Dear PayPal

I'm thinking about breaking up with you.

We've been together for almost a decade. A decade where I've bought and sold 10s of thousands of dollars of items using your service. I've loved the simplicity and the security that you provide me when I make purchases from people I don't know all over the world. I love how you make it easy for me to sell things online without having to go through setting up bank processing.

I evangelize you to friends, family, students and clients.Recommending that the simplicity that you provide far outweighs the higher transaction fees when selling and that the security you provide when ordering is unparalleled.

I look for the PayPal button when I'm making purchases and always use PayPal when it's available.

I even remember stubbornly ignoring Ebay's attempts to get me to use BillPay. I ranted to my friends about Ebay's attempts to replace you when you were so vital to Ebay's growth. Even when Ebay made us go through extra steps to use you I persevered. I thought you were in the right and I like to think that people like me are the reason that Ebay relented and bought you for $1.5 billion.

But I don't know what you're thinking right now.

I'm not sure if you've just gotten too big and forgotten your roots. Your service is still awesome, I've even had great customer service experiences the couple of times that I've had issues.

You have to remember that it's not the big things that kill relationships.

It's the little things. Like forgetting to put the toothpaste cap back on or leaving the toilet seat up.

Those things that just annoy you,

The first couple of times, you don't even notice

But after a while you mention it and explain why it bothers you

Then when it happens again…

You're mad

This is one of those things…

Why in the hell do I have to click "NO" I do not want to use your "Bill me later" service EVERY time I pay for something????

Once was fine…"Oh they have a new service…"

Even the second time, I thought "Oh there it is again…"

But then you started freezing the page to make me select yes or no on it.

That was annoying

But I dealt with it, thinking to  myself, "This is a little aggressive for a $5 purchase"

and it happened again

and again

and again

WTF are you doing??? Who programmed that thing. There are two issues here:

1. Why would someone want to use Bill me later on a $5 purchase?? Maybe a $500 purchase, BUT a $5 purchase???

2. Why should I have to say "NO" more than once. Hell even a 30 day cookie would be fine. A one day cookie would make it a little easier to bear…

Really…I don't get it. how much will you really earn on my $5 purchase if I use Bill Me Later…

Sincerely,

Former raving fan

Fir those that don't use PayPal here's the offending picture:

I believe in giving back to my local community. I'm on the board of Junior Achievement, I co-founded the Save Our Parade committee and saved the Billings St Patrick's Day Parade five years ago, I helped with our Billings Swords For Kids run at the  Pepsi Refresh grant #17 out of over 300, I help with the Yellowstone Highland Games and I give free presentations on online marketing and social media for a variety of organizations.

How do I give back?

I prefer to give back using my skills: public relations, marketing strategy and social media /online marketing and tend to do that for the different groups I get involved with. Most of the time that's simply because i have the most experience other times it's because I request to fill that roll.

I believe that anytime you can fill a roll that fits your work skills it's best. It's not that I'm allergic to setting up tents or manning a ticket booth, but I know that my skills are best suited lining up and doing TV and radio interviews. So try to fill in where your skills are best suited. If you're a carpenter, build things, if you're a graphic designer design things, if you are extremely organized, manage the projects there is no end to the number of roles that are available to you.

How do I benefit?

There are a lot of great benefits from giving back. I truly enjoy teaching kids in the Junior Achievement program. It's so much fun seeing the look in a kids eyes when a concept hits home. I also get a chance to hang out with some amazing people that I may not have met without getting involved.

My business has benefited because I've been able to get to know a number of the local reporters and have been interviewed on camera as the local social media and online marketing expert and provided commentary on Facebook changes and Cyber Monday. This has helped me get speaking opportunities and new clients without doing anything but giving free information.

So get out and get involved in your local community, you'll feel great, you'll meet some great people and you can build your business. Now I need to run the St Patrick's Parade lineup starts in 1/2 an hour.

I almost called this article how I found out I was a mongoose, but it doesn't make sense until you go take the quiz. My friend Jonathan Rivera, you can find him at Real-TechGuy.com did a video and post about Surviving Your Serengeti. <– affiliate link.

The book sounds interesting and he gave it a great review I don't know much about the book beyond his review.  But their marketing has been amazing.

One of the things they are doing is a quiz that helps you determine what animal you are, that's how I found out I was a weasel. It's a simple quiz and we're all curious to find out if the quiz is "right." But on the quiz page they have three different ways you could virally share. #1 like the page on Facebook, #2 like the book on Amazon and #3 like ActiveRain on Facebook.

Once you've gone through the quiz they show you what animal you are and give you multiple ways to share your type. I'll detail three of them here:

#1 They ask you to share your results with your friends. This generates the wall post below 

#2 The ask you to share the Quiz which generates a wall post.

#3 They have Facebook and Twitter Share Buttons

That's not counting the links on the two sides of the and they have a Facebook Profile badge generator that I didn't get a screenshot of, but here's Jonathan's. He's a mongoose too. My guess is that most of my online entrepreneur friends will be mongooses because we're resourceful.

They hit it from all of the normal book launch channels as well, but how they used social media to virally promote was extremely well done. And it looks like it worked:

I'm buying my copy based on Jonathan's review, but their marketing was top-notch. You can learn a lot from this campaign.
One of the core take-away's is to not be afraid to use multiple method because you never know when someone with a large audience will share your page and drive a significant share of traffic.

The most common social media mistake I see my clients making is starting their social media without a plan. Their are several scenarios that happen.

1. You hear someone talking about how much success they've had with social media so you jump in and set up a Facebook profile. 
2. Your boss comes in and says, "We need to get on that FaceTube or YouBook thing, and you need to take care of it."
3. You realize that your old advertising methods aren't working and you need something new so you give it a shot.

In most of the scenarios above you end up failing. Why do you fail? Primarily you fail because you don't start with the right questions:

1. What are my goals for social media?
2. Who is my customer?
3. Where is my customer active in social media?
4. What information does my customer want to know?

The thing to remember about social media marketing is that it cuts both ways. It's better to not be involved than to do it poorly.

Let's dig into these questions

What are my goals for social media?

There are several metrics that you can track:

Engagement:

1. # of new people on your email list
2. # of fans/followers
3. # of comments / likes / share of your content

Revenue

1. # of online sales if you have an online store
2. # of new customers coming into your store

Who is my customer?

I'm always surprised when I ask prospective clients who their customer is and they say everyone. It's not everyone, you might take everyone's money, but that doesn't mean you should be working with everyone or that everyone will buy your product or service. Build a profile of your best customer: age, sex, likes, occupation etc.

Where is my customer active on social media?

There are several ways to find this out:

1. Ask them – this is the one that most of my online peers miss. Ask them in your store, ask them when you're meeting with them, email them if you have a list, but ask them.
2. On Facebook –
   • Go to advertising
   • Start an ad
   • Adjust the demographics to fit your demographics
   • Ask yourself if that's enough people

What does my customer want to know?

This will depend on your business. Bars need to let people know what specials, events and music they have coming up. Clothing stores should share sales, dressing tips, Real Estate agents can share tips for lowering your mortgage rate etc… You can also do some of the following to find out what they are interested in.

1. Ask them…
2. Search.Twitter.com – search based on your business type and keyword phrases
3. Do a Google search with the keyword phrases for your business – look for social media sites that could be a good fit
   • "Keyword phrase" blog
   • "Keyword phrase" forum
   • "keyword phrase" in video
   • "keyword phrase" in News

Feel free to ask any questions about planning in the comments below.

This is a little different from what I normally write and is much more about me and mindset then strictly about business. We'll be back to our irregularly scheduled business and online marketing posts soon, but for today join me as I explore my goals from 20 years ago and how they relate to where I am today.

I have a game or ritual I've done for years. I walk up to one of my book shelves and I take down whichever book catches my eye first. I open it up to a page and sit down and start reading. Then most importantly I try to apply what I'm reading to a situation that I'm currently going through.

This morning I grabbed Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. I opened it up and the first sentence I noticed was one that I wrote in the book in 1991, when I was 23 years old. It said "Never lose sight of your dreams."  I asked myself had I lost sight of my dreams? The short answer is "maybe" the longer answer is much more complicated and I like to say my goals have evolved.

Ask yourself that question today and take the time to answer it honestly. Most of us have lost sight of our dreams or at the very least they've been subjugated or set aside. 

After thinking about that and journaling for a while I decided to track down my goals list from 1991 and I found it. I am blessed that I have journaled in my life. I wish I had done it more regularly throughout my life, but I've had several periods over the last 20 years that I've spent time journaling and am am able to go back and read about myself from those periods.

My goals / dream in 1991 were the following:

1. Build a multi-million dollar business and become a millionaire in my thirties.
    
2. Get paid to speak in front of 3,000 people
    
3. Compete in a national martial arts tournament – I didn't really care if I won, but I wanted to be a legitimate threat to anyone I fought.
    
4. Build muscle to reach 175 pounds
    
5. I wanted to help others achieve their dreams

Let's see how I did since then:

Goal # 1 Build a multi-million dollar business and be a millionaire in my 30s.

I did that with RMTG, Inc. We had 30 employees and did just short of $5 million a year for 5 years. Then I "retired" selling my shares back to the company with a 10 year, six figure a year payment package in 2005. RMTG ultimately went out of business and my payments stopped at 10 months instead of 10 years. This on top of a number of other things caused me to ultimately lose everything which could be another series of blog posts.

I joke that I should have been more specific with my goal because I was a millionaire in my 30s and lost everything before my 40s. I'm back on track to building a multi-million dollar business again and will easily do six figures in 2011.

Goal #2 Get paid to speak in front of a group of 3,000 people

When I was 23 I was speaking quite a bit, mostly presenting the Shaklee opportunity, but also talking about NLP and mindset. My regular speaking was MC'ing a monthly Phoenix- wide Shaklee seminar that had 100-150 people and the largest group I presented to a group of just shy of 300 where I was able to share the stage with Robert Cialidini, the author of Influence, one of the seminal works for people interested in persuasion. I ended up moving back to Billings from Phoenix in 2002 and pretty much set speaking aside until a couple of years ago.

In the last three years I've presented both paid and for free to groups across the US from as small as 10 people to almost 200. This year my goal is to get paid to speak at least once a month. I have three, possibly four speaking gigs lined up for March and am starting to plan April and May. The 3,000 is a very specific number and will take a while, but I will hit it. If you know a group that might be a fit feel free to contact me.

Goal #3 Compete in a National Martial arts tournament.

I was doing Kenpo karate point sparing tournaments back then and that's really what I meant. I didn't check a leg shot properly and tore my MCL and quit competing. Since then I've done Olympic fencing and fought in local club tournaments reaching the semi-finals a couple of times with foil. But my best chance at this is SCA heavy fighting. I've won 2 of the last 4 tournaments that I've been in and feel that even at the ripe old age of 43 I have a chance at increasing my skills enough to be a legitimate competitor in any tournament that I enter. Not quite there, but certainly on the path.

Goal #4 Build muscle and reach 175 pounds

I was pretty skinny back then and was working out an hour or two every day while trying to improve my fighting skills. I was about 165 pounds and one of the issues I had was not enough muscle and/or power. Because of that my goal was to build more muscle. Part of my reasoning was vain as well. What 23 year old doesn't want to have big shoulders and bulging biceps.

Today, I chuckle at this one. Let's just say I will never be only 175 pounds again unless I lose a limb. I soared past that in my early thirties. My goal today is to get back down to 205.

Goal #5 Help others achieve their dreams

What I meant when I wrote that was help people grow their Shaklee businesses. I quit doing Shaklee and personally feel that the old school MLM model is broken. I still use the products because I do believe in them. Which could just be a case of "drinking the Koolaid" but I find my body likes their protein better than any of the others I've tried over the years.

What it could mean today. I love working with business owners helping them grow their businesses. Almost everything I do is focused on helping people make more money. Local businesses don't understand online marketing and most of the people who are trying to sell them services are simply fleecing them or have no clue what they are doing.

I also dabble in information marketing and have built and sold several courses and coached other online business owners over the years. The courses range from my work with Social Traffic and my product Local Social Profits. Both of which were focused on showing people how to be a local social media consultant helping businesses leverage the power of social media marketing for their businesses. I'm toying with re-launching that again, but their are so many of the "get rich quick" types peddling "get rich" selling offline consulting that it has poisoned the well a bit for me personally. I've been doing online marketing consulting for almost 5 years now and get a little disgusted with what I see being sold.

The exercise:

1. Track down an old goals list. This is best if the list is at least a decade old.
2. Review your goals.
3. Write down what you meant on each goal that you set.
4. Write down how you've done on that goal
5. Write down where you are today.
6. Once you've done that ask yourself, "Am I following my dreams?"
7. Journal your answers
8. Come back here and share what you learned

I hope this post was as interesting for you as it was for me. I rarely share about myself and posted on Facebook that this post was coming yesterday because if I hadn't I probably never would have hit publish. 

It happened again this morning. I received an email from someone I consider to be a smart marketer and who has a depth of knowledge that I respect. She was offering new pricing for her services that are a deep discount on her past prices. Why is this pertinent to the post title? It's because I've seen her drop her prices several times in the last year and it appears that she has made a rookie marketing strategy mistake of discounting her services.

Why isn't discounting a good strategy?

History is littered with corpses of once great companies that tried to race to the lowest price.  When is the last time you shopped at a Kmart? Do you even remember Woolworth's or Kreskes. Walmart, as big as it is is even beginning to show some kinks in it's armor.

It also sounds like shes desperate. Do you want to do business with someone who's desperate? I know I don't for a number of reasons. First how did they become desperate? Do they suck? If you're going to offer a discount you need to tell me why you're desperate for the cash. Second desperate people tend to get themselves in over their heads and end up never delivering. I've seen it many times.

You don't want discount customers

The other problem with discounting is the type of customers it attracts. Spend an hour on a Saturday at WalMart, is that who you want as your customer? Discount customers are discount customers because they can't afford better or they don't value you and your services enough to pay what they are worth. Not only will you be stuck with these customers, but you will find that they tend to be the most difficult and demanding customers as well. 

What about the customers that paid full price?

Have you ever bought something and then saw it in another store for less or an ad where it was discounted? How did you feel? Do you want your customers feeling like that? Dropping your prices can cause a negative backlash from your current customers.

But sales are good aren't they?

Occasional sales are great, but they need to have a reason and a limit on them. If she had said I just had a big project reschedule and I have time to take on 5 more clients this week at a discounted rate. That would have been fine, it still maintains her value, gives a good reason why and gets her the cash infusion she needs.

The key in any business, but even more so as a consultant is that we need to value our time first before we can expect anyone else to value it. I'll do a follow up post explaining some of the things that I have done to maintain my value.

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“Frustration” – a word frequently used to describe companies new to social media and those who have been involved in social media but have yet to enjoy a return.

The problem is two-fold. First, establishing a social media presence takes time and continued effort. You have to be consistent in your involvement with the social media medium and remember that returns will not be overnight. Second, you have to make sure that you are using social media in a way that makes sense for your business.

If you are not sure, ask yourself these simple questions:

Are you using the right platform?

First, remember that there are a variety of social media platforms for you to consider – most notably Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Further, within these platforms, there exist variations on the theme. For example, in Facebook, you can have a “Page,” a “Group,” or a “Community.” Each variation has its own set of tools, purposes, and capabilities. In addition, you may decide to participate in several social media platforms at the same time.

For example, if you have a fitness center or weight loss product , you may want to use your YouTube channel to publish videos on how to perform certain exercises or tapings of classes you offer there while using Facebook to build a sense of community through candid photos, listings of hours, available classes, and upcoming events.

Have you scrapped past attempts?

However, you also need to remember that whatever you take on has to be maintained and updated regularly. This can take up valuable time and people resources. While it can certainly be worth it in the long run, remember that consistency is key. If you do not think you will be able to maintain various platforms (or you have already started and stopped using a platform) be sure to erase or delete those accounts. Otherwise, you stand the risk of eroding your brand value when a customer (current or potential) stumbles across your forgotten Bebo account. Instead, make sure that what you have is the best it can be and do away with anything that you are not actively using.

Are you providing the type of information and interaction that your audience wants?

Ask yourself what it is that your audience would want to read, not what you want to tell them. Providing discounts or having giveaways can be useful, but you have to have more substance than that. Consider posting facts about your company, the brand, or its products. Think of the tidbits of information you encounter everyday that make you stop and say, “Really?” Examples include fun facts about how long you have been in business, what happens “behind the scenes”, why your business operates as it does (e.g. why Yoga class was cancelled on Tuesdays, why you do not serve poppyseed bagels, why you buy local, why legal documents are presented in blue card stock), etc.

Are you listening to your audience?

Likewise, are you listening to your audience? When they make a post, do you respond? Do you stay on top of when your company is mentioned on other sites, blogs, social media, etc., and make relevant comments to that affect (on that site and yours)? Remember that social media has developed because of the continued interaction it affords. Its purpose is not to simply broadcast, but rather give people a voice in things they would otherwise not be privy to.

Do you allow them a voice?

Similarly, make sure that you give your audience a voice. Ask open-ended questions, run surveys and polls, include them in new product decisions, etc. – the more things like this you do, the more valued your audience will feel. Remember that interaction is a large part of a successful social media campaign. If miss out on this, you may already be out of the game.

Social Media can be a key part of growing your business and brand to attract local consumers.

Local Internet Marketing isn’t just about having a website, it includes being findable in multiple places when local consumers are looking for your product or service.   A Local Internet Marketing Consultant can help you determine the best route for your online marketing plan.

Simple promotion strategies or ways to get fans to your page:

Invite Them

Inviting them through invite a friend. This works great if you have frinds that you know would like to join the page, but do not barrage all of your friends with this unless you are 100% sure that it’s something that they are interested in.

Ask Them

Ask them to invite their friends through invite a friend – same as above, can work well, but request that they invite people that they think would be interested.

Advertise

Run Facebook ads – honestly the most effective way to get your page past a “hump-. It happens on all pages your initial push gets you a bunch of fans and then everythigns slows down. Using ads is the quickest, easiest way to get things going again.

The “ninja” trick is to run ads against friends of people who are fans. The ads show with their friends names on it, most people do not realize that it’s a paod ad, they think it’s a suggestion from Facebook.

Contests

Have a contest – I’ve seen lots of great viral contests. This can explode you page, but contest people can be difficult to get engaged. They aren’t there because theya re interested in your page, they are there because they are interested in your contest. There are lots of ways to do contests that keep people engaged.

Tag em

You can tag people you know in a post about the page, do it sparingly because you don;t want to be blocked because of "tag spam"

Have a Party

Have a tagging party and tag other pages that you think your fans will like. This is something Mari Smith just started, it’s similar to a Follow Friday thing from Twitter. It will get you new fans, but they won’t be the most engaged.

Email them

Send an email to your current customer list. This assumes you have a list, but don’t just say “fan us on Facebook” give them a reason to go there. Restaurants could say check our Facebook page for our daily specials, a retail store could have Facebook only specials or even post a word or phrase of the day for discounts.

Ask Them 2

Ask your customers – assumes that you talk to them either on the phone or in your store. But give them a reason to fan your page.

Use Your Username

Add your Facebook.com/Username to your business card, your print ads and TV ads.

NEVER say Find us on Facebook without giving them your custom username. That’s like saying find us in the phonebook. I cringe every time I see someone with an ad campaign that does that. Do a Facebook search on the first 10 brand names that come to mind and look at the results. How many of those pages do you want your customers landing on? Probably not the “BrandX is cruel to animals” or I hate BrandX” pages.

Can’t find 25 fans to get your username, run ads on Facebook use one of the other examples above or if all else fails go to Fiverr.com and get 50 for $5. Don’t fool yourself the “fans” from Fiverr won’t be real people who will engage with your page, but they will get you your username.

Hand it out

Print your address on your business card – Tell people why they should check out your page

Fan Box

Add Facebook Fan Box to your website – I recommend showing the recent posts and at least two rows of faces. You will get more people who go to your website to join your fan page.

Go ahead and add your promotion ideas in the comments. In a couple of days I will dig into ways to get more engagement on your page.

Today’s topic is on finding your writing style or voice. I have a confession to make. I’m a horrible writer. Not that I can’t write, it just takes me a long time to do it. It takes me hours to put together a blog post. I can write 20 page proposals in less time than it takes me to write a 500 word blog post. I think it’s because I don’t like to share who I am. I prefer to share my knowledge. But I’m working on it, i fact I’m going to do my best not to delete anything in this post and just to write it.

I think the problem started when I was in school. Our English teachers taught us to write in the third person, but that doesn’t work in the new social media and blogging world. We expect to be able to get to know the people we follow. There are some that just lead with their knowledge but most of the successful bloggers / social media consultants let us into their lives to learn who they are.

My style will probably never be as open as someone like Chris Brogan or Mari Smith. That’s just not how I”m wired. I like my solitude and my privacy. I enjoy being out in the public and sharing information, but only once have I shared much about my past while on stage. I don’t hide where I’ve been and what’s happened in my life, but I feel we all need to walk out own paths and frankly like to leave my past in the past.

Now how can you find your voice? Here are a couple of things that I’ve done and I’m going to share one of the resources that helped me. Hopefully this will help you

Just hit Publish

One of the first things I was told was to just write and hit publish. That’s what I’m doing. It’s tough to do it, but I’ve been assured that it’s gets easier as you do more of it. Just like speaking. I remember when I was just out of high school and wanted to learn how to speak in public. I took the steps necessary to learn how to speak. You can read about it here.

The more I spoke in public the easier it became, where today I can get up in front of hundreds of people and deliver a talk without thinking about it.

Talk

Talk– this is advice I first received from, Paul Myers and more recently from David Preston. They both said if you have trouble writing don’t write talk. Dragon Naturally Speaking is a great tool to use. It takes some training to get it to work for you. I tend to do a lot of my work sitting in coffee shops so I haven’t used it as much as I should, but I agree that it’s a great tool to use and it is amazing how fast you can put an article together.

Read and Emulate

Read and emulate — this one is tough because what you want to do is find your own style, not try to become someone else. But if you are really struggling, just read other blogs and get some good ideas for content.

Tweet

I found Twitter helped me with my writing. You only have 140 characters, can’t do too much damage in 140 characters can you. I guess even using chat would have helped. It’s easier to keep it conversational.

There are the things I tried and here’s the resource that I mentioned from Paul Myers. It’s free, nothing to buy, Paul’s that kind of guy. He just creates amazing content and freely shares it. Heck even when he sells stuff it’s usuallyonly $17-27. I’ve received more value and learned more about marketing reading his free newsletter than I’ve learned in $2,000 training courses. Sorry for the sales pitch. Once again there’s nothing to buy, download the guide and let me know what you think about it.

Let me know what you’ve done to help improve your writing too.