Shane Gibson's Podcast – Social Selling – B2B Sales and Influence

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.

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).

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:

* Have a custom background that tells what you do and who you are

* Have a complete bio with keywords that people search for

* When you follow people, find something to comment on or ask a relevant question to let them know you’re there and are conversational and community focused

* Make sure your Twitter profile is recognizable and real. Photos of celebrities, cartoons or logos tend to get less follow-backs than a profile with a real smiling human face.

* Follow people who recently followed your competitors

* Follow people who are complaining about your competitors

* Follow-back those that follow you. Many will un-follow after a period of time if you do not follow-back. Avoid following spammers, pornbots or anything that doesn’t resonate with your values or personal brand of course.

* Look at your competitors public lists and follow those that are relevant

* If you’re a local business use Twitter local search to find people talking about your business, industry or community and follow them (remember to interact)

* Search for relevant industry #hash tags ( ie #scrm #rechat #bieber or whatever your target market talks about) follow those people, then as per #3 – reach out and communicate.

* Use relevant #hash tags on topics, conferences, and issues and attract more followers

* Search Twellow.com for regional influencers and follow them

* Search Twellow.com for industry specific or topic specific people and follow them

* Register for Twellow.com and fill in the expanded profile and bio section, you will show up in more searches.

* Change your Twitter bio from time to time to attract new markets through search

* Put your Twitter address on your business card, brochures and any other printed material you give out

* Have a decal designed and put your Twitter address on the back of your laptop (I have had a number of new and interesting followers and it’s a good ice-breaker at coffee shops and airports)

* Finish all of your blog posts with a short bio that suggests people follow you in Twitter

* When making comments on blogs, many ask for a web address – give your Twitter address instead

* Have a prominent Twitter badge displayed on every page of your site and/or blog that links to your profile

* Let your Facebook and Linkedin connections know you’re on Twitter and ask them to connect.

* In Linkedin Groups (relevant ones) ask members as a topic discussion to share Twitter profiles with each other and suggest you also connect on Twitter.

* In a tasteful non-spam format let anyone on email lists, meetup groups YOU operate and other online groups that you’re on Twitter and would love to connect. This is often done best as a side-note or footnote in a regular Meetup update or email newsletter blast. Emails and updates titled “Follow me on Twitter” are generally considered bad form.

* Target regional (all regions your market to) influencers (not necessarily Twitter superstars) on Twitter and put them on a private list. Monitor their discussions and updates and pro-actively have relevant discussions, RT (Re-Tweet or Share) their updates and promote things they are promoting. After a period of time they will take notice, often following you and even sharing your content with their network.

* Follow anyone who retweets your content and thank them (except of course spambots)

* Use backtweets.com to find out who is linking to sites of interest or competitor sites.

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.

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?

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.

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:

Banff Western Connection Conference Stephen Jagger and Shane Gibson Sociable!

View more presentations from Shane Gibson

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:

* Jeremiah Owyang

* Jay Conrad Levinson

* Arrianna Huffington

* Tim O’Reilly

* Charlene Li

* John C. Maxwell

* Rob Cottingham

* Bruce Philp

Let me know who your favorite thought leaders are.

(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.

I first met Guy Kawasaki at an Olympic Tweetup here in Vancouver a little over a year. My co-author Jay Conrad Levinson had already filled me in on Guy, and Jay may have even used the word “enchanting” when he described Guy. He seems to arrive and light up a room and make everyone around him feel at ease, when guy speaks about marketing and leadership business leaders listen. When Guerrilla Social Media Marketing was being written Guy was #1 on our list as the person to write the foreword, and we were absolutely honored to have him do so. He is a true guerrilla marketer and his use of Twitter and the creation of his site Alltop.com make him a social media thought leader and innovator. He also is an Apple Fellow and the driving force behind the creation of the Apple Fanboy many decades ago (a movement which is still in full force).

When Guy’s book Enchantment was being released I responded to Guy’s announcement and asked him to do a podcast interview. In the interview we discuss:

* Enchanting brands

* Social media marketing

* Enchanting today’s worker

* How to resist enchantment

* and the difference between enchanting brands like Apple and Zappos and mainstream run-of-the-mill brands

Below is an “Enchantment Info Graphic” to accompany the podcast:

 

Last week we posted part 1 of our seven part social media assessment. In this week’s podcast I will talk briefly about how you can assess social media effectiveness on various networks including Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and sites like YouTube and Flickr. Each social network could be a full one hour podcast on their own – but today I have given you the 20,000 foot view. The major focus of the assessment is to determine how prepared you are technically and culturally to engage in two-way conversations with your stakeholders. It also looks at your ability to provide content that is filled with contrast and relevant information for your market.