Thinks I find along the way
…but I have been bloody busy with the Agritechnica trade show in Hannover. I set up a social media dashboard in the menubar so you can track the work I’m doing with AGCO in Germany. So sorry, but with doing social media 12 hours a day, I just haven’t been able to maintain my normal editorial schedule for my business. Needless to say, there won’t be a ‘top tactics and tools’ post today — next Tuesday, I hope I’m recovered from jet lag enough to write on ‘tactics and tools’ #5 – Shareaholic!
“Social media is free. Social media is easy. Just hop on twitter and start tweetin’!” Hmmm… how many times have we heard that? I have honestly heard social media consultants at networking events state during their 60 second pitch “social media is free, come talk to me if you want to do free marketing!” Ouch, not the case folks.
Several business leaders have asked me lately for tips on finding a good business or social media consultant. Many have been confused by the blog posts that seem to only complain versus helping business decision makers find someone who can really help them.
I actually did a few Google searches and found very little in regard to helpful tips and skills to look for. What I did find was numerous posts complaining about social media consultants, gurus and how to spot a bad one. I have to admit I too have posted a few blog posts that are on the humorous side of this topic while trying to offer helpful tips at the same time.
I wanted to provide some helpful tips when hiring a consultant. Note, what is a good consultant for Tom doesn’t mean it will be so for Betty and Jane. Consultants, just as mentors and coaches should be selected based on personal fit with your business goals, life cycle, culture, gaps etc. The most important thing is that you do your research and talk to a few. Don’t go with the first one you meet.
I’m one of those social media consultants. You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article and then give me a call and rake me over the coals!
PDC is Personal Digital Coaching and it’s totally different than the kind of experience that’s being discussed here…
“I’ve been reading with great interest this past week as some of the leading web application companies discuss their philosophies regarding the providing of phone support for their services.” WebWorkerDaily » Archive Phone or Email Support – Which Do You Prefer? «
Give me a call at (920) 710-0790 or contact me through the contact page…
Hmmm. Looks like everything you need to know about social media you may have learned in kindergarten. Not quite, but this confirms some of my preconceived notions…
“There are hundreds of ways to exploit social media to help your business or to build your personal brand but one that should stand head and shoulders above any other is the simplest of them all and has been around for as long as we have been on the planet….help other people. It sounds really really easy and you probably don’t even think it warrants you reading the rest of this post but if you stop and think about it for a second do you really help others? Do you consistently go out of your way to help others and put their needs above yours?
Let me let you in on a little social media secret: helping others is the key and any work you put in to help others will come back to help you in the long run 10 times over. The beauty in this day and age is that it is so easy to help others through social media now. You just have to want to.
It’s not going to happen in a week or even a month (although it can) but if you make it your mission to help people online in whatever way you possibly can it will always come back and make your day when you least expect it. I am not just talking about re-tweeting somebody or linking to them in your blog but actually going properly out of your way and helping somebody else to achieve their goals. Not your goals, their goals.” Source: Why you should help others to help yourself in social media
btw, few people do this better than my buddy Dana VanDen Heuvel of MarketingSavant. Go to the source and read the rest of the article, but check out Dana’s site too if you haven’t done so — it’s one of the best you’ll ever find on the topic of thought leadership and internet marketing…
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It’s a well known secret in real estate that the three most important aspects of a property are ‘location, location, location’. In social media, there’s a similar mantra. It’s called ‘share, share, share’…
“If you step back and take a look how information moves in Social Media, it’s quite different than “Traditional Media.” Back in the day, most people got their information from newspapers or magazines. The direction of information is from the few (the writer or publisher) down to the many. We’ve all seen this in action in our daily lives, maybe to the point of not even noticing it anymore. Got a favorite newspaper columnist or TV show host? One single person communicating to possibly millions of people with little interaction between the communicator and the listeners.
As we step into the Social Media arena, the direction and flow of information is between the readers and the writers. The interaction (thanks to the internet) tends to be instant and the ripple effect from this sharing of information can spread far and wide. With the users of Social Media able to contribute news and information to anyone willing to listen, we now have a conversation. Just like the conversations you are already having at the local coffeeshop or at work.
The recent buzzing and tittering by the media about Twitter and Social Media in general, it’s no wonder business owners may feel forced into using these internet-based communication tools, or perhaps miss sales opportunities their competition is getting instead of them. Not being familiar with the landscape, many make that sometimes fatal error of confusing Social Media with traditional advertising.” Source: The Secret to Social Media – Business Networking – Biznik
This isn’t something to be afraid of — it’s something to be embraced and leveraged. Using the right set of tools, sharing is easy…
As the internet marketing gurus at Hubspot say ““Each thoughtful post on your blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership, personal integrity, humor, and professional insights. You don’t have to refute one of Einstein’s theories to get respect.” To that I would add each thoughtful ‘share’. In my seminars I ask people how many of them have ever forwarded a link to their friends or saved a bookmark. Of course EVERYONE has done that. What differs is the efficacy or efficiency of their tools.
Shareaholic
Shareaholic is my personal favorite and one of the first Firefox add-ons I install whenever I move to a new computer. I also recommend ShareThis, another Firefox add-on as well…
ShareThis
In closing, I’ll share with you one of my most important tactics. I’m always on the lookout for something good to share — it helps establish my thought leadership position. If something is really good, however, I’ll do a blog post FIRST and THEN share that post with others. Yes, it’s important to share but it’s ok to be a little selfish in the process by sharing something from an internet property that you own so that it drives traffic to your homebase, wherever that may be. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…
John Jantsch recently wrote on the topic of “Profiting from other people’s content”. He says…
“Don’t be alarmed by that title — I’m not talking about stealing content for gain, I’m talking about adding the filtering and aggregating of content to your content consumption, creation and sharing routine.
Pretty much everyone has bought into the idea that they need to produce lots of valuable content in order to build the trust and search engine eyes of today’s online prospect. One way to supplement your content strategy while still providing lots of value, is to get good at finding and filtering other people’s content that your prospects and customers will find useful as well. (Done right, the other people will thank you for giving a wider audience to their content).
It should go without saying that giving credit to the original source and full attribution to the author when appropriate is a must.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
John talks about his “consumption, creation and sharing routine” — my mantra is ‘listen, publish, promote’ which is a little more elegant in my book but we’re both trying to say the same thing and use an alliteration in the process. If I were John, I might go for ‘consume, create, communicate‘ — in fact, I might start using that instead. Either way, the point is that gathering good content effectively and commenting on it is a great way to build your personal brand. I’ve been using this strategy for years — most recently, I amped it up by using Posterous [another tool that John advocates] and saving more content directly to my blog instead of shared bookmarks as I used to do. Here are the results:
I think the results are really quite good for an ‘army of one’, don’t you? I do all my ‘creation and communication’ as a result of my daily ‘consumption’ — because my system is easy to implement and use, I work it frequently. I call quoting other sites ‘curation’ and my rare original thoughts ‘creation’. The curation works to draw people to my creation. Does it work? You betcha [you’re reading this, aren’t you?]. The average person drawn into my blog through effective communication reads 3.3 pages and spends 2:52 minutes on the site, while only 4.75% ‘bounce’ to another site. Over 71% are new visitors…
Jantsch goes on to give three tactical implementations of his ‘profiting from content’ suggestion. They are…
“Make yourself a better resource
Creating a habit of filtering content related to your industry, products, competitors and customers will make you better at what you do, allow you to keep up with trends and give you data to help you build deeper relationships with customers.
Share content to draw attention
Pointing out useful resources and good finds is a great way to build your social media and blog followings. Consistently sharing relevant links and sharing them on Twitter is a strategy that many find helps them be seen as follow worthy. Creating a once a week blog post roundup of good stuff is a great way to add content and keep readers engaged.
Filter personalized content
A more advanced strategy is to use your filter skills to create your own industry research briefs. If you specialize in several market niches you can create laser specific new pages and email newsletter roundups that feature the best of what you find each week. You can even use RSS technology to deliver dynamically changing web content password protected for your best clients.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Clearly, John and I share a lot of the same ‘common sense’. He goes on to list 10 different resources [you can follow the link] you can use as tools to find other people’s content. One of them — Kurrently — is one I’ll have to add to my toolkit. For me, however, this is where we part ways. My paradigm is “Google Reader is the answer. Now what is the question?“.
I use Google Reader like a tactical nuke. It’s the one tool I use to manage the ‘rest of the internet’ and I use it like a virtual newspaper or better yet, news bureau, where I manage hundreds of little newsbots that do my news aggregation for me. I have 5 great ways to get relevant content into Google Reader and they include most of John’s 10 tools — it’s just that in my book, Google Reader is the one tool that rules them all. It really is the driver in my ‘e1evation workflow’ outlined below. Either you get it and you can use it or I can help you implement it but the point is that if you have a brand and you want to build it online, we can help…
This list from author Matthew Shofoluwe is a good start…
“Business, like any organism, has to adapt to it’s environment. While the underlying principles for conducting businesses may remain unchanged, some areas are almost always in need of new and better ways of doing the same things. An example of such area is in communication. These includes presentations. Business has to promote itself. Passers by become visitors, who may become customers. A unique tool of these promotions is the internet, and the website in general.” Source: Business Website – 10 Reasons Why Your Business Should Have One
…but I think he didn’t hit the biggest issue hard enough, namely, the ability to publish whatever you want about yourself without having to worry about the cost of printing, etc. One of my favorite cartoons says ‘On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog…‘. I have always taken this to mean that any company can look as good as any other company on the internet regardless of their size…
If you’re looking for a low cost internet presence powered by social media, contact me using the form above or by calling (920) 486-4798. You can also find me lurking on the internet in these places…
…through our partnership with AGCO around ‘socializing’ — using social media to cover — trade shows. Here are some interesting thoughts from Kipp Bodnar on the topic…
“Almost every B2B company invests part of its marketing budget in trade shows. It is one tried and true method of lead generation. The problem with trade shows is that they aren’t cheap, and they are a big line item on the marketing budget. So if your company is making the investment, then it should do everything it can to squeeze out every last drop of value. This need for value, combined with cut travel budgets across all industries, means that the solution to this problem is social media.” Source: 5 Ways To Make Your B2B Trade Show Social | Social Media B2B
Go to the source for the rest of the article. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…
AgWired, the social media voice of the agriculture industry reports that AGCO, one of the world’s largest agricultural equipment manufacturers, is effectively using social media to stimulate sales in a down economy…
AGCO is providing a great example of how to integrate social media and networking into their communications strategy and to learn more about what they’re doing I spoke with Sue Otten, Director, Corporate Communications & Brand Communications Worldwide. In our conversation we talk about why the company has invested in very active social communications channels. Sue says that it’s a great way to “learn” from their customers and target a new demographic too. Source: AgWired » Blog Archives » AGCO Shows How To Go Social
Want to know their secret?
One of the recommendations Sue makes is to not be afraid to get started with social media. She says that there are some great consultants out there who can help you too. I’ll use this opportunity to make a little plug for Todd Lohenry with e1evation, Inc. who has worked with AGCO. Source: AgWired » Blog Archives » AGCO Shows How To Go Social
Their social media effort is powered by e1evation and Envano — straight outta Wisconsin! Using the same free, open source tools that are available to every entrepreneur, AGCO is rocking the ag world using social media. Comment, call or use the contact form to talk about how you, too, can effectively leverage social media for your marketing efforts…
As a father of 6, parental analogies are always close at hand for me. It’s why I sometimes say that clients are like children in that when you see them take the things you teach them and they make it their own and excel, you can’t help but burst with pride. Recently, the AGCO blog was included in the agriculture feed at Alltop, the internet’s best source for news aggregation, becoming the only Farm Equipment manufacturer to do so…
AGCO’s success should rightly be credited to Jamy Johnson, a budding online community manager and social media practitioner who took the time to embrace the ‘e1evation workflow’ and make it her own. Last month, their blog had over 10,000 visits and it’s rapidly becoming a key factor in lifting the corporate website to new heights in search and traffic rankings as well…
Kudos to Jamy’s manager Sue Otten who had the courage to embrace social media in the ag space before ag social media was cool! If Jamy and Sue can rise to the top using “good, fast, and cheap” social media tools for agriculture, imagine what you can do in your industry!
Boasting 90 million users, LinkedIn is one of the social media titans. For business professionals, it has become an essential tool for staying connected to their business network.
But for companies, there’s been little reason to pay attention to their presence there. LinkedIn has been about individuals, not organizations. LinkedIn Companies existed, but offered little in the way of functionality. That has now changed.
In November, LinkedIn quietly introduced an upgrade to LinkedIn Companies that makes it both a critical and powerful tool for managing your company’s digital presence (especially if you market B2B).
Here’s a primer to help you plan and make the most of some of the powerful new features on LinkedIn Companies.
Follow the ‘via’ link if you’d like to know more…
Darren Rowse of ProBlogger has been reading my mail. Or attending my seminars. Or both. Seriously, he does a great job in this video of explaining some of the tactics that I use to drive traffic to my blog…
“Every businessperson leads a busy life. There are marketing meetings to attend, RFPs to reply to, and client projects to finish. With so much work demanding so much attention, many of us never make the time to keep our business relationships alive, and wish we did: ‘What does he do again?’ ‘Does she still work there?’ ‘Didn’t I know someone at that company?’
Rather than regretting not staying connected, pick some of the twelve ideas below and use them to start conversations with people you’ve met before and want to speak with again.”
You might want to also check out the RainToday series on LinkedIn 101.
e1evation, llc announces that Todd Lohenry has been named the interim VP of Marketing, Sales and Technology at Jag, Inc., one of Northeast Wisconsin’s oldest and most trusted names in advertising.
There are two objectives behind the move:
Introduce internal systems and process improvements at Jag, Inc.
Jag, Inc. has already migrated from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps for Business Communications. It is also in the process of implementing a new Content Management System [CMS] website, social media strategy, and Customer Relationship Management [CRM] system to improve both sales and customer service. Todd will manage the business development process and oversee the day to day operations of these systems and their processes which drive business development at Jag, Inc.
Expand the existing product lines of both companies.
Jag, Inc. is already one of the top providers of outdoor, indoor and commercial signs in the State of Wisconsin — President Jane Sweasy is a respected member of the Wisconsin Family Business Forum and the Northeast Wisconsin business community. e1evation, llc is a Google Authorized Solutions Provider, a CMS Website developer, a social media marketer, and a Charter Business representative — owner Todd Lohenry is also a public speaker and teaches the social media certification course at NWTC.
Together e1evation, llc and Jag, Inc. offer a full range of cost effective options that will work together to generate leads for our customers ‘here, there and everywhere’. Moving forward, billing and administration will be handled through Jag, Inc. – please contact Todd Lohenry regarding any transitional business issues…
About Jag, Inc.
“Jag billboards and commercial signs have been getting companies and their products noticed since 1946. As a family-owned business, Jag Outdoor Advertising prides itself on going above and beyond when delivering customer service, ensuring that every Jag customer achieves optimum results while earning a lifetime friend.”
About e1evation, llc
“e1evation, llc [pronounced elevation] is an international consulting firm that helps businesses, non-profits and academic institutions with marketing, sales and technology solutions.”
For Jag, Inc.: Jane Sweasy, President Jag, Inc. 1508 Sunset Avenue Algoma, WI 54201 http://jagoutdoor.com jsweasy@jagoutdoor.com (920) 487-3443 For e1evation, llc: Todd Lohenry, Owner e1evation, llc 305 Steele St., Suite 27 Algoma, WI 54201 http://elevation.company (920) 710-0790 todd@e1evation.com ###
Garry Tan has announced that he is leaving Posterous, the ultra-simplistic microblogging company he helped found in 2008. Tan wrote on his blog today that it was time to move on and that he would be taking an advisory role with the company in order to do what he was most passionate about – work with startups.
“My greatest passions lie with the early stage of building world-changing consumer products,” writes Tan. “To that end, I’ve decided to join the team at Y Combinator as a designer-in-residence and help the dozens of top pre-seed startups in the newest Winter 2011 batch reach their potential through excellent user experience.”
Ruh roh! What does this mean for Posterous? I have been having concerns about the platform for a month or two due to lagging tech support responses and what I interpret as a lack of focus with Posterous groups and now this? Still, Posterous is the best tool in the universe for curating content and autoposting to my WordPress blogs — better than ‘press this’ which really stinks, imho. What now? In the words of the great philosophers .38 Special, “Hold on loosely, but don’t let go. If you cling too tightly, you’re gonna lose your soul”…
There are few people I know that have leveraged the internet more effectively to build their personal brand than ‘Green Bay Greg‘ Dallaire. The video is one that he shot for a client of mine, Tailwind Flight Center, and it demonstrates the quality of the work he’s doing at ‘365 Things to do in Green Bay’ along with Tony Rouse from MindSeed Labs. If you want to know how to use the internet and social media to build your brand you don’t need to look much farther than Greg Dallaire…
Here’s a great presentation on ‘Socialgraphics’ I found online while researching for a speaking engagement tomorrow…
There’s a recording to accompany the preso here.
Every year, I spend hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours reading articles on Internet Marketing for my annual Best Internet Marketing Posts blog post. The effort to find these posts, read them thoroughly, identify whether they meet certain criteria, and categorize them takes an incredibly huge toll on me, but at the end of the day, I’ve been proud to provide regular content to my readers. Over the last five years, hundreds of URLs have been carefully collected and selected for inclusion in this post.
The posts for the last five years are:
- Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010
- Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009
- Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008
- Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2007
- Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2006
Each year, this post has gotten bigger and better, and for my 30th birthday, I offered 300 great links that can most certainly act as the only internet marketing schooling you’ll ever need.
If Tamar says this is the best, I’m all in!
John Jantsch says…
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, social media tools are killer for the small local business trying to drive people offline and into their businesses and to build deeper relationships with existing local customers.
For this episode of Local Color I met Scotty Wise an Indiana restaurateur and owner of Scotty’s Brewhouse that is has his business booming through the use of social media. The key in his case, and I think for any local business, is to move beyond simply building a Facebook page or Twitter feed and to look for ways to deeply integrate social media into everything you are doing.”
I say John rocks and if you’re a small business owner, sit up and pay attention while you watch the video. John goes on to say…
“In the case of Scotty’s Brewhouse, not only do they Tweet and use Facebook, they sponsor events that involve social media, use Foursquare to reward frequent customers and even built iPads into the booths at their newest store to allow existing customers to interact in deeper ways, connect on Twitter, sign up for their eclub and what videos of their meals being prepared. There’s even a Scotty’s iPhone app so you can order ahead, get coupons and learn about special events.”
Hello! Any small business owners listening?
Whenever I present on the topic of ‘practical, tactical social media’ organizational leaders usually like what they hear about social media and how to implement it to build their brands online until they hear that in order to achieve maximum results, they’ll have to post a thought every day for at least three months. The response is usually IMNOTAWRITER. If you’re one of those people, read on…
“Have you ever accidentally slammed your hand in a car door? OUCH!
I think that very unpleasant feeling can be compared to how some small business owners feel about blogging. Until very recently, I would never have published anything on the Internet because I have never considered myself a writer.
Well, that all changed when I purchased my small business and suddenly I was forced to start producing content so that I could try to rank in Google, educate customers, and develop my backstory.
However, even though I started producing content, I still suffered from the inferiority complex that can only be associated with IMNOTAWRITER syndrome.
This syndrome, I’ve found, can be deadly to your small business blogging and it can cause countless hours of wasted time and frustration.
Plus, telling yourself, IMNOTAWRITER, is a very easy and convenient excuse not to blog, isn’t it?” Source: How to Blog When You’re Not a Writer
You can go to the source if you want to read more, but what amazes me is the number of organization leaders that have time to write the same emails over and over, but don’t understand how much more efficient they could be and how many more people they could attract by posting the same email content on a blog and then sending the link to the post to their correspondents! Not only would it save them time, but also drive traffic to their sites. Fine, they say, but they don’t want to learn new technology to update their sites. For those people in particular, I allow all the sites I create to be updated via email — a skill which even the most technophobic organizational leader has mastered at this point. Now what’s your excuse? Please comment!
“Small town people are carrying smartphones, playing location based games, and using Facebook even while out of the house. Visitors and travelers are using Google Local to find businesses in even the smallest of towns. Travelers and locals review small town businesses on sites like Yelp and Urban Spoon. All of this is happening now. Smart small town businesses are taking advantage of this, and 2011 should see more businesses in small towns offering coupons and deals through the established players like Google and Facebook. Mobile-friendly information and QR Codes will pop up, even in remote locations.” and “The wave of global outsourcing may have crested, and small town business can benefit by capturing more of these jobs through ruralsourcing. Rural service firms claim a number of advantages over global firms: shorter supply chains, better data security, intellectual property protection, cultural compatibility, and convenient time zones. Costs are lower than traditional urban firms, reflecting the lower rural cost of living. Those small town companies capable of partnering with large corporate clients stand to gain new business throughout 2011.” Go to the source to read the article: smallbiztrends.com
Smart rural economic development corporations, government leaders and business owners will pay heed and e1evation, llc can help navigate the technology issues. ‘Connect with me’ to discuss how this applies to your organization…
Bright, shiny objects! 
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