Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

LinkedIn is the new cold call. Perhaps this sounds familiar to you... 

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I continually study the field, read a ton of books, and attend seminars and workshops from my fellow marketing enthusiasts.

And I'd like to respectfully disagree with that analogy.

LinkedIn is way better, smarter, faster, and more effective than a cold call. In fact, I'd slant the analogy a different way altogether:

LinkedIn is the new email with a red velvet rope around it, a priority seal, and a much more attractive return address envelope!

First let's explore those three points and then you'll see an example of LinkedIn in action PLUS here are some sample social media scripts you can use that have gotten awesome results for our clients in our marketing mastermind and private mentoring programs. 

3 Reasons LinkedIn Beats Email

1. Red Velvet Rope - This is a term popularized in the marketing arena by Michael Port. It means there's an exclusive, members-only feel to your marketing. It's not for everyone - and not everyone qualifies. You need to be "in the club." When you reach out to a fellow Group member on LinkedIn, you both are in the club and there's a strong element of peer-to-peer belonging that encourages community, communication, and responsiveness. Can't say that about a cold call or a plain old email!

2. Priority Seal - Most executives and business owners feel overwhelmed by email. When they're not tackling the email monster (click here if you'd like to master your email!), they are wall-to-wall with meetings, phone calls, and their daily dose of dealing with crises. LinkedIn messages DO trigger an email notification but you have the choice of responding via email or via LinkedIn -- and LinkedIn messages (for most of us) are few and far between so they give the impression of being more important, more filtered, and more personally relevant. Think of it as a FedEx envelope arriving in your daily mail. Sure, you can ignore it - you can toss it - you might not get to it for a few days. But chances are greater that you will because of curiosity - a basic trait of human nature.

3. More Attractive Return Address Envelope - LinkedIn messages tend to be shorter than emails - and a shorter note merits a shorter response. You've just given your prospects, clients, and connections a huge "out" because they do NOT need - and probably would not even consider - sending you a long, involved response. If you send a short, succinct note to reconnect with a past client - they'll respond with a short, succinct note and you'll probably use LinkedIn to make plans to connect in a longer format offline (phone call, lunch, coffee, in-person meeting). Yours will be a fast, easy and appealing note to respond to - so your chances of getting a prompt response just went up considerably!

LinkedIn in Action and Results

This story was submitted by my motivational speaker colleague Jim Clemmer to the excellent SpeakerNetNews:

Using LinkedIn to (Re)Connect and Build Business — Jim Clemmer

I have been using LinkedIn to reconnect with old contacts and to connect with anyone signing up for my newsletter. I do this with the LinkedIn for Outlook utility showing if anyone sending me an email (or completing any website form that is emailed to me) has a LinkedIn account. As my connection numbers build, more website visitors, book readers, and subscribers are now asking to connect with me. We’ve also done a few email blasts to our database asking for connections to those who have LinkedIn accounts. Over the last two years we can directly trace a few hundred thousand dollars in speaking/workshop or long term/ongoing consulting fees that started with these (re)connections.

3 LinkedIn Secrets from Jim's Success:

1. As my friend and Speaker Hall of Fame member Dr. Alan Zimmerman likes to say, "your business comes from your business." (He's a guy who enjoys a 92% repeat and referral rate from his client base so he's walking that talk.) Note that Jim Clemmer is also generating his success not ONLY from new connections - but from RE-connections. Try it for yourself and see what conversations you can generate with the folks who already know you, love you, and have given you money in the past.

2. You gotta ask for the connection. Note that Jim's strategy also involved email blasts to his list proactively asking them to connect on LinkedIn. And not just once - but several times over the past 2 years. Remember to make your social media scripts appealing, relevant, and NOT focused on you - but focused on the value you'd like to deliver to your connections.

3. It takes time and there are both direct and indirect benefits. Notice that Jim said, "over the last two years" - not the last 2 weeks or 2 months. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Notice also that he said he could DIRECTLY trace several hundred thousand dollars of new business. That's great - and in addition, Jim has likely generated that much money or more INDIRECTLY, meaning that people didn't hire him FROM LinkedIn but BECAUSE they saw something he contributed, received a connection update, or otherwise "bumped into" Jim's name, content, ideas, website, blog or network - and were prompted to engage with him.

Are you a DO IT freak? Welcome to the club!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!

Welcome to the 2014 Do It! Marketing Master Class Series

Here's where you'll get some of the smartest marketing advice from top marketers and entrepreneurs who share their best success secrets via in-depth interrogation-style interviews with yours truly... 

My special guest this week... 

Corey Perlman - Social Media Marketing Expert

Corey Perlman knows what it takes for busy entrepreneurs like you to dominate social media the RIGHT way. That means - strategically, smartly, and without wasting hundreds of hours on trivial nonsense. Corey's new book, Social Media Overload, is specifically designed to show you how to generate maximum social media impact in minimum time.

Download this Master Class (mp3) now. 

Share this with your pals, link to it from your own blog, tell 17 friends, go nuts and have fun! 

Please leave a comment below with your own experiences or questions about social media marketing, social media overload or anything else we talked about (including how to dominate social media without letting it dominate YOU!!)

Klout. 

"Excuse me?" or "Yech..."

I can hear you already...  

If you know what KLOUT is (www.klout.com), then you might think it's the web's version of a superficial popularity contest. 

If you don't, you may chalk it up to more internet marketing mumbo-jumbo, the latest buzzword or a piece of jargon not worth knowing about... 

And in both cases, you'd be wrong. 

If you want to increase your online and offline influence, impact - and income - then you need to know about KLOUT.

The best KLOUT resource I've found is the great new book KLOUT Matters by Terry Brock and Gina Carr.

Recently, I was lucky enough to interview my friend, Hall of Fame speaker and technology expert Terry Brock.

Here's the video for you. Listen in to Terry's lively advice - with many high-value nuggets and takeaways for YOU as you build your marketing game plan for 2014 and beyond:

Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts about KLOUT, Twitter, Facebook, and social media engagement as a measure of genuine influence. Are you a believer? A skeptic? Somewhere in the middle? Let's discuss...

Here's a two-part interview with my pal, Corey Perlman of eBootCamp.com. 

We talk about... 

• Social media myths vs. reality
• Why your website still matters - big time
• Different social media approaches for different businesses
• The key elements to a digital marketing gameplan that WORKS
• A special time-sensitive offer to boost your marketing success

Part 1 is here... PLEASE STOP watching at 17:45 when our video connection blew up!

Due to hysterically funny technical difficulties, we put the last 5-6 minutes of content onto Part 2 here...

p.s. Corey is running one of his special 2-day intensive seminars in Michigan on 9/26-27 and you can get full details on that here. If you email him at corey@ebootcamp.com and put in the subject line, "David sent me" you'll qualify for a free electronic copy of Corey's bestselling book and "bring a friend" privileges to the event.

p.p.s. It's the best investment you'll make in your business this year. Corey guarantees it. And so do I. 

Guest post by Jay Baer, author of Youtility

Today, companies must compete for attention against consumers’ friends and family members. Each day as people log on to Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest they see a variety of messages in their newsfeed or timeline, some of these messages are from their friends and family and some are from companies on social media. How can marketers compete in this environment successfully?

Friend of mine awareness and Youtility are the answer. Friend-of-mine awareness is predicated on the reality that companies are competing against real people for the attention of other real people. To succeed, your prospective customers must consider you a friend. And if, like their friends, you provide them real value, if you practice Youtility rather than simply offer a series of coupons and come-ons, they will reward your company with loyalty and advocacy, the same ways we reward our friends.

Youtility is marketing upside down. I call this Youtility, not “utility,” because a utility is a faceless commodity. Instead of marketing that’s needed by companies, Youtility is marketing that’s wanted by customers. Youtility is massively useful information, provided for free, that creates long term trust and kinship between your company and your customers.

As marketers, we’ve always tried to build loyalty with people, and now we must build loyalty with information. Social media marketing has changed the landscape of marketing by putting us in the mix with photos from our block party, our cousin’s baby and other companies trying to reach people as well. What you have is an intermingled mixture of information that matters to you because of personal relationships, and information that matters to you because of commercial relationships. It’s not just Facebook, either. Twitter works the same way, as do YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, e-mail, blogs, and podcasts, too. For the first time, companies have to compete on the very same turf as our family and friends, using the very same tools and technologies and media and messaging as consumers.

My wife doesn’t buy radio ads to try and get my attention. My friends don’t buy newspaper ads to make sure I know what’s going on this weekend. But the opposite is most definitely true. Companies are now invading the spaces and mechanisms that we’re using to connect personally. The companies that will connect are the ones that are a Youtility in the social space, providing massively useful information that people want to see.

If your company and its marketing are truly, inherently useful, your customers and prospective customer will keep you close, as they keep their friends and family close. Making your company useful without expectation of an immediate return is in direct opposition to the long standing principles of successful marketing, and that’s a good thing.

Excerpted from Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype by Jay Baer. See YoutilityBook.com for other resources.

Jay Baer’s Bio: Jay Baer is a hype-free social media and content strategist & speaker, and author of the Amazon #1 bestseller, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.

What do YOU think? Please use the COMMENTS area below to share your advice, insights and recommendations on these ideas and join the conversation... 

Top 5 Tips for Twitter:

1. Listen and learn. As with other social media, the most important first step is to listen to the conversations. See what people are talking about in your industry on Twitter. The daily thoughts of so many people can be an incredibly rich source of new ideas for products and services.
2. Publish valuable news and information. Only after you've listened and understand the style and etiquette of Twitter communications should you consider creating an account and posting content. An easy starting point is to publish regular news and updates that you already distribute via other channels.
3. Distribute promotions. Some companies are finding that Twitter is an effective channel for sending out promotional messages. Timely sales and coupons are easy to distribute on Twitter, and the fast nature of the Twitterverse means that people can respond to the promotions quickly. Note: Keep offers and promotions to LESS than 20% of your tweets, otherwise you'll come off like a sleazy peddler rather than a trusted partner. 
4. Create or extend your brand personality. Ultimately, Twitter is far more valuable for distributing your brand personality than it is for merely delivering your content. Social media is social. Be a person first. 
5. Engage in conversations and customer service. Twitter is about conversations, not monologues. Twitter is about talking with people, not merely at them. Engage, thank, respond and reciprocate.
    

Top 5 Tips for LinkedIn:

1. Use LinkedIn Groups & stimulate new leads daily with value-first outreach.
2. Ask questions & build your credibility using LinkedIn status updates.
3. Create powerful events and promote them to relevant groups.
4. Run an advanced search to find buyers, prospects, and advocates in your target market.
5. Once you find leads, send personalized messages and connect 1-to-1 as real people, not as “targets.”
    

Top 5 Tips for Facebook:

1. Define your target market. Every online effort that will actually get you results starts with knowing exactly who your perfect clients are.
2. Connect with people in your target market. For every action you take on Facebook, ask yourself how doing this helps you connect and network with people in your target market.
3. Get and stay active. Facebook marketing will only work for you if you are active. Don't engage in "drive-by" activity and expect long-term results.
4. Share valuable tips and ideas. A big part of your Facebook marketing should be promoting and sharing your expertise – not pitching and peddling your wares
5. Start a Facebook business page. Start one if you don't have one yet. It's a great forum for discussion, answering questions, and building community.
    

Your Simple Social Media Marketing Plan:

Here is exactly what you need to do - step by step - to help you and your organization maximize the basics in your social media gameplan:

• Calendarize your social media tactics in less than 30 minutes a day
• Organize your social media priorities behind one of three main purposes (sharing resources, building relationships, engaging in reciprocity)
• Operationalize your social media game plan with time-saving tools such as TweetAdder, BufferApp, and ping.fm
• Leverage and grow the impact of all your social media efforts and assets

Remember – if you start small, stick to your plan and your calendar, learn as you go, and adjust your game plan based on your results, your social media strategies WILL pay off for you and for your organization!

Tags: Marketing speaker, marketing coach, social media gameplan, top 5 social media tips, marketing for speakers, marketing for authors

What do YOU think? Please use the COMMENTS area below to share your advice, insights and recommendations on effectively using social media WITHOUT going bonkers...

Just came across this Facebook post from someone who shall remain nameless to protect the self-absorbed.

On the surface, this will look innocent enough. 

But a treacherous marketing gaffe lies in wait... 

Another victim is about to fall prey to the Social Media disease known as... 

[Drum roll]...

Social Me... 

Check it out and let's discuss... 

While I really value having connections on Facebook, I'm noticing that I'm not as active on my personal page and decided that focusing on my Public page will be the best use of my time and allow me to really connect more with people. So I am in the process of deactivating this page - if you haven't already, please 'like' my community page so we can still connect there: [link]

What's wrong with this picture?

Let's color-code it and you'll see how NOT to confuse "Social Me" with "Social Media"...

While I really value having connections on Facebook, I'm noticing that I'm not as active on my personal page and decided that focusing on my Public page will be the best use of my time and allow me to really connect more with people. So I am in the process of deactivating this page - if you haven't already, please 'like' my community page so we can still connect there: [link]

If you were keeping score, you noticed that there were 10 - TEN! - mentions of "I, Me, My" in this two-sentence post. 

One of the games I like to play with my marketing coaching clients is to take ANY piece of copy - a sales letter, a web page, a prospecting email - and totally REMOVE ALL "I, Me, My" language and translate it 100% into YOU and YOUR language, which is much more compelling to most of your prospects, readers, and fans. 

Here goes... 

The level of activity on this page has diminished so that the value you're getting is not at the level you deserve. Please click over to this new page [link] where you can tap into a much more active community, ask your questions, take part in value-rich discussions, get the answers you need PLUS you'll get access to valuable downloads, resources, and tools. See you on the other side!

Social Media... 

Did you notice the new score? 

Let's turn on the colors again and see how you did...

The level of activity on this page has diminished so that the value you're getting is not at the level you deserve. Please click over to this new page [link] where you can tap into a much more active community, ask your questions, take part in value-rich discussions, get the answers you need PLUS you'll get access to valuable downloads, resources, and tools. See you on the other side!

Old score (Social Me): 0-10. You lose! 

New score (Social Media): 7-0. You win!

What do you think? Please use the COMMENTS area below to share your advice, insights and recommendations when it comes to Social Media vs. Social Me... 

And then leave a comment below with your questions, thoughts, and advice on the ideas above.

Are you a DO IT freak? Welcome to the club!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!

When it comes to marketing, there are four things that you need to focus on, four levels if you will.

The four levels of marketing are:

• Strategy
• Tactics
• Initiatives
• Action steps

When you go to a conference, when you ask your mastermind group for help, even when you start searching the web for answers and resources to grow your business, the number one source of overwhelm is when you've heard a whole bunch of strategies, a whole bunch of tactics, a whole bunch of initiatives, a whole bunch of actions steps and you don’t know the difference.

There are three reasons why this short-circuits your brain:

1. You can't do them all
2. You can't even prioritize or figure out how to start to think about them
3. You can't distinguish which is which and why or how it might work for your particular business

A strategy is a big picture area of your business. It could be a marketing-focused strategy. It could be a sales-focused strategy. It could be a financial strategy.

Let’s say you come across someone who tells you Twitter is an amazing marketing platform and you’re really missing out if your business is not on Twitter. He's using it and it fits his business beautifully, and you respect this person and you admire their successful business.

And now you’re thinking, "Oh man, it's all about Twitter, Twitter, Twitter."

"If this guy built his business on Twitter, I can probably build my business on Twitter."

Well, let's back up and analyze that as far as the four levels of marketing.

Internet marketing is the strategy. In other words, Internet marketing is the big giant umbrella over Twitter.

The tactic under that would be social media. There's a lot going on via the internet, folks, that's not social media.

For example, Search engine optimization, your website, the structure of your web presence, blogging, email marketing, dozens of internet marketing strategies. Social media happens to be one bucket under that, so social media is the tactic.

An initiative would be "I'm going to start using Twitter."

This is level three now. I'm going to start using Twitter. I'm going to start understanding it. I might read a book. I might go to some websites, I’m going to grab a copy of Twitter 101 or Using Twitter for Business, all those fabulous resources that are out there for free.

Now, the action step - here's level four, the action step always takes the form of verb, noun, date.

• Set up my Twitter account by Wednesday
• Load my first 30 tweets in Hootsuite by Friday
• Find 100 influential people to follow in my industry by next Monday

Those are action steps.

And the action step can also go on your calendar.

So it really takes it down to "What are you doing today?" What's on your priority to-do list today?

Your to-do list could be 50 things, but what are your top three most important things that you need to do based on the strategies you've selected, based on the tactics that you’ve chosen, based on the initiatives that you've designed, what are the action steps to put on your calendar and get it done?

So let’s follow this through with a complete example -- let's say you're in the insurance business.

You're selling into the insurance marketplace, insurance companies and insurance agents, general agents, insurance associations, insurance publications, and you’re looking to become a dominant resource in that world.

Your action step would be "I want to follow 300 insurance industry folks on Twitter by March 1."

Does that fit into an initiative? Yes. The initiative is aggressively grow my Twitter following targeted to the insurance industry.

Does that fit into a tactic? Yes, it does. It fits into the social media set of tactics.

Does that fall under a strategy that you decided to use? Yes, it falls under your internet marketing strategy.

So right there, just unpacking those four levels, you've gotten some insights through which you can start to filter and sort all of your old ideas, old notes, all of those conference sessions that you may have gone to, all of those tactics and tools and light bulb moments, all those nuggets and sound bites that you may have swirling around in your head or on your “someday, maybe list.”

If you start to sort them in to these four levels; strategy, tactic, initiative and action step – you’ll get a much clearer blueprint for ALL your marketing going forward this month, next month and next year.

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I've noticed that my clients and audiences are always fascinated by the topic of business blogging - specifically blog writing. 

Questions include: 

• How can you write so much?
• Where do you find the time to write?
• Do you REALLY post a new blog every day? 
• Where do your blog ideas come from? 
• Do you do your own writing or do you have people that blog for you? 
• How do you know what to put on your blog and what to put in your email newsletter? 

This week, we'll dig into Business Blogging 101 and you'll master the basics of business blogging. So stay tuned and please DO use the COMMENTS area of the blog to share your own blogging advice, insights and recommendations. 

Let's dig in... 

Business Blogging 101: 3 Reasons Your Blog Isn't Better

Simple, really:

1. You are unable to write QUICKLY.

2. You are unwilling to write BRIEFLY.

3. You are inefficient at IDEA CAPTURE.

Notice I didn't include the two biggies that YOU probably think are YOUR problem - 'cuz they're not. These are... 

1. Inability to write. (That's a convenient BS lie/excuse)

2. Not having ideas. (That's another convenient - and bigger - BS lie/excuse!)

We'll address all of these business blogging challenges and more in this week's posts. So stay tuned for more Business Blogging 101...

Please use the COMMENTS area below to share YOUR biggest questions, stumbling blocks, or burning issues when it comes to blogging for your business...

Are you a DO IT freak? Welcome to the club!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!