How Live Events Enhance Social Networking and Marketing

November 25, 2013 by
Jeff Korhan and Joe Pulizzi www.jeffkorhan.com


Jeff Korhan and Joe Pulizzi reconnect at the Green Industry Conference shortly after Content Marketing World

In the days before digital, if you wanted to network you had to get out of the office. That’s where we developed relationships and consummated deals.Telephones were only used to supplement those live interactions.

Live events are where you experience firsthand the energy and enthusiasm of other like-minded people who share your interests and business objectives.

A few years ago it was predicted that webinars and other digital forms of online training would eventually replace live events, thereby putting professional speakers like me out of business as we know it.

That is not what is happening, and this trend – the resurgence in live events – is also relevant to your business networking and social media marketing.

The Live Version is Always Better

One of the frustrations with social networking is that you can invest a great deal of time and yield few results. Thus, it becomes increasingly tiresome and is ultimately abandoned in favor of more urgent business matters.

The solution is literally getting out of the office to meet the people that you are connected with online, and make new connections that you can then bring to your social networks. When you integrate the two, you enhance the effectiveness of both.

Make it a habit to periodically attend live events such as expos, conferences, and community benefits. In addition to building more meaningful relationships, you will acquire abundant material for invigorating your content marketing.

Put Serendipity to Work

Your social networks want to hear about your life just as much as your business. So, if it’s not all that exciting you may want to get out of the office to increase the number of planned and serendipitous interactions, what online retailer Zappos refers to as “collisions between employees.”

This is actually an intentional practice that online retailer Zappos uses, and one reason why they moved their offices from suburban Henderson, NV to the old Las Vegas City Hall.

CEO Tony Hsieh has a vision of transforming downtown Las Vegas to create “The most community-focused large city in the world, in the place where you least expect to see it.” In addition to their own facilities, Zappos is funding start-ups to join their intimate community ecosystem.

You can read more about the social business model in Built-In Social. It’s a model that closely resembles the concept of a small town or local community where (almost) everyone knows your name.

How This Works

The reason for the resurgence in live events is somewhat surprising. Now that we are more connected than ever due to social media, people want to meet those connections to further develop their relationships with them.

After meeting people live it adds a richness to your relationships online, while also leading to new alliances, including relationships with new clients.

So, if you are not getting results from your social media marketing, I encourage you to find more ways to make it come alive. The power of targeted events is that you can benefit from the energy of like-minded people that share your interests and business objectives.

I’m still mining ideas that I gained from attending Content Marketing World a couple months ago. Additionally, I developed new relationships and opened up some cool new opportunities, one of which is speaking at the upcoming Social Media Marketing World.

2013 was the first year for this event and it attracted over 1,000 marketers and business owners from around the world. The expectation is there will be will be over 2,000 attendees in San Diego for the 2014 event in March.

Consider joining us in sunny San Diego. I’d like to get to know and your business.

Click on this link or the image above to learn more about this live event. Incidentally, there is a $370 discount available now that expires this Friday.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, helps mainstream small businesses create exceptional customer experiences that accelerate business growth. Get more from Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.

Jeff is also the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business – (Wiley 2013)

More is Not a Content Marketing Strategy

September 16, 2013 by

Content Marketing Strategy www.jeffkorhan.com

Marketers often comment that they are overwhelmed with the demands of creating content to fuel their online marketing.

Does your audience really want more content – or more relevant content? Tweet This

The noise and clutter online tells us the problem is not a shortage of content, but finding the content that specifically addresses our needs. Thus, the challenge for marketers is developing a strategy for getting their best content to those that can ideally benefit from it.

A Strategy is Written Down

During the opening moments of the recent Content Marketing World conference it was noted that more than 50% of all enterprises do not have a documented content marketing strategy. That’s enterprises; so imagine what the figure is for small business.

My experience with small businesses is most do not have a written sales process, so it is doubtful they have a written content marketing plan for generating leads for their sales team.  How about you?

Regrettably, whether the discipline is sales, marketing, or customer service, more is often the approach many businesses employ to ensure their survival. This is sometimes referred to as the “spray and pray” method. Create more content, make more phone calls, and send more tweets. Then hope and pray some of it sticks.

When you don’t know your next strategic activity you will always be overwhelmed.

If you really want to be less overwhelmed and more confident with your content marketing and social media, it is necessary to develop a strategy for maximizing the utility of your efforts, and putting it down in writing.

What Do Your Customers Really Want?

Writing is an activity that builds clarity. If you think you have a strategy, challenge yourself to write it out. You will soon realize you need more than a content marketing strategy. You also need a general marketing strategy and a social media strategy that are both consistent with your business mission

There are as many ways for developing your growth strategies as there are businesses. Logically, the starting point is with the customer. Do you know what they want and can you help them? If so, build your content marketing strategy around attracting their attention to communicate that, then use your social media channels to further engage them. This is your social marketing process.

The Social Marketing Process ©Jeff Korhan www.jeffkorhan.com


The Social Marketing Process ©Jeff Korhan

As you can see, your content marketing is the attraction element that drives your entire social marketing process. So, obvious questions are who are you trying to attract, and why, and how? The answers are the beginning of your content marketing strategy.

Of course, you can have the best content in the world, but it doesn’t exist if your audience is not aware of it. This is where your social media strategy works to breathe life into that content that you worked so hard to create.

Inspire Your Content Marketing Strategy

Sometimes just a few words will trigger thoughts and spark breakthrough ideas. Here are a few that I brought home from learning and networking with other content marketers. Use what works to inspire your (documented) content marketing strategy.

  • What do you want them to feel?
  • Take aways doubts
  • Technology is creating better consumer experiences
  • Run at problems
  • Remember to smile and wink
  • How will they experience the content?
  • You need home runs
  • Branded content vs a content brand
  • Content became her brand
  • Executives want data!
  • Ideas so contagious they cannot be controlled
  • Real-time, consumer driven marketing is the Holy Grail
  • Show them how to use your products
  • Content is currency

You can also tweet this post to share these inspiring content marketing words.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business and host of This Old New Business podcast.

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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