Hit The Links: Social Media Marketing Golf Club

Walt Goshert — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:58:22 +0000

Each Saturday, we’ll Hit the Links.

As your Marketing Caddy, I’ll share with you some of the best “Holes” I discovered during the past week stumbling around the “InterWebs” to help you Build Your Business Online.

Enjoy your Round!

Front Nine

Hole #1: Par 4 The Blogger’s Guide to Brain Surgery A mild Par 4 Opening Hole… Michael Martine explains in simple language how a business blog works.

Hole #2: Par4 George Vs. The Dragon In this brutal Par 4, Rick Reilly wakes you up to reality … Some days you just don’t feel up to the effort and working? Denver Nuggets Coach George Karl starts his day with 15 minutes of torture… then he goes to work.

Hole#3: Par 3 Whose Shoes Are You Wearing? A short, but tricky, Par 3 from Ken Mueller of Inkling Media. Social Media listening with a perspective from your customer’s view.

Hole #4: Par 5 Breaking the Scarcity Mentality: How to Afford Anything You Want A confidence-boosting Par 5 from Dave Navarro.

Hole #5: Par 3 The Difference Between Recipe and Restaurant Chris Brogan’s challenging long Par 3… it’s one thing to talk about social media, it’s another thing to DO it.

Hole # 6: Par 5 5 Easy Steps to Creating Reuseable Social Content Jay Baer’s guest post at Social Media Examiner… a short Par 5 on getting the most out of your Social Media Marketing Game.

Hole # 7: Par 4 Online Identity Calculator- make sense of your Google results Are you “Digitally Distinct”? Find out here.

Hole #8: Par 3 Improve Your Site’s Page Rank in 30 Seconds Brian Horn’s short lesson at DanKennedy.com on how to plug those Google Juice Leaks on your site.

Hole #9: Par 5 10 Dead Dudes Every Entrepreneur Should Follow (but, not on twitter) A fun (but enlightening) Par 5 from Jonathan Fields

Back Nine

Hole #10: Par 4 Content Creation Tools for the Average Person A meaty, straight-forward Par 4 to open up your Back-Side from Terry Dean

Hole #11 Par 3 The World As We Know It Is (Not) About to End Cool video find from Pamela Wilson at Big Design Systems

Hole #12 Par 4 When to Respond to Negative Reviews (and not) Lisa Barone delivers sound advice (as usual) on managing your online rep at SmallBusinessTrends.com

Hole #13 Par 5 Talk Biz News: What you really need to succeed online Yep, it’s an Opt-In, but every online marketing pro wants to tee it up with Paul Myers

Hole #14 Par 4 What the hell can social media do for me? From his island paradise small business in the Caribbean, Mark Hayward shares how he uses social media

Hole #15 Par 3 Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media … meanwhile at the Wall Street Journal…

Hole #16 Par 5 30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business Mark Hayward again… this time at ProBlogger.net

Hole #17 Par 3 Is Social Media Worth Your Time? A quick blurb at Inc.com

Hole #18 Par 5 5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You’re Already Doing Swing easy, let it fly… John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing brings you to the “House” with how to do more with less effort.

19th Hole: Lancaster Spring Home Show Franklin & Marshall College Follow Up with a pint of Belgian Pale Ale at Iron Hill Brewery

Have a Fantastic Weekend!

Photo Credit: Flickr

Tune Up Your Listening Station

Walt Goshert — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:05:35 +0000

Psst… Listen Up!

You wanna know the secret to making online marketing work for your local business?

Wanna learn how to get found in the search engines and have your prospects and clients spread the word about you and your business on the social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz?

To effectively tap the power of social media marketing online in your local business…

You must develop the discipline to first, listen… and use tools and build processes to listen first.

First, Listen… Listen First, Huh?

First, Listen

Your prospects are talking online. On Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, YouTube, blogs, blog comments, Online Reviews, emailing friends. They are talking about your local community, your industry, your competitors, and yes, your local business. They are expressing their likes and dislikes, dreams and desires, problems and frustrations… and revealing needs and wants that your business has the potential to help solve.

But, First, before you rush in and try to sell them your stuff, LISTEN.

First, Listen to Chris Brogan on Listening:

Now… Listen First

Next, now that you get it that you must First, Listen… now you’re ready to use the tools and build processes that position you to Listen First.

Chris Brogan shares with you the tools to building a Listening Station for your business.

First… 5 Tools I Use to Listen

And… Grow Bigger Ears in 10 Minutes

Use Free Google Tools- Gmail, Google Reader, and Google BlogSearch. You might want to add Google Alerts to automatically “listen” to keywords like your name, Business Name, Competition Name(s), etc. served up automatically in your Gmail account.

Listen on Twitter with Twitter Search. Chris mentions this as one of his Listening Station Tools. Here he goes into more detail on how you set it up.

Social Media Marketing where you First, Listen… and Listen First is tapping into the online conversation stream of up- to-date and constantly evolving market research. Your Listening Station sorts and organizes this Market research into your Google Reader and serves as the platform to begin creating content and building prospect and client relationships based not on what you’re trying to sell, but what people want to buy.

Before you start selling… First, Listen… use “Listen First” tools and build processes to gather market research. Then, you’ll be ready to have value-added conversations with your market.

Do you have any other online Listening Tools you’re using… or any suggestions?

Go ahead, share them in comments.

We’re listening.

Flickr Photo Credit C.P.Storm

People Ask Their Social Networks? (gigaom.com)
How to Use Free Web and Social Media Tools to Promote Yourself Online (slideshare.net)