I start out talking about the vital importance of promoting your product and the difference between Inbound and Outbound Marketing and WHY the two must be addressed to really get your message out…

“Running a business is not for the meek. If anyone tells you being an entrepreneur, small business owner or even in upper management is anything less than an unbelievably challenging and daunting task, you have my permission to call them a bold-faced liar! It’s a relentless, up at dawn, burning the midnight oil and deeply devoted endeavor to run a successful business—and yet we love it, don’t we? And the payoff for all our efforts is, yes, if you “work it,” they will come.”

Click Here to Read Entire Article…

Thanks for reading and please do ask any questions or additional information you have about how you like to Market…I’d love to talk about it with you – this stuff after all IS my favorite topic!

Get Noticed!

Jenny

Clients always ask me what the best way is to reach out to their audience.

The truth is it is VERY different for each of us and it depends on our audience! So let’s take a CLOSE look at what your potential and existing clients do everyday…What do they read? Where do they socialize? Work, commute, play, entertain, shop, get their news and information…see the point?

If we can make a GOOD list of outlets and locations where your GREATEST clients live their lives then we’ll know what medium is best to use to reach out to them. Then we can also discern what kind of outreach they might best resonate, reply and interact with…I just read a great article in the North Bay Biz ( a magazine I like because it represents the local businesses in my community) and they were talking about “The Millennials,” in case you’re wondering it means those ah, very young folks around 29 years old. The piece discussed their habits, needs, likes and dislikes, patterns etc.

Pardon me…let me just adjust my screen zoom again here…ah… now I can see better. SIGH…Anyway…

At first the article made me feel SLIGHTLY old but then once I read more I realized a few things.

1) I actually personally have some “younger” patterns –  HA

2) These little whippersnappers who are doing business and promoting businesses today must of course do the exact same thing all us brilliant and effective PR pros do. They are adjusting their reach and message to communicate with their own audience. They are naturally finding ways to reach them on their own level, which naturally, they understand very well.

A few particular items include the fact that younger generations don’t generally read newspapers, they don’t love network television (that much), they are extremely social and find high value in being socially accepted and several other specific habits prone to their set.

All very interesting information and all very clear once you sit down and begin truly examining an audience.

And this is the GOOD NEWS here.

Each of us (each of your clients) has a very particular WAY WE LIKE TO BE REACHED and it’s your job and or my job to be strategic enough to figure that out and fill the need so that we and our messages are invaluable and received perfectly.

I can’t preach enough to you about the virtues of stepping back, taking a sweeping look at the BIG picture and making a strategic PLAN on how you will reach, communicate with and WOW all your clients and potential clients with your message.

Get Noticed!

PS – SO the Million Dollar Question is:

What patterns have you noticed about your clients and what are you doing TODAY to best address them?????

The Louder You Try To Be, the Less You’re Actually Heard

December 7, 2011

The more you promote your content, the more people will buy.

That’s the conventional wisdom. It’s why sales professions cold call. The more people you call and speak to on a daily basis, the more sales you make. Or the more direct mail campaigns you send out, the more responses you’ll get in return.

The more you promote, the more sales you close. Period.

Except when it comes to social media, the opposite is true. The more you do it, the less it works. And yet, the less it works, the more you do it. It’s a total catch 22.

Here’s the thing, just because I followed you on Twitter or friended you on Facebook, doesn’t mean I’m interested in hearing your sales pitch. That’s not considered an “opt-in” (in my opinion).

The louder you try to be, the less you’re actually heard. Pitching me isn’t winning me over. Incessantly promoting your content, isn’t moving me closer to a sale. Subscribing to your newsletter on the other hand, is completely fair game. By opting in to your newsletter, I’ve effectively given you permission to market to me.

Here’s some advice on treading the social landscape successfully:

• Listen and find opportunities to be helpful. Folks like @comcastcares and @zappos have nailed it in this regard. They listen and find opportunities to respond and be helpful to customers and potential customers alike who are experiencing issues with their service. Ultimately, this leads to increased word-of-mouth, more sales and better client retention.
• Seek to be helpful, first. That’s the art of the soft-sell. You earn a reputation for being helpful. People value that. It establishes trust. It makes you referable. “You should talk to [your name], he/she is very helpful.”
• Don’t cross-post the same content in multiple places at the same time. That’s lazy. And useless. Instead, find ways to recycle your content so you’re delivering something fresh in different places. @ Corcoran_Group has nailed this. Look at some of the content they post on their Facebook Page and Google Plus for example. It’s always different. And yet, it originates from the same photo archive that they have stored on Flickr and that they’ve posted via their Foursquare tips and check-ins. In other words, it’s content they’ve used before, but it’s recycled so that it appears fresh to audiences on different platforms.
• Show up. Day in and day out. When you start to produce exceptional content, it becomes expected that you’ll continue to do it. You can’t write 6 blog posts one month, then not show up the next two. You’ll lose your audience that way. To put it more simply, consistency matters.

What about you? What are you doing to earn a reputation of being helpful? Someone people want to do business with?

Jenny’s final thought….If you serve your customers, audience and potential clients they will fall right in love with you…if you ask how and actually help them they will come to you again and again!

Get Noticed!

But you do have to look for it.

I’m honestly a bit obsessed with the idea of the value and importance of finding, defining and explaining your story. Why you ask? Did you ask?? I’ll tell you why…

So… we live in this crazy world of mass communication and messaging. A world totally inundated with messages, commercials, images, sales pitches, “marketing schemes,” the “answer” to all your problems again and again and again all aimed directly at us from what seems like every possible angle. How will your UNIQUE STORY (your Raison D’etra) ever stand out? I feel that your story should be the foundation for your brand or at least a very big part of how it is shaped! This is how you will…say it with me everyone…GET NOTICED.

You and your business CAN be separated out from the masses by defining your brilliant story, your niche as it were. Like:

• WHY you do what you do
• HOW you became what you are
• PASSIONS that inspire you
• WHY you are DIFFERENT!

This handsome man here in the picture here is my dad Lou (the reason I have these brown eyes, brown hair and charming (HA) nose!) But more importantly he’s the reason I’ve been lucky enough to have a passion and love for helping people find their interesting story to promote! I completely inherited this bug from Lou, one of the original “Mad Men,” working and living the life of a Madison avenue AD man in the heyday of the field in the 1960′s, 1970′s and on.

And if you ask him if the hit television show, “MadMen” correctly depicts the business and era he’d totally say YES…that’s exactly how it was in those days. By the way when you hear that LONG standing Ad, “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz (remember that old Alka Seltzer Ad?) that was Lou’s Ad team! My sister and I call Lou the “Bee Charmer” cause he can talk to anyone, anytime about anything…this is also a VITAL trait for a Marketing/PR person. Lou has had some moments of true inspiration in his long life! I adore the fact that I’ve inherited some of his abilities. (By the way, in case you were wondering that is in his hand, it’s a pepper grinder. The man owns several and brings them out to dinner with him – the guy’s obsessed with Pepper – no idea why!)

But anyway Lou has always had the ability to look at someone or a business idea and very quickly ascertain the “why” or “story” that sets them apart, highlights the most exciting elements and creates a BUZZ.

Listen, there are literally millions of everything out there; doctors, dentists, mortgage brokers, dry cleaners, chiropractors…you get my point. So I ask you (again) how will YOU stand out? What are you all about?

Now that Lou is semi-retired and has more time to hang with family he’s been helping my brother-in-law Christophe with his photography shoots. Last week he assisted on one for a hospital to profile a Cancer survivor to market their services in that department. They went to the location, set-up and began shooting. It was going well and the subject was a very nice and sweet guy, then my dad started to talk to him casually in-between set-ups.

The Bee Charmer launched in to action.

Turns out after some discussion that this guy was a famous boxer in his day. He’d never mentioned this to anyone before this. Lou and Christophe immediately encouraged him to start doing some boxing poses and movements for the camera…the shoot quickly shifted from good to genius. Just like that his story went from yet another cancer survivor to a deeper, much more interesting story of a fighter winning the battle in life and with cancer. See the difference? Now his very personal story makes him THAT much more of a stand-out AND provides a much more riveting story for the hospital and their campaign.

What makes you stand out? WHY are you relevant in a world of so many of the same thing? Interesting questions, eh?

Get Noticed!

SEO is a VERY generally used and a bit misunderstood term among the general public right now. I’ve discussed this before and will continue to do so until we all get more comfortable with this internets stuff…there are MANY MANY MANY M A N Y self-proclaimed SEO “experts” out there but the reality is GOOD SEO starts with a (technically) well-built (or updated/revised) website. End of Story. That’s simply that.

There are very real and very technical realities that can not be ignored and for that you must seek out good, well trusted, honest website architects, builders and webmasters to ensure your SEO settings or infrastructure, as it were, are set up properly – internally.

THEN…

Yes, there are lots of things you can do to support and aid in the traffic that comes both TO and FROM your site…sorry to say it’s not terribly sexy (I mean, I find it fabulous but that’s just me) Its work. Just like anything good you want in life – let’s fight for it right? okay so let’s work – here’s some ways how:

1) WRITE…contribute articles online – let’s INSPIRE our audience (inspire them right into calling you).

2) Blog weekly (2x if you can) do a nice combination of written and video.

3) Here’s a biggie that NO ONE wants to do but Jenny thinks is great: Go on other websites that are within your genre and comment on the conversation! Make sure you’re “logged-in” to whatever system they ask you to so that the comment you make is somehow referenced/linked back to your site.

This is something my personal webguru and designer Ms. Debbie Gray has been talking about with me for years and I’ve been trying to listen (I swear) I do suggest this to all my clients and I only hope and dream they do it as often as possible! TIP: Make a list of the sites you want to be a part of and load them up into your favorites bar – then they are just a click away.

and 4) Outbound marketing – blast message every so often to your database BUT a warning…with so many flippen newsletters, ezines, eletters etc be interesting, be fun, be different, be YOU!

More to come on this ever-growing topic but the main thing I wanted to convey today was that it does start with a good strong foundation and having a technically soundly built and or updated site and then you can improve upon it.

What do YOU want to know about improving traffic to your site…ask me and I’ll try my best to help out.

I say care for your content like a Longtime Relationship.

Creating good content takes time, it takes creativity and inspirational efforts, it must be massaged properly, thought about extensively and like any good relationship…paid much, much attention to!

Ricardo blogs here regularly about the effects of truth in your message AND how to engage, entertain and maintain an audience with real content! He also talks about the many, many, many benefits of doing so! Hope this helps you enhance the content in your content – I work on mine almost everyday!

Beware children there are many, many fly by night, snake oil salesman, get it fast, get rich fast schemes coming at us at every moment on-line. I know we all want that ”magic pill” to create a success story from our sites and blogs heck…that’s why we do it!! BUT in the end sticking to real value and truth is the best way to stand out and win this tricky game we call social media.

Seems like everywhere I turn I am being asked if I want to “get rich quickly” on-line in one form or another. Everyone is selling me an audience; do I want more viewers, to attract more clicks, drive more traffic to my site??? While I am sure some of it is good advise no doubt  –  I am also sure that some of it is C R A P O L A ! Here’s one way to tell the difference!

This blog referenced is written by the number #3 top PR blogger worldwide -yes I quote the guy often but that’s only because he’s SO right on!!! Here he blogs about the VALUE of real twitter followers and why…what I love about what he says is it also applies to EVERYTHING you do on-line AND that you do to promote your business and yourself for that matter.

Bottom line is if you tell the Real Story about you and your work, if you authentically offer ideas, education and again, offer real value based content to your readers, listeners, followers and viewers they will indeed come back, TRUST you, forward you and boast about how great you are – which is exactly what I am doing here with this Peter Shankman blog!

Proof in da pudden!!

Blogging humanizes your business. A blog is a place to relax and get to know your customers. Think of your blog as a conversation between people, not between a brand and one person. Keep in mind that your blog is about people connecting and conversing WITH other people. It is not a corporation taking TO people.

What to do?

1) A database – if you don’t have a fully expanded DATABASE to communicate your blogs posts to you are missing a goldmine – let everyone know each time you blog! You can use a multitude of programs excel, constant contact, outlook just fine one that best suits your needs.

2) Know your Keywords! Incorporate them each time you contribute anything anywhere online.

3) Create a Calendar!!!! VITAL. Make an appointment with yourself. Assign your blogging to time slots when you knew your creative juices are flowing, when you typically feel inspired and productive

4) Write two to three times a week AND two days a week, spend 30 minutes reading other blogs in your industry and leave comments where appropriate when you have something of value to add. This gives you visibility & drives traffic to your website.

5) Keep a running list of Blog Topics – The more you blog, the more ideas you get. Make a list of categories that are of interest to your audience. Have a list of ideas and links you find and want to share to prompt other posts.

Remember – each blog is like adding a new page to your website which attracts more attention and better ranking!

Go Get Noticed!
Jenny

We laughed and I let her off the hook, it was after all after business hours.

But I must admit I am extremely diligent and adamant with clients about massaging, growing and utilizing their DB to the most of its capabilities and on a weekly at least basis. I know and have seen first hand how “working it” in this way can increase your business anywhere from 25% to 75% – remember most these folks already like you and in many cases love you and your work.

Now, I realize that it’s not the most exciting task on deck, I know it’s often thought of as drudgery but what can I say…until we all have our “Oprah Moment” and can hire others to this work for us we’ve got to hustle! I say work the H.E. double hockey sticks outta those contacts because they are the most inexpensive way you’ve got to get business!

You need to know who your contacts are and reach out to them, arm them with information about your work so they can not only be reminded for themselves but also head out and spread the word! AND YES to do this properly your precious, golden, highly valuable contacts must be organized and be all in ONE place ready to be approached electronically and in person!

Mine your DB:

1) Add  to it - challenge yourself – how many contacts can you get?
2) Pull out contacts that should be schmoozed – schedule it!
3) Wo do you ”wish” to know
4) Make a time to “work” your database each week!

I’ve been threatening to do a “Database Boot camp Seminar” to help sole props see what GOLDEN contacts they are sitting on and how to make them live (and believe me you’ve got them) would you participate in such an event??? Comment here and also ask me anything about your own DB questions!

I’ll add you to my database so I can let you know when I do it!

Don’t be afraid!
Go Get Noticed!
Jenny

As you all know and are likely nodding your heads right now…the minute you feel like things are running smooth and there’s plenty of work…whoops. Where did that pipeline go???

If a body in motion stays in motion then so does your pipeline of work – we all need to hustle and hustle good!

If you’re wondering what to do its good to ask – what’s working for me right now? Where am I getting the most traction? This year for the first time I got several cold calls from my website (naturally it encouraged me to expand my efforts on-line – hence my newly launched blogggggg!!!!!

on-line – devote more time to on-line promotions and exposure, blog more (2x a week is best), contribute articles to on-line sites (ask me in comments and I’ll give you a few good suggestions), go on related sites and comment linking back to your site.

A client of mine mentioned she gets so much new work when she socializes so we decided she should schedule 2 events each month!

Another informed me he gets mucho traction when he works on foundational aspects of his business..organization, file maintenance, etc. We scheduled a weekly business meeting for him!

So find what’s real for you and take advantage of the fact that you are having success in a particular area – trust me it will pay off – and do it NOW before the well runs dry.