We can talk about how blogging started, personal stories, traditions, facts, and whatever else comes up.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?
Writing a tagline can seem an overwhelming task. How do you pack all of that promise into four or five simple words that will resonate with the folks you want to reach?
I discussed the strategy behind taglines yesterday.
To fill out the information, I thought I might reseach what some other folks are saying. Here’s the best I found from around the blogosphere. They are 25 to add to the one I wrote yesterday.
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Sometimes immersion is the best way to get to know how to do something.
I gathered these links as a resource. Everyone needs a different sort of support when it comes executing the vision of a business that customers will see. Find the ones that suit you and take the wisdom you need.
What words will you use to define your promise in a tagline?
Want to test a few? Write them in the comment box here.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.
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It happens something like this. I meet a person who intrigues me. I rush in where the proverbial fool would fear to go. I want that person to see my value. I put it out there. I don’t realize that my thinking is all about me.
“Look at me behavior” is what I call it. The subtext of what I do is something like “I want you to see what I know, think, understand, have accomplished. I want you to see how worthy I am. I want you to see me.
The irony is that whenever I make things about me, it’s not me who shows up to tell the story.
I end up saying things in ways that aren’t my way of saying them. I hear myself handing over my weaknessess as I tout my strengths.
When I am lucky, when I have my wits about me and my heart in the right, relevant place, I know that the other person doesn’t know or even suspect. I’m only ludicrous facts that I’m spouting without context.
It’s so silly, We all know that folks discover the things they need to know.
When I choose to trust the person I’m talking to, I find that the right parts of me show through — without effort, within the bigger story of who I am. I find that my defensive self promotion falls away like water falling down a moutatin cliff.
When I trust in the thoughts of others, I am who I am.
When I trust the thoughts and humanity of others, the rest happens rightly more often than not. It’s so much easier to let them discover wht I am.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Back to business . . .
We’re on the way to Building an Outrageously Solid, Customer-Centered Model to Test All Business Decisions. What we’re going for is to define the business by building these four parts.
My version might look something like this:
Ideal customer: Thinking businesses and entrepreneurs who understand that relationships are crucial to success
Company name: Successful-Blog
Tagline: You’re only a stranger once.
Do line: I show businesses how to make irresistible products and services that attract fiercely loyal customer-fans.
What’s packed in that definition? Let’s concentrate on the tagline for now.
A tagline is brand statement. It’s what we want folks to remember about us — the perception and reality of who we are rolled together in a few words. Nike said, “Just do it.” Burger King said, “Have it your way.” Verizon knew we were all saying, “Can you hear me now?” Think on the businesses you know. How many taglines can you remember? My point exactly.
A killer tagline is not just one that we remember. It resonates. We find something we recognize, something we identify with inside the words. That’s why we wear a “Just Do It!” t-shirt.
Killer taglines describe something about who or where customers want to be.
Here are three steps to a killer tagline that customers pass on.
Promises are things we don’t usually forget.
If you want folks to remember a tagline, make a promise. Make it a promise that your customers will care about. That means the promise has to offer something for THEM.
Make your promise about what you will do for them. What one thing will you deliver without fail. What need will you fill? What can your customers count on you to do over and over again?
I want to work with thinking businesses that care about relationships. My tagline promises they’ll learn ways to establish long-lasting relationships with a community of customers they want.
Powerful taglines don’t waste words. The longest example I gave has only five. Five words make it easy to understand, remember, and repeat. Five words means that there’s nothing hidden, no small print, no “take backs,” no thing to worry about. Five words means that you have through what you’re promising and that you know it well enough to say it in five words. Can you use six? Sure, but be certain that you need every one.
Talk about your tagline promise often. In other words, repeat your promise out loud. Call attention to it. Let folks know that you stand behind the words. No one does this better than Phil Gerbyshak. He’s the Make It Great! man.
When we say the words out loud, or write them in a comment box, it tells folks that we use those words with intent. Every time we repeat our tagline, the subtext is “and you can say I promised.”
Imagine a promise offered that comes with a subtext that says “You won’t be disappointed.” Who wouldn’t want to try that? How many folks wouldn’t talk about it after they did?
Under promise and over deliver. You’ve heard that before. But don’t back off on what you can do. Be there. Show up. Put your head and heart fully in it. That’s what you’re following your passion to do.
Nothing beats the feeling of a promise that someone kept. Even better than that is when someone keeps it a second time. That moves a person to a special category of friend.
When a business delivers on a promise once we’re impressed. When a business makes it their business to keep their promises every time, we give them back our loyalty and our trust. The next guy has a hard time stealing us away from that.
Three simple steps. We’ve known them since we were kids. Make a promise that means something. Say it out loud to show that you mean it. Then deliver without fail.
Who wouldn’t want to tell their friends about service like that?
What do you know about promises that businesses have made to you?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!
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To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.
I enjoy watching Jeff Pulver take on life. He’s a guy with BIG ideas. He also makes them happen, This week via email and a couple of blog posts, Jeff passed two of his great ideas on to a few folks that he knows. I was lucky. One of those folks happened to be me.
Friday, Jeff wrote about blog posts he’d like to make “sticky.” His idea seems simple enough — we might all consider it. His thoughts were that we mark certain signature posts with the same tag so that first-time readers could find them easily. After an email conversation, the appropriate tag chosen was “bestof.” Tom Evslin, offered to program something that would tie the posts together — if it rains this weekend. (I didn’t want to hope for rain, but the code will be nice. I’m guessing Chris Brogan, Jeff Jarvis, and Kfir Pravda — all part of the same conversation — might have been thinking the same thing.)
Imagine the value of this “bestof” tagging convention, if it caught on — readers would know to Google a name and “bestof” to find the work that defines a writer’s viewpoint. Reporters and other bloggers could find a blogger’s expertise with ease.
I’m updating the About Liz page in the sidebar to include a “Bestof” section that will include a handful of posts that I think fit this category.
Three years ago, Nir Ofir started blogDay. As he says,
I initiated the blogDay in 2005 with the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to discover new blogs and expose them to the world.
blogDay 3 is August 31.
Today Jeff Pulver launched a game to encourage folks to join the celebration — BlogDay Blog-Tag: A Game to Celebrate BlogDay3. He asked me to play. Jeff offers these simple suggestions for how to make it work seamlessly.
[R]ecommend five blogs, preferably Blogs that are different from [your] own culture, point of view and attitude. The goal of this version of blog-tag is for the readers of our blog posts to find themselves leaping around and discovering new voices and Blogs to explore. This in turn will help celebrate the discovery process of finding new people, their voices and their blogs.
When creating your BlogDay blog entry, please try to follow these instructions:
1. List five Blogs that you find interesting and if you can tell, include the city/country where they are from.
2. Identify five Bloggers to tag to join in this game with you. I recommend emailing the bloggers you tag to give them a heads up of you tagging them.
3. Use the tag: BlogDay2007 in your blog post.
4. (Optionally): Contact the owners of the blogs you shared as your “blogs to take a look at.”
I can do that.
I wonder who Ann, Sean, Chris, Troy, Phil might also recommend as world blogs we might explore.
Thanks, Jeff, for getting me to stretch in these ways.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
I used to think looking good was something you only had to do during a business presentation. Beyond that, my work and talent would take care of my reputation. Many years ago, I read Tom Jeary’s Life is a series of presentations. He said Whether you are talking to a soccer coach or potential client, the way you present your thoughts and ideas to people have a profound effect on the shape of your life..
I felt like someone poured a bucket of ice-cold water over me. I learnt to value each individual who stood before me and take the time to be nice. I don’t always succeed and sometimes under duress or tiredness I walk away from a conversation wishing I did better. But it became part of my DNA. To be deliberate in the experience I wanted to leave with the person I was interacting with.
The first dot that went blink, blink, blink in my head the whole week was Anna’s. Anna blogs about business leadership and has many terrific things to say. But the thing that made her dot blink for me was her tagline right at the top of her blog. People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. I’m willing to bet that if you met Anna, she would be one of the 10 people you would never forget even if your paths never crossed again.
Dot #2. It reminded me what Liz said about being good and nice.
Being good at what you do is important, but a strong personal identity includes both good and easy to work with.
Sometimes when we’re good or hold positions of authority, we forget to be nice. It’s not only a business rule, it’s a life rule.
In fact, if I recall, it is the ONLY rule that Liz has on her blog.
Speaking of personal brand, what I found most interesting is that the people who were clearly leaders and had a profound effect on me had a common attribute.
They led by serving.
What a paradox! or is it? You’re the people I trust and the people I serve., Liz says in her post this week
I’ll never forget in all my years in business, the companies I wanted to work with were those who asked me the question at the end of the meeting (even though they were 10 times bigger than we were).
So how may I be of service to you?
Let me take you to another favorite dot of mine, his name is Drew. Drew is an extremely smart person and very well-read in the blogosphere. He’s take on how to write an outstanding blog post?? It’s all about you. It is that humility and generosity that makes Drew compelling.
This particular journey would not be complete without stopping to visit Steve. The title of his Greater than yourself mashup series already defines who he is as a blogger and thought leader. The one sentence in his blog that resonated the most with me?
I have to give of myself before I expand myself.
I was reminded of one of my kids’s favorite jokes. How do fit a an elephant into a matchbox? Take out the matches!
As Liz would say, make room for the conversation.
May the dots be with you!
