Engagement Case Study: Liz’s SOB

I recently met Liz Strauss, a social media icon and power networker, at a conference on customer engagement.  Afterwards, I checked Liz’s Successful Blog.  In my opinion, her blog’s SOB project– which stands for Successful and Outstanding Blogger — is a super example of an engagement strategy.

Back Story on SOB

Being passionate about the benefits of business blogging, Liz wanted to encourage those who left comments to take conversations that began on her blog back to their own blogs and into social media.  She asked that they let her know when they did, but they often forgot.

So Liz tracked down those threads, downloaded logos for the sites they appeared on, and added links to the conversations her blog had spawned.

How to Become an SOB

Then Liz instituted “SOB.” She began to showcase those who contributed as Successful and Outstanding Bloggers. Quoting her blog, these are the steps to become an SOB:

• Find a way to start a dialogue about how blogging helps business, or carry the dialogue here back to your own blog.
• Offer a great feature, post, idea, or an article that will shed new light for the blogosphere. Add an outstanding idea, insight, or spark to the conversation going on at this blog or start one on your own and share what happened here.  Contribute something that demonstrates that you think like a Successful and Outstanding Blogger. Find a unique way to “add value” to the conversation going on in the blogosphere to make it grow stronger.
• Then just tell me about it. I’m pretty easy to persuade. E-mail Liz at lizsun2@gmail.com with a link to your post or a brief description of what you did.

Once you make the cut, she even awards badges and welcomes you into the “SOB Hall of Fame.”

SOB and Engagement

I count 787 sites in her SOB Hall of Fame.  (I think — it’s hard to count when scrolling.)    She’s got a Technorati Authority rank of 258 (that’s HUGE) and an overall rank of 6,572 for all the millions of blogs out there.  Her 7 day average page views, according to Alexa, were 93,685.  Her blog, along with its SOB strategy, is drawing enormous numbers of people into “the conversation.”  Including you and me.

Liz also created a blog post series called SOB Cafe, where she showcases good posts from SOB blogs.  She brings bloggers and commenters together and then provides a online forum for their ongoing interaction.

SOB IS Engagement

Liz wants to focus on people, on individuals, not abstract concepts of engagement.  But just how does Liz use SOB to draw us all in, to get acquainted with each other, to interact?

• If engagement with business blogging means intellectual and emotional involvement, SOB’s must give both.  “Offering an great feature, post, idea or article” requires thought, analysis, creation.
• Liz provides incentives and rewards for this engagement.  She awards badges, lists those bloggers in her SOB Hall of Fame,  and links to their sites.
• With the SOB Cafe, she keeps us all coming back, to read post excepts of others, to comment and interact.

In these three ways, Liz builds momentum for business blogging.  How can you use these same engagement principles to involve each of your customers or blog readers?

This post is my contribution to the business blogging conversation.  How can you start a dialogue about how blogging helps business?

Related Links

What I Learned about Customer Engagement and Loyalty at Alterian’s Engaging Times Summit

Hey You There, Reading This.  Here’s How It Works

Do’s and Don’t of Commenting On Blogs and In Forums

Social Media Monitoring Tool to Listen to Customers and Measure Engagement

Thanks to Week 211-211 SOBs This blog makes Liz’s SOB list