Fishing Can Teach Us Something About Blogging

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I came across this interesting article on the Problogger Blog, which was a guest post is by Kevin Cullis of MacStartup.com.

Kevin made an interesting comparison between blogging and fishing. As you already know, this is the metaphor we use to describe the process of recruiting in our program "You're NOT the Person I Hired". We talk about the need to fish in deep waters and how to attract/lure the right talent to your "hook". The key problem we identify in that program is that companies settle for fish floating near the surface that are not always the best talent.

Marketing through blogging has a lot of similarities to the recruiting process. Finding candidates (CEOS for example) is not unlike conducting an executive search. Where are the fish hanging out, what's the right bait (content), and how do you hook them?

Kevin describes 6 steps to leveraging blogging as a fishing metaphor to attract and capture the attention of customer/clients (read: CEOs). Here's a small excerpt from his blog post about "where are your customers?" This is subject we cover extensively in our Chair e-Course on Using Social Media to Find, Attract, and Nurture potential CEOs for your group. Publishing Blog Posts without regard to where your potential CEOs might be reading them is a complete waste of time.

 

Step 3: Where are your customers/readers? Where do they visit, hang out, and connect with other readers of their tribe of offline and/or online connections? You have to know where are the ideal locations or “awesome fishing spots” for your customers/readers. Try fishing for salmon in the backwoods of Kentucky and you’ll go hungry.

If you would like to read the full blog post, click the link below:

What do fishing and blogging have in common?

Barry Deutsch

 

 

Great Quote about Networking

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Dave Clarke, writing on the Business Networking Blog, made the following quote in one of his posts. I found this quote to hit the proverbial nail on the head when thinking about the effectiveness of networking - particularly in the context of networking through social media, such as LinkedIn.

 

 Success in networking (offline and online) comes down to building a manageable number of relationships amongst people with influence amongst the right audience. Then motivating that network to advocate you.

 

So many individuals consider networking to be the accumulation of contacts. A more important element of collecting contacts is as Dave Clarke mentioned - those contacts are influencers with your target audience. How many of your contacts have numerous (let's say more than 10) trusted and influencing relationships with CEOs that would be excellent candidates for your group?

Let's take the example of TAs. You interview the TA as someone you would like to build a relationship with over time and obtain referrals from.  Let's pretend the TA is the Managing Partner of a local law firm. The TA claims to have numerous relationships with CEOs. After two years and zero referrals for your relationship-building efforts, you actually discover that he has lots of CEO contacts in his rolodex, but very few trusted and influencing relationships among his clients.

Does this suggest you should be more careful in selecting whom you're willing to invest time with in relationship-building? OR does it suggest that a better approach is needed to validate and verify the claims made by those whom we are trying to strike up a relationship in our network for the purpose of generating leads and referrals to CEOs?

This is my major contention about why networking for leads and referrals fails so often: The individuals to whom we are connected do not have strong trusted and influencing relationships with their connections.

To read the full article on the Business Networking Blog, click the link below:

Are You Building Strong Ties with Your Network?

Barry Deutsch

Social Media is NOT About Collecting Contacts

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Eggs_in_One_Basket

Is your focus on LinkedIn to collect contacts as a primary social media strategy like putting eggs in a basket hoping they’ll hatch OR is your focus on communicating/interacting with your network (LinkedIn Connections)?

So many individuals jumping on the social media are allocating way too much time in just acquiring contacts. There should be a good balance between acquiring contacts and communicating with your network.

In drafting my latest Lesson for the Chair e-Course on Leveraging Social Media, I was covering  this exact issue. I was so bold as to suggest that the process of collecting contacts without high engagement/communication was a worthless activity – bordering on a complete waste of time.

Although you might want to sustain a continuous level of acquiring contacts, such as sending invites, researching contacts, seeing who is connected to your contacts – I’m going to recommend at least 50% of your time on social media should be spent communicating, interacting, sharing, and responding. This is how you build a loyal, dedicated following of interested folks who are passionate in absorbing what you have to say and your thought leadership.

I’m very curious how you engage, communicate, interact, respond, question, share on LinkedIn with your network.

What’s the frequency of your communication?

What tools do you use?

How often do you look for opportunities to interact/respond?

What have you found to be the most valuable approach for you in engaging your LinkedIn network?

Barry Deutsch

PS – If you’ve not done so yet – is it now time to take our FREE e-Course for Chairs on how to leverage social media to find and engage with potential CEO members?

Your LinkedIn Profile: Is it Time for Check-up?

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Is it time to give your LinkedIn Profile a Check-up?

Instead of the abbreviated amount of space in a few bullet points on your resume, or a bio,  LinkedIn provides you with unlimited space to describe your accomplishments, achievements, honors, awards, and recognition.

Bonus: LinkedIn also provides you with the tools to provide support for your claims through video clips, audio recordings, white papers, powerpoint presentations, and blog articles.

Many of the profiles I look at are nothing more than simple chronological resumes with very brief information. Boring, mundane, and lacking any impactful information.

Imagine when you send a note to someone inviting them to connect with you on LinkedIn – or when someone sees your profile as a connection to one of their key contacts – what’s the first impression they have of YOU?

Are they blown away? Does a little switch click on in their brain that says “I must get to know this person?” Or is the reaction bleh, blah, or shoulder shrug? Most profiles on LinkedIn deserve a shoulder shrug at best!

Is it time to spice up your profile?

  • What’s your headline say about you?
  • Do you give me a compelling reason in your summary for me to want to connect with you?
  • Am I astounded by what you’ve accomplished in your life?
  • Do we share similar groups, interests, book lists?
  • Do I get to read on your integrated blog why you’re a thought leader for CEOs?
  • Do I get to see how much value you’re putting into your twitter stream through the integrated twitter application?
  • Do you reinforce the brand that is YOU through powerpoints, video, audio, and white papers?

Plain, vanilla, boring, mundane, unattractive, and average just doesn’t cut it in attracting potential CEO members. You need to stand out, be different, offer a compelling motivation to connect and engage?

What does your network say about your profile on LinkedIn? This is your marketing brochure. It’s your personal brand. It’s your calling card. And it’s advertising all wrapped up in the most powerful business network on Earth.

When should you give your LinkedIn Profile a Check-up?

Barry Deutsch

PS – Did you download the LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment Tool I mentioned in a previous blog post?

Members Active in Social Media - CEO Member Referrals Explode

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Find Top Talent Through Social Media and Social Networking

Referrals and leads for CEOs are at a minimal level from your members' social media connections with other CEOs because the whole social media networking arena is still in an early adopter phase.

As I've been preaching, your participation in this discussion group, reading my blog, and taking the Chair e-Course I run on how to leverage social media will put you way ahead of the power curve when using social media becomes more commonly used by the vast majority of small and entrepreneurial businesses.

However, I am convinced we can drag a large portion of your members into inserting their toe into the water of using social media. Once they begin this "putting their toe in the water" process, I do believe the floodgates will open in their recognition of the many areas in which they could use social media in their companies.

For example, social media could have a dramatic impact on employee engagement, customer interaction, customer service, marketing, sales, pr, and recruiting. Of all these uses of social media, I might be a little biased - but I think recruiting lends itself to immediate use and ROI. Some of the areas may be a little more of a reach to tie quantifiable outcomes to the investment of time spent on social media.

Recruiting through social media (OR social recruiting) can demonstrate it's impact/ROI/benefit immediately.

As a result, I've developed a Speaker Program to teach Vistage/TEC Members how to leverage Social Media to find and recruit top talent. I'm delivering this program to a Vistage Group this week for the first team. The big question I've got is how it will be accepted by the CEOs. Will CEOs perceive there is both a benefit to them personally using tools like LinkedIn and to their executives and managers?

If you would be interested in receiving a PDF of the Slide Deck for the Presentation, please let me know and I'll forward it to you. I am also considering putting together a short 5-10 audio-podcast narrated overview of the Speaker Program.

A number of Chairs have been pushing me to create a similar program to the Chair e-Course I lead for Vistage/TEC members to use in learning about how to leverage social media for their sales function in terms of lead generation and nurturing. Although this appears to be an interesting application - I still think the use of social media for most Vistage and TEC members will first come through the recruiting function.

Once that happens and CEOs start to get personally committed and active in places like LinkedIn, you should start to see your referral and lead generation explode.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this observation that a little education on how to use social media in recruiting for your members might be the tipping point.

Barry Deutsch

Can You Be Found On LinkedIn by CEOs?

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Does Your LinkedIn Profile resemble a Lighthouse Beacon?

Is Your LinkedIn Profile Adequate? Are you a "beacon" that others can easily find when searching for a local leadership coach, a leadership expert, leadership networking, or leadership advice?

Does your LinkedIn Profile Scream out "STOP Your Search - NO ONE ELSE comes close to my level of leadership expertise and you should be considering Vistage Membership?"

If Your Profile is NOT causing executives who find  you on LinkedIn to stop in their tracks and want to pick up the phone to call you immediately, you're missing a lot of potential members through a very simple and passive strategy.

This strategy is called personal branding and building an effective LinkedIn Profile is one of the first steps.

Brad and I created a LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment Scorecard for Executive Candidates to use in their Job Search. The same document can be easily used by Vistage Chairs to assess their own profile and improve upon it. Here's the link to download this free self-assessment:

Click this link to download our LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment

Here's my recommendation:

1. Take the Profile and score it. You can download the LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment Scorecard here.

2. Send it to me by email.

3. I'll shoot my Step-by-step guide to building an effective Profile on LinkedIn.

3. We'll schedule a 30 minute phone call for a complete "LinkedIn Profile Make-over".

Barry Deutsch

Find CEO Members Easily: Referral Networking Is Everything

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Referrals through Networking and Relationship Marketing Should be your primary strategy

For most high value sales professionals, coaches, consultants, and speakers – referral networking is everything. All the other noise you engage in with marketing and generating leads – cold calling, putting on webinars, attending networking events should take a backseat to referral marketing.

I was reminded of this the other day when reading a blog post on the Sassy Marketing News Blog. Here’s a snippet from the blog post about the effectiveness of referral networking.

 

Referral networking is perhaps the best tactic to grow and sustain a business. Referral networking is the process of gaining referrals from friends, associates and satisfied customers. You work with other respected and quality companies to support each other to grow and prosper. It’s easy to implement and the results can last a lifetime.

I’ve got 25 years of experience that reinforces this simple and basic concept. In our own executive search practice we’ve noticed this on a number of dimensions:

  • Over half of our new search assignments come to us based on a referral. The referral could be a satisfied customer, someone who downloaded our free book “You’re NOT the Person I Hired”, or a twitter follower who liked our tweets about hiring top talent.
  • Well over 95% of all executive candidates who received an offer from one of our clients came from a second-third level referral. Rarely was the first person contacted the winning candidate who got the job offer.
  • Most successful senior executives have told us over the last two decades that almost everyone of their job leads and opportunities came from a referral vs. responding to a job advertisement on a job board.
    If referral networking is king to generating leads, opportunities, and sales – why then do most sales professionals, consultants, coaches, and speakers insist on spending time on ineffective and non-productive activities? Where do you spend your time in hunting for leads, prospects, and opportunities?
    Barry Deutsch

Are You Using Local Marketing Tactics to be Found?

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Buzz 101 Blog

Social Media sites and tools are beginning to expand that help drive leads, referrals, and business to your local business (CEOs in a specific defined territory, city, or market).

Perhaps, the marble analogy summarized on the Buzz 101 blog brings to light the importance of including local marketing tactics in your overall strategy to find members. Here’s the analogy I liked from the blog post:

It’s crucial to submit your website to as many local directories as possible, not just the major ones. The reason for this can be explained with an analogy. Imagine your website is a marble, and a local business directory is a stack of marbles. Someone who’s looking for a solution gets to select a couple of marbles from the stack and then choose their favorite one.

With a hundred different local directories out there, not everyone will be picking out of the same stack. Some directories are more specific while others are broader. Therefore you really want to make sure you’re putting yourself in a position to be found, regardless of where people are searching for your products and services.

To read the full article on Local Marketing, click the link below:

Local Marketing Strategies

Barry Deutsch

Should You Belong to LinkedIn Groups?

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LinkedIn Personal Trainer Blog

Steve Tylock on the LinkedIn Personal Trainer Blog described the importance of LinkedIn Groups. He did a survey and found that one-third of individuals responding belonged to 26-50 groups, and just a handful didn’t belong to any groups.

You’re probably a member of the Vistage Group in the US, or the Canadian TEC Group, or the group for whatever country you host your physical group in. If you’re reading this post, your also a member of the Group I run for Chairs on How to Leverage Social Media to Find and Attract Potential Members.

We did a previous session in our Chair e-Course about leveraging groups in your local community, territory, or city. If you took the Chair e-course or are currently enrolled, did you add valuable groups in your local area that might contain potential CEOs?

Here is a small snippet of what Steve had to say about LinkedIn Groups:

Useful

That’s the word of the day – no matter how you intend to use LinkedIn, belonging to relevant groups is useful.

They help research, connect, and promote – and while you might not want to do any of that today, it’s not necessary to do anything until you’re ready.

To read the full blog post on the usefulness of LinkedIn Groups, click the link below:

Success With LinkedIn Groups

Barry Deutsch

Get a Daily 15 Minute Exercise Plan for Using LinkedIn

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Ghostwriter Dad Blog

Just like that disciplined exercise plan you follow through on every day, your social media activities can also benefit from a little structure. I came across this article written by Sean Platt of the Ghostwriter Dad Blog. Sean describes in words the approach I take to my social media time investment. He was speaking to freelance writers about leveraging LinkedIn. Many of these same activities apply to Chairs.

Ready for my corny analogy of comparing an exercise plan with leveraging your time on social media, such as LinkedIn. (Be glad I didn’t use another analogy to coaching high school girls basketball). Just like any exercise plan, the more focused and disciplined your plan, the more you’ll personally gain. Social media is exactly the same. It’s easy to get “lost” or “distracted” and feel like you’ve just wasted 3 hours. I prefer to do my social media work in small time increments like 15 or 30 minutes with a very specific action plan of what I want to do in that time period. I also separate what could be on-going maintenance/conversation/posting/interaction with projects, such as setting up a new account, creating a short white paper, or writing  blog post.

This “engagement” side is an important part of social media. Just showing up, having hundreds of connections, friends, and followers – and then “lurking” in the background is worthless. To gain any leverage, you must interact, share, ask questions, answer questions, share, be helpful, respond, share, and engage with others.

Where does this engagement level of a few minutes a day take you? I’ll give you quick example. I was recently named the number ONE on-line influence for recruiters by HR Examiner based on a number of different factors – primarily of which on-line engagement was a large metric. In the two weeks since that announcement, I’ve received hundreds of congratulations from my network, 2 requests for radio show interviews, over a dozen requests for guest blog articles on “A-List Blogs”, and a couple of reporters called for interviews over the phone for articles they are writing. That’s just a few of the requests and accolades that have come from that recognition of engagement in the recruiting and hiring arena.

Here’s a link to the HR Examiner article if you would like to see the criteria for areas like reach, relevance, and influence.

As a Chair, you can do this too. You can create a powerful reputation, image, brand, pr, awareness in your local community for CEOs that would be a perfect match for your groups. The question is whether you’re willing to invest 15 minutes a day for 2-3 years without a significant return or pay-off. Why do you have to wait 2-3 years (read my next article on the analogy of how social media is a lot like the book “The Little Engine that Could”.

Would you be willing to invest 15 minutes a day in being active on the primary social media site that could generate an abundance of member leads and referrals? How would you modify this list for your unique situation? Could you be this disciplined to accomplish all these tasks in 15 minutes?

Here’s what Sean recommended to freelance copywriters in how they should spend their 15 precious minutes every day on LinkedIn:

Once you’ve identified your groups, here’s your daily 15 minute to-do:

  • Post an update to your profile. Profile updates are less critical on LinkedIn than on other sites, but still show you’re using the site and are updating regularly. (1 minute)
  • Respond to invitations to connect. You can arrange for these requests to be sent directly to your email in-box, too. (1 minute)
  • Add additional contacts. Each time you approve a request to connect, you’ll automatically be shown other people you may know. Spend a few minutes looking for potential new contacts and requesting additions to your network. (3 minutes)
  • Read current updates in your groups, and respond to questions and conversations. (4 minutes)
  • Post new threads in your groups with related topics and points of interest. (3 minutes)
  • Request introductions. Spend a minute asking for introductions to anyone you may want to “meet.” (1 minute)
  • Write a recommendation. LinkedIn allows you to write and receive recommendations from your contacts. Writing a recommendation creates good karma, and increases the likelihood someone will write one for you in turn. (2 minutes)

If you would like to read Sean’s post on the Ghostwriter Dad Blog, click the link below:

How to do LinkedIn in 15 Minutes a Day

Barry Deutsch

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