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Liz's Thematic Links Story: Lorelle's Blogging Birthday Quest

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thematic-links

I Promised I Would Write This Story

In response to the Joanna’s Thematic Links Post WritingChallenge, I promised I would use the titles to write a story. Here is the story that I wrote.

Lorelle’s Blogging Birthday Quest

Once upon a time, a sweet young lady called Lorelle set out to celebrate her blog’s birthday. She went on a quest to find her passion. Seeking knowledge, success, and wisdom, Lorelle went to to the lighthouse at SuccessCREEations. There she saw Chris, the wizard, she had met at SOBCon07. Lorelle was sure that he could help.

In her swirling teal green dress that matched the logo on her blog, Lorelle timidly knocked on the lighthouse door. A very tall, but kindly, Chris pulled back the huge and creaky door. He held a Klondike bar as he looked down, down, down to see the young lady in the swirling teal green dress that matched the swirling logo on her blog. She was looking up, up, up at him.

She noticed that her neck was getting a little crick and stepped back a step.

“I’ve decided to take on more — show people real Blog writing with a purpose,” Lorelle said.

Chris questioned whether he should Fan the Flames. He listened as she spoke.

“I’ve done The Recommended Weekly Readings (2007-08-18). Project Management, ” Lorelle said, sounding like a cross between an encyclopedia and a librarian.

“I was just about to do a blog myself,” Chris said. “It’s called ‘Weekly Wrap-up: War on Clutter.’ Would you like to watch? First of course, I have to clean up the clutter.”

Lorelle caught on right away. “You want me to help you clean your lighthouse. No way!!”

“Perhaps, then . . . ” Chris said, thoughtfully. “Frankly Lorelle, I worry about Google and the Privacy Dilemma. We shouldn’t be in the lighthouse alone. Maybe you should go out to play.”

But our little Lorelle was not to be stopped.

Everyone who knows, knows that you don’t get in the way of a determined Lorelle. She crossed her arms across her chest firmly and stamped one foot in a lovely black patent-leather shoe (that looked so elegant with the teal green dress that matched her blog.) “Why go out and Play when you can be Inside Blogging?”

As the two stood on the doorstep of the lighthouse, several bloggers walked by.

“There you go!” Chris said, seeing opportunity. “Hey, Jon!”

Jon and Brad walked over. Jon said, “Yeah, Chris?”

“Lorelle here wants the “How to Best Pitch Bloggers – a Virtual Group Interview” Speech. Are you the guy who does that?”

“Nope,” said Jon. Brad said, “That would be Jan. He’s out showing GP Why Writing a Link Post Should Be Like Planning a Party. I don’t think you’ll be finding him for a while.”

“What do you guys do that’s a cool blogging trick?” Lorelle asked, stomping her other lovely black patent leather shoe that looked so elegant with her teal green dress that swirled in the same color as her blog logo.

Together the two men said, “We know How to read feeds without driving yourself mad.

“I already know that.” Lorelle said.

A woman named Anastasia walked up to offer Lorelle A learning whirlpool.

Lorelle immediately backed off protecting her lovely black patent leather shoes that looked so elegant with her teal green dress that swirled in the same color as her blog logo.

“Error Retrieving What You Wished For! Retry? Y/N?” asked Alina.

“What are you talking about?” Lorelle asked, not at all sure these ladies were talking about blogs.

“Shared Answers – Final Roundup & the Winner” said Yvonne.

“I don’t want my horoscope read,” Lorelle exclaimed. “I just want to be Linking with intention even When writing means spirit spilling.”

“You should rest. After all next week is A New Week. You might feel differently by then.” Chris finally said to Lorelle.

As Chris walked Lorelle back to her blog, the teal green one with the swirly logo down the road — the one that matched the dress that looked so elegant with the lovely black patent leather shoes. The two travelers were passing a tiny blog when they heard a woman’s voice say, I’m just writing to say thanks.

“Who’s that?” Lorelle asked.

“Can’t tell.” Chris said. “It’s either Liz or Joanna. They’re both always saying stuff like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related
A List Becomes 301 Links in Story — Chapter 1

10 Expert Strategies for Finding Customer Needs

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SIMPLE SALES SERIES

Customers Are the Only Ones Who Count

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Yesterday I wrote a recipe for a product offering that sells. Of course, it really was about paying attention to customers — customers are the only ones who count.

Before we leave the topic, I did some research to offer you the points of view from some experts on the subject.

10 Expert Strategies for Finding Customer Needs

Read to find out how to listen to your customers and how to know when they are right.

  1. pdf 6 Customer Expectations.
    a most readable pdf with solid explanations of how customers think.

  2. video Asking Customers What They Think Has Long-Term Benefits
    The benefits of asking

  3. A Customer Feedback Tip – Are You Asking The Right Questions?
    Well-written article on making sure we know what we’re asking

  4. To Charge Up Customers, Put Customers in Charge
    Uses the great example of Threadless.com an online business.

  5. Create Successful Products by ‘Getting in the Van’
    The benefits of going to where the customers are

  6. Customer Satisfaction Tips Links to 18 articles on the subject of finding out what customers think

  7. Finding Hot Selling Products to Sell
    The basics of supply and demand

  8. Successful products through observation
    Why simply watching ourselves and our customers is valid too.

  9. Tips for e-mail marketing in a spam-filled world
    Once you have a list of customers hw you might use it to ask them what they think.

  10. How to Find High-Demand Products That Sell Like Hotcakes
    Some nontraditional places to research online

Now take a look at the products you own. What thinking made you buy them?

How will that help you decide what you offer?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
10 More Outstanding Links that Answer “What DO You Do for a Living?”
20 Outstanding Links to Answer “What Do You Do?”
Three Steps to a Killer Tagline that Customers Pass On
Strategy: 40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully!
20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy

The Recipe for a Product Offering that Will Sell

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SIMPLE SALES SERIES

It’s No Good if It Doesn’t Sell

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We don’t decide what is a great product or service. Customers and clients do. If we what we do well is what our customers value, it will sell. In my publishing job, I said this over and over . . .

It’s not a good book, if it doesn’t sell — at a profit.

Customers decide whether our offer is better than any alternative. They let us know by how they vote with their money. Our job is to make an offer they find attractive, knowing full well that we cannot coax or coerce them to behave.

The Recipe for a Product Offering that Sells

While I was publishing, I spent a great deal of time talking to customers who used my products and to customers who did not.

Most marketers would recommend that you find out how folks are using your “stuff,” what they like, what they don’t, what they wish for, and what other “stuff” they like just as much or better. They would suggest that you especially find out why folks who aren’t using your “stuff,” aren’t using it. I did all that — but only about 10% of the time.

The other 90% of the time we talked about THEM, not about my “stuff.”

That’s how I got to my recipe for a product that sells. It’s the recipe I used when driving the strategy of the company we turned around.

  1. Talk to your ideal customers about
    • what wish they had more time to do.
    • what they wish they could learn.
    • what they wish someone would invent.
    • what problem they would love to get off their mind or off their desks.

    Listen actively to understand the outcome they prize. Find the patterns in what they say.

  2. Build a product or service that does one thing well — in less time. If you bundle more than one need, do it carefully. Less is more. Simple is elegant.

  3. Design the product or service to match customers’ sensibilities. Make it beautiful and functional, and a reflection of what they value. Adding “quality” they can’t see or don’t want is adding cost they don’t want.

  4. Price the offer at what the work is worth — what you need to make a profit and what it saves the customer.

  5. Test what you plan by asking customers who know you, who don’t know you, and who are notoriously on the opposite side of the fence.

Every bit of the development is about how the features of the product or service benefits the customer. Add to “How are WE doing?” the additional question “What drives YOU crazy?”

How do you find customer needs customers that aren’t being met? Are you your own customer? How might you use that in your favor?

I’m really interested in informal ways we get customers to talk about their experiences.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Blog Business Summit in Chicago!

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did-you-know-that

Blog Business Summit is in Chicago! It’s September 17-19.

Steve Broback and Teresa Valdez Klein, the power behind Blog Business Summit, have pulled out the stops to make this year’s event shiny and new. It’s got the foundational values that has made past summits memorable, and more and deeper thoughts on revenues, metrics, customers, communities, bloggers, corporate blogging, entrepreneurial blogging, — the direction blogging is headed. Whew!

It’s hard to find a topic that’s not well represented by this group of speakers. Click on the names to find out about their sessions.

Quite a list don’t you think?
Go on over to check it out.

Let me know if you’re thinking about going. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Change the World: Take a Challenge

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changetheworld8

How-cool-is-this!!!
Robert Hruzek of Middle Zone Musings sent out an email to a few close friends about a series he writes monthly.

Robert’s been thinking, and he’s decided to make a challenge. He said he wouldn’t mind if I shared that challenge with you. So, here’s an excerpt from that email.

Over the last couple of days I’ve posted a two-part series at Middle Zone Musings on the subject of change, and got so inspired it prompted me to do something crazy (I mean, more than usual). So, go ahead and call me crazy if you like, but here it is: I’ve decided to change the world!

OK, I can hear it now; a chorus of, “Well, that’s just crazy!” (See; told ya!) But I don’t mind; I’m still goin’ for it! But, I really need your help (sound of stampede to the door).

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been inspired by Liz Strauss’s Change The World series of posts. It always amazed me to realize just how much a single person can change the world, given the right circumstances. So I said to myself, “Self, why don’t you change the world?” Amazingly enough, me, myself and I agreed to quit talking about it and actually do something! (After all, it’s so rare that we all agree on something! I mean, besides ice cream; ice cream is always good.)

With that audacious goal in mind, I’ve just kicked off a Special Edition of our usual monthly What I Learned From… writing project with a two part post (yesterday’s and today’s) on the topic of Change. Yes, I know it’s a bit early – usually it starts on the first Monday of every month, but this time we’re going to need a few more days.

Please do me a favor and drop by the Zone, read these posts, and consider the challenge. Then, if you’d like to change the world with me, then by all means, let’s do it!

So, what do you think? Are you up to a challenge?

Will you change the world?

You, me, Robert . . . we can change the world, just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

121: From a Blog Writer to a Conversational Dynamo

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one2one blog post logo

Dynamo? Oh Wow!

Sure, Dawud, put me on the spot, why don’t you? . . .

Have you read, Dawud’s latest one-2-one post? He answers the question, Are You Having A Conversation With Your Niche Audience? and he invites you to help him come to his best answer. The conversation in the comments brings up some fabulous thinking on the subject.

Then what does he do? He asks me (and you folks reading) about how I got to be a conversational dynamo. I sort of feel like I’ve been asked to explain what a great kisser I am — whether I am one or not.

His actual question was.

What’s helped you go from just being a writer on a blog to becoming a conversational dynamo?

I won’t waste your time, I’ll pretend like he knows what he’s saying. We all know I can talk and that there are a few comments here and there on my blog. So let’s start from that premise. What makes the conversation happen here? Am I a conversational dynamo or is it smoke and mirrors?

I vote for the second.

Conversation is two or more people talking together. I can talk all I want. That doesn’t mean anyone will listen. Does it? Some days, I feel pretty sure that no one does. So what makes it special when they do?

It’s got to be more than me. Of course, it is. I can only guess at the recipe, but here goes.

A Recipe to Be A Conversational Dynamo

  • Write with one part heart. Put it out there open wide and let everyone see what it is you have to say. Don’t hedge your bets. Know that some days everyone will disagree and that all days some people will not see eye to eye. Be okay with that. Like them anyway. They’ll respect you for that.
  • Then write with another part thinking mind. Offer it without fear and let folks know what you’ve learned lately about life and yourself. Don’t be stingy with your knowledge thinking that one day you’ll need to know more than someone else. People can tell when you’re holding out on them.
  • Lavish it all with room for everyone you meet to be who they are, to come in and change your ideas, and expect them to be every bit their best. Hope they expect it of you.
  • Welcome every person at the door. Call each one by name. Let every one of them know that you are glad he or she is here.
  • Then after you make all of them feel at home, stop talking and listen.
  • Stop talking and listen some more to each one individually.
  • And care about what they say with your head and your heart.

That would be my recipe for becoming a conversational dynamo, if I were to guess how.

I leave you with this question for next week.

What do you do when suddenly no one seems to be paying attention to your blog?

If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear your answer in the comment box below.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

One2One is a cross-blog conversation. Find the answer at dawud miracle on Monday. You can see the entire One-2-One Conversation series on the Successful Series page.
In Case You Missed It: Writing 06-13-07