Podcasting as intent

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 24, 2010 in Marketing, Podcasting | 4 comments

Following someone or something on Twitter indicates a small amount of intent. It takes literally less than a second to follow someone. Replying and conversing does show more intent.

Becoming a Fan on Facebook is the same. Liking something on Facebook indicates a small amount of intent.

Subscribing to someone’s newsletter takes slightly more intent. Reading, forwarding, sharing, and clicking through indicates greater intent.

What does it say about someone, though, who watches all of your videos or listens to all of your audio podcasts? What does it say about someone who tunes in all the time? What does it say about someone who shares every piece of content you create with their social circles and relentlessly flogs other people to tune in?

They are a true fan. They’re dedicated. They believe in you and the information you have to share.

The question is, how well are you treating them? Or are you spending all your time chasing new audience, and ignoring the gold mine you’ve already got subscribed to your podcast?

If you don’t know who your evangelists and true fans are, you probably don’t deserve to have them, and in fairly short order if you continue to neglect them, you won’t.

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Marketing White Belt Basics for Digital Marketers is now on Amazon & B&N

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Marketing White Belt: Fast, Cheap, Good

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 22, 2010 in Strategy | 2 comments

The old joke about quality goes something like this:

FAST CHEAP GOOD
Choose any two.

You can have good and fast, but it won’t be cheap.
You can have cheap and fast, but it won’t be good.
You can have cheap and good, but it won’t be fast.

Want to do a back of the envelope competitive analysis? Look at your company through this lens to understand your vulnerabilities.

If you can’t deliver fast, cheap, or good, you’re pretty much dead meat and it’s time to polish the resume and get out as quickly as possible before the ship sinks beneath your feet. You don’t even need a strong competitor to lose – one mediocre competitor will eat your lunch.

If you can deliver on one of the three qualities, fast, cheap, or good, then you have at least some competitive advantage, but your competitors will be able to maneuver around you fairly easily. If you’re fast, but not cheap or good, a competitor doesn’t need to be as fast as you to beat you – they need to be reasonably fast and either cheap or good, and you’ll lose customers to them.

If you can deliver on two out of the three, you’ve made life difficult for your competitors. Chances are whatever axis is left of the three is difficult to compete on or is extremely expensive operationally to compete on. For example, most fast food restaurants can nail cheap and fast, but not good. To deliver good, you’d have to either innovate or cut one of the other two areas. Most companies that are competitive in the marketplace can deliver on two out of three qualities to hold a competitive edge.

If you’re one of the very, very rare companies that can miraculously deliver on all three qualities, you’re going to obliterate your competition. Google has gotten search to be fast, cheap, and good and as a result, it’s nearly impossible to compete with them in search. The more dominant you are, the more profit you have to dedicate to improving on any of the three qualities and solidify your market position. The only way you get dethroned is if the product sector changes entirely and you fail to adapt.

So, which qualities does your company possess? Which qualities do your competitors possess? How much danger are you in based on this simple but elegant test?

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Marketing White Belt Basics for Digital Marketers is now on Amazon & B&N

Watch me speak: Attend virtually!

I recommend: for Twitter audience building.

You might be doing it wrong…

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 20, 2010 in Awakening, Buddhism, Strategy | 0 comments

You might be doing it wrong…

… if you enjoyed my talk about awakening your superhero with the power of social media and then went back to the office and enforced rules about not using social networks at work.

… if you read the latest book from your favorite business author, demanded everyone read it, and then didn’t implement a single idea from it.

… if you watch and are moved by a TED talk about the devastating impact of global warming and then get in your 10 MPG SuperSUV to go to work.

… if you say social media isn’t about numbers of friends and followers, and then keep on checking Twitter Counter.

In Buddhism, there’s a concept called ignorance which isn’t about a lack of knowledge (as the term is generally used) but a willful denial of reality around you. You’re trying to actively ignore things that would otherwise wake you up and make you change for the better.

The antidote to ignorance is mindfulness, or waking the hell up and living in the present, in the here and now, in the reality that’s around you, and acknowledging that what you want may be very different than what you have. The first, simplest step to becoming more aware of what’s around you is to practice living in a mindful manner, with regular routine breaks out of habits to recenter yourself.

For example, take the 10-2-5 time management method that we’ve talked about. Once you’ve gotten the hang of using it, add a little bit of mindful practice to it. At the beginning of each 10 minute stretch (or the end of a 2 minute break, depending on your perspective), take a moment to fix your posture and sit up. Just something as simple as that – add that in.

If you’re responsible for managing people, you can encourage mindfulness in yourself and themselves by giving feedback regularly, routinely, and extremely frequently, rather than waiting for an annual or semi-annual corporate process. If you commit to recentering and refocusing weekly or even daily, you’ll find it’s easier to make changes and get more done. I commit to reviewing my work and the work of my team every Monday and Friday, for example; we look on Mondays at what we have to do and on Fridays we look at what we did.

A few of you reading this post will try these exercises and gain great benefit from them. What about the rest of you?

Will this blog post make you nod and agree vigorously… and then you’ll completely forget it in about two minutes?

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

The amazing windup salesperson!

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 18, 2010 in Marketing, Sales | 2 comments

The amazing windup salesperson!

I had the pleasure and privilege to speak at Multifamily Pros’ Optimization Summit this past week and talk about email marketing in the modern age (click here to watch the recorded version). One thing that hasn’t modernized, however, is that new sales folks still aren’t getting trained to be effective sales people.

What do I mean?

As part of shows like this, I enjoy walking the expo floor, seeing what new and innovative things people have come up with in their industries. I stopped at probably 30 different booths to see what was new and next. Amazingly, out of those 30 booths, a stunning 57% of sales folks never once asked me what I did.

It was almost comedy – wind up the sales person and hear the pitch come out like a child’s toy. They never qualified me by asking question (they would have quickly realized I had no need for their services) and they made the assumption that I was there as a multifamily building manager/owner like everyone else. There were two people who I was amazed managed to get to the end of a fairly lengthy pitch while breathing only once. They probably thought I wasn’t listening, but I was looking for the defibrillator in case they passed out from hypoxia.

Of the 13 vendors who were trained to actually let prospective customers talk, most made a “what do you do” question within the first couple of minutes. Some people led with that, which is one of the easiest and best strategies for building rapport and trust. As a sales person, one of the best things you can do is get the prospect talking about themselves early and often so you can gather information.

Here’s a simple test: If you’re a sales person, record yourself selling, then watch the video or listen to the recording and see how long it takes you to get to “so, what do you do?”.

Want to see how this applies to your marketing online? Jason Falls recommends checking out WeWe Calculator to see how much of any given web page’s language is centered around you the company instead of me the customer. It’s illuminating to see that most corporate web pages get so wrapped up in boasting about the company that they never give prospective customers the opportunity to mentally engage with copy that is customer-centric. Try it out and see how your content and company score.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

Three belief secrets about achieving your goals

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 16, 2010 in Awakening, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin | 2 comments

On a team that you know has the potential but needs a little something extra to get cooking? I’ve been in that exact situation many, many times in my professional career, working with people who were incredibly talented but for one reason or another, their potential was staying locked away. Sir Ken Robinson said once that human resources are exactly like natural resources – it takes time, effort, and energy to dig out human potential and transform it into something useful.

One of the most useful tools for mining that potential, for bringing it to the surface, is goal setting. However, goal setting is more than just putting up endposts on a football field and then hoping that the players know what to do. Goal setting also involves belief setting, creating a three-part belief in your fellow team members. When each member of your team believes in all three parts, they become incredibly motivated to want to go the extra mile, to unleash their full power, to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to hit the goal.

The three part goal beliefs are:

• I believe in the goal, that it is worth achieving in an ethical sense.
• I believe in the process, that there is a clear path to the goal that I can travel.
• I believe in my team, that we are all aligned and focused on the goal, and will support each other to achieve the goal.

Each of these points is vitally important. A goal has to be worth achieving, not just in a financial or numerical sense, but in a higher sense, an understanding that the goal (whatever it is) somehow makes the world a little bit better. This is the part that drives passion, that drives motivation, that makes people volunteer untold hours a year for their favorite charities, that keeps people working long after everyone else has gone home. If the goal doesn’t make the world a better place in a clear fashion, strongly consider abandoning it.

A goal has to have a means of getting there. It’s fine to set a goal, but without a method for achieving it, it’s a daydream at best, a lazy wish rather than a process or recipe to follow that will get you to your destination. When you are setting your goals for yourself or others, think carefully about how you plan to get there.

A goal, even individually achieved, still has to have the backing of the people around you. No woman or man is an island. Everyone up to this moment in your life has in some way participated in getting you get to where you are. If you want to achieve your goals faster, more effectively, more powerfully, and more happily, you need the right team at your back to help you up when you fall down and cheer you on when you’ve hit a hot streak, with the understanding that you’ll do the same for them.

Take this triple secret to your next goal or mission and see if you can assert each part clearly, compactly, and strongly. If you can, I can promise you that you’ll get to your goal faster and arrive happier.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.