The intuitive website blog

I was listening in on a discussion between Internet Experts. Speaker A was making the point to Speaker B that every website owner needs to build an email list. They said that the average site visitor spends just 46 seconds on your page. You need to collect a name and email address from them before they leave so that you can market to them in the future. I have mixed feelings about this.

Now you can just ask people for their email and name. You could say, “Hey, can you give me your email address and name so that I can try to sell you my stuff through personalized emails?” That would be the most honest approach, don’t you think?

Maybe you aren’t just trying to sell people your services and products. Maybe you are completely altruistic and just want to give away great advice and tips. Maybe you have truly useful information to share with them. Then you can say, “Sign up to receive my useful tips and advice”, and that way you might get people interested in your tips and advice signing up, because you are giving them something that they consider valuable.

When people give you their name and address, they are giving you something of value. You need to give something back. Don’t solicit emails from people unless you have something of value to share. And make sure it is valuable. Be it a free e-book if they sign up, or useful advice, or a promise of the information that they are looking for, make sure that you are giving something of value. Otherwise people will unsubscribe faster than they signed up, and you are just adding to the obesity of our spam layer.

Back to Speaker A, she said that when you send out your emails to this growing list they should be 75% content and 25% sales. I disagree. I think that if you send emails out to a list of people they should be 90% valuable content and 10% sales. In fact, I don’t think you should ever send an email unless you are offering value. I do believe that email lists are important, however, unless you have something of value to offer your list in addition to advertising, I want to discourage you from sending emails. My point of view might not be the most marketing savvy opinion, however, as someone bombarded with hundreds of email every day, I would urge you to not add to the empty calories. I want nutritious email landing in my inbox. I want them to feed my intellect, or my curiosity, or my spirit. I don’t want the internet to be a huge commercial. I want to believe that the internet is a vehicle for communication and sharing ideas.

That said, I do enjoy an occasional notice from amazon.com about my favorite author - so how is that different? The key word, I think is “occasional”.

Speaker B asked Speaker A, “How often should you send out emails to your list?”. Speaker A said that in the past experts have suggested sending an email once a month, however, she urged, recent studies show that you should send an email every week. “you should be contacting them once a week .. be it with a newsletter or a tip … the reason is that people purchase for different reasons .. emotional … does no good to do it only once … you need to continually be staying in front of your list - broadcasting - it doesn’t have to be lengthy … send a benefit … tie it into current events … share a tip, then at the bottom of the email mention your information.”

Now, I have issue with this again. I recently attended the Social Media TeleSummit, and each of the speakers had a free gift for attendees that required filling in your name and email address (They ALL must be listening to these experts!) Caught up in a flush of enthusiasm about what I was learning, I naturally signed up for ALL. I was then bombarded, literally bombarded with email.  The variety of the email that I received in response to my action of signing up for their gifts covered a range of useful to down right annoying. One speaker  bombarded me almost daily with emails that were transparently just a framework to sell me. Other speakers have been sending me an email once a week, and although some of the content is useful, most of it is just a sales pitch. They might have ONE sentence that is good advice and then point me with an affiliate link to another class or teleseminar that is happening. ONE sentence. That is just plain lazy.

What I am trying to say is, if you are going to start broadcasting email to an email list, put time into it. Don’t cut corners. Give value. Don’t sell products with every email, unless you space them way out, (so people have a chance to forget they were annoyed by the balance of value content to sales in your last email. )

And no matter what Speaker A says. Please don’t send an email every week unless there is really time sensitive information that you need to communicate. If the emails are just a vehicle for a sales pitch, keep it to twice a month, or once a month.  And no matter what you do, make sure you send emails that are well written and contain 90% value content. Don’t do it, unless you are willing to take the time to do it right. You expect your recipients to take the time to read them, after all. You should be willing to invest the time thinking about what you are sending.

I want to share with you, my clients, some fantastic marketing tips from Andy Wibbels’ presentation Friday night at day 3 of the Social Media Telesummit hosted by Leesa Barnes. The hour presentation was titled:

Time, Money, Sex (and Salvation): How to Turbo Charge Your Blog Posts, Podcasts and Sales Copy for Maximum Traffic & Greater Impact with Andy Wibbels

(On a side note, Andy Wibbels is a very entertaining speaker, so if you ever have a change to listen to him - to a podcast, or to attend a teleseminar that he is participating in - I encourage you to do so.)

Andy Wibbels has a background in theater, and because of this he sees the world from a narrative perspective. He sees the act of shopping as a giant screen play, and has spent years studying the characters involved and analyzing what motivates them.

Wibbels started by saying that we tend to focus on “why should people buy from me” from the perspective of ourselves - because they like me, because I’m credible, because of my reputation. That may be true, but in order to successfully market, he says that we need to understand the underlying motivation behind their purchases - we need to see into the DNA of their psyche. Shoppers won’t buy from us only because they like us, they will buy from us because something in their emotional psyche is urging them to buy our product, and that that underlying urge is wrapped up in self preservation.

Andy Wibbels pointed out that we buy things (and he is not talking about essentials, like eggs and milk and toilet paper, he is talking about the extras) - we buy based on emotions and then justify it.

Andy asks us to look at the stories around us, and at how things come out in a narrative structure. In every a story, movie, play or poem, he points out that characters act when their self preservation is threatened. “Every movie, play, story or product is about the end of the world. “

According to Wibbels, you can translate that to the marketing world. If we have a perceived threat to the trajectory of our lives or our livelihood, if we, as consumers, feel threatened, then we act - AND to do so we must see the product or the service that we a compelled to buy as the savior, the grail, the salvation. The product must be perceived as the life raft.

To better illustrate his philosophy, Andy Wibbels had us draw a Venn diagram.

Andy specifies that these are the main reasons why we buy things beyond our daily needs - (not toilet paper, oatmeal, cat litter).

TIME
We want to save time - to use our time more wisely. Everybody is so busy, no one has time to do anything.

How does your product or service help people use their time more wisely? Does it free up time for them to do what they would rather do?

MONEY
Everybody is broke.

How can your product, service, ebook, teleseminar, phone call, magazine help people make money, make more money, or have them use their money more wisely

SEX
Wibbels points out that our advertising is “soaked in sex, wreathed in sensuality and bathed in lust”. He said that (and I paraphrase some of this) “Sex is one of the main reasons why we buy things … not talking about getting on - rather how does your product or service make people more attractive so that they can have more sex? How does it help people have more sex, better sex, more partners, better performance, more offers for sex. The idea not just of sex as ‘get it on’, ‘get it together’, but performance and yourself as an attractive person”…
“to a business this translates to: search engine ranking, brand, visibility, how your business is perceived - your means, your products, - the best description of social software is software that gets you laid.“

Andy Wibbels’s VENN diagram maps out an easy way to talk about your products and services. This is a quick way to cook down what you do, and put your job description to 3 points.

1. How do your products/services save time
2. How do your products/services save money
3. How do your products/services increase sex appeal, the attractiveness of your brand and visibility

According to Wibbels, people are driven by emotional needs which are tied to our self preservation - “our need to spread our genes and our means.” You can answer their emotional reaction, justifying this NEED to buy with data: (your products saves time, money and increase a business’s sex appeal).

CONTROL
At the center of Wibbels diagram is control.

“Who wants to be out of control?”, he asks, ” Nobody! We all want control … every theme in every movie, song or play is about control”.

Ask yourself, how do your products and services help people take that control.
YOUR MARKETING SCRIPT

We must write our marketing material as if we were writing a screen play, (or a one act skit). We have analyzed why our hero is in pain and in need of help. We have scripted how our products and services can save the day!

In writing this marketing script, Wibbels advises us to make sure we illustrate tangible benefits of the product or service that we are selling. We need to be direct and exacting, to point out specific benefits that people (our hero) can latch on to. Do not talk generalities, he says, we are talking about the pain/discomfort that people are experiencing in their lives, and how our services can help.

SALVATION

Wibbels has an addition to his diagram. Off to the side, there is another reason why people do things - a dotted line not connected to the main circles. And that reason is salvation - some people do do what they do for salvation, divinity, to connect with a divine inside themselves…
Salvation, he said, is less about control and more about connection.

TO SUM IT UP
That is why we buy: time, money, sex, control, salvation

I am writing this for the benefit of my intuitive-website.com and goffgrafix.com clients. Already I have spent hours on the phone with several of you, sharing in excitement some of what I have been listening to during the Social Media Telesummit hosted by Leesa Barnes. More to the point, you called me for other reasons and I just couldn’t contain myself. Before my observations become robotic from too much repetition, I am going to jot some of the them down here.

One thing that really caught my fancy was Kate Trgovac’s presentation last night about Second Life. I had never heard of Second Life before, so the idea of using it for business profit or for garnering business to business relationships and leads had never crossed my mind. Second Life, and this is what I understood from the conversation last night, so it might not be 100% accurate, is a virtual world where people can create avatars to represent themselves, usually more than one. It is not a game. It is an actual world, with currency, where you can buy land, lease property, set up shop, create things and sell what you create.

I started to think of my clients - the life and business coaches - I imagined them entering this virtual world and hanging out a shingle - offering advise to gender bending avatars trying to get their virtual and real lives in order. I thought about the virtual assistants and how they could be the “girl fridays” for avatars, researching the best location in Second Life to set up shop, being general contractors for construction, or handling the daily communications and maybe video recordings of an avatar’s enterprises.

This Second Life appeared to me as a foreign country that you don’t have to take a plane to get to - where you can exchange your US dollars for Second Life currency, and then if you make a profit, exchange the Second Life dollars back into concrete US dollars in your paypal account. Kate mentioned three case studies of how people are using Second Life to build their businesses - from testing out new products by creating virtual versions of them, to garnering good will by hosting a virtual sailboat race, to creating training videos with avatars acting out case studies.

It all makes me wish I had 24 additional hours in the day so that I could go and explore the possibilities - it makes me wish that I had a second life!

This morning I listened to the audio recording of Travis Greenlee’s presentation from the 1st day of the telesummit. Boy, am I happy that Leesa is recording all of the sessions for later playback. My notes from Travis’s presentation are jotted frantically across sticky notes that now strew my computer. Travis offered such great advise and concrete resources! Kudos to him! I want all of you to click on his name above and check him out. His topic was “Using the Power and Simplicity of Video Marketing to Attract Tons of Awesome Clients”.

Like the other presenters, Travis talked about knowing what/who your niche is, identifying what are the problems that they are having, and what are the solutions that you can provide to them. He also talked about keeping your videos and marketing super simple, citing a statistic that because of all of the “noise” on the internet, the reading level is 7th grade. He recommended, unless you are making training videos, to keep the videos around 90 seconds.

Later on, when he was taking questions, an attendee asked him how, just how, can you create an effective marketing video in just 90 seconds. Could he give an example? And Travis shared with us a marketing syntax that we can use for videos, audios and for other marketing material. This checklist is worth the entire telesummit, in my opinion. Here it is:

1. Identify your target market
   (Hello such and such market, I am addressing you from such and such a place - let them know that this message is for them - it makes it personal right away.)
2. Talk about a problem
   (I was just talking with a client of mine, and they have been losing sleep over this one problem and so we brainstormed how to solve it - now I thought if they are losing sleep over it, you might be too so..)
3. Give a solution to the problem
   (Here is the great tool, resource, action that we came up with to solve the problem)
4. Include a CALL TO ACTION
   For more free resources to help you save time and build your brand, check out my website at…

By following these four steps you can create effective marketing material.

The importance of a Call to Action was stressed several times. Give people something tangible that they can do after viewing your video, listening to your podcast or reading your blog. Also, give them something tangible in your video, audio, blog.. Give them real solutions.

Why use video? Video gives people an immediate and personal connection with you. It is a means of building trust and credibility. Greenlee stated that often a video is indexed by the search engines within 10 minutes of being posted. However, Travis also pointed out, to be successful using video for marketing you need to post your video with frequency and consistency. He listed four more important ingredients to success with video marketing.

1. Frequency (post once a week at least)
2. Consistency
3. Tangibility
4. Visibility

How does one create video? Travis Greenlee answered questions about that as well. He suggested we all go to flipvideo.com. The Flip Video is a nifty little camcorder that you can plug into your USB port and upload video directly to your youtube.com account - well, it might not be quite that easy, but he made it sound that easy. So guess what yours truly did while listening to his advise? I went on-line and bought one! So, my dear clients, get ready for me to approach you with ideas on how we should film you at work and post it on your websites! because I have the means now to assist you in using video to help promote yourselves. I even bought a waterproof case, in anticipation of all the locations on and near the ocean, or in inclement weather - that I might be called to film.

Another resource that Greenlee mentioned was trafficgeyser.com. He said that with a trafficgeyser membership - which runs $90 or $100/month, you can have unlimited submissions, and trafficgeyser.com will submit your videos to hundreds of places, do the tagging of your videos (SEO term), strip the audio from the videos and submit the audio to audio directories as well.

One of the listeners also mentioned tubemogul.com where you can submit your videos for a reasonable charge, or even for free - I don’t remember, and they will disseminate them throughout the internet for you.

Software for editing your video? Windows Movie Maker comes with a lot of computers and it used by many online video marketers. Cyberlink Power Director was another product mentioned, as was Camtasia Studio for recording your desktop - (if you are on a mac, an alternative to Camtasia is SnapzX Pro - which is my comment as a mac user).

Finally, combine your traditional email lists with social media, and always include a call to action.

And here’s mine: check out my growing list of (mostly) free resources at http://intuitive-websites.com/resource-links.php

I have been “attending” the Social Media Telesummit, hosted by Leesa Barnes. Yesterday was the first day of the telesummit. The first part of it ran from noon until 3:00 PM. I am very happy that they will be posting podcasts of the sessions, because, to be honest, my phone rang off the hook with client calls all afternoon and I missed the majority of what was said besides a general gist that even if you are a one person business, you can reach a global market through social media, and that linkedin.com is a good way to network for business. An evening with the family conflicted with the evening speaker, so I am anxiously awaiting those podcasts and looking forward to re-digesting everything at my leisure.

Today my office phone was amazingly quiet and I was able to listen to the telesummit from noon until 3:00 without interruption.

The way this telesummit is put together is a testament to the power of social media and the importance of mixing up your different medias (if they weren’t posting the audio archives of the guest speakers - I would be unable to benefit from this summit). It is hosted on a blog (http://wordpress.com is the platform used). It uses a wpmember interface works with 1shopping cart to create membership levels in wordpress. (Your intuitive-website also has the membership component that you could use to create premium/ members only content for your visitors.). It uses a forum, as well, that attendees can post questions on. It combines written content with audio, and interactive elements.

It is wonderful to be able to hear a panel discussion and to submit questions. The speakers today had pdf handouts that we could download and refer to during their discussion, and an archive of the telesummit will be posted in podcast form to re-listen to at our leisure. There was a LOT of information given to us today - so it will be nice to have the pdf files and the audio to refer to later.

• What I learned #1 - combine media: use written, printable, audio (and video) to disseminate your content
  

The first speaker today was Jason Van Orden and his topic was: Using Social Media and Premium Content to Create New Profits Centers for Your Business

Jason was eloquent and had some great advise which I will start to summarize here, but will go into more detail about later. He outlined several steps:

1. Find a niche market
   • Find a niche that you are familiar with - that you are a member of or understand very well
   • Find a market that has a need that you can fill
   • pick a market that has money to spend
   • narrow down your niche
2. Realize that you have valuable information to offer and that you don’t need any body’s permission to be an expert in your field.
3. Use as many different media channels as you can to get your content out there.
   • Create a web presence using social media tools best practices.
     Your web presence should be RSS ready (by the way, your intuitive-website allow you to publish rss feeds of your content)
   • You should regularly create valuable content for your market.
   • Establish through leadership - post fresh content, offer tutorials and step by step tips for people.
   • Use as many different media channels as you can and always link back to your home site or blog.
4. Create a relationship with your target market. Relationships and trust are the new branding. Maintain your email list, but also, start a community.
   • inform your relationships - give them valuable content
   • entertain them - through anecdotes that illustrate your points, through the passion that you bring to your area of expertise
   • offer them a place where they belong - offer belonging.
5. Find out what your niche wants - not what you think they need. Ask for feedback. You can use services like http://surveymonkey.com or the custom form builder in your intuitive website to create questionnaires and find out what your audience is looking for.
6. Give your niche premium content at a premium price.
   • through membership areas
   • e-books
   • archives of content and podcasts
   • consulting

Session 2: Branding and Blogging: The “New” Success Secret for Attracting More Clients and More Money with The Blog Squad

The blog squad talked about the importance of establishing an online brand, and that branding in combination with blogging is a powerful tool. The blogs that thrive are ones that have mastered the branding with the blogging. The blog can help you control your business identity, what people see of you online.

My first question might be, “What do you mean by branding?”
This is what I think they mean, and we can combine this with Jason’s wise words: What is your niche market and what do you have to offer them? That is your brand. Ask yourself, “who is my ideal reader? how do I solve their problems? what are the core reasons for reading this blog?”

My second question might be, “How do I incorporate my branding in my blog?”
One way is to write smart titles to your posts and pages . The blogsquad said that you need to be strategic with your keywords - using words that are specific to your niche - specific to your customers and your expertise - when people do a search on those keywords that are specific to the problems that you solve - in all likelihood you’ll be found much easier.

What is the core message of the blog? what is the brand? Make sure the blog includes that brand statement, a consistent design and what you want people to know about you and your business and your services.

Communicate consistently with passion and focus, and stay on topic. Stay focused on your expertise.

Make sure your blog reflects the look and feel of your other marketing material.

Include a photo of the author, an about statement and contact information. Blogs are less formal, so use the first person - this is your story - not a cv or resume.

Include links to other social media pages- facebook link etc.. so that people can see where your active (professional pages).

Remember what the purpose is - is it to build your business? to get leads? to get sales? to establish yourself as a thought leader? use common sense about what stays on and what goes off.

Include testimonials from your clients.

To develop your brand through blogging requires ongoing activity, over time. It doesn’t happen writing once a month - or with one blog post. You have to post several times a week.
Professional blog etiquette
In my notes I have written:

a blog is a public forum - keep in mind - anyone can find this content - future clients etc.. which is what you want - so keep it professional. Make sure you are professional. It is okay to reveal personal information but make sure it supports your objective, and tread lightly around religion and politics unless you are in that business.

Some of the last advise from the blogsquad was to mention your blog everywhere. Drive traffic to your blog. Find other blogs that are in your niche, read them, and leave comments on them (respectfully and without overtly marketing your business), including your blog url in your signature. Start building relationships.

Starting to build relationships segues into the next speakers.

5 Ways to Use Social Media to Find & Create Your Next Joint Venture with MaryPat Kavanagh & Michele PW

Michele and MaryPat spoke about the importance of networking and finding people with similar business interests to work with. I am going to have to comment on their input later, however, because it is almost time to listen to the final speaker in today’s telesummit schedule.