Arianna Huffington, Jason Calacanis, and Michael Arrington (to name a few) got filthy stinking rich by using one important tool. Sadly, most website owners have it and never use it.

Instead, many site owners hide their Excalibur (or light saber, if that’s more your thing) in a dark corner somewhere and rarely bring it out into daylight. But, if you’re brave enough to fight off the spiders, bats, and killer dust bunnies, you’ll be able to expand and grow your business far beyond its current expectations.

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Where Businesses Go Wrong

I love writing and I love working with my clients, but if there’s one thing that drives me around the bend, it’s this common scenario:

A client contacts me looking for a piece of link bait, buzz content, or a marketing plan. So, I have them fill out a profile, we discuss goals, direction, and all the other specifics. But, as soon as it comes to choosing a topic, they disagree with every one of my suggestions. In the end, they choose a standard topic with a frame that confines their article to ’safe’ subjects and constraints. The piece never generates much attention, and they end up disappointed.

Now, I’m not saying I always come up with the best topics to match a business all the time. I’m human. But, these clients turn down most good topic suggestions because they’re terrified. They’re scared stiff they might upset or offend someone. They’re worried they may come off looking silly or stupid and damage the brand they’ve worked so hard to build. Sadly, they likely do more damage to themselves by not taking a risk than they ever would have if they’d have just bit the bullet and done something a little differently.

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Bring Out the Chutzpah!

If you look at the Internet’s most successful people, particularly big-name bloggers, you’ll see they have one common trait: they’re not afraid to get creative. They’re different and not afraid to cause backlash, offend someone, or have someone walk away hard feelings. They’re not trying to fit into a specific mold, or at least not a standard one. Most struggling companies and websites, however, are.

When companies fail get creative, they fail to demonstrate to a visitor or potential customer they’re different or better than their competition. And let’s face it, this is vital. If I go car shopping, I look for the one that makes me go ‘Yes! That’s the one I want’. If I want to buy a dress, I look for the one that looks better than all the rest. When I vote for a political figure, I vote for the one that stood out as being different and portraying the type of person I want representing me. If you don’t stand out, there’s no reason for someone to choose you!

Even businesses in the real world are learning this hard reality. Take the Apple/PC commercials, for example. One of the reasons they’ve been so successful is because they were funny, but they’re also quite creative. They appear different from any other commercial that’s been on TV or Internet lately. Comparing themselves directly to PC was risky, and let’s face it, they could have been facing some serious legal trouble had they done it wrong. But, they bit the bullet, they took the risk, and it’s certainly paid off.

Most people who own a PC or Apple have seen these commercials or heard them at one point in time or another. These commercials have also spawned numerous spoofs, generated all sorts of links to spread its reach, and even helped build and emphasize the brand. In the end, Apple comes off looking like THE high-end, elite product. It looks trendy and people want it because it’s different and THE thing to have.

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Using Your Own Chutzpah

Other brands and businesses can do the same and it doesn’t have to cost millions of dollars or an entirely new marketing campaign either. It could be something as simple as creating an article that’s different from anything else out there; something that shocks, amazes, or maybe it’s even a little controversial. The important thing to remember when getting creative is that you need to sound intelligent, show professionalism, and you need to demonstrate all the qualities that you want your customers to associate with your business. Otherwise, you could end up doing more harm than good.

Outspoken bloggers and popular blogs have this down to an art form. These guys tell their stories straight up. There’s no beating around the bush and no candy coating. They give their opinions straight out and don’t care whether somebody likes it or not. In fact, they like it if somebody disagrees because it creates buzz, interest, and it gets people passionate and emotional about the subject.

This, my friends, is what drives sales and pushes people to follow your call to action. This is the exact same thing a writer works hard to accomplish in a piece of sales copy. You don’t need to be a jerk to accomplish it either.

If you want to take your site over the threshold and bring it into the realm of success, do yourself a favor and get out of your own way. Take the leap. It’s worth the risk. Worst-case scenario, this online world gets just a little more interesting!

Based in the Canadian Prairies, Angie Nikoleychuk (Haggstrom) is the Senior Copywriter & Content Consultant for Angie’s Copywriting, a premium business copywriting service providing offline & offline content to organizations of all sizes. In addition to online copywriting, Angie is a diehard coffee addict, avid Twitter user, and enjoys chatting about SEO, SM, branding, marketing, and business. (Besides writing, of course!)

(note: this post was written at 30,000 feet on the way in to Austin, Texas)

While most of my inspirational posts are original, it is worth noting when other hit gold.  Peter Shankman, of HARO fame, recently posted an excellent list of tips when traveling.  Peter is a true social media road warrior, and I trust that he’s been through enough bumps and bruises along the way to save us the trouble.

I highly recommend that you read the original post if you are even an occasional traveler, and let me add one to Peter’s list:

Spend some time reflecting about where you are in life.  Sometimes a change in perspective can really shed some light on areas in which you are succeeding, as well as areas that need more focus and attention.

Happy Memorial Day, dear readers, even if you are working today, try to step back and see where you measure up – compared to where you want to be.

Twitter, while excellent, short circuits the full potential of the thoughts that we seed into it. I’m putting a clock to the amount of time that it takes to write this blog post from start to finish, and will have it take no longer than 2 minutes.

Why? Because I’d like to get some of my brain back away from Twitter

Kidding aside – it’s important to elaborate on one’s thoughts. For me personally, I seek to strive in full abundance theory mode. People from all around seek advice from myself and my company, and we’re here to deliver. Sure, I could have lead in by putting out a short Twitter post. But this goes slightly beyond that 140 characters. File this away and before you do, let it serve as a reminder and a word of caution. Your thoughts should remain yours. Tweet away, but don’t forget that important lesson.

Welcome to the final installment of the 10in10 experiment! Week 10 I had a chance to catch up with John Stammerman aka JStam, currently a web administrator for Indiana University.  Right away I could tell that John really gets the web, both as a designer and a programmer.   It was interesting to see his views on social media, as he has been an early adopter and a ‘behind the scenes’ man for some time now. We chatted about usability, spending time looking at Prezi.com.  It was great meeting up with John and hearing about his transition from agency work to University work as well.

John had a fresh perspective on social media, one coming from a social media user, rather than marketer point of view.

We have a winner!

And we have a winner, folks! Congratulations to Kevin Mason, who drove the furthest to meet for the 10in10 experiment – Kevin has won an iPod Nano, courtesy of Geeks.com!

I had a lot of fun with the 10in10 experiment and hope you found it to be an enjoyable read.  Let’s not let it stop here.  We’re going to try to get the 10in10 crew together and see how it helped them grow in social media.

Previous 10 in 10 posts:

• Week 9: Meeting Ben Ray
• Week 8: Meeting My Neighbor?
• Week 7: Meeting Louisville Soup
• Week 6: Meeting Erin McMahon aka Firestar9s
• Week 5: Meeting Scott Hack
• Week 4:Week 4 – Todd Mundt from NPR
• Week 3: meeting with Jaime Mack
• iPod Nano / Geeks.com sponsor announcement
• Week 2: meeting with Kevin Mason
• Week 1: meeting with David Finch
• Taking it to the Streets: Initial post

At one point or another you’ve probably come across motivational posters.  Whether in a corporate boardroom or an email chain forward, some are meant to be meaningful and heartfelt, while others are downright funny.  Here’s our collection of the 7 best social media motivator posters:

Be sure to make a motivational poster of your own with the parody motivator generator.

LinkedIn

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StumbleUpon

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Twitter

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Digg

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Facebook

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Delicious

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The Internet (says it all)

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Related posts

• 10 Rules of Social Media (nowsourcing.com)
• Quasi-motivational posters (dougbelshaw.com)
• SEO Motivators (wiep.net)

Sometimes reading other people’s motivational stories just isn’t enough to lift your spirits. I’ve tried to make it a habit of posting motivational pieces every Monday (yes, yes, I know… it’s Tuesday… all the more reason to get motivated!), this one coming from Lisa Barone – It’s Not the Recession, You Just Suck. With a title like that the comments were closed over there pretty quickly. The ranters were delivering a serious tongue lashing. Perhaps Lisa didn’t convey her message in the friendliest of terms, but several of her points still stand. In this economy, feeling bad for yourself and wasting away your time on Twitter won’t change a damn thing. You have to be willing to work harder; that goes double for those of you who intend on becoming entrepreneurs amidst one of the worst employment famines in United States history.

This isn’t the time to feel bad for yourself.  Now is the time for action.  Work harder.  Don’t let self-doubt, peer pressure and blame get you down.

Nobody’s gonna break your stride! Onward and upward you must press, dear readers!

Getting featured in a web comic is a great start for motivational Mondays:

(see the rest of War 1/3)

Nothing beats riling up the Digg masses on a Monday, lol.  The Drill Down discussed War on this past Friday’s show as well.  Ncomment says that quite a few social media folks will be appearing in the next 2 installments – can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.  Always on point with visual commentary, more people should take notice.

Several days ago I put together 10 rules of social media.  For those of you that missed them amist the Twitter chatter, here they are, nice and concise:

Rule #10 in social media: multitasking makes you stupid. Do a single task and increase quality (props @kathysierra – http://bit.ly/sM8D)

Rule #9 in social media: be a wellspring of thoughts and inspiration to others. On the fly. Come on, I dare ya.

Rule #8 in social media: be careful what you say. If you think only social media folks are watching this space, think again.

Rule #7 in social media: know when to take a break – and going on Twitter doesn’t count as taking a break

Rule #6 in social media: be adept at thought, speech, and action – and know that they are all connected.

Rule #5 in social media: learn to type 80+ words per minute, you’ll need it

Rule #4 in social media: your goal ultimately should be to help change the world.

Rule #3 of social media: love what you do.

Rule #2 of social media: more coffee (good guess, @localseoguide)

Rule #1 of social media: coffee.

Related posts:

• Is Social Media an Industry? (mashable.com)
• How to Use Social Media to Land the Job of your Dreams (problogger.net)
• Do You Make These Social Media Mistakes? (cathystucker.com)
• Jacob Morgan: Social Media Translated into the Real World (mpdailyfix.com)

As this is my first SXSW Interactive, I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  You can spend all day looking at guides on SXSW, tips for newbies, and my.sxsw, watch #sxsw and the like.  In short, this is all overflow.  It’s overwhelming when you basically have all of Twitter in your living room.  

Once you jump into the flow, you go with it and see where it takes you.  I spent the time meeting all sorts of friends old and new: @RCSAustin, @dberkowitz, @tamar @catone @corvida @nickcobb @explicitmemory @rizoh and many many more.  It is really an amazing feeling to finally meet people that you have chatted online with for a long time.  Here’s a brief recap in pics:

RCS Austin blogging away

@nowsourcing and @corvida

@catone

@rizoh winning a Texas Social Media Award #tsma

Related posts:

• The Real Purpose of SXSWi (adamhcohen.com)
• The Real Purpose of SXSWi (socialmediatoday.com)
• SrexSW: The Twitter of SXSW 2009 is Twitter (RexBlog.com)
• Download Squad are in the house at SXSW! (downloadsquad.com)

This post is a combination between motivation, meeting for the #10in10 experiment, and social media.  I find that people sometimes have trouble “keeping it all together” sometimes.  It’s easy to get burned out and overwhelmed in social media.  My advice: take things one step at a time.  Of course you have your overall game plan, but what I’m talking about here are all the baby steps in order to get there.

Which brings me to the #10in10 experiment.  10in10 has been a lot of fun, though it is also a lot of work and time commitment.  We also had a huge ice storm in between.  So when considering balancing work and family, you would think that 10in10 might be something that might fall through the cracks.  Well, fear not, dear reader! We will finish 10in10 and also have some fun bringing it all full-circle shortly.

Now without further ado, let’s meet 10in10 #9: Ben Ray.

We had a chance to bring 10in10 back on track this weekend meeting Ben Ray, who is currently working for the Ohio State Treasurer up on Columbus, OH.  Ben is an interesting and smart guy, and it was a pleasure talking shop over a cup of coffee.  Though we can’t share all of the details, let’s just say that they are working on some truly useful and engaging things!

It’s interesting that Ben grew in social media from being both a writer and Digger.  Most social media practitioners out there tend to only specialize in a single network, I can recognize that being a content contributor and Digger is a real talent.

While Ben technically came from Columbus, he still also lives in Louisville, so that counts him out from winning the iPod Nano, which Kevin Mason is still on track to win as he drove all the way from Nashville.

So who of you would like to close out the 10in10 experiment? We have one more to do and the Nano is still at stake (sponsored by Geeks.com).

Previous 10 in 10 posts:

• Week 8: Meeting My Neighbor?
• Week 7: Meeting Louisville Soup
• Week 6: Meeting Erin McMahon aka Firestar9s
• Week 5: Meeting Scott Hack
• Week 4:Week 4 – Todd Mundt from NPR
• Week 3: meeting with Jaime Mack
• iPod Nano / Geeks.com sponsor announcement
• Week 2: meeting with Kevin Mason
• Week 1: meeting with David Finch
• Taking it to the Streets: Initial post