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Take Advantage of Business Social Media TODAY

July 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Every time I’m in front of an audience I ask two questions:
1. How many of you have some social media involvement? (Almost everyone raises their hands.)
2. How many of you wish you were better at it? (Almost everyone raises their hands.)

And keep in mind this is from a (supposedly) sophisticated group of people. They all have smart phones, most of them get personal Facebook notices on their phones, but for one reason or another they have chosen not to enter the world of business social media. Many are on LinkedIn and have a few connections, almost none of them tweet, and even fewer have their own YouTube channel.

What’s your social media status?

REALITY: Some HUGE companies have gone all out in social media, while others have their heads buried in the sand or are playing ME TOO, because they woke up one morning and found their competition gaining ground through a prominent and active social media presence. Still others are claiming “regulations” are keeping them from engaging.

Here are a few examples of big companies taking BIG advantage of business social media:

  • Starbucks is asking customers opinions and soliciting customers ideas (where do you think the idea for that little green stopper splash stick came from?).
  • The CEO of Sun Microsystems blogs daily.
  • Burger King is continuing to let customers “have it their way” online with information and coupons.
  • IBM is utilizing every aspect of social media and has plans to double their effort in 2011 by trusting and encouraging their employees involved on a personal-business level to their individual customers.
  • Proctor & Gamble is all about Facebook and is substituting TV ads for social media presence. (WOW!)
  • Ford is using social media as a PR communication device and consumer sounding board and feedback opportunity.
  • Comcast is tweeting individualized customer service help messages.
  • And as if they weren’t customer service dominant enough, Zappos tweets their service responses, and as a result RECEIVES THOUSANDS of positive tweets.

All of these companies, B2B or B2C, emphasize the same word in their philosophy and their outreach: COMMUNITY. They all recognize that their customers have a voice, and by listening and responding to them, they’re discovering benefit and profit.

These are NOT isolated examples – they are typical examples of how big business is using the power of social media to inform, communicate, serve, and sell.

How are you doing? What’s your “community” strategy? Who are you listening to? Who are you responding to? Or are you still answering your phone and “serving me better” with nine options? Pathetic.

Here are 6.5 TOUGH questions designed to make you think, plan and act:

1. What are you doing about the social media opportunity?
2. How are you attracting customers and prospects?
3. What’s your value message beyond product offerings?
4. How are you engaging customers and prospects?
5. How are you connecting with the people you engage?
6. What’s your social media doubling plan for 2011?
6.5. What policies, trust issues, and lawyers are holding you back? Get rid of them (no play on words intended regarding the lawyers)!

Those are painful questions that need answering before January of 2011 rolls around.

REALITY: And while you sit around strategizing and legalizing a business social media plan, your competition is laughing at you, hoping you’ll delay even more.

TWEET POWER: I tweeted this quote last night, “The more you hold your people back from using social media at work, the more your competition will kick your ass.” Less than one hour after it hit the Internet, more than 50 people had re-tweeted it, and more than 100,000 were exposed to the message. And ME. FOR FREE.

REALITY:
People have made the following statements, or asked me the following questions, over and over:

  • How do I use BUSINESS social media to attract?
  • Isn’t social media for kids?
  • I have never tweeted.
  • I tried it and didn’t get any results.
  • My boss won’t let us use Facebook at work.

HUH?

REALITY:
Individuals (like you) can safely setup their own value-based, value messaging BUSINESS page on Facebook INSIDE the parameters of whatever guidelines your business has. And you can do the same with twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

PROBLEM: It requires hard work
MAJOR CLUE: Start today!

Filed Under: business, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Business Social Media Self-Test

July 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

BUSINESS SOCIAL MEDIA SELF-TEST:

  • Make a list of your last 10 Facebook postings. How many people like your page? Do you even have a business page?
  • List the last 10 actions you took, or messages you sent, on LinkedIn: Anyone join you or want to link as a result of them?
  • Make a list of your last 10 tweets. Are they relevant to your business success? Did they help others in any way? How many got retweeted?
  • List the last 10 videos that you posted on your YouTube channel. Are you posting value messages that your customers and prospects would watch, learn from, and think of you as a resource? Any video testimonials posted on your YouTube channel? (Short testimonial videos will help prospective customers buy and reinforce your own belief system.)

How did you do? Keep in mind:

There are all kinds of books and seminars available on social media and business social media. I recommend reading as much as you can and attending as many as you can. And my biggest recommendation is: START NOW.

Filed Under: business, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Understanding The Power Of Twitter

July 1, 2012 By 2 Comments

It seems as though the mature (seasoned) salespeople are resisting Twitter or simply do not understand the power in it and efficacy of it. With an estimated 175 million accounts and millions of tweets a day, there MAY be something to it. Especially because the Fortune 1000s are tweeting. Every newspaper and news agency is tweeting. Thousands of small businesses are tweeting.

What are you doing? Are you tweeting every day? Or are you stymied by the process and don’t quite know what to do? (Like most people.)

WARNING: Twitter for business has nothing to do with being in your pajamas, having a tough day, heading to the office, or other inane useless information. It also has nothing to do with “tweeple,” “tweeps,” or other buzzwords that are cute and condescending.

  • Twitter is about informing.
  • Twitter is about passing on information.
  • Twitter is about value messages.
  • Twitter is about connecting.

Twitter is about others finding value in your messages or information and passing it on to others. And when you’re retweeted, it’s proof that your message had enough value, content, or vital information that people in your network were willing to pass it on to their network.

How does a daily value tweet help you?

1. It challenges you to think and write. Daily discipline.

2. It challenges you to create viral messages so that you become better known as a person of value.

3. It challenges you to create the REAL law of attraction. Attraction = potential customer.

3.5 People will proactively connect with you. If they agree with you, and they respect you, they’ll tell others to connect with you as well.

There is a secret to Twitter success. And it’s the same secret for all of social media, especially business social media: Wake up and WRITE.

Here are some Twitter conversations going on right now about me:


Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Your (Personal) Business Social Media Game Plan

June 25, 2012 By 2 Comments

Regardless of where you are in the construction or operation of your business social media outreach, I’m asking you to relook at and rethink about the process because the odds are you started it with the wrong motive: money and sales.

In regard to your business Facebook page, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn connections, and your YouTube channel — ask yourself these questions (for each of the four individually):

  • What am I hoping to achieve?
  • Who am I wanting to attract, engage, and connect with?
  • Who will help me design?
  • Who will help me launch?
  • Who will help me post?
  • Who will be in charge of this process short term?
  • Who will be in charge of this process long term?
  • Do I need professional help?
  • How much time am I willing to allocate each day?
  • How often am I committing to update?
  • What type of value messaging am I going to offer?

The answers to these questions (written down) will create both structure and architecture for your entire business social media game plan. It will also determine your strategy for attracting, engaging, and connecting.

Luckily for you, most people started a Facebook page because their neighbor did or one of their friends did. Don’t do that. Start (or restart) your business social media outreach with purpose, plan, and design. And start (or restart) it with an understanding of what you want to achieve. Not just a goal to launch, but also a goal to attract, a goal to engage, a goal to connect, and a goal for what you want the OUTCOME to be.

Whatever you do, do not follow the ill-fated “Begin with the end in mind.” A more bogus, meaningless statement has never been written to the world business population.

It should say “Begin with the outcome defined.”

If you don’t begin knowing what you want to achieve, and how you intend to achieve it, then don’t begin.

Business social media is far different from, and far more powerful than, social media. Business social media will allow you to keep existing customers loyal, attract new customers, build your reputation, and create more brand awareness than you could ever do with a full page ad every week in Time magazine, or a full page ad every Sunday in The New York Times.

MATH: Those ads will cost you millions of dollars a year, and guarantee you NOTHING. Business social media is free, and a million times more powerful, more authentic, and more valuable.

And if done correctly, business social media puts you in direct one-to-one contact with paying customers. That’s a game plan you can take to the bank.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

HOW TO: Start Your Own Business Facebook Page

June 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here is a 5.5-part success formula:

1. Gather the email address of each one of your customer contacts. There may be three or four connections at one place. Then gather all your prospective customers whether you have spoken to them or not (email addresses and names). Then gather all your vendors, prime connections, and the CEO of every vendor you have. If there are end users involved in your sales chain, gather as many of them as well. How many names and email addresses do you have? Never think, “I don’t have enough names.” Even if you have only 50, and those people are loyal advocates of yours, you can begin to create your own business Facebook page.

2. Begin gathering valuable content that your customers would perceive as usable and profitable. Information that they would consider so valuable that they might forward it to somebody else. Gather lots of it. Think of it this way: Every paragraph that you have can be one day’s post. Don’t start your business page without at least 30 days of postings.

3. Have your business page designed graphically and strategically. Sometimes it pays to pay. If you seek out and hire credible, professional help in design AND strategy, you will get incredible results. Although the ability for graphic alteration within Facebook is limited, that doesn’t mean you can’t use what’s available to its maximum power. How your page looks to others, and the value of what you post, created the attraction power. How you link to other ports of “you” builds your following, your reputation, and your limelight.

4. Your Facebook page has to be a door that swings both ways. People attracted in from value and people that can immediately click out to find out more about you.

5. Use my page as a guideline. It’s designed to make certain that I have a linkage to all other business social media and all other forms of attraction. It even has a welcome video that describes what the page does so that people have no hesitancy to “Like” me.

5.5 Sign up for Ace of Sales to create the coolest emails on the planet. And then construct a short email that invites people to join you on your business Facebook Page.

Just remember: All business social media in interconnected. You have to do ALL of them consistently to gain effective results. And you have to do all of them well if you expect to monetize your efforts.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Year of The Webinar: Don’t Miss Out on This Value

June 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

2012 is the Year of the Webinar. I want to invite you to sign up. When you do, you’ll not only have access to each upcoming live webinar, but you’ll also be able to watch all the previous recorded webinars that you missed. It’s a lot of value. And it’s meant for you. To sign up, click on the image below:

Learn more about it by watching the video below:

Want a better idea of what the webinars are like? Watch this excerpt:

Sign up now: http://bit.ly/LjYYW1

Filed Under: business, sales Tagged With: , , ,

The sales world is changing. Are you changing?

June 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The sales world is changing. Are you changing? Been in sales for more than five years? Notice any changes? Of course you have – but probably not the ones I’m going to talk about. I’m NOT talking about the economy, or customers in financial trouble, or slow sales, or price pressures from competition, or pressures from your boss to “sell more now.” Oh and, by the way, how about YOUR changes? Still cold calling? Still learning “how to close?” Still “finding the pain?” Still trying to figure out social media? Still a bit behind technology? That’s your problem.

I AM talking about changes that have taken place over the past five years that will affect sales into the next decade. Your sales. Here are the major changes that have taken place, and how you must take advantage of them and master them to sell and succeed:

Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube today.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Who’s afraid of social media and social networking? You are!

June 6, 2012 By 1 Comment

You’re a chicken.

Let me correct that. You’re a dumb chicken. You’re out in the middle of the road, pecking for scraps of food, and an 18-wheeler is about to run you over.

Let me explain: Business social media has created the biggest chicken farm in the history of mankind.

But you’re chicken to get involved with, or participate in, what will prove to be the biggest boom to business and sales since the creation of the Internet. The chicken farm is also known as “Corporate America.”

Since a very small percentage of salespeople and businesspeople in the country are taking total advantage of business social media, I’m assuming you fall into the chicken category. And I’m not just talking corporations and lawyers here. I’m talking you, the salesperson, are a chicken.

Here are the elements that may be holding you back from participating in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to build your connections, your reputation, your business and (of course) your sales:

1. You’re technologically challenged. You may feel overwhelmed at the thought of creating your own business Facebook page, your own LinkedIn account, your own Twitter account and certainly your own YouTube channel. Relax: Each one of these social media programs has easy-to-follow tutorials that will allow you to get started and establish your base. It will require an investment of time — about two to three hours total. Or, in that same period of time, you could make 20 cold calls and receive 20 rejections. Think about it.

2. You don’t know where to begin. Begin by calling your top 25 customers to find out what they consider valuable in their marketplace and in their business, and inform them you’re about to create a value-based business social media presence, and you’ll be sending them an email asking them to join you.

3. You don’t know which program to start with. Start with Facebook. Currently the third-largest country in the world, Facebook has now interconnected more than 600 million people, many of whom are your customers and your prospects. You may already have a personal Facebook account. Now start a Facebook “business” page.

4. You don’t know what to say. When you call your customers and find out what they want to hear, what they want to read and what they want to learn about, you’ll know exactly what to say. Business social media is not complex. It’s not a course in calculus or physics. The secret basically revolves around common sense and providing value. Those are the core elements.

5. You don’t understand how it applies to business. Business social media provides a first-ever open forum where customers can connect with you and share their feelings, and you have an opportunity to respond back. If you don’t see how it applies to business, perhaps you should search your competitors, who are at this moment making some feeble attempt to get involved. Your job is to create a better, more open, more truthful forum on Facebook, on Twitter and on YouTube.

6. You’re afraid your customers will post something bad. Wake up and smell the Internet. Just because you don’t give customers an opportunity to post bad news, doesn’t mean they’re not going to post it. If you give them an opportunity to post, it will give you an opportunity to respond and fix the problem or at least address it, thereby giving your other customers assurance that you’re paying attention.

This is also a huge opportunity for your business to discover your own weaknesses and make certain they don’t reoccur. I believe a negative post on your business Facebook page is one of the most positive opportunities you could have. And the only people against it are C-level chickens and marketing chickens. Oh, wait, I left out lawyer chickens.

7. You’re afraid the boss will fire you. If you’re posting positive comments about customer interactions and customers themselves are posting their comments about how much they love you, your fears might turn into a raise. Most of the time, bosses are afraid of business social media because they are technologically challenged themselves. (Note well: All bosses and all sales managers are chickens. That’s why they put a noncompete clause in your contract in the first place.)

8. You’re afraid you will break the rules arbitrarily set by your corporate attorneys. The easiest way to ensure that you stay away from rules is to stay away from your company name. Your business Facebook page should be about the product or the service, not the company. Keep in mind, you’re branding yourself, and you’re branding your expertise. This is all about communicating and helping customers, not selling products.

9. You’re afraid no one will follow you. If you set up a page and use the “Field of Dreams” strategy — “If you build it, they will come” — you are correct, no one will follow you. If you create a game plan as outlined above, post valuable information and invite your customers to follow you, you’ll have more followers than you can say grace over.

10. You’re afraid to make the personal commitment. Time fears and time commitments are one of the biggest barriers of life, not just business social media. I recommend that you list the hours of a day that you’re awake — maybe 16, maybe 18, whatever it is — and allocate them to the projects you consider most important, saving at least two hours for business social media. One hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.

Note well: If your boss is stupid enough to forbid Facebook at work, start the morning at Starbucks. Make 25 connections, post five great events and cruise into work an hour late. After a week, the boss will ask what you’re up to. Show ’em. You might be able to get a rule changed.

10.5. Your bosses and lawyers are not just afraid of business social media; they’re afraid of everything.

The simple answer to involvement and achieving business social media success is: seek professional help. I did. One Social Media (http://www.onesocialmedia.com) advises me how to cross-link, keyword and other Googleable actions. It’s working.

Reallocate time. Two hours a day to start. Get into the 21st century.

It’s measurable, and it’s pleasurable.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m Gonna Google You, And You Can’t Stop Me

May 24, 2012 By 3 Comments

As business social media evolved and matures, all salespeople, executives, and entrepreneurs will expose themselves for who they are and who they aren’t…WAY BEFORE a sales call or sales meeting of any kind takes place.

Think about the impact of that…

  • I’m gonna Google YOU.
  • I’m gonna Facebook YOU.
  • I’m gonna find you on LinkedIn.
  • I’m gonna look you up on Twitter.
  • I’m gonna search you on YouTube.

And you can’t stop me.

Here are the NEW standards by which you’ll  be evaluated, granted appointment time, decided upon, measured, branded, and talked about:

Are you ready to be found?

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

6.5 Tough Questions Designed To Make You Think, Plan, And Act

May 20, 2012 By 1 Comment

The social media boom is here! Are you participating? Or are you just watching from the sidelines? If you still haven’t decided if you’re ready to enter the world of business social media, I want you to ask yourself these 6.5 tough questions designed to make you think, plan, and act:

1. What are you doing about the social media opportunity?
2. How are you attracting customers and prospects?
3. What’s your value message beyond product offerings?
4. How are you engaging customers and prospects?
5. How are you connecting with the people you engage?
6. What’s your social media doubling plan?
6.5. What policies, trust issues, and lawyers are holding you back? Get rid of them!

Those are painful questions that need answering. Here’s what I can tell you: Individuals (like you) can safely set up their own value-based, value-messaging BUSINESS Facebook page INSIDE the parameters of whatever guidelines their business has. And they can do the same with LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

It requires hard work and consistency, but the benefits are well worth your time and energy.

Don’t wait any longer to enter the world of business social media. Start today.

Need ideas or inspiration? Visit my Facebook page. Connect with me on Twitter. Watch my videos on YouTube. Find me on LinkedIn.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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