Listening For links

I love this shot.  

It says everything you need to know about listening.

Look at the body posture, the size of the eyes - she’s laser locked and her entire attention is focused.

When done right, listening is an all encompassing behavior.

Good Listening Equals Links

The way to get people to notice your content is to interact with them in the digital world.  

• Interact with the wrong people and nothing happens as they don’t care about your content.
• Interact poorly with the right people and still nothing happens because now they don’t care about you.
• Interact well with the right people and your content gets shared.

The trick to identifying the right people AND finding the right way to interact,  is to be a great listener.

You Know How To Do This

Here’s the screen-cast from January:

4 minutes on how to listen strategically.

In the ideal world you would spend as much time listening as you spend on content creation and publishing.  

Imagine If You:

• Allocated time every day to listen
• Added “Hours spent listening” to your KPIs
• Set a quarterly target for listening

How much further would your content reach?

Quick Caveat

This approach only works if:

• Your digital footprint is in order
• You have a regular content production cycle
• What you create is actually good

Written while listening to: The Bench 173 Bpm Flow - Session 1 | 1014 by music2work2

Image Credit: Listening by fs999 on Flickr

Whodunnit? A Social Media Marketing Mystery...

So I client of mine was on Facebook recently and came across an article in her feed that looked intriguing.  Clicking out to read, she found it to be well written and informative, just the kind of thing her audience would appreciate.  Having shared the article with her followers she clicked through to the author's Twitter bio, scanned her last 10 or so tweets and decided to follow her.

What happened next

Within the hour the author had visited my client's Twitter profile, followed her, clicked through to her website, spent over 7 minutes reading several pages & finally contacted her through an email form on one of her case studies.  That contact turned into an email exchange which resulted in the author booking a strategy session.

Did you spot it?

What do you think was the most important element in this whole transaction?

• Was it the great looking website with concise & compelling content?
• Was it the professionally branded digital footprint with consistent appearance and messaging?
• Was it the blog posts, the tweets, the follow...

No.  Although they all played their part in converting the lead - the most important behavior in the entire transaction was that my client chose to spend her time reading an article by someone she'd never heard of.

The answer

When it comes to social media marketing, listening and reading is as important, if not more so, than production and distribution.

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Written while listening to: Development track: 191 Bpm 31-01-03-02 by music2work2

Image credit: time to read by Chat Noir:) on Flickr

4 Minutes on How to Listen Strategically

You can't be tired of listening yet!  It's not even February!

OK - this week only applies to those who want to identify people who are interested in what you have to sell and who might be interested in sharing what you publish.

What you'll need:

• A Twitter account and / or a Facebook account
• A free Hootsuite account - go to http://hootsuite.com and follow the super easy steps, connect your Twitter account and arrive at the dashboard
• The following 3 minute 54 second screen cast (watch on full screen )

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Written while listening to: Session 2 - 191 Bpm by music2work2

How to Fist Bump

1.    Open Twitter
2.    Find a smart and/or witty tweet
3.    "Favorite" it

Easy!

Why do I want to do this?

You want to get your information out to as many people as possible right?  In order to do that you need other people to share it across their platform, preferably people with big networks - influencer types.  For them to read your content they have to be aware of you first and the easiest way to do that is through Twitter.

Quick sidebar

It doesn't matter if you don't care for Twitter, or if you don't think your target market is using the network.  The influencer types, the people who can move a message from your website into a stranger's inbox, are!  

How does it work?

When you favorite a Tweet the owner gets a message containing your username, which not only makes them feel good but also puts you on their radar.  A few more low level interactions and they might even click on your name - view your Twitter bio, read your Twitter stream and hell - maybe even visit your website and who knows what could happen then.

Guess what? It's about listening!

There are of course some subtleties to the process regarding frequency, influencer status and how to not come across as a stalker, but in essence it's about identifying the people who can move your message and then actively listening to them.

Want to know more?  You know what to do....

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Written while listening to: Session 1 - 191 beats per minute by music2work2

Image credit: Big Brother fist-bump by Meg Lauber on Flickr

One Weird Trick To Grow Your Business With Social Media

Hands up all those who think that working means you need to be producing - that unless you've created something tangible then you've been slacking off and could probably have used that time more productively?

If this is you - you're going to find social media marketing a bit of a challenge.

Why

The whole point of social media marketing is that human beings  you do know, take your message and introduce it to other human beings that you don't know.

The first job in marketing your business with social media is therefore not to create stuff for people to share - it's to create relationships with human beings so that when you do have something - they will be happy to move it around.

You've Already Done This Before

It's no different from the first year at school / college / work / whatever.  You already have examples of how to do this and more importantly how not to do it.

Don't...

If you start out all noisy and self centered and pushing your message, people will tune you out pretty quickly.  If you come in all fawning and sycophantic, trying to buy people's attention, well,  we all know people like that and it never works out well for them.

Do...

Be nice.  Listen.  Share what you think is good.  Add to the conversation - give your knowledge to help others and share their message.  Spend time just learning about the people, I dare you to spend a whole hour on social media without posting, pinning, tweeting anything about yourself and then actually  feel good about it.

Strategy

Now having said all that - you do actually need a strategy!  If you're selling eye wear in the South Bay you probably don't need to be listening to oil producers in Dallas - so a little forethought can pay dividends.

Takeaway

If you're not getting what you want from social media, stop producing and start listening.  It'll feel weird but bizarrely enough will ultimately help to grow your business.

If you'd like help setting up a strategy to do this, email or call me on 310 980 2499.

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Written while listening to: Stampy Sep 27 Cello Mix by music2work2

Image Credit: You Get What You Give by Our Man in Paris on Tumblr

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