Are you a Bullet Point on a To Do List?

May 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment

The idea that you can contact someone and they will drop everything they are doing to talk to you, write about you or even promote you it not a very realistic goal.

Lets try it.  - Stop reading and promote me to all your friends and family for the next 30 minutes - go ahead - just start calling and emailing….

I will wait….

See, you kept reading instead, didn’t you?

Yet when we start promoting and creating buzz, that is exactly what we hope for.  I sent you an email, why haven’t you blogged about me yet?

The best you can hope for is often to get on someone’s to do list.

That is not as bad as it sounds - we all want repeat exposure, and if someone keeps rewriting your name on the to do list and moving it forward each day or two, it is better than an advertisement.

Here are some tips to stay on someone’s to do list until they finally act.

  • Make your request easily actionable (Something they need to do)
  • Repeated contacts, but not too frequently.
  • Make the person feel appreciated - SuTree made me an expert.
  • Have a clear benefit stated.
  • Make your request difficult to decline. 
  • Assume you are on the to do list of a busy person.  It is not a NO until they say no.
  • Follow up after a yes. 

My to do list is always full of technologies to check out, books to review, etc.  I say yes, but the people that keep communicating with me rise to the top while others may never get addressed and may fall off the list eventually.  If you think about the dynamic of the to do list, you will change the way you interact with people.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Buzzoodle, Internet Marketing, Word of Mouth Marketing 

Does your email message stink?

May 8, 2008 | 1 Comment

The reason you communicate with people is to create relationships.  Maybe not directly, one to one, but connections none the less.

 Before you dash off your next email, consider if you are just answering the question or building a better relationship.

Email mistakes you may be making:

  • Email too short: If you are just replying to a question, you may be losing an opportunity to create a better relationship.  What could you send that demonstrates value and caring?
  • Email too long: If your email is too long, people will just skim it and get what they need.  Send the email with links that point to more information they might be interested in.
  • Personal & Caring:  Address the person and make your message more about them and less about you.
  • Email Signature: One of the ways I frequenly contact people is to look up a recent email and scroll to the bottom.  If you do not have a good email signature, you are missing out.

And lastly, don’t give away the farm.

You should build resources that you can send people to if you get common inquiries.  For example, I could have sent a recent group of inquiries the link to our blog post on 99 ways to create buzz.  Instead, I let them know they get that link if they sign up for our free buzz marketing email course.  The link was shorter, the message was shorter and the relationship is stronger because they sign up for our course.

Don’t get me wrong here - don’t double the time required to answer emails.  Simply have resources available that you can send or link to that strengthen the relationship beyond a yes or no.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Networking, Blog 

Deliberate Practice

May 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Steve Rubel has an interesting, if not shocking, post about practice and becoming and expert.

 Read it and think about how that technique could be incorporated in your organization.  Each employee should understand online media and deliberately practice creating buzz a little bit each day.  No, not two hours - don’t worry.  But a little bit every day, measuring it and reporting it.

Some will succeed, some will fail and a few will become rock stars.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Branding, Blog 

Care to give me your thoughts?

May 4, 2008 | 1 Comment

See an old post: here along with the comments.  Someone with the same name would like me to take this post down because people might confuse him with this person.  It was a person going around committing fraud.

I got a lot of responses from people after that post about him.  I think I would be doing a bad thing to remove it, but I hate to see someone else feel like their reputation is hurt.

What do you think?

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

Are you letting just anyone edit your profile?

May 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment

 Wink.com is special because it helps you create a great profile of yourself and integrate all your other web accounts and profiles together. If you have the feed from your blog, twitter account or other kind of RSS driven account, you can actually tell wink to display your last few updates as well.

Chances are you are already in Wink. Do a search before you sign up, as they may have imported your information from another source.

Downsides of Wink
One downside of wink is that there is more advertising than I like on a site like that.

Another downside is that it defaults to allow anyone to edit your profile. If you are going to take the time to set up a profile, you want to lock it down so only you can update it.

To lock your profile, follow these steps:

  • Choose My Home at the top right.

  • On the lower right under dashboard, choose profile settings.

  • Under permissions, change the edit permissions to only yourself.

One other problem we ran into is that it works better with the Firefox browser instead of Internet Explorer.

Wink can be very beneficial in helping you with your online visibility for your name.

Be sure to add lots of websites under “Where I am online.” As your wink profile ranks better, it will also help those pages rank better and drive some traffic.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

Yahoo Answers

May 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Yahoo Answers is a tool that you may not have heard about, but it is a good tool for some people to build traffic, develop more search engine visibility and position yourself as an expert.

Saying that, 90% of the questions are not all that serious or professional.  But if you take a few moments and find good questions, and give good answers, this tool can be effective - and addictive.Yahoo Answers

******************

Here is why you want to consider participating.

1.  Search Engine Visibility

Each question becomes a webpage with the question at the top and the responses below.  These pages are optimized for the question and they are on Yahoo, so they rank very well very quickly.  If you have answered a question and it contains a link to your website, you could be getting traffic for years to come.  If your answer is selected as the best answer, it is moved to the top.

2. Traffic

Each time you answer a good question, other people are checking it out as well.  You could see steady traffic from a good and interesting answer.

3. Expert Status

Yahoo will not make you an expert by itself, but it is a good place to hone your Q&A.  Plus, you could always point to your expert site as a part of your answer.  If people like your answer and you have a link like:  Need more information about buzz marketing?  Sign up for my newsletter….

You cannot do this every time as it is rather spammy, but if it is relevant to the question, you should do it.

4. Ask Questions

You can also ask your own questions.  This helps you capture all of the stuff above and keep it at the top.

Note of Caution:  I have found that the less complex a question is the more it will get responses.  Even though the general questions have been asked many times before, it is probably your best bet.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog