Tactical Execution

I’m getting ready to fly up to Vancouver for the 2008 Internet Marketing Conference (IMC).  Last year, the conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden.  It was the first conference about internet marketing that I attended and it was a spectacular experience.

My workshop was entitled “Monetizing Trust; Bringing Your Audience from Rapport to Revenue” and it was well received by the audience.  This year, I’ll be chairing two sessions, both about Social Media.  The first is a panel discussion with Warren Sukernek, Jacqueline Voci and Julie Wisdom.  The second is workshop devoted to Social Media and the opportunities to integrate multiple platforms to communicate more effectively with your audience.

It’s an exciting time for me.  I just finished my book: Make Yourself Useful, Marketing in the 21st Century.  And my website now has over 350 pages on content on it.  Together, they offer a good synopsis of my expertise along with the credibility to share it with others.  IMC 2008 will be my first opportunity to offer my book to the public.

The interesting thing will be to hear the thoughts of other experts in the same field.  Social Media has grown to include so many different platforms (including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Utterz, Flickr, Digg, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, Meetup, all the various forums, BlogCatalog and blogs in general) that everybody has a slightly different angle on the opportunities available.  The panel discussion will undoubtedly raise some fascinating possibilities.

When I was in Sweden for IMC 2007, I went out for dinner with 13 other speakers.  Between the 14 of us, we came from 11 different countries.  I doubt the participants will be as diverse this time around but I’m really looking forward to meeting the other speakers and all the attendees.  Conferences like these are incredibly valuable in a networking sense and can quickly add to your business in ways you’d never imagine beforehand.

To top it off, Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the weather in September is hard to beat.  I would encourage anyone interested in Internet Marketing to attend this conference.  Not only will you meet true experts in the field but you’ll also be introduced to a growing niche of modern marketing that’s far broader than most people realize.

I continue to be amazed at the opportunities to integrate your online activities on different platforms.  I’ve written about this before, specifically as it pertains to Twitter and Utterz, but wanted to write another post to describe some of the other tools I’ve stumbled upon recently.

This Tactical Execution website is build on WordPress and there are a number of things you can do to integrate your blog with your other social media accounts.  Last week, I installed a plugin entitled Twitter Tools.  It basically does three basic things.  First, if you post a tweet, it will automatically create a post in your blog presenting the contents for your website visitors.  Second, if you post a blog post (like this one, for example), it will automatically post a tweet announcing your post to your twitter audience and telling them where to find it.  And finally, it allows you to post a tweet from your WordPress dashboard.

I originally installed the plugin because of this last feature.  I don’t do a lot of texting and never get around to visiting my twitter account so the ability to post a tweet when I’m managing my website is a great feature.  But since I’ve installed the plugin, I’ve come to appreciate the first two features as well and have noticed an increase in traffic to my blog as a result.  I’ve also had a number of new people start following me on twitter.

In my post about twitter and utterz, I described the ability to make one cell phone call into the utterz platform and automatically populate your twitter account, your website (via the blue widget you can see on the left hand side of this website) and your facebook profile (because twitter integrates nicely with facebook).  Well, it turns out that facebook can be seamlessly integrated with your blog as well.  By going to your “Notes” page, you can add the RSS feed from your blog and have your facebook profile be updated every time you write a new blog post.

Between my website, facebook, twitter and utterz, all my activity is completely integrated.  I am now looking at ways to integrate other platforms like LinkedIn or BlogCatalog or YouTube.  I’m sure there are and just have to allocate some time to do the research and then take the steps necessary to complete the process.  My point is that your digital footprint grows exponentially when you integrate your different audiences and it doesn’t cost a thing.

This same concept is true for so many things.  Take YouTube videos.  If you do just one video, you’ll most likely get lost in the thousands of other videos.  But if you do a series, you broaden your reach.  Think about it like a fishing net.  You want your net as big as possible, catching people in different ways and for different reasons.  But once they see one of your videos, they’ll quickly see all the other stuff you’ve done.  And at that point, the cross-polination increases the traffic to all your videos, not just the original one.

With all the social media platforms, you can see the same effect.  You have friends on facebook.  You have followers on twitter and utterz.  You have fans on YouTube and visitors to your website.  Regardless how they find you initially, they can immediately be introduced to all the other stuff you do, augmenting your online identity and increasing your traffic at the same time.

• Just installed the Twitter plugin for WordPress. I am writing this tweet from my WP dashboard. Very cool. #
• [utterz] http://www.utterz.com/u/utt/u-NTEwNzg4Mg #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

There’s a lot of talk about how to leverage the internet to grow your business.  Different people have different strategies and they all seem like tricks you have to do just right to see results.  And while some of that may be true, there’s value in understanding the concepts behind Internet Marketing, allowing you to apply the same concepts to dozens of different strategies.  Besides, I always like knowing what it is I’m trying to accomplish rather than just knowing a sequence of steps to follow.

Before jumping into the meat of this post, I also want to address the fact that the internet has changed a lot over the past decade and the concepts behind Internet Marketing have changed as well.  Although the modern realities all have roots in those early years, the dynamic was very different in the mid to late 90s.  Today, the internet is starting to mature with people using it in predictable ways.  And perhaps more importantly, the internet has become more social; hence the new buzz words like social media tools, social networks and social bookmarking.

The driving force behind modern Internet Marketing boils down to one simple phrase: conversations are markets.  If you want to access a particular market, you have to find that conversation and participate in it.  Let me say that again.  If you want to access a market, you have to participate in the conversation.  Simple.  But let’s dig a little deeper and see how we might accomplish this.

MySpace is a huge conversation.  In fact, there are thousands or even millions of individual conversations taking place on MySpace.  Same with Facebook.  The blogosphere is one massive conversation.  Forums are conversations.  Bulletin boards are conversations.  Twitter is a conversation, as is Utterz.  All the social bookmarking platforms like DIGG, delicious and StumbleUpon are all conversations.  People are interacting.  And if you want to sell a product or service to those people, you have to participate in that conversation and establish credibility within those circles.

If you’ve spent any time on the platforms just mentioned, you’ll know that within each certain users stand out as authorities.  Perhaps they have more posts or more friends or more content or more bookmarks.  In general, those who are active are quickly recognized as authorities.  So what does that actually mean?  It means you can be an authority yourself by just selecting the conversation that best matches your business and becoming an active user.

For most people, there are two problems.  First, people are fickle.  Second, they have no discipline.  Go to a gym in January and it will be packed.  Go in March and it will be quiet.  Why?  Because everyone had a New Year’s resolution they soon abandoned in favor of other healthy activies like watching TV or drinking beer.  Bottom line; those who stand the test of time will win in the end.

Never before has the formula for success been so clear cut.  It’s a simple formula.  Participate.  Be active.  Establish yourself within a community and you’re almost guaranteed to succeed, or at least make progress.

Let’s move on to fickle.  Every single day, new platforms are launching on the internet and they all allow and even promote interaction within their users.  Every day, there’s a new fad.  The problem is that if you constantly follow these new fads, you never become established anywhere.  At some point, you have to pick a particular conversation and focus on that.  Even if something flashier comes along, there’s value in sticking to your plan.

Now, am I saying that you have to limit yourself to all the old-school platforms that are no longer attracting fresh visitors?  No.  All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t be too quick to jump from one to the other.  Put some time into the initial selection process.  Find the conversations that apply to your business.  Find the best forums.  Find the best blogs.  Find the best groups on social networks.  Look at them all and decide which ones you want to focus on.  Then stick to it for a while and see how your efforts pay off.

There’s another level to this discussion.  There’s something even more powerful than participating in conversations and that is facilitating conversations.  This might include becoming an organizer for an online group.  It might include adding a forum to your website.  It might include creating a wiki and then opening it up to your audience.  It might include using Ning to create your own social network around your particular business.

The possibilities are endless but you have to ensure you have an enthusiastic audience before you pull the trigger.  There’s nothing worse than a forum with no posts, a wiki with no contributions or a social network with no members.  But let’s look at an example of someone who has truly capitalized on the axiom: Barack Obama.  Now, I am not referring to his politics at all.  That is not my concern here.  But in terms of participating and facilitating conversations, he’s done more than any other politician in history … by orders of magnitude!

If you go to his website, you can create a profile and accumulate friends just like any other social network.  You can create a neighborhood and stay updated on events or even organize your own events.  You can obviously donate to his campaign or you can offer to match someone else’s donation, and even stay in touch with that other person.  But most interestingly of all, you can create your own blog within his web platform.

As of this writing, the Barack Obama website has over 40,000 active blogs, all written by individual supporters.  All these people are thoroughly engaged in his campaign and are contributing buckets of unique relevant content to his website.  They’re interacting with each other and getting more and more intertwined with the Barack Obama “change” movement every single day.  There’s no question he has capitalized on the “conversations are markets” moniker and I personally expect his dominance in this area will carry him through the November election.

Take some time and think about the conversations taking place in your field, in your business.  Do some searches on Google and Technorati and Big-Boards.  Find the conversations and begin participating in them.  You might be surprised how quickly you become a known quantity and how quickly you can start promoting your own products or services to the people you meet.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the popular micro-blogging platform called Twitter.  It’s an extremely simple platform that allows its users to tell their “followers” what they’re doing in just 140 characters.  That’s right.  Just 140 characters.  That’s about 1 or 2 sentences.

Essentially, it’s just like a blog feed.  You’re updating your status on an ongoing basis and people can subscribe to the feed, keeping up with your activities.  Now, picture a grandmother who decides to follow the daily activites of her grandson by subscribing to his Twitter feed.  She could even push her feed to her mobile phone and get ongoing updates about her grandson’s life.  I’m sure her peers would be impressed.

I have a friend who has a huge following on Twitter and he uses it to be a thought leader within his field.  Although the vast majority of your followers do not read all your tweads, some do and they will know you are an active member of the Twitter community.  But the point that most people do not read all the tweads they have subscribed to is an important one.  For many, the people they choose to follow are little more than popularity contest.

Those who benefit the most from platforms like Twitter are those who use them in creative ways.

Another micro-blogging platform that’s gaining popularity is Utterz.  It differs from Twitter because it allows text, photo, audio and even video content.  And one of the nice things about Utterz is that it feeds easily to Twitter.  That means you can post your content on Utterz and populate your Twitter account at the same time.  Utterz also has a great little widget you can include on your website.  So by using Utterz, you can populate your Twitter feed as well as your website.

Using the same methodology, Twitter has a Facebook application.  That means your Twitter feed can keep your Facebook profile updated.  Okay, so let’s put it all together.  If you push content to your Utterz account, it will feed to Twitter, which will then update your Facebook profile.  As well, Utterz will update your website via the widget.  So you can touch 4 different audiences all by using this configuration.

By the way, Utterz and Twitter are both free.  Yes, it’s true.  They don’t cost a dime.

So for me, I push audio content to my Utterz account and you can see their blue widget on the left-hand sidebar of my blog.  If you click the play button in the top left-hand corner of the widget, you’ll hear my most recent 10 audio Utterz, played in reverse chronological order.  Utterz also feeds my Twitter account and updates my Facebook profile.  And all it requires is a 2-minute cell phone call to their automated submission line.

One of the best ways to evaluate the quality of content people are pushing to their Twitter accounts is to compare the number of people they are following with the number of people following THEM.  There’s a simple reason.  When you follow someone, they get a notification.  And in most cases, they turn around and follow you back.  You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.  But if someone follows you without that reciprocation, it shows the content is drawing people all on its own.

You are all welcome to follow me on Twitter.  And if you do, you’ll see that I have a lot more people following me than I have people I am following.  The reason?  I try to push good valuable content.  And you can evaluate it for yourself by listening to my most recent Utterz on the widget.  If you like what you hear, please subscribe to my feed.