Exercise and I have a vexed relationship. I don’t like to sweat and when my heart-rate rises, I’m sure it’s bad for me and I slow down immediately.
Now I’m on the wrong side of 30, my vanity is flourishing and I’ve joined the gym. Walking through it during a busy lunchtime period recently, feelings of intimidation take me back to a childhood spent being chosen second-last for all sports teams, and the anxiety that coursed through me every time a ball came into the outer field where I stood daydreaming. Balls and I do not get along. (more…)
Some years ago, I moved from Sydney to Melbourne in pursuit of a guy who was a terrific flirt. After surprising him with my interstate move, he invited me to his place for dinner. While dinner was cooking, he pulled out the guitar and sang me a Tom Waits song. If it were possible for humans to melt into a puddle, that’s what I would have done.
Done well, your marketing works similarly (although dinner is two-dimensional and has no aroma). Done well, your marketing warm people up through witty repartee, searing insights and quirky originality.
Done well, flirting graduates to fandom, and sales.
Fandom
Fandom is not about slavish devotion and group think; fandom is about recognising ‘your kin’ in the digital arena, and hooking up to their email list, subscribing to their blog, or following their business on social media. Fandom doesn’t necessarily translate into imminent sales but helps build a business’s reputation through word-of-mouth endorsements and ‘social proof’.
Fandom solidifies casual browsers into solid prospects and, most importantly, helps to spread the word about who you are and what you do.
Depending on your business goals, blogging and social media marketing may:
Educate on the benefits of your offerings;
Highlight the particular issues, inconveniences or problems that your offerings seek to alleviate;
Educate on the nuances or particulars of how you do what you do, and why;
Overcome any misconceptions or misunderstandings about your modality;
Highlight the unique approach of your business;
Grow your email list;
Increase inquiries;
Increase referred web traffic;
Sell.
Attracting and repelling
Effective business blogging and social media marketing should attract and repel in equal measures as readers segment themselves into ‘your people’ or ‘not your people’. We need to strike a skilful balance between just enough personality and style – not enough and your marketing is too dull to engage with; too much and you’re attracting ingratiating sycophants, not people who are in the market, actively seeking what you sell.
I’ve heard people compare personal stories in marketing to condiments in cooking – they add spice and interest, but you wouldn’t eat only condiments, because that would be gross.
When I suggest at my marketing courses that effective marketing repels as much of it attracts, most people give me a dubious look that says “are you serious?!” But marketing cannot appeal to all people. That’s not the point.
Ineffective marketing neither attracts nor repels. It’s like a cup of lukewarm tea – tolerable, perhaps, but far from appealing and most often overlooked entirely. Ineffective marketing is far too general, indistinct, and, ultimately, invisible.
Asking for the sale
Among health and wellbeing professionals, people tend to fall into two camps – the social media fans spend a lot of time cultivating their community, responding to comments and flirting with the best of them, but fall down when it comes to asking for the sale.
Or, they don’t understand online and social media marketing and are skeptical about how it could translate into sales.
Their blogs and email newsletters, if they have them, tend to read like a collection of sales copy with little appeal to clients who aren’t already intending to buy.
The flirtation is important. The dude that attempts to bypass the flirt and go straight to the ask normally gets a quick cold shoulder. The warm-up flirt precedes the ask, and the same applies to your business. Unless your prospect is primed and raring to buy, you’re unlikely to make a sale the first time you ‘meet’ online.
But you also can’t flirt forever. Eventually, you have to get over yourself and ask your flirt on a date. You’ve invested time, money and effort into slowly, skilfully and lovingly doing business with you. They’ve shown interest by engaging on social media, signing up to your email list and commenting on your blog.
When it’s time to ask, ask. Don’t hesitate or waffle or sound doubtful or nervous. You’re the guy in the nightclub. You need to sound confident if you’re to engender confidence. Ask.
Note from Brook: I first met Lauren in 2012 in Byron Bay when she came along to one of my online marketing courses. We kept in touch and collaborated on her community building free project, Capturing Gratitude. Late last year, Lauren became a business coaching client and very quickly launched her first digital program, A Daily Dose of Bliss. Over to Lauren …
Business coaching case study
My work as a clinical psychologist in Mullumbimby, near Byron Bay is thriving, and I have wait lists. But I was keen to develop online offerings so that I could have more time to spend with my family and my own self-care. I already have a few audio meditations for sale on my website so I wasn’t a novice to online selling, but I really wanted to launch my e-course ‘A Daily Dose of Bliss’ that I’ve been developing for a couple of years now. I decided to engage Brook as my business coach because I’d worked with her before and I knew she knew her stuff and I wanted someone ‘in the know’ to support me during the launch.
Within a couple of weeks of commencing, I opened the doors to my online shala and invited people to purchase. The experience was very nerve-wracking and, of course, plenty of hard work and late nights, but I was thrilled that 37 people signed up in the first run. I’m just about to run it a second time and, hopefully, many more times into the future.
Brook helped me in those pivotal days to focus on the key tasks that were essential, not only to the smooth running of the course, but reaching the people who would be most likely to benefit and would purchase. She was, variously, my teacher, trainer, cheer-squad, confidant, accountability coach, and business manager and it made the whole experience that much more easy.
Shining a light on finances
Brook helped me to concentrate on the economic realities of my business. Like many creative people, I’m far more interested in sharing my work and creating new offerings, both online and with the face-to-face iRest Yoga Nidra courses I run, but Brook helped me to examine what’s working and what’s not, so that I’m set up to reach my financial targets.
Dreaming big
Since starting coaching, I’ve been encouraged to dream big and have moved outside my comfort zone – sometimes, well outside! Supported by my lovely husband Stefan, who looks after the technical details of A Daily Dose of Bliss and other digital conundrums, I’ve pitched myself to festivals, streamlined my websites, cut out a lot of unnecessary details with running Capturing Gratitude, and written a plan for A Daily Dose of Bliss.
Through various exercises and homework tasks that Brook has given me, I have a much clearer and deeper understanding of exactly who is best suited to my business and how I can best reach them. I feel that my marketing communications, from email newsletters to social media and blogging, is far more strategic and effective at appealing to people and helps to make their lives easier, simpler, happier and more enjoyable. This was the reason that I created online courses in the first place.
I want my business to be meaningful for me, to provide well for my family, and to make a positive contribution to the world. I donated ten per cent of the cost of my online course to Krama Yoga in Cambodia and have many more plans for the next course, and the one after that.
Brook is a great combination of supportive, plain speaking, encouraging, and firm when required. I love the work that I do, and I now feel far more confident in the online arena and sure of my place in it.
On October 31, 1517, a monk named Martin Luther in Germany nailed a lengthy document of 95 theses that he wished to debate onto the Wittenberg’s castle church door. At that time, the doors of public buildings were often used as a bulletin board to ignite debate and ask questions about civic issues.
This is social media.
Although written in Latin, rendering them indecipherable to most of the townspeople who saw Luther’s issues, the next day was All Saints Day, so the numerous visitors came to the church and saw Luther’s document. Word soon made it to the Archbishop of Mainz, who forwarded a copy to the Pope, and soon all of western Europe knew about Luther’s challenge to papal authority.
Luther’s public act of making his grievances against common practices in the church, most notably, the sale of indulgence whereby sinner could pay for their sins to be forgiven, was a type of social media. He found a common thoroughfare, and made his communications public. This form of communication was an early example of social media.
Social media enables you to share your voice
At Sydney Theatre Company on Walsh Bay Wharfs, there’s a large blackboard in the ‘Bar at the End of the Wharf’ where theatre-goers congregate, drinks in hand, before and after productions, as well as during intermission.
It’s decorated with the name and themes of the latest production, along with the scrawlings and sketches of theatregoers. Chalk is provided and theatre-goers are encouraged to leave their comments and a piece of themselves behind. This is social media.
Social media helps you get noticed
Father Rod Bower of Gosford Anglican Church on the New South Wales’ Central Coast isn’t afraid of getting noticed. He uses the church’s notice board outside his church in Mann Street, Gosford, to express his views on topical issues relevant to his local community.
About 20 months ago, he widened his audience significantly, through posting photos of the church’s sign board on Facebook and Twitter, starting with his sign, “Dear Christians, some people are gay, get over it, Love God.”
Father Rod’s unflinching opinions which are critical of both sides of government seems to have a lot of fans. He taps into public debates on social issues and doesn’t shirk complex or controversial topics. As his online community shares his photos, his signs are sometimes seen by between 80,000 and 500,000 people around the world. This is social media.
The medium is not the message
In Marshall McLuhan’s cult book The Medium is the Massage, Marshall argues that technologies are the messages themselves, not the content. Playing on the words of his of-quoted saying “the medium is the message”, Marshall suggests that, while consuming media is relaxing, our pleasure is also deceiving. “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (The Medium is the Massage, page 26.)
Much has been written about the influence of a medium on a message. And this is not a blog post about how to format or alter your approach as you take your message onto Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest. But perhaps McLuhan made too big a point of it – perhaps we’re too focused on the medium at the expense of the message?
The effect of the internet and, in particular, the increasing popularity of social media, is much scrutinised at the moment. The results of a 2007 study into the internet’s effects on the brain, titled ‘Your Brain On Google’, by a trio of psychiatrists at UCLA led by Doctor Gary Small, are often quoted – particularly how brain activity is far more extensive for the experienced web surfers than the newbies, notably in areas of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is associated with problem-solving and decision-making.
But heightened brain activity does equal heightened intelligence and it’s this ‘wired’ feeling which is at least partially responsible for other undesirable side effects of prolonged internet use, including insomnia and anxiety.
Psychologists are reporting higher numbers of people presenting with social anxiety exacerbated by social media, a phenomenon that’s leading to calls for regular stints of ‘digital detox’ on weekends and holidays, typically by heavy social media users. Numerous studies show that heavy social media use by individuals prone to anxiety can worsen it. But the same may be true of reality television, and these began in the 1990s or, some argue, as early as 1965 with Chuck Barris’s The Dating Game. For someone prone to social anxiety, talking with or seeing particular individuals may also exacerbate anxiety, but nobody’s calling for restrictions on friends or telephones.
The Medium is the Massage argues that modern media are extensions of human senses and some would argue that smart phones have become extensions of our hands. Naysayers tut-tut about the decline in modern manners and the decay of civilisation, echoing the sentiments expressed when rock and roll music took off. Seems the kids are up to their old tricks of upsetting the status quo again.
The threat of collaboration
Whether a document nailed to a church door, a church sign-board, or a blackboard at a theatre, social media is inherently threatening to traditionalists because it invites feedback and seeks collaboration. Feedback and collaboration necessitates a process of greater transparency, which means being more accountable, more willing to change, and more open to examining mistakes and failures.
Twenty-first century business recognises collaboration as key to its survival. It embraces participation from customers because it knows that the emotional investment customers put into feedback brings a sense of ownership and tacit approval of the worthiness of an offering.
But, unlike the safety of an anonymous suggestion box by the door or the privacy of confession with your parish priest, social media is open and exposed. It invites the moaners, the haters, and those with a sense of entitlement. It uncovers average and subpar products and businesses. And, for managers and businesspeople who’ve grown up without the passage into adulthood of selfies, sexting, trolls and the skillful management of online personas, social media for business may feel amateurish, unprofessional, exposed, and unnecessarily risky.
This is your social (media) business
Too often, businesses that don’t understand social media simply bury their head in the sand without explaining why they’re bucking a trend as a compelling piece of their marketing story.
Poorly managed social media can cause spectacular public relations disasters – stories which are spread by skeptics to justify their resistance. Too often, businesses jump on the bandwagon without taking the time to understand the nature of social media, and show their ambivalence towards its value as a business tool by delegating responsibility to young, unpaid interns. Unsurprisingly, young people whose experience of social media is only as a personal tool, with no training or mentorship in public relations, customer service or crisis management, are ill-equipped for complaints, disasters or trolls.
If you’re going to ask for feedback into your business or offerings, you need to demonstrate that you’re receptive and taking action on information given. Not only will this increase rapport, but it also builds a business’s reputation for integrity.
Your social business is competing not only for attention but for engagement – and key to this is understanding what people care about. Being bland and agreeable on social media is being ineffective and invisible. A skilled social media community manager walks a line between understanding social trends and moods while expressing the personality and ethos of your business. Your social business asks for feedback and implements this. Your social business is interconnected. Your social business keeps up conversations with thousands of leads simultaneous. This is a gift. Use it.
Kate Alexandra has only just started teaching but has gone about things differently from most. When Kate decided to start offering yoga classes in the front room of her house, she didn’t just set about marketing and open her doors for business. She approached things very smartly, using tools which were totally free, and has been booked out ever since. (more…)
Hustle & Heart equips business owners in professional services to grow their business and reputation. Through business coaching, short courses, live masterclasses and peer-led masterminds, we help you to increase your profits and take-home pay, design a YOU-shaped Offerings Ecosystem, and say something worth listening to.
On October 31, 1517, a monk named Martin Luther in Germany nailed a lengthy document of 95 theses that he wished to debate onto the Wittenberg’s castle church door. At that time, the doors of public buildings were often used as a bulletin board to ignite debate and ask questions about civic issues.
Kate Alexandra has only just started teaching but has gone about things differently from most. When Kate decided to start offering yoga classes in the front room of her house, she didn’t just set about marketing and open her doors for business. She approached things very smartly, using tools which were totally free, and has been booked out ever since. 
