Whose advice would you more value: a world class heart surgeon that talked about diet, or a family practice doctor who talked about diet.

I’ll betcha you’re going to say the World Class Heart Surgeon.

People want to deal with experts, not dabblers.

So, let’s keep moving with this: most small businesses are loathe to branch out, they are unwilling to be about anything because they want to not get ‘pigeon holed.’   That’s one of the easiest mistakes to get into.   We’ve all encountered the Insurance guy who sells Real Estate, MLM and personal training “on the side”.   The man might be affable, but the truth is this: people would rather do business with someone that presents himself as a world class expert in one area than a guy that does a little of everything.

Mercedes is a better brand than Ford.  You know that a Mercedes is luxury.  A Ford–as Al Reis famously said–is a Cheap, Expensive, Fast, Economical, Large, Small, Car Truck or Van.   Get specific.

Then, once you’ve demonstrated–one on one–how good you are, you’ll have credibility.  You might be the area Real Estate Expert in one area.  You might also be fearful that you need to branch out.   But, as the area expert, you will have more impact when you tell someone that they could live in an adjacent or nearby community.  You can sell that house to them and they will believe you much more than someone that ‘generally covers the area.’   If you take the time to acquire and present expertise in one area…you’re believable.

So become something.  Be the world class community expert.  Take the time to make it work.     You’ll be rewarded–and compensated–like the expert you become.

Business owners–understandably–want to be sure about ROI.  Business owners want to not throw money into an empty pit.

Consultants, invariably want no accountability for ROI.  They want to say that you’re not doing enough, and that the solution to the problem is more money shoved at them.

The truth is ROI is hard to measure.  Clicks back to your site is not what social media marketing is about.  That’s broadcasting, and Adsense does a better, more efficient job at getting raw eyeballs to look at a page than anything else does.   AdSense/PPC by Yahoo both do a fine fine job at delivering traffic, and trying to force Social Media to do that is dumb.

See, social media is about real warm human relationships.  Same deal with blogging.  The goal is to build an army of like minded people, to create a place in someone’s mindshare, to have a small audience that will run through walls for you, that will carry the banner of your business.

ROI is this: the relationships you make from being online.  It can happen in bursts.  But, it only happens if you are authentic, if you put yourself into it.  What’s the value of a contact, a friend?  What’s the value of someone that trusts you enough to buy all of your stuff?

That’s what you’re getting.  You’re getting friends and fans.  Not mere consumers, not “leads” and not warm bodies.  What you do with all of this stuff is entirely up to you.  You will make mistakes.  But if you make mistakes with a good heart, and a desire to connect, and a desire to put other people first, and help them, the world will forgive you.

What’s the value of a friend?  That’s what you’re here to do.  To connect with people, to help.  To lend your expertise.  And yes, the money will happen if you do the rest of this stuff.

Social media is not about techniques.  It’s not about “broadcasting.”  It’s about helping people.

Get that in your head and the technical stuff gets easier.

Social media success isn’t about you, either.  It’s about how you can help.  Get that in your head, too, and life gets easier.  It’s marketing with a human face and a personal touch.  It’s marketing with the other person’s best interests at the forefront of your imagination.

Again, get that in your mind and life is better.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN are simply this: another place and another way to network.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Everyone makes the newbie mistake of trying to broadcast, trying to reach out and grab a wider audience.  Join this, be that.

Yes, you should manage your reputation online.  Yes you should be sure to complete your build out and have your radio station done.  But, what do you want to be more: someone that’s entertaining and amusing…or someone that helps?  Perosnal Branding’s limit is this: it makes things about you.  About how awesome you are.  The bigger question is this: how much do you help other people?  How much do you give?

That’s the point of being on these tools.  When you view things that way, when you want to figure out what people want and find a way to give them that, the pressure for figuring out TweetDeck, for figuring out LinkedIN dissipates.  You realize that it’s a channel.  When you’re nice, kind and good, the world aligns itself to help you out, and to make sure that you’re getting somewhere.  Don’t be afraid to dive in: when people learn you’re here to help, to give and not just another taker, they’ll make life easier on you and they’ll make things happen for you.

EDIT: Running spell check helps when typing fast.

So I talked a little about personal branding yesterday.  It’s a different concept than Reputation Management.  I want to make that utterly clear.  Personal branding is representing who you are.  Reputation Management is engaging the conversation about yourself, it’s about putting your best foot forward, on purpose, so people see the side of you that best reflects who you want to be.

Reputation Management Vs. Personal Branding

Reputation Management is tactical.  Personal Branding is strategic.   Both of them start with character management–not being a jackass, and not kicking hornets nets.

So, a while ago, I posted about Westerville Dentist Susan Stalnaker on my personal blog.  I was making a riff more or less about the idea that symbols are important.   How you’re percieved by your customers.   I wanted to know, what it meant when you took the best parking spot with an easily identifiable car with bad vanity plates.  How insulted I’d feel as a customer.  She seemed to me to be undoing a good career as a dentist by not paying attention to detail, and by not managing the symbols in her business.

What happened then was interesting–now when you google Westerville Dentist Susan Salnaker, or even Susan Stalnaker, my post comes up in the top 3 every time.   The other one is my friend, Central PA Webmaster Ryan Hartman. This was not my attempt to assasinate her rep.  This was just me riffing on a bad symbol.

Now, what she SHOULD have and COULD have done was preempt this.  For just a few bucks, you can control what people say about you on line.  If you have the basics, a Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter account, you push the bad stuff down the page.   A few articles in some directories, and it helps more.

Action Steps:

1.)  Get on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn.

2.) Make a blog at either WordPress.Com or some other spot.

3.)   Get on some video site, preferably YouTube or DailyMotion.

4.) Put the links in the posts as soon as you can.

That’s it.  Then, no matter what anyone says about you, you’ll be taken care of online.  You will have better & older & more authoritative posts on the matter.  You will have a platform to spring from, to show up and to tell your story.

What is your follow up plan?

When you meet someone on the net, when you connect, do you already know what to do next?  Do you pester them (drip) until they regret having clicked yes?

Do you blurt out offers randomly, or do you know what’s going to happen in advance?

Do you make a ham fisted hope that they buy, and then go on to the next person and say “this social media shit doesn’t work?”

Do you have a plan in advance that honors your clients?  Do you know what you’re going to say before you say it?  I’m asking, here.  Getting on social media, plugging in, that’s a part.  But if you just try to do whatever comes to mind whenever, you’re not gonna get big, you’re not gonna get good and you’re not gonna get paid.   You’re wasting your damn time doing this and would be better off building your business the old ways.  That’s right, I said it.  Don’t bother unless you’re gonna think a move or two ahead.

Broadly speaking, you are gonna find people divided into 4 groups:

1. Citizens: The most common.  This is ‘everyone.’  You should, when they add you, have a plan for following up that does this:  tags where you found ‘em, responds in that channel.  Your goal is to provide information, be cordial, and be seen as an expert resource so their friends can hook you up.  You might have connected via mutual acquaintance.  You want to REMIND THEM of your existence while honoring who they are.   This is a group you deliberately connect with periodically (systematically) through a todo/follow up list.

2. Prospects: This is a group of people that might buy your stuff, someone that you found, say in a forum for discussing your widgets.  These folks are engaged.  They are probably buying, and we hope, we really hope, it’s from you.  They need follow up, information, they need tlc, and they need responsiveness.  Follow up by: educating on what you do (process stories), and being available.  5-10% of the people you meet, unless you’re a purebred hunter.

3. Advocates: Sometimes you click with someone, you see their web presence, and you love it.  Sometimes you find someone that you wanna help, and that they will help you.  You’d be proud and happy to carry their banner because that’s who you are.   A separate category, for me at least.

4. Old Jags. People you flat out don’t want to connect with for whatever reason.  They have the stink of failure.  You wanna know who they are and ‘shroud’ them so you don’t get sucked into flame wars drama and other stuff.  This should, for sane people, be one percent of the market or less.  You track, and avoid.

How to do it:

I use aweber and infusionsoft.  I have a private page made with webforms that I can quickly put people I meet into one of a few buckets.  It spits out a list of actions for me to do next.  Each class gets something different.  My default is to assume “citizen”  educate, don’t push, help, don’t reach.   Prospects I want to make sure we determine if my blogs & consulting is a good fit or not (remember, either way is fine).

A ‘citizen’ gets the following treatment:

1. Quarterly pings–I wanna make sure I touch people once a quarter.

2. Intro phone calls.  (Ask anyone that recently followed me on twitter.  I call, I connect & I help.)

3. Checklist:  I wanna learn about people, who a good referral would be for them.  SO I ask.  And if I get people that need stuff that I know I have, I put ‘em together.  No rake, no charge, just some pay it forward action.

An “advocate” gets the following:

1. Phone call.  I want them to know I’m on their side right away.  I want them to know that I’m impressed and that I’ll really help them any way I can.

2. Follow up/Link.  I preemptively link to them in a blog I help consult on or control.  Without their asking.

3. Scheduled reminders:  I try and call monthly.

…

This is the way to get more out of social media.  You have a plan in place for anything that could happen before you start.   Yours will be different from mine.  Different isn’t better.  Social media is about…relationships, not numbers.  Honor the people and you don’t need to run that autospamming crap that is disrupting ‘the conversation.’

OK, so you’re blogging.  You’re doing some social media account creation.  You want to get customers.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is this: they don’t put enough of themselves out there.  You might be trying to be part of some community.

But without really engaging, without COMPLETING the profiles, without putitng ALL of yourself in there, you’re an empty suit.  You’re showing up for attendance, not for any other reason.  Get it?

Let’s put it this way:  would you engage someone that is only sort of there?  Would that be interesting to you?  Would you trust them as part of the community if they just had a bare bones profile?

Even if you knew them already, you might not.

So fill the damn thing out.  Finish what you start or don’t start at all.   Make it so your personality, whatever it is, comes out in your profiles.  Make it so people can tell it’s a real person there, that you care about how you come across, and that you want to connect.

People are so afraid of getting spammed that they don’t put a real email address up.  That’s stupid.  You will get spammed somehow, email or not.  Allow people to connect with you when you make your social media acounts.

Go deep.

Ten deep.

If it asks for books, list ten.  If you have yet to have read ten books, then you have a problem.

If it asks for songs, list at least ten.  Same deal.

Be someone of import.  Matter.  Connect so people can see you’re real.

Everyone wants to be Darren or Brian Clark or Gary Vee.   Twitter does that to you.   A lot of my clients want to be a big time social media coach.  They want to be problogger.  They want to be rich.  They want to earn a living just musing and riffing on the internet.

They don’t realize how much work that them there guys put in.  I do.  I also wanna be rich.  Honestly, I do.  But that there path is risky.  To get to the perch, you have to be great for a long time.  You know, your 10,000 hours. And in the middle of all that you’re missing out on acres of diamonds right here.  In your existing business.

When I was a Realtor® It was the same deal.  Everyone wanted to be a leader, everyone wanted to be a coach.  Nobody wanted to lead and coach.  They want recognition.  Ain’t no short cuts, bunky.  Ain’t no path to greatness but to put in the time to make yourself great.    Same people that sold three houses in a month suddenly wanted to be on a superstar pannel because the closings got scheduled on the same Friday.

So it brings me to twitter.  I have ~2,000 followers at any given time.  I want to have about that many.  Because I’m familiar with them.  I’m connected to them.  I know who’s a Realtor, who’s a lawyer, who’s in Portland and who’s in Boca Raton.

I get spammed offering me more followers.  What for?  If I sell 200 of my followers (10%) that’s not implausible.  And that means I make–from twitter $300,000 (average client over a year is worth $1,500 in money and more in friendship and knowledge.)   It’s not a numbers game.  Well, it is.  It’s nubers of people that are really connected to you.  It’s numbers of people that like you.  It’s numbers of people that dig you.

I don’t have any advice for using twitter better save this: pick up the phone.

The best tools on twitter are @ and D.

And the phone.

Action Steps:

1.  Find people that interest you.  Use Search.Twitter.com.

2. @ them.  Say hi.  Call the ones that leave their info out.  Introduce yourself.

3. Don’t have an agenda.  Don’t sell, just listen and learn as much as you’re able to.

4.  Promote them.  Retweet the things that they dig first.  Give that away.

5.  Keep your eyes open for clients of yours that should be clients of theirs.

That’s it.  Honest.