This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Content Creates Engagement

Engagement is the buzzword of choice when social media experts get together to pontificate. And while I agree that engagement, and ultimately action, is the payoff of social media, few social media experts talk about how it’s really created. Engagement is not really created by being a nice, genuine, caring and attentive sort of chap on twitter. It’s hard to create much momentum in any kind of social network without some of those qualities, but true engagement, engagement that leads to customers and partners, is created with content. Or, perhaps more accurately, engagement is created with engaging content.

I know you’re likely sick of me talking about the need to create lots of education rich content, but there’s just very few ways around it as a typical small business. Some exceptions, marry into lots of money and buy super bowl ads, get Miley Cyrus to wear your product on stage, or get Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble to argue publicly about the merits of your feature set - baring these, think content creation.

When it comes to effective social media use, I personally push towards using a great deal of energy and activity to create awareness for your content. So, of course if you’re to take this advice, you’ve got to have lots of content. Many people do little more than create small talk on social networks and then wonder why they can’t get an ROI for time spent. Most small businesses will be far better off if they look at their status updates on LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter, not as a way to tell the world about what they are doing (unless it’s creating content), but as a way to shed light on valuable content housed either within the particular social network or elsewhere online.

This means uploading videos to Facebook, creating events, such as webinars and optimizing them using the Facebook Events app, uploading PowerPoint presentations to Slideshare and using the Slideshare app for LinkedIn, and creating a quick hit point out of your latest blog post and pointing to it on twitter. That’s how engagement leads to orders.

I’m not suggesting that you don’t also have to make referrals, point out other people’s great content, and provide great answers to questions posed on that network – that’s just smart networking, regardless of the platform, and it’s also an important trust building function. But, at the end of the day, if someone, looking for a solution, can’t find that you have in detailed, multi-format, education based content, then social media participation for business purposes can feel like a big fat high school mixer.

So, if you’re one of those that’s determined social media is a big fat waste of time, then I’m suggesting that what you’ve really discovered is that your sparkling personality isn’t enough to make social media pay.

Image credit: luc legay

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Is the Online Business Manager a VA on Steroids?

Marketing podcast with Tina Forsyth (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download - subscribe now via iTunes

For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I visited with Tina Forsyth, author of Becoming an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Role with your Clients (and Yourself) Forsyth wrote her book to help train, initially VAs, in more advanced roles of helping business owners “run” the business.

Here’s her official definition of the Online Business Manager: A virtually based support professional who manages online based businesses, including the day-to-day management of projects, operations, team members and metrics.

However she likes to look at the role from a bit of a different angle - what is the purpose of an Online Business Manager beyond ‘what they do’?

The role of the OBM boils down to one simple thing: To free up the business owner so that they can focus their time and energy on the things that only THEY can do in their business.

What she found after writing her book was that yes, lots of VAs and marketing assistants wanted this information, but lots of business owners started to contact her as well to learn where they could get an OBM. Recently she started training would be OBMs in a 16 week certification program.

For the business or individual stuck with too much to do and no way to manage it - the OBM might prove to be a solid answer.

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What’s Your Signature Response to Problems?

I’ve written often that one of the ways to create goodwill, positive buzz and happy customers is to exceed expectations. Responding proactively to problems offers, in my opinion, one of the easiest ways to exceed expectations available.

Problems happen, that’s a fact, and you can choose to respond to customer challenges, problems, let downs, screw-ups and mistakes in one of two ways. You can ignore them and create the kind of friction that drags your trust into the ground or you can respond in such an over the top, out of control, nobody does that kind of way that can turn problems into gold mines. If you want to exceed expectation, choose the latter!

Most everyone is familiar with the Nordstrom’s policy of refund – no time limit, no receipt, no questions asked. It’s an example given whenever someone talks about customer service, but it’s really a signature response to a customer problem and it’s become something that creates incredible word of mouth for them.

Creating what I call your signature response to problem solving takes a little thought, planning, implementation and even training, but it can become a very valuable tool for your organization.

Invite and reward feedback

The first step to making problem solving a core marketing system is to encourage customers to tell you when something’s not right. This may seem like a simple thing but there is plenty of research that suggests somewhere near 90% of your customers experiencing an issue will simply go away quietly unhappy.

You should clearly state in all your marketing copy that you welcome feedback and won’t rest until your customer is thrilled. Spell out guarantees, return policies and make it very obvious how to contact you via phone, mail, web, or email. You should also build satisfaction surveys, results reviews and even random phone follow-ups into your standard operating procedures.

Of course, it’s not enough to just ask for feedback and then send it down a black hole; you’ve got to respond.

Create a response

In order to get the full impact with this idea you need to design the manner in which you will automatically respond in order to solve a customer problem. Some of this can and should be handled through clearly spelled out, no strings attached, guarantees and return policies, but you need to add some flair as well.

Adding some creativity in this step is how you turn a response into a signature response. For example, does the CEO show-up with a bouquet of flowers, does the customer immediately receive a month of service free and a dedicated service rep to help guide them through the challenge, do you do whatever it takes to make it right?

The key here is to do something that gets the customer the result they are after but also offers a little wow that they can’t help notice, because it was unexpected.

Occasionally we receive notes from customers who have purchased one of our products, but feel it isn’t what they thought it would and want to return it. We cheerfully refund their purchase price, but instead of asking them to return it, we ask that they make it a gift to another business owner. It’s a pretty simple thing on our part, but it really creates a warm response each time we offer it.

Empower the team

Another really important piece of the problem solving puzzle is blame. When you make a mistake, admit it and move to fixing it. When your customer makes a mistake, well, move to fixing it. There’s no gain in getting the customer to admit they were wrong, even when they are. One of my favorite business expressions, said to my staff in my best dad voice is: Fix the problem, not the blame.

The way to make sure that your signature response to problems is actually delivered as designed is to empower your staff to fix the problem, not the blame!

Let them know that while you have a set of policies designed to make their life simple and your business profitable, they can do what it takes to make the customer happy. Now, if that makes you more than a little nervous that you will be taken advantage of then perhaps you need to refine whom you are attracting as customers. There will always be people who try to take advantage of your willingness to please, but the key lies in setting the proper expectations up front in all of your marketing messages.

Saving a deal gone bad by reacting in a way that is generally unexpected is how you create positive buzz and customers for life.

Image credit: pixeljones

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Weekend Favs for July Five

I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is from a shot on recent vacation in the Sangre de Cristo Range in the Rockies)

Enjoy!

Good stuff I ran across this week

• Monitoring Social Media Metrics - Nice “how to” article that uses Google Docs to create SM spreadsheet. I know I’ve run across more than one frustrated marketer that was charged by the boss with showing some metric on the effectiveness of Social Media.
• Keyword CSV file on Yahoo Pipes Demo - this video shows you how to take a series of keywords from a CSV file and uses Yahoo Pipes to run each keyword through various searches.
• GraphJam - Graphs are often used to illustrate business information, both good and bad - this very funny site uses the graph to illustrate some very interesting statistics like “the amount of ink in my printer” - laughing is good medicine!

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This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

rainbow

rainbow,
originally uploaded by ducttapemarketing.

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

How to Get Great Photos for Your Blog Posts

I like to use to use images to help illustrate the theme or point of a blog post. It’s a proven “best practice” in blogging and I highly recommend that every blogger do it.

One trick for easily finding and properly using images in your blog posts is to search the creative commons licensed photos on the photo sharing site Flickr.

So, what’s Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that has created a standardized set of tools for granting various levels of permission for people to use creative works freely. The author or in this case photographer of the works designates a type of license and then Flickr allows you to sort through and find only photos that are free to be used for blog posts. I choose to use photos that carry the attribution/share alike license. This means that I may use the image here as long as I attribute the image to the Flickr user’s account where I found it. Here’s Flickr’s description of CC licenses.

So, here’s how to find and grab great images.

1. Surf to the Flickr Creative Commons Search Page - all images you search for here are free to use with proper attribution
2. Search for a specific phrase or concept and choose the image that fits
3. Click on “all sizes” and choose the size you wish to post on your blog - I use the “small” as 240 px wide fits my blog design
4. Right click the image and choose “copy image location” - use this path to paste into your blog post where you want the image to appear
5. Copy the link to the original image and link the photo in your blog post to it (this is a nice touch for the creator of the photo)
6. Somewhere in your post add the words - Image credit and the link to the Flickr account where you found the image (see at the bottom of the post)

To be a good Flickr photo user make sure you:

• Link back to the original photo
• Credit the source of the photo
• Thank the person who made it available by leaving a thank you note in the comments section of the photo on Flickr
• Add your own images and make the available through the proper CC license - you can make this a default account setting

Image credit: likefunyouare22

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

What Really Generates Referrals

So much of the literature on the subject of referrals focuses on the proper ways to network, ask for referrals, and create incentive programs for referral sources. While some of these more tactical things do indeed produce referrals for the organizations and salespeople that employ them, they are often little more than window dressing when it comes to the big picture.

Building a foundation that automatically generates referral momentum is not done through external actions – like some many things in life, you do it from the inside out. Plain and simple the most widely referred business are purely more referable.

I’ve studied a lot of businesses that easily generate referrals and they share some common internal tendencies as part of their brand and culture.

Make people look good

Looking at all business relationships with an eye on making prospects, customers, vendors, mentors, and staff look and feel good is a tremendously attractive internal quality. I read this quote recently and I think it works well here - “To a large degree, our success and happiness in life depends on how much people like themselves when they’re with us.” Joe Caruso

Ready to refer

We all know that giving referrals is one of the best ways to get referrals, but the difference lies in the systematic preparation. There is a big difference between understanding this philosophically and practicing proactively. Building your back pocket with a group of “best of class” providers takes work. You’ve got to discover, recruit, train and build the trust necessary to develop a proven network of providers who can help you add value to your client relationships, but once you do, the rest is pretty easy.

Keeps promises

The word trust is easy to use and even easier to lose. But, as Stephen M.R. Covey so correctly points out in his book, The Speed of Trust – trust is a hard currency and asset. Trust impacts how fast things are done and how much they cost. It is so much easier and less expensive to refer a business that keeps its promises.

Creates an experience

We will travel to the ends of the earth to be entertained or at least not bored to tears. The businesses we love to refer aren’t boring. They realize that it’s not just about the product and service they sell, it’s equally about the total experience – the marketing, the message, the people, the processes, the delivery are all carefully considered as props integral to a successful customer experience.

Educates, instead of selling

Nobody likes to refer a friend to a sales pitch, right? But, exposing a friend to information that might help them get more of what they want out of life, now that’s a different story. Even better when that information is packaged and presented in multiple locations, formats, and venues.

Adds value beyond price

In Bob Burg’s book the Go-Giver the main character, Joe, encounters the 5 laws of stratospheric success. The first law, the Law of Value states that your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. This is a tough one for so many people because we often have no great baseline for the value we bring. The key here is to work tirelessly to understand, quantify and enhance the value our customer receives and the rest will take care of itself.

Does something talkable

My spell check isn’t balking at the word talkable, but I think it properly expresses this one. You’ve certainly encountered the concept of word of mouth constantly of late, but I think that concept tends to lean heavily on tactics and stunts, like viral videos, that might create a flurry of word of mouth. To do something talkable to me is to have something at the core of your business, a higher purpose, an inspirational story, a product or service that is simply brilliant, or a habit that makes people smile. Authenticity and consistency are what make something talkable.

Exceeds expectations

This one seems pretty easy, but why isn’t it. When someone buys a product, toss other stuff in the box, right? Maybe, but the only way to actually exceed expectations is to know what they are. And that’s where people fall down. In business and in life, it’s extremely difficult to exceed an expectation you have not participated in setting. Widely referred business work very hard to set the proper expectations and then it’s pretty simple matter to exceed them. So, you see exceeding expectations might also include understanding and attracting the right customers, laying exactly how you work to get results on the line, teaching customers what’s expected of them, and even saying no once and while.

Focus on even one of the internal mindsets and practices above and watch how much more referable you become.

I also created a public mindmap of this article and would love it if you would contribute your thoughts on the tactical elements of each of these principles listed above. You do have to sign-up for a free Mindmeister account to add your thoughts, but it’s a pretty cool tool anyway so you might like to play around with it. You can find the map here - http://www.mindmeister.com/23949165

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Yahoo Pipes a Smokin Radar Tool

Yahoo Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. Frankly, it has been around for a couple of years now and while it’s advanced a bit, I don’t think it has ever really caught on in a big way. The interface is a little funky and takes some getting use to, but once you do, it’s a pretty cool tool.

Pipes can do some very complex things, but what I think it does better than most other options is allow you to aggregate, sort and filter many RSS feeds into one. So, you might be asking at this moment, why would I want to do that.

I can think of number of reasons pretty quickly:

• Monitor mentions of your brand across multiple sources
• Monitor mentions of your competitors
• Monitor specific topics of discussion across the web
• Aggregate the columns of key journalists you want to influence
• String the blogs of your strategic partners into one feed

The image above is an example of output from a Yahoo Pipe for Duct Tape Marketing

I put together a quick sample pipe that includes mentions of Duct Tape Marketing and John Jantsch with duplicate content filtered from RSS feeds including:

• Yahoo News
• Google News
• Techorati
• Bloglines
• Google Blog Search
• Twitter
• Backtype
• Boardtracker

The image above is the source code of modules used in this pipe example

In the social media world we live in monitoring across platforms that track social media sites, bulletin boards, blogs, blog comments, PR newswires and web sites has become important and more complex. A simple monitoring mashup from Yahoo Pipes may provide a good DIY fix.

Pipes also comes with some tools that allow you to easily create widgets and badges to place on web and blog pages.

If you want to dig a lot deeper into the use of Yahoo Pipes, I suggest checking out Dawn Foster of Fast Wonder Consulting. Her blog is filled with down to earth tutorials on how to use Pipes for many things - here’s a recent tutorial on using CSV files to run keyword searches.

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