Successful Blog

What Are You All About?

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By Terez Howard

Do you want me to read your blog? Then tell me about yourself?

Dan Keller recently wrote that blog post, and it got me thinking. When I check out blogs, and I am in the constant state of searching for new content, the absolute first link I click on if I like what I’m reading is the About page.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

  1. Who is this blogger? What does he/she do for a living, and why?
  2. What does this blogger hope to achieve with this blog?
  3. How am I going to benefit from following it? Am I going to benefit at all?

I ask myself these questions every time I click on that About link. But I’ve never put them in writing. Now that I have, I feel I have some work to do. Are you giving your readers this basic information?

You know you need a change, but how?

So, I look at my About page on my blog, and it answers what I hope to achieve with my blog. That’s about it. I’d say this is the easiest question to answer. Most, if not all bloggers, know what they are writing about. This is the time to provide a brief synopsis to your readers. Simple.

Looking back at my About page, it doesn’t say who I am. How can I, and maybe you, too, get personal? I would like to tell readers:

  • How long I’ve been writing
  • Where I’ve written
  • Why I love writing
  • What I do for a living
  • A little about my family (They’re my life!)
  • Where I live
  • A fun fact about yourself (Be creative.)

I’m going to add a headshot to my About page. Dan recommends posting a quick video so that people can get a glimpse of your personality.

An About page needs to tell people why they would care to read my blog. This is going to be different for every niche. The basic, foremost question you need to answer is:

What are readers going to take away from your blog that they can use?

I only read blogs that somehow relate to my life. For instance, I have natural hair, and I’m constantly looking for new styles, hair care tips and insights. When I’m looking at a new blog, I want that About page to tell me that I’m going to get what I need. Of course, I enjoy reading about personal information, like why a woman went natural and rants on natural hair. But I want to learn something for my hair. It has to be about me to a certain extent.

With that in mind, bloggers write about personal matters. However, if posts never relate to your readers, there will be no readers. Right of the bat, readers can know from your About page that you are going to help them in some way.

Ask yourself:

  • If I were visiting my blog as an outsider, what would type of information would I want to see?
  • How can readers use the information in my posts?
  • Why will readers want to come back to my blog?

Answering these questions can help you get on task for constructing an About page that tells your readers what they want to know. I’m ready to make some changes on my blog.

What else do you include in your About page?

—
Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility.  She has written informative pieces for newspapers, online magazines and blogs, both big and small.  She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas . You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

Thanks, Terez!

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

@StevePlunkett, Saying Thank You for ReTweets, and Signal v Noise

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Small Observations

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On Friday, @StevePlunkett and I started a small column on this blog called “Steve’s Shorts.” It grew out of my admiration for Steve’s view of the social web and an idea that small observations can be powerful and worth talking about.

That first post had an interesting result. Apparently a behavior on Twitter can go unnoticed, a statement said in 140 characters on Twitter can float by without response, but point out that behavior or that comment and put it on blog and suddenly it has a new importance. In this case, some of that response seems made without consideration to the bigger picture or the reputation and generosity of the person who offered the original comment.

Not a good situation. I am compelled to offer my own thoughts …

What @StevePlunkett said

It started with a short statement in which Steve explained why he doesn’t thank people for ReTweets …

When people say “Thanks for the RT,”, I always shoot back, “Thanks for the good info”.. I read it, I may have even blogged it. It was good info, so I passed it along, you don’t need to thank me for sharing and trusting your credibility. Believing in you enough to click on a link? That you earned anyways via engagement and professionalism. But you are welcome, again, thanks for the info. When you retweet me, you are saying “Thanks for the info”.

Apparently several people were upset by that statement. You’ll note the comment in which he notes that. In that same comment he puts forth an explanation that parallels my own thinking on the subject of saying thanks to every ReTweet.

I ReTweet and pass on links a lot. I like to feature other folks’s content. I see it as a win for everyone. The practice of finding great content to share keeps me reading and learning. The act of passing it on gives the writer one more reason to keep writing and gives those readers who value what I value more to think about and use in the businesses they’re building.

In my mind, ReTweeting great content serves much the same purpose as researching and writing great content for my blog – it offers value to the people I love … as in @SteveFarber ‘s famous mantra “Do what you love in service to the people who love what you do.”

… and that’s where the response to Steve Plunkett’s statement gets me confused.

Saying Thank You for ReTweets and Signal v Noise

When I pass on a link to someone else’s work, I don’t expect a thank you. When I refer a friend for work offline, I don’t expect a thank you then either. Getting that person’s attention wasn’t what motivates me, sharing great people and their great work is. The occasional thank you from someone I’ve not met is nice because it starts a new relationship, but in general I prefer not get a thank you from folks I already know. Here’s why.

  • I would hope my friends value me for more than my small ability to ReTweet their work.
  • I don’t want my ReTweets to become a kind of currency that becomes a trade of Tweet for a Thank You.
  • I am savvy enough to know that a small group of folks will say Thank you simply to get their name in another person’s Twitter stream.
  • I’m sensitive to the content that my Tweet stream carries and what value does a long list of thank yous offer to the folks who follow me? A long list of thanks yous that aren’t directed to you are really just noise not signal it seems to me.
  • I find other ways to show my appreciation for ReTweets. One is to visit that person’s Tweet stream to read what they’ve written lately in hopes of finding more great content to share.

I value reciprocity as much as anyone, but I don’t live for it. I don’t ever want to be the person who counts the times my actions and expects a 1:1 ratio in a return response … I see that as a time sink and something that has the potential to breed a certain sort of self-ish-ness. I can use the time I might have used to type multiple thank you to build things that say “thank you” in bigger ways and that philosophy allows me to manage my own behavior not chase or worry about whether folks are being reciprocal.

So don’t worry about thanking me for every ReTweet I make. Take that time to do more great things for all of us and know that I’m doing my best to live gratitude so that the word, “thank you” never become a currency or noise that we ignore.

I value and respect your opinion on this. It doesn’t have to be the same as my own. But if you understand my intend, then you’ll know that value for you is always strong.

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

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The 10 Point Plan to Build an Internal Community of Brand Loyal Fans

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(Updated in 2020)

Community Starts at Home

During my years in publishing, I was a serial community builder. It seems that every job I took included “rebuild the department, refocus the vision” in the role. I’m fairly certain that those two challenges are what attracted me.

Even as a teenager, explaining the quest, translating the context, and helping folks bring their best to what they’re doing has been my natural response. I’ve always done that. Not that I’ve always done it well. Still the failures and successes of the past have taught me what moves people to trust in a vision and to join in to build something they couldn’t build alone.

So I was the one they hired

  • to rebuild the company and the strategy for growth six months after the company had laid off 40% of the previous employees.
  • to re-establish the department identity when it had grown too quickly and lost its role within the organizational process.
  • to build a cross functional team that could function with professional ease and confidence from a crew of new hires when the start up started growing.
  • to establish a winning brand and a high performance product / marketing team from a single product offer and a squad of contract workers
  • to lead an ad hoc SWAT team of 60 professionals to reconceive and bring to market a product in crisis (in 1/6 the time originally budgeted for development.)

Every one of those jobs was the best job of my life while I was doing it, because we built teams that made outstanding things happen. Who doesn’t want to work with people who are “in with both feet,” working at their best level, and having fun?

The 10-Point Plan to Build an Internal Community of Brand Loyal Fans

Now I’m working with two new clients that very topic close to my heart and my business. Both are asking how they might get their teams to “raise a barn” rather than “build a coliseum.” Both companies want a to build an internal community of brand evangelists the expands from team to team, from department to department that will spread from inside to outside their company’s “walls.”

We’re going to use traditional interviews, a social tool called a “histogram,” and tested, collaborative instructional design to build an internal community of brand loyal fans. Here’s a 10-Point Plan to build an internal community of brand loyal fans. It’s exciting to offer a program and a process that grew out of the of the working model we use every year at SOBCon.

  1. Articulate a clearly defined vision.
  2. Negotiate a leadership commitment to live that vision.
  3. Assess and benchmark the current status.
  4. Identify and enlist a core team of champions to lead the quest.
  5. Build a brand values baseline by gathering the values that drive the brand.
  6. Challenge the brand teams to condense and clarify the brand values baseline by talking them through with stakeholder and bring back less than 7 words.
  7. Align your brand values with your brand value proposition
  8. Engage the brand teams in identifying and collecting cultural stories, signs, and rituals that exemplify the values of the brand values baseline.
  9. Move the process outward training teams in — a leadership team that focuses on departmental quality and performance and communications through persuasion.
  10. Exhibit leadership commitment by investing regular time and resources to ongoing collaborative brand values conversations to build decision models, communication models, and performance / hiring standards that align with the brand values baseline.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about each step in the process. We will explore what each step is; why it’s important; how to put it into action; and how to know whether it’s working in the way you intended. Then we’ll talk about how to connect that internal community to the community of customers, partners, and vendors who help your business grow from outside.

Any questions?

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

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

3 Key Strategies and 3 Crucial Insights to Growing Business on the Social Web

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What to Keep and What It Means Now

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At the Social Media Masters Summit, I spoke about three crucial business growth strategies.

  1. Make an irresistible offer. Remove things that customers don’t want. Enhance and expand what they love. Then find ways to add in extraordinary value that only you can provide.
  2. Grow products and services as you grow (and get to know) your customer base. Review. Revise. Repackage. Be on a continual cycle of offering something new for old customers and something revised or repackaged to new customers. Avoid dying by offering old product to old customers for too long. Avoid the huge risk and expense of building something new for a whole new market — dividing your resources while trying to attract people to something new.
  3. Value loyal customers. We never recover the lost of replacing one who deserts the fold. The loss of revenue over time is high and noticeable. When it is combined with the opportunity loss, the cost of acquiring a new customer, and the negative word of mouth (the average deserter tells three friends) the impact is huge.

I also spoke about three key insights we need to fully leverage the speed and reach of the social web …

  1. Solution is the new location. Once it was important to be at the corner of State and Main. Now it’s important to be at the top of a search engine when people type in a problem they’re looking to solve.
  2. The attention economy requires a clear message sent to a clearly defined customer group. The social web makes it easier to amplify our message and to reach out to the ideal customers and partners we want to attract. In geographically limited marketplace, we could claim to serve a less-clarified market, because the community was limited. The loss of limits leaves a lack of definition in a position to be entirely overlooked. The value proposition for a specific niche is what makes us different from all other competitor’s on the web.
  3. Narrowing a niche widens opportunity. Geography no longer limits our community and customer base. A clear narrow niche works like a laser beam to focus attention on what we offer and our best value proposition for the ideal customers that we’re trying to attract.
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No wonder the social web has become such a revolution. Once a brick and mortar store could count on a limited number ideal customers and be required to offer products and services beyond their needs to less ideal customers just to survive. The freedom of the Internet offers us an opportunity to choose the exact ideal customer base we want to serve. We can hone and tailor our products and offers to reach out with intention, knowing that the world market has far more customers of that description than any single geographic location ever could.

It’s the beauty of direct mail with out the cost of the catalogs … without the long development time between offers and seasons.

What businesses do you see demonstrating that they understand the reach of Internet? Not many I bet.
How are you leveraging the opportunity that the social web represents?

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

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63% of the International Bees Awards Entries Are Big Brands

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San Francisco November 9, 2010 marks the first annual International Bees Awards in recognition to the best Social Media communications and marketing practices. I’m proud to serve as a member of the Iinternational Bees Awards jury. I’m also excited to report that

  • Every continent has submitted entries: Social media marketing is a worldwide phenomenon.
  • 14 of the 16 categories have received entries: Market sends the message that social media marketing goes way beyond creating a Facebook page.
  • 63% of all entries come from large brands: Large brands are embracing actively this new marketing approach on the Web.
  • 70% of all entries come from specialized agencies: Small/fast-growing agencies are making social media marketing their main expertise and as a result, seem to get the large client accounts.

Social media is still an emerging market and there are a lot of questions and curiosities revolving around this new medium. Upon submission, entires have the oppurtunity to become case studies for the international press. Entries are kept 100 % confidential unless stated otherwise.

Case studies that have been shared with the public come from Sweden, Japan, and Canada, showcasing campaigns for IKEA and Cirque du Soleil’s One Drop are shared on the Bees Awards Blog.

The professionalism behind the criteria for choosing the jury, the truly international focus, and the dedication to quality make this event one to keep an eye on.

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

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SOB Business Cafe 08-27-10

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Social Media Explorer
Social CRM is being hawked by monitoring services, market research firms, traditional sales software and — if you can believe it — Twitter applications. Brand managers, marketing managers and agencies everywhere are anxious to get them some of that social CRM, by golly. Sadly, most of them don’t even know what CRM stands for.

Smart Blog on Social Media
When the song does come on my iPhone via shuffle, I quickly skip it and move to the next. So why do I get so excited when a song I can listen to anytime comes on the radio? The answer is that someone else, with a far greater reach, has chosen to share one of “my songs” with their audience.

OPENForum
We multitask at work – flitting between 12 browser tabs, chatting on IM, taking phone calls, processing our inboxes. We multi-task in the car – driving, texting, listening to the radio. We multi-task in the kitchen – talking to our partners, chopping vegetables, checking our Blackberries or iPads. Yet, multi-tasking has been proven time and again to be a miserable failure.

So how do we fight back?

Mack Collier
Let me clear up front: If you are going to use social media, you absetively should have a strategy driving your efforts. Totally.

But simply creating a social media strategy and executing it doesn’t mean you are using social media correctly. I can create a blogging strategy for your company and tell you exactly what to do, but that still doesn’t mean you’ll have a successful blog.

Blog for Profit
Should your blog’s domain name be a brand or your own name? Or should it contain search keywords? Grant and I get this question all time from our clients. The answer may surprise you.

EConsultancy
You can measure a thousand different metrics and still fail at social media, because you’re ignoring the hundreds of different methods involved. If you want to create true engagement, then you’ll need to drop any preconceptions you might have about market behaviour and take time to speak personally to each customer.

Related ala carte selections include

Chris Pirillo
I spend probably 80% of my working time writing things. I communicate with people across social networks. I compose missives to be sent to various people. I occasionally author books and articles. I draft items to send to potential sponsors. I dash off the quick email
or hundred. The one thing I do not do is write a letter. Who needs to do such a thing in this day and age of 140 characters or less?

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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