LinkedIn Marketing

Approximately 81% of small and medium-size businesses use social media, and 94% of those use social media for marketing purposes. But how many of those brands are using social media to directly acquire business? If ever there was a social media platform that helps you directly get business, it’s LinkedIn, the social network designed around business.

Twitter and Facebook may have bigger numbers, but LinkedIn is the place businesses go to do business. And that works to your advantage…if you know how to use LinkedIn. It requires that you change your mindset from how platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are used. The tactics are more personal, and require some thought and effort (really Twitter and Facebook do to, but that’s another podcast episode).

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Josh Turner of LinkedSelling joins us to give us beginning, intermediate, and advanced tactics to acquire business through LinkedIn. For complete show notes and links, see LinkedIn Marketing Solutions on my blog.

Featured Segment Expert: Josh Turner – Founder of LinkedSelling
Host: Jay Ehret of TheMarketingSpot.com


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Tapping Brand Advocates for Word of Mouth Marketing

Brand Advocates - Word of Mouth Marketing - Social Media Marketing

You may be surprised at how many of your customers are really your brand advocates, ready and willing to spread the word about your business. You just need to give them a nudge in the right direction. In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Rob Fugetta, Founder and CEO of Zuberance, and author of Brand Advocates, joins host Jay Ehret to discuss how to turn your brand advocates into brand promoters.

Guest: Rob Fugetta – Zuberance.
Host: Jay Ehret – The Marketing Spot
Length: 24 minutes

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Rob Fugetta on Brand Advocates:

Definition of Brand Advocates – Highly satisfied customers, or others, who are willing to recommend your brand or product without pay or incentives.

Start by asking the ultimate question for customer loyalty:
“On a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends or colleagues?”

Steps to Tapping Brand Advocates for Word of Mouth

1. Identify – Ask the ultimate question across a variety of customer touch points and communications channels.

2. Energize – Making it easy for your advocates to recommend them.

  • Create ratings and reviews for your products.
  • Collect advocate stories and testimonials.
  • Get advocates to share content and offers with their social network.

3. Track your results.

Selected Quotes from Rob Fugetta:

“True advocacy cannot be paid for or manufactured, it can only be earned.”

“It’s really not about marketing to your advocates; it’s marketing through your advocates, and with your advocates.”

“Marketing is about more than clicks and impressions; it’s about building a movement around your brand.”

SHOW LINKS:

Buy the book: Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers Into a Powerful Marketing Force
Rob Fugetta at Zuberance
Rob Fugetta on Twitter


Hybrid Vigor and The Corridor of Opportunity

Topic: What I learned at the 140 Characters Conference NYC.

Podcast Episode #79 of the internet show about small business marketing


Last week I presented at the 140 Characters Conference, New York. My presentation was titled: Now is Your Brand? But this conference was more than just a speaking engagement, it was an incredible networking opportunity and a chance to learn about marketing. In this episode of Power to the Small Business, I share some interesting conversations I had, and my big take-aways.

Host: Jay Ehret – Chief Officer of Awesomeness at TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 21 minutes

— SHOW NOTES AND LINKS —

Honking Just to be Honking:

The now tools of the internet convince us that we always have to be saying something…now! It’s like the guy laying on his horn in stop and go traffic. It has no effect other than “honking just to be honking.” When our Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook status updates are simply a bunch of links and unimportant events, we are honking just to be honking. Instead spend more time on the future of your brand.

“Now is not your brand, now is the future of your brand.”

Let Texas be Texas:

Allowing for differentiation – In the podcast I share a story about a conversation I had at the 140 Characters Conference networking event, where a conference goer suggested I tweet our Texas Governor to change the school paddling laws. My response shocked her, and I think it was a lesson in branding. Copying makes you homogenous and undifferentiated.
“Let New York be New York and let Texas be Texas.”

Hybrid Vigor:

Hybrid Vigor – Exchanging ideas with people not like you o create something totally new.

The 140 Characters Conference was an incredible networking opportunity to meet people from all walks of life from all the corners of the world. Different lifestyles, different value systems, new opportunities. Meeting new people and trying new things creates hybrid vigor and opens up a corridor of opportunity that did not previously exist.

Networking Instead of Marketing:

At the conference I met people from Luxembourg, Israel, Australia, Holland, Canada, and several states in the U.S. It was incredible networking. I think that’s also the real opportunity of social media; networking. Too many marketing experts present social media as a marketing tool, when it’s really more of a networking tool. Cody Heitschmidt called Twitter “The world’s coffee shop.” Try using social media to network with your customers rather than just market to them.

SHOW LINKS

Premium Webinar: How to Create, Write and Leverage a Blog
Registration Information: Jay Ehret’s Blogging Webinar
Webinar Discount Promotion Code: Power25

– 140 Characters Conference NYC
– Small Biz Survival blog by Becky McCray
– Becky McCray on Twitter
– Cody Heitschmidt on Twitter
– Annie Tran on Twitter

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Marketers Roundtable 8 – The Biggest Marketing Impact

Current Marketing Issues

Podcast Episode #72 of the internet show about small business marketing


Hear ye, Hear ye! Interested citizens of The Internet, you are invited to the eighth gathering of the Marketers Roundtable.

Whereas…marketers like to congregate and discuss marketing, Therefore, let them gather at The Marketers RoundTable to discuss current marketing issues for all to hear on Power to the Small Business.

In this gathering of the Roundtable, the marketers discuss the biggest marketing impact of the past year, and what will have the biggest marketing impact in 2011.

Guests:
Tamsen McMahaon, Director of Digital and Strategic Initiatives Sametz Blackstone
Kyle Lacy, Principal – Mindframe
Ken Briscoe, Creative Director – A6 Media
Jay Ehret The Marketing Spot (Podcast Host)

Length: 27 minutes

iTunes

The Biggest Marketing Impacts:

TAMSEN McMAHON

2010 is the year the social media barrier fell.

“It was the year the general public lost its resistance. …I point you to the dramatic increase of people on Facebook…and 41% getting their daily news from Twitter, up from 17%.”

2011 is the year marketing gets to join the big boys at the table of business operations.

“This is the year we’ll really start to see marketing shift upstream, where a lot of us think it always should have been.“

KYLE LACY

2010’s biggest impact was mobile.

“We’re seeing an uptick in manufacturing (mobile use) …health networks are starting to use iPads within the hospital.”

2011’s biggest impact will be mobile.

“I think that mobile is going to completely revolutionize the way that and industry is working. …Number one is going to be customer service.”

KEN BRISCOE

2010’S biggest marketing impact was social media.

“It became obvious that every one needs to play on some level.”

2011 will be mobile accessibility.

“I think you are going to see a lot more conversation about location-based stuff.”

JAY EHRET

The biggest marketing impact in 2010 was Facebook Pages for Business

“Businesses realized that this was something relatively simple that they could do and immediately become available to 57% of the adult population in America.”

2011’s biggest marketing impact with be Facebook combined with location-based services.

“…because of Facebook Places and Facebook Deals. Facebook has just been brilliant in the way they’ve integrated it all into one, easy-to-use interface.”

Show Links

Tamsen McMahon: Brass Tack Thinking@tamadear on Twitter

Kyle Lacy: KyleLacy.comTwitter Marketing for Dummies

Ken Briscoe: @kenbriscoe on Twitter

Jay Ehret: Free Branding EbookThe Marketing Spot on Facebook

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