Future Scratches

Are you a collector? If so, of what? I’m not, but I know the culture. I grew up reading comic books and buying music and haunting bookstores. in all cases, there’s always a sub-tribe of collectors, the kind who scour bins, sometimes seeking the rare and expensive, but other times, seeking the rare and cast off. These are the bin-pickers, the type who must stop at yard sales.

I had all these thoughts, random thoughts, and they could all be blog posts, or they could be nothing. Some of them take time to absorb. Not all of these apply to you. Pick through these as a kind of bin full of tapes and bits you could use to mix into your own stories and songs.

You, the talent, must find the business that supports your storytelling. The studio no longer knows. Replace “studio” with “publisher,” if you’re an author.

No platform? No problem. It’s just harder that way. Start somewhere. Get known for something. Nurture that community and grow it slowly.

If you’re not serious about content creation as a tool of your business-making, you’re not serious about using the web as a business tool.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not serious. The web can just be fun. Relax, if that’s what you want.

You can be the creator, the distributor, the servicer, or maybe the commentator. You can even be all. But knowing which brings you business is the whole value game.

Start. Start. Start somewhere. Worrying or thinking or doubting are all soap without a bubble wand.

On my phone, I can create music, read a magazine, have conversations, write stories, sell things, accept payment, and more. If you’re not configuring your business to face the mobile everything-maker, then you’re skipping the most obvious big sector of potential digital growth for your company.

Picking any one thing and working on that is better than thinking about working on something.

If you’re not making it easy to buy, people will oblige you and not buy.

Stop waiting for your big chance. Those come when you make them happen. They come when you dare to say what you really think.

You can read about sex all day. It’s still not as fun as having it. Same thing with most business experience.

The world is tapas. If you’re waiting for the perfect amount of time, you’re going to miss the big meal.

If you fancy yourself a business owner, start thinking like a business. And by that, I mean, “how do I grow relationships with my best potential partners?”

The most successful people I know lead with, “Tell me more about you! I’m dying to know.” They rarely talk about themselves. That’s why they’re successful.

You are very wonderful and worth it. Here’s a cookie. Now, do the hard work that it takes to eat off the bigger plate.

If you think your product or service or YOU are boring, it is (you are). That’s your vote first, and you’ll help influence us.

None of this matters. What matters is you taking action.

If you’ve had even one or two little twinges of “a-ha,” then I’ve done my job. Thanks for picking through the bin.

Lastly, I want to ask you to sign up to my free newsletter that comes out weekly. I promise to challenge you even more in there. We get up to some really interesting things there weekly, and it’s a very personal back and forth experience. If you’re seeing the word “newsletter” and thinking “information about social media” or “news about chris,” then you’re missing the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.

And thank you.

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No BS Grassroots Marketing Inconvenient Truth 7 – Do What You Do For The Right Reason (Profitable)

Marketing at the local small business level has many challenges. One of the biggest can doing what you do for the right reasons. For example: There are lots and lots and lots of things you can do with advertising, marketing and promotion. Most small business owners, to their painful loss, fail to ask the “Jurassic Park” question:

Just because we can, does that mean we should?

Applied to you, the small business owner, the question becomes “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Do what you do for the right reason Be wary of investing in things because of ANY of the following reasons:

They are popular,Are normal and customary,Are what “everybody” does,“Cool kids” do it,Giants do it,It’s the latest “must-have-gonna-make-everything-easier-magic-button-whiz-bang-flavor-of-the-week.”

Be resistant to pressure by media salespeople, marketing “gurus” biased to or selling particular tools, and employees, peers, friends and family.

I know this will comes as a huge surprise and a harsh reality. perhaps even a genuine shock: Not everyone has your best interests in mind. Not everyone with options has qualified options.

It is YOUR responsibility to hold each investment and activity up to harsh assessment and measurement, to minimize risks, avoid waste, and obtain positive returns.

Why are we doing this?

The story is told of the newlywed couple who were cooking their first Thanksgiving ham. The new wife cut off an end of the ham before putting it in the brand new oven. When asked why she cut of the end, she said: It’s the way my mom always did it.”

The unconvinced and frugal husband then called his mother-in-law to inquire about this practice. Her response: “I have no idea, but I’ll call my mom and find out. That’s the way she always did it.

From 2 generations back, his wife’s grandmother said: “Oh dearie, that’s the way we had to do it. We only had one pan and most hams would just not fit.”

As a small business owner with a limited marketing budget you can’t afford to guess at what works and what doesn’t. Only choose those marketing approaches that have the ability to prove their ROI value to you.

If it’s not provable, it’s not valuable

To stay within the bounds of the real world, I will admit there may be marketing that is not provable that works great. The problem is you’ll never know it. For local businesses, you have to be picky about where you put your limited resources for marketing.

View the original article here

LinkedIn 4x better for B2B leads than Facebook or Twitter says HubSpot study

Web Ink Now: LinkedIn 4x better for B2B leads than Facebook or Twitter says HubSpot studywindow.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init( { apiKey: 'a279adbe87e2b3c505e777af99a5260d', xfbml: true } );};( function() { var e = document.createElement( 'script' ); e.async = true; e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js'; document.getElementById( 'fb-root' ).appendChild( e );} )();Web Ink NowHomeSpeaking TopicsSpeaking EngagementsRave ReviewsDavid's BioContact InfoBlog Archives« GolinHarris shows how an agency does real-time communications right |Main| open cycle launches today and is a company to watch »

April 16, 2012LinkedIn 4x better for B2B leads than Facebook or Twitter says HubSpot study

I'm presenting at the LinkedIn #B2BConnect 2012 event today - April 17, 2012 - in Mumbai, India.

A few weeks ago as I was preparing my talk, I asked my friends at HubSpot if they had any data on the effectiveness of LinkedIn that I could share with my audience. Rebecca Corliss came through with some awesome new data which I am releasing for the first time here.

In a study of 3,128 HubSpot B2B customers, LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.60%, four times higher than Twitter (.67%) and seven times better than Facebook (.39%).

The methodology was a data dump of all of HubSpot customers' social media traffic and leads collected through the HubSpot system in 2011. From there, data was segmented to look at B2B companies that had generated visits and leads from social media. Companies that generated less than two leads in the year were excluded from the sample.

Lead generation with LinkedIn

This data clearly shows that LinkedIn is a good lead source. But few B2B companies use LinkedIn to its full potential.

To help you, HubSpot has published a free ebook Learning LinkedIn From the Experts: How to Build a Powerful Business Presence on LinkedIn. In it, five LinkedIn specialists provide insight into how you can use LinkedIn to successfully grow your network and business. Or just check out the HubSpot LinkedIn company page to see the potential of what LinkedIn can do.

Disclosures: I am on the HubSpot board of advisors and I serve as Marketer in Residence for the company. I am being paid to speak at the LinkedIn #B2BConnect 2012 event.

Posted by David Meerman Scott on April 16, 2012 | Permalink

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Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

I wish several companies I know would read this post. I think Facebook for B2B or corporate environment is as useless as Linkedin for sharing your social life... and as useless as using a fork to eat soup. You must choose the right tool for the right audience (I published some similar ideas on my blog)

Unfortunately Facebook is very trendy, so many think they must use it...without thinking if it will work for their strategy (in the case the had any) or not.

Great post. Thank you

Posted by:Antonio Calero |April 17, 2012 at 02:44 AM

Great data that supports what I've been telling people in presentations about building professional profile. Facebook may have a role in B2B, but it's nothing like the go-to resource that LinkedIn is.

I posted on this today on my own blog, theIdeaStudio: http://www.customercrossroads.com/customercrossroads/2012/04/which-social-network-can-get-you-business-linkedin-is-for-b2b.html Thanks for the inspiration!

Posted by:Susan Abbott |April 17, 2012 at 11:38 AM

I find Facebook and Twitter to be more fun. However, when I'm serious about networking for business, I definitely head for LinkedIn!

Posted by:Tamara G. Suttle, M.Ed., LPC |April 17, 2012 at 10:27 PM

LinkedIn is seriously under-utilized as a marketing tool. Its groups and answers features give marketers more information than you could ever glean from Twitter profiles or Facebook open graphs. There are people asking questions and telling your their problems every single day! I've consistently found that (for me) LinkedIn converts 10x to 20x better than Twitter. The volume is about half so that still results in a net 5x to 10x increase. It's because the responses are laser-targeted and customized. People don't like to do it because it takes better organizer and more work.

I've just launched a new web business 30 days ago and so far LinkedIn conversions are 12x better than Twitter and 2.9x better than Facebook.

Posted by:Jon DiPietro |April 18, 2012 at 08:20 AM

Hi David,

I'd agree i might be more than 4 maybe 6 or 7 times more effective for B2B. I think it is if you establish some thought leadership their through groups. If your using it as purely Sales tool I think you'll have a tougher time.

My friends Sales friends at Cisco our using it as Sales Channel. I personally think if you are you should give back a bit maybe go pro or establish the leaderships I talked about. I think that will reel people in more.

Thanks

Dara

Posted by:Dara Bell |April 18, 2012 at 03:17 PM

Thanks, David. We've had a lot of success with LinkedIn and I think it's because it's used for professional development. We market software tools for engineers, so there's a symbiosis with our user community: our tools are enhanced by skilled users and skilled engineers are are enhanced by our tools. In other words, without a skilled user we are just dead bits on a hard disk drive. We hosted a Group on LinkedIn so that our community can showcase their skills and develop their careers. They can tag their profiles/resumes with our tag, and attract headhunters who are looking for the skill to drive our tool. It's a win-win-win! PS Thanks also for the mention! :-)

Posted by:Signalintegrity |April 18, 2012 at 07:40 PM

I think there are practical applications for all the major social media platforms, but LinkedIn has some obvious (and not so obvious) advantages in business. As a corporate blogger, I pay very close attention to who responds to the material I share everywhere but especially on LinkedIn.

Posted by:Crystal Wiebe |April 23, 2012 at 10:39 AM

I understand that LinkedIn is better for B2B lead generation because it is a professional network. However, that kind of makes the conclusion fall into the category of "Well, duh!" Business people use LinkedIn for maintaining business connections, not Facebook.

However, we should stop thinking of paltry visitor-to-lead conversion rates of less than 3% and start thinking about connecting buyers, sellers and vendors through the power of those networks we all possess and put systems in place to manage it all as a virtual channel. Many B2B products, especially long tail/niche technology products need to be sold. No one will click to buy 40 grand worth of Active Directory utilities off a LinkedIn ad. But sales like that are too small or too expensive for a direct sales force.

Let's look beyond the irrelevant conversation of Facebook vs. LinkedIn for B2B and look at how social networks can be used to get B2B products to market in fundamentally new ways.

Posted by:Tim Johnson |April 26, 2012 at 02:37 PM

Tim, I absolutely agree. And I've been writing about that topic for a decade now (since 2004 on this blog). Nevertheless, I do think this is interesting data. Thanks for jumping in.

Posted by:David Meerman Scott |April 26, 2012 at 02:44 PM

David, would you be willing to have an offline conversation about a system that is just coming on the market that can do just that?

Posted by:Tim Johnson |April 26, 2012 at 11:28 PM

Thanks for the post. Can you define "visits" in the context of this research? Is it one visit to a company page on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter? On LinkedIn you could also visit a group or a personal profile, correct? Hence the request for clarification. Thanks!

Posted by:Curiousbanker |May 01, 2012 at 09:44 AM

Thanks for this post, I quoted it on my blog : http://www.mailinblack.com/blog-mib/br%C3%A8ves-mib-%E2%80%93-30042012 ;)

Posted by:Hadia |May 02, 2012 at 03:30 AM

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Bob Marley and me

This week "Marley," the new Bob Marley documentary hits the screens in many countries. Naturally, the official U.S. release date is 4/20. The film is terrific and I have a small role in finally telling the reggae legend’s story on film.

While in New York City after a gig at Madison Square Garden, Bob Marley learned that he had terminal brain cancer. He headed to Pittsburgh anyway, travelling by bus with his band The Wailers for a gig at the Stanley Theater two days later in what turned out to be his final concert on September 23, 1980.

Road Trip

On that same day 32 years ago I also road tripped to the Stanley Theater to be at the show, although nobody in the crowd knew what the world would learn soon after, that Marley was very, very sick.

I was a sophomore at Kenyon College in Ohio at the time. Having grown up a rock kid in the suburbs of New York City, I was already a concert veteran by then, having caught dozens of bands like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, The Ramones, Black Sabbath, Frank Zappa, and the Grateful Dead plus classic blues artists like Muddy Waters and Albert King.

But when I first heard Bob Marley blasting from my friend Ned’s dorm room at the beginning of freshman year, it was like nothing I had heard before. I was hooked and bonded immediately with the others partaking in Marley’s music and all that goes with it.

My friends and I just had to be at that Stanley Theater show, so we drove four hours to catch it. For some reason, I felt compelled to borrow a friend's excellent camera outfit complete with telephoto lens. It was a cosmic thing because I had never brought my own camera to a show before. Since the big Canon looked "official" back in the days of film cameras, the staff let me fire away from anywhere I wanted. Somehow I managed to focus the unfamiliar camera even though we had "prepared" for the show for the entire drive.

The show was epic. The i-Threes opened (Marley's wife Rita Marley, plus Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths) and I still recall them swaying in time to the music. They did three songs before Bob came out to thunderous applause. He was dancing the entire 90 minute show except for the acoustic "Redemption Song" which he performed laid back and solo. They did three encores as if Bob just didn't want to leave the stage. Nobody in the audience knew that Bob was sick. His energy level was extremely high and he had total command of the audience.

My resulting photos didn't see the light of day for several decades. Then 2 years ago, the Marley family released a live album of that Stanley Theater show.

Content drives action

When I noticed that the photos used in the live album packaging were not actually from the Stanley gig, I left a message in my Amazon review of the CD: "If anyone from the label reads this, I have some great photos from the show."

Little did I know that a film was in the works from Academy Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald.

"One of the challenges with Bob is that there's so little great archive footage," says Macdonald. Marley's last show was a critical aspect of the film and there was no video or photo record... except mine.

The weird vibe of borrowing the camera and reviewing the CD came full circle when the filmmakers, who had read those reviews, contacted me.

I'm not trying to make a marketing lesson out of this story, but had I not posted content in the form of that Amazon review of the CD, the world would never have seen photos of Bob Marley's last concert.

"Of course you can use my photos!," I said. And for a little added ego boost, I got a credit in the film.

"Marley" the film

In the trailer, the first two stills are mine.

Direct link to "Marley" trailer on YouTube.

"Marley" is a terrific film even if you aren’t a fan. My wife watched the screener with me and she loved it too.

Bob Marley's universal appeal, impact on music history and role as a social and political prophet has only grown in the past three decades. "Marley," is the definitive life story of the musician, revolutionary, and legend, from his early days to his rise to international superstardom. Made with the support of the Marley family, the film features rare footage, incredible performances and revelatory interviews with the people that knew him best.

Bob Marley's music became an important part of my life. So much so that on a visit to Jamaica in the mid-1980s, I even traveled several hours by car to Bob's childhood home in the village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish.

"I think what's great about the film," says Bob's oldest son, David "Ziggy" Marley, "is though there's been a lot of things done on Bob, I think this one will give people a more emotional connection to Bob's life as a man. Not just as a reggae legend or a mythical figure, but his life as a man, you know? The struggles he went through."

Ziggy is right. The film does provide an emotional connection to Bob Marley. I'm amazed that through some remarkable serendipity and cosmic 420 vibes, I played a small part in bringing this story to the world.

View the original article here

Where Should You Put Your Content?

I’ve been asked by subscribers of my personal newsletter how I decide what goes on my blog and what goes into my newsletter. I think the answer differs depending on your strategy, but I’m more than happy to tell you how I view it. I put information that sells on my blog, and information that nurtures in my newsletter.

My job, because people seem confused these days as to what exactly it is I do or am selling, is to help mid-sized to larger companies build business (revenue and growth) by improving their use of the human digital channel (social media, email marketing, mobile marketing, content marketing, and other business applications). When I write something here on [chrisbrogan.com], the goal is to help YOU, and then also to entice potential clients who are seeking ideas on how to build up business.

Thus, what goes onto my blog is information that I hope gets indexed by Google, that I hope gets shared by you, and that I hope is found to be useful to the kinds of clients I like to work with (primarily B2C, but I get some B2B as well). Lots of times, however, I write for my community and not my marketplace. This article is for you. It’s not really as useful for a bigger company, unless that company is just as uncertain where to put which kind of content. See the difference?

On my newsletter, I write personally to you. I write with ideas that I think will help you grow yourself, and sometimes your business. Last week, I wrote about how to start an email marketing program to grow your community. This week, I’m going to write about how one starts charging for services, and/or the whole money thing in general. (If you want that information for free, subscribe here.)

My idea is that my newsletter content is built to nurture my community.

That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t sell to your community. Don’t forget: if you’re doing it right, your community is very willing to hear what you’re offering for sale, because they know that you’re only offering products and services that are of value to their own needs. So you can sell. You just have to spend more time nurturing than selling, lest you lose the privilege of having a strong email newsletter community.

As your primary site is your Home Base, social networks are Outposts. What should you create for those places? On Google+, for instance, I might write a piece that isn’t a blog post. What I do there, quite often, is just write the “liner notes” to this site. I write information that I find interesting, or that might tell you more about me, but that isn’t exactly the bread-and-butter of [chrisbrogan.com]. For instance, when I write about music, I tend to write about it there. Same thing with Twitter and LinkedIn. If I still belonged on Facebook, I would write posts that were specific to my community and try to help nurture it even more.

Does this line up with what you’re doing? Does this make sense? How have you found this kind of approach helpful, or how has the opposite treated you?

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Friday Fun: Entrepreneurship For Children

Friday Fun is Diva Marketing's virtual happy hour from cosmos to Jack to lemonade. A waiting for the weekend playground time to be sophisticated-silly. Or sometimes just plain silly. A time to go off topic.

Truly wonderful the mind of a child is. - YODA, Star Wars

What do children have to do with social media marketing? Nothing. Everything. 

When was the last time you attempted to try something new without benefit of strategy, research or group consensus? Even outside of a work environment adults incorporate these three safe guards to make decision.  Stay with me on this one. 

We even use these safe guards when we're taking a fun family trip. Strategy: What will you pack? We need a (planning) list. Research: Are the reviews on Yelp more credible than on Trip Adviser? Group Consensus: Let's vote. Who wants to go to the beach and who wants to go to the mountains?  

I know what you're thinking. "Hey, Toby you've been talking to us for the past 27 billion years about the importance of planning and strategy." Well, it's really been only 8 which in social media years is just about 27 billion years so I guess you're right.

Sometimes I think we think too much and the innovative ideas blow by us like danilion seeds. 

Our friends at MSN Business on Main have some interesting content posted about young adults who dived into business. One is a video about how two college pals created a summer job, College Hunks Moving Junk (love the name!), that morped into a mulit-million dollar business.

At the time their risk was small .. a start-up for the summer. Sure there were learning and growing pains that might have been avoided if a plan and research had been in place but would the business exist? 

The other is an article fostering entrepreneurship in young children and quotes Dr. Cathy Ashmore, founder, Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education. I had the pleasure of taking part in the intial planning session (oops! that word) for the Consortium Forum 2012, 30th year education in entrepreneurship conference, taking place in Atlanta in November. Truly an amazing event that I encourage anyone who is involved in teaching children about entrepreneurship to attend.

I can't help but wonder how many children might have followed a different path if they had been given the confidence and told it was okay to catch a few danilion seeds blowing in the wind. Innovation first. Planning second.

If you're interested in helping children explore the path of owning a business skip over to Lemonade Day a nonprofit that offers an ".. experiential learning program where communities across the nation unite to teach youth how to start, own and operate their own business through a lemonade stand."

Let's circle back .. what do dandilions, summer jobs, lemonade stands and children have to do with social media marketing? You connect the virtual dots and tell me!  

That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. - Walt Disney

 Diva Marketing is part of an online influencer network for MSN Business on Main. I receive incentives to share my views on a monthly basis. All opinions are 100% mine.

View the original article here

No BS Grassroots Marketing Inconvenient Truth 4: No Substitute For REAL, Personal Relationships

I like to listen to old radio programs on CD’s, on the rare occasions I have to drive any significant distance. Many of these CD’s have the original commercials intact. In a series of Phillip Marlowe detective dramas – based on the character created by the legendary writer Raymond Chandler – there are commercials for the 1950 Ford sedans, and they are really spectacular radio commercials. They feature true Unique Selling Propositions:

Ford had the only budget priced sedan with a powerful V-8 vs.versus all others in their class with 6 cylinder enginesThey had “king-size brakes” typically found only in much more expensive cars, providing maximum safety; and so on.Some of the commercials featured testimonials, like an airline pilot comparing the experience of driving this car to that of flying a plane, soaring above the crowds.They all had a strong call to action, pushing listeners to immediately arrange a test drive. And they all directed listeners where to find their local dealer in their phone directories, plus this line:

“… or perhaps you know him personally. He’ll be happy to arrange…”

The idea that you might know your local Ford dealer personally, whether you do or not, is a powerful piece of persuasion. It suggests that your Ford dealer is a man of your community, a neighbor, a person who is accessible to you, out and about, there to be held accountable. And even if you don’t actually know him personally, it reminds you that it feels like you do, because he appears in his own advertisements with his family and pets, and you know things about him as a result of his advertising, marketing, and public relations, maybe, that he was a war hero or a star on the area’s college sports team or spearheads a big fundraising effort each year for the volunteer fire department.

3 Tips for REAL personal, person-to-person relationships

First, I am a champion of the idea that there is neither good nor bad media per se, just as neither hammer nor scalpel nor gun is a good or bad tool. It depends on the purpose it is to serve and the capability of the person using it. The merits of any and every advertising and marketing tool, media, strategy, or tactic are totally situational.

Second, the merits of one almost always depend on the context of use and synergy with others. A billboard-wrapped truck in and of itself may have very limited value, as Jeff mentioned, largely due to the painfully brief message that can be grasped at 55 miles per hour (and realistically, who drives 55 mph anymore?). But if that billboard-wrapped truck is strategically parked in a neighborhood where work is being done on a happy customer’s home, from 5:00 to 6:30 PM, when all the neighbors are returning home from work AND the people working on the house are in good uniforms and, if approached, are able and eager to answer questions and collect information or immediately whip out a cell phone and connect the prospect with a salesperson back at the office AND the surrounding homes get a multi-step mailing campaign immediately after the work on Herb and Betty’s house is done, beginning with a testimonial letter from Herb and Betty to their neighbors, well, the billboard wrapped truck may be very valuable indeed.

Third, and most important – MOST important-when advertising and marketing media are used in a way that makes the connection human, from a person to another person, and reminds that “he is my local Ford dealer I probably know personally” – used in a “grassroots” way – it is all infinitely more effective.

View the original article here