4 Steps to Podcasting Success

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Social Media Examiner Blog 4 Steps to Podcasting Success

I know that many chairs are struggling with the question of whether to launch a blog, but here's another one "broadcasting" strategy I'll suggest. Have you considered podcasting?

I love podcasting since it's so inexpensive, can actually take less time than blogging, and you can crank these out with 5-10 minute "management tips" for your list of CEO leads. It's one way to reinforce why people should connect and engage with you. It gets circulated on a viral basis with others. You can broadcast it through your website, blog, or almost any other place you have a link. The equipment to do it is inexpensive and the learning curve is almost non-existent. Nathan Hangen, on the Social Media Examiner Blog, had this to say about the value of podcasting:

 

Podcasting is like any other content medium. To both provide value and keep your audience returning, it’s best that you have a plan that maximizes your potential.

The most important feedback I can give potential (or current) podcasters is that you should take the medium seriously, possibly more seriously than you treat your blog. I ask that you consider podcasting not as a way to get cheap traffic, but as a professional media outlet.

This is not HAM radio.

 

Is it time for you to consider "authoring" a few short management tips that you can use to engage with your potential audience of CEO prospects? How about using some of the already created tips that speakers and Trusted Advisers have put into the Vistage Village library? I'm sure the speakers and TAs would be willing to allow you to take that content and share it with your prospects.

As you can probably tell from many of my blog posts - content marketing - offering valuable content to your prospects is rapidly becoming the primary method of marketing, lead generation, and lead nurturing in social media. You've got to have a few "platforms" from which your content comes from. These might include a blog as your home base, audio podcasts, and video through a youtube channel. Once you start down the path of content marketing to your prospects, you'll find many ways to "re-use" the same content over and over in different mediums so that you're not forced to be continually "creative".

Sometimes the hardest part of doing something new is just taking the first step. Have you taken advantage of our FREE e-course offerings for the chair community to learn how to get started with social media and content marketing to find, nurture, and close CEO prospects? You may have received one of my notes inviting you to participate in our Coaching Program. Have you put your hand up asking to participate in our personal Chair coaching program for leveraging social to find new members?

If you don't know where to start or what to do - I think Steven Covey called this being unconsciously incompetent - perhaps it's time to acquire the knowledge. If you already know what to do - what's holding you back?

If you would like to read Nathan Hangen's full article, click the link below:

4 Steps to Podcasting Success

Barry Deutsch

Stun Your Prospects - Send a Follow-up Video

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Keith Ferrazi Blog Stun Your Prospects Send a Follow up Video

Here's a great idea when you've had a conversation with a potential member for your group. I got this off of a blog posting by Keith Ferrazzi.  Keith in turn got it from a member of his network.

When you got home, fire off a quick email with a link to one of the Vistage/TEC marketing videos - you can even put your own spliced intro on top of it. And to add icing to the cake, you can create a personalized link for them to download the video. I liked this idea so much, I'm going to start using it in my executive search practice, both with potential candidates, and with potential clients.

Here's an excerpt from Keith's blog post:

 

Step One: Create a short introduction script for your video and film it.  “Hi Sue, this is Keith. I really enjoyed meeting you at the conference and I thought you’d like this two-minute video tip I’ve created on how to [insert your subj matter here] – I think you’ll see it fits in well with what you’re working on.” That’s spliced in with the pre-recorded video tip you’ve created on your area of expertise.

 

Try it. Test it. See if it doesn't generate a few more potential CEOs who go to the next step with you. You could even send this follow-up to them after a phone call. A lot of marketing success comes from continually trying new techniques and strategies to see what works the best. Are you stale in your approach of engaging and nurturing potential CEOs? Is the same system you used 3 years ago still effective?

If you would like to read the full article, click the link below

Creative Follow-up Idea: Send a Helpful Video

Barry Deutsch

 

 

Are You Capturing the People Who Want to Talk With You?

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Are You Capturing the People Who Want to Talk With You?

 Goose Laying a Golden Egg Are You Capturing the People Who Want to Talk With You?

Your email list is your "goose that lays golden eggs". It's the group of potential prospects who have searched for you, stumbled across you, want to engage with you, found your LinkedIn Profile in a search, and been referred to you. Many of these individuals WILL CONVERT into viable prospects for membership in your group (if managed properly). Are you leaving potential prospects high and dry - without any ability to reach out and connect to them?

Are you feeding, nurturing, and tending to your goose (your email list) - or are you ignoring/killing this valuable source of potential CEOs for your group?

Let's review three simple steps in managing people interested in you, your group, Vistage/TEC membership. Using sales management terminology, we might call this "lead generation".

 

Lead Generation Step 1: Management of prospects

How do you capture them if they don't send you an email directly or phone you personally?

Do you have a master email list of names, email addresses, and other useful information about the prospect? Are you using an excel spreadsheet, iContact, ConstantContact, SalesForce.com, or some other tool to capture and communicate with all these people?

Have you automated the collection of names, email addresses, and other important information? Do you have an "opt-in" form that potential prospects can fill out? Do you link everywhere to this form? When potential prospects complete it, does it automatically input the data into your tracking tool like salesforce.com or iContact so you don't have to reenter data?

Is this form on your website? Do you have a link to it in your email signature, your LinkedIn Profile, all your social media sites, like Facebook and others?

Have you benchmarked yourself against other Vistage/TEC Chairs who do a great job in this area?

 

Lead Generation Step 2: Creating a Compelling Reason for CEOs to give you their email address

I love digital downloads. They are very easy to create. There is no cost. You can automate the download so there is no human interaction or time involved. Take a look at what we do with CEOs for our Executive Search Practice. We offer a free e-bo0k, numerous templates, audio programs, reports/surveys, examples, downloadable e-courses. The list is endless. In 5 years, we've developed an email list in the tens of thousands of CEOs interested in improving the hiring accuracy of their companies. You too could offer a high value download. As a Chair, you have more great content at your fingertips than the average person.

What simple digital download could you create within the next few days that would be impactful and compelling enough to encourage a CEO to give you their personal contact information in exchange for receiving the download?

 

Lead Generation Step 3: Market Your FREE Digital Download

Talk about the value of your download in your blog posts, on Twitter, on LinkedIn status updates, in the LinkedIn Groups you belong to, and other on-line venues. Build a series of messages around this template, report, tool that you're offering CEOs.

Once they start giving you their email addresses, and you begin to build your email list, you can start the next phase of "lead nurturing" by communicating with them on a regular basis through an email campaign, connecting and sending messages through LinkedIn, or publishing a newsletter.

 

What's Your Next Step?

How far are you along the path of creating a pipeline of abundant prospects through the very simple tools of lead generation and lead nurturing? You would be amazed at how much of this work can be automated. Give me a call or shoot me an email and let's spend 15 minutes cycling through our lead generation and nurturing assessment template. I'll bet within those 15 minutes, you'll get 2-3 new ideas for capturing and engaging with potential CEO prospects. I'm thinking that this might even be a great topic for one of the Chair e-courses on Leveraging Social Media to Find Members.

Barry Deutsch

Are You Going Beyond the Basics on LinkedIn?

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 TopRank Online Marketing Blog Are You Going Beyond the Basics on LinkedIn?

Dave Fokens, writing on the Top Rank Online Marketing Blog, challenged his readers to consider using LinkedIn beyond the very basic elements of creating a simple profile and doing simple people searches. He suggested 5 key tips in his article. Here's one of my favorites that most Chairs do not take advantage of on their profiles. I'll talk more about this issue when I launch my next Chair e-course on LinkedIn Profiles in the next few weeks.

 

As either an employee or a business, a recommendation can carry a great deal of weight in the eyes of future customers. By essentially collecting success stories in advance you have the ability to create a testimonial page on a highly-trafficked, well-established site that can lead to future opportunities based on your work appearing in searches for specific keywords by others.  These provide concrete examples of a (hopefully) good experience with you in a personal manner. It’s word of mouth promotion in a neighborhood of 90 million professionals. Not a bad target audience for most and one that shouldn’t be missed.

 

Are you leveraging LinkedIn with some of the outstanding networking, contact management, and marketing/nurturing tools they provide OR are you stuck at the basic/elementary level of just having an account and some connections? What are you doing to MASTER the tools LinkedIn provides for you to find and nurture relationships with potential CEOs for your group?

Have you asked every Member and TA with whom you're connected on LinkedIn to write a recommendation for you - not just the same old "He's/She's a good person" - but rather a specific success of the value you added through Vistage /TEC to them in their business - have the folks writing the reference/testimonial make it very personal - even quantifiable if possible (we could probably devote an entire blog article to this one subject).

To read the full article by Dave Fokens, click the link below:

LinkedIn Marketing Tips for Companies and Individuals

Barry Deutsch

Are You Turning Off Your Network From Referring You?

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Andy Lopata Networking Blog Are You Turning Off Your Network From Referring You?

Do you "un-inspire" your network to refer you?

When was the last time you kept a referral source updated on the progress of their referral? When you did you thank them for the referral? Did you ask for their assistance in building the relationship with the person they referred?

Most referrers want to be intimately involved in the process of helping you with the referral - why do most people resist this and try to go it alone?

If you looked at all your referrals right now - let's pretend it's 20 referrals you're currently working on - when was the last time you touched based with the person who referred them? How often do you stay in touch with the person who referred them?

I've made numerous referrals to chairs over the years through my network and I am stunned at the number of times I don't get a call for months - if at all - on the referral status. Getting thank yous, being asked to help with the initial introduction, and being kept constantly alerted to the status of the referral are so basic to networking and referrals that I'm shocked most people don't do it. Why does that happen?

The problem is that if you screw this up with your referral source - they'll stop making referrals - you'll wonder why that well dried up. They'll never tell you. They'll just start giving referrals to your competitors.

What's your track record of communicating with your referral sources?

Here's what one of my favorite blog authors, Andy Lopato, on networking and referrals, had to say about this issue:

 

I was out with friends last week. I knew that they had referred some very good business to a mutual contact of ours, and he had gone on to win the contract. I mentioned that I had spoken to our mutual contact the week before and helped him with some introductions which would help him deliver to his new client.

My friends were disappointed when I told them this. They had helped him by referring the business, why had he not approached them for help with the connections? In fact, as the initial referral was their client, they would have expected him to keep them involved throughout. 

Not only had he not kept them informed and involved. He hadn't even thanked them properly.

 

How often do you think these conversations occur behind your back about you?

To read Andy's full article, click the link below:

How To Lose Referrals With Ease

Barry Deutsch

Are You Creating a False Sense of Networking?

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Being Kintished Blog 300x63 Are You Creating a False Sense of Networking?

Will Kintish, author of the Being Kintished Blog, wrote an article that reminded me of the false sense of security you might have regarding networking.

Many professionals are falling into the trap of thinking that networking (with the ultimate purpose of gaining referrals) is being on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Like Will, I love social media, and think it can play a very valuable role in the networking process - But it's NOT the heart of networking.

Here's the quote from Will's blog article that reminded me to step occasionally away from my computer and meet members of my network:

 

Networking is building relationships:  know-like–trust are the 3 key steps to achieving this. How can you get others to like and trust you simply through the computer. I do believe you can start a relationship online and even reinvigorate and reinforce but no-one will ever convince me you can build a sustainable relationship with anyone.without the face-to-face meeting.13213732 1190780300805054500?l=kintished.blogspot Are You Creating a False Sense of Networking?

 

Of the time you invest in networking (5%-10% of your total workweek), how much time really goes into face-to-face meetings for the purpose of building stronger networking relationships? Don't include pitches, presentations, and meeting prospects. I'm talking about face-to-face meetings to foster stronger relationships to gain referrals to CEOs who could become part of your group. Everybody complains about not getting enough referrals. I'll contend that the number one mistake of seeking referrals is not having a strong enough relationship with the referral source along the three dimensions that Will talks about: KNOW-LIKE-TRUST.

What's your plan for building relationships with your best referral sources to get them to like you and trust you (by meeting with them personally and frequently) in the coming year?

To read the article on Will's blog, click the link below:

Network? Sure, I network. I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook all the time.

Barry Deutsch

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