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!!)

Does your dog blog? 

Yes? No? Not sure? 

Well, don't worry because mine does.

You're about to get 10 blogging lessons from my black Labrador retriever, Woofie, who turns 10 soon. (FYI her birthday is April 29 and she loves getting birthday notes by email. And she replies to every one!)

What makes Woofie such an authority on blogging? Well, it's simple really - she gets a TON of traffic. Every month, I get emails from GoDaddy, where her website is hosted, to the effect that her website bandwidth (5GB/month) has been exceeded. Sometimes by a factor of two or three!

Put simply: there's a chance that this dog's blog is more popular than yours. 

So to help you fix that, here are Woofie's guidelines for blogging.

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!

Guest post by Janet Aronica

Creating consistent and helpful blog content is a great way to build community and trust around your brand for your prospects.

It's how you draw the right potential customers to your website.

But cranking out daily content is challenging.

How can you keep the blog post ideas flowing? How can you keep the content fresh and prevent yourself from re-hashing the same old thing?

Here’s a brainstorm of some ideas to get you started, or just keep you going...

Multi-media and Visuals

1. Do a screencast with Screenr of your product and share it on your blog.

2. Show a step-by-step guide on how to do something in a screencast, how-to video, or show the steps in a series of photos.

3. Create a music video for your company and post it on the blog.

4. Share a cartoon or create an original one.

How-to’s and Tips

5. Write a how-to article. Give instructions with screenshots or photos on the steps someone needs to take to do something.

6. Point out common mistakes in your industry and offer solutions on how to fix or avoid them.

7. Offer a list of benefits for doing something.

8. Share a list of some things to avoid.

9. Relate your how-to content to a current event or a celebrity. Example: “Five _____ Lessons from Lady Gaga” or “What the Election Teaches Us About ____”

Use Existing Content

10. Take the contrarian position – Find someone else’s article that you agree or disagree with. Introduce your blog post with what you specifically agree or disagree with it, and support your argument with a few concise points.

11. Do a weekly or daily links-roundup of relevant news for your community.

12. Find tips in other content, create a list of those tips and give links to those articles as the sources.

13. Share an excerpt from an ebook or white paper with a call to action to download it for the rest of the information.

14. Share an excerpt from an upcoming webinar with a call to action to get the rest of the content in the webinar.

15. Share your slides from a recent presentation.

16. Share conference takeaways.

17. Do a round-up of last year’s/last month’s/last week’s most popular posts.

18. Re-interpret existing content: Collect the top motivational YouTube videos for your audience, top ebooks, top webinars or infographics.

Incorporate Other Platforms

19. Create a Slideshare presentation of new statistics related to your space and share that in a blog post. Tag the Slideshare presentation with relevant keywords for your company to leverage SEO benefits of the platform.

20. Ask a question on Twitter and share the results with a Storify embed.

21. Collect Tweets from a webinar or conference hashtag, show them off with Paper.li (as recommended by FitSmallBusiness.com) and offer your own takeaways in the blog post.

Research

22. Respond to industry research with your own perspective. Offer a fresh angle to spark conversation.

23. Do a survey with Survey Monkey among your community members and create an infographic based on the results.

24. Do a poll of your Twitter community with a Twtpoll or your Facebook community with a Facebook Question and post the results on your blog.

25. Do an in-depth case study about one company, or offer a few examples of how other companies do something successfully.

Thought Leadership

26. Record an interview with an expert in your field and post it to your blog.

27. Get experts to offer a tip and do a round-up of their recommendations.

28. Feature guest posts from industry experts.

29. Publish responses to frequently asked questions about your industry.

30. Create a list of trends to watch.

31. Compare and contrast: Different products, different approaches, different companies, different people, different places, etc.

32. Do a review of other non-competitive products or services that your community cares about.

33. Be a journalist: Be the first in your space to offer industry takeaways about breaking news.

34. Explain what a current event or topic in the news means for your industry or community. Example: “What ____ Means for ____.” “Why _____ Matters for _____.”

35. De-bunk common myths.

Make it About Your Community

36. Interview your favorite customer.

36. Post a Flickr slideshow of pictures from a recent event.

37. Run a contest and give away something relevant to your community.

38. Ask for guest posts from community members.

39. If you have company news to share, talk about it in a way that makes it about the reader. Example: If someone gets promoted, talk about how why were successful. Inspire your audience.

40. Publish a post relevant to the current season or holiday.

41. Outline the top practical use cases for your product, service etc.

Originally posted by our partners at Hubspot on the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog.

What do you think? How do YOU generate ideas for your blog? Use the COMMENTS area below to share your advice, questions or opinions...

You'll remember from yesterday's introduction to this Business Blogging 101 series, I mentioned the three BIG problems keeping you from doing a better job of leveraging blogging into business: 

1. You are unable to write QUICKLY.

2. You are unwilling to write BRIEFLY.

3. You are inefficient at IDEA CAPTURE.

Good news for you - #1 and #2 are related and we'll solve them both for you before you're done reading this post...

Business Blogging 101: 7 Ways to Write Less and Say More
 

1. Think fortune cookies - you don't need to write an essay to share a key nugget that occurred to you while you were driving or in the shower.
   Example: 101 Success Tips in 3 Words  
    
2. When you have a lot to say, say it in shorter, sharper chunks. Like a series. Call it something snappy like "Business Blogging 101." See?
    
3. Use quotes, stats, visuals, videos, and graphics. These are not only easier for your blog readers to absorb, they're MUCH more likely to be shared, thus driving more traffic and Google juice back to YOU. 
   Example: Marketing Concept: 12 Home Page Must-Haves
    
4. Great blogs do NOT persuade, explain or convince. Put your opinions out there - the sharper, the better. Give your readers something to agree or disagree with.
   Example: The (REAL) Idiot's Guide to Social Media Marketing
    
5. Stop being so nice. It's OK to piss people off. Too many blogs take both sides of any given argument and end up sounding like a high school essay instead of a pointed, share-worthy piece of thought leadership.
   Example: 5 Signs that Your Prospect is Giving You Too Much Bullsh*t
      
6. Master the 20-minute blog post. Give yourself 20 minutes on the clock. Set a timer. Write. Revise as you go. When the bell goes off, hit publish. Truth: Even if it sucks - which it won't - you're better off posting it than if you had posted nothing that day. Honest.
    
7. Steal these blog titles: 7 Ways to... 5 Keys to... Top 10 Strategies for... 3 Biggest mistakes of... 11 Secrets of [topic] revealed... 7 Questions to ask yourself... 13 Quick tips on... 
    
8. (Bonus) Use numbers in your titles
   Example: Marketing Coach: 17 Ways to Drive More Traffic FAST
    
9. (Bonus) People love lists of key points, mistakes, lessons, examples, templates, strategies, tactics, tools, secrets, and so on. 
   Example: 23 things to say when you're asked for free consulting
    
10. (Bonus) People love free resources. People love when you point out other cool people, other great blogs, and things they need to know about, use, read, or buy to make them more successful in your area of expertise. 
    Example: Why Your Business Needs to FLOP
     
11. (Bonus) People love bonuses. Underpromise and overdeliver and you'll keep folks coming back for more. Like sharing 11 points when you initially promised just 7. Priceless!! 
     

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!

"Direct marketing is to social marketing what a one-night stand is to marriage." -- @dnewman

The above statement is a tweet that gets a lot of reaction - some positive, some negative, and some asking for more detail. So - you asked for it, you got it. Let's dig in...

Quick sidenote before we start: I find it telling that people read the analogy wrong - they sometimes misunderstand and think I'm saying that social marketing is the one-night stand. NOT AT ALL - direct marketing is the one-night stand. Social marketing is a marriage (unless you do it like an idiot - More on that later.) 

The purpose of direct marketing (short for direct response marketing) is just that - to get a response. A hit. A lead. A sale. A little badda-bing in your pants, ya dig?

The purpose of social marketing (short for social media marketing) is to establish trust, build a strong relationship and deliver value over time. Can you hear the wedding bells?   

A big mistake that a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs and indepent professionals make is to think of social marketing in the same way that you might think of direct marketing or outbound sales activity. (As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I see this mistake all the time and it's the source of MANY bad marketing decisions and idiotic online sales antics.)

Think about it: Cold calls. Email blasts. Direct mail like postcards and sales letters. Do those things and the natural question to ask is - OK, how much did you SELL TODAY?

You made 100 dials, you connected with 20 humans, you had 14 conversations, you qualified 5 serious prospects and then how much did you SELL TODAY?

You sent 10,000 postcards. Requests came back for 300 quotes. So how many widgets did you SELL TODAY?

All that scorekeeping, bad pick-up lines, hitting on people (not to mention the need to do it over and over again the next day, the next week, and the next month) is starting to sound a lot like Leisure Suit Larry's dating life, doesn't it?

Social marketing doesn't work that way. Social marketing is... well, social. It's about relationships and trust. Relationships and trust don't have an ON/OFF switch - they develop over time.

Transactions happen today from relationships you built last week, last month, and last year. The benefit of that - and the reason it's worth the "wait" is that social media gives you a permanent asset - TRUST.

Oh and by the way, married people DO have crazy good sex. But those transactions happen BECAUSE of the relationship, not instead of it!! It's the permanence of the relationship that gives you both the long-term love (trust) AND the short-term lust (profitable transactions) you want and need.  

Think about the long-term impact of your social media marketing assets and the fleeting nature of your direct marketing investments:

Blog entries are forever. They continue to sell your expertise, your company, and your value day after day, week after week, year after year.

LinkedIn recommendations are forever. People that wrote glowingly of you in 2002 are still "selling" for you and your reputation TODAY.

A voice mail? BEEP - gone.

An email? ZAP - deleted.

A sales letter or postcard? THUNK - into the recycling.

Those happen today and they're gone today. 

Sure, you have to sell today. You have to make your quota today. You have to feed your family today. But social media marketing helps you ensure that what you create ONCE today works and lasts and brings customers and clients to you for many years to come...

Not because you SOLD them like an idiot -- but because you built the trust and relationships that HELPED THEM BUY today, tomorrow and beyond!

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!

Marketing Concept: Your home page is your calling card. 

Question: Are you communicating everything that you need to on that all-important home page to get people engaged with you and your products and services? 

Let's back up one step. Before you can answer that question, a better marketing concept to explore is the key question: 

What IS the main purpose of your home page? 

Multiple choice answers for you to choose from: 

a. To create a cosmetically appealing "cover page" for the rest of your site

b. To concisely summarize all your product and service offerings

c. To showcase your primary offering that you want to highlight (your flagship product, current promotion, etc.)

d. To create an easy-to-navigate roadmap with multiple ways to access the key pages of your site

e. None of the above

And the answer is... 

Wait for it...

Hang on... 

Alright, you win - it's e. None of the above.

Why? Because the main purpose of your home page is to convey two (and only two) key marketing concepts:

1. We know what you (the prospect, reader, website visitor) are going through.

2. We can help.

Here are 12 home page must-haves according to our partners over at Hubspot: 

What do you think? Please share your insights in the COMMENTS section below and..

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!

Guest post by Sandy Barris, Fast Marketing Plan

Marketing Concept: Start writing like people talk or even better the way your prospects talk:

1. Use plain talk when writing your marketing, advertising or PR:
Please don’t try to be your fifth grade teacher or your college English professor.

Forget everything you ever learned in school about writing.

Fancy writing (big word writing) only draws attention to itself and not to the benefits you are using to persuade.

2. Try using short sentences and vary their length:

Don’t try to stick two thoughts into one sentence.

Use two short ones instead.

3. Use simple language:

Use the familiar word to the far-fetched.

Use the concrete word to the abstract.

Use the short word to the long word.

Examples of simple language:

Instead of this: Use this

• Encourage: Urge
  
• Continue: Keep up
  
• Supplement : add to
  
• Acquire: get or gain
  
• Along the lines of: like
  
• As to: about
  
• For the reason that : since
  
• In order to: to
  
• In the event of: if
  
• In accordance with: by, under
  
• Prior to: before
  
• With regard to: about
  
• Accordingly: so
  
• Likewise: and, also
  
• Nevertheless: but, however

You get the idea. KISS

4. Use personal references:

Examples: names, pronouns & human interest words.

The best words you can use are… "YOU" and "YOUR"

5. DON'T USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

People recognize words based on their shape, not the actual letters in the words. All caps are harder to identify immediately.

6. Use a Headline

Your Headline is your Ad for the Ad.

The headline should invoke a "reflex reaction" from the reader.

Stop them dead in their tracks.

The reader should instantly understand what you're trying to say, and have enough information to qualify or disqualify himself from reading the rest of your marketing.

But hey, if your professionaly written and perfectly edited marketing is working, making you a small fortune, ignore this and keep doing what's working.

That's your quick marketing tip for now.

Use them and profit.

About the Author: Sandy Barris is the creator of Fast Marketing Plan which provides any business owner, executive or manager a simple, fast, easy and affordable online marketing and business management tool to create unlimited and complete Marketing Plans, Marketing Calendars and Marketing Roadmaps for use by almost any type and size of business.

Guest column by Jerry Minchey, SearchEngineU

There are a lot of ways to get incoming links, such as:

• Get listed by the directories.
• Write articles for ezines and newsletters.
• Provide useful content so people will link to you without you asking.
• And the technique we are going to talk about today . . . Ask other sites to link to you. I'll go into the other techniques in another article.

Sample Link Request email message

Create personalized custom letters and send them manually one at a time. (My comments are in parentheses. The actual lettler is the text outside the parentheses.)

Subject: Link request (Look at their website and see if they request a special subject line when requesting links.) (Start of actual email message text:)

From: Jerry Minchey at http://www.SearchEngineu.com Personal email address: JMinchey@xxxxxx.com (This tells them that this is NOT spam. Spammers don't leave their email address.)

Cell phone: (Use a cell phone or a number where you can almost always be reached. If they want to talk to you, they may only try one time.)

Dear Jim, (Take the time to find the site owners name)

I found the information on your site at http://www.YourSite.com to be informative and professional, particularly the section on (fill in something to show that you have actually visited the site).

I think your visitors would all appreciate help getting their websites ranked higher on Google and other search engines. We are a subscription website, but we offer a ton of useful search engine optimization information to non-subscribers as well. (Show them an advantage to having your link on their site.)

I would like to request a link to our Home page at http://www.SearchEngineU.com from (Describe their page you want a link from. Home page, main product page, etc.) at http://www.yourSite.com/resources.htm. (List the URL of their page you want to be linked from. Maybe give them two suggested pages. Find two on-topic pages that have a reasonably high Google PageRank if possible. Of course, their Home page is always nice, but their Resources page may be where all of their other links are from.)

You can link to us by downloading our logo and code from: http://www.searchengineu.com/public/department25.cfm or just creating your own code. (You should have a “Link to Us” page with simple step-by-step instructions on your website showing people how to link to your site. Refer to it here.)

I have subscribed to your newsletter and look forward to receiving it. (That is, if they have one. This shows that you have looked at their site and find it of value. Stroke their ego.)

(And if you are proposing a reciprocal link arrangement, include the following statement:)

I have already added a link to your site. You can see it at: http://www.searchengineu.com/public/department25.cfm

I think the visitors to your site will appreciate your help in providing this valuable resource for them and of course, it will be greatly appreciated by me.

If you can provide the link, an email to confirm it would be appreciated.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I can be reached by email at JMinchey@xxxxxx.com or call me anytime on my cell phone at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Thanks for your consideration, Jim. (End any request with the person's name. It works much better than starting the sentence with their name.)

Sincerely,

Jerry Minchey

P.S.Remember, adding this link to your website will take you less than two minutes. And your thoughtfullness in adding this valuable resource of additional information will be greatly appreciated by your visitors.

(Always add a P.S. to your email message restating what it is you want and why they should take the time to do. They may just scan your email message, but they WILL read the P.S.)

Click here if you want to see more articles on Search Engine Optimization Techniques.

Guest column by Nick Usborne

The Rule of One falls into two areas...what you write about, and who you write to.

Here’s the first part of the rule...

Confine each communication to a single topic

This is a battle that has been raging between copywriters and their clients for a very long time.

Twenty years ago I remember trying to discourage clients from wanting to say too much in a single ad or direct mail letter.

I think they felt that if they were going to pay the media costs, they would get “more for their money” if they used every opportunity to say as much as possible about their products, services and company.

My counter-argument was that they would communicate much more clearly, and with better results, if they stuck to a single topic and a single message. The same problem persists today on the web.

Too many web pages try to cover too much ground.

Think of it this way. Very few people arrive at your site wanting to hear about all of your different products or services. Most will have used a search engine to find information on a single, clearly defined topic.

Whether you bring them to a specific landing page or some other interior page, build your pages so that they focus on just one topic at a time.

Do that and you will stay focused and please your visitors.

As a side benefit, you will also please the major search engines, which consistently reward pages that are confined to a single topic. The more clearly defined the page topic, the higher the listing.

And now for the second part of the Rule of One.

Write to one person at a time

You have probably heard this advice before. But as I read web pages across a variety of industries, I see little evidence of writers following this simple rule.

Basically, you will write more clearly, more personally and with better results if you picture an individual prospect or reader as you write.

Don’t write to some amorphous demographic group. Write to one person within that group.

Don’t create a mental picture of “that kind of person”. Picture a real person with a real life. Think about that person’s life. Think about what they want out of life.

Now think about how your product or service fits that person.

If you do this well, if you can truly see an individual prospect in your mind, it will have a profound impact on what and how you write.

Your text will read and feel as if it is being written to a real person. The corporate-speak jargon and biz-speak nonsense will disappear, and you will suddenly begin writing more clearly, with a true empathy for the person who will be reading your text.

Keep one thing in mind. This is not a “copywriting trick”. This is writing pages in a way that corresponds to how they will be read. It may sound obvious, but so many people lose touch with the fact that every page you write WILL be read by individuals with unique lives and needs.

No “group” will ever read your page. No “industry” will ever read your page.

The web pages you write will always be read by individuals, one at a time.

Concluding thoughts

Stick to one topic and write to one person.

It sounds easy, but very few people do it. Sometimes copywriters fail to write in this way because they haven’t thought about it. Sometimes it happens due to unrelenting pressure from above.

Either way, sticking to the Rule of One will always help you. Discipline yourself and fight your clients and managers if you need to.

In the end, the results will speak for themselves.

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Note: Nick Usborne is the leading advocate of good writing on the Web. He is an 
author, copywriter, consultant, speaker, and the publisher of the Excess Voice 
newsletter for online writers. Read his articles at http://www.excessvoice.com  

A colleague recently said to me, “No one has found the top secret formula for successful online marketing yet.”

I disagree. A number of companies know exactly what works and are making small fortunes with it.

The primary concept is that online marketing works best when you e‐mail to people who ALREADY know you. Therefore, successful online marketers build their “house file” or “e‐list” (lists of prospects and their e‐mail addresses) using the process outlined below, and then sell to those people via e‐mail marketing:

1. Build a Website that positions you or your organization as an expert, guru, or leader in your field or industry. This is the “base of operations” for your online marketing campaign.

2. Your Website should include a home page, an “About the Company” page and a page with brief descriptions of your products and services (each product or service description can link to a longer document on the individual item).

3. You should also have an “Articles Page” where you post articles your company has published on your industry or area of specialty, and where visitors can read and download these articles for free (e.g., a home improvement contractor would have tips for small do‐it‐yourself home improvement projects).

4. Write a short special report or white paper relating to the problem your product or service addresses, and make this available to people who visit your site. They can download it for free, but in exchange, they have to register and give you their e‐mail address (and any other information you want to capture).

5. Consider also offering a monthly online newsletter, or “e‐zine.” People who visit your site can subscribe free if they register and give you their e‐mail address. You may want to give the visitor the option of checking a box that reads: “I give you and other companies you select permission to send me e‐mail about products, services, news, and offers that may be of interest to me.”

6. The more “content” (useful information) on your site, the better. More people will be attracted to your site, and they will spend more time on it. They will also tell others about your site.

7. The model is to drive traffic to your site where you get them to sign up for either your free report or free e‐zine. Once they register, you have their e‐ mail address and can now market to them via e‐mail as often as you like at no extra cost.

8. The bulk of your online leads, sales, and profits will come from repeat e‐ mail marketing to this “house” e‐list of prospects. Therefore, your goal is to build a large e‐list of qualified prospects as quickly and inexpensively as you can.

9. There are a number of online marketing options, which can drive traffic to your site, that I can help you with. These include free publicity; e‐mail marketing; social media advertising; search engine optimization; direct mail; and e‐zine advertising.

10. The key to success is to try many different tactics in small and inexpensive tests, throw out the ones that do not work, and do more of the ones that are effective.

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Need a great marketing speaker for your next association conference, company meeting, or franchisee/dealer event? Marketing speaker David Newman delivers the goods - over 600 presentations since 1992. David's clients include 44 of the Fortune 500 and countless small and mid-size organizations, associations, and non-profits.
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