Successful Blog

How Do You Let Folks Know What You Do Without Pitching Them?

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Tools Need a Purpose

Got a hammer, looking for nails to use it?

Got a Twitter account, don’t do that.

Social media tools work so much more effectively when we decide a few things before we use them.

What to Do Before You Twitter

Know what business you’re in and know your ideal online customer.

If you’ve not done that in the last six months, the definition you’re using probably isn’t the best one. The generational nature of the online culture means that our base of customers is always shifting, growing, learning.

Draw a picture. Make a prototype of the customer you’ve just identified. What do you offer that makes that customer’s life faster, easier, or more meaningful?

Now that you think you know that. Go find people who meet that description and ask them what they care about … and listen.

Go back and revise your offer to meet what they care about not what you thought they did. Then keep listening — build relationships and get to know your potential customers better. When you talk about what you do, talk the way you tell friends what’s going on in your life.

You don’t pitch your friends do you?

The folks you meet will say when they need you. When you hear them talk about a way you might help, just say, “By the way, that’s what I do.”

When we’re authentically listening, we can hear who actually needs our help.

How do you let folks know what you do without pitching them? I bet you have some secret ways of doing that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence!!

How Do You Keep Negative Comments from Turning You Around?

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Sometimes It’s Semantics …

Who hasn’t had the joyous experience of a negative comment? We overhear them around the corner, confront them in conversation, and find them written boldly on our blogs. It helps to remember that they’re often more about the person talking … what that person heard, misheard, or never listened to from the start.

It helps a lot if we don’t make such things about ourselves.

A friend asked me once how I handled negative comments on my blog. My first sentence was, “Well I’m a saloonkeeper’s daughter and I used to teach first grade …” I had no idea how that sounded until she laughed out loud.

How do you keep negative words from turning you around?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence!!

What We Gotta Know about These Tools

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It’s Not What Comes After Twitter …

With the advent of SOBCon Hands-On event partnerships, I’m enjoyng the pleasure of forming relationships and working alongside people who share my business passions organizations, businesses, and individuals learning to serve their markets by working online and off seamlessly. Watch for them in the next few weeks.

The authentic candor of the conversations with Susan Kuhn Frost, Gio Galluci, Erica O’Grady, DDGriffith and Starbucker has totally convinced me that teaching the tools isn’t an end in itself.

Businesses of every size seem confused about integrating the Internet — they see social media tools as key drivers of business. Social media tools don’t build a business.

I keep thinking of an editor with a writing assignment. She had talent, experience, and the best equipment to use to write the piece she was assigned. She came to me on day three, saying that she just couldn’t do it.

After a few minutes, the problem was easy to spot. All of the tools in the world wouldn’t fix it.

She hadn’t decided — didn’t know — exactly what she wanted to say.

You can’t use the tools of a writer if you don’t know that.

Gotta Know the Goal Before the Tool Is Gonna Help

To bring it down to it’s most basic form, the business that picks up the tools first without setting goals first won’t don’t do well.

Email, telephone, Twitter, any tool is only as useful as it match to the purpose. Not the other way around.

If we want to be successful using social media tools, we need to know a few things to make the tools work:

  • Who we are.
  • What we offer.
  • Who we’re offering that to.
  • Which tool is a match.

Just like the editor, who had to know what she wanted to say to use the tools at her disposal …

I’ve decided to let the other guys worry about what comes after Twitter … from the pencil to to the typewriter to the telephone to the computer … they’re all tools.

We gotta know what we’re using these tools to do.

Have you seen people get so involved in a tool like Twitter that they’ve used it without really having a goal?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence!!

How to Blog Like a Beginner …

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A few words I’ve said before that I want to share on my birthday …

Something blogging has taught me a lot about — not just the beauty of paying attention to one thing at a time — but the fulfillment of offering other people a chance to talk.

Half the show is in the comments. Thank you HART for saying that!

That was one of the first things we discovered here.

When I first started blogging, I often tried to do too much. I’d write a post that carried the load of too many thoughts at one time. Those blogging posts went both deep and wide. They were so complete, I left no room for readers to add their thoughts.

It’s not a conversation when all a reader can say is I agree with you, Great post. or You covered that subject really well. There’s just nowhere for a conversation to go, if I don’t leave room for a reader’s thoughts to squeeze in between my own. Now I know to think about the conversation when I write.

Here are a few things that I do differently now. What they add up to is staying in the mind of a beginner.

  • I ask more questions without answering them.
  • I don’t try to think through every possibility as I used to do. I write what I know and I let other folks add what they know to that.
  • I’ve backed off on holding myself accountable as an expert on the what I write about and instead, think of myself as one of the audience talking to another reader about an idea, waiting to hear his or her point of view.

The result? This social media beginner is having so much more fun than any teacher … and feeling so much more authentic.

What do you do to stay a social media beginner?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Saying No With Authenticity … When No Becomes Yes Unexpectedly

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Don’t Agree to What You Can’t Do

On Monday while waiting at DFW, I got a back channel message from @LisaDJenkins saying that a friend and potential client had asked for social media help in an area that “wasn’t her thing.” The message said, “Could I recommend you?” I checked it over, saw a nice fit, and said yes.

A relationship started … I haven’t met the client yet, but I’ve gotten to know Lisa pretty well. I wanted to know more about her and what she was doing. Her follow up email and the recommendation she sent her friend were well-written and compelling. A good turn on her part become more than that. Lisa tells the story better than I do.

On the other hand, once I had a conversation with a potential client that became a negotiation via email. We discussed a project in detail. It was a blast talking to him about the project. The conversation was more than worth looking forward to, but as he told me about his expectations, the more I felt I was unable to gather the resources I’d need to do the work to my satisfaction.

It was a sad moment for me. The project had sounded exciting. I’d enjoyed beginning a relationship that was authentic, filled with fun, and an example of with great communication.

I didn’t stay sad very long.

He must have felt the same values. When I declined, that potential client shifted the topic to other projects on which we might work together.

There is a lesson here. It’s one I like believing in.

Ever had a no become a yes like these?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Is Your Promise Irresistibly Attractive to Your Customers?

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relationships button

As business moves on line, less and less of what is offered is “one size fits all.” Customers like you and me have developed a taste for what helps us express our individuality. The more a business or a blog seems to “look and feel” like me, the more likely I am to stick around and explore.

What does that mean to an online business now?

Build a Promise on Values

We are a fascinating species. When we don’t know where to go, we’ll go where everyone else goes. But give me a valuable reason to come to you, and you’ve made a customer –- a reader -– possibly a friend forever.

It’s likely that our customers will look a lot like ourselves. People gravitate to people who think as they do. In fact, we think people who think as we do are smart, and those who don’t are difficult uninformed or unable to “keep up.” Naturally our best customers will share our values too.

What we value is what we’ll fight for, what we’ll put our head, heart, and time on the line for.

Build a promise core on values to attract customers who love your business as much as you do.

  • Define one or two core values for your business. Call them your value service niche. Make it your place to stand. Saving time with a smile could be one. Worrying your work into art could work. Play to your strengths and passions. Do what you value better than anyone else.
  • Find out everything about the customers who value that too. Fall in love with every one of them. Figure out how to crawl into their skin and see what they think, feel, and experience. Know their dreams and their wishes. Find their needs and desires. Learn to predict what they’re not saying.
  • Define your your work through your customers’ world view. Design everything they see to look like them. Choose your words to sounds like they do. State what you stand for in promise of a few words.
  • Write that promise everywhere your customers look.
  • Deliver on it every time they meet you.
  • Use that promise to test every decision, every product and service your business offers.

Core values define what you and your customers put above everything else. When they’re aligned and out loud, they are our voice and an irresistibly attractive message.

What core values do you share with your most loyal customers?

You’re only a stranger once.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.