A game plan to generate a thousand social media leads.

/in /by

I have a goal and a plan to attract 1,000 leads in the next 30 days.

Six months ago I launched my Gitomer Certified Advisor program. It allows others in the coaching and training field to use my brand and sell my classroom training and my online platform along with their offerings – or by itself.

After a very successful (but limited) launch, I want to take the program to the next level and need to find interested and qualified people to do so.

THINK ABOUT YOU AS I TELL YOU ABOUT ME. Before I get into the strategy and actions I’m going to take, I want you to understand why I’m writing about the process. I want you to compare it to how you attract, how you prospect, and how you connect with willing buyers.

  • How do you get leads?
  • How do you prospects?
  • What is your strategy to socially involve and attract?
  • Is your personal platform strong enough to attract?
  • What is your social media lead-conversion rate?

The answers to these questions will significantly impact results.

BIG PICTURE: The strategy for this ‘attraction campaign’ is to use every form of social media and electronic outreach to find interested people, and offer them multiple ways to connect with me. The goal is to give information immediately without a barrier of registering or giving me their information. I want to get my messages BOTH responded to and passed along.

THE TARGETS: In order to get 1,000 leads, I am going to mass mail my contacts and connections AND specifically target existing coaches, existing sales trainers (corporate and independent), and anyone looking to start their own sales training business that wants to use the Jeffrey Gitomer brand to increase authenticity. As a Gitomer Certified Advisor, I provide them with the content, the brand, and the training to make it happen.

TIMED SOCIAL MESSAGES: Posting time and frequency are directly proportionate to the audience reached and their likelihood of response. From my personal experience, my social media consulting expert, Joe Soto, and the article, The Scientific Guide to Posting Tweets, Facebook Posts, Emails and Blogs at the Best Time in The Huffington Post, the best times to post on social media are as follows http://blog.bufferapp.com/best-time-to-tweet-post-to-facebook-send-emails-publish-blogposts:

Facebook. Best post times are between 1 pm and 3 pm Monday through Friday; engagement rates are 18 percent higher on Thursdays and Fridays.

Twitter. Tweet later in the day. Re-tweets on Twitter are higher at 5 pm compared to any other time during the day; the best times to post are between noon and 6 pm. This same study found that people are on Twitter 181 percent more during their commute. Think about it. Aren’t you more likely to be all about your life and how to improve it before or after work?

LinkedIn The Media Bistro suggests LinkedIn is most often used right before and after work hours (specifically on Tuesday and Thursday, but no one knows exactly (except maybe LinkedIn).

Blog readers read in the morning, with the ‘sweet spot’ being Thursdays around 11 am. But that’s a subjective opinion as well.

YouTube has no ‘best time.’ By comparison to others, its visitors are more search oriented, so I intend to be both searchable and findable. And my new video posts will go out to all my existing subscribers.

CRAP SHOOT REFINED: No one really knows. All messages are different, and all experts are flawed. (I’ve been proving that for years.) I believe that content is a bigger key than what time you post it. And key words will get you found. So that’s where I’m concentrating. I’m going out to my audience, and asking them to go out to their audience (re-tweet, repost, forward, like, comment, and anything else that spreads the word organically).

My overall goal is to generate at least 1,000 leads by May. You may think that is an aggressive goal, but highly achievable through social media and email. Generating 1,000 leads will create a pipeline that will lead me to one sale per day by June 2014.

And I am going to give you the complete detailed outreach plan for you to use as a guide to creating your own game plan for new leads – next week.

If you’d like to see the exact email and subject line I’m going to use, go to www.gitomer.com and enter the word ADVISOR in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Lessons Learned from Corporate Branding and Rebranding Efforts of Note

/in /by

Lesson: Don’t fix what’s not broken
Coca-Cola learned not to tamper with a beloved brand in 1985 when it decided to re-stage its iconic brand with “New Coke.” The public was outraged and let Coca-Cola know they didn’t want a “new” Coke. They wanted their old Coke, literally a quintessential icon in American popular culture. Coke responded within a few months and brought back “Classic Coke.” Classic Coke sales rebounded. Although New Coke remained on the shelves, it eventually faded from store shelves. Some commentators felt the move to New Coke was a marketing gimmick to regenerate interest and sales in the brand after sales erosion due to the “Pepsi Challenge” taste test campaign. Don Keough, company President, responded to the charge saying “We’re not that dumb, and we’re not that smart”.

Lesson: Expansion may require a bigger umbrella
International Harvester changed its name to Navistar International in 1986 when it sold its farm equipment business and entered the truck, diesel engine, and bus markets. Although the name is “made up,” it broadened the brand and has strong connotations of movement and direction. As a 2013 company report* stated, “Navistar was selected as a name with a strong sound, a resonance to Harvester, and a connection to its root words “navigate” and “star.” It does all of those things and has since become the name of the holding company over multiple Navistar divisions, International Trucks, and MaxxForce Diesel engines.

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 

About the Author

CEO Miller IngenuityWith more than three decades of management, executive, consulting and speaking experience in markets all over the world, Miller Ingenuity CEO Steve Blue is a globally regarded business growth authority and ‘turnaround specialist’ who has transformed companies into industry giants and enthralled audiences with his dynamic keynotes. In his upcoming book, Outdo, Outsmart… Outlast: A Practical Guide to Managed, Measured and Meaningful Growth, he reveals why seeking growth and surviving growth are equally perilous, and require different sets of plans to weather the storms. Steve may be reached at www.StevenLBlue.com.

Top 10 Cyber Security Tips

/in , /by

These days, more people than ever use technology, including mobile devices, to conduct their professional and personal business. Companies of all sizes place incredibly valuable data in cloud-based repositories, and hackers are constantly testing new ways to gain access.

For these reasons, it’s more important than ever to safeguard vital assets with sound cyber security practices – and to remain vigilant to prevent breaches. Here are 10 cyber security tips that can help you reduce vulnerability:

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 

About the Author

Bill Carey is Vice President of Marketing & Business Development at Siber Systems Inc., which offers the top-rated RoboForm Password Manager software.

The Advisor’s Corner – How Do I Establish a Decision-Making Protocol?

/in , /by

How Do I Establish a Decision-Making Protocol?Question:

What can we do to clean up decision-making habits in my workplace? No one seems to know who is making which decisions and it’s driving us all crazy!

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

Leaders get into trouble far too often simply because they don’t have good decision-making protocols in place on their team or in their business. If a decision matters to you, then make your decision matter!

Here are several all too common scenarios:

  • People keep wondering, “Who is making the decision about…?” and feel they are powerless to do anything in the meantime.
  • Someone comes up to you and says, “Why didn’t anyone tell me about that decision; it impacts my work?”
  • Another person says, “Well, if she’d already made the decision, why did she ask me my opinion?”
  • You hear, “When will he decide – he’s holding up everything at my end!”

There is such a simple way to prevent these and many other ‘dropped balls’ from happening in your workplace. Once you get in the habit of asking these 5 questions of yourself and/or your team, each and every time, you’ll find it could take as few as 60 seconds to get to the answers. Even better, it will save you and others frustration, confusion, hard feelings, lost time and lost profits. Best yet, you’ll gain more respect from those you lead because they can trust you to make decisions well.

5 Key Decision Making Questions

1. WHAT IS THE DECISION that needs to be made? BE EXPLICIT including who and what will be impacted. You need to know exactly what is to be decided. There are often layers of related decisions that need to be made – that’s why you need to start here. When you can clearly articulate the decision, you know what it is – and when you can’t, you don’t. So begin with a lot of clarity.

2. WHOSE DECISION IS IT? Again, you must BE EXPLICIT. This is essential to know and communicate upfront to the people who are impacted. Are you the decision maker? Is it a group? Do you want input or do you want others to make the decision? I’ve often observed that more anxiety is created by not knowing who is making a decision than even the decision itself. And, people lose trust if you pretend their input matters when you’ve already made the decision.

3. WHAT METHOD will you use to decide? Will this be a consensus decision everyone must be able to live with and support? Is it a majority, a plurality, or 2/3 vote, a unanimous agreement, or something else?

4. WHEN WILL THE DECISION BE MADE? The timeline is important for you and other people who are impacted. With a timeline, the decision can be managed well and people can get on with their work. Taking too long or not long enough can be frustrating and create unintended and even dysfunctional outcomes.

5. HOW AND TO WHOM WILL THE DECISION BE COMMUNICATED? This is often overlooked, and yet the success of a decision depends so much on how well it’s communicated. Consider who needs to know, who’s the messenger, how it will be shared, and through what means – in person, by email, over a loud speaker…Often the choice of messenger sends a message all it’s own – is it you, a team, your boss, someone else? The message will be perceived differently depending on the messenger.

It takes a lot of time and energy and sometimes money, to clean up the messes that happen when your decision-making is reactive or ad hoc. I really hope you will make it a point to be proactive in your decision-making because it’s a lot more fun when you are running your life and work instead of letting life and work run you.

About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice 11 – Identify Risk-based Business Performance Assessments

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice ArticleOrganizations expend significant personnel and financial resources on well-performed business performance assessments and the implementation of follow-up performance improvement actions. To reap the appropriate return on their investment, executives and managers must carefully select the self assessments to be performed such that they directly support achievement of organizational goals and values while mitigating its most significant risks.

Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

Subscribe Now!

Not sure? Click here to learn more.

 Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice 11 – Identify Risk-based Business Performance Assessments for just $2!

Access the Article Now!

Return to the Business Performance Assessment Program Forum

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.