True success in business lies with a blatant, in your face, absolutely RAW use of this:

(Read this is a flaming, singsong voice) PERSONALITY!!!!!!

How are today’s successful companies achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage?

Why are companies who have better products/services not thriving, when other companies are?

What makes one more successful than the other?

There have been hundreds of books written about success and business and some are still very relevant today. BUT, the consumers today are not like the consumers of previous generations, there is an all new dynamic that we as the drivers of the business MUST study and edit how we guide our marketing and delivery.

If we do not, we will be left in the dust of other companies who have responded and innovated and henceforth, been rewarded for hitting the mark!

One of the major pieces that is important to today’s plan for a business is personality. Consumers do not want a boring, faceless company to provide their products or services anymore. We want to be entertained, emotionally involved, and personally connected with companies, like never before.

Hence, authors like Seth Godin talk about the Purple Cow and Tribes in describing a companies products and followers.

A book called Personality NOT Included talks at length about this. I am reading that along with 30 other rescently published works, ah the plethora of info consumes us!!!! So, I leave you with the words of Seth Godin “There is no tribe of normal”

People don’t coalesce into active and committed tribes around the status quo.

The only vibrant tribes in our communities are the ones closer the edges, or those trying to make change. The center is large, but it’s not connected.

If you’re trying to build a tribe, a community or a movement, and you want it to be safe and beyond reproach at the same time, you will fail.

Heretical thoughts, delivered in a way that capture the attention of the minority–that’s the path that works.

So, the point my dear friends?

Make your business YOU, it shoudl have personality, just like you do. It should be REAL, what we are all looking for. And it is easier than ever with social networking and youtube video sites galore! And it is FREE, hello, can you say cheap?

So, how will this change you? Your bsuienss? Your plans today?

If it doesn’t change something, stop wasting your life reading my blog!

Puleaze!

C

Are you prospects/customers/clients acting randomly? Predictably? Both?

The Levy Flight

Chaos is not defined in any one or multiple direction. Hence, the growing numbers who visit your website, twitter or facebook page are not organized or predictable.

The path your customers take towards you is not a straight line.

This is much the same as the fact that you cannot predict which direction an animal will take next when foraging. So, how do we predict our future success with these social media platforms or our marketing campaigns or anything for that matter to do with our businesses?

Enter the Levy Flight. Seth Godin puts it well:

Someone discovers your site. They poke and prod and join and return and return again. Then they feel as though there’s no more benefit and they move on, surfing until they find another place to forage.

Someone finds your restaurant. They love it. They return with friends. They hang out and become regulars for a while. Then they get bored and start browsing again.

Adding the Levy flight to your understanding is a much more nuanced representation of consumer behavior than solely thinking about the ideas of brand loyalty or random web surfing.

See an example here:

So, the only accurate prediction is that there is not predicting some outcomes, most outcomes, really.

So, how does this change your plans for today, tomorrow, next week, month or year?

Stop trying to predict, learn when to trust your instincts and when they will lead you astray, test and improve.

My best,

C

Social Media/ Social Networking – Facebook wins against Google!

Very few have decided to forgo the “social media” networks but with these latest stats, the proof of their value is clear. Facebook is the winner, twitter is sure to be right behind, with hundreds of others lagging way back in the distance.

Click here!

The question remains – How can we profit from this massive interaction movement?

I would love to hear about your failures, your successe, your ideas…

C

Seth Godin’s TWO approaches to How to Respond to the “Bad Economy”

So, the economy has affected us all. Many companies are looking to cut expenses, payroll, budgets, everything and anything that will lessen the outflow to attempt to balance the lack of inflow!

BUT, is this a SMART business strategy? Well, if you would like even less customers, revenues, clients, then yes.

If you want to grow your business, NO.

Seth Godin illustrates this well today:

One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. That’s actually what they spent most of my time at business school teaching me.

No sense putting more on that pizza, sending more staff to that event, answering the phone in fewer rings… what’s the point? No sense being kind, looking people in the eye, being open or welcoming or grateful. Doing the least acceptable amount is the way to maximize short term profit.

Of course, there’s a different strategy, a crazy alternative that seems to work: do the most you can do instead of the least.

Radically overdeliver.

Turns out that this is a cheap and effective marketing technique.

So, how should you respond, as the business leader? How can you overdeliver? How can impress the socks off of your current clients, customers, patients?

What will that create in referrals, word-of-mouth, and media attention? Whether in your marketing videos, on twitter, facebook, face-to-face with your clients/customers/patients, how will that change the interaction and the reaction and the after affect?

Look at Tom’s Shoes or other companies who seem to just give, give, give! Do they suffer financially? Absolutely not!

So, whatcha gonna do about it?

C

www.christiescott.com

Best how-to advice on using Social Media in our Marketing from Seth Godin!

So, we all seem to be buzzing about how to use social media and social networking to our monetary advantage. Some people are making money on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. But, most what are they doing? Wasting time? Because they are focusing on the wrong things!

Seth Godin has this to say, you would do well to pay attention, then get on track to make a difference:

Social media is either a time-wasting, wool-gathering, yak-shaving waste of effort or, perhaps, just maybe, it’s a crack in the wall between you and the rest of the world. It’s a choice… up to you.

If you’re keeping score of how many followers you have, how many comments you get or how big your online footprint is, then you’re measuring the wrong thing and probably distracting yourself from what matters.

On the other hand, digital media can offer you a chance to make real connections, to earn permission and gain insights from people you’d never have a chance to interact with any other way. We were isolated, now we’re connected. The typical individual didn’t have the time, the money or the connections to be heard just a few years ago. Today, the door is wide open… but only the people who can touch us will step over the threshold. If you can reach and (far more importantly) touch or change people, you will gain in influence, authority and power.

Shepard Fairey made a poster of Barack Obama. The Internet helped it spread. The poster connected one supporter to another and became an icon, a freely shared ID badge (and ultimately a parody). And in the center of the spread was the artist. It doesn’t matter that Fairey didn’t make a penny selling the image. What matters is that he connected, and that connection gave his art leverage.

He’ll never need to look for work or revenue again. It will find him.

We grew up isolated. The future is connected. We grew up unable to have substantial interactions with anyone except a small circle of family and co-workers. Now, we earn the right to interact with just about anyone.

I think this changes everything… if we let it.

So, my friend, like I ask so often at the end of my posts, whatcha gonna do about it?If you simply learn something, it doesn’t help you. It is the putting into action what you have learned that transforms our world.

C

www.christiescott.com

How to get Social Media Marketing to actually WORK!!!! Make money with social media, humph, how novel a concept!

(hee hee. I think I like to push the envelope of how long a title can be.

Alright, so you want me to tell you how it is really done, right? How to make BIG things happen with social media, how to create amazing buzz around your product or business for FREEEEEE on facebook or twitter…

(One caveat here: Learn from the pros, but don’t copy per say. Think outside  their box. Make it your own.)

CONTESTS!!!! I saw a trend a few weeks ago and began tweeting and blogging about it. Companies are using contests of all types to get people to retweet their promotions. WE are promoting them for FREE, because we want to WIN BIG. Or small in the case of Whole Foods, they offered free cookies for one winner, but they did this every day for a period of time. It was very successful!

Then, I see five other companies in one day offering contests too!

IKEA does it and does it well! They create a Facebook profile for a store manager, then load the account with gorgeous pictures of products, portrayed showroom-style. The first user who tagged his or her name on a product won it!

As you know, when a user is tagged on a photo in your Facebook account, that photo automatically appears in your newsfeeds of your network. The users who missed out demanded more pictures of course (I found out about it after the dust settled or I would have been one of them!). The efforts raised a very passionate interest in the campaign, the product and the brand.

SOOOOOOO, IKEA got truckloads of brand exposure with very little investment of the big three (time, energy and money). All of this simply for an the investment of a few thousand dollars’ worth of furniture. For the result, quite a ROI, don’t you think?

How can YOU profit from this? Give away furniture? NO. Have a contest? Maybe, but not necessarily.Think outside of the box of what has been done. Get a little crazy. Forget about the status quo, it no longer fits today’s markets. Ikea is a brick and mortar and a catalog company first. Then, it became a website too. Don’t box your company in to how it delivers, instead maximize your reach and expand your impact to your buyers, are they online? Then, GO GET THEM! GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT (or at least some of them).

Challenge your team to come up with out of the box, over the edge, insanely different ways of getting people to talk about your company/product!

I want to hear about it… you know!

C

www.christiescott.com

Twitter? Blogging? Video marketing? HELP!!! How to Start Marketing ONline:

Ok, so MANY clients ask me, “I want to market myself and my business online, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t know which platform to use. Do I need a Facebook page, must I twitter, do I also Blog? Then, there is Viddler, and Youtube? WordPress or my own website? How will find the time for it all?… help!” So, here is what I recommend.

First, you should read the book “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuk. Here you will learn more about all of these and which to use.

The short version is this: DON’T even START if you want RESULTS NOW! It is unlikely you will create many results for the first few months online if you currently have no or very little presence there.

So, you WILL put in hundreds of hours and have little to show for it, revenue wise. This is ok, if you know this, understand and be patient.

Choose something you are PASSIONATE about. That way you love what you do and you have something interesting to say. If you think a subject will make you money, but you don’t absolutely love it, then your audience will sense that and move on to someone who has an opinion, a passion, a REALness.

Alright, now, you should use your Blog as your HOME. You want to invite everyone on the web to visit you there. ALL roads, your article, tweets, facebook updates, videos, everything should invite people to visit your HOME.

You will blog first, then you point to your blog with your tweets and posts.

And repeat.

Simple as that.

Now, if you use video, you can use that in different ways. You can use the videos as your blog, or you can use the videos to drive people TO your blog.

Ok, now, what WILL you do?

Today!??

Tell me, I WANT to hear it!

My best,

Christie

Social Media – Social Marketing – Really? DO I NEED TO JOIN IN?

Yesterday, during a group Conference Class, we were discussing the value or lack there of for my clients to participate and join this revolution of marketing in the Social Media spaces such as Facebook and Twitter.

SOMEONE (I won’t mention any names ) thought it was not for him at the START of the call. Towards the end, I think I had him convinced of the value found in this avenue of communication with his clients and his prospects.
Well, sure nuff’ this morning he sent me this link from Seth Godin’s blog:

http://tinyurl.com/y88494x

So, if you are not a believer, I recommend you read “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuk:

http://tinyurl.com/qgwhvm

I will say this: DO NOT EVEN GET STARTED with social Marketing if you are not willing to do the following:
spend hundreds of hours BEFORE you see any real results
devote time everyday for a year or two
be truly authentic, quirky and YOU always
be absolutely honest
give, give, give valuable content.

If you do that, you are going to be able to accomplish great things in this medium.
Disagree? I WANT TO HEAR IT!

Your coach,
Christie Scott
www.christiescott.com