Jeff Korhan

Why Should I Read Your Blog

You have four seconds to answer.

If you expect to translate visitors into readers, you have to appeal to their sensibilities in a matter of seconds.  To do that, you have to know them well.

Know Your Audience

Many blogs proclaim to help everyone.  That's not an audience; that's a dream!

I've read blogs that profess to help bloggers, or companies, or worst yet - people!  My question is which ones?  For example, there are business bloggers and bloggers that are just expressing themselves for the fun of it.  Their objectives differ. 

Having fun is a viable objective.  It's an art form.  If that is how you can help, go for it. I suspect it is an under-served niche.

Connect with Their Primal Needs

What are the primal needs of your target audience - the perennial challenges that never seem to go away? 

My target audience is small business owners who typically are wearing multiple hats.  They are starved for time.  For this reason, I have to keep things simple, get to the point, and whenever possible, provide pragmatic examples that show them how.  The don't care about a long-winded perspective from The Harvard Business Review.  They simply want practical tips and advice.

If your audience happens to be more intellectual, then by all means, go ahead and provide 101 tips.  I feel my job is to sift through the rubble to find the gold that my readers are looking for.  That's how I add value.  

Get Smarter

My friend shared an interesting insight about blogging.  He said blogging is a form of talking to yourself.  And we all know that people that talk to themselves, while possibly being a bit strange, are quite often very intelligent.  The nice thing about blogging is you can privately talk to yourself.

Seriously, the more you blog the smarter you get.  You develop greater clarity for how you can help your customers, especially if you are taking the time to engage with your readers through comments.  And the more you do that, the better you understand them, and what they really need.

The Challenge

The problem with most bloggers, and for that matter, many of us in general, is we know too much.  Our challenge is to learn how to apply what we know, instead of trying to impress with how much we know.    

When you can succinctly describe how you can help your audience with their challenges in just a few seconds, you will easily build your readership.  There are many theories for doing this.  However, the one that I always come back to is the simplest - work at it.

Be good.  Be exceptional.  That's right dude, be excellent!

There is no substitute for excellent performance.

If you happen to be a Typepad Blogger, here is a comprehensive page of excellent tips for making your Typepad blog excellent.

Using Google Alerts More Effectively

 
Google Alerts are an invaluable tool for monitoring your online presence or a very specific topic. 

The most common use of Google Alerts is staying on top of the Web presence of the most important person in our lives - ME!  And on this increasingly humanized Web, that is certainly a recommended practice to take advantage of positive mentions of your personal brand, and also to manage those negative comments.

The Web is a big place and specificity is the key to effectively using this tool.  Here are some tips for doing that.

Getting Started

The first step in using Google Alerts is to get a gmail address that establishes your Google Account.  Then simply go to Alerts in their menu of services and start setting up the words or phrases that you wished to be informed on.  You have a choice for being informed via email or with an RSS feed to your Google Reader, which you can use more easily with iGoogle.

Use ALL of Your Names

You have more "names" than you may realize.  Traditionally, we think of having a legal name and a nickname.  However, the Internet has created a need for more names that you should also be monitoring.  This includes usernames, addresses, and URL's. 

Because you do not know which name will be indexed, or sometimes which portion, you will be wise to establish a complete system of alerts that aims to go fishing for all them.

Your Name

Mostly I go by Jeff Korhan, but my legal name is Jeffrey J. Korhan, so I have alerts set for both. 

If there happens to be a famous persona that shares your name, use the minus sign to exclude them from the data sent to you.  For example, if your name is Bill Gates.

Set the alert like this in quotes to exclude (subtract) the famous namesake by using an associative term, such as: "Bill Gates - Bill Gates Microsoft." 

Social Media UserName

To simplify your life, it is best to choose one username and stick with it on all of your networks.  Mine is jeffkorhan - which is my name without spaces.  Yet, as far as Google is concerned, that one little space makes a difference.

Twitter UserName

Once again, one little symbol makes a huge difference.  @jeffkorhan is my Twitter username.  The key is to include the @ symbol.

Incidentally, Google is not going to index all of your Tweets.  However, once in a while one gets indexed.  You may as well know which ones those are. 

Website Name

For me this is jeffkorhan.com.  The key is the .com.  Because whether  your URL is indexed as http://, or www, or both together, because they are all contiguous, it is going to be the "yourURL.com" - or whatever extension applies, that distinguishes your site.

Company Name

If you are a small business owner, your personal name and company name are practically synonymous.  Setting alerts for your company name keeps you informed on any mentions on the Web so that you can encourage positive comments, and address any negative  talk.  

Plus, if you happen to have a registered or trademarked name or names, you are obligated to respond to infringing uses to protect your rights. 

Related Names

Related to your work as a small business are the products and services you provide, key customers, your competitors and what they are up to, and industry associations you are a member of.

In this area especially, you will have to discriminate and suspend Alerts if the content gets too overwhelming.  While I do a lot of work in the green industry, there is more content there than I have time to digest, so I discontinued those alerts.

Take a Drink

Google alerts just bring you to the trough of water.  It's up to you to take drink.  The important thing is to click through the indexed links and see where they take you.  When appropriate, make a response.  There is one thing other bloggers appreciate, and that is when a mentioned source shows up to participate in the conversation.

For example, I was recently mentioned in a post by the Social Media Club of France.  I discovered the link through Google Alerts and dropped down an appreciative comment, to which they graciously responded.  You won't see the comments in the link above because they have not yet been indexed.

Going beyond analytics to use Google Alerts for human interaction and building community is the highest use of this sometimes tedious work of monitoring your personal and company brands. 

It Works Fast

So, how fast do Google Alerts work?  This post went live at 11:54 a.m. CDT.  As you can see from the image below, at 12:19 p.m. - just 25 minutes later,  this post was indexed and an email sent to me.  Very nice, huh?!

If you have enjoyed this post, please leave a comment below.  Let me know other topics you would like covered and I'll do my best.  And feel free to use the buttons below to share this post with your community.

Photo Credit: Floeschie

The Risk and Reward of Social Media

Yesterday we had a lively discussion about how to be fearless with your social media marketing, and in the process, to keep getting better every day.

As most of know, the process of getting better occasionally involves some obstacles.  That's the way life works, but it can be managed.  I've recently been observing an example of this through the conversation surrounding a well-known blogger who has stirred up a small controversy with his substantial audience. 

The issue and the blogger are irrelevant, so I will not mention either.  What is relevant is the fact that if you expect to build a substantial fan base or audience for your blog, you are going to have to take some risks.  And along with those risks comes not just the potential reward, but also the occasional heat or fallout.

Let's look at some ways this can be strategically managed to achieve your small business objectives.

Being Agreeable - Low Risk

This is a good strategy if you are just getting started with blogging, or possibly if you are at the peak of your career and have nothing to prove.  In both of those situations, you don't need to or want to be controversial.  This may also be the right approach if you work in a small town or a corporate environment.

You have to decide how much risk you are comfortable with. Naturally, we all want to achieve more.  Although, you had better expect to endure some stress in achieving your lofty goals because you will encounter plenty of people who will challenge you - some for no reason at all, and others because they sincerely want to help you.  It can be difficult to discern between the two.

Agreeing to Disagree - Moderate Risk

When you Agree to Disagree with someone in your target market, you are basically saying you don't agree with them but you would rather not get into a big tussle over it.  You think you are right, and I think I'm right, but for the sake of doing business together, or at least co-existing in the same market, let's just agree to disagree and move on.

The problem with this stance is its not too far removed from Being Agreeable.  You are taking more risk here and as a result, you will occasionally catch a nice wave.  But the street-smart in your market will define you as spineless - someone who will back down as soon as you are challenged. I would rather be known as a pleasant and agreeable blogger, because while there is lower risk and reward, there is also a nobility to knowing who you are.

Taking a Stand - High Risk

This is where most of us are - or think we are.  The true test, of course, is to honestly ask yourself how often you compromise when the current gets a little choppy.  The aforementioned blogger hasn't backed down once.  It doesn't matter if he is right or wrong.  What's important is he has developed a base from which he can back up his position.

That is exactly why this is the wrong approach if you are being controversial just for the effect, which is not uncommon with some youthful bloggers who have scored one success and are emboldened by it.  What they don't realize is the seasoned professionals don't think very much of their irrational exuberance. Why?  The world is littered with one-hit wonders!

Standing the test of time is the ultimate proof.  You will take some heat to get there, but that is also what makes you wiser.  You have built up a legacy through your social media work that backs up your talk. 

The Best Approach

Get clear in advance about what is acceptable and what isn't.  Write it down if you have to.  And have a value system that you live by.  When you get get clear about just those two parameters, you will be very comfortable with your chosen strategy - and the risk that accompanies it.

Knowing that most of us want to accomplish more, I made a decision this week to share what I know on this topic by co-writing a book with a marketing friend.  I will keep you informed on the progress.  However, I can already assure you it will be heavily weighted towards taking the apparent risks - to get the real rewards that come with authenticity. 

Sometimes the true risk is holding back.

Take a chance, you only live once.

Photo Credit:  Holotone

Using Video to Sell Creatively

Relationships Selling

When most of us think of using video on the social networks, it is often with the vision of having that video go viral.  Not that we necessarily want to be worldwide celebrities - or do we? 

That's exactly what can hold you back. If it happens, that's wonderful and something to celebrate. Until then, think about what's important here.  You just want to be known in your market.   

Today I was ready to turn a proposal loose to a new client.  At the last minute I realized that taking an extra 15 minutes to shoot a 2 minute video introduction for anyone who might be involved in the decision-making process would be a good idea.  Is it worth that to get the business?  You know it is.  

We're talking about relationships here.  You obviously cannot develop a relationship with a video, but you can help give someone a glimpse into your personality - what it may be like to work with you.  That is something you cannot do in words.  And that is a powerful use of social media.   

How It's Done

When I tried to load up the aforementioned video to YouTube, I discovered (for the first time) that YouTube was down.   So, I strolled on over to Vimeo.  For one thing, I know the quality of a video presentation is better with Vimeo.  It may not have the audience of YouTube, but the quality is exceptional.

What I didn't know is their system of password protecting a video is very nice indeed.  With just one click they will email the link of your video, along with your personal message and the necessary password to view it.

Time to Think Better

There is tendency among marketers to think bigger - we are trained to reach for more customers.  While social media can help you with that, it also is ideal for helping you to better communicate with that small circle of prospects and customers that know you, that understand you, and are therefore more likely to do business with you.  

There is an energy to marketing.  You know it and I know it.  However, at some point you need to get off of the energy train and focus on the opportunities that are right in front of you.

You understand the tools. Just consider how you can use them to more effectively get results now. 

When we have access to the same tools, and similar skills for using them, it is often creativity that separates us.

You've got that creativity.  How can you use it to differentiate your business?

Photo Credit: Scott Kinmartin

How To Add a Form To Your Blog

To make it easier for everyone to work with you.

Why a Form

One of the benefits of a form is that you can guide prospects through a process of providing you with the information you need to help them.  While you can use forms as a filtering tool, I find they are most useful for speeding up the process of working together.

Before we talk on the telephone, I like to do my homework.  This means a look at your website and blog is essential.  I also use my form on this blog (above - click to enlarge) to set up a time to talk when I know I will be able to give you my full attention.  This will not be first thing Monday morning!

Integration of Forms

I have three forms on my blog that were created using Google Docs, Batchbook, which is my customer relationship manager (CRM), and MailChimp , which I use to manage my bi-monthly newsletter.  All are excellent for their intended purposes.  However, in my situation, they are all interconnected

I have created a Working With Me tab on this blog that describes how I work.  This is where I use the form above that I created with in a few minutes with Google Docs to collaborate with those that are considering my consulting or speaking services.  If we decide to move forward, this information can easily be transferred to Batchbook in a CSV file, and from there integrated with MailChimp.

Creating Your Form with Google Docs

If you haven't set up your Google Account, this is your first step.  From there, go to Google Docs and look for the Create New button in the upper left corner.  Then (example above - click to enlarge) name your form and add a subtitle.  Use the Add Item button to insert new fields.  After you have added some fields, use the drop-down menu to select 'text' for a small field, or 'paragraph text' for a detailed response.  These are evident in my Working With Me form.  There are other choices too.

When you have added a few items, you can mouse over them to get the 'cross-hairs' that will allow you to sort them in your preferred order by sliding them around.

Click on the Theme button to find a them that matches the style of your blog.  Google offers you the option of viewing your responses in two formats.  I choose 'spreadsheet' so that I can collect the responses and then download them to my CRM in a CSV file (which is an Excel spreadsheet format).

Managing Your Responses

If you happen to be using iGoogle (I use it as my home page), you can get the Google Docs widget to stay on top of new responses.  Google Docs places a time-date stamp on all of your form inquiries so that you can process them accordingly.  How nice is that?!

The process of adding forms to your blog is as simple as adding a video.  You simply click on the More Actions button to get the Embed code.  Using the Typepad platform, it is a snap for me to plug this in.  I only needed to adjust the pixel width to 370 to fit it to the page on my navigation bar.

You Are in Control

What I find exhilarating about this is I don't need a webmaster to help me.  I can adjust my forms whenever I see fit.  And that puts me in control.

This is just one more example of why I believe blogs will replace websites for small businesses.  Of course, you can have your webmaster take care of this.  However, just a limited knowledge of technology puts you in control.

If you happen to use an assistant, either virtual or real, they can also access this information while you are busy running your business.  One of the advantages of Google Docs is the collaboration feature.  All you have to do is give your assistant access to your Google Docs.

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Social Media Lessons from College Communities

One of the basic principles of the social media platform is its use for building community. 

This weekend our family traveled to The Ohio State University campus with our son Zak to take a second look at their business school.  There is one word I heard again and again: Community.

For me, this is both exciting and inspiring.

Community

For most students, college is a microcosm of the the real world they will soon join.  The college or university is its own community, with hundreds of other communities embedded within it.  Like the real world, the college experience presents many challenges and opportunities.  And it is all experienced within the many micro-communities.

Micro-Communities

At most of the colleges we have visited, there are "living-learning" communities that seek to aggregate incoming students into specific dorms according to their common academic interests.  While this could result in a narrow experience, you have to consider that these kids are being thrust into a completely new environment where they may need some help getting focused on their chosen academic discipline 

When I left the corporate world to launch my contracting business, one of my best decisions I made, on the counsel of one of my former customers, was to join a trade association.  This is a micro-community.  It proved to be instrumental in helping me learn my new industry by getting involved. 

Today, I only wish the the associations I am a member of used social media more to extend that experience by adding to its richness.  This is one reason I'm very involved with Engage365, an online community that works to encourage more use of social media to make association meetings and conventions more successful. 

The Community of Leadership

Most colleges have programs for student ambassadors, citizen leaders, and peer advisers.  My daughter Ali is a peer adviser at Indiana University.  I know my daughter, and I am confident she has gained every bit as much from this experience as those students she is assisting.

This is one of the secrets of leadership.  Leaders seem to do more of the work, yet they gain more as a result.  We need more leaders on the social networks. 

Social Communities

When you are in college, you look forward to graduating and having more freedom.  As hilarious as this may sound, it is nonetheless true!  Fortunately, there is an abundance of social communities on every college campus that give students the freedom to express themselves.

How about you?  Are you finding the social media communities that are just right for you?  While colleges create a nice little bundle of hundreds of clubs and dozens of fraternities and sororities, you and I have to go out and find our own.  It definitely takes some effort, but it's worth it.

I have been inspired from this weekend to do more of this.  As you know, that is the challenge with social media marketing.  You have to get involved so that you can exercise your talents.  And if you do that well, you will help others do more, and that in turn helps you in your business.

What Employers are Saying

What I found most interesting during our campus visit was the comment from a representative from Eli  Lilly and Company, who said that they prefer to hire students from Ohio State because the size of the institution virtually guarantees that they will have a great deal of experience working in teams.  They recognize that to prosper in a university of this size (50,000 students), you have to get involved in communities to get things done - it's unavoidable. 

And that is saying something about our business world in this emerging relationship economy.

Learning From This

I believe there is a temptation to use the social media networks to replicate your existing communities.  Unlike wide-eyed college students, we may resist this because we are set in our ways.  We have found what works, and that may be holding us back.  Instead of replicating your communities, you should be growing new ones that will enable you to grow, both personally, and as business owners.

What will help you most?  A  Ning group may help you work more closely with associates in your industry that share similar goals and objectives.  I'm planning to experiment with this to enhance learning with a group of speakers here in Chicago. 

A Facebook presence may help you to develop a better understanding of what's important in the lives of your friends and associates.  That what I hear most often.  Now I'm experimenting with how this can work better using some of the new technologies.

You have to work at this to make it work better for you, just as a college student is responsible for their own success.  Whatever you do, consider how community is becoming more relevant to our personal and business lives.

 

Why So Many Bloggers Quit

Because they do not understand the process. 

The reason they do not understand the process is they do not trust it.  They don't trust it because they cannot see how it works.   When you cannot see, you get impatient.  And the more impatient one gets, the more you fight for control.  Before long, you stop fighting and quit.

The Hidden Element

During the early days of computing we referred to computers as a black box because we could not fathom what was going on inside of that unit.  All we knew is that mysteriously something called software made it work.  We had to trust that software to do its job.

The blogger is the software. 

That human element is what makes it work.  And for it to work, you have to trust it.

Unrealistic Expectations

Successful bloggers will tell you that their success took much longer than they expected.  Yet, they persisted because they believed in what they were doing.  They accepted the fact that they might only help a few people.  Then  somehow it all magically started to click, seemingly overnight.

There is a tipping point to every blog.

All of your work is cumulative.  You have to keep building value for your market until you hit that critical mass.  Progress will be slow, but if you keep learning working, you'll get closer.

A Need for Control

With virtually every form of traditional marketing, including Internet marketing, size seems to matter.  Size and power combine to create a desire to control.   Blogging resists every effort to control it.  Sure, you can control the technology to some extent, but it is that human element again that dictates whether or not your message will go viral.  You have to coax that.

Blogs are like flowing water - difficult to control, but very powerful once they get moving.

The way I see this, you have three choices.

1.  Quit

2.  Resist

3.  Trust the process.

If you choose number 3, you will join the tribe that smiles when it blogs, because they know. 

My Favorite Social Media Action Tools

Listening may be the most valuable social media activity for your business.  However, listening is a form of learning that only matters if you then take action.

In this time of information overload, you have to grab information when you see it- so that you can take action when you need to.  These are my favorite tools for applying what I learn from the social networks - or any source.  I hope you find them useful in your business.

Checkvist

Checkvist is one of my favorite tools for staying focused. It's an online, collaborative tool that is easy to use.  And most importantly, it's simple and fast.  That's why I like it. 

You all know what a checklist is.  Checkvist is more than an online checklist that you can access from any computer, including your iPhone.  It's really a means of instantly cataloging all of those ideas that you must get done now, should get done soon, or will get done when you get around to it.  I maintain a list for each one of those categories.

My favorite Checkvist tool is their bookmarklet in my Firefox browser toolbar.  One click opens a small screen that allows me to plug an item into the appropriate list for taking action later.  You don't even have to wait the few additional nanoseconds to open the list, but that is an option.   

Imagine a project you have to complete next month. As ideas randomly come to mind, just tuck them away in a list for later action.  Then when you have to get the job done, its a snap. Here's a post that will explain how I use Checkvist to collaborate with clients.

Evernote

Evernote grabs urls and even complete Web pages with one click.  You use tags to organize these notes, and that makes them easily findable.

Evernote also has an iPhone app that makes your notes portable.  This works outside of business too.  When I go to my favorite sushi restaurant, I note which of their creations I enjoyed most so that I can enjoy them again.  Maybe you can remember Mango Tango, Green Turtle, and Tokyo Style maki, but I can't. 

Today Problogger posted a great page on SEO for blogs.  I'll study it when I have time, including all of the associated SEO links.  For now, it's safely tucked away in Evernote.

Twitter Favorites

The social networks move fast.  If you see a useful idea, save it.  On Twitter, just make full use of the favorites option.  Click on that star beside any Tweet and you have secured a resource that you won't have to spend 20 minutes searching for when you need it.

Typepad Links

I'm not sure what is available on Wordpress, but here on Typepad I get analytics that I can click through to see who is appreciating the work I put into this blog.  My action step is to acknowledge that through a Tweet or Facebook comment. Now I've not only made a new friend, but have also learned what is resonating with someone in my target market.

Library Card

Yes, I'm serious.  This may seem old school, but often we learn of a great book from the social networks.  Then our thriftiness kicks in and we fail to take action.  You don't have to buy every book you read. Take advantage of this free resource to learn more about the experts in your field.

I can take action with my local library by placing an online hold on a book. Think of this as another bookmarking tool that captures a valuable resource that you can explore later.

Moleskine

I've saved the low-tech solution for last.  Ideas are transient.  You need to keep a journal of some kind with you at all times to capture inspirational thoughts.  Today I spoke with Trent, an honors student at my alma mater who connected with me through the Miami University LinkedIn group.  He asked me how I maintain a steady stream of ideas for my daily blog posts. 

My response was from daily conversations with customers - and people like him.  I jot them down into my Moleskine notebook.  They have countless styles and sizes, and all of them are very affordable. Plus, writing is an action itself that tends to imprint a seed of an idea.  You can not only make notes, but draw, associate, and otherwise let those ideas grow.

The only thing left to do is to take action.

Photo Credit: seanmcgrath

Why Your Marketing Needs Video

For one thing, it's so easy even a high school kid can do it.

It's Happening

The New York Times published this article today that shows you that video is becoming a viable communication tool for college applicants.  Why?  It only takes a $100 camcorder, a little bit of ingenuity, and a commitment to getting it done.  Plus, it's fun!

Video is engaging.  It shows us your personality.  And when you combine it with words that elaborate further, you have a rich-media experience that comes awfully close to the real thing.  The video above is one excellent student submission for application into Tufts University.

This my friends is what social media is all about!

I'm not surprised that colleges are accepting videos as part of application process.  In fact, last fall I suggested to my son Zak that he should consider starting a blog so that he could point to it from one of his essays - something to give more texture to his application.  He started alright.  Though, like many others, he just didn't stick with it.  

What's interesting is Zak has created several video and audio pieces for different school projects throughout this senior year that could easily be worked into more descriptive blog posts.  I'm hoping this gives you an idea that social media marketing isn't a project - it's a process.  One that if you get going with it will eventually merge with your daily activities.  That's the idea.  It represents you to your customers - as you really are.

In case you haven't started your blog yet, take a look at Zak's.  It took us 30 minutes to build on Typepad.  That's it.  So what are you waiting for?

The System is Ripe for This

Are colleges and universities ready for this?  I can only tell you that Zak applied to major universities, mostly in the Big Ten, and it still seems that test scores (the ACT and SAT) and grade point averages (GPA) still rule - if not 100%.  He put a great deal of time into his essays, and had a lot of fun doing it, but I seriously doubt they matter just yet. 

If those essays really matter, it begs the question: Why are Honors Programs and Academic Scholarships still based solely on test scores and GPA?   If college is intended to develop well-rounded young adults, shouldn't we be measuring that at the start? 

Kudos to Tufts for at least introducing this into the process.  But, we need to see more participation. 

Think about this; we applaud great film directors, actors, and musicians every year at the Academy Awards and the Grammys, but we still cling to a standardized academic system that largely ignores their emerging talents.

Now ask the same question from the point of view of your customers.

Are they just interested in results, or in a complete experience of working with a company that personalizes the process, makes it interesting, and fun?

One Funny Customer Relationship Metric

My accountant has taken care of my tax returns for over twenty years.  During that stretch we have been through a lot together.   I did some work for him when I owned my contracting business, and he has done plenty of work for me, including successfully navigating an extensive IRS audit that involved all of my businesses. 

If you are actively involved with your customers, you get to know them well.  We call this engagement on the social networks.  This relationship building process takes time.  There aren't any shortcuts.  It is a process of discovering what works and what doesn't. 

After you achieve a certain level of trust, everything is easy.  You take it all in stride.

When I did that landscape work for Scott's new home, everything worked out great.  Then he hired me to do the maintenance to keep everything looking sharp.  After a few years he just had me deliver materials and he provided his own labor.  Over time, he did it all himself.  I thought he was a bit thrifty, but I figured it was part of his DNA.  He's an accountant!

My landscape and snow-plowing businesses were sold a couple of years ago.  The timing was perfect, as the following year was a tough one for most contractors.  Although, it hasn't been bad at all lately for snow contractors.  It seems everyone is getting snow.

It takes time to shut down a business, but the expenses seem to keep rolling in from longstanding commitments.  That's why I was pleasantly surprised to see this "Recession Discount" on the invoice from Scott for preparing the tax returns.

A year later I am focused on only one business - helping entrepreneurs and small businesses with their online marketing through speaking, consulting and some new information products and services that are in the making.  Despite the recession 2009 turned out to be a year I was proud of, and that was my goal - to the letter.   

This year is shaping up well, so I gave Scott a visit last week to get my 2009 returns done so I can stay focused on work.  Everything went much more smoothly this year thanks to some new relationships and services, such as Shoeboxed, that are helping to keep me organized. 

Nevertheless, and this is most important, I reminded this thrifty CPA to be sure to include my recession discount again.  He did that, while also sending me a message that speaks volumes about our relationship.

How do you know you have a strong business relationship with someone?  When its not all business.  When you can kid around with them as your would any other friend.

Humor is another form of trust.  There is risk with humor, so it is only used when the relationship allows for it.  It doesn't include numbers, but it is a valuable metric that you can have confidence in.

And it makes any relationship stronger.

Unconventional Measures Give You An Edge

Last week I flew Hawaiian Airlines to a speaking engagement where I was informed that my regulation carry-on bag was non-conforming, but not because it was over-sized.  It didn't fit the weight limit of 25 pounds that is specific to this carrier. 

While I was not a happy camper, I realized this was a brilliant move by Hawaiian Air to manage one aspect of their business better by measuring what I suspect most of their peers are not.

This experience led me to consider how I measure my work with social media.  It may give you some insights.

Develop Customer-Based Parameters

When everyone is using the traditional measurements, differentiate your company by measuring what isn't being measured. Social media marketers tend to measure the number of contacts, connections, or friends they have on the respective networks.

Are there better ways to measure your social media strength or power?  Sure, their are plenty.  If you work in a tight market you may wish to measure by location.  If you are targeting a specific customer type, then you may wish to think like your customers and measure parameters that are more relevant to your customers, such as the distance between you and them.

The best way to find out what you should be measuring may be to ask your customers.  Find out what is important to them.  You may be surprised.  And it may just help you to find more customers like them.

Maintain a People Perspective

If you work with businesses, and most of us do, consider expanding your data collection to help you better understand the companies you work with. Why not set a goal to get connected with as many people as possible within the same company.  It should go without saying that this will make you a more valuable resource.

It is easy to sell to owners and executives while overlooking those that may have a great deal to say about whether or not you get hired, or continue to be a trusted source.  This is a smart approach in this relationship economy.

Seek the Most Relevant Data

Large numbers are relevant when you are mass marketing or Internet marketing.  However, today most of us are using social media marketing.  Our measures should be more human than just numbers. We should be collecting personal data that we can use to better engage with people to build stronger relationships.

The problem with numbers is they are faceless, especially when they are taken out of context.  Nobody wants to be a number. We want to be your friend.  How can you measure friendship.  It may not even be possible, but it is still worth considering.

Keep it simple.  When did we first meet?  Where did we meet?  This is what we all tend to remember, or should.  It's what humanizes our relationship. 

Measure What Matters

Recently I spoke at a tree care convention.  During one group discussion one member of that association suggested that in his business it is all about finding customers that "care about trees."   Maybe he said that for his company it's about finding "tree lovers."

You get the idea. 

Measure what really matters.

Photo Credit:  Jek in the box

Why Context is King

Because it makes your content relevant to me.

Fans

If you can make your message about your audience, your market, your customers - however you care to describe the target of your communications, then you have a greater chance of building fans.

Fans enjoy feeling like they are collaborators with you.  They enjoy feeling that they have something in common with you.  This is what makes them friends at a distance.

Social media is platform that is closing the distance between you and your fans.  

Here's How it Works

If I give you information that is valuable, you will appreciate it, but possibly never use it.  If I help you appreciate the value of that information by showing you how it works for me or someone like you, then the context makes it invaluable. 

However, no matter how many pragmatic examples I give you, they don't matter unless I can relate them to you.  And that means I have to understand you. 

Social media is a collaborative platform that is helping people to better work together.

Getting Closer

We all identify with what we know.  Local context shapes our lives. We have a tendency to seek what we know based upon where we live - or have lived.   If your local context is like mine, then it is likely we will feel comfortable working together. 

Social media can help you get closer with your client or customer to understand more about how they live - or want to.

Being Relevant

How do you make your blogging or other marketing communications relevant?  You show your audience you understand them. 

My audience happens to be entrepreneurs and small businesses like you - people that work hard because you care about serving your customers well.  I try to work just as hard as you do to earn your trust.

Social media gives your customers subtle clues about why you are relevant to them.

Customer Context

Show your customers you understand them - that you understand their context.  I was a marketer in a corporate environment for ten years.  Yet, I always felt like a bystander.  The context seemed designed to keep a distance between us and our customers. 

As a small business owner for over twenty years, I learned that there are others like me that are willing to put their heart and soul into their work. That I understand, and that adds a great deal of context to the work we do, regardless of how different it may be.

Bill Gates said content is king, and he's right, as long as the context is relevant. 

The more I use social media to accomplish more with my customers, the more I realize its true value is to close gaps, build bonds, and communicate information more effectively, even though there may be physical distance between us. 

Social media is more than a medium, its an environment that makes the work of serving customers more human.

Photo Credit:  C.P. Storm

Was It Good For You

That must be the question traditional advertisers ask themselves.

In many situations, I suspect the response is - huh?

Real People

While watching the Winter Olympics I had more than a few emotional responses.  When you see athletes ready to take the challenge and their families anxiously looking on, it is easy to feel what they must be experiencing.  You feel like you are there with them.

Traditional Marketing

Then you watch a commercial by a company like Proctor and Gamble that attempts to evoke that same response.  It shows a manufactured clip of pre-teen children in full speed skating gear that suggests their lifelong dream.  Their mothers are looking on. 

And of course the message is - "Moms."  The same moms that P&G would like to buy their products.

With all respect for the fine products that P&G provides, my response is it's not working for me.  It wasn't as good for me as the real thing. 

Real Solutions

P&G could more effectively make that emotional connection with their audience by getting to know these athletes and helping to capture what goes into achieving their dreams.  That is something you cannot manufacture.  It may not always be glamorous, but it is real.

Imagine what US athlete Bryon Wilson feels like after unexpectedly capturing the bronze in the Mogul competition.  And how about Alexandre Bilodeau, the Canadian athlete who in the same competition is the first from his country to ever capture Olympic gold within his country's borders.  That's real.

The Relationship Economy

In this economy, we want to feel what you are feeling.  And the only way we can do that is if we have a relationship with you. 

While amateur sports is becoming increasingly sophisticated, it is highly unlikely these athletes cut their teeth in the manner that is depicted in those slick, traditional commercials. Why not show us the real deal - like what the conversation may have been like from the kitchen table? 

Real Customers

If you want to attract customers, real ones, it should go without saying that real stories about their challenges are what will engage them - and us, with your brand. 

If your message is real, you will know without hesitation that it connected.

You won't have to ask. 

The Highest Use of Your Blog

multiplies your ability to better serve your market.

A few days ago I was talking with a new client.   In our brief conversation regarding the social media strategy for his green industry business, he casually mentioned a specific concern that was the inspiration for my previous post on managing negative comments on the Web.

That post generated a surprising level of interest, on a weekend no less, which reminded me to share with you how I use my blog for its highest use.  While I have previously written about what you should blog about, today I will give you specific methods that you are probably familiar with, but that you may not have developed into a productive blogging strategy.

Listen

Your prospects and customers are a rich source of information that can help you serve them better - provided you are willing to take action.  Your customers presumably share the same issues, concerns, and problems.  Yet, only a few of them will truthfully open up and share their feelings with you.  This is one of the challenges with direct-selling.

One generally underused means of acquiring this information is through online surveys.  You may be able to get more reliable feedback by experimenting with acknowledging the participants identity and keeping them anonymous.  Compare the results and the response rate. Then compare those results with what your clients are telling you in casual conversation. 

One reason I am an advocate of comparing and tracking is that it is easy for a small business with a generally small client base to make false assumptions.  It's easy to assume the minority of vocal clients represent the whole.  It's also easy to assume all of your clients will tell you the truth.   Why would they lie?  A couple of reasons include protecting your feelings and their ego or reputation. 

Have you ever had a client tell you how good you are and then switch to a competitor without warning?  Often the reason is you were not listening.  Or you did listen but didn't take action.

Take Action

Use your blog as an extension of your conversations to show your clients how you can solve the problems you believe are the most relevant.  If it is indeed a relevant problem, you have now enhanced your credibility in a number of ways.  You have demonstrated you are a listener who takes action, and you have provided proof of your capabilities to other customers who may share that same problem.

This may even result in previously silent customers stepping forward to acknowledge your wisdom, which builds your relationship with them, and every other customer who happens to be reading.

Learn

Your blog provides you with incredibly valuable information that you cannot get anywhere else, and certainly not at the low cost of free.   The beauty of blog analytics is they are more likely to be valid because the audience is invisible  They have no reason to give you anything other than the unvarnished truth.  Look for spikes in your traffic and analyze the heck out of them.  Then look for patterns with the posts that created those spikes.

When you are blogging, you are not going to hit the mark as often as you you will wish.  This is why it pays to blog as often as possible.  I find that I consistently score well with every 3 to 4 posts, and exceptionally well about every 7 or eight.  That means I hit a home run nearly every week, which may be every year or so for the undisciplined blogger.  The simple lesson is you have to both listen and take consistent action.

All of this may seem to be tedious, and it can be.  What keeps me interested is the thrill of the hunt.  I love the challenge of helping my customers and those future customers in my market.  If that is tedious and boring for you, then maybe you should switch from the marketing department to something more exciting like accounting.  :)

Photo Credit:  Zoltan Papp

Managing Negative Comments on the Web

starts with being the first to find them.

You will eventually find an an unflattering comments made about you or your work.  In virtually every situation, those comments can be managed. 

Most of them are the result of a misunderstanding.  And once in a while, you run into someone that loves to throw stones.  Regardless of the reason, the prescription is the same.

Be the First on the Scene

It is surprising how many businesses do not take advantage of Google Alerts to monitor their personal Web reputation, and that of their business.  When you do this, you can be the first on the scene to make an appropriate response.   And speed is of the essence when your reputation is at stake.

Being first on the scene gives you authority, just as it does the eye-witness of an accident.  You have the chance to shape future opinion and stop an errant commenter in their tracks.

Build a Strong Base

When you build a base of information that helps a community, it creates a body of knowledge that continues to grow over time to strengthen your reputation.  Reasonable people, and especially your fans,  will always weigh this against a solitary comment to draw the logical conclusion. 

You have earned your reputation, and one little scratch is not going to bring it tumbling down.  If you handle this well, you will find that it can actually enhance your reputation, because it gives you the opportunity to use the situation to reinforce your credibility.  Treat it as an opportunity! 

Diffuse

Suggest to the commenter that they do not have a complete understanding of the situation.  And above all, never be defensive.  I like to start with affirming their perspective.  "I can understand how one (not you) may come to that conclusion if they were not familiar with ...."  Just fill in the blank with the content that clarifies why one could come to that unfounded conclusion.  You've just provided an out that allows them to save face.

Even better is to start off your response by thanking them.  Why?  They are giving you the opportunity to address a concern that others probably have.  Now you have potentially turned the other silent naysayers who may have agreed with the negative comment into fans - or at least interested followers.

Clarify

It is usually not appropriate to give a lengthy or self-important response.  Sometimes people are venting and you just happened to be the recipient.  It is often best to keep your response short and to the point.  Writing lengthy paragraphs makes you appear defensive - and that just fans the flames.

Inquire

This can be risky, but if you have confidence in your community, end your response with an open-ended question to encourage a response from your community.  Just don't ask them if they agree with you - ask them what they think.  If your community does not agree with you, then you need to respond again to further illuminate the truth.

Illuminate

Most situations will never come to this.  However, sometimes you will need to create a blog post that consolidates all of the information on the topic and adds new perspectives from additional research.  In other words, use your blog to create an informal  'press release' that articulates an upbeat and clever response that gets everybody feeling good again. 

This also gives you the opportunity to create something that you can point to should there be further discussion down the road.  Rumors and innuendo can spread and arise at the worst time.  When you have this in your back pocket, you can calmly refer everyone to it and go about your business with aplomb.   

Let it Go

Once everyone feels the topic has been fully exercised, be the first one to let it go.  Rest your case.  Some people love a fight.  Skillful negotiators will always tell you that it takes two to fight.  Your approach shapes the environment.  Whether you are respectful, professional, casual, or humorous, that is the type of conversation you will tend to encourage.

You choose.

By the way, when a negative comment comes from someone with an avatar image that is other than their own, such as a cartoon character, discount them, because others will do the same.  They will challenge your reputation, even though they are not willing be be 100% authentic by putting a face on their social media presence.

Photo Credit:  compujeramey

The Only Writing and Speaking Tip You Need

Trust yourself and the right words will come.

We are Different, and the Same

Today I had a conversation with a green industry peer about how to speed up the process of writing a good quality blog post.

I had a similar conversation with my son Zak about giving his next presentation in his high school speech class without notes.

And to be honest, even though I speak professionally, I have to remind myself of this in preparation for my speech to tree care professionals tomorrow.  Yep, I get anxious before a big talk - and sometimes even a small writing project.

Learn, then Forget

Here is a post I wrote on speed blogging.  There are links in there to several other sources.  This will help you to build your skills.  But that isn't what I'm talking about here.  You can have all the skills in the world and still struggle.  You actually have to learn to go beyond those skills.  You have to trust.

If you sweat the details, seek perfection, and do all of the things you and I were trained to do through our formal education, then you still may fall short of your capabilities.  I'm suggesting you may want to learn to forget - not what you know, but how you apply what you know.

Here is a personal example that may help you.

Get in the Groove

I have some time this evening to practice more for my presentation tomorrow - and I will.  However, I am confident I know the material.  I just need to get off to a good start and I will be fine.  More practice is just going to wind me up and increase the anxiety.  So what is my secret? I'm doing it now.  Blogging!

I discovered by accident that writing settles me down before a presentation.  What works for you?  What will help you hammer out your blog posts in record time. It may be as simple as the right piece of inspirational music that gets you jazzed. 

Give it a try.

But more importantly, learn to trust yourself. 

My friend shared this quote from Mark Twain that is insightful and humorous - and true.

" I know my worrying pays off and helps fix things because any problem I worry about never comes about!"

Photo Credit:  WallyG

Back-Up Your Blog

Or risk losing thousands of hours of inspiration, perspiration, and motivation.

Today I deleted two blogs.  It was tough to do this because these blogs were my foray into the world of blogging.  However, both were specific to my landscape business, which I sold two years ago next week.  And while I extensively speak and consult to the green industry, from a subject matter standpoint, this blog is where my focus is.

Deleting those blogs was just as easy as deleting a document.  One push to get to the "Are you sure?" level, and then one more to get rid of them forever.  I did the same with the RSS feeds at Feedburner, which was equally scary.  Why? 

I just wanted to be absolutely certain that this blog - jeffkorhan.com, is here for as long as I'm on this planet, and maybe longer.  So, that got me thinking about safeguarding my inspiration and hard work.  After all, this blog is my legacy of hard work.

Back It Up

Do yourself a favor - back up your blog.  And then back that back-up to the cloud.  I personally find Jungledisk to be a joy to use.  Unlike other Web based back-up services such as Mozy, Jungledisk is a virtual hard-drive.  This means you get your data back within minutes.  With Mozy and others like it, plan on approximately 4 hours or more.  That just isn't acceptable if I have a crisis just before a presentation.

WordPress Back-Up

Sometime soon I am going to write a post that will give an objective side-by-side comparison of the blogging platform I use and recommend, which is TypePad, and the other one with legions of fans - WordPress.  I use both now, as I'm a guest blogger on several WordPress platforms.  I will write that post after I build a WordPress blog next week, which will allow me to objectively compare with the dozens of TypePad blogs I've built.

Let's first look at the method for backing up a WordPress blog.  (Click on both images to enlarge.)

This is step one of approximately ten necessary steps.  While it is laid out very clearly, you can see from the sidebar that you will still have to answer questions related to SQL, plug-ins, and things like that.  If you don't know what those are, then you get my point.   

Most important is what is written at the top of this screenshot.  "It is strongly recommended you back-up your blog at regular intervals and before an upgrade."  As you can imagine, you can actually lose all of your data when making an upgrade to your Wordpress blog, which is something you have to do to stay ahead of viruses and the like.

I covered this in detail after Mashable broke a trending story on a WordPress virus last year.  Here's my post recommending Wordpress users take action.

TypePad Back-Up

As you may have surmised, I prefer TypePad.  I don't have to worry about upgrades or viruses.  TypePad takes care of that.  Better yet, the procedure for backing up your TypePad blog is extremely simple. 

You push one button and that's it!  You are presented with a .txt file that you then save to your hard drive.  As long as you do that every now and then, Jungledisk automatically takes care of the rest. 

 
Furthermore, you can see it is also a simple matter to import your blog to TypePad.  If you decide to do so, please click on the banner on the bottom of the center blue column of this blog to get a free 14 day Typepad trial.  Yes, I get a commission if you sign up.

I suppose that is my reward for recommending a blog platform that will make your blogging life a little easier --

And safer.

People and Business Systems

The right mix of these two ingredients is how you make social media work for your business.

People

People are arguably the main ingredient of any business.  This includes your customers, employees, vendors, and other partners that help you take care of those customers.  Without the right ones, it is tough to sustain a profitable business.  The right people are vital to the success of any business, and that naturally extends to the social media marketing of your business.

An Extension of Your Business

When you begin to think of social media as an extension of your business, it becomes easier to get the pieces into place to achieve the results you are seeking.   Anyone who has operated a small business for a period of time knows you always get more done with people you agree with in principle.  Talented superstars can make great contributions, but they often have a low tolerance for working with a team.

The Right People

While it may be beneficial to be friends with some of the social media celebrities, and thousands of people you hardly know, I will bet money that you will do more for your business if you focus on regular people like yourself that you can actually work with.  This is your team.

Business Systems

Your Team

While people are responsible for getting results, business systems help get those results consistently.  I love systems, but I learned the hard way that they need to be flexible if they are going to work well for the entire team.

Take an assessment of your most highly valued team members.  Are you running too fast or not leading strongly enough for others?  If your systems are counterproductive to the efforts of your social media network, you may wish to reconsider your approach.

A Social Media Viewpoint

We are still in uncharted waters with social media, a marketing medium that has turned the business world upside down in many ways.   There are many paradoxes associated with this platform.  For this reason, I'm going to suggest you consider looking at it from multiple perspectives before trying the next shiny new technology, as many are characterizing the latest 'gotta have (or do)' in social media.

Just as I would take at least two views of a putt I really needed to sink to win a golf match, I like to look at my social media marketing from a viewpoint that is both with the crowd - and without them.  It is then much easier to choose the best approach for me.

Here's an example.  When Twitter was young and many people thought the whole idea of communicating in short, rapid-fire bursts was bordering on the ridiculous, I was intrigued.  I wondered if they were missing something.  So I gave it a test drive that proved to be extremely productive.   The majority was only looking at it from one angle.

Now is Now

This brings us to today.   We are settling into social media.  We know what a blog is, and if you read my post from yesterday, you have more than enough reasons to blog.  The same goes for the social networks.

The Merge

What's next?  It's time to stop looking at social media like an alien, because it's nothing to be afraid of.  It's time to get up close and take a practical look at what it really is.

An extension of your business that should be treated like all of the other ingredients. 

Thanks to my green industry friend Steve Hoogenakker for the conversation today that inspired this post.

Photo Credit:  emeryc

The Simplest Social Media Strategy

involves the application of two skills: Attention and Intention.

Attention

Are you noticing any changes in the social networks?  I am.  I'm noticing that it is very quiet on Twitter.  This may seem like an odd thing to say because the number of people using Twitter it is huge.  However, unlike when it was young, Twitter is becoming so crowded with business messages looking to go viral that there is very little conversation. 

You can notice a lot if you use your attention.  Then you can adjust your strategy, and possibly put more effort into other networks.  That conversation on the early Twitter is exactly why I was able to achieve what I did back then. 

Now I'm giving more thought to LinkedIn.  This is where I recommend anyone new to social media should get started.  Although, I have to admit I haven't used it much over the years.  Lately, however, the functionality of LinkedIn has improved, and I'm finding more ways to engage with like-minded colleagues.

Look around and experiment a little.  I'm thinking of starting a LinkedIn group to work in conjunction with a new series with this blog on the small business challenges that many of us share.  I'm still not quite sure how I can be most effective, so I'm keeping my attention on it, with the intention of making it work.

Intention

When you make a commitment to accomplish a result, and you stick to your commitments, two things happen.  First, you tend to achieve your objective.  But more importantly, you tend to grow, which makes the next goal that much easier.

Whether you are here to learn, to help a community, or to build a business, or like me - all three, then you have to be willing to do the work.  And that is where we are going.

My belief is we are now entering a period where the social media networks are seeing a shift towards achieving practical results.  The more clear you are about what you wish to accomplish, the more likely the effort you make will connect you with those that you should be working with.

These are exciting times for anyone that is active with social media.  Many of us have worked through the various forms of technology to achieve a comfort level.  We now have our favorites tools.  We've settled in with the technology.  Now is the time to use those skills to be productive.

The logical question is this:  Why are you here?

I know that I am committed to helping other entrepreneurs and small businesses use this amazing platform to build a business that is stronger and more sustainable.  How I will do that will evolve over time and get better as long as I am doing two things:

1.  Paying attention to the what people in the small business communities want to do.

2.  Having the intention to apply my abilities to make it happen for them.

This simple two-step strategy can work for anyone.

And I love simple!

How about you?

Photo Credit:  Caro's Lines

Your Favorite Social Media Channel

is the one that will yield your greatest social media ROI.

Marketing Style

If you have been reading this blog for the past year or so, you know I consider your blog to be the center of your social media universe.  This is where you have the largest body of information that speaks favorably about you and your company.  It is where you develop new ideas, and capture those stories that are the legacy of your business.

There are many top bloggers who will agree with me.  We all love to blog, and as a result, we get practical results from our blogs.

That said, I have recently been collaborating with Shawn Doyle, another professional speaker who uses a different approach that works equally well for him.  He uses LinkedIn as his hub, and the strength of his LinkedIn presence is the private group he created to collaborate with others who are interested in motivation and leadership. He calls his group Motivation Nation!

What is interesting about Shawn's LinkedIn group is he can manage the content, just as I manage the content of this blog.  Using different channels, we are both accomplishing our business objectives.  You should consider which channel works best for you and why.  Of course, there are still other channels to consider, such as Facebook and Twitter, which have micro-blogging capabilities much like LinkedIn.  

Blogging is the perfect channel for me because it fits my storytelling style of marketing. However, the ability of a LinkedIn group to connect people with common interests and objectives is working exceptionally well for Shawn.  The point is there is no right or wrong here.  The question is what is right for you and your target audience.

When choosing your favorite social media channel, you should consider your communication style, your audience, and most importantly, where you feel most comfortable investing your time.

I'll be honest, in the early days of Twitter, I really enjoyed using Twitter to collaborate with a wide range of people around the globe.  For that reason, it produced the greatest ROI for me.  As Twitter became more impersonal, I shifted my focus to this blog.

Extending Your Channel

Regardless of where you decide to cast your anchor to establish the hub of your social media presence, you still need to use other social media channels to encourage more people to engage with your community.   Just as your company website can benefit from an active blog that points to it, so can that blog benefit from the cross-connections of Facebook, Twitter, and many other channels.

Professional speakers often talk about meeting the audience where they are.  By that we mean connecting with them on a topic through a relevant mindset.  The mindset on Facebook is clearly more loose and open than it is on LinkedIn. 

And there is no telling what the mindset is on Twitter from day to day, but we know with certainty that it has an incredible reach, and is therefore quite valuable for extending the message that you cultivate within your hub - your favorite social media channel.

I'm really looking forward to sharing the stage with Shawn this summer at a convention where we will work together to help others learn how to apply the respective methods that have worked for us. We may even help them to develop hybrid methods that will work best for them and their community.

When it comes to social networking and marketing, there is not one size that fits all. Find a channel that allows you and your community to best do what they most want to do.

Tuning into that channel is something your will look forward to.

A positive ROI will be the natural result.

Photo Credit:  Leo™

Small Business DNA

You either have it or you don't.

Operating a small business takes a certain mindset.   It's not so much about skills, but how you think.  You need to be intensely interested in learning, and willing to take action.  Most importantly, you must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to ensure the success of your business.   

These qualities of successful small business owners seem to be congruent with the characteristics of the more proficient social media players.  A closer look suggests some of us are hard-wired for social media, just as we are for small business. 

You can distill the small business DNA, and social media hard-wiring down to just a few words:  being interested, inquisitive, and interactive.  Here's the story that inspired this understanding. 

Interested

Entrepreneurs especially, and small business owners too, are always learning.  That's how they keep their edge.  They are naturally interested in other small businesses.  I was thinking of this tonight while I waited for my dinner to be served.  It was guys night out in the Korhan family, so Zak and I went over to MeatHeads for a gourmet burger.  

We placed our order and then sat down while they prepared it.  My mind immediately drifted to sizing up this particular business.  I wondered about the seating.  The seat bottoms are hard wood, but the back cushions of the booths are soft.  Is this a compromise for cleaning and comfort?  The lighting is more like a fine restaurant, so the atmosphere feels right.  I was wondering.

Checking Out the Community

What I was intuitively doing was checking out this particular business to determine what is intentional, what may have been random, and even what could be improved.  This is part of the small business DNA. it can't be helped!

This is no different than what many of us do when listening in on a social media network.  We use our skills of observation.  We are curious, yes - but for a purpose.  We use our observation skills to learn how we can apply what we learn to our situation - to our business, our community, or our other networks. 

Inquisitive

The tab at MeatHeads was a bit under $19 for the two of us.  Is that a fair amount for a freshly made to order burger?  I began to compare with what we would have spent had we ordered a pizza, or possibly gone out for sushi.  You do learn a great deal about something by comparing it to what it isn't. 

This is one way we understand our social networks.  The early success of Twitter was due to the free-form interactivity.   Facebook took notice first, and soon LinkedIn followed suit to a lessor degree.  As you monitor your brand on the social networks,  I would hope you are taking notice of what the leaders are doing that seems to be working for them.

Comparing Businesses and Communities

I also find myself comparing social media businesses, such as Techcrunch and Mashable, especially today with the launch of the iPad.  Mashable was the first to validate its existence, with their bold TRENDING post, which has become a signature of the Mashable brand.

USAToday, however, chronicled Steve Jobs every move by the minute, which proved to be the most complete coverage.  What's interesting is while Mashable has become more CNN-like in their recent approach (with the addition of more writers and expanded coverage),  USAToday pulled an end-around on them and Techcrunch to give the best front-end technology coverage on this piece of news.  It appears the playing field may be changing.  How about yours?

Interactive

We all know you learn the most be getting involved and interacting with other people.  When our food was served, we were greeted by a big smile.  "My name is Jimmy.  If you need anything else, just let me know."  Jimmy greeted everyone like this.  And he smiled the same way when he mopped up.  You could tell he really enjoyed his work.

Engaging with People to Encourage Opportunities

I wanted to say a few words to Jimmy, but I didn't make it a priority.  Bad for me, because I believe I could have learned something.  And this is precisely how the social networks operate.  That stream rolls by, and if we hesitate, we miss the opportunity. 

DNA is one thing, but we are still human.

Photo Credit:  Pascal.Charest

Why Small Businesses Are Confused About Social Media

They are listening to self-described social media experts who have little or no real-world business experience.

The Problem

Seth Godin recently made an interesting comment on his blog about the evolution of technology trends.   Here's what he said:

The early adopters of the technology are the technicians that helped to create it. 

For that technology to stick, somebody has to figure out how to use it to get results.  That's where small business owners enter the picture.  The hallmark of small business owners is their ability to take what is complex and make it practical to achieve results that their customers can benefit from.

Later, in an effort to make the technology even better, bureaucrats and conglomerates eventually step in,  and in the process drive everything that was working into the ground. 

If you doubt this last statement, I have two words for you to consider:  Conan O'Brien.

So don't hesitate.  Get in while the going is good!

Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners

Entrepreneurs and small business owners are some of the most successful people on this planet because they understand how to make things simple, practical, and profitable.   Yet, for some reason, technology clouds their minds.  They either run from it and miss the opportunity, or embrace it and spend a fortune on misguided technicians who do not understand their business .

Social media marketing is about people, not technology.

The technician may understand the technology exceptionally well, but they frequently do not have the basis for understanding your business.   

The Solution

Small businesses should be looking for social media partners who understand both their business and the social media technology. They should be looking for the same depth of experience that they have developed over the last 20, 30 or 40 years - or more.

When I speak to entrepreneurs on social media marketing, I often hear this:  "Ah, now I get it!"  It is not that I am some kind of social media genius, because there there isn't such a thing.  I just happen to understand two pieces of a simple puzzle: social media marketing and what it takes to operate a small business.

My Recommendation

If you are a small business owner who is looking for help with your social media marketing, here are some capabilities I would recommend you be on the alert for:

1.  Pragmatic experience - Has your suitor helped companies like yours?   Another simple test is examining their blog to determine if they are experienced in their practice.  Does that blog go back a few years, or just a few months;  and has it been consistently updated?  You may be surprised at what you discover.

2.  A knack for simplicity - Can they communicate without jargon?  There is a tendency within social media circles to say what everyone is else is saying - such as "add value."  If you truly understand that, then you will know how to explain it.  Ask them to do that.

3.  Congruency - Are they consistent in their message across multiple social media networks?  Often I will see one type of behavior on Linkedin, with a more 'reckless' type of behavior on Facebook, which is a platform that encourages letting your hair down.  You have to determine what is acceptable for you and your business.

4.  Focus - Are they really focused on businesses like yours, or just "companies - which of course implies they are essentially mercenary social media experts for hire?"  You need to cut through the BS to be sure you have a good fit.  After all, nobody cares more about your business than you do.

5.  Credibility - Do you believe them?  You have been in business for a while.  You know people. And social media is about people.  Apply what you know.  This is the social media acid-test.

I can appreciate the enthusiasm many have for social media.  This is a phenomenal platform for growing any business, and especially a small business.

If you are unsure of how social media can work for you, dig deeper to get the right answers.  If you are still unsure, wait a while.

Just don't wait too long, as this may be the marketing opportunity of a lifetime.     

If you take anything from this post, it is that social media success is not about the technology, but people - the same people you have worked with to achieve your current success.

There is nothing confusing about that.

Photo Credit:  jmacphoto.com

The Art of Blog Tags

is based on the understanding your blog serves multiple communities.

I was surprised to learn through my research that there is very little written on the art of category tagging for blogs.  My hope is this discussion will be both helpful, and also generate new discussions that we can all benefit from.

The Science of Tagging

Most of us understand the science of using category tags - to get indexed by Google.  For more on this, see How To Be Where People are Looking.

I would like to include Technorati in this discussion, as indexing blogs is what they do.  However, from someone who has been trying to 'claim' his blog on Technorati for over a year, their process remains a mystery.  My suggestion is to focus on the sure thing, which is Google.

The art of using tags is really to be found by human beings who want to do business with you.  This goes beyond the game you are playing with Google.  That said, once Google helps someone find your blog, your tags need to help them navigate your blog, and validate it.  

The Art of Tagging

Your goal with all of your readers is to be a credible and reliable source.  You want to be the 'go-to' guy or gal for your particular topic.  This means your work has to be easily findable. 

I prefer the service Google provides, for obvious reasons.  Lijit is another one that works well.  Both are best sourced through your particular blogging platform. 

In my mind, the three communities you should primarily be tagging for are your subscribers, new readers, and yourself.  You will need to select tags that are appropriate for each group, and provide a search tool that works well for your blog.

Your Subscribers

Regular readers of your blog are your fans.  They know you; they know your style; and they know your material.  You need to provide tags that help them find earlier posts that they may want to re-read for their own benefit, and better yet, share with their friends through the social media networks.

Your subscribers will remember characters in your stories, places, and other unique details.  Be sure to tag them so they are properly indexed.  When selecting these tags, familiar words are the best tags.

New Readers

New readers are checking you out.  They want to know if you can be the trusted source they are looking for.  The scope and depth of your work will be most valuable.  They will check your blog out at multiple levels to get a sense for your strengths.  Don't disappoint them.  

When tagging for this group, general words are the best tags for demonstrating your understanding and capacity for your topic.  Coincidentally, these are the same tags that Google will use to bring them to you in the first place.

Yourself

If you are a serious blogger, nobody reads your blog more than you do.  You need tags that allow you to quickly link back to a more through treatment of a topic that is relevant to the current post.  Your blog is an incubator for ideas, and it is a marketing tool.  The right tags will enable your to find information that you can use for articles and other marketing materials.

When tagging for yourself, tag the words that were the inspiration for the post.

For example, this post started out as:  "How to Add a Google Search to Your Blog."  After determining how much it varies from Typepad, the platform I favor, to Wordpress, Blogger, and others, I decided to help you be more effective with that search once you have it set up.   If you happen to use Typepad, here's the link to setting up a Google search for your Typepad blog.

Please share your ideas on this topic by leaving a comment below.  You'll be helping all of us to learn more.

And just in case Technorati is listening, I have gone back to Technorati.com to once again claim my blog by helping them find it on this Web where if you so much as sneeze, you will be found. :)

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Stitching Together Your Social Media Gaps

Disconnectedness

The challenge with social media is your communities can become disconnected.  Friends can seem to randomly come and go.  This leads to frustration and blaming everything from the technology to your lack of time for keeping it all together.

To be productive in any endeavor, you have to have your "head in one place."  Or if you have ever practiced yoga or meditation, you would say you need your mind and body connected.  And there is a cure for that.  If you have practiced meditation or yoga, then you are probably familiar with the term 'sutra.'

A sutra is a word or sound that links together aspects of the body and the mind.  In fact, the word sutra really means stitch.  It helps you acheive Yoga, which essentially means union - of the mind and body.

The Social Media Stitch

When you stitch together the energies of the mind and the body, everything works better.  When you stitch your social communities together, it stands to reason they will function better as well.  It may be more accurate to say you will function better.  You are the keeper of your communities. 

Twitter and Facebook both give us the capability to subdivide our friends into smaller groups.  This does make everything more manageable.  It's easier to focus on a smaller group.  Nevertheless, those friends are all still associated together under the umbrella of your respective Facebook or Twitter community.  So, there is cohesiveness among the subgroups.  Yet, what about the gaps between your social networks.

Friends Fill The Gaps

Wouldn't it make sense to introduce your "Twitter Friends" to your "Facebook Friends?"  This stitches together some of the inherent gaps.  And doesn't a great deal happen in those gaps between communities.  Aren't your best friends the ones that understand you at all levels - professionally, socially, and personally? 

Gaps can drive a person insane.  Your real friends fill the gaps between your communities, don't they?  They add a sense of continuity to your life.  It's interesting how much disconnectedness there can be on the social networks when everyone is working so hard at making connections.   

If you want a greater connection, consider the gaps.

Then once in a while bring together friends that might not otherwise connect.  It may surprise you.

Google calls it a Wave, I'm calling it a stitch that closes a gap.  It's nothing more than an opportunity to bring people together to create new perspectives - and better collaboration and friendships.

Photo Credit:  on2wheelz

Haiti Reminds Us

we all live on one planet where all communities merge together.

Awareness is a quality of social media that is working right now to engage people for a common purpose.  Normally, our awareness is localized to what is familiar to us, and that is typically what is local to us. 

Yet, social media works nicely to expand that awareness. And sometimes the consequences are not as pleasant as we may have liked.  Nevertheless, it is working to mobilize people and resources in ways that would otherwise have been impossible, or inconceivable.  

The simple truth is that if something is happening on this globe today, it will be felt in some way, however small, by each and every one of us. This is the nature of our greater connectivity. 

We all live, work, and play in our respective communities.  Yet, because we all share the same physical location, we now know with certainty that our communities connect and overlap.  This means if you are having a problem, then so am I.

Haiti was suffering long before this earthquake, but most of us were focused on other matters.  As social media continues to amplify world events, it will be impossible not to be aware of what is happening on our planet - everywhere, all of the time.

This will surely create interesting scenarios regarding the distribution of resources, such as talent, raw materials, food, and wealth, to name a few. 

I cannot even imagine how this will play out in future political situations.  The skill, training, and commitment that will be necessary to solve these global problems is going to be incredibly challenging.  How will leaders best work to allocate resources where they are needed most?

For some time we have been saying that social media is all about giving value and sharing.  The current circumstances in Haiti make us especially aware of this.  Now we know for sure.  It is.

We now realize our greater connectivity brings not just opportunity, but responsibility, too.

So when the day comes that we forget about the circumstances in Haiti, there will be other events that will bring our awareness together with millions of others who happen to share the same community that we think of as our own - this planet.

While we cannot yet predict tragedies like this, it is very possible the next time we will be more prepared.

That may be the lesson that Haiti reminds us.

 

The Craziest Rules of Social Media

are the ones that work.  

Here are my favorites, and why they work so well.

1.  Share personal stories about your life with complete strangers.

You can't just talk about authenticity; you have to reveal it.  This is the only way you will build a fan base for your blog or social media pages.  This is your reality show.  Sure, you can be shocking and over the top, which is entertaining.  But unless your name is Fred and your audience is little kids, my recommendation is to just use some social media wizardy and pull back the curtain.  

2.  Blog consistently when you know nobody is reading.

I did this.  Virtually no stats after well over a year.  Though to be honest, knowing that Google was reading helped to keep me in the game.  Every once in a while a post would get indexed.  It was very exciting stuff back then.  These days it seems Google will index just about anything.

Nevertheless, after achieving critical mass, I can now play with those numbers as subscribers leap on or drop off based upon new strategies that I am constantly tinkering with.  There are indeed subtle nuances to blogging that make a big difference.  Besides, the game is constantly changing, so you may as well get in and learn now because we'll soon enough be learning yet unproven ways to accomplish our objectives.

3.  Share confidential information with your competitors.

In some industries the competition is especially fierce. Yet, when you freely share information with your marketplace, it is bound to fall into the hands of your competitors.  In fact, I have no doubt my competitors subscribe to my blog as I do theirs. 

C'mon, get over yourself.  First, nobody is that good.  And if you really are, you have no worries.  Read Seth Godin's blog.  Do you think he's worried that I borrow an idea or two every now and then?   I doubt it, because he knows there are plenty more where that came from!  Today he had a great post about lemonade stands.  Those are real stories you can't make up. (See rule No. 1 above again.)

4.  Study the rules of grammar that you've ignored your entire life.

I've always considered myself to be a good writer.  The truth is I wasn't.  I was just better than most of the people that I was studying or working with.  Learn how to write for your blog.  Subscribe to blogs like Copyblogger that focus specifically on this component of this social media craziness.  I especially like Sonia Simone's work there.

When you study your writing, you'll start realizing you'll need to learn a few of those rules of grammar most of us have ignored, save for that year of Freshman English.  A helpful exercise is to read a page or two daily from the Elements of Style.  Then read it again.  I don't know what they charge for it now, but my copy shows a handsome investment of $1.25 that is paying off nicely, thank you - now that I'm actually using it!

5, Agree with viewpoints that are completely opposed to yours.

If you can step back and look for points of agreement with anyone, you will find them - guaranteed.  That agreement may simply be that you understand how one could have such a perspective.  Now, that you have opened their mind, you have an opportunity to restate your point from a fresher and more thoughtful perspective.

This discipline is excellent for helping you to shape your viewpoints to achieve even better levels of interest. No tension means no interest, and that means no audience.  You don't have to be controversial, but it is helpful to have something to say that hasn't quite been said like that before.  (See rule No. 1 above again.)

You know what's really crazy?   Continuing to spend heavily on traditional marketing without giving this a try.

If you have enjoyed this post, consider adding a comment or subscribing to it.  I'm happy to have you around.  Jeff

Small Business Ownership is Limited

to what you can manage and control.

That means if you cannot control it or manage it, it owns you. 

What Ownership Usually Means

Yesterday we learned social media marketing takes a commitment to working hard.  Yet, hard work doesn't seem like work at all when it generates productive results.  This had me thinking about the  work that sucks the life out of our businesses.

When I looked up ownership, then owner, and even own, all of the definitions were surprisingly vague.  The dictionary used words like possess, claim, and hold - words that fail to define.   

And this is my point exactly:  If you can only claim or hold something, then you have bought into the illusion of ownership.  You don't own your home; you only have a claim.  And so does the bank, who is in line ahead of you, which means that they own the house and you.

Real Ownership

While you clearly don't own employees, they are indeed human assets that you have to manage.  Yet, if you have to work at managing an employee, they own you.  The best and most productive employees don't feel like employees at all, but collaborators who are self-managed.  Besides, some day they will move own.  All you can do is to take advantage of the mutually beneficial collaboration.

For that matter, why not take the same approach with your depreciable capital equipment?  Get your mind right with it from the beginning.  Unless you have an awesome mechanic, and a bulletproof insurance policy and anti-theft system, you'll never feel like its really yours. So just lease it and let it go from the get-go. 

Manage Your Ownership

I realized the projects on my 2010 plate that are  getting done are what I have taken mental ownership of.  A case in point is this blog.  I own this blog, and for good reason.  It is an integral piece of my marketing plan.  When I see that plan working, it fires me up to do more. 

Today I took some action on what was not working.  I forwarded the url of my seriously outdated website truenature.com to this blog.  I'm here.  This is where I'm doing my best work. So, that website was not speaking well for me at all.  While I have to protect those links and the 10+ years of history associated with them, I made a decision that puts me in the driver's seat. I'll get it fixed soon enough.

Liberate Yourself

There are piles of files, books, and reference materials in my office that I'm realizing I will never need.  So they are getting tossed or donated to someone that may be able to use them.  Try it. 

Liberate yourself of whatever is owning you - get rid of it all.  

Remain Free

If you have to take on work that you don't want to, make sure you own as little of it as possible.  How do you do this?  Don't make long-term commitments.  And get outside help with it if you can.  As a small business or solo-preneur like me, there has never been a better time to outsource.

There is a lot of talent out there looking for work.  If you can't find it locally, try sites like Elance or 99Designs.

Finally, protect your freedom.  Resist the temptation to do, think, or feel what somebody else says you should.  Include in that list the biggest enemy to your freedom - your ego - that misguided fool that works for everyone else but you. 

When you can manage that bad boy,

you will truly be free to own the rest!

I have a feeling we'll be hearing more about this in 2010.  How about you?

Photo Credit:  TheTruthAbout...

Can You Handle The Truth?

Then start blogging.

Stretch the truth.  Why not?  It is guaranteed to attract multiple perspectives, and if you are lucky, some lively controversy, too.

Don't fear the negative comments.  Embrace them as an opportunity to clarify your own position.  Go ahead, push the envelope a bit.  Cross the line.  It's o.k.

You are free to say what you wish, and so is your audience.  That's what is so liberating about this platform.  You just have to give everyone the opportunity to freely comment without moderation.  And make it easy by ditching that annoying captcha system.  I can barely read my own writing, much less that scribble. 

Yesterday I was strolling through Facebook and found a link to my friend Ron Culberson's blog.  So, I made a comment and then redirected him over to my blog to show off some of my recent work.  Since Ron is a professional humorist, I thought he would enjoy my post on social media callbacks.  He did.  Then he set me straight on the true definition of a callback.

He said this, "...technically speaking, in the world of comedy, a "call back" is not so much a brand that identifies someone but a comment that refers back to a previous joke in the routine.  It's a circular construction of a joke so that another punch line comes later in the routine by referring back to a previous bit."

Guess what?  I knew that.  Although I could never have articulated it that well!  I actually find this quite humorous because when I wrote it I knew there was a chance that I would get thrown under the bus for stretching the truth to fit the point of my post.

Isn't this what we all do?  Don't we guard our area of expertise, our truth,  a little too closely?  We see everyone else clearly, but then we think those rules don't really apply to us. That's what is great about the social media communities.  There is a self-correcting mechanism that keeps us all reasonably truthful.

I can handle that.

But I'm not saying I won't cross the line again. :)

Photo Credit:  Bixentro

Do You Have a Social Media Callback?

"A girl phoned me the other day and said..... Come on over, there's nobody home.  I went over.  Nobody was home."     Rodney Dangerfield

Rodney was the master of the callback.  What's a callback?  A simple word, phrase, or sound that is clearly identified with you - and only you.  And what was Rodney's callback?   That's right - "I get no respect."  Whenever you hear that, you remember Rodney Dangerfield. 

In the early days of modern marketing a type of callback was created to market a brand. They were called advertising slogans, specifically because it took a lot of advertising to create and support them.  And in the days of mass marketing, slogans were quite effective at building a memorable brand. You may remember a few of them:

• Good to the Last Drop - Maxwell House Coffee
• The Pause that Refreshes - Coke
  
• Just Do It!  - Nike

That era of  marketing is now history.  Those slogans were only memorable as a result of enduring mass marketing campaigns that were costly, and during these challenging economic times, are going to fall on deaf ears.  This is the social media era. Now is the time for authenticity.

Business used to be about companies.  Now its about people.  This means a simple little callback that speaks to who you are, what you do, and who you do it for can be a valuable marketing tool for any business.

This also means entrepreneurs and small business owners like you, who are already close and personal with your customers, are now in the drivers seat.  This is your time.

While a self-deprecating callback may be perfect for a comedian like Rodney Dangerfield, something stronger and more positive is more likely to be effective for your small business.  What are you known for - or want to be? 

You have to understand the needs of your customers to determine that.  What do they really want to know that you can personally deliver on?  You may even consider phrases that we now use that you can make your own.

Like...No worries.

Callbacks work because they spread virally through the social media networks - by real people who happen to be your customers. Try to come up with three words that capture the essence of your business promise.

That's your callback. 

Make it your own.

How To Build a Business Legacy with Your Blog

Make it Simple, Strong, and Social.

Blogging is the most powerful marketing tool available to any business marketer today - without exception.  It is the great equalizer.  Whatever you do well, it amplifies it.   And unlike your other social media networks, you own the content you create.  That is why it is also your legacy. 

You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide

You many have 100,000 followers on Twitter, or a Facebook Fan Page that is electrified with endless conversations.  But that is all transient. The time comes when your prospects want to know the substance that makes your business worthy of their investment.  Your blog is that proof.

When I am out speaking to entrepreneurs, I find many of them are operating very successful businesses.  They are the real deal.  Though many have yet to build an online legacy that illuminates their truth.

Here are my recommendations for building or refining your blog to make it a legacy that matches your business accomplishments.

Make it Simple

Words are powerful.  Images and videos are even more powerful.  Be discerning.   Choose your words carefully.  Keep your videos short.  And use images that capture the essence of your message.  Distill your message down to what will make a difference in the lives of the people in your target market.

Make it Strong

Marketing in all of its forms is about influence.  If your message lacks authority, than so do you - and by inference, so does the business you represent.  When you are blogging, you are standing on a mountaintop. Now say what you have to say as if you had the undivided attention of thousands of people.  Do it well, and someday you will.

Make it Social

Business is no longer about companies.  It is about people.  We are living in a world where superior quality and value are expected.  The differentiating factor is the opportunity to work with someone we can trust.  HOW you convey your message is even more important than the message itself. Make an emotional connection and you will be remembered forever. 

Be strong.  Keep it simple.  And use the power of this social media platform.

A great blog is the marker's marketer.

Photo Credit:  Jerrold

Small Business Trends for 2010 - Part 3 of 3

If you are new here, this is the third post in a series.  Here is the leading post on  Small Business Trends for 2010.  And here is the previous, or 2nd post in the series on Collaborative Markets. 

 

Sustainable Communities

Organizations of people are evolving from exclusivity to inclusiveness.  This creates more sustainable communities where members place their trust in each other.

While not fashionable, sustainability generated some critical discussion a couple of decades ago.  Back then the talk was mostly among scientists, those of us within the green industry, and more than a few citizens at large.  What happened?  Well, times were so good for so long that the movement just didn't develop much traction.  Disposable was more accurately the word of the day back then.

Today we are waking up to how our wasteful behaviors have now collided with a devastating economy.  In these unprecedented times, we need to build sustainable communities. And the only way that is going to happen is by working together.

A Community of Communities

We live on one planet, and that means all communities eventually merge into one.

You may only be concerned with what happens in your local community, but you now know that the economic future of your community is highly dependent upon global markets, multiple currencies, the supply and demand for necessary commodities and skilled labor. 

Social media is helping us to understand how our communities overlap  They freely co-mingle resources when that is possible. Your company is a community that merges with other communities that includes industry associations and markets.  This means you are vying for the same resources as other companies.

If you wish to be successful in the future, it's vital to begin thinking about managing your communities for inclusiveness, as opposed to exclusivity.  In times of scarcity, no organization, company, or community can expect to succeed on the merits of exclusivity. 

What's the a logical first step?  Engage more with the communities you depend upon.  Make a list.  It's a list that will continue to grow with more examination.  Here are some suggestions for building engagement with your communities.

Sharing and Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is collaboration with a community group to perform a simple task, usually one that solves a simple problem for the majority of the community.  This is often best accomplished when there is a degree of anonymity. This active participation is almost certain to generate more sustainable solutions.  Why? Because the crowd has ownership in what it helps to create. 

Marketers have traditionally considered themselves to be the experts who processed market information.  Focus groups are the best example of this.  Crowdsourcing is different. It spins that concept around 180 degrees.  It's a new way of thinking that taps into the wisdom of a crowd.  How can you do this?  Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter, online surveys, comments on your blog, and practically every other form of social media.  

Why is this significant?  It's not what you have to say about your products and services that matters most, but what others are saying.

A New Business Model

One of the greatest contributors to the failure of small businesses is the belief that they are mini-corporations.  This is top-down thinking that minimizes inclusiveness, a model that is doomed in our emerging economy. Top-down thinking leads to taking on too much overhead, forgetting that customers want to be engaged, and otherwise assuming a 'one size fits all' mentality.  

Entrepreneurs and small businesses need a business model that is community focused.  They need a model that takes what is working for them now, their personal relationships with people in the community, and extends it.  Social media can do this - because social media is not about more - but better.    

Think about how you can help your communities do more of what they want to do. You can surely discern that they are concerned about the economy?  What else?  Education, health care, safety, communication, and the environment. You decide. 

Most importantly, consider how can you help your community in a way that is congruent with your business mission.

This is all a process, not an event.  Being human-centric, and collaborating with people to build sustainable communities is not that difficult at all.  

It just has to be done. 

Have an outstanding year!

Photo Credit:  Sreejith K

The Best Community

It's what you share with just one other human being.

Today I did some very last minute Christmas shopping with my daughter Ali who is home on her college break.  When our Holiday shopping mission was accomplished, I realized something.  When you can spend a day, one-on-one, with someone you care about, that is a gift you should not take for granted.

I also learned something else.  Last minute Christmas shopping can be a lot of fun!  By mid-afternoon there was hardly a crowd at most of the places we visited.  We enjoyed an unhurried lunch, stopped for an afternoon coffee, and strolled from shop to shop while having some quality time to just be with each other. 

Needless to say, you can't do that when you are shopping online.

While we did manage to snag one nice bargain, the most pleasant surprise for me occurred when we took a shortcut through a neighborhood where the kids played sports when they were much younger.  This gave us a moment to revisit some of those memories.  That is a gift you cannot measure.  Though it sure makes you aware of the value of your time together - and that time is right now.

I made a promise yesterday to comment on sustainable communities, the last segment of my short series on small business trends for next year.  While I like to keep my promises, that just did not seem to be appropriate at this time.

So for now, I'm just sharing this brief experience.  That's all.  There will be plenty of time to explore how our business communities are changing for the better. 

Until that time, I'm going to enjoy the best community of all - one on one.  I hope you are able to do the same.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and all the best to you and your family!

 

Proof We are Not Overly Connected

Do you get a response to all of your emails, Tweets, and Facebook posts?

How about 50%.  That is a more accurate estimate, isn't it?  Do I hear 25%?  You know what I'm talking about. As many of us give our perspectives on the high points of 2009, as well as the trends we see shaping up for 2010, a common theme that you are hearing is 'connectivity overload.'  Incidentally, tomorrow I will be wrapping up my three part series on 2010 Trends for Small Businesses when I focus in on sustainable communities. As you may expect, I'll discuss how social media is strongly influencing these trends.

For now, one thing I am emphatic about is that we are far from being 'overly connected.'  My belief is we are overly disconnected - from people.  Hey, I am just as guilty of this from time to time as many of you are.   Yes, I have my face in this computer more than I should.  I will even go so far as to say I am addicted to media, to news, to the next thing.  It's fun to learn, isn't it? 

Nevertheless, if you are a friend of mine, you can bet that I will return your email, your Tweet, and even your Facebook wall post.  That seems like the right thing to do.  This is what builds relationships.  It says you care enough about the sender to respond in kind. 

I've always said that social media will make you a better marketer because it puts a spotlight on your communications, and in the process, places some accountability on those communications.  Yet, this doesn't seem to matter to a lot of people.  Do you agree? 

Take a look at some of the mega social media marketers like Chris Brogan and Seth Godin.  They respond! A friend of mine was surprised that Seth returned his emails.  I'm not.  I cannot say I'm a friend of Chris Brogan, but I follow his blog that gets upwards of 100 comments a day.  And you know what, he responds.  Yes, he even responds to people like me.  I appreciate that.  And I guarantee if you do the same, you will build a larger community of friends, prospects, and customers too.

You would think that people would be over-communicating these days.  Why?  Because the economy sucks.  Why else?  Because social media makes it so easy to do so.  Guess what?  They aren't!  It honestly boggles the mind.

Click!  Light bulb.  That's right, this means there is an open field of opportunity just waiting for you and me.  All we have to do is connect, communicate, and build community through the simple action of being responsive.  O.K., I suppose that is technically a series of actions.  OMG, that sounds like work.  The question then is how badly do you wish to succeed.

You don't have to be a marketing genius like Seth Godin, or a an uber-multi-tasker like Brogan to build a successful business.  You just need to do something reasonably well, and do it consistently.  My belief is this is a vital ingredient in any marketing plan.  Marketing is synonymous with communication, and these days, it's all about personal communication. 

This the undercurrent of new media marketing.

Social media marketing doesn't do a anything for you that you are not already doing well.  What it does give you is the power to do everything better - by connecting you with people who are aligned with your message, your product and service, your personality and character, and your energy and spirit.

That's a big promise. 

Tune in tomorrow and I'll deliver on it.

Did I just make a promise? 

Yes. 

Photo Credit:  Mickal

What is Collaboration?

To work together, cooperate, join forces, unite.

Yesterday I elaborated on collaboration, the second of three trends for small businesses for 2010 that are being encouraged by a variety of converging influences, with social media being one of them. 

I've been wondering if we can harness the power of these converging influences by uniting the talents of the people in the markets where we work by capitalizing on this increased collaboration.  Maybe you have considered the same.  Here's a perspective you may not have considered.

Yoga 

When I began practicing yoga about 15 years ago, it was still an anomaly here in the Midwest.  These days its as common as going to the gym to push some iron.  To each his own.  I prefer to do both, so in a way that is my yoga. 

The word yoga is derived from the word yoke - which means union.  Yoga is the union of the mind and body, and if you believe in spirit, that too.  It's really a way of saying that everything works best when it works well together.  That is collaboration.

Where the body stops and the mind or spirit begins is subject of some debate.  It's enough to understand they are inextricably joined together.  That is most true when you have a high level of awareness.  That's one thing that yoga does for you.  It brings your awareness back to your body, which means it brings your mind and body together.  That awareness is key to the art of building solid business relationships.

There are actually eight "limbs" of yoga, according to the traditional definition.  Those postures you know as yoga are just one limb.  Meditation, the management of the mind, is another limb, along with other practices that are beyond the scope of this article. Just know that they all seek to build more refined levels of awareness.  And that is something you understand in all areas of your life, including the business side.

Social Yoga

I'm going to take some liberties here with this self-created definition.  When you think of collaborating with your markets, your customers, your business and social communities, you should be considering a balance of mind and body. In other words, collaboration in mind, such as on the social networks, should be balanced with personal, face-to-face collaboration - in body, so to speak.

The yoga tradition teaches us that when you achieve higher states of yoga, the mind and the body both disappear, with nothing left but pure awareness. This is where you have a spiritual experience.  This of course is not going to happen on a practical business level.  However, what is possible, if not entirely likely, is that the right balance of collaboration with the people you care about will lead to a higher level of creativity and accomplishment.  That's collaboration.

Collaborative Communities

No worries; you don't need to have a group hug with your customers!  Although, it's a nice thing when it happens, isn't it?  In a business context it may be surprising at times, yet it is welcome.  You and your customers should care a great deal about the success of your joint venture.  Quite simply, you can enjoy your collaborative work with others who are like-minded.

My suggestion is to think about your collaborative efforts with your customers as not necessarily work, but as uniting together as one mind.  To say someone has a mind of their own usually indicates they have ideas that are different from the norm, or at least different from yours.  Why not take those leading edge ideas and collaborate to make them work for the larger community.  

That's what we'll talk about when we wrap up our series on small business trends. We are living and working in uncharted waters these days. We have to think of new ways to accomplish in these tough times what may have been easy when the economy was easier.

In other words it's time to stretch - yoga metaphor and pun intended!

I'm up for it.  How about you?

Photo Credit: Myyogaonline

Small Business Trends for 2010 - Part 2 of 3

If you are new here, this is the second post in a series.  Here is the leading post on  Small Business Trends for 2010.

Collaborative Markets

Markets are no longer about selling to buyers, but collaborating with them to develop better and more sustainable solutions. 

Who would have thought that markets would become more about the buyer than the seller?  Well, it's about time, isn't it?  For decades we have been pounding the drum with mantras that are intended to invoke a customer focused marketplace.  But for the most part, it was lip service.  

What is a collaborative market anyway? 

Have you ever traveled to a third world country and engaged with the street vendors?  It's fun, isn't it?  Surely you've been to a flea market.  It's all the same.  Isn't it interesting that in this age of technology we are moving back to when things were simpler? 

Step 1  - Engagement

Street merchants know that they get one shot at your business.  For this reason, if they can get your attention, they will initiate a process of engagement.  Yes, they will gladly haggle over terms, and if they they can, they will customize their product to fit your specific needs.  But the first step is the all-important one.  They need to get your attention and keep you involved.  

You should consider how you do this with your customers.  Most websites are not very engaging.  That is why blogging and social media in general are exploding.  You can engage with tips and advice, by being a friend, or maybe by just being interesting.  You have to decide how this will work best for you and your business.

Step 2  - Understanding

Adapt to the market.  Markets are different from day to day.  The street merchants know this.  Sunny days are vibrant and create a great deal of energy.  And then there are the behaviors of people to consider.  What are the factors in your market?  Some markets expect to have a great deal of involvement while others prefer to rely on your expertise.  It does matter if you are building custom homes or building the concrete foundation for them.  One requires a great deal of collaboration, while the other only demands compliance with accepted specifications.

The point is you need to consider how to achieve the appropriate level of involvement with your market.  The only way to figure this out is to engage with them and do a great deal of listening.  Google Alerts and social media networks like Twitter are ideal for this.  Have a process that keeps you in control at all times while giving your prospects and customers the opportunity for being heard.  That is the nature of this trend.

Step 3 - Responsibility

The reason markets are trending towards collaboration is consumers are more educated and know what they want.  This doesn't mean they know what you know.  You are still the expert, and that means you are ultimately responsible for their satisfaction. That's part of the relationship.

If the product needs to be more costly to guarantee results, then it should.  If you expect the product to require maintenance, then that should be disclosed.  If you can warranty the product for years to come, you should do that too.  Warranties keep you engaged for extended periods.  That's a good thing!

What All of This Means

We are moving into a period where nearly everything matters.  We are entering a period of full-disclosure and authenticity.  You are expected to have done your homework.  You have to stand in the shoes of your customer and know everything that has to be known.  This may seem unreasonable, but it is a sign of the times.

Here are some considerations that are encouraging this trend.  This is what is on the mind of most consumers.  And so it should be a consideration in your process.

• Full-disclosure  - People want to work with people they can trust.
• Risk - The economy has made us risk averse.
• Sustainability -  Everybody hates waste.
• Value - This is another form of sustainability.
• Accountability - The days of fine print are gone. 
• Alliances - Increase your value by integrating it with related products and services.  This shows your customer you unselfishly care about them.
• What's Next - We love surprises, but only if they are the right ones.

Don't stop here.  Make your own list.  And feel free to share it here.

Let's make this a collaboration.  

Photo Credit:  Sarahkim

Why I Blog

Because I can.

People often wonder why bloggers continue to ply their craft, regardless of who may be reading.  I've given other excuses, such as the fact that Google is always reading my blogs.  That means that somebody, someday will read them.  But that's not enough to sustain the effort.

And when I say effort, I'm talking about much more than time.  You can crank out a blog in a few minutes.  All you have to do is read a few headlines and give another perspective.  That's nice, and few people will read it.  But that is not enough for me.  My nature is to do what I do well, regardless of who may be reading.

The true motivation comes from the response you get from real people with common interests that connect with your message.  When you make a connection like that, you have communicated.  You have in some way helped someone in your community do what they want to do better.  That's what it is all about. 

Of course, whether you are a new or an experienced blogger, you will have to blog with abandon just to receive a few morsels of encouragement.  And that's OK.  If you have something to say that is of value, you know that those seeds will eventually fall upon fertile soil.  So you bend, shape, and package your message in such a way to potentially engage a few readers.

Is that the goal?  Not at all.  The goal, if you are honest, is thousands of readers!  But you had better be prepared to engage them one at a time.  That's how this works.  You plant seeds, you watch over them, scaring away the birds and rodents until those seeds bear fruit. It's simple enough, but it takes patience.

In order to develop that patience, here are a few other reasons to blog.

Find Your Voice

You don't realize how poorly you communicate until you really start to measure it.  That measurement comes in the form of a message that feels right.  It's you. The more you practice, the more skillful you get. If you need some role models, look to any well-known presenter.  My business finds me presenting to green industry professionals at least 50% of the time.  Recently my friend Al Lautenslager sent me a video of George Carlin giving his perspective on Saving the Planet.  You may not agree with George's style or language, but his skill in delivering his message is truly amazing.  It takes a lifetime to develop your voice.  So, you may as well get started now.

Create a Forum for Engagement

A few weeks ago I created a series of posts about my project to write a book within two weeks.  I proceeded to burn through the first week by reorganizing my material.  Yet, when I finally hit the ground running, I wrote half of that book in the second week.  This proved the validity of my thesis.  More importantly, I engaged with many friends who gave me their tips and advice.  And that made the effort incredibly valuable and worthwhile.

Differentiate Your Business

Your market, your customers, only know what they know.  It is your job to communicate what is unique about your business.  How do you do things differently that makes a difference?  These days the bar is set high.  Quality is expected.  Your customers need to be reminded, again and again, why they should be doing business with you.  They need a reason to continue their relationship with you.  Often this has little to do with what you do, but how you do it.  It has a lot to do with who you are on a personal level.  Pull back the curtain and give them a show they will remember.

Fan the Flames

Have you ever felt you were at the right place at the right time?  This is what marketing is all about.  It's reminding your customers that they have made the right decision to do business with you. Give them evidence.  Make them feel great.  That's what people want.  It's simple.  And that is why it works.

Own Your Ideas

This week I presented some new material on green industry trends to a group of industry leaders.  Any speaker knows the most important aspect of any presentation is the first few minutes where you set the stage.  I had worked on those few minutes for weeks. I had the idea in my mind, but how to present it best kept changing.  That's when I determined how I could best create a tight, well-written opening.  I needed to blog about it to really own it. I knew when I was done with that I could comfortably stand in front of those industry leaders and say what needed to be said.

As a professional speaker, that is what I do.

And I do it because I can. That's why I love what I do, and why I keep doing it.

How about you?

Photo Credit:  Fellowship of The Rich

Small Business Trends for 2010

The Trends in a Nutshell

No. 1:  Human-Centric Businesses

Business used to be about companies.  Now its about people.

No. 2:  Collaborative Markets 

Markets are no longer about selling to buyers, but collaborating with them to develop better and more sustainable solutions.

No. 3:  Sustainable Communities

Organizations of people are evolving from exclusivity to inclusiveness.  This creates more sustainable communities where members place their trust in each other.

What do you see for your business?

The Evolution of this Perfect Storm

All of these trends are simultaneously converging to create a perfect storm of opportunity for businesses, especially small or entrepreneurial business that are characterized as having personal relationships with customers.

If you go back to the late '50's and early '60's, there was an emerging technology that changed the world of marketing.  That technology was television.  In the midst of an expanding post-World War II economy, middle class consumers embraced television.  Television had reach.  People had discretionary income.  And all of this created a new era of consumerism that helped make many brands household names.  

Television was a marketing technology that made everything more expansive by bringing it to a larger stage, and that fit perfectly with the growing economy.  What followed was a love affair with the automobile, highly stylized fashions, and countless consumer products guaranteed to make your life a dream!  Those companies were at the right place at the right time to capitalize on the converging trends of the day. Needless to say, some of those industries and companies are faltering today.

Human-Centric Business is Local

If you are an entrepreneur, YOU are now at the right place at the right time.

The technology that is transforming the business environment in your favor is social media marketing. It is giving everyone a voice at a period when people have gone through some tough experiences.  They want to move forward, but it is still uncertain where this economy is going.  Until that happens, they are looking for people to trust.  This means they are going to be doing business in their local communities.

This is why every Fortune 500 corporation has a presence on social media.  They know that business is going local.  They are seeing how social media is leveling the playing field to create equal opportunities for every company. In a nutshell, they want to be more like you.

Your challenge is to be who you are, a human-centric business that is willing to reach out even further than you already have.  Social media is a tool that is ideally suited for that, and most significantly, it's influence is sustainable.

What's the next step?  Collaboration. 

This morning I am presenting these trends to a group of green industry CEO's here in AL.  I'm sure our collaborative time together will generate rich insights.  I look forward to sharing them with you on parts 2 and 3 of this series.

Until then, leave a comment and tell me what you are seeing?

Why Tiger Woods Will Save His Marriage

It's a competition.

And this is one contest he needs to win.  Tiger knows there is no way to easily regain his confidence on the golf course without rebuilding the foundation that supports it. 

The Tiger Woods brand was formed when his primary relationship was with golf and himself.  That has changed.  Clearly, he will be making some dramatic changes in his life.  When he does emerge in the public domain, you can bet it will not involve golf, but his relationship with his family.

What defines Tiger Woods is his relentless ability to succeed in competitive situations, despite the odds, and maybe even because of the odds.  The odds are against him on this one, and that will only intensify the focus he needs to succeed.  If he can win this one, it helps him immensely in every other endeavor.  And  unlike it, those other challenges will always be waiting for him.

Despite pressure from sponsors and the PGA Tour, he will not relent until he has this part of his game under control.  The sponsors and the Tour understand this.  And so they will wait to the extent that they can.  Life is messy, but it is interesting.  And this scenario proves to be all of that.

What This Means for the Rest of Us

If there is anything this episode teaches us, it is that business is about relationships -  all of them.  Today social media is connecting communities with lighting speed and great accuracy.   Search engines now use real-time search to index everything we do.  With the social networks eavesdropping on more of our conversations than we know, like Tiger, we need to get comfortable with what the social networks do very well.

If Abraham Maslow is correct in his famous theory of the hierarchy of needs and desires, Tiger will do what every business or brand should be doing in this or any other economy.  He will focus on what matters most - those core relationships that we depend on every single day, and that we may sometimes take for granted.

I am frequently asked about the ROI of social media.  There are a number of ways to measure the value social media brings to your business.  Yet, while you can fairly easily measure the value a key customer brings to the table, it is exceedingly difficult to quantify this thing we call reputation. 

This much we now know:  Whether you are a celebrity or not, reputation may be immeasurable, but it is represents a drive down the middle of the fairway.  

That's something any of us can build on.

Photo Credit:  MarkLarson

The 100% Solution

When was the last time you considered how you can deliver a perfect solution for your customer?

While this is a lofty goal that you may never achieve, it is possible.  And having the intention alone makes it that much more attainable.  Thoughts do have a way of attracting more thoughts that can manifest into something grand, at least once in a while.  Isn't it worth considering?

The reason I pose this question is these days we have the ability to engage and interact with our our clients and customers in ways we could only have dreamed of a few years ago.  When I started my contracting business in the late '80's, I did endeavor to create a perfect solution for each one of them. While I doubt I ever achieved that goal, something very significant happened.  They noticed!

Customers notice when you care about them.  And most of them reward you for the effort.  That reward may come in the form of additional business, or at the very least, building a stronger relationship that solidifies your client base.  We may not have appreciated that a few years ago, but I'm sure everyone does today, regardless your industry.  To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, "It's tough out there."  So, if you expect to generate the respect that ensures the survival and growth of your business, you would be wise to give this some thought.

Years ago I organized my customer's needs and desires with chronological written logs in files, bold notes on index cards posted on my bulletin board, and a lot of scribbled notes that probably got lost.  Today I have actually gone back to some of those methods because as good as databases are today, they still take time to manage.  And it only takes a moment to jot down a note.  Best of all, when you write it down, you tend to remember it.

These days I'm using Batchbook as my database to capture information.  I'm supplementing that with Evernote, which works great to capture on my laptop and my iPhone.  It captures Web pages and the iPhone integration means I always have a virtual notepad to record my client's thoughts.  This week I discovered the Dragon app for the iPhone.  This is voice a free app that transcribes into text what you speak into your phone - with about 85% accuracy.  Very nice indeed!

These are useful applications for recording information.  Yet, they are only of value if they are consistently applied to a solution.  Now that social media is maturing as a platform, you should be thinking long and hard about how to all of this to achieve better business solutions.

What's that sound?  Do you hear that?  It's the footsteps of your competitors who are late to the social media game, but who have a great deal of experience in their business serving their customers - just like you. 

Don't lose your place in line. Many of us have found our way to the social media trough, but there is always limited space to take a drink while the water is fresh.  These are tough times indeed.  This is when you have to push a little.  Try what's new, drill down on your social networks, of course, but try to integrate what they do with what made you successful in better times.

It's very unlikely that you will discover the 100% solution.  Yet, it is also impossible to achieve any level of customer satisfaction if you don't make the effort. 

This much I do know.  My formal undergraduate education in college was in Chemistry.  It is a discipline that teaches you to vary the ingredients in your mix until you achieve the desired solution.  It's a process of study, research, and to a great extent, trial and error.  And it works.

Sometimes it works on the first try.  Most often, it takes days or weeks or months.  Is it worth the effort?

Yes it is - 100%.

Photo Credit: ChemicalHeritageFoundation

Getting Comfortable with Authenticity

Show me what you can do?

These words are typical of what you may hear from a coach, your boss, or a prospect and customer.  These words are intended to reveal what makes you worth being a member of a team, a community, or an organization. This is the  foundation that shapes your personal brand.  It is based upon your performance, your reputation, and sometimes a good dose of self-promotion or marketing, which these days is strongly influenced by social media marketing.

Yesterday I gave a presentation on business trends that are being shaped by social media.  Naturally, one of the topics that came up is the increasing visibility that social media is bringing to all of us, whether we pursue that visibility or not. 

The truth is we have very little control over our reputation, other than of course how we play the game.  What's the game? The game is not just your performance on the athletic field, or in your business if you are an entrepreneur, but everything you do in every community that you are a member of. 

Today social media is connecting communities with lighting speed and with great accuracy.  Search engines and recent innovations that include real-time search are indexing everything we do, including where, when, and how we connect with other people.  It's time to get comfortable with that.

You and I have to get comfortable with the fact that our society is evolving into an open book. And there is at least one championship golfer who is painfully aware of this.  What remains to be seen is what can be salvaged of his personal brand.  My belief is the best strategy is to go straight to that inevitable destination that seems to arrive more quickly, and with greater regularity than ever - authenticity.

This past weekend I discovered a discussion string from Facebook that occurred over two years ago.  It was a discussion among my daughter's friends while she was in high school.  Since we share the same last name, it was inevitable that I would discover this discourse involving dozens of students. While the information contained within that stream of comments was innocuous, it was indeed interesting.  Most interesting to me is that Google is cracking through the "great wall of Facebook," and indexing some of that content that gives us clues to character, capabilities, aspirations, and much more.

You may not be a celebrity, or even a Web celebrity, but you are a human being.  And the increasingly humanized Web is eavesdropping on your conversations more than you know.  This is a trend that is sure to gain momentum as the social media networks do what they do best.  Some people fear this, but fear never results in anything positive.  So, you have to get comfortable with this.

The good news is good news travels well.  Some may disagree, but when the day is done, we want to hear the good news. We want to know how you are  helping your communities.  We want to know how your product and service will solve our problems. Human beings naturally seek the high road.  The rest is just noise.

Getting comfortable with the authenticity of this Web is going to change your business and mine for the better. Here's why.

Your customers, your markets, and your communities only want to know one thing: What can you do?

Do that, and do it well, from tee to green, and the social Web will treat you like a champion.

That's the only score we really care about.

Photo Credit:  PocketWiley

Do You Trust Advertising or Friends?

What's the first thing you do when you see an interesting ad?

You call a friend to see if they will validate the product or service.  We have always looked to our friends to get their opinions because we know their frame of reference and we trust them.  With the advent of social media this inquiry is more easily accomplished than ever. 

Why then would anyone consider advertising?  Awareness is what comes to my mind.  Advertising is a suggestion to get or keep the buying process moving.  I seriously doubt in these times it results in a stand alone sale, unless of course the price point is so low that there is very little risk.  Or possibly if the purchase is one where, shall we say, getting a friend's opinion may be a bit awkward!

Our personal experiences and those of our friends are shaping new business models that are sure to include the most valuable advertising there is: the wisdom of friends.  If you are a business owner, you need real friends who can validate the value you bring to the marketplace.  I'm talking real friends here, no t the fake friends that you may be frantically collecting on Twitter. 

A few years ago I spoke to Caterpillar dealers at their Superbowl celebration in Orlando, an experience that I enjoyed immensely.  It is always a pleasure to be with a group of professionals who are genuinely interested in learning. There were dealers from across the country who converged to share best practices and learn how to connect with new markets.  One of those markets being the green industry that I was there to represent with my twenty years of experience. 

As I said, it was several years ago, long before social media had really found its legs.  The news I shared with them was the green industry is a market in excess of 50 billion dollars, yet a very fragmented one.  This is typical of most industries that are dominated by smaller, entrepreneurial businesses. 

If I were speaking to them today, I would strongly encourage strategic marketing initiatives for engaging with those entrepreneurs through the social media networks.  I would suggest a combination of advertising for awareness with a healthy component of engagement to get to know one business owner at at time.

That's how we share information. We all talk.  We trade notes.  And we value each others opinions because we know our friends understand how to get things done in the trenches just as we do.

I don't think advertising is dead by any means.

It just needs to be, hmm..friendlier.

Photo Credit: RoadsidePictures

My No-Risk Business Model for This Economy

This is the time of year when you are finishing up, actively involved with, or at least thinking about your business plans for next year. 

If you have been in business for a while, you know with certainty that business in the future will be dramatically different as a result of at least two influences that are reshaping buying behavior: the economy and the sensational growth of the social media networks.  The economy you know about.  If you have been asleep for a while, one measure of social media's influence is Facebook just celebrated 350 million user, which is over 200 million more users than this time last year.  

The economy has taught many of us to do with less, as we have discovered we really didn't need much of the stuff that was cluttering up our lives.  That habit is almost sure to prevail.  Then there is the habit that became a sport - getting a better deal.  Not everyone has been struggling, but it has become fun to search and wrangle for a better deal - better quality, a lower price or at least more value for the same price, and new and different options that only come your way when you are able to take advantage of them.

My belief is flexibility and choice are destined to be strong buying influences this coming year, and probably well beyond.  This creates a major problem for a specific business model that I'll refer to as The Club Model.  If you have been a member of a health club or a golf club, owned a cell phone or subscribed to a magazine, then you know the premise of the model: Get customers and keep them for as long as possible, preferably a lifetime.  Wasn't this partly the model of apparel and automakers?   Their brand was the club. 

The problem with the club is it is easy to get locked in, which of course is the idea.  Oh, but c'mon, you are a member of the club, so don't you want your club to do well?  Well, um...I guess so.  But what if you wish to try another club for a while?  Most club models are designed to keep you from doing exactly that. Cell phone companies love this model. You typically have to be a member of their club for two years, or you have to pay dearly for the flexibility of a shorter, one-year commitment, which in this economy still feels like a lifetime!

The model you should consider, and one that I am adapting to my speaking and consulting, is increasingly common in this Web based society.  It's the No Risk Model.  And coming out of a tough economy, this is exactly what a lot of your customers are looking for. 

Please understand I operated a contracting business for 20 years and I completely understand the need for annual contracts.  Nevertheless, I'm not in charge of this economy and neither are you, so maybe you should give this some thought.  Find the middle ground for your company and your customers.

Most of the social media services you and I use are free.  Since social media happens to be my business, I pay for a number of services too, and they all offer a no-risk trial with a low-risk payment plan that allows you to opt out at any time.  And that is what makes it easy to opt in in the first place!

Some of my favorites examples are Batchbook.com, Shoeboxed.com, and Freshbooks.com, which are all Web based services.  Batchbook is a customer relationships manager (CRM), Shoeboxed is a business card and receipt organization service, and Freshbooks is a time-tracking and invoicing service. These are great services for the entrepreneur who is usually on-the-go.

I tried all of these services out for little or no investment.  The "pay-as-you-go" method is easy on my budget and easy to budget for.  Though the best part is their model requires them to get better and offer more value to keep me as a customer.  I like that!  And let me tell you, the better they get, the more I sing their praises - as I am here. 

And to paraphrase Billy Mays - That's not all!  They listen to me.  I can get a live person on the phone, and I know for a fact they are listening to customers like me because they have made the improvements many of us have suggested.  This tells me they are looking down the road to what business is evolving to. 

And this leads me to my three requirements for a successful business model in this economy:

Vision - Always be looking ahead, because your customers are.

Voice - Listen to your customers.  Give them a voice and they will be your biggest fans.

Value - When you stop offering more, your customers start thinking about opting out.

Is your business model closer to the Club or the No-Risk Model? 

Your answer will help you get ready for the economic recovery.  When that happens, there will be a lot of people ready to make a change.  These people will remember the clubs that locked them up, and that's an opportunity for you. 

If a club is typically exclusive, then inclusiveness is the future.

Let 'em all in.  Make it easy.  Some may leave.  That's o.k. If you are good enough, they'll be back.  Let that door swing both ways.  No risk in that.

Here's my no-risk offer:  Leave a comment and I'll respond.  Guaranteed!

Photo Credit: BrianButko 

What You Should Do When You Get Here

What is social media? 

This is a question that I am asked to address in too many of my presentations.  It's a question that makes me want to stick a fork in my ear.  Maybe the reason is that you can easily learn the basics of this topic and any other by jumping on the Web and doing a search.

And right there is a clue to my frustration, as well as the frustration of those who ask the question.  They don't understand how to conduct a Google search, and this should not be a surprise, because to do this you first have to understand how Google thinks.  You have to understand how their system works. Do you really think the fellow at the grocery store is smarter than you?  Of course not, he just knows to send you to aisle 7 because he understands the store's system of organization. 

These days enough businesses are being led to social media that the more logical question becomes: What should you do when you get here?  Oops, you already missed a step.  This is a consideration that should have been made before you got here.  If you have to ask why you are here, then you are lost.  And being lost is never a good thing.

Let's assume you indeed have a plan for your business success, and you have a marketing plan that carefully subordinates those company objectives.  You are here.  Excellent.  Now lets take a look at what you should do if you are just getting started, and what you may need to adjust if you may have already jumped in without a solid foundation.

1.  Devote at least 1/3 of your social media marketing to listening and learning.  Use Google Alerts to monitor your company brand, personal reputation, and industry specialty.

2.  Use a personal photo for your profile, as opposed to an avatar or business logo.

3.  Standardize your usernames and profiles.  It will make your life much simpler.  Use namechk.com or knowem.com to search for availability.

4.  Start blogging.  This is the cornerstone of your social media presence that distinguishes your unique value for your customers and prospects.  Use it to help them solve their problems.  My favored platform is Typepad.  Here's why:

5. Don't try to "spin" your reputation or capabilities.  Social media amplifies who you are with amazing accuracy, so just be your best self.

6. Use multi-media messaging to make your your content consumable in as many different ways as possible, so that you can engage with as many people as possible. 

7.  Sharing is the grease that makes social media work.  Without this, there is no reason for anyone to link up to you.  And that means you don't have a reason to be here. 

Social media is a platform for interacting and engaging with people to make friends and build relationships that may create opportunities for your business.  This is what you should be doing once you are here.

If you understand this, you understand the most important thing about social media marketing: Business is a by-product of it.  And how do you find it? 

I think its over there on aisle 7.

Photo Credit: J-P-F

 

Engaging with Communities

Many of us in the United States will be reengaging with our regular business communities after nearly a week of visiting or hosting family for the Thanksgiving holiday.  This ritual will again be repeated for a number of upcoming holidays, depending upon your faith, upbringing and background, and if you travel to warmer climates during the winter season, your geographic location.

Transportation methods, flexible work schedules and discretionary income have all contributed to the formation of more communities that we easily move in and out of.  The social media networks are increasingly taking this to another level, as communities of all kinds are now represented both on an offline.

How many different kinds of communities are there in your world?  More than you probably realize if you take the time to consider this.  These communities shape how you do everything in your life - how you work, how you enjoy your leisure, and how you make new friends.  So, this is my first challenge:  make a list of all of the communities that you engage with.  Think about work, play, education, clubs, activities, and associations and partnerships, and that list will quickly grow. 

Moving forward, you are going to become more aware of these communities and their value to your life and lifestyle.  You will start to measure that value.  Truth is you already do in some respects.  Why do many people join a health club when they can easily purchase the equipment to workout in their own home?  Why does anyone join a club?  As with most inquiries, the best answer is often that it depends.  Does it raise the quality of the experience?  If so, it  helps to answer the question:  "Why are you here?"

This past Thanksgiving week I engaged with dozens of communities that mostly involved family and friends.  This took me away from my usual business communities where I will be spending most of my time this week.  And I am looking forward to reengaging with those communities.  This variety is essential to leading a fulfilling life that grows and leads to new opportunities. However, it also makes me realize I need to start considering how I balance my participation, contribution, and engagement in every respective community.

It is interesting to notice how some communities overlap and others do not.  Most of my family members do not know a great deal about the type of work I do as a professional speaker.  They are mostly interested in how I am doing as a person - period.  Information in some communities seems to be transferred on a need to know basis?  This is just one aspect of how you can simplify your engagement with communities to maximize the value you receive and give to the other members.

How else can you  order your communities.  Please leave a comment below and share your ideas?  Here are some ideas that come to my mind that I am considering to balance out my online and offline community participation. 

Balance/Focus/Value

Boundaries/Rules/Exclusivity

Inclusiveness/Diversity

Trust/Acceptance/Friendship

Contribution/Participation/Integration

Education

Stability/Flexibility

Receptivity/Appreciation

Risk

Our time is valuable, and with the increased functionality of social media, it is possible to share nearly everything with everybody.  Anyone can do this, and it certainly encourages a great deal of discussion.  But will that discussion be as productive if  it were more ordered to encourage a desired result that is highly valued by the majority of the community? 

There is no wrong or right here.  You may believe there is no need at all to order your communities.  To that I will only suggest -  It all depends.

Photo Credit: Will Lion

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Viral Thanks-Giving: The Power of Social Media

One measure of the value of social media is how it helps our friends, and in turn helps their friends.

During this Thanksgiving season it is easy to to be thankful for family, as we should.  We interact with our family members on a regular basis.  They know us  We see ourselves in them, and they in us. This makes our thankfulness natural and easy. We call this love. 

But what about your friends who help you just because they can. How often do you really thank them?

Given the breadth and scope of social media, it is plausible that someday we will be able to thank every single person who has helped us in some way, however small their assistance may have been.  There is amazing power in that.

Every time you make a comment on a blog, or make a retweet on Twitter, you are embedding a thank-you into the consciousness of the social media platform that is then readied for a viral journey.  Much of this gets indexed, although a great deal doesn't, such as the comments in Facebook, though that is bound to change, and that right soon. 

The humanized Web works to shape consciousness in a positive way.  This is how social media "works." Thankfulness highlights the good works of everyone that crosses your path, which in turn helps the next person who benefits from that giving.

How good are you at thanks-giving?  Most of us can do better, and moving forward it is inevitable that we will get better as we learn the subtleties of how social media really works.

Is social media working for you?  This is a question that many people ask me.  How you define this may determine the result. The paradox lies within your ability to capture the wisdom, talents, and abilities of your friends.  When you appreciate the contributions of your friends, you make them better, and thereby help them to serve others better with the input that shapes their future work. 

Today, I ran one of my best 5 mile stretches in months thanks to the innovative work of my friend Dr. Marc Swerdlick. When I finished that exhilarating run I had only one thought - thanks Dr. Marc!  I wonder if he knows that? 

Chiropractors are known to fix back pain, but in this case my problem was an apparently obscure ankle and tendon ailment that took minutes to diagnose and treat.  And I am supremely grateful for the result, just as I appreciate his brilliant insights on marketing, which is a topic that seems to prevail in our casual cconversations.

While it took Dr Marc minutes to help me out, he cannot possibly understand my immense gratitude, because he probably doesn't know how important running is to me. Next time, I should probably talk less about marketing and let him know that.

It's your job and mine to thank everyone, every day, for every measure of benefit that you receive. And when you do that, you are giving back to people you will never know.  I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty cool to know I'm helping complete strangers, strangers who just may help me somewhere down the road.

Take the time to be "thanks-giving." When you express your gratitude for what you have received, you give something that is immeasurable for improving the work of your friends by focusing and enhancing their efforts to help others.

All you need is love. That is the root of Thanks-Giving. 

Give it a try.  Whether you do this personally or virtually, its a powerful and viral force, whatever you wish to call it.

Photo Credit:  Dark Matter

The New Playground - A Digital Conference Collaboration

This weekend I was very excited to wake up to a surprise in my inbox -  my advance copy of Google Wave.   I have to be honest, Google Wave doesn't make much of a first impression.  It is an uninspiring template that you have to learn to love.  Here is my suggestion on how to do that. 

Think of Google Wave for what it is - a playground. 

I have wonderful memories of the schoolyard playground where we played basketball, kickball, dodgeball, and many other activities that we either learned or invented together - because we had to.  If we were going to have fun on that little piece of asphalt at our elementary school, we had to create our own experience.   There is an interesting dynamic to playgrounds, just as there is to Google Wave.  It is a user controlled experience that demands cooperative collaboration. 

Playgrounds have some limitations.  There are both hard boundaries and some softer boundaries too.  However, you don't know which are which unless you are willing to push those soft edges to see where you can go.  In this respect, playgrounds reveal a great deal about who you are.  They help us to learn who are the leaders, the joiners and collaborators, the risk-takers, and the observers who prefer to hang out on the the sidelines and watch the action.  Wherever you fit, we all are participants who nevertheless help shape the overall experience. 

Google has carefully released advance copies of Wave in a series of drips to create a trickle that is building into a strong current of hype and excitement, at least among those of us who follow the technology trends.  We all know the real deal never lives up to the hype, and that is what I discovered, and what others have expressed on Twitter since the most recent release. 

Once you see what Wave looks like "fresh out of the box," you will understand the disappointment.  I'm convinced that reaction is unfounded once you realize how Wave can work.  This is your playground, and its up to you to do something special with it.  You have to make your own fun, and that means you have to get involved and do the work, which of course goes against the current of what some erroneously assume to be the rule of the road with social media.

Here's the thing.  Imagine you have the opportunity to either sit in a classroom and listen to a lecture, or go out into the playground to make some fun.  When I was in school we didn't care if it was raining or snowing, the playground was always the better option.  How about you?  Would you rather collaborate, make friends, and learn more about your capabilities with your colleagues, or would you rather sit there and have to take it as it comes  - like a lecture?

As a professional speaker, my job is to deliver a message that benefits an audience, and this is usually accomplished with a presentation that is conveyed from a platform.  Of course, I encourage participation and interaction, but there is no guarantee i will always get it.  When I do it is truly a wonderful thing.  It makes for a more enjoyable and beneficial learning experience for me and the audience, and I'm sure that then goes double for the meeting planner. 

There has been a great deal of discussion lately on blogs about creating a more interactive model of learning for adults.  Why?  Evidently, we have retained fragments of the memories of those playground experiences.  We can either sit back and listen to speakers like Jeff, or we can learn in a more collaborative environment with speakers like Jeff.  The only way we are going to evolve our conference learning model is to once again push those softer edges, and Google Wave offers some possibilities.

Last week Mashable.com shared some creative applications of Google Wave.  There is one in particular that got my attention in regards to this topic of collaborative presentations.  This use takes the Twitter hashtag experience of collaborating during a conference and and puts a tidal wave behind it.  The idea is simple:  Conference attendees can collaborate in real-time on the same playground using Google Wave to assemble a body of work that captures the unfiltered, present moment insights and inspirations of conceivably hundreds of participants. 

There is a fully documented account of this on the FreshNetworks blog.  Here's an excerpt:

“Here’s what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.”

I'm suggesting this could go even further to also include the conference presenter in the collaboration.  Imagine a presentation that gets better as it evolves into something completely original, something that has never been created before, and that is only created now because of this unique collaboration, by this audience? 

This week I am attending the Fall Conference of the National Speakers Association where a few of us discussed this topic at length.  There is risk involved with any kind of exposure, and there is certainly a great deal of risk in opening your presentation up to any and all comments.  I'm just considering that greater risk usually involves greater rewards. 

Maybe the question is how authentic are you prepared to be?  I envision a time when we won't even have to ask that question because social media will amplify and reveal our true nature to the extent that complete authenticity will be unavoidable.  How about you? 

Who wants to play?

Yes, I would love to read your comments and will be sure to respond in kind.  While you are at it, feel free to click on the green ShareThis button below to share with your friends.

Photo Credit:  Lulu Vision

Writing My First Book: A Fortnight of Lessons

On this day I had promised all of you that I would have the first draft of my book completed, all 60,000 words.  While I have only 30,000 to my credit, I didn't actually get started writing until after the first week.  This became the most important lesson of this little endeavor.  It isn't that tough to write 5,000 words in a day if you know the topic well, which I do --- and you are very clear about the how the book will be organized and what points you will cover, which I didn't.

Nevertheless, I'm calling this project a success.  The first reason is I maintained my promise to blog about my progress daily, which generated some supportive and beneficial feedback from readers like you.  The second is I now not only have the shape of the book, but with more than half of it completed, I feel like someone who has completed an equal portion of an agonizingly large and intricate crossword puzzle.  Once you have the finish line in your sights, it is a simple matter of methodically chipping away to make more progress, which may occur in big or little chunks.  However it occurs, you get more excited about reaching the destination, and that becomes increasingly motivating. Incidentally, I don't do crossword puzzles, but that seemed like a decent metaphor - so I'm using it!

To bring this phase of my book writing project to a close, here are the lesson I learned, either on my own or from friends who were happy to share from their experiences.  I've included the tips, lessons, and suggestions that helped me the most, along with an occasional translation, as well as links to the respective posts, mine or theirs, where you can read more in the context of the complete story.  And finally, I have given attribution to the respective contributors for their insights and inspiration.  Thank you to all!

Don't Boil the Ocean  -  better to cover just a few key points well - Judd Hoekstra (via Ken Blanchard)

Tap into the Power of Visualization - Gilda Bonnano.

Get the Shape of the Book as Quickly as Possible - do your research, organize your points, and see it coming alive, all the way down to the font that looks right to you - Jeff Korhan

If you have to do a great deal of research before you start writing, then you may be writing about the wrong topic - unknown blogger.

Write with the Door Closed, Edit with the Door Open - Stephen King

The Trend is Your Friend - Despite setbacks, stay the course with what you know and you will arrive at your destination - James Dines

Write about your industry and you will find the big news of the future today - Frank Schulte-Ladbeck 

The Power of Intention is Healthier (and therefore more effective) than the power of a goal - Dr. Bill Dean

You Need to Keep a Balance - my wife Leslie

Everyone has a Book Inside of Them - Dan Poynter

If your book is going to be different, it has to be the one YOU want to write! - Jeff Korhan

This ought to be enough for now.  In a few weeks, when I'm back from my business and holiday travels, I will share news about the next leg of the journey - editing.  I'm sure it will be another collaborative effort. Until then, keep writing.  I know I will.

Yes, I would love to read your comments and will be sure to respond in kind.  While you are at it, feel free to click on the green ShareThis button below to share with your friends.

Photo Credit:  Hddod

Book Writing Project Day 2 - How to Be Different

Research is not a part of the writing process that I particularly enjoy, but it is absolutely necessary.  You have to do it, do it well, and do most of it before you get started.  I'm realizing I may only have done an average effort with it, and as a result, I have lost a day of writing.

I'm not too worried about this because I know it is better to start well and build momentum, rather than muddling through a faulty premise.   To put it bluntly, you need a razor sharp statement about why your book is different.  Your audience has to know without hesitation that your book is the answer to a problem they have that is worth solving.  That is, of course, if your book is targeted to a business audience.

One purpose of my book is to cut through all of the B.S. of social media.  Sometimes I wonder if God didn't invent social media to see how we would use it, you know, as a test.  There is a lot of power there and using that power well is a huge responsibility.  Some people are not trying to abuse that power, they are just clueless about how to manage it.  In some ways, this is a lot like the process of writing a book, isn't it? 

Today as I organized my chapters and major points, I realized I have several social media books in me - using social media to grow a small business, building sustainable relationships, enhancing customer service, increasing referrals, .... and much, much more.  I am so glad my friend Judd Hoekstra made a comment on yesterday's post that cautioned me to focus on a few key points, rather than trying to  "boil the ocean."  I really like that, because that's exactly what I was preparing to do.  Judd knows what he is talking about as he has co-authored several books with legendary business author Ken Blanchard.

Would you like to hear my great aha for the day?  For months I have submitted proposals to traditional publishers.  To their credit, they were much more approachable than I had expected, especially considering I wasn't using an agent.  My challenge was to sell them on my book idea, why it was different than anything else on the market, and why that market would line up to buy it.  I did an equitable job at this, as one of them gave me a verbal yes. 

However, now that I am writing solely for my audience, having elected to self-publish, I am experiencing a freedom of expression that would have been stifled by thoughts of ...."I hope my publisher agrees with this."  I know my customers, and I'm sure you know yours.  There is an understanding with them that you have that is beyond words.  When you know, you know; and whenever you have to check that against a distant third party, a portion of your message is lost forever -  maybe the most important part.

This may be my first lap around the track of book publishing, but I now sure of one thing:  If your book is going to  be different, it has to be the one you want to write.

Photo Credit:  PaperbackWriter

My Book Writing Project Launch - Know Your Audience and Yourself

How This All Started

My friend and the recognized self-publishing expert Dan Poynter, better known as The Book Guy, is known for saying everyone has a book inside of them.  I know I do, and I'm going to prove it over the next couple of weeks. That's right, weeks.

While I have yet to put pen to paper, in many ways this book has been percolating in my brain for the better part of a year.  If you are a regular reader of this blog,  you know I have been examining perspectives on social media marketing from as many angles as an entrepreneur can have - and there are many, many more to examine, given the millions of entrepreneurs and business owners out there.  I like that! 

Why are We Here?

So, it is that path that I plan to explore.  After speaking to thousands of entrepreneurs from numerous industries over the last couple of years on this topic, I believe I have a good idea what is needed for small business owners like you and me to take full advantage of this revolutionary marketing platform.   Naturally, having been an entrepreneur myself for over the last 20 years, I intend for this book to especially help you get business traction with social media in the simplest way possible.

The true purpose of this series of posts is not to just take you through the process of writing a book, getting it published, and marketing it, but to show you how bringing your audience into your personal world is a humanizing and effective use of social media.  Here's the thing:  since I'm not a social media guru, rather a business owner like you who happens to have a solid understanding of this platform, just following along is a likely way for you to learn from the perspective of another entrepreneur - me. 

I'm a regular guy who is writing for regular guys (and ladies) like you.   Suspend your disbelief and lets take a trip together.  What can you expect to learn:  how to use the power of intention for accomplishing a major milestone,  how to orchestrate a successful marketing campaign using social media, and possibly how traditional marketing methods need to be ruthlessly reexamined if you plan to excel in the new economy?   

Why This Will Work

The first step when undertaking a project like this is to clearly understand who you are so that you can build a system that works for you.  Putting that another way, how do you get your best results?  This is a vital consideration, and exactly why I am taking this particular approach.   

Here's what I know:  I work best under the pressure of peer accountability and short-term deadlines.  How do I know this?  From experience mostly, but there is also another way to gain some insights into your preferred way of getting results.   Take the Kolbe A Profile.  If you need help getting started or interpreting the results, my friend Jason Cupp is a Certified Kolbe Consultant who will gladly help you out. 

Back to the plan.  I will write this book, somewhere around 200 pages, plus or minus, within the next 15 days.  That will be the first draft.  I will share my progress, the thrill of victory, and the lessons learned from the occasional mistakes.  Whatever happens, I can assure you that it will be real.

For clarity, I have not yet written a single word.  I have a title that I am very excited about, especially since I have also managed to secure the matching URL's, but for now I will be keeping it to myself.  The process begins right after I hit the "publish" button on this post. I will write an average of 4,000 - 5,000 words per day to get the first draft done.  Then I have some business responsibilities and holiday travels planned.  After the Thanksgiving holiday I will be on a tear to get this book published in time to offer it up to audiences that I am already scheduled to speak to this winter.  What's possible?  Join me and we'll both find out.

How You Can Work With Me

What interests you about this endeavor?  Let me know by leaving a comment. If you can get involved with me, I have a feeling you'll learn a few things too.  Do you have resources or ideas that have worked for you?  Would you like to write a book some day?  Have you tried and failed.  Have publishers rejected you too?  Let's share everything we've got to help as many as we can.  Tomorrow I'll share some thoughts about publishers and self-publishing. 

Anything else?  Uh, yeah...wish me luck!

Photo Credit:  Libraryman

How to Score at Trade Shows and Conferences Using New Media

Trade shows and conferences are time-honored business events that are presently experiencing significant challenges.  In this tight economy, attendance at many events is down, and some are questioning whether we should reinvent the format, or even if we should have them at all.  

The forces of social media are influencing how adults want to learn.  We want to be engaged.  We want to be involved, and we want to participate in the creation of solutions that affect our businesses.  This means we need trade shows and conferences, but maybe with more emphasis on interaction that gives attendees, vendors, and and presenters alike an equal voice.  

This week I will be an attendee and a presenter at the GIE/GIC - The Green Industry Expo and Conference in Louisville. I have been attending this event since 1995 when I was building my practice as a green industry professional.  Now I am a consultant to this industry, so I am able to give a perspective from both angles for maximizing the ROI from such an event.

Hollywood likes to characterize the conference attendee as a disheveled businessmen who is clueless about his local surroundings.  This is usually typified by the guy who is out on the town trying to look cool to score a date while being completely unaware he is still wearing his nametag. I believe that stereotype is behind us, especially in this economy.

The one thing we are all trying to score is new business. So, lets look at how you can maximize your ability to score a return on your conference investment by using lessons from the social media networks that give us some excellent clues about social engagement.

Be Human

Being human is the first step with social media effectiveness, because it mirrors what works in real life situations. Regardless of your objective at trade shows and conferences, your first goal is engagement.  The best approach for accomplishing this is to just be a human.  Learn what is going on in the lives of your customers and peers.  Find out how the family is doing.   I'm sure you've noticed this from the true professionals in your industry - the class acts that everyone respects. They aren't showboating about their latest success, they are just being human.  And we remember them for that.

Friends First

When you meet someone new, get to know them first before you offer up your freshly printed business cards.  Walking up to someone and eagerly pushing your business card into their hands is the same as subscribing everyone to your eZine list without their permission.  This is interruption marketing.  Try permission marketing. 

Permission marketing is engaging with people on a personal level first, so that you earn the right to present your business card or brochure. Make this a personal challenge.  Don't be the first to bring up business. Then when you are asked for your card, show it with pride.  You just scored.  Better than making just a business connection, you also made a friend you can build a relationship with.  This is exactly how it works on the social networks - friends first.

Social media is much more than broadcasting your message.   You want to create a dialogue so that everyone can learn more and make better decisions.  Since we know the social networks are great for this, you will want to improve the effectiveness of your business cards by incorporating your social media addresses.  My card is below if you need an example to get started with.  For my latest order ,I used overnightprints.com - they did a great job, delivered quickly, and the price was very fair.  Note that my usernames are consistent.  This way people can find me if they don't have my card, but have a decent memory.

Travel Light

Travel light to avoid looking like a tourist, even though we all are visitors at these events.  You have to resist the temptation to load up on all of the junk that everyone else is packing.  Carry a light load so you can be ready to easily shake hands, lend someone a hand with their load, especially an association staff member, or take in an impromptu dinner without having to make a trip to the hotel to drop off your 'luggage.'

These are lean times my friends.  Maybe you are enjoying a great year and want to tell everyone about it.  Resist the temptation.  In most cases, you will remembered more by the way you handle your interactions.  This is something social media teaches us.  Be a giver first and foremost, and be prepared to add value to every relationship you have.  Just let the opportunities unfold on their own time.

Bonus Tips

For those of you who like lists, you will probably like this one. 

Prepare - Jot down one thing you want to discuss with those people you hope to connect with so you can naturally do a little business if the opportunity presents itself.  If you have been networking well with social media, this will be a natural transition for taking that virtual conversation offline to get some business accomplished.

Be Visible - Use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to broadcast the sessions you plan to attend so your peers can keep an eye out for you.  Pressed for time?  Use sites like http://hootsuite.com to schedule your Tweets in advance.  I like to do this to Tweet during my presentation, when in fact I've actually scheduled them days prior.

Share - Use social media to highlight the good works of others.  Did you notice a new product at the show that is helpful for you business?  Spread the word.  Just attended a great presentation? Let others know so they can get the handouts before they are gone.

Pick up the dinner tab or a round of drinks.  Bring a small gift or two for nobody in particular.  I enjoy a cigar once in a while and have friends that do.  While I won't have time to enjoy one at this event, I'm bringing a few for my cigar aficionado friends to say thanks for being a valued resource.

On the healthier side, you can share a workout.  I've already had an invitation from Facebook so I'm bringing my gear to log a few miles with an industry friend.  This is a nice break and an excellent way to share quality time.

Engage - Bring your camera or Flip Mino camcorder to shoot a video that captures the excitement and action.  It's a great way to capture the energy of the event on your blog when you get back home.

Be Green - Take what you need.  I used to pick up the little promotional do-dads when my kids were younger.  Now that they are in college, or soon will be, there is no need for me to bring trinkets home that I am just going to toss out. 

Visualize - Who is the special person you are hoping to connect with, that recognized expert in your industry?  Jot their name down in your trip folder with some ideas to share - this is a visualization exercise - and it works.  Don't be surprised when they walk around the corner and you are prepared with just the right thing to say. You scored again! 

Remember, luck is simply opportunity meeting preparedness.  Help it along with some new media strategies and it will.

  

Yes, of course you can leave a comment.  And I'll be sure to respond in kind.  While you are at it, feel free to click on the green ShareThis button below to share with your friends.