Successful Blog

The Ties That Bond

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A Guest Post by Linda M. Lopeke, The SMARTSTART Coach

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Not feeling the love in your social media relations?

Social media is a channel for building relationships from the comfort of home while cloaked in the anonymity of the internet. A place where your own actions and behaviours determine whether you thrive or dive. A place where your voice is a more likely to be unheard, lost in the gathering crowd, or (worse) deemed unremarkable. The same place where lasting friendships and stellar reputations can be made (or lost) in 140 characters at the touch of a send button.

If you truly seek to connect and fully experience the wonder of social community, you must first accept that the same standards required for successful face-to-face interactions apply to creating distant ties that bond. Satisfying relationships are born when you communicate effectively and establish mutual trust. Only then can bonds grow strong enough to meet our human need to connect. If you remain anonymous, or are incongruent in your actions, comments and tweets, the digital world will likely be a lonely, meaningless place for you.

In the virtual world, everyone is suspect until proven otherwise. And body language is expressed in punctuation, personality in photos and multi-media and both are responded to by sharing, digging and re-tweeting. The good news is it is entirely possible to feel close to someone you have never met. Sharing the truth about who you are is one way. Seeing the truth about those you encounter along the way is another.

Don’t overcomplicate the friendships you establish online. Just wear your truth. Unpretentiously. Confidently. Through trial and error, you’ll soon be able to quickly see who is loyal, interesting, and trustworthy and who is just there to pimp a link or push another product.

Ditch the fake personas, wannabes and also rans. Care less about what people think about you and more about whether or not you have anything useful to contribute. Be harder on yourself than others, but don’t take any of it so seriously you start measuring your own worth (and that of others) in meaningless friend and follower counts.

There are many ties that bond across the digital divide if you let them. The mentor who can teach you things you won’t learn in any book. The v-friend you feel comfortable reaching out to and sharing private information with. The e-lover who is neither friend or frenemy but who could turn out to be either in a nanosecond. The i-quaintance whose name you recognize but with whom your relationship is more casual than committed. There’s even the f-buddy who fails at social media because they’ll never see you as anything other than an outlet for link lust or an opportunity to pimp themselves.

Ahh, the digital playground. Where everyone wants to plug in and get naked. And everyone else needs to learn how to play safe and follow the unspoken rules.

Take care! —
Linda M. Lopeke
SMARTSTART: Success-to-go for people working @ the speed of life!

Thanks, Linda! I couldn’t agree more!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Make social media work toward your goals!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

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Questions to Start a Social Media Discussion

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Amber Naslund shares some very valuable information:

Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding

Be courageous. Pick up the phone, or fire up the email, and ask for 15 minutes of time from the people that can help move social media forward in your organization (or at least reduce some of the friction around it). That means the marketing folks, the customer service folks, finance, HR, PR, product management, QA, sales. Yes, that includes the people you’ve never talked to before, and the ones that aren’t in your “box”.

Ask them one or two questions that can help you form a business case for social media. Your goal is to align social’s capabilities with the problems your organization needs or wants to solve for their own business. Note that the questions below aren’t all specific to social media; they’re attempting to uncover some of the underlying culture, brand, and operational issues that social media could help address. Remember, we’re talking culture change as well as operational change. You need to be the one to translate.

1. What do we do and why, in your words (not a vision statement)? On what could we, as a business, spend more time, energy, and focus?
2. Are you passionate about your role? If so, why? If not, what would help you be?
3. What goals do you have for your role this year? How do you hope to impact the success of your department? The company?
4. How would you describe the culture of our organization?
5. How do you use the internet in your work life? In your personal life? Where are the overlaps?
6. How do you believe your team uses the internet for their work? Have you heard ideas or feedback for ways they’d like to use it more or differently to do their jobs better?
7. Where do you turn when seeking resources or information about your role? Our company? Our industry?

Read them all!

Finding Irresistible Skills at SES Chicago

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Search Engine Strategies — December 7-11, 2009

Before people find us irresistible, they have to find us. Some do that by Word of Mouth and Referral. Some do that via our social media efforts. But still a most powerful influence is our search engine presence.

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Understanding the Tools that Run the Engines Is Key to a Professional Online Presence

Next week at the 11th Midwest Search Engine Strategies Expo will be will be packed with 70+ sessions covering PPC management, keyword research, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, video optimization and usability, while offering high-level strategy, keynotes, an exhibit floor, networking events and more.

Whether you’re a beginner, got some skill, or a seasoned veteran being up-to-date in current conditions and the latest strategies and techniques is the only way to offer the strongest value to your own business or those you serve.

Take a look at who will be there. Follow these folks on Twitter and come meet them in person. Check the agenda to see how much they’re offering. Registration offers a variety of ways that you can participate. I hope I’ll be seeing you learning with me.

Irresistible also means constantly learning how things work.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Then get ready to join us at SOBCon2010

It's Easier to Plan an Irresistible Event When …

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At a meeting this fall, we brainstormed ideas for events that might bring more people into a client’s store. The conversation was exciting the way ideation can be. No holds barred. We were having fun imagining the themes and content that would be the most irresistible offer.

Wait, wait, wait.

We were planning an event and we hadn’t even thought about who we wanted to come.

It’s hard to be irresistible when the audience — the customers for our products — have no faces or names. How can we be irresistible for people we don’t even know?

Have you done that before? I know that I have.

What’s more fun is to find out who’s looking for an event, a meal, a learning experience, get to know them and to make every bit of the event exactly what would rocks their world.

It’s easier to be irresistible, we need to know who we’re being irresistible for. Then we can

  • chose and build every nuance to be exactly what they love.
  • leave out the things that distract, irritate, or disrupt their enjoyment of what they came to share.
  • and build in a special surprise that will be make the experience unforgettable — something that lets them know you know them really well.

If we make a great meal and invite people, some folks will come and eat and be satisfied. But when we find out who we want to serve and put every thought, every detail toward making the experience one that perfectly suits them, they tell each other and often bring their friends.

Promotion changes from “why this is better” to “You belong here. We listened. We made this for you.”

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That’s the formula for an irresistible event. And with that attention to that group you’ve chosen, you can bet they’ll remember and be talking about when you’ll be offering something like your event again.

Businesses thrive like that. People know when you care about them.

How do you find the people you want to invite to shape your irresistible business?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

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Stop Thinking Poor – Start Irresistibly Growing Your Business

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No one does it on purpose. Who would? Why would they? Yet I’ve seen it. I see it now. Something negative happens. People hit a wall with their business. They pull back, retreat to safer ground to protect what they have. They question their commitment, their strategy, their decisions. This sort of risk mitigation can be a good thing

The problem happens when we start thinking poor.

Is Thinking Poor Managing Your Business Down the Drain?

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Whenever an unexpected life event, the economy, or kismet puts a hitch in our giddyup, it’s a natural response to question how we got where we are. Panic or just sheer exhausted frustration can lead us to believe our thinking was wrong from the start, that it’s time to change direction and save what we’ve got before we lose it all.

That’s thinking poor. Thinking poor leads us to throw away the good things without seeing them and to increase our chances of following them down into that hole. Some great examples of poor thinking include:

  • slashing the marketing budget across the board … reaching fewer customers won’t grow the business
  • discounting prices for unlimited periods … customers who value us only for discounts will leave when they’re gone
  • reducing services … just tells customers we don’t value them at the time we need them most
  • raising prices … passing on our pain to our customers doesn’t win their loyalty

We’ve seen plenty of examples of ways businesses think poor. Thinking poor is a reaction based in fear and weakness.

Great businesses work from strength, strategy, and commitment. We evaluate where we are, what got us here, and how we might adapt to keep moving forward. To do that we go back to the original strategy and check every premise to see which are still vibrant and which no longer work in the new environment. Here are some questions to help you do that.

  • Which parts of our old strategy still truly brings us closer to our customers? Which parts no longer work in the current market?
  • Which are our most robust markets? Who are our most reachable customers? How can we celebrate them and make them heroes?
  • What do those customers value about our products? How can we find out what they wish we would leave out of our offer? How can we invite them to help make our business stronger?
  • What small, high-value enticements might we add to our current offer that would get new customers to try us and entice old customers to try us again?
  • How might we repackage what we’ve offered before so that it becomes a new and vibrant offer for a market of customers that has already shown interest in what we are doing?
  • How can we invest more in skills, services, and learning how to get closer to what our customers want?

Each of these questions is centered in becoming more intimate with the people, the customers, who grow our business.

Delivering service, product, and value to customers by listening to those who are nearest to us is the fastest way to grow a thriving, stable business.

And it’s more fun than thinking poor …

What are you going to do today to start growing your business?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

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Beach Notes: A Long Tail We Don't Like

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

The bluebottle (a.k.a. Portuguese man o’ war) is just a little bubble critter with a long tentacle. But there is a nasty sting in that tentacle and the aftermath can be very unpleasant. When we see a row of these washed up on the beach we assume there are more in the water, which usually makes that a swimless day for us.

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Are there bluebottles that you avoid?

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh