Lots of commercials these days tout the advantages of dating sites. I’m wondering whether some companies ought to join one or at least watch the commercials. The commercials talk about how to find a perfect match, someone who

• understands my needs
• shares my values
• is as intelligent as I am
• cares about me

and so on. You get where I’m going.

The last commercial I saw showed first dates — one person telling another something that the other had no interest in.

“And in the nut family, I love cashews.” Perhaps your perfect match is a nut.

“I’m the smartest guy in the world.” And also the most self-involved.

Who wants to date people who only talk about themselves?

In fairness, many of us do some of that when we’re nervous or feeling out of our depth in strange surroundings. But we should do a little better when we’ve had time to prepare.

I would hope that when we’re putting up a website we think about the people we’re talking to …

Why I’d Date Endless.com

Some websites are like the people who talk only about themselves. Great websites are like great dinner companions, they are interested in the folks who come to share time with them. They speak to the people who visit in easy conversational language and make it easy to hang around. The best website I’ve seen lately is endless.com

I would date Endless.com Look at all of the ways they make their site easy to spend time with …

• They talk TO Me and don’t talk too much.
• They talk about what I care about … Free shipping. Free returns.
• They remember details about me … up at the right, I can see what I saved from a past visit. I don’t have to remind them or go searching.
• They’re seductive … Indulge … Tempt yourself … Save $20 ….
• They ask me what I think.
• and their good looks don’t hurt

Endless makes me feel like they know what makes my life easier, faster, and more fun. The tracking of product from my iPhone was a breeze. I’ve quit other shoe sources online and off. [no disclaimer needed / I am just a customer.]

Click through on the screenshot to see even more, including how they let me sort product my way.

But seeing this might lead you to go check your own site. Is your website all about you?

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

Buy the Insider’s Guide and Get your best voice in the conversation.

I decided to put three questions on the back of my new business card under the heading, Tell Me Your Story.

They are these:

What do you do?

Why should I care?

How will it make my life easier, more meaningful, more fun?

Anything that doesn’t answer those three questions for your key customers is irrelevant.

Is your story relevant? They get to pick.

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

Whether Henry Ford actually said, “You can paint it any color, so long as it’s black,” it underscores Ford’s success at building for a mass market. He brought together an acceptable standard of quality, price, and reliability to sell 15,000,000 Model T automobiles.

It might seem that all we need to do is find our own “Model-T” and get it to the mass market. Some companies are trying to do that. The ones that are succeed understand that no product can serve a mass market in the 21st century.

If you’re marketing a Model-T — a single version product — in this century, here’s how to do it.

• Identify a clearly defined key customer group who buy for reliability and low-price point value.
• Study the products that this group currently buys to see the features those products have in common. Look beyond the features to the benefits that each feature offers.
• Within the key customer group, meet with the car mavens — folks who offer friends detailed advice on car buying — and customer evangelists for the products that the key group is currently buying.
• Build a product that includes all of the features that key customers value and none of those that they have no use for.
• Offer it at a competitive price that requires no negotiation.
• Provide fast delivery and excellent service.
• Make the product modification friendly. Allow consumers to personalize it. Offer mod kits and merchandise that let’s folks feel part of a club for owning the product.
• Take care with any new versions that you don’t revise out the value that developed the customer base that you’re enjoying.
• Consider a limited and temporary brick and mortar presence and a huge online selling model. A consistent product with a simple sales story works well in an online situation.

A single version product that fits its customers perfectly still has a place in the 21st century market.

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

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Once upon a time when we were young our parents and teacher told us stories to pass on information. Long ago the oral history of nations was shared the same way.

Many of us blog for our businesses. Blogging allows us to share our expertise and our knowledge base. It can give us a podium on which to stand and deliver our message to the world. Don’t go there. Podiums make lecturers.

We might like to learn, but few folks like to be taught.

Great teachers share stories, and in that way, pass on what they’ve experienced. They follow the writers’ rule of “show don’t tell,” pointing out examples that bring home ideas and lessons that are meaningful in ways that principles alone could never illuminate.

I want to know how you know what you know so that I can be sure what you’re learned will work for me.

It’s my experience that telling stories lets people find their way into a situation or an idea without a wall of information between. Stories entertain without being intimidating or intrusive. We can see how to apply good story without feeling that we’re being judge for what we may have done wrong.

Stories are a sticky way of teaching and learning,

Share a story about how stories have helped you.

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

Inside and throughout every thriving business is a deep-seated value that connects to customers. It’s what you’re in business to do.

If your business is founded on concrete, you can state your value proposition. It’s your answer to the question, “What do you do?”

Whether the job is huge or a few hours, the same value underlies it. The unique proposition that you is a delivered in every act, every conversation, and every relationship.

I show businesses and individuals how to develop irresistible products and services set in unique and compelling value propositions that attract communities of fiercely loyal fans.

That’s my value proposition.

What’s yours?

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

In client conversations, when the subject turns to blogging, one of the most asked questions is

What causes a person to participate in a blog?

The answers vary with each participant, but we all have things in common — simple human things that give experiences meaning.

• Fame — some folks blog for fame. Words we write online, in a blog post or the comment box, aggregate to form our reputation. The blogosphere is like a global city made of many neighborhoods. People in each neighborhood know each other well and visit the same places. Words of wisdom collect to become influence and attract a following. A blog can make a person “Internet famous.”
• Fortune — though most blog for free. Some folks make serious money. They use online sales models or teach what they know.
• Friendship and Community — in the blogosphere, it’s easy to meet or click on. So connections happen quickly. Conversations between like-minded friends grow exponentially faster than their real-world counterparts. Without the issues of geography, meeting is simpler and can be done out of time. I leave a message you respond later. We all have a need to belong.
• Fun — the distraction of new people and new ideas. The level playing field in which introverts and extroverts both have to type what they are thinking makes it fun. You can argue politics, discuss beauty tips, or wax philosophical about where business is going. It’s endless conversation in a coffeehouse that’s always open.

Knowing these, you might spot more, we can tailor our environments, products, and services to meet one or more and we’ll get more participation.

Seems simple doesn’t it. Humans are human.

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

Recently, working with a client, I was asked the question,

What will make a blog compelling to a user?

It’s a favorite question. Getting people to come and stay is what I do, and talking about it is almost as much fun. I might have said it in a slightly more corporate way, but what I answered was basically this.

Humanity is what’s compelling. We’re all hungry for a connection that makes us feel real.

Quality content, a real human being, the combination of three things: head, heart, and practical meaning in my life make a person feel that they are wholly alive.

People recognize the real deal. When they come, visitors figure out quickly whether they get to be who they really are, and if that’s okay with everyone there. When authenticity happens, they tell their own truth and feel valued for it.

When that happens, we give back — in attention, participation, and loyalty. When we’re invested, we don’t walk away.

That’s the heart of compelling.

A compelling blog is human in every way.

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

You’re sitting in Customer Service, miles from your office. A fire is requiring your best PR efforts — you’re not trained for this — but you’re the one who best understands the information. You’re fielding questions and carefully wording answers, because leaders speak with concern that their message is understood.

You make it through. You’re exhausted when you return to “normally scheduled programming.” When you reach your desk, you find a deluge of voice mail and your inbox is overflowing. The easiest thing to do would be to imagine you are still over in Customer Service handling the PR accident you had been handling.

Then you think, well really you’ve never left customer service.

Your job is a customer service job as much as the one you were just doing.

Do you return phone calls when you get them?

Service is sticky.

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

What makes a person unforgettable from the second you meet? Why do some folks motivate and energize us? What is it about some folks that attracts people so powerfully?

What makes a magnetic personality?

• Positivity . . . When someone lights up room with the joy of living, it’s hard not to notice. It’s fascinating how positivity pulls us to it. We’d all rather be around someone who stands in the sun than someone drenched without an umbrella.
• Smart thinking People who help us sort our thoughts into great actions are valuable. Someone who helps us clarify our own thoughts without an agenda are priceless.
• Purpose People who know what they’re about and where they’re going are easy to be with. They stand on solid ground and when we stand with them, we do too.

Can a business have a magnetic personality . . . you bet it can!

positivity, smart thinking, purpose = irresistible

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

A web host.

What do you answer when someone asks what web host you recommend? It’s a tricky recommendation — not unlike being asked to set up a blind date. If something goes wrong between the two, it’s hard not to feel some responsibility.

A web host must surely be aware of that situation. The as-much-as-I-love-you-I-can’t-recommend-you-to-my-friends syndrome has to be the curse of every web host.

So what’s an intelligent, customer-centered web host to do?

Show folks how.

Top Hosting Center has decided to recommend its customers instead. Wow!

Take a look here. Hosted by THC: A Random Static. Nice play on the words “hosted by,” don’t you think?

I sit here and gather in the deep benefits of this blog post.

The customer being featured feels important.

The readers who see the post recognize that.

Go deeper still. What did it take to write it? What does it say that the blog host did?

• THC had to believe customers are important.
• They had to get to know Chris Zaal and what he does to write the blog post.
• They chose to highlight Chris’ values — I’m sure they’re values that THC’s ideal customer would relate to.
• In the bold type, the review shows where their values intersect with Chris’s . . . note honesty, straightforward approach, excellent job, easy and truthful.

It’s hard not to like a guy who points out great qualities as important and valuable.

He made himself a person and made his customers people too.

Kind of makes you want to work with him.

Oh, he’s a web host.

Unforgettable.

Liz Strauss