Misconception 1:

“Sales is marketing”.

No! It’s sales.

Sales always involve people talking to potential customers. Marketing, (particularly on social media) on the other hand, brings people into your ‘funnel’ so you can later sell to them. Ideally after you are positioned as the expert.

Misconception 2:

“The kind of marketing done by corporates is the same as what SMEs need.”

Complete rubbish, but believing it will just waste your hard earned money. Almost equivalent to buying a yacht—just a hole that you pour money into which quickly vanishes. Something I know from personal experience!

For a large company, their advertising and marketing focuses on building a brand and broadcasting that image into the marketplace. They do this because:

1. It builds the profile and recall of their brand so people will more likely choose their products or services

2. It pleases the board of directors and senior management who like most people know little about marketing. But they sure have strong opinions and have clout to get their way.

3. It wins awards for advertising which makes management feel good

4. And at a distant fourth spot in the line, because they want to sell something!

The marketing departments in big companies have a real battle on their hands if they want to create marketing that is effective. Now, if it’s hard for them, it’s impossible for an SME. Brand marketing is very expensive which just makes it ridiculous for small businesses who don’t have big budgets to blow on hit and miss campaigns.

Or the money to spend on something as vague as ‘raising ones profile’.

Good words will work without pictures. But pictures add the zing to copy.

Pictures help break up large amounts of text and make a piece more visually appealing and effective. If you use in your copy, make sure they’re the best pictures you can find to suit your content. Beware of the stories that pictures tell all by themselves regardless of what your copy is saying. Be careful they don’t undermine your message—easy to do in social media marketing where images are everywhere.

Here are the 8 keys to using pictures effectively:

1. Don’t use photos from ‘politically correct central casting’. You know the ones—sharply dressed, late 20’s, sitting in a high tech office; one black, one white, one brown! Tragic.
2. The picture needs to suit the pitch, your message.
3. Use a picture to tell a story, not just because you like it
4. Use specific captions for all of your pictures
5. If a picture is unsuitable for whatever reason, just don’t use it
6. If you want to encourage trust, have a picture of someone with their family, their kids or with their dog—family values encourage trust
7. As to where to place pictures on the page, look at where everyone else is placing them and do the opposite. You’ll stand out
8. Have someone who is not involved in your work have a look at the copy and the picture together. Ask them if the picture completely suits the copy, or if it undermines it in any way. If they say it does, listen to them! Don’t just use it because you like it

Finally and most importantly: If the picture is on a website, put and alt tag in using your keywords.

Yes, they tell a thousand stories. Be sure you tell the right one.

For a mere blink in time, just a few hundred years, humans have lived in cities. And became mobile.

So the forces compelling us to be trustworthy largely vanished:- proximity and knowing you were stuck with the same bunch. Stuck for life.

Why is trust coming back with a giant roar?

Giant social networks and their millions of connected groups are shrinking the areas of shadow. Shrinking the areas where a person or a business could be anonymous. And so not accountable.

What does this mean for people in business?

You need people to stand up and vouch for your services. Vouch that you can be trusted to do what you say you’ll do. And of course those vouching for you come with their contact details, so we can vouch for their credibility in turn.

To be a leader in your field you again need to be trustworthy. The huge difference is it must be verifiable online, in many different communities. Not just your village.

Is it any wonder people get confused when Journalists write the most appalling articles? Especially in credible mainstream papers like the Wall Street Journal?

Marketers and networkers know that face-to-face is where real connections are made. That’s a given. But to write an article that criticises online networking using profoundly flawed logic only adds to the confusion.

In a recent WSJ article about the role of social networking in the socialising arena, Jonah Lehrer had this to say:

“…business travel has dramatically increased since the invention of email. Attendance at business conferences has spiked since the invention of videoconferencing. ”

Excuse me? There could be hundreds of reasons for business travel dramatically increasing. What has it got to do with email? What a fantasy!

And videoconferencing?

Frankly, I would argue that video conferencing, until very recently, has been expensive and inconvenient. And even as it gets better, like all new technology, it requires people to change their behaviour. That takes time. And until they do, there won’t be a “tipping point.” However, the glib statement made by Jonah ignores the elephant in the room: the huge reduction in the real cost of air fares between all main business centres.

You might as well be saying that business travel dramatically increased despite the rising prices of bananas. It’s about as relevant and related as thinking emails sparked the rise in business travel.

He goes on to say that “Businesses still pay hefty rents to be based downtown.” (In Australia, this means the “central business district.”) As though that proves anything about the value of online networking! Surely tradition and good old human inertia contributes to the popularity of the central business district. What about the existing transport hubs that were built to service “downtown”?

Further, Jonah declares: “[Google+] will focus on becoming a better supplement amplifying the advantages of talking in person.” This is a false dilemma.  Just like the classic ‘diemma’ that Hitler gave to the German people back in 1932 when the country was in chaos. That to fix Germany it was either the Nazi’s or the communists – totally ignoring the moderate choices in between.

In the same way, Lehrer’s article prompts a view that completely misses the vibe of online social networking.

Whoever said (as John Citron commented on the WSJ article) it had to be a supplement for face to face networking?? Surely it’s a complement!

There’s enough confusion in the world about these new technologies as it is. We don’t need more fuel to add to the smoky haze already surrounding the topic.

Jonah’s article can be found here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903341404576482431024246652.html

Businesses cannot simply make a Delicious account and start bookmarking their own website/blog or any other random website relating to their business field. That’s not being strategic, and is unlikely to be effective. You could even call it lazy? People will not bookmark your website simply because you’ve bookmarked there’s. The number one priority in using Delicious as a promotional tool is to give your visitors a reason to bookmark your website. Below are the first three steps each business should apply when first using Delicious.

Step 1: Create a blog

Company websites are great at providing information about your business online – anyone can access it from anywhere. The downside is that no one’s going to bookmark your website if the content isn’t worth coming back too. If your website looked the same all year round, and had the same content, would you bookmark it? Probably not.

What you need to first do is create a personal blog – it can be on an entirely new domain (with links to it on your company website) or placed on the first page of your company website. Blogs are fresh, continually updated and can provide information, opinions or advice in each post. This content creates an incentive for visitors to bookmark your page in their Delicious account – it might have some useful information worth coming back to. Because blogs are continually updated on a daily/weekly basis this means there is also a higher chance of repeat traffic to your blog.

Step 2: Simplify the bookmarking process

I know sometimes I am fairly lazy with bookmarking. I have to copy the URL, log into my Delicious account and then paste the link. Sometimes I even sit there weighing up my options – is this page worth going through that tedious process of bookmarking? Silly I know, but it happens. So the best thing to do is to make this process easier for Delicious users.  Official Delicious buttons, badges and links can be placed at the end of each blog post for easy bookmarking. With a simple click of a button or link, users can easily and quickly save your page without having to copy and paste! For avid Delicious users most of them would have either the Delicious Google Chrome Extension or Firefox Add-on incorporated into their browser. This is even a quicker way to save bookmarks as users’ logins are automatically saved for next time and visitors simply click the extension/add-on button while on the page they want to save.

Further motivate your audience to bookmark your posts by adding the Delicious Tagometer to your blog page. With this badge it is easy to show both the tags and the number of saves your blog has received. The more bookmark saves you have the more interesting and attractive your blog appears to be, and the more trustworthy and valuable your content is. More bookmarks equate s to more visitors which equates to increasing your online presence. That is the goal after all isn’t it?

Step 3: Network, Network, Network!

You’ve created a blog, continually update it with useful information and links and you’ve made it easy for visitors to bookmark your posts. What’s next? Unlike the two steps outlined above which were one-off processes, step three involves networking, a process you should do continuously!

Building and expanding your network is vital if you want to reach potential clients or conduct market research on your target market. The social aspect in social bookmarking is useless to businesses – we are not there to make friends and access all their bookmarks. We are only interested in one thing – connecting with those in your business field in order to increase the exposure and recognition of your company and to create valuable and strategic connections. Delicious users are notified when you have added them to your network and consequently they may choose to add you too. Get out there and connect with those who are more likely to be interested in the content of your blog and likely to bookmark it. Slowly your blog will be added to other Delicious users’ bookmarks; if they are a part of other networks your bookmarked blog will be shared with those in the network too. It’s an endless cycle that could be used to your advantage.

There has been a huge movement in the developed world of professionals who are Green or Sea Changers. Many of these are professionals who are able to work remotely, giving them the option to move to beautiful, more remote areas. Either green and peaceful, or close to the sea.

These people were typically well educated and wanting more out of life. Starting maybe 20 years ago, they came to see that they were able to work remotely and still deliver a good service. Examples included designers of all sorts, writers and of course, software developers.

So, why the death of sea changers? Well, because they could work remotely meant others could as well. Including those in low cost countries with well-educated work forces. And it doesn’t matter whether you are 500 kilometers away or 5,000 when you’re working online. This outsourcing overseas has exploded in the last 5 years via great web services like Elance and oDesk.

So, these refugees from the big smoke are going to feel increasing resistance to the level of fees they charge. The low-cost countries will soon drive down the prices to levels where it is no longer profitable for someone in a first world country to work remotely.

And yes, this article will get many business people saying “we tried overseas suppliers; it didn’t work”. For many people it hasn’t, but that’s because there is an art to overseas outsourcing, it is not something you can just dabble in. Nor is your selection of suppliers just about price. That said, many of us who buy these services get huge value already, and many more are buying each year.

The writing is on the wall if you are someone used to charging $100 an hour for a service that someone with the same qualifications working for clients in leading first world countries charges just $30 for. For many, it will mean returning to the big smoke, getting close to their clients and leveraging the services of the overseas workers to increase the value of their offering.

This will have a big impact on real estate prices in those towns. But also, it is the end of the dream for younger sea changers. Have to leave the nice spots to the retirees!