For the past few weeks I have been attending a digital marketing tweet chat on Twitter, #ElevateChat. The chat is hosted by Sarah Clarke of Dufferin Media and she does an amazing job in asking great and challenging questions to all who participate.
This week I found the toughest one yet, the topic was about web accessibility, something I know almost nothing about.
I am sorry to say, I'm guilty!
It's not that I'm not wishing to be super personal and to engage with one person at a time and appeal to their specific goals and aspirations.
The truth is there are just not enough hours in the day to engage with every new connection request and every new follower at a level that I would ideally like. So some automation is inevitable. I'm still experimenting too and have already adjustedsome things.
I'm not using autobots as such, but I am manually adding new connections to my CRM and an automated process and messaging them with the same template message. And no, I don't feel great about it, but it's working at the moment.
My goal is to be engaging and strike up a conversation, share some valuable content and information that is free and at the same time being careful not to pitch anything. Its totally not my intention to do any kind of pitching. Eventually I'd like to have a conversation, which I call a discovery call. And that again is to provide some value, not to pitch.
I have carefully designed this process after weeks of testing it and receiving some deeper level of engagement with new connections, especially on LinkedIn. Anywhere else it's much harder to do. Email is still one of our default go to apps each morning. I know it's Facebook for most too.
I state very clearly in my auto emails that my purpose is to engage at a deeper level and invite recipients to unsubscribe if they wish to and indeed some do, but not as many as I had originally expected. Maybe one every 2-3 weeks.
I do receive a fair bit of engagement from these new connections and I also notice a lot don't. I'm surprised because they asked to connect with me in the majority of cases, at least 95% of them are incoming requests. Usually with no reason given for wishing to connect by the way.
The real engagement occurs when after a few touch points, which are a combination of engaging with their profiles and sharing some content and information, you manage to get agreement for a discovery call. When you are able to engage in a conversation with your connections, more clarity about who they are and what their goals are means that you can start to look out for clues and understand better how they'd like you to engage with them in the future. Over the years I've come to realise that this is by far the best method.
The goal always is to end up having a conversation. I believe by phone and usually Skype with video is best. I'd like to try other methods too, like Facebook messenger with video, although having tried it twice, it's still a bit unstable.
If you'd like to skip all the automation and go straight to a discovery call then by all means go for it and head over here,
http://www.stayingaliveuk.com/lets-talk
in the meantime let me know how you're feeling about my automation and by all means share your ideas and strategies that are working for you?
LinkedIn created a brilliant eBook with my favourite illustrator. @gapingvoid (Hugh Macleod) creates the most amazing messages through his illustrations. Read more about him and@gapingvoidhere: (http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/)
Occasionally I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, interpretation, insight and my meaning.
#contentmarketing #content #socialmedia #engagement #marketing #socialselling #sales #empathy #distraction #purpose #relevance #trust #love #mastodon #why #linkedinlectures
Online is great and talking is even better. Everyone's ultimate goal in business and life is to make real connections, where you meet someone face to face. Before that meeting a conversation is the ultimate icebreaker. I value my LinkedIn connections and realise that I don't really know you or what your goals are and how I might facilitate or support those goals. Feel free to click through and book a call with me (https://www.stayingaliveuk.com/discovery-call/). I have blocked out only Fridays each week, excluding holidays, for calls. Hope to speak with you soon.
@stayingaliveuk
It is said that narrative thought creates stories that are coherent of particular experiences, temporally structured and context sensitive (Baumeister & Newman, 1994).
On a day to day basis you take in millions of bits of data and in order to make sense of it all you literally develop your own daily story with all that data.
You are actually the biggest storyteller yourself.
This means you are already very accustomed to stories and therefore anything that comes your way in the form of a story, you will accept quite readily and weave that into your own story with its own characters, outcomes and timeframes.
Let’s take your trip to the gym. Some of you go daily, 3 times per week or just at the weekend and some of you may not have made it yet.
However, we all have a picture of what a gym looks like. Lots of exercise machines, weights etc., maybe a pool, a cafe and many other amenities.
When you think about going to the gym you almost certainly create a short story in your brain. You see yourself getting up, doing whatever you do, changing into your gym wear, travelling there and doing whatever you like doing the most and travelling back.
You may not include the travelling part, you may just see yourself doing the exercise. Just enough to get you motivated to follow through.
Everything you think about, well nearly everything, develops in the form of a story.
What have you been thinking about lately? Share your answer in the comments below.
You can download the full story by clicking HERE.
#storytelling #content #socialmedia #engagement #marketing #socialselling #sales #empathy #digitalmarketing #storyteller
Online is great and talking is even better. Everyone's ultimate goal in business and life is to make real connections, where you meet someone face to face. Before that meeting a conversation is the ultimate icebreaker. I value my LinkedIn connections and realise that I don't really know you or what your goals are and how I might facilitate or support those goals. Feel free to click through and book a call with me (https://www.stayingaliveuk.com/discovery-call/). I have blocked out only Fridays each week, excluding holidays, for calls. Hope to speak with you soon.
@LinkedIn & @gapingvoid
Unfortunately most of us are in a flight and fight status. This means we come from a place of needing to be heard instead of a desire to listen.
True empathy will only arise when you place yourself in selfless position to listen. When you are an active listener you learn things you would never have learnt if you remain in a position of needing to be heard.
An example I share often is the first meeting at a networking event or maybe even a party. Almost in the first sentence spoken is the question, ‘what do you do?’. My advice always is to avoid answering the question and instead say, ‘why don't you go first?’.
And when they do go first, you follow it up with more questions, placing you in a great position to listen and learn. Often the speaker will even forget to ask you again what you do. They are so wrapped up in the moment of sharing their own story, loving talking about themselves and appreciating you for asking inquisitive and probing questions. Just nod knowingly and avoid responding. The speaker will feel listened to and you come across as having empathy.
The same approach is advisable for the social web.
Listen and ask more questions rather then transmitting your stuff in order to be heard.
Twitter is losing its shine and I wonder why? If you look carefully it's all about transmitting and needing to be heard. The social web has had enough of being transmitted to. We are naturally curious beings and as such the platforms, which have moved towards stories are on fire, because when your stories are being appreciated you feel that your viewers are displaying empathy towards you.
And actually ‘empathy’ = ‘love.
What we want more than anything in the whole wide world is to be loved.
I wonder if you could answer just one question in the comments below please?
What's the one thing you love about being on the social web?
LinkedIn created a brilliant eBook with my favourite illustrator. @gapingvoid (Hugh Macleod) creates the most amazing messages through his illustrations. Read more about him and @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/
Regularly I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, interpretation, insight and my meaning.
#contentmarketing #content #socialmedia #engagement #marketing #socialselling
Online is great and talking is even better. Everyone’s ultimate goal in business and life is to make real connections, where you meet someone face to face. Before that meeting a conversation is the ultimate icebreaker. I value my LinkedIn connections and realise that I don’t really know you or what your goals are and how I might facilitate or support those goals. Feel free to click through and book a call with me. I have blocked out only Fridays each week, excluding holidays, for calls. Hope to speak with you soon.
If you haven't already, I am sure you have contemplated it. The name has a nice ring to it as well 'Digital Detox'. There are now millions of self-proclaimed addicts to digital content. Soon to be billions. And there are plenty of us that are in denial as well.
Brandwatch shared some mind-blowing stats in March 2016. Here are just a few.
https://www.brandwatch.com/2016/03/96-amazing-social-media-statistics-and-facts-for-2016/
In years to come, all those content spewing platforms will be asking us our preferences. Once they know our preferences they will only serve up those bits of content we have asked for. No more no less. Unfortunately this means that we have to make a decision. What do we really need to see on a daily basis? Not what we want to see but what we need to see.
There is a big difference, because as an addict we have many wants and we have to slowly wean ourselves off a lot of the content that we are already addicted to.
The trouble with all of us, we are constantly in FOMO, 'fear of missing out'. That's why we are addicted. If you want to learn why, read my article, 'Do Social Networks Sell Drugs'.
Most of us are on the Internet on a daily basis and whether we like it or not, the Internet is affecting us. It changes how we think, how we work, and it even changes our brains.
LinkedIn created a brilliant eBook with my favourite illustrator. @gapingvoid (Hugh Macleod) creates the most amazing messages through his illustrations. Read more about him and @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/
Each week I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, insight and meaning of the words and illustrations.