Welcome to guest writer, Pete Machalek, SagePresence!

As a filmmaker who works with business professionals to help them design and deliver compelling messages, I often surprise my clients by telling them not to worry about their story so much.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I tell them. “There’s a time and place for your story. But it isn’t the most important story you need to tell.”

If their own story isn’t the most important one for them to tell, what is?

The story that comes in handy the most isn’t their own story. It isn’t the story of their company, or the story of their product or their service or any aspect of their offering.

The story they should focus on first is the story of their clients.

When business people tell the story that their clients experience, they communicate the significance and the value of what their business delivers.

When they talk about themselves, it usually comes across as a clumsy, self-serving data-dump.

Let me demonstrate.

First, the clumsy attempt at a story about me and my company:

My partner and I formed SagePresence in 2001 after running an acting workshop for two years, because the actors told us they were getting so much out of it that we shouldn’t just be working with actors, we should be working with everybody. So for the last ten years, we’ve been working with business professionals at every level of all kinds of organizations, helping them communicate more effectively and present themselves with more impact, so that they can network, sell, present and lead better.

(This is a reduction of the sort of thing I used to say years ago, before we got our own process figured out and put into practice. The full-fledged version is way too long to print here, sometimes lasting as long as 90 minutes for some poor networkers who had the misfortune of getting trapped in a conversation with me at the time.)

Now, here’s the more compelling story, the one about my clients:

Business professionals come to SagePresence when they’re feeling challenged to face important audiences. As filmmakers, we give them messages that tell the story their audience wants to hear, and the performance skills to tell those stories with dynamism that captures their audience’s attention. So when our clients head out to face their challenging audiences, they feel ready and able to thoroughly win them over.

Can you see how much more compelling this is?

Here’s what you want to do to come up with a story like this:

• Tell us about your ideal clients. Who are they? What situation are they in when they need you the most?
• Tell us what you actually do for them.
• Then tell us what better situation you lead them to.

That’s about it. Let us hear the difference your business makes for the people it helps. We’ll get a clear picture of who you want to help and how you help them, so that we can identify ourselves or someone we know or someone we meet as a potential client for you.

Give it a shot, and let me know how it goes for you!

Pete Machalek

pete@sagepresence.com

Welcome to our guest blogger, Connie Anderson, Words and Deeds, Inc.!  From book editing to business writing, Connie knows her stuff!  We are proud and honored to have her share some of her wisdom with you! Enjoy!

Do you have a strong passion for what you do? When you talk about your business and tell stories or case studies, do people say: “You should write a book?”

The most interesting aspect of writing “a book” is that people perceive you differently. Now you are an author, an expert, albeit self-proclaimed.  Your status has risen as others have a higher perceived competence of anyone who writes a book—especially if it looks and reads great, and has good content.

Books come in all shapes and sizes.  A health coach created a 24-page 5”x7” book with a striking four-color cover, professional editing and layout. This was his new calling card. It was his words, his passion—and his way of standing out in the crowd.  A few weeks after it was printed, he called, “My first contract already paid for the book!”

A very talented man wrote a 164-page book on marketing, with an attention-grabbing cover, and professional editing and formatting.  The square shape set the book apart from others.  His book successfully promoted his expertise to prospective clients.

The book by a large financial services firm provided strong, clear and easy-to-access info their niche markets needs, and shows how well this firm understands their specific needs.

What could you use a book—as a sales tool, a give-away, or for back-of-the-room sales when you speak?  The ideas are endless.

Have I piqued your interest yet?

Once you see the possibilities for you and your company, it’s important to understand book publishing. If your book is going to be a marketing piece, it will be self-published, so let’s start with the different steps.  The total costs will be determined by number of words/pages. This is where the economics of publishing a book is relevant.

Words/Content: You can write the content yourself because no one knows it better—or hire a ghostwriter.  We can work together to determine content: What do you want them to know, and what do they want/need to know?

Editing: Let the good people on your staff give input and review the work, but hire an outside professional editor. Her insights will make the book better, and her knowledge of grammar and punctuation, word usage, etc. will make you look very smart—and trustworthy!

Proofreading: Proofreading should be done by both people in your company who know your business, and a different editor/proofreader.

Cover design: Hire book cover designer, even if you just want words.  He will design the front and back cover as required by a book printer. He knows colors, type styles, etc. Remember, the cover is your first impression.

Inside formatting: Hire a professional book designer to create a topnotch layout.  The best of words can be received negatively if the inside design looks amateurish.  Bad design can also mean it will not be read.

Printing: Use only printers who have printed other books.  In small quantities (under 800 books) digital printing is the answer.  After the initial run, you can order in small quantities (publish/print on demand) as needed.

The only thing that makes a self-published book look self-published IS if it does!

When writing about your business or passion, often the most difficult thing is finding the time and the most efficient way to get your intellectual property (what they know that others don’t) out of your head and onto paper. If you have ever wanted to write a book, and need to know the different steps and costs in the process, I will be happy to answer your questions, and also guide you to the other professionals.

This is an excerpt in a series of blog posts dedicated to the topic of Content Marketing and small business.

Writing, blogging, recording, taping, speaking…there is a lot of noise happening right now for small business owners and marketing their business in this new age of economics and media.  When talking with small business owners on this topic, the word that comes up time and again is overwhelm.  Sometimes too many options bring about a sense of paralysis.

Before I take on anything new for my business I like to better understand why. Why should I do it?  What’s in it for me?  How will it drive more business to the bottom line?  So let’s start there.  Why should you as a small business owner consider content marketing as a part of your marketing plan?  Let’s start by looking at three reasons content marketing is great for small business.

Years of Expertise

Whether you are in the start-up phase or have been in business for a couple of decades, you bring your own years of service, experience, and passion to your industry and business.  You have more content than you can shake a stick at, but you just haven’t taken that step back to realize your vast level of expertise.  Consumers are cynical.  Consumers are in control.  Consumers want their problems solved.  By sharing the expertise only you and your business can provide through content, the consumer seeking this information will find it, consume it and begin to decide if you are a good fit for them.  If the consumer is in charge, then providing them with your information, solutions, tips and resources is vital in today’s search economy.

The Know, Like and Trust Factor

Take it from Bob Burg, author of “The Go-Giver” and “Go-Givers Sell More”, we want to do business with people we know, like and trust.  You already know this.  Providing content, whether written, spoken or on video, is proactive marketing.  It allows you to build a more personal relationship with your community that provides more insight into how you work, what you solve and if you may be a good fit for them when the time is right.  Though the consumer is cynical, the consumer does also want to work with wonderful people who can help them! Content marketing allows your personality, your brand, your brand experience and your company culture to shine through.

Stories Sell

We all love a great story.  As a small business owner, every single one of your clients or customers is a story.  As humans, we connect to other humans when we can step into their shoes, take on their emotions, and oftentimes simply hear our own story inside of theirs.  The movie industry has been doing this for decades.  We laugh, cry, scream while watching a movie because the story has us connected to the characters on the screen.  Content marketing in it’s simplest form is storytelling.  Peter Guber, CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, recently released his book “Tell To Win” breaking down the power of story and how business is made every day through this process. Sometimes we are held back from giving something a try because we over analyze it.  Connect your community to the stories already a part of your business.  They could be super satisfied customers, raving fan clients, employees going above and beyond, or even the story of why you do what you do.  We all love a great story.  You may have dozens, even hundreds to share!

Understanding why you may want to dive into content marketing as a small business owner is where it all begins.  Creating the content, choosing the strategies, developing a consistency for implementation, putting in place various points of leverage and working towards conversion also need to be considered. But it all starts with why.  Still struggling with why?  I’d love to talk you through it.

Yep, we are busy business professionals.  Always too much to do and not enough time in the day to get it done.  So it’s imperative that you come up with ways to leverage as many parts of your business as possible.  This includes your marketing.

Leverage: Ability to influence a system, or an environment, in a way that multiplies the outcome of one’s efforts without a corresponding increase in the consumption of resources; “doing a lot with a little.”

So how do you do this with your marketing?

Content is King in the new economy.  What you know, how you share it and how it can help your target market is key to marketing in today’s world.  There are a lot of ways to do this and   often the overwhelm kicks in.  I suggest you start small and allow your ideas to grow.

Status Post>Blog Post>Article>eBook>Chapters To Your Book

First, post a great tip or idea out on Facebook or Twitter.  That could be the impetus for your next blog post.  As you develop your blog, individual articles may come from these ideas.  Pull 6, 8, 10 articles together and you’ve got a nice eBook!  Develop a 3, 5, 7 eBooks from your articles, and now you have the chapters for what could be your signature book.  When you “begin with the end in mind” all areas of your content marketing will improve.

Want greater reach with less effort?

Write one Article>Own newsletter>Association Newsletter>EzineArticles

Start by writing one article. Share this article with your community through your own newsletter.  Are there associations or business groups whose members are your Target Market?  Contact the person in charge of their monthly newsletter and find out their policy on having outside content submitted for publication.  Set up an account with EzineArtcles.com.  Write it once, share it three ways.  That’s leveraging your content and creating a broader reach.

Do it once, repeat again and again.  Stop telling yourself you don’t have the time. Try asking yourself how you can get it done instead.  How can I get this one item out to more people best served by me?  Who else needs great content every month that is connected to my target market?  Ask yourself better questions and you will get better answers, thus, better results.

Learn to leverage your marketing content, and you will being do more with less effort in no time!

Pamela

I have a little philosophy when it comes to marketing your business.  You get what you ask for.  Yep.  Pretty simple really.  If you are getting clients that don’t bring you joy and are actually causing you to lose more money than you make, there is only one person to blame.  You.

Let’s simply break down Attraction Marketing.  The message and value you put out is going to attract those that connect with it.  So, what message are you sending out?

It all starts with you.  To ensure you are connecting with the prospects and eventual clients that are best served by you and your product/service, you must first start with evaluating what is important to you as a person and as a business.

First step: Make a list of the top 6 personal core values that are most important to you.  These values are what should drive your priorities which in turn should drive how you spend your time.  And since much of your time is spent marketing to prospects or meeting with clients, wouldn’t it be better to have a similar core value system?

Second step:  Make a list of the top 6 business core values that best define and represent your business. These values should be reflected in your marketing message, how you brand your company, the culture you are creating, the content you produce.

Why are these core values so important?  It’s basic.  Like attracts like.  Once you put some focus and energy on what you value most as a person and as a business, you will then send this out in your marketing.  Those that connect with your message will want more.  These prospects who may become your clients will be your ‘A’ and ‘B’ clients.  Clients that bring you joy and fill you up when you work with them.

So next time you are frustrated with the type of clients you are getting go to the one place you can make change.  You.  Evaluate what you really want and what is really important to you.  Then rework how you share this to the world.

It all does start with you.

Pamela

As a marketing planner and strategist, I absolutely believe in the power of benchmarking key areas of your marketing and your business.  You definitely need to have something to reach for in order to know if you are behind, on track or exceeding your expectations and necessary goals.  But there is one benchmark that many are adding to their plans that I actually want to dispute.

Every day more and more people in business are adding Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter handles to their marketing plan.  Great.  I agree, Social Media can be a wonderful set of tools to broaden your marketing reach, develop qualified leads and get new clients/customers.  But there is a danger lurking among this process for many of you.  It’s the danger of believing that he/she who has the most Fans or Followers at the end of the year wins.

I understand how we can fall into this old trap.  The old school, industrial age way of doing sales was always very focused on the ‘law of large numbers’ methodology.  Your odds exponentially increase as your list increases.  Basic math stuff, actually.  And yes, there is still some truth to this methodology.  But the world is shifting.  Actually as it is shifting, it is also reverting.

The power has been and still is in the list.  But instead of looking to simply build a bigger list, I encourage you to simply build a better list.  This means, of course, going back to the basics with your marketing and sales.  To actually attract the perfect fit for your product or service, you have to know and understand your multiple target markets.  You cannot seek out the people if you don’t know who you want to meet.  By spending more time up front on this process of your marketing, all strategies will have a better shot at delivering a stronger return on investment.

Look at it this way.  Instead of focusing on growing hundreds and even thousands of Fans and Followers, focus on building relationships one at a time.  Which one would you prefer:

• To Have 100 ‘Fans’ and ‘Followers’ in your tribe hoping that at least 20% are interested in your product or service;

OR

• To have 8 out of 10 Raving Fans and Evangelists in your tribe who not only love you and what you provide, but they are also out marketing and selling for you.

Building relationships one at time takes time.  Yep, it does.  It takes patience, care, authenticity, participation, interaction, and persistence.  Like I say, it’s simple, but it’s not easy.  If it was, more people would be doing it.

So let go of benchmarking your Fans, Followers, Connections on the social media tools.  Stop focusing how any and put that energy on how can I strengthen my community, my tribe.  Go for Quality and Quantity will take care of itself.

Pamela

Recently one of the questions I am getting asked more and more is “How do I build more fans on my Fan Page”.  It’s a good question.  But I also feel that it’s missing the mark a bit.  Social Media is about being social, interactive, conversational, and participatory.  We should know by now that never-ending and constant promotion is not what really works in the Social Media space.  So, when folks ask how to get more fans to their Fan Page, there is also a tinge of ‘list building’ mentality going on here.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  When it comes to a sales situation, the power can most definitely be in the list.  The more qualified the list, the better conversion into customers.  Customers treated well and taken care of by you can definitely turn into Raving Fans.  And herin lies the rub.  You can’t ‘spam a Fan’.  Perhaps better phrased, when you spam, you don’t create Fans, you annoy people who simply turn away from you.  It’s called Attraction Marketing for a reason.  Your ‘Fans’ will come to you if you are doing all the right and good things on social media.  Provide the insightful and excellent content that only you with your voice can provide.  Edify and offer up other members of your network and industry to your Fans.  Show a bit of your character and personality so we can get to know you on another level.  Have a conversation with your Fans; answer their questions and respond to their posts.  Show gratitude for the individuals that are choosing to be in your Fan club.  You cannot be a leader in your industry if you have no real followers, i.e. real Fans.

Becoming a Fan is a choice.  Create a system to drive folks to your Fan Page so they can see the value you may bring to their business and their lives.  But once they are there, it is still up to you to continue to provide them with excellent reasons to stay.  So first, remember that social media is not an island.  Start connecting the relationship of your offline marketing to your online tools.  Here are some basic tips:

• Did you create your custom URL?  If not do that here:  www.facebook.com/username
• Put this URL on your business cards, brochures, email signature, any offline stuff you hand out
• Add this URL to your website
• Send out a special email to your list
• Cross market on other SM sites.  Let your LinkedIn folks know you have a Fan page.  Share it on Twitter.  And vice versa.  Let Facebook fans know your Twitter handle.

The most important way to build Fans is to continue to provide great content.  This goes onto your Fan’s walls, which in turn allows thousands of other eyes to view it.  Great content in front of the right eyes will attract more people to your Fan Page.  The internet is viral, remember?

It’s not about he/she who ends up with the most fans at the end of the year wins.  It’s much more about having true Raving Fans that love your ideas, message, tips, information, personality and culture.  Let your Fans share you to their world and watch your list grow organically.

Oh…one more thing.  If I choose to not become your Fan, don’t get upset with me.  Always look to the only place you can control and change.  Are you spamming your page to my FB inbox?  Do I even know who you are?  What content will I find on your page when I check it out?  If you haven’t posted in 3 months, I’m not interested.  Perception is reality, remember.

So there you go…just my $:02 on getting and keeping Fans on Facebook.

Oh…if you thought my blog post was something beneficial, thank you!  You can also check out my business Fan Page or my radio show Fan Page.  Yep, couldn’t resist the cross promotional opportunity.

Pamela

It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn from my clients.  Every conversation, consultation, coaching session brings out a new way to look at an old idea, develop a new idea from an old concept, or just see a situation from a different angle.

Today was no exception.

I met with my client, Phil Kluesner today.  He is the Managing Partner for Gannet Peak Partners, a commercial real estate brokerage that specializes in tenant representation.  He hired me to assist him in developing his 2010 marketing plan that included a social media strategy and implementation.  All of Phil’s professional life, he has followed a system of getting leads, putting the leads into his database, then tagging the leads for follow up.  Every day a list of names to call.  A constant cycle of red flags on his Outlook database.  Phil realized something today.  Something I sometimes take for granted because I am eyeball deep into the social media space.  Phil realized he really needs to simply jump and take a leap of faith.  Habits need to change.  His ‘old school’ marketing mind needs to shift.  He has over 17 years of experience and is truly an obvious expert in his industry.  Now it’s time to adjust his daily routine from calling red flags and transfer some of his time to developing his online community and presence.  He needs to take leap of faith that providing quality content, participating on the social media platforms and engaging with his community online will not only strategically grow his network, bit ultimately positively affect his bottom line.

I got it when he said it was a leap of faith.  Posting information out in cyperspace on Facebook or on a blog is a foreign and intangible feeling for a lot of folks.  Is anyone actually reading it?  If so, who are they?  Do they really care?  When you are used to getting a lead, picking up the phone and (hopefully) talking to a live human being, it’s not easy to equate tangible individuals to an online relationship building process.  Statistically we know they’re out there.  Numbers don’t lie.  400 million on Facebook, 60 million on LinkedIn.  But there is still a cyber wall between you and the specific individuals you want to reach.

But it can work.  It has worked.  For thousands of individuals and business owners.  Providing great content and valuable information to those that are seeking it is a powerful way to position that you are the ‘go to’ person in your industry.  The right people will respond.  They will comment on your blog.  They will become your Fan or Follower.  They will share you with their tribe.  And they will do it because you attracted them.  Because they chose to be a part of your online community.  Doesn’t get any better than that.

So do it.  Join Phil.  Join me.  Take that leap of faith.  And most importantly, believe.

Pamela

I tend to live and breathe the Pareto Principle in my business.  Otherwise known as the 80/20 Rule.  When I really internalized this universal principle a few years ago, it really liberated me!  However, the more I become familiar with it’s outcomes, it can also cause me to take pause.  And that’s not such a bad thing either.

Let’s back up a bit.  The Pareto Principle is named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who first wrote about it in 1895.  Pareto noticed that people in his society seemed to divide naturally into what he called the ‘vital few’, the top 20% in terms of money and influence, and the ‘trivial many’, the bottom 80%.  He later discovered that virtually all economic activity was subject to this principle as well.

So how does this connect to you and your business?  Especially when it comes to marketing?

Here are some sobering 80/20 stats:

• 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results

What activities are your 20%?

• 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your sales

Which customers are your 20%?

• 20% of your products/services will account for 80% of your profits

Which products/services are your 20%?

• 20% of your tasks will account for 80% of the value of what you do

What tasks are your most valuable 20%?

It is to your business benefit to pay attention to your activities to deduct which ones are most valuable.  Keep track of your time this week.  Write a journal of your activities each day.

Best customers?  Who are you’re A & B customers?  The ones that are a sheer joy to work with and love you!  Make a list of their characteristics.  This is an ideal Target Market for you.

Look at your menu of services.  What is flying off the shelf?  Which service is most popular?  Focus on those.

What are your daily disciplines?  What tasks are easy for you?  Bring you the most joy?  Find a way to do these more and outsource the rest.

Is this easy?  Heck no.  Deducting your 80/20 requires self awareness and some brutal self honesty.  But do it anyway.  You’ll be glad you did.  At least 80% of the time you will be.

Pamela