Successful Blog

How the Football Captain and the Guitarist Sold Out the Stadium!

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It Starts with Someone Who Cares about the Audience

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When I’m asked to do an off-site, I sit down the with event planner to discuss what the people attending might want or need to know. Hands down the most requested topic is how can they use social media to get people talking about the brand and their products?

It’s all about stories.
We’ve been hearing and telling stories all of our lives.
It shouldn’t be that hard.

5 Critical Steps to Spreading an Irresistible Social Media Story

If you remember back to university, you know the power of friends sharing stories. Good news, bad news, rumors and truths can fly through a school fast enough to make any news network jealous.

Here are the five critical steps to making that happen for you in the social business community.

  1. Build your network before you need it. It all starts with community. No matter how irresistible our message, we’ll have trouble sharing it without relationships. Building a network is more natural and easy, if we do before we need them to do something for us.
  2. Be known for one thing. Sure you can do many things, but many things are hard to remember. One thing stands out and is easily shareable. To go back to the college analogy, if I say he’s the captain of the football team or she’s plays lead guitar in the coolest rock band, you already know that other kids into sports they want to connect with him and other kids into rock want to connect with her.

    The same works now … If you are known for one thing, that one thing you are jumps to my mind when I meet someone who might need that one thing. If you’re a freelance blog writer, every time I meet someone with a growing blog, I’ll mention your name. If you’re one of a million writers who writes for blogs, magazines, websites, menus, and whatever. I’m less likely to remember exactly what you do and far less likely to share your name. When you’re one thing everyone knows what they can count on you to do and how you connect to their universe.

  3. Make folks feel proud, important, part of something bigger than then are alone when they do. Talking in the language of the people you want to help you. Make the message about them, not about you. The football captain who frames his message “Are you ready to rock the game tonight?” gets a better response than the one who says “Come to our game tonight. Show your spirit!”

    The savvy football captain says, “The team goes all out when you’re there! You rock the stands. We’ll rock the field!! RockTheGame!!”

    Let’s stay with the savvy football captain … he shows Booster Club how it’s in their interest to donate $500 worth of iTunes and permission for a concert by pointing out that they’re all on a quest to get folks to the big game. Then, he contacts the girl lead guitarist and persuades her band that a sell-out game would make a great after-concert venue.

  4. Make it easy, fun, and meaningful to share it. The Booster Club enlists the campus TV station to announce a contest for the entire school. Every ticket sold to the big game will be entered into a raffle for that $500 iTunes gift card to keep rocking.
  5. Reward and celebrate the people who do. When the game beats attendance records concert by the coolest rock band — after the game in the school quad to rock the school spirit!

We all value our friends’ attention.
We all value the time we spend with them.
We all value it when they engage with us and listen to what we’re saying.
It’s a natural next step to make it a value for them to invest in us too.

All we have to do to get them to share our story is to make them proud to be part of it.

How are you making your friends, colleagues, customers, and clients part of what you’re trying to do?

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

What If You Don’t Know What Your Passion Is? Where to Look

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True Story

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This is a true story related to me by the guy in the story. He told it to me in 2007 and I’ve been retelling it ever since. I’ve changed the names for his privacy, because well, this is my version of the story. Let’s call him Rick and her Julia.

Rick was driving Julia to client meeting about an hour from their office. They were talking of dreams, missions, strategies, and life goals. Highways and passing scenery provide a perfect backdrop for considering such things. The topic had gotten on to doing what a person is meant to do … the “follow your passion” thing. And Rick, the one who had found his path, was doing his best to avoid that over-used shallow description of what he felt he was doing.

But Julia was passionate about finding out how to find her passion.
And so she kept asking, “What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I hate that question,” Rick said.

“But you know the answer, don’t you?”

Rick started singing along with the radio.

“Listen to me!” Julia said. “I need to know. What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I’m not going to answer you,” Rick said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll get mad.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”

“No, I won’t. I promise. Just tell me. What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I’m telling you … you’re gonna get mad.”

“I’m gonna get mad if you don’t answer me,” Julia said deliberately. “What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“You do.”

“WHAT?!!”

“You know what your passion is — maybe you won’t admit it or you’re lying to yourself — but in your cells you know.”

“I think I hate you.”

“See, I told you you’d get mad.”

What Rick was saying is that our “passion” is the purpose written in our cells.

That thing that people keep telling us to follow is what we were built to do and what we naturally do well. Part of the problem in identifying it is that because

  • it’s so natural that we have trouble recognizing that it’s a value.
  • it’s something that comes so easily to us that we think that everyone can do it too.

Sometimes it’s easier to find and define if we kill the word passion and just look for

  • the helpful thing that we can’t quit doing.
  • the problem that seem to be solving for person after person because “it’s what we do.”
  • the subject that we get blissfully lost in exploring and innovating on.
  • the activity that ties to the people we most enjoy
  • the one thing we do that we would miss most if had to give it up.
  • what we’re doing when lose track of time and all self-consciousness

Look for your passion in the thing you do that makes you feel like the best version of yourself.

Be irresistible.

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

Thanks to Week 313 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

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.

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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

Why I Can’t Reimagine, Recreate, Or Reinvent Me

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living up to who I am

I’m not a knight or a warrior. I can’t fight another person’s fight.
Every time I do. I end up wrong.

I can’t wear their clothes.
They don’t fit. I look silly.

I can’t walk in their shoes.
When I try I fall down.

I wonder at how long it took me to understand this.

I need to sing my own song.

It’s not a selfish thing. It’s a surrender to who I am.

I can toss and turn, stretch and skew an idea, but I can’t change the way my brain works. I can walk all the way around and through a thought or a belief, but I can’t change the chemistry or the electricity of a single synapse — slow them down maybe — but not reroute and remap the system to work as another brain might.

I can be reimagine, recreate, and reinvent solutions.

But I can’t reimagine who I am.
I can’t recreate life of experience and learning.
I can’t reinvent the DNA that makes the unique me.

In that uniqueness is where I found my values and the most valuable traits I offer.

The sun can’t stop shining to become a planet.
We count on its “star-ness” — the energy, heat, and light it offers.

People are made of the same stuff as stars.
I need to bring the best “me-ness” — the energy, mind, and heart I offer.

Living up to what I am is a far better use of my life than trying to become something I’m not.

Be irresistible.

Liz's Signature

Would You Invest 15 Minutes to Help Kids Make a Mark on the World?

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Do You Still Have Trouble Believing in Yourself Sometimes Even Still ?


Kids that contribute their time and talent to make our communities better realize their own potential and self worth.

On helping kids make a difference

An Invitation from Jessica Kirkwood,
VP Interactive Strategy, Points of Light Institute.

Did you ever want to change the world? Set things right? Make a difference? When did you first have a thought like that? Were you just a kid? Even now, does the idea feel too tall, too broad, too big?

It’s not. All it takes is few minutes to encourage a kid — your kid, your cousin, your neice, nephew or neighbor — to make their own mark on the world. One click is all it takes to get started.

October 16-22, generationOn, the youth activation division of Points of Light Institute, launches its annual Make Your Mark Week our initiative to inspire youth to invest their energy, ingenuity and compassion to “make their mark on the world.” Hands-on service projects are being planned all week so that young people can make a big impact on their lives, their communities, and the world.

Imagine the unforgettable experiences.

Right now, projects are being planned to make a difference in areas kids care about — animals, environment, homelessness, hunger and literacy. Here’s two already in the planning:

  • In Nebraska, first through fifth grade students at Columbia Elementary School in Omaha is going to make their mark by creating rope devices that will be used to train service dogs to open doors, refrigerators and other various items for people who need assistance.
  • The Boys & Girls Club of Southeast Georgia will be using their artistic talents to produce containers featuring plaques that encourage residents to recycle their waste.

Go look at the wealth of ideas. Some take less than 15 minutes.
How would the world be now if we all grew up knowing we could make a difference?

This is our chance to show the next generations how.

I’d be honored to have you join me by helping kids you know make their mark. It easy, fun, and meaningful. Visit http://kidsvolunteer.generationon.org to see how minutes can have a lasting impact.

You’ll be making a difference by showing kids how.

Jessica Kirkwood
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Thank you, Jessica!
The kid I once was and the kid I am now … think this is an outstanding idea!

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

GenConnect’s Laurel House and Liz Strauss Talk Irresistible Attraction

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Who Gets You Where You’re Going

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In a lovely conversation with GenConnect’s Laurel House at BlogHer in August, we explored the questions:

  • What makes an irresistible offer?
  • How does being fully-expressed in your work remove the problem of self-promotion?
  • How do you start the first connections with people you want to meet?
  • How does celebrating your heroes make you and your business better?
  • How are values a part of your attraction?

What works best for you to connect your business to the people who love what you’re doing?

Check out GenConnect – the place to connect with life’s experts.
You’ll find Laurel on Twitter as @QuickieChick

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