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March 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

How to Use Facebook Groups to Strengthen Your Niche

I see lots of back and forth these days about how effective Facebook is as a business tool. Some marketing professionals claim to hardly ever log into Facebook while other swear they get all sorts of business via Facebook. While your mileage will vary depending on your business and your strategy, I think Facebook can be a viable communication and lead-generation tool for businesses – especially those who are effectively targeting niches.

A Facebook Group is a great way to strengthen your brand presence in a specific niche of customers and connect with potential customers in that same niche, as well. Once you have reached a critical mass of customers in a given niche, create a Facebook Group that is themed specifically for that group of customers. For example, if you are a wedding planner and your target market is brides-to-be in Indianapolis, you might create a Facebook Group called “Indianapolis Wedding Resources”. You would then brand this group with your company logo and brand message and sponsor a group that is designed to let brides-to-be in Indianapolis share ideas, tips, and resources with each other. You would invite all your existing customers to join, and then ask them to invite their friends, as well. Now, you have providede a valuable networking venue for your customers and potential customers to join and utilize – all under your brand. In additionl to being a helpful resource, another end goal of this is to gain the trust and respect of your potential customers so that you have a stronger chance of earning their business.

Other examples might include:

  • A local homeowners resource group, sponsored by a real estate professional
  • An “ecosystem” group to help associations board members network and learn from each other to get the most from their web sites, sponsored by a web site design agency that works with associations
  • A group to help professional speaker share tips and tricks, sponsored by a business coach who works with speakers

As you get more a more members in your group, you will want to post valuable resources, information, and educational material in your group to assist members. You will also want to start discussions that help engage members in conversation with each other. All of this helps to strengthen your position as a resource and a trusted advisor within that niche.

A successful marketing strategy is not made up of just one tool, but Facebook Groups are a great way to strengthen your brand presence within your niche.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , ,
March 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Do People Really Still Cold Call?

I had a somewhat annoying experience today that made me pause and scratch my head. A sales person came into our office today unannounced and said she was “our neighbor” from a chiropractor’s office nearby. She was offering “90% off” a massage at their office and wanted to talk to everyone in our office to offer them this great deal. At first, I politely said that sure, I would be happy to ask around and told her to feel free to leave some brochures. She then proceeded to tell me that she couldn’t leave the brochures with us because it was a special offer that had to be an immediate commitment. She then described in rapid-fire detail this complicated process of getting a special code and calling some special number and then writing the code on the brochure and jumping through a few more hoops before actually getting the massage. At this point I was completely confused and getting annoyed.

When I told her that everyone else was at lunch, she seemed irritated and said “well, if we have any left, I’ll try to stop back by later.” She then walked out and I breathed a sigh of relief that the ordeal was over. Did she really think that this was the way to get new clients? She walked in unannounced and interrupted my day, talked at me rather than with me, had a wildly complex sales process for what should have been a simple transaction, tried to pressure me into a sale, and used a classic “you’re missing out” closing line. In all, it was a huge fail. I felt like I was at the receiving end of a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman from 1950.

Here are a few ideas that this chiropractor could have used to build a client base that doesn’t involve annoying, antiquated sales techniques:

  1. Publish a great email newsletter. A bi-weekly email newsletter that contains useful health tips is likely to be forwarded to friends and will create referrals through authority and peer endorsement.
  2. Utilize Google AdWords. Personal services are well-positioned to take advantage of targeted local Google search campaigns to locate and draw in prospective patients who are ready to engage.
  3. Utilize social media. By creating a Facebook Fan page, a LinkedIn profile, and a Twitter account, chiropractors can distribute health tips and educational material to their networks and establish credibility as a health expert. This leads to warm referrals.
  4. Network. Join a BNI chapter or another local networking group. Building a network of referral partners leads to strong referrals based on trust.
  5. Offer seminars. By speaking on health-related topics, chiropractors can position themselves as leaders in their respective fields and can gain an audience of prospective patients through educational seminars. Public speaking helps strengthen your personal brand and reputation.

The difference in these techniques is that they create leads that are based on desire and trust. I would much rather work with someone who actually wants to work with me and is ready to engage. It’s 2009… there are much better ways to build your business than high-pressure cold calling.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: ,
March 22, 2009 By 2 Comments

Favorite Ubiquitous Capture Tools

As many of you know, I’m a productivity junkie (I happily drink the GTD Kool-Aid) and love to tweak and improve my personal productivity system. In the course of doing this, I’ve settled on a few great tools that assist me with ubiquitous capture. This allows me to capture and retain ideas, actions, and concepts that I want to act on later but don’t have time to process in the moment. These are some of the tools that I have found useful.

Things. I’ve gone through a number of todo list apps, including Nozbe and OmniFocus, but Things is the nicest one I’ve found yet. It’s a Mac app (Sorry, Windows folks) and it’s clean, fast, and flexible. It allows me to sync up tasks with my iPhone and gives me quick keyboard shortcuts for capturing items. When I’m at my computer, Things is my capture mechanism.

Hipster PDA. If I’m not at my computer but at my office or at home, I can easily grab my hipster PDA made up of notecards and a clip. Cheap, easy to use, and effective. Then, I can drop my notecards into my inbox for later processing. It also makes me feel like the guy in Chaos Theory, which is awesome :)

Jott. If I’m out and about and have no hipster PDA available, Jott comes to the rescue. It’s a great application that costs $4/month and allows me to speak notes into my cell phone which are then transcribed and emailed to me for later processing.

After trying many of the tools and methods out there in the GTD community, I’ve found that I can successfully capture everything that comes to mind with one of these three tools so that I can process ideas and actions later without getting distracted in the moment.

What are your ubiquitous capture methods? I’d love to hear about them here.

Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With:
March 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Verio Partner Summit Observations

I had the pleasure of attending the Verio Partner Summit in Reston, VA this week (Washington, D.C. area) and had a great time networking with other Verio partners and team members. I also had the pleasure of sitting on a panel during a breakout session focused on helping business owners grow their businesses.

I was also pleasantly surprised to receive the Innovation Award this year for SpinWeb’s work in utilizing the Verio and Accrisoft product line to deliver powerful and beautiful web sites to our clients in the member-driven, health care, business-to-consumers, education, and manufacturing industries.

Finally, I attended some excellent presentations, including one by Heather Lutze, who talked about Internet marketing and social media. She inspired me to re-write my own presentations and make some improvements. Nice work, Heather!

Every time I attend conferences like this, I am reminded of the need to get away and re-charge on a regular basis. It’s extremely important to network with other business owners and learn in a group space together because it’s at events like these that I develop some of my best ideas. Props to the Verio team for a great conference. I look forward to next year’s event!

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , ,
March 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Network of Women in Business Embraces Smart Online Tools

Today, SpinWeb launched a shiny new web site for the Network of Women in Business, also known as NOWIB. The site is located at www.nowib.com. I am thrilled to talk about this client because it was such a pleasure to create this site. The team at NOWIB was great to work with and everyone was always respectful and helpful the whole process truly felt like teamwork.

It’s also very exciting to see a networking organization like NOWIB really take advantage of our tools in a really smart way. For example, NOWIB is using the Membership module to store, manage, and bill members. This allows members to log into the web site and manage profile information, as well as pay bills online. It allows NOWIB to set up paperless recurring billing for members which saves huge amounts of time. They are also using the Events module for online registration, as well as Email Marketing for a great email newsletter. The NOWIB saw the tools that we recommended and embraced the technology to really take the organization to the next level.

The great new design was also fun to do! The new look and feel is cleaner and easier to navigate and helps NOWIB project a much more credible image to prospective members.

We at SpinWeb are grateful for the opportunity to work with NOWIB and I am very happy to see the new site online. Thanks, NOWIB!

Filed Under: Design, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,
March 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Interested in Feedback? Keep Your Surveys Short.

As a member of a number of associations and networking groups, I receive a lot of surveys. It always amazes me how long and cumbersome most of these surveys are. Inevitably they will be multi-page monsters that require me to type things in and fill in blanks. 99% of the time these surveys end up falling prey to my delete key. Do the senders of these surveys really expect to get a reasonable response when the surveys are this long and complicated?

In order to maximize your response rate, use the following guidelines:

  1. Keep your surveys short. 5-7 questions should be the maximum.
  2. Make all questions one-click multiple choice. Do not ask your readers to fill in blanks or type in text unless it’s an optional final question for other comments.
  3. Keep your surveys to one page.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to tell your readers that your survey will take 2 minutes or less to complete. This sets expectations and reduces the anxiety caused by all the other awful surveys they received. If I can see the entire survey on one page, then I know exactly what to expect, which lowers my anxiety level. If every question is on it’s own page, then I get more and more anxious as I continue because I keep thinking “when will this end?”

If you really want a useful response from your recipients, keep your surveys short and to the point. This will result in data you can actually use.

Filed Under: Design, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: ,
March 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Use Twitter to Keep Your Association Members In The Loop

As a board member of the Indiana Chapter of The American Massage Thereapy Association, I had the pleasure of attending the National Board of Directors meeting in Chicago this past weekend. Chapter presidents from all over the country were gathered to attend the board meeting and report key details back to their chapters. This year, I tried something a little different – I posted updated from the meeting in real time using Twitter.

Having already set up a Twitter account for AMTA-Indiana, I logged in at the start of the meeting from my laptop poised for action. Each time their was a significant point to communicate, I posted a tweet and attempted to add commentary as appropriate. When the presentation displayed documents that were available for download, I searched the AMTA National web site for the document and then posted a link to it via Twitter to make it easy to reference the material discussed during the meeting. It ended up being a lot of fun and I received notes from members who were not able to attend telling me that they appreciated the updates because it kept them in the know. I was even able to post some photos of the boardroom and dinner with our National president via Twitpic from my iPhone.

Twitter has many uses, but this illustrates one of the most valuable, in my opinion. Membership-driven organizations need to be sensitive to the fact that their members want to know what’s going on and feel informed. By using Twitter to distribute information in real-time, I was able to open the box a bit and hopefully bridge the gap between the closed boardroom in Chicago and our membership back home in Indiana.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , ,
March 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Make Yourself Easy to Refer Business To

As a member of a number of local networking organizations, I am always looking for ways to make connections between people in my network of trust. I notice, however, that not everyone is easy to refer to. Some people do a great job of creating a complete LinkedIn profile, have a good web site, and have friended me on Facebook. Perhaps they are also active on Twitter.

Others seem to be stuck in the “call me” mindset and seem resistant to even using email for an introduction. Don’t get me wrong – picking up the phone is great. However, if the only way you can accept a connection is with a phone call, you’re going to limit your options.

Social media gives us so many great ways to make connections that it would foolish to ignore them. If I want to make a connection, I might post a note on Twitter with an introduction along with a link to my contact’s web site. I might email a link to the referral’s LinkedIn profile. I might do a friend recommendation on Facebook. These activities don’t necessarily replace a warmer connection like a meeting or a phone call, but it can make a huge difference in the success rate of the referral when the time comes for a real-world conversation.

Make yourself easy to refer business to by establishing a compelling presence in social media. It will lead to better referrals and greater success.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , ,
March 4, 2009 By 1 Comment

Be Efficient by Re-using Your Content

With all the different mediums available to us today, it can be an overwhelming task to try to keep up. For this reason, I recommend writing content that you can re-use. When blogging, for example, use the same post in your blog, your email newsletter, your Smaller Indiana blog, your Facebook note, and send a link out on Twitter. Then, if you have a need to present information at a speaking engagement, turn it into a presentation or a BNI Educational Moment.

Don’t re-invent the wheel in every medium… re-use your content and get more mileage from every piece.

Filed Under: Marketing, Productivity, Technology
March 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Do, or do not. There is no try

Those of us old enough to have grown up watching Star Wars will instantly recognize the immortal words of Yoda:

“Do, or do not. There is no try.”

Not only is this good advice for a young Jedi, but a worthy philosophy by which to live – especially in business. I am becoming more and more convinced that there are two categories of people in the world: those who try and those who make it happen.

Making it happen is not a result of talent, ability, or special knowledge. It is a decision. My network is filled with great people who have a lof of talent, ability, and knowledge. However, when it comes to finding those who actually making things happen, I find that the list gets a little shorter.

Making it happen is not a matter of trying your best, working hard, or catching some luck. It is a matter of envisioning the outcome, deciding that it will happen, and doing whatever it takes to reach that outcome. I encounter people all the time who, when asked if they can do something, respond with things like “I’ll try,” “I hope so,” or “I’ll do my best.” This is admitting that you have not committed to the outcome. By hiding behind vague statements of hope, you reveal that you have not made a decision to reach the finish line. This sets the stage for failure and for disappointing those who are depending on you.

I conduct regular workshops at SpinWeb on various topics like marketing, technology, and productivity. For  a while, I was in the world of “I’ll try” as I worked on putting together presentations and outlines. My plan was to schedule my first workshop after I put together the presentation. Finally, I realized that I had not fully committed to the workshop so I turned the plan around by choosing a date, publishing it on our web site, and opening it up for online registration. By doing this, I made the decision that the workshop was going to happen and that I had no choice but to get my materials together in time. I made a decision to simply make it happen. Guess what? It happened.

Next time you need to produce something of value, are you going to try or are you going to make it happen? Those who choose the latter are the ones who accomplish great things.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Productivity
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