VISIBILITY  +   CREDIBILITY  + PERSONALITY  = PROFITABILITY

If you’re familiar with Dr. Ivan Misner of BNI fame, you might recognize some of this equation…. but I’ve added Personality to it.  And, I’ve been doing some analysis of my recent Facebook posts to see if it’s holding up.

But, let me tell you how I came to add personality to it…   A few years ago, I was new to Twitter and decided to follow David Allen (of Getting Things Done).  Most of his posts were about client work, airports, stuff he was doing and the occasional tip or insight.   And yeah, it was fine… but the one that hooked me was when he tweeted that he was going to the garden to practice his bonsai technique!  This glimpse into his personal life (and personality) was endearing and compelling to me.

Of course, when I first mention to students that they need to include some personal information or stories in their marketing communications, they are often quite uncomfortable with the idea.  I’m not suggesting that you share everything, but I am suggesting that portraying a multi-dimensional YOU is better for your marketing than just showing the fact-oriented, all-business side.

And interestingly, when I looked at the Facebook posts on my business page that generated the most interactions- the most successful one was when I announced my 16th wedding anniversary on December 30th!

So, as you’re planning your marketing communications– share your wisdom or course, but also share YOURSELF, it’s probably not TMI!

In mid-September (after my summer wasn’t quite as stellar as I had hoped), I sat down and blocked out my vacation calendar for the rest of 2011 and for 2012. This week for example, I had pledged to keep client time to a minimum and I have no client time scheduled for next week at all. I’ve also scheduled August 2012 to be a quiet month client-wise.

For the past year, I’ve also been experimenting with On My Business scheduling. I must admit, I’m still not 100% compliant with any of my attempts.

Over Thanksgiving, I worked on my 2012 program calendar. It felt really great to get the details for the first half of the year firmed up and the general decisions about workshops throughout the whole year decided too.

This week, I’ve been working on my editorial calendar. Newsletter content, Facebook post ideas, blog ideas. I’m a little more loose with the specific dates of each idea (more like monthly theme ideas).

Next week, I’m going to formalize a bit more my 2012 marketing calendar. In theory, I should have probably done that before my editorial calendar, but since I’m loose with the latter, I think it will be okay.

I’ve also been contemplating a cash flow calendar now that I have one year of data from MarketingU under my belt.

What calendars do you have for your business?

I read DH back in May. It was the first pick of the newly launched Biz-erkeley Book Club and I was excited to read it even though I wasn’t a Zappos customer. I’m one of the odd women who doesn’t adore shoes. However, I do know some raving fans of Zappos, and they really do RAVE!

As I started to read it I must admit that I was disappointed. It was all biography and I expected more business how-to. Fortunately, the insider’s look into Tony Hsieh’s youth finished about half-way through and I was able to get the insider’s look into creating a culture (some might say cult) that is in fact committed to customer delight. I truly appreciated Tony’s (I don’t know him, but since I don’t have an editor from the New York Times, I don’t feel obligated to say Mr. Hsieh) honesty about the really tough times when getting financing was hard or he lost interest in an earlier business and could barely get out of bed. Even the move to Las Vegas from the San Francisco Bay area, which as a Berkeleyan, I find nearly unimaginable, seemed reasonable given their circumstances!

But the lasting piece for me, was signing up on the book website and following the Delivering Happiness Facebook page. I signed up to be a Very Happy Person (VHP) on their website.

Talk about customer engagement and leveraging a platform!

Yesterday I got an email from the team at DH and they are promoting doing good and happy things by being a Very Happy Holiday Person. You can get a ‘badge’ (which is surprisingly motivating) by doing 5 things from a list of holiday happiness like:

* Donate cans to food organizations
* Write a holiday greeting (or two) to someone in need
* Call someone you love that you haven’t talked to in a while
* Take pictures of Holiday Happiness spotings and share on Facebook

Talk about big purpose!

The book has certainly spawned a bigger movement and even a separate organization for delivering happiness.

Happy Holidays and Much Happiness throughout the year to you and your family!

It is scary to think about turning away a prospective client or even thinking that there might be people who aren’t a good fit.

A recent experience with a client has helped me to come up with an easier way to frame this.  Here’s what happened.  She’s a wellness professional and was putting together a Get Healthy 2012 package for potential new clients.    Of course, anyone could be a good patient for her- but she did say that she really liked to work with moms with babies or toddlers.

As soon, as we went from anyone to moms with toddlers or babies- the marketing fell into place.   Where do you find moms like this?  What do they read?  Who do they talk to?  What messages will resonate with them?

All of the proper marketing activities became super easy to figure out!    She could put flyers in preschools; talk to women she knew who had connections at those places; post electronically in the places they’d be looking; run ads in the right places; clarify the messaging so it spoke specifically to them and they knew they’d be welcome;  What had started out as overwhelming if we were marketing to anyone became straightforward and doable.

Of course, her next program could be for a different target audience…  So, in speaking to my clients going forward, I’m going to frame it as sequential target audiences rather than only one!   Who is going to be your first?

If you have questions about your first or second or third…  and how to position your business, call in to my First Friday phone call- just sign up to the right and you’ll get the dial-in information!

I found this to be a quick and easy read. And empowering.  I’ve been on my own quest to build MarketingU into the business I want over the past year.   Derek Sivers describes his own challenges of making CD Baby into the business he wanted and letting it go when it stopped being the place for him.

There are some aspects of this book that are similar to Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh- especially the passages in both that talk about the doldrums of not wanting to go into the office.   At the point where you dread the thought of waking up and heading over to your office- you know you’re done.

Enjoy this quick summer read- and join us if you can ! or post on Facebook about the book:

My daughters and niece- 2 summers ago!

Summer has never been my favorite season. I have always favored Fall with it’s crisp air, new beginnings, starting school year and sweater-wearing. I love a lazy beach week as much as anyone else, but only if I can read (alot) and hang out with family and friends.

As my daughters just finished their school year today, I’m thinking about what our summer will entail. Camps for them, a family vacation, and plenty of marketing for my business. I was talking to a client today about how we can use technology to allow us to schedule things like blogs; Facebook posts and more. Summer is a great time to practice and build our marketing muscles and habits so we end the year in great shape.

My current list of summer to-dos includes giving this website a facelift; updating the copy throughout; finishing up two more course products and streamlining some of my own marketing processes. I have been developing some marketing muscles with the Biz-erkeley Book Club and my monthly free Q&A calls. Both of these allow me the opportunity to talk to other fabulous business owners about how they can implement change and be more effective.

How are your marketing muscles doing? What can you do to give them a boost this summer?

It is quite simple to add to your site. Take a look a the Twitter resource page and follow (no pun intended ) the directions there. You’ll quickly have a new Twitter follow button on your website (see the right hand column of this site (just above the Facebook stream to see what it looks like). Or you can also see it right here:

Follow @MarketingUcom

So, of course, you need a Twitter account to implement this and for many small, local businesses a Twitter account is low in cost (both time and money) but doesn’t add too much value in the short run. I think we’re still looking for the killer app for Twitter for small, local business (with the exception of food trucks that need to announce their locations!) Let me know if you’ve found a great use for Twitter for your business!

Tomorrow is the Biz-erkeley Book Club meeting and we’ll be discussing Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh.     In final preparation for the meeting, I’ve been doing some more poking around the book website and found this badge.   I love the concept of encouraging your audience to engage and show their love for your brand through this type of badge.  (Look for a MarketingU badge in the future )

As you know there are many theories about when (if?) the end or Judgement Day will occur. The recent movie ’2012′ was based on the Mayan calendar’s prediction of the End. Now, Harold Camping of Oakland, California is predicting that it will be May 21, 2011.

The key words for this are May 21, Judgement Day, Harold Camping, May 21 2011. You can find the latest trending words at: http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends. Unfortunately, there weren’t many marketing related hot trending words today. I would have much more to say about those topics than about Judgement day on May 21, 2011. Nevertheless- I’m looking at this as a great experiment to help my clients and students learn how to use trending topics on Google (or Twitter) to drive more traffic to their blogs and posts.

Of course, the downside of focusing on a transient trending topic is that May 21, 2011 will come and go – most likely with no Judgement Day and the blog post will be irrelevant after that. I think I’ll start checking trending topics for trends in the topics and see if there are more resilient ones that can drive traffic for longer. I’ll keep you posted on all accounts!

UPDATE: :MAY 12 Nothing too amazing to report from yesterday. One click through from the keywords including May 21 2011. I’m sorry if they were too disappointed. That said, the date is still trending so there may be some more traffic today!

UPDATE: MAY 13 Nope- no more clicks

UPDATE: MAY 23 Wow! 7 clicks in total. Many just on “trending topic” though- and not on the May 21, 2011 Judgement Day content. Now if there were more trending topics about marketing workshops

An alternative is to run a Facebook ad targeting your specific audience and drive the traffic to your website.   So, yes, Virginia you can have a Facebook ad without a Facebook page.

The demographic targeting available is really quite remarkable on Facebook and is one factor in the very rapid growth of Facebook’s dominance in the display ad publishing world.  They now serve almost a third of the US online display ads!  Double what it was a year ago.

*Display ads include static and rich media ads; excludes video ads, house ads and
very small ads (< 2,500 pixels in dimension)

For local businesses, you can target people in your geographic area (per their profile information).  You can target them based on their gender, their age, their interests- which groups they like; which companies they follow; etc.  In many ways it is the holy grail for marketers.  Custom messages for each very narrowly defined segment.    You can even target ads for people to see only on their birthdays!

And remember- Facebook inventory is growing as more people use Facebook and spend more time on it.  So, unlike Google Advertising which has gotten much more expensive over time, my clients are finding that Facebook advertising often decreases in price over time.    Of course, it operates quite differently than Google ads.  People who see Google ads are searching for something similar to the ad.  People who see a Facebook ad aren’t actively searching but they are in a segment that the advertiser thinks will benefit from the offer.    In my opinion, this makes Facebook advertising perfect for building awareness and interest.   Google is a better fit for getting the buyer to take an immediate purchase action.

The next blog post will address why you might want to consider the time and energy in a Facebook page in addition to a Facebook ad!