Often in life it’s more important to know what not to do that what to do. In the spirit of teaching, the Attention Connection team is going to publish a weekly Marketing Darwin Award.

This is not an award you really want to win because we are going to point out all the wasted marketing dollars people spend by pitching platitudes, junk, false interrupts and general marketing blunders.

Our goal for the readers and members of the Attention Connection is to learn from other people’s mistakes, other people’s wasted dollars.

Join in the fun and submit your “stupid marketing move of the week” candidate. If your submission is accepted, you will win the weekly goodies we will give away in recognition of pointing out stupid marketing tricks.

People use Social media platforms for many reasons. Based on reading posts and being an active social media participant for two plus years, I think some people use social media because it’s “the thing to do”, others are making connections with friends and family, while others are using the technologies for business development.There is also a crowd of folks who feel through social media that they can become micro celebrities or simply to attract attention to themselves.

I use social media for all the above reasons except the last one. My main use of social media id for business development and moving influence on the Internet. If you are in this crowd with me, this is the audience I want to speak to about the use of key words in your social media strategy.

All effective Internet marketing is based on key words, the words and word strings the general public will search on to find your website in the search engines.  If your organization is not using your key words in social media, you are missing out on traffic and valuable SEO.

It was only recently that Google and the other search engines made the decision to crawl the social media sites. If you are a Twitter or Facebook user, run a search on Google on your name. You will now find some of the organic results to be references to your social media profiles. Ah ha, now the message of the day.

Use key words you want you or your company to be found on the Internet in your social profiles and in your stream posts of tweets or wall posts.

Since the search engines are scanning the social media sites, be smart and drive traffic with key words. So many users of social media don’t have a strategy around their posts and it’s evident by reading their streams.

Stay ahead of the pack by using key words to your advantage. Here are a few recommendations:

1. Develop a lexicon of key words – get your SEO expert to help you do a key word analysis on your products and services. Find out what key words are important to traffic, who owns that traffic and then write all your content, including stream posts, using your own lexicon of words.
2. Tweet in the language of your customers – if you sell supplements to treat inflammation of the joints, then you better tweet about sore joints and not the clinical name for the condition. Tweeting in 12 dollar clinical names does not do you any good when you want to reach people with sore joints and all they want is relief.
3. Tweets and wall posts favor the 140 character limit, so always use key words and reference your product name. This takes creativity but you are really working on SEO and traffic.

Social media is fun, engaging and can be a great benefit to your sales if you have a plan and execute on it by leveraging key words.

As always, stay connected by paying attention.

Our firm works with many start-up companies and organizations that are expanding product or service lines.  One  struggle we see when it comes to kicking off any new venture, line or product is the battle between performance of marketing efforts and perfection of the message and identity.

The choice is easy, take performance every time.

I have a new client in the commercial lending space who came to me wrestling with the naming of his firm, the picking of a internet domain name for the firm and concerns about his logo. You could really tell he was struggling to “get it right” or “hit one out of the park”.

I listened to his concerns, and we kicked around ideas. I showed him several websites that are stunning in appearance, have great domain names and still don’t perform because they are not selling sites constructed of the right key words, the right structure, the right marketing systems to push traffic to them and actually convert to sales.

The juxtaposed situation  we all face in business today is the low cost of entry into Internet marketing, yet the time it takes to attract the attention of buyers. Don’t confuse low cost with quick results. Internet marketing and true sales funnel building takes time and the important thing to do is start now. In the early days of your Internet presence you wont have instant traffic so you will have a period of time to get your identity and message just right. Here are gems of advice to get you started;

1. Start by doing a key word analysis for your product or service. Build a lexicon of words that are already being searched on and have traffic. Pick out the keywords that get you into the flow of Internet search traffic.
2. Build your website from CMS tools like Wordpress or Joomla. These tools allow you to change your site rapidly without a developer. You can change the look and feel on the fly as well as the content.
3. Submit your key word dominated site to the search engines and get you in the race for traffic.
4. Integrate your new site to social media giants like Facebook and Twitter. Jump into   the stream
5. Develop effective landing pages that sell and convert
6. Implement a CRM and marketing automation tool that allows you to track all of this, manage the flow and effectively follow up on the leads.
7. Start your outbound marketing efforts
8. Tweak your identity and gussy up your site. In the early days you wont have enough traffic to worry about missing the mark too bad.

I have over simplified this as there are very key actions to take but the truth is you will never “get it right” the first time. The most important thing to do is act now and begin the journey. Because you have selected the right tools, you will be able to be nimble, learn and adapt.

Stay connected but don’t go broke doing it.

Connect with you later.

Now that you are reading this, you know we have a new look and feel to the website. Please tell us what you think.

I don’t understand the thinking of some companies when it comes fees, especially unexplainable fees.  Extra fees are a sure fire way to fire your customers. Badger me with fees and I will walk away every time.

For more than 60 years, the airline industry baked into the cost of a plane ticket the expense of baggage handling. You purchased the ticket and there were various services built in ( food, drinks, baggage handling, fuel, etc). Last year most of the major airlines departed from this pricing model and started charging baggage handling fees. Pay $400 for a round trip ticket and plan on another $50 at the counter to check a bag.

My 14 year old daughter recently went on a school trip to Washington DC and I had to remind her of the $25 bag fees on the out bound and return trip. It was a hassle to have a 14 year old remember this and I would have gladly just paid another $50 for the ticket and not had to worry about the transactions and headaches at the counter at each airport. Thanks Airtran for trying to fire me as a customer. Who needs more headaches? So I select the airlines without extra fees… I fly Southwest Airlines all the time. They get it and therefore, they get my money.

My mobile communications company, T-mobile decided to try and fire me as a customer this past month after 9 years as a customer with their own version of nonsense fees.

My dear sweet wife accidentally dropped her Blackberry into a cup of water while carrying a basket of laundry… don’t ask how that happens. Blackberry’s and water don’t mix.

I called T-Mobile and order her a new Blackberry and they charge me $18 for an “upgrade fee”. I questioned the need for an upgrade fee when we did not change service, did not change plans, (actually renewed the contract for another two years as she was eligible for new equipment if we renewed) and bought her the exact same Blackberry that she had just drowned.  There was no evidence of a upgrade anywhere. I just bought a phone and renewed my contract. The wonderful folks at T-Mobile tried every angle in the book to justify the upgrade fee when there was no upgrade.   Who is running their marketing department?  These unexplainable $18 fee is customer retention prevention at it’s finest. I wondered out loud to the customer services reps if they had hired their marketing team from the major airlines?

Customers, members and partners don’t need hassle. I would have gladly paid $18 more dollars for the Balckberry if those fees were hidden in the cost of the unit.I spent more time then I care to share with you on the phone and after 3 levels of customer service folks and threats to take my business to another carrier, they credited me the $18.  T-mobile spent more money argueing with me over $18 and created a pile of ill will.

Fees are just hassle and just a way to alienate those who keep you in business.

Stay connected to your customer, members and partners by including minor fees in the cost of your goods and services. Everyone will be happier in the end.

Stay connected.

I step away from the normal business strategy writing to send a note of gratitude and appreciation for the women in my life on this Mother’s Day Sunday morning.

Men owe gratitude to the women who shape their lives.  Mothers, wives, aunts, grandmothers, sisters and daughter all add the caring, nurturing, loving feminine touch to our cavemen, neanderthal lives.

To my wife Paula, you are the center of my universe. I love you and appreciate you more than words can say.You have given me the 5 treasures of my life, my children.

To my mother, Marlys, I owe you the world as you were the one strong enough to care for me until you were able to hand the baton to Paula.You have always been there for me and you are now a trusted friend and adviser.

Happy Mothers day to all. May we now find this gratitude and honor for the women in our lives and not have to wait 51 more Sundays to show this appreciation.

Take the time to pay attention and find connection with the women in your life.

I spend 100% of my professional time working with clients to help them automate their sales and marketing processes. Yesterday I had an “ah ha” moment that I have to admit is an oversight, especially when you consider workflow automation has been a part of my life since 1992.

The internal customer.

For small and medium sized businesses our firm loves Infusionsoft, a great CRM/Sales Automation/Marketing Automation tool.  My firm and our consultants get myopically focused on the sales and marketing processes and over look automating processes for the internal customer.

A great example of this would be to use the workflow automation tools to manage any process in the company which requires reminders, follow up, accountability and automated sign off.

Example #1 – Benefits enrollment – Each year most of us are required to re-enroll in our employer’s benefits programs. Without automation, this requires the HR representative to send out countless emails, chase you down at your desk all to make sure you get enrolled.

Why not automate these “internal customers” in a workflow follow up sequence to enroll them? Let the software chase the employees down! Set up an enrollment page, follow up sequences, then set it and forget it.

Example #2 – Training Certifications – Most all of companies require some sort of training for their employees. Again, a manager or HR person ends up being some sort of hunter tracking down people, partners, franchisee partners to enroll and complete these vital processes. Again, this can be tackled with a set of web forms and follow up sequences.

Reminds me of this great clip from a few years back, “Terry Tate the Office Linebacker”. This is a must view, spend a few minutes, you wont regret it, especially if you have a sense of humor.

Maybe you need a Terry Tate office linebacker in your firm but my guess is you will be better off letting the software increase your productivity.

You can leverage your CRM tools to automate your communications and processes for your internal customers.

An Attention Connection™ has no boundaries and for small business, workflow automation can be a life saver on so many fronts.

Stay connected.

Connect with you later.

When it comes to Internet and social media marketing, I am always reminded of an old joke about two guys out hunting grizzly bears.  The joke goes like this:

There were two hunters in Alaska out hunting grizzly bears. The first hunter was a sage old hunter who was a professional hunting guide and had seen his share of bear hunts. Along with him was a second hunter, a very inexperienced hunter who was on his first hunt with the guide.

After a few hours out in the brush, the inexperienced hunter kept hearing rustling noises and began to fear that he had probably put himself in harms way by hunting bears. The rustling grew louder and finally the fear got the best of him and he asked the sage old guide “don’t you ever worry about being able to out run the grizzly?”

The guide looked at his fear filled companion and in a dead pan voice replied, “nah, I don’t ever worry about out running the grizzly, I just have to outrun you!”

Can you outrun your competition when it comes to Internet and Social media marketing?

It’s just as important to know what your competition is doing as to what you are doing. Your organization not only needs to pay attention to your own social media, SEO and PPC but your closest competitors.

There are great tools available today to monitor brand and social buzz, along with compare your keywords, tags and SEO with with the keywords of those you compete with.

I highly recommend competitive analysis as a vital first step in social media and your internet presence.

Here is another great video that is worth the 45 seconds. Can you out do the competition?

Funny…

Stay connected.

Most everyone walking the planet over 16 years old has seen the popular late night talk shows.  In nearly every country, people flock to these late night shows. The format is the same and very popular. The shows start with a monologue from the host, normally laced with social commentary laced with humor and wit. After the opening monologue, the show flips to a interview format where a dialogue takes place between the host and guests.

Marketing types should learn from this successful format now that internet and mobile communications now facilitate dialogue better than ever.

The days of monologue marketing, media and communication are gone. We see evidence of this with the global struggle of the newspaper industry and various medias that used to primarily were monologue delivery systems. The papers and media created the content, controlled it’s distribution and basically had control.  There was no two way communication, it was all monologue.

Democratization of content and influence is here. Anyone person or organization can create a groundswell using social media. Now that mobile communications have become affordable for the masses and social media platforms are all the rage, you must provide your prospects access to you in formats that support a dialogue.

Questions to ask your organization:

1. Does your marketing message invite people to be taught, not told?
2. Do you deliver the education to your customers need to buy from you in a manner which can be consumed and not feel like a sales pitch? Does your communication delivery include automated drip systems?
3. Does your website invite communication, not just a a digital brochure? Have you integrated video and chat into your online presence?
4. Are you actively using social media? If so, how effectively?
5. Are you monitoring your brand in social media and responding to what is being said?
6. Do customers, partners and prospects have access to your firm 24/7 in a self service format? Remember, customers buy when they are ready to buy and not when you are ready to sell.

If you are truly going to gain and maintain an Attention Connection with your desired stake holders, you must be relevant and connected. You can not be a stand up talk show host that just delivers a  monologue. You must seek to have dialogue.

What do you think? How do you grade your organization in the delivery and sustaining in a dialogue?

As always, connect with you later.

Yesterday I wrote about Bryan Bennett of DNA Services of America and his success of using Twitter as a way of extending his marketing reach.

Overnight I thought maybe another example of Twitter success would be in order as so many people are confused about what Twitter really is and why it’s so valuable as a weapon.

So here is my second “grizzly in the stream” Twitter success story… My own company.

Our firm is a trusted adviser for comprehensive technical marketing systems we call Attention Connection Systems and at the base of what we do is usually a CRM system. (Most of my tweets on twitter are about CRM). We are partners with many technology companies and help customers connect utilizing the tools.  One of the tools we love is a solution called Infusionsoft. You must check them out!

I have  posted tweets about Infusionsoft  because it’s so powerful and it’s too good to be kept a secret.  In the past month our firm has had three new clients result from tweets on Twitter. In addition to these new clients,  I have helped provide input to another firm in Boston (headed up by Garth Rose) who recently decided to join the ranks of Infusionsoft and signed up after connecting with me on Twitter. Garth has even started a local Infusionsoft user group like the one we have here in Colorado.

Not a bad month  and truly what Twitter is all about.

You better jump in the stream.  If you have not seen this video, invest the 45 seconds! You will be glad you did.  Fishing for salmon… check it out.

Too funny!

My take home message is this: Dive in,  don’t just wade in ! Beat the competition to the fish!

Better put on my slickers!

Connect with you later.