Personal Branding Advice from Dan Schawbel

Personal Branding Advice from Dan Schawbel

I recently interviewed Dan Schawbel on my podcast show. Dan is the best selling author of Me 2.0 and widely recognized as an expert in personal branding. Dan is also Managing Partner of Millennial Branding.

Me 2.0

In his book, Me 2.0, Dan offers a four step personal branding process: Discover, Create, Communicate, Maintain. Whether developing a brand for a company or individual, it’s all about figuring out who you are and what you represent before you can create your online presence. Dan stresses the importance of setting goals and developing a personal brand plan where you communicate through online media, network and constantly work at maintaining your reputation. You must be involved in relevant conversations. As you grow, your brand must grow along with you.

Social Media Position

Dan worked at EMC for about a year. He met fifteen people over eight months to get his job at EMC. Dan had created a blog on personal branding. Fast Company wrote about him. Google invited Dan to speak at their headquarters. Once he built his personal brand, and EMC created the social media position, Dan was the obvious choice for the position.  Dan’s success from his book and media engagements snowballed his career as a personal branding expert.

Twitter as a Communication Channel

Dan used to use to his Twitter profile as a marketing platform. People would often retweet his content. He noticed that as his followers increased, engagement decreased. He likens Twitter to a public forum where everyone has a level playing field.  But, Twitter allows you to move people to other forms of online relationships such as email, or a phonecall or in person.  Now, Dan uses Twitter it as a communication channel. But, he’s now investing more of his time in Facebook. Dan also has a popular LinkedIn group on personal branding.

Native Strengths of Online Channels

Dan recommends the use of each online channel in relevant ways, and to bring people back to your blog. Depending on your goals, Dan suggests you figure out your marketing funnel. Take people through the online touch points where they can get exposed to your products or services in ways that meet your goals. To emphasize this point, I borrow from Wayne Gretzky; “skate to the where the puck is going.”

Digital Immigrants

Those of us born before 1985 are digital immigrants. The public Internet as we know it was created during our lifetime. On the other hand, digital natives grew up using the Internet. For digital immigrants, we must figure out which tools work best to build our personal brand. We must be willing to experiment over the span of months. It’s a huge process. There is no simple answer. There must be a mindset shift to leverage both the technology and cultural evolution of the Internet for personal branding value.

Personal Brand Example

I asked Dan for a good example of personal branding. He told me the story of Joel Backaler, who is an American fluent in Chinese. He developed a blog called TheChinaObserver.com. His focus on China has earned him recognition from The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BusinessWeek and other prominent media outlets. His career has taken off as a result of his focus and content on China.  Dan makes the point that small opportunities often lead to larger opportunities. But, the hardest thing to do is to get the first hit.

Millennial Branding

Dan’s Millennial Branding consultancy is his attempt to create a personal branding world with four integrated business divisions.  The Media division includes blogs, a magazine, online television and a newsletter. The Consulting division helps individuals and companies build their personal brand.  The Community division is all about building his community by connecting with people online on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. And, the Education division produces books, conferences, webinars, etc. Despite the name of his company, Dan acknowledges that most of his clients are not millennial, but rather people and brands beyond the millennial phase in search of a personal branding strategy.

How do you mix personal and company branding?

My good friend Chuck Palm asked me to ask Dan this question. Dan’s advice is to build your name before your company name if possible. If you already have a company, then build both at the same time by connecting the two together. When people think of you, they can think of your company.  For example, ChuckPalm.com is synonymous with IPN.

Me 2.0 Second Edition

In October Dan is releasing the second edition of Me 2.0. It will contain another chapter called: Social Networking for Job Seekers. It will provide a step by step plan for job seekers to build their personal brand using social networking.  This is a topic which is very near and dear to me, as I am speaking and delivering education on this topic.

My podcast interview with Dan has more on personal branding. Just click the play button above, or listen to it in iTunes.

You can connect to Dan Shawbel and visit him at his various online properties including:  DanShawbel.com and MillenialBranding.com.

What are you doing to build your personal brand? Share your story in the comments below.

Social Media Marketing for Chiropractors

Social Media Marketing for Chiropractors

Dr. Patrick MacNamara is a licensed chiropractor.  In this podcast, Dr. Mac shares how his chiropractic education didn’t prepare him for the business world. Early in his practice, he struggled with marketing.  He learned about Affordable Management Consulting, aka, AMC. He hired them and his practice exploded. Eventually, AMC asked him to join them to help other chiropractors explode their business. Dr. Mac was inspired by a report from Richard Telofski.  It said that less than 1% of chiropractors blogged. And, only one third of them were effectively using their blog to grow their practice.  That’s when Dr. Mac realized that chiropractors needed help with their social media strategy.  He began studying social media by following podcasters and bloggers like me and others. He read my book, Marketing 2.0, and has been a loyal listener of my podcasts since the beginning. He launched his Next Generation Chiropractor blog in April 2009. His blog targets the next generation of chiropractors, comprised of those just coming out of school that will more likely embrace marketing 2.0. Dr. Mac is also active on Twitter.

One-to-Many Effect

Dr. Mac fell in love with the idea of helping the chiropractic profession. Dr. Todd Osborne inspired him when he said that when you treat patients, you can only impact the patients you treat. But, by teaching chiropractors to market themselves more effectively he can impact more patients than he could ever impact in his own practice. It’s a one-to-many, rather than one-to-one effect.

Marketing to the New Generation of Chiropractors

As chiropractors have become more aware of social media, they are finding Dr. Mac through his blog. But, there’s a long way to go. The new generation of chiropractors spend more time online than more established chiropractors.  He’s trying to bridge the gap between the traditional marketing mindset and the new marketing mindset for chiropractors. His blog is the primary bridge for Dr. Mac. He quickly points out that the marketing that worked in the past for chiropractors (Yellow pages, direct mail) doesn’t work as well anymore. Dr. Mac has stepped up to the plate to help other chiropractors make the transition to Marketing 2.0.

Those Who Get It Never Go Back

Dr. Mac shows empathy for his peers in chiropractic care. He views his role as helping them expand the way they think. Once they expand their thinking, they can never go back to the previous way of thinking. The mindset shift for chiropractors is imperative. Dr. Mac does 4 to 6 hour presentations on how to market a chiropractic practice, then provides a webcast version as a follow up resource. He’s also available as a resource to chiropractors to answer questions.  The chiropractors that embrace the new marketing mindset come to understand it takes work and commitment. Many chiropractors have seen other chiropractors succeeding with inbound marketing, which inspires them to keep at it.

Success Stories

Dr. Jon Heins was one of the first that interacted with Dr. Mac on his blog. He developed his blog and within about three months he experienced a 20% increase in his business by sharing his blog content and using his Twitter account to engage with the local community. He followed all of Dr. Mac’s advice including techniques such as using hashtags and creating SEO friendly blog content.  He has moved full speed ahead down the Marketing 2.0 road.

Dr. Todd Sullivan is found online primarily through his blog. He has worked hard at consistently creating content, and being a good listener. He’s a young chiropractor, just five years out of school. So, the Internet is native to him. He also uses video marketing. His organic SEO works well from his online press releases and article marketing. His number one source of patients is referrals from medical doctors. His second highest source of new patients is from his blog, i.e., his inbound marketing strategy. His patients are likely to share his content and spread the word because so many of them are online.

After doing a presentation in 2009, Dr. Mac was approached by a chiropractor who said he didn’t fully understand all the Marketing 2.0 techniques. But, he was slowly implementing a strategy through his Facebook fan page. He had already experienced an influx of college students coming in from Facebook. It turns out his office is located across the street from a college campus. Traditional marketing wasn’t bringing in college students. But, his Facebook fan page brought the college students in the front door.

Dr. Mac’s Advice for Chiropractors

Dr. Mac advises chiropractors to develop a strong presence online. Get out of the 1.0 web world. Become interactive through a content hub starting with a blog. Share your blog content through other channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Identify the demographics you target.  Refine your content to appeal to the niche of your target demographics, e.g., young patients, older patients, etc.

Dr. Mac quotes Steven Covey: “Technology is a wonderful slave, but a horrible master.” Dr. Mac’s purpose at his Next Generation Chiropractor blog is to train chiropractors how to use this wonderful technology available at our fingertips to increase their practice in order to use it to treat more patients.

I hope you’ll listen to the entire podcast recording above. Just click the play button, or subscribe to my podcast in iTunes. Dr. Mac received insights and inspiration in part from my book, Marketing 2.0 and my podcasts. I am very humbled by that. If his story inspires you, let me know in the comments section.

14 Social Media Risk Factors to Avoid

14 Social Media Risk Factors to Avoid

I recently gave a presentation at Tech Summit that was very well received. Here is a link to my slides for this presentation. Additionally, I recorded a podcast to share it with you. Below are the highlights with more detail covered in the podcast.

Social Media is Mainstream
Businesses are jumping in with both feet. But, there are risks in social media marketing.  You should know what they are and how to minimize these risks. Here is a list of 14 of the top risks.

No Strategy
When a business says let’s just dive into social with no objective and no strategy, that’s a big risk. You can expect limited or poor results, if any.

Wrong Strategy
If sales improvement is your goal but you have product problems, maybe your strategy should be improved customer service. Align your social media strategy with the current circumstances in your business.

Lack of Executive Support
If you want to achieve any social media success, executive support is a must. Otherwise, it will be a skunkworks project. Some companies can pull this off, but not many.

Wrong Staff
The staff must embrace social media. If they are resistant it could undermine your social media strategy. Assess if the current staff has what it take to engage in social media.

Not Measuring Progress
It’s important to measure progress.  For example, measure customer successes, downloads, comments, reach, subscriptions, etc. These can be “first downs” along the way to scoring touch downs (results).

Measuring the Wrong Stuff
What and how you measure depends on your objectives. If improving customer service is an objective, then measuring growth of fans on Facebook is only important if they are existing customers. Set measurement strategies that align with your objectives.

Not Using Available Tools
Measuring progress and results can be achieved through many available tools. Some are free and some are fee based. Here is a partial list of tools to measure your social media progress and results:  HubSpot, Website Grader, Twitter Grader, Facebook Grader, Facebook Insights, Unilyzer, Raven, Hootsuite, SocialOomph, Manage Flitter, Google Alerts, Google Trends, Social Mention.

Unwilling to Experiment
You must be willing to try different ideas. That’s why executive support is so important. If you don’t experiment, you won’t know what is effective.

Expecting Overnight Results
Results vary according to a business, industry, people, and circumstances. Set expectations with executive management that results usually don’t happen overnight.

Trying to Maintain Control
We have little or no control over of our markets. We can influence our markets, but we can’t control them. You can build your reputation but you can’t control it in social media. I offer two examples in the podcast of brands who tried and failed to control their community.

Employee Abuse
All employers have this risk, but large employers have more risk just based on the numbers. In the podcast I describe the experience of employee abuse at Domino’s Pizza in 2009.

Responding Slowly to the Community
The social web is 24/7/365. We now live in a world where we must respond in minutes, not hours, days or weeks. In the podcast I provide an example of how Comcast has done this successfully.

Shorting the Effort
Not applying enough resources. If a new social media strategy is added to someone’s job, in the beginning it may make sense but as it evolves you’ll need to allocate more resources to be successful. Don’t under resource your social media marketing plan.

Underestimating the Influence of One Person
United Airlines learned this lesson the hard way. Band leader Dave Caroll wrote a song and produced a video viewed over 8 million times on YouTube when United Airlines ignored his complaints due to mishandled luggage which broke his guitar.

These are 14 of the most common risks in social media marketing. The way to minimize your risk is to have a well defined strategy, get executive support, allocate resources, get the right people, be responsive in a timely manner, be willing to experiment and use tools to measure progress and results.

Do you have any other risk factors to add to this list?

BTW, I cover this topic in my book, Marketing 2.0. Have you picked up your copy?

Book Bernie Borges for Your Next Event

Book Bernie Borges for Your Next Event

Thanks for considering me as a marketing speaker at your event. I’m truly humbled. I thoroughly enjoy speaking to a business audience that wants to hear from someone like me.

My presentation style is very down to earth. I always prepare my marketing presentations for my audience. You and your audience will know that I’ve done my homework to make my marketing presentation relevant and interesting for your group.

Choose Your Event Style

I can speak to a private group in an auditorium or workshop manner. We can work together on a format that will meet the needs of your group.

Whether you’re looking for education, strategy, vision or a workshop on Internet marketing and social media topics we can put our heads together to develop a content plan that will leave your audience satisfied. This partial list of testimonials will offer some insight into my speaking credentials.

The best way to get together on this is to provide me insight into your event so I can give you an intelligent response to your inquiry in a timely manner.

Please answer a few short questions, to get the ball rolling. But, don’t worry, there is no obligation until we both agree we have a match between your event and my speaking qualifications.

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Bernie is also available for Live Webinars, Podcasts, Video Tutorials
as well as Training Session Material.

A Step-by-Step Social Media Business Development Plan

David Carothers, Marketing 2.0 Maven

David Carothers is a risk management advisor at Praxiom, a two year old risk management consulting firm. In this podcast interview, David shares how he developed a step-by-step social media business development plan.

Praxiom helps companies save money and reduce risk through business insurance products. My inbound marketing agency is a Praxiom client. David purchased my book, Marketing 2.0, last summer and got inspired to start his social media business development plan (though originally under the cover of darkness) right away. David used my book as a roadmap for his social media plan. But, he purposely didn’t tell anyone at his firm about it. He knew that social media marketing would be met with skepticism, so he worked his plan until he was able to point to tangible business development results. Once he captured new clients from his social media plan, he unveiled it to his colleagues at Praxiom. David had quickly observed that people who use social media are either very successful if they are committed to it, or not successful if they are half hearted about it. So, David decided to go full speed with a social media marketing strategy using the principles he read in my book. David knew he would be bucking the paradigm of traditional outbound marketing strategies commonly used in the risk management industry, which he characterizes as a lot of “dialing for dollars” to create a wide funnel of leads.

A Step-by-Step Social Media Business Development Plan

In early 2010, David set up a step-by-step social media business development plan for other risk management advisors at Praxiom. His plan starts with the basic mandate that everyone’s LinkedIn profile must be built out 100% following the LinkedIn meter. He points out that it’s important for all relevant content assets to be listed in your LinkedIn profile and up to date. In David’s case, he links his LinkedIn profile to his blog and his Slideshare account.

Professional and Social Credibility

David focused his social media business development plan on building two aspects of a client relationship – professional credibility and social credibility. LinkedIn is the platform to build professional credibility along with his blog. David is not a technology guy. So, when he decided to start blogging, he went to Google and searched “how do I build a blog?” David found Hubpages to build a blog. David finds blogging therapeutic. He enjoys sharing very valuable info with his network through his blog. Some of his content is about insurance and some of his content is about non-industry business topics such as how to do business development through LinkedIn.

David also builds social credibility through Facebook. He connects with clients and friends and shares both personal aspects of his life and business content. He opens up the personal aspect for clients to get to know him. He often hosts after hours networking events just to socialize with people and build personal relationships. He uses the Praxiom Facebook fan page to engage with more content at a business level and with photos to add a human aspect.

Content Sharing Strategy

David produces content that helps him build his professional credibility and his social credibility. He uses his Twitter account as a tool to help him spread his content. He views Twitter as the gasoline that drives the engine. Through Twitter management tools he selectively posts content to all his social media accounts. He also shares content from other blogs and tweets about his client’s industry topics, and about general business topics. He understands that by sharing non-industry business content, he gains confidence from clients about his business acumen. Once in a while he tweets a self promoting piece of content. He measures the click through on the content he tweets to help him understand what content people are responding to.

He’s At it Everyday

David is active in his social media accounts every day, multiple times per day. He has built the infrastructure. Now he’s driving the car. The results have exceeded his expectations. When John Keller joined Praxiom, David put him through the step-by-step social media plan. John would arrive each day at 7:30am to get ready for the day.  Six weeks later he had become very active in LinkedIn, blogging, using Twitter, etc. But, he was very discouraged because he didn’t see any results. David advised him to be patient, promising that good results will happen soon.  The same day David offered that advice, John forwarded an email to David. Someone had emailed John asking him to consult for their business on worker’s compensation based on one of his blog posts. This was proof positive of building professional credibility and winning new business. John flew to Atlanta and landed the account for $2.7M in workers comp premiums which translates to over $100k in revenue to Praxiom. Pretty good ROI!

David’s Advice

David doesn’t mince words. He says “either you’re in or not. Don’t do it half hearted. If you’re not 100% in, you won’t see results. If you are, keep at it and you will see results. Once it kicks in, you’ll see the momentum build and ongoing results as you keep at it.”

While I observe some aspects of David’s social media business development plan he could do differently, in the grand scheme of it all it doesn’t matter. Social media marketing isn’t about being perfect. It’s about doing it 100% with commitment and sincerity. As David says, it’s about “building professional and social credibility.” The results will be there.

I encourage you to listen to the 20 minute podcast interview. Just click the play button above. Be sure to subscribe to my podcasts in iTunes.

If you want to learn how you can build professional and social credibility through Facebook or Twitter consider attending one of my Facebook for Marketers or Twitter for Marketers workshops.

Inbound Marketing Is All About Leverage

Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Survey

HubSpot recently released a report on the State of Inbound Lead Generation. The report is a result of interviews with more than 1,400 HubSpot customers who are mostly small and mid size businesses. A webinar delivered by Rick Burnes and Sophie Schmitt of HubSpot summarized the findings.

The findings are very interesting and very compelling especially for businesses who are either still sitting on the sidelines or are flat out skeptics of inbound marketing. I find that overwhelmingly those businesses who don’t buy into the inbound marketing mindset haven’t allowed themselves to break out of a decades-old paradigm. But, the earth is shifting and marketers simply can’t ignore the facts especially as more facts become available such as those in this report from HubSpot.

Critics of this research may say that the companies interviewed are users of the HubSpot inbound marketing software. Of course! You wouldn’t survey people sun bathing on a beach about their winter vacation habits and expect that data to be of high integrity.

HubSpot has built a customer base of more than 2,500 customers. While the degree to which each customer is using the full gamut of inbound marketing strategies to include SEO, blogging, social networking and generally a strong content marketing mindset may vary, the common denominator is they buy into the fact inbound marketing can effectively produce leads.

So, here are some of the most compelling findings from this report.

The More Google Indexed Web Pages the More Leads Produced

Businesses with 60 to 120 Google indexed pages produced a median of 7 leads per month. Those with 176 to 310 Google indexed pages produced a median of 22 leads per month. Those with 311 + Google indexed pages produced a median of 74 leads per month. This triple digit growth is achievable through a bonafide, committed, consistent blog strategy.

Business Who Blog Produce More Leads

As stated above businesses with more Google indexed web pages produce more leads. The most practical way to increase indexed page count is by having a blog connected to your website. This chart shows that companies who blog produce more leads.

Blog Size Matters
The survey proved that having a blog alone doesn’t move the needle. The more content the better. The data suggests that fewer than 10 blog posts didn’t make a difference in lead generation. But, more than 20 blog posts demonstrated more leads from those surveyed.

Twitter Matters in B2C
B2C businesses who use Twitter produce twice as many leads as those who don’t use Twitter. Though this research doesn’t account for B2B businesses on Twitter I’m a fan of Twitter due to the reach it can provide and ability to spread your content. For example, in addition to my personal Twitter account, Find and Convert also has a Twitter account.

More Keywords Ranking in Top 100 Produce More Leads

This data point proves two myths wrong. Myth #1 is that many businesses think the only ranking that matters is for a small number of keywords which typically represent their core business. Sometimes it’s just one keyword phrase. Myth #2 is that the only rank that matters is page 1. Of course, we all want to rank #1 on page 1. But, this data shows that businesses who have dozens of keywords ranking in the top 100 rankings get more leads. This translates to having dozens of keywords that rank across the first 10 pages of Google. The way to look at this is like a diversified portfolio of assets. The value is in the total portfolio, not any one asset. Having dozens of relevant longtail keywords that rank in the first 10 pages of Google will produce more leads.  These two myths are shattered in the chart below.

It’s All About Leverage

This webinar concluded with the concept of leverage. Inbound marketing allows a company to leverage content assets online to produce connections with people who have interest in your company’s products. Ignoring this leverage opportunity is very risky in a marketing economy where established competitors can surpass you with inbound marketing strategies quickly. Worse yet, newer nimble and inbound marketing savvy competitors can come out of seemingly nowhere and eat your lunch.

Get on the inbound marketing bandwagon. A good place to start is with my book, Marketing 2.0 . I wrote Marketing 2.0 for executives and their staff looking for a basic understanding of how social media and inbound marketing strategies can bridge the gap between sellers and buyers. Mike Volpe, V.P. Inbound Marketing at HubSpot wrote the foreword of my book. Those who’ve read it say it provides a good primer to get started. Check out the reviews.

Allow me to give a plug for the fact my inbound marketing agency is a certified HubSpot partner. We can help you get started producing more leads through inbound marketing or take it to the next level.

Unconventional Marketing by Nadine M Rosin

Happy New Decade!

As I kick off a new year with my podcasts I want to reiterate the mission of my podcasts.

I seek to bring you interesting people that are doing interesting things in marketing in order to share their experiences with marketers around the world for education and inspiration.

My first podcast guest in the new decade is Nadine M. Rosin. Nadine is an unconventional person in several ways. It’s her unconventional approach to life and marketing that offers great inspiration. Nadine is a certified therapeutic body worker and a non-denominational minister who performs weddings in Tucson. Nadine is the author of a book titled The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood. The book was inspired by the loss of her dog Buttons. Buttons was diagnosed with cancer when she was 8 years old and was given just 6 weeks to live. That’s when Nadine got unconventional…

An Unconventional Person
Nadine is less likely than most people to accept the conventional way of doing things. She subscribes to the cliché “necessity is the mother of invention.” When the veterinarian gave her dog Buttons 6 weeks to live, Nadine sought and found the causes of the cancer. Rather than deal with the symptoms, Nadine took a holistic approach to Buttons’ cancer. Over the next four months Nadine cleared out all toxins in her home. Essentially, she cleansed Buttons’ environment inside and outside and strengthened her body nutritionally so her dog’s body would heal itself. It worked. Buttons lived another 11 years and died of natural causes at age 19.

The Marketing Lesson in Mourning
Nadine observed that people (especially in the U.S.) are encouraged to keep sorrowful emotions bottled up. She points out that it’s not healthy to hide these powerful emotions. It’s not how we heal. An example Nadine offers is how during President Reagan’s funeral the esteemed media praised Nancy Reagan for not showing her grief in public. It’s a normal human emotion to mourn over the death of a loved one. It’s authentic and healthy to grieve. Grieving gives us a healing process.

What does this have to do with marketing you ask? Good question. Keep reading…

Create Content About Which You’re Passionate
The experience Nadine had with her own pet coupled with the observations of how people need to grieve even after they lose a pet, inspired Nadine’s book. Her book helps “pet parents” to grieve and heal after the loss of their pets.

Nadine never had a budget to market her book. She doesn’t have a warehouse of books to send out for promotion. But, Nadine does have a warehouse full of passion. She started her marketing plan with a 3 minute video, which serves as a trailer about the book which she posted on YouTube. Then, she searched for videos on YouTube for “pet memorial” and found people offering tributes to a pet which had recently died. Nadine would leave a short, authentic and sympathetic comment in her handle: authorgirlpetparent with a link to her video. Many people would click on her video and find her book and buy it. Eventually, many people came back to her video to comment on how helpful the book was to them in their healing process over their pet loss.

Shoestring Marketing

Nadine designed her website herself with no prior experience. She just learned how to do it. She found and visited online pet social sites to find conversations with people about their pets and engaged them. Two such sites include Dogster and  DoggySpace. The people she encountered on these pet social sites actually speak in the persona of their pet.  She started making friends on all these social sites and establishing her brand in her own persona of Authorgirlpetparent. This marketing strategy cost no money. It did “cost” her about 6 hours each day after work, which she admits flies by because she is so passionate about the topic and her online relationship building. One such online connection got her an invitation to be flown to an event where she was the keynote speaker.

Nadine is very focused on the details of her online relationship details. She sends a personalized direct message (DM) to every new follower on Twitter and Facebook. She also gives free help to other pet parents who have holistic questions. She offers a 30-minute one-on-one consultation. No one is turned away who can’t afford one.

Marketing 2.0 at Work

Nadine’s content marketing and relationship building strategy is intuitively exactly as I wrote in my book, Marketing 2.0. Nadine has developed a content marketing strategy and prioritizes the connections she makes online with people on pet social sites and through Facebook and Twitter. Nadine also blogs regularly on her pet parenthood blog and accepts, speaking engagements where ever possible.

Experiential Marketing
Nadine is creating experiences with people when she connects with them. She shares her own personal experience through her story about her deceased dog Buttons. For example, someone on Facebook contacted Nadine about a friend who had just lost a pet. This person posted Nadine’s video on her friend’s profile. This person turned out to be Yvonne DiVita an active social media expert who supports women in business and pet owners (pet parents). Yvonne bought and read Nadine’s book.  She contacted Nadine to help her market it. She offered Nadine valuable social media advice to accelerate her social media marketing on Twitter and Facebook.

Results in Motion
When I asked Nadine how she measures results, I could tell she was a little uncomfortable with this topic. As an author of a book, I understand that conventional results measurement is all about measuring book sales. But, until Nadine’s book sales gets into in six figures, she won’t be excited measuring that result. So she ignores the numbers. Instead Nadine measures the results in motion, which includes:

What kind of emails is she getting from readers?
How much are other people trying to connect and help Nadine?
What’s the value of her new connections?
Do her connections offer value that can contribute to book sales in the future?

There Are Many Inches in a Mile
The unconventional path to book sales for Nadine wasn’t so unconventional after all. Nadine figured it out as she went along. Her passion and commitment combined with her authentic approach to connecting with people has allowed her to learn successful marketing strategies as she experimented with them.

Nadine is measuring milestones. As I state in my book, marketers can measure the outcome of relationships developed online. These milestones are stepping stones to end results. You don’t get from an inch to a mile in one step.  It’s ok to measure the inches you achieve on your way to the mile.

One small example of measuring inches for Nadine is the way we met. I found Nadine when she was featured in a newsletter article put out by our mutual publisher, Wheatmark Publishing. I was impressed by her story so I contacted her to to be a guest on my podcast. Who knows what doors may open from this podcast interview.

I hope Nadine’s story as a pet parent and as a marketer inspire you in some way. I invite you to learn more about Nadine and her book here. I’m sure Nadine would enjoy connecting with you, to share common interests in marketing or pet parenting.

Bernie Borges
@berniebay

P.S. To learn more about developing content marketing strategies like Nadine’s check out my book, Marketing 2.0.

Psychotherapist a Self Taught Inbound Marketer

Ken Donaldson has a very unique vocation.  He is a licensed mental health counselor, aka a psychotherapist. Ken also calls himself a life coach and a relationship coach. Ken has been in private practice for sixteen years. While Ken is a psychotherapist by vocation has had to become a marketer. Here’s his story. The podcast interview has the whole story…

When Ken first got started in his profession, he expected it to be much easier to develop his practice. He created about 1000 business cards and waited for the phone to ring.  But the phone didn’t ring. He quickly realized developing his practice would require marketing.  So, he started speaking. That was a good start because when Ken spoke to a roomful of people he created more exposure for himself. His speaking gigs usually produced some client referrals and more speaking gigs. Ken eventually realized he had a business. So, he set out to learn how to grow and run a business.

Ken started educating himself on how to run a business by attending workshops, reading books, blogs and websites on marketing. While Ken doesn’t consider himself an aggressive marketer, he realizes that compared to most of his colleagues in his profession, he is like a Chris Brogan.

Marry Yourself First

Ken is the author of a best selling book: Marry Yourself First. His book is a compilation of “the best of his best advice” for people to live extraordinary lives.  His book offers 24 key life principles that give people success. Ken’s strategy is to market his book as a way of marketing Ken Donaldson. And vice versa. He has two websites. His primary website is Ken Donaldson.  And, his Marry Yourself First website promotes his book.

Video Marketing

When Ken first developed his website he was advised that it needed audio. So he added audio. Then he was told he needed video. So he added video. He learned that it wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. He also created a small website called Ask Ken Donaldson. Ken creates short video responses to the questions he receives. Then, he posts them on YouTube and on his website. He currently has nearly 90 videos. Ken’s content marketing strategy is to produce free advice and give it away through his websites, his blog, Facebook and Twitter with video as a primary form of content delivery.

Location, Location, Location.

As the old saying goes in real estate, Ken has learned that in marketing it’s content, content, content. Ken’s strategy is to give his best in 3 to 5 minutes. He produces content that delivers on the 3 E’s reaching people who are interested in his content. Ken’s videos are very authentic and human. For example, during a vacation in Utah he created some video with beautiful scenery. It was totally unscripted, raw video because it was so casual with some good advice from Ken.

Trading Dollars for Hours No More

Ken’s practice is doing well. His content marketing strategy effectively drives clients to his practice. In 2009 he got more clients from the internet than ever before in his sixteen years. He attributes his success to being more visible, more available and more downloadable.  He eventually plans to “trade dollars for hours.” He’s already started producing premium content through his 5 CD program and has more plans for more premium content.

Ken’s brand is growing and his business is thriving. I feel strongly that these content marketing, inbound marketing strategies apply equally to all business of all sizes across all industries.

In addition to the website links for Ken above, you can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter. He’s a good example of a niche marketer having fun while enjoying success.

If you want to learn more about content marketing strategies, check out my book Marketing 2.0.

@berniebay

Measuring Results in Social Media Marketing

This blog post an updated excerpt from my book, Marketing 2.0.

Measuring results is one of my favorite topics in marketing. Since the invention of marketing (I couldn’t find that date in Wikipedia), executives have wanted to measure the effectiveness of marketing dollars against sales in order to determine their return on investment, or ROI.

The reality is that in recent years, measuring marketing results, at least at the quantitative level, has become increasing sophisticated through tools and techniques. In addition to quantitative metrics, measuring qualitative results can be just as valuable.

Social media marketing measurement is very similar to measuring other web marketing results. First I’ll review the tools you can use. Then, I’ll offer ways you can use them to measure social media marketing results.

Conventional Wisdom

Let’s start with a look at the conventional web marketing metrics tools, beginning with some free tools. You may be familiar with some or all of these tools. As obvious as they are to me, I often meet marketers who are not harnessing them to their full potential.

Google Analytics—a free web analytics service that provides website owners valuable insight into website traffic details including visitors, sources of visitor traffic, pages visited, time spent on your website, keywords driving website traffic, geographic location of visitors, conversions based on a predefined goals, and much more.

Google Webmaster Tools—another set of free and powerful tools from Google providing another level of detail in studying traffic data for your website as well as keyword click-throughs and inbound links.

Google Alerts—another free service that will alert you by email or to your RSS reader each time Google finds a relevant result for a topic you’ve set up to track.

Google Blogsearch—a free search engine subset of Google’s search engine geared to display blog posts. When you search on a phrase, Google displays recent blog posts for that phrase.

Social Media Measurement Tools

As social media marketing has exploded, so has the landscape of tools and services designed to help companies measure and optimize their results. I’ll start with a partial list of free social media measuring tools. Note most free tools offer fee-based premium versions as well.

Blogpulse—a service from Nielsen Buzzmetrics that acts as both a blog search engine and blog tracker. Bloggers can track conversations taking place about topics of interest, as well as discover where their blog ranks in relation to others covering similar topics.

Trendpedia—a free service that functions mostly as a blog search engine. Its main feature involves helping people find the most popular trends in social media across a variety of topics and tracking the trend of the topic over a three-month period in comparison to other relevant topics.

Trendrr—a free service that adds a real sense of analytical measurement through its use of trending graphs. Trendrr lets anyone track, compare, and share trends on any topic across blogs and other social media.

Technorati—a free service that functions as an Internet search engine for blogs. You can track your blog content in Technorati.

Twitter Search – Whether or not your have a Twitter account, you can use Twitter’s search engine. Marketers should search relevant keywords to learn about conversations about their brand on Twitter.

The free tools listed above are a partial list of many tools available to track your content results. I encourage you to use as many tools as practical to measure and track your social media marketing results on an ongoing basis.

Staying on Course

However, tracking the reach of your content in social media is just a part of the measuring results secret sauce. You also need to gain insights so you can measure your progress and take action. A metaphor comes to mind. Social media marketing is like flying an airplane. The sophisticated cockpit constantly calculates the extent to which the plan has shifted from its course route and makes the necessary adjustment to get the plane back on its course. In social media marketing, you must similarly be tracking and interpreting in order to know when and how much you must adjust your content strategy and your tactics to stay on course.

In addition to the free tools listed above, there is an ever-growing list of fee-based tools to measure social media results. I will only list two because these are the two we use at Find and Convert and therefore I’m most familiar with them. Again, there are many other good tools available and you should do your own homework.

HubSpot – an inbound marketing software as a service (SaaS). HubSpot allows marketers to track keyword rankings, competitor’s web marketing presence, traffic analysis, leads and lead intelligence. Recently, HubSpot added social media tracking features allowing marketers to track the impact of social media on your desired goals (such as sales leads). In the screenshot below you can see the emerging impact of social media traffic.

ScoutLabs – a social media tracking tool that allows marketers to track mentions in blogs, bookmarking sites, Twitter, photos, video and more. We like the ability to track sentiment of keywords and the ability to chart trends. Below is a short video interview with Jennifer Zeszut, CEO of ScoutLabs.

Measuring Quantitative Results
There are many factors you can measure in your social media strategy. First, make sure you have clearly defined goals. Otherwise your metrics will not be meaningful and you won’t be able to measure success. Here are some quantitative metrics you can measure.

Subscribers – watch the subscriber count to your blog(s) and newsletter grow.

Followers – watch the number of followers on Twitter or Facebook grow as well any groups or communities your create.

Mentions – track the mentions of your brand and relevant keywords to learn about conversations and decide which conversations you should engage.

Sentiment – track the sentiment of your keywords to determine what (if any) changes you should consider in your content strategy and in the tactics you use. A negative trend on a topic may give you cause to back away from that topic or to change your approach to it.

Inbound Links – links are the currency of the web. Track the number of links you’re building and where they are coming from.

Comments – study the comments being made on your blog or your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Comments could give you reason to engage or add more content on a topic of high interest.

Connections – one of the greatest and measurable factors in social media marketing is the new doors that can open up. New connections can result in speaking opportunities, media interviews, guest blog or publication articles, key introductions and new sales opportunities.

Brand Equity – all businesses should care about brand equity. It’s not limited to large companies. Using any combination of tools described above you should study the trends in your brand. Is your company name a growing keyword driver of traffic to your website? If the trends are positive, correlate that to your sales results. If you have employees with a strong social media presence include them in your brand equity study. The relationship between your employees and your brand is tied more tightly than ever before. Take Mike Volpe as an example. His blogging, speaking, podcasting and overall content creation on the web has a positive impact on HubSpot, his employer. And, btw, both Mike Volpe (the brand) and HubSpot (the brand) benefit from his efforts.

It Takes Work!
If you’re thinking, man this sounds like a lot of work, you’re not only right, you’re onto something big! Measuring results properly is not just hard work. It’s time consuming. So, where are you going to get all this time? By eliminating non-performing marketing activities! Measure all your marketing activities. If you have losers in your marketing mix (assuming you’ve been at it more than six months) scale them back or eliminate them. Many marketers report cutting back on marketing activities such as direct mail and tradeshows after measuring success in their social media strategy. BTW, attending a tradeshow can be just as effective as exhibiting at a tradeshow at a fraction of the cost. While you’re at the tradeshow you should be posting to Twitter about the people you’re meeting and the content you’re enjoying, taking pictures and shooting video interviews with industry people and posting all this content on the web to keep building your footprint on the web. Of course when you tag this content you’ll create links and build more brand equity. And, you can measure that…

To measure your social media marketing results keep at it and measure. Keep at it. Measure. Keep at it. Measure.

Tips for Bulls-Eye Blogging: Getting Your Content Found

Dianna Kersey: Information Architect

Since the beginning of time, humans have been searching for ways to communicate.  From sign language to cave drawings to paintings, humans have been trying to tell their stories.

In fact, we humans have protected, copied and preserved the written word since its inception.  From Dead Sea scrolls to naval captain’s logs to newspapers to the blogs written by the world’s 70 million bloggers, people have been (and continue to be) obsessed with communicating what is important to them.

So, you say you are clean out of parchment, your hammer and chisel are dull and you don’t own a printing press?  How about we move into the 21st century and we learn how to communicate with not only other humans, but search engines as well, so those other humans can find the words on your blog that express what’s important to you.

So let’s start with the basics….

Loading the Rifle:  What is a Blog?  Here is a short video to explain:

There are 8 types of blogs that can be a part of how you choose to communicate what’s important to you.

Here are examples of each kind:

1.    Linkblog – Social bookmarking, such as del.icio.us
2.    Moblog – sending pictures from a camera phone or mobile device, e.g., Flickr
3.    Podcast – audio recording in MP3 through RSS feed – iTunes
4.    Videoblog/Vlog – video recording in MP4 through RSS feed – YouTube
5.    Microblog – short text message, popular with mobile users, e.g., Twitter
6.    Miniblog/reblog – content is mostly from a third party in a post versus creating original material,  e.g., stumbleupon
7.    Liveblog – covers a live event, such as a sporting event or press conference.  Engadget is an example.
8.    Blog – A collection that can include all of the above.

Once you choose which format is inspiring to you, it’s time to bring it to life and be found on the social web. When choosing a blog strategy, first you will want to choose a blog platform (such as WordPress or Blogger) and create a themed look and feel appropriate to what you want to talk about and what you feel will appeal to the type of audience interested in your same topic.

Now that you have a blog hosted and up and running…. now what?  You need great content. Period.  Your content must be interesting, informative, educational, or inspiring in a way that compels your readers to engage with you.  Most important, be creative and have fun with the voice of who you are.

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz has written a great article that details 21 tactics to increase blog traffic, but we are going to cover just a few highlights.

Talking to Humans: Taking Aim at Your Target

Here are a few items to help keep your content fun, inviting and engaging to your audience:
-    Great content – first and foremost.
-    Link to your sources and data information. Don’t be afraid to link to resources valuable to your readers.
-    Invite guest bloggers to be featured on your blog.
-    Interview influential people who address the topic covered by your blog.
-    Use rich media – e.g., video, charts, images, graphs, podcasts, bullets, etc….
-    Use community sharing software such as ShareThis or Tweetmeme to allow visitors to share your content easily with others through Twitter and Facebook and many other bookmarking  platforms throughout the web.

Talking to Search Engines: Bulls-eye

Okay, so you have great content. Check.  Now it’s time to be found in the search engines and share your content with readers.  You have to socially broaden your footprint on the web and get your content out to communities that are interested in what you have to say.

How do you do that?

Here are some simple tips to help search engines identify and “read” your content and properly index it so that a person searching on the topic that you posted about can find your blog. By using these plug-ins (or many others like these), you can help tell the search engines what your posts are about.

-    Use a SEF (search engine friendly) plug-in, such as headspace2, to insert title tags, smart URLs and descriptions into your posts to help search engines index the posts for the right keywords.
-    Tag your content with keywords relevant to what that post is about.
-    Make it easy for someone to subscribe to you with RSS feeds or subscribe with email.
-    Use an interactive WYSWYG word processing plug-in, such as Tiny MCE Advanced, which allows you include images, video and a myriad of other functionality to make your content engaging.

You’ll be loaded for bear if do your research, choose the type of blog that’s right for what you want to communicate, educate yourself on your chosen topic, learn from other bloggers, create a community by broadening your web footprint, and use the 21st century tools to help humans using search engines find your blog content when they search on the keywords that are most relevant to it.

Good luck!

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