If you’re stuck in the rut of selling your time, do yourself a favor and grab this free eBook I’ve cosponsored with my friends from FreshBooks – Breaking the Time Barrier.

Very early on in my consulting career I learned an important lesson about time – You only have so much.

photo credit: subcircle via photopin cc

I know that may seem like an obvious thing, but many businesses still base their pricing, and therefore their capacity to earn, on time calculations. You know, it takes me 10 hours to build this so that will be 10 X $75/hr.

When I provided consulting services this way I quickly filled up my capacity and essentially trapped my profit potential. After I had done this for a few years I started to raise my prices and a funny thing happened – I stayed just as busy.

Then one day a potential client called and said he heard that I was really good at getting companies featured in the local business journal. Instead of suggesting an hourly fee I told him that if I was successful the cost would be $2,500. At first he balked, but then he considered there really wasn’t any risk unless he got a result.

I hung up the phone and made one call to a journalist that I knew was looking for precisely this kind of story. I secured the interview and called my client back with the good news and an invoice. He said, “but wait, it apparently only took you 15 minutes to get me that story and you want me to pay you $2,500?”

I told him in fact it had taken me the better part of 10 years to be able to get him that story and that he was paying for the value of the result and not my time. He had no argument with that logic, paid the invoice and was thrilled with the result.

That was the day I knew I would spend the rest of my business life using value based pricing. I began to align all of my fees based on the results I knew I could deliver and took time off the table every time it crept into a client conversation. In the end clients don’t want your time, they want a result. When they become confident you can deliver that, they don’t really care how you do it.

The keys to embracing value based pricing

• Understand that price is a function of perceived value – increase your or your product’s perceived value and you can increase the price. This is why best-selling authors can charge much more for speaking fees and why Apple can charge more for a phone.
• You must have a clear point of differentiation – Your methodology, point of view, feature set, delivery, packaging, experience, training, design, etc. must set you so far apart from others that there is no way in which a prospect would consider using price as the lone comparison tool.
• You must measure results – Once you start to appreciate that the work you do delivers tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in results to a client, you’ll get much more open about value based pricing. You must measure and review with your clients the actual results they get from working with you so that you can confidently begin to price and sell your work based on this knowledge and proof.

My friend Mike McDerment, co-founder of FreshBooks, just completed a free eBook (with Donald Cowper) in which he chronicles the story of a web designer who comes to appreciate why he’s going broke selling his time vs. selling the results of his work. If you’re stuck in the time rut, do yourself a favor and grab this free eBook – Breaking the Time Barrier – How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential.

Why You Must Stop Selling Your Time is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

It’s been a big week at Facebook. Hashtags rolled out to most users causing quite a stir in the marketing world. (It’s yet to be seen how much utility they actually bring to the everyday user.)

And, Graph Search finally got turned on for my account. Graph Search is the long-awaited jump by Facebook into the world of search engines powered by Microsoft’s Bing. The official announcement came several months ago but roll out has been slow.

The first thing I noted was that I had to relearn a bit of navigation as things aren’t where they were and don’t always do what they did. That’s a minor annoyance and not really what this post is about.

In playing around with Graph Search I noted some very useful internal search tricks that should pay off nicely for local businesses. All of a sudden there’s a Yelp like search function for nearby places that, say, my friends like. Obviously this has some utility. Here’s a Lifehacker article on some nice, clever uses for Graph Search

But, one thing that I did not fully appreciate, even though it was part of the story months ago, was the integration of Bing Web Search results.

Let’s say I type a search that’s not one of the obvious Graph Search categories, something random like, in the case of the image below – small business marketing system. The first option is to show web results from Bing.

As you can see from the image, these search results display right in the Facebook interface along with Bing Ads.

I know this was hyped when announced, but until I saw it for myself, in my own context, it didn’t ring as important as I think it may be.

Now, a great deal depends on this kind of search behavior catching on inside of Facebook, but if does it spells the first real threat to Google AdWords and search dominance.

For now it certainly means that marketers need to rethink their Bing search and Bing Ads approach. Get over to Bing and claim your Bing Webmaster account and create your Bing Ads account and start paying more attention to how your assets are faring on Bing.

Why Bing May Become Your Search Engine of Choice is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

So, for starters, the title to this post poses a bit of a trick question because significant research suggests it is in fact a fact.

photo credit: dragonanswers via photopin cc

Buyers have become so adept at doing initial purchase research that they no longer need or have the patience for a sales presentation on the benefits of your widget. Ironically, this applies doubly for B2B, big ticket items where you might think a little face time would be a good thing.

A CEB study of more than 1,400 B2B customers across industries revealed that 57% of a typical purchase decision is made before a customer even talks to a supplier.

So, what does this spell for the typical sales and marketing professional? You better find a way to make your marketing as useful as your products. That’s right, sales and marketing is no longer about being found and providing educational information – those are still important, but today you better have prospects looking to you as an adviser, teacher, time saver, problem solver and guide on life’s journey or what’s the point.

I repeat – it’s not just your product or service that must perform – it’s your actual sales and marketing process that must provide these things as well.

This same CEB study also found that 53% of those surveyed claimed that the sales experience itself was one of the greatest contributing factors in continued loyalty to the brand.

The feeling is that most products, services, brands and even pricing are about the same, but the sales experience, or value, ease and insight delivered during the actual process of buying, was what tipped the scale.

Two recent books hit this theme pretty hard. Mitch Joel’s CTRL+ALT+DEL (Check out interview with Mitch Joel here) and Jay Baer’s Youtility (Ships June 27th – look for an upcoming interview Jay.) And of course CEB’s book derived from the extensive sales research cited in this post called The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. (Check out interview with Matthew Dixon here)

So, how do you make your sales process more useful?

Let’s say you were shopping for some running shoes. You search around and find a few sites that seem to specialize in the selection you are looking for and a couple even provide lots of information and reviews from other runners. But, you’re not sure which $150 pair of shoes are right and that’s enough money that you want to get it right.

So, you fire off a couple questions to sites that seem the most informational. One sends you back some specs from the manufacture and then Patton Gleason from OptimalRun.com sends you a personal video showing you all 3 shoes you were considering and telling you why, based on your needs, which one he suggests.

Now, you tell me – is that sales process useful?

And, the beauty of this kind of sales process is that it actually favors the little guy.

Here’s what some of his customers had to say – sounds like they found his sales process useful!

“It was amazing and so helpful and kind: I finally felt like someone was actually listening to me instead of just trying to rush me into making a purchase.”

“You’re too great – this is awesome that you answer with a personal video.”

“Thanks again so much for your help, it especially helps to be able to see the shoes other than just in photos.”

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the bar today. Creating marketing and sales insight that’s so useful people would be willing to pay to receive it.

So, what can you to create a much better buying experience in your business? What have you seen others do that you would like to share?

What If How You Sold Was as Important as What You Sold? is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or one that I took out there on the road.

This is how they roll at Oddly Correct Coffee in Kansas City

Good stuff I found this week:

theSkimm – daily newsletter that simplifies the headlines for the educated professional who knows enough to know she needs more.

Webinar tools – Nice list of tools to use for online seminars, includes reviews.

Week Plan- Nice little online planning tools that turns to do list into a weekly plan.

Weekend Favs June Fifteen is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Tom Asacker

A few months ago I started a series of posts I’m calling Recover You. The series is focused on practices and habits that I believe lead to a healthier mind, body and spirit, a healthier business and ultimately a healthier economy. This is the final post in the series. You can catch the entire Recover You series here.

photo credit: JeremyMP via photopin cc

I have spent a great deal of time over the last decade or two trying to understand and sort out the role of purpose as it relates to work.

And you know what? – it’s a lot easier to consider in retrospect than to try to grasp by looking towards some far off horizon.

In this quest I think you can indeed consider what brings you joy the most, where your passion lies and even what legacy you want to leave behind, but until you succumb to the fact that what you are doing right now must be your life’s purpose you’ll always feel cheated somehow.

Now, this isn’t one of those you must live in the moment posts. What I’m saying is that I discovered my purpose in work when I finally realized that it’s the experience of what I’m doing and living my work with passion that defines my purpose. Giving in to that idea is how purpose finds you.

The struggle to find that perfect thing you were meant to be is what causes untold amounts of pressure while the very thing you were meant to do is experience what you’re actually doing more fully.

When you realize that one distinction you can start to change the world around you by building new beliefs. Every thing we do in business and in life is dictated by our beliefs and changing this one belief is how you change your existing reality.

I recently sat down with Tom Asacker author of several critically acclaimed books including his latest, The Business of Belief: How the World’s Best Marketers, Designers, Salespeople, Coaches, Fundraisers, Educators, Entrepreneurs and Other Leaders Get Us to Believe to talk about the subject of purpose and beliefs for an episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

Asacker first approaches how our beliefs dictate, right or wrong, every action we take. To me this notion also rules how we think about purpose and passion. Many people don’t find purpose in their work because they don’t think they can or should or that purpose must represent something much grander than what they are about today.

Asacker’s book also shows how marketers and others can use the power of belief for good and evil, but ultimately this short read is all about getting you to take charge of your beliefs so you can change your view of purpose and passion.

To me the missing piece in the struggle to bring purpose to the workplace lies in the words of Buckminster Fuller. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

So, in order to work more fully on purpose you must make your existing model of work obsolete.

I think every business owner should carve that quote into something permanent and persistently visible!

How to Work on Purpose and Why You Must is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Samuel Faith – Enjoy!

When it comes to content marketing, nothing is better than a good webinar. You can educate, inform, engage and convert your target market – all at once. Independent reports from inbound marketing experts indicate that webinars can significantly boost your expert status, build meaningful and engaging relationships with your customers, and turn your audience into high converting prospects.

But creating webinars is just one part of the equation. Promoting them is equally important too to maximize so here is a comprehensive 10-step roadmap for you to effectively promote your webinars.

1. Define Proper and Measurable Objectives

Having specific objectives help you to measure your success and ROI. Most of us don’t plan properly, and having specific objectives happen to be an afterthought for most of them. Without any objectives to help you measure, you won’t know how well your webinar performs and thus you can’t improve anything.

Your objectives will vary depending on your business needs, but most of them will fall into the following categories:

1. To educate and inform
2. To generate qualified leads
3. To gather market response and feedback

Clearly defining your objects will also help you when you promote your webinar, as well as planning the presentation delivery. What you do for each objective categories will be different.

2. Set Realistic Expectations

Expectations are not quite same as goals. Usually, we might have unrealistic expectations or too vague ones that we don’t even know what we should measure using the objectives. Knowing and having realistic expectations also help us in follow-up plans. Whatever your expectations are, keep in mind that webinars are not for massive immediate boost in sales, but rather to build relationships and generate new leads.

3. Estimate Audience Response

There is no easy way to estimate audience response, for there are many influencing factors. However, here are a few factors that you can consider to estimate your audience response.

1. Your current blog and email subscribers. Look at the numbers such as usual response rates. Check out how many percentage of subscribers are active in engaging with you. These are the same people that are likely to have an interest in your webinar.
2. Targeting metrics. If you have specific targeting metrics, then you will have a lot closer chance to estimate your response from that target group.
3. Your content and offer. If your webinar content sucks, then nobody will come. You can’t lie to audience with just promotional materials. t will also depends on the offer you are going to give as an incentive.
4. Your web traffic. This is seasonal as it depends on other marketing efforts too. The traffic can spike. So if your webinar is promoted on your site during the time of traffic spike, then your webinar will receive a lot of responses.

4. Determine and Set Your Cost Per Lead

Cost per lead is basically your cost for hosting and promoting a webinar for each participant. Sum up everything and divided by the number of participants you get. Knowing your cost per lead can help you out in determining your cost per acquisition for each customers. It is always good to keep this cost low, and if you have your own email list or partnering with someone with a good list, then this cost will go down too. If your promotional efforts pay off and you gain a lot of participants and interests, then your cost per lead will be low as well.

5. Maximize Your Attendance Rate

Statistics show that actual turn-out rate from all webinar registrants is between 40% to 60%. The rest will flake or just forget about your webinar, unless it is paid. Maximizing attendance rate is not really hard. You can use a good reminder sequence via email, and SMS reminder just a couple hours before webinar starts. Offering good incentives can compel them to attend your event too.

6. Conversion Matters

Conversion is all about maths and you can easily figure it out once you know the industry’s standard conversion rates, click-through rates and open rates, as well as your own data. If you already have an email list, then you definitely have all those data.

A well-articulated offer on a well-managed email list, with good email subject can get you around 10% to 15% click-through rate. Average will be 5% to 10%. If your webinar topic is highly relevant and timely, then you can expect even better.

Your landing page is important too. A well-optimized page with good copy, minimal form fields (ideal is just name and email) and good incentives for visitors to sign up can convert convert as low as 25% of visitors. Hopeful rate will be 40%. However, it is not unheard of to convert 70% to 80% with well-optimized landing pages.

7. Ask For An Expert To Be Guest Speaker

Even if you are an established expert, your webinar event will reap more benefits if you partner up with another expert. He will have his own list and blog readers. Besides, it will also deliver more value to your audience as well as his. In fact, it is known that you can get as many as 200% to 300% boost in webinar sign-up rate. This is especially helpful if you and your business are not well-known players yet. Your visibility will also shoot up when you have a high-profile guest speaker.

8. Build An Optimized Registration Page

Landing pages are important, but so are registration pages. They should not be an afterthought at all. For some, they may separate landing page from emails and registration page as two entities, or they may use only one page for both purpose. Here are a few critical things you should not have on a registration page.

1. Too many form fields. Did you know that every extra form fields required to fill out will lose 5% of your prospects? If you have 3 fields, then that is already 15%. Name and email are enough. Follow up the rest later.
2. Having links leading to other pages. If your registration page or landing page is hosted on your main website, make sure that the page is standalone and none of your navigation links are there. In fact, don’t put ANY links that will lead people away to any other pages.
3. Not having social proof. People will trust you more if you show social proof. Things like testimonials from previous webinars, information about your high-profile guest speaker, and mainstream media coverage on you – all of them can give you massive boost in social proof.

9. Do Split Tests Again & Again, Then Improve

It is absolutely critical to test our message in the promotional contents to know which ones works the best. For emails, test different subjects. For landing pages, do A/B split tests. You might not get it right at the first time but after a few times, you will get enough data to know that what works, and what doesn’t. Then you can improve for future events. If you want to get good examples, subscribe to Obama’s email campaigns. He has some of the most talented copywriters and email marketers.

10. Don’t Forget To Remind And Follow-up

Not every registrants will remember that they have an awesome webinar to attend. What you should do is send out well-timed reminder emails and SMS. Always remind your registrants one week ahead, then 1 day ahead, and 1 hours before the event. Don’t keep sending SMS reminders all the time though, and it is best to send out an SMS reminder together with the final reminder email.

After your webinar event ends, send out a thank you email to all those attend. And make sure you keep your word and give them access to your giveaways, as well as follow-up your audience. You may want to send a survey, or a special offer. It all depends on what’s your end-goal is. You can also send recording of your webinar to everybody, including those who didn’t show up.

Samuel Faith is a content marketing specialist with a focus on technology, marketing and entrepreneurship. He is a big believer of the role of webinars in content marketing and currently running http://www.bestWebinar.com, a website where he reviews and talks about webinars.

The 10-Step Road Map To Promoting Webinars is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Adele Revella

I think it’s pretty easy to get caught up in marketing speak when it comes to customers and think in terms of target markets and market share and the like, but in the end, even the buyer at the big corporate purchasing department is a person.

photo credit: GuiMeneghelli via photopin cc

Defining and sketching the make up and personality of your ideal customer, you know, the ones you love to work with, is something I’ve been preaching for years.

The impact of narrowly defining who makes a great fit for your business – meaning who you can actually deliver the most value to – is astonishingly simple and profound.

It helps you first and foremost spot business you should not take. It helps you attract the right kind of customer and it guides how you simplify and communicate your marketing message.

Over the years marketers have come to call this sketch of ideal customer segments customer personas. I love the terms as it draws heavily on personality traits and behavior – two of the most important elements of a good fit.

The term persona originates in the theater world, which translates wonderfully to the world of business where character development, story lines and emotional connection are staples.

The idea behind a persona for the sake of marketing is to describe or sketch in elaborate detail exactly what a customer segment looks and acts like as though they are a real person. This might involve a character name like Mary or a descriptive term like Techie as well as an image. But the key is that Mary or Techie’s behavior is described in a way that gives clues to what they expect and how to spot them.

For example in my world you might meet: Bob – The Learning Focused Business Owner – Bob owns a business and realizes that he loves to learn – he soaks up everything he can and knows where to find more. He reads books, attends online seminars and can spout the latest business lingo. He researches before he makes a decision and relies heavily on information from his network. He craves a combination of coaching, teaching and DIY and demands the ability to dive deeper into subjects on his own. He wants help on things he does not understand and validation on the things he is working on to make sure he is on the right course.

To give more insight into the notion of customer personas I visited with Adele Revella, president of Buyer Persona Institute and author of the eBook The Buyer Persona Manifesto

Revella describes what she calls 5 Rings of Insight that are required to accurately create customer personas.

1. Priority initiatives – What’s important to your customer right now
2. Success factors – What would success look like to them
3. Perceived barrier – What might hold them back from buying
4. Buying process – How do gather information and make a purchase
5. Decision criteria – How do they come to a decision

Revella’s work is focused primarily on large organizations but the considerations for any size business are the same. Have you ever considered the factors above as you consider your ideal customer?

Discovering and using customer personas is part gut feeling from your own experience, part stepping back and considering things like Revella’s five rings and part consistently asking your customers and prospect why they do what they do, why they don’t choose you, how they make decision and why they chose you.

Take all of that information and put into a set of characters your business is built to attract and everyone in your organization will learn how to attract the right kinds of clients.

What If Your Customers Were Actually People? is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

I’ve spent the better part of the last 10 years telling any small business owner that would listen that marketing isn’t really that complicated.

What’s complicated and frustrating about marketing perhaps is how small business owners and those that work in the field of marketing think about it.

Marketing is just a system and, operated as such, it isn’t any different from many of the other systems needed to run a business. A system creates control, a system guides priorities, a system creates process, a system generates accountability and a way to measure and win the game.

I developed my own view of “marketing as a system” after discovering that working with small business owners in the way I wanted wasn’t possible unless I was willing to change my view of marketing.

What I quickly discovered was it’s a two-way street. Marketing consultants are often frustrated because they have no system or methodology they can apply over and over again and small business owners are frustrated because there’s no logical way to buy marketing services from people pitching the idea of the week.

I had a large ad agency professional approach me recently and tell me about trying to help several of his family members find some marketing help for their startup. Because he had spent most of his life in six and seven digit budget land he was appalled at how hard it was to find help that made sense for this startup.

And that’s precisely the work I’ve been engaged in for over a decade – putting an end to marketing frustration – both on the part of marketing consultants and coaches and on the part of the tens of thousands of small business owners that have adopted some version of this systems approach to marketing.

For some the concept of a system for marketing seems so still and uncreative, but for me a system is how you Save YourSelf Time Energy and Money – corny, I know, but something we all need a little more of!

I’ve built a marketing system that gives relief to frustrated marketing consultants by way of the Duct Tape Marketing Network and provides real results for small business owners through the Duct Tape Marketing System.

Below is a very brief description of the elements of a marketing system

1) Strategy before tactics – create a narrowly defined strategy first

This is without a doubt the most crucial step. Strategy must come before any tactics. Until you can narrowly define your ideal client and uncover or create some way your business is both unique and remarkable you’ll compete on price and struggle to build any sense of momentum. More on this . . .

2) Build your Marketing Hourglass – A marketing focused business model

The next step involves what I call The Marketing Hourglass. This simple process asks you to view your business and discover how you will move your ideal prospects down the path of know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer. The beauty of this thinking is that it puts the focus on the end – a happy customer, willing to buy more and tell others. Get that part right and you’ll never need to worry about lead generation in the same way again. More on this . . .

3) Become a publishing engine – Your content become the voice of strategy

Almost every element of the Marketing Hourglass relies on some form of intentional content to operate properly. In this step business owners create their content plan with some very specific objectives in mind. More content is not the answer. The right content, delivered to the right person, at the right time is the answer. More on this . . .

4) Build a total online and offline presence – Integration is the key to success

Integration is what makes social media work. It’s what makes email marketing work and it’s what drives effective advertising. Until you view your online and offline presence as one integrated whole you’ll continue to fall prey to the idea of the week. Any decision on what to do on Facebook comes with content, SEO, email and advertising implications as well. View it that way and you’ll never wonder about ROI again. More on this . . .

5) Build a lead generation machine – Lead momentum comes from multiple streams of lead generation

Lead generation is a game of trust, context and repetition. Advertising, public relations and referral generation built around an effective marketing strategy is the secret to creating the right awareness with the right prospects. More on this . . .

6) Lead conversion is a system – Lead conversion as a repeatable sales process and customer experience

The thing about an effective marketing system, such as the one described above, is that it eliminates the need to sell – at least in the traditional sense of the word. When you educate, build trust and create engagement all that’s left to do is show prospects how they can get the result you’ve shown them. More on this . . .

7) Live by the calendar – You’re never done, simply operate the system over and over again

Once you build the various elements of your marketing system you must map it out on a calendar, test, analyze, tweak and improve it continuously. For some, simply carving out the time to create new processes and putting in the effort to develop new marketing behaviors must become a habit before any progress can be made. It’s a long-term game, you’re never done, just deal with it every day. More on this . . .

I’ve taken every element of this system and turned it into an online course that any business can apply to build a marketing system. Each element is presented in step-by-step lessons that include video, workbooks, worksheets, examples and resources. We continue to work on it and improve it and add to it as new tools and tactics arise.

Once you gain access to the Duct Tape Marketing System you’ll be able to visit each lesson over and over again as you perfect your system and even use our materials to train and guide your marketing staff.

You can find complete details here.

Solving the Most Frustrating Part of Marketing is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or one that I took out there on the road.

My podcasting set up at Duct Tape Marketing HQ

Good stuff I found this week:
Long Tail Pro – handy SEO tool allows you to find long tail search opportunities.

Ask Me Every – Very simple way to create daily accountability. Set up daily questions and reply to collect and track your progress.

Thing Link – tool that allows you to make your images interactive with text, music and links

Weekend Favs June Eight is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Winning the game of organic search comes down to three essential activities.

1. Figuring out what to write about in order to rank well for your key terms – Keyword research
2. Figuring out what others are doing that currently rank above you – Competitive research
3. Figuring out how to build authority for your content in the eyes of search engines – Link and networking research

While there are potentially dozens of elements that go into each of the points above for the most part this is the game. This also explains why content and social are foundational aspects of SEO today.

In an effort to do all that figuring out above you must employ a toolset that makes it easy to do keyword research, optimize every bit of content, spy on competitors and network to increase links and authority for your content.

Below is a list of tools I use for these activities. I wonder if you might add or share your favorites.

Winning the Game of Search with Tools is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Porter Gale – author of Your Network is Your Net Worth.

Technology has redefined how we prospect for jobs, meet business contacts, and interview. Whereas I got my first job because the receptionist at the courthouse where my mother worked was on maternity leave, today your recruitment involves analysis of your personal profiles on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, group lunches, video chats, and other approaches, as well as the formal interview.  Every day people are making connections online via Skype, in Google + Hangouts, through email and more.

How we meet and network has dramatically changed.   The days of getting a job through a series of one-on-one interviews where you wear your blue suit aren’t as common. T. J. Sassani, the CEO and founder of ZOZI.com, shared a story that demonstrates the new model of networking, “One of my most recent hires was a new public relations person named Tian Lee. She found my profile on LinkedIn and sent me an email that was so passionate I realized she could sell the company better than I could. I hired her on the spot.” If you want to accelerate your networking with online tools, seven practical and powerful steps to help you make Your Network Your Net Worth follow.

1. Have a Concrete Goal. Set a networking goal (i.e. seek employment, build friendships), determine your message”and define the types of people you’d like to meet (i.e. at specific companies, industries etc.).
2. Build Your Online Profile. Consider developing a web page. Many open source applications (i.e. WordPress, Magento, spree) and fully hosted website options (SquareSpace, Wix, Virb, WordPress.com) are available. Also try using Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and other online tools and sites to spread your message. If you’re looking to build your online business profile, do not overlook the power and reach of LinkedIn. If your story or networking goal has a visual component use Instagram and Pinterest to share images, photos and pins that reinforce your message.
3. Know The Blogging Basics. If you’re blogging to build your network or profile, remember attention spans have decreased and multitasking has increased, so keep your content short and concise. Make your headline memorable but not clichéd. Enable social sharing on all posts and post not only on your blog but also on your social media channels. Include your Twitter handle and URL in your byline. Consider blogs with easy-to-digest “top tips” lists or question-and-answer formats.
4. Understand the Power of Keywords & Links. If you do build a site or start generating content, know the power of keywords, the basic principles of search engine optimization and the power of links. What words should you build into your content to reinforce your networking goals and objectives? Are there back links or inbound links that can be added to your site for increased traffic?  Have you submitted your website to the major search engines and Internet directories?
5. Share, Connect & Nurture Relationships. If you want to build a relationship with a contact online, it’s important to share, communicate, and connect in the same way that brand fans and companies nurture their relationships. Actions as simple as a retweet (RT) or mention in a #Follow Friday (#FF) list on Twitter, a “like” on Facebook or an endorsement on LinkedIn can signal your interest in connecting.
6. Partner With Publications.  When I left my post at VP of Marketing at Virgin America, I made a conscious effort to raise my profile and to build my network by blogging for online publications. I wrote a sample post and pitched several editors. After a quick back-and-forth, two editors agreed that I could blog for them on a regular basis. This is where it gets tricky. I agreed to write content and was not hired as an on-staff writer. So blogging is a bit like sweat equity: you need to make sure you can glean a return in ways that are not directly deposited in your bank account. For me, the exposure kept my name in the forefront, and I included in my bio that I do public speaking. With every post, I gained Twitter followers and usually received a speaking engagement inquiry. So the return on investment wasn’t a direct payment from a publication but came quickly via a larger network and reach and more consulting opportunities. Partnering with or blogging for publications with built-in reach is a faster way to find an audience and build a network than starting from ground zero with your own blog or website.
7. Think Like A Marketer. Get creative with your copy. What is memorable about your email, post or tweet? Are you being clear and direct? Is the subject line header of your email catchy enough to grab someone’s attention? Think creatively, and keep your objective in mind when you use online tools to communicate. A mistake that people often make is not being specific. For example, have you ever sent a long email to a new contact without details on a proposed follow-up, request, or action item? If you are looking for an interview, are you clear with your request? Make sure your writing is concise, memorable, and typo-free. If you don’t get an answer to your email, do not give up. You might need to be more creative.

In today’s social economy, technology has transformed how we network, connect and prospect for jobs. If you want to make Your Network Is Your Net Worth, don’t let your social capital lay dormant. Set an objective, build your online profile, develop partnerships to extend your reach and understand the basics of blogging. Get out there and use technology to accelerate and amplify your connecting efforts.

Porter Gale is a start-up advisor, public speaker and former VP of Marketing at Virgin America. She is the author of Your Network Is Your Net Worth, a clear guide on how to bring value yourself and others through the powerful currency of relationships.

7 Practical and Powerful Tips To Accelerate Online Networking is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

I write about the power of building a network of strategic marketing partners a lot. I truly believe it’s an underutilized small business strategies.

Getting a group of like-minded business to market each others products and services adds exposure, creates new demand and builds on some already established trust.

I think people get the idea, but the challenge is often in finding ways to logically work together and promote each other. I shared a number of ideas on sharing content for referrals last week, but in this post I would like to offer another great way to work with your partners – give their stuff away.

I bought a pair of running shoes a while back from an online seller and when I opened the box I found a note from the owner along with a pair of socks and some energy bars and snacks. First off, I loved the surprise element, but being a nosy marketer I contacted the owner and found that these were gifts from a couple of his closest strategic partners. Of course there was also information about how I could order more of these items as well.

Think about how you might use this idea with existing or future strategic partners.

Do you have a trial or small product that your partners would love to give as a gift? Are there partners you work with currently that would have something you could give away?

By building gifts into your products you create extra buzz with your customers and gain extra exposure both for and from your strategic referral partners – all of these elements can create even more referrals.

And you don’t have to limit your thinking to free products. One way to get a potential or current strategic partner’s attention is to buy some of their products or gift cards for their products to use as thank you gifts.

As a matter of fact, you don’t have to limit your thinking to products at all. I received a subscription pitch from a business publication that included a free offer from a partner to evaluate my pay-per-click advertising efforts.

Any consultant could offer a valuable 30 minute audit of sort. (My consultant network uses something we call a Signature Brand Audit to offer a very useful marketing analysis by way of a questionnaire and one on one meeting – this kind of tool could be a great gift to a customer base.)

There are a number of service cropping up that can help organization make gifts to clients by finding local businesses. For example, a service called Yiftee allows a business to find something unique right in the community where a client or prospect may live. Yelp allows local businesses to feature gift certificates as well making it easy to find good products and services locally. I think this approach adds a nice personal touch.

Along this same line of thinking, check out this free eBook from HelpScout – 25 Ways to Thank Your Customers for some additional ideas on gifting for referrals.

This is such a simple, powerful and elegant idea that any business with a little creativity can employ.

So, what will you give away today?

How to Give Stuff Away to Generate Referrals is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Links back to your site from other sites give Google a potentially important signal – “Hey, I’m a human being and I think this is good stuff.” – that’s something Google can’t do with a spider and even better if the site in question is already known to Google as a trusted source.

photo credit: dolescum via photopin cc

Links have always been important, but in the past it was just about getting lots of them. The “more is more” approach led to gaming and buying and other unnatural types of acts.

There was a time when SEO folks and site owners seemed more concerned about getting links than producing anything worth actually linking to and visiting.

Recent changes in the Google algorithm addressed this aspect of their ranking system in dramatic fashion.

Links still matter, but the emphasis has been placed squarely on the quality and authority of links and not on numbers of links. You could see this coming with every new tweak and pronouncement from Google folks like Matt Cutts.

Link building in the age of authority has more in common with effective networking than some sort of magic SEO art.

Below are eight tactics I’ve employed to effectively build and continue to build high quality, relevant links.

One word of caution – none of these tactics supplant the need to be link worthy and none involve tricks of any kind. You draw high quality, relevant links the same way you develop networking relationships – by focusing on the needs of your link partners and your readers.

1) Snack size influence

One of the best ways to get some very high authority links (and this includes RT’s +1s and Likes from high authority folks as deemed by Google) is to publish quotes, advice and answers from influencers in your industry.

The above statement is pretty obvious of course, but the key to getting said content from influencers is to make it as easy as possible for them to provide it. Ask one question, for example, of a dozen people, publish the answers in a thought-provoking and link to each participant’s site.

Many times this approach can produce a very high quality, or at least interesting, piece of content that others, including your influential guests, may think worthy of linking to and socializing.

How I Write and How I Decide What To Write via @ducttape ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2013/05/2…

— Brian Solis (@briansolis) May 21, 2013

Here’s an example of this approach that produced multiple high quality links – How I Write and How I Decide What To Write

2) Guest content

I know you’ve heard lots of people talking about guest blogging and with reason – one of the highest quality links you can get is a link back to some page on your site from the body of a blog post on an influential blog. So, get over to Topsy and do a search on your key terms + guest and find yourself some great opportunities to draw links from your guest content

But, don’t forget two other potent variations on this theme – a) Ask others to write a post on your site. You can get some tremendous content and likely as not they will link to that content once it’s published. Here’s a guest post written by my friend Chris Brogan. He linked to this post from his various profiles.

I wrote for @ducttape today: What digital marketers get wrong – ow.ly/jXK6y

— Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) April 11, 2013

b) Interview guests for a podcast – Authors love to do this around new book launches and many influential folks in your industry may want to do the same. Not always, but more often than not, your guest will link to this content. Last week my friend Lee Odden linked to the podcast interview he recently gave for the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

3) Promote an event

Events are another great way to draw links. If you host an in person workshop or even online seminar you can likely attract links by listing your event on local event pages, MeetUp and Eventful.

In some cases you can get some pretty terrific links from the event space – I hosted a free talk at the public library in my community and got some terrific high domain authority links from local media calendars and the library .org link

4) Repackage across mediums

I write lots of blog posts and speak frequently for organizations. Just about every word I write or speak is fair game to be repackaged into eBooks, turned into videos and pitched to media outlets in one form or another.

The net effect is that one piece of content might be a source of link generation in many ways. For example, here’s my library talk from above posted to YouTube.

Organizations love to share free eBooks. Here’s a very high influence link from PRWeb.com to one of my free eBooks.

5) Your partners

Yet another reason to work hard at establishing a formal strategic partner network. Last week I wrote about ways to use content for referrals and many of these ways involved linking opportunities.

In a way this is the updated version of the linking networks that were in vogue before Google slapped them down. The big difference is these should be, by virtue of how you build them, far more natural.

Over the years I’ve acquired links from HP, Dell, Microsoft and Sage Software through partnering efforts.

6) Build something useful

Want to know the easiest, fastest, more productive way to draw tons of links? Create a highly useful free tool and tell people about it. People love to find and share stuff that’s useful and, of course, even better if it’s free.

One of the most linked to pages on my site is for a free press release generator called Instant Press Release that I created years ago. The tool also generates hundreds of newsletter sign up each month even though I never do anything to promote it and you can’t even find it without searching for it.

And I wonder how many millions of people have shared tools like Hubspot’s Marketing Grader?

I know this one might be easier said than done, but this is so powerful it is worth investing in having something built.

7) Real world networks

What organizations do you belong to? What alumni directories publish links? What business groups? What non-profit committees?

These may not seem like great places to get high traffic links, but they can often be terribly industry relevant and carry high authority signals for Google. They still like .org and .edu domains.

Most of the options above require real work, I realize that, but Google has said loud and clear that the days of buying links in farms are over. Keep creating great content, sharing great content, working on building your own authority and networking and links, the kind that won’t ever go out of fashion, will come.

7 Ways to Attract Lots of High Quality Links in the Age of Authority is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or one that I took out there on the road.

My first computer!

Good stuff I found this week:

Red Pen – extremely simple way to get annotated feedback on any design.

Piwik – free, open source analytics software you run on your server. No more sharing your data with Google.

25 Ways to Thank Your Customers – free eBook from the folks at HelpScout with some nice ideas

Weekend Favs June One is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Each month I choose an editorial focus and publish a great deal of content around that month’s theme. May 2013 was all about writing. Here’s a collection for each viewing and sharing.

Writing for Marketing and Business – a collection of posts on a theme is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing