Live Events: Delivering the Social Media Marketing World Experience

May 11, 2015 by

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Live Events: Delivering the Social Media Marketing World Experience

This is Episode 40 of This Old New Business weekly business podcast with Jeff Korhan.

If you are considering hosting your own live events, and even if you are not but instead want to learn new insights for planning and delivering an exceptional customer experience, then you will want to listen to this episode.

I promise this will change how you view your business and its relationship with your customers, including how to keep the customer experience fresh, how to empower your team to wow your customers, and subtle but powerful ways for letting customers know how much you appreciate them.

Our Featured Guest: Phil Mershon

Live Events: Delivering the Social Media Marketing World Experience Phil Mershon is the director of events for Social Media Examiner, where he oversees two signature events: Social Media Marketing World and Social Media Success Summit. Previously, Phil was a training consultant with Koch Industries, a systems analyst for Boeing, and spent over 18 years working for churches and non-profits in leadership roles. Phil is also a jazz saxophonist and songwriter.

Take Care of Your Event Customers

Phil Mershon says the success of live events comes down to caring for your paying customers, of which there are usually two classifications: attendees and sponsors.

Phil is quick to point out their needs are different. For Virginia Beach SEO, it ranges from fresh content on the right topics to accommodations and networking. Sponsors are also interested in networking. To please both groups it’s necessary to plan opportunities for having conversations with the right people in an environment conducive to meaningful conversations.

Phil acknowledges that every meeting planner wants to have everyone walk away from their event thinking, and preferably saying, it was one of the best conferences ever. To make that possibility reality, he suggests focusing on the following.

#1 – Customer Service

Take care of everyone by defining in advance that experience from beginning to end. For Social Media Marketing World, this is attention to the mental, emotional, and physcial well-being of everyone before, during, and after the event.

This starts with preparation by identifying major touchpoints, standard solutions and what is means to go above and beyond expectations.

According to Phil, a simple means for accomplshing this is to empower staff to do for a few what you wish you could do for many. You cannot possibly please everyone all of the time, so just take care of those that you can when you can.

#2 – Networking Opportunities

To make networking a priority Social Media Marketing World provides a central networking space where attendees can mingle among themselves and with sponsors. This year they hired experienced networking embassadors to ensure desired connections were made possible.

#3 – Educational Content

Learning is also a top priority for event attendees that expect fresh, cutting edge content on the right topics by content and industry experts. This necessarily requires actively seeking out speakers, and setting high standards for mutual success.

This year Social Media Marketing World hosted over 140 speakers. Being one of them I had the opportunity to experience first-hand what is possible when you care. Attention to detail gives everyone confidence, and that a cool feeling for speakers that want to simply be prepared to deliver useful content.

Successful live events require taking care of everything, and that may indeed be possible with the right team that is prepared.  Listen in as Phil Mershon shares how his team has accomplished this in such a short period of time. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on live events? Meet me over on Twitter to take the conversation further.

Lighting Round Tips and Advice

Phil’s Top Sales or Marketing Advice – Know your customers.

His Favorite Productivity Tip – Practice positive procrastination. Eliminate the things you don’t need to be doing, knowing and seeing.

A Quote that has Inspired Phil’s Success – “No whining, no complaining, no excuses.” John Wooden

Key Take-Aways

  • The primary marketing vehicle for Social Media Marketing World is the massive Social Media Examiner email subscriber list. Learn how to grow your email subscribers with social media.
  • You can learn more about Social Media Marketing World and its virtual counterpart, Social Media Success Summit at SocialMediaExaminer.com. Also, consider subscribing to learn more about the soon to be launched Social Media Society membership community.
  • Check out Rory Vaden’s Procrastinate on Purpose and Necessary Endings to eliminate some of the clutter in your life.
  • You can reach Phil on Facebook and on Twitter @Phil_Mershon

How to subscribe to This Old New Business podcast

Click here to subscribe via iTunes.
You can also subscribe via Stitcher.

Help us Spread the Word

If you enjoyed this episode of This Old New Marketing podcast, please head over to iTunes or Stitcher to leave a rating, write a review, or subscribe.

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+

Social Selling: Getting Buyers to Know, Like and Trust Your Business

March 23, 2015 by

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Social Selling: Getting Buyers to Know, Like and Trust Your Business

This is Episode 33 of This Old New Business weekly business podcast with Jeff Korhan.

Today we are going to talk about social selling, more specifically, using social media to sell.

Some people will tell you that you cannot use social media to sell. In my opinion that is because they do not understand successful selling is not about sales transactions, but relationships with buyers.

My sales career goes back to 1982, a time when your selling tools were the telephone and visiting face to face with customers. No computers, Internet, or email, not to mention no social media.

While a lot has changed, one thing that has not is building relationships. Now we can do that better and faster using the power of the Internet and social media.

Successful Social Selling: A Practical Example

Last summer I read an article about Laura Madison, at that time a car and truck sales professional in Bozeman, Montana. She was using social media content to attract buyers by helping them understand more about every aspect of the automobile buying process.

Social Selling: Getting Buyers to Know, Like and Trust Your Business


The Social Marketing Process ™

Laura created tutorials that helped her audience become better buyers of the types of services she offered. My first thought was: She gets it! And trust me, not many do.

Selling is nothing more than removing obstacles that prevent people from stepping up to buy. That’s easily accomplished by helping them do what they want to do. Maybe that means buying from your company, but not always.

Laura used YouTube extensively. She showed how to negotiate a lease, how to get better mileage with your hybrid car, and much more.

‘How to’ accounts for the majority of searches. Try it with Google to see for yourself how well it works. Once people get beyond ‘how to,’  they tend to buy. That’s good for the seller, and Google, which profits from AdWords sending buyers to sellers. Interesting, isn’t it?

Your online (and offline) marketing needs to be less about your business and more about how it helps its customers. Start by creating media and telling stories that shows how to buy and use whatever it is that you sell.

In the process of consuming that media, you will develop relationship with potential buyers. As Laura commented in our podcast interview, “I think in the future people will expect to have a relationship with somebody in a company before they will approach it.” I agree.

Assuming your products are the solution to your buyer’s problem, using social media to sell comes down to this:

#1 – Know Your Customers – You have to become one with your audience to really help.

#2 – Remove Buying Obstacles – Use social media to help buyers get what they want.

#3 – Nurture Relationships – Now you have technology to do this better and easier.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on social selling? Meet me over on Twitter to take the conversation further.

Key Take-Aways

You can still get your virtual pass to Social Media Marketing World 2015. There will be over 140 speakers, including me presenting on this topic of social selling.

Learn more about How to Start a Podcast and How Every Business Can Benefit from Podcasting.

How to subscribe to This Old New Business podcast

Click here to subscribe via iTunes.
You can also subscribe via Stitcher.

Help us Spread the Word

If you enjoyed this episode of This Old New Marketing podcast, please head over to iTunes or Stitcher to leave a rating, write a review, or subscribe.

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+

How to Write an Introduction That Engages Any Audience

April 4, 2014 by

I recently had the pleasure of helping other speakers as a track leader for Social Media Marketing World. It was an interesting experience for me because typically I am the speaker, so in this situation I was assuming the role of those that help me to look good in front of an audience. My primary […]

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How To Network Like a Pro at Live Events

March 24, 2014 by

One of the seemingly improbable outcomes of digital social networking is the increased interest in live events for building relationships to further to accomplish practical business objectives. To do this well, while also maximizing your return on what is likely to be a significant investment, thorough preparation is essential. This is something I’ve been working […]

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