Relax. This is not one of those tagging game posts where you have to nominate five people etc.
Nominating 5 things that give me joy in my business is a way of kick-starting a project I am embarking on, to record a set of interviews on the theme “What Gives You Joy in Your Business?” It seemed like a good idea to show my hand before I asked others to show theirs.
My aim with the project is to provide a channel for some inspiration and positive vibes for the League of Work From Home Professionals*, at a time when every newspaper, television and radio station is telling us how bad things are and how worse they are going to get.
As a preamble to what follows, I generally describe my business in these or similar terms:
I help business owners and executives navigate the maze of social media and develop social media roadmaps to match their business strategies and I do that mainly through online and offline seminars, together with group or individual coaching.
So here are five things that give me joy in my business:
- Being continually challenged to keep learning about social media and about business coaching
- Having clients and colleagues whose achievements I respect and whose company I enjoy
- Being able to help people in business communicate more effectively with their colleagues and the broader marketplace
- Being my own boss
- Having a worldwide, mutually supportive network I can call on and who can call on me when needed
Makes me feel very grateful.
I would love for you to share with us some things that give you joy in your business: five would be great, as would one or two (hint: a chance to tell us what you do – no spammers please).
PS: I don’t know that there is a League of Work From Home Professionals, I made it up. But would that be a good idea?
Image courtesy of Wordle.
Comment Spammers Have Turned “Nice Post” into a Spam Alert
One of the things that I dislike most about comment spammers is that they take otherwise useful or pleasing phrases and make them part of their spam comments. For instance, “Nice post.”
It’s not that I don’t like friendly, complimentary comments. It’s just that, more often than not, that phrase at the beginning of a comment is followed by gibberish. Although at a quick glance the gibberish can sometimes look like a rational, relevant comment.
My assumption is that the “comments” are created by a bot, and the reason the “comment” looks on a quick glance to be relevant is that it repeats words or phrases from the post being commented on. Take the following, for instance, a comment on a post I wrote about how rural communities are being short-changed in the broadband department:
My first reaction was that this was from a non-native speaker of English and was probably ok enough to let through. Then I read it properly and realized it was one of those sneaky spam comments that masquerade as a real, relevant comment.
A bit more coherent than the one which followed:
Good for a laugh the first few times, perhaps. But boring and annoying after a while.
Someone once queried my mistrusting the comment “Good post”.
All I can say is, blame the spammers.