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Soulati-'TUDE!

Building Community One Spice At A Time

09/18/2018 By Jayme Soulati

ALT="Penzey's Logo"For those of you not familiar with Penzey’s, it is a growing, family-owned spice company that originated in Wisconsin. Even with the onset of the digital age (which have helped with building community and exponential sales), it’s the most fun to shop in the brick and mortar store. The customer experience is amazing, especially if you love to cook. Penzey’s says, that “cooking is kindness, and that kindness can change the world.” I have to agree!

My mom shares the writings and emails of Pennzey’s CEO, Bill Penzey. He is an extremely outspoken figure who expounds upon liberal politics and the crisis in American democracy under the Trump administration.

Brands have begun to show their colors, and why not? A human is behind every brand, no matter how old it is. Remember the recent experiences with Chick fil-A and Hobby Lobby? What about the Colorado baker who refused to make and sell a cake to a gay couple in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court? Nike actually chose to build a campaign around Colin Kaepernick, which is somewhat different than the previous examples.

Building Community With Controversy

When you serve people with your products there is a choice whether to wear your beliefs on your sleeves or keep them to yourself. Bill Penzey elects to build community using the former. His views are squarely on his sleeves, front and center.

From his vantage point, he’s building community one spice at a time. In fact, what speaks more loudly than his words are his company’s sales. Penzey’s sales have shot upward. Isn’t it interesting how politics and words can influence sales of spices? It’s obviously due to building community.

Look:

ALT="jar of Penzey's Arizona Dreaming spice"“Arizona Dreaming is one of our best blends, inspired by people very much like John McCain with the strength to fight the uphill battle for a more inclusive Arizona. Arizona Dreaming is a very tasty celebration of the coming together of cultures that so flavors the foods and the lives lived across America’s Southwest. Don’t miss this chance to get yours free.”

Did that blurb spark your interest in wanting to buy Arizona Dreaming in honor of Senator John McCain? (Or, maybe I’m sentimental!)

Who else do you know in the corner office who mixes spice with politics to earn sales, literally? You’ll see in Mr. Penzey’s recent email newsletter that his side of the aisle is very good for his business, and he encourages marketers to observe and embrace that.

Bill Penzey on Politics, Building Community And Spices

Below is a recent post from Bill Penzey I’d like to share with his permission to republish.

“We think we’ve discovered something. What we’ve discovered is that standing up against everything the Republican Party has become is really, really, really (+76 more reallys), really good for business. I understand how this can seem at odds with the image so popular right now that America is an evenly divided nation, but as we’ve learned this image does not reflect reality. And as much as it seems that the big issue right now is an out of control, possibly worse than racist presidency, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The real issue is the unlimited political spending that brought this President and so many other Republicans to power. Watching TV ads and reading comment sections, it can seem like Republicans actually have popular support, but these days ads and comments are simply part of the many things unlimited political spending can buy. Yet from our experience what we’ve found political spending can’t buy is popularity.

This chart is our weekly online sales this year vs last year starting with the week of April 1st. It mostly is the tale of just two offers. The first was calling out the President for claiming that he was above the law; he isn’t. This is America where no one is above the law. No one can pardALT="Penzey's sales graph showing spikes from campaigns and building community"on themselves.

The second came with us pointing out that the Russia probe has to happen because: Our President chose a campaign chairman who had accepted $17 Million from a pro-Russia political party. This chairman personally picked the vice president, who in turn went on to pick a literal Russian agent as our country’s top national security advisor, despite being clearly warned by our intelligence community about his past.

The first offer in the chart looks like two spikes because this is a weekly graph and that offer ran over a Saturday and Sunday. But that second offer, that big pyramid there, just ran for 18 hours over a Thursday night. With that offer we received an 80-fold increase in sales over the same time period last year. Along with the avalanche of orders we also got comments like: “Don’t mix business and politics, Bill. It’s bad for the bottom line.” “I was taught years ago, you don’t mix politics or religion with your business.”

Yet, look at the chart. This is not 80% growth, this is 80 times as much in sales!

In our experience we’ve found that when you honestly support and speak out for the values of your customers, your customers support you. Looking at how we evolved, humanity really is the gift of Cooks, and for people who cook to simply watch as Republicans use the power the money of unlimited spending has bought them to undermine education, attack the environment, take health insurance from the poor, dehumanize those deemed not white enough, and separate children from their parents simply for seeking asylum; these can be heartbreaking times. Speaking out now really matters.

If you are involved in a business that has been uncomfortable with the Republican attacks on human decency, there is really no better time to share those concerns with your customers than right now. Your country needs you to step up.

And if you are a marketer, please be aware that the times are changing. Maybe it’s time to stop saying young people can’t be reached and instead try to get your clients to look to the values young people hold dear. At some point some breakfast cereal maker is going to celebrate the bravery of Colin Kaepernick by having him taking a knee on the cover of their box. In that moment they will win all of the younger generations for all of the rest of their lives.

There’s talk right now about people no longer being interested in things but instead being interested in experiences. At Penzeys we sell Spices, the very things that have been selling continuously for longer than any other thing in human existence. I believe a big part of why Spices have the staying power they do is that they are experiences.

Each Spice, every Seasoning connects us to a place, a time, an event that has at its heart our humanity — how we take care of each other. Make your product an experience, make your experience in some way radiate decency, compassion, and kindness and get ready to be busy.

Right now those on the frontlines of challenging what the Republican Party has become are being rewarded, and that’s a good thing. Unlimited political spending has taken away the vote from individuals and given it to corporations that seek profit from undermining the public good. It’s time for Americans to vote with our spending. My advice is to be a company worth voting for.

I believe what we’ve been experiencing is only the start of something much bigger. Business is an evolutionary process where the new things that work very quickly become what everyone needs simply to survive. This is not the time to be left behind. Spend every day like it’s November 6th.
Bill | bill@penzeys.com”

Find Your Kin As Your Next Customer

So, marketers, brands and the humans behind them, take note. If you speak your mind in a calm and intelligent fashion with logic, you can find your kin who will also become a worthy customer of your products, services and brand. Will this happen overnight? No, but with consistency comes success for the long haul.

Let’s wear our perspective on our sleeve and sell spices, shall we?

Filed Under: Branding, Public Relations Tagged With: build community, Community, democracy, Penzey's, Selling, Senator John McCain, spices

20 Ways To Build Blog Community

09/27/2012 By Jayme Soulati

Creative Commons License: Dr. Kelly Page

This blog, Soulati-‘TUDE!, has the most amazing community, evah. Not lying; it’s vibrant, insightful, buoyant, supportive, accustomed to a good blog-jack, and full of ‘raderie. I love this community, and it wasn’t built overnight.

I’ve been “accused?” of being an excellent community builder; I cannot lie, I had no idea what that meant when someone shared that with me the first time. So I started to pay attention, and here are my tips on how to make your blog community blossom:

20 Tips to Build Blog Community 

1. Engage with a commenter! So often when I hit a new blog and leave a comment, it’s crickets and I never go back.

2. Genuinely thank people for taking their time to come by and leave a thought. How many blogs are there now? A couple million? Good grief.

3. Be exceptionally welcoming (not drippy) to newcomers. You know who they are! It’s so cool when someone new stops in; thank them.

4. People’s time is so valuable; you have to respect those who stop in…until you get to know them, and then you can become more personable.

5. Mix up your topics. I did a test that Ralph Dopping was aware of…I wrote a post that was purely about public relations and he was the only one who commented. We deduced the post was not general enough and didn’t appeal to a wide audience.  A general topic promotes more engagement; people feel more comfortable participating because the topic isn’t over someone’s head.

6. Do what I just did…take more time to go to someone’s blog and grab their latest blog post and insert it as a hyperlink in your post. When you do that, I’m getting a pingback, and I know automatically I’m coming over to say thank you.

7. Don’t just put a Twitter ID in your blog post when you mention someone because they are totally unaware they’re being called out.

8. Send a note on Twitter to the folks you really want to read your post; ask them/invite them to your blog. Kaarina Dillabough is perfect at this practice when she guest post; she’ll send me a note and I try to get there as often as I can to support her. She also informs me when I’m tagged in an article.

9. In comments, ask another question like Shakirah Dawud does. She’ll comment on your comment and then pose a question back to bring you back. Smart commenting.

10. Join Triberr. Can’t say enough about Triberr. You may think you don’t need it, but every blogger needs Triberr. I’ve written about this too many times to go on a Triberr tirade here; just trust me on this one.

11. Your comportment says so much about the community you’re trying to build…are you personable, laughing, flirtatious, serious, professional, funny, witty, open-minded, welcoming, consistent, paying attention? (Yes, blog communities demand all of that and more.)

12. Do you comment and return that favor on others’ blogs? I believe that commenting IS quid pro quo…you comment at my house, so I better show up at yours. What do you know about that? I’ve done some experimenting and have deduced it’s true. Commenting on others’ blogs definitely leads to community building.

13. I have often wanted a roll-call menu so I can tick off my name to say I visited; sometimes I don’t want to leave a comment, but I want the blog owner to know I stopped in. So, when you stop in and don’t leave a comment, think of something anyway and do let the blogger know you’ve come over…it’s like a courtesy. Commenting is not ding-dong-ditch!

14. Make a point of remembering peoples’ writings and recall that in comments.  I cannot stress this enough. When you engage in comments and recall a post about someone recently wrote, then that visitor is impressed because you’ve made a point to make them feel special.

15. Ask for help, opinions, insight and expertise. No blogger knows it all; your community is a resource for you. When you ask for that knowledge, then you can build on it in a new post.

16. Reward your community with lists. Wait! Don’t yell at me…apparently, people hate lists that are link bait. I get that, but I don’t adhere to that practice. I do do lists and I do them infrequently; yet, when you see one here, it’s the real deal, written from the heart.

17. Help a newbie! When you see someone in your community struggling to get readers, commenters or topics, take them under your wing and try to help. Ask them to write a guest post for you, single them out in comments, use commenting systems that enable you to tag someone so they stop in…there are many ways to keep a community growing, and these are mine.

18. Add Comment-Luv or Lifefyre or another commenting system that allows commenters blog posts to be visible when leaving a comment. It’s a courtesy for visitors, and I love it because I can see what others are writing and jump there with one click.

19. Blog! You have to blog consistently to build community; no kidding. If you post once per week or less, or your blog has fallen off for more than a three-week hiatus, you’ll find your community disappearing or never growing. The consistency of posting is the secret sauce.

20. I’m done…no more tips! What’s your 20?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Branding Tagged With: blog comments, Blogging, building community, Community, Tips

Behind Every Blog Is A Person

08/30/2012 By Jayme Soulati

Yesterday, I permitted my fears (unfounded or not) to come directly to these pages for all the world to see. I asked for a hug, and you came out in my support. You also came out to whoop me upside the head and say “snap out of it already.”

Yes, I needed that and thank you.  I also needed to be a person, a human with fears and emotions, and needs. I needed to know if there was comfort in my future or uncertainty? I needed to vent the unsettledness that ruled me yesterday and the days prior to clear the way for the get-up-and-go ‘tude you all have come to expect from me.

Did you read The Jack B today? I just did before I sat down to crank out this post. He’s certainly sharing some thoughtful, personal, frightening, raw thoughts because he is a person behind his blog — real, fighting for his family’s future and his own.

We learned of the passing of someone’s child via a blog post recently, and this threw everyone into a tailspin. We heard of another losing his job with four children at home, and that provoked support and encouragement. We learned that a Twitter pal had found love and employment, and that has put him on a path of happiness.

You see, each of us has to be human at some point or another. Without that kind of persona occasionally peeking through, a blog would be merely mechanical and cold.

I want to say that your comments from yesterday’s post assured me we’re all in this together, regardless of whether we live in Costa Rica, Canada or Sweden. When someone is going through a rough spot, and seeks a bit of acknowledgment that it’s all going to be okay, a community becomes more than family. It becomes a hug.

So, while I allowed myself to show a bit of unusual behavior recently (stemming from a financial decision I made that has me fearful and positive), you saw a human behind this blog.

Thank you, kind family.

Filed Under: Blogging 101, Thinking Tagged With: blogs, Community, humans, people

Blogging For Community Or Clients?

07/30/2012 By Jayme Soulati

By Jayme Soulati, Chicago River, Wendella Boat

It’s summer, and I prefer a laissez-faire approach to blogging that matches my inability to be super productive because, as all of you know, I’m a #MomInSummer with no help.

What that means is the writing of pretty easy blog posts suitable for my community which get everyone thinking (none too hard) and generate a bunch of comments. In addition, I’m not doing too much hard work to add proof points and evidence that my opinion matters as evidenced by big data or research.

Is this a problem?

When I look at the really established bloggers with hundreds of tweets for each post (and often very few comments), it gives me pause. Should I be writing heavier content to impress would-be clients to show I know my stuff in business-to-business social media marketing with public relations? (Had to stuff that key word phrase in somewhere, didn’t I?)

Or, can I go ahead and offer up thinkable topics that align in and around the community while being accessible and sharing ‘raderie that I so love to do? There are times when I am hit in the face with hard business topics, and these require a different approach to writing; that’s when the smarts really show up, and it gets peeps thinking or running away. Comments become fewer, but traffic is there. People don’t often find the need to say anything because, well, I don’t know the because…this has often baffled me…the posts that say a lot about nothing; the bare-your-soul posts; the I-have-a-problem-and-maybe-you-can-help-me posts; the simple-non-thinking-fill-space-posts; seem to ALWAYS get the most comments.

Why?

What does that say about communities? Would people rather alight on a topic that’s airy and fluffy or get fodder that contributes to business topics?

In my thinking about this post, four heavy-hitting bloggers come to mind:

Heidi Cohen

Shelly Kramer

Adrienne Smith

Wonder of Tech

I love these four women who write the same all the time; hard-hitting news, tips, reviews, educational material, and more. I can count on them for good insight, and I can learn from them, too. Laura Click came over the other day and said she knew she was writing for clients and not her peers, and that’s why her comments from peers were fewer than when she launched her blog and engaged her peers more.

What that says to bloggers is a good lesson to heed.

If your blog is lackadaisical in approach, topic, content, goals, then take a look at these five women bloggers and look at their consistency of style. Are you writing for your community or your clients? Do you care?

Filed Under: Blogging 101 Tagged With: Blogging, comments, Community

Blogging Under A Rock

01/23/2012 By Jayme Soulati

I hope these key words in this headline don’t draw more readers…no one wants to blog under a rock, least of all moi. But, that’s what I’m accusing myself of absolute – I’ve been oblivious to anything outside of my immediate purview – client billable work, drafting content for my blog and a few guest posts, too, and that’s about it.

Here’s what prompted this post (and Steve Farnsworth and Paul Roberts thought I was kidding):

On Friday afternoon Steve tweeted me this awesome PR33 Blogs List from Paul Roberts’s blog. I thought, cool, I need to see this; thanks, Steve. Lo, I read the list to find myself included, much to my utter amazement. (And, thus the over-the-top thank you in comments that likely included my embarrassment at being late to the party.)

You see, I had not previously met Paul Roberts (that I knew of; unless we had drinks one night, Paul?), and here he had amassed an incredibly influential list of PR bloggers with insightful comments about each. (Again, thanks, Paul.)

AND, I DIDN’T KNOW IT!

So, I’ve been blogging under a rock, and that rock has bashed my head. Here’s what I’m guilty of and will attempt to change:

Problem: I use Triberr religiously to comment on bloggers in my tribes, and rarely do I hit others’ blogs to extend my reach. (I still like Triberr, and we’ll address that topic another day.)

Change-Up: Form another tribe with new folks and interact with their writings as much as original tribes.

*******

Problem: I go to familiar blogs with familiar communities who frequently come to my house and return the comments in familiar ways.

Change-Up: Get out of your comfort zone, Jayme! This becomes too routine; change it up, Girl!

*******

Problem: I realize the labor intensivity of extending blog reach, and while I sometimes comment on new blogs, it’s often isolated and not consistent.

Change-Up: Quit your whining and add “subscribe to comments” on all those blogs to keep you engaged.

*******

Problem: I go where I’m invited;  if you ask me to come, I’m there.

Change-Up: That’s not a problem; just stop waiting for an invite – insert yourself on more occasions.

********

Problem: I am failing at a consistent focus on Facebook community building, and now that Google has slammed all of us with forced participation, I’m worried how I’m going to manage enhancing all these channels.

Change-Up: Anyone got a solution to this one? I’m overwhelmed and want to go back under my rock.

********

Problem: I’m a Twitter girl to a fault; I keep it open all day long, attempt to work the stream and open new conversations on occasion, yet my faves column is filled with just that – faves! Twitter is my first love, my first channel (even before a blog), and I won’t let go of it, but maybe a little less here and more elsewhere?

Change-Up: Hah. Yes, create a new column called “Tweeps To Know” and head in their direction each day.

What problems and change-ups might you include to ensure you’re not blogging under a rock?

Filed Under: Blogging 101 Tagged With: Blogging, Community

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ALT="Jayme Soulati"

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