SageRock Digital Marketing Blog
The SageRock Team Web Marketing Blog
Last week John and I sat down to discuss Pinterest, the hottest property online right now.
Understanding Pinterest will help you understand where social media and the Web as a whole is headed.
This is a series that he and I are going to start to do regularly. 2 heads are better than one.
You can watch the entire discussion here:
You can follow John on Twitter here.
In an attempt to let my brain chillax, and the fact that it’s president’s day, I’m not writing anything.
I’m at Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky Ohio.
See you Wednesday.
I’ve gotten my Pinterest invitation and, like many Pinterest users, am obsessed by it.
Pinterest is a new way of looking at the world is a highly visual way. It reaches you powerfully, emotionally. In a way that words really can’t. It makes you understand the saying, “a picture is worth a 1000 words.”
The key here is “emotion.”
97% of fans are women. That is crucial to understand. It won’t always be that way. But it will always have that soul.
It’s about loving things and sharing them. It is about creation. It is about empathy.
I can already feel the desire of businesses to start pinning all their products to Pinterest and then trying to compel people to “Pin It.”
The key here is to find the love in your business. Don’t look for the sale.
Every business has love.
Think Google Doodles.
Think DTS.
Think Intel.
Do not think Microsoft.
Do not think Walmart.
Find the love and show the love. Do not show the product. You are not selling a product. You are selling what the product gives your customers:
Show those parts of your business on Pinterest.
There are two main phases companies exist in: the profit phase or growth phase.
The growth phase is like pedaling your bike up hill. It’s hard. It take a lot of energy. But usually it’s worth it.
Once you get to the top of the hill you typically enter the profit phase. That’s where you start coasting. You use all the energy that got you to the top of the hill and coast down to the bottom.
There is much more risk and less benefit for the principals of the company in the growth phase. Most of the money that comes into the company is put right back into the company to keep growing.
In the profit phase risk is minimized, expenses are cut and excess money is funneled directly into the owners’ pockets. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. However, it’s not what our area needs to move into the next era of the business world.
Most of the world is growing: New York, LA, India, China. The list is wide and varied.
There is extreme innovation happening everywhere. And very few things that we do in our region need to be produced here. Another state or country could do them just as easily.
It is not lost on me that we are almost directly in-between Detroit and Pittsburgh:
Detroit is in a dark ages. Pittsburgh is in a renaissance.
We could go either way.
The only way to move into our own renaissance is through growth.
And the only people that can do it are business owners. They are the people who need to sacrifice, risk and grow.
If the business owners don’t do it we will likely fall back into our own dark times. If that happens we all lose. Our communities, our citizens and ultimately our own businesses.
We are our own saviors.
If we coast and profit we will ultimately die.
If we work like hell and grow everyone wins. And not inconsequentially, the riches for those who grow will be significantly greater. But you have to risk and sacrifice now.
That’s the rub.
This is a risk. You definitely could fail. You could definitely pick the wrong path. You could step out of your comfort zone only to meet defeat.
But know this: You have come from a background of risk. You and your founders risked everything to get where you are today. You know risk better than the vast majority. If there is anyone who can manage risk and drive through it, it’s the business owners. You can do it!
And I’ll tell you something else: Fortune favors the bold.
Those who risk often succeed. In fact, they usually succeed. If you truly risk. If you truly drive forward you likely will succeed.
So how do you do it? Here are some thoughts:
You simply have to become a stronger, sharper human being. You can’t be the stereotypical conservative, slow-moving Midwesterner. You will get killed.
But I know you can do it. You have a work ethic unlike most others in this country. It is probably on par with the Chinese. You are determined. You are steadfast. You can do this!
But just be sure you do do it. Do it for your neighbors, family, kids and co-workers. We all desperately need this from you.
I often talk to companies of all sizes that tell me they have no money and no time.
That’s a bold face lie.
What they have is very little interest in what they asked me to come talk about.
The one that I especially disbelieve is the lack of time.
We all have time. We all have the exact same amount of it. It’s the great equalizer.
I don’t care if you are Warren Buffett, Bill Gates or the guy begging for money on the street corner. We all have 24 hours a day. How we spend it is what makes the difference.
I’m as guilty as anyone of misspending my time. As a business owner the only thing I need to be focusing on is achieving the goals of the company. And, as with the vast majority of businesses, there is only one goal: make more money.
You know that’s the case with every publicly traded company. They are in business to bring higher returns for their stock holders.
Private companies (especially small ones) often like to think they are more complicated than that. But they aren’t.
If you are trying to save the world you are in the wrong business. You would do better saving the world by doing any myriad of things that don’t include trying to stay profitable as a business.
Of course you can create a product or service that makes a difference in the world. In fact, if you want to succeed you have to bring true value in some way. Drug companies do that by creating life saving medication. Monsanto does that by selling us cheap corn. But if they didn’t make money at it I promise you they would be doing something else.
This amuses me because I talk to many people personally who feel this is dirty. They think that somehow these things should get done without the gears of commerce working. Everything stops working without money.
If you believe the primary goal of a business is not making more money please tell me in the comments. But if not, if you agree making more money is the primary goal of a business then as the leader of the company you need to be spending as much of your time and money as possible making that happen.
You make money one of two ways: Sales or marketing. I actually believe doing both gives the best results.
Every spare moment and dime needs to go into these areas. Sales and marketing are the oxygen and blood of your company. Constant growth and refinement is absolutely critical.
A company only is going up or going down. You and your employees want to be on a ship that is going exciting, interesting places. No one wants to be on a ship that’s sinking.
Sales and marketing is how you stay afloat and thrive.
If we (SageRock) were in competition with other sales initiatives or marketing strategies that would be one thing. But often I’m in competition with doing nothing.
“Should we invest in Internet marketing or should we do nothing?”
I hate losing to “do nothing.” I’d much rather lose to a quality competitor.
Other things I hate to lose to:
Those are all losers. They are in decline. Online marketing is cheaper and incredibly more effective.
It’s important to note that I’m not absolutely against any of those offline methods. But they should always be tied to an online approach.
Online can tell such a richer story about you and your company. Plus you can instantly determine success by driving people online.
How effective is your Yellow Pages ad? I’m willing to bet you have no idea.
Invest in online first. Then figure out how those other items fit into that.
And above all else: DON’T DO NOTHING.
If you don’t want to hire me, fine, call one of these competitors, I feel reasonably sure they will try to give you good work:
TheSearchGuru 440.306.2418
BruceClay.com (866)517-1900
iProspect.com 617.449.4300
OneupWeb 231.922.9977
In many ways I am a one trick pony. I actually think most executives are.
You will see a CEO come into a company, do great things, move on and then be terrible. It happens because they are great in a certain scenario but aren’t able to adapt to a new scenario.
I’m a guy who can brand by personality. It’s what I did for my company and it’s what I recommend to others.
I’m not the first (or best, by far) person who has done this:
Donald Trump
Richard Branson
Every major sports star
Steve Jobs
Bill Gates
They do this because it adds dimension and life to an inanimate entity. It’s much easier and cheaper to brand by putting a person in front of a company than trying to turn the company into something that has a real feeling of life.
There are many pitfalls with this approach.
The one that comes to mind recently is that I think people often believe I’m the person who is expert at everything. I’ve had several people want to only work with me. They don’t want to talk with my team.
There couldn’t be a worse person to solely run your online campaigns.
While I have been a detail person in the past. I used to easily practice my cello working on a single measure 6-8 hours a day for days on end. But today I am a big picture person. In fact, I continually try to get bigger in my perspective. I do everything in my power to move away from details.
I’m the vision of my company. I am not the product.
I was reminded of this last week when I presented an SEO and paid search review to a client.
I had done the paid search portion of the review.
He specifically mentioned that the paid search portion seemed high level and not specific. He was worried we wouldn’t bring anything new to his paid search. He didn’t see specifically what we would do for his paid search.
He caught me.
I’m the guy with a sledge hammer or axe. I come in to bust things up brutally. I’m not the guy who you want to make things pretty.
But that’s where the team comes in. Everyone else I work with at SageRock is a detail person. I’m surrounded with detail people.
SageRock would be nothing without these people. I believe a little Sage goes a long way. I’m not the turkey. You just sprinkle a little of me on the turkey to give it a little zest.
That interaction during the site review had a big impact on me. It made me realize that my value is not in implementing things. It’s setting up the vision for where things need to go. It’s for inspiring and motivating to move everything forward. I am the person who develops things. I’m simply not the person you want hashing out the details of your account.
With that I’ve made a very conscious decision to stay in the world of helping people with things like the Friday Internet Marketing Show, Digital Akron, writing this blog, speaking.
I want to dedicate my time to being as helpful to the business community as I can. But me running and implementing accounts is definitely not my best use. In fact, it probably is a detriment to my clients.
One of the great values of working with an agency, versus doing everything internally is that you get access to a team. While you don’t get everyone’s time all the time, you get the value of a collective group that together has decades of experience. That’s almost impossible to recreate in a non-agency setting.
SageRock has always been about being honest, straight-forward and the best Web marketing company on the market. The SageRock team, as a whole, achieves those objectives. I, alone, come nowhere close to that.
I was very influenced by the HBO 2 part special on Saddam Hussein.
The overarching message was that he killed everyone who disagreed with him.
He became incredibly paranoid and convinced everyone was out to get him.
Granted, there were a lot of people out to get him. But he couldn’t tell the difference between those who were trying to help him and those who were trying to get him.
If you didn’t agree with him he killed you. That’s a terrible management strategy. You need good, honest advisers around you.
Ultimately, he ended up in a hole in the ground looking like this:
Saddam was like many small business owners.
He was exhausted, paranoid, beat up and attacked at every angle.
If there is a psyche of a person I’ve gotten to know over the years it’s small business owners.
I work with them a lot and I am one. That dual role (living with them and being them) gives me a deep sense of understanding and empathy. I get, to the core, why they are the way they are.
Here are some adjectives that come to mind when I think of small business owners. It isn’t every small business owner because they are a varied group. But I would say I see these character traits more often than not:
Pros:
Cons:
I think it’s important to say that while the “cons” sound bad, it’s important to know that small business owners have only become that way because they are a product of their experiences.
They are tired because they have been beat down by vendors, customers and the government for years and years.
They are suspicious because many people have tried to take advantage of them. Everybody is testing to see if they’ve just encountered a sucker.
They are arrogant because they are the only people in their lives that have been willing to take risks and make big moves.
They are myopic because they don’t have enough money to hire enough people to get all the work done. So they end up vacuuming the floor before clients come to the office.
Yes they are bad traits but it’s not because they are bad people. They are just products of their environment.
This is how Saddam ended up in a hole looking like a homeless man. This can happen to you. (Well maybe not literally in a hole. But you get the analogy.)
While these Cons are nothing to feel guilty about or to feel that they represent you as a human, make no mistake. They are cons and they are limiting your growth potential.
I strongly recommend reading the “Daily Practice” by James Altucher here:
How to be THE LUCKIEST GUY ON THE PLANET in 4 Easy Steps Altucher Confidential
I’ve seen versions of this from other people but this is a very good process.
If you can implement that practice into your daily life I promise you those cons will melt away.
That said, time is never on the side of the small business owner. Because of that, I’ve become a fan of drugs.
I do 20 mg a day of Citalopram. It’s used to treat depression.
I would not say that I’m deeply depressed. But my doctor definitely thinks I’m depressed. If you look at the con list they align pretty closely to the signs of depression.
I know taking drugs to deal with emotions is a taboo topic. But I don’t really care.
The cons in that list for me have significantly lessened.
If you are in the anti-drug crowd then I highly recommend strenuous exercise. Like running.
Running is actually a stronger drug, in my opinion. I will often reach levels of euphoria. The big difference is that the Citalopram is more even.
Running is more spikey. I feel omnipotent for a couple hours but then fall pretty quickly back into my negative thought pattern.
But whatever you are comfortable doing: just do it!
You can’t will your way out of those Con characteristics. You have to work your way out of them.
But I’m here to tell you, if you don’t manage them they will just get bigger and bigger. They will end up consuming you to the point of implosion. Trust me. I’ve seen it.
Next week is the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego. (Having a “summit” in San Diego in February is GENIUS!)
I’m doing a 3 hour workshop on how to avoid social media stall out.
This is for the B2B social media crowd.
Keeping business to business marketers inspired to keep on keepin’ on with their social media is probably one of the bigger challenges.
B2C companies get it all a little more easily than the B2B crowd.
That amuses me, however, because it suggests that when people go to work buying and selling products and services for business they somehow leave their human parts at the door. It’s like they morph into analytical robots that only buy things based on quantitative analysis.
If that was the case every law office in America would not look like this:
If there is anything in the world that people probably buy more on instinct and emotion it is B2B products and services.
You have no real idea what the answers are to those questions.
You just believe the sales guy that stopped by your office and told you things.
You are telling yourself you are buying intellectually. But really you are buying for unconscious reasons:
You can’t possibly analyze a business product thoroughly enough to estimate how much money it is going to make you or save you. Eventually you have to take a leap of faith.
And with that, the B2B company selling their products have an advantage if they know how to use it. They will make the sale on the relationship building more than the features and benefits of the product.
For sure you have to have awesome features and benefits. But everybody has those – or at least they say they do. What will set you apart is the relationship.
This is where social media comes in.
If you had started a social media plan you believed this at some point.
But as time goes on you very likely lost sight of why you started in the first place.
That’s where I come in with this session.
I have 3 main goals I want to get across at the session:
Goal #1: Why doing social media is a good idea.
I want to discuss metrics that hopefully will inspire the group to remember (or learn for the first time) why social media is so important.
Like this, for example:
Social media is like this whether you blog, tweet, LinkedIn or Facebook. You get more leads if you actively engage in social media. I’ve got several of these types of slides.
Goal #2: Stop torturing your followers.
So often I see B2B companies sending out the WORST messages in the social media world. They are not interesting and are entirely self-serving.
There is no better way to alienate you and your company by just being a boring marketing message in the social media world.
This segment will include a series of examples of how people continually torture their followers. And then we’re going to have a workshop where we, as a group, come up with a super awesome viral marketing plan for one the people in the group. I’m especially looking forward to that. The group strategy sessions almost always come up with amazing ideas.
Goal #3: Tracking your way to success.
We are then going to finish up with different tools and techniques to monitor and track success. There are so many great, cool tools for helping you measure social media. We’ll look at as many as I can fit in.
One of my personal favorites is: http://www.socialbro.com/
That should be more than enough for a 3 hour workshop.
I’m really looking forward to it all. Rocky and Indy (my amazing wife and awesome kid) are coming with me. So I’m especially looking forward to LEGOLAND on Sunday.
Click Here to check it out live: http://www.sagerock.com/live/
