I went to Pavilions / Vons tonight to get balloons for my boy’s birthday morning. 10pm entry. Sign on the door says they’re open until midnight.

Very few patrons in the place – two in line, maybe. This is the Newport Beach Pavilions by Bonita Canyon. 7+ workers, one on the cash register, one bagging groceries. Several others about.

Knowing that I’m going to buy a few other things, I go straight to the cashier and box boy to get some balloons filled up while I shop (btw – I worked in a market as a jr high kid and hs freshman, so I know how cruddy retail can be).

The cashier and box boy tell me to go pound sand in no uncertain terms.

I start to leave and then ask them for their manager (I’m on the hook for birthday wake-up morning, remember). They make the call for Terii or Terrii. Lots of extra letters.

Terrii doesn’t show up, but someone else does. She’s very helpful and see’s that I’m ticked. This balloon thing is one of our traditions, so I’ve done this quite a bit over the years. I’ve seen 6am produce people fill em up.. cashiers, mangers, the whole crew. They usually make it work. Especially when there’s no one in the store.

I offered to do the balloons myself tonight. The box boy, btw, said he didn’t know how to do it. I scoffed, probably shouldn’t have.

The manager woman who eventually filled up the balloons was a true hero / heroine. That has to be said. She was great. Shoulda got her name.

Anyway – I get the balloons, thank said manager profusely, and head to check-out with my other items.

By this time, Terrii is the one at the cashier. She’s checking me out. As I’m sliding my card through the reader, the manager woman walks by. I’ve got balloons over my head, btw. What does Terrii say to the manager as she passes by?. . . “I can’t believe you filled up these balloons for this guy.”

I was stunned. I freak stared the supervisor Terrii and left the place in a bewildered haze.

As I was shopping, I kept thinking that maybe I’m the NB a-hole. Preventing these people from a clean getaway when their shifts change. But I was there 2 hrs before closing. And I was thinking about how it was one of those critical retail moments that create customers/fans for life – a father getting balloons for his son’s birthday wake-up moment.

There was a moment there when they could have been superheroes, recovering from the initial blow off and coming full force with super service. Instead I’m writing this.

I don’t really expect extraordinary things from average retail . . but with all this word of mouth (WOM) social media stuff, I thought the world might be shrinking a little and retailers changing.

Still 2nd guessing Vons Pavilions

Are you familiar with the “inbound marketing” concept?

If not, here’s my quick explanation. If so, please scroll down to the bottom of this post to see if we’re on the same page and could possibly work on a project together.

Ok – inbound marketing is easy to describe if you compare it to traditional or conventional marketing/advertising methods.

Conventional marketing seeks to interrupt and pitch to people.

• It’s the unsolicited junk mail in your actual mailbox and the spam in your email inbox.
• It’s the car salesman that asks about your kid’s soccer team but has no interest or intention of getting to know the details of your son’s 8-2-1 season.
• It’s the 10,000 address Hoover’s mailing that seeks a 1-2% conversion via reply card.
• It’s the out-of-context XM radio ads that drone on and on about re-financing when you have no intention of re-financing your home. . or going bankrupt. . or rehabilitating your credit or whatever.

In short, interruption marketing is the old school approach that throws $10 million in ad budget at every method under the sun in order to bludgeon the market into coughing up a slim margin of return.

An Alternative to Annoyance

Inbound marketing is the modern, Web-connected alternative – although it integrates off-line advertising, direct mail, billboards, text messages, magazine ads and so forth. It’s really not about offline/online. It’s more about integration, conversion and accountable measurement.

Inbound marketing seeks to generate leads by offering content, value, conversation and education up front. It’s like “working the room” at a networking mixer. You ask about the other person first and try to understand what they’re up to before you lean in with your needs analysis. You don’t just foist out the business card and recite your elevator pitch. It’s about thought leadership, too. Inbound marketing might generate an email list by offering an in-depth, educational white paper.

Ideally, the best inbound marketing strategy should just offer up that white paper without any strings attached (no email capture or sign up form). Your content should educate and position you as the advisor resource right off the bat. That alone generates email leads, phone calls and qualified conversations about how your products and services can help.

Inbound marketing is also about measurement. How are your leads converting to real business? Can you measure that? Which landing pages are successful? . . which headline? Subheads? Photos? Calls to action?

All that stuff is easily measured with simple Web tools.

Have You Been in These Types of “Creative Meetings?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve suffered through meetings where marketing teams deliberate endlessly about subjective content treatments without having a clue about testing and conversion results (A/B tests or multivariate testing).

Inbound marketing strategies, systems and tools help you manage all this.

So . . do you agree with any of this? Are we on the same page? Are you ready to implement some real strategies and solutions for generating leads, improving your messaging, and cultivating enthusiastic product evangelists and “hub customers” that Tweet about your products, blog about your services, and promote you to their friends on Facebook.

Here are just a few general areas that you’ll want to consider.

Content Creation: Is your current Web site set up as a blog or do you have some other Content Management System (CMS)? Are you pumping out relevant, useful, well-written content on a consistent schedule? If not, why not? Your competitors probably are.

Optimization: Are you using tools to grade keywords, landing pages and inbound links? Do this right, and you’ll make some significant SEO strides.

Promotion: How are you using social media “channels” to connect with customers and leverage the exponential reach of friend networks? Do you have an efficient system for communicating with prospects via email and measuring the results of those interactions? Again, do this well and you’ll smoke your competition.

Conversion: What’s do your lead-gen process and pipeline/nurturing practices look like? Do you have simple, clean yet powerful ways to manage prospect lists and leads?

Analysis: Who are you reaching? When are they most receptive to your messages? Are they weighing you against competitive offerings? Are they asking their social networks about your solutions or products? Do you have a way to track all this and “listen” to the market?

Ok – enough with the questions. You get the point. Inbound marketing is an integrated, accountable approach to lead-generation and conversion. It’s about creating great content, making promises, having conversations, delivering value and converting interest to revenue.

Are you at the point where you want to do some these things and start making a measurable difference?

Call (949-244-9440) or email, and let’s talk. We recently gained partner status at Hubspot, so we can get you into that system. Or, we can pick up a few small projects and take it slowly.

This is one area of your business that you don’t want to ignore. There’s a big shift going out there in sales/advertising/marketing/lead-gen-land, and you don’t want to get caught behind the curve. Your competitors will just beat you up at every turn.

And please don’t get suckered into green, newbie “social media” and SEO outfits that promise to solve all your problems by setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts. (This is the part about burning your as$.) Inbound marketing programs are about reasoned, focused marketing campaigns. You don’t want to keyword stuff, pump out useless blog posts, or spam your press releases every 1/2 hour on Twitter. Content development is the key. You need writers, designers, creative input and cohesive strategies to make progress.

Contact us today, and let’s talk inbound marketing and meaningful content development.

949-244-9440

service@qualitywriter.com

I haven’t seen The Social Network yet, but it’s already bugging me. My neighbor, for example, announced that she took her entire family off Facebook after seeing the movie.

Now, I can understand why people would do this. Kids can get into a lot of trouble with social tools online. They need some tech guidance when it comes to the open-ness of these platforms and the traps that lie in waiting. Part of their education should also cover how to express  ideas, what to omit, how to communicate politely, etc.

But that’s not the point here.

My biggest, general beef is with the way people discuss these things. They place a lot of blame on the messenger and demonize the tools people use to express their ideas and connect with others.

It’s like a journalist from 1975 blaming his typewriter for the word f*#k. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

These tools we’re using evolve over time, and they have some features that can get non-techies into trouble. But they’re only tools with people behind them. Back in the 50′s there were people new to telephone communication who didn’t quite understand the concept of the party like (this is when neighborhoods were bunched into common calling lines – before the advent of one line, one house). They got caught gossiping while others listened in on their calls.

Similar things go on today with Facebook and Twitter. You’ve heard the stories.

So technology is disruptive because it catches those who remain unaware in these difficult situations – they get fired, their kid gets called into the principal’s office, a photo of their donger gets passed around the Internet (sorry Brett Favre).

The horse was disruptive, as was a car, and texting is disruptive (thought not as impressive as a horse). “The network” might be as impressive as a horse (e.g. Web/Internet/Social Media). Blah, blah, blah. It’s all technological leaps.

As long as you stay clear about what technology is, then you’re ok. We’re just talking about communication tools, really.

Modern, Web 2.0 tech helps you communicate with people, express your ideas, look for things and check things out. End of story. If you’re abusing those tools or using them stupidly, then it’s your fault.

That’s why content curation and filtering are going to be so critical moving forward. There are lots of companies in this space already, but I’m guessing that we’ll see even more interesting things develop in the months ahead. Mike Elgan wrote a great article about How Facebook Could Rule the World that relates to this.

Let’s just agree to stop all the stupidity about the tools themselves.

I like to periodically reset and remind myself that tech is only a bunch of tools for ideas. That’s why they’re important to me, at least.

Spreading ideas, sending them quicker, forming them, getting exposed to different ones, etc.

That’s my $0.02. What do you think? Please comment below.

Oh – regarding the irony – I tend to post a lot about technology, marketing and communication. . so I’m guilty of obsessing .

If you’re trying to generate leads – or just improve your conversion on existing customers/prospects – you need to have a strategy or process in place.

This is just one simple approach.

Are you doing this? Do you need help with any of these steps?

Let’s talk. Please comment below or contact me directly: 949-244-9440 or dunn@qualitywriter.com

So how can you stand out? How can you put on a more remarkable presentation and turn heads? Here are my 11 thoughts:

1. Adjust and edit your marketing documents with the show’s context in mind. Companies, speakers and marketing materials that are relevant in context are much more compelling than boilerplate, “we use these at every show” materials. With today’s POD and rapid-PDF layout capabilities, you have no excuse for not revising content for specific events. The best way to stand out in a crowd is to be immediately relevant in context. If you do this one thing, you’ll sucker punch your competition before the show even begins.
2. Infuse your communications with authenticity and the company’s personality. We’ve all been discussing the dilemma of marketing and advertising “noise” for quite some time now. Trade shows tend to produce even more noise. How do you cut through the chaos? Be relevant in context (like #1 above), and use your company’s purpose, vision, personality and authentic positioning to stand out. Aim high and try to be that booth that the journalists and bloggers are buzzing about because the personalities, communication pieces, and vibe are irresistible. You can do this without looking stupid. You can do this by focusing on your solutions and getting excited about them. It’s a matter of digging deep into the real value of your company and products/services. You can do it.
3. Focus on the audience. Now is the time to start surveying show attendees. If you’re 2, 3 or 4 months away from the show, you need to start asking what their expectations, fears, pains, dreams, and desires are about the particular event. Why are them coming? What would be a great experience? What do they want to learn? Which kinds of keynotes do they hate? What are their all time favorite presentations? Gather information like this and you can position for a much better show experience. You’ll also have specific topics to discuss with real people at the show.
4. Edit with one-to-one or one-to-many in mind. A lot of marketing folks debate 2nd person and 1st person writing perspectives. To me, it’s simple. If you’re editing a trade show script, you need to pay attention to group dynamics and position your ideas with the multitude experience in mind. You can include one-on-one interactions in the presentation, but, for the most part, your conversation is with the collective audience. A white paper or special report requires a different positioning. Here’s where you want to speak directly to the reader. Address them directly and use “you” often. They are in a silent conversation with you, so your best bet is to be conversational.
5. Educate. Give to get. Then give some more. When you connect with prospects on their terms, in their worlds, with stories and cast studies that are relevant to their experiences, you stand out. You also build trust before any selling process begins. They can raise their hand on their own when they’re ready to discuss specific products and solutions. In the mean time, hang back and educate. Be soft like water.
6. Be more creative. Are you giving out thumb drives? T-shirts? Are they boring? How can you make them more interesting and creative? Are you allowed to be provocative? Think about who’s coming by your booth. What devices do they carry, and how could you interact with them in more original ways? My thoughts are just forming here, but I’ve got some ideas that include Google Goggles, Google Maps and your post show parties and events. . How about integrating a FourSquare, Facebook Places, or Gowalla activity that showcases your company? How about using the bar-code scanner app (Android or iPhone) to show prospects the super secret locale of your executive private round table and whiskey tasting event? Get creative now.. and hurry.
7. Take away more in order to show more. Go through all your brochures, presentations and hand outs with an eye for elimination. Take away excessive words, extraneous concepts and fluff. You’ll end up showing more of what makes you good. Try making your short pieces about only one thing. Try making your longer presentations and white papers about a maximum of three concepts. These two strategies are so valuable. Give em a shot.
8. Include frequent calls to action (CTAs). Have you ever seen a knock-out presentation that fails to provide a final, compelling CTA? It sucks. People fidget in their seats wondering what they should do next. Give them something fun, interesting, or important to do – immediately – and they’ll thank you for it.
9. Focus on your 3 most important “touchpoints.” Where are you hitting attendees first? With a personal, one-to-one handshake? With a hand out on a street corner? With a keynote? With a product demo? Figure out the first three places most people will encounter your company and make sure these are spectacular experiences. First impressions are everything, right?
10. Make your materials social. Community matters now more than ever. It provides that “stickiness” needed to get people buzzing about your solutions and engaging with your story. When you socialize your marketing materials (which include speaking events, casual gatherings and hard collateral) you give yourself a chance to be viral. If you do it well, you can create a buzz storm.
11. Perform an outside document and script review audit with a qualified technology marketing specialist. “Another pair of eyes” is always a good idea. When you present your materials to outsiders before the show starts, you can gain priceless insights. If I understand your industry and solutions to a reasonable degree, there’s a chance I can help (email me or call 949-244-9440).  If not, I can direct you to someone who knows your particular niche. I’ve been writing in-depth content for software, hardware, telecom and enterprise solution providers for the past 15 years. And I have an extensive network of techie marketers.

Thanks for reading, and good luck at your show. If I can help out in any way, please let me know.

Also… what else should I include on this list? Any suggestions? Please comment below, and I’ll do some research and elaborate for you.

And they heard two friends.. and so on, and so on..

Search Engine Land recently ran an short article posing the question: Is Trust in Social Media Dying? It’s a quick statistical look at the dip in trust across social networks.. and the problem seems to be “marketing.”

I’d like to take their analysis a little further.

Yes marketing messages have infiltrated every nook and cranny of social media networks (whether that’s apps that friends recommend you get, groups they want you to join, or games they’d like you to play). Yes – the proliferation of acquaintances rather than real, trusted friends is part of the problem. Everyone seems to think they’re a micro-business (or some kind of eBay/e-commerce part-timer).

From my vantage point, the extended issue involves a re-introduction of traditional marketing methods on an organic medium. What do I mean by that? Here’s the simple version: People are attempting to force old methods – like multi-level marketing techniques, aggressive networking and referrals, and spammy recommendations that lead to affiliate links – onto the new social channels, and it’s not working.

Couple this phenomenon with the fact that noise levels are at all time highs, and you’ve got distrust. Social media was supposed to cut down noise after all. Your trusted group was supposed to help you filter out the noise. Yet people have been shooting themselves in the feet because they treated “friending” as a gold rush scenario.  Collecting followers does not lead to valuable information exchanges.

So what do you do to gain back that trust and make your social networks work for you?

1. Delete spammy acquaintances from your personal social media networks (use a tool like Twitter Karma, for example).

2. Participate with authenticity – send out the messages and information that you’d like to see coming back your way. This is another karma play of sorts. You get what you give – it’s that simple.

3. If you’re using Social Media Marketing (SMM) for business, start acting like an artist (ask Seth Godin about this – or read his Linchpin Book). And I don’t mean acting as in faking. I mean acting as in action. Create something remarkable, give gifts, push through to make it better, and connect people in meaningful ways.

4. Tell the truth. Stop saying your feet hurt so you can score a free pair of shoes (like the Timberland guy did on Twitter). Those days are over. That was yesterday’s creative PR move. Write honest reviews of products. And, treat your product reviews as a niche business. Huh? Yes – pick a tight little corner of the world and dedicate your reviewing resources to that (foi gras, 1-inch heels, gerbil racing, nudist party planning, the worst selling products on Amazon, beard growth tips, whatever). Who knows, some day some company might want to advertise on your site and tap your network.

5. Connect offline. Go to tweet-ups, meet your friends in person (heck, use something like Gowalla or FourSquare to make it happen), and talk about the ideas you’ve been sharing online. There is no substitute for social contact (faces are amazing things), and the serendipity of discussion often reveals precious insights because it’s not premeditated (like a Tweet or FB post). Get out there an blurt in the real world.

These tips should help you filter out a lot of noise and get you back to the genuine, productive, value-rich conversations that social media is so good at cultivating.

If you do it right you don’t have to sweat this declining trust trend.

Anyone have more tips? Please comment below.

Not anymore. Days go by. Inboxes are too full. Spam filters send legitimate emails off the radar screen. It sucks, but it’s true.

So where have these crucial conversations gone?

• Back to the phone – this is good for a number of reasons, and I’ve personally seen this occurring in my own business.
• To SMS – Whether your contacts are close friends or important business associates, text messages seem to get much more attention these days. It’s the first thing people check, wherever they are and whatever time it is.
• Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter (for some people) – I’ve had entire business conversations with people within Linked-In and Facebook.. the FB one was a friend already, however. These tools allow people to strategically filter their discussions by friend groups.
• In person – Still the best way to discuss business.
• Via Skype, IM, Chat and so forth – This could include a Web cam or HD conferencing. Again, the filtering factor of buddy lists and contact circles makes it useful to busy executives.

What’s your experience? Are you having any luck with direct email marketing? Are people you meet and email slow to respond? Please comment below to share your thoughts.

This is definitely where the rubber meets the road. Depending upon how you use the web, your browser, social networks and the like, Google could potentially know loads of information regarding *who’s sharing what and how important are they are to you based on your emails, texts, IMs and voice calls.* This gets really scary when you consider someone like me who has almost all the Google tools integrated – including Gmail, Google Talk, Google Voice and their various extensions in Google Chrome.

Or not – I’m pretty exposed Web-wise, anyway. Of course, it could be very useful for productivity, time-saving, entertainment, buying short-cuts, etc. That’s the grand vision, for sure.

Interestingly, the only way Google doesn’t know what I’m sharing is if I post directly via Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm, Hello.txt or some other social aggregation/post tool.

One thing I’ve noted.. Google could have gathered much more data about the content people share if they’d done a better job integrating “send link as email” within Chrome. Firefox does this really well. With Chrome you have to have an extension (apparently the 3rd pty one works best).. to pop open a gmail page and send. How much info are they missing when chrome users share using other tools because it’s not so easy with their own browser?

This will be a hot topic for some time to come.. what are your thoughts?

What follows are some highlights and lowlights from a typical day of “connecting” in my life. I find the most value appears when I’m connecting with people who help me get my job done, of course. On the other hand, some exchanges are just plain fun even though they won’t help my business right away.

For starters, I posted a question to several of my LinkedIn contacts that I know have experience in the marketing and Web development field. I was looking for a WordPress developer that could help quickly launch Word Press Web sites. I’d need the person to “turn the lights on” every time I launch a new site or have a client that wants to transition to the flexible, powerful WP platform. I quickly found a great resource (in New Zealand of all places) that’s already helping out with a rather extensive client project. In the words of Jack Davenport on Britain’s Coupling, “result!”

Next, I read a bunch of links from thought leaders and link-sharers that I admire and trust. I use Seesmic Desktop and Twitter to do this. I follow quite a few people on Twitter, but Seesmic allows me to put them into groups (I think you can do this with TweetDeck, too). I have a group called “A-List,” and this is the place where I filter out those that consistently bring useful and entertaining links, ideas and articles. This can be a major time sucker, because if you follow a lot of the thought leaders on Twitter, there are a lot of tantalizing titles flying around. I try to limit my window for this activity to an hour or less. I like to take one action idea from each piece I read and get it into my calendar or task list. That way, I’m not just admiring articles. I’m actually using information to move my business forward. I came across an article yesterday that was really intriguing, How I got to the first page of Google thanks to ONE bookmarklet (by Zee on TheNextWeb). It shows you how to use Posterous and optimize WordPress for an ultimate SEO pick-me-up. I’ll be tinkering with those tools/tips today.

Then I moved into the realm of the unproductive. I put up some pictures of our kids’ soccer games [taking very little time, mind you: 1) Eye-Fi wireless SD card takes the pictures from the camera and automatically uploads them to my computer and Kodak Gallery, 2) A quick email puts the best ones on Posterous, which 3) automatically updates to Facebook]. Everyone’s updated in a matter of minutes, and I’ve only clicked a couple of times. The videos from the camera go to YouTube automatically, as well. It’s amazing.

Next, I commented on a bunch of inane but funny Facebook friend stuff. There were some good/ugly Kanye West/Michael Jackson funeral jokes and more of those silly Hitler videos from Valkyrie, where they put in subtitles about current events. I also caught up on friend photos, videos and whereabouts. I may score a ticket to the Cal-USC football game, as a result. That would be productive!

How do you use social media for fun and profit? Any stories or tips that are useful and insightful?