Marketing in Real Life

There is a lot you can learn about your Facebook Fans by keeping a close eye on what content they engage with and tracking Facebook insights, but some things you just need to ask. While you don't want to over survey your fans, here are three things you should know as you build out your strategy. 1. Are your fans already customers? To best serve your audience, you need to know if you fans are already on board, considering a purchase, or just enjoying your content with no intention of buying (not necessarily a bad thing by the way!) 2. Why did they become your fans? Did people click the "like" button for a specific offer? On a whim? Or because they really want to engage with you? Knowing what got them to act in the first place can help you grow your network and provide the right content. 3. What do they expect? While you can learn a lot from Facebook insights about what works, it never hurts to ask. How often do they want you to post and about what? If you give your ...

We've been interviewing lots of people at my job lately and I often wonder if we all over think the process. We look for specific skills. We scour resumes for companies we admire. We ask thoughtful questions and hope for great responses. But are we really using the right measuring sticks? I'm not so sure. We all spend so much time with our co-workers - more than with our families - and yet we often use impersonal methods for evaluating job candidates. The truth is that you know pretty quickly if someone is close to right. If the conversation is easy, enthusiastic, and enjoyable and they have a background close to what you need the details can always be taught. I mean, how many skills truly transfer directly from one company to another? So, my advice is to not think so hard. You know when a candidate is right. And that may mean placing more value on the personal connection than the resume.

Dear Mr. or Mrs. Social Network Starter, I understand that you and your company have been working on building a social network for months, maybe even years, but most of the people you want to join and use it are not going to be interested. It's not that the functionality isn't great, I am sure it is. And we may even sign up to check it out. But we just can't divide our attention any further and we certainly can't convince our friends and colleagues and parents and children to move from one place to another. We appreciate your intentions but ask you to refocus your efforts. If Facebook is the new tv, you can be the AMC to our NBC. We are interested and eager to see how you can take Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin to a new level. But we ask you please... Do not make us sign up for a new network. Our dust covered Quora, Plaxo, and G+ (too soon?) accounts send their regards. Best, Internet users everywhere

I read and write a lot about content marketing. In my opinion the beauty of content marketing is that you are empowering your customers and prospects to be successful before they even realize it. One tip after another you dish out small pieces of information that people can act on and before they know it they are already having success and bought into your philosophy (and often your products and services.) This process reminds me of when we were training our puppy (now a happy middle aged dog) to go up the stairs at our condo. He obviously had the ability to go up on his own but lacked the confidence to do it on his own. So we started by placing a piece of ham (he's a pug so food rules the day) on the second step, which he forced himself to go get. Next time out we put ham on the second and fourth steps. Based on his prior success he was willing to go a bit further and grabbed the second piece. Two more training sessions and he was at the top of the steps happily eating ham and t...

Over the last week or so, there has been a ton of chatter in the online marketing world about Google+, a new social network from Google. The user experience is similar to that of Facebook (a news feed based on status updates and shared content, recommended friends, etc.), but the idea here is to make it easier to share content with specific sets of people (called Circles) instead of just publishing content on your wall for everyone to see. It's definitely a cool concept, even if it doesn't gain real traction (like some of Google's previous attempts to be social). Right now Google+ does not allow businesses to sign up for a page, although they have said they will be bringing a business-friendly version to market later this year. While many business pages have actually been shut down, Ford was one of the first corporations to have a page launch legally earlier this week. So ... as a small business, should you care about Google+? In short, not right now. Google has been ama...