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How Signs and Rituals Draw In Your Loyal Brand Fans

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10-Point Plan — Attracting Second Generation Heroes and Champions

Employees as Volunteers and Volunteers as Employees

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In less than three years, Lady Gaga has built an incredible business that counts on a fan base of fans drawn consistently closer to her. The fans aren’t loyal to her music. They’re loyal to her and each other. She’s accomplished this feat with a true understanding of the function of rituals and symbols as connectors in a community culture.

Jackie Huba wrote a detailed description of how Lada Gaga built a culture by naming her fans, giving them a cause, adding symbols, and making them rock stars.

You can do the same thing inside and outside your business.

How to Use Ritual and Symbols to Build a Loyalty Culture

You don’t have to be a rock star with special hand signal to make folks feel important to be part of what you’re doing. What’s important is to draw folks closer by valuing them and their ideas.

  • Start with Stories Send the 8-12 people, we’ve been talking about out to gather stories of the heroes of the business. Have a storytelling lunch hour. Choose the story that defines your business or organization. Teach it to everyone. Let them make it their own. Invite them to tell their own version of the story. My community story is about taking folks to lunch and tipping the whole restaurant. It’s a story of how my dad built his business by honoring everyone who helped his business thrive.
  • Call it something. I called my dad’s community barn raisers, because they built the business together. Are you ship builders? world changers? Does your name come from the company itself? Are the folks who work on the Chevy Volt the Voltage Vanguard? Are the folks at our event SOBConners? Pick a name that describes the higher purpose.
  • It’s a quest. Decide what will be the symbol of your community. Blog badges and t-shirts are too easy. Look around for the habits and symbols that you already use. You’ll find them in the ways you greet each other and the ways that you celebrate things that go well. The hashtag handsign has become a symbol to recognize someone in social media. What symbols can sit on their desks or in their pockets to remind them of the quest that you share? Every barn raiser should have a tiny hammer on a sticker, a key chain, a card, a pencil, something to remind us of why we do what we do.
  • Be inclusive. Not everyone is right to move your quest forward, but many people outside your business are. Don’t limit your name or your community to only those who get a paycheck from the business. Include family, friends, partners, volunteers, vendors, fans, and anyone who can proudly wear your logo and tell your story.
  • And don’t forget those sayings that grew from stories within your group experience. Say them often. Share them with new friends and share the meaning behind them. They help explain how the “family” and the culture came to be and grew.

If you constantly invite new heroes to join in the group and notice their ideas. You’ll find inside every collaboration a chance to celebrate with a ritual or two.

How would you start establishing signs and rituals that develop a sense of inclusive identity within your group. ?

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

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

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Thanks to Week 268 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

Vitamin Angels Doubles Their Reach and We Can Too!

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Last year at SOBCon was one of four nonprofits the entire group worked with on the Give Back Challenge Day. We talked about their work in help children grow with the right nutrition. They told us of their quest to increase distribution of vitamin A to reach 20 million children and supply over 100 million multivitamins to children and mothers. By connecting essential nutrients with those most in need we can reduce child mortality.

This year they have doubled their reach and they’re on the brink of being able to that again!!

Marine Nutriceutical is matching your contribution dollar for dollar through the end of 2010.

Just click the image below to chip in to help any little bit with be worth twice what you give.

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Want to do more? Just pick up the badge and pass this message on to your network for them too. See what a community can do.

Thanks.

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

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Values Questions to Make Decisions that Build Your Unique Brand

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(Updated in 2020)

Liz Strauss. Photo by Anne Helmond

10-Point Plan: How to Use the Values Baseline to Make Decisions

The Amazing Testimonial

They say other people, our customers decide our brand. I’m no longer convinced of that.

I had the most fabulous experience at BlogWorldExpo. While I was talking in the hallway, a woman I respect came up and put her arms around my waist. She looked at the people I was speaking to and said …

I respect and love Liz Strauss because she’s intelligent, generous, real, and she truly cares about other people. But what’s even more important is when I talk to other people about her they all say the same thing that I just did.

Wow! What a testimonial.

It left me thinking … how did that happen? What makes a brand that everyone describes the same way?

I think it comes from the values I chose and the questions I use to simplify decisions and be clear on my business and my brand.

How a Values-Baseline Can Simplify Hard Decisions and Build a Strong Brand

When you know your values and establish a brand-values baseline, every decision — business or living — becomes easier. Rather than thinking through the situational details. Values push us up to the larger picture. We’re left with simple questions. My brand values are authenticity, creativity, intelligent perception, love, and connections. So the questions I ask myself about my life and my business sound a lot like this ….

  • Is this delivering brilliance? Is this an intelligent connected idea? Does it connected intelligent people in a brilliant, seamless effortless way?
  • Does this shine with informed trust in ourselves and others? Does it show authentic belief, integrity, and confidence and a willingness to decide when to set aside fear?
  • Is this smart and sensitive? Does it show respect for the intelligence and heart of the people I want to work for and with? Will it move our business, our lives, and the lives and businesses of the people we care about forward?
  • Will this good news or bad news be truthful, generous, and leave a place to stand for the other person or the business?

So when a difficult real-time decision drops in my lap, I make visit those questions or questions like them — all of them drawn from my brand-values.

Suddenly deciding comes more easily. The decision might be whether to spend some money, take a project, redesign an event, or tell a friend what she’s not doing. By the time I get through the questions — an answer is clear and the direction is true our values.

In this new social business world, we have a chance to live and share our values rather than let people try to find them in a broadcast messages. In that way, an individual or a huge corporation can be the values-based brand and attract the people who value what they do.

Live your values. The brand story will ring clear and resonate.
And like telling the truth you won’t have to remember what you said yesterday.

All of your decision will reinforce you, your team, and your business.

What values and questions might define your brand for you?

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

What Three Values Drive Your Brand?

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

10-Point Plan — The Brand Values Baseline Defined

Three Reasons Get Us to the Task at Hand

Now the core team returns to discuss the feedback from the stakeholder leaders who’ve helped them identify the brand values baseline. Review the words each group has returned with and talk through the meaning until the group can roll up the short list to three words that stand for the foundational core values that drive the business. Try one from the head, one from the heart, and one from the long-term vision or meaning.

An example might be these three that drive SOBCon:

Delivering brilliance: We believe in intelligent, elegant connected ideas that raise us up to higher thinking.

Trusting fearlessness: We believe in authentic trust in ourselves and others that has no room for fear as it stand with our intelligent ideas.

Deep Strategic Vision: Our quest and our purpose is to move ourselves, our businesses, and those around us forward with leadership born of strategy and deep meaningful purpose.

Or brilliance, trust, vision. Those three words wrap up the sentences and make the an easy reference for every decision that drives our business. Other people on the core team can choose their synonyms and as long as they mean the same thing, we can trust in the variations and the mutations that will grow from them.

We have our values aligned.

What three values drive your business?

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

Blogs in Education?

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Blogs – Enhancing Education
A Guest Post by Brian Jenkins

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Why do teachers blogs? They use them as a networking tools, to share news and tips with other teachers, to let parents know what’s going on in the classroom, and to distribute information to their students. Teachers are using blogs to post student assignments, handouts and notices, and to offer instructional tips. Teachers provide links to websites related to topics and concepts discussed in the classroom. Blogs are also used by teachers as question and answer forums. Also, school administrators are increasingly using blogs to communicate with parents, faculty members, the community, and other administrators.

Some teachers use blogs to showcase exemplary examples of student writing, ideas, and creativity. Blogs are utilized by teachers to create a classroom that goes beyond the boundaries of the traditional school setting.

Parents and School Blogs

Many teachers encourage parents to read their blogs. If parents follow these blogs they’re more likely to take an active role in their child’s education. The blogs may include summaries of what the students have been studying each month and the projects they’ve been working on.

Student Blogs

Many teachers encourage their students to maintain a blog, which can be assigned as an individual or a team project. A blog gives students an opportunity to express themselves and to enhance their writing skills. It provides students an opportunity to work on assignments as a group and improve their ability to work in a team. Students can also share course-related resources.

Blogs provide opportunities for students to express their ideas who may be too shy to participate in the classroom. They also provide students the opportunity to get feed back from their peers and discuss a variety of issues. Students can use a blog to create a digital portfolio.

Blog Topics

Blogs are used to focus on a variety of topics. Some of the popular categories are education news, college, E-learning, Internet culture, education policies, library and research, learning, technology, and teaching.

TeacherLingo (http://www.teacherlingo.com/) is an educational community of teacher blogs, lesson plans, and other teacher resources. Teachers can share experiences and advice with other educators.

Blogs are increasingly being used by teachers and students throughout the nation. They’re easy to create and use, and they certainly can enhance the education experiences of both teachers and students alike.

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Brian Jenkins contributes content related to elementary school teaching careers, among other education and career topics, to the BrainTrack website.

Thanks, Brian!

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

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