Connect-IMCAZ

Do you have a Social Networking Strategy?

Last week, Dave Cooke, aka the Sales Cooke, filled our brains with even more information about Social Media.  In his presentation, though, Dave talked about developing a strategy instead of jumping in blindly. 

I’m glad he that was the focus of his presentation because I've been telling my own clients to do the same thing.  Blogging, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, Ryze, Ning, Xing, YouTube or Twitter or anything else is only as good as your plan.  

Dave sent his PPTs, which will be forwarded to those who attended the meeting.  He also asked me to share the following recommendations for anyone grappling with what to do next:

1. Define what your business.  What do you provide your clients, the value your clients get and the real problems or issues that you solve for your clients.
2. Determine what people would be looking for if they would be looking for the solutions that you are providing.  Is it better hires, teamwork, increased revenues, etc.
3. Defining what businesses are looking for and what your business solves is your marketing opportunity.  Develop a plan or a vision for how you would promote this combination.
4. Determine how you would like to best communicate your message – written, audio, video, etc.
5. Start capturing your thoughts and ideas in the selected medium from above as it relates to your expertise and share them.
6. Use Twitter.com to promote your postings. 
7. Use a social networking site (Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo) to increase your contacts.
8. Link Twitter, Social Networking and your chosen medium together and get busy.

 If anyone has questions, please contact Dave via www.purecooke.com

Sylva Leduc, follow me on Twitter @windowsyl
www.SylvaLeduc.com

IMC-USA's Email Daily Tip Today About Blogging

I subscribe to IMC-USA's email Tip of the Day and I almost always find something valuable to take away. Interestingly, this morning's tip was about blogging. The question posed was:

Is blogging an effective way to get business? If so, how do I go about it?

The reply was not much more that a quote of the Merriam-Webster dictionary and was pretty disappointing. I responded by sending them an email which appears below:

--------------

I begin my mornings by reading your ‘Daily Tips’ email and I almost always find something valuable to take away. Unfortunately, I think your tip this morning regarding blogs does a great disservice to our members. A blog is such an effective tool that I think every consultant should have one. Blogging is a cutting-edge marketing tool that is immediate, personal, and engaging, and is within the financial reach of everyone.

The biggest challenge most consultants face is getting business. In fact, two of the three bullet-points on the IMC-USA website’s Education page are “Get Known” and “Get Business”, both of which are blogging’s strengths. Consultants can benefit from blogging is several ways:

Google Juice

Almost everyone with a problem to solve begins their quest for an answer with a Google search. There is no better way to raise your search engine rankings than a blog containing informative, engaging, and insightful content. Google likes fresh content and each blog post appears to Google as a new page, rasing your ranking. Not only that, other people who find your blog’s content informative will link to it, resulting in more links to you than you could afford to acquire by any other means.

Free exposure

Influential people read the blogosphere. A columnist for the Boston Globe is a regular reader of one of my blogs (and I read her blog too). There is no better way to get noticed by the mainstream press than to blog passionately about topics in your industry.

Direct Access to your Audience

Almost everyone has a story about spending time with a newspaper reporter only to either have the story spiked or appear so completely re-written that your original message disappeared. A blog is a way to bypass the gatekeepers in the media and get your message out to the audience most important to you: your current and potential customers.

Differentiate Yourself

Every consultant has his or her ‘What’ and ‘How’: ‘What you do’ and ‘How you do it’. The ‘What you do’ part is probably not unique. There are most likely several other consultants in your community doing exactly what you do. The important part is the ‘How’. You have probably developed your own unique ‘How’ and have demonstrated its effectiveness repeatedly. A blog is the perfect platform for showcasing your ‘How’ and its effectiveness, and is key to providing your potential clients with the perception of the difference between you and your competitors.

Build Trust

By blogging about your industry and writing about that which you are most knowledgeable, readers will begin to see you as a resource and authority on your topic. They will begin to trust you and your advice.

There is a second type of trust: personal trust. Through your blog, your current and potential clients will begin to see you not as a two-dimensional cardboard cutout but as a three-dimensional figure. They will connect with you and come to trust you enough to feel comfortable doing business with you.

Conversation

A blog is part of a conversation. No aspect of blogging is more important. Our clients are smart and saavy. They participate in various online communities and learn from each other. We can ignore those online conversations, in which case our markets will get smarter faster than we do. Alternatively, we can participate in those online conversations and learn from them, and create an opportunity for the other participants to learn about us.

The other aspect to this conversation is that other experts in your field are already blogging. The blogosphere provides you with the equivalent to an online industry conference where you and your peers can learn from each other and share the latest trends and news.

Improve Your Image

Several years ago, having a website or email address was enough to present the image that you were forward-thinking technically and marketing-saavy. A blog does that for you today. If your competitors are not yet blogging then you are immediately differentiating yourself from the pack. And your blog demonstrates that you are open and honest in your business dealings.

The bottom line is that there is no better way for a consultant to showcase his or her talents and boost exposure than a blog.

Speed-Reading Our Blog

Want to make it easy to keep up with Connect-IMC-AZ.org (or any blog for that matter)? Use the blog's RSS Feed.

Every blog is published is two formats. One is the familiar HTML that you see here in your web browser. The second format, called RSS, strips out all the graphics, styling, and formatting and delivers pure text. The interesting part is that MSIE 7 (Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7) knows about RSS, and it will tell you if there are any new posts on this blog since the last time you visited and how many.

It gets better. MSIE 7 (as well as most other RSS Feed Readers) can aggregate the feeds from multiple blogs onto a single page. The beauty of this is that at a glance you can see if there are any new posts here (as well as new posts on any other blogs you read), and you can also see the first few sentences of each new post. The result is that you can quickly keep up with what's going on here.

In a recent post on my own blog I called it a Bicycle for Your Blog.

Here's how to use RSS in MSIE 7:

1. Look on MSIE's toolbar over on the right and locate the small orange square icon shown here. Click on it.


2. Connect-IMCAZ.org's RSS feed will be displayed. Near the top of the page there is a yellow box with Connect-IMCAZ and the words 'You are viewing a feed that contains frequently updated content...'.
   
3. Just below that paragraph is Subscribe to this fed link. Click on it. A pop-up dialog box will apppear. Leave the 'Name' and 'Create In' fields as is and click on Subscribe. There. That's all there is to it.

To check and read a Feed:

1. Locate the Favorites Center icon (the gold star) on the tooobar. Click on it.
2. Click on the Feeds tab near the top of the Favorites list.


3. Mouse over Connect-IMCAZ and the tool tip will show you how many posts have been added to this blog since the last time you looked.


4. Click on Connect-IMCAZ and the new blog posts will be displayed.

Want to Have New Blog Posts Delivered to Your Inbox Instead?

Look for the 'Subscribe via Email' box in our blog's sidebar and enter your email address into the field.

Welcome

Welcome to the Arizona Chapter of the Institue of Management Consultants (IMC)'s blog. It was an interesting coincidence that I began attending the IMC meetings (and joined IMC) just about the same time as the leadership began contemplating a blog. I am 'Dave the Blog Guy', founder of a small consulting firm here in Phoenix named Business Blogging Pros. In the short time that I have been involved with IMC, I have already received enormous benefit. So yes, Business Blogging Pros is sponsiring this blog but it is my way of giving something back to this organization.

Doug Zogby has been an indispensible help getting this blog up and going. It's a pleasure to work with someone as forward-thinking as Doug.

And of course, it never would have happened without 'El Presidente' Lisa Koss, whose enthusiasm is positively infectuous.

I'm sure both Doug and Lisa will be posting soon.