90% of Your Business Will Be Digital or WOM

A fellow employee at Brandswag, Colin Clark, wrote  a blog post about the 5 Ways to Prepare for the year 2011. Now this is an interesting post title in itself. What is the deal with the year 2011? I finally had the chance to read Colin’s post which is centered around a comment by Seth Godin. Seth has predicted that the majority (90%) of your sales will come from either digital marketing or word-of-mouth.

Talk about a crazy prediction… or is it?

Is it so hard to believe that the majority of small-to-mid size business leads will be driven by customer referrals and communication online? We are experiencing a complete 180 in terms of communication. Brands are being controlled not by the owner of the product or service but by the users.

Customer experience has always had a small hold on brands but with the Internet and social communities… the definition of YOUR product and service is no longer… under your control.

Where do you go from here?

Learn. Read. Jump in.

And when I say read… I mean go read Colin’s blog about the 5 Ways to Prepare for the Year 2011. The year of communication.

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NonProfit Organizations Love Social Media Too!

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Fundraising 2.0 conference on Friday and I wanted to make sure that everyone on the Internet knew that non-profit organizations get a bad name sometimes for hating on social media (the fear factor)… well sometimes. I recorded this video to show that people are getting excited for social media and the future of communication! Check it out.

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4 Tips to Successful Strategy in Social Media

I have been following the writings of Jon Gatrell of Spatially Relevant and I would recommend all of the people reading this post to subscribe to his blog. It has some great content. I was reading his post about the 2009 Mountain Social Media Summit. I found what they are focusing on to be really interesting. This is straight from the site:

The 2009 Mountain Social Media Summit focuses on the 4 P’s of Social Media: Personas, Problems, Projects and Profits.

Personas: Who leverages social media, what are the opportunities and why is social media important in a personal, professional and commercial context.

Problems: What challenges exist for social marketers? What problems does media address? What problems exist for social media. Understand the opportunities, obstacles and value social media can bring to your business or your personal growth.

Projects: Understanding use cases and case studies which highlight key lessons and themes which are important.

Profits: Where is the market opportunity, revenue channels and process improvements. Can social media increase customer acquisition, drive cost reduction and improve customer/market awareness?

Good stuff right!? What I found interesting is that anyone can relate the 4 Ps of Social Media to their own strategy. When you are building a social media strategy for your company or organization follow the Mountain Social Media Summit and focus on the 4 Ps.

Personas: Who are you trying to target with your social media strategy? Are there different sites online that cater to this specific demographic? Are you targeting Baby Boomers? Try Eons or the growing trend on Facebook. Focus on targeting the personas of your social media strategy first. The rest will come with ease.

Problems: There are three main problems that arise for businesses and organization when using social media: Time, ROI, and the Learning Curve.  The problems need to ad addressed before you can walk down the social media marketing route. Time management, metrics, and education are the answer to the social media problems… which in the long run will just lead to fear.

Projects: Learn and read what other people are doing in the social media. Track your competitors and constantly read about changes and trends in your industry. If you are still hesitant to use social media try a small project on the side and watch the results. You will be surprised!

Profits: Measure. Measure. Measure. Measure. Measure. You will only be able to relate success to social media if you measure the social media tools you are using.

Remember the 4Ps. Write them down if you have to or just attend the 2009 Moutain Social Media Summit.  Believe me, It will be worth every second and every penny.

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Next Time. Punch Fear in the Face.

What is it about fear that immobilizes an individual or an organization? The fear of failure… The fear of not understanding how to use a specific tool.. The fear of being left behind.

The problem with fear is that it paralyzes and damages the great things your company or organization can do in the future. At Brandswag we come across many individuals, companies and organizations that are simply afraid of jumping into the world of “the social web.”

It could be the fear of open conversation. It could be the fear of not knowing what to do. What is driving your company? What is the driving factor for not changing? What is keeping you from not adapting to the changing world of communication?

The simple fact…

You cannot let fear rule the way you run your business. The world is changing. People are controlling conversations, brands, and causes. Your brand is built by people. Why not use the tool most associated with communication?

You may not want to change for a variety of reasons… but you don’t really have the choice. Remember the term Evolve or Die. It applies here.

Here is what I want you to do… Next time you are sitting down and reviewing methods and procedures for the marketing of your product or service and that fear starts to rise in the back of your mind… you have two choices…

Ignore it or Embrace it.

Which one do you think is going to revolutionize your company or organization in the years to come?

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Telling THE Story of Your Business

I am sitting in the AFP Fundraising 2.o conference and we have been listening to the likes of Mitch Maxson from MediaSauce, Hazel Walker from BNI, and Erik Deckers from ProBlog Service. Erik Deckers is currently talking about the value of social media and how to use some of the tools and I have realized a common theme from all the speakers at the conference. I will be getting up there in the next 30 mins and the same theme applies to my presentation.

Why is it so hard for us to tell the story of our company or NFP? Marketing is telling a story plain and simple. Human interaction has been built off the idea of story telling since the inception of forward thought. Why is it so hard for marketers and owners to tell the story of what built and builds their company or organization?

The global communication world (mainly social media) is built off the theory of telling a story. If you have read the book Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers you will understand where  I am coming from…

You have a premiere way to reach people that will (in the words of Mr. Maxson) bleed for your service or cause. You have the evagelists out there waiting to take the flag and charge forward…

What are you waiting for? Tell your story… Tell why you love what you do… Tell why people love you…

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Taking a Gamble is the Way to Work!

(hat tip to Seth Godin for this wonderful post)

Mr. Godin is right when he says:

The irony, of course, is that they’ll (Wall-E, Pixar) make plenty of money. Bravery often pays off, even if paying off is not your goal. Especially if that’s not your goal.

Marketing isn’t always about pandering to the masses and shooting for the quick payoff. Often, the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all.

Is Mr. Godin speaking on one of my favorite topics: marketing authenticity? I am not necessarily sure. If you read the full post here , you will find that he is referencing the fact that QUALITY directly relates to the overall success. More often than not, you will not need to hook up the crack wheel and act like Robin William’s in Patch Adams. Sometimes all it takes is a quality product (Wall-E) and a quality communication tool (the Internet).

I can’t imagine the extreme amount of stress seeping from the Pixar offices. You have ONE movie a year to make a splash and to make money. ONE. Talk about a huge gamble!

Honestly, I envy Pixar’s trust in their product.

Take note! Take note business owners, entrepreneurs, product managers, and salesmen. This is a great example of confidence in your product offering. We should all have this kind of confidence.

20 Ways to Engage Contacts in Social Media

What is it? What is it good for? Engagement.

One of the primary selling points of social media is the concept of engaging a potential customer or partner in your product or service. So how do you accomplish engagement on a personal level?

20 Ways to Engage a Potential Customer Using Social Media

1. Start a blog. This seems like an obvious one. This should be one of the first things you think about doing when contemplating using social media as a marketing tool. There should always be a hub where your contacts can interact. The so called “hub.” WordPress is a great tool to start blogging. Get on it!

2. Join Brightkite and Use it during the business day. Brightkite is a service that allows you to update your location to the people following you on a regular basis. I do not recommend using this tool after business hours (could turn a little creepy) but it can help your contacts get an idea of what you do on a daily basis. Even if you are just sitting in your office for most of the day.

3. Join LinkedIN and recommend your partners. Most of us are already using LinkedIN (if you are not click this link for great information on LinkedIN). When you start to recommend the people you love working with it will help spread the goodwill that your business partners deserve. What happens you spread goodwill? Ever heard of pay-it-forward?

4 and 5. Start an RSS Reader and Find 10 Blogs. It is important that you use an RSS Reader to help with the organization of the blogs you read. For more information on starting and maintaining an RSS Feed check out this link. By using a Technorati or Google BlogSearch you can find 10 blogs that are industry “blog leaders” in your dedicated profession. By following and commenting on the blogs you will start to engage other readers.

6. Place a Poll on Your Blog or Website. There are plenty of tools available for polling on your website or blog. Wp-polls is a great resource if you are connected with wordpress. Ask a question to your audience. How can I make my content better? What are you wanting to read or learn about? This will help in engaging your more loyal readers and followers.

7. Ask a Loyal Reader to Guest Post. There is a ton of value in having your loyal readers do a guest post for your blog. They will feed your link to their subscribers and it also gives them a pride in ownership of your blog. This allows for the strengthening of a relationship in the long run.

8. Identify Your Strategy. This should have been placed at number one because it is the more important of everything you could be doing online. If you do not have a strategy in place to lead the charge into social media you will be at a lost when it becomes overwhelming. A strategy allows you to measure success points in your social media journey. This only helps when it comes to YOU engaging THEM.

9. Focus. Really Focus on Your About Page. What is the second most read page on a blog? The about page. People want to know who they are communicating with. The last thing you need to do (and I am also guilty of this on my personal blog KyleLacy.com) is to create a boring about page. Spice it up. Add some details that will create the best about page you could possibly want! Also.. enable comments on your about page. Allow people to comment on yours likes and dislikes.

10. Use Twitter on a Daily Basis. Now this might be a little overwhelming to the young at heart in social media but Twitter is fast becoming the ideal means of online communication. For a detailed explaination of Twitter check out DiTii.com’s video.

11. Add Your Social Media Information to Your Business Card. I have written a ton about this in previous posts. If you want to truly engage with the people you meet offline… add your social media sites to your business card. I have my LinkedIN, Twitter, and Blog URLs on my business card.

12. Be open to collaboration. You may have run your small-to-mid sized business for years by yourself but social media is built on the art of collaboration. People will be giving their opinions on a daily basis and it is in your best interest to take those opinions with stride. Collaborate and join in on discussions surrounding ideas related to your industry and your life. Collaborate. Learn. Listen.

13. Start a Facebook Page and Add in Your Family Life. Facebook is an extremely personal tool that can be used to connect with individuals on an emotional basis using pictures. You have to be open in sharing some of your family life with the outside world. There is a reason why PR companies have used the idea of “family man” to save many tarnished CEOs. Add pictures of your family, your dog, your vacation. People will connect. (New to Facebook. Check out this link on getting started as a company).

14. Pick 4 Social Sites and Maximize. You will become anti-social if you become overwhelmed with the multitude of different social media sites in which you are a member. We teach a 4-touchpoint theory of choosing four social media sites to spend your time. With a limited amount of time you will find that 4 sites benefits you in two main ways:

1. You will have more brain “bandwidth” to communicate on a deeper level.

2. The same people will pretty much be on all the sites you choose. (I say this loosely)

15. When someone comments on your blog email them a thank you. I learned this from the famous Gary Vaynerchuk. If someone is joining into the conversation on your blog and adding content make sure you thank them for your support. The people who show a vested interest are key to growing your readership. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t have time to email people the moment they comment. It sometimes takes me weeks before I send a follow up email.

16. Write About Personal Experience. We talk a lot about this. Write about the way you see life. Write about the way you experience your business on a daily basis. TAlk about how you are helping people. Talk about how you are solving the problems on a daily basis. Use Twitter. Use Facebook. Tell stories on your blog. People engage in stories. They connect with stories.

17. Try to Keep Yourself Within 450 Words or Less on Your Blog. It is important to keep blog posts concise and to the point. If you have trouble writing this will help you in the long run. As you can tell by the post you are currently reading, it is not essential that you keep it to 450 words. If you have advice and knowledge to send out to the masses.. . please do so. If you keep blog posts short it helps to keep readers and that is the goal.

18. Remember Quality vs Quantity. Quality is always better than Quantity. I have always said that 100 extremely engage readers are infinitely better than 4000 quasi engaged readers. Quality allows you to truly form relationships with the people you are dealing with on a daily basis. You can build your base anyway you like but make sure you always come back to quality over quantity.

19. Monitor the Conversation around Your Brand both Personal and Professional. For more on this read: 25 Tools and Tips to Following Your Brand Online. Why is it important to follow your brand online? You need to be involved in all the conversations surrounding your product, service, or YOU.

20. DO NOT HARD SELL! I am going to repeat this again: Do Not Hard Sell. This means you are not sharing about sales and detail after detail about your company. It means you are concentrating on listening to the people who are investing in your writing and social media prescence. Nobody cares about your 50% sale. They care about who will be greeting them at the door of your store or place of business. Personality rules and if you want to act like a used-car sales man… go work at one.

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Social Media According to Zhang Yu

I am re-reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

Let me be clear. When I say I am re-reading it actually means I am reading it for the first time, a second time. It is amazing the kind of insight you take away from a book when you read it through different parts of life. It has been a couple of years since I picked up the book and a section about adapting caught my eye.

Zhang Yu : Adaptation means not clinging to fixed methods, but changing appropriately according to events as is suitable.

We are in a phase of adaptation in the world of marketing communications. With the advancement of the Internet (mainly the growth of commercial social media) a new phase of communication is quickly becoming a premiere way to connect with a demographic. But..

You have to adapt.

If you do not adapt to the changing business environment.. you will be lost in a world that is moving faster and faster with every moment. It is important to destroy the learning curve that is forcing multitudes of companies to rethink the way they communicate with their clients and potential clients.

Remember that adapting and changing is not an easy thing to do but it needs to be done. The key is to learn and soak in as much as you can when it comes to business communication. We are all in this changing environment and some are adapting faster than others.

The key is to adapt, strategize, and execute….

and repeat.

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Flickr a Tweet in the Facebook. Speaking at Fundraising 2.0

I will be speaking at the Fundraising 2.0 Conference on Friday put on by the Association for Fundraising Professionals. There is an amazing list of speaker from the city of Indianapolis and it is going to be AWESOME! Check out the information below. 

—————————————-

The web isn’t what it used to be.

Social networking is here and here to stay. Can you Flickr a Del.icio.us Tweet in the Facebook? Would you even want to if you could? Obama used it, raised millions and fundraisers raised eyebrows.

Studies show that all ages are using these media in some fashion, but how do you tell what is right for your organization and where to start? How do you spread the word without spreading yourself too thin? Well, if you’re ready to learn, you need: Fundraising 2.0 – Raising Money on the Social Media Landscape
AFP’s Spring Conference will give you the quick and dirty on how to Digg the Newsvine if you Stumbleupon an RSS Feed. We’ll help you determine exactly what social networks are best to accompany your organization’s fundraising plan and how to use them efficiently to meet your objectives. Hear from the experts and walk away with a manageable toolkit to get started.

Web 2.0 – It’s here to stay (at least until 3.0)

8:30 Hazel Walker, BNI – The social media movement (an overview)

9:15 Mitch Maxson, MediaSauce – Best Practices, Practical applications (what’s working)

Build it and they will donate – A How-To Workshop!

10:00 Erik Decker, Pro Blog Service– Tools and design (what to use, how to use it right)

11:00 Kyle Lacy, Brandswag – Productive Social Media (Impact in 30 minutes a day)

Learn more about the speakers here!

Where: Riverwalk Conference Center
When Friday, April 17, 2009
7:30 am Registration and breakfast
8:00 am Workshop begins

Cost: $75 for AFP members (Scholarship assistance may be available)
$95 nonmembers

Thanks to our sponsor!

Being Social is Better than Silence

It seems fairly obvious doesn’t it? The art of human interaction is built off of many things but mainly communication. You can define communication in a variety of ways but it still rooted in sharing of ideas between two individuals. 

We want to interact. We want to be heard. We want someone to listen. 

You have to be social in order to facilitate human interaction. The same goes with social media. 

When talking with business owners about using social media there are the metrics and values that are attributed to lead generation and customer retention. You can talk about the massive amounts of eyeballs an ad can hit or the customer service value Zappos and Comcast has delivered. 

But the main point is this…

There is someone talking about you somewhere. Wouldn’t you rather be involved in the conversation than not

Being social is better than silence and listening is just one key to success in social media.

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