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Do YOUR Customers Really Want Innovation?

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Is It Their Thinking or Ours?

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If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. — Henry Ford

A while back I sat in a presentation in which an evangelist from a huge corporation said …

Customers want innovation.

It was one of his PowerPoint slides too.

“Ah, no,” I thought. “Here I sit in a room filled with people who came to learn from him. Some of them, because of the man’s title, were bound to repeat that silly statement.”

Had I heard that sentence in my younger days, when I had less patience, I would have felt compelled to … um … handle it gently. His choice of words skews solid thinking.

Customers?
Every customer is a person.

The sentence changes when it becomes
People want innovation.

Do we? Do people want innovation. I suppose some folks put down hard earned cash for “innovation.” Personally, I’m not fully sure what innovation is until someone conceives it and shows me how it works. I certainly don’t go looking for it.

When I spend my money on what I need, want, or desire, innovation doesn’t make the list. Solving a real or perceived problem does.

Solutions make my life, easier, more fun, more elegant.
Solutions make me feel better about myself.
Innovation isn’t about me.
It’s about the person or people who came up with the idea.

What’s your thinking? Do your customers want innovation?

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

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Want More Fans, a Bigger List? There’s No Skipping this Step …

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We Make It Harder Than It Is

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Sometimes we try too hard. Sometimes we reach too far. Sometimes we take the long way home because we never stopped to think about the easier one.

Are you looking trying to expand your community, your business, your sales, your blog readership? Want more followers on Twitter, more fans on your Facebook page, more members in your community?

I’m going to tell you straight out, there’s one step you can’t skip.

If you want more folks to love what you do, you have to be able to tell them why you love it yourself — clean, clear, fast — in ways they enjoy and understand.

It’s not that hard to do. It works this way …

If we make beautiful glass like this …

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… we have to be able to tell people what’s to love about it. Here’s how to do that.

  • Find the love stories in what you do. You can love the challenge. You can love the chase. You can love the heroic heritage. You can love what it does for people. You can love the time it saves. I love beautiful glass because it reminds me of the beautiful, beveled mirrors my dad used make. He taught me to appreciate the value of hot-sweat and workmanship.
  • Once you have the stories, find the ideal people to share those stories with. The people who love what you love are sure to think a lot like you do. You probably already know some of them. The first ones are probably very close to you. They probably have a few friends who have a few friends. To find the folks who value what you do, just share the irresistible stories and love behind the work that you do.
  • Tell the stories in ways that invite them to share stories of their own. Stories connect us in ways that small talk and transactions never will.
  • Listen carefully for details and doorways. Their stories will reveal their values — some the same and some unimaginably different from your own.
  • Pass on their stories to connect with new people new ways. Those might be people who work with what you make, who want to use it in different ways, who have ideas for partnerships.

The stories of what we value define us and better and faster than anything can. When we share those stories our relationships, our knowledge, our networks and our collections of stories expand. It’s a natural progression.

Whether we’re a huge corporation or a solopreneur, there’s no skipping this step …

If we want more fans, we have be a fan first.

How do you share your love for your work?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Be Irresistible!

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10 Crucial Roles of a Social Media Director

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What Sort of Expertise Does a Social Media Expert Need?

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Social Media Marketing budgets are on the rise. It’s been said that as many as 86% of Companies are planning a Social Media Marketing Bump this year. And social media job listings aren’t so hard to find anymore.

In 2010, a new job role of Social Media Director became quite the thing. It was given many names and a wide range of job descriptions. Although on a whole we humans have gotten good at being social, those in social media roles need more than expertise with online tools to lead a company’s direction successful on the social web.

Now, years later, we realize that any role on a social media team is about change: changing relationships, changing technology and change management in times of every more rapid change.

10 Crucial Roles of a Social Media Director

Macro and micro businesses get stuck in process models that they’ve outgrown, but keep using. Fear of change, love of past success, bias that interprets history in our favor leads us to repeat and re-imprint bad or outdated behaviors in our organizational brains.

To pull that off, a social media director needs to be role model, leader, learner, teacher, guide, friend, entrepreneur, but even more than that. If you want a company to embrace the social web, champion these ten roles as an action plan …

  1. be a role model … listen first; communicate authentically; don’t control the conversation (and choose wisely those you refer)
  2. become a fan … fall in love with the brand and its customers to protect its heritage and legacy
  3. be a follower … get to know the people who work there to find the champions and learn how the culture moves, learns, and thinks
  4. be about ROI …. study the business to protect it financially
  5. be a connector … work toward open silos so they communicate internally at light speed
  6. be inclusive … enlist marketing and PR to help build a strong, consistently authentic voice between the business and its customers
  7. be strategic … write a strategic plan of goals and measurements based on customers that naturally support growing product offers, strategic relationships, and the customer base
  8. be focused … choose online tools, tests, and tactics after you have the goals
  9. be innovative … integrate social business online and off
  10. be a community builder … make it look easy, fun, and meaningful

If you look inside those ten points you’ll see that the job really calls for about ten roles — strategist, change manager, brand manager, a marketing manager, a community builder, a campaign manager, a cheerleader, a business developer, a corporate trainer, and a social media professional who can use quantifiable social media data, tools, and measurements.

Last night, 1700+ Retweeted a Mashable Post about the 15,740 social media experts on Twitter. I can’t help but wonder whether all 15,740 are up to all ten of them.

Bet you see even more roles and action steps that I’ve left out. I’d love you to add your additions here.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
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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!!

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How Will You Reach Out Close Today?

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I've been thinking . . .

about reaching out.

From the earliest days of our lives we are reaching and reaching out … it’s how we learn, how we connect, how we find where we end and the world begins.

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We reach for what’s shiny, what’s new, what’s curious, what’s interesting, what’s tempting, what other folks have.

And from reaching and other folks’ teaching we gain bits of wisdom — wisdom that we have to reconcile and internalize into life skills and business strategies.

We learn that reaching for the stars can push our potential.
We learn that reaching beyond our grasp is impossible.
We learn that if we grasp at too many things, they lose their meaning.

We trust what we touch with our hands, our hearts, and our minds.

Still the obvious often escapes us, unless we stop to realize that the things that we need to thrive — the love one, the customers who value us most, the passions we prize, and the gifts we offer are the ones most within our reach.

How will you reach close to all that lets you thrive in business and life today?

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Does Knowing the People Raise the Prize?

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Staying Close to the People We Serve

When we developed an international strategy, I made an agreement with my boss about the relationships we would forge, We agreed that the people we choose to work with would be partners bi o matter their role, no matter their location around the world. It involved three basic points.

  • People at our own company would call the people we worked with “partners,” not vendors, not licensees, not other clients, customers, or any other.
  • We would adjust our process to meet theirs as well and as often as we could.
  • I would visit their companies at least as often as they visited ours.

Could we have completed our business by not doing any or all of the three? Most certainly we might have. Information can be shared without being in the same room. We all know that so well.

However, by keeping to these three “rules of conduct,” our company became the first partner of choice. We enjoyed special access to content, and special access to files — we participated in decisions that lowered everyone’s costs and made the work more fun in the process.

True relationships formed around and through the work. Those relationships and the access they afforded us, allowed us to save $1000s and to be involved in the process of our partnered product launch. And those people talked about how easy our business was to do business with us. Soon we had partners in more countries than ever.

Companies are buildings with people inside.

We keep saying people like to do business with people.
What’s your story that shows how knowing the people raised the prize?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!