Archive for the ‘PR / Word-of-Mouth’ Category
Attracting Clients With Your Message
I have recently ‘discovered’ a most talented individual — Christian Mickelson.
He’s the founder of Coaches With Clients — a San Diego, CA based firm that helps coaches develop the skills and systems for growing their clientele.
In this video, Christian shares a lot of wisdom on the topic of “How To Respond” when someone asks, “What Do You Do?”
It’s always a challenge . . . until you learn the secret of saying the right words to help you become more attractive to prospective clients.
Check out his video . . . he’s a coach himself and, more important (to me) he’s successful because he practices what he preaches . . . he walks his own talk . . . rather remarkable.
You will a lot from Christian. I sincerely hope you do, too!
Maximizing LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a wonderful social network for business.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with a ‘User Handbook’ full of ideas on how to get the most value you can from being a part of it.
Here are some quick and easy ways can get more out of being on LinkedIn.
Drop Your Title!
For example, I used to use my title “CCO”. Now, my profile ‘title’ reads: “Helping small business owners attract clients and grow revenues”.
This allows you to inform people how you can help them rather than what you are — which may be lost on them, anyway.
Key Idea
Show your tagline instead of your title
Integrate with Twitter
The new Twitter integration functionality allows you to tweet a message and have it display in your status . . . automatically!.
You can edit your settings to show “ALL” your Tweets or, selective Tweets which you can set up with the hashtag (#) function on Twitter. Very cool!
Key Idea
Use the Twitter integration function on your LinkedIn profile.
Leverage Your Group Memberships
I’ve been writing a monthly article for The National Networker for about two years helping others leverage their marketing and networking to build relationships and revenues. After an article is published, my publisher, Adam Kovitz suggested I post it as a “news article” to the various groups that I belong to on LinkedIn. You can do the same thing with any blog post you write just as easily.
This one simple activity can drive tons of traffic to your blog!
In time, getting people to know of you (brand awareness), like you (brand preference) and trust you (brand value) because they’ve come to appreciate the value in your advice is . . . priceless!
Key Idea
Join the LinkedIn groups where your blog posts or articles will be relevant and post your “news articles” whenever you can.
Join The Conversations
LinkedIn has ‘Discussions’. Are you starting them? Are you commenting on them? If not, you’re missing a huge opportunity to leverage your membership and the value LinkedIn holds for you.
Contributing to LinkedIn Discussions is a great way to position yourself as an authority and showcase your expertise.
Always provide a link to a relevant page on your blog or landing page on your website. For example, if you comment on how to ‘generate referrals’, you should create a landing page where a Special Report on ‘Referrals’ can be downloaded. Remember, you’re offering relevant information in a meaningful context. So don’t just say, “Hey, I’m here!”. Offer value and . . . an easy way to get it!
Key Idea
Participate in the discussions on any LinkedIn group where your ideal clients are likely to be found and post questions to stimulate some discussions of your own.
Respond To Questions
Questions allow you to demonstrate your expertise and build up the “know / Like / Trust” factor you know is so important to your marketing success.
Both the questions you answer for others (and, ask) will be seen by visitors to your profile. Often, what you have to say may be more interesting than anything else a visitor will notice on your profile page.
Key Idea
Seek out questions posed by others on topics you can answer. Use an RSS feed coupled to your Google Reader to show you new questions as they appear and post your answers to your profile as well.
Want To Build Revenues With Social Media?
Check out our Social Media Pro Study Group!
Are You Naughty or Nice?
For session #2 of Social Media Pro — our online coaching course for using social media in your business, we’re focusing on optimizing your brand assets.
One of the many ways to do that is to create quality content and post it on the internet.
Video content is increasingly popular. And, various video hosting services have sprung up to support you in making your video content readily available.
The best known site is Google’s YouTube service. But there are others. One, which I’ve personally experienced (and, none too pleasant an experience it was, I assure you!) is Vimeo.
In my ‘listening post’, I get an alert when certain terms are being cited on blogs. “Vimeo” is one of them. (I have my reasons!)
Why am I telling you all this? Simple. To share three (3) lessons that will ‘teach’ you how this social media stuff really works better than anything less ‘real world’ ever would.
Lesson #1: You Can’t Hide On The Internet
This is true if you’re good. But, it’s especially true if you’re bad. As in ‘bad customer experience’. Why? People talk. And the mechanisms available — online — to do their ‘talking’ is tremendous.
Check it out for yourself: http://boagworld.com/reviews/vimeo and you’ll see an example of the kind of ‘chatter’ that is waiting for any firm — even yours and mine — if we give people a good reason to want to vent.
Lesson #2: Do NOT P ____ People Off!
In the upper left panel of the above blog, note the number of ‘RE-Tweets’ about this page. This post just went up and in less than a day there are already over 400 re-tweets!!
Now consider this . . . the average social media savvy person has a network online of their contacts. People who are facile with social media are probably pretty well connected. Some people have ‘followers’ that number into the 1,000’s of people.
In just ONE day, this rather toxic post has already been broadcast (retweeted) to a very, very significant number of people. Probably a couple hundred thousand when you consider these socially connected types each have a network themselves! And, if the source is credible, they tend to retweet the content they receive over and over and over again. Scary, isn’t it?
Lesson #3: If You Listen, You’ll Find Stuff You Can Use
In my listening post, I spotted another related item . . . http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357254,00.asp. Seems Vimeo has a little explaining to do about how it’s doing it’s own business –– in a courtroom!
Oh, it’s a little thing, really — copyright infringements being alleged by EMI — the music industry watchdog for this kind of questionable behavior!
Copyright infringement. Interesting. Because people are claiming Vimeo’s telling them what they can or can’t publish . . . and EMI claims Vimeo is just as culpable in the way Vimeo’s handling their own affairs. Think that’s going to engender ‘goodwill’ from the Vimeo user community? I’d say the jury is still out on that one!
Question:
Let’s suppose . . . you are the chief counsel for EMI. Would knowing about the kind of comments being made online about the firm you’re trying to build a case against be helpful to you? Would it be hurtful to Vimeo? How would you use this kind of information in court? I don’t have the answers. But they’re certainly worth noting, aren’t they?
Look, Vimeo is not a villanous firm. Ok, maybe some appear to argue they’re eccentric and artsy and all. And, yes . . . they appear to be capricious and arbitrary in how they choose to recognize and respond to violations of their ‘terms and conditions’ clause.
But here’s the lesson I want YOU to get . . . social media has made the masses connected . . . in a way we’ve never seen before!
The media that connects all those minds is a superhighway of thoughts that can either build your brand up or . . . tear it down. I say, ‘either’ because, frankly, there’s really nothing in-between. It’s all or nothing.
Now, do you see why it is so important to be listening? And, once you are . . . to respond in a timely and effective manner!
Personally, I’d be giving “thanks” to Vimeo for providing you with a ‘real world’ example of the power of social media on a business. It’s not always a ‘good’ example that teaches us so well. But, what social media is doing to Vimeo is certainly a ‘powerful’ example, isn’t it?
And please remember this — to make social media work FOR you, you must know what people are saying ABOUT you (as well as putting out your own story).
Which is an excellent segue into what we’re going to be learning about in Session #3 . . . on BLOGGING!
Next session . . . session #3 . . . “Blogging” . . . is an excellent way to make sure _YOU_ control the story about you and what you deem to be important to the people — friends and foes alike — in 2010.
Get Found Locally!
I predict
2010 will be the year of the search . . . the LOCAL search.
If your business isn’t leveraging the opportunities your prospects have access to on the internet, it’s a a safe bet they’re not likely to find you when they do. Tsk, Tsk.
Want to do something about that?
Try Google
Google’s “Local Business Center” to be specific.
It’s a free and easy way to help you claim some internet real estate so you can become noticed by people who are looking for what you do.
Learn more . . .
POINT:
If you’re not putting yourself (and, your business!) ‘out there’ . . . you’re only helping your competition . . . at your expense.
So check out Google’s Local Business Center and get yourself an UNfair share of the market for your wonderful services!
The Social Media Marketing Book
One of the many principles — but a very essential one — for using social media is to ‘optimize your brand assets’.
What’s that mean? Good question.
It means using online social media sites to post content so people can find your content and, as a result, find you, too!
Here’s a great example of this:
Dan Zarrella, a noted expert on social media is the author of this extremely good book on social media.
But my point, for this post at least, is that he’s practicing the principle of getting ‘out there’ by posting his content (in this case, video on YouTube) so you can connect with him.
Get Dan’s book. It’s awesome.
More important, get the power of this practice . . . optimizing brand assets on the internet.
It’s good for your brand awareness and . . . your bank account.
ONE MORE EXAMPLE . . .
Here’s one of the ‘related videos’ you’ll be able to view after Dan’s video.
Notice that it’s not likely to be confused with a ‘Hollywood’ production in any way. But it’s acceptable. It’s also effective.
Question:
Can you see yourself doing something similar to this video or Dan’s? Really! And what would that do for you? ’-)
