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.

A good friend of ours Liz Watson, gave us the heads up on Scott’s presentation for Portable Talks when Adam was reading Scott’s book “Making Ideas Happen“. It was great timing and a fantastic presentation. Personally I believe in the adage: ideas are 1%, execution is 99% and Scott has dedicated his time to the 99%. His presentation ranged across all sorts of techniques from checklists, through to meeting patterns and technologies – all focussed on the execution of ideas.

It was perfect timing for us at Bluewire as we try to speed up our web strategy and web design projects’ delivery times.

[It was so good in fact, that when Adam and I saw it in Sydney, we booked 3 extra tickets for the team up in Brisbane!]

So at the end of the presentation I asked Scott: “What is your number 1 tip for making things happen fast?”

The answer: Take action without conviction, take a little action and take it fast. Check out the video below. Thanks Scott!

Transcript:

I’m Scott Belsky and please to answer a question for Bluewire Media.

The question is: Could you please reiterate your number 1 idea for making things happen fast and then how that might apply to web projects or which web tools might help?

One of the things everyone needs to think about is that with any idea that comes up, that we feel comfortable acting without conviction sometimes. Often times that means rather than thinking about when to start thinking about it, and who to start speaking to and when to take a test, just take rapid action. Rapid action to talk to a specific person about it and decide the next step. Or rapid action to draft it up and send it around for feedback. Or rapid action to buy the domain name. Whatever it is, these little actions are sometimes what help us break the seal of hesitation that often gets in the way of having an idea and actually see it transpire. I think in any sort of web development project, new business, new product, new service, when you have that inkling of an idea, push yourself to find the first action you can take and then take it quickly and see where it takes you.

Adam and I went along to another great Verne Harnish Rockefeller Habits event put on by The Growth Faculty on Tuesday and sat next to Derek Hodge, a TEC (The Executive Connection) Group Chair.

With a full day of Verne under our belts and sharing ideas, Derek invited me to join him the next day for a TEC presentation by Marcus Child (@digitalmarcus) titled “Leading an Engaged Culture”.

What a cracking few hours! Marcus was incredibly energetic as a presenter with great practical ideas around leadership and staff engagement, not to mention some incredible results to report. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you go to see him.

I videoed Marcus afterwards and asked him the question: “How can we use the web to build an engaged culture?” . The video is below.

The quick take home for me: The web can be used to really bring leadership messages to life through visual and audio, and enable them to be shared so much more easily!

Thanks again Marcus!

The video

It’s 2.03mins (transcript below):

Interview Transcript:

Hello my name is Marcus Child.

I’ve been speaking to the leaders of TEC today and that’s my work! Speaking to people all over the place, describing to people how they can get an engaged culture. And think about how we might use the web for that.

My own story, a year ago, somebody said to me: “Marcus, you do these talks, people really enjoy them” (really nice things) “but afterwards a few months after, they say: how do you keep it alive? How do you keep the messages because I’ve forgotten what you said?”

So I made a series of Digital Marcus. Made a website, and made a series of downloads, all audio downloads – mp3s – which people can listen to on their mobile phones, listen to on mp3 players, download onto their laptops, listen on the tube, when they’re driving.

And do you know it’s made a massive difference. For my business it’s been marvellous, but also for people to keep the message alive. I sold 25,000 of these things in the first 6 months! Ever so strong! And that’s been really good for me. I’ve decided to blog, and give people videos and footage of me working – just to keep the thing alive.

With some of my clients we do the same thing. Literally MDs and other people in their organisations, are finding ways of not only blogging, but sharing what they’re saying, what the latest newscast is in a podcast, in a really quick mp3, which gets shared around the business for everyone to get the latest message.It’s a much more modern, powerful way to get to see, feel and hear your leader in action.

And I think there’s a lot there. I think there’s something about replay it, build it into an accessible device, and it can be ever so colourful. And way better than the black and white of a page.

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.

That’s what I was told when I had the pleasure of meeting Wendy Ackland, Emmy Kerrigan and John ‘JV’ Vickary at an AMI social media workshop that I facilitated in Cairns.

It turns out Andrew Griffiths is Australia’s best selling business author, from Cairns and quite a character!

Andrew Griffiths is a small business author, professional presenter and advisor. Here is his interview on how writing a book is an effective marketing strategy.

How did you end up writing a book?

For me it was interesting. I’m not one of those people who started out wanting to be a writer. I know a lot of people that’s their dream in life.

My route was a little bit different. I had a small business marketing firm basically at this stage and I found a lot of my clients had similar kinds of issues. They’d come in, they needed advice and they didn’t normally have any money and they couldn’t afford a consultant to give them advice  to steer them through whatever challenges they were facing. Over a period of time I developed a whole pile of fact sheets so people could ring me and say:

“Hey Andrew I’m having trouble marketing my business or I need more clients or I need to make a brochure, or I need to do a website”, or whatever it may be.

I can could just fax them (back in the days when we used to fax) I could just fax them through the information sheets.  And I found that one day I had about fifty of these fact sheets up on the wall actually in this kind of display case. And if I thought, Ah well maybe I could write another fifty and then I’d have one hundred and if I put them all together in one little space, maybe I could have a book “101 Ways to Market Your Business.”

And I really liked the idea. I spoke to a few friends in the marketing game and they said:

“It’s a ridiculous idea, so don’t do it.”

And of course I did it.

I was a little bit lucky too because right at the time when I had put that together, there was a lack of Australian business writers, and particularly in the small business space. There were a lot of American writers, a lot of English writers who had great stuff but the Australian business market wanted Australians to be telling them how to run a business or to be giving them advice.

So my first book came out with Allen & Unwin and I was still amazed that I actually got a book published. And it was really successful and they said:

“Have you got another one?  Do you want to write about something else?”

So I literally worked my way through marketing, sales, customer service, advertising, general business advice in the ’101 Series’. Now it’s sold in fifty countries around the world. Translated into everything from Indian to Chinese, Nigerian, Russian, you know bizarre…well bizarre for me! But it also shows that small business around the world have the same issues and challenges, it doesn’t matter where they are. They’re still struggling on how to market or how to use the online world or whatever it might be.

How important is it for businesses to be writing content?

It depends on the business, of course, but I think that these days people want information, that to me is the real commodity out there these days and we often undervalue our own information, and what we know: our expertise. And businesses should be producing as much information as they can but they shouldn’t necessarily be giving it away.

We’re entering a period where there are opportunities for businesses to actually increase their revenue stream by maybe selling some information as opposed to just giving it away. What’s important right now is you’ve got to take out what’s in your own mind, your own experiences, your own expertise and it’s great if you can actually get that out of your head and into an environment where more people can access it–whether it’s paid or whether it’s free, depends on what you’re doing.

I think we’re living in that Age of Information so people are looking for it and hunting for it, and if they like what you’ve got to say they are more likely to do business with you, so it’s a great promotional tool.

What impact has writing had on your career?

Writing really has changed my life. One hundred percent, one thousand percent, in reality. Before I wrote I was a commercial diver by trade. So that in its own right says that was a pretty major change. I got into marketing through a strange set of circumstances that seems to happen in life when you have a change in direction. I was working for a large Japanese company as their sales manager at a global level, so I was in that corporate world for quite some time but my passion was really small business.

I love small business and I love helping small business owners. I think writing my own book helped me to become more of a household name and helped me reach tens, hundreds of thousands of small business owners.

And a lot of the time I don’t think we value our own knowledge. And all of a sudden when you write a book and have people want to buy it or people want to publish it for starters and then people want to take your knowledge onboard, you think, Wow! Maybe I do know what I’m talking about. It’s almost as surprising for me as it is for other people. So then you progress into writing, so then you progress into talking at conferences and offering advice to people: franchise groups, small business groups, magazines. So for me in many ways it defined me as a small business guy, or ‘The Small Business Guy’ in Australia. Now I talk at conferences around the world, my books are sold all over the place. I get an opportunity, I think, to help tens of thousands of business owners every year. So that to me is the greatest reward I can have.

It has had a profound effect on my life, is the simple answer to a short question.

How have you used the web to leverage your message?

For me, the internet has been a great opportunity for me to become more of an accepted name as a small business expert, from that point of view, otherwise it’s pretty hard. Even if you write books, if that’s the only environment where people get to know you they’ve really got to buy your book, and if they don’t buy it, then they don’t necessarily hear about you. I’ve found that the internet has been really helpful for me to build my own brand. All my keynote speaking jobs and things like that, my training workshops all come through the internet, which would be really hard, I think otherwise, to get that kind of work and on a global level. So I travel around the planet presenting on small business and you wouldn’t get that kind of reach, that kind of video accessibility for people to actually be able to see you online, see if you’ve got the right kind of fit for their group, for their organisation.

I think it’s a way for me to disseminate lots and lots of information that I get: my current observations about what’s happening in the world of business right here, right now and offer that advice to people. To be able to say, Hey, if you’re struggling and feeling isolated, don’t worry, you’re not the only person. There are lots of other people feeling isolated, so it’s a way for me to reach out and I guess connect to my fan base, my readers, my followers, from that point of view.

How do you help business owners overcome their fear of social media?

It’s such a good question and it’s something that I encounter a lot. There are obviously so many people who are in that transition zone and often they’re a little bit older, I think, too. They’ve been in business and they’ve got an amazing wealth of expertise, but they’re struggling to embrace the new world of online social media, things like that, which is a real challenge for them. It’s like “teaching old dogs new tricks.” And whenever I’m presenting in a room where there are lots of people with grey hair (I’ve got my share coming through) but they are struggling to from that traditional business model to a more modern model of embracing online.

So, for me, you can’t go in there and nag them to death and tell them “You’ve got to do this” and guilt them into it. And yell at them and say, “You’ve got to Tweet. You’ve got to go on Facebook.” It doesn’t really mean anything, so you have to go back a step and give it some meaning. You’ve either got to show them that if you don’t do this kind of stuff, well, you’re going to be missing out in the future. But even go one step further and say, well okay, “How do you do business now? How have you built a successful business?” Most of the time it’s through building relationships, offering great quality products, being a good corporate citizen, whatever it might be.

And I say, okay, how do we find the online equivalent of all of this? Being a great corporate citizen–the online environment is a perfect way to tell people what you do as a great corporate citizen. So then how do we actually transition them through on that part? They can relate to that with “Oh, yeah, we like to tell people we do good in the community”. Let’s do a video, go online and show people what you’re doing.

What about networking? Well, you normally go to a social function, meet people, slap them on the back and have a cold beer. Well how can you do that in the online space? Let’s look at things like Facebook, let’s look at things like Twitter and understand that all it is is an electronic version of backslapping, having a beer and a cocktail frankfurt. But it’s more instantaneous and much, much broader.

I find that once you show them some examples of those kind of things and show them some success stories of other businesses that perhaps struggled to embrace the online environment but have and there’s been a big pay-off, then they tend to go, “Alright, now I get it.” And they are wonderful. I love nothing better. I’ve got a client of mine who’s eighty-five years old, a manufacturer and this lady does all this incredible stuff and she just loves the online environment. It took her fifteen years to really get it in many ways, but now she’s a Twitterer, a Facebooker, any kind of social media and she’s built a great business. She says she loves it because she spends nothing on advertising and marketing these days because it’s basically a free environment for her.

How can people find out more about you?

My main website is www.andrewgriffiths.com.au. On Twitter it’s twitter.com/agauthor. That’s easy to find me, but you can get it all through my website. I write a blog there and a couple of other blogs starting up soon. So just do a Google search and you’ll find me. It’s the easiest thing in the world; I’ll come up number one. It shows my belief in the online world.

Thanks Andrew!

During my time in San Francisco I was lucky enough to meet and interview Dave Peck – the social media strategist for Meshin.

He’s based out of Palo Alto Research Centre (home of the ethernet) in Silicon Valley.

Dave’s career is pretty remarkable – it was kick-started while he was playing Second Life (as a young blonde named Britney no less) and has grown in even more remarkable ways.

To name but a few of his achievements:

• Dave has built online communities for Sergio Rossi, Stella McCartney, Coca Cola and Wells Fargo,
• He has also worked as a social media strategist for The Grammys, The Ozzy Osbourne Auction, and NPR; and
• He’s been profiled by CNBC and CurrentTV for his work in social media and community building.

OK – you get it. He knows what he’s talking about!

Interview Highlights

I’ve continually considered how it is that we can use social media to help businesses that are – how shall I say it – less ‘social’, to achieve their business goals. Because the fact is not every social medium suits every type of business. While I may do my banking through a certain bank or may rent through a certain real estate agent it doesn’t mean I am willing to connect with them on Facebook. So I put it to Dave.

Everybody loves pizza – it’s intuitive to market lifestyle products or services on social media. But what about other companies? Is there a place on social media sites for industries that are less ‘social’ – like banking, real estate and insurance?

Dave’s answer really reaffirmed some of the strategies we’ve implemented at Bluewire and it was a pleasure to hear some brand new ideas on the matter.

You’ll also learn:

• How to attract a huge Twitter following,
• How to use social media in different ways to spread news; and
• How to generate story ideas for your blog.

What would you like to ask Dave? I’d love to hear from you!