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New Year, New Ideas – Best of the Web!

Posted on January 19, 2013 | In Best of the Web

This last month has been crazy busy (mostly in a good way) for us!

We spent most of November and December preparing for the launch of the Audience Business Masterclass and now we are right smack dab in the middle of the launch!

But we still make sure we spend time reading content on other blogs to expand our knowledge and see what ideas, opinions and research are worth being spread. It’s been a while since our last Best of the Web, and there has been A LOT of great content that we’ve seen since then.

So without any further ado, here are my favorites from the past month, I hope you enjoy them and find them as useful and interesting as I did…

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Meetup.com Bridges the Engagement Gap

Posted on January 18, 2013 | In Engagement Strategies Contest

The following post is an entry by one of our spectacular finalists in our Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest. Finalists showcase their ideas, and whoever gets the most traction (i.e. comments and social shares) within five days of publication will be crowned the winner! And commenters can win prizes too, so check out the rules and enjoy the post!

When I saw that Firepole Marketing was having a contest for an Awesome Engagement Strategy, I knew that the work I did this summer was worth sharing.

What do I really do? Good Question!

Before I tell you about my engagement strategy, I’m going to tell you what I do and why I needed an engagement strategy in the first place.

I’m a Communications Advisor, Coach, Facilitator and Instructor who helps individuals and teams understand their workplace communication styles and behaviors. I do this through workshops and team-building sessions that are customized for each of my clients. The work I do helps them have fewer misunderstandings, stronger teamwork and more productivity.

I know that when people understand how and why misunderstandings occur, they can participate in developing strategies, goals and tactics to overcome them and move forward with less stress and more fun.

But… that’s not what I’m known for…

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How to Generate a Stream of 1-on-1 Coaching Clients, for Coaches and Consultants

Posted on January 17, 2013 | In Engagement Strategies Contest

The following post is an entry by one of our spectacular finalists in our Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest. Finalists showcase their ideas, and whoever gets the most traction (i.e. comments and social shares) within five days of publication will be crowned the winner! And commenters can win prizes too, so check out the rules and enjoy the post!

Are you a coach or consultant?

Clients, be they one on one, or as part of a group, are the life blood of your business.

Without clients, you have no business… and boy do we know that feeling. Perhaps you have just enough clients to keep you ticking over. Perhaps you could do with a few more. But without a reliable engagement and conversion strategy, the chances are that instead of every lead turning into some sort of paying customer, you may be stuck in a place where each fumbled lead increases your self-doubt.

(Hey look, we’ve all been there. I *FEEL* your pain.)

Now the thing is it’s not because you’re terrible at what you do. In fact, it’s more likely that you’re outstanding at what you do… but how frustrating is it when you can’t seem to demonstrate that to potential clients who land on your site, or end up in an email conversation with you about their problems – their problems, that on some level they want you to solve, else they wouldn’t be contacting you, right?

Maybe you find these interactions a big drain on your time. Maybe you wish you had better quality leads with people who can afford and want to buy your services. But how on earth do you go about creating that? How do you attract better leads, and then engage them in such a way that you can show case your value, and command the price tag you know you’re worth?

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Engage Readers by Revealing Royal Screw-Ups

Posted on January 16, 2013 | In Engagement Strategies Contest

The following post is an entry by one of our spectacular finalists in our Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest. Finalists showcase their ideas, and whoever gets the most traction (i.e. comments and social shares) within five days of publication will be crowned the winner! And commenters can win prizes too, so check out the rules and enjoy the post!

Do you have a rather lifeless, arms-length relationship with your readers?

Are you afraid to be human, vulnerable, and reveal your weaknesses? Have you felt obliged to focus on your strengths and paint yourself as the perfect go-to expert in your field?

If so, you might be creating a passive, unresponsive community that respects you but doesn’t really trust you.

I was in that exact situation and it was awful.

Let me explain…

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The “Single Video Strategy” for Sparking Massive Engagement

Posted on January 14, 2013 | In Engagement Strategies Contest

The following post is an entry by one of our spectacular finalists in our Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest. Finalists showcase their ideas, and whoever gets the most traction (i.e. comments and social shares) within five days of publication will be crowned the winner! And commenters can win prizes too, so check out the rules and enjoy the post!

Ever wondered what the difference is between sites that engage magically and those that are just meh?

Have you ever wanted to learn the secret to inspiring your visitors to take action instead of just inspiring them to leave?

Like all of us, I’ve tried different ways to encourage my audience to engage – from installing social media buttons on my blog to just asking people to leave comments, but I never truly figured out the secret of inspiring true engagement until the day a friend sent me a video by San Francisco baker Chad Robertson. It was a simple video that didn’t pitch anything at all. But by the end of it something interesting had happened – I’d been transformed into a fan.

And not just any fan – the best kind of fan.

The kind who bought his product and who shared his video with my friends on Facebook. And all without having heard of him before that day.

Keep reading and I’ll show you Chad’s video, plus I’ll dissect what he did in detail. And for bonus points I’ll even lay out a complete engagement strategy for doing the same thing for your website and business.

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Ask the Readers: Can You Automate Engagement?

Posted on January 13, 2013 | In Ask the Readers

It’s Ask the Readers time, and we’ve got a great one today.

We’re right smack dab in the middle of the Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest, and we’ve been getting tons of amazing tips, tricks and vice and tactics that we can use to increase our audience engagement.

Engagement is a hands-on business, and no matter how seriously you take it – keeping it up as your business grows is a challenge.

So it begs the question – can you automate engagement?

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3 Live Video Broadcasting Formats That Will Captivate Customers and Make You More Money in 2013

Posted on January 11, 2013 | In Engagement Strategies Contest

The following post is an entry by one of our spectacular finalists in our Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest. Finalists showcase their ideas, and whoever gets the most traction (i.e. comments and social shares) within five days of publication will be crowned the winner! And commenters can win prizes too, so check out the rules and enjoy the post!

So it’s 2013.

My plan for engagement is to incorporate “Live-streaming” video into my content strategy, like, A LOT.

Bandwidth is cheap. 62% of american adults have access to high-speed internet.

Webcams are cheap. Decent audio, also cheap.

The argument for broadcasting video live from my webcam is fairly simple. To grow my own reach and deepen my engagement, I could either

A.) Spend 20 hours researching a blog’s audience, pitching the publisher, then take another 15 hours to write a guest post, hoping it’ll get some comments. or…

B.) Spend the same time researching the audience and working with that blogger to do something live for an hour, offering viewers one on one, real time interaction.

With option B.) I’m still doing research and preparation, but the content creation lasts as long as you’re broadcasting.

Also, viewers don’t “scan” a live stream. There’s no “skipping to the good parts” they’re either there, or they’re not.

All of this makes for a more captive audience that chooses to participate. That captivation is even stronger when there’s a structure what’s being presented.

If for no other reason, we’re all wishing for moments like this (watch Jimmy Fallon)

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

This year, I’m incorporating Live Streaming to deepen engagement, provide loads more value, and open up additional revenue streams.

Here are three ways I plan on doing it…

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Mastering Success on Facebook by Becoming a Welcomed Guest

Posted on January 10, 2013 | In Engagement Strategies Contest

The following post is an entry by one of our spectacular finalists in our Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest. Finalists showcase their ideas, and whoever gets the most traction (i.e. comments and social shares) within five days of publication will be crowned the winner! And commenters can win prizes too, so check out the rules and enjoy the post!

Want to grow your Facebook fan page fast, and receive your daily portions of ego-massage while you are still a newbie?

Here’s how I did it…

Last spring, my friend and I created our first Business Page on Facebook. We were really excited.

But then the question came up – how could we grow it FAST and without investing a lot of money in it?

It was a new venture… no website/service available, just a rough idea to test the market, so we decided to start all activities inside Facebook.

Of course, we followed all the basic recommendations:

  • invite all your friends, so that gave us ~100 fans,
  • made advertising campaign, $10 investment resulted with 100 extra fans,
  • tagged our friends and celebrities on pictures – didn’t work with me so well. A warning to keep in mind: You can make people you tagged really irritated. For example, an Indian artisan tagged me on the picture of his new basket. “Where is the connection?” I wondered, “I don’t like this basket, I don’t want my friends to see it…” It was okay, when he did it once. But when it happened 3-4 times, I cancelled his subscription. Overall  results from  this tactics were rather poor.
  • “Pay” with a Like. For example, there are special forums in LinkedIn Groups to promote your page. You have a list of participants who will like you after you Liked them. This one is also not my favorite – very time consuming, and people can be offended if you forgot to like them back.

Weeks passed… my friend became busy, so I stayed mostly all alone with our page, keeping updated it daily. Though my dream – to open my account in the morning and see hundreds of new Likes, Fans and comments – remained just a dream. Instead of hundreds of Likes, I was getting 1-2 per day.

But one day the miracle finally happened!!!!!!

It was amazing and inspiring, especially since at first, I didn’t know where all those visitors came from…

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Real Relationships with Ten Thousand Subscribers?

Posted on January 9, 2013 | In Fireside Chats with Danny Iny

It will come as no surprise to most of you reading that over here at Firepole Marketing, we’re HUGE on engagement.

We answer every email we get as quickly as possible, and, so far as we are able, we help our readers and community through their marketing and business issues without charging them a penny until they’re ready to become clients or students.

I’m sure you can imagine that’s a lot of work. Worthwhile, of course, but a sometimes staggering commitment. So that’s what this podcast is all about: how to have a real relationship with ten thousand subscribers.

Many of the principles regarding engagement that we follow were built into the very foundations of Firepole Marketing, and we grew with and adjusted to them over time. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make engagement an important part of your marketing at any stage – you’re never too big or too small for it.

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I’m Selling My Chops, But Giving My Gravy Away

Posted on January 8, 2013 | In Engagement Strategies Contest

The following post is an entry by one of our spectacular finalists in our Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest. Finalists showcase their ideas, and whoever gets the most traction (i.e. comments and social shares) within five days of publication will be crowned the winner! And commenters can win prizes too, so check out the rules and enjoy the post!

When I began writing, I shared the common delusion that one day I might be rich and famous.

I still may be someday, but that is no longer a consideration for why I write. I am not as concerned about selling books as I am being read. I would much rather sell 10 books to people who read and share them than 100 that sit in a shelf picking up dust, nothing but literary furniture.

I’ve read much about freebies, and I used to think it pointless, even counter-productive. How will I become rich and famous giving away books?

I see things differently now, and I think, better. I have a novel scheduled for launch next year, and I’m trying a couple of things marketing-wise that strategically places some tasty giveaways.

The great thing is these ideas should work for any book, fiction or non-fiction…

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10 Secrets to Fantastic Engagement

Posted on January 7, 2013 | In Engagement Strategies Contest

The following post is an entry by one of our spectacular finalists in our Awesome Engagement Strategies Contest. Finalists showcase their ideas, and whoever gets the most traction (i.e. comments and social shares) within five days of publication will be crowned the winner! And commenters can win prizes too, so check out the rules and enjoy the post!

Blogs and social media are designed to be… social.

But when they’re treated like a one-way communication vehicle, they lose a lot of their power.

When people get up in the morning and say, “It’s time to blast my post all over the Internet today. Oh boy!”, that’s not using the tools in the way that they were designed. That’s one-way engagement and it gets old very, very quickly.

When you see people posting their links in groups in Facebook or LinkedIn and never responding to comments or questions, you know what kind of people you’re dealing with. When you see comments on their blog go unanswered, are they committed to engagement?

I don’t think so.

So what’s the secret to online engagement? It comes with changing your perspective from just thinking about you, to thinking about what would delight other people. When you understand what most people want out of their online experience and help them get it, then you’re well on your way to generating goodwill and improving your overall level of engagement online.

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Kicking Off the New Year With a Bang – Project ABC Update

Posted on January 5, 2013 | In Firepole Marketing Updates

Happy New Year everyone!

I guess it’s almost cliche to talk about how crazy the holidays are, so I won’t get too into that – but I will say here and now that I will, if at all possible, never move houses in the week between Christmas and New Year’s directly before a product launch and while trying to start a business ever again.

I will just say no.

Suffice it to say, I spent slightly less time working on my business in December than I had initially planned for.  That means January is going to be full-steam ahead, with extra hours and lofty goals.

And that’s something I’d like to talk about for a few moments – goals.

This time of year, the blogosphere is full of talk about New Year’s resolutions – are they good? Are they bad? Do they work? Are you making any? Will you keep them?

I don’t know the answer to any of those questions. But I am making, if not a New Year’s Resolution, a list of things I want to accomplish in 2013, since the world didn’t end, and all. One of them is relevant here:

I’m going to get Project ABC to a point where it’s earning an income, and set to become a long-term, sustainable, audience based business.

And I don’t think for a single second that I’m going to be doing this alone.

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