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How Do Get You People to Stop Listening to Words and Start Hearing Ideas?

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Semantics Isn’t Conversation

In any conversation, a simple word I choose may have an unexpected effect on you. I have no way of knowing when you have “history” with ordinary words I regularly use.

A word such as curiosity, or money, or gorgeous might trigger a specific and negative response. I’ll have no clue that I’ve touched off feelings, negative feelings. I won’t suspect that one word has changed the tone of my presentation from neutral to negative.

It’s an accident because of something or someone in the past.

Looking for the Wrong Words

What folks encounter negative words it’s easy for them to have negative thoughts. They transfer their experience to the the person who said them, even when the words said aren’t thought of as hurtful, negative, or mean to most people. Communication breaks. Those listeners get distracted in that way.

It’s confusing when folks flinch at something we think is innocuous. We often feel misunderstood and try to explain that we meant no harm. It’s a defensive posture that rarely works. Rather than getting caught in explanation, looking for the tripwire word can be most helpful. If we ask about the message received, we avoid the risk putting our focus on our own intentions, but on the hearing the person who feels something wrong was said.

Here are some ways to bring the focus back to listening — when it seems that we’re getting distracted by words, and not hearing ideas.

  • Know what you want the outcome to be That means listening to the people — their tone, their pauses, their enthusiasm level — not just the words they’re saying.
  • The fear of negative comments — in person and on our blogs — is over-blown. Allowing people to play with language and to enjoy the conversation can be a conceptual collaboration.
  • Giving up the need for control — making room for tangents — can reap great benefits in involvement.
  • Look at faces when the eye contact is too intense.
  • Notice how your conversation partner sits and moves. Lean into the conversation, literally and figuratively.
  • Ask questions about points that interest you. Find many of them.

In other words, let the person talking know you value what he or she is saying. Signal everyone around that person’s importance to all who might be around. Listen actively. In other words, pay attention with the expectation that you will be asked to solve a problem with the very next question.

Conversations sometimes derail over words that we think about differently. When that happens how do you get people to stop listening to words and start hearing ideas?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Value of A Comment

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Leaving a comment on a blog is an excellent way to say what you think about the content of the blog you have chosen to read. Commenting is becoming part of the conversation. People comment, or write a blog post about the topic themselves, because something they read interested, motivated, angered, intrigued or just plain made them happy. So why does there seem to be fewer and fewer comments on blogs these days?

Blogs with huge readerships, the “A-Listers “ have no problem getting comments. People comment there to be seen engaging in the conversation, challenging the ideas contained in the post and promoting their own sites. We don’t question that A- List bloggers input great value and knowledge into the blogosphere. I’ve gone to many other blogs that also provide great information and insight but have small readerships and very few comments. I wonder why?

There’s been some conversation lately around the issue of the value of comments. There seems to be a trend towards less commenting and more posting of links, for example, on Twitter. This isn’t new. I’ve seen the topic come and go. I keep wondering about this the longer I blog and the more I read.

I read a lot of blogs and comment on few. I’ve been thinking about that lately. At times I believe I don’t have anything of value to add to the conversation or I’m intimated by the other comments. Sometimes I have too many to read and not enough time so I just tweet the link. I know that when I receive comments on a post I wrote I feel like they add value and I truly appreciate hearing what others have to say. I enjoy and learn from the conversation.

What is the value of a comment to you?

from Kathryn Jennex @northernchick

photo credit: Linda Cronin

Connecting with Fiercely Loyal Customers By Being Helpful in a Hypeful World

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He’s So Sure He’s So Good

relationships button

Just read an email about how much I needed someone’s help. To put it mildly, the person who wrote it doesn’t stand a chance of doing business with me. He’s so sure that what he’s got so good. That he bet his sales on impersonal email blast to people who don’t need what he does.

The email he sent was filled with huge promises, hype of grand results, and a future that would have me set for life. I’m wondering why he needs to work if he has that secret.

Some folks sell by telling everyone how good they are.
Some folks sell by making claims that are bigger than life.
Some folks sell by pitching every person they can contact.

I feel safe in saying that it’s not the way to make fiercely loyal customers.

Connecting with Fiercely Loyal Customers By Being Helpful in Hypeful World

Great businesses have always been about customers — how to make their lives easier, more free, and more meaningful. Great companies invest in getting to know their customers and showing they value them. That builds fiercely loyal customers. Fiercely loyal customers come back and bring their friends.

Ever watch people who love what they do when they talk about their work? They talk about what they do as fluidly as water. Even when they first explain what they do, they don’t ever seem shameless. They talk about the kind of people they help and the help they give.

When we’re fully-engaged in our work, telling others about an offer is like talking to our friends about what we do. It’s natural, conversational, and about them. If you have something of value, here’s how to have conversations that matter.

  • Do your homework. Find out who’s interested. Research to know the people or businesses who need your product or service. Know their needs before you even say hello.
  • Be curious about their dreams. When you meet with prospective clients, start by asking them about their goals.
  • Be a learner, not a hunter. Look and listen for ways to help them move their goals forward.
  • Then talk about how your goals and theirs work together. Let them know the kind of helping that you do.

Don’t wait for the stars to align. Align your goals with theirs. Sit on the same side of the table with your customers. Business happens when it’s to their benefit to do business with you. Show them how working with you will get them where they want to be.

Great promotion is helpful, not hypeful. How do you talk about your work as helpful?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

If You Remove the Social from Social Media Tools …

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Hammersmith or Nail Banger?

This weekend on Twitter, I passed along Beth Harte and Geoff Livingston’s fabulous post, Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert is a Carpetbagger. I encourage you to read it.

Not everyone who does things differently than we might have them do it is a carpetbagger. I’m sure Beth, Goeff, Jason, Chris, Amber, Mack, or any other well-respected social media adviser would agree with that statement. Individuals and individual companies need to find their own voice and their own path.

Yet in this fast growing context and culture of experiments and experiences, the chance is high that folks may not have found the information they need for every decision. The world is full of “Swiss cheese knowledge.” Some folks get taught by bad teachers. Some things get past all of us.

Add to that the creativity factor, the drive for innovation, and the necessity that is the mother of invention. Experimentation is a good thing, especially as we test new tools. No one gets to pick who’s qualified to experiment and who’s not.

I’ve used a wooden-heeled shoe to pound a nail when I didn’t have a hammer.

What happens when the experiments change the nature of the tools?

If You Remove the Social … What’ve You Got?

Social media tools — blogs, social networks, Twitter, Facebook, Ning — what happens when you take out the social and just use the tool? What happens when messages and conversations become automated and future dated? What have you got if you don’t know whether you’re responding to a person or a bot?

It’s a fair question.

Some folks see the world with a different filter. They find uses for books and hammers that I’d never imagine. Some folks find uses for social media tools that, in my mind bypass the social. Allow me three extreme — of course no one actually does these things — metaphors to explain what I mean. Here are three people who would surely not see the social in social media tools.

  1. The person who sends a singing telegram rather than meet for coffee. That person probably won’t understand why socially inclined social media advisers don’t take to auto responders.
  2. The person who enters into a new neighbor’s house, saying “Cool boxes! Glad you picked my neighborhood! Check out my roller skate store.” That person probably won’t see the problem folks have with a “Just found you. Will you review my blog?” requests that come before “hello” has been mentioned.
  3. The person who interrupts people at parties to hand out business cards might not put together why a Twitter profile page filled with his / her website links and no @ signs would be considered unsocial.

Don’t get me wrong. Tools are meant to solve problems and experiementing is how we learn. Guy Kawasaki says there’s no wrong way to use tools such as Twitter. Within reason I have to agree.

I’m just sayin’ … when I use a wooden-heeled shoe to pound a nail, I’ve not become a hammersmith or a journeyman carpenter. I’m a nail banger who reconfigured a shoe.

For a hammer to be hammer, its design, function, and use involves setting nails. When I use a hammer as leg on a artfully made table, it’s no longer a hammer. It becomes a table leg.

The primary design, function, and uses of social media tools involve community, conversation, and relationships. A social media advisor brings social skills, relationships, and conversation into the mix. Without using the tools as they were designed, the tools change into something else.

If you remove the social from social media tools, what have you got? More Internet Marketing tools. Spammers and bots figured that out.

Scary thought.

How do we keep the social in social media tools?

If you disagree with what I’m saying, please set me straight. If you agree, please help me explain.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

How to Wear the Hats of a Social Media Champion — 5 Key Traits of Credible Social Media Champions

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It Starts with Amber’s Hats

The Living Web

Last week Amber Nashlund wrote post about the hats a social media champion wears. Whether we’re working inside a company or independently, anyone who offers new ways to do anything knows the challenge is not meant for the faint of heart. Knowing which of Amber’s hats to wear and which skill to call on for each situation is part science and part art. That’s the expertise of a social media champion — it’s the key leadership trait of any business manager leading change.

The proverbial hats — the know how, the expertise — won’t get far with a group that doesn’t know and trust the person wearing them. I know that Amber agrees. We’ve talked about this on other projects we’re planning together.

Remind You of Anything?

In the early years of educational publishing, dedicated teachers wanted more authentic materials than those offered by big publishers. So they made their own tools, activities, and classroom materials. Soon other teachers noticed and asked to use them. A business was born. Teachers made products and sold them to other classroom teachers they knew. The products were handmade, bound with plastic, and copied somewhere like Kinkos.

Rough edges were a mark of authenticity. Hand drawings and low-design meant the quality was in the content. Those qualities said “A real teacher made this.” New customers knew the books were good because they knew the teachers who made them.

The best of those dedicated teacher-publishers gained experience and perspective. Some left their own classrooms to serve more classroom teachers full time. However, they found growing their business wasn’t as easy as starting their business had been.

Our dedicated teacher-publishers saw other dedicated teachers offering homemade products for individual classroom teachers. Inexperienced copycats and opportunists were selling look-alike products that made empty promises and offered bad practices. Big educational publishers began to make books for individual classroom teachers too.

Classroom teachers had trouble discriminating the value from the noise.

When their customers knew them, the “rough edges” had been a certain kind of credibility, now those same homemade values made their products look shabby. Dedicated teacher-publishers needed a new way to connect their expertise with the classroom teachers they served.

Remind you of a situation anywhere near us right now?

How to Wear the Hats of a Social Media Champion

In the early days of blogging and social media, people learned by trial and error and then taught other people. We read their blogs or worked with them personally. Only so many sources existed. Someone new could recognize a wise teacher from a fool by seeing what the wise teachers had in common. We knew who was credible.

Then the blogopshere and the world of social networking exploded. Whole populations exist that have no contact with each other. Anyone can put on the social media hats. It’s hard to discriminate the value from the noise. We need to find new ways to connect with the people we want to serve.

When faced with the same challenge, those teacher-publishers shifted their thinking. They took their expertise out of the handmade package. They raised their production values to match the market. The successful dedicated teacher publishers made careful choices to convey their shared values with their classroom-teacher customers.

They offered the same solid expertise, the same content, in a new presentation.

In any noisy market what newcomers first encounter is presentation. Presentation is more than first impression. Presentation lays the groundwork for connection and relationship.

The way we wear the hats of a social media champion — our presentation verbally, visually, in text, in tone, in personal relationships — is a vital part of the expertise those hats represent.

A social media champion is a living presentation of his or her social media expertise.

Our presentation shows whether we understand who we’re talking to and what they value. From the choice of the photos and the type on a blog — new design in the works — to the choice of whether to wear a grunge jeans to visit a lawyer client, the way we “package” a message communicates even before our first word is offered.

5 Key Traits of Credible Social Media Champions

I’m not thinking we should change our identity. Just the opposite. What I’m proposing is that we make our best traits visible — that we walk our talk in the following ways. I see 5 key traits of in the social media champions I most admire and so I recommend them here.

  • Know who you are. — Be a person, not a personal brand. People make credible relationships. You make things happen. Your brand is a reflection of that. Credibility is based in actions that build trust and relationships.
  • Communicate what you stand for. — Define social media in detail in clear terms. Expertise leads a champion to have opinions about what works and what doesn’t. Be certain about your philosophy so that like-minded folks can find you.
  • Connect through the tangible and the intangible. Social media is about connections. An expert connector is focused on meeting other people where they feel comfortable. Everything from the vocabulary we use to our choice in dress code can be a bridge that connects. Great connectors show relationship expertise by using every chance to relate.
  • Be able to explain the social media culture in concrete world terms. Incidents like what happened to the Motrin ad earlier this month cause concern. Champions offer a open doors and reach out with guidance. Give context and offer familiar analogies. You’ll build bridges to replace what was fear.
  • Value Their Expertise and Be Available to Them Champions know that every voice brings value expertise of its own. They see the potential of new ideas adding to the culture. Find small, low-risk ways to invite interested questioners to listen, watch, and participate. Be available to explain what they encounter.

Long before they offer us a chance to speak or show off our social media hats, people evaluate our credibility. By the time we talk, they’ve already decided whether they will listen. Jason Falls says it best,

“Social media, you gotta live it.”

It takes quite a skill set — and several hats — to be a social media champion: listening, understanding, building on what went before, showing proof of success, engaging skeptics in meaningful conversation, inviting them into new ways of participation, planning action appropriate to their history, demonstrating ways that make jobs easier, more effective, and more efficient, helping keep the focus, and cheering people on when they lose the faith.

That’s why it’s a called champion, not a manager.

What traits do you see in the social media champions you trust? Who’s earned your credibility?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

A 3-Step Social Media Reality Check

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Are We Listening to Conversations about Us?

The Living Web

We’ve had some time to learn the social media tool kit — sort the hammers from the levels, figure out which goes with which . . . People who’ve been watching are getting curious.

But don’t get confused. The folks from outside the social media fish bowl aren’t using the same yardstick to decide who knows what and what they need to know for their business.

Ever notice how human it is to forget to follow the same rules that we teach? We might be singing to the choir while we’re networking on the web, but are we practicing what we preach when we’re working with folks who want to join in?

In deliciously ironic way, the best example of customer conversation not being listened to might be those of customers WE are looking to serve. How do WE check?

We can’t Google folks who are talking about us offline.

A 3-Step Social-Media Reality Check

Everyone needs a reality check to stay on track. In a new industry, where the standards are being set and credibility is still a question, it’s vital to keep our game at its best. Here’s a simple way to ensure that we’re in touch with the world and not only hearing what bounces back. I’ve named it a 3-Step Social-Media Reality Check.

Make a point to have regular conversation with friends, acquaintances, and people you’ve just met. Plan to ask these questions and actively listen.

  • Three Buzz Words — Offer three buzz words that you use every day on social networking sites. Ask your conversation partners what each word means.
  • One tool — Name one social media tool that you use daily. Ask each person to say everything he or she knows about it and how it’s used. Then ask about the web tool he or she uses most.
  • The Internet — Ask each person to describe what the Internet is, how it works, and what it’s biggest impact is on the world.

If you made it this far only listening, you’ve got a wealth of information about how the rest of the world thinks.

If you didn’t, . . .

If you couldn’t resist telling folks about what the words really mean, what the tool really is, how the Internet is changing the world . . . hmmmm . . . I suspect you’re might have trouble explaining how social media is different from traditional push marketing.

Reality check: We tell people to listen first. Do we do that?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!