Landscape Digital Show

Episode 60 of Landscape Digital Show reveals customer care marketing lessons in leadership, communication, and training from an actual case study.

The best marketing for any business is not what its media says, but the actions the business takes, especially when circumstances are less than optimal.

To perform in these clutch situations and let s face it, everything in life is a performance, requires a customer care plan.

This means that your people need to be trained for every conceivable circumstance they may encounter. One of the best ways to prepare is to take situations that you experience or learn about and break them down into practical lessons that become part of your regular training.

That's what we're going to do today as we explore a situation that ignited the social and traditional media channels around the globe last week.

Of course, I'm talking about the incident involving one of the major airlines in which a passenger was re-accommodated with the use of excessive force. (Google that term for the backstory).

This situation and others like them are case-studies that can prove invaluable for preparing your business to avoid or skillfully manage crisis situations like them with leadership, communication, and training.

Customer Care Starts with Leadership

Many people have called for the firing of the airline CEO.

If you are the owner of your landscaping business, you know what that spotlight feels like when operations do not go as planned. Unlike the airline CEO, I hope that you will:

a. Acknowledge the situation and calmly take responsibility for it. b. Get together with your team and study it to learn what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the future. c. Fix it for this customer and train your team so that it never happens again.

I'm confident you already knew this. But let s consider taking this a step further with your marketing.

As you resolve difficult situations consider making them teaching moments that are shared with all of your customers.

Depending on your community, they will probably find out on their own through Angie's List, Yelp, or day-to-day word of mouth. If you take the lead and risk being vulnerable, you can make this a teaching moment that shows your company's commitment to making things right.

Everybody hates rework, especially customers. So, the next time you have to incur the warranty expense of replacing expensive trees, use your media to share a lesson on watering or whatever went wrong to help other customers avoid a similar event with their property.

If the problem was something underground, have a conversation about soil types and amendments. You can try to protect your business with contract language, and should, but a better approach is to support it with teaching examples.

Customer Care Requires Proactive Communication

A friend of mine wrote an article last week about her true experience with another airline that also involved a challenging situation. It turned out to be memorable for all of the right reasons because the pilot proactively communicated with the passengers, every step of the way.

This included a face-to-face explanation at the gate about the details of a mechanical problem, and then another, and then a gate change that required a manual rebooking procedure, and so on.

You get the picture. People were inconvenienced, they were delayed, and they were less than delighted with the experience. But everything worked out fairly well because they were communicated with in an open, honest, and direct way.

Contrast that with the major airline and how it handled their challenges. There was blaming, forced evacuation of a passenger that required hospitalization, and the curious absence of involvement from the airline staff that deferred to outside security personnel.

Here s something to consider that s vitally important.

You are not the CEO of a major company. Therefore, you cannot call a press conference on one of the major networks to apologize or explain. You need to proactively communicate to your networks to ensure you will have an attentive audience for handling crisis situations or any other.

Of all of the communication networks a business can have, email is the most important because it s the most personal.

Email is personal if it's consistently used to encourage a dialogue. Use it to inform customers about anything that aligns their relationship with your business, such as the personal side of team members they work with every day.

For this to work, you have to show up on a regular schedule. Think of it as making a weekly or monthly appointment for enhancing customer care.

Training Makes Customer Care Responsive

If you expect your team to perform at the highest level they need to know you will do your job, and that s to use your industry leadership and experience to develop systems that ensure the right things get done right.

In our major airline example, there has been some interesting social media commentary. One person suggested the staff was trained to get airplanes to destinations on time when in fact they should be trained to get passengers to destinations on time.

If you think about it, when you see airline industry rankings it s usually about flights arriving on time. Have you ever seen a ranking until recently about the number of passengers that get bumped?

Customer care is really one outcome of the collective customer experience.

Everything matters, from departing and arriving on time, and everything in between.

Isn t that what your landscape customers want, projects completed on-time, professional care, and working with great people that take the time to answer the many questions that people will always have?

Training makes it all come together.

Update: After this was published the CEO of the airline made some strong moves and released an email to its customers detailing those actions. You can get the full update here.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to sit down with your team and discuss this major airline fiasco. Ask what they think should have happened, and what they would do about it now if they were the CEO of that company.

Make this a regular training practice with mainstream and landscaping industry examples that you encounter.

In fact, if you have one to share I d love to hear it. Without identifying any specific company, leave a comment below and maybe we can talk about it on a future episode.

The post Customer Care: Marketing Lessons in Leadership, Communication and Training appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 59 of Landscape Digital Show reveals the 4 most important SEO ranking factors according to leading SEO industry studies.

Today we're going to examine the top SEO ranking factors for 2017 that every business needs to know if it expects its website to rank well right now — and hopefully for years to come.

This episode is based on data from a number of sources, with the most comprehensive being an article published in Search Engine Journal earlier this year.

Here s what the author of that article had to say about SEO ranking factors:

Fortunately, not all ranking factors are created equal you can maximize your SEO efforts by focusing on a few specific ranking factors. Of course, Google s algorithm is always changing, and we can t rely on yesterday s ranking factors as we step into 2017.

The point is that there are hundreds of factors that Google considers in the ranking of website pages, but if you focus on these four you have a good chance of winning with Google in 2017.

#1. Content Using Natural Language

It s important to understand that Google technically does not rank websites but pages with content that serve an audience searching for solutions to specific problems. Obviously, more pages with quality content collectively boost the overall ranking of a website.

One of the most important measures of quality content nowadays is natural language.

In other words, you need to understand and use the language your audience would use in a casual conversation.

This means that fake language written specifically to optimize for keywords is penalized. The landscaping industry is full of this type of content, with the most notable example being a homepage that lists dozens of counties that the business serves or hopes to serve.

That s not natural because human beings don t list all 27 counties they serve when talking to customers. Another example is an abundance of blog posts with repetitive location language, such as Chicago Commercial Landscape Management. Google uses artificial intelligence (better known as bots) to look for this.

Not only that, they have real people doing this too.

Therefore, when you are optimizing content be discriminate and use natural language like you do every day in casual conversations. You may wish to try the Hemingway app to test some of your content. I know some copywriters that swear by it.

Easier yet is to be yourself and not who you think Google or your audience wants you to be. There s nothing more natural than the authentic you.

#2. Backlinks from Influencers

Links that point to your content are a vote of confidence. They suggest the source likes your content and appreciates its value enough to share it with his or her community.

The first source of backlinks to consider is from your own content. Most content creators know to link to earlier content that adds value. But equally important is to link from older to newer content as well.

You want to link to content that adds relevant value. Also, you want the anchor text, this is the text that you are linking from to be relevant. But be careful that you are keeping it natural.

If your anchor text is consistently the same words or phrases Google will interpret this lopsided linking as unnatural, which may harm your ranking.

What you ideally want are inbound links from influential sources. These are the leaders in your industry, not just in size, but also in terms of their online authority. When they link to your site they are sharing that authority with you.

To discover these influencers, consider using BuzzSumo, Twitter advanced search, or Google.

#3. A Mobile First Experience

It's absolutely essential to have a mobile responsive website. In fact, maybe you recently received an invitation from Google to grade your website.

If you accepted Google's offer to grade your website you know the first score on their report is its mobile friendliness.

We've arrived at a point where you essentially have two website experiences, one that is mobile and the other desktop. Of course, Google is pointing to the fact that mobile is the future.

Experts agree Google is primarily crawling the mobile, not the desktop version of websites.

If your site is mobile responsive, the primary action to take for getting mobile right is reducing clutter by taking a less is more approach. Use concise, natural language that is free of industry jargon.

And don t use massive photos when a smaller one will do the trick.

#4. Important Technical SEO Ranking Factors

The top 2017 SEO ranking factors are content, backlinks, and the mobile experience. However, there are technical factors that will support them and also prepare your website for the future. One is https encryption.

Not only do the top 100 ranking websites on the web all have https encryption, the Google Chrome browser marks sites without https as unsafe.

Thanks to the functionality built into the Rainmaker Platform that supports this website, adding https encryption was painless. This tells me it s something that your Webmaster should be able to easily handle too.

But there is one thing to know. You will most likely lose some or all of your social media share counts because technically you are moving to a new domain (one that begins with https versus http). Just make the move and be done with it because it s a matter of time until this encryption becomes the standard.

Another technical factor that is known to be good for SEO is using H2 headings to make your content easier to scan and consume. These headings are the promise of what the underlying content will deliver.

The H2 heading should be descriptive, just like the 4 SEO ranking factors headings used in the notes for this post. While I could have used an edgy heading like Badass SEO Factors for this section instead of Important Technical SEO Ranking Factors, it's not descriptive, and therefore, not as likely to attract the right audience.

After all, that is what we are trying to do with SEO.

Show Notes

• There is more to optimization than Google. If you use LinkedIn, this article will help you optimize your personal LinkedIn profile.
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to take a serious look at your website SEO ranking factors and begin updating your content for 2017 and beyond.

You want your site to be as human as possible, with content that looks, feels and sounds like an old friend. That s what will lead to earning valuable backlinks that help your rankings.

But don t forget the technical factors such as the mobile experience and the safety that https encryption provides. After all, an old friend would never put you or your website in harm's way.

The post SEO Ranking Factors: How to Win with Google in 2017 appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 58 of Landscape Digital Show reveals a data-driven social advertising system for reaching a larger or deeper audience.

One of the most insightful sessions I had the opportunity to experience at Social Media Marketing World 2017 was one by Larry Kim on social advertising, that s using Facebook, Twitter, and Google advertising to promote content that drives traffic to your website to sell more products or services.

What s beautiful about this data-driven system is its simplicity for getting the job done with a minimal advertising spend.

Here s how it works.

#1. Find Your Unicorns

The key to the system is using social advertising to promote only your best content, what Larry Kim refers to as your unicorns. This is content that has proved its value, and therefore, merits the opportunity to reach a larger or deeper audience with the boost of social advertising behind it.

Compare that to how some companies use social advertising. They promote all of their content equally with the hope that some of it will stick. This is like sitting at the blackjack table and going all in on every hand with only hope as a plan.

There s nothing data driven about that, and that s why it s called gambling.

It s not necessary to use complex analytics to find your unicorns. Social share counts are usually enough to find content that resonates with the audience you are targeting.

Google favorably ranks content that meets the test of resonance, relevance, and recency.

Resonance is an indication that content is hitting the mark with a targeted audience. That is, it s solving a problem a particular problem that is relevant to the audience.

One measure of resonance is relevance. Another is recency.

Recency can be tricky because sometimes evergreen content that is years old still ranks well, while content that is only a few days old is no longer considered relevant. Use your best judgment based on the type of content.

#2 Strategically Promote Your Content

If you review your (recent) content for the past 12 months you will discover that only about 5% of it is truly relevant. That is, it has earned moderate or better social shares.

This resonant content is likely to achieve desired outcomes with social advertising. Test it with a limited advertising budget of about $10 – $50.

If it doesn t bring a measurably favorable return you stop. To make that determination choose the desired outcome or action, such as filling out a form to get more information or calling your office.

According to Larry Kim, there are two purposes for social advertising.

1. Catalyst 2. Accelerant

A catalyst speeds up a process that will otherwise work without it. In terms of social advertising, this is giving your content a lift to see if it has a chance of running with the unicorns, so to speak.

If it doesn t, you stop. Save your money until you have better content.

If the content is performing well with advertising as a catalyst you then employ the accelerant strategy. Invest in more social advertising to fuel the virality of your content just as gasoline fuels a fire.

The hard part is getting the fire going, so when you discover one you want to take it as far as you can, to the extent that your budget allows.

#3. Create a Bias for Your Brand

Here s the truth about social selling and content marketing, especially for landscaping and other green industry companies whose revenues are largely dependent upon trusted customer relationships.

1. Promote inspirational and memorable content aligned with your brand to a target audience. This creates awareness.

2. Awareness creates a bias toward your brand. But there are a number of reasons why an interested buyer will choose not to take action at that time.

This is why content marketing is a forever game and why using marketing automation to nurture those relationships with unicorn quality content and social advertising should be strategically planned.

3. Buyers with a bias will take action with your brand when the need arises.

One of the outcomes of our industry research is that landscaping companies need more leads and greater conversion of the leads they get. This is what we are talking about here.

The winners today are the companies that rank highly for the search terms used by their targeted audiences. That s a good source of leads.

The winners are also the companies that are earning social engagement that tends to create even more engagement. That s one of the best sources of conversion.

All of this is measurable, so there s no excuse for not taking a data-driven approach like this one.

The truth about content marketing nowadays is it is becoming a winner take all game. It s a natural function of the maturation of social media.

Now consider that Facebook advertising is very economical today. Doesn't it make sense to give it a try before it too becomes winner take all?

As social advertising matures it s only a matter of time until the price to play goes up.

Show Notes

• Check out Facebook Advertising: Target and Reach Your Ideal Buyers.
• If you listen to the show on mobile I highly recommend the Overcast app because it also gives you access to these show notes and links on your device.
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

Here s the call to action for this episode.

Use BuzzSumo to find your content unicorns. You simply type in your company name or domain and it will list your most popular content in terms of social shares.

Then promote this content to a targeted audience such as visitors to your website. You ll know who they are if you have placed the Facebook pixel on your website.

It takes time to build that audience from the Facebook pixel. In the meantime, you can target other audiences, such as your Facebook fans. Check out the link on Facebook advertising for other ideas for using custom audiences in the Show Notes (above).

The post Social Advertising: A Data-Driven System appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 57 of Landscape Digital Show reveals tips from 3 influential social media experts for live video marketing.

I just returned from Social Media Marketing World in San Diego, and one of my goals was to learn as much as possible about live video. What I discovered will not only give you the motivation to create live video marketing, it will make it easier.

#1. Don't Be Perfect

David H Lawrence, XVII is a former film and television actor who knows what it's like to deliver in front of the camera. His presentation on using video to build authority at a moment's notice was both educational and entertaining.

David's definition of authority includes being believable and trustworthy. And he noted that trust and believability are directly related to vulnerability because what happens in the moment when you allow yourself to be vulnerable is the authentic you.

Vulnerability engages audiences.

One reason live video is so hot is that connecting with real people is engaging. In contrast, highly edited and sanitized video is often boring.

To be clear, you have to know your material well and practice delivering it, because that helps to remove fears that can undermine your authority. When you trust your authority you know whatever you need at any moment will naturally come to you.

One of my roles at this event was introducing some of the biggest social media personalities to their audience.

I tried David's advice and was pleased to discover that taking the risk of embracing little mistakes instead of trying to be perfect proved key to encouraging laughter and attention that engaged the audience.

Not being perfect will save time-consuming video editing time and will put you more at ease when creating live video.

#2 – Push Yourself

This tip from Facebook marketing expert Amy Porterfield was indirectly suggested by all of the marketing experts I had the pleasure to connect with.

The way David Lawrence put it is to "set up quickly" so that you actually get in front of the camera and create video instead of planning to do it another day. He said this is actually a Hollywood trick for bringing out an actor's best qualities.

One of the ways Amy pushes herself to do video is to schedule it. She will typically create 4 educational videos one week apart in advance of a product launch.

She also prepares opt-in and thank-you pages that describe what the videos will cover. They will say, This is what I'm teaching. This is what you will learn. Please join us live.

When you think about it, you can randomly show up on Facebook and do a live video, but if you plan for and promote it in advance you are more likely to attract a larger and more engaged audience.

So push yourself with video. Our next tip explains why.

#3. Facebook May Soon Be All Video

Mari Smith is sometimes referred to as the Queen of Facebook. And that designation is earned because Facebook itself has hired Mari to teach Facebook marketing to small business audiences across the country.

In her presentation on improving your Facebook marketing ROI at Social Media Marketing world, Mari mentioned a quote from Facebook VP Nicola Mendelsohn.

Mendelsohn said, "If I was having a bet, it'd be video, video, video. Facebook live may be all video in half a decade"

That quote was made last June, by the way.

She went on to say that Facebook Live is "a bigger, faster phenomenon" than Facebook expected and that people "are loving the behind-the-scenes content."

This is significant because Facebook's algorithm is designed to show content in the newsfeed that people most want to see. This is video, especially live video, and it explains why that content is achieving far greater reach than static content.

It's also important to remember that Facebook's revenue is directly tied to advertising, and with 10 billion videos consumed daily on Facebook, it's clear that video is how advertisers will choose to reach buyers.

You ll want to do the same.

Live video is the next evolution in storytelling and Facebook is the current and potentially foreseeable leader because they have a massive, ready-made audience that loves video.

If your business wants to reach a greater audience, live video should be part of your marketing strategy for reaching your audience and engaging it to build believability and trust.

Show Notes

• David H Lawrence, XVII recommends the AT2020+ mic for recording video because it includes a headphone jack so you can hear what you are recording. An inexpensive lavalier mic for on-camera work is the AT3350is. And David says Screenflow is the only video editing software you need.
• To switch between her laptop and mobile devices with live video, Amy Porterfield and Mari Smith use Wirecast.
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode to push yourself to do video. While it s unlikely Facebook will ever be 100% video, it s clear that video is the future of marketing.

Video marketing is absolutely exploding, especially raw, unpolished, live video that assures us we are getting the real thing.

The post Live Video: Top Tips from 3 Social Media Experts appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 56 of Landscape Digital Show reveals why the secret to digital marketing is showing your customers how your work is done.

If you have been a subscriber or member of Landscape Digital Institute for a while you know that I typically close out my emails with this: Now go out there and show them how it's done!

Your purpose, your mission, is to get out there every single day and serve the people that are now your customers, however many or few there are, for one very important reason.

That base of customers is everything when it comes to your digital marketing because they are your link to new business. If they are not talking you up on the digital channels you may have to rethink what and how and maybe even why you are doing the work that you do today.

The fact is people talk and share what's part of their daily lives. If they appreciate and trust you they will share that with friends. It's all about inquiry and being top of mind.

Facebook asks us, "What's on your mind?" Twitter inquires, "What's happening?" And LinkedIn suggests, "Share an article, photo, or update."

Let's assume that your products and services are better than most. They work. They get the job done. That's enough, right? Not exactly.

How your business accomplishes its work, and why, is vitally important. And because that can get a little messy from time to time, it necessarily makes live social media and other forms of digital marketing points of vulnerability.

This is why more conservative companies tend to shy away from digital marketing, especially social media. They prefer to polish their marketing to a mirror shine to get rid of all the wrinkles and warts.

There's nothing wrong with that because we all need our glamor photos and pieces of marketing that fluff up the business to that perfect version of itself. But that's not going to get talked about because it's not engaging.

People want to see how things work. They want to know how the secret sauce is prepared and why those special ingredients matter.

Consider that next landscaping project or lawn care treatment to be a meal. Is it enough for it to be tasty? For some people, yes, especially the ones that know you well and trust you. These are your current customers.

But what about the customers your business has yet to serve? They are not going take everything at face value because everyone has slightly different decision-making criteria.

More than anything, new buyers are wondering if they can trust you. And you know how that works.

You never trust anybody just because they say you should. You trust people that show you they are trustworthy.

Embedded within the experience of discovering, acquiring, using, and enjoying what you sell is the key to getting your company talked about because that's where trust is earned.

It's seldom just the transaction of acquiring what you sell that matters because that's just a moment in time. It's something else that either precedes or follows it that is worth remembering and sharing.

That may be how you open the door to new relationships or transition your customers from the design to the construction phase, and then to caring for their property.

For my former landscaping business, it was helping people to dream bigger. We loved that challenge because it's easier for people to buy into ideas that are better than they dreamed were possible, even if they do cost more money.

Most important is that we created a system that showed how we were going to make that possibility happen.

Neuroscience assures us that most people make decisions by trusting their gut, their intuition.

It also assures us people will not make a decision until they have a mental picture of how everything will play out and why they can trust your business to make that vision reality.

Showing your customers how things are done not only builds relationships and earns trust, it also gives them more to share that will get people talking about your business.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

Show your customers how everything about your business works so they can become its advocates to the new customers you have yet to discover.

That's how this crazy thing we call digital marketing works and why video is absolutely exploding, especially raw, unpolished, live video that assures us we are getting the real thing.

This week I'm off to Social Media Marketing World in San Diego where I hope to make new discoveries about live video and more that I can bring back to you. If you are not attending, you can still register for the digital pass to get the recordings of over 200 expert sessions.

Look for updates on the Landscape Digital Institute Facebook Page.

The post Digital Marketing: Show Them How It's Done appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 55 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to use content marketing to sell more business by making a difference for customers.

For over 15 years, Seth Godin has been blogging short nuggets of information, insights, and inspiration every day of the week. His track record speaks to the power of content marketing for attracting an audience of people that you can serve.

Seth Godin says that we lay clues with our content that sparks change, thereby giving people permission to take action and acquire the things we sell.

Those products and services we make matter a lot, but first, they have to be discovered by the breadcrumbs that lead to their discovery.

This includes the conversations people hear and the experiences that are shared that casts a shadow that starts days, months, and often years prior. We're all casting a shadow of some kind with our content marketing, but is it helping you stand out in a sea of sameness?

Content marketing is not for everyone for two reasons:

#1. You have to believe content marketing works. #2. You must have a plan for making it work for you.

Everybody sells something. The art of content marketing is putting some meaning behind that by showing your customers and potential customers and influencers what you stand for to cast the right shadow, one that engages people.

That meaningfulness is a combination of what your customers want and how you are aligned with helping them get more of it. This may be what you sell, but it's also what they believe in, which may include environmental stewardship, community involvement, and educating our future leaders.

Telling that story is something that I'm very passionate about, and I hope you are too because it not only helps people discover how you can make a difference for them, it adds value to what you sell.

You only need a plan for making that happen. Here's a simplified approach that will help you to find the gaps in your approach so that you can fix them.

#1. Content Audit

The first step is the content audit. This is a compilation of all of the content you have out there on the web, where it's located, and it's purpose. Focus on the content that is now the most highly visible and that you have control over, which for most people will be your social media accounts and website.

My suggestion is to cut and paste that content into a folder where it can be the controlling copy. My preference is Evernote. I'll edit that to make it a better, date it, and then set triggers to remind me to do it again a couple times per year. Then it's a simple matter to update every version of it that's on the web.

This may start with your LinkedIn profile, let's say, and then carry over to your website, YouTube channel, and so on.

#2. Content Topics

Next, is choosing the topics you wish to address with your content. This goes back to what you and your customers care about besides what you sell, which again may be the environment, community, etc.

#3. Editorial Calendar

Take these topics to your editorial calendar to guide your content creation. Keep this simple. Maybe you stick to just a few themes, rotating them every month or so. If you are a commercial landscape management company, these topics may be managing project costs, safety, communication, and planning. That's one topic per quarter.

#4. Content Distribution Channels

Which channels do you plan to use to share that content? That is, where will it be published? This can be a combination of your website, a blog if you have one, email newsletter, YouTube channel, both personal and business accounts for LinkedIn and Facebook, Pinterest, and Houzz.

Your content distribution channels are where you can and should be encouraging engagement with your communities. This is what distinguishes social from traditional marketing that gives it greater and more sustained impact.

#5. Analytics

You have to monitor and measure your results and make adjustments to your trail of breadcrumbs that lead to the discovery of the products and services your business sells. In addition to Google Analytics, you may wish to consider a business intelligence service such as Cyfe.

There are a few other steps for taking your content marketing to the next level, such as creating a style guide, but implementing these five will put you on solid footing.

Seth Godin wrote his first blog post on January 2002. He just kept going, and now he has a body of work that not only casts a long shadow, many of us find it to be an indispensable source of inspiration.

We are all going to experience shifts in our businesses, but capturing that experience with content allows you and your customers to get the most from it.

If you are an introvert or your business culture is conservative you may not be comfortable with content marketing because creates vulnerability. Depending upon your approach, that may be exactly what attracts more customers to the great products your business makes.

Show Notes

• Check out Content Marketing Roadmap to go deeper on this topic.
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to take this simple, 5-step, content marketing approach to cast a shadow of content that communicates the great work you do, and thereby helps to sell the products and services you make.

The post Content Marketing: Making a Difference that Sells appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 54 of Landscape Digital Show reveals a 5-step writing process formula for creating winning content that captivates your audience.

In this episode, I'm going to share my writing process that has evolved over the years by borrowing secrets from great writers, including novelists, non-fiction authors, editors, screenwriters, copywriters, bloggers and more.

Like any other activity, writing must follow a process. It s the only way to consistently achieve results.

Every day billions of people jump on Facebook, LinkedIn, and so many other channels to share a message, often to accomplish a business purpose. That's usually a written message, but if it's the spoken word like this podcast or a video, I hope at least a portion of it is first written. Why?

Some people can indeed create amazing improv content, but they are rare.

If you doubt this, just rewind in your mind the rambling acceptance speeches of too many Academy Award winners. That's what happens when there is no preparation, and that preparation you will discover is writing.

Whether you think you have writing talent or not, I can assure you anyone can do this better if they commit to studying and practicing to find and perfect his or her process for doing it well.

Here's the writing process that works for me.

#1. Generate Ideas

The first, and in my opinion, most enjoyable step in any writing process is to start writing to discover new ideas worth writing about. You're having a conversation with yourself that leads to accessing ideas that you may have long forgotten or not explored as they are in that moment.

This is one of the secrets of writing. By typing on those keys you are engaging your mind and body, and most likely your heart and soul too. Anyone that has not written a book may not understand this.

I know that I didn't because I desperately wanted to write a book and it took me almost a decade to make it happen. Instead of writing to generate new ideas I was trying to create perfectly written content without doing the work of discovery.

You'll never have everything perfectly organized, so just get started and put in the time to see what your mind, body, heart and soul come up with. And be prepared to thrash around, struggle and fail because that's part of this too.

Trust the process and stay with it because what comes after that struggle will be the ideas for some of your best writing.

#2. Give It Structure

Once I have the thread of an idea I print it out and start looking for the structure. Typically, I'll use a three-part beginning, middle and end structure, just like a screenwriter or playwright will use a three-act structure.

It's a time-tested formula that always works. There are more advanced structures that I use, and that I've discussed in earlier episodes, but this one is foundational.

#3. Write to Completion

Now the true writing begins. And the cardinal rule is that I do not take my butt out of the seat until the article, podcast show, or chapter is complete. You've invested a fair amount of time to get to this point. That's why it's important to use that inspirational flow to go the distance.

It's quite likely that before taking this step I've allowed my idea time to set, giving my conscious and subconscious mind time to work on it. This is something we all naturally do. It's called the Zeigarnik Effect.

The mind tends to work on what's not complete. So, you have to get started to have something, anything, that you can then take to the finish line.

It may work differently for you, but I've personally discovered that not writing to completion is like swimming halfway across a body of water. Turning around means starting over again.

#4. Take Time to Edit

Editing to most people means fixing misspellings and typos. Clearly, that has to be done but there is much more to it. Since most of the content you create will be published somewhere online, you have to ask yourself if you have been true to the theme that is represented by the headline or title.

Often I will find that I can come up with a better headline. After I do, I'll usually have to eliminate, reorganize or rewrite some of the content. Then, I'll create subheadings or improve those that I already have.

After that, I'll scrutinize the paragraphs to make them as tight as possible. This includes breaking out key sentences that can stand on their own, thereby giving them more punch and making them retweetable.

Finally, everything has to pass a visual test for look and feel. People don't read nowadays as much as the skim content for meaning. So keep your paragraphs short, usually no more than three sentences.

And be sure to highlight key phrases and sentences in some way. They can be bolded, italicized, numbered, or featured in a call-out box.

Congratulations. You are done, except that you aren't.

#5. Rewrite, Reformat and Repurpose

If you haven't heard the term writing is rewriting, get comfortable with it because that's what should follow the initial publishing of your content.

A lot of people publish and stop. No, no, no, no, no.

You have to now publish your content in multiple formats to adapt to the desired learning or discovery preferences of your respective audience members.

The good news is each writing iteration makes your content that much better. Trust me, this phase of the process often will take on a life of its own that can go on for weeks, months, even years. And it should.

Think of this as a dialogue with your audience that never stops. If it does the relationship with that audience of customers, influencers, and potential buyers falls apart. This is why I go back to my archives to take earlier content and make it more relevant to my audience today.

Rewriting, reformatting and repurposing are more work, but it s truly where the magic happens. Sadly, most people skip this step in favor of chasing new ideas.

Ideas become what they want to be at a particular moment in time, but they cannot get there on their own. You have to be the guide by rewriting them.

Show Notes

• Here are some of my favorite books on writing:

Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t, by Steven Pressfield – This easy read by one of the masters is informative and humorous. You'll discover fiction and non-fiction writing have a lot in common.

Everybody Writes, by Ann Handley – Ann's book is a great one for both beginners and serious writers. Here's my podcast interview with Ann when her book was first published.

On Writing, by Stephen King – This is both informative and hilariously entertaining. That's why I suggest the audiobook that is recorded by the author.

The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne – You probably need to be a lifelong writer to pursue this publication. It's for serious writers.

• Check out How to Discover and Perfect Your Brand Story for additional ideas on story structure.
• 27 Writing Productivity Tools, Techniques and Resources is a monster blog post that I put together after writing my first book. It's exactly what the title suggests, tools, tips, and resources.
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to take my 5 step writing process and test it against yours. If you don't have a reliable process make mine your own and borrow from those of other writers.

If you don't have a reliable process make mine your own and borrow from those of other writers by exploring the links listed in the show notes.

The post Writing Process: A 5-Step Formula for Creating Winning Content appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 53 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to create a social selling plan for gettin buyers to know, like and trust your business.

As I read that headline I wrote for this article, the phrase know, like and trust strikes me as overused. How about you?

The truth is those words matter more than ever when it comes to social selling.

Social selling is powerful and becoming more so as the technology improves. But you first have to get the basic foundation in place.

It's a fact that people want to buy. They have problems to solve and dreams to fulfill. But they will not take action if everything is not right, and they ll make that decision at a gut level.

Smart people trust their intuition when making important buying decisions such as choosing the company that will beautify and maintain the outdoor environment of their home, their castle, their most significant investment in this lifetime.

When you put it like that, suddenly trust takes on new meaning, doesn't it?

Perfect. Let's get to work building your social selling plan for using all forms of marketing, including social media, for getting buyers to know, like and trust your business.

I. Principles of Social Selling

These principles put a frame around the current selling environment that has been greatly influenced by social media over the past decade.

#1. Business is Now Personal – Most people will not even approach a business nowadays unless they have a relationship with a person in it. Use your media to help them get to know you.

#2. People Like to Collaborate – If you can get buyers involved, they will be emotionally invested in the creation of their own solution, which means they will naturally make the financial investment to acquire it.

People like to be involved. Use your media to give them that experience and they will buy.

#3. Communities are the New Markets – Thinking in terms of markets produces faceless marketing that is not trusted.

Building trust takes time; it comes from being visible and active in the places where buyers are hanging out. That community is where trusted relationships grow.

Remember these principles when choosing your digital marketing channels and the content that you will share to move people to action. First, let's consider the channels.

II. 4 Pillars of Social Selling

#1. Modern Website – Your website is the primary vessel or container for storing and delivering your media content that will help people to know, like and trust your business. Is is personal? Is is collaborative? Does it encourage community?

#2. Intimate Newsletter – This is how you get the word out that you've just published new content on your website or any other channel that will help your community of subscribers.

#3. Consistent Blog – This could also be a podcast show like this one. It's where you consistently provide fresh content that builds your digital footprint and helps your site's ranking.

Trust is a function of relationships, and you cannot be successful them if you are not consistently showing up to add value.

#4. Active Social Media – This should be self-evident but it bears repeating. You have to be actively engaged with your community of buyers if you expect to build trust. If you want to measure how you compare against your peers in this department on LinkedIn, just Google Social Selling Index and check out your score and how to improve it.

The third and final step for creating a social selling plan is where the magic happens, creating social content that sells.

III. Social Content that Sells

Content that sells is content that builds trust because that s what ultimately gets people to sign on the line that is dotted. That content can accomplish many objectives, but in its simplest form it should:

1. Answer questions 2. Solve problems 3. Provide inspiration

Think about media in general and why people tune in. They want answers, solutions to problems, and ideas that inspire them.

Ideally, you want to be their go-to source for all three.

You have to know your audience's challenges to answer their questions and solve their problems. And you have to inspire them to take action so that they can actually enjoy the benefits of what your business sells.

Let's face it, getting people to know, like and trust you is selling. That's why it's interesting that the more recent term social selling implies a different take on social media marketing. Social is personal and selling is personal, so it stands to reason that social media should connect with people on a personal, emotional level.

Social selling is primarily removing obstacles. People want to buy but there are obstacles that stand in the way of them trusting your business, and the same is true for its competitors.

Here are 4 examples specifically for landscaping and lawn care companies that are equally applicable to many other industries.

#1. Overcharging – This is a fear many people have. Addressing it can be tricky because often there is a reason why your pricing is higher than the competition.

Use your media to show them why by being honest about what's built into your solutions.

There are countless things that happen behind the scenes or during construction that justify a higher price. Show people what that is or they will have no choice but to judge the book by its cover.

#2. Unreliable or untrained staff or workforce – Nobody wants to or should have to babysit their project or clean up after a crew.

Probably the best way to convey this with your media is testimonials from real customers. And be sure to get their permission to use their real names because without that it looks like smoke and mirrors.

#3. Unsafe chemicals, pollutants, or irritants – Creating and maintaining landscapes is messy because it's disruptive. The company that wins the business is the one that shows it understands, among other things, local ordinances and how to manage even what seems unmanageable.

You especially want to use your media to show buyers you know what they don't know and can guide them through it all.

#4. Inconsistent follow-up – Communication is vital for building trust. No company is perfect, but those that have systems in place to communicate consistently will build confidence with buyers.

As you can see, social selling with digital media is no different than traditional face-to-face selling. Both require planning and deliberate implementation of that plan.

If you are a beginner, and even if you aren t, keep this as simple as you can. As you progress you'll gain insights and make discoveries about what works best, such as which channels, the type of content, and so forth.

Just keep one thought in mind and make it part of your sales and marketing training:

When all things are equal, and sometimes even when they are not, people will do business with people that they know, like and trust.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to commit to a simple social selling strategy that gets consistently implemented. If you can do that you will be ahead of 2/3 of the companies in your industry. That's what the research proves.

Be sure the cornerstone of that strategy is personally engaging with buyers on a regular basis to develop and nurture relationships. Remember that most people want a relationship with someone in a business before they will approach that business.

The post Social Selling: Getting Buyers to Know, Like and Trust Your Business appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 52 of Landscape Digital Show reveals what your business needs to know to take full advantage of the recent LinkedIn changes.

If you have the new LinkedIn profile interface you know its bigger and bolder.

On the surface, this update looks like LinkedIn has simply polished things up, but the reality is you'll want to make some adjustments so that your connections and people searching for your skills and experience can find you.

If you do not have this new update yet, be patient. Our understanding is you will by the end of the month.

Let s take a look at 6 of the more relevant LinkedIn changes.

#1. The Summary

The Summary used to be a separate section, but now it's part of that top box that includes your headshot photo and headline.

People are only going to see the first 220 characters of the Summary in that box, so you need to make some adjustments to take full advantage of this valuable real estate.

Think of those first two lines of content as a meta-description — a little introduction of the content to follow. Craft this carefully to express who you are and what you do to make a difference in this world.

The goal is to entice people to click and explore your entire profile Summary. So, you may want to include a call to action like this: Learn How In My Summary

You may want to consider putting that statement in all caps.

#2 – Who's viewed your profile

Also prominently displayed at the top of your profile is the number of people that have viewed it. This is valuable information that you want to take action on.

If someone viewed your profile there is a good chance he or she is considering working with you. A friendly response is obviously a smart option.

If you participated in our 1st webinar you ll recall one of the advanced LinkedIn strategies is to view the profiles of the people that you want to work with. They ll see that activity and possibly reach out to you.

Also, this where LinkedIn will make a pitch to sell you on the Sales Navigator, which is the premium service that costs $79/month, because you can only see the 5 most recent views with the free version, but can unlock all of them with Sales Navigator.

#3. Skills and Endorsements

It's possible that LinkedIn is deemphasizing this because they are only displaying your top three skills.

You can choose the three skills that best represent your current business focus. This should ideally be what gets you hired, which may not necessarily be the 3 most popular skills.

#4. Your Experience

The Experience section is now much more important than it has been because most people are not going to click through to read your entire Summary.

Unlike the Summary section where you just get two lines of content, the Experience section for your primary business or position automatically opens completely as people scroll down. But that s only for the first position.

In addition to listing your most important position first, you should add media, which could be videos or links to articles on Slideshare.

If you are not familiar with Slideshare check it out because it's owned by LinkedIn and the easiest way to include articles, PowerPoint® presentations, and other content to your profile. To get to it go to the More button at the top of your profile and click on Slideshare.

#5. Notifications

The Notifications section makes it much easier to engage with people on LinkedIn without losing the flow of the conversation. This is where you will find content that you have been tagged in. For example, I recently attended a networking event and was tagged, along with a dozen others, in that photo.

This is how LinkedIn is feeling a lot more like Facebook. It's one more reason why you will want to invest the time to share content that represents your skills and expertise well.

#6. The LinkedIn Newsfeed

The newsfeed is where LinkedIn takes us most of the time, so it's clear they want this to be central to your LinkedIn experience, and why they designate it the Home page.

The top of the Home page newsfeed is where you make content updates, including adding new articles to LinkedIn Publisher.

It's striking how much it is beginning to resemble the Facebook newsfeed. In addition to the usual content updates most of us have been sharing, I'm noticing more salesy content. Why? Because the opportunity is free.

But don't expect that to last. For now, if you want to get updates out about your events and things like that, you need a nice eye-catching photo to go with it. And I really want to underscore the importance of that photo to avoid getting lost in the stream.

Also, find a balance with the type of content you share because just like Facebook, users can hide content from their feed and block people that are overly promotional.

There s nothing wrong with a little promotion if its relevant to your audience, but that s a slippery slope if your audience is diverse, which it is for most of us on LinkedIn.

All said, I really think these are positive changes for LinkedIn because when Microsoft purchased it there was some fear that it would become too corporate. But clearly, it's recognizing the need to retain its current identity, while taking notice of the trend toward more multi-media content.

In fact, don t be surprised to see live video in the LinkedIn newsfeed real soon. Until then, think about how you will use it to accomplish your business objectives.

Show Notes

• To learn more details on the LinkedIn changes, check out this article from Social Media Examiner.
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to first get into your LinkedIn profile and update your Summary and Experience sections to maximize the value you get from LinkedIn. Then explore the other LinkedIn changes discussed in this episode.

The world is changing and so is our place in it. So, it's vital to periodically refresh your story to stay relevant with the communities you serve. Good luck and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

The post LinkedIn Changes: What Your Business Needs to Know appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 51 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to teach customers to buy by applying an adult learning framework to your marketing.

There are many definitions of content marketing and even more for marketing in general. But at the end of the day, I think we can all agree the ultimate purpose of marketing is to attract the right buyers and guide them toward a relationship with your business.

To do that, we re going to use a framework that compliments how adults like to learn. It s credited to a man by the name of Malcolm Knowles, who is well known for his theories regarding self-directed or autonomous adult learning.

That's what's happening these days when prospective customers are checking out your website, videos and other marketing to make comparisons with your competitors. According to Knowles, the four factors you should consider to move buyers to action are as follows:

#1. Collaboration – Adults want to be involved in the planning or creation of their experience for making new discoveries

#2. Relevance – Adults are most interested in learning about subjects that are relevant to their jobs or personal lives.

#3. Direct Experience – Experience, including mistakes, provides the basis for learning.

#4. Problem-Centered Approach – Adult learning should be problem-oriented.

Let's take them one at a time.

#1. Collaboration

Your future customers have access to abundant media and are often well-informed about their situation. Armed with that information they are usually looking for a guide that can take them further.

People want to collaborate and co-create their own solutions. If your marketing communicates that your business has a collaborative process to engage them you will easily stand out from your competitors.

#2. Relevance

Adults are interested in two things: What will help them better perform their work, because that's where they spend the majority of their waking hours, and how to improve their quality of life.

In the previous episode, we discussed audience outcomes. The challenge for businesses is to thoroughly understand their customers' decision criteria. While surveys are helpful, interviewing them one-to-one is best, according to Adele Revella, the founder of the Buyer Persona Institute.

#3. Direct Experience

Let's face it, most people like to try things before they buy them. Is there a way to test-drive your landscaping services? At the very least, you should help your audience experience what you sell through the lens of your successfully completed projects.

This is why I'm a huge advocate of case studies that showcase the evolution of project solutions from start to finish, including the motivations of the customers, challenges encountered with delivering your solutions, how everything came together, and what's next, like a plan for care and upkeep.

4. Problem-Centered Approach

It's not always natural to think in terms of problems, especially if you consider yourself to be a positive-minded individual. Nevertheless, that's the key to selling more work.

You have to get to the heart of what drives your customers to take action, all the way to the finish line. People get stuck. That's why they contact businesses like yours.

It's up to you to prove that you are the better choice. This includes not just solving the obvious problems, but the ones that buyers don't even know that they have.

You sometimes have to turn up the heat to help them feel the pain of making a poor choice. One of the surest ways of accomplishing this is to show them the why behind everything you do.

People want a product with integrity, but they may not know what that is. So, if you can show them how and why you build that integrity into your solutions, you will not only justify the sale, but also the potentially higher price it should command.

Show Notes

• Check out my interview with Adele Revella to get her entire process to using these interviews to create buyer personas and align your marketing with its ideal audience.
• Buyer or audience case studies are invaluable for making discoveries about the outcomes they value most.
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

Get everyone on your marketing team thinking of marketing as education that teaches people how your business solves problems.

Recognize that it is the responsibility of the business to take every buyer by the hand and guide him or her where they want to go, which is to the successful resolution of their problem.

This is your content marketing in action.

It informs; it guides; it teaches, and all of that sells.

The post Adult Learning: Teaching Customers to Buy appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.