12 Most Magical Ways to Make Meaningful Media

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 Meaningful media helps your business grow in today’s noisy landscape. When you turn off the noise and turn up the magic you get three things:

• Simplicity
• Clarity
• Purpose

But magic doesn’t always come in a rabbit-filled hat. So, here are some tips for the 12 most magical ways to make your media more meaningful:

1. Automagically share your instagram photos on Twitter

Automagically sharing photos on Twitter makes your feed more visually appealing. But sharing photos on Twitter isn’t quite so seamless. It’s mostly a text-based platform, which is why it’s even more necessary to pump up the magic. So… why not create a secret magic recipe?
You can use the platform If This Then That (IFTTT.com) to create a recipe which will automagically share your Instagram photos to your Twitter stream.
Once you turn the recipe on, people can now view your beautiful photos on both platforms — just like magic. But please be sure that the photos you share on Instagram best suit your brand. For example, if you run a shoe company but share photos of food on Instagram, this will leave a bad taste in your customer’s mouth (pun intended). And it’ll likely cause a lot of confusion with your brand messaging.
Strive for clarity with your messaging by making sure what you choose to share has meaning behind the photos. If it’s not immediately apparent, at least make sure there is some sort of symbolism that corresponds with your brand.
For example, when Audi isn’t sharing photos of cars, they may share an image of tire tracks in the snow. This leaves room for imagination, while still aligning with the core of their brand.

2. Tell stories

You don’t need to be David Copperfield to meld storytelling with magic. Let your imagination run wild. Weave worthy moments of your brand story into your content to make your magic credible. This shows that you’re a quality showman, which builds trust with your customers. Telling stories also creates more impact across your various media platforms, if you tell them right.

3. Cross-post content

When you find the magic in one platform, you’ll want to cross-post it to another to re-create the magic. But wait. You’ll want to make sure you have the magic touch.
Each social network has a different set of tricks. So make sure that you don’t cross-post content without understanding the conversations first. Some social networks simply work well together. Others? Not so much.
For example:

• Pinterest and Google+ go together like peanut butter and jelly.
• Instagram and Twitter can work together well too (see above).
• Facebook and Twitter are completely different conversations. Do not automatically share the same content across both of these networks. Hashtags are helpful on Twitter but can come across annoying on Facebook.
• LinkedIn and Twitter can work well together (just make sure you remove any hashtags when sharing your updates on LinkedIn).

4. Use visuals

Couple the written word with beautiful visuals to achieve depth and clarity of the experience. And yes, the right visuals make it an experience.
Make sure each visual you choose makes sense for your brand. For example, if your customers are of the Millennial generation, find images that best represent this demographic. You can do this by either using vintage-style photos, or making young people the main characters in the stories you tell and the images you select.

5. Curate content with context

Context clarifies meaning. When you use context, you get not only clarity — but meaning and purpose. And this makes for awesome magic.
For example, instead of using the headline of an article in a tweet, why not tweak the tweet so that you create context around why you’re sharing it? This makes your content more meaningful. And in turn, it creates more meaning around your media.
Anyone can share a simple headline. But when you take the time to tweak it, you show that you’re human. And humans can make some awe-inspiring magic — if we curate accordingly.

6. Slow it down

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” ~ Ghandi
Seek out more substance with quality content. Learn how to slow down the fast-paced media of yesterday and use slow media to inspire instead. Slow media helps you laugh, think, and question the status quo. Slow media helps you rise above the noise, and settle into your stories (no screaming necessary).

7. Elicit enchantment

Enchantment is “the state of being under a spell.” When you elicit enchantment, you build an ecosystem around your brand — and you engage with your customers in a real, authentic way. But as Guy Kawasaki discusses in his book Enchantment, it’s a process, not an event. The best way to keep enchantment strong is to enjoy the process. That’s where there’s proof.

8. Do less marketing

Your media platform has more value than any marketing that you create. Your media is where the magic happens. And here’s the thing: when you put the focus on creating high-quality media first, you don’t need to use as much marketing.
More media, less marketing is the way to go. You’ll instill more meaning and trust into your brand. And you’ll cut to the core of who you are, so that you don’t need to market yourself as hard.

9. Intersect science and magic

Data-driven metrics can sometimes take away certain synergies. So, no matter how technically savvy you become, make sure that you leave room to get transported by magic. When you believe that there’s more to life than you know about, you start to sync with synchronicities. The other synergistic benefit is that this concept also allows for some insightful stories.

10. Be human

Magicians may seem like machines, but the best ones know how to show that they’re human. They are masters at explaining the nuances of human behavior and awareness. They use the various quirks in human perception to learn how the mind works and they use psychology as the underpinning of their tricks. They know that magic is not only about being human — it’s also about being smart.

11. Gain levity

Levity is the luxurious lack of a leash. Well, that’s my definition — which is why levity is necessary when you’re magically making media. You don’t need anything holding you back when you need to be lifted up, up, up and away.
Now, the dictionary definition of levity is “humor or frivolity, especially in the treatment of a serious matter.” You don’t need to be a comedian like George Carlin, but it can’t hurt to try to levitate towards the art of comedy.

12. Create art

Kurt Vonnegut believes that “the arts are… a very human way of making life more bearable.” And I think he’s onto something.
Writer and ceremonial magician Alan Moore believes that magic is indistinguishable from art — and that it’s the manipulation of symbols, words, or images to achieve changes in consciousness.
So the next time you seek a magical way to make meaningful media, know that you’re co-creating your future consciousness — by creating art. Laugh, think, tell stories, sing, and create. Just make sure it’s magical.
What are some other magical ways to make meaningful media? Please comment below.

Photo credit: Big Stock Photos

How to Benefit from the LinkedIn Publishing Platform

Did you know you can publish your articles on the LinkedIn publishing platform?

Do you want to build more authority in your niche?

LinkedIn is opening up its publishing platform to all 277 million+ members!

In this article, I’ll show you how high-quality content creators and bloggers can use LinkedIn’s publishing platform to build their influence.

Why LinkedIn Publishing Platform?

 

I’ve always said you don’t have to be anointed as an influencer to build online influence. It’s up to you to contribute to your community, share valuable experience and create astute content that shows your thought leadership.

The LinkedIn publishing platform gives you the opportunity to expand your reach in a major way. Since all LinkedIn members have access to the platform, it’s critical for you to create high-quality content that differentiates you.

Your published posts show up at the top of your LinkedIn profile.

With the LinkedIn publishing platform, you can follow other publishers and build your own followers in the process. While your LinkedIn followers have the potential to see your LinkedIn posts, they aren’t official network connections. (It’s similar to LinkedIn’s current model for following LinkedIn-appointed influencers.)

Any posts you publish on LinkedIn are tied to your professional profile and show up near the top of your profile. This means your thought leadership insights are showcased when someone views your LinkedIn profile.

The first post I published to LinkedIn helped me attract over 200 new followers, and my profile views were up 38% week over week! These stats tell me that the LinkedIn publishing platform is going to be a great place to share longer-form, thought leadership content.

In the rest of this article I give you best practices for making the most of the LinkedIn publishing platform.

#1: Create Valuable, Attractive Content

 

Before you start posting, have a plan in place. What content is most useful for your audience? Is your post too salesy? Although there’s no formal editorial process, LinkedIn makes it clear that sales-oriented content won’t be tolerated (after all, that’s what the advertising platform is for).

LinkedIn has some helpful guidelines in their Help Center about what to publish. This is a good reference for understanding how to frame your content so it resonates with and adds value to both your established audience and your potential audience (which will now be even greater than your existing LinkedIn network).

Make sure your posts are scanable.

The general guidelines I’ve seen (including LinkedIn’s) recommend keeping posts between 400 and 600 words and publishing weekly. However, you could certainly experiment with these parameters and determine what works best for you.

Like other social networks, people want to consume information quickly. Make it easy for them by creating scannable, attractive content. A few best practices are using a compelling headline, placing an eye-catching image at the top of your posts, bolding important text and breaking up longer paragraphs.

Feel free to enhance your articles with YouTube videos or content from SlideShare to make them as interesting and useful as possible.

When you’re ready to write an article on the LinkedIn publishing platform, it’s pretty easy. Go to your LinkedIn home page and look for the pencil icon in the box at the top where you would typically share an update.

When you click the pencil icon, you’ll see the publishing editor. This is where you create your post.

LinkedIn’s publishing editor is very simple to use. It’s similar to the WordPress editor or Microsoft Word. You can type or paste your text into the editor and format it right there. Below is a snapshot of what my first post looks like within the editor:

What a post looks like within the editor.

Your LinkedIn post doesn’t have a bio section. You’ll need to create a bio at the end of each post. Your bio should include a sentence or two about who you are, what you do and who you help, a link to your website or blog or even a specific call to action.

It’s a good idea to make the most of all of your resources. In my bio below, I’ve linked my name to my Google+ profile, and on my Google+ profile I added LinkedIn to the list of sites I contribute to. This ensures that Google picks up my authorship profile for my LinkedIn posts.

Be sure to create a bio section at the end of every post you publish!

Before you hit Publish, please be sure to review your post and check it for grammar and spelling (the Preview option is helpful here). But if you don’t catch everything, you can go back and edit your post any time.

#2: Share Your Post Everywhere

 

To maximize your reach and engagement inside and outside of LinkedIn, share your post on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. If you have a LinkedIn company page, share it there as well (assuming your post is relevant to your company page’s followers).

This kind of aggregate social networking adds credibility and encourages more shares and engagement across the social web. In turn, all of that engagement sends social signals to Google’s search algorithm and can help increase your visibility in online searches!

#3: Manage Your Post Comments

 

You’ve written a useful post, you’ve promoted it far and wide and people are reading it. After all that effort and exposure, don’t forget to check your comments!

In the Comments section of your post, you can respond to and interact with members who are leaving feedback or starting a discussion.

Don’t forget to respond to comments on your posts!

In most cases, those who commented on my posts were people I’m not currently connected to. That means the post is getting visibility beyond my first-degree network, and yours probably will too.

Unfortunately I did see one or two spam comments when I posted, but you have the ability to hide and/or flag these.

#4: Evaluate Content Performance

 

LinkedIn immediately starts to show you the number of views, social media shares and comments your post generates. I admit that it’s exciting to see those metrics changing right before your eyes in real time!

Use your LinkedIn post metrics to determine how well your content is resonating with your audience. As you build your professional content library, compare your posts to see which ones outperformed others.

When you have a feel for what’s working for you, take some time to review the posts of your favorite official LinkedIn influencers and your competitors. Evaluate their posting schedule and which posts got the most views and engagement. Consider how you can use similar tactics for your own success.

For example, a LinkedIn influencer I follow is Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of 85 Broads and former head of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. She publishes to LinkedIn about once a month.

Even though she’s a prominent thought leader in the financial services industry, she writes about universal topics that appeal to a larger audience. Below is a compilation of her most recent posts. Her article about productivity hacks clearly stands out in terms of the number of views and level of engagement.

Evaluate what your favorite influencers are writing about.

Seeing what’s working gives you an idea of what people are responding to and you may want to consider using similar topics or how-to’s that appeal to your own audience.

Learning from the LinkedIn influencers who have gone before you can help you craft a more successful content strategy of your own!

Keep Your Existing Blog!

 

It’s critical to remember that LinkedIn’s publishing platform shouldn’t serve as your content publishing hub. It’s a place to syndicate and further showcase your existing professional content from your blog.

Remember, you don’t own your LinkedIn presence or the content associated with it.
I recommend publishing the original post to your own blog first, then publishing it to your LinkedIn profile in its entirety.

You may want to vary the two posts a bit, however. Perhaps write your blog post to your specific audience or niche, and when you publish it to LinkedIn, change it to appeal to a broader audience.
I’m super-excited about this publishing opportunity on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn publishing platform is an important part of any marketer’s content strategy. I think it will be interesting to watch the network grow as an online content destination for professionals.

What do you think? Will the LinkedIn publishing platform be a game-changer? What kind of content are you publishing? Please share your thoughts with me in the comments below!

5-Step Strategy To Improve Your Facebook Engagement & Growth

Thanks to numerous Facebook changes recently, many businesses are thinking about dropping Facebook entirely. Engagement is in the toilet, and the page just isn’t growing.

Before you do, it pays to take a fresh, close look at your Facebook strategy. Often the problem lies there and has absolutely nothing to do with algorithm changes.

Here is a sneak peek at part of my evaluation processes to identify where the disconnect lies.

1. Figure Out Who Your End Buyer Is

 

When a business doesn’t really know who actually makes the purchase decision for their product or service, they don’t know who their audience is.

Without understanding that audience, odds are slim that the content being posted will resonate with them. If the target customer isn’t something a company can rattle off the top of their head, then it’s important to do a quick analysis of who has purchased their product and why.

If I am working with a security company, for example, here are the types of questions I might ask:

• Do you sell commercial or residential solutions?
• Residential -> Are most of your buyers men or women?
• Women -> Do you know what triggered their decision to improve security?
• If you were to set aside the fear tactics so common to the security industry, what kinds of things would interest them? Engage them? Build a relationship with them?

Questions that dig into buyers and their purchase decision make the foundation of your social media strategy. They tell you who you are talking to, what concerns they have, and what brought them into your sphere of influence. It gives you a basic foundation to begin understanding who your prospects might be.

Once you understand the largest segment, you can branch out into looking at smaller segments.  Then, you can start being creative with how to reach them because you understand who these people are and what motivates them.

In keeping with the security company as an example, I might create a Facebook presence around a fake “thief” that posts  stories of his/her activities.

Targeting women? Maybe it’s a cat burgler that is actually feline. Furry fun to entertain and trigger laughter while educating.

I’d use Fiverr or (preferably) a local illustrator to create some custom images with captions, if the budget allowed. Or perhaps we would create a sexy fake Sean Connery-styled James Bond who does residential burglary and corporate espionage. Have fun with it! Don’t be scary, be interesting.
(Note: These ideas are my intellectual property. Don’t steal them unless you hire me and have my permission.) 

You can’t be successful on Facebook without understanding your customers and prospects.
Once you understand who they are, you can put on your thinking cap to focus on what might interest and motivate them. It’s important to keep the niche narrow – don’t try to sell everything to everyone.
Then, forget about marketing. Start conversations. Tell stories. Fit your activity to your audience.

2. Realize They Just Don’t Care

 

Other than current customers, who make up the bulk of fans for most Facebook pages, understand that the general population doesn’t care about your brand, product or service. They care about their own needs and interests.

Most people follow very few brand pages, so giving them a compelling reason to stick around is critical.

What can you give them that they can’t find anywhere else? Education? Entertainment? Emotional reactions?

Get over any ego and assumptions that make you think they are innately interested. Your customers might care because you’ve already proven your value – which is why Facebook is a wonderful customer retention and customer service platform – but prospects? They. Just. Don’t. Care.
How are you making them care?

3. Do an Audit of Your Facebook Page

 

Now that you understand the buyer and target audience, look at your existing Facebook page. Would it appeal to them? Why or why not? Are you giving them reason to engage? Are you promoting too much and acting in YOUR interests, instead of theirs?

That’s common. Entrepreneurs and marketing professionals that think of social media as a marketing tool often lose sight of what matters. Remember: It’s not about you, it’s about being a part of your community and providing value.

Take an honest look at your page from an outsider’s perspective. Consider asking your customers/prospects what they like and don’t like about it and take their recommendations into account as you re-vamp your Page.

4. Define Your Marketing Objectives and Customer Acquisition Goals, Then Map Them to Your Facebook Strategy

 

Understanding your audience is essential because it helps you build community and engagement. But what good is that if it doesn’t lead to revenue, website traffic, or other marketing objectives? Be clear about what you are trying to accomplish. Common objectives include leads, traffic, reach, and sales.

Back to the security company. Say we decided the primary target audience is women homeowners purchasing residential alarm solutions. If the marketing objective is website traffic, how can your posts trigger click-throughs? If your marketing objective is building your email database, how are you giving them incentive to subscribe?

I follow the 80/20 rule – eighty percent of social media activity is entertaining, conversational and/or educational, and twenty percent is marketing about the company/product/service. All of it works to build the brand, but in different ways and always being careful not to over-promote.
After all, this is social media, not advertising.

5. Define Your Brand Attributes, Then Make Sure Your Posts Fit Them

 

Brand attributes aren’t the graphic standards you use – they are the attributes you want your company, product, or service to be known for.

What do you want to build your reputation around? Is it complicated installs? Knowledge of iPad integration? Complex computer security? Inspiring women to put safety first?

Posts should connect with these attributes and tie in with your marketing objective. It’s part of what makes you different. Unique. Worthy of interest and connection.

Identify your top 3-4 brand attributes, then connect them to your activity. Showcase these brand attributes in everything you do: your cover image, your tabs, and every post you make. Make it smack-upside-the-head obvious, so page visitors and fans don’t have to guess.

You can also include product or service attributes. These are your key differentiators on a product or service level, instead of a company level. Are you different due to uber simple control panels when everyone else offers a hot mess of complicated computers? Or your panel is a crazy simple smartphone app? Or your installation service is faster and cleaner? Then your Facebook posts would speak to those specific attributes and create conversation about it. Know what makes you different and build on it so your audience has something to connect to.

As you start integrating your attributes, some will interest your audience more than others, so don’t forget to try new ideas for your page! Make sure they fit your audience, objectives and attributes, but constantly test new ideas and monitor the results using Facebook Insights.

Putting It All Together

This is just a quick, down, and dirty overview of my basic process, but I urge you to give it a try before you delete your Facebook page.

Map out these strategies in a spreadsheet or Word document that you can refer to often and you may be able to identify a major gap that is killing your success.

6 Ways to Promote Your Business With Pinterest Places

Do you use Pinterest to promote your business?

Have you heard of Pinterest place pins?

Whether you have a storefront, products or a travel aspect to your business, consider exploring the geographic elements of Pinterest

In this article, you’ll learn six ways you can use Pinterest place pins boards to promote your business or products.

Pinterest’s new Places boards have really taken off.

How Place Pins Work

Businesses now have two ways to associate their pins with a geographic location. In addition to rich pins, Pinterest introduced Pinterest place pins in November 2013.

Place pins use Foursquare‘s location API combined with Mapbox’s map technology. Plus, if a location you want to pin doesn’t show up, you can simply add it.

Brands can create a board to focus on places in a single city or country, or a board that focuses on similar places across the globe.

This board from Outside Magazine shares places across the United States.

This tool is a dream come true for companies in the travel industry. Just check out Hotels.com‘s Hit the Slopes board of best places to ski, New York City: The Official Guide’s Free (and Almost Free) in NYC board and all of the #VXTraveler City Guides on Virgin America’s Pinterest page. Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts has a variety of place boards, showcasing everything from concierge suggestions to honeymoon destinations.

However, just about any company can think outside the box and come up with a creative way to use Pinterest place pins.

Outside Magazine created a board to share places across the United States that offer lots of outside recreation opportunities to their residents.

Use place pins not only for your locations, but to share other places that would be of interest to your followers.

How to Create a Pinterest Places Board

 

To get started, select Place Boards in the menu from the upper left-hand corner of your Pinterest profile.

The Place Boards option has been added to the main Pinterest menu.

From there, click on Create Board. As you fill in the fields, make sure you select the Add a Map option.

Be sure the Add a Map option has Yes next to it.

On the next page, start adding pins by clicking on Add a Place.

Place pin boards display with a map behind them.

This is where you assign a city location to your pin. Once you choose a city, your searches will return results for venues in that location. For example, Bonefish Grill has several locations across the nation, but only the Boise location showed up in my search.

Manage the location of your place pin by changing the city.

As you add place pins, you can change the city location at any time, which makes it easy to share multiple locations for the same vendor on one map.

Now that you know how to create a board for your place pins, let’s see how you can use them in everyday promotion efforts.

#1: Map Your Brick-and-Mortar Locations

 

How great would it be if people who found you on Pinterest knew exactly where your nearest location is?

Whether you have one location or a dozen, Pinterest place pins let you provide your customers with a visual guide to where they can find you.

Starbucks Coffee did a nice twist on this concept. They created a Store Design board and pinned the locations of their uniquely designed stores.

Starbucks’ Store Design board has pins for uniquely designed stores throughout the world.

Create a Locations board to highlight your locations in one country or around the world. Whether you want to add a unique slant, as Starbucks did, is up to you.

#2: Pin Your Clients

 

Part of positioning your brand or business is pointing toward the clients you choose to work with.
When you display your current clients on a map with Pinterest place pins, it’s easy to see how far your geographic influence reaches. You can also provide a link back to their sites so potential clients can see the companies you work with and what they do.

Create a Client board to showcase both the quantity and quality of your current clients to anyone who’s thinking of working with you in the future.

#3: Pin Ideas for Your Clients/Customers

 

Another option is to create a board with tips for your clients based on where they’re located.
Simple Skincare created a places board called Winter Skincare Around the U.S. The board has skincare tips for different climates, and illustrates the best ways for the people in those regions to use their products.

Simple Skincare has a places board with skincare tips for customers who live in different parts of the United States.

If you can add tips for customers based on the place they live, that can raise your expertise level and the value of your brand.

#4: Introduce the Team

 

Every business is made up of employees who come together and work as a team. They provide the product or service that makes your business successful.

Pinterest place pins can help your customers to get to know your team as people.
Using place pins, map the hometowns of all of your employees, alongside their favorite restaurants or shops. Better yet, create a group board with all employees and let them pin their favorite places and spaces on their own. These insights give customers a glimpse of your team members’ personalities.

People like buying from people they trust. A board featuring employees helps customers get to know your team and build that relationship.

#5: Share Your Inspiration and Process

 

Every brand or business is inspired by something. Learning about that inspiration helps people identify with you.

Tundra Restaurant Supply in Boulder, Colorado created a places board to showcase their favorite places in their state, so the restaurants they work with could get to know them better.

Tundra Restaurant Supply created a places board so they could share how much they love their state with their customers.

Customers love transparency, and using Pinterest place pins to show them all of the ins and outs of your business makes them more likely to trust you.

Use Pinterest place pins to share the locations around the world that inspire your products or services. If you own a cafe, show customers where you get your coffee beans. If you run a Chinese restaurant, tell them where your dishes originate. If other businesses work with you to create your final product, pin them too.

You can also share your whole process from start to finish. This will encourage loyalty from current customers and attract new customers.

#6: Demonstrate Your Customer Reach With a Competition

 

No matter where you’re based, chances are that your products and services are used across the country or even around the world. Let your customers tell that story!

Encourage your customers to pin pictures of your products or services from wherever they are and offer a prize to the pinner who lives farthest from your location.

A competition gives your customers a reason to share the product they bought from you. Not only will people see how popular your products are, each new pin increases your visibility.

Over to You

Pinterest is one of the top social media platforms currently out there, and it’s continually growing. There are a ton of creative ideas popping up on how to embrace new features like Pinterest place pins.

Whether it’s to showcase yourself, your employees, your clients or your partners, use these tips for inspiration on how you can use boards with Pinterest’s place pins to connect your brand to customers around the world.

What do you think? Are you using Pinterest place pins? What ideas can you share for this newest Pinterest feature? Please leave your thoughts and comments below.

5 Essential Marketing Skills Every Person Should Know

Anyone involved in a business has a role to play in marketing. In today’s highly competitive world, marketing sits across every function of a business, and it’s not just down to ‘The Marketing Department.’ If you work for yourself or run a small business, sales and marketing will be as much a part of your working day as everything else that has to be done to make a profit.

Marketing can be a very complex subject, but anyone can develop a few of the core skills and see the results of their efforts. You may feel it’s something best left to the experts, but there are some essential marketing skills that can make a huge difference to your success in business.

The Pareto Principle (80/20 rule)

1. Understand the 80/20 Rule

Everyone’s heard of the 80/20 Rule, but you may not realise how important it is in the world of marketing. Also known as Pareto’s Principle, in business the rule tells us that eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of your customers. The actual percentages may vary, but essentially it means that you have to recognise where your profits come from and specifically target those customers. Your marketing and advertising budget should take account of this, or you will be wasting time and effort.

2. Customer Segmentation

Taking the 80/20 Rule a step further, you should understand the different types of customers you deal with and tailor your approach to them. There are hundreds of ways you can segment customers, and only you can decide which is right for your business. For example, you could segment customers based on their age, how they trade with you, their average monthly order, or even their geographical location. Once you have segmented your customers into groups, you can develop strategies for the best way to deal with them.

3. Marketing Communications

Communication is everything in marketing. If you can’t get your messages out to an audience, your business will shrivel and die. Marketing communications is about understanding the needs of your audience and finding the best way to talk to them. It may be a mix of face to face visits, email marketing, newsletters and press advertising, or it could be something far more simple. Good marketing communications tell a story and use emotion and personal examples to stimulate interest.

4. How to Make Your Company Stand Out

Most markets are saturated with similar products and services, and the way to beat the competition is to make your company stand out. A very small difference could put you streets ahead. The obvious approach is to be the cheapest, but customers are more sophisticated nowadays, and other strategies can work better. Take a look at successful companies like Apple, and consider what makes them stand out from the competition.

5. Social Media Marketing

Just a couple of years ago social media marketing was seen as a passing fad. Sites and services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are now part daily life, and they are incredibly powerful marketing tools if used in the right way. Social media can be used to identify and market to very specific customer groups for very little cost. Sites like Facebook allow you to develop conversations with customers and prospects, and you can capture feedback and ideas in an instant. Social media allow you to develop your company’s brand and to establish yourself as an expert in unique and interesting ways.

Technology and the way we do business has changed beyond recognition over the past decade, and marketing has had to adapt at a rapid pace. Traditional marketing skills still have value, but the modern marketer has to develop new skills to respond to change.

6 Ways Twitter Chats Can Help You Connect With Your Audience

Is your Twitter marketing working?

Are you trying to reach a wider audience and generate leads?

Twitter chats are a great way to boost your marketing results.

In this article you’ll discover six ways Twitter chats can help you connect with a larger audience and enhance brand awareness.

Why Twitter Chats?

Most marketers use Twitter to promote content, build brand awareness and interact with followers. Overall, it works pretty well. But what if you could turbo-charge those efforts?

Twitter chats are open, moderated conversations that use a relevant hashtag for a certain topic (e.g., #blogchat or #MMchat for Marketer Monday).

Many chat participants use services like Twubs or Hashtags.org to filter conversations based on the chat hashtag so they can easily follow the conversation.

Tools like Twubs filter conversations based on hashtags.

Including a regular Twitter chat in your marketing tactics helps you reach your current followers and their followers. A successful chat can introduce you to hundreds of potential leads.

Below I show you six ways Twitter chats can bring value to your followers and position you as a thought leader.

#1: Crowdsource Content Ideas

Are you looking for content ideas? Or deciding what type of ebook to offer list subscribers? Or maybe wondering what topic your next webinar should tackle?

A Twitter chat can help you answer those questions. Whether you’re looking for input on a project or wondering what your customers are looking for, chats are an easy way to gather information and opinions from a lot of people at one time.

The New England Music Association has an interesting way of using chats to keep their members in the loop. They choose their annual conference themes by crowdsourcing via a Twitter chat. They even host a public Google document to keep track of ideas.

You can apply crowdsourcing to any aspect of your marketing needs.

Crowdsourcing can also help you define what problems your customers need to solve. Ask chat attendees what they need or want, and while you have their attention, delve deeper and ask them to clarify their answers or give you examples.

Take notes, integrate their ideas and needs into your efforts, and then give them what they asked for.

#2: Connect With New Leads

Want to find new leads? Make yourself useful. Answer questions, provide good information and engage with your followers. Chances are, you’re already doing this across platforms, right? Use a Twitter chat to amplify that value.

With a little promotion and buzz around your upcoming Twitter chat, you’ll have the chance to reach an even bigger audience interested in your product, service or information.

To attract those new leads, you can host a fun Twitter chat with a general theme, include a giveaway or choose a topic that tackles a common problem and showcases your expertise. Not sure which topic is best? Crowdsource!

Make sure people know about your upcoming Twitter chat!

Follow up with chat attendees after the event and ask them how you can be of service. Engaging with those folks can cultivate great business relationships.

#3: Build Your Social Reach

Social proof is one of the highest compliments you can receive from your followers.
When a fan shares your information or product with a friend, they’re giving it their seal of approval. It’s very likely those friends will consider that recommendation when they’re ready to buy.

A successful Twitter chat attracts a large group of people whose followers are watching them engage with you. Maybe they’ll take the hint and join in too. It’s a great way to leverage your existing followers.

Twitter chats can reach far beyond your existing followers.

#4: Create Community With Live Tweets

You can’t attend every in-person event you want to, and neither can your fans. Twitter chats are a way to bring everyone together as if they’re there.

If you’re hosting or attending the in-person event, try live tweeting (or having someone do it for you). Invite your fans to follow the hashtag and share their ideas and opinions about the topic at hand.

Many conferences project real-time tweets onto a screen so all attendees can see the Twitter conversation and join in if they like.

Live tweeting shares the conference vibe with everyone, even if they can’t attend.

#5: Track Your Successes

As a marketer, you already know the importance of analytics. Plan to track your Twitter chat successes from day one. When you know how popular your guests, topics, questions, interactions and hashtag are, you can determine what resonates with your followers.

A service like TweetReach helps you keep track of reach, impressions, tweets and contributors. You’ll know who saw your tweets and who shared or retweeted your information.

Evaluating the data over time gives you a good idea of which chat topics are most successful and what ideas are most important to participants. You can use that information to create relevant follow-up content.

TweetReach reports on several aspects of your chats so you can track what’s popular with your audience.

#6: Learn More About Your Industry

Because marketers are so busy, it’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day work and miss opportunities to chat with your peers about the industry you work in and any relevant news.

An industry Twitter chat serves as a kind of online professional meeting. Participating in these specialized chats is another way to network, both locally and even internationally, and expand your circle of contacts.

Industry chats are also a place where you can discover and discuss any debates or “holes” in the industry. These kinds of chats keep marketers on their toes and up to date with the latest trends.

Meet up (virtually) with colleagues around the world to discuss what’s happening in your field.

Conclusion

If you’re already using Twitter as a marketing channel, adding in a regularly scheduled Twitter chat can help you build brand awareness.

Just as you would with your regular content, create an editorial calendar for your Twitter chats, then promote the topics, dates and times to ensure a great turnout. The more value you offer, the more the community seeks you out.

Use your Twitter chat feedback to create the content your audience wants, find qualified leads and stay up to date on industry trends.

What do you think? Does your company host a regular Twitter chat? Share your experience and thoughts in the comments!