Linkedin in is a powerful tool for B2B sales enablement, engagement and prospecting. This is a presentation given to our global sales force at BreakingPoint on how to use the capabilities of LinkedIn to move from being an online resume to online resource.
Last night it finally happened, the Dell Inspirion that I had been using for the past six years (not to mention three house moves) gave up the fight. First off, this was a solid computer. Used for nearly every facet of my life during the past six years including:
Alas, all good things come to an end. The research towards a new computer begins today, but I’m looking for suggestions from all of you, who know me fairly well at this point. Tell me what computer would work best for my family, here are some critical points:
What say you loyal reader?
What is the one habit you can’t kick? You have one; at LEAST one. Want to know one of mine? I have to drink two cups of coffee in the morning and then one diet Coke with lunch and then one more coffee at 4pm. There you go, I’ve included a habit with my obsessive compulsive disorder. Habits come in a variety of flavors, ranging from innocent to life-threatening.
Habits are often placed in a negative light, and in most cases rightfully so. Yet as a B2B marketer one of your goals is to create habit-forming campaigns in order to lead generation and cultivation. Why do you use drip email? Why do you execute webcasts on a monthly basis? Why are advertising buys predicated on daily, weekly or monthly runs? The list goes on and on, but ultimately you should be planning out your activities so that you can take advantage of the natural habit behaviors of humans, which I assume your customers are ultimately, until the robots take over.
The first time I came across this concept was after reading Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore
It’s time to introduce habitually good marketing to your audience.
Conversation is defined, in many dictionaries, as the “informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc., by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy”.
Communication is defined, in many dictionaries, as the “imparting or exchanging of information or news”.
Let’s agree that the definition of Conversation should change a bit, to at least include “written words” along side those that are spoken.
Now, a question for you.
On Twitter, do you have Conversations or Communications with people?
On Facebook, do you have Conversations or Communications with people?
On eMail, do you have Conversations or Communications with people?
On the phone, do you have Conversations or Communications with people?
Reposted with permission from Stagira Inc. and Jason Stoddard:
Community Management FTW! (extending the conversation from the Ubiquity Marketing unSummit)
Join us for a Webinar “flashcast” today at 3:00 pm CST Community Management FTW! Registration
Aaron Strout and Kyle Flaherty
The boys from bean town and recent transplants to the Live Music and Social Media Capital of the World, Kyle Flaherty, Director of Marketing at BreakingPoint Systems, and Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered Inc. do a “re-do” on their panel from last week’s Ubiquity Marketing UnSummit on Community Management. During this 45 minute webinar, they’ll cover the “do’s” and “don’ts” of community building. We’ll also leave some time to harass Aaron and Kyle for the RedSox trailing the Yankees for the division championship, live “chat” questions, and attendee participation.
Title: Community Management FTW!
Date: Friday, September 11, 2009
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM CDT
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
Teaching is the blood of our culture, without it we cease to learn from those who may be smarter, but almost certainly have a different way of looking at a topic. Too often people, particularly those who deem themselves “gurus” or “experts”, forget that what people need the most is a teacher to show them the ropes. People do NOT need to be ridiculed publicly for sending out a bad PR pitch or not understanding how to Tweet properly. This is all new territory, there are no rules, people are depending on you for guidance. People need you to teach them what you have already learned.
It has become easy in our hyper-connected world to dismiss the notion of teaching people new skills and instead rip people down when they do something that is perceived to be wrong. Perhaps it is part of human nature and we are just seeing it come to the surface more because of new communication tools like Twitter or perhaps it is just laziness. But I like to think that the teachers are out there doing it silently, or at least not beating their chests incessantly. The teachers are willing to simply provide people with good nuggets of information, no kudos needed.
During Labor Day weekend we were visiting with family in St. Louis and it was wonderful how many people asked me, “What the hell is (insert social network here), I just don’t get it?”. Each time it was an opening for me to explain what I thought it was, how it works and potentially how this person would use the platform. It was invigorating to hear people around the dinner table then share ideas on how to use Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. At one point I even took out my laptop and showed some of my slides I put together for the Ubiquity Marketing unSummit. The saying is cliche, but if I did teach one person one thing that weekend it was worth the time.
Are you a teacher?