I’ve been following Tim on Twitter for many years and had the pleasure of catching up with him in Melbourne recently.  I also got to interview him about the importance of a website.

Here is what Tim shared with me:

My name is Tim Martin and I’m the principal presenter for NET:101.

What’s the importance of a website?

Well essentially, my view of these things, is that all roads lead to Rome and Rome is your website. So the idea is that sooner or later no matter how people discover you online, through twitter or a social media platform, or through Google Search you’re going to end up on the website. And that website is a very powerful first impression so make it a good one.

It’s also a very important conversion funnel for you, so once you land people on your website, you want them to do something of value that you can measure and as I say adds value to the organisation.  And you need Analytics in there.  Plus it’s your primary publishing point to the web – it’s your ability to get content out onto the web – where it needs to go, at very little cost and you’ve got full control over it.

And speaking of control, you do have full control over it because it or not those terms and conditions you signed when you opened up your social media platforms means they can take it away at any time.  Nobody can ever take your website away, it’s the one thing you’re in full control of!

Make sure your website looks fantastic, it’s humming away, it operates and it’s findable by search. And look after it, it’s an investment.

What’s your website?

Several websites, the easiest one is www.NET101.com.au - that’s the training and education site. Or you can just google Tim Martin.

Connect

Thanks Tim!  And if you’d like to connect, you can follow @2sticksdigital on twitter.  Plus Tim Martin is a popular TEC speaker and runs NET:101 which social media courses around Australia.

Newsjacking by David Meerman Scott

My favourite marketing author David Meerman Scott has just released a new book today called Newsjacking.  Well it’s not literally a book as we used to know them.  It’s  only available as an instant digital download on Kindle or iPad, not as a printed version.

Newsjacking is term David uses to describe the practice of high jacking a news story.  It is done by astute marketers who publish real-time content that fuels a reporter’s desire for a unique angle on a breaking story.

The result: tons of media coverage, worth a fortune, that would normally be completely impossible to obtain.

Chilean Miners

The case study that I am most familiar with is the 33 Chilean miners who emerged from being trapped underground and were handed Oakley sunnies to protect their eyes from the sunlight. This real-time decision earned Oakley over $40 million worth of media exposure!

The same can happen with a timely blog post or tweet that attracts the attention of the news hungry journalists. When you notice an announcement in your industry (please be tracking these with Google Alerts!)  David urges you to post a timely response providing your take on the situation that will ideally be fodder for reporters to use in the second paragraph of their stories.

He also mentions you are much more likely to earn some press coverage if the original announcement doesn’t provide the full story or is full of bland, uninteresting gobbledy-gook corporate speak.

How to hijack a news story

The great news is that kind of stuff isn’t dictated by luck, it can be planned for: provided you have a real-time mindset and a culture that encourages initiative. David even shares his tips for doing so:

1. Find news to hijack
2. Formulate a strategy in real-time
3. Instantly get your take into the market

For more

I really enjoy David’s books and I love the challenge of implementing his strategies.  Previously when I’ve done what he says, it’s worked, so this latest one, Newsjacking will be exciting to put into practice.

It’s available on Amazon for $7.99 and is a nice, easy read and full of concise, actionable ideas. Highly recommended.   If you like, you can follow @dmscott on twitter.

Haven’t times changed since 2007?

Yes, we’ve seen social media sites like Facebook and Twitter explode and some like MySpace, implode.  I agree certainly that internet years are like dog years!

I like how David explains the old rules. There used to be three ways to get attention.

1. Buy it (adverts)
2. Beg for it (press releases)
3. Bug people for it (salespeople)

Luckily, now there is a 4th: Earn attention by publishing remarkable content!

David’s third edition of his bestselling book is full of case studies of organisations large and small that have achieved phenomenal success by embracing the ‘new rules’.  Having read both the second and third editions, I am stilled most blown away by the powerful introduction where the ‘old rules’ are debunked.

Page 7 entitled One-Way Marketing is Yesterday’s Message had me hooked.

Old Rules
A primary technique of what Seth Godin calls the TV-industrial complex is interruption.  Under this system, the advertising agency creative people sit in hip offices dreaming up ways to interrupt people so that they pay attention to a one-way message.

New Rules
The web is different. Instead of one-way interruption, web marketing is about delivering useful content at the precise moment a buyer needs it.

On page 8, David elaborates:

The Old Rules of Marketing
- Marketing simply meant advertising (and branding)
- Advertising needed to appeal to the masses
- Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message
- Advertising was one-way: company to consumer
-  Advertising was exclusively about selling products
- Advertising was based on campaigns that had a limited life
- Creativity was deemed the most important component of advertising
- It was more important for the ad agency to win advertising awards than for the client to win new customers

The New Rules of Marketing
None of this is true anymore. The web has transformed the rules, and you must transform your marketing to make the most of the web-enabled marketplace of ideas.

My favourite quote

Put simply (and this is my favourite quote and message from the book).

“On the web, you ARE what you publish”

My take

In a nutshell, my interpretation of the ‘new rules’ is to publish remarkable content that helps solve your buyers problems.  Publish frequently and share it liberally.

You’ll be rewarded with loads of interested buyers, backlinks which will propel you up the Google search rankings and enquiries from journalists looking for experts to write about.  Most importantly this will lead to genuine customers who appreciate your useful content and love the fact you’re not interrupting them!

Thank You

Thanks David.  On a personal we were excited when you agreed to collaborate with Bluewire on the Strategy Planning Template and thrilled that you included the template in the book. Cheers for the mention on page 153!

You can follow @dmscott, buy his book and follow his blog Web Ink Now.

A Faster Future

A Faster Future

I’ve been reading the book called “A Faster Future” by Brad Howarth and Janelle Ledwidge which has made me realise how big this opportunity will be for those who are ready.

I particularly enjoyed the 3rd chapter “Small Business, Big Potential” (p77).  The benefit for small business owners is that broadband and the web provides them with more power to compete with big business.

Not only can smaller organisations collaborate to tackle bigger competitors but they can now access web tools and software that were previously too expensive.

Outsourcing using sites like oDesk.com and Brickwork India (our favourites) provides access to a truly global talent pool. And of course if you’re doing business on the web you’ve opened yourself up to a global market too!

As buyers

As someone who buys stuff online, broadband has meant an explosion of online reviews which makes my decision making much easier. Ruslan Kogan, founder of Kogan Technologies, explains why on p85:

There is a whole dedicated online retail community made up of users with personal blogs who review products. You can type in nearly any product and the word ‘review’ into You Tube (or Google)… It is far safer to shop online because you’ve got all this information available to you.

Shoes of Prey

My favourite case study from the book is on p91 about Shoes of Prey – an online shoe retailer (no, not Zappos this time) based in Sydney.  On a personal note, I’ve been following the success of the three Shoes of Prey co-founders, so it was no surprise to see them profiled in this book.

Design your own shoes

It turns out they set out to build a product that was a Purple Cow (a Seth Godin term for something so remarkable that people talk about it — like seeing a purple cow in a paddock).

I’ve seen first hand on many occasions, just how much of a purple cow their idea of allowing girls to design and purchase their own shoes on online is.

Girls go seriously crazy over being able to choose their shoe style, the length of heel, the colours and the decorations and they pay up to $375 for the privilege!

Shoes of Prey have embraced social media to allow the word to spead, including a very popular blog. Some guest blog posts have attracted 500,000 visits in a week and their story has even been picked up by the Wall Street Journal.

You can follow @shoesofprey on twitter.

Howarth & Ledwidge’s book gives countless examples of how small business can use broadband and the web to catapult themselves past big (slow) businesses – and for me that is the most exciting thing we have in store for us in the next few years!

You can follow @bhowarth and @janelleledwidge on twitter and check out their book for yourself www.AFasterFuture.com.

Liz was in Sydney recently and I had the chance to ask her a question that had been on my mind for while.  “Do the strategies of a Multiplier apply in the virtual web world (where people are often in separate locations and time-zones)?”

Here Liz explains why it is even more important to apply the leadership traits of a Multiplier in the virtual web world.

Liz Wiseman’s video transcript

So I’m Liz Wiseman and to my friends at Bluewire, in addressing this question, “do the strategies of the Multiplier apply in the web world?”

I’d say, not only do they apply, but they apply even more so; because when we work on virtual teams and in the distance, it’s very easy for us to get project focused, task focused. Here’s the set of work that needs to get done and we delegate it out, call people up, we go through the deliverables and we often forget to figure out what people are really good at and ask questions “are we utilising them, not just for some tasks but are we utilising their deep genius?”

Biotech example

Multipliers

It reminds me of an example of a biotech company and there was one employee in Washington DC and the rest of the team in Silicon Valley. When one of the managers read the book “Multipliers” he asks this new employee out at DC to what extent he was being utilised and he said about 20%.

So he just started to hook him in via Skype to their meetings, let him go first in meetings, kind of gave right of way to this employee out in DC and in a matter of weeks he said his utilisation had gone up to about 80%. All because he identified his genius and started to focus on asking him questions that utilised his deep skill.

Thanks Liz!

You can follow @LizWiseman on twitter or check out her book at www.MultipliersBook.com

When David was in Australia earlier this year, we asked him to explain how to use the template and why it is so useful.

Download it for free

Download the Web Strategy Planning Template (with Bluewire’s design)
Download the Marketing Strategy Planning Template (with David’s design)

They are free to download. No registration is required. And feel free to share with your friends!

PS. Congrats David

The 3rd edition of David’s book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” has just been released. Congratulations David, we look forward to reading it!

And thanks for collaborating with us on the Web Strategy Planning Template.

You can follow @dmscott on twitter or visit www.DavidMeermanScott.com

Here is a transcript:

Two major tips for SEO that are often overlooked are:

1. Use Google Webmaster Tools

Most people have got Google Analytics setup but they haven’t got Google Webmaster Tools setup. The reason you need Google Webmaster Tools set up is because it will tell you everything Google knows is wrong with your site and that is right with your site. Quite often a lot of sites don’t even know that Google hates them and the reason that Google hates them is all outlined in Google Webmaster Tools.

2. Publish often

The second tip is publish often because since the advent of Google Caffeine, Google likes to see fresh content more than ever. I know that it’s something we’ve always said , but since July last year if your competitor was publishing more often than you are chances are Google is going to favour that site over yours.

Thanks Jim!

You can follow @jimboot on Twitter or visit StewArtMedia.biz for an SEO specialist.

Here is a transcript:
OK, it’s Vivienne Storey from Blands Law. We specialise in writing Social Media Policies for companies and I just wanted to highlight an important aspect of having a Social Media Policy and that is as a risk management tool it’s invaluable for training.

Once you’ve developed your social media policy you then have something to go to or start with to train them in the various areas of social media that they need to be aware of before they can engage on the companies behalf.

Thanks Vivienne!

You can follow @mysocialpolicy on twitter or visit www.BlandsLaw.com.au for more.

PS.  Vivienne collaborated with Bluewire to develop the Social Media Guidelines Templates (free download).

Below is a transcript too.

Why social media can be useless

The relational intent that you have in social media is what matters. In other words, you can connect with a bunch of people and have no relationships. That’s not a network. A network is a group of individuals that have your back. A network is a group of individuals where you lead with generosity, you don’t lead with ‘what’s in it for me’.

Lead with generosity

Keeping in touch

Never Eat Alone

The next thing of course is it allows us to stay in touch. Pinging is something that I talk about in Never Eat Alone, which is constantly reaching out, sending emails, staying on people’s radar screen. What a wonderful opportunity using facebook and other forms of social media to stay ‘on touch’ and yes stay connected.

But it’s not a replacement for being relational and going deep. That actually has to do wioth you authentically being generous. Go onto LinkedIn and send a recommendation to somebody that you want to build a better relationship with. That’s the kind of connectedness we are talking about.

So just remember connections are not relationships but they are powerful particularly if we have the relational intentionality.

More about Keith Ferrazzi

For more you visit www.keithferrazzi.com or follow @keithferrazzi.

Common question at workshops...

One of the most common questions I am asked at presentations and workshops is “how do I deal with negative comments on social media?”

After telling a few stories about both good and bad ways of dealing with negative comments, I usually paint a hypothetical situation and let the audience members debate it in small groups and then de-brief at the end.  Each group often takes a slightly different approach and they are all very valid.

The 2 most common responses I hear and advocate are:
1. Personally contact the person who left the negative comment and “show you care”. The ideal outcome here is that the negative commenter is “converted” into an advocate and adjusts his or her negative comment.

2. “Bury the negative comment under loads of positive comments.” If the negative commenter is unresponsive to the option above, try asking your community of supporters to stick up for you.  If your community is strong, they will do this without asking!

Anyway, I have just found this brilliant article by Laurel Papworth that goes into even more detail about dealing with negative comments.  Laurel is a social media community manager and #4 female blogger in Australia.

Here is the entire article, called 8 ways to deal with negative comments in online communities, but I have summarised it and added some of my own comments.

Here are Laurel Papworth’s 8 tips.

1. Ignore the negative social media commenter.

Ignore it and hope it goes away, but still continue to monitor.  Be very careful they don’t set up an anti-community (eg Dell Hell).  Laurel says sometimes the ‘negative comments’ can lead to heated debate which can translate into much needed publicity!

2. Lawyer Up!

Threaten to sue if they don’t remove the comments. Laurel warns that waving a big stick rarely works and you risk antagonising the community and making things MUCH worse.

3. Deflect to a more positive discussion

Thank the commenter, ask for more information and defuse the situation. I personally am a big fan of this one.

4. Remove the comment, Ban the commenter

“Just remember, the community trusts the moderators to keep a social network (like a Facebook Page) safe and relatively free of nastiness – it’s actually your duty to remove really bad comments and commenters”. This is supported by our recent article ‘Technology Lawyer Reminds Us ‘Your Facebook Wall is Your Responsibility!’

I personally think you should only remove defamatory, offensive and malicious comments. I’d advise leaving genuine comments from disgruntled people published or you may come across as nontransparent.

5. Educate the disgruntled customer

“Many a negative comment is a cry for help – telling them how to fix the problem will sometimes kick back a positive review to follow the negative one.” A timely, genuine & sympathetic helping hand often leads to converting them into an advocate.

6. Confess All and Beg Forgiveness

The temptation to say “sorry” to ignorant customers stems from the ‘out of date’ concept of the customer is always right. They are not, so don’t go overboard apologising to people. Laurel says, “Timely apologies for delays and a good explanation and asking for patience is fine. Thanking the community for their input and a promise to get back to them (and do it!) is great.’

7. Stand up and Fight

“Prepare to take on your customer, but not apologise for normal business practices and defend yourselves.” I agree that you can’t please everyone, so it’s worth taking a stand, but I’d personally not try to stir things up too much.

8. Own It and Wear It.

Laurel says, “Some of the best responses to online criticism I have seen have been to “own it”.” If you take the comments on board and ‘own it’ as part of your company’s DNA it can resonate with your ‘good clients’.

If you have 14 minutes, I recommend taking the time to hear Laurel expand on these tips.

Thanks Laurel. You can follow Laurel Papworth on twitter @SilkCharm

I’ve also heard Laurel runs very good ‘hands-on’ computer based social media marketing workshops in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane!