Raising a barn is a spectacular goal. Getting a community to help makes it easier and harder. It’s important not to confuse goals with dreams.

A goal without a plan is just a wish.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
author of The Little Prince, said that.

Char Polanosky explains what that means.

To raise a barn or build a business with a community is a social collaboration. It competes with all of the other wonderful and pressing things in their lives. To capture their time and attention, we have to offer something that is smart, compelling, and easily fit into their lives — irresistible.

Share the Vision and the Plan

When the time comes to build, we’re not going to find a community who magically knows what to build and where to put their skills to work. A critical stage in social leadership is being ready for the community when they’re ready to help.

We have to be able to explain — what we’re building and what roles they might play.

Share the Vision

We gotta know the vision before we can share it. The vision has to be clear from the minute they arrive. We need to be able to articulate

• what we’re building — what the parts are
  and how the parts fit together to make a whole.
• how that whole will be useful and who will use it.
• how that whole with make that real people’s lives
  better, faster, and more meaningful.
• how you’ll reach the people who will use it.
• how you know they will.

Seeing the vision gives a community a reason to do the work.

Share the Plan

We gotta have a plan before the work can start. The value of the work also needs to be shiningly apparent. We need to be able to communicate without hesitation a clear business plan that offers:

• easily understood standards of quality
• simple budget rules or a stated source of materials
• a realistic schedule with an end date for their commitment
• a clear description of job roles for volunteers

Knowing the plan offers security that the work will be time well spent.

The vision and the plan let the community see what we will be creating. The vision and the plan give us the confidence on which a community can plant their trust, energy, thought, and emotion. On the vision and the plan, we align our ideas and ideals — we agree on the work to be done.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery also said,
Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it.

Have you ever helped someone build a dream? What did you need before you invested?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to build barn? Work with Liz!!
Image: NASA Image Exchange

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Here’s how it works.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

How Do You Get People Talking on Your Blog?

Social media. Even the name means more than one. It’s about conversation. Of course we want people talking on our blogs. How do we get people talking on our blogs?

• Is it the way we write?
• Is it the length of the posts?
• Is it the questions we ask?
• Is it the topics we choose?
• What’s the secret? Is there one?

And, whatever else comes up, including THE EVER POPULAR, Basil the code-writing donkey . . . and flamenco dancing (because we always get off topic, anyway.)

Oh, and bring example links.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
image: sxc.hu
Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

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Raising a barn needs a leader, a plan, and a community of people with skills.

The beauty of enlisting a social media community from the start is that communities only have time for ideas that will work.

When we reach out — talk to people — about our compelling idea, the social media community responds. They let us know what works for them and what doesn’t.

If the idea we have to offer is truly compelling, the folks we’ve formed relationships with can offer us help more than we’d ever imagine. Why? Social media folks participate for many reasons. Here are just a few.

• Some will be inspired by the idea and want to make it a reality.
• Some will want to work us and the folks who take on the project.
• Some want more experience and new skills a project can offer them.
• Some have skills to offer and like to teach what they know.
• Some will want to save us from the mistakes they made.
• Some will like us and want us to succeed.

How does that happen?

How do we get a community to be inspired, to want to work with us, to want the experience our project has to offer, to want to teach what they know, to want to save us from the mistakes they’ve suffered, and to want to help us succeed?

Bring a plan their minds can buy into. Bring a dream their hearts can hold. Bring a reason each one of them will make a particular difference.

Be a leader who’s a learner.

Reach out with head, heart, all the meaning behind what you’re building.
Don’t be afraid to them how and why their part is important to the whole.

Bricks and mortar don’t make a business. Code and design only hold attention for so long. People make a business happen.

We’ve got all the tools. We’ve had ‘em. Can you see how to bring the people in we from the start?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to build barn? Work with Liz!!
Image: Haussler Cluster Raising in CA

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JOIN US TONIGHT AT 7PM

How Do You Get People Talking on Your Blog?

Oh, and bring example links.

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

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When people ask my help, it’s often to avoid or to remedy a situation like this one.

He had a dream, an idea, for a new business. It was a product and a service. He saw it in its glory. It was part store, part community bustling with transactions. He saw the people coming — they knew they couldnn’t wait for it.

So he got busy building that dream. He invested time, money, and enthusiasm in something …

• that he thought was cool.
• that was costly, but “worth” it.
• that was harder to use than he realized.
• that he didn’t know how to sell.
• that he imagined would get people change how they do what they do
• that someone else had already built — better, faster, less expensively.

Nothing happened. No one lined us. No bustling community developed. The dream was built and no one lined up. No one has noticed it. Why?

He didn’t remember to talk to the people who were supposed to come.

Get the People to Come Before You Build It

Suppose, instead of building that business and offering it to them, we invited the people we want to serve build the business with us? The culture of social media and social networking offer huge opportunities to build a business with a community rather than for them.

In the 18th and 19th rural North America, building a barn – the most important structure of farm — required many hands and many skills. Time was often short and funds could be tight. Barn raising was the work of an interdependent community that saw barns as an important part of life.

A barn raising used to be a one- or two-day event. Materials were purchased and plans were finished ahead. When the community came able-bodied and quick-minded members could start right in. Barn raisings were lead a barn raiser who with a well-thought plan who was paid to identify and manage crew chiefs, specialists, and volunteers for “pitching in.” New barn raisers were expected to watch before they took up their work.

A barn raising is the ultimate community collaboration to complete a common, organized goal.

Barn raising a business in the social media culture offers the business and the community members who participate clear benefits. Here’s why your social media business building should be a barn raising.

• A community needs a plan and organization to build. We can’t fool a community by building parts that don’t work together. We can’t get stuck or be moved to fall in love with our own ideas.
• Enlisting a barn raiser and crew chiefs keeps your plan organized and on schedule.
• Ideas and costs get questioned.
• We have to be able to explain how things will work, what makes them useful, and why they’re worth building
• We all gain skills and relationships from participating in the process.
• The final business reflects the needs and values of the community that built it.
• Participants showcase their best work in a short-term commitment
• The process provides a product or service has proven its worth by the community support.

Barn raising builds the community at the same time that it builds the business that will serve us. Everyone who has participated is invested in its success. Don’t just think … do.

Ever been part of a project that worked like a barn raising?

What would be the first step in helping some get a social media barn raising started for their business idea?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to build barn? Work with Liz!!
Image: Haussler Cluster Raising in CA

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by Guest Writer Suzie Cheel

To move forward I know I need to let go of both physical and emotional stuff.

Tomorrow we have a council collection, so today we have spent a couple of hours cleaning out the garage and clearing out accumulated things I might use one day.

Des just commented how amazingly tidy the garage looked.

I located a few journals tucked away in boxes from a few years ago and found a poem I had written about letting go.

Mirrors of the Soul

Are you just being a mirror

for me and my soul?

There is a big leap

to make from the

known and familiar

There is the letting go

of ” who I think I am” to

“the who I know I will become”

But the freedom it will bring

will drive me on

I must let go

I must listen to my soul

- Suzie Cheel 21/11/99

I know as I continue to let go I will create more space for the new to flow in.

Are there times when you find it easier to let go?

Suzie writes on Law of Attraction at Abundance Highway and you can see her wonderful Art scarves and Art Quilts at Suzie Cheel

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The LANGUAGE of SOCIAL MEDIA

Words have a deep effect on
how we interpret and interact with the world.
The words we use and how we define them
reveal our interests, concerns, and values.
This series explores the words of social media.

social media

Most literally, social media would be any object or tool, that connects people in dialogue or interaction — in person, in print, or online. In common usage, social media has come to mean a category of practices, technology, tools, and online sites that are based in social relationships, participation, and user-generated content. Social media adds a more personal context to the traditional business relationship.

For more information see:
Social media
The Social Media Conversation Prism
Social Media Time Investment = You put in is what you get out? The Time Scale

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Search and Social has made a fun litle quiz about social media addiction. Apparently I’m 46% addicted to Social Media. I might have guessed higher. Perhaps, I’ve been slacking …

It’s a simple quiz of multiple choice questions. Takes about five minutes.
It made me think about what I do.

Click the box with the big red heart to give it a go

Enjoy!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

Asking for What We’re Worth

When we take on the role and reins of a professional, not all of the skills come at the same time. Often we’re great the work, but not so good at asking to be paid what the work is worth. How do folks figure that out? It comes from experience and trust in our own value.

Here’s what Sheila said . . .

For one thing, people are rather itchy about giving specific amounts when discussing payment and salary, so we go around not knowing that there are some people out there getting paid pretty good money to do what we’re doing.

Once I finally figured out that .50-$1/word was more than reasonable and even low-end for most print pubs, I started doing the math for my online work, which is just writing, after all.

Holy cow, was I giving away the farm! That led me to turn down a few blogging jobs that sounded nice but just were not paying enough for my considerable efforts.

So, let’s be more frank about money so we know what is “standard” and reasonable to ask for.

Then, let’s realize how increasingly valuable our online savvy is to businesses that want to move online. Knowledge that we think “everyone knows” is in fact gold bullion to companies who have just found Web 2.0. I’m not saying overcharge “because they can afford it,” but we should really appreciate our unique skillsets.

The teacher/consultant role and the need to pay such folks seems to be understood, so I plan to lean more in that direction, and try to make a decent living teaching what I know.

Sheila Scarborough from a comment on December 29, 2007

A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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