I just discovered a brand new Facebook marketing education program called FBInfluence.  I’ve reviewed the whole program and it looks really good.

The delivery is done by Amy Porterfield (she has participated in Social Media Examiner’s Success Summits) and she does an excellent job of being methodical, patient, and easy to listen to.  No hard sell, no fast-talking obscure tips — she sticks to what you really need to know to be successful.

If you want a thorough Facebook marketing overview PLUS detailed tips and references, this is the program for you.  It’s also a great price.

Facebook has become a critical piece of having an integrated online strategy.  So, knowing how to leverage it into more traffic to your business and sales revenue is pretty important.  There’s no better time than now to get started so you can hit the ground running in 2012!

Click here to check it out and sign up!

The home page of a website is the most critical page of the whole site: it is the landing page for your entire business.

The home page must offer a compelling experience of your businesses key value both in feel and in the copy.  And the impact must be immediate—you have on average only 3-5 seconds to get someone’s attention.

In priority order, here are the questions that need to be answered with a minimal amount of copy embedded in a clean and clear design:

1. Is this interesting, entertaining, or critical to me?

You’re competing will all kinds of other personal demands on your viewer’s time: fun activities, tasks that need to be completed, general entertainment, and an endless list.  In a nutshell, what is different about your website?  Convey that in imagery and headlines that reflect your message and your personality.  Be creative, clear, and compelling.

2. What are you offering?

Once you have someone’s attention because your website looks intriguing or compelling, you need to make it obvious what you are offering.  That’s so people know if this is something relevant to them.  If figuring this out is too hard for them, then out the door they go.  So make sure you’ve got something in a headline about what service or product you sell.   Secondarily, have some information in there about why you’re better than anyone else in your unique way of delivering, creating, or servicing.

3. Who are you?

Trust is an important factor in people’s buying decision process.  For you to have people pay for your product, service, or digital offering they need to have a sense of who you are, how credible and responsible you are, whether you’ll deliver, and if you’re reliable.  This is why referrals are so important and the contribution social media makes to your website—all of that visible interaction conveys trust.

You can begin to create credibility with testimonials—one right on the home page—and with a brief description of your business and its credentials.

4. What difference can you make for me?

Making a difference in people’s lives is a key foundation for purchasing.  We don’t buy just because we need it in places like the United States and Europe.  We have so many choices that now we buy because a product or service promises to improve our life experience in some way: we’ll get the girl or guy we want, we’ll have the prosperity we desire, we’ll have fun, or we’ll feel better—and more.  So what difference are you going to create for people who do business with you?

5. What do you want me to do on this page?

Every page of your website needs to have a call to action—and also a flow of action: two different things that relate to one another.

The flow of action is the path you want someone’s eye to follow when they arrive at your website home page (or any landing page for that matter).  Heatmaps for interactions on websites show that the hottest spot on the page is the top left then the flow is to the right diagonally downward.  That’s your critical real estate and you actually want to lead your viewer’s eye on that path so that your messages are reinforced by their natural inclinations.  So the first thing you want them to do is follow that flow.

The second action you want them to take is to either buy what you’re offering on the page (with money, with an email address, or with a click) or go to another page on your website.  You want to make it absolutely clear what they should do next.  If they want to look at something else on your site, browse around, explore the nooks and crannies, then great!   But if they’re short on time make sure you’ve given them the most direct A to B path possible.

6. What do you want me to do then?

If you’re lucky (and good) then you get to answer the last question about what they should do after they’ve taken all the obvious paths and they’re still hanging out.  How can they stay connected to you if they like what they see?  What else can you offer them and how will you do that?  How will you show your appreciation for their time spent on your website?

Invite them to continue to have the latest information about whatever it is you do by signing up for your newsletter, or tips and insights, or action alerts or whatever you want to call it.  Email is still the best way to nurture and encourage sales once they have left your website.

Have something for people to download — with or without an email.  I encourage asking for an email address — if they’re interested enough to download, they’ll probably be interested in more.  At that point, you are expanding an existing relationship instead of creating it from scratch.

Ask them to participate in your social media activities— “Like my page” “Follow me on Twitter” “Follow my business on LinkedIn”— so they can get the latest info delivered where they like to hangout.

Interesting quotes, words of wisdom, jokes, cartoons, suggestions, and encouraging thoughts of the day—these are all ways to appreciate the person who stopped by your website by making just a little difference in their day.

Finally, above all else give your visitors a great experience of you and the personality of your business.

Show them what it’s like to be a valued customer, someone you care about.  This is your opportunity to let them see how you treat the people that matter to your business.

Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte

Presentations are the lifeblood of marketing. Because of that, I make sure that all the presentations I create and/or give have key messages and a path to conveying that message that will empower my audience to take an action. And not just any action, but one that will make a positive difference in their lives.

The absolute best book on how to craft a story line for any presentation that you want to have actually make a difference in the lives of your audience is this one by Nancy Duarte.

This book completely changed how I approach developing presentations — even for very short talks, for information-filled classes, for statistical updates — for anything! I now start with figuring out what action I want to help my audience see is possible. Then I work from there, building the cadence of the talk as Nancy Duarte lays out in this book.

Get it, read it, use it — and it will change both how you speak as well as how you listen. You will know more about the speakers you watch and why they’re effective or not than you ever knew before.

As you can see, I love this book. The reason I love it is because it aligns perfectly with my own commitment to connect from the heart when you’re communicating with people — via marketing collateral, social media, or advertising. The heart is where the action is.



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In thinking about Eric Schmidt’s remarks this week at D9, I’ve got to say that Google seems to still be completely blind to the real issue behind their lack of success in being social.  And it’s not because Eric Schmidt forgot or got sidetracked.  The reason has more to do with core competencies of companies based on their foundational beginnings and their original value.

Google has always created value by serving up search results that hit the spot, delight us, and get us ready to buy.  That comes from a deep focus and expertise on ferreting out the algorithm that connects the need behind our wording, what’s available on the web, how it’s described, and what might not be said but what’s actually in our minds.  Google has created a form of artificial intelligence that is predictive, reactive, learned, and synthesized.  They bring together our search history, where we are, the words we enter, in what context those words often occur, the psychology of how that relates to what is on the web, and, of course, how websites portray themselves.

Facebook, on the other hand, has from the beginning created value by connecting people up – in whatever way made sense to the founders.  Connecting up for dates, friendship, whatever – but the KEY here is CONNECTION.  And everything Facebook does is about that connection: enabling, reinforcing, offering, highlighting, expanding, and so on.  All Facebook’s coding is directed towards that and now connection is what makes the money happen for Facebook.

So here is what we have:  Google’s value and focus has been to find stuff for us using the most advanced engineering possible and Facebook’s value and focus is to get us and keep us connected using their most advanced engineering possible.

Google is an engineering company at heart and Facebook is a social graph company.

And that is why Google doesn’t do social well – and shouldn’t focus on it.  Their core competency and the brilliance of their engineers is in doing what they do: artificial intelligence in finding the needle – or the grain of sand – in the haystack.  And that will continue to be absolutely crucial in our village gone global world.  Facebook will continue to push the bounds of connection and probably continue to not do search well – a reflection of their core competency and brilliance in social connection, not ‘finding things’ engineering.  (A note about Facebook search: internal Facebook search is still Facebook’s effort and it’s bad – I understand they use Bing for the external results and that’s not what I’m talking about – try to find a person or page when you don’t know the first word in the title or name – ugh!).

In summary, my advice to Google => continue to capitalize on your incredible core strengths and don’t squander your resources on other areas of expertise that are completely different.  My advice to Facebook => you better get clear on what you really do well – connection – and up the ante because you’ve got contenders coming along that are going to eat you alive.

The moral to the story for the rest of us: be clear about your unique brilliance and stick to it – no one is everything to everyone and no business has been that for very long with any success.

Don’t blink! Or Facebook will leave you behind with yet another change in how business pages post or how the wall looks or who knows what… And Twitter might restrict access from all those helpful desktop programs like Hootsuite and Seesmic…And LinkedIn will add yet another feature with no documentation…

So how can you keep up?

I have 3 ways I keep on top of social media innovation—kind of a triangulation to figure out what’s going to make the difference for all my clients.

Number 1: I read read read—actually I scan headlines every day from people that focus on new features and actually get a secret heads up on new stuff coming down the line.  I pay close attention to Loic Le Meur on Facebook, TechCrunch on Facebook, ReadWriteWeb on Email, and Mashable—in that order.  For detailed tech innovation I track the startup news on all of those plus the Wall Street Journal Tech section, Mediapost, SmartBrief, and Seeking Alpha.

Number 2: I listen to the thought leaders in social media: Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang, Guy Kawasaki, Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryVee), and Charlene Li.  I look for places I can hear them speak.

Probably the best value for this is the Success Summit series that Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner.  This series is one I NEVER miss.  Fall is for Facebook, Winter is for Blogging and Spring is for Social Media.  In one place over the course of several weeks the Success Summit has usually about 10-12 webinars, transcripts, and presentations that you can download and save for later.  They feature all the thought leaders for the big picture AND the people who have used the tactics to create big success.

In fact, April 20 is the last day to save 34% on the Social Media Success Summit that’s starting in 2 weeks.  I’ve already bought my ticket to all the webinars AND the checked out the bonus material.  This summit currently has over 2000 people signed up from large, medium, and small businesses from all over the world.  As part of the summit you also get to be in a closed LinkedIn discussion group with all these people with the best tips and experiences shared anywhere.

If you haven’t already registered, then click here to register for the Social Media Success Summit 2011 and save 34% (expires April 20) AND get a free sample class.

Number 3: Lastly, I try things out that I find out about.  Here’s the key to that—many of us don’t want to try new stuff out and then have our business look bad, right?  However, if you try something out that’s brand new in social media—that means in the first week—you look great!  You look like an innovator (which you are), you look like you’re with it (which you are) and you look like you are committed to staying on top of new features and ways to keep your community engaged (which you are and they’ll love).

So just do it!  Practice in virtual conversation with your online business community—you need to have a small circle of business that support each other online for this purpose and to also keep each other in the news feed!

So now you know my secrets!  Let’s learn together—let me know what you’ve discovered in the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2011.  You can share here or on my Facebook page—I always love to play with new features there…