Visual content is unbeatable. People will always process visual information much faster than plain text or audio content, no matter how hard you try to write a compelling story or record an outstanding podcast. Social media developers realized it a long time ago and based entire platforms on images, infographics, and videos. But you need a marketing guide to creating Instagram stories.
At the same time, marketers also use this content strategy to target and approach potential customers. While platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter foster multimedia content, Instagram managed to attract more than 800 million monthly active users focusing almost exclusively on visual content.
To put it more precisely, Instagram inspires people to think about and express feelings or opinions through images or Stories – sets of correlated images.
Here is an interesting story that perhaps will inspire you.
In 1960 two men made a bet. There was only $50 on the line, but millions of people would feel the impact of this little wager. The first man, Bennett Cerf, was the founder of the publishing firm, Random House.
The second man was named Theo Geisel, but you probably know him as Dr. Seuss. Cerf proposed the bet and challenged that Dr. Seuss would not be able to write an entertaining children’s book using only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss took the bet and won.
The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham. Since publication, Green Eggs and Ham has sold more than 200 million copies, making it the most popular of Seuss’s works and one of the best-selling children’s books in history.
t first glance, you might think this was a lucky fluke. A talented author plays a fun game with 50 words and ends up producing a hit. But there is actually more to this story and the lessons in it can help us become more creative and stick to better habits over the long-run.
The marketing potential of a guide to Instagram stories
Although Snapchat was the first to introduce the story feature, Instagram quickly managed to respond and offer its version of the same product. According to the research, Snapchat saw a big drop when Instagram launched Stories in 2016.
Digital marketers immediately realized the potential of the new feature and started creating Story-based campaigns. It proved to be a big success, but marketers can still learn a lot about this communication channel.
There are many ways to enhance your Stories strategy, so we decided to show you the top 10 options in that respect. Let’s check them out!
Exploit Geolocation
Audience targeting is the first step towards successful marketing. For this reason, it’s not enough to rely on generic features. You need to micro-segment your target groups instead and address specific sets of consumers. To do so, you have to exploit geolocation. There are three basic ways to do it.
First of all, you can choose geolocation for the scheduled Instagram Stories. Most places are already listed as potential geo targets, but you can set up your location in case none of these suits your business.
The second thing you can do is to add the geotag sticker to Instagram Stories. It doesn’t only reveal your location but also makes your Story more interesting and interactive.
The last option is to add location hashtags. It doesn’t require any special knowledge as you only have to enter a hashtag that precisely describes your location. Local Instagram followers will recognize it immediately and engage with your content more actively.
Remember to Use Stories Highlights
A guide to Instagram stories is a special type of ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours. Younger audiences find this feature very entertaining, but some Stories can become so successful that you want to make them permanently available.
Stories Highlights give you the opportunity to display evergreen content forever. Adding Stories to Highlights is a simple procedure. You can turn on this feature on your profile for every post separately. There is an arrow next to your Instagram name where you can access your Highlights.
If you haven’t created any Stories so far, you won’t see anything in the Highlights menu. But as soon as you start publishing Stories, you will see a Highlight option that enables you to activate permanent visibility of a post.
Don’t Forget Hashtags
We already mentioned how important audience targeting is for Instagram Stories. Hashtags are another way to make the visual content more efficient because they help you to reach the right group of followers promptly.
Namely, Instagram users don’t pay attention to every topic, brand, or product; On the contrary, they carefully choose who or what to follow so you need to understand their preferences. Using relevant hashtags, you will approach the right kind of audience and let them discover your Stories quickly.
As a matter of fact, hashtag relevance became much more important in 2018. Instagram users can now flag inappropriate hashtags (Don’t Show for This Hashtag) and prevent your campaigns from reaching them. Besides that, Instagram will detect your Stories as spam in case you constantly add the same hashtags to your content.
However, there are some good changes as well. For instance, you can now analyze each post by the number of different traits, including hashtag productivity. It’s a great option because you can discover hashtags that produce the best results for your marketing campaigns.
Successful social media marketers are aware of the power of word of mouth. One of the easiest ways to increase brand awareness with Instagram Stories is to tag Instagram influencers. Of course, you should do it carefully, or else you’ll cause a negative reaction.
But if you can establish a good relationship with influencers, they will be willing to share their popularity with you. This is a win-win situation because you will probably introduce part of your followers to these social influencers.
But how exactly do you contact an Instagram influencer? It’s not rocket science, but it does require strategic thinking. It all depends on the nature of your niche or business, but most importantly you need to be polite, friendly, brief, and straightforward.
Create Opinion Polls
Opinion polls are always a good way to engage your Instagram audience. The reason is simple – polls give people the opportunity to express their opinion, which makes them feel acknowledged and appreciated. Instagram Stories are not an exception in that respect, so you should use this tool to make the marketing campaign more productive.
How can you do it? Once again, the process is easy to complete. There is a sticker icon on the screen – you should click on it and choose the “POLL” option from the menu bar.
Everybody can take advantage of this Stories feature. Fashion designers can ask followers to choose favorite colors; sports clubs can invite fans to predict the result, etc. The options are countless, and it’s only up to you to think of a good poll and engage the audience.
Add Links to Stories
Adding links to social media content is the best way to invite people to take concrete action, but this option did not exist on Instagram until recently. Today, you can add URLs to Instagram Stories in case you have more than 10 thousand followers.
If you’ve been struggling to increase the follower base but didn’t see concrete benefits so far, now is the payback time. Links you add to Instagram Stories are practically called to action that can turn passive content consumers into active participants.
Send Direct Messages
Direct communication is the best type of interaction. It’s a time-consuming process, but it grants you access to every single person on your follower list. Sending customizes messages; you can prove to potential customers that you care for them and want to build a long-term relationship.
However, you need to know how things work in this area. Teresa Jones, a digital marketing specialist at Best Essays, recently noted: “You can’t just address a follower out of sudden and expect him to be thrilled about it. On the contrary, each Instagram message must have a concrete purpose”.
In that respect, you should pay attention to three important elements of direct messaging via Instagram:
Personalization: A communication with your followers must be formal but polite. It’s good to call them by their names and provide them with useful information or entertaining content.
Avoid group messaging: The whole point of direct messaging is to avoid talking to multiple followers simultaneously. When you send group messages, you prevent customization and need to stick to the more general style of communication.
Avoid auto-responders: The idea of immediately answering or thanking users might seem great at first, but it’s a poor practice. Why? That is because it dehumanizes your brand and gives followers the impression of talking to robots instead of a real person.
If you thought it’s impossible to add GIFs to Instagram Stories, you were wrong. It’s a relatively new feature (available since 2018), so most marketers still don’t know anything about it. You can use GIFs for a variety of reasons.
For instance, GIFs can make your stories more amusing and funnier. At the same time, GIFs can help you to share news and brand updates more efficiently. As always, your inspiration plays a major role, and you should find a way to integrate stories and GIFs to fit the overall style and values of your brand.
Use the Type Mode feature
Have you noticed how all social platforms are trying to come up with a more unusual feature, artwork, or style? Well, Instagram is no different than competitors, so it recently added a new option called the Type Mode.
This component of Instagram Stories allows you to change fonts, background colors, writing styles, or illustrations. You can find it on your camera, under the Record button and next to the Normal Mode. You only need to click the Type button to try out a variety of different designs.
Ads in Instagram Stories
No matter how hard you try, sometimes you won’t be able to increase brand awareness on Instagram organically. Even the biggest brands use paid advertising to stand above competitors, so you should not run away from this feature either.
Fortunately, you can place ads on Instagram Stories as well. But there is a catch – you can’t do it on your own Stories. What you can do is to place promo banners next to other people’s stories. Although it seems wrong and counterintuitive at first, it’s a great thing because it allows you to advertise using two different channels.
The first channel is your own Instagram Story, while the second channel represents Stories shared by other Instagram accounts. Of course, you should keep in mind that all ads must be highly relevant and informative if you want to grab the attention of an average Instagram user.
A combination of education and entertainment is often the best solution for Instagram advertising. You should create ads that speak a lot about your brand while still keeping the informal tone and adding a slice of humor.
The bottom line
Visual content is dominating the social media universe, which is the main reason why Instagram attracts millions of users every day. The platform became even more popular in 2016 when it launched its version of Stories.
Marketers immediately seized the opportunity to create Stories-based campaigns, but some of them failed to reach the full potential of this feature. Stories give you a wide variety of interesting options, and you should learn how to exploit them all effectively.
In this post, we showed you the top 10 ways to use Instagram Stories in marketing campaigns. Did you already try some of these features? Do you have other interesting suggestions to share with our readers?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Products that are remarkable get talked about says, Seth. Yes, that is very true Seth … great products get talked about often. Getting started creating remarkable content can be a challenging concept for folks who have limited experience creating great content products. It takes considerable work and experience. Even more work without any winning content creation tools.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 9 out of 10 marketers are using content marketing. While more marketers are shifting their content creation efforts in-house, at the same time, they state producing enough quality content is their biggest challenge.
Marketers certainly need to focus less on producing more content and turn their attention towards producing better quality in their content. And, while content marketing is more than just tools and needs a solid strategy to be successful, there are a plethora of tools out there that can make the job of creating content easier.
If your company is creating useful, relevant content that your audience wants to see, share and interact with, you’ll grow your audience, see more engagement and establish yourself as thought leaders in your field. In addition, there will be considerable SEO benefits for your website. Some of the best ways to create content are through images, videos, screencasts, and webinars.
Here are 9 content creation tools we’ve started using lately that make our content creation much easier. We just had two criteria for our list:
The tools are free
They help you physically create content (not distribute or measure it).
So what are you waiting for? Read on to discover these amazing resources that can ultimately help you create some incredible-looking content.
Content creation tools: writing
Word2CleanHTML
If you like drafting blog posts in programs like Microsoft Word, Evernote, or Google Drive, this tool can be your best friend. Why? Because apparently the CMS software execs all got together years ago and decided that drafting anywhere but inside their tools would lead to formatting madness for writers when you paste in your text: paragraph breaks come through too large or totally absent, and eliminating font stylizing is gone
Simply paste in your draft, click one button, and then copy the resulting HTML straight from the tool. When you paste that into your CMS (most will have buttons reading “HTML” or “</>” in their toolbar above your draft), it will appear nice and clean.
This Chrome extension allows you to capture three sizes of screenshots: the visible part of a page, the entire page (even below what you see on your screen), or an area you select. That’s not bad, but the real power of the tool is what comes next: cropping, adding notes and callouts, and the ability to print or save to your desktop or Google Drive.
This tool allows you to upload an image and add little icons that appear upon hover. Readers can interact with these icons, which range from images and videos you embed to links and messages you can create. You can also embed or share the image.
Two subtle but awesome features you should add: First, you can embed without needing to mess with code to resize it. It gives you a simple sizing option. A great feature. Second, after embedding, it adds a “source” link in the bottom right, so you get proper attribution when others use your work or share it.
Skitch is an app that helps you communicate more visually. It lets you mark up images, digital assets, PDFs, and other files with arrows, callout boxes, text, and more. Although it’s free, it does require you to open an Evernote account, but that’s also free (and a great tool to use). Skitch is incredibly powerful because you can do it all in one place.
Videos
PowToon
Let’s discuss PowToon, an easy way to make videos, but first, let’s look at YouTube because great content doesn’t help if no one sees it.
We are always looking for the next digital marketing opportunity to give a big advantage over competitors. Right now, that opportunity is YouTube PreRoll (a.k.a. YouTube in-stream) advertising. The barrier to entry is creating a high-quality video, which can be expensive because even the most affordable video creation companies charge at least $300 to $1500.
Here is where PowToon comes into adding real value for creating quality content. It’s one of the easiest and cheapest ways to create a good video and—this is the crazy part—it’s free.
If you take your time with PowToon, you can create something that’s more than adequate in a matter of hours and start taking advantage of YouTube PreRoll the next day.
Instagram and Vine: While these may be thriving social networks, don’t forget that each is a powerful video creation tool also.
Design is everything.
Design
Canva
Canva is an amazing tool. The time and resources it takes to learn design and/or pay for design assets and create beauty from scratch can be really difficult when you’re staring at a long list of action items. Canva, the latest addition to our tool list, offers a library of pre-made templates and assets that you can manipulate while also adding your own imagery.
Canva charges you $1 for more “premium” assets and graphics found through their image search, but they have so much to choose from, and there’s plenty of value for free. Keep in mind designing important assets would cost you much more than a few dollars through other means.
Infographics
With our short attention spans, infographics are becoming a great way to visually convey data and information. This content creation tactic will get your company more attention than most boring white papers.
Like Canva but this tool is specifically for infographics. A drag and drop editor with many backgrounds, shapes, icons and more. You can watch a review of easel.ly here.
PowerPoint
Some may cringe at the suggestion but you can really make some cool infographics using PowerPoint but it is certainly a viable option.
This tool is similar to Canva but focuses more on infographics and data visualization in those graphics. And, in keeping with the goal, it accelerates your content creation process and helps you circumnavigate the larger, more complex design programs.
They also offer compatibility with Microsoft Excel through Infogram Charts, and their infographics are responsive with mobile and tablet screens. That is a great value, in our minds.
This is more of a handy tool than it is a prolific content generator. Nevertheless, it helps you quickly and easily create tweetable links and text comments.
Remember the statement I opened with? “Great products get talked about often.” Maybe I’m hoping it’s a tweetable quote that gets people to share my post. But rather than hope and pray you to copy that text, open Twitter, compose a new tweet, and paste the phrase, I can just make it easier for you by doing something like this:
Setting this up took all of 30 seconds. On the Click to Tweet site, select “Basic Link” and type out the text you want people to tweet, then add your post’s URL. I recommend shortening the URL with a service like bit.ly or goo.gl so you can both save characters and track clicks to your link.
Click to Tweet will generate a link for you that you can then add to your post however you like. If you can hyperlink text, you can use Click to Tweet.
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
Before we continue, let me ask you a question.
What works best for customer experience design in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.
We often get questions and comments on delivering great customer service and experiences. From clients and customers commenting on our blog. Many relate to customer service actions that are reminders of what we already know (but we occasionally forget). These are big enablers of customer service. They usually won’t create Wow service on their own, but their absence is noted by customers and lowers excellent customer service to just good enough or less.
Here are eight well-known customer service actions that are effective in keeping us on track, so we consistently deliver what our customers want from us.
Much of how we help people deliver better customer service is with examples. These are fun and useful because we all have them (since we’re all customers.) And sometimes it helps to look at examples of things we shouldn’t say to customers. That is if we want them to keep coming back.
So, here is my top 10 list of actions not to take or things you should never say to a customer that we often use in client workshops:
Lower customer experience … following a script
Because scripts and checklists are all the rage now, employees are scripted to death. Many feel (and some are told) they are not there to think but to follow the script. And often that’s exactly what they do, even when it makes no sense and wastes the customer’s time.
When I hear a script, I wonder if the person has the capability to help me. Not a confidence builder, is it? If you have a script or checklist, pay attention to the real world too. Your customers will thank you.
Related post: Client Satisfaction …10 Secrets to Improve Customer Experience
Never say not my error.
Not my error
Never pass the buck or blame someone else, especially if they’re part of your company. You don’t look any better or smarter by doing so. But you certainly appear uninterested in solving the customer’s problem. Your time is better spent fixing and helping rather than blaming and finger-pointing.
I’m sorry if you feel that way
People often say this as an apology. But it’s not. Because it again shifts the blame to the customer.
If you’re sorry, then say so. Don’t qualify it. When customers hear an apology like this, they understand what you’re doing. You’re saying, “I know I’m supposed to apologize, but I don’t want to.“
Related: Crash Course on How to Apologize to a Customer
A better option is just to say “I’m sorry this happened” or simply “I’m sorry.”
It tells the customer you are sorry for the situation the customer is in without making you responsible for it.
Customer experience optimization … just calm down
Is there ever a situation where this has the intended effect? Not that we can see. It seems like you are tossing gasoline on the fire.
More like they’ll get even angrier while they tell YOU to calm down. They’ll escalate the matter, and they’ll probably become a former customer.
Listen, let them vent, have them talk to someone else if they want. But never tell them to calm down.
Recording: Your call is very important to us.
I hear this so often I ignore it. And that is how it should be. A recorded message is not the place to tell your customers how much you value their business. Do it with a real, live, caring human being. That’s a message your customers will believe (and respond to).
Customer experience strategy … you made a mistake
We all know customers make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. But when you point it out in a direct and blatant way, you risk offending or embarrassing your customer. How would you like it? No blaming is needed. Instead, focus on helping them understand the right way to do things so they won’t make the mistake again.
Talk to corporate office
If a customer has feedback, a request or a complaint, they don’t care who YOU have to forward it to. They don’t care that another person in you organization will deal with it. What they want is for YOU to take the initiative to get the ball rolling. It’s not the customer’s job to go trying to find the exact person who should handle their situation. That’s YOUR job.
Importance of customer experience.
Lower customer experience … it’s our company policy
With too many employees this is just an easy way to get out of doing something they’d rather not do.
If you want to help, then find a way. Don’t hide behind a company policy. And if you can’t work around the policy, offer an alternative or escalate the matter for the customer. If your customers see you are trying to help, they’ll be less disappointed even if they don’t get exactly what they want.
Please take a number (often when you’re the only customer)
If I were the customer in this situation, “huh?” is the only response I’d be able to muster, assuming I didn’t just walk out. But it happens. People get so focused on policies, procedures, systems and rules that they forget about a little tool called “common sense.”
No one else has complained
This one always amazes me. Are we taking a survey? Are we voting on the situation? If enough other customers have a problem then you’ll listen to me (or handle my problem)? Is that really how you want to be perceived?
Of course not, that’s ridiculous. But I’ve heard employees (and managers) say this all too often. The problem is they are focusing on their perspective. They should be focusing on the customer and helping solve a problem.
Remember one simple thing here: all employees need to view themselves as customer advocates, period. Customer service actions that are remarkable get talked about. And getting talked about in this light is a great thing, right? No question.
Do you have a lesson about making your customer experience better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your customer attention and focus. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas to make your customer experiences better.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on customer experience from our Library:
Client Satisfaction …10 Secrets to Improve Customer Experience
Leadership is a struggle by flawed human beings to make some important human values real and effective in the world as it is. Interesting thought from Steven Snyder. Do you consider yourself a leader that promotes loyalty in your team? How important is this leadership characteristic in your mind? I believe that it is more important than ever as employee loyalty is at an all-time low. I have held leadership positions in the military and business for over 40 years. In my mind, there are few, if any, more important successful habits to achieve.
Successful habits
Before we continue, let me ask you a question.
What is your best leadership habit? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.
Here are some of the more important ways to strengthen your leadership habits:
Leaders need to be authentic.
Successful habits … be authentic
Nobody likes to work for a phony. In past decades, it was more common for employees to tolerate insincere and ineffective leaders.
These days, younger generations are generally less willing to suffer under bosses they have little respect for.
That’s putting a greater premium on authenticity. Authentic leaders can be counted on to say what they mean and do what they say. They’re the same person to their staff, their own superiors, their customers, and their partners.
Authentic leaders can be counted on to say what they mean and do what they say.
One of my favorite leadership experts is Tanveer Naseer. He is the Principal and Founder of Tanveer Naseer Leadership, a leadership coaching firm that works with executives and managers to help them develop practical leadership and team-building competencies.
I recommend you keep up with his blog, he has lots of knowledge to share in the form of stories and great examples.
Tanveer points out that authenticity refers to being honest in all things–not just what you say and do but who you are. When you’re authentic, your words and actions align with who you claim to be.
Your followers shouldn’t be compelled to spend time trying to figure out if you have ulterior motives. Any time they spend doing so erodes their confidence in you and in their ability to execute.
Leaders who are authentic are transparent and forthcoming. They aren’t perfect, but they earn people’s respect by walking their talk.
Leadership habits … serve your team
Leaders who inspire real loyalty to see their role as motivating and improving the working lives of those they lead. They view their team members as more than just people to help them execute their own goals.
Instead, they find meaning and purpose in bringing out the best in their employees.
Success is a question of the number of talented people they’ve helped to grow and advance in the organization. In private conversations, they love to include stories about those employees and their accomplishments.
Be accountable
There’s a long legacy of leaders who place blame on their team members or external circumstances to avoid responsibility and the potential for a backlash from higher-ups.
They are afraid of mistakes and overcompensate because they want to be seen as indispensable and even perfect.
We all know this is an impossible standard to meet, but many managers try anyways, and this approach is what actually leads to discontent employees. Their defensiveness leads to harsh criticism and incivility for the people around them.
“The ancient Romans had a tradition: Whenever one of their engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was hoisted into place, the engineer assumed accountability for his work in the most profound way possible: He stood under the arch.” –Michael Armstrong
Great leaders have their followers’ backs. They don’t try to shift blame, and they don’t avoid shame when they fail. They’re never afraid to say, “The buck stops here,” and they earn people’s trust by backing them up.
Related post: How to Create the Best Leadership Accountability
You can’t inspire genuine loyalty if you’re unwilling to be a mentor. The best leaders continuously look for ways to help their staff develop, not only in the workplace but also in areas of their personal lives.
One of the biggest drivers of high turnover is the belief that there are better professional development opportunities further afield.
If employees who are loyal to their companies feel otherwise, it’s largely thanks to their managers.
Look for opportunities not just to train your staff but to challenge them. If those resources aren’t already available within your company, try to bring them in from the outside.
In fact, inspiring leaders are more afraid of their employees’ skills stagnating than they are of losing talent to other organizations after they’ve put energy into developing them.
Put the team first
Be an extra mile leader. They are selfless in that their motivation and their proactive ways are done with the intent of benefitting the team.
Yes, there can be exceptions when what motivates an individual is selfish in nature.
But by and large, these leaders have a broad understanding of the mission and vision of the organization and their sacrifices are for the benefit of the group.
Share values and ideas freely
Leaders who inspire those under them are open and transparent about what they believe. They share their ideas openly and enthusiastically every chance they get. Their team members never have to guess where they’re coming from.
Those leaders make it clear what it takes to succeed in the organization and explain where they see the company heading.
They’re also unafraid of being proved wrong—the point is to sustain a regular and meaningful dialogue, not win an argument. Their positive energy and belief in those they work with is contagious and boosts everyone’s energy.
Be genuinely interested in employees’ lives
Talk to any leader who inspires loyalty and they’ll be able to share a wealth of information about each of their team members—not only their performance history, but also their families, hobbies, and interests outside the workplace.
Cultivating loyalty takes knowing your employees as people. Leaders who do it well are fully aware that their team members’ lives impact their work in many ways.
Supporting your employees’ personal needs is one of the best ways to ensure that they’ll be there in turn when you and the company need them most.
Put yourself in another’s position
Trying to understand the other person’s point of view when it differs from your own is sometimes difficult.
However, this leader can look at a situation from another’s perspective and gain more knowledge of how to address the problem.
Always pitch in
Regardless of what position they hold, loyalty building leaders take the opportunity to work alongside everyone whose work they oversee. No task or project is too far beneath them to play a hand in.
If emergency strikes, leaders who inspire are the first ones on the scene, offering to do whatever is necessary to get the job done. They don’t expect anyone to do a task that they themselves aren’t willing to do.
Be good at motivation
Motivating others through positivity is another quality of this type of leader. When a person leads through threats and intimidation, nothing productive can occur.
It may seem like you’re progressing and meeting goals, but if it isn’t handled in a positive way it will be like a structure built on sand.
Give trust
Loyalty inspiring leaders push staff to go beyond their comfort zones and are there to support them. Armed with the confidence of their leader, team members are more apt to take on challenges and risk failure.
But you can’t spark real loyalty simply by telling your employees you trust them. It needs to be backed up by action.
Employees who know their leaders have their backs will not only take on bolder challenges, they’ll stay put even when they stumble or when the going gets tough.
Show compassion and enthusiasm
Chade-Meng Tan, the head of personal growth at Google, discussed compassion in a TED Talk a few years ago.
He pointed to Jim Collins’ book Good to Great,which outlines that the two most important qualities in truly great leaders are humility and ambition.
Chade-Meng said:
These are leaders who are highly ambitious for the greater good. And because they’re ambitious for a greater good, they feel no need to inflate their own egos. And they, according to the research, make the best business leaders.
And if you look at these qualities in the context of compassion, we find that the cognitive and affective components of compassion –understanding people and empathizing with people — inhibits, tones down, what I call the excessive self-obsession that’s in us, therefore creating the conditions for humility.
Be generous
Loyalty building leaders are generous. They share credit and offer enthusiastic praise. They’re as committed to their followers’ success as they are to their own.
They want to inspire all of their employees to achieve their personal best–not just because it will make the team more successful, but also because they care about each person as an individual.
Show humility
Loyalty building leaders are humble. They don’t allow their position of authority to make them feel that they are better than anyone else.
As such, they don’t hesitate to jump in and do the dirty work when needed, and they won’t ask their followers to do anything they wouldn’t be willing to do themselves.
Be approachable
Great leaders make it clear that they welcome challenges, criticism, and viewpoints other than their own. They know that an environment in which people are afraid to speak up, offer insight, and ask good questions is destined for failure.
By ensuring that they are approachable, great leaders facilitate the flow of great ideas throughout the organization.
The bottom line
Remember this simple fact. Leadership focuses on people. What is the best definition of a leader? It is someone who helps people succeed.
Let your leadership success be your difference maker.
The moral of this story is that a loyalty-building leader has a great influence on the success of his business.
If these different thoughts are possessed by your current leadership team, or your emerging leaders, you will be in a good position for the road ahead.
Which of these leadership thoughts stand out to you? Do you have any other thoughts of effective leaders worthy of mention? Leave a comment and share your insights with others…
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of r business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Whether it’s a band, a baseball team, or a small business, chemistry is at the heart of what makes teams great. Much of modern business thinking is centered on understanding the chemistry of what makes effective teamwork tick. And the best way to learn … is by doing, as Confucius says. But beware the characteristics which destroy effective teamwork.
Build a team whose members have diverse backgrounds and mindsets. This broadens the creativity process.
Each person will contribute different thoughts and ideas, which lead to unique conversations when everyone comes together. The education, background, and experience of individual members lead to a creative group.
Team members will learn from one another. Different perspectives lead to new skills and effective innovation strategies. The result is a stronger team equipped to take on new challenges and quickly solve problems of all sizes.
An important leadership competency for any size organization, the ability to build and lead high-performing teams is especially critical in small-to-midsize businesses. Here, people must work closely together, wear many hats and work effectively across the organization to get tasks accomplished quickly enough to remain competitive.
Nothing really prepares you to be a leader. In most cases, you get the opportunity to lead by being good at something else. However, while being a strong performer gives you the credibility to lead, it says nothing about your ability to lead. Leadership is a skill in its own right and, for the most part, it’s one you learn on the job.
In order to understand the characteristics that could destroy effective teamwork, it is helpful to first define a team. Here is a simple but effective description from The Wisdom of Teams (Harvard Business School Press, 1993.)
“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”
Note, however, more often than not, there are more characteristics that can destroy teamwork than make it better. These are the ones you really need to recognize and avoid. Let’s discuss them:
No clear goals
Sometimes, organizations are in such a hurry to move on their projects that they pull together groups of people without first deciding on the goals and desired outcomes.
Related post: Are You Looking for an Extraordinary Fast Track Career
In his book, Team Renaissance: The Art, Science and Politics of Great Teams (Old Man River Publishing, 2013), Richard Spoon explains that without a clear sense of what the team needs to accomplish and how a successful outcome will be defined, it’s impossible to assemble the right group of people to get there.
So decide on team goals and desired outcomes first. Use it for clear direction for the team you select. Start at the endpoint: What is the outcome you want and why? Leave the team flexibility to develop the best way to get there.
Poor team leaders find a way to avoid appropriate risk-taking and experimentation for change. They look at first time mistakes as failures … ones to avoid at all costs. Certainly defeats opportunities for learning and teamwork.
Destroy effective teamwork … lacking open communication
Communication is the close brother of chemistry. In any team, communication is crucial to building a sense of camaraderie between members. The manner of communication — how freely and frequently team members communicate —determines the effectiveness of the team. Put simply, the more freely you talk to your fellow team members, the more comfortable you are in sharing insights and ideas. This is just one major reason why modern businesses emphasize communication and collaboration tools.
The most important part of communication is listening. Hands down in my opinion. Listening is not just a way to find things out. It’s also a sign of respect. So send the message that your conversation partner is valuable. Listen like you mean it. Demonstrate that you’re listening. Paraphrase, re-state and react to what you hear. Ask for clarification. Get involved.
Lacking defined roles
Roles often shift somewhat once the team is assembled, but before starting, if you don’t understand the skill sets and thinking styles that are needed on the team, you will be in a big hole. If a team needs to develop a new product for the market, that team will need a detail-oriented person (the task-master), who is methodical and can keep the team on track.
The explorer will be more of a big-picture thinker who can help the team see what is possible. The number-cruncher will take charge of measurement and metrics. It’s possible your team will have other roles to fill, but you should have a good handle on those roles before you begin staffing.
Once you have a plan for those basics, don’t neglect to choose the strongest team members to carry out the project.
No common goals
A chief characteristic of any successful team is that members place the common goal above individual interests. That is very difficult if no common goals are defined. While scaling individual targets is great for personal morale, teams succeed when they understand, appreciate and work with a common purpose.
No accountability is a cardinal sin.
No accountability
Without letting the team knowing the boundaries of their accountabilities, introduces many unknowns. Teams need to accept responsibility as individuals and as a team. Without accountability, they may blame one another for team mistakes and failures. No one should spend any time, useless time, in personal justifications. They should celebrate their successes together and recognize special performances and contributions that each team member makes to the total work of the team.
Discouraging differences in opinions
Agreeing on a common goal is essential. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of suppressing alternative ideas and opinions. Discouraging divergent opinions within a team erodes team performance; a diverse team needs to be its competitive advantage.
Diverse opinions stir the imagination and new ideas. Imagination and new ideas stir creativity. Unless the status quo is threatened and questioned, you won’t find those crucial “out of the box” ideas.
Lacking collaboration
Close collaboration is a trait shared by every successful team, whether it be the Apple leadership team or Lennon-McCartney of the Beatles fame or Jordan-Pippen of the Chicago Bulls fame. A team that is missing this ability weakens the team’s performance. The idea is simple enough: the more you collaborate and the more you communicate, the more you create.
No internal team trust
Team members who cannot trust one other or who don’t believe in the process and goals of the team seldom find success. Effective teams focus on solving problems. Trust is an adjunct of effective communication; there can be trust between team members only if they are allowed to air their views freely. This is the reason why organizations often undertake team-building exercises that put team members in positions of trust.
Across industries, building an effective team is a process, not a destination. A great team is like an organic being, continually growing and changing to adapt to situations and challenges arise. Remember … teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success. So know what to look out for in terms of characteristics that destroy effective teamwork.
What do you do to get your teams in the right frame of reference for top performance?
Please share an experience or two with this community.
If you are looking for additional resources for innovation, one of my favorite experts is Kate Nasser. You’ll find lots of good stories and examples to learn from her blog.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on teamwork from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
The Story and Zen of Getting Things Done
Lessons Learned in LIfe … Class Continues Daily
Are You Looking for an Extraordinary Fast Track Career
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
I was raised to believe I could become whatever I bothered to learn. No single idea has served me better.What do you consider to be the most important end result of a leader? My answer is influencing skills, hands down. Finding leadership characteristics to improve influence is one area of consistency interest to me.
A great quote can provide personal inspiration and can be used to educate others. We like to open most of our blogs with an enlightening quotation that relates to the topic. This one is a real favorite.
What leadership characteristic is your strength? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.
Ever wondered how the best leaders handle distinguishing their leadership characteristics so effortlessly? The truth is, most highly successful people do stumble, worry, and doubt themselves, just like the rest of us. But they are very good at mastering the way they are perceived.
I have been in the military and business world for forty years and often get asked what I believe are the most important leadership characteristics. It takes time and practice to be a top line leader. You are not borne with leadership behaviors. And you are never done developing them.
My experience leads me to this list of xx business leadership characteristics that most successful leaders all share. They rank as the most significant to success as a leader in my perspective.
If you want to be a better leader, work on continuously distinguishing this list:
Show commitment
People believe in those leaders that stand strong through adversity and continuously show their commitment.
No matter how good you are, you will only be as successful as your team. So, getting the most from each team member is critical. We call this being a multiplier leader.
Multiplier leaders know the importance of bringing out the smarts and capabilities in everyone around them. Great leaders inspire motivation and learning. They create environments where learners feel empowered, impassioned, and engaged.
Psychological priming
People often forget the things you tell them but they will always remember the way you made them feel. Do you know the 3 most powerful emotions to use with team interactions? I believe they are happiness, power, and aspiration. You can never go wrong when using these emotions when priming your team.
Related: The Zen of Abraham Lincolns Leadership Lessons
Act in face of change
Many people don’t do well with change. They do favorably respond to leaders who act when faced with the need for change and who explain the need for the change.
Foster collaboration and team self-esteem
We have written on employee attitude and engagement on several occasions. Employee attitude is so critical that it can’t be overemphasized. It trickles down from employers. Your business can never be what it can be if you don’t focus on employee happiness.
Leaders should make employees feel good about themselves. It is something all people crave. Constantly criticizing and pointing out the flaws in an employee is a sure fire way to decrease morale and performance.
Influencing skills … character
People take notice of those who do what is right over what is easy. Good character will always shine through, won’t it?
Vision
People need leaders who communicate a clear and compelling vision of the future.
Encourage work – learn balance
People always put more confidence in those who continually expand their skills and talents. Especially those who share their know-how in these new talents. Always encourage your team to expand their learning and give them some time to do so.
Your capacity for leadership influence expands in direct proportion to your commitment to lifelong learning.
Influencing skills tips … guide talent and teamwork
Coach your teams and develop their future paths. People respond favorably to leaders offering help. People love working as part of great teams. They appreciate leaders whocoach teamwork and develop their future paths.
People put faith in those who are the most beyond themselves.
Does your job just happen to you?
If you’re a willing cog in the vast machinery of the work environment, it’s entirely possible that the things that occur all day feel like they’re being done to you.
The alternative is to take the initiative to create a job where you create forward motion, where you do things to the job, not the other way around.
Take a look at the language you use to describe what happened at work yesterday, that’s your first clue. If you’re not the one leading the change, perhaps it’s time to start.
Always remember that true leadership is the ability to lead while being led.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Tom Peters said: Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low. We stumbled on a very interesting website recently while searching for a video that described the value of the first follower. In actuality, the video was seeking to answer the question of which was most critical to building a community, the leader or first follower. It was also dealing with walking out into the unknown.
The video was created by Derek Sivers and it was his him and his website that was so interesting. Just a little about Derek before we discuss the video and then the website.
Originally a professional musician and circus clown, Derek Sivers created CD Baby in 1998. It became the largest seller of independent music online, with $100M in sales for 150,000 musicians.
In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby for $22M, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Says a ton about Derek, doesn’t it?
In 2011, he moved to Singapore and published a book which shot to #1 on all of its Amazon categories.
His new company is Wood Egg, publishing annual guides to 16 countries in Asia.
Now let’s get back to what Derek’s video has to say about the first follower. We’ll use the script of the video for most of the following content.
If you are interested in leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:
The leader
A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow.
Related: How to Create the Best Leadership Accountability
Have you ever been the first follower?
The first follower
Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower. You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself.
Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.
The second follower
The second follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first follower has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is the beginning of the community and the community is news.
The community must be public. It makes sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.
Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a real community movement.
Risk is reduced
As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd if they hurry. Over the next minute, you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.
Conclusion
And that is how a community movement is made.
Recap
Let’s recap what we learned:
If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.
Be public. Be easy to follow.
But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?
Leadership is over-glorified.
Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:
It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.
There is no community movement without the first follower.
We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.
The best way to make a community movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.
Our view
There are many articles out there that talk about leadership. Far fewer on being the first follower. They all have different theories, and all of them are probably right in some way. But the backbone to being successful in either role is courage. Call it what you want, but courage inspires action. Courage to take action can change your life.
Courage can mean challenging conventional wisdom, or doing what others are not doing, or attempting to break a record, or risking going broke over a crazy idea. It can mean speaking in public, trying new things, challenging your boss, starting a family, or being the leader or first follower. Courage is the ability to overcome something that frightens you. Learn to build your courage for new things and walking out into the unknown … you won’t regret it.
Key takeaways
There’s a school of thought that says we overemphasize individual leader traits when trying to understand leadership effectiveness. Another angle says leaders are only leaders because they are recognized by others as such: it’s a social process.
What lessons does it give you about around leading innovation and change? For me, it’s about improving your courage … making it easier and more desirable for people to join movements and communities. Have a look at the Sivers Ted Talk video on this topic.
As you have seen, Derek is a very creative guy who has many valuable things to offer on his website. Take a look around.
What do you think?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation and the first follower. And put them to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
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