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Be Irresistible: Grow with the Community Who Loves to Tell Your Best Story

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10-Point Plan in Action: The Off-site meeting

Money Can’t Buy Love

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At a recent corporate team-building meeting, I experienced a speaker’s dream of a setup. The company VP who spoke before me discussed a tactic used by the competition — how they secretly pay people to talk about them from speaker platforms and in the press.

That simple shocking story made my opening statement easy. I repeated the competition’s tactic, then I quoted Paul McCartney …

I don’t care too much for money. Money can’t buy me love.

The company in the room already had a core community of enthusiasts who are fiercely loyal fans.

We talked about how love beats money and these six steps that will get people who love you together into a community and talking about you:

  1. Build your network before you need it.
  2. Share that story about you that connects people.
  3. Let them tell it the way they want to. Leave lots of room for positive mutation. People feel ownership when they contribute.
  4. Make it easy, fun, and meaningful to share the message with friends.
  5. Make it so that folks feel proud, important, part of something they do together.
  6. Reward and celebrate your heroes who share what you do.

I used this presentation to organize my thoughts around those ideas.

We discussed how great marketing and growing businesses are a balance of

  • leadership and loyalty — leaders learn from our heroes, align our goals with our advocates, and attract loyal fans with by valuing them.
  • customer and company — great businesses value both customers and company. They know that without the company customers won’t be served and without customers the company can’t survive.

Today, I’m talking to another already irresistible organization about the same six steps and the underlying values inside their value proposition.

Great businesses are about one community — employees, vendors, partners, clients, customers — looking in the same direction, working together to build something no one person can build alone. Communities like that grow companies that serve customers who love them. Those customers bring their trust and their energy and are quick to share your best stories with their friends.

That’s how we get to be the first trusted source — a stand alone value that can’t be copied or replaced.

This week I met with the corporation that held the off-site. We began planning the strategy for making it even easier, faster, and more meaningful — irresistible — for the existing community to meet online, offline and even at the company. We’ll be showing them how they can share ideas, swap strategies, and invite their best friends to join them. We’ll be extending an unending invitation to become a bigger part of the living story of how a company and it’s customers grow together and thrive.

What’s your best story — the one that customers are already telling about you?
How easy are making for your heroes to meet each other and pass it on?

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

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If You Want to Get People to Love What You Do …

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Andy Sernovitz is always insightful on Word of Mouth Marketing.

There is no force on Earth that talks more than a teenager in love. … sounds like an executive with a new iPhone.

Love breaks the barrier between money and marketing. When you have great Word of Mouth, you don’t need to pay people to talk about you. Thrilling people with great service and satisfaction changes the way that people see us … people start talking about us because we are awesome. We build an army of fans who stick around even after the economy as improves.

In that way,

Marketing is what you do not what you say.

Before we get great word of mouth, we have to give people something to love.

If you want to get people to love what you do …

  • Talk to everyone you can about what you offer.
  • Ask them what parts make their lives easier, more fun, more meaningful.
  • Ask over and over what they don’t love, what gets in the way.
  • Add more of what make their lives easier, more fun, more meaningful.
  • Remove all you can of what gets in the way.
  • Ask the same people whether the new offer shows that you heard them … ask over and over until the ones that matter can only smile and agree.
  • Celebrate and honor their help when you share the new version of what offer.

Word of mouth is love not money. Love means we talk to each other. Love means we listen to make each other’s life better too.

What better word of mouth is there than someone in love?

What products and services do you love enough to talk about?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

Influence: He Leaves People Feeling Proud to Know Him …

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This is Carly Simon, No Secrets
, in 1972.

His friends are more than fond of Robin
He doesn’t need to compliment them
And always as he leaves he leaves them
Feeling proud just to know him … — His Friends Are More Than Fond of Robin

Those few lines made me want to meet the guy the song was about. That description has influenced me for more than 30 years.

When I say I’m proud to know you, it unpacks to many things:

  • I respect your values.
  • I trust that you hold people around you safe.
  • I see your competence, credibility, and generosity.
  • I recognize your integrity.
  • I want to share you with my friends.
  • You make it easy to be my better self when I am with you.

Proud to know you, for me, means outstanding, shareable, and easy. Robin had the best Word of Mouth in the 70s. No wonder the lyrics also said

He’s talked about before he gets there …

We talk about what we like.

Who do know that’s talked about like that?

What makes you proud to know someone?

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

Word of Mouth and Social Media Aren't the Same …

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But You Already Knew That!

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My son is an introvert. He thinks long before he talks and rarely wastes words. He’s not one to volunteer extraneous information. Ask a question and you’ll get exactly the answer it takes to fulfill your request. Some days that makes conversation a bit of a challenge. A digital native by age, birth, and technological era, he would never be a social media maven. It’s just not his personality or his inclination.

However, if you get him talking about something he believes in, he’ll tell you exactly why and how you should be participating. Then he’ll tell the person sitting next to you, if he thinks that person might listen. If he knows how to do something faster, make something easier, or has an insight into something more meaningful, he’ll share it because it feels good to do so.

That’s the definition of a word-of-mouth natural. It’s not promoting. It’s sharing what we care about with the people we care about.

World of Mouth and Social Media Aren’t the Same Thing

Recently, Andy Sernovitz and I were talking via email about his new SuperGenius Word of Mouth Conference on December 16th in Chicago. He made some great points worth sharing about the difference between social media and word-of-mouth marketing.

Social media is an incredible tool. But social media is not word of mouth marketing. It’s a tool we can use for the online portion of word of mouth. But it’s not even the main tool there. I would argue that more recommendations go by plain old-fashioned email than all the social networks combined.

On top of that, offline word of mouth is so much bigger than online word of mouth. A tweet still doesn’t beat a personal recommendation from a close friend.

So why are we talking about social media so much?

1. Because real word of mouth is hard. It requires big ideas, long-term commitment, and an honest dedication by a company to earn the respect and recommendation of its customers. You can’t just call your agency and order up some WOM.

2. Because social media gives us an action step. It’s fairly straightforward to do a campaign on Facebook or Twitter. You can call your agency and order up a social media campaign. And your agency, who is totally freaked out by this WOM stuff, can deliver a pretty good campaign. Then you can show the results to your happy boss. Everyone feels good and gets paid.

Except… we completely miss the point.

The point of word of mouth isn’t ecommerce; it isn’t to count clicks and CPAs.

The point of word of mouth is to be a brand worth talking about. To be a company that people are proud to tell their friends about. It’s to replace paid marketing with personal connections. To replace cash with love. To be fantastic.

And that’s what this conference is all about: A revival of TRUE WOM. A home for the simple idea that HAPPY CUSTOMERS ARE YOUR BEST ADVERTISERS.

True WOM is a movement.

Andy didn’t ask me to share what he said, but I agree with every point he made here and I wanted to pass it on.
He offered me a discount seat at the conference and he offered a scholarship code for my readers.

Learn How to Be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing An incredible word of mouth marketing conference. Learn to get more people talking about you the very next day. 12 How-To Classes, 12 Case Studies, 6 Authors Word of Mouth Supergenius! Chicago, December 16

Register here: http://gaspedal.com/supergenius Use the code VIPSUCCESSFULBLOG for a discount of $144.

Andy wrote the book on Word of Mouth Marketing. No, I’m not an affiliate. I think it’s important that we know everything we can about getting folks to talk about the good things we have going on.

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

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

Crowdsourcing the SOBCon Secret Project

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I have been looking at this for hours:

Mike Rodhe made these sketchnotes at SXSW last week and they are fantastic. I have been thinking about doing something like this for SOBCon because I am a big notebook freak. But I can’t draw so well…

So I am going to ask you all to help with this little project. On Sunday the Lovely Bride TM and I went to Boston for a trade show and I stopped by the Levenger store to pick up some supplies for this “secret project“. I am looking forward to seeing what the attendees put together.

If you have any ideas on how to make this better, please let me know (contact form).