Category: Social Media

Steve Pohlit, Expert Business Consulting

Join My Fan Page on Facebook

Click Here

FREE Report:
How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

This Week's Most Popular Re Tweets RT

Also – if you have a favorite Tweet from me or anyone add it to the comment section here along with your @twittername and I am likely to Tweet it to my network of over 23,000 people.

Top re-Tweets for the week ending June 7th

Most Popular re-Tweet Is This Quote:

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Maya Angelou

Next Most Popular

How to backup your WordPress blog http://TwitPWR.com/backup/

“You are amazing. Expand by connecting with those even more amazing than you. How do you do that? Allow yourself to attract them.” Steve Pohlit

Other Popular Tweets

Is your business in a crisis and what to do if it is http://TwitPWR.com/mgmt/

Lots of detailed work connected with social media marketing. Understand it and leverage it. Start here http://jijr.com/hhMJ

Twitter Tip 1: if you want your message to be RT then keep it under 120 char

Twitter Is Hot, Avoid The 7 Deadly Sins http://TwitPWR.com/twittersins/

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work. Earl Nightingale

Your life’s work is a statement of who you are. If not, why are you doing it? CWG

More About Social Media Marketing

Learn how to use social media for marketing. Click Here and register at Social Media Source for the free course or Email Brian for information on the Social Media Marketing course he is offering.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

IR Consulting, Inc.

Follow Me and I Follow You

Join My Fan Page on Facebook

Click Here

FREE Report:
How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

When Business Sucks, Look In The Mirror

All the solutions are waiting for you to attract them. That’s right and if you disagree, you are correct. What you believe is true for you. For me, I know what I focus on expands. That is The Law of Attraction and it is always working even in business. If you expect problems you will attract problems. If you look outside for the reasons there are issues in your business, then you will always be finding someone or something to blame. All this solutions for your business start with your knowing there is a solution. Consider these examples:

Last week I began working with a rather large business that finds itself in a cash crunch. The first meeting I had with the owners of this business asked the single most important question relative to this situation. “Do you feel this situation can be solved?” Without a consensus yes answer, there would be no reason to continue. We continued.

I called a meeting on the second day right at the beginning of the day with these owners. I asked them to begin focusing on the picture of success. I guided them to shift their thoughts from all the issues that are pressing to the picture of a well coordinated profitable business with plenty of cash. I said to them we would have this meeting every day that I was on sight and I encouraged them to hold the meeting when I was not there. This week I will give more clear directions on imaging specific success for their business.

In business there are three situations: First there is the current situation. Second there is a situation that is more negative than the current situation and if that trend continues it could lead to what people describe as a worst case. Third, there is the going forward picture of what it is that the team of people in the company will create. Of course my work is primarily focused on the third picture. Since I am not able to discern what others are intending, I spend some time on a worse case scenario designed to protect the business should events proceed quickly to the negative. On balance, I usually spend 90% of my time on designing and implementing the going forward plan.

Solutions to business situations vary depending on the conditions being addressed. The second day into this project calls were received that represented huge opportunities. Day three another call came in that also represented a marvelous opportunity. None of these seemed to be in motion until the owners began focusing on success. They are responsible for their business and they are responsible for attracting success. My work is to help them attract success and optimize revenue and profits. I show them how to continue that process once the project they hired me for is complete.

Does their business suck? Well actually it did up until a week ago. The owners are beginning to see they are responsible. They are no longer blaming external people, places and things. Once you accept responsibility that your are the reason for the state of your business, then you can begin to paint a new picture.

I experience more examples of how business sucks in one week that I could possibly write about in a month. I’ll bet you do to and I’ll bet you have a short list of what they could do to improve the situation fast.

Consider this example: in the town of my most recent client referenced above, there is a very nice building exterior that is a home of a restaurant. From all outward appearances, I anticipated a very good dining experience. Inside told a different story. First the atmosphere was very institutional. However, it appeared to be clean. The appearance of the staff was not one where you knew they had much pride in themselves and so they didn’t have pride in servicing customers. I am sure there were exceptions. But I didn’t attract any that evening. The food was not even close to the pictures on the menu. The beer selection was good and it was good.

That is just one example of “When Business Sucks, Look In The Mirror”. Each of the issues described are fixable in a very short period of time. There are so many opportunities in business for “doing it better” without having to spend a lot of money. The solution starts from within. It starts with the mindset “I am responsible for the outcome of my business.”

In operations, I work with companies on fundamentals. In marketing I recommend solutions and have do it for you solutions. The do it for you solutions are particularly valuable in the social media marketing arena. In all cases I stay focused on proven business principles. These are the ones that are ignored the most because the discipline required t0 execute the fundamentals is routine and boring. It just so happens those fundamentals are where the gold is mined.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Designer: Local Business Marketing This program is outstanding because it builds long term relationships and profits.

Follow Me and I Follow You

How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

Join My Fan Page on Facebook Click Here

FREE Report:

Social Media For Building Business Profits: Part 2 The Big Three

Social Media In Plain Terms

Social media as an umbrella phrase includes sites and services that facilitate interactivity and community. In that regard blogs and email marketing are included. In fact both are an integral part of the marketing funnel.

This series is focused on using the newer and emerging services for business development. The big three are YouTube, Facebook and MySpace in that order. Fast risers are Twitter and LinkedIn. Currently if you placed your social media marketing attention just on those, there still would not be enough time in a day to manually optimize the benefit of these sites. To develop and implement a business development campaign in most cases requires an effective system that includes automation and leverage of very specifically defined tasks.

Which Site Is Best For Finding Your Target Audience?

All of them! Look at the numbers. Twitter which has moved into the 47th highest traffic spot according to Alexa as of the date if this article has an estimated 6 million users. If you have a business then your target audience is there. Your audience is also on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube and many more sites.

I suggest stop analyzing this until the cows come home and get to work. The key is knowing how to properly use each account and attracting your target audience to your landing page, blog or website. How you use Facebook is going to be different than how you use Twitter etc. All most likely are going to be linked and you will be using one of several applications to update multiple social media accounts through one interface. http://ping.fm is a popular one that works very well.

Twitter

Twitter is particularly unique since each person has 160 characters for a profile biography and is limited to 140 characters per message. It is also unique since according to Alexa most people stay on the first page of tweet flow (message displays). This is a message ticker tape system. The newest message is posted at the top of the page and that pushes the last message on the page off.

Many people focus on growing a large number of followers. The key is followers who are your target audience. So how do you know that? Start with Internet marketing 101 principles which is a clear definition of your target market. Then what are the primary keywords related to your target audience? Using the search function find out who is tweeting about those topic and follow them. You can expand this by following their followers.

Balance Twitter followers and following by going to your View All Following screen and then looking for those people that do not have a direct message link. You can only direct message people if they follow you. If after a few days someone has not followed you and you are attempting to balance the ratio, click delete. There are some people and services that do not follow much at all but their content is valuable. That is your choice.

More Twitter Tips in future additions. For now this will get you started and will help experienced users. Again this is written with the goal of building business revenue and profits using social media.

Marketing

There have been no fundamental changes in the principles of successful marketing. In order to convert targeted traffic into sales there must value and you must effectively communicate the value. Start with your funnel and using Twitter as example. You are forming a relationship with your target audience. Your tweets should have value. If they constantly scream buy this or that, your efforts will be futile and are likely to get you banned.

Next

In the next article in this series I will take a closer look at some of the features, benefits and pitfalls of specific social media sites. In the meantime, every day you spend thinking about this or trying to figure it out on your own, is a day where you are not optimizing your sales that are possible using traffic from social media. I suggest you get started now by emailing me.

Link To Part 1 of This Series

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Follow Me and I Follow You

How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

Join My Fan Page on Facebook Click Here

FREE Report:

Marc Andreessen, Charlie Rose, Ken McCarthy, The System

Below is an email Ken McCarthy sent me and thousands of his closest friends. I have been privileged to attend four System Seminars and one targeted training Ken held for 30 people over a weekend in Miami. Ken has tremendous experience with the Internet and is closely aligned with leadership. More importantly, Ken is a quality person and has always been focused on providing value.

This is an hour interview and I am the first to admit I have no patience with content of that length. However, this is an exception. This is a marvelous interview and well worth your time. Before I turn this introduction over to Ken I want to mention The System. I am not an affiliate. This is a sincere endorsement based on my personal experience.

Now here is Ken and you are in for a great show.

Steve Pohlit

________________________________________________

Steve

If you want to learn how to do something, the smartest
thing to do it find someone who’s done it.

Making a billion dollars is pretty lofty goal, but if
you’re interested I know a guy who has done it twice and
is on track to do it a third time.

He’s always worth listening to.

Recently, he was on the Charlie Rose program and
was on fire.

If you want to be prepared for the next ten years,
watch and take notes.

(It will help too if all you want to do it make
a million.)

Enjoy!

http://kenmccarthy.com/blog/?p=131

Ken
Ken McCarthy
The System Seminar

———————————————————————–

I appreciate Ken providing this really great interview

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Follow Me and I Follow You

How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

Join My Fan Page on Facebook Click Here

FREE Report:

Social Media for Building Business Profits Part 1

Being on line means you are already using social media sites. The question is should you be using social media as part of your marketing strategy? My experience in developing business with social media being part of the marketing strategy, confirms that social media is a “must have” part of your marketing strategy.

What Is Social Media?

Social media are locations where people build communities based on interest. Just like a physical community where there is a wide range of interests and value systems, you will find diversity in sites categorized as social media. Considering the diversity of interests, it is very important to define the audience you are attracting or your target market.

What Are The Best Social Media Sites For Building Business Revenue and Profits ?

The answer to that question depends on your target audience. For example, if you are an engineering firm, you are more likely to find your target audience on Linked In rather thank on MySpace. However, since MySpace has over 200 million subscribers, your target audience is likely there as well. In this example, LinkedIn may be more suitable for finding your target audience near term but MySpace should not be ignored.

We set up profiles for our businesses and our client companies on most major social media sites. We give each site the focus warranted by the target market. When you are attracting targeted prospective customers, you are then working consistent with your profit goals.

Ultimately you must be able to convert that traffic to profitable revenue. Conversion has nothing to do with social media and everything to do with follow up systems. In other words, conversion has everything to do with your sales funnel.

The Social Media Funnel

I started using the word cloud to describe the population of people using social media. I have seen other people use that term as well and feel it is a good description. Tools within each social media site are used to attract people from the cloud to your group, following, blog, landing page or some other feature specifically associated with your offer. However, drawing people to from the social media cloud is not the place to begin conversion. That is the place to begin building a relationship.

The Social Media Cloud to Customer Process

There is no one program for bringing people to your business which is where you have an opportunity to market your offer. Each social media site operates differently. We have spent thousand of hours testing various ways to use the major social media sites. We have a very good understanding of what works from the results we achieve.

We also have confirmed that there is significant time involved in setting this up properly and executing the daily tasks required to build and grow an effective network. The time is significant even with an effective process of in place of focusing on the most efficient tasks and using the leverage of automation and delegation. In addition, the landscape is dynamic which means that you must be alert for social media site changes that affect processes in place.

The time and processes required to build and maintain an effective network for attracting targeted people to your conversion cycle from the social media cloud is extensive. If you are intent on doing this yourself then focus your attention on two or three main sites. Realistically since building a social media network means doing certain tasks daily, focusing on more than two or three sites without an entire department or outsourcing this work is impractical.

The Benefits of Social Media Marketing

The first benefit of social media marketing is that the cloud is huge so your customers are there. Next, the more consistent you are in building your network, the easier it becomes to grow your network since there is a viral aspect. We see evidence of people building rather large followings and groups and enjoying the esteem that comes with the related popularity. That is certain one valid goal.

Our goal is monetization of the value we offer. We are a business and to remain in business, we must make a profit. The level of business success is measured by revenue and profit trends. For clients, we hold ourselves accountable for delivering a 100% return on investment in 30 to 90 days.

To be a client you must have a business that has a sales conversion cycle that is already working for a clearly defined target market. To achieve those results we measure and track all data from the network developed from the cloud all the way through conversion into a sale. Analysis is key if your focus is making money.

Foundation for Success

I have written articles about this, conducted training about this and led client projects focused on this. The this I am referring to is build traffic and convert it. With the numerous social media marketing opportunities, it is easy to take your eye of the ball of sales. When a customer says I’ll take it, that is a very valuable event. You then are responsible for delivering the value of what the customer has purchased and having in place the right customer service support structure for what you are selling.

If there are weaknesses in what you sell and in your support network, all the work you do in social media, Internet marketing, PPC, direct mail, direct sales and more is largely wasted. On the flip side of that, if the revenue cycle of your business is solid you will achieve a high return on you marketing dollar investment.

Next

In the next article in this series we will take a closer look at some of the features, benefits and pitfalls of specific social media sites. In the meantime, every day you spend thinking about this or trying to figure it out on your own, is a day where you are not optimizing your sales that are possible with social media. We suggest you get started now.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Follow Me and I Follow You

How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

Join My Fan Page on Facebook Click Here

FREE Report:

The WSJ Reports On McDonalds. My Report On The Key Success Factors

McDonald’s is doing well in the current economic climate as reported by the WSJ and a lot of credit is given to the leadership of Ralph Averez, President. Readers have a number of reactions to this story including some not so flattering.

However the are a number of principles being followed by Mr. Alverez that are well worth paying attention to. These include:

“I love numbers,” Mr. Alvarez says. “I think data used well really tells a story.” He acts to create a continually improving story. For example, modifying menu offering and prices almost in real time. That is a great lesson.

He uses a baseball cap and sunglasses to disguise himself when visiting stores and testing food and service against the standards. There are two lessons here: one stay close to your customer’s experience and two, for awhile people who wear ballcaps and sunglasses and look like Mr. Alverez in disguise, may get outstanding service. 🙂

You don’t win and maintain customer loyalty by cutting the size of the serving. You eliminate all unnecessary costs and them some and keep focusing on increasing the value of the customer’s experience.

For the complete article Click Here.

My comments posted to this article on the site of the WSJ are republished now:

This is an excellent presentation by Janet Adamy. I really appreciate the statement “I love numbers,” Mr. Alvarez says. “I think data used well really tells a story.” He acts to create a continually improving story. That is a great lesson.

There is a huge opportunity for McDonald’s and others in using social media to increase sales and profits. I suspect that the large companies will turn to their marketing executives who will turn to their ad agencies and say let’s invest in social media. I recommend new thinking as social media is new landscape.

Steve Pohlit
http://stevereports.com

One reader suggests McDonald’s has got it all right. I think they are not in step with on line social media treads. This represents a huge opportunity for them.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Email Steve to schedule A No Obligation Consultation On Building Your Business Profits. Let’s discuss how to use cutting edge Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing and Direct Response Marketing in the revenue building cycle of your business to drive your profits sky high.

Follow Me and Follow You

http://Twitter.com/manifestmmind

http://Twitter.com/connectfriends

http://Twitter.com/socialmania

FREE Report:

How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

Summary of Twitter Trends and Benefits by Jeff Walker

This email from Jeff Walker is an excellent summary of Twitter and is republished intact including all links. The only question is with over 7,500 followers why is Jeff only following 1% back? I really don’t see how not following people is in the spirit of social media. I welcome comments on this topic.

To The Point: Here is Jeff’s article which is very good.

You’ve probably heard of Twitter by now. It’s the

latest thing that all the cool kids are playing

with. 🙂

And it’s also going to be an absolutely HUGE

business tool. In my opinion, we’re literally just

seeing the very tip of the iceberg.

I’ve actually been active on Twitter for almost

two years, and I’ve been watching it very

carefully during that time… it’s been evolving

VERY quickly, and the pace of that evolution just

keeps increasing.

(You can follow me on Twitter at this

link: http://www.twitter.com/JeffWalker )

So here’s what I’m seeing on Twitter right now…

Real world celebrities are showing up on Twitter.

One person that I’ve been watching is Lance

Armstrong (it’s a natural since I’m so into

bicycling)… Lance joined Twitter just a few

months ago, and he already has over 233,000

followers.

This summer when he races in the Tour

de France, I’m sure his Twitter updates will be

mentioned many times during coverage of the

race… and all of a sudden Twitter will hit the

mainstream.

I’m predicting that Lance will have over 1 million

followers by the end of July.

And other celebrities are already taking notice.

When they realize that they can build a following

that they can control directly (ie, they don’t

have to depend on mainstream media) AND that they

can monetize that following in various ways…

well, look out. We’ll soon have every movie star,

TV star, rock star, and athletic star on Twitter.

Naturally, all their fans will follow.

Are you starting to see why I think Twitter is

going to be huge?

Now a few important things:

1. Lots of people say they don’t “get” Twitter.

Maybe you’re one of them. I suggest you just go

ahead and sign up (it’s free), and then start

following a few people. You’ll catch on quickly.

2. It’s the functionality behind Twitter that’s

important… and will continue to be important.

Whether Twitter.com is the ultimate winner, or

whether some competitor comes along and beats

them, this type of site will be a long term

winner.

3. You want to stake out your spot on Twitter –

it’s clearly a viral tool. The bigger your

presence on Twitter, the faster your presence will

grow. So if you haven’t started building your

Twitter following, then start doing it RIGHT NOW.

4. There’s lots of self-appointed “Twitter Police”

out there that think they know how Twitter should

be used. The reality is that there’s a hundred

different ways to use Twitter… so experiment

with it until you find the way you want to use it.

5. There’s a TON of third-party sites and software

programs to use with Twitter. They can make the

site a lot more fun and useful.

The one that I think is most important and useful

is the search function at

http://search.twitter.com – you can use that to

track what people are saying about you, or your

company, or your competitors. It’s awesome,

instantaneous feedback.

6. If you want to get up to speed fast on Twitter,

you should check out TwitterPower… which is a

brand-new book by Joel Comm. You can get it at

Amazon.com at this link:

Twitter Power on Amazon

(By the way, that’s NOT an affiliate link.)

7. Remember… follow me on Twitter – I put up all

kinds of cool things there, including some insider

breaking news stuff. Here’s the link:

http://www.twitter.com/JeffWalker

8. Oh yeah… Twitter can be very addicting. Try

to limit yourself to small doses. Set a timer when

you check Twitter – give yourself 5 or 10 minutes.

And don’t blame me if you get completely addicted.

best regards,

Jeff

Courtesy of Steve Pohlit

Follow Me and Follow You

http://Twitter.com/manifestmmind

http://Twitter.com/connectfriends

http://Twitter.com/socialmania

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

FREE Report:

The WSJ Reports on Twitter and My Comment

My comments that follow relate to an article written by JULIA ANGWIN with the Wall Street Journal who discussed her experience and recommendation for Twitter:

I appreciate this article and Julia.

I recommend Twitter. In my business we set up every client with multiple Twitter accounts as an integral part of the marketing funnel. Twitter works because we use a “give value” model. This develops a relationship with our followers.

Several days ago I reached out to a lady who I have seen active on Twitter. She had posted a tweet about an upcoming event. I felt she might fit our client criteria and sent her a quick tweet. She immediately responded and a day later we had a conference call in place. At the start of the call we introduced ourselves and she said “OMG you guys are Manifest Mastermind. @mastermmind How cool is that! You’re the ones with the purple picture. I love your tweets. Thank you so much”

So that felt really good and offered us credibility for a related venture we were proposing. We are now in the final stages of a client agreement which will be very good for her as well as for us.

I didn’t see it mentioned by Julia or in the comments. Personally I would not be without Tweet Deck. It allows you to easily follow up to 10 people or niche markets at once. Awesome! Having said that, my number one tool is http://TwitPwr.com/TweetL

http://twitter.com/stevepohlit
http://twitter.com/manifestmmind

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

FREE Report:

Marketing Is All About Traffic and Conversion

If you are in a for profit business you must have a continual stream of customers that buy what you offer. If you don’t have that working nothing else matters. Given that, what is your priority? Correct…Marketing!!

There are only three ways to increase revenue:

1. Sell more products or services to an existing customer

2. Sell the same amount of products or services to a customer at a higher price

3. Add more customers

When anyone visits your business that is traffic. When anyone who visits buys your offer that is conversion.

Recently, article posted here have been highlighting social media marketing for business. That arena is increasingly being used to generate traffic. I have helped many companies implement marketing programs that use a combination of tools including: a blog, a website, pay per click advertising, email marketing and more. These are all tools that work when used properly.

The landscape is changing with droves of people pouring into sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more. There are many people who claim to know why social media sites have become so popular but the reasons don’t matter. The facts are that there are huge numbers of people entering these sites and others like them for the first time each week.

Open up a Twitter account at Twitter.com and use the search feature at the bottom of the page and type in the keyword phrase social media. Then begin to click on profiles and discover how many people are referring to themselves as a social media expert.

Key Point: If your primary intent is to do business, having a growing network of connected people on Twitter or anywhere else for that matter means nothing if they are not buying your offer. You have traffic but they are moving on by and the conversion piece of the formula is missing. So when someone calls themselves an expert ask them to show you the profitable business they have developed using social media. Don’t be surprised at the lack of response.

We started from scratch and developed two businesses that are profitable and cash flow positive using only social media. Social media we used includes a blog for each business, and a network we grew on several of the larger social media sites.

There was a lot of work involved in doing this. I know because I did a lot of it and so did my business partner. Brian Campbell is the strategist on the detailed steps needed for this to work. Does this mean we are experts? It means we really have a lot of skills, and now systems, for building meaningful market share in important niche markets.

My Top Two Recommendations for Businesses Wanting To Improve The Effectiveness of Their Marketing

1. Building a contact data base is key. Effectively communicate with that list. This is not new and remains a foundation principle. It is still an alien concept for most companies.

2. Have a find tuned marketing plan, budget and return on investment monitoring in place and reviewed weekly and for some actions, daily. All activity must be focused on building traffic and converting that traffic.

Closing Comments:

The social media landscape is hot and getting hotter. But there are also other proven business development tools including pay per click, email marketing, print media, electronic advertising, trade shows and more. Each must be evaluated and tested in terms of benefit to your business. You can invest your time and that of your employees or outsource a lot of this. If you want fast results, outsource. If you do, again migrate based on priorities and test.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance