where things are happening. It weaves itself into interactions. The potential for money flow is just about equal to the extent of engagement.

The Outer Orbits

External blogging is pretty much the opposite, and here’s where writers have trouble. Our brain wiring has to do much more than expand into the new technical territories of the blogosphere. We actually have to retrain some mental habits. In the midst of all the usual Blogger’s Everests of learning curves, we writers also have to grapple with the uncomfortable sensation of a very different medium for our craft.

Knowing Marketing Helps

I was lucky when I started blogging. I had an edge that had been sharpened during many months of market research for my book, “Little Shifts.” I had already developed some success skills like precisely defining my readership, listening closely to their collective conversation, and ruthlessly lopping off the fat in my writing. But external blogging is an extreme version of that listening and lopping. Online readers scan the screen impatiently, looking for the first reason to grasshopper-hop to another virtual playground.

The Beast That Is

External blogging is a weird animal. The reader’s experience must be that of an irresistibly friendly conversation they eagerly respond to. The writer must authoritatively convey essential information while keeping the door wide open to discussion. The reader must always feel they are part of an important social group that makes a mark on the whole. This is engagement at its best. It moves the reader to draw deep from her well and share creatively in the process.

Sailing the Seas of Blogging

The writer who ventures into External Blogging will cope with tremendous distractions of technology while maintaining that sense of authority within his chosen field. For starters, the blogosphere demands honesty to the point of radical transparency. One might think you’re either honest or you’re not, but becoming transparent is really a skill. When a blogger can entertainingly reveal her daily challenges while keeping the reader fed with valuable streams of information, she is on the yellow brick road that leads to success.

Unlimited Flow

The flows available to an External Blogger are darn near unlimited. This in itself is a problem. With all that great content in the outbasket, you now have to engage the most productive technological interfaces to feed your own goals. It’s time to get familiar with those options.

The Writer in the Blog

In my class designed for writers and beginning bloggers, I use a variety of tools to help you gain a big-picture view of the world of successful blogging. You’ll see a mind map that will show you the world of connectivity from about a thousand feet in the air. You can take it in, and decide which pretty pattern you want to learn about next. To get your feet wet, subscribe to the site, and you will receive my e-series called “Before You Begin.” Just put your email into the box over there in the right column, and click “subscribe.”

Meanwhile, which kind of blogger are you? An innie or an outie? Or a little of both?

Suzanna

Where’s your entry point?

The blogosphere invites you, but how do you get there?

(I hear you knockin’, but you can’t come in!)

What is this place, anyway?

The blogosphere is the great creative force through which you can organize anything. It’s talk-friendly / art-friendly / idea-friendly / money-friendly / community-friendly / and friend-friendly.

So you go forth and try to find your way through the first learning curves. Once you’ve done that, you’ll get to climb up onto that first plateau where you, personally, can communicate. You can also make money. The options and choices on this plateau are staggering in number. It’s exciting, totally creative, and open to anyone.

Where’s your entry point? That’s the big question.

Remember that kid’s game Chutes and Ladders? Well, that’s what it seemed like to me a while back when I was trying to get the most basic understanding of what people are doing online and in the evolving blogosphere. I could see a lot of excitement, sure, and it really did look like there was a way to make a decent living, but what a morass! And which direction to take?

Watch out for that morass.

It held me up for years, keeping me from finding my own community online. I couldn’t even begin the experiment. Maybe I’m easily “confoundable,” but I don’t think I’m alone in being totally confused by the whole online world.

Just think about finding your own entry point. I can tell you that this is a tremendous time to be entering the learning curves of online income. It’s changed drastically, but you can still apply what you already know. It’s changed in all the best ways, in my honest opinion. And we have some very friendly people working hard to explain the whole machine.

Where’s your entry point?

How do you find it? The answer depends on some personal issues, actually. If you are ready to take on the whole machine so you can start making a decent living as soon as possible, you want to enter at what I call the Fast Track and learn quickly and efficiently. If you’re still just looking around, happy with your day job, just exploring, you have time to peruse more of the philosophy of this socio-cultural-impact-beast.

Still groping?

If you are groping in the dark like I was in 2004, then you’d benefit from my series called “Before You Begin.” This e-mail series takes you from the ground floor of the Internet, through a solid look at all the aspects involved in being successful at online communicating. From there you have several good choices to continue your learning journey. All you need to do is go up to the top of the column on the right, and subscribe. I send the series to my subscribers by e-mail.

Are you The Writer in The Blog?

I’ m betting you are, and all you need is a foothold on how the whole industry works. It’s changed dramatically in the last few months, finally emerging from what was a confusing jumble of different worlds, into its own valid industry of communication. Now that it is a bit more grown up, it’s easier to talk about, and much more relevant to a lot more people. All that’s needed is adventurous souls willing to take on some learning curves, and ready to share it with each other. Are you game?

Where’s your entry point? Can you already answer that question?

To your outrageous success,

Suzanna

To read more about entering the blog world, click on this link.

COMMUNITY – CONVERSATION – CONNECTION
I’d hate for you to miss it, so I’m going to tell you a story about how everything has changed in our virtual world. It happened quickly, like everything in technology, and now of course it seems inevitable. It is absolutely a good thing. Rejoice!

The Internet has grown up. It was loping along behind old paradigms, while the global community of web users made their way through a bunch of learning curves. Here’s our online world as I see it:

The Three Cs:

Community: The group that belongs to you. You create it out of your own deep interest, your skills, experience, and passion. Your community looks to you for information, honesty, entertainment, and love. Wow.
Conversation: Being yourself, being trustworthy, offering consistent and valuable content, speaking from the heart, facilitating the community’s conversation with thought-provoking questions, responding to their comments.
Connectivity: Your facility with technology. Optimizing what is available so that you are able to create the community and engage the conversation with the greatest possible ease and consistency for everyone, including yourself.

WHAT COMES OF IT:

You can take those three concepts, each an ocean unto itself, and turn them into a very nice living. That’s one benefit. You can also put yourself into it, as I was showing in the definition of Community, as the whole person you are. You can bring your deep love and passion to the table, articulate it for your community, and be paid for sharing your knowledge.

WHAT IT TAKES TO DO IT:

Thanks to online teachers like Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, and Jeff Walker, among quite a few others, this process is being articulated so well we can all have access to it now.

Short version of the answer: It takes your interest – elevated to a passion, an investment of time (investment can be translated to focus and commitment), a few dollars (most of it is free), some soul-searching (as in “what am I really all about?”), and courage. Nothing more. But you can’t get out of the soul-searching. You will have to give it up from the core. That’s what makes a community love you, trust you, and want to pay you for your knowledge. And that passion I mentioned? That’s what carries you, and makes your imagination, creativity and innovation available.

WHAT’S YOUR PLAN?

So now that you know that you can learn to present your offerings to an eager public and enjoy your own online community, what are you gonna do? It’s good to have a plan. Make a short list with little steps and don’t forget your breathing. Just step out there.

Suzanna Stinnett

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