Successful Blog

A Checklist for Building a Solid Partner Relationship

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Moving With New Tools to New Relationships

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The past few years bloggers and brands have worked together to move messages through communities and across the Internet. It was a natural transition for a broadcast-based system to move some of their marketing and advertising from print publishers to online audiences.

In many cases, what has occurred is that brands have chosen to use the new tools with an outdated view to how reaching customers work. Though the brands have given this new relationship a new name – blogger outreach – that implies relationship, the goal behind the outreach is often still product mentions in the form of blog posts and eyeballs looking at them.

It may be easier on the short term to hire a blog post or offer something free in hopes of getting bloggers to write about it than to develop a relationship, but as more big and little brands bombard big and little blogs with pitches and product samples, the less attention any brand can get.

And it always was true that …

Old thinking and old methods aren’t the best use of new tools in a new cultural mix. The best brands — businesses big and small — are already making the move from outreach and focus groups to partnerships. The best business bloggers are taking the initiative to build relationships like that too.

A Checklist for Building a Solid Partner Relationship

Great brands, savvy small businesses, and the best business bloggers know the best business relationships are a partnership in which both sides align goals and work together on a shared mission not a single campaign or opportunity. Here’s a checklist for building a solid partner relationship that can do that.

  1. Check for similar team size and bias toward action. What you’re looking for is a similar time-goal orientation. If your business can turn on a dime and needs one person to make a decision, you’ll be at a disadvantage working with a business that is highly driven by several step processes. The business with the most approval stages always wins control.
  2. Check for shared values and like standards. What you want to determine is that you and your partner agree on what makes great work and great service to each other, the business, and the customers. These intangibles can’t be described in a contract. They have to be discussed deliberately. Do that.
  3. Check that you have the same vision and mission in view. What’s important to determine here is that your mission critical goals for the work are truly aligned, that you see the same ending outcome, and that you’re sharing the same kind of risk. Find out before the work starts if your views don’t match — you don’t want to find out later that you were building a partnership and the other team thought of you as a channel of distribution.
  4. Check that you agree on roles, process, and vocabulary. What you want is concreteness of the “how” the partnership will work. This conversation will bring you to who owns which part and what responsibilities go with that.
  5. Check that you have clear boundaries and realize differences in your time-goal orientation. What you want to bring up here is the idea of “scope creep.” How will you alert each other when the relationship needs re-balancing? What will be the communication methods for changes to the plan, the process, or resource and budgetary needs?
  6. Check that you have discussed how you will share the risk and share the benefits. What is important here is a conversation about how the vision will play out, what will be required from both teams to secure the win, and how the rewards will be shared when you bring it in.

This checklist is a conversation that stands outside the making of a deal memo or a contract. It’s a relationship meeting of the minds. The accuracy of the conversation needs to be tested after you’ve gone through the checklist. You can do that easily by following these two rules.

  • Take one small unit of work through the process to verify your thinking about the roles and the scope of the work. At each step of that prototype, keep what worked and revise what didn’t.
  • Throughout the relationship, review the results quickly, constantly, consistently and adjust to keep improving the process and the relationship. As you build trust, sleek down the checkpoints to let each partner do their work without unnecessary interruption.

Sound like a lot? It’s really not. If you think about it, it’s two meetings and keeping your head, heart, and vision in the partnership. They say a good partner can divide grief and multiply success. I can tell you that this process can bring you a lot closer to ensuring that.

How do you build a solid partner relationships?

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

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Reinventing Is Futile – Connect to the Brilliance in You

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Reinventing ourselves.

What are we thinking when we say that? Is the plan to pull apart our DNA and restring it? Shall we just set aside those skills and talents we came with? Genetics doesn’t work like that. Our DNA is coded with four letters A, C, T, and G. The order in which they’re set not only differentiates us from other species, but also from each other, except our identical twin.

We can’t just toss aside the A, C, T, and G to reach in a box of letter beads to recode a new set of letters we like better. We can’t really even rearrange our current code with any sense of surety.

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Add to that the wealth of experience that has brought us from the moment we gave our first cry and opened our eyes to this moment in time. That experience has moved, molded, and made us into unique beings. We can’t relive our experiences either.

Our genetics and our experience are the foundation of who we are. They have burned the pathways in our brains that move and manage information. They have set the personal comfort zones that we find in the human experience. If we try to deny those foundations, to become something other, we end up a bad facsimile. We can’t replace bits of our being the way an inventor might change out a set of wheels for skis.

Reinvention is futile.
I can’t reinvent myself into you.
You can’t reinvent yourself into me.

But you can reconnect to the best that you are.
And I can reconnect to the best that I am.

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People and stars are made of the same stuff. And as every star is shines with its own brilliance, so do we. When we reconnect to that we know deep in our genes and our experience, we become a richly alive, unique human being.

Even the smallest star shines with it’s own brilliant light. And we are like the stars. No one brings what you are. No one can replace you. No one can shine as you.

What’s irresistible is the brilliance you are.
Reinventing yourself is futile. Connecting to your brilliance is powerfully fruitful.
The world will be just that much brighter when you do.

Be irresistible.

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

Thanks to Week 288 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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the-dreaming-cafe
feverbee
hvm-solutions-blog
planet-pookie
the-wallace-effect

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

Rhythmic Marketing Strategies for Businesses with Seasonal Demand

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A Guest Post By Isabella York

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In this day and age of uncertain times, more and more people are looking for a point of stability in their lives with regard to income. These fervent searches have proved fruitful in the form of capitalizing on certain skills or native products, turning them into moneymaking ventures that last years or, unfortunately, fizzle and fade into obscurity. In an effort to stay fresh and original, personal business ventures have taken on different forms, one of which being the seasonal business.

A seasonal business can be rewarding for those who have the ingenuity and drive to see it through, even with its numerous pitfalls that can lead to its downfall. Amazingly productive only during a certain time of the year, seasonal businesses quickly lose their profit-generating capabilities during a period called the off-season. Unfortunately, off-season periods for a seasonal business can encompass most of the year leaving a very small margin for the moneymaking process.

In order to combat the dreaded period of slow income, seasonal business owners have to continuously innovate and market their products and services. This entails constant promotion and the use of a number of techniques that will help turn a profit when times are tough. It also calls for strategic planning and timely intervention, knowing when to push a sale and when to hold off or where to allocate funds to produce the greatest amount of positive change.

When it comes to marketing, no rules are set in stone, especially so with seasonal businesses, much of it is touch and go. By taking initiative and combining personal strategies with these tried and true methods, seasonal business owners can definitely last longer than the dismal projection most others set for them:

  1. Thorough Analysis and Planning

    Make sure to take a look at the calendar at the beginning of every fiscal year. Take note of important occasions and events and try to see how your products or services can be incorporated. Give yourself a trial period and map out your initial progress through a specific time period. Analyze trends and apply this knowledge to your sales approach. Try not to restrict yourself to the limits of your seasonal business but go beyond and see how you can move further. A good example would be modifying summer pool covers to fit the demands of the season. Another instance would entail offering tropical themed Christmas trees that could serve as summer time decor.

  2. Innovative Advertisement

    It is a known fact that customers are attracted to seasonal products and will generate a lot of income during the peak season. To this effect, seasonal business owners would do well to advertise their products far and wide. Reach as many people as possible through the latest communication avenues and create a system of feedback that allows you to talk directly with your customers. Study the latest advertisement techniques and use them to the optimum effect.

  3. Excellent Customer Service

    Establish an excellent database of loyal customers. By doing so, you generate a stable source of income even during the off-season. Create updated surveys every sale period and get customer responses personally to build rapport. The web with its wide array of tools is an effective way to generate and manage surveys. You can also draw on customer ideas to generate new advertisement and marketing schemes. Consumers can have great ideas too.

  4. Off-Season Strategizing

    Marketing practices need not be confined to peak-season. In fact, business experts claim that the most effort a seasonal business owner must exert is during the period of low income. However, an important point is not to exhaust one’s income and to prioritize what needs the most attention. For example, either do an advertising campaign or push for store renovations and product updates. Never take on too many projects as this may tip the fragile balance of peak season income and off-season demands.

  5. Diversified Approach

    Branch out in terms of market groups. Never restrict your campaigns and services to one market as this also limits the amount of money you can make. See about reaching different people from different countries. Try to go global and tap into the different seasonal strategies of business owners from other countries. Not only do you build a wider customer base but you are also opening yourself up to potentially useful knowledge you would never know otherwise.

Be willing to take in one step further. Look beyond the strategies presented here and see how you can build and improve on them. The consumer market is vast and constantly changing, requiring you to stay on your toes and keep the ball rolling with regard to coming up with new and more attractive marketing schemes. The most important thing in business, seasonal or otherwise is to take the first step. It’s all about initiative. With constant innovation and attention-to-detail you can start and maintain a successful seasonal business.

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Isabella York has been in the business world her entire life. Having seen business cycles ebb and flow, she knows a thing or two about developing strategies for changing demands, however her job with a purveyor of Artificial Christmas Trees (http://www.balsamhill.com/Artificial-Christmas-Trees-s/1.htm) and Christmas Trees (http://www.balsamhill.com/) has catapulted this skill set to a new level.

Thanks, Isabella, for your insight into something we don’t talk about enough!

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

Watch The Livestream of SOBCon Chicago 2011

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Thanks to Bitwire Media and NewTek for presenting the livestream of SOBCon Chicago 2011.  (FYI, our Twitter hashtag for the event itself is #sobcon11)

If you want to make sure you don’t miss our great speakers & content, the event schedule is HERE.    Our thanks too to our sponsors GMC, GoToWebinar, Network Solutions, and Glam Media,  and our event partners SmartBrief, Freshbooks, and No Limit Publishing.

 

Here’s the stream  – enjoy! (If for some reason the screen is blank below, go HERE)

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Bitwire Media

 

 

 

Why Your Request for Help Isn’t Getting A Response

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New Culture, New Thinking

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Whether you’ve been on social web from the beginning or you just got here and whether you work for yourself, for clients, or an employer, if your goal is to grow your business or cause — and if it’s not, why isn’t it? — being able to spread your positive message is critical.

Social business and social media can business development, brand awareness, and marketing so much easier because of the people-centered, networking nature of the tools and culture. What drives social media and social business is the idea that people like to connect with and talk to other people.

The messages we share are important and vital to the causes we care about. Often they’re urgent and vital to the success of the projects and campaigns that we’re working on. Yet we need the help of our networks — our communities of colleagues and friends — to get them out, hopefully to take them viral.

So we put together an idea to spread, a call to action that our advocates and evangelists might talk about and share. The problem is that everyone is trying to be subject of the hour as much as we are and true advocates and evangelists are few. So we reach out further to find volunteers in hopes that they will help us as well.

Why Your Request for Help Isn’t Getting A Response

The problem is that we can get so wrapped up in the value of the “goodness” of what we’re doing that we can forget to pass that goodness on it with our request for help. We use the time to detail the “ask,” without letting the people we’re asking know how and why it’s about them to follow through on it. As a result, the request to help us with our cause, our launch, our contest, and sound selfish and leave folks wondering why they should take time to do it.

We can’t ensure a message with take off like wildfire, go viral, with certainty. It’s a combination of timing, connection, resonance, and a perfect match to the audience. Here are three reasons why a request won’t get much attention at all…

  1. “Buy my stuff” / “help my cause” and “tell everyone” broadcasts. No one has time or resources to do something just because someone asks. It would be silly to do so and we’re not doing our work if we think just saying “buy now,” is enough. These days people get asked so much that lack of a compelling reason to act is enough to be an excuse to say “no.” And passing it on means that we’re only passing more “buy my stuff” noise to our friends.
  2. “Do this because I / we / need you” to share this messages. Research shows that using “because” will raise your odds. But will that raise your odds enough? We’re bombarded by “calls to action” that are really “calls to help” so much so that the nonprofit world has a term called donor fatigue. Our response to such messages is directly proportional to our relationship to the person, business, or the cause that is asking. We can’t give our everything to everyone, can we? And you can’t keep asking every week.
  3. “I’m shameless to ask / feeling guilty to ask / begging, so won’t you share this?” messages. Asking for a favor is a friendship action. If you feel shameless for asking, then you shouldn’t ask. If you don’t, don’t say that you do. Saying you’re shameless is asking me to be shameless with you. If we have a relationship of trust, you can tell me what you need and let me decide.

All three messages stop short. They literally leave out what’s need to connect in way that resonates. If we want the potential to go viral, we need that connection in a human to human way.

These messages ask the receiver to choose between helping out and interrupting, nagging, possibly irritating their own network of friends. That’s pressure that no one enjoys and it often backfires on the sender who may have had the best of intentions.

Very often when I get messages like these, I wonder whether the sender has considered me at all in what they’re asking. I want to reply with “Why should I promote yours and not the other ten I just got? I can’t spent my time or bother my friends promoting all of them.”

As they stand all three messages are missing one powerful piece that is crucial to taking a message viral – a connection to the person we’re asking to pass it on. To make it much more likely that your message will get a chance a long and viral run make the act of doing what you need about the people you ask not about you or your cause.

Be a hero by pitching in $1, http://hero.link [someone will sleep in a warm bed tonight]. Pass it on to heroes you admire.

When you make it easy and help folks like heroes for helping, they more often do.

How often do help and RT requests that make you feel proud to pass them on?

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing