Jeff Korhan

Still Don't Get Social Media? Try This

 

Marketing Precedes and Selling

In a traditional sense, marketing is what you do to increase awareness, to otherwise move potential buyers closer to engaging with your sales process.  The idea with marketing is that it makes your sales process easier, because good marketing  "pre-sells" your product or service.

The challenge with any type of marketing that it places a burden on the salesperson to ultimately close the transaction. This is precisely why sales people are typically highly compensated. A skilled and experienced sales professional knows first and foremost how to make a buyer comfortable.  

Making a sales starts with building relationships and establishing trust, which are vitally important for keeping buyers fully engaged so that a well-designed sales process can be allowed to properly unfold.

Social Media Precedes Marketing

This is where social media can be invaluable.  Marketing helps to build awareness, and to some extent it educates the potential buyer.  Social media can do some of this too, which is where we get the term social media marketing.  

Yet, the greatest value of social media is not necessarily to "pre-sell" - but to "pre-humanize."  In this sense, it actually becomes an extension of that salesperson.  In other words, social media is best used to personalize the sales and marketing process.

I have been in sales my entire career, the first ten years in a corporate environment selling B2B - business to business. As an entrepreneur and small business owner, that experience helped me immensely.  I understood that you don't just show up and start selling.  

To be honest, as a young and inexperienced MBA, I wanted to get down to business.  I didn't understand why my more experienced mentors "wasted time" with lunches and dinners and the like. That getting to know each other process is easily accomplished with social media.

Your potential clients these days don't always have the time for business socializing, though its almost always a productive use of your time if they do.  It comes down to that simple truth that people do business with people, not brands or companies. Because if they like you and trust you, you are more likely to consummate the transaction - provided of course that your product or service is indeed a good fit for them.

Use Social Media to Learn and Relate

If you are using social media to extend your traditional marketing, then you will not be as effective as the business that uses it to support or precede it.  If I were a marketer just getting started with social media, I would sit down with my top salespeople and ask them how they make their prospects comfortable.

What makes this interesting is during that first and all-important meeting with a prospect, the most important activity is passive - it's listening.  The best salespeople will let the prospect do all of the talking.  So, this is the lesson number one. 

Consider how you can create an environment where everyone feels comfortable so that they will reveal what's on their minds.  How do you do this?  Ask open-ended questions.  Let them use you as a sounding board.  Show them you understand.

How do you show them you understand?  My favorite way of doing this is always to relate a similar experience with a previous client or customer.  Experience is always relevant.  If you have previously solved a similar problem for a satisfied customer, that story is pure gold.  Use it.

Now I'm Listening

One thing I've realized is that while I have endeavored to reduce the length of these blog posts, they nevertheless seem to be getting longer.  So, now I'm going to stop and listen to you.

How can I make this blog more useful for you?

What's on your mind?   (That's an open-ended question BTW)

Has this been helpful?   Then please click away on the Facebook Like button below, or otherwise share it with your community.

For my American friends, enjoy the Labor Day weekend.  For everyone else, enjoy your weekend as if it were a holiday!

 All the best,  Jeff

 

Want To Be A Small Business Celebrity?

A small business celebrity is not the one who craves media coverage and recognition.  That's a small business wannabe, and the social Web is a medium that makes their endeavor easily attainable. Traditional mediums such as television and magazines have conditioned us to believe that visibility makes you a celebrity.  It may for a while, but as most media celebrities know, its a slippery slope.

True business celebrities are recognized leaders.  They have earned a place in their profession for being relevant sources of useful information.  This is why they are sought out for their honest opinions on best practices and business trends.  What do you think about that definition?

Now, I'm imagining that what you were thinking since reading the headline above has changed, and that you have moved closer to a yes response, than a no.  I'm also hopeful that this not only warms you up to the idea of using social media more, but additionally gives you some thoughts on how to use it better. 

Content Always Matters

In small business circles, one of the most talked about topics involving social media lately is why more small businesses are not taking advantage of it.  One of the reasons for this is that this space is highly populated with people who, regardless of their age, are buying into the illusion that being cool, popular, and tech savvy are key ingredients for success.

The truth is content always matters.  Over the last few days I have been bouncing between The Tonight Show and David Letterman, mostly just to find something worth watching.  What I have realized is that interesting content on this social Web wins hands-down over movie stars that don't have much to say, or are incapable of effectively communicating without a script.  

If you are business leader, your script is your years of experience, and the practices that you followed to become successful. One of those best practices undoubtedly involved hard work. If you also happen to be cool and popular, better yet!

Sustainable Success Makes You Relevant

In any profession, including film, athletics, and business, we most admire those who have consistently succeeded.  This gives others something to shoot for - a model to emulate. Most of the time the formula involves simple practices that include staying in the game when others are giving up, and focusing on what you know (and do) best.

Not too long ago I was watching Bill Murray on Letterman. He did a routine on the street, diving into a large tub of water, and then walked inside soaking wet and had a conversation with David Letterman. Murray is still relevant because that is what he has always done - the unexpected.  He is famous for his ability to ad-lib any situation and change it up - to produce an unexpected surprise.

What's yours?  

What personal quality will make you relevant over the duration of your career?

Honesty is Most Enduring Quality 

Last night Michael Douglas was on Letterman for the same reason as every other movie star - to promote his upcoming film, Wall Street:  Money Never Sleeps.  There was the usual banter about the family, what a pleasure it was making the film and working with such talented young actors, how director Oliver Stone gets the best out of the cast, etc. 

Yet, it was when Douglas opened up about his bout with throat cancer that literally stole the show. How he handled himself in those moments with honesty and conviction for a positive outcome had me, Letterman, and band leader Paul Schaffer just going ...wow!

I realize now that if you are someone that has spent your entire life associated with the film business, you know that medium reveals everything about you.  The social networks are no different. You have to be honest to be relevant, because as Murray suggests in the recent GQ article (link above), we all know what's going to happen next - even before it happens.

So, Murray changes the expected to create humor.

As small businesses, we should be creating authentic honesty, a quality that is not always expected. 

It's a good script for all of us to follow, whether you are engaging an audience, or just making the most of your efforts with social media.

Has this been helpful?   Then please click away on the Facebook Like button below, or otherwise share it with your community.

Until tomorrow,   Jeff

 Photo Credit: Vamant

Oops! Sorry, We Goofed

If you have been receiving emails that apologize for minor mistakes made in emails previously sent from the same source, then you are not alone.  This is a new email marketing tactic that is a direct result of our social media influenced marketing environment.

Mistake Marketing

When I first started noticing this email strategy, my inquisitive nature kicked into gear.  Was that really a mistake or was it intentional?  I wondered.  And so should you.  Good marketers are trained to notice what other marketers and doing and ask not what is happening, but why.

I don't have to wonder any more because this tactic is becoming so commonplace that I decided to share it so that you can figure out how you can apply it to your small business marketing - which could be your email marketing, social media marketing, or any other kind of marketing. 

The purpose behind these planned mistakes is they give the sender an opportunity to make back-to-back calls to action to engage with you their offered product, service, or event.

Most of the time, the follow-up email purports to fix something that really didn't need fixing at all. It's usually to clarify a partial mistake, such as inviting you to an event on Thursday the 23rd.  The clarification is that the event will indeed be on the 23rd, but it is a Tuesday and not a Thursday.

But you had already figured that out, right? In marketing parlance, it's one more valuable impression.

Mistakes Make You More Human

What is clever about this tactic is how it humanizes a business, because we all make mistakes. Mistakes are believable.  Mistakes sometimes create even more engagement (note the Facebook screen capture) than well-crafted marketing messages. And its all a function of this increasingly personal business environment.

Mistakes make you approachable, and more importantly, they create opportunities for further engagement.  Mistakes give you a reason to go one step further toward accomplishing the next objective.

Making Mistakes Work For You

There is actually nothing new about this tactic.  I used it in high school to manufacture an excuse for returning to the home of a girl with whom I had just had a first date - in the hopes of asking her out on a second date.  I would "accidentally" leave a personal item behind, such as a jacket, just to have a reason for stopping by the next day. Oops, I forgot!

So, how can you apply this to your business to enhance your engagement with prospects and customers?  Here are some ideas:

• Leave something out. Then return to the scene to give it up.  This will feel like a bonus to your customer who was already satisfied with the transaction, and that will bring them one step closer to being a loyal customer.
• Take something back.  It sounds crazy, but it will get their attention.  Better yet, just mention that you were not intending to include that extra bonus, but now that its done ... "enjoy it with our compliments."
• Make an upgrade.  You can extend the warranty to compensate them for paying promptly, or just because you feel like it.  Zappos did this in the early days with free expedited shipping. Customers were obviously delighted, though by now it surely must be known that it is SOP - standard operating procedure.

You get the idea.  Be creative.  

Mistakes don't just get noticed, they are remembered too.

And being memorable is the hallmark of every great marketing strategy.

Has this been helpful?   Then please click away on the Facebook Like button below, or otherwise share it with your community.

Until tomorrow,   Jeff

Increase Your Work Efficiency with The Pomodoro Technique

Today I started using The Pomodoro Technique to better manage my time, and based upon my increased productivity today, I am very excited about its possibilities - especially with respect to my blogging here, my guest blogging, article commitments, and unfinished books.

The Pomodoro Technique

I just became aware of this technique over the weekend via John Jantsch and his Duct Tape Marketing Blog.  After perusing the free pdf from The Pomodoro Technique site, I was immediately intrigued, because this method is predicated upon how we use our minds - or let them use us, something I studied for over 15 years when I was actively teaching meditation.

The Pomodoro Technique, which was created by Francesco Cirillo, uses an ordinary kitchen timer, which may or may not be in the shape of a tomato (a tomato is a pomodoro in Italian), to track a fixed unit of time of 25 minutes.  This unit is known as a pomodoro.  You use these units to estimate, track, and evaluate your investment of time for accomplishing your priority activities.

How To Use the Pomodoro Technique

Francesco goes into detail about the subtle nuances for applying this technique in the descriptive 45 page pdf (link below).  So, I'll just give you a general idea from my experience today.

You start the day by organizing and prioritizing your list of activities. I allotted one 25 minute pomodoro to carefully plan and prioritize my goals for the day that I extracted from my weekly list, which I keep updated online with Checkvist.

One of the vital qualities of a pomodoro is it is an indivisible unit of time.  This means if your work is done a few minutes early, you use the remaining time to refine it further - which led me to at least one breakthrough today.  The flip side is that when time is up - it's "pencils down."  You then take a 3-5 minute break, whether you think you need it or not.

So, when you are planning your day, you estimate how many pomodoros you need for each activity. If it is three, you place three boxes to the right of that item - x-ing them out as you use them.   Sometimes you'll need another pomodoro, other times you'll have some to spare.

At the end of the day, you can take a look at your progress (or not) and now have the raw material for making better estimates, and for trimming the fat out of regular activities that are taking longer than your would like.

Time and Stress Management

One of the activities I worked on today was editing a chapter on blogging for a book that our National Speakers Association is publishing to compile best practices for professional speakers.  I had estimated two pomodoros, but was making excellent progress so I added a third to get to 95% completion.

The big breakthrough from a stress management perspective is that instead of not being finished with the full and complete edit, I have indeed completed the serious heavy lifting I had intended, and know exactly what is necessary to make it ready for final submission - one pomodoro.  So, that's a mini-celebration of progress for today, along with a clearly defined activity for the next day.

Also, by setting aside that final edit for tomorrow, I'll be doing so with a fresh and clear mind.  This is where I'm beginning to see the ultimate progress.  Instead of starting the day with a list of to-do's, I envision a learning curve where my planning, tracking, and processing leads to even better planning and productivity.

The Tools for the Technique

The primary tool for this technique is of course the pomodoro kitchen timer.  Today I used the timer on my iPhone. Francesco likes the timer because he feels its important to see the time passing - so that you can align with it and use it well, instead of it slipping away like an enemy into the night.

I get that, yet I'm not sure if I could handle the ticking of the timer. I'm going to find out tomorrow because there is a free Pomodoro iPhone app (the pro version is $.99) that emulates the pomodoro timer - complete with ticking.

The only other tools are the tracking sheets that you can print out from the free Pomodoro instructional PDF, with the most vital being the To-Do Sheet on page 36.

The Secret Benefit

There are a number of benefits to this method, including greater focus and concentration, increased awareness in the present, better estimating of your time, and reduced anxiety.

However, I believe the secret benefit is that is helps us to conquer our biggest enemy - our wandering minds. You don't realize that it is you that interrupts you from taking a job to completion. We have conditioned ourselves that we need or deserve a break, that we are just too busy to focus on this right now, etc, etc.

Yes, if The Pomodoro Technique does one thing well, it is that it helps you to manage the self-talk that Seth Godin refers to in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? as the resistance.  That little voice that always has a reason why its ok to put off what you are very capable of doing - getting the task at hand completed and shipped.

Has this been helpful?   Then please click away on the Facebook Like button below, or otherwise share it with your community.

Until tomorrow,   Jeff

 

Social Media and Small Business Marketing to Older Adults

Everything we do in life is driven by the desire for happiness. As we get older, there is a tendency to rely on what has made us happy in the past, which of course prevents us from making new discoveries that may well work better.

This to me explains why older adults who were previously reluctant to give social media a try are now leading the pack. The Pew Internet project of the Pew Research Center recently released a report that shows the 50+ age group as nearly doubled their use of social media over the last year.

(click graph to enlarge)

This clearly indicates that older adults are indeed seeing the benefits of social networking. Understanding those benefits will help you to focus your social media marketing efforts accordingly.

Sustainable Family Relationships

Many of us in the 50+ category are still in the workforce.  I know I intend to be here for a long time, as I throughly enjoy my work with new media and small business marketing.  That's one community that I connect with - industry friends, clients, and influencers.

However, I believe most adults are using social media predominantly to stay connected with friends and their extended families.  This means that our communities will become increasingly intermixed as adults, their children, and grandchildren connect on Facebook.

So, it is conceivable to envision businesses having more relationships with multiple generations of the same family - which I imagine is how it used to be when more of us lived in small towns than in cities.   This has to be good news for small businesses that themselves involve multiple generations of the same family, and are better integrated into their communities as a result.

Targeted Marketing and Referrals

Marketers that have relied on traditional methods have to be salivating over the possibility of reaching their their ideal adult customers with the potentially laser accurate semantic search capabilities that are emerging on networking sites such as Facebook.

This creates some interesting possibilities, especially for companies whose products and services not only suit this demographic, but that too involve major investments - such as automobiles, home improvement, retirement services, health care, and more.  This is going to require a major shift in marketing for small businesses that in the past relied on nothing more than word of mouth.

The reason for this is Marketing and PR 101 - more impressions increases the likelihood of buying. When the economy was strong, I didn't have to do any marketing for my landscape contracting business.  World of mouth gave us all we could handle, especially during peak season. That's not the case for many industries moving forward.

The big opportunity that I missed when I owned that business was doing more work with family members of my best clients. While I can postulate a number of reasons for this, all of them are solved by being better connected on Facebook with my customers who are clearly connected with their extended families.  From there, the Facebook LIKE button will work its magic.

Meet Them Where They Are

The Pew study indicates that only a small percentage of older adults are using Twitter.  My experience supports that.  So, where are the aging baby boomers hanging out on the social networks? If they are still in the workforce, they are undoubtedly using LinkedIn.  However, my money says the majority are using Facebook - either for business or personal reasons, and most likely both.

Social media is more than community, it is entertainment too. Here at my house, you are more likely on any given evening to find me and my kids on Facebook than watching television.   I suspect the day will arrive when that will be true for all demographics.

What is happening here is a shift in what is socially acceptable.  Television used to be where families congregated during the evenings, and to a great extent that is still true. Nevertheless, there is another component to our day-to-day activities that is extracting us from these previous methods of entertainment, and that is social media.

We using new methods for driving our happiness, and social media is evidently gaining its share from every age group.

What is really exciting to me is that small businesses like mine and yours can take full advantage of it, unlike television which only helped major brands.

Marketing tells us to meet our customers where they are.

Facebook is sure shaping up as a good place to look, don't you think?.

Has this been helpful?   Then please click away on the Facebook Like button below, or otherwise share it with your community.

Have a great week!   Jeff

 

Can Social Media be Effectively Outsourced?

Given that the intended purpose of social networking is connecting and interacting to build relationships with real people, it not only seems ironic to outsource these activities, but counterproductive as well.  Nevertheless, lets take a closer look to fully understand the dynamics involved.

(click to enlarge)

Transparency Always Works

When we see your smiling face on your Twitter profile, we naturally assume we are chatting with you, and for the most part we are.  This is exactly why many of us do not pay attention to our Twitter Direct Messages, because we know most DM's are automated.  That's how it has been for years.

When the Twitter account is a brand logo, we treat it as such.  We suspect there is a team that manages that account, and there probably is.  Since we really don't know specifically who we are communicating with due to the lack of transparency, we are polite, professional, and otherwise maintain our social distance.  Well, at least most of us are.

Does this compromise effectiveness?  It all depends upon what you are trying to accomplish.  With brands we expect less intimacy and engagement; yet, we can still obtain value from the information that is communicated.

Where this gets fuzzy is with personalities, such as celebrities, where there may or may not be a team of professionals acting in place of the celeb.  Is this effective?  I don't think so, not if I'm the celeb and I'm trying to learn from my fans.

Then there are regular people like you and me, professionals, entrepreneurs, and small business types. We are expected to be the one behind the controls that gives a human response. So, if our follower doesn't get one, they have to wonder why. It reminds me of the audio cassette commercial that suggested with their slogan what is conceivable with that medium ... "Is it live ... or is it Memorex?"

An Interesting Example

Social media personality Chris Brogan uses his regular @chrisbrogan Twitter account when he personally Tweets.  We know that and we expect it, especially given his credibility as a heavy Twitter user over the years.

Some time last year Brogan created the @broganmedia Twitter account, which does display an image of Chris Brogan.  This is an automated account that Tweets news, and if you follow that account for a while, you will soon realize its a news source because all (or most) of the Tweets begin with ... "Found this neat..."

Is this OK?  While a personal presence implies a live human being, the word media does not.  We understand that and adjust our behavior accordingly.  Brogan has been completely transparent about the fact that @broganmedia is an automated account.

Yet, lately I am hearing from several of my friends that they are looking for or have already found someone to outsource their social networking to.  So, now I get to thinking how silly I will feel when I discover 6 months down the road that I have been Tweeting with a complete stranger - all the while thinking it was my friend!  Weird, isn't it?

Automation Can Go Wrong

One consideration with outsourcing is that things can go wrong.  Comments could be made that don't represent you well, and that will seriously compromise your social media efforts - because you probably will not even know about them. That's something to give serious consideration to.  And if the communications are highly polished, you'll come off as stiff and impersonal

Then there is digital automation.  I'll have to confess to recently setting up automatic notices that announce my speaking engagements on or about the time I am stepping on stage.  The way it was supposed to work was to pull fields of data from my eSpeakers CRM to identify the location, date, and audience, along with a standard message of ... "Looking forward to speaking to..."

Due to a glitch (or operator error), a recent push to my Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook Profile resulted in a truncated message because the audience field didn't engage.   This resulted in an interesting exchange on Facebook (see above).

The good news is sometimes there are unexpected benefits to mistakes, namely that they get people's attention and that can lead to even MORE engagement.  That is, if you are actually monitoring them and then double back to respond.

So, now you may be thinking about building mistakes into your posts (live or automated) so as to humanize them.  This is a tactic I've noticed a lot lately, especially with the use of email. The strategy is to purposely make an error in an email blast so that you can .. "fix it the next day" - which thereby gives you an opportunity to make one more impression to promote your event, product launch, or whatever.

So, what's your take on all of this?

BTW, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I tend to blog about what is going on in my life right now. And in fact, tomorrow I will be facilitating a Twitter chat on this very topic for Engage365, which is an online events and conferences community.

You are welcome to join us if you wish.  It starts at 1:00 EDT and the hashtag is #Engage365.

Has this been helpful in any way?   Then please Tweet, click on the Facebook Like button below, or otherwise share it with your community.

Have a great weekend!  Jeff

 

How to Start a Blog

Despite the millions of blogs in the blogosphere, it is still a fact that the percentage of small business bloggers in any industry other than technology is less than 10%, and probably much closer to 1%.  Let's take a look at some of the common challenges, some solutions for overcoming or working around them, and then a step-by-step process for how to start a blog.

Common Blogging Challenges

While the percentage of bloggers is small, it is not for lack of desire.  What I hear most often is that "I know I should be doing this."  So, let's focus first on what is holding everyone back.

I have prioritized according to frequency, those challenges that I hear most often when I am speaking to small businesses associations.

1. I don't have enough time
2. I'm not a very good writer
3. I don't know what to blog about
4. How often should I blog?
5. How do I start a blog?

Every Challenge Has a Solution

There are solutions that will solve multiple challenges.  For example, instead of writing, just posting an image or a short video with a small caption solves the challenge of time and writing skill.  Because its simple, you can do it every day - which takes care of how often to blog.

The response I would like to give to how often you should blog is this: How good do you want to be? That said, just do what you can, but at least weekly.  Consistency is more important than frequency. Nothing turns readers off more quickly than a blog that has evidently been abandoned.  Use your mobile device to make updates on the fly if you have to.

What to blog about is not only a challenge for new bloggers, but for those of us that have been doing this for years.  You should never stop asking yourself how you can best help the community you serve. What is it that they most want to know? That's what you should be blogging about.

In this regard, that list of 5 challenges above are included on my list of topics to blog about.  I have also blogged here about privacy issues and how to handle negative comments on the Web. Why? Because they are commons concerns small business owners have with social media marketing. There are basic needs with every community. The more you blog, the better you get at finding and addressing them from different perspectives - and thereby helping the largest possible audience.

Blogging takes patience.  It takes time to build up an audience, unless you are already well known in your industry. That's OK - keep blogging.  Because Google and the other search engines are always "reading" your blog.   Don't worry, as you accumulate relevant content that gets indexed, it will eventually get read, and your readership will naturally grow.

Steps for Successfully Starting Your Blog

Step One - Define the community you blogging for? -- You need to clearly define your readers.  Have a mental picture of who they are, where they are located, how they will most likely prefer to consume your content (written, video, audio, etc.), and what they want to know.

These should ideally be your customers and clients, or those that associate with or influence them. "Anyone that is interested in my message" is not a valid answer.  It's a cop-out. You have to be clear on this before proceeding any further.  The reason being that you cannot solve problems for your readers if you are not crystal clear about who they are.

Step Two - Know why are you blogging? -- What action do you want your readers to take?  Do you want them to subscribe to your feed, leave a comment, share your post with their Facebook friends, join your Facebook Page, sign up for your newsletter, or call you up to hire you?

It is subtle, but the desired call-to-action will affect the character of your blog, such as where you locate key elements. For example, if your goal is to get a phone call, you want your phone number located high and displayed prominently.

Step Three - What do you most want to write about? -- In my mind, blogging is a lot like exercise. You have to enjoy it and be willing to do it consistently - so that you can continue enjoying it.  So, notwithstanding what your readers want to know, you have to enjoy the process of delivering that content to them.

In other words - be passionate about your message and how you communicate it.  In this blog, I cover a mix of what I want to write about AND what I believe think they want.  Lists are not my favorite method for delivering content, but I know people love them - which is exactly why I'm delivering one right now!

Step Four - Determine what is not being done that is of value to your community -- It helps to subscribe to other blogs and read the COMMENTS. That is where you will learn what is not being done. This can help you to develop a style that fills a need that isn't being served by the established bloggers in your area of expertise.

Some ideas are to go narrower or deeper on a topic, present it in simpler language, distill it down to its key components, or just make it more interesting.  At the very least, reading those comments will give you some ideas for your next blog post.

Step Five - Choose a Descriptive Title for Your Blog -- This is something that challenges quite a few people.  They wonder if the title should be more about them or the audience.  That's a good question. I believe it should be about the audience you are serving. However, if you are trying to build a persona, you will want to build your identity in there too.

My primary reason for blogging is to get hired to speak to associations of small businesses.  So, I am the product. That's why it's essential for me to have my name incorporated into my blog banner. The banner is a secondary step you can get to later, but here is a post where you can learn about blog banners.

The trick with blog titles is to create one that you know will resonate with those that you are writing for.  You are taking a risk when you try to be cute, and also when you use "big" words that are not commonly searched for.  Strategic is a good example.  It's a powerful word, but it's not commonly used in searches.  Don't impress yourself with your title -  use it to connect with your desired community.

Step Six - Write a compelling bio that captures your expertise and personality. -- The first thing people do when they arrive at a blog is to check out the credentials of the blogger.  This is how words like ninja, guru, and expert became so prevalent on the social Web.  Please don't use them, just be mindful to communicate your special skill.

For example, my special skill is an ability for taking things that are complex or abstract and making them practical and useful.  That's what I do with this blog.  I understand the needs of my readers, and so I sift through hundreds of other blogs to find the best ideas, which I then serve up in a simple and practical way - so that they can be readily applied to most small businesses.

Step Seven - Choose a blog platform that is right for you -- Once you understand who you are writing for, what you are going to write about, a title for your blog (with a URL to match so you own your blog), a bio, and preferably your first blog idea - you are ready to build it.  Note:  The URL is not necessary to start your blog.

Blogs are either hosted by you on your servers, or by others.  I chose TypePad to host my blog this, and a number of other reasons.  This post I wrote some time ago gets dozens of reads every single day.  It describes some of the reasons I favor TypePad, with the foremost being that they take care of everything in terms of support and technology so that I can focus on two things - blogging and finding more speaking engagements.

Incidentally, I also recommend Wordpress, but there is a level of skill and commitment involved that is daunting for most small businesses.  If you have the technical talent, and are really wanting to push the limits with your blog, it may be worth considering.

Step Eight - Start Writing -- It's easy to start writing, but not quite as easy to keep writing.  It is important to have your personality embedded into your blog.  I find the easiest way to do that is to pay attention to what is going on in my life with my business and personal activities.  Usually, they are connected in some way.

For example, I am mentoring a young man in college with his social media and blogging.  Once he asked me ... that question ... what should I be blogging about? My suggestion was to tune into what his professors are really saying

If one of them has a challenge, than it is most likely a shared one.  This student blogger can share his perspectives in his blog, and with a little luck, his other professors will be impressed with his willingness to tackle what is evidently on the minds of the faculty.

What are the challenges of your customers?  You solve their problems every day.  That is excellent content to share because their story is one with some drama and a happy ending your future customers can relate to.  Here's a post that will give you some ideas and resources for developing your storytelling skills.

For clarity, if you run out of ideas for your blogging, just ask yourself what happened in your life today.  There is a story in there somewhere.  Go for a walk, a run, or a bike ride (as I often do) - and work it out.

Step Nine - Blog consistently and never stop learning! -- Just as with exercise, the most important time to stay with your blogging is when you least want to.  That's when you will make the breakthrough that will carry you to the next level where everything is easier.

Some of the learning you will have to do will involve choosing and using keywords to be found more easily by your readers. Whatever you do, don't spend any money on complicated systems.  The easiest way to choose the best keywords is to understand and listen to your prospects and customers.  When they find you, ask them which words they searched for.  It's a process.

If you are looking for more tips, here are 27 of my favorite blogging tips.

One of the things I suggested above is to understand what you want your audience to do.  I have discovered the Facebook LIKE button to be an invaluable tool for increasing the traffic to my blog, which helps me help more small business owners.

So give that LIKE button a clickety-click and I will be most appreciative!  You can also subscribe to this blog's feed, leave a comment, or otherwise share it with your community.

Until tomorrow, Jeff

 

Seductive Social Media

Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.

That's a quote from the The Color of Money, a film about the art of hustling and earning a living in the game of pool.  And it makes an interesting distinction that applies to your work on the social networks.

Winning is indeed seductive because it happens when you are least expecting it.  It seems to just happen on its own.  That's the seduction.  What gets us into trouble is expecting it to magically happen again.

The results you achieve through your social networking and marketing will often have this seductive quality. They may happen very quickly for you, and they may seem to materialize out of thin air.  My suggestion is to avoid this seduction if you want your winning ways to continue.

Winning Changes Behavior

It is certainly fun to win, and we all deserve to get a lucky break every once in a while.  Yet, once you get accustomed to winning, it is easy to forget what made you a winner in the first place. And so you fall into what I call the entitlement trap.

The challenge with winning is making the winning streak last. There are probably many ways for accomplishing this, but the most reliable one is by working hard and persevering after others have given up.  Beyond that, it always helps to take a look at how you got there.

Analysis and Study Creates More Winning

When I score a win with my social networking or marketing, I like to go back and trace the activities that made it happen. For example, last week I learned that this blog was ranked in Technorati's Top 100 Small Business directory. That naturally suggests I am doing something right, but what exactly?

This means doing some homework, or at least take a moment to contemplate.  I enjoy celebrating my successes, but part of that celebration is a process of determining how I achieved that success.  This is valid for any success at all, which should include every piece of new business that you score, as they are technically all wins.

Use the Seductive Forces Effectively

There is definitely a cause and effect relationship to everything that happens in this universe. Sometimes the cause is hard work.  Other times it may as simple as having the right intention that gives you the focus to notice what is most relevant.

Seductive forces can cause us to lose our focus on what matters most, such as confusing the number of followers or fans with meaningful interaction and engagement with real people.

A better plan is to simply recognize the seduction and use it for what it is - an indication that you are on the right track. Now determine how to use that energy to build on the current successes.  That will keep you sharp.

And then you'll be able to enjoy the seduction, as opposed to getting distracted by it.

What matters most to you and your business?  If you keep your attention on that you will achieve better results and appreciate them more.

And that alone will make them sustainable.

Whether you win or earn them - they are successes all the same.  The important thing is to make the distinction, and not be seduced into falling into any traps that will undermine your future success.

If this been helpful, please give it a Tweet, click on the Facebook LIKE button, or otherwise share it with your community.

Until tomorrow,  Jeff

Photo Credit:  Chicago.metromix.com

Social Connectivity is a Human Need

A recent study indicates that college students who are active Facebook users are more likely to make new friends, get involved, and therefore, go the distance and ultimately graduate - in other words, succeed.

My friend Richard Heller and me at a Green Industry Event

The Paradox of Social Media Technology

This study validates what I have said before, that there are a lot of paradoxes involved with social media. One of them is that this technology doesn't put distance between us, it brings us closer together.  And most importantly, it makes us feel connected to a community - which is undeniably a human need.

You can be a complete introvert, as many of us were growing up.  Yet, at some level we crave involvement - a desire to belong to a community of like-minded people.  For students, this can come in the form of sports or clubs.  Or it can be an industry association.

When I was in the corporate world and beginning to consider the challenge of starting my own business, one of my entrepreneurial clients suggested I join trade groups.  I had no idea what a trade group was.  After a bit of research I learned that these were indeed industry associations.

And I can say with absolute certainty that connecting with others that shared my challenges and aspirations was one the best decisions I made as a young entrepreneur.  I only wish I had joined more of them sooner. When I got involved in national associations I was thrilled to discover how the increased diversity resulted in even more ideas that I could apply to my small business.

Expand Your Communities

For years we have been talking about the global business environment, but we weren't really experiencing it, other than possibly reading generalities in the news about what was going on in India or China. Social media has made all of that an actionable reality.

As small businesses owners, we can all benefit from broadening our horizons beyond the local level to learn what is happening across the globe.  You may not think this applies to you, but the truth is you will learn so much about how to operate your local business by engaging, sharing, and otherwise interacting with others that have perspectives that may enhance or challenge yours.

I'll have both of my kids in college this year, and I can assure you that virtually every college or university that we considered is placing a great deal of emphasis on having an international experience. You and I can now have that experience right here on the social networks.  Thanks to services such as Skype, we can even video conference with our international friends for free.

Go Where the Action Is

We are or soon will be experiencing profound changes in how we do business.  If you doubt this, all you have to do is search the social Web and you will discover that many of those ideas you were thinking of acting on are already in play.

I'm presently reading the The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, and it is very interesting to learn that Mark Zuckerberg's ideas about Facebook were not revolutionary at all.  There were many similar sites already in play. He and his team simply made some excellent decisions about scaling slowly and keeping it simple to enhance the user experience.

So there you go.  Isn't that what you have done in your small business?  Haven't you seen an idea in practice and thought - "I can do that better ... make it more practical ... or more cost effective?"

But the only way to do that is to get in the game and learn what is already in play.  Learn from your industry friends across the country, or across the globe, and then apply it to your business.

Social media can be a support group.  It can also be a research tool.  And it can be a source for new ideas.

It's all of these things, because however you are wired for success, you need that connectivity to more effectively accomplish your business objectives.

If this been helpful, please give it a Tweet, click on the Facebook LIKE button, or otherwise share it with your community.

Until tomorrow,  Jeff

 

The Bright Side of Losing Social Media Privacy

From an early age, we have all witnessed countless circumstances that we have deemed unfair.  And while many are bemoaning their loss of privacy on the social networks, they should be welcoming that very thing that will indeed make this world a more equitable place - and that includes our business environment too.

People Talk

It used to be that if you were aware of your competitors having a competitive edge because they were not being fully compliant with the law, you just had to get over it.  For one thing, giving attention to your competitors keeps you from focusing on your own business.

And how do we know that other businesses may not be operating on the up and up?  People talk. Everyone knows what's going on, but nobody is doing anything about it.  So, as they say ... it's business as usual.

People are still talking, and they are doing so in a big way on the social networks. And they aren't just talking, but posting videos, images, and a lot more.  The result of this is that communities are communicating what is really going on with such amplitude that fairness in all of its forms will undoubtedly prevail.

Social Networking is Media

Yesterday I learned of an unfortunate circumstance on the LPGA tour.  There was evidently a lull in the action and Julie Inkster pulled out a weighted club to loosen up.  A fan noticed it on TV, notified the tour, and she was disqualified.  I had no idea this was not allowed, and evidently Julie didn't either.

We all make mistakes, and many of them are honest mistakes. Nevertheless, the social networks are putting so much of our daily lives into the mainstream that either our mistakes will be noticed, and we will learn from them - or we will learn from those of others.  I now know not to use a weighted club in competitive golf - and now so do you.

That's how quickly this works.  One circumstance leads to lots of learning, and that alters our future behavior.

The Inevitable Loss of Privacy Has Just Begun

Some of us are more comfortable with visibility than others. Yet, whether you use the social networks to enhance your visibility or not, you will be affected by its influences. Because even if you don't use social media, you will hear about what is happening on them through good old word-of-mouth.

If you have teenage children like I do, you know that they have grown up with such easy access to media that they are very comfortable with sharing their daily activities on the social networks. And they are going to take that mindset with them into the business world.

You have to remember that social media is for the most part, less than four years old - which is less than the length of the typical college term.  In five more years, we will have adults in the workforce that used social media in both high school AND college, and that is going to dramatically affect how freely information is shared when they join us in this business environment.

It's inevitable.

We are not going to be able to change behavior that is second nature to an entire generation. Nevertheless, our reduced privacy will inevitably encourage more fair play in every arena of this inherently connected global community.

And that inevitability is the bright side of the social media privacy issue.

BTW, the photo above is from my son Zak's high school graduation this year.  He's the one in the middle:)

Has this been helpful?   Then please click away on the Facebook Like button below, or otherwise share it with your community.

Have a great week and look on the bright side in all that you do!   Jeff