Liz, Author at Successful Blog Page

Thanks to Week 263 SOBs

November 6, 2010 by Liz

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.

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

Create a Powerful Core Community by Building a Brand Values Baseline – PART 1

November 2, 2010 by Liz

(Updated in 2020)

10-Point Plan: Build a Brand Values Baseline PART 1

A Decision Model for All

Any time we interact, we have a chance to build and strengthen relationships. When we strengthen relationships with the people who love what we do, we strengthen our business. When we know the values on which those relationships stand, we can identify, attract, and connect with more people like them.

That’s the thinking behind building a brand values baseline.

Whether you’re a corporation or a solopreneur, you can start a power core community by finding 6 to 10 people who support and love what you do and bring them into this exercise.

Choose a location that is good for thinking and honors the participants. Think of the place you might take your most valued client or customer group to talk strategy and future relationships.
Invite 2 – 8 heroes — people you’ve identified as social stars, training stars, influence stars — to a meeting. The wider diversity of their skills, levels and backgrounds, the richer the experience will be. Also invite a trusted non-participant to record notes.
Explain that the room is designated a free conversation zone — that you’ve asked them to join you in a conversation because of their leadership skills and the respect they show for the people who work for the business. Let them know you’re counting learning from them so that the company might grow.
Without much talk or fanfare, ask them to reflect on the highest reason they might believe in the work your business does. Allow them time — as long as 10 minutes — to gather their thoughts as individuals. Encourage them to write words and phrases, draw images, or make a mind map of what comes
Allow each individual to share his or her thoughts with the group. As they speak, write notes for reference and track words that express values on a flip chart.
When the entire group has spoken, review what you heard and confirm that you’ve heard correctly what was said. Add your own thoughts. List your own values words to the flip chart.

Review the list of words, noting the similarities between them and poses these questions.

How might we take this list back to entire company to distill it down to no more than five words — a values baseline — that describes the values that drive what we do?
Should we distill down now and get their approval?
What process might we use to include everyone in this quest?
Who does everyone include?
How long will that take? What should each of us bring back to this meeting, if reaching a true values baseline is our goal?

As your heroes and champions get more interested in the values that underpin your business, so will the people who look up to them. A single meeting with the heroes and champions who love what you do can bring out the best in your company in less time than a whole team from a huge consulting firm.

Live your values and you’ll attract the people to your brand who value what you do.

How will you / did you find your brand values baseline?

Related
To follow the entire series: Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

3 Traits Winning Social Media Teams Bring to the Tools

November 1, 2010 by Liz

Hard Work Isn’t the Same as Great Work

Pick a passionate team at random people, tell them your vision, and hand them the best materials and power tools. Then ask them to build the new building where you’ll meet your customers. Does that make sense to you?

The passion of random people and the best tools aren’t enough to create a team to build that vision for me or for you. Key to a winning team lies in what those passionate people bring to the tools. For a quality building to be strong, functional, and efficient, the randomness of people who are passionate about building with a passel of fabulous tools won’t build anything useful if they don’t bring something more than passion to the tools.

It’s true in any team endeavor that the tools don’t deliver the great results, the people do.
Great people can build amazing things even with less than the most powerful tools.

3 Traits Winning Social Media Teams Bring to the Tools

A winning social media team is more than people who are passionate about the tools. Look at the teams who are working and you’ll find they have outstanding traits in common that fuel the ways and whys of how they choose and use social media tools.

Brand Identity and Values – The Who — Winning social media teams are anything but random people in a group. Even at the lowest levels, they are leaders who know how to think in service to their customers and as a true ambassador of a brand. This comes as much from who they and from how they’ve been brought into the team. They’re people who share the same values and higher cause of the business and they’ve learned how to their values align with and enhance the core value proposition of the team, the business and the brand.
Purpose and Focus — The What – Winning social media teams have focus on goals that serve those values and that value proposition. They can easily in few words what their purpose and how it fits the higher cause of the business and how it serves a brand and it’s customers. Bringing customers closer and finding meaningful ways to learn from them, serve them, and connect them to other great customers, employees and great resources is what a winning social media team is about. They way they use the tools underscore the vallues and enhance the value proposition.
Bias Toward Action — The When – Winning social media teams pay attention so that they can be there when something needs their personal touch. They respond quickly yet within the values of their brand. Their bias toward action is timed to make things faster and easier for the customers … and all of them see communication as their responsibility — no matter their specific role. They listen, learn, and contribute when the conversation is going on … not hours later after the conversation has moved, changed, or lost it’s audience.

So what about the where AND the how?

You’ll find winning teams choose their tools they use and to be where their customers are and to use the tools their customers already use. In other words …

Winning social medias teams configure their strategy rather than trying to reconfigure their customers.

What qualities drive the winning social media teams you know?

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

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Thanks to Week 262 SOBs

October 30, 2010 by Liz

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.

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.

Want to become an SOB?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Will Your Customers Define Your Brand or Will You?

October 26, 2010 by Liz

(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

10-Point Plan: Build a Brand Values Baseline

Live Your Brand

Before the Internet, when we were silently niched by geographic markets the conversation with customers was one way. We wrote, televised, advertised to them. Then they read, watched, or saw our message and formed their ideas of what those messages said.

Customers decided who we are from the messages we sent.

When the Internet opened up the two-way conversation began. Now we’re finding more and better ways to listen talk, and interact with customers directly. We’re talking on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and social sites we make just for them.

Don’t miss the opportunity in how the social business web has changed brands.

This shift in the way we interact with our customers has a significant impact on the theory of how a brand is born and who determines the character of a brand. We now have a huge opportunity to demonstrate our brand values as we claim them.

We can now define our brand with much more clarity and control than before because we can include our customers as we do. In that way we have a huge opportunity to take our brands where we want them to be. Here’s how to take advantage of this new branding power …

Define the core values that your brand represents.
Communicate that set of core values — a brand values baseline — to everyone you work with and for.
Check every business decision against that values baseline.
Celebrate and reward anyone who demonstrates your brand’s values.
Choose evangelists who share those values and encourage them to share their ideas.

Live your values and you’ll attract the people to your brand who value what you do. Ask the people who are doing the work what would just one thing. As your heroes and champions get more interested in the values that underpin your business, so will the people who look up to them.

A single meeting with the heroes and champions who love what you do can bring out the best in your brand in less time than a whole team from a huge consulting firm.

Have you found the way to define your brand or are you letting your customers do all of that for you?

Related
To follow the entire series: Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 261 SOBs

October 23, 2010 by Liz

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.

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.

Want to become an SOB?

–ME “Liz” Strauss