How to Enlist Awesome Sponsor Partners for Your Projects

Filed Under Business Life, Comments, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

The Art of Finding Great Partners

As the co-producer of SOBCon, a small event conference, I had to invent a few things about working with sponsors. It took a while to build and explain the value proposition for an event that only offers 150 attendees. Yet, those weren’t just any 150 and my goal was to entice, encourage, and enlist the most awesome sponsors to invest in making it work.

Last week I wrote a blog post about the 6 Cold Truths of Building Business. Two points in that list really apply here. Take a minute to go read it if you haven’t had a chance to; then come back here.

Learning the art of finding great partners might be the biggest value of my business career. I’m delighted to be sharing what I’ve learned about finding great sponsors with you.

How to Enlist Awesome Sponsor Partners for Your Projects

How often does it happen that we get emails often from complete strangers, requesting our time, resources, or money that outline what our investment will do for person asking? For me at least, it happens more and more. It’s a sadly tuned request that only lays out the benefit to the person who is asking. No giver has resources to answer every one-sided request generously — it’s not good friendship or good business. How would the giver ever survive?

Whether you’re looking for a sponsor to send you to a conference or someone to support your newest project … you have to make it in the best interest of the people who might help.

Here’s how to entice, encourage, and enlist awesome sponsor partners for your project.

1. Do your homework. Know what you have to offer. What about your event or project might be attractive to what sort of partner? Find out how folks value it. Be ready to walk in with an broadly sketched business plan that considers what the exchange of value will be.
2. Choose your partners. Don’t ask everyone. Look at what you’re doing and find the ideal match for the event or project you’re building. It will be so much easier to connect and collaborate if you can explain to a potential partner how you already see them participating in a meaningful way.
3. Start with asking them, “what are your goals for the next two quarters?” Then listen. Listening lets offers a chance to adapt what you’re doing to include something that fits the sponsor irresistibly.
4. When you hear a goal that aligns with yours, suggest how you might be more efficient working together. Negotiation is aligning your project goals with the goals of the folks you want to buy in. Sit on the same side of the table and align what you want with where they want to go.
5. Last word: Love your sponsors and the sponsors of any event or project that you enjoy! Sponsors make all of our lives easier.Talk about them. Write about them. Personally thank them for all they do for us! Give them lots of reasons to be pleased, proud, and ready to come back. You can bet that helps when we ask them to sponsor again!

A great example might be …
If you want a sponsor to send you to a social media (or SEO or education) conference or workshop, research to find a local business that wants to get involved social media. Ask for a meeting to discuss how you can help each other. You might suggest that they send you to the conference and that in return you spend 4 hours with their team teaching them what you learned.

Even if they don’t have the budget, you’ve made call on a local client who’s interested in social media (or SEO or education). You’ve started to establish yourself as an expert. You may find other business come from it.

Show how doing what you want will make them a hero, get them closer to their goals in ways that are easier, smarter, and more meaningful. Look for how you can make folks feel proud and smart to be a part of what you’re doing, you’ll find someone who wants to invest in what you’re doing.

I’m pleased to say that SOBCon2010 has an incredible list of sponsors, including Intuit, Allstate, ReveNews, Smart Brief of Social Media, and IZEA. Every one of them has been a pleasure to work with. We’ll be announcing a few others soon!

Any questions about getting awesome sponsors?

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

Look Who’s Entered to Win a FREE SOBCon Trip — OR Get a $250 Discount

Filed Under Comments, Design, Marketing, Motivation/Inspiration, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Writing | 1 Comment

150 People to Fine Tune Your Web Presence

Suppose you could take a weekend retreat away from the noise of the Internet …

• to focus on your business with the support of a mastermind team
• to get quality time to interact with the top people in social media
• to get the best information AND time to discuss how you’ll apply it
• to work with sponsors who are doing the same thing
• in a room limited to 150 people — all focused in the same direction
• without worry because the food and the wireless are outstanding.

Imagine a weekend work retreat with these people totally invested.

Here are the entries to win …

1. Jon Swanson @jnswanson wrote How Becky McCray Changed My Life
2. Leia Ferrari @lferrari2 wrote My BlogCrush confession
3. Cynthia Smoot @ohsocynthia wrote Getting Back to Basics …
4. Kristin Rielly @geekgirls wrote Opportunity Can Be the Greatest Motivator
5. Ria Sharon @RiaSharon wrote How Our Relationships Matter
6. Deb Brown @debworks wrote The Virtual Meets the Concrete
7. Ellen Nordahl @ElleLaMode wrote Inspiration to Embrace Uncertainty
8. Laura Maly @laura_maly wrote Online Thoughts Crash Into Reality
9. Esther Crawford @faintstarlite wrote My Internet Addiction
10. Glenda Watson Hyatt @glendawh wrote Lives Change When the Virtual Meets the Concrete
11. Jasmin Tragas @wonderwebby wrote Virtual Adventures and Girl Scout Cookies
12. Ken Trump @safeschools wrote Inspiring Person: Liz Strauss
13. Paul Merrill @paulmerrill wrote How Chris changed my life
14. Teri Conrad @tlchome wrote The Doctrine of Stephen Jagger
15. Susana Molinolo @foodplayground wrote #SOBCon2010
16. Lynne Jarman-Johnson @LjjSpeaks wrote Work + Fun = Passion
17. Erno Hannink @ernohannink wrote Als online ondernemer doormodderen of in stroomversnelling – SOBCon 2010
18. Stephen Sherlock @SherSteve wrote Hitchhiking with Aloha
19. Hope Bertram @windycitysocial wrote SOBCon2010 – Getting to know Hope
20. Connie Roberts @ConnieFoggles wrote Connecting Is The Easy Road To Blogging
21. Carole Hicks @carole_hicks wrote SOBCon2010 – The People Who Have Made a Difference For Me
22. Deb Hildreth@adlex wrote I am …
23. Hollie Pollard @commoncentsmom wrote They Don’t Even Know
24. Chris Burdge @b_WEST wrote #SOBCon2010
25. Pieter van Osch @pyotr wrote Online Creativity Accelerated by Off Line Event
26. Lisa Grimm @lulugrimm wrote Reflection: Inspirations From the Web
27. Dave Murray @DaveMurr wrote #SOBCon2010 – To Everyone, Thank You for Being Here and for Helping Make This Ride All the More Meaningful
28. Nathan Hangen@nhangen wrote 3 People/Places that Have Inspired and Educated Me for Online Success
29. Nerissa Marbury @OneEpiphany wrote The Person I Secretly Admire (or use too)
30. Lynn Reidl @lynnreidl wrote Peace of Mind: a Concrete Reality
31. Phil Gerbyshak @philgerb wrote Big C Communities Matter: #SOBCon2010
32. Tamara @unexperiencedmom wrote Liz Strauss Labeled Me an SOB!

And this just in from

33. Jordan Cooper, stand-up comedian @NotaProBlogwho wrote Nigerian Spammers Changed My Life

Would you write a blog post to get a chance to win a FREE SOBCon Weekend?

An Expense Paid Ticket!! AND the BlogIt EarnIt Discount

Here’s what they did to enter …

Now, we’ll put all of the entries in a random drawing and choose one lucky winner. We’ll announce the winner at the Webinar on February 15th. The winner will receive:

1. a free ticket to SOBCon2010 - $895.00 value
2. airfare and three nights at Hotel 71 - up to $1105 in hotel and airfare

A total package value worth as much as USD $2000 - nontransferrable, nonrefundable.

And remember as a thank you for sharing a story, we’re sending everyone who enterred a special code to take $250 off the $895 FULL conference rate - that’s over a 25% savings!

If you can’t make to SOBCon2010, you could “pay it forward” and pass the discount on to one of your friends — or offer it back to us as a gift for us to pass on for you.

Don’t Miss the FREE SOBCon Webinar Monday

Join us at noon EST on February 15th), to kick off a special SOBCobn2010 Webinar with Chris Garrett, Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund and Liz Strauss

We’ll be announcing the FREE SOBCon Trip contest winner and a new special limited time offer!

SOBCon2010 Webinar
Mon, Feb 15, 2010 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM EST
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/197073915

We’ll be talking strategy and tactics for our online business.

We’re doing everything we can to bring you all the value, the experts and expertise, and the time to work and network that you need to make your business outstanding and extremely profitable in 2010.

What could you do with a weekend of the time, expertise, and support you need to focus your business?

We’re all coming for the same reasons.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Register Now!! for Make the investment.

IKEA Shows a 30-Sec Spot Can Be About Us

Filed Under Comments, Marketing, Successful Blog | 9 Comments

This beautiful 30-second ad commissioned by IKEA, produced by the Hamburg agency Grabarz & Partner shows beauty doesn’t have to be expensive. At a time when many brands are focusing on volume and discounts, IKEA has deliberately used a calm 30-second advert to showcase the power of the brand.

A great message for these times — a tribute to the humble tea light..

Click the video to play.

Tealights are a small item staple to IKEA’s offer in line with their philosophy that elegance and beauty don’t have to be expensive, boring, or pretentious.

‘You don’t need a great deal of money to make your world more beautiful, just a bit of IKEA – that’s the IKEA philosophy in a nutshell,’ explains Claudia Willvonseder, IKEA’s Marketing Manager. ‘The tea light is one of several IKEA icons, and is a small-scale reminder of everything that IKEA does in a larger context,’ she adds.

For more discussion about this ad read Coloribus

I find this ad worth watching again and obviously worth passing on.

What is a small scale reminder of everything that is your brand?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Register Now!! for

It’s True! Unlimited Paid Leave for Employees! Will It Work??

Filed Under Comments, Community, Great Finds, Marketing, Successful Blog, Trends | 4 Comments

Change the Question

In an article in Business Week this weekend, Roger L. Martin and Jennifer Riel explored how approaching new ideas with an eye toward precedent and previous proof could be a killer. They told the story of a bank so risk averse it missed a huge opportunity and then held up the “abductive thinking” of Research In Motion who moved from a pager company to a smartphone contender.

In the mid-1990s, RIM was a modestly successful pager company. But Lazaridis saw potential in the idea of a portable e-mail device. He began to consider what it might look like, what it could do. He imagined something much smaller than a laptop but easier to type on than a phone. Laptops were already shrinking and bumping up against limitations on how small a QWERTY keyboard could reasonably get. Lazaridis stepped back to consider how a much tinier keyboard could be feasible—and he achieved a leap of logic: What if we typed using only our thumbs? He soon had a prototype and concrete feedback from it.

Asking what could be true—and jumping into the unknown—is critical to innovation. Nurturing the ideas that result, rather than killing them, can be the tricky part. But once a company clears this hurdle, it can leverage its efforts to produce the proof that leaders depend on to make commitments—and turn the future into fact.

Social Strata also saw potential and achieved a leap to a what if? of another fashion.

Unlimited Paid Leave for Employees?

Social media brings passionate people together in business relationships. And we look to them to show us how business might be if we work with trust and transparency. At Social Strata in Seattle, President Rose O’Neill, takes that idea seriously. Social Strata has recently surprised employees by announcing a revolutionary plan to offer its employees unlimited paid vacation benefits. At first the employees thought it was a joke.

There’s no maximum, but there is a minimum of two weeks.

From the Social Strata Founders blog post. Unlimited Paid Leave? Oh yes. :

… we decided that, if we have the “right people on the bus,” i.e., people who are passionate about what they’re doing, we don’t need to set artificial limits on the amount of time they can take off, or why they can take time off. Disciplined people will ensure that their responsibilities are handled, and still be able to recharge their batteries with time off. Undisciplined people who take advantage of the system will reveal themselves and be naturally sorted out.

Bruce Watson of Daily Finance points out that the plan relies on

• an employee/employer relationship of mutual respect
• and employees with a sense of responsibility to each other.

With those in place, Watson says could make for an energized workforce that feels appreciated and is inspired to loyalty and higher productivity. He also points out that in a workforce larger than Social Stratas 14-person, close-knit team, it might be hard to accomplish.

Here’s an interview Ms. O’Neill had with King5 News Seattle,

The environments we build often shape our behavior. Will this radical move bring the response that Social Strata is after?

What do you think needs to be there for this benefit to work? Do you think the plan is destined to falter at some future point?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Isn’t it time you registered for

SOBCon?

Develop strategies and tactics with the best of the Social Web for an entire weekend.

SOB Business Cafe 01-22-10

Filed Under Comments, Marketing, Successful Blog | Leave a Comment

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Chrisg
Steven Aitchison has a strong blog. Most people would regard his site as a success (in fact he claims it as the “biggest personal development blog in the UK) … So why would he ask for a blog critique when he is doing so many things right? With stats like these, Steven could be giving advice rather than asking for it.

How to Sell More From Your Blog (Blog Critique: Steven Aitchison)

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Steve Woodrufff
It’s a none-too-fancy restaurant that has been serving mouth-watering chicken, biscuits, and jam since, oh, the days of the Pony Express. Loveless Cafe.

Loveless in Nashville

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Starbucker
Sometimes a leader needs to think like a plumber.

Yep, a plumber.

How so? Think about pressure for a minute. A plumber deals with pressure all the time – in their case, water pressure.

How A Leader Needs To Think Like A Plumber (No Wrench Required)

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Seth’s blog
Find a calling. Then deliver

Craftsmanship

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Barry J Moltz
Now that jet lag has subsided, I can now reflect on what I learned on my three week vacation with my family to China, Hong Kong and Thailand.

1. You can stop and the world will go on…and that’s okay…

Cabbages and Condoms: 9 Things Learned On My Vacation In Asia

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Deaf Mom’s World
Have you ever been caught in a conversation where you weren’t sure what was going on yet you nodded along, laughed along or excused yourself to head to the bathroom?

Are you a Social Bluffer?

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Related ala carte selections include

A New Player?
This is fun.

Twategy

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Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

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