The first time I taught "Twitter For Business" I had a very pleasant surprise. It was toward the end of the class and I happened to walk near one of the participants. As I looked down at her table, I noticed she had taken over five pages of very dense notes.
Then I looked at the lady sitting next to her and saw that she too had taken copious notes. In fact, when I looked at the other attendees I saw that each person had taken lots and lots of notes.
I hadn't realized how much information I had conveyed to them, but they were all writing as fast as their hands could fly across their pages.
At the end of the class, they all swarmed around me and raved about the ideas they had learned and how it was going to change their businesses.
Here is a video of some of the feedback I got from those participants:
Now you can get this same information. I have just put the class on CD, revised my Twitter Marketing ebook and added four new chapters to it. And I have revised the Twitter flowchart on which the class is based.
Here's what you will learn:
And integrated system for using Twitter, blogs and email marketing to attract new clients.
How to find valuable content for your followers and subscribers that will solve their problems and move them to take action.
How to build an email list while at the same time building your credibility with the people on your list.
How to use Twitter to drive traffic to your blog.
And how to follow up with your list with an easy-to-use and inexpensive autoresponder.
The cost of the CD, plus the two downloads is only $22 plus $7 for postage and handling.
Don't delay. Get this information to start growing your business today.
I really should be more diplomatic, but I got into a minor hissing match with one of my clients' web developers the other day.
My client has a really great looking site that is a work of art in every respect. There's just one teensy little problem: It doesn't make any money for my client.
Pretty is nice, but not at the expense of profits.
The problem with most websites is the home page. See if you don't agree with me on this, but most home pages read like a brochure. They talk about the company's "commitment to excellence," tossing in the words, "value-added" at every opportunity and solumnly stating the company is a "full service solutions provider."
Sigh.
So here was my suggestion to my client that got me in such hot water with their web guy:
Clean up the home page and make it an opt in page for an email list.
I wanted my client to clear out all the "commitment to excellence" drivel and give the visitor a compelling reason to subscribe to the company's email newsletter. Have a short video and a few bullet points with an opt in form underneath.
Sure, I allowed, they could keep the tabs at the top to navigate into the site's other content, but put the idea of subscribing front and center on page one.
I supported my stance with two words: "Barrack Obama." Well actually there was a third word, "Google."
In 2008, the Obama Campaign raked in enormous amounts of contributions by doing one thing - creating a home page for their site that forced visitors to decide to either make a contribution or not.
The home page was clean, simple and asked people to make a single decision. Nothing else got in the way until they had made that one decision.
If visitors chose not to give, they could navigate into the site to read his talking points and position papers. Alternatively, if they chose to contribute, they could still get to see all these other goodies after they sent money.
I just checked out barackobama.com today, and it is already gearing up for 2010. Here is a screen shot:
At the risk of beating a dead horse, the site doesn't force the visitor to make a lot of decisions does it? It simply gives them the opportunity to leave an email address before moving into the site further.
Google, if you recall, came into the search engine game far behind Yahoo and MSN. But while Yahoo had a portal page full of options and interesting distractions (want to read an interesting news story or check out your horoscope?), Google just had (and still has) that clean page that puts the query box front and center.
As a result, Google took over the search business leaving the other guys to pick up the crumbs. Bing, by the way is an interesting spin off with its one decision home page combined with beautiful photography. Proving you can have pretty and simplicity at the same time.
So back to my tiff with the web developer.
One of my core beliefs in this business is that a website's main job is to collect leads. It takes a lot of work to get a visitor to land on your site one time. But even after all that, most of these people will not come back unless you have a way of following up with them.
So I preach the gospel of direct response to my clients.
Direct Response Home Pages
In the advertising world there are two camps: The "Image and Awareness" advertising people who see their job as making potential customers aware that the company exists and what they do.
Unless a prospect just happens to be in the market for whatever this advertiser sells at this very moment, chances are the ad will not get a response. But it will raise awareness slightly.
The direct response folks, on the other hand, see their ads as merely tools to build mailing lists of interested prospects. They want to see results now and they do this by giving prospects an incentive to request free information or materials.
These ads used to have coupons to clip out to send in for more information, or a free booklet (nowadays they just direct people to a website to get the free information). A person doesn't have to by interested enough yet to place an order or call for an appointment, just interested enough to ask for the free ebook or CD.
To put it another way, they may not be ready to take action right now, but they might like your information just in case the need arises in the future. From a marketer's point of view, this puts you in line to solve this person's problem while they are still in an information-gathering stage.
Direct response ads have the advantage of being measurable. An advertiser can track the number of inquiries a particular ad generates. Then they can make minor changes like rewording the headline or the graphics or wording in the offer to see if this results in more or less responses.
Direct response ads can constantly be improved scientifically by testing one version of the ad against another to see which one delivers the best results.
Additionally they give the marketer the chance to follow up multiple times. It is a proven fact that people usually don't buy until they have received multiple exposures to an offer. So a series of letters goes out to each person who requested the free information in the ad.
This causes the effectiveness of one ad to go up because the marketer gets multiple bites at the apple or several opportunities to sell to the prospect.
The same rules apply to websites. A site can either be the online version of an "Image and Awareness" ad or it can be a version of a direct response ad. But not both.
The value is to give visitors only one decision to make at a time. Sure not everyone who lands on your site wants to subscribe to your newsletter now. Fine but by making the home page a direct response device, you have gotten that one decision out of the way.
I should also note that no direct response approach works without a valuable free offer. Create a white paper, ebook or CD (or something) that gives helpful information in exchange for opting in. Or you can offer discounts and coupons to subscribers. Just understand that people will not fill out an opt in form without expecting to receive something from you that is of value.
The more enticing you can make this free offer the better.
My client hasn't made up his mind yet. Will he stay with a pretty home page that isn't making money or will he simplify that home page at the expense of "pretty" in order to build a database of email subscribers he can follow up with again and again?
What are your thoughts on home pages? Have you had success with direct response sites and simple home pages? Or are your present results stifled by a "pretty" home page?
I'm always recommending creating good quality web content to business people I meet. When they ask me how, I mention blogging and podcasting. And that's usually when I get met with that now-familiar I-hated-English-class stare.
But fear not. You can create good, quality content fast so you can move on to the other projects you face each day. It just takes a system.
First, keep a notebook with you to jot down ideas for articles. What things does your target audience want to learn about? What information do they need?
One of the best things you can do with this notebook is to list helpful tips and actionable ideas that the people you want to reach can put into practice and see quality results.
Second, read. Again focus your reading on the information you want to learn. As a blogger or content creator, your job in essence is to read for other people and share the best of that information with them in digest form.
Third, armed with your notebook of ideas and/of a few nuggets of information you've come across worthy of sharing, sit down at your computer.
Write a question. Write another question, and another until your mind grows blank. Then look at these questions to decide which one to launch off of.
Write an answer or response to that question. When you have answered it, start on another question. At this point you can either choose from your list of questions you have down, or (more likely) what you just wrote will give rise to a new question in your mind.
Write that question down and then answer it.
Questions force the mind to come up with an answer.
True story: Several years ago, I went through a long catastrophic illness which caused me to spend a lot of time sleeping on the coach. My young children could play around me and not faze me in the slightest. But sometimes one of them would ask me a question and I would immediately wake up, answer the question and go back to sleep.
There questions would trigger my mind to come up with an answer, regardless of how deep my sleep was.
So use questions to trigger your writing. Ask and answer questions until you have dealt with the topic. After words, you may leave the questions in place or remove them like scaffolding beside a building.
Some of your answers will come from your mind and other parts will require that you look at your research information.
Do this for either your blog articles or as a way to script a podcast. Either way, it will help you create a lot of content quickly and easily.
Regardless of your horrifying experiences in English class.
Note: This is a Google Sidewiki entry I posted. I saw this short post by @BlogCoach and felt it said so much about why social media marketing is different from traditional forms. Thanks for the great idea.
This is an excellent point by @BlogCoach. Social media gives businesses the ability to connect, engage and converse with fans and friends.
Don't treat these people as a "target market" treat them like friends and you will see much greater results. As a resource, see my article on the "1000 True Fans" concept: http://bit.ly/bNKVen
If you have a career (as opposed to just a job) or a business, or ever hope to have one in the future, you need to know about personal branding.
The term "personal branding," as best I can determine, originated in 1997 when Tom Peters wrote an article called, "A Brand Called You." This legendary article (which pre-dated such internet tools as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube) forecast how individuals could take control of their own destinies by building brands for themselves.
The problem is that we all have a choice: We can either establish a strong reputation for ourselves, or we will become (or remain) commodities. Think about how potential employers or potential clients view us. There is always a tendency to put us in a nice neat box and slap a familiar (if not always accurate) label on us. The reason for this is that the human mind tends to categorize new information by associating it with information already known.
As a new potential employee or business person, we start off as a new bit of information.
The danger of being a commodity is that tangible factors like the price of our offerings or the perceived quality of the schools we attended become the tiebreakers for our prospects or potential employers.
Personal branding is a matter of inserting new and more powerful tiebreakers into the equation.
But here's the secret: Despite their tendency to categorize you, the people who want to do business with someone like you, want a tiebreaker.
Imagine the human resource person sorting through a stack of resumes looking for the "best" candidate. Or picture a potential client doing a Google search (or worse yet, looking through the Yellow Pages) for the "best" lawyer, doctor, plumber, print shop, veterinarian, etc. Or the executive looking for the "best" person to promote within the company. These people are desperate for a significant tiebreaker to help them make this important decision.
It is only when they fail to find a real reason to break the tie that they resort to superfluous factors like whether you graduate from Yale or Kansas State, or whether you charge 15% more than a competitor. In other words, only when factors like value and return on investment are absent, will factors like a name brand school or a marginally higher cost default to becoming the key tiebreakers.
Much has changed since Tom Peters wrote his article in 1997. Now everyone can set up a blog or post a video to YouTube. Social media has made personal branding a reality for anyone who wants to create tiebreakers.
So what is a tiebreaker?
For most professions, and professionals, content is king. If you can create good content that solves problems for your target employers or clients, you can build a personal brand online.
In fact, often the sheer number of search results on Google when someone does a search for a person or a business, can be a significant tiebreaker. If a job candidate has a blog with numerous articles coming up on Google, or if a business has published numerous instructional videos on YouTube, that raw number will, in and of itself, often become a powerful tiebreaker.
This last point shatters the most common misconception of personal branding: That it is just hype and popularity. Personal branding (at least for professionals who market themselves based on their expertise) relies on creating a "paper trail" of sorts online, not just empty claims.
To quote Tom Peters' article:
Almost every professional services firm works with the same business model. They have almost no hard assets [but] They have lots of soft assets -- more conventionally known as people, preferably smart, motivated, talented people. And they have huge revenues -- and astounding profits.
If your company "ME, Inc." has no hard assets to speak of, how can you build your own soft assets? By demonstrating what you can do for a potential client / employer. And nothing can demonstrate better than a thoughtful blog or a series of problem-solving information pieces in the form of articles, videos, or any other content you can create.
Do a Google search on yourself. Do you find anything at all? And if you are listed, do you find content that you, yourself put on the internet or are you finding content creating about others about you?
Let's look at it this way: a news piece about you is great, but it is hard to control news content when you are just the subject of the piece.
Your public relations efforts may pay off now and then, but it is far better create your own content (which is, by the way, a good way to get the attention of someone in the news business, and which may lead to you becoming the subject of many news pieces).
Get started today. If you don't already have a blog devoted to your field, start one. Everyone needs their own piece of online real estate they can control and on which they can showcase their own original content.
Now that you have a blog, what articles, videos or podcasts should you put on it?
Think about what information your target market (either potential clients or employers or higher executives within your present organization) wants to learn.
What problems do they need to solve and what information will help them?
What questions do your clients ask most often? Or, what questions should they be asking, but lack the background to know to ask?
What information would make them better consumers of your services? In other words, what would help them make the best decision between Brand X vs Brand Y?
What problems could be sneaking up on someone that they are not fully aware of? (Think of all the articles you've seen about medical issues that most of us were not previously aware of)?
What kinds of problems do they need to solve BEFORE they have a need for what you sell? Can you build trust and relationships before your target audience needs to buy from you?
If you charge more for what you sell than your competitors, what information would justify that higher price? What benefits do they get from you that they cannot get elsewhere?
Once you have a game plan for creating content, put it on as many sites and in as many forms as you can on the internet.
Create articles, ebooks, and whitepapers. Then take much the same information and produce audio content in the form of podcasts. Create PowerPoint presentations and post them as slideshows. Create videos and post them on YouTube.
Build trails of breadcrumbs on your subject matter so that everywhere your target clients or employers search for information on that topic, all trails lead back to you.
What do you think? What kinds of content ideas can you share that will help to build a better personal brand?
If you don't already own one, and you want an easy way to market your business, go buy a Flip UltraHD Camcorder.
Now!
Why? Well for one thing, the Flip is dirt cheap. The model you see in the picture above costs only $149, gives you 120 minutes of recording time, fits neatly in your pocket and delivers excellent sound and picture quality.
And it will put some serious money in your pocket if you use the following tips to market your business:
Record video testimonials of your clients or people who attend your events.
Create short videos (2 to 3 minutes seem to be the optimal length) that answer your customers' most frequently asked questions. Also include those questions that you are NOT asked, but you feel customers should be asking. One short video per question.
Demonstrate your processes. If you make a product and can demonstrate "how the sausage is made" this will create a compelling piece that your potential customers will want to watch.
Convey information in a format that is easier for your customers to understand than if you put it in written form. Or use videos to supplement your written material. Some people understand text while others find videos easier to comprehend. Don't assume all people grasp information in the same format.
Demonstrate how your product is used. Show it in action.
Upload your videos to YouTube and other video sharing sites. Be sure to "tag" your videos with your best keywords and put your URL in the description section YouTube provides. This will create a link from YouTube to your site making it easier for people to find online.
Also post your videos to your own website. Studies have proven that websites with videos convert at least 50% more visitors into buyers.
Use videos to share helpful tips and solutions to your customers. Including several "how to" videos on your site will make not only help you bond with your visitors, it will also convince them that you know what you are doing.
Use videos to upsell to higher value products. Show side by side comparisons of Product A with Product B. If Product B costs more than A, show them why. Use your video to demonstrate value and benefits.
Create valuable content with videos. The more informative your site, the more it solves your target customers' problems, the more it helps them reach decisions or achieve the goals they want to achieve, the more traffic your site will get.
The fact is, you can use pretty much any camcorder to do the above things, but because the Flip is so easy and portable, you will find yourself using it more often than a bigger, clunkier model.
Check out the reviews and customer feedback on Amazon here.
I consult with businesses on the strategic use of social media, web marketing and email marketing. I also speak and conduct workshops on social media marketing for organizations.
My team offers outsource solutions and training for companies needing to engage with their target market with social media.
Contact me at 817-501-6892 or by email at: or chbrown/at/webmarketing-coach.com.
Need a Speaker or Guest Writer?
Need a speaker or guest writer/blogger on social media marketing, rainmaking or personal branding?
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