Rocket Readings

How to Measure Social Media Lead Generation

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:24:00 +0000

How to Measure Social Media Lead Generation:
rom Business 2 Community by Michelle Hill
This is my third post in our ‘how to measure your social media objectives’ series, the first two being:

Today we explore how to measure lead generation, a priority for most businesses. Firstly, let’s revisit the sales funnel and remind ourselves where lead generation sits.

Engagement

Social media lead generation starts with a conversation and it’s important at this stage to get a clear understanding of what drives audience participation so that you identify which topics are the most likely to draw people into the engagement part of the funnel. By using analytics tools such as Facebook Insights and Google Analytics in combination with a shortened URL, you will be able to gain insight into how people are interacting with your social media activities.
At this stage you might track re-tweets, shares, likes, posts, @mentions etc. Also clicks through to landing pages on your website where people might download content or sign up for a webinar. Granted, at this stage they are not considered a hard lead but rather a soft lead where they are happy to give you their email address and consequently fall into the ‘opportunity’ category.

Opportunity

At this stage, you want to be measuring their journey through your website such as:

Which pages they visited
How long their spent on each page
Did they go on to download further content
Did they start to fill out a form but decide not to submit
Where they exited

Once you gain insight into these areas, it will help you to identify where your best opportunities lie. You can also use this information to try and influence the journeys of future visitors.

Convert

The last stage of the sales funnel – this is where you can tie your tweets and likes to revenue. Obviously this will depend on your particular business but examples of metrics you want to track might be the number of purchases that resulted from:

Clicking on a link on Twitter offering a discount voucher
Posting a product on Facebook
Downloading content promoted on Google+
A conversation that took place on LinkedIn

Be patient

Lead generation on social media can take time. Yes you might get the odd one or two which convert immediately but as a rule, it’s a nurturing process which requires patience and a lot of hard work. As long as you monitor your activities, adjust accordingly where necessarily and are willing to invest the time, then you will reap the rewards.

Five Creative Strategies Every Startup Should Consider When Producing an Online Marketing Video

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:22:00 +0000

Five Creative Strategies Every Startup Should Consider When Producing an Online Marketing Video:
from Steamy Window Productions Inc. by swp_admin

An online video marketing strategy guide we wrote for Techvibes was released today. It explores creative strategies for online marketing campaigns and uses some of our favourite online videos to illustrate our points. We are covering these topics in greater depth here on the Steamy Window blog, so check back for updates. Thanks to Rob Lewis and his team for sharing our thoughts with companies across Canada.

A Simple Framework for Thinking About Simple Deals

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:19:00 +0000

A Simple Framework for Thinking About Simple Deals:
from The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino by S. Anthony Iannarino
A Simple Framework for Thinking About Simple Deals is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

I write a lot about the complex sale. Selling well is difficult, and it is only getting more challenging. Deals are more complex as companies make more buying decisions by consensus. The outcomes are also more complicated and more difficult to obtain.

But this isn’t true for everyone, and it isn’t true for every deal. Not every deal you sell is complex or complicated. Some are really pretty simple. Here is a simple little framework you can use to think about those deals.

Who Do You Need and Who Needs You?

One simple way to evaluate and think about an opportunity is to start with the question “Who do I need to win this deal?” Just making a list of the people you need to open an opportunity and win a deal can guide your efforts in developing the right relationships.

Another way, and an even better way, is to ask the question: “Who needs me?” Who are the contacts within your dream client that need your help? Who is struggling with the challenges that you can help to overcome?

Starting with the “who” is a great way to identify, open, and win an opportunity. Even a simple opportunity.

What Do They Need and How Do You Create Value?

Now that you have identified the contacts that you need (and who also needs you), you can start to identify what they actually need.

What results do your dream client contacts need that they aren’t presently getting? What product, service, or solution will help them achieve those results? When you meet with your dream client contacts, you can develop better answers to these questions.

But the most important question to follow up with is this: “How do I create value around this need?” How does what you do to create value align with what your dream client needs? If it doesn’t line up, then they aren’t your dream client. If the value you can create for them does line up, you can develop a solution and start presenting it.

Why Do They Need It and Why Are You the Right Choice?

If you want a compelling reason for your dream client to buy, you need to understand why they need what they need. There is an old saying in sales: “People don’t buy drills. They buy holes.” It’s true. If they could have the holes without buying the drill, they would.

The question you need to ask is “why does my dream client need what they need?” Want the fastest way to this answer? Ask them why they need what they need; they’ll tell you. Ask the question three or four times in a row and you will come to some answer about increased revenue, increased profit, or reduced costs. Ask what increased revenue, increased profit, or decreased costs does for your dream client contacts and you’ll know their personal motivation.

If you want to know how to win, ask yourself the hard question: “What makes me the right choice?” If you can’t easily answer that question (and if you’re honest, it’s one of the toughest questions in business), then try this one: “What could I do to make me the very best choice?” It’s a tough question too, isn’t it? Here is one more question you can try: “Who do I have to be to be the very best choice?”

It’s a simple framework for simple deals, but that still doesn’t make it easy!

Questions

Is every deal you sell complex? Or are some really pretty simple?

Do you know who you need to create and win a simple opportunity?

Do you know who needs you?

Do you understand what your contacts want and how you create value for them?

Do you know why your dream client wants what they want?

What makes you the very best choice of a partner to give your dream client what they want?

Why You Need To Ask Your Client About Their Spending Early Why You Need To Ask Your Client About Their Spending...
Six Questions Your Client Needs You To Answer Six Questions Your Client Needs You To Answer is a...
What It Means When a Salesperson Doesn’t Listen What It Means When a Salesperson Doesn’t Listen is a...

Why MicroMarketing is the New Inside Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:19:00 +0000

Why MicroMarketing is the New Inside Sales:
from Gary Ambrosino by Gary Ambrosino

I spoke to 500 inside sales managers at a recent American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) conference. They were there to learn how to make their ever-increasing sales quotas with a small to non-existent headcount growth allowance.
One question I asked at the start of my talk, was “how many of you are getting confused between the role of marketing and the role of sales”. Not surprisingly a large number of them raised their hands. Are they serious ? Are they really getting more, not less, confused about their role as a sales manager ?

Selling Has Changed – A LOT

What sales managers now have to respond to is the increased role and responsibility inside sales reps have for a helping and assisting approach rather than “selling” in the “traditional way”. That’s a far cry from the usual straight line selling process based on qualify-sell-close on-a-schedule measurement.

What’s Going On ?

Customers are now in the drivers seat MOST of the time. Salesmanship has a lot less to do with success than facilitation – - objection handling has a lot less to do with moving the process along than informing. ”. (I covered these trends in three earlier articles – Sales Prospecting at the Speed of Trust, Selling at the Speed of Trust, and Checklist for Launching a Time-to-Trust Sales Campaign. ).

Micromarketing – the New Selling

The most effective Inside Sales organizations I am working with have changed their selling approach to use Micromarketing techniques. I see our Inside Sales customers at TimeTrade routinely increasing their close rates by 30% and their time-to-close by 40% . That’s an extraordinary increase compared to small, single digit improvements with incremental techniques aimed at improving funnel yield.
Here’s what a Inside Sales people in high performance Inside Sales groups using a Micromarketing approach are now doing:

Providing materials on their product or services, and their value proposition.
Helping prospects find customer reviews
Using social media for relationship building and management
Playing a strong facilitation role during the process
Selling ONLY at key “pivot points” in the process – - the product demo, the quote, the contract discussion.

Doing all this requires a new skillset for the Inside Sales group. It is a combination of sales skills, product advisor, social marketer, and content creator. The online tools to use for this go way beyond Salesforce.com, and I’ll cove these in the next post.

Implementing Value Based Pricing – It’s a Challenge!

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Implementing Value Based Pricing – It’s a Challenge!:
from Axia Value Solutions by admin
Harry on tour! – Part 2
The 2^nd Annual Pricing & Profit Optimization Forum on Life Sciences hosted by the European Pricing Platform

The se7en R Framework

The last two conference sessions were delivered by Richard Coppoolse of EPP and our very own Harry Macdivitt. Harry examined the 7R’s VBP implementation framework (covered in Chapter 10 of our new book Value Based Pricing) with three or four real life medical devices examples. The 7R’s framework simply reinforces the fact that the road to Value Based Pricing is a journey and needs to be planned and supported properly. However, for any business that wants to capture some of the significant value it delivers to its customers, the journey is an important one. Understanding value from a customer’s perspective is a critical starting point because it is only through this understanding that a real differentiation can be created and then subsequently communicated and priced. These last two conference sessions were the only ones that really got into the issues of implementing prices effectively throughout the organization, although other speakers did touch on them briefly.
Discovery!
Perhaps the most startling discovery was that all of the companies in the room were using cost based or competition based pricing approaches. None was using VBP. In pharma VBP has acquired something of a bad name because of how it has been handled by the UK government in particular. We say “startling” because the products of these industries are so full of astonishing value. In a survey conducted by DeLoittes during the conference about 40% of delegates said that sales were lost on price. Taking these two factors together, there does seem to be a value communication and pricing challenge in lifesciences companies.
Capture your Value
This reinforces the plenary outcomes from Day 1. Despite the enormous investments in product development, testing and compliance, most companies are still using cost based approaches for the most part. These approaches completely fail to capture or communicate value. This leaves companies struggling to compete on price in a heavily regulated, competitive industry – factors that cannot fail but to lead to premature commoditization. And it leaves their sales teams with no weapons to defend against the pricing pressures they are subjected to. What a pity!
There is a solution……
But it doesn’t need to be that way – there are some things we can do. Start today!

Define your value properly.
Place it at the centre of your value proposition, your collateral and your arguments.
And finally capture, through Value Based Pricing, the economic rewards to which you are entitled.

It’s not an easy journey, but every journey has to start somewhere. Check out the 7R’s framework and start your journey today.

Talking Value in Pharma in Geneva

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Talking Value in Pharma in Geneva:
from Axia Value Solutions by admin

Harry on tour! – Part 1
Another week and, in this instance, another conference. Harry was in Montreux for the 2^nd Annual Pricing & Profit Optimization Forum on Life Sciences hosted by the European Pricing Platform (while I was in Stokenchurch!)
It was a great opportunity to learn about pricing challenges in pharma in particular, and compare these with the challenges we are finding elsewhere. There is no doubt it is a really tough market and needs very high level skills indeed if companies are to be successful.

It's a tough life but someone's got to do it! Lake Geneva from the bedroom window!

So what are the pricing issues in these industries?
Once more, commoditization reared its ugly head. Ugly in pharma particularly because – at least to our way of thinking – driving the prices of such important products and technologies down to the lowest possible level cannot be in the interest of the industries concerned. Or for that matter public interest. A key question for pharma is how does a company optimize its profit streams given the regulatory complexity, intense competition, generics, and the vagaries of reimbursement?
In the plenary discussion at the end of Day 1 delegates wanted to talk about Value! This industry sees Value as the way forward.
What did they want to discuss?

Building value into product ideation and development – rather than leaving it to the commercialization stage;
Ensuring that when products are launched there is a clear and compelling value proposition;
Kill non-value oriented products long before they get to market…even at development stage;
Bring in pricing at a much earlier stage – even thinking about it at the stage of concept generation;
Communicate value more effectively at all stages, but especially at the go-to-market phase;
Moving from selling products (on features and price) to value.

Just how many of these are common to your own business?
So what about the role of Sales?
One of the things that was both interesting and surprising was the relative absence of discussion of the role of sales and product management. The conference was all about pricing, of course, and there were lots innovative ideas explored…but they were about optimizing returns from largely cost or competition based approaches. We can create a really clever pricing strategy and plan it to the tenth decimal place. But ultimately products have to be marketed and sold. If they are not sold correctly, these strategies will crash and burn, products will fail to achieve anything like their potential and companies will be discouraged from developing new products.
So perhaps the time is fast approaching when sales needs to be recognised as a key component in the pursuit of a value approach to both selling and pricing. They need to have the skills and capabilities, and the support, to be able to explore the customers perceptions of value, feed those back accurately to the organisation and subsequently communicate the value of the solution back to the customer. More than anything, they need the skills to move away from the “Discount Default” to the “Value Default”. They cannot do it on their own.

The Worst Sales Email Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:01:00 +0000

The Worst Sales Email Ever:
from Business 2 Community by Drew McLellan
Maybe I’m wrong and you can top this…but check this out:
Hi folks,
Name Name here from InvestorGuide.com. Our network of sites reaches a business savvy audience of over 5 million people every month. We also have a million opt-in subscribers and 125,000 financial advisors ready to receive dedicated email blasts.
We’ve been in this business for over 10 years so we know what works. I’m trying to find out who handles media buys for your clients, and I’d really appreciate it if we could get an updated copy of your client roster. I think we can really make something work here.
Sincerely,
Ms. Name Name
Title
e-mail address
Hi Folks? So who all got this and how did I get lumped in with them? Send you an updated list of our client roster? Are you kidding me? Who writes these things and worse yet…who approves them to actually be sent to prospects?
This is why we have all the SPAM laws and why our email inboxes are so cluttered with junk that we can’t find the emails we want to receive/read.
If you are sending out emails like this — stop it. Now.
Photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

Email Newsletters: the What and the Why

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:59:00 +0000

Email Newsletters: the What and the Why:
from Business 2 Community by Zach Heller
In my book, The Fundamentals of Email Marketing, I break the different types of marketing emails up into four categories. Today, for the first time, I will take a stand and tell you which of those is the most important.
It’s the email newsletter.
What is an email newsletter?
In the book, I describe a newsletter as any email that goes out to a subscriber list on a regular basis with news, updates, or exclusive information but no direct sales message. In the United States, 1 in 2 people now subscribe to at least one company’s email list. And chances are, most of them belong to a newsletter list. They might go out daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly. But whenever they do, people are expecting them.
Why is the email newsletter so important?
They have the most global functionality. A newsletter list can be the easiest to implement and grow, because consumers know that generally, a newsletter will present a pushy sales message, and it will come on a regular basis so that they know when and what to expect. Once you have a loyal newsletter following, you can begin to use that audience in other ways. Build brand loyalty, create specials and offers specifically for your newsletter subscribers, push them towards your social pages. It all starts with the reliability of an email newsletter.

How to Avoid 7 Productivity Land Mines in Content Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:47:00 +0000

How to Avoid 7 Productivity Land Mines in Content Marketing:
from Content Marketing Institute by Michele Linn
There’s no way around it: Content marketing takes a lot of elbow grease and time, but the rewards are great. And, as we’ve shown in this week’s series on productivity, there are plenty of ways to streamline your efforts and make them work more smoothly. Here are some of the most common issues content marketers face, with solutions for each.
Are you spending too much time trying to figure out what to write about?
If you write with any frequency, I’m sure you have wondered, “What should I write about next?” In fact, as indicated by the 2012 B2B Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends research, producing engaging content is the biggest challenge for content marketers. Coming up with ideas is something our authors have covered a lot on CMI, so here are some ideas:

Laura Roeder recently wrote about how to plan your blog posts a year in advance.
Roger Parker suggests you “resist the urge to reinvent the wheel” and study the right examples.
I like using mind mapping when I need a different way to think about content creation.
Rick Allen has 7 ways to generate blog content ideas via your analytics.
Get inspired by what others are doing. Check out our Ultimate eBook: 100 Content Marketing Examples.
Louis Rix shares 5 places to find inspiring content ideas.

Do you need a better way to plan all of your content?
If there is one tool I think every content marketer needs to be efficient and organized, it’s the editorial calendar. While this document can be fluid, it provides the structure you need to know what content you need to create when. You can download a template that I created, or you can check out this recent post from Joe Pulizzi on Copyblogger about the components of an editorial calendar.
Are you trying to get more focused when you write?
In his post, 3 Tips for Increasing Your Content Productivity, Roger Parker suggests two tools to help you stay focused: “Don’t assume that your current word processor is your only writing option. You may be thrilled, for example, to discover highly focused writing tools like IA Writer, with its uncluttered writing environment. Or, if you want to keep your ideas and online sources in front of you as you write, explore Scrivener, which uses an index card motif. “
Alternatively, if you don’t like looking at a blank screen, you can “talk it out” by using an audio recorder, a tip suggested by Brody Dorland.
Do you need a way to break down all of the tasks associated with a project?
Dianna Huff provides this general framework for reducing “getting it all done” content marketing anxiety:

Keep track of your workflow
Determine your bottlenecks
Design your own system and processes

As an alternative, in a comment to Roger Parker’s post on increasing productivity, Howard Rauchl provides some great tips on how you can figure out how long it takes for content creation so you can have realistic expectations:

In the productivity workshops I used to run at Folio, I chided editors because many assumed they were efficient. There are always shortcuts, and eventually they must be discovered. So, when it comes to content marketing, the premise in terms of content creation is that anyone supervising the process must know how long it takes to do everything.
Here is a simplification of how to start the process: (1) Break down the job into components; let’s say you end up with 12; (2) of that number, identify your three or four biggest time-eaters; (3) within the framework of a 20-21-day work month, estimate how much time is required to complete tasks involved; (4) then do the same for the lesser time-eaters; (5) you may find that your 20-21-day month has become a 25-40-day monster.
So now you know everything I know! Right now I am in the process of developing estimates for digital content workloads. The process is clearly diferent from content marketing, probably because the biggest time eater is e-news writing. Perhaps a good starting point for content marketers interested in this kind of stuff is to first identify key presentation categories… like white papers, webinars, newsletters, eBooks, etc. Then within each category, develop time-eater sub categories… and go from there. Enjoy!!!

Do you need a better way to organize and access all of the information you come across?
If you’re like me, you’re always finding ideas of things you want to try or getting inspired about things to write about. But, unless you centralize all of that info, this can be a time-consuming process. A great way to store, organize, and access your ideas is with Evernote. It’s no surprise that it’s been a very popular productivity tool for years. Here are some tips on how to set up Evernote to capture and store info, as well as ideas on how you can use it for content marketing.
Are you feeling overwhelmed by all of the social media channels out there and unsure of where to focus your efforts?
Instead of diving in to all social channels, Jayme Thompson suggests deciding which ones make the most sense in Cutting the Complexity of Content Marketing. She explains: “Our customers are probably much less aware of the newest, greatest content outposts than we are. If you do some listening and find the ponds they’re in, customers will find your content. And the No. 1 way to simplify? Start small, see how it goes (track it), and then add on when necessary.”
Are you looking for ways to automate distribution?
Once your content is created, you need a plan to get it out into the right channels. Brody Dorland wrote a fantastic post on 12 things to do after you have published a blog post with the updated 7 additional tips. Taking a cue from that, I developed a simple template for content marketing distribution. You can download and customize this template as a way to help you remember all the key steps when you want to get the word out.
What other productivity challenges or tips do you have? Let me know in the comments.

5 Stats Every Good Lead Nurturer Should Know

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:43:00 +0000

5 Stats Every Good Lead Nurturer Should Know:
from Business 2 Community by Henry Bruce
I must admit, I’m a bit of stats nut when it comes to forming an argument and making my case for something, like whether the Celtics can win it all this year, or saying its time to break up the Red Sox and start all over.

Rethinking the DemandGen Process: Quantity or Quality?

But when it comes to B2B sales and marketing, I am going to get on my soapbox and tell all it’s time to rethink the entire demand generation process. Why? Because looking at a variety of stats from some of my favorite authorities like Gartner, Forrester, Marketing Sherpa and Sirius Decision tell a very dark story about current practices that still plague the B2B industry and have a big-time drag on revenue and profitability growth. These stats represent some of the worst practices that are a carryover from the way we did things in the good old days when buyers actually took your calls and read your email. They also point to an obsession with lead quantity rather than lead quality.

Sales-Ready vs. NOT Sales-Ready

Let’s start at the top. Basically, today when someone hits your web site for the first time and registers for something of interest, only 10-15% of those folks are sales-ready. Most of the rest, 70% or more are not ready to engage beyond this initial opt-in for that white paper or webinar. So going all Lady Gaga and calling all those people who downloaded that cool info-graphic you just published or who dropped by your booth at Info-Mania Marketing World Expo is impressive, but a waste of time. Its not hard to figure out the ones that sales can work on, but that 70+% group will be quickly discarded by your sales team.

What Happens to the 70+% That are NOT Sales-Ready?

The latent demand ones typically just fall by the way side. And that is not only a shame, but a HUGE waste of your leadgen dollars. That is something your CEO or CFO will remind you of come budget review time because 3 out of 4 of those leads will end up buying sometime in the future. More damning though is stat #3 from the worst practice hit list: 9 out of 10 of those who buy, do so from someone other than who started things off initially. Think about that one for a moment. Let it roll around in that rational analytical mind of yours before you start reaching for the bottle of Tequila.

“You Tawkin’ to ME?”

Point #4 speaks to buyer behavior today that is driven to total distraction with Smart Phones and texting and tweets and stop-by workers and bosses. With B2B buyers bombarded by 3-5,000 messages daily, it takes 11-13 proactive outbound communications to interrupt those ADHD buyers. That’s a lot of emails, phone calls and banner ads loaded with supposedly juicy content before that target buyer asks, “you tawkin’ to me?” and pays attention. It’s not necessarily that the content or the offer or the call-to-action is irrelevant or weak. You have to be committed, be persistent and keep trying.

What’s the Payoff for the Shift to Quality?

Finally, though we have painted a dark and hopeless picture here with the state of things in B2B lead management behavior, the real message to deliver to your sales team and your bosses is that doing it right will make a huge difference in revenues and commissions for everyone. Sirius Decisions annual study of the B2B market repeatedly report that the best-in-class sales and marketing teams generate four (4) times the number of closed deals than average team from the same number of leads.
If that doesn’t get your bosses’ attention when you make your case for making some changes in your lead management practices, then you have a different problem to deal with friends.

5 Pitfalls that Keep Marketers from Maximizing Social Media Channels

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:39:00 +0000

5 Pitfalls that Keep Marketers from Maximizing Social Media Channels:
from Business 2 Community by Sheryl Roehl

More and more businesses are jumping on the social media bandwagon, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re getting everything right. Here are 5 things that keep marketers from getting the most from their social marketing programs.
1. Running your social marketing without a strategy or a plan. Social media is maturing, but is your approach to it? You should build a plan for your social marketing like you would for any other marketing discipline. Your plan should include the strategies and tactics, branding, messaging, content, tools, resources and goals that will help you make your social media presence a successful part of your marketing.
2. Operating in a silo. 7 out of 10 marketers in a recent BtoB survey said branding is their top goal for social marketing. Funny, but the reality often seems like the exact opposite. Many companies seem to run their social media programs like a separate sideline and tactical program handled by an intern or entry-level marketer. This is a mistake. Instead, you should incorporate social media into your integrated marketing programs. Be sure to project a consistent brand in all your social media channels (and across all marketing channels) in terms of design, positioning and personality.
3. Using social media as just another marketing “me” channel. Twitter and other social media are not just another corporate press release wire for your PR team or product announcements. Can you say boooring? Too many B2B companies use their social channels to push out one-way PR announcements and top-down messages.You can instantly set your company apart from competitors by delivering interesting and valuable content and engaging in two-way conversations about topics that really matter to your target audience.
4. Neglect your following. I’m always surprised when I run across companies’ social media accounts that push out plenty of tweets and posts, but have relatively few followers — let alone engaged ones – even after years of maintaining an active social presence.Like it or not, your company’s reach and engagement with its following help drive your Klout score, a key measurement of your social media influence.
You wouldn’t drop a major email campaign to a dozen contacts, nor should you do the equivalent on your social channels. Just as you work at building your email list, you should invest time and resources in growing your list of quality followers, fans and likes.
If you don’t have the bandwidth to tackle it, you can outsource this task to social media experts. For example, Avenue L Marketing built up a client’s Twitter following to more than 500 in a matter of weeks. For another client, we grew the quality and number of followers gradually over several months, from around 400 followers to 1,000. Here, atAvenue L Marketing, we increased our followers (@MarketingIntel) during the past year to over 2,500 as of this writing.
5. Obsessing about the score. Yes, metrics can help you track your progress, but you don’t focus too much on them. Your social media presence should be making an impact and contributing to the success of your marketing campaigns. Sure, pay the proper attention to your Klout and other metrics delivered by your social platform, but don’t go overboard. They’re just numbers after all.
Don’t make these 5 mistakes in your social marketing. Build your social media plan and constantly fine-tune it based on what works and what doesn’t. Get help from experts to optimize your social presence and invest in growing your target audience of followers, fans and likes. It’s smart to keep an eye on key performance metrics but stay focused on improving your content and increasing the engagement of your audience.
What other tips would you add to this list of social marketing pitfalls? Would you please share your experiences and perspectives on social marketing?

7 Writing and Marketing Links Worth Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:16:00 +0000

7 Writing and Marketing Links Worth Reading:
from Copyblogger by Robert Bruce

This week on The Lede …

13 Ways to Make Idea Generation a Daily Habit
10 Signs You’re About to Hire the Right Copywriter
RSS: Your Social Media Monitoring Secret Weapon
Convert More Visitors from Your Guest Post with These 10 Landing Page Hacks
The Jedi Master Approach to Content Marketing that Converts
Twitter v. Facebook: A Short Case Study in Building Trust
Stephen King’s 20 Tips for Becoming a Frighteningly Good Writer

If you want to grab more useful links (than the seven we highlight here every week), follow @copyblogger on Twitter.
//
13 Ways to Make Idea Generation a Daily Habit
You ever hear that story about Thomas Edison’s idea naps? He’d sit on the couch with his head in his hand, propped up on his elbow, holding a few ball-bearings. He’d allow himself to drift off to sleep — in order to let his subconscious mind go to work on his ideas — and when he drifted too far into a deep sleep, the bearings would fall to the floor and wake him. Legend says he repeated this throughout the day. Consider it number 14, and get on over to Ms. Jones article for 13 more …
//
10 Signs You’re About to Hire the Right Copywriter
Are you paying too much for a copywriter (probably not)? Too little (probably)? Is the writer you’re looking at a hack with a briefcase full of “social media” buzzwords, or a pro that knows what really matters (e.g., the right offer is more important than perfect copy)? If you’ve had some of these questions in the past, read through the list Mr. Robisch has compiled. It’ll take you a long way down the road to finding a good copywriter who knows what she’s doing.
//
RSS: Your Social Media Monitoring Secret Weapon
Who says RSS is dead? Well, a lot of folks actually, but The Lede would be a lot more difficult to run without our old, never-quite-made-it-to-primetime friend. You might still be using an RSS reader to catch the latest blog posts in your industry, but you may have missed this cool little implementation that Ms. Seiter brings up — social network monitoring. Instead of running ragged between all your accounts, bring all those tweets, updates, pins and answers right into one place. Feels like 2006 all over again, feels good …
//
Convert More Visitors from Your Guest Post with These 10 Landing Page Hacks
Getting that guest writing gig on an influential site that’s relevant to your goals is a win. But what are you doing with the traffic that’s hitting your site as a result? If it doesn’t convert, you’re no better off than if you’d never written that guest post at all. Mr. Patel gives you 10 specific ways to turn a piece of that traffic into customers, subscribers and/or regular readers.
//
The Jedi Master Approach to Content Marketing that Converts
Human beings tell stories all day long. We tell them to ourselves and we tell them to each other. Humans also need to hear stories, it’s how we’ve been wired. And, whether you’re doing the telling or not, the world is hearing a story about your product, service, or idea. In this article, Mr. Clark takes us back a few decades — and a few thousand years — in order to find a storytelling template that works.
//
Twitter v. Facebook, A Short Case Study in Building Trust
You can have all the users in the world. You can get all the press that the media has ink for. You can build one of the most recognizable brands ever made, but if you don’t have trust, you ain’t got nothing. And if you do have it, you won’t need all that other crap to build a profitable business anyway.
//
Stephen King’s 20 Tips for Becoming a Frighteningly Good Writer
Mr. Morrow dissects and analyzes one of the best books on the craft of writing that’s ever been … uh … written. If you’ve dismissed Stephen King as an American horror hack: 1) you’re wrong, and 2) you’re missing an opportunity to learn from a master. So knock it off, read this post, and then go get On Writing.
//

Did you miss anything on Copyblogger this week?

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media's Copywriter and Resident Recluse. Get more from Robert on Twitter and Google+.
Tweet Share

13 Tools to Create and Share Your Presentations

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:02:00 +0000

13 Tools to Create and Share Your Presentations:
from Fill the Funnel by Miles Austin

All of us are presenters at one time or another. When that need arises the following tools can not only ease the creation process but save you some time, and allow you to create a presentation masterpiece. The fastest way to loose your audience and your credibility as a speaker is flip through slide after slide of small font bullets, text and charts. Most experts will agree that you need to engage your audience, to entertain them by sharing your ideas using fresh, graphics to make your point.
Each of the 13 tools or services listed below has the potential to help you dazzle your next audience, whether it be in a boardroom, a school room or your living room. Each on their own might be just what you need, but I suggest that you consider combinations of several in one presentation. Experiment with each, and then combine them into something unique to share. Share your innovative presentations with us all.

1. Slideshare

If you want to share your slidedeck with others, allowing them to download, embed it or copy it as you feel appropriate, Slideshare will provide these options. I refer to it as YouTube for presentations. Slideshare has an application customized for LinkedIn users, allowing presentations you select to be embedded directly into your profile. If you opt for one of the paid plans, you are also able to capture leads from those that have viewed your slides, as well as review the detailed analytics so that you know which presentations are striking a chord with your audience. Slideshare.net

2. Prezi

There are times when Powerpoint/Keynote formats and flow will just not deliver the experience you are hoping for. If you want to explore a free-flowing, non-linear presentations format, then Prezi can provide an entirely new presentation environment. You begin with one large canvas and proceed to layout key points on the canvas, similar to a whiteboard. You then add text, video, PDF’s and even live web links around each key point. When you have captured all of your ideas, you link them together in the order that you would expect to present them. If your audience asks a question that is not in the flow, you can simply click on that area where you address the question, share your point, and then go right back to the established flow. Prezi can be used in both an online or offline environment. If you value an interactive, non-traditional approach for your next presentation, give Prezi a try. Prezi.com

3. Brainshark

Delivering your presentation/message over email always looses the impact that you can deliver in person. Brainshark bridges that gap by providing an audio track for each slide, allowing the viewer to move through the slides at a pace comfortable for them. You can also embed actionable links within your presentation. One of the most powerful benefits comes in the form of analytics generated from the viewers interaction with your slides. How many times did they view it, how much time did they spend on each slide and did they forward your presentation to others. Brainshark is ideal not only for your sales and marketing efforts, but also for training, HR and public relations efforts. Brainshark.com

4. Animoto

Sometimes your slides themselves just don’t convey your intended energy and impact. Animoto provides a very easy to use platform that turns your individual slides, photos and text into a video, and you can add a soundtrack of your choosing. Simply take a each slide in your deck, capture it as an image, then add each slide to your Animoto workflow. Add captions, additional text or photos as appropriate, select your soundtrack and your video will be produced with professional transitions within minutes. Once complete, you have an HD quality video, and the ability to export to YouTube, Vimeo or your website/blog. You can even download a copy onto a DVD to play on a DVD player. Animoto.com

5. PresenterMedia

Using graphics in your presentations is one of the first recommendations that experts teach. Coming up with scalable, quality graphics, images and templates for your presentations can take more time than the content itself. Add in the necessity of ensuring you have the rights to use these graphics and it can be a daunting task. The team at PresenterMedia have made this much easier for you with their service. They provide fresh, top-notch graphics and artwork for you to select from, including graphic images, animated images, and backgrounds in several formats. You have the ability to modify each of their graphics for size, shadows, background color, transparency, shadows and reflections. They also have announced video backgrounds. If you have a specific need for a graphic, submit your request and you might just see your image made available for public use. Presentermedia.com

6. PresentationPro

Another deep source for images, icons, graphics and templates for your Powerpoint work is PresentationPro. They have thousands of selections to choose from and provide a helpful search engine to help you find what you are looking for rapidly. There images are scalable, allowing them to stretched or shrunk as your needs dictate. Each month they release additional items, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. I have used their images in slide presentations, websites, landing pages and even printed products for years. PresentationPro.com

7. SlideRocket

An effective tool to create and deliver your critical business communications to your customers, SlideRocket is worthy of your exploration. You can import your existing presentations to get started and then SlideRocket goes to work to reinvent your presentation in a fresh new package. You can access your presentations online, offline and on every type of device from iPhone to iPad or desktop. One of the features that I especially enjoy is the ability to sync presentations from the cloud to my presentation device, ensuring that I am always using the most current version. They have an included set of robust design tools to help you expand your creative powers. Analytics are also available for your review as you desire. SlideRocket.com

8. Cynocast

This tool might be the most innovative of the 12 mentioned in this post. Cynocast is an online service that enables you to upload each slide you want to share, with the difference that each slide is “live” within the browser, all links are clickable and interactive. You can present your slides to an audience of 1 to 1,000 or more, all at the same time as you would with most web presentation tools. The difference is that each viewer can click on a “buy now” link and complete the transaction independently from every other viewer. You can also “record” your presentation and share it online for future playback, maintaining the same capabilities as the live presentation. This capability is beginning to make significant impact in industries like vacation rentals, automobile dealerships and online computer resellers. Castinteractive.com

9. Kineticast

If you find challenges delivering your PowerPoint masterpiece to your customers due to file size or firewall limitations, Kineticast can help get your message through. By integrating the delivery of your message into their toolset, you can create a full deck, slide by slide with timing just perfect, add your own voice narration to the slides so that they hear your full message and then review full analytics based on the interaction between the recipient and the slideshow. Your presentation never hits the delivery barriers because all the client receives is a brief message and a web link Very effective and customer give positive reviews. Kineticast.com

10. pptPlex

Powerpoint is the brunt of many a joke or meeting complaint. It is an easy target to blame the software rather than the presenter. If you are tired of presenting using the same old slide deck over and over, then this free add-on from Microsoft Office Labs might be for you. You will need Microsoft PowerPoint 2007/2010 to use it. The basic concept is simple. You have all your slides on one large canvas, then zoom in and out of individual slides, moving between slides during your presentation. If you use an interactive style, you will be able to move back and forth between slides with ease with a fluid movement. Similar concept as #2 Prezi above, just executed differently within Powerpoint.com. Officelabs.com

11. Screenr

Custom, personalized screencasts delivered almost instantaneously to a client can help you win that next deal. Customers value an effective, speedy response to their requests. If you want to stand out from your competitors, one way is to deliver information effectively and efficiently. That is where Screenr helps. It is a web tool that creates and delivers a screencast of your presentation over Twitter. Present your ideas, capture using Screenr and share with anyone that has an interest instantly. Once you use Screenr you will discover all sorts of creative ways it can be of help to you. Screenr.com

12. Jing

Made by TechSmith, the people that make SnagIt and Camtasia amongst others, Jing is like a Swiss Army knife of screen capture and sharing tools. Simply put, Jing provides instant screenshots and/or screencasts of your work. With this ability to capture your ideas effortlessly, you are then able to add to your slidedeck as images or even as an embedded video. The ability to grab an item from the screen and place it into a slide with ease will save you valuable hours as you prepare your next important presentation using any of the previous 11 or even the old standby PowerPoint. Techsmith.com/jing
Effectively presenting your ideas and concepts is as much art as it is a science. Using a creative, innovative approach will not change your content but it can help command the attention of the audience, giving your message a greater chance to get through. Check these sites out, experiment a bit and you and your audience will come out ahead.

13. SlideShark

From the innovative team at Brainshark, SlideShark is the tool of choice to share your PowerPoint presentations on an iPad. No conversion errors, messed up fonts, just a seamless transition from your desktop to an iPad. Plus they now include valuable analytics right in SlideShark, allowing you to see who opened the presentation and when, how many times, etc. Very helpful if you want to know where the interest is strongest. SlideShark.com
©2012 Fill the Funnel. All Rights Reserved.
.

Reinventing Your Sales Model is A) Overdue, B) Impossible, C) Mandatory for Survival

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:02:00 +0000

Reinventing Your Sales Model is A) Overdue, B) Impossible, C) Mandatory for Survival:
from 3forward by Matt Smith

Unless you are the rare CEO or Chief Sales Officer with a B2B sales force that is knocking it out of the park, you likely fall into either the A or B answer to our question of changing your selling model.   If you’re in that lucky club then we graciously give you back the two minutes it would have taken you to skim this blog post.
Everyone Else Searching for a Sales Model That Really Works – This Message is For You!
We see first hand a lot of struggling sales models (and that includes demand generation as well). It’s usually why we are hired in the first place since CEOs and Sales Leaders engage sales consultants when they need to improve results – not when things are going gangbusters. A big part of what we do is help company leaders define the extent of their challenge by giving them both perspective and tools to measure themselves against their goals AND their peers.   When they see the gap, many realize it’s time for dramatic changes to the selling model.
That brings us to the Lessons Learned on Managing B2B Sales Transformation that we’d like to share.   These are things you should know BEFORE you tackle the tough challenge of reinventing your sales model (or demand generation model) – not three months into it.   These examples are taken straight from actual prior engagements and hopefully help prepare those of you considering your own sales transformation for what you might face.
Leading a B2B Sales Transformation Project – Lessons Learned From Those Who’ve Been There

Don’t hang on to old leaders you know were part of the problem. Make them available to your competition before you get started so you don’t have to argue with them about why things must change.
Don’t design new positions to accommodate existing staff if they too are part of the problem.
Build for speed and efficiency – the complexity can come later.
Get the help you need. Don’t count on internal expertise to suddenly have the experience and knowledge to do something they would have started a long time previously – were they the right people to begin with.
Once you commit to transforming your sales model go full speed ahead.
Focus on ROI, not cost. We’ve seen way too many companies act penny-wise and pound foolish when it comes to making needed investments.
Identify your weak spots and over-resource those areas at the beginning.
Include constituents from all critical functions when designing and implementing big changes. Excluding key groups from developing the new model is inviting them to challenge and subvert the program once it launches.
Don’t loose sight of the forest for the trees. Transforming sales and demand generation to be successful in today’s Google-ized buying process and intensely competitive market is a complicated undertaking, but keeping your “change team” focused on the objective will help put the smaller roadblocks in perspective.
Prepare to adjust course as needed. Even months after launching your new model you will continue to tweak the program, add resource where needed and even shed elements you thought would be critical. Count on it!

Transforming how they sell is way overdue for many company leaders. Selling models running on status quo will only continue to fall further behind and never generate the results that are necessary. We have helped many companies execute sales transformation projects and are glad to talk about the unique challenges you might face within your own company. Schedule a sales optimization review if you would like to kick around some ideas with us.

Case Study:: B2C Content Marketing: How employee content drove 200 leads per day at Guitar Center

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Case Study:: B2C Content Marketing: How employee content drove 200 leads per day at Guitar Center:
from Marketing: Case Studies & Know-How from MarketingSherpa
The most valuable content for consumer marketers is often user-generated -- reviews, Facebook conversations, Tweets, Pinterest boards and more. One content resource consumer marketers might overlook, but many B2B marketers utilize, is the knowledge shared by company employees. This article first ran February 23, 2012, in the MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing newsletter. Read on to see how retailer Guitar Center generates leads by tapping into the expertise of its sales team. And learn how the company improved homepage traffic by featuring "store experts" in its display ads, and encouraged 66% of employees to create online profiles on the company website.

How To:: Brand-side Marketing How-to: 6 content marketing lessons learned from a B2B IT company

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:57:00 +0000

How To:: Brand-side Marketing How-to: 6 content marketing lessons learned from a B2B IT company:
from Marketing: Case Studies & Know-How from MarketingSherpa
As a B2B marketer, you have likely read about the importance of content marketing countless times over the last few years. And, MarketingSherpa has been no exception, having published a wealth of articles highlighting effective content marketing efforts. In this article, Softchoice, a B2B IT company, offers six content marketing lessons it has learned after placing a stronger focus on content strategy over the last three years. Read on to see why the company puts the customer at the forefront of its content efforts; how it utilizes internal sources to create successful content; and how it measures content's effect.

Jay Baer Debunks 7 Social Media Myths At Marketo Summit (Live Blog)

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:57:00 +0000

Jay Baer Debunks 7 Social Media Myths At Marketo Summit (Live Blog): by Dayna Rothman
from Modern B2B Marketing | Marketo Blog by Dayna Rothman

We are halfway through our first day at Marketo User Summit. So many new and exciting ideas have already been presented! My head is spinning. We are about to sit down for lunch while listening to Jay Baer, social media strategist, blogger and author of The Now Revolution kick off the afternoon. I am very much looking forward to the afternoon sessions.
Jay opens with his presentation on “The 7 Myths of Social Media”. You can feel the energy in the room as B2B social media is on the hot list for every enterprise marketer. With the consumerization of IT and customers becoming social, it is imperative that B2B companies begin to engage. So what are the 7 myths that hold B2B companies back? Take it away Jay!
Myth #1: My customers don’t use social media.
Actually, they do. In fact, 81% of adults use social media, and many of them are on these networks for business purposes. In fact, there are more people on Facebook then not on Facebook.
Myth #2: Social media isn’t worth the trouble for B2B.
Even as business leaders, social media has become a huge part of our lives. Jay reports that 86% of business technology decision makers use social media for work! That means your target audience is looking to social media to help make business decisions. In fact, customers exposed to a brand in the social space are 2.8x more likely to search for it down the road.
Myth #3: How B2C uses social doesn’t apply.
Think again. You can take a lot of cues from how B2C companies engage with your customers. If you have customers, prospects, and employees you can build relationships through social media. Always tell your customers a story, focus on the pain points, and let them relate to you in an emotional way.
Myth#4: If nobody tweets about us, we don’t need social media.
Do you know if anyone is tweeting about you? Start listening! These are great ways to engage with your target market. The more you nurture your leads through social media, the more loyalty they will feel towards your brand.
Myth#5: Having a “page” = having a social strategy.
You need to do more than create a page on Linkedin or Facebook. You don’t get credit in social media by just showing up.
Myth#6: Social is just about marketing.
Social media touches all sides of the business. People post reviews whether you like it or not, and every customer is a reporter. 70% of customers complaints on Twitter go unanswered. Connect with your customer service team and have them lend a hand.
Myth#7: Social media isn’t measurable.
Many B2B marketers don’t know what to measure or what the data means. Measure social engagement and track behaviors not eyeballs.
Great stats in Jay’s presentation. The conversations are definitely buzzing with how to become more social. Stay tuned for more live blogging and remember to tweet your updates at #mus12!

Jay Baer Debunks 7 Social Media Myths At Marketo Summit (Live Blog) was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

Six-Figure Businesses Built for Less Than $100: 17 Lessons Learned

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Six-Figure Businesses Built for Less Than $100: 17 Lessons Learned:
from The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss by Tim Ferriss

Photo: 401K.
The following article is a guest post by Chris Guillibeau, who’s traveled to 150+ countries and studied more micro-businesses than anyone I know. I hope you love this piece as much as I did. Enjoy!

Enter Chris

Over the past several years, I’ve been on a quest to study micro-businesses—small operations (typically one person) that make $50,000 a year or more (often a lot more). The quest took me all over the world, at first to a large group of 1,500 “unexpected entrepreneurs” who volunteered to share their stories in detail.
I wanted to hear from all kinds of businesses–both offline and online–to decipher what made them so successful. How did they get started? What helped them grow into significant, reliable sources of income? How can you increase odds of success?
After much effort, a small team and I narrowed down the case studies to a subset of 70 that I focused on for final analysis. All 70 people had created freedom for themselves: new income and a completely new way of life. There are formulas.
Here is a highly-condensed list of 17 lessons learned…

The 17 Lessons of $100 Start-ups

Note: Links show the businesses in action.
A gap in the marketplace reveals a business opportunity.
Gary Leff used his Frequent Flyer Miles to travel all over the world in First Class, and his friends kept asking for advice. Almost on a whim, he decided to launch a basic website offering the service of booking travel awards for a fee.
His service is something that people could do on their own for free—but plenty of people don’t know how it works or just don’t want the hassle of dealing with airline call centers. This “side business” now brings in more than $100,000 a year.
Lesson: Provide results (photos, testimonials, details of your own experiences) and offer to do something for people that they don’t know how to do or don’t want to worry about.
Latch on to a popular service, then simplify it for others.
Self-described “professional nerd” Brett Kelly wrote Evernote Essentials, the first English-language manual for the popular Evernote software. Brett was hoping for a $10,000 payday over the course of a few months—enough to pay off some bills. Instead, he received $10,000 in two days… and then the sales kept coming.
Originally conceived as a hobby that Brett worked on during nights and weekends, Evernote Essentials now earns more than $160,000 a year in net income. Here’s what Brett says about the results: “The unreal success of this project has not only freed our family from a decade of debt and financial instability, but has also given us the freedom to pursue the kind of life we want.”
Lesson: Simplify things and cash in. Brett developed a comprehensive resource with lots of screenshots and detailed, highly actionable tips. More than 10,000 customers later, it’s still going strong.
Don’t beg your friends for money!
You probably don’t need any outside investment to begin. The vast majority of respondents in the study started their business for less than $1,000, and nearly half for $100 or less. In Vancouver, Canada, Nicolas Luff started with only $56.33, the cost of a business license. Others started only with a domain name and a free WordPress account.
It wasn’t just online businesses that started on the cheap. Michael Hanna started an unconventional mattress store after being laid off from his job in media sales. A friend of his who owned a furniture store offered him an unwanted truckload of mattresses, figuring that Michael could sell them one at a time on Craigslist. Instead of Craigslist, though, Michael found a car dealership that had recently gone out of business. He was able to rent the space at a huge discount, and he opened his first store while learning on the job.
Even though Michael originally knew nothing about the mattress business, three years later Mattress Lot produces more than $1 million in revenue.
The chart below illustrates the average startup cost from the businesses we examined.

Image Credit: Mike Rohde.

Note: I sometimes hear from people who say that not all businesses can be started on the cheap. This is true. If you want to open a factory, you might need more than $100. If you want to found a VC-backed tech start-up, you might need to woo investors. But the point remains: you can start many different kinds of businesses without going into debt. All things are equal, why not take that route if the costs are low?

Lesson: Whenever possible, start quickly and start cheap. (And most of the time, it is possible.)
If you do need money, you can find a way.
Emma Reynolds had an idea for a consultancy that would work with big companies to improve their staffing and resourcing. She calculated that she would need at least $17,000 to start the new firm. There was just one problem: Emma was 23 and unlikely to get a business loan.
Emma and her business partner Bruce realized that despite this, they could probably get a car loan. Bruce proceeded to do just that, borrowing $17,000 for a car and then investing the funds in the business with Emma instead. They paid back the car loan within ten months, and the bank never found out that there was no actual car. Now the profitable firm employs twenty people and has multiple offices in four countries.

Another example: Shannon Oakey was turned down for a small bank loan despite excellent financials and a strong business plan. Shannon took her business elsewhere: to Kickstarter, where her project was fully funded. Shannon printed out a copy of the final results and mailed it to the loan officer who had rejected her—with a lollipop inside the printout.

Lesson: If you really need a loan, don’t take “no” as the final answer. Consider alternatives. Bootstrap. Hustle. Figure it out. (Note: Borrowing money for a non-existent car is at your own risk!)
Get to the first sale as quickly as possible.
Nick Gatens put up a portfolio site for his photographs and sold a $50 print for the first time. What’s the big deal? When you’ve never sold something before–i.e. never had a stranger comes to your website and hands over their credit card–the first time is flooring. Here’s what Nick said:
“It took me a long time to add the order button on my site. For a while I kept blaming it on technical issues—a WordPress glitch, the need for design improvement, and so on. Finally I realized I was waiting for no good reason. I put the offer out there and made a sale. It felt great!”
Lesson: Does your site have a PayPal button on it? If not, add one today!
A trend or controversial idea can also reveal a business opportunity.
Jason Glaspey was a follower of Paleo, the controversial diet that is both loved and ridiculed. Jason noticed a common problem among fellow devotees: because of the requirement for regular shopping and planning, Paleo was hard to follow on a regular basis.
Jason created Paleo Plan, a membership site that offers shopping lists and ongoing guidance. The goal of Paleo Plan is to keep its customers on track, with detailed shopping lists and ongoing recommendations. The project now brings in more than $5,000 a month.
Lesson: When large groups of people love and hate something, it’s a good sign there’s a business model hiding in plain sight. Get paid by making things easy for the people who love it.
You can be one person… or maybe two.
Nathalie Lussier had lost weight and discovered a new way of life by following a raw foods diet. She then set up a successful business teaching people how they could do the same thing, using webinars, courses, and personal coaching. One of the tipping points came when Nathalie discovered that the initial name she had chosen, Raw Foods Switch, could also be rendered Raw Foods Witch. Nathalie jumped into character, dressing up with a broom and pointed black hat.
Within a year, the business grew to more than $60,000 a year in net income. What’s not to love? Just one thing: Nathalie liked raw foods, but that wasn’t all she liked. She was also a programmer who had set up the entire database and backend operation for Raw Foods Witch. She wanted to put those skills to greater use, and she felt like she could help aspirational entrepreneurs build their business.
Instead of shutting down the raw foods business, however, Nathalie put it on auto-pilot, using auto-responders and repeating webinars to essentially market the business on its own. Then she switched over to a new site, NathalieLussier.com, where she offers specific consulting services based on business-building and technology.
Nathalie now earns a good living from both businesses, with RawFoodsWitch.com essentially running on its own as she focuses her efforts on the new site.
Lesson: Clone yourself for fun and profit. It’s not necessarily about doing more, it’s about being smart.
Notice what frustrates you, then figure out a way to correct it. [TIM: This is my business model for almost everything]
In Portland, Oregon I met Sarah Young, who opened a yarn store at the height of the recession despite no business background. When I asked Sarah, “What made you think you would succeed?” her answer was astute.
“I wasn’t an entrepreneur,” Sarah said, “But I was a shopper. Other yarn stores were cramped and unfriendly. There wasn’t really a space you could go to hang out. I knew I wasn’t the only knitter who felt this way, so I decided to create an alternative.”
Sarah followed up, renting retail space and decorating for the grand opening of Happy Knits, a welcoming space for knitters and their families. The last part was important: most (though not all) knitters are women, so Sarah set up a play area for kids and a WiFi area for non-knitting partners. Customers are welcome to stay as long as they like.
You can see Sarah and hear more about Happy Knits in this video trailer.
[Note: in the trailer, Sarah tells the story of her first $1,000 day. We filmed this a few months ago, and when I recently caught up with her, she told me about the store's first $10,000 day. Business is great and Happy Knits now has six employees.]
Lesson: See something missing? Maybe you’re not the only one. Pay attention to inefficiencies, which may be opportunities to provide something better.
To make an extra $35,000 a year, be open to change.
One of the most insightful stories came from a source who preferred to be anonymous, a gent who tweaked a single variable in his sales page. Everything else was constant:

On one sales page I had $49, and on another $89. Nothing was different at all—same copywriting, same order process, same fulfillment. To be honest, I thought that $49 was a better price, but I had set that price somewhat arbitrarily. Guess what? Conversion went down [for $89]… slightly. But overall income actually increased! …
I then decided to test it at $99. Why not, right? But from $89 to $99 I saw a bit more of a drop-off, and I got worried. I’m now back at $89, and even with the lower conversion factored in, I worked out that I’ve given myself a $24 raise on every product that sells.
These days we are selling at least four copies a day. If everything else remains consistent, I’ll make $35,040 more this year . . . all from one test.

This single, unexpected tweak resulted in more than $35,000 a year in net income. His last words to me were: “I’ve decided to try some more tests.”
Lesson: Test everything. If you’re not good at testing, however, at least test pricing. [TIM: Here's one helpful tool you might get obsessed with: Unbounce.com]
Give them an offer they can’t refuse.
What separates a decent offer from a compelling offer that you simply must purchase? I learned this lesson in Anchorage, Alaska, when I talked with Scott McMurren, co-founder of Alaska TourSaver, the leading coupon guide for visitors coming to Alaska.
Scott explained how it worked. Every year, more than a million visitors head to the frontier state, and many of them travel independently. Alaska is a beautiful place, but it’s also expensive. To keep costs down, Scott worked with hotels, restaurants, and tour providers all across the state. He put pressure on them to provide real savings instead of the usual minor discounts that other coupons offered. (In the TourSaver guide, most deals are Buy-1-Get-1-Free or 50% off.)
Then Scott make an important decision: instead of pricing his coupon book for twenty bucks or so, like some competitors did, Alaska TourSaver would sell on an annual basis for just under $100. Because the deals are so valuable, it’s a no-brainer for most travelers to pick up the package. Scott’s pitch is: “Get this coupon book, use it once, and it will pay for itself. Then you’ll have hundreds of additional coupons to use as well.”
Lesson: Make your offer so compelling that buyers have no reason to say no. Give them an offer they can’t refuse. (Bonus tip: every compelling offer includes an element of urgency, the reason why buyers should take action right now. “Supplies are limited! Don’t wait!”)
Give people what they want (not just what they say they want).
Kyle Hepp is a wedding photographer who travels the world from her home base in Santiago, Chile. Kyle’s clients tend to be young and hip, and they’re drawn to her work because it is non-traditional. Sometimes they even say they don’t want any traditional wedding shots. “We’re not into old-school,” was how one couple put it.
Kyle agrees with them and spends her time at the wedding getting fun, candid shots that she knows the couple will like. But that’s not all. Having done this for a while, Kyle knows that what her clients want and what they say they want may be different—and she also knows that the families of the bride and groom may have preferences of their own. Here’s how she handles these competing desires:

On the day of the wedding, I’ll grab them and say, “Let’s get your family and just do a couple of traditional shots.” I’ll make it quick and painless. I make sure everyone is laughing and having a good time and it’s not those awful, everybody-stare-at-the-camera-and-look-miserable kinds of shots. And then after the wedding, when I deliver those photos, either the bride and groom’s parents will be thrilled to have those pictures (which in turn makes the couple happy), or the bride and groom themselves will end up saying they’re so happy that we did those shots.

Kyle goes above and beyond by giving her photography clients what they really want… even if they hadn’t realized it themselves.
Lesson: Dig deeper to uncover real needs. Give people what they really want.
Put happiness in a box and sell it.
What do people really, really want? They want something positive added to their lives or something negative removed. The best microbusinesses do this in different ways—making it easier to travel the world, for example, or making customers feel special. But when you talk with business owners, many focus on the descriptions of their business instead of how their product or service will actually help people.
Consider these different approaches in explaining the mission of the V6 Ranch, an unconventional vacation destination in Parkfield, California:

Descriptive (Boring): Our business enables visitors to ride horses and sit around the campfire.
Benefits (Inspirational): Our business helps visitors be someone else for a day. The message we try to send is “Come stay with us and be a cowboy.”

Isn’t the second option so much better? Sell happiness (benefit) instead of merely describing your business (features).
Lesson: As much as possible, focus your business messaging on adding something positive or removing something negative from customers’ daily routines.
Forget traditional demographics. Focus on psychographics instead.
In Arcata, California, Charlie Jordan and Mark Ritz teamed up to start the Kinetic Koffee Kompany. They had great coffee, but that wasn’t enough—these days, there are plenty of small businesses making great coffee.
What set the Kinetic Koffee Kompany apart was their target market: they focused specifically on the outdoors community, pitching bike shops and “gear retailers” on carrying their stock. They showed up at races and made a name for themselves among groups interested in active hobbies. Instead of competing with Starbucks, Charlie and Mark made their own market.
Lesson: Figure out who “your people” are and serve them. Don’t group them according to traditional demographics unless you have a good reason to.
Offer a “no pain, all gain” refund option to build confidence.
Nev Lapwood was a snowboarding instructor who created a set of instructional DVDs that sold around the world. Nev had a good business model almost from the beginning, but he decided to kick it up a notch, offering to refund his customers 110% of their purchase price if they didn’t like the product. Sales increased, and Nev applied the same approach with foreign translations of his DVDs.
I asked Nev if this had become a problem with people requesting habitual refunds. His response: nope, not at all. The business now produces more than $240,000 a year in net income.
Lesson: Build trust by making it easy to trust you. Offer a strong guarantee, and don’t make people jump through hoops to get a refund.
[TIM: 110% sound familiar? Check out the below. Congrats again, Nev!]

“Marketing is like sex (only losers pay for it).”
This quote, originally from a 2010 Fast Company article, aptly describes how the roles of marketing and paid advertising have changed. The vast majority of business owners I surveyed had built their customer base without any paid advertising at all. Instead, they did so largely through word of mouth.
I tested this hypothesis through my [Chris] own $10,000, Ten-Hour “Marketing and Sex” experiment—placing a series of paid ads for a travel service I operate and comparing them to the efforts of “hustling,” or connecting with friends and readers in a free, organic manner. The results were clear: I made far more money through the hustling efforts than through the paid advertising methods.
Lesson: If paid advertising proves to work for your business, by all means, don’t quit. But before you go down that road, consider “hustling” instead—the gentle art of self-promotion, and making something interesting that others will be eager to share for free.
Plan your product launch long in advance, and make people line up to purchase.
Like a Hollywood movie, you want to build anticipation before launching anything. Use the “dark and stormy night” approach to tell stories and lead people into a great experience—not just a sale.
Adam Baker and Karol Gajda’s Only72.com project illustrates this concept well. Twice a year, they line up affiliates and partners to push through a megasale of discounted online products… for only 72 hours. Each sale produces a six-figure payday for Adam, Karol, and the affiliates—because they’ve learned to build anticipation.

Free bonus: wondering how to launch your first product? Here’s a 37-Step Product Launch checklist. Pay it forward by making a great product or service and launching well.

Lesson: Get people excited! Then give them what they want.
Turn disaster into recovery—then sell recovery.
Ridlon “Sharkman” Kiphard was on an island in Fiji, operating his first big tour for Live Adventurously, an alternative tour operator for those who like to play hard. The first half of the trip had been great, but then the call came: the chief of the neighboring island, which they were scheduled to visit the next day, had died. His death called for a mandatory 100 days (!) of mourning. Suddenly, Sharkman had nine high-paying guests… and nowhere to go.
In Sharkman’s words, here’s how the story unfolded:

“This was when doing our research earlier, and really knowing the area, paid off. We managed to extend our stay where we were by one night and spent the time feverishly cobbling together plans. We chartered an aircraft; contacted numerous hotels, resorts, and dive operators; got recommendations; did some more research; and booked the group into a newly opened property on a remote island. The transition went smoothly, the entire rest of the trip came off without a hitch, and it was as if it had been planned that way the entire time.”

Over and over, I heard stories like these—of how an impending disaster turned into a moment of strength. In Sharkman’s case, his guests were highly impressed with how the team managed the problem. Some of them offered to pay extra to cover the additional costs incurred with the change, and all went on to provide strong referrals for Live Adventurously.
Lesson: Stick it out! (Bonus: The value of failure is overrated. Everyone always wants to know about failure because of some convoluted theory that you must fail more often than you succeed. “You learn more from your mistakes…” etc. Why not succeed from the beginning? Some people do. [TIM: In other words, learn from other people’s mistakes instead, when possible.)
***

Wrap-up: Your Turn

The constant themes in our study were freedom and value: freedom is what we all want, and value is the way to achieve it. Over and over, I found business owners who had created their own freedom (and a great income) by making something useful and desirable for their customers.
It’s easy to think that these are isolated examples, or that you can’t achieve the same results, but the micro-business phenomenon is happening all over the world in different ways.
Follow the path of these stories and make actionable plans. Pick one thing, get it on the calendar, and do it in the next week. Just do something.
Lesson: Don’t kill the dream! Live the dream!
###
Odds and Ends:
- If you have enjoyed the muse example series in the past, you will love Chris’ new book, The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future.
- If you’re interested in product launches, check out this oddly named (cough, cough, scratch head, scratch head) piece in Forbes: The Tim Ferriss Effect.
- Are you a writer, or an aspiring writer? Read this: “How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day.”

Five Reasons to Create Online Videos for Your Customers

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Five Reasons to Create Online Videos for Your Customers:
from New Research on Lead Generation through Web 2.0 Media | Marketing ... by Guest Blogger

A guest post by Jim Dicso of SundaySky.
When consumers shop online, they expect to receive the same personalized attention they get in-store, with engaging experiences throughout their decision-making process. To create those engaging online experiences, innovative marketers are turning to online video.
Interested in maximizing your brand’s success with online video? Here are five thoughts to consider.
1. Search engines favor video and structure their results to reward sites that use it
Consequently, online marketers are investing more to promote their videos. One investment that goes a long way towards attracting higher-quality visitors is making on-site videos scalable. That ensures reach for long-tail keywords, which drive the highest-quality traffic and best conversion rates.
2. Pre-roll ads bring your prospects back
The average consumer interacts with your brand several times before conversion. An effective way to bring site “abandoners” back and recover lost traffic is with retargeted ads designed to re-engage abandoners based on their previous behavior on your website.
New online video technology advances retargeted advertising by presenting abandoners with personalized pre-roll ads based on their shopping history and relevant deals. Retargeted pre-roll ads outperform traditional retargeted banner ads with higher conversion rates and often with above-average order value, leading to a significant return on ad spend.
3. On-site video increases conversion rates
When videos are properly produced, they captivate users. Video availability also enhances credibility and improves visitors’ impressions of the website, even among folks who do not view them.
New smart video technology enhances the potential of on-site videos even more by generating videos in real time. As price, seasonal deals, and last-minute offers change, product videos are created on the fly to overcome the challenges of manual video production. The result is a richer and more engaging shopping experience with higher conversion rates.
4. Online video can be an effective customer service tool
A company’s ability to retain customers depends largely on the quality of service throughout the customers’ lifetime with the brand. Use video for product demonstrations, to provide order and provisioning status, or to deliver complex bills, statements, and invoices with an easily digestible explanation of usage and fees. Companies pursuing this approach have customers who make more informed decisions and less calls to the contact center, which results in lower support costs, greater trust and credibility, and higher customer satisfaction.
5. Online video makes for more impactful nurturing campaigns
The effectiveness of email campaigns, newsletters, loyalty programs, and customer portals can be enhanced with personalized offerings that resonate based on profile, shopping history, and browsing trail.
Personalized video helps nurture, upsell, and retain existing customers. The open rate for video newsletters, for example, is two to three times higher than it is for text. Personalized video newsletters can include a greeting with the recipient’s name and display promotional offerings based on browsing history, geography, or preference segmentation.
These five applications of online video bridge the gap between live and virtual experiences for the consumer. Plus, they offer the most streamlined way to present information in all your customers’ touch points with your brand.
Jim Dicso is president and chief revenue officer of SundaySky.
(Photo courtesy of Bigstock: Happy Woman)

How to Prepare Your Press Release for the Search Engines

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:41:00 +0000

How to Prepare Your Press Release for the Search Engines:
from Blogging Tips by Guest Author

With search engine rankings playing such an important part in online business success, press releases have quickly become the primary method of gaining top rankings for your keywords by using paid distribution to put your press release across the Internet on major news websites as well as distribution through RSS.

This content will essentially discuss two things:

The different strategies distribution services use to get you those top rankings.

What you need to do to ensure that your press release gets you to the top (and hopefully helps you stay there).

What is Search Engine Optimization?

In the simplest of words, search engine optimization (SEO) is about making sure that your website shows up as high in search engine results as possible when users search for information / products / services in your industry.
One of the biggest (and most successful) strategies of doing this is to ensure that you get as many other websites as possible to link to your website. The more, the merrier (and to a certain extent, the better chance you have of ranking high in search engine results).
With competition for the top page (and especially for the top 3 listings) of search results extremely intense, quality links (from high ranking websites in your industry) are at a premium.

So how can a single press release help you with that?

Let’s find out.

Keyword-Based Search Engine Presence

Online press release distribution services have evolved to include complimentary services such as search engine optimization and press release tracking (to determine where your press release is eventually displayed, and to find out how much traffic a press release has brought in).
One of the keys to building a high-profile search engine presence is to have quality links pointing towards your website. When you press release is distributed to newspapers and media outlets, it is NOT posted on their websites.

So where are the links coming from?

From the distribution service archiving / posting your press release itself.

Websites that place the PR service’s RSS Feed on their website (incidentally, this means that your feed will be ‘cycled’ out as new press releases come in).

Newspapers, journalists and media outlets that post your press release and / or write a story based on your press release in their publication, blog or website.

Essentially, a press release is like a ‘shout-out’ in time – you have a limited amount of time make your impact on the media before your news becomes old news and is replaced by fresh press releases.

What can we learn from this?

Sending out a press release is no guarantee of better search engine rankings. The primary purpose of a press release remains the same: to sell your story to the media. Your success in this regard will determine whether the media will run your story, and in the process, build links for you.
Another aspect of search engine visibility is how well your press release is optimized for the search engines. Building links and optimizing your content goes hand in hand; without either one your efforts would be start failures.

Formatting for SEO

Formatting your press release for SEO requires two steps:

Keyword optimization

Linking strategy

Let’s take them one by one.

Keyword Optimization

When you search for something on Google or Yahoo (or the search engine of your choice), you use key-phrases to indicate your query. For example, if you’re looking for news on Saddam Hussein, you’ll type something like “Saddam Hussein” or “Saddam Hussein news”.
Search engines, on the other hand, rank websites and web pages by a variety of factors, in which one of them is relevance, or how relevant a particular page is for a certain keyword.
Keyword optimization involves preparing your press releases so that when someone searches for information in your target market, your press release is seen as being as relevant as possible by the search engine.

Linking Strategy

The second important part of optimizing your press releases is to use a linking strategy. Note that free press release distribution is always a text-based submission, so you will not be able to add any HTML tags – i.e. you cannot add your keyword-optimized links into the press release.
For paid distribution, it’s a different ballgame. You can place links in your press release pointing to your website with the anchor text of those links exactly as the primary keywords that you know are relevant for your business (keywords that people would be using to search for information in your target market).
Placing links to your website within the press release then means that wherever this press release is fully displayed on the Internet, it will count not only as one link (in the contact information box), but as multiple links for search terms that are highly relevant for your niche.
Alternatively, you can pay the distribution service to optimize the press releases themselves. Usually, the press release distribution service will be able to take care of all aspects of press release optimization, including keyword optimization and placing links in your press release.

Getting High Rankings

A press release is no guarantee for your business to get high rankings in the search engines. Instead, your press release is a time-sensitive opportunity for your business to get noticed by the media.
Your success in the search engines (based on your SEO press release) directly depends on how well your story sells and how well your press release is received by the media.
Don’t be pulled in by the hype of search engine optimization for press releases. It is a complimentary, value-added service that you can just as well perform yourself.
Instead, keep in your mind that you are paying the press release distribution services to do one primary thing:
Project your presence (via your press release) to a highly targeted market on as wide a scale as possible. The story, the content, the ‘selling’ part of your press release…
That is the only key to success with SEO press releases. Don’t get me wrong. Search engine optimization is important. However, don’t look to replace your regular search engine marketing strategy with distributing press releases.
A press release performs a specific purpose, and so does your search engine marketing strategy. Both are for different purposes. Your SEM strategy will ensure long-term presence and visibility on the search engines.
Your press release, on the other hand, is a limited opportunity to promote a specific event related to your company.
Do you have any tips on optimizing SEO Press release?
This guest post was written by Bill, who is the author of seoarticlewriteservice.com, a popular blog that provides Guaranteed SEO Services to small business people and affiliate marketers. Subscribe to his RSS feed for more SEO Tips.

Copyright © 2012 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us so we can take legal action immediately.

Three Quick Steps for Turning Content into Conversations about Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Three Quick Steps for Turning Content into Conversations about Your Business:
from Content Marketing Institute by Juan Martinez

Establishing a content marketing approach can be daunting. Even the largest brands with a generous supply of resources to commit to the process often struggle to determine the right method for generating and distributing content. So for small businesses with limited resources and staff, content marketing might seem like an unnecessary luxury.
However, content marketing can build brands, drive engagements and, ultimately, lead to vital conversions. For these reasons, no company — no matter how big or small — can afford to avoid to ignore its benefits.
The following three-step guide to building a content marketing strategy for small businesses can help you turn content into conversions.

Step 1: Start a blog

Before posting content on your blog, you should determine your target audience and its primary interests. For example, Mike Klassen, author of “Increase Sales & Build Deeper Connections: Maximizing Your Content to Boost Sales and Generate Better-Quality Leads,” says “[marketing] content should not necessarily be about the exact product or service you offer but what it’s going to do for your customers.”
Klassen consults small businesses on content marketing strategy. He says he often finds that the notion of content marketing, “scares the hell out of some people.” Despite this fear, it’s essential that marketers blog because, as Klassen also says, “a blog gives people a reason to come back to the site. Most small businesses think throwing up a website and a sales letter should be good enough. But nobody’s sales letter is that good.”
The frequency with which content is posted to a blog should be determined by how motivated your employees are to write. While it’s important to produce enough content to keep readers interested, it’s also important for marketers to not force the issue by posting boring or redundant articles.
“The reality is most people who have a fear of starting a blog don’t have something to say every day,” Klassen says. He recommends posting at least one article each week and increasing output if interest and ambition develop.

Step 2: Distribute your content

Just posting articles to your blog won’t give you the reach you need to connect with prospects. Social media is simple-to-use, cheap, and effective, so to extend your influence, you need to use sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest to share your content.
Klassen recommends brands move beyond “just tweeting and doing a status update.” He says that he urges clients to monitor LinkedIn Answers’ Q&A section to see if people are asking questions about your blog posts. “It’s an ideal place to go in, and answer the question, and share additional content.”
Content distribution isn’t just about sharing your content on social media. Content discovery platforms enable you to integrate content below articles on premium publisher sites so articles are presented to readers who are actively looking to discover new and interesting things. If you have a limited budget, you can use a self-serve platform to determine daily budgets and cost-per-click in order to distribute content to peak audiences for as long as you think the information is relevant.

Step 3: Repurpose your content

Most articles live on a blog’s homepage for a few days and then get buried in an archive. If you’re fortunate, readers will share one of your posts with their friends and the post will continue to circulate several weeks or months after it’s originally published. In order to ensure that interesting articles continue to drive engagement long after their original publication dates, it’s helpful to repurpose some of the most relevant content contained in your posts for use in other interactive formats.
“How you ultimately repurpose your materials will be dependent upon the industry you’re in and where your prospects are,” Klassen says. He recommends webcasts, podcasts, videos, and even PDFs for content repurposing, though he cautions marketers to determine the right channels based on where their prospects are most engaged.
“I did a talk with a group of business people and a woman from a cosmetic brand was in attendance,” Klassen explains. “Video is an obvious channel for the cosmetics industry, for makeovers [and displaying products], for example. Video will be a more likely path for this woman’s content than a white paper or audio would.”
To learn more about blogging, check out our Ultimate Guide to Blogging.

5 New Twitter Tools to Boost Your Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:36:00 +0000

5 New Twitter Tools to Boost Your Marketing:
from Social Media Examiner by Leon Widrich

Are you seeing the results you want from your Twitter activities?
There are over 1,000,000 different apps for Twitter and a new one is added every second.
This means it is often quite easy to get confused finding those that actually add real value to your day-to-day tweeting.
I took a look at some of the latest and most promising Twitter tools to get you tweeting like a pro.
So, if you think it is time to up your game with some new tools, keep reading.
Here are 5 tools to help you power up your Twitter marketing efforts.

#1: Twylah—Make Your Tweets Live Longer

One of the tools that can make a huge difference to your impact on Twitter is Twylah. Their tagline is “Make Your Tweets Shine” and that is exactly what it does.
According to research by bit.ly, your links on Twitter will only last 3 hours. With Twylah, however, you can give your tweets a much longer life—literally forever—displayed beautifully on a custom page.

A beautiful fan page for your tweets.

The way it works is very simple. After you set up your own Twylah account, this tool will capture, save and display each of your tweets on your personalized Twylah page.
Before Twylah, when you glanced over someone’s Twitter stream, you didn’t pick up any great insights about the person. But when you glance over someone’s Twylah page, you get a very good picture of what his or her business or personal Twitter page is all about.
Now, you can even click into each individual tweet on any page. Each of these is surrounded by lots of other relevant and related tweets.

Keep visitors engaged longer with your tweets.

When reaching out to Twylah founder Eric Kim, he mentioned to me:

“Because there is so much related content found on the page, visitors spend much more time with your tweets than they would do on Twitter instead—up to 40 times longer.”

A feature that is unique to Twylah is the Power Tweet. If you find a link, instead of sending people to that article, you can send them to a designated Twylah page.

Send a Power Tweet to show other related tweets.

If you want to give more strength to your tweets, be sure to get on the invite list for Twylah. It has had a tremendous impact for me.

#2: NewsMix—Discover the Best Twitter Content for Your Business

A great app I discovered recently is NewsMix. It solves a crucial problem I have with Twitter. If you are new to Twitter, there isn’t much value in your stream yet.
Imagine if there was a channel available for you, filled with great curators tweeting exactly about the topics you are interested in.
That’s exactly what NewsMix does. It helps you discover great topics based on top influencers for any topic you are interested in.

Choose a channel to follow or create your own.

You can easily create “channels” to follow on a Flipboard-style interface. Your channels can either be made of individual Twitter users you put together, or even whole Twitter lists.

Make a collection of top experts in your niche.

NewsMix then allows you to follow these channels either on an iPad or through the web-based version. Here is a powerful social media channel I recently created:

Follow your subscriptions (like on Flipboard) on your browser or iPad.

#3: SocialBro—Provides Powerful Twitter Analytics

SocialBro is an app that fits well into everyone’s toolbox. It is a dashboard designed to filter in the absolute best analytics for your Twitter account in an easily accessible way.
With Twitter, the quote “You can’t improve what you can’t measure” hits the nail on the head.
The first feature I greatly enjoy is to see your Twitter community in charts. You can group your followers by lots of different aspects, for example:

Language
Time zone
Number of followers
Tweets sent per day

Find out in which time zones your followers live.

In my case, what I discovered with SocialBro was that over 13% of my followers are in the UK, and I was only posting for US time zones. I quickly changed and moved some of my updates to reach the people in the UK as well.
You can go even deeper and localize exactly where each of your followers lives on a map.

Get the exact location of all of your followers.

The final feature I want to highlight from SocialBro is their list-management option. A key to make Twitter work, especially as you grow your network, is to keep track of the most important people via Twitter lists.
SocialBro makes it much easier for you to copy lists from one account to another, save lists as a .txt file or specifically move larger groups of people into new lists.

Easy list management with SocialBro.

#4: Ifttt—Connect Twitter with Your Other Social Activities

An app that can help you automate your social activities in a very powerful way is Ifttt, meaning “if this then that.” In short, it allows you to connect any two web services together, like Facebook with Instagram or Twitter with Dropbox.
The different ways you can use Ifttt in connection with Twitter are extremely powerful. By simply sending a tweet, you can trigger a large number of different actions for your other social accounts across the web.
Here are 4 ways to use Ifttt for Twitter to make your marketing activities smarter:

Send items that you find in Google Reader and tag with “Tweet” straight to Twitter with Ifttt:

From Google Reader straight to Twitter.
If you post a new picture on Flickr or Instagram, tweet it automatically:

Upload a new image and post it immediately on Twitter.
If you favorite a tweet, add it to your list for reading later in Pocket:

Not enough time to read? Save to Pocket for reading later.
If you publish a new blog post, have Ifttt publish a new tweet straightaway:

Easily publish your blog posts on Twitter.

This is of course only to give you a taste of some of the things you can accomplish with Ifttt and Twitter. There are lots of other connections and channels you can explore for your Twitter account.
Above all things, this tool is amazing to discover your own creative ways of using the Internet and Twitter that no one else has done before.

#5: Tweriod—Find the Best Time to Tweet to Reach More Followers

The last tool I want to introduce you to is called Tweriod. This has a very powerful algorithm to analyze your Twitter account and then find out which times will have the most impact for you to tweet.
All you have to do is sign in with your Twitter account. The app then prepares a report for you and after a few minutes it sends you a direct message on Twitter with the results. It gives you a detailed breakdown of the most likely days and hours when your followers will be online.

Times when your followers are online the most.

Once you have your best times to tweet, you will also get a graph like the one below. A recent integration with Buffer allows you to start tweeting at these optimal times through your Buffer account.

See your optimal tweeting times in a graph and set them inside Buffer.

Tweriod’s algorithm analyzes the performance of your own previous 200 tweets, your followers and the performance of their past tweets and excludes automation apps such as Twitterfeed, dlvr.it, etc. This provides you with the data you need most.
Equipped with these 5 power tools I am sure you will be able to up your game on Twitter considerably.
What do you think? Which other tools do you use to make Twitter work for you? Which one of the tools mentioned above might be a great fit for your workflow? Please share your comments in the box below.

Four Ways Content Marketing Builds on Thought Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:34:00 +0000

Four Ways Content Marketing Builds on Thought Leadership:
from Business 2 Community by Craig Pearce

Content marketing is now an integral element of public relations and is an extension of the notion of thought leadership. It varies the thought leadership approach in four ways:

1. It includes content not generated by the organisation
2. It can include content that is not necessarily ‘insightful’ or ‘high-end’
3. It broadens the range of issues an organisation might offer content on
4. It increases the number of organisational employees who might speak, or represent the organisation, on certain topics.
Whether these aspects manifest themselves in an organisation’s approach to content marketing will be entirely dependent on its communication and marketing strategies, especially its reputation management and branding dimensions.

The C word in content marketing

C = content. What’s it all about?
Beyond thought leadership, or not? The answer is yes. Not all content needs to be cutting edge, ground breaking etc. But it should provide value to the target audience.
It can help organisations cover the broad ground of their remit (or their brand) that might otherwise have not been possible due to resources. For instance, providing an insightful, helpful comment on valuable content relevant to target audiences and then sharing it can be a worthwhile activity.
By choosing some core pillars to provide original content on, then having a ‘satellite’ of secondary topics where a content curation aesthetic is applied, can offer organisations the opportunity to have their cake and eat it too.
Certainly, it can help communicate and engage with secondary target audiences where marketing and communication resources are not normally expended. A ‘reverse-flow’ positive impact on primary target audiences can be instigated, as the secondary target audiences become sharers and advocates of that curated information that received the imprimatur of the organisation.
And as word-of-mouth (WOM) now has social media through which to accelerate its ‘virality’, this momentum of sharing has even greater potential than it once did. Especially since the digital age has cultivated the behaviour of social sharing (digital gossip) amongst its netizens.
Just remember: “Your story travels further the less you mention your brand.”

Branding and positioning in content marketing

The social infinity does not seem to have canvassed the aspect of content marketing that relates to positioning and branding in great depth. Important elements in this dialectic are the sorts of content that are embraced by an organisation and who, from the organisation, does the ‘speaking’.
Further elements include what role does content (and content curation) play in the broader content marketing context, are there any dimensions that are ‘off-limits’ and what is the rationale driving the content marketing plan?
Firstly, in regard to the content itself, each element of content that emanates from an organisational employee contributes to an organisation’s branding, positioning and, to a lesser but still potentially significant degree, its differentiation. Choosing these topics should be driven by the strategy; content topics should not be picked up randomly simply because they are ‘topics du jour’ and of immediate interest to target audiences (i.e. how do these topics relate to brand-target audience relationships?).
Secondly, in traditional command-and-control organisations and those that apply a similar authoritarian approach to their communication, it has been a CEO-and-damn-the-troops mentality. I don’t espouse this approach but, regardless of this, whatever approach an organisation takes will impact on how much content it can feasibly generate and curate.
From a pure practicality perspective, whilst thought leadership can be applied in a limited but still quite effective manner when adopting this antediluvian approach, it is simply not viable to apply it to content marketing:
• A primary reason for this is that content curation is more than just retweeting or otherwise sharing. There needs to be a qualitative value-add from the organisation to some degree some of the time (actually a lot of the time, but I’m taking the low [expectation] road here)
• Involving employees in content creation educates employees on their industry which, one would think, helps them contextualise their work efforts and give them information to get better at their job, increasing productivity
• Employee involvement increases commitment to their organisation – likely to increase productivity – and helps them become a stronger organisational advocate
• Utilising normal (non-marketing Martians?) minimises the need to hire additional marketing employees and can optimise financial investment into the program – increasing productivity.
The most interesting and challenging aspect of this dimension, however, relates back to who are those doing the curating and how is this contextalised within an organisation’s branding?
• What are they commenting on?
• What is the nature of their value add?
• Is there a comms or marketing employee facilitating all this curation, or is it the relevant individual doing it solo after, perhaps, some initial briefing and some guidelines have been set? This relates to the third point I flagged above.
Fourthly, and this is perhaps the most fundamental aspect, the rationales driving the strategy will determine all of those issues noted above.

The ‘personality’ of content marketing

One of the interesting questions about both content strategy and thought leadership is should it be refined and targeted to within an inch of its focus group-tested life, or should it be sprawling, multi-faceted and reflective of the tumultuous, fast moving environment in which most organisations exist – and which, in fact, mirror target audiences’ existences?

I suggest it probably all goes back to overarching communication strategy:
• the drivers of communication strategy
• what market research tells us what will engage target audiences and prompt them to enact required behaviour (e.g. purchase, whisper sweet reputation-enhancing nothings in their contacts’ ears et al)
• perhaps, too, there is a unique emphasis or shading in the content that is delivered via various communication mechanisms
• branding/positioning/differentiation
• and what of the impact on content for each organisational spokesperson due to their own interests, preferences, knowledge, passions and the customer/target audience segment they are responsible for?
Whilst it will be the organisation’s brand/personality that dictates the answers to these points and queries, in general I believe there is room for both schools of thought – the refined and the rambling (i.e. humanistic) – to work hand-in-hand.
A focus on topics and messaging that is relevant to the organisation and engaging for target audiences seems a prerequisite. But, and this is important, to rein in thought leadership or any other content to within a narrow set of parameters risks the organisation being perceived as cold, calculating, self-centred and predictable.
This post is an edited version of an article in a free white paper, The Holy Trinity of public relations. The white paper is available as a free download for all email subscribers to his blog, Public relations and managing reputation. The white paper provides an overview of the strategic dimensions of, and practical implementation tips on, thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances.
Illustration by guydownes.com.au ©]

Content Marketing: Old Wine in a New Vessel

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:48:00 +0000

Content Marketing: Old Wine in a New Vessel:
from Business 2 Community by Francis Moran
Everywhere I turn these days, it seems that content marketing is being touted as the latest must-do for business-to-business technology marketers. And there seems to be considerable angst over how to do it properly.
“Content marketing is a fairly new concept that many marketers are struggling to figure out,” said a recent post on business2community.com. In the post, author Rachel Foster reported on a recent survey of LinkedIn’s B2B Technology Marketer’s Group that asked, “Can you use one word to describe the biggest challenge facing B2B marketing today?” A word cloud of the more than 1,000 comments so far clearly shows ROI to be the dominant concern, followed very closely by content.
In a similar vein, in a round-up earlier this month of the biggest B2B marketing disruptions of 2011, Michael Brenner of B2B Marketing Insider said, “People have been talking about content marketing for at least a couple of years. But in 2011, it really seemed to hit its stride.”
I could cite several additional examples, but I think you get my point. According to a large swath of the B2B braintrust out there, content marketing is the greatest new thing, and we’d better all get aboard.
To which I reply, what the heck took you so long? In my world, content has been the core of everything I’ve done for 30 years now.
I started my career as a newspaper reporter. And what is a newspaper but a content-marketing platform? An audience is attracted to informative and useful expert content that, nominally at least, is not overtly selling anything. Once attracted, that audience can then be marketed to advertisers. Even in the current dismal state of the newspaper industry, the successful titles continue to be those that understand that they must maintain their investments in unique, high-quality content.
As a marketer, most of my time has been spent on the earned-media side of the equation, the side where content rules. While advertising and other paid-media tactics can buy themselves a sufficiently dominant presence to ensure that their overt sales message gets across, media relations and other similar approaches must earn their way in on the strength of the quality and utility — and, usually, the neutrality and non-promotional nature — of their content.
So crafting marketing strategies that rely heavily on content that is informative and useful rather than overtly sales-oriented is nothing new to me. What is new — and certainly what is driving many more marketers to embrace this highly effective approach to engaging with customers rather than just selling to them — is the proliferation of new channels through which good content can be put directly in the hands of customers. Actually, I should turn that around — it’s the proliferation of new channels through which customers can now seek out and access content that they want to consume rather than just the stuff we want to push at them.
I can understand how marketers raised on the milk of push messaging are having a tough time weaning themselves. In the first instance, good content is not easy to develop, and few truly understand that the definition of content covers almost everything you do on the market-facing front. It’s not just big-content pieces like white papers; it’s your web site, your collateral, your blog and the stuff you post to the countless new channels such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more.
Secondly, the effectiveness of what is certainly a far more subtle form of engaging with the marketplace must appear, at first glance, to be less certain and less measurable than the old ways. (Remember that ROI was the only word that appeared more often than content in the word cloud of that LinkedIn survey I referenced at the top of this article, so measuring impact is, understandably, a critical concern.) Fortunately, the fact that most of the new channels available to marketers are digital means that metrics can quite readily be collected and analysed, making the calculation of ROI probably the simplest it has ever been. In the old days, I had to rely on anecdotal reporting or a series of intercept questions when a prospect was first added to the pipeline to identify where that lead had come from; today, I just follow the digital breadcrumbs.
The bottom line is that customers and prospects have always wanted good quality content that informs rather than sells. At the risk of turning this post from a good piece of content marketing into a more overt sales pitch, if you’re having difficulty crafting your content-marketing strategy, give us a call. We’ve been doing it for a very long time and we can show you how to prosper at it.
Francis Moran and Associates is an associated team of seasoned practitioners of a number of different marketing disciplines, all of whom share a passion for technology and a proven record of driving revenue growth in markets across the globe. We work with B2B technology companies of all sizes and at every life stage and can engage as individuals or as a full team to provide quick counsel, a complete marketing strategy or the ongoing hands-on input of a virtual chief marketing officer.

6 Key Customer Engagement Metrics for Improving Online Community ROI

noreply@blogger.com (Reg Nordman) — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:44:00 +0000

6 Key Customer Engagement Metrics for Improving Online Community ROI:
from Business 2 Community by Joshua Paul

The Importance of Online Community Telltales

I took my daughter sailing for the first time last weekend. She was very interested in how I know where to steer.
I explained to her that there are pieces of yarn on the sails that tell me where to point the boat as the wind shifts. They are called telltales. If the yarn on the outside of the sail flaps, I make subtle adjustment to go in that direction. If the inside telltale isn’t straight, I point the boat in that direction.

If only online communities came with telltales….

Well, you’re in luck. They do. Every online community has key ratios that help online community managers and social strategists to know where to point their efforts.
Just as telltales on a sailboat indicate why the boat is slowing and what actions need to be taken to address its performance, the goal of these community engagement metrics is to help organizations understand why certain things are happening and why they are getting certain results.
Here are 6 key customer engagement metrics to measure at least monthly in your online community:

Metric #1) Visit to New Registration Ratio

What It Measures: This ratio measures the ability of your marketing messages and website to recruit and convert people who visit your website into online community members.
How to Measure: Divide the number of new online community registrations by the total number of visitors to your website.
Sample of Visit to New Registration Ratio:

Metric #2) Visit to Login Ratio

What It Measures: Are increases in members accessing your online community a result of more members finding value in your community and returning, or just an overall increase in website visitors?
How to Measure: Track the number of people who visit your website against the number of returning members who log into your online community. Tip: It is also helpful to combine the new registration and returning logins to see the overall community access (new and returning) to website visit ratio.
Sample of Visit to Login Ratio:

Metric #3) Login to Post & Comment Ratio

What It Measures: This ratio indicates whether or not your organization’s online community is seeing an increase in contributions by members.
How to Measure: Create the ratio by tallying the number of forum or blog posts, idea submissions, comments, or file uploads, then dividing it by the total number of logins.
Sample of Login to Post & Comment Ratio:

Metric #4) Post to Comment Ratio

What It Measures: This metric determines if the content being produced in the community is driving engagement.
How to Measure: Compare the number of blog post, forum entries, idea submissions, or file uploads to the number of comments these items receive.
Sample of Post to Comment Ratio:

Metric #5) Login to Action Ratio

What It Measures: By comparing activity with logins, you have a ratio that pinpoints the effectiveness of your community-building tactics inside your community. If you measure activity alone, you don’t know if you are seeing an increase due to better engagement tactics inside your community or a general increase in members visiting your community.
How to Measure: Actions are defined as including blog and forum posts, comments, posting and downloading files, watching videos, “friending” people, sending private messages, and many other actions depending on the community. Divide the sum of these activities by the overall community logins.
Sample of Login Post to Comment Ratio:

Metric #6) Members to Completed Profile Ratio

What It Measures: This ratio gives you an idea of how committed your target audience is to the community.
How to Measure: Divide the number of completed (or mostly completed) member profiles with the overall membership of the community.
Sample of Members to Completed Profile:

Tip: For all of these customer engagement ratios, it is also helpful to track the average so that you can report on the success of a specific time period compared to your online community’s typical performance.

Online Community Takeaway

Tracking an online community’s ROI should not be elusive for companies and membership organizations. Measuring success and making adjustments should not be a mystical skillset. However, understanding online community ratios and tracking customer engagement data is critical.
As online community consultancy, FeverBee, recently blogged, “Without data you’re working in the dark. It’s the community equivalent of judging climate change by looking at the weather outside.”
During the online community planning process, be sure that your online community software platform can support your reporting and business intelligence needs.