Over $1 Million Dollar Sale from Flickr

Did I get your attention?

I was at a recent chamber of commerce speed meeting – you know, where you sit across from another member and give your one-minute, thirty-second elevator pitch. Well… I didn’t want to talk about TKO Graphix (www.tkographix.com). I wanted to talk about social media. So I said, “TKO – we do large format graphics, vehicle wraps, banners, signs and – by the way – what are you doing with social media?” You already know what I heard: “What is social media?” “Nothing, it doesn’t work!” “I’m not big enough,” “It takes too much time,” and, “I don’t know what to do.” (We offered to help.) I also heard, “I’m dropping everything and only doing Facebook!”

How Did We Secure A 6000 Vehicle Contract (Over $1 million sale)?

TKO Graphix social media strategist, Josh Humble, published photos of our work on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tkographix/). Jeff Moore of Moore and More Print (http://www.mamprint.com/blog.html), in St. Louis, saw our photos. Josh and Jeff reached out to each other, and continued to correspond and socialize within the network. One of our national account representatives, Glenn Burris, drove to St. Louis and visited Jeff. They had lunch and talked about how we could help each other. They were socializing face-to-face. Jeff was contacted by an advertising agency that needed a large format graphics company with traveling installation crews. Jeff recommended his friends at TKO, and the ad agency contacted TKO. Glenn and Tom Taulman II, TKO’s President, traveled to St. Louis and gave a big-ass presentation (BAP) to a big national company that shall remain nameless. Glenn and Tom met with the BIG company again. TKO provided a proposal and was awarded the contract.

We are currently re-branding 6000 vehicles at 221 locations in North America. We’re manufacturing the decals and wraps, de-identifying the vehicles, and installing the new graphics. This… is… a…game… changer.

The Answer? A Multi-Faceted Marketing Plan

Now, let me tie back to the first paragraph. Social media DOES work, but it should be part of your marketing plan, not just a plan in of itself.

• Social Media – Josh publishes TKO’s photos on Flickr and manages the account.
• Social Networking – Josh and Jeff correspond via the network.
• Traditional Networking – Glenn and Jeff meet over lunch.
• Friendship Networking  – Jeff recommends TKO to the ad agency.
• Sales Presentation – Glenn and Tom give a presentation to the BIG company.

Without a combined marketing effort and plan, TKO would not have been awarded this contact. So… when someone tells you it doesn’t work, tell ‘em about our 6000 vehicle contract (unless it’s our competitors, then tell ‘em it doesn’t work). When someone says I’m only doing social marketing, and dropping everything else, you may caution him or her not to quit everything they have been doing.

The Call To Action – Let’s Help Each Other.
What SM successes can you share? Let’s gather ammunition we can all use when faced with non-believers. Tell us your story. Be an advocate. Share. #SMworks

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Randy Clark is the Director of Communications at TKO Graphix, where he blogs for TKO Graphix Brandwire. Prior to TKO, he spent 13 years with Unique Home Solutions as Marketing Director and VP of Operations. He is an avid flower gardener, beer geek, and he fronts the Under the Radar rock & roll band http://bit.ly/9mJ59m

The Right Way to Market Yourself on Twitter

Trying to market yourself on Twitter can be tricky. Being a pushy salesperson, while never popular anywhere, is strictly taboo in Social Media. So how do you engage potential prospects while avoiding the appearance of a door to door vacuum salesperson?

I recently had an interaction with Kat from GoHeadBand.com who negotiated the art brilliantly. I had tweeted how difficult a 2 mile run for me had been in spite of running a mini-marathon just 5 months ago. She responded to me with encouragement and some advice. I was told to take things slow, but to remember that I will attain fitness faster because of my prior running.

As I don’t know this person, I was inclined to look her up on Twitter to see what she was about. Her bio mentioned that she had completed 5 marathons and she also made “moisture wicking headbands.” Since my most recent run was in 94 degree heat and I am fond of headbands, I now found myself as an interested prospect.

Not once has she offered to sell me anything, but here I am as a potential buyer. So what did she do right that we can learn about as we navigate the roads in Twitter?

• Search. She obviously had a twitter client, like CoTweet, where she was searching for keywords like “running.” This helps you identify a group with interests in your product.
• She offered Value. She not only gave me some friendly advice, to adapt to things slowly, but she also offered me encouragement. You can trace those lessons back to “How to Win Friends and Influence People” as classic relationship management.
• She had a great bio. Her bio told me a little bit about herself in that she was a runner. It also clearly defined to me what she specifically offered as a product or service including a website link.

Much of the advice available in the realm of social media is pointed towards telling us what not to do. While those lessons can certainly help us avoid some challenges, it doesn’t give us clarity on what we can do. I am thankful for this experience and I will definitely add this to my “rules of engagement” on Twitter.

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Todays guest post was written by Brian Richardson has 19 years of sales and management experience and is a sales trainer at ExactTarget.  Follow him at B__Richardson (that is two underscores) and check out his Twitter bio for hobbies and interests.

Stories are Life. Marketers are Failing.

Stories are life. Stories are built off of every day occurences and the little things that happen in life. Where did we… as marketers… go wrong when telling the story? All businesses and products are built off of a story. What is the main point of marketing… Is it fulfilling a need? Is it creating a product that actually helps an individual? Is it selling your wares… period?

A story is something that creates a safe haven for an individual. You are building a message that should be involved in the story of your customer’s life. It should (and must be) the connection that brings in additional customer and evangelists for your brand.

You want your customer to get to a place… a place where they agree with your terms and conditions. A place where they say, “Yes. I do need, want, or should have that product or service.”

A place where they approve your service and believe/know it will work for them… in any capacity.

What is the series of events that drive a person to a specific point: buying your product. What are you telling your customers? Is your story bland… Boring… Normal?

I see normal marketing everywhere. Brochures… Smiling billboards… Postcards… Facebook updates…It is normal and plain. There are no new story lines. There is nothing to pull me into the brand. The stock photography you bought in 1980 is not going to sell me on buying a house. The telemarketer that just left a message on my cell phone is not going to trick me into buying your magazine subscription.

And… the direct mail piece you just sent me asking me about my retirement plans… is definitely not going to pull me into your luncheon.

My friends and MY preferences are going to sell me on your product. I want to pull your information at MY will… at MY discretion. Notice a trend here?

It is about me… how are you speaking to me? Nay… how are you listening? Do you know what I want as an individual… are you allowing me to interact?

If you are not…

You have a long way to go… shift that paradigm and interact.

Announcing New Social Media Seminars for April in Indianapolis

We are proud to announce three new seminars for the month of April. Check out the follow below

APRIL 7th – Twitter 101 : The Power Behind the Bird

This the beginning. Learn from the author of Twitter Marketing for Dummies on how to fully maximize Twitter to create customer relationships that will actually… last.
We will be breaking down the common uses of Twitter as well as the following points:

• The Twitter Basics
• Setting up and maximizing your profile
• The importance of re-tweeting
• Sharing content that matters
• Time productivity tools Is quantity better than quality?
• Using Twitter to grow your business
• The secrets to maximizing Twitter search
• And much.. much.. much.. more!

This seminar is for both the beginner and the intermediate user.

APRIL 14th – Building Your Personal Brand Through Social Media

Your personal brand is what sells your product. We are all building personal relationships and our networks to strive to be better professionals. Are you doing the most to make your online brand impressive and true? Your personal brand drives everything in life.

This seminar will show you the top ten ways to use social media to build your personal brand. You will learn how to improve your online persona when communicating to others. As a business owner, it’s essential for you to demonstrate your knowledge. Your knowledge builds trust – and the best place to start is with your own personal brand.

• How to create your “story”
• What to do if people are talking about you (good or bad)
• Creating a leveraging a blog
• How to leverage LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
• The “Six Ps” for improving your online brand
• The Must Do’s and Dont’s to building your personal brand

APRIL 21st – Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Employees

It is probably not a secret that social media is scaring the CRAP out of your company. Do you have a policy in place to teach your employees the right and wrong ways to use social media? Have you offered training to help ease the change into the new world of communication?

In Building a Social Media Policy for Your Company, we examine how to draft a companywide policy to share with your employees on what they can and can not do on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites. You will be taught exactly what should be in a social media policy, update your knowledge on the perils of social media for your company, and be able to discuss the topic with key executives at your company.

We will also be emailing you a social media policy in Microsoft Word to help in your editing process.

Social Media for Lead Generation? Maybe Not

I came to a conclusion about lead generation and customer service while I was reading through “The State of Small Business Report” from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. The report focuses on the development of small business and a section of the report talked about social media adoption. Social media adoption has actually doubled for small business over 2009 from 12% to 24%. However, that is not the interesting stat.

Based on the performance of Social Media image to the left it was rare when social media actually met the expectations of the business owner. This could be chalked up to higher expectations but there is an interesting dynamic that I recognized in the stats. The one stat that actually received higher than expected results was the collaborating more externally with vendors and customers.

This further supports thoughts I have had with Jason Baer and Brandon Prebynski... we talked about the concept of people laughing about social media being used for lead generation. The true value of social media is ingrained in communication through stories and customer service. We are talking about a communication medium where sharing, customer retention, and customer communication are absolutely… positively… king.

This also supports the concept of enterprise systems developing more social capabilities in the software helping corporate cultures market and communicate. Every facet of customer communication needs to be looking towards social as another way to speak values across a subset of people.

It is hard to imagine a world where every social media consultant is NOT talking about lead generation. However, we may be experiencing another shift in the way we look at social media.

By the way… small business is still increasing spending in social media. Let the games begin.

5 Ways to Use Foursquare for Business

Some would say that Foursquare has blasted into the scene of location based social networking applications with a vengeance. I would tend to agree with that sentiment. The best way to describe the service is to actually use the source. From the Foursquare site:

People use foursquare to “check-in”, which is a way of telling us your whereabouts. When you check-in someplace, we’ll tell your friends where they can find you and recommend places to go & things to do nearby. People check-in at all kind of places – cafes, bars, restaurants, parks, homes, offices.

You’ll find that as your friends use foursquare to check-in, you’ll start learning more about the places they frequent. Not only is it a great way to meet up with nearby friends, but you’ll also start to learn about their favorite spots and the new places they discover.

I will be completely honest with you (side note: I love that saying because it is a funny thing to say… just so you know… I will always be completely honest with you) I have not realized the full potential of Foursquare personally but I have seen it being used across a multitude of different users… from power users to newbies.

What I strive to accomplish while writing this blog is to give the reader practical uses of emerging digital technology and ideas to use them effectively. So let’s get this party started!

1. Encourage Foursquare Users to Check in and Post Reviews about Your Location

Foursquare allows a user to view where their friends have been within 3 hours of a certain update. This could have huge potential for a hotel chain. David Fleet mentioned in his blog post, Foursquare’s Potential for Hyper Local Marketing, the advantages of using Foursquare to check where your friends have stayed (the night) in a given location. A hotel, sauna, or day spa could encourage Foursquare users to check into a given location and put brief thoughts about the service in their tip updated.

Example : Give users of Foursquare a discount on their tab for a favorable tip update. (This could also be applied to any social network)

2. Use the Points Structure of Foursquare to Support a Local Charity

Users will gain points when they accomplish certain activities like checking in, making multiple stops in a day, adding a new venue, making a repeat visit, or consecutively checking into a certain location. Encourage users to rack up the points and put a value to the points they are accruing (Ex: $0.04 per point). At the end of the promotion donate the amount of money to a charity. This encourages visits to your business and gives back to those who need our help!

3. Use the “Mayor” Status as a Perk – You Become an Authority Figure

The user that checks in the most at a certain location will gain the notoriety of becoming “mayor” of that location. I have actually witnessed people fight over becoming mayor. If you offered special perks to the mayor of your location (ie: name on a board, gift certificate for the month, free beverage, or maybe a puppy!) it will encourage Foursquare users to visit your location more often.

4. Utilize the To-Do List to Give Users Tasks to Complete – Scott Hepburn

Each business has the potential of creating a to do list for Foursquare users. If you visit a Foursquare page for a business (Click here for an example) you will find a button to create a to-do list. This could be utilized as a contest for people visiting the location. You could offer perks much like the user became a mayor of your location.

Example : Give a to-do list of what the location wants to improve upon in terms of service. Allow users to help improve those services by viewing the to-do list and adding tips for improvement.

5. Encourage Users to Become Superusers of Your Location

When a user becomes a SUPERUSER at your location they have the ability to edit venue information. Some of you may be skeptical and hesitant at giving users the ability to edit YOUR data… but let’s be honest… it isn’t really YOUR data anymore is it? It is easier to have users edit your location information because they are actually using the tool and experiencing your company in a completely different way. Also, this help for annoying bad data that could be spread through different users.

Foursquare is an infant compared to social media titans like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter… the important thing to remember is that it is growing and people are using it.

Is your business getting reviewed on social applications? You would be surprised…

5 Ways to Change Attention to Action in Social Media

We spend oodles of  time talking about increased exposure for your company or personal brand while using social media. We spend countless hours reading about tips to gain attention and pull users into our content. Personally. I spend quite a bit on Google Reader trying to stay ahead of the curve and consume the next big idea.

Many small business owners concentrate on one aspect of social media: the attention of the users. It is mainly the increased exposure to potential clients that starts the interest wheel turning. This is the old marketing strategy of… the more content you share the more eyes you will hit. We need to take it a bit further than just building brand recognition. It is hard to measure brand recognition in terms of return on investment.

Initially when entering into a social media marketing strategy companies need to think about the attention gaining concepts for the plan. Whether you are doing a contest, being productive on social networks, or launching a new blog it is important to initially focus on the attention aspect of social media.

What is truly important (in a business sense) is the action the user takes to buy and/or become interested in your product. You have all the attention you can muster! How do you turn the user’s attention into action.

4 Ways to Change Attention to Action

1. Free eBook:

Write a short book about your expertise. Are you an accountant? A business coach? Maybe you are a plumber who is just getting involved online? Write a quick page turner on some topics that will be beneficial to your readers. Offer it for a free download and capture their email address. This will allow you to build your database while already zeroing in on interested prospects. Chris Brogan has done an excellent job at this.

2. Blog or Email Subscription

In everything you do in social media it is extremely important to always have a subscription box for users to subscribe to your thoughts and offerings. A great email tool for wordpress is FeedBurner Email Subscription.

3. Promotional Banners or Links to your Profile

Always have a link present (image or text) that offers a discount on your services. You can also have a link directed to your company website that allows users to invest more time in learning about your services. This is a huge example of way to drive your attention users to your website and sell them on your services.

4. Gain Their Trust

You need to become involved in the communities that potentially may be a revenue source for your company. Take the time to respond to questions, ask questions, invest in writing great content, and helping people out. This is a huge aspect of changeing attention to action. The steps towards the buying pattern of a user has a lot to do with trust in the social media environment. Gain their trust and offer them something to hard to put down.

Gaining the trust of a user is the more important of the four steps listed above. User’s attention is not a bad thing but in order to measure your  ROI  you must take some of them to the action steps.

5. Use Intense Debate to Encourage Further Conversation.

Intense Debate is an AWESOME comment plugin that allows for intense comment functionality for your blog. The features include: comment threading, reply-by-email, email notifications, commenter profiles, moderation/blacklisting, reputation points, widgets, and Twitter integration (to new a few).

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Think Big and then Think Small

I’m not going to lie to you. This blog post is completely… and utterly… inspired by Jay Baer over at Convince and Convert. His blog post titled Get More Bait in the Water has a great thought that pushed me to write this blog.

“Thought leadership via social media content is about thinking big. And then thinking small.”

I believe that we are so focused on thinking big that we deny the concept of thinking small when deciding on strategy and implementation. It can lead to inconsistent messaging and promotion. We are talking about the death of many small to mid sized companies.

The overall strategy of a specific marketing initiative is the concept of thinking big. How are we (as a company) going to achieve our goals? How are we going to move from point A to point B and dominate the market? The overall goal of strategy planning is to think big! But creativity can only take you so far. I can use my own social media and design company as an example.

We do a ton of creative brainstorming. My role as head of business development allows me the luxury of thinking big.. 24/7. Early on we ran into the problem of implementation. We had some huge ideas both internally and externally but they were not implemented properly (for our clients or our company). My business partner, Brandon Coon, took it upon himself to be the implementation guru.  We hired an awesome company ran by Nicole Bickett to help us with process and we acquired an excellent project manager named Amy Rowe.

It is so important to remember the small things that make a BIG IDEA work. The same concept applies to your social media strategy and implementation. You have big goals but how are you going to accomplish the social media goals?

A top ranked blog or seach engine ranking takes small posts and careful planning to reach that coveted spot. Great lead generation tools for your sales team takes little ideas implemented over.. and over.. and over to work. In the words of the great Chet Holmes, “Pig headed discipline and determination is key to business success.”

Be pig headed and stubborn… but remember planning and implementaxtion.

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Diamond Marketing and Selling the Experience

This morning I was listening to a local radio station when a diamond store’s advertisement played across the speakers… I sat there at the stoplight listening to the words…

“We are the ONLY diamond store that buys direct from the manufacturer… cutting out middleman pricing… best quality diamonds… friendly service…”

Truthfully… the ad was lame. There was no story telling… there was no emotional buy. There was nothing that invited me to continue the conversation. I decided to look into the other diamond sellers and manufacturers in the city. You guessed it… they were all the same. They all said the exact same thing.

Frankly, I do not care that you had to fly to Hong Kong to buy your diamonds. I don’t care that you are cutting out the middleman pricing. I care that you treat me the right way when I walk in the door. I care about the experience of the purchase not the purchase itself.

When we are selling a professional product or service it is important to DIFFERENTIATE. It is a lost art. How do you differentiate in a world where everything is starting to sound similar… sound bland?   It is essential that you gain the trust of the individual before they buy. It is essential to encourage your customers to tell the story.

You can buy as many radio, yellow pages, or newspaper ads as your budget allows… it only breaks the surface. The experience sells the product. How are you using your website, social media, traditional marketing, and networking to tell your story.

Do not bore the world with details… tell them the story!

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Quantify and then Qualify Your Social Media Relationships

Corvida has an awesome post on Chris Brogan’s blog called Decreasing Our Connections While Increasing Our Networks. The basic rundown of the post (which you should go read) is her exasperation over the amount of “friends” she has over various networks and the lack of a deeper and real connection. This conversation surfaces quite a bit when I am speaking to groups of people about social media. Where do you draw the line on relationship building in the social media environment?

From the post:

Maybe growth on some of these networks isn’t the best thing in the world. Should there be self-imposed limits on how many people you befriend? No because in the end, while your network growth may increase, your connection with your network still increases. However, the rate at which the connection can increase actually decreases. Did that make sense? Unless your friends are constantly questioning you or keeping tabs on you, it’s going to take a lot longer to make deeper connections the more your network grows.

We have been talking a lot about creating deeper relationships through social media. When you are adding hundreds of people on networks like Twitter, Facebook, and other networks it is hard to make the same connection as before! I wrote recently about turning friends, followers, and subscribers into a deeper connection. After all the purpose of sharing in a community driven environment should be relationship building whether for business or personal use.

The question has been presented: How do you take the massive amount of users on social networks and par them down to create meaningful relationships online? Quantify and Qualify.

Quantifying Your Social Media Experience

There are some networks where a huge following is necessary to gain the full experience of the site. Some would argue that Twitter is the site to use for a massive follower base. I am still torn over the notion of having a huge amount of followers on any site. I tend to use Facebook and Twitter to quantify my follower based. I want people to experience my personal side . Quantifying in a social media world basically means I gain an increased quality of experience based on the quantity of the people I am following.

Qualifying Your Social Media Experience

I qualify my niche networks in social media. I have found that I have an increase in quality without necessary having a huge quantity of followers on my geographically direct communities. Smaller Indiana and LinkedIN have been my niche quality sites for my social media experience. Smaller Indiana is a geographically located social network for people in Indiana. And for LinkedIN? I only tend to add people I have met in an offline environment on LinkedIN. My niche networks tend to be the place where there is a direct form of quality conversations.

How do you manage your networks? Do you find you get more or less quality based on the quantity of your friends or subscribers?

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