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As the social media elite wax on about the best ways to attract 20K followers on Twitter; in all of their singing they fail to realize that most of us haven’t even gotten our arms around adding email newsletters to our business marketing Kung Fu. Let me be the first to tell you that a good number of the gurus who built huge followings did so years ago when Twitter and Facebook were in their infancy and there was little noise in the channel.  That time is gone and many of the strategies that worked for them are almost sure not to work for you, so what about the rest of us; how do we make Twitter work?

From building relationships with powerful, “Oprah-like” local influencers to getting the attention of Google, there are many reasons to tap online social networks but I will share one strategy I use that is simple and almost guaranteed to get your phone to ring.  Are you sitting down? Okay, email your Twitter tweets to the next hot prospect you encounter, that’s it!

Okay, there’s a bit more too it than that but the technique is really simple. Let’s get ‘er done:

1. Commit to posting three or so knock out, helpful bits of information to Twitter each day. Resist the urge to post any sort of advertisement or sales pitch. You can automate the process using tools like Tweet Later.
2. Setup your first sales meeting:  Over here I use a 2 presentation approach consisting of a needs assessment presentation and a solutions presentation.  This is a powerful 2 step process that if done right positions you as the “must have provider”.
3. Bite-sized Chunks:  Email your prospective client one Tweet from step one above each day in between your needs assessment and solutions presentations.
4. Prepare your business for a rush of new customers or clients.

Now that really is it!

Why this SYSTEM works

We can assume your prospect is interested in your product or service, afterall you were able to set up the meeting, right?  The question in your prospect’s mind that the Tweet-a-day process answers is, why this person should purchase YOUR solution vs. moseying down to the shop a few doors away. Assuming your short tweets are “light bulb” bits of information gold that your prospect can instantly put to work (at no cost) you will build in your prospect’s mind a powerful sense of trust and liking. Who was it that said, “People do business with those they like and trust…”?

How do you engage vs attract followers?

It is survivors law that if you are in business you need customers to buy but how you go about making this happen is the difference between a business that soars or sinks. Anyone who knows me understands that I live by the rule “you get what you give” and until you have made a meaningful investment in helping your prospects, you haven’t won the right to introduce your products or services. Thanks Mr. Rogers for the lesson.

The other day I started following someone on Twitter who from his status updates (Tweets) seemed like an interesting enough person; that is until he started sending me pitches for a service he recently launched.  That’s right not even a hello or how are you doing?

The strategy of help…

Up front if you live to serve, to help; you will be rich in relationships, trust, authority and not to mention restful sleep knowing that you are not viewed as the newest con-man on the scene. From a monetary standpoint the strategy is equally effective as reciprocity kicks in and those you helped really work hard to return the favor by offering referrals, service trades, helpful resources and purchases.

On your website…

Replace a few of those “buy now”, “order this immediately” and related pitches with free information that can help your customers and clients. A free ebook, educational article or tips sheet will serve as the necessary handshake giving you the right to make the ask.

The next time you get frustrated after receiving a bad report from your accountant, find a charity and donate your services. Its the cure for what ails you and your business.

Who is the last person you helped?

I bet you are much too savvy to jump on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and start furiously posting your latest in-store specials or gift card offerings. If you are using this hopeless “jam it down my throat” technique by the time you reach the end of this post I hope you will see the light. If you have adopted this method, good news your competitors probably use it too and armed with a bit of magical information soon you will be leaving them wondering, “what just happened?” as you zoom to the top of your niche.

Online communities are not advertising mediums.  They are SOCIAL networks with people discussing and sharing ideas in communities of like mindedness.  You wouldn’t walk into your friend’s house party and start handing out advertising flyers would you? Well, I won’t be mailing that invite if you do. Adopt the “get what you GIVE” philosophy and start using social networking in place of social advertising.

Networking reloaded!

Just like its offline counterpart social networking is all about building relationships with interesting people whose goals and skills COMPLIMENT your own.  Helping others in social spaces is the best way to build your brand. Consider taking some time to expand your network of friends and associates becoming more interesting, educated and valuable in the process.

Get creative with your engagements…

Use tools like Twellow (the Twitter Yellow Pages) to find influential people in your geography who offer a service or product that is an exceptional compliment to your own.  Make contact with this neighborhood influencer by commenting at their blog, promoting their Tweets to your network (retweeting), or emailing them a tip that might help their business.

While your relationship grows you will ride the reciprocity waive as they return the favor and your profile grows along with site visits, newsletter registrations and your customer base. Haven’t you ever wondered why those companies whose products you know are inferior to yours always seem to get recognized at the awards dinner?  Chances are they understand the power of networking. Stop selling and start connecting.

Now, what are you going to do with that next advertisement?

Let’s face it we can be lazy at times even when it goes against our best interest. I know I should add the grocery items my wife requested to a written list but I don’t and to my detriment (slap upside the head, ouch!) I invariably forget something. Your customers and prospects are no different and by doing the hard, dirty work for them; your prospects will quickly turn into paying customers and raving fans who sing your praises on Twitter; become FaceBook fans and bring you more business.

Good News Your Competition is Lazy Too…

Its a fact that the majority of your top competitors are really good order takers who with McDonald’s-like precision deliver just what the customer asks for and nothing more. Below are some tips to separate yourself from the order taking crowd and own your niche by empowering prospects to change their lives.

1. Review complimentary products and services: If you sell real estate add reviews of local hardware stores or lawn maintenance services to your website.
2. Interview industry experts: If your store sells toys interview a product safety expert for safety tips related to a hot toy category and include the Q/A in your next newsletter.
3. Provide how-to’s: Fitness experts partner with a local video producer to create a video teaching your audience how to shop “healthy” at the local grocery. Teach them to read product labels, select fruit, etc. “Wow, I never knew that…” I can already hear them saying.
4. Book summaries: Read every good book in your space and write quick one page summaries trimming the fat and speeding the learning for your customers (Hint: get a Kindle ebook reader). Most people don’t read but you should!
5. Find opportunities: My friend Felicia does a great job here by connecting minority vendors to “real” project opportunities at firms looking for help. Everyone wins!

Feeling Inspired?

Stop selling stuff and start showing people how to improve their lives with your products. Expose them to resources they don’t know to seek or are otherwise too busy to look for.  This is game changing stuff, so fire up your site’s content management system or blog and get to doing the hard work (ha!). How do you help your customers hack life and make the days easier?

Because you are exceptional at what you do I am sure you have been asked to share your know-how with a local trade association, industry or community group. If not we have some work to do now don’t we?  Now enter Oprah Winfrey.

What is it that makes Oprah one of America’s most influential people; a mega-hub whose mere suggestion of a book or product, moves everyone to follow? Aside from her content, its her reach which has evolved from local to national distribution and like Oprah you too can expand your reach by producing and distributing video of your next seminar or business presentation through the web.

The Why…

All of those people in the audience wowed by the “Ah-Ha” moment you just delivered now see you as the go-to resource for your service (trust me here); afterall, the shop down the street was not asked to present to the audience, no you were.  Why limit this connection moment to the small audience in the room.  That’s right, by adding the taped session to your website, blog or partnering with a third party site your Wow moment can reach hundreds or thousands through web-connected networks. Some other things to note:

• It’s cheap: The client covers venue, audio and related costs
• No marketing:  Your client brings the live audience
• Instant reach:  Immediately broadcast from your client’s website

The How…

Now is not the time to go messin’ with your brand; so make sure you DON’T go the do it yourself route. To sweeten this deal partner with a local wedding videographer to shoot and edit the spot. These folks have the gear and skills to deliver to them what will be a simple shoot and I guarantee if you pitch the opportunity to plug the videographer’s services in the final spot the producer can be convinced to do it as a free-to-you service trade.

Bonus

Oh yes, there’s more payback here. No I am not an infomercial pitch man (geeze). In addition to the expanded audience, you can promptly turn your shiny new video into an information product to use as a lead generation giveaway, an incentive to join your email list, an inducement to register for your blog or even for resale.

I know you can’t contain yourself, so tell us how you plan on using this monster technique…

After the last two posts in the series, How Hard are You Willing to Work, we have a full appreciation for the value of hard work in growing our businesses and the ways we keep the motivation cup filled; but where do our loved ones fit in to this picture?  Our children, relationship partners, wives and husbands are on this journey with us; so how do we keep them up front and feeling valued as they talk to the backs of our heads as we work into the a wee hours?

Keeping Others in the Picture

How I Stay Grounded

This is the place I want you to smell the roses and remember the purpose for all of this hard work. I find it helps if I schedule time on my calendar (formally) for my wife and children.  I keep this time sacred and my business demands are not dealt with during periods. This “our” time has become a custom of sorts that I look forward to and it keeps my powder dry. I have friends who manage this challenge in different ways.

A Call From the Third Tribe

Some of my fellow Third Tribers weighed in on a thread I started in the Third Tribe Marketing community forums.  Here’s what some had to say,

Dustin Riechmann
Web:  Engaged Marriage
Twitter: @EngagedMarriage
“As someone who writes about marriage improvement on my blog, I find this topic really intriguing. I have personally struggled with keeping my family time a priority…even though I may be writing about that very same topic!

Some things that have helped me are to have “no computer time” between the time I get home from work and when the kids go to bed and also to have specific time each evening to spend entirely with my wife. It’s usually just talking, undistracted, for 15 minutes but that’s actually quite powerful.”

Justin Brooke
Web:  Jabber Stream
Twitter:  @JustinBrooke
“all of a sudden I was stuck to my computer for 14 - 16 hours a day 7 days a week… Ever since then I have been working hard to treat what I do like a normal business where I start at 9am and finish by 5pm… Things are much better now and my family knows that I care about them”

Shayna Walker
Web: Wedding Lady
Twitter: @weddlady
“I am intentional about spending time with my family. I chose my business pursuits (my planning business and the blogging component) specifically to be available to my kids when I’m needed.”

Where Do You Find Your Zen?

Hard Work Series Installments

1. How Hard are You Willing to Work?
2. What Inspires You?
3. What About Me?

Motivational Business Quote: “What comes easy for you but comes rather hard for others is where opportunity lies.” - Peter Drucker

In part 1 of the series, How Hard are You Willing to Work we explored the reality that business success requires more hard work than most could imagine but it is this hard work that ultimately separates us from the competitive pack.  In this, the second part of the series, YOU and I will explore tapping vital sources of motivation necessary to carry us through.

Get Motivated!

When the idea to start a business comes to us, like a child with a new toy we get excited but as the daily realities of marketing, promotion, paying the bills and not to mention daily life set in; we find ourselves needing the cup refilled.

Refilling My Cup: Some Things I Do…

1. Talk to my wife: My wife Jilda is the most spiritually guided person I know and the one who pushed me to start my business in the first place, so she is a natural energy source for me.
2. Read a good blog:  I follow many creative bloggers (Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, Joan Stewart ) and there is always a motivating new idea above the fold within their communities.
3. Tap the Third Tribe:  I am a member of Third Tribe Marketing an online community founded by several new media influencers and built around the idea of bringing smart online marketers together who live by the philosophy, “you get what you give” and they are a great support group and idea bank.
4. Exercise:  Yes, nothing like a little sweat and that euphoric runner’s high to wipe the slate clean. My elliptical trainer is also one of my favorite places to  blog.
5. Call my cousin:  My cousin ran a wildly successful real estate development firm in our home town of Chicago that (like so many) closed its doors due to the weakened economy but he did not skip a beat in starting another venture that has begun to bare fruit (Turbo Athletics - Chicago Speed and Agility Training).  He is nothing short of a one man power station and is sure to turn my mood.

Man, I feel recharged already!

Where do you turn when your enthusiasm dwindles?

Hard Work Series Installments

1. How Hard are You Willing to Work?
2. What Inspires You?
3. What About Me?

Hard Work Quote: “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson (thanks Chris Brogan)

Adding your first employee, securing financing, researching/editing blog posts, vetting vendors, rethinking your website…I can almost hear your cry,  “can I at least have one day off!” Shoot, entrepreneurship is tough work. We work hard for the money!

In this first in a three part series YOU and I will explore the work, the motivation and ways to keep relationships in tact along the way to creating a booming business. Now let’s dive in, but first a word from a worker…

How Hard are You Willing to Work?

No, I am not going to tell you here to cut back, slow down or smell the roses. Entrepreneurial glory requires selling a great product or service, working in a market that demands your wares and a whole bunch of work that you better be dedicated to doing. In fact the amount and consistency of your efforts (your hard work) is your single greatest competitive advantage. 99.9% of the people who do or want to do what you do are not willing to put in the hours day in and day out.

By showing up with vigor, consistently you will beat most of your competition. My tennis teacher told me that if you simply hit the ball back most of the time, the other guy will eventually beat himself (thanks coach Kofi).  No marketing gimmick on the planet holds such a claim.

My wife, family and friends have no idea why or how I can stay up for two days with less than 3 hours sleep (my answer in a later post - grin). Bill Gates regularly slept in his office, Rodney Dangerfield wrote jokes each night for 12 years while selling aluminum siding by day. Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers says it takes 10,000 hours invested (not raw talent) before you can consider yourself exceptional.

Now ask yourself this, are you one of the .1% willing to grind it out or are you among the 99.9% just looking for a better job and under the false illusion that “being your own boss” is the answer (see: Avoiding the Broke Zone)?  Seriously, I am asking you…comment and share your story.

Hard Work Series Installments

1. How Hard are You Willing to Work?
2. What Inspires You?
3. What About Me?

Chip’s website Chip’s blog LinkedIn Training On Twitter

Okay, your friends have been saying for months that you need to sign up for Linkedin, the social networking site built for business professionals like you.  The day isn’t even over when you whip open your gmail (please don’t tell me you use Outlook…) to find a Linkedin join invitation from one of those pesky friends. To heck with it you take the plunge.  Four weeks in you have connected with 10 old work buddies (man, you hated that job!) and 20 others you have no idea who they are.  Crickets break the silence as you blankly stare at the monitor wondering, “now why am I doing this?” Read on…

Raymond “Chip” Lambert is a professional trainer, business coach and all around business development specialist that I met while following a group of Twitterers talking up a conference where Chip was presenting.  The rain of positive comments about Chip’s expertise on creative ways for businesses to use the LinkedIn professional networking site led me to tap Chip to share his insights with our community. Get ready because you are sure to walk away with the answer to those crickets.

Give me a quick overview of your business

[Chip Lambert] I train successful professionals how to leverage their book of business and existing relationships to build their “Ideal” business.  I do this through time-tested business development strategies and new social media.  Knowing how to close a prospect is a critical skill - but so is acquiring that prospect in the first place.  Most successful people are sitting on a gold-mine of potential referral business, but they are not mining it because they are caught between “selling” and “servicing”.  I help people to break free of that trap and move to the next tier of success.

What are the mistakes most people make using LinedIn as a business development tool?

[Chip Lambert] They think that because they are “there” something will happen.  There is a parallel offline - networking events.  People show up and assume that because they are “there” that something will happen.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  LinkedIn is a technological infrastructure for what successful people have been doing for generations - building and WORKING their networks.  It takes strategy and consistent action to really make LinkedIn - or any social media for that matter - work for you.

Say you have 100 direct LinkedIn connections and thousands more indirect…how does one effectively communicate with the network so that people understand what you do and what you are looking for?

[Chip Lambert]  This is a several pronged asnwer: 1 - Write a stellar profile.  People read them. And update it as you and your business change.  LinkedIn notifies the people in your network when it changes - this drives them back to read your updates.  Tell them who you are, why you are on LinkedIn, what you are looking for and what you have to offer.  Then tell them what you want them to do next - provide them a next step - ie. follow the link to you blog - read it;  sign-up for your newsletter - with a link to do so; etc. 2 - use the “What are you doing now” status update feature.  It keeps you in front of your connections regularly.  If you have multiple social media properties - link the status update features with http://hellotxt.com or http://ping.fm.  That way all of your networks or properties are updated simultaneously.  LinkedIn isn’t the only game in town - it has its place.  Mass marketing strategies don’t work here.  But driving them off linkedin can.

What are some third party tools that can add efficiency to managing your LinkedIn account?

[Chip Lambert] Hellotxt.com - Ping FM.  RSS reader - for subscribing to important threads or questions inside linkedin.

What parting words do you have to help people better use LinkedIn?

[Chip Lambert] Get strategic - the tactics fall out of the right strategy.  If you are looking for clients, get clear about who and search them out.  If you are looking for JV or Channel Partners, take some time and set some parameters and get to work.  To get the most from LinkedIn, get active - not passive.

Your Thoughts

Whew, I told you Chip knows his stuff but enough of our rambling. How do you make use of the LinkedIn community? Do you have questions about LinkedIn that we did not answer?  Comment below and let us know.

My company recently donated the development of a new website to a local non-profit and while explaining the workings of the new system to the founder I blurted out, “how do you plan to let people know about your new site?”  After several seconds of silence and head scratching, I shared these thoughts below.

1. Notify your mailing list:  Send an email announcement to your mailing list asking subscribers to visit the new site and forward the url to contacts they feel could use your services.  This works particularly well if your site is filled with useful “Ah-Ha” moment, educational content instead of pushy sales pitches.
2. Send a Press release:   Send a press release to your local media announcing the site launch.  Remember the media does not care about your business, so make your site launch pitch relevant to the publication’s audience. If you are pitching your story to the newspaper’s business section try an angle like, “Local firm beats recession using new web strategy…” Nowadays papers are always interested in recession beating stories.
3. Reach out to hot prospects:  Send a website launch announcement to any hot prospective clients currently in your sales funnel. Again, make it relevant to your contacts, many of whom really don’t care that you have a new website but they might be interested in new features that would benefit them as a client.
4. Tap online, social networks:  Spend a bit of your social capitol and partner with Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn fans on a meaningful announcement to their online spheres of influence.

Okay, I have “talked” enough…What is your experience?