Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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A Checklist for Building a Solid Partner Relationship

Filed Under Checklists, Successful Blog | 3 Comments

Moving With New Tools to New Relationships

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The past few years bloggers and brands have worked together to move messages through communities and across the Internet. It was a natural transition for a broadcast-based system to move some of their marketing and advertising from print publishers to online audiences.

In many cases, what has occurred is that brands have chosen to use the new tools with an outdated view to how reaching customers work. Though the brands have given this new relationship a new name – blogger outreach – that implies relationship, the goal behind the outreach is often still product mentions in the form of blog posts and eyeballs looking at them.

It may be easier on the short term to hire a blog post or offer something free in hopes of getting bloggers to write about it than to develop a relationship, but as more big and little brands bombard big and little blogs with pitches and product samples, the less attention any brand can get.

And it always was true that …

Old thinking and old methods aren’t the best use of new tools in a new cultural mix. The best brands — businesses big and small — are already making the move from outreach and focus groups to partnerships. The best business bloggers are taking the initiative to build relationships like that too.

A Checklist for Building a Solid Partner Relationship

Great brands, savvy small businesses, and the best business bloggers know the best business relationships are a partnership in which both sides align goals and work together on a shared mission not a single campaign or opportunity. Here’s a checklist for building a solid partner relationship that can do that.

  1. Check for similar team size and bias toward action. What you’re looking for is a similar time-goal orientation. If your business can turn on a dime and needs one person to make a decision, you’ll be at a disadvantage working with a business that is highly driven by several step processes. The business with the most approval stages always wins control.
  2. Check for shared values and like standards. What you want to determine is that you and your partner agree on what makes great work and great service to each other, the business, and the customers. These intangibles can’t be described in a contract. They have to be discussed deliberately. Do that.
  3. Check that you have the same vision and mission in view. What’s important to determine here is that your mission critical goals for the work are truly aligned, that you see the same ending outcome, and that you’re sharing the same kind of risk. Find out before the work starts if your views don’t match — you don’t want to find out later that you were building a partnership and the other team thought of you as a channel of distribution.
  4. Check that you agree on roles, process, and vocabulary. What you want is concreteness of the “how” the partnership will work. This conversation will bring you to who owns which part and what responsibilities go with that.
  5. Check that you have clear boundaries and realize differences in your time-goal orientation. What you want to bring up here is the idea of “scope creep.” How will you alert each other when the relationship needs re-balancing? What will be the communication methods for changes to the plan, the process, or resource and budgetary needs?
  6. Check that you have discussed how you will share the risk and share the benefits. What is important here is a conversation about how the vision will play out, what will be required from both teams to secure the win, and how the rewards will be shared when you bring it in.

This checklist is a conversation that stands outside the making of a deal memo or a contract. It’s a relationship meeting of the minds. The accuracy of the conversation needs to be tested after you’ve gone through the checklist. You can do that easily by following these two rules.

Sound like a lot? It’s really not. If you think about it, it’s two meetings and keeping your head, heart, and vision in the partnership. They say a good partner can divide grief and multiply success. I can tell you that this process can bring you a lot closer to ensuring that.

How do you build a solid partner relationships?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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SOBCon08: A 10-Point Action Plan Checklist for a Successful and Outstanding Blog

Filed Under Checklists, SOB Business, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

How Biz School for Bloggers Was Born

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You might wonder why there was no call for speakers at SOBCon08. It was because we wanted to present some highly structured valuable content.

So many bloggers are looking to build a blog that attracts a solid community of readers, we wanted to make sure that they got the models and the interactive time to see how to apply those models to their own situations.

So SOBCon08 was built in an unusual fashion. We structured the content to meet 10 key points of a Successful Blog Action Plan. Then we invited hand-picked experts — experienced pros who could provide tested models in short targeted sessions. Their fluency and ability to offer clear models brought focus and freed up time. That time allows participants to apply each model to their own situation while the experts are still in the room.

The experts became speaker/presenters and the participants became six-person mastermind teams. Biz School for Bloggers was born.

10-Point Action Plan Checklist for a Successful and Outstanding Blog

Whether it’s is a hobby or it’s a place to make money, every blog is a business of sorts. The content is a product. The writing is a service that we perform. Our readers are the customers. Successful bloggers market and promote our blogs in the same ways that any business markets online.

Yet, we often don’t think much about the goals of our blogs in a structured fashion. It’s easy for hidden assumptions to creep in. Sometimes we forget to ask whether what we’re doing is the right thing to get us where we want to go.

Biz School for Blogging is built around a 10-Point Action Plan Checklist for a successful blog — 10 Structural Assumptions that every blogger should consider and question about his or her blog.

  1. Know the purpose. Is the blog a hobby or business OR is it meant to extend the hobby or business for an audience?
  2. Match the structure to the purpose. Does the structure of our online model supports the purpose we’ve defined?
  3. Determine the content boundaries. Have we decided what sort of content belongs on our blogs? Is that answer immediately clear to first-time visitors?
  4. Describe the ideal reader/customer. Have we figured out what sort of readers will love what we do? Do our blogs reflect our promise to them in every way?
  5. Manage our time investment. Do we spend our editorial time efficiently OR do we spend time working on things that our readers don’t care about?
  6. Choose social network sites with goals in mind. Have we chosen to use the right social networking sites to match our goals?
  7. Determine which new media options fit our goals. Do we know which new media options are appropriate for what we’re trying to accomplish?
  8. Know how to use the stats that match our purpose. Can we talk with authority about whether visitors are converting into reader/customers?
  9. Make everything “sticky.” Do we know how to make an irresistible environment that offers something that readers can’t help telling their friends about?
  10. Have an exit plan. Have we given a thought to what we will do with our blogs when we find we no longer want to keep blogging?

At SOBCon08, we’re going to go through that Action Plan Checklist one by one. Eight expert speaker/presenters will provide eight models or model choices. Participants in six-person “mastermind” teams will use the models to discuss and define that key point in terms of their own goals. By the end of the day, each participant will have an actionable plan for a more efficient, more reader-focused blog.

But don’t miss the more subtle “take away” that will also occur.

By the end of the day, every participant will have five new working relationships. For each person on their mastermind team, participants will be beyond the “Oh yeah I met that person at SOBCon,” and instead be able to say “We worked together in 2008.”

It’s very cool.

Isn’t it time that you register now?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! SOBCon is a business strategy workshop held every year in Chicago the first weekend in May. Register now!

12 Detailed Checklists to Spit Shine and Promote Your Blog

Filed Under Basics, Checklists, Successful Blog | 11 Comments

In Case You Missed It

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Vovo over at Business Traffic Ideas threw this idea to me. He caught it from Patrick Schaber at The Lonely Marketer who spotted the idea originated by Matt McGee over at Small Business SEM.

The thought is that so new subscribers in recent months might like to know about posts from times gone by.

12 Detailed Checklists to Spit Shine and Promote Your Blog

Every human is drawn to what we like and away from what we don’t. The beauty of a well-written checklist is that it checks for what we might have forgetten. The best blog promotion is quality — content, design, and linking. Use this dozen checklists to give your blog a spit shine and show it off.

  1. Classic Revisited: The Blog Review Checklist

  2. Checklist for Linking to Quality Blogs

  3. Editing for Quality and a Content Editor’s Checklist

  4. Choosing for Our Readers: A 5-Point Pop Quiz

  5. Blogs Aren’t Books, But Revising Is Still Revising: 6 Gating Questions to Make Revising Easier

  6. 6+1: How-to Blogging — Stomp Out Swiss Cheese Knowledge

  7. Eye-Deas 3-Photo Content Checklist

  8. Editing for Quality and a Content Editor’s Checklist

  9. A Blogger’s Personal Narrative Checklist

  10. Checklist for Starting a Directory Listing

  11. Blog Design Checklist

Taking care of the details, any designer will tell you is the killer app in the most elegant and well-cared for presentations. Any great writer will agree with that opinion. Yes, one after number 7 is missiong. :)

Quality feels satisfying to generate and to use. Quality is a blog’s best promotion of all.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!!

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Strategy: 40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully!
20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy
Strategy: How to Get Maximum Benefit from Complex Link Lists

Choosing for Our Readers: A 5 Point Pop Quiz

Filed Under Branding, Checklists, Successful Blog | 12 Comments

It’s a Surprise Quiz!

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Content is king. It is the product and the service we offer to our readers. Content is what they come for. So when we look on our front page, our job is to make sure that readers will find what they came for. Our posts are our way of extending ourselves, our thoughts, our business savvy, and our expertise. They are the flag that carries our branding message to the world in every sentence.

Sometimes we can look in the wrong direction. Instead of choosing for our readers we unconsciously choose for ourselves.

I use this 5 Point Pop Quiz to check today’s post.

  1. What was my purpose for writing today’s post?

  2. Who is the audience who will enjoy the post? Are they the core audience of my blog or business?

  3. Is there real content in the post? If it’s a link list, do I personally recommend every link on offer? If I’m passing on information, have I added my own insights, analysis, and value to it?

  4. What will my readers learn or get from reading today’s post? Will they be informed, entertained, or moved to action?

  5. For today’s post, did Ichoose for myself or for my readers?

Now and then we all forget and find we chose ourselves over our readers. Other times we write for each other, rather than for the folks we want as customers. I’ve been writing for years and I know I still get caught there.

I hope your post passed this 5 Point Pop Quiz with flying colors — the flying colors of a brand well focused on your readers. If not, I bet you know just what to do. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Don’t forget to sign up to meet me in Chicago. Seats are, oh so, limited.

Related
Two Important Ideas in a Brand Identity and Why We Have to Live Our Brand
Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About What You Think

A Pre-Publishing Checklist for Feeding the Spiders

Filed Under Checklists, SEO, Successful Blog | 13 Comments

Making Sure the Investment Pays Off

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Yep I write every day and I publish. That’s way I make sure that my voice is heard. I also want to be sure that my words are visible. I like to see that the spiders serve them up in Google.

Prorating the time that I spent gathering ideas, I’ve probably spent 60-120 minutes on average post. Time writing is time working. Time spent is an investment. It’s time I could be using talking to bloggers and talking with clients. Before I hit publish I make sure that the time I’ve invested pays off as well as it might. I’ve made a short Pre-Flight Publishing list that I run down, before I pass say, “Go.”

Pre-Publishing Checklist

  1. Is the content keyword rich? By waiting to read for keywords until after all other checks, I make sure that I don’t forfeit quality to pray at the altar of SEO. Now, I can look for keywords my readers might search for and make sure that they find the relevant content that I have to offer. I won’t be reaching, and they won’t be disappointed. Current relationships will stay strong, and new readers will be pleased with what they encounter here.
  2. What tags might I add that belong with this post? Tags can help search engine spiders properly index my post. Post tags are definitely blog, brand, and business promotion. If your blogging software doesn’t easily allow you to tag your posts, there are plug-ins and hacks for every platform out there.
  3. What related articles do I have that readers might be interested in reading? Offering related articles for readers to read more when they finished my post, gives people more information about a subject they’ve already shown interest in. It also gets readers more involved with my blog, my business, and my brand.

    The intra-link that you make at the end of your post shows people how your content relates and is relevant throughout your blog–this helps search engines index it as well.

  4. Are there opportunities for trackbacks? If I’ve mentioned another blogger’s work or if what I’ve said meshes well with the conversation on another blog, I’ll send a trackback to let that blogger know.
  5. Is this this a one-in-a-million post that I should self-promote to other blogs? If I’ve written the post that reveals how to get “Google Goodness” from every post, I write a brief introduction of myself and your post and send a personal email to a select two or three bloggers.

    I make it’s a one-in-a-million post, and I explain my reasons for thinking it’s a match with their blogs. If you don’t read a blog, don’t send a link. Period. Either way, it’s a long shot that a post really is the one-in-a-million post that we think it is. Still, there’s a right and wrong way to let folks know. If you’re going to do that, do your homework first, the person receiving the email will notice. Believe me they will.

When I’ve made these few checks I feel better that I’m sending off my work in great shape to make the most of the time that I’ve invested.

What other practices are on your pre-publsihing checklist?

–ME “lis” Strauss

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