Friday Thoughts April Eighteenth

My blog post today includes posting my comments and links to a handful of articles or great content I ran across over this year.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting.

Article:  Social Media: Why it’s a Big Fat Waste of Time and Money!

Question:  What’s your approach to social media – do you have a strategy? Is your social media strategy paying off for you beyond meaningless metrics?  

Comment:   Your statement above is the reason I say, “Being persistent is a tactic, but not a strategy.” I can’t speak for everyone but I make sure there’s a strategy for the activities in my business where I want to see excellence. Wikipedia defines “strategy” as a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Imagine you are driving a Ferrari at 80 mph headed straight toward San Antonio – but you really want to go to Los Angeles. Accelerating to 120 mph may give you the sense that you are really making progress, temporarily. But what you really need to do is change direction.

We all need to be careful of being (or just doing it because it’s possible) “persistent” in the wrong direction. Right direction is more important than persistence.
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Article:  9 Proven Ways to Generate Sales Leads

Question: What are your thoughts?

Comment:   I have to agree, by far the best lead generator is to give an event presentation and follow it with customized letters, calls or emails to individuals that you met.
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Article:  I Started Blogging, So Where Are My Sales?

Question: Did you enjoy this post?

Comment:  Great post Maddie!!! My (2¢) is that blogging is a completely safe method of finding out if you have a message that people want to hear. And that’s the real question. Don’t blog just for the sake of blogging – blog because you have a message than you can’t contain. No one is an “expert” at the beginning. We all just start where we are and get in the game. But it’s by being in the game that we refine and develop skills, information and relationships that ultimately make us “experts.”
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Article:  Avoid the Discounting Death Spiral

Question: What’s the key to avoiding the discounting death spiral?

Comment:  I would say the key to avoiding the death discount spiral to have a focused and strategic plan for knowing what gets the shopper of prospect through the door and then, know, exactly how you will differentiate your product or service from the sea-of-sameness, where the relationship is on other factors than price.

For sure the race to the bottom is real.
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Podcast: LinkedIn Publishing Platform: What Marketers Need to Know

Question: What do you think? What are your thoughts on using the LinkedIn publishing platform?

Comment:   I think the LinkedIn Publishing platform has some real upside for many business owners and marketers. Published content that collects social signals and shares does wonders for an author’s authority and for many the LinkedIn publishing platform might be one of the best places to get exposure, build engagement, pick up +1s and send Google an authority message.
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Article:  The New Buzzword That Is 100 Percent Bullshit

Question: What’s your opinion on effective selling and social media?

Comment:   From day one it’s been said that the proper use of social media is for engagement, not sales.

But when you think about it – effective selling has always been about engagement first, because true engagement happens between people.

Article:  10 Things Top Brands on Facebook Do That You Can Do Too

Question:  What do you think? Have you tried any of these Facebook tactics? Are there any smaller brands you’re aware of that are doing awesome things?

Comment:   I really like #8: Deliver Content That Interests Your Fans. At the core “care about what I care about.” I always think shared passions is a great tactic because it can create an increase in engagement and fan base.
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Article:  10 Social Media Tips From the Pros

Question:  What do you think? Do you use any of these social media strategies? What’s working well for you today?

 Comment:   It’s time for all companies to realize every employee is an ambassador for the organization. As Jay mention, “your employees have far more social connections than your company is ever likely to accrue.”

Translation = It’s all good. The benefit of the company will accrue to the individuals, and conversely the brand equity in the individuals will accrue to the company.

The reality is that social belongs everywhere in the org and each department and individual is charged with using social behavior to meet their objectives and add value to relationships.

Article:  Social media ROI is nothing but a numbers game

Question:  What about you? Have you reverse engineered the numbers to deliver the ROI you want?  Have you ever thought about social media ROI in this way? What are you doing to deliver ROI?

Comment:   Nichole powerful opening statement, “every time a marketer says that social media ROI isn’t important or doesn’t tell the whole story, a piece of their career potential dies.” The goal is not to get good at social media (unless that’s your hobby), the goal is to be remarkable at business because of social media.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions – he had money (conversion), too.

I personally would have no interest as a business owner in social media if it didn’t improve the way I conduct business.
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Article:  No Brainer Way To Increase Content Distribution

Question:  What other free or low cost content distribution would you recommend and why?

Comment:   It’s funny that most of have had the ability to create content for a while, but the problem was the cost of distribution.

Now that the cost of distribution has become $0 most have been ignoring this crucial step in the process. The biggest shift in our culture made by the Internet is that it allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher.

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Article:  6 Reasons To Start Your Startup Now!

Question: What do you have to add? 

Comment:   #1 I think works for the online world as well. The internet has unlimited shelf space for products and services. The numbers of places (groups, blogs, social communities, forums, etc.) you have to build brand awareness for the cost of sweat equity is amazing. #4 is also a good reminder that success doesn’t revolve around what happens in the white house, but what happens in your house (mind).
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Article: 17 Steps to a Perfect Linkedin Profile [Infographic]

Question:  How do you set up a perfect Linkedin profile? What is the most important part of the Linkedin profile?

Comment:   In my opinion, the most powerful social media profile you can use is the LinkedIn profile.

Most powerful that is, if you are looking to do more business and/or achieve your professional goals.

For me it starts and ends with the headline

Headlines are everything in newspapers, magazines, and on blogs.

They are just as important on your LinkedIn profile, because the headline is the first thing that shows up anytime someone does a search online.
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Article:  Audi’s new augmented reality app is the future of car manuals

Question: What are your thoughts?

Comment:   Eventually, every industry will start offering customers not only convenience but convenience that fits into their lifestyle. And our phones are ingrained into our lifestyle.The world of the soft—the world of intangibles, of media, of software, and of services—will soon command the world of the hard—the world of reality, of atoms, of objects, of steel and oil, and the hard work done by the sweat of brows. Iron and lumber will obey the laws of software, automobiles will follow the rules of networks, smokestacks will comply with the decrees of knowledge.