Shane Gibson's Podcast – AI and Digital Selling – B2B Sales and Influence

Today’s podcast is more of a rant. We cover everything from customers service, the dangers of believing what you see on Infographics, and my response to Peter Shankmans comments on “Why All Social Media Experts Need To Die in a Fire.”

I cover it briefly in the podcast but here’s my thoughts on Shankman’s statements. It’s been a full week since the post but people keep emailing me asking my opinion on his blog post. (On a side note: nice work on Peter’s part for all the traffic generated).

Here’s my response to a client:

Instead of becoming a best seller like Guy Kawasaki he feels he needs to put down the entire industry to prove his superiority.

There are good and bad accountants, lawyers, authors, sales trainers, digital agencies and Apple “experts” out there. Shankman points out the obvious: be a good marketer, be customer service orientated, don’t misspell stuff, don’t let an intern do your social media. But you do need to help your team effectively socialize… and many of the social media disaster stories we read about every week come from companies that went it alone and didn’t get mentorship or study bast practices that already exist.

Social media is just a tool, you do need a strategy, an understanding of your customer and yes it should be integrated into multiple departments and with the rest of your business, marketing and customer service strategy. (Integration was one of the parts of your assessment).

I do not have a lot of love or time for people giving bad, ill-informed advice and misleading people or as Guy calls it

The bottom line: marketing and sales success principles will prevail… but the platforms for engagement have changed and customer tolerance for pitching or in-authentic engagement has decreased. We are in a new era with new opportunities (and new risks).

Have a listen to today’s podcast rant and let me know what you think!

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Today’s podcast is an interview with @JessicaNorthey, a very sociable social media strategist with a background in broadcast media specializing in helping radio stations and music artists use social media efficiently. Update: She also happens to be ranked as the #1 Most Influential Woman on Twitter by Twitter Grader. We recently exchanged a few tweets on authenticity in social media and after looking at the great work Jessica is doing I asked her to do an interview.

Here’s an excerpt from her bio:

Jessica Northey, SocialMediologist

Tucson Native Jessica Northey is taking over Country Music and Radio one Tweet at a time. Specializing in, using Social Media when you ARE the brand, breaking new artists and strategic use of Social Media for Broadcasting; her optimization techniques are being implemented at top stations across the nation, and her writings/methods instructional material for various programs from Real Estate to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.

She is a Social Media, Broadcasting, Country and Music Blogger/Writer, Nationally Recognized Speaker, On-Air Personality, Daily Columnist for AllAccess.com, the web’s largest radio and music industry community, who owns Social Media boutique firm Finger Candy Media, LLC.

Having a personal network of over 140,000 followers and a second order influence of over 4 million she is consistently ranked in the top 100 most influential people on Twitter (in the world) according to TwitterGrader.com and in the October Issue of Fast Company Magazine was shown as one of the most influential people on Social Media ranking at 109.

This is day 3 of my 30-day podcasting challenge. I will be posting a new podcast every day for the next 30 days. If you would like to contribute as a guest on the show e-mail me at [email protected]. Otherwise, a comment, tweet, or Facebook share would be greatly appreciated.

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Today’s podcast is on Outsourcing Automation and Building Virtual Teams. My guest today is Stephen Jagger (who is also my co-author for Sociable!) co-founder of Ubertor and Outsourcingthingsdone.com. They have a 150 seat office in Manila where they supply North American tech firms, Realtors and a variety of other industries with virtual team members.

I asked Stephen to come on the show to discuss best practices in the area of outsourcing and the technology needed to lead virtual teams.

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Today’s podcast is titled “Professional Speaking for Geeks.” Yes they call it death by PowerPoint and many other things. It’s the art of the bomb, crash and burn — or worse. We get a polite applause and the audience attendees forget about us half-way through the conference wrap-up party.

I have had a number of inquiries from my tech and social media brethren about how to present on stage. Some are gentle questions like “how many slides should I have for a one hour presentation?” to outright pleas for help such as “I’m terrified of audiences over 20 people, how do I present our new iPhone app at this conference?”

Geeks (science or tech savvy and knowledgeable folks who get turned on by pixels, pings, microchips, biology, chemistry, APIs etc.) tend to struggle with presentations, yet if they master the art they can have a massive impact on their business and career (think Steve Jobs or David Suzuki).

Too many people think content is king. Connection is king. Unless you can connect with your audience and engage them effectively your geek speak will mean very little to them. Today’s podcast covers a few insights on better stage presentations.

[This is day one of my 30 day podcasting challenge, I will be posting a new podcast everyday for the next month, drop by, make a comment or share a link to the podcast you posted today).

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Today’s social media podcast (direct download here) and blog post is on how to increase your Twitter following. These strategies aren’t just about the numbers but are proven strategies to attract the right followers. Here are 52 (non-automated) Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers:

Shane Gibson (@ShaneGibson) is a sales and social media speaker who has addressed over 100,000 people on stages on three continents over the past 15 years.  He is also co-author of Guerrilla Social Media Marketing and Sociable! How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside-down.

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Today’s social media podcast (direct download here) is focused on social customer relationship management. Social SCRM (#SCRM on Twitter) is really where sales and social media form a nexus point with customer service, leadership and community. This of course is assuming we use the Social CRM for its intended purpose. Too many organizations fall in love with the tools but they should really be showing their customers and prospects that love. Here’s a great blog post that defines social crm well: “What is Social CRM?”

Monitoring conversations is great – but getting involved in the conversation and being a thought leader is where the true opportunity is. Having a Social CRM strategy is vital, we need to help our sales team understand how to socialize online. Today’s podcast talks about some of the pro-active components that should be included in that strategy.

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As organizations push into the social media space many will start with a social media position, others will have a social media department within their company. This is a great initial step but there are pitfalls and down-sides to seeing social as separate from other business activities. Today’s podcast (direct download here) talks about the whether or not we should have dedicated social media silos or fully social companies.

In my opinion your end goal must be to fully socialize most of your departments from HR to sales, marketing and even the senior executives in the company. What are your thoughts?

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Today’s podcast (direct download here) focuses on the difference between building an online persona or brand versus building you the person/organization. Too many people have a veneer they present to the world. Once we scratch the surface when we interact with that brand or that person we can be disappointed.

There are also brilliant people and awesome brands that don’t realize that their persona is actually hiding the great things about them. Today’s podcast focuses on why we need to build the person, build the organization and forget the veneer.

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I talk a lot about thought leadership in social media. In fact in our Social Media Matrix Stephen Jagger and I label our 5th and highest level engagement “Thought Leadership.” When I talk about social media and thought leadership on my blog, Twitter or live at an event/seminar there’s always a couple of people that moan or whine. They say the word is overused in social media. Funny thing is the term has been around a lot longer than the term “blog” or social media (1994 According to Wikipedia) — it is an integral part of any marketing, community building, or leadership endeavor.

Thought leaders create community, build other leaders, and create unique content that speaks to and helps specific markets. Today’s podcast (direct download here or via iTunes here) discusses thought leadership and it’s importance to marketing, leadership and even your career.

Here’s a SlideShare embed of the model:

As for those that don’t like the term “Thought Leadership” here’s my challenge to you: find me an easy to understand, non-geek or non-tech speak definition that has global appeal and I will gladly use it.

As for the rest of us. Thought leadership is a process of becoming, not an event or clever blog post.  Here are a few of my favorite modern day business thought leaders:

Let me know who your favorite thought leaders are.

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(Download today’s social media podcast directly here)

Today I had the great opportunity to once again have Bruce Philp author of the Consumer Republic on my social media podcast. I was so inspired by our conversation I actually reworked my Socialized! Lunch presentation today to include some very important thoughts that Bruce shared about the future of brands and the true power consumers now hold in their hands.

The idea for this podcast discussion really came from a couple of tweets I posted about Groupon’s recent off-color marketing tactics and my disappointment that their response and handling of comments and complaints seemed to be more about sanitizing and denying versus engagement and authentic apologies. (Still not happy with Groupon’s Super Bowl Ads this was the icing on the cake) Bruce’s question to me at that point was; “what if consumers become discouraged and no longer engage?” (because of this type of corporate response online.) I invited Bruce back on the show to talk about the “Consumer Republic” and answer this important question.

During the podcast the conversation quickly turned toward so-called social media experts bloggers etc. who are often the first to criticize a brand, but personally don’t walk their talk in regards to engagement or even responding to blog comments and tweets.  (I’ve been personally guilty more than once of not returning an email or a phone call due to huge volumes of in-bound tweets and inquiries.)

Have a listen to the podcast and let me know what your thoughts are on the subject. A huge thanks to Bruce Philp for logging on and having the conversation as well.

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