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Category: Social Media
A Day In the Life of Jason Terry – Blogging 101
We talk a lot about being consistent with your messaging when it comes to pace (at least weekly), voice (fun, professional or somewhere in between) and platform (social networks, email newsletters, marketing pieces). One of the questions that we hear all the time is “How do you come up with things that are worth saying to your audience?”
I have been doing this for so long that it comes naturally. I have to remind myself that not everyone has experience writing, thinking like a blogger, or paying attention to the things that happen every day that are worth talking about. You might be doing this kind of activity for the first time in your professional career.
I thought it would be good to walk you through a day in my life and show you the many opportunities that occur to talk about your staff, your company, your clients and more!
Before I do that, here is a quick list of things that you should consider talking about:
- Clients
- Vendors/Partners
- Projects
- Things that caught your attention
- People, people, PEOPLE!
September 7th, 2011
6am – Personal and Business – For Me, They Are The Same Thing
Got up and went to LifeTime Fitness with my brother Mike Terry who works for Ingenix. Talked about the fact that Adam Rector from Beautiful Outdoors was coming by the house today to give me an estimate on some landscaping work in the back yard. Mike mentioned that he needs to have some work done in his back yard as well and wanted me to have Adam give him a call. (Later in the afternoon, I did refer Adam to Mike = Word of Mouth Referrals in Action #1)
8am – Creating my Daily To Do List, Checking Emails, Etc.
Came back to the house to clean up and get to work. Checked my email and started making follow up calls… this involved a list of people and companies that is too long to even try to include here. Took me about an hour.
9am – Mic Rocks, T-Shirt Talks
One of the things on my follow up list was to talk to Mic about the “Avoiding People That Suck” T-Shirts. The article he wrote was a huge hit and Brett Gibson at AdventureTech asked when the T-Shirts would be available! (Mic is creative and driven and I could have written a blog article about him!) He is working with a good friend of his, Molly Beacom at Image Market on pricing, etc.
10am – Public Service Announcement
Started errands, including going to Commerce Bank to make a Blue Gurus deposit and then to the post office to mail off my quarterly estimated tax payments. Yes, they need to be sent by September 15th, so count this as a friendly reminder to get on that if you do quarterly estimates.
11am – New Client
Got a call from Donna Rimbo at Christ Church in Overland Park. She was referred to us by one of our clients, Tommy Wilson at the Downtown Council of Kansas City. (Word of Mouth Referrals in Action #2) We had a great conversation for 30 minutes about a potential project we could do together. I told her how we do what we do. She mentioned that their committee had been talking about this project and when Donna mentioned that she was going to talk to Blue Gurus that one of the committee members started raving about us. (Yay!) She said based on our brief conversation, the strength of the referrals and the respect of peers, they are not looking at other companies to help them with this project! A new client for Blue Gurus and a testament (nice word choice?) to what we keep saying about the power of word of mouth and building a positive reputation for doing what you say you are going to do.
12:30pm – Technical Work
My friend Matt Simpson, owner of Infusion, asked me to help him out with a client project involving WordPress. I spent 90 minutes getting the project done and following up with Matt on next steps. Oh, and scheduled lunch together for September 21st at Nick and Jake’s. I had to include this detail because so many people say “I don’t care where people are going for lunch.” Hey, if you don’t care… fine. It’s part of my story though. You won’t care about every part of this story, that is normal and even expected. Some people live near Nick and Jake’s. Some people own Nick and Jake’s. Some people love or hate Nick and Jake’s with a story of their own. You get the point… it’s not just about what I had for lunch.
2:30pm – Writing My Blog Update
Sat down to write my blog update with nothing particular in mind. Thought about all that had happened today and thought about the fact that there are dozens of stories involving people and companies that might be worth talking about. Realized we hadn’t done an article on the blogging process, so why not document the day!
In Closing…
If you read this whole article, you prove my point. This thing was WAY TOO LONG. You must care about me, Mic and Blue Gurus to have gotten through it… and that is the whole point. People want to hear what is going on in your life because they CARE about you. In a 9 hour period today, I connected with dozens of people, representing dozens of companies. Helped my brother out. Earned a new client through a word of mouth referral. Did billable work for a client. Crossed off the majority of the things on my To Do list.
I could expand on any one of these stories to create a great article that talks about specific people and companies. (Did you recognize any of the people or companies? Do you know them? Have you done business with them?) This stuff matters. Look at what you and your company are involved in on a daily basis and tell your stories!
How LinkedIn Helped My Wife Missy Get A New Job
About 10 months ago, I had a conversation with my wife Missy (ok, it was more me talking to her and her ignoring me) about how she needed to be on LinkedIn.
You see Missy is a professional meeting planner, LOVES the Meeting Planning industry, knows a ton of people across the country, and is well respected in the meeting planning community.
“You need to work on building your online professional network!” I bellowed at her.
“I know, I know” she said with the enthusiasm of a child being told to brush his or her teeth before bed.
Now let me give you a little more background here. I LOVE social media…LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. And I LOVE Missy…LOVE, LOVE, LOVE her. But the LOVE, LOVE, LOVE OF MY LIFE doesn’t share my LOVE, LOVE, LOVE of social media. She has a Facebook account and never uses it. She’s not on Twitter. She humors me by occasionally reading blog articles I write. And, as I mentioned, she wasn’t on LinkedIn.
So because I wasn’t convinced that Missy would ever actually go out and create a LinkedIn profile, I created one for her. I started with her resume and copy-and-pasted much of the information over. I was also sure to personalize it a bit more as resumes, as we all know, are generally stuffy and boring. I also put in a few things I know that she’s passionate about (gourmet cooking as one example! She’s an AWESOME cook!) after being married to her for nearly 14 years. After about an hour, I had put together a pretty serviceable profile.
Take a look for yourself at Missy’s LinkedIn Profile. She still has some work to do (she hasn’t written a SUMMARY yet, for example), but she’s come a long way since our initial conversation. As of this blog article, she has 166 connections and she even took my advice and personalized her professional headline!
How did LinkedIn help Missy get a new job?
Three months ago, Missy received a message in her LinkedIn inbox from a recruiter at Lockton informing her that they were creating a new meeting planning position in the organization. After getting a few more details, we did a little research on LinkedIn and found out that a woman I used to work with, Julie Bartels Smith (she now has her own professional communications business), knew the hiring manager. I reached out to her and she so very kindly passed on a few nice words on Missy’s behalf. Missy then went through the interview process and now is the Sr. Manager, Meetings and Events at Lockton Companies!
Needless to say, being the kind, gentle and yes, humble, husband that I am, I never said “I told you so” to her. (Ok, that’s a lie.)
What are some quick takeaways from Missy’s story that can help you, either in a career search or in using LinkedIn to help grow your professional network and business?
1. You have to BE THERE. If a recruiter, customer or prospect is looking for you on LinkedIn and you aren’t there, you aren’t giving opportunity a chance.
2. If you are going to BE THERE, you need to make a consistent effort to interact with your professional network on a regular basis. Don’t say “I don’t have the time”…MAKE the time.
3. Connect to people you know, trust and respect and grow your professional network.
4. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete. You wouldn’t apply for a job with a 30% complete resume, would you? You wouldn’t give your customer or prospect 30% of the information they asked for, would you? Then why would you have a LinkedIn profile that isn’t complete? Your LinkedIn profile is, for better or for worse, a part of your professional brand.
5. Always listen to anyone named Mic. (grin)
Have you gotten a job or new client through your efforts on LinkedIn? Tell us about it in our comments section!
Totally Transparent – I Struggle With Weekly Content Too
Last week, we got a TON of feedback on Mic’s blog post about avoiding people that suck. Mic had the idea that we should make up T-Shirts with that message and we are working on making that happen. I am sure Mic will tell you more when we get the design done and the details worked out so that we can make them available for you to pick one up!
I am writing this post to fess up to the fact that I sometimes struggle keeping up with the weekly content grind just like everybody else we work with. Let me be clear that this is Jason talking, not Mic… he has never missed a weekly blog post deadline. We have been doing this for 121 weeks since I started the business. We normally post our blog articles on Thursday afternoon at 2pm because that is one of the best times for people viewing our content. (We also publish on Tuesday afternoon at 2pm with the “In Case You Missed It” tacked on to really make sure people have had a chance to see what is going on with Blue Gurus.) So here it is Friday morning and I am staring a wonderfully busy day in the face and just realized I did not get my blog post done yet for this week. I missed the 2pm Thursday afternoon deadline. Crap. I know that you have been there too… and the only answer is to suck it up and get whatever it is done that you need to get done, so here goes….
We believe that telling people every week about what is going on in your company is one of the best sales and marketing tools at your disposal. We all have friends in the business community that want to help us be more successful, but too often, they don’t really understand what we do. The 10 second elevator pitch is well practiced, but doesn’t really stick. That 10 second description isn’t enough to let your friend feel confident referring you business. Fast forward to a social networking presence where you put out weekly content about what you do and those friends become educated extensions of your sales department. They get a feel for what you are doing and finally understand how the can help you by hiring you directly or referring you to a friend of theirs that needs what you do. This isn’t just an idea… this happens to us at Blue Gurus every single week. It works really, really well.
This weekly content thing works on so many levels:
1) You have to come up with new content every week, so you get used to being closer to your staff so that you can learn what stories need to be told. This actually becomes a team management tool when done right.
2) Your existing customers start to see the depth of what you can do for them. They also are glad to see that you are busy and productive, reaffirming why they hired you in the first place. People want to work with successful people.
3) Your prospects go to your web site and see months of interesting content that has been published every single week (sometimes late <grin>) It makes you look more professional and often larger than you really are. People are sometimes shocked that Blue Gurus is just two people… if you just read that and were shocked, comment or let me know to help me prove the point.
4) Your web site will be fresh and new because of the content you consistently put out. The days of going to a web site with a Copyright 2003 and a news section that says “Under Construction” are gone. Get with the program.
5) Your brother or sister connected to you on LinkedIn starts seeing the kinds of things that you are involved in with your company and has the “Aha!” moment. They finally understand what you do. I have heard this story 3 times in 2011. Same thing with all of those people that you have been in networking groups with for years that have not referred you any clients. This just might break the ice for you.
(For more information on Content Marketing, Mic wrote a deeper dive a couple of months ago)
Whether you hire us to help you with this or not, get a web site set up that allows you to add weekly content easily. (10 Reasons You Should Consider WordPress) Start telling the stories and make sure they get out to your social media networks so that you can start educating your friends, current clients and new prospects about why they should be doing business with YOU!
Akismet – Fighting Comment Spamming on your WordPress Site!
If you have a web site that is powered by WordPress, you might be familiar with the concept of Comment Spam. We get calls from people that are getting dozens of spam comments every day on their web site! (Noteworthy is the fact that more than 25 million web sites currently use WordPress to power their content, so this tip could help you or someone you know!) We wanted to let you know that there is an easy way to reduce a majority of spam comments with a great plugin called Akismet. The Akismet service is free for personal blogs and inexpensive for company blog protection. We install this plugin on every site that we do for our clients as a best practice. If you don’t have it running on your WordPress based site, you need to take the time to hook it up. The installation takes just a few minutes!
Comment Spam is the behavior of a hacker or spammer posting a comment to one of your news/blog articles. It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to your blog. Adding links that point to the spammer’s web site artificially increases the site’s search engine ranking. An increased ranking often results in the spammer’s commercial site being listed ahead of other sites for certain searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers.
Some examples of a spam comment (usually accompanies by links to the spammer’s web site):
- Thank you for the shares in this blog. I will visit it again. (from DualShock 3 Wireless Controller)
- I identified a really great internet site for you folks. (from Morocco Currency)
- I am finally in the United States but need your help to get my money out of Saudi Arabia (from Prince Akheem)
Don’t just ignore comments in your WordPress site… you are allowing the spammer to accomplish their goals! Use Akismet to help with the problem. Akismet isn’t the total solution, but it is a step in the right direction for fighting comments spam on your site.
Let us know if you use Akismet or have another suggestion for combating spam on your WordPress site!
LinkedIn Tip: Personalize Your Professional Headline (Just Like These People Did!)
Every single time I have a 1×1 LinkedIn profile training session, one piece of advice I give is to personalize the professional headline of your LinkedIn profile. Some people don’t take my advice, but more and more I’m finding people that are open to being creative and letting the LinkedIn world know a little bit more about themselves.
Here’s mine:
What was my thought process behind personalizing my professional headline? In short, I didn’t want to be like 95% of the people out there on LinkedIn that list “CEO”, or “Project Manager”, or “Accountant”, or “Sales Manager”, or the other various titles that most people will gloss over when they are reading a profile. I want people to know there is a lot more to me than just being a Social Media & Business Coach at Blue Gurus.
Anyone and everyone that knows me knows that I LOVE the Kansas Jayhawks. I am a die-hard KU Basketball fan and get to my fair share of football games too. Additionally, people that know me well know that I lost my dad to cancer 15 years ago and that I am a volunteer for a wonderful organization called Cancer Action in Kansas City. So all of the things in my professional headline are things I am passionate about and I want to share that with every person that sees my LinkedIn profile.
What you will find, and this has played out with me personally and with some of the people I highlight below, is that even doing something as simple as personalizing your professional headline opens up conversations that would have never happened otherwise. For Greg King below, when he personalized his professional headline, five of his LinkedIn connections made comments about how much they liked the change and one even told him that he was an aspiring guitarist too! When Jenn Shorrock listed that she was a U2 fan, it sparked a conversation with a client.
People want to do business with HUMAN BEINGS and are interested (whether you think they are or not) in what you do and who you are when you aren’t at work. Simply customizing your professional headline help humanize your LinkedIn profile.
Take a look at what a few of our clients have done below and then get to personalizing YOUR professional headline!
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