John Leavy’s Blog

I’m in the throes of cranking out my eight book. The working title is The Ultimate Guide to Online Marketing. The section I’m writing this week is “Being Social on the Internet”. I developed a set of questions I think a VP of Marketing, Managing Director, CMO or other marketing professional might be asking themselves in regards to leveraging Social Media. Let me share my opening paragraphs from that section of the book and then my questions:

Companies are coming to understand social media behavior better as time goes by. Many organizations immediately jumped on the social media bandwagon thinking of nothing but widening their revenue stream. They soon found out that social media interaction meant more than exchanging a virtual handshake in hopes of selling some merchandise. Social media is about building relationships, sharing information and ideas - in short engagement. Companies found their hidden agendas had to be parked on the back burner.

Companies are learning to use social media channels to lower their customer support costs and solve problems quicker. Social media aids in customer retention by keeping the company brand in the customer’s consciousness.

Social media is a nonthreatening way of engaging prospects/customers in the knowledge transfer process. As well as a covert way of keeping an eye on the competition.

Now for those questions I think the marketing professionals are asking themselves…

1. How can we leverage social media to accelerate our customer care?
2. How can we use social media to build a reputation of expertise in the minds of our prospects/customers?
3. What are the best ways to create more community using social media?
4. How can social media be utilized to create new revenue streams?
5. How can social media be employed to build trust in the minds of our prospects/customers?
6. How can social media be used to expand our company’s market reach?
7. What are the best ways to use social media to gather intel on the competition?
8. How can we guide the social medai conversation without being obnoxious?
9. What are the best ways to employ social media to identify more prospects?
10. How can we find out what customers are saying about us using social media?
11. Are there things we can learn from other companies on how they’re applying social media?
12. Can our services be expanded or new services offered by using social media?
13. How can we use social media to take the company global?
14. How do we use social media to raise our brand’s awareness?
15. What are the best ways to manage our reputation using social media?
16. How might we use social media to research the current customer base?
17. How might we track industry trends using social media?
18. How can we use social media to give our customers a more positive experience?

How about a little help here? Am I asking the right questions? Are there fewer questions than I think? Are the questions being asked in a different way?

Please let me know if I’m way off base or on track. For your gracious comments I’ll be glad to send you a PDF of my first section which is complete; Building a Strong Web Presence and I’ll drop you an email when the book comes out this spring. Here’s where you can send me your email.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

I just finished Part I - Web Front Readiness of The Ultimate Guide to Internet Marketing; my latest masterpiece. Let me know if you think I’m covering the subject matter well enough.  

“The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” – Mark Twain 

This is an area where clients and web developers seem to fail – neither one is competent at writing compelling copy. The web folks are geeks and the client may not have the marketing skills to express the messaging clearly. If a good writer or marketing person is not part of the web development team; hire one. I have seen sites where page after page droll on. The thought here must be that the visitor is eventually worn down and convinced to buy.  

Continue Reading »

Welcome. I’m in the process of cranking out my latest book: The Ultimate Guide to Internet Marketing. I’ve just finished Part I. I’ve posted the Introduction to the book so you can get an idea of where I’m heading.

You’ll also see a post titled, Part I - Web Front Readiness. This post talks all about getting your website and blog market ready for thousands of visitors.

I thought, why not let other interested parties, that would be you, participate in my writing process? Have you ever read a book and thought, why didn’t the writer cover this? We’ll here’s your chance.

I think Part I is complete; but maybe something is missing? Tell me and I’ll send you a link so you can download Part I in its entirety as my FREE gift to you for helping.

The old marketing methods are dead. The days of the salesperson being the gatekeeper of the information are long gone. The fond memories of grabbing some out-of-date sales material off the warehouse shelf and stuffing it into an overnight envelope are over.

Today, people are making decisions on their own terms. They do a lot of the investigation over the Internet and move at their own pace.

Relationships need to be built and then information is passed along over time. Push “the sale” too quickly a person may find them self out in the cold.

The days of large marketing budgets with no accountability have ended as well. Continue Reading »

Part I of The Ultimate Guide to Internet Marketing deals with developing a strong web front. In the discussions that follow let’s think of our web front much like a campaign front in a battle. Our web front includes the website and the organization’s blog. At times the blog is an integral part of a site and at other times it has a different look-and-feel and resides on a completely separate domain. The website and the blog are the two contact points visitors are eventually driven to from other channels such as landing pages, emails, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Community Forums. The next few pages give us a broad brush overview of what is takes to develop a strong web front. Feel free to scan the topics and jump into the one portion that is the most relevant. You can always come back and review the other topics. At the end of Part I, and every other Part for that matter, there is a 2 Minute Drill so we can review the key points of each serving. Continue Reading »