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Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Marketing

By Cindy Ratzlaff January 5, 2012

Using social media to market your book, brand or business is a relatively low-risk way to dip your toe in marketing waters. Most social networks are free to use, although the time required to use them well will cost you human capital.

I’m an entrepreneur, just like many of you, and I’m my eighth year of owning my own business. Statistically, if I can make it through this year, I’ll have beaten the brutal odds of business that fail in the first five years. In these first seven years, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that fear of trying something new leads to failure.

Most new businesses fail in the first seven years.

I usually write about more complex tools and strategies, but in speaking to new entrepreneurs or small business owners this past year, the questions I most often get are:

How can I add social media to my marketing without adding additional employees?
How can I do everything you suggest and still have time to work on my products?

Lack of time and money are the #1 and #2 saboteurs of start-ups. So to everyone who has not yet jumped into the social fray to promote their business or service, here’s my simple beginner’s guide to using social media for business.

I believe most businesses can benefit from a simple, straightforward social media strategy that includes:

A Facebook profile for the “face” of the business; the owner or spokesperson
A Facebook fan page for the business itself
A Twitter Account
A YouTube Account
A Blog

With these five social media basics, even the most cash strapped and time deprived entrepreneur can begin to create digital footprints that lead back to their business. Adding additional social networks such as Instagram and Pinterest may be advisable for some businesses, but these five will give you a good basic foundation from which to build a large online following.

Setting up the accounts is easy and entrepreneurs should not become distracted by the bells and whistles and they wish list that comes with fully tricked out Facebook pages or beautifully designed Twitter accounts. When you’re swamped, stick to the basics and don’t let “ideal” stop you from starting with “good enough.”

Here’s a simple beginners guide to a social media marketing strategy map anyone can use.

Blog 2-3 times per week and keep posts to 500-600 words. Make them keyword rich (words you would enter into Google Search to find YOU). Make sure each post gives one interesting or useful piece of information to the reader about your area of expertise.

The same day you blog, post a link to that blog on your Facebook Fan Page, adding an invitation to join you on the blog for more posts on your subject matter.

Allow this post to auto-post to your Twitter account by linking your Twitter account to your Facebook fan page through this Facebook app link: http://Facebook.com/Twitter.

The next day press the share button under your Fan Page post and share it to your personal profile. Your friends are your closest supporters. Ask them to share your post with their friends, leave you comments and let you know if you can help them with your area of expertise.

Two days later, turn your blog post into a simple, how-to video by reading it into your web cam. Put the “script” up on your screen so you can look directly at the camera. Speak as though you’re explaining the concepts in your blog to just one person. Post the video to YouTube and tag the video with your keywords.

This is an over simplified map, designed to get you thinking about sharing content throughout social media. There are many, many subtle and more complicated nuances and strategies to increase your visibility, but this is a start. If you’re a new business owner or entrepreneur who has not yet begun to use social media in your business marketing, begin here and add new strategies as you get comfortable.

There is so much you can do in social media marketing, that sometimes the overwhelming feeling of “I can’t do everything” stops us from doing “something.” Focus on the basics first. Where do the majority of your ideal customers spend time on line? For most of you it will be Facebook. Makes sense, right? It’s the largest social network with the most active monthly users. So start there with a personal profile. Talk about your business, your products, your services and special deals. Next venture into the world of Facebook business pages to create a stand alone page dedicated to your business. Master those two properties before moving forward with the rest of the recommended steps in this article. Don’t let fear of the task ahead stop you from bringing your business to a larger audience through social media.

Bill Gates Tops the Scrabble Leader Board | Facebook adds Subscribe Option to Profiles

By Cindy Ratzlaff September 15, 2011

I admit I have no idea if Bill Gates plays Scrabble on Facebook; yet. But I just might soon enough.

Among the new features being rolled out this week from Facebook are the enhanced friends lists options which many feel was a response to Google Plus Circles, and the introduction of a Subscribe button with multiple implications and applications.

The subscribe button is, by far, the most radical of the changes and for the first time, allows people who are not your friends to see your personal profile updates if you enable the subscribe button. So, Guy Kawasaki or Pete Cashmore haven’t accepted your friend request. Bill Gates is ignoring your pokes and messages. You can now subscribe to their personal profile posts if they decide to enable Facebook’s new Subscribe button. Why should you or your brand care? You should care because Facebook has just opened up an interesting option for celebrities, authors, entrepreneurs, speakers and other high profile public figures to create great reach for their posts, beyond their friendship circle. However, this comes with some challenges, privacy concerns and the need for those users to understand exactly how this works and what they’ll be sharing.

What does this mean for brands, small businesses and entrepreneurs?

For business people who use their Facebook profile as yet another entry point to their brand, albeit a more casual one, you can now place a subscribe button on your profile. This allows people who aren’t your friends access to those posts you mark as public. This will be useful to celebrities, speakers, authors or other very public Facebook users who have reached their 5,000 friend cut-off, but still want to allow new friends to see their posts. If you use your profile strictly for personal communications with family and friends, you’ll want to skip implementing the subscribe button and continue to decline or ignore requests for friend connections with business contacts.

What does this mean for you, the user?

As a user, you can subscribe to the posts of industry leaders, celebrities or political figures who set their personal profiles to allow subscriptions and you can decide what types of posts you want to see. For example, you can hide all posts related to games so that you’ll never know when Lady Gaga hits a new high score on Bejeweled, but you’ll always be notified when she posts a new photo.

Facebook provides more details and the link to add the Subscribe button to your Facebook profile here. The profile owner can choose to be notified when someone subscribes, too. This is one to watch as it evolves in use.

Will you enable the Subscribe button? Why or why not?

Will Ferrell, Stephen King and the New Influencer Class

By Cindy Ratzlaff August 25, 2011

Got Klout?

If you don’t know your Klout score yet, you’d be wise to find out. As more agency heads, marketing VP’s, celebrity publicists and advertisers look for an edge in creating buzz about their clients and products, they’re increasingly seeking some metric to effectively measure an influencers, well, influence.

Your Klout Score is part of your personal brand.

For more than a year, the socially savvy have been aware of Klout-based invitations to special parties at big conferences such as BlogWorld, and advance previews for movies and new products.

This week both Will Ferrell’s FunnyOrDie video website and Mile 81 (Scribner, $2.99/eBook), Stephen King’s new eBook-only launch partnered with web influence researcher, Klout.com to identify and reach out to influential social media users as a key component in their marketing push.

Scribner, an imprint of the New York City based parent company Simon & Schuster, teamed up with Klout.com, a privately held San Francisco firm that measures social influence and assigns an index, to choose 1,000 highly influential users to preview New York Times bestselling author Stephen King’s new original short story, which is being released in e-book form only. The lucky 1,000 are being offered free access to the book one week before it goes on sale to the general public.

As agency executives, marketing V.P.’s and celebrity publicists look for an edge in reaching the social influential, Klout.com provides an aggregated measurement score that includes, among other things, a person’s reach, influence, audience and areas of influence.

Klout declined to provide an actual minimum score for the 1,000 socially savvy influencers chosen to preview Mile 81, saying they target a combination of score and topics on which a person is considered influential. A representative from Scribner was unavailable for comment at press time. Rob Goodman, Director of Online Marketing for Simon & Schuster, Inc., was responsible for putting together the deal with Klout.com.

Social Bookmarking and Blog Comment Strategy | Brand Marketing

By Cindy Ratzlaff June 22, 2011

Social media etiquette aside, there are benefits for all of us in social media bookmarking and blog commenting strategies.

First, when you share valuable information through social bookmarking, you position yourself as a resource to your online community. You train your potential customers to follow you to stay up to date and in the know on advances, news and strategies in their fields of interest.

Social sharing creates social influence for you and the original content creator.

When you comment on a blog post, and, this is important–add to the conversation by contributing additional resources, original thoughts or insights–you also position yourself as an individual or brand highly engaged in your field of expertise. The more interesting your comments are, the more likely people will follow your digital footprint back to your home base and subscribe, follow, friend or bookmark you.

Share to Position Yourself as a Leader

When you read a blog post you like from a writer whose work you value or respect, leave a comment. By doing so, you provide a service. Google and other search engines pay attention to the amount of interaction that takes place on a website and the more interaction, the higher the social authority of that particular blog.

Think about it in this way.

You’re at a business conference where you hear a presentation about a new technology coming out of a brand new start-up.
You go back to your company and tell your colleagues to check out this new start-up because they have some valuable marketing tools that might help you on an upcoming project.
Your firm hires these new innovators for a project which is hugely success because of their new technology.
They grow and continue to innovate and help your whole industry.
You are a hero at your company and you, in turn, consider that original business conference to be your new “must attend” event.
HOWEVER, if you attend the conference but tell no one about what you’ve learned, their start-up fails to thrive and grow for lack of customers and eventually they don’t produce any new ideas or products and perhaps even go under.
Everyone loses; the start-up, your company, and you.

The same thinking applies to blogs. If you find a blogger is consistently providing you with valuable tips and strategies, then commenting is your way of encouraging Google rank them well and ultimately to help others find this blogger. So being a conscientious blog content consumer by subscribing and leaving comments is a way for you to contribute to the ecosystems you inhabit. And, in return, you garner social equity for yourself as an aggregator of useful information, a leader in connecting your fans and followers needs to resources they can use and as an informed player in the marketplace.

Bookmarking Benefits

Social Bookmarking is another responsible way to help spread valuable or entertaining information. In addition to leaving a comment, go to one of the many social bookmarking sites and recommend the blog post to others. Social bookmarks are a way for you to save links to posts you’ve found helpful, and others can subscribe to your bookmarks. By bookmarking a blog, story or news article, you create a home for it where you can easily access it and refer to it again later.

This serves as a visibility strategy for you because you found the post or blog, and now, by bookmarking it, you’re telling other that it’s worth reading. You increase your own social currency as someone who passes on great information and ideas, and you increase the visibility of the original blogger.

It’s Called “Social” Media for a Reason

Social Media is, at it’s heart, people engaging and sharing ideas with one another. So remember to consume information and pass on the tips and strategies that you find most useful. In this way you become a valuable resource to your followers, you become more visible to those you follow and you foster a sharing mentality throughout your network.

Some social bookmarking site you might consider using include:

* Digg
* Delicious
* StumbleUpon
* Reddit

Please let me know if you have a bookmark list so I can consider subscribing. It’s time to create conversations about YOU by creating conversations about others.

8 Free or Low-Cost Twitter Timesaving Tools | Twitter Toolkit

By Cindy Ratzlaff June 7, 2011

UPDATE: Since the writing of this blog, Twitter has changed it’s policy on third party auto-follow apps. So Tool #3 below is no longer recommended for auto-following.

Twitter continues to help entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies alike increase their brand awareness, exponentially expand their marketing message reach and create more a sense of relationship between customer or client and brand or product.

Many still fear that Twitter is a time rabbit hole and that building a large following on Twitter will unleash a time commitment they can’t accommodate.

Here are eight timesaving tools to help any sized business or individual entrepreneur find, follow, engage or manage their time on Twitter for productive results.

Twellow: This site is the Yellow Pages of Twitter. This free site allows you to register your Twitter account under three different keywords such as marketing, branding, social media or whatever keywords a potential client might enter to find your business. Listing your Twitter account here will help others to find you when searching for the service or product you provide. Therefore, leads or followers coming from Twellow are more likely than average to be seeking what you have to offer. It’s fast and easy to register and worth your time. Additionally, if you use Twellow while logged into your Twitter account and Twellow, you can search, find and follow others directly from the platform.
Twitter App for Facebook: The Twitter stream is a fast moving conversation and therefore, your tweets once out of sight are out of mind. Making any content you create do double duty is a good timesaving strategy. Using this app to cause Facebook to auto-post from Facebook to your Twitter account makes your daily Facebook post work harder by also speaking to your Twitter followers. And, the added benefit is the way this app creates a truncated link to bring people back to your Facebook page to read a post that is longer. This is a subtle invitation for Twitter followers interested enough to click the link to continue reading to “like” your Facebook page. Again, always ask your content to work in multiple ways.
SocialToo: Auto follow everyone who follows you. I’m a believer in auto following everyone who follows me on Twitter. It’s an easy way to build your following and allows people who find you to DM or Direct Message you on Twitter. I’ve been interviewed by national newspapers and contacted by future clients this way and had I not employed a policy of auto following, they would not have been able to reach me as easily and quickly. I upgraded from a free account at SocialToo to a one-time $10 fee to use their set it and forget it auto follow tool. I love this feature and cannot recommend it enough.
Hootsuite: In my opinion, Hootsuite is one of the best social media dashboards for managing Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin accounts at a glance and pre-scheduling tweets. I use it regularly manage 10 or more Twitter accounts alone, using Hootsuite and their newly enhanced metrics are terrific for creating client reports and for insight into which marketing messages are working and which are falling on deaf ears and may need tweaking.
Tweetbeep: Google for Twitter. Set alerts for your keywords, your business name and your competitors to keep yourself in the loop and to find good information to tweet to your followers.
Tweepi: This handy site allows you to weed out the accounts that don’t follow you back, to reciprocate those that follow you first and to clean out inactive accounts from your Twitter tribe. A free version is suitable for smaller accounts and a paid version adds significantly more functionality for larger accounts or agencies.
Tweetchat: Follow hashtag conversations in real time without distractions. By doing so, you can quickly and easily find people talking about keywords and topics that interest you or your potential customer. Use hashtag conversations to bring yourself and your brand to the attention of others by participating in interesting, on-point twitter conversations.
Timely: Analyze your Twitter patterns and get recommendations on times of day when your followers are most likely see, read and respond to your posts.

What other tools are in your Twitter toolkit? If you have tools and strategies for maximizing your time on Twitter, I’d love to hear about them. Let’s share with one another.

Low-Cost Digital Marketing Tools for Authors and Publishers

By Cindy Ratzlaff May 25, 2011

Traditional marketing and publicity opportunities for books are rapidly becoming scarce as Oprah exits network television and national morning shows more regularly use in-house correspondents instead of author experts. This means authors and publishers need to restock their marketing tool box.

Using digital marketing tools can help authors and publishers by-pass the network television gatekeeper and take book messages directly to the reader. Digital tools help authors connect with potential readers wherever they spend time online, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs or search engines. And, it is essential to remember that nearly half of all web users are accessing the web throughout the day via their mobile devices so creating digital content that plays nicely in mobile formats is key.

I recently spoke on the topic of digital tool kits at BookExpo America 2011 on the Digital Marketing Panel with Sally Dedecker, Fauzia Burke and Kathleen Schmidt. The panel consensus was that authors and publishers need to consider utilizing a wide variety of digital strategies to reach new readers. You can view my powerpoint presentation here. But many digital tools are expensive to create and not every author or publisher has the budget to develop and implement the more complicated and costly digital strategies used by major brands.

Here’s a list of my favorite low-cost digital tools authors and publishers can their book campaigns.

Blogsite or Website with a blog

This is the author’s home base. Readers should be able to read more about the author, find links to the current and previous works of the author, view a personal appearance schedule and read the author’s blog. Readers should also be able to sign up for a continued relationship with the author, perhaps through a newsletter or to receive a sample chapter of a new book. Whatever the offer, the author needs to capture the e-mail addresses of people who express an interest in hearing from them. Authors can create a free blog using WordPress or Blogger and an e-mail management system like MailChimp is free until the author has attracted 2,000 fans. MailChimp automatically generates the HTML code needed for an Opt-in box, which the author can place on his or her blog. By working with the publisher to offer a sample chapter as a digital download, authors can offer a sneak peek for new books for fans who sign up for the mailing list.

Social Media

Social media amplifies the authors website and blog messages and creates a connection to help readers feel as though they’re involved in the author’s world. Authors can share tour information, preview books, give fans special content such as original stories on their website or blog and spread the word via social media. It’s easier and faster to amass a large following on Twitter and Facebook than to acquire a large subscription base on a website because millions of people are already gathered on social media sites. Go to where the readers are already gathered. Bring the author’s message to those readers instead of waiting for them to stumble upon that message on a website. It’s free to sign up for accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. There is no cost to use them. However, investing a few hundred dollars in design and custom tabs will allow authors to sell books directly from their Facebook Fan page, offer that sneak peek free chapter through an opt in box right from Facebook, create the look and feel of their own television channel on YouTube and give readers a sense of their personality on Twitter. For under $500, each of the author’s social media sites can be design to promote the others and ultimately to drive fans back to the author’s blog or home base.

Opt in

The theme for an author’s digital tool kit is “make it easy for the reader to find, follow, friend and like you.” By developing an e-mail database of readers who have expressed an interest in what an author writes, authors and publishers will be able to easily and efficiently push updates and marketing messages to potential book buyers who have already identified themselves as being interested. This permission based digital marketing is cost effective and can have a higher ROI than nearly any other book marketing. Adding an Opt in box and an enticing sign up offer on both the author website and their Facebook Fan page is an easy, inexpensive digital marketing strategy.

Video

We’re living in a social world where Facebook is the Wal-Mart of digital platforms. With nearly 700 million users now conditioned to expect to see a face attached to every brand, authors who use video effectively will have a competitive advantage in reaching readers. Readers like seeing and hearing from the artists they admire. In the past, meeting a favorite author or even a new author, was relegated to book signings and perhaps major events. Now authors can create short home videos and talk directly to their potential readers, sharing their tour experiences, their creative process and even concepts from their books. Readers enjoy authors who share a bit of their personality and their time by creating short video messages. This, too, is an easy and inexpensive digital marketing concept.

Digital Assets

Authors can now create digital badges, original digital content like blogs or articles, downloadable author photos and bios, digital press releases, quizzes, games and contests. All of these digital assets can be used to create visibility for the author and his or her books online. The more interesting and compelling the digital assets are, the more likely they will be referenced, shared and valued by potential readers. Creating 5-10 original essays or blog posts that can be used as guest blogs on sites visited by an author’s ideal reader is a free way to use these digital assets to promote an author’s books. The topic of the posts could be related to the topic of the new book and the author by-line can reference his or her latest work. By providing desirable content to other websites, the author extends his or her own visibility and attracts new readers. Sharing charts, graphs, photos, videos, quizzes or other interesting and relevant content on these high traffic websites is another strategic use of an author’s digital assets. Think about what digital assets you can create to support the launch of your books and prepare those assets so they’re ready and available at launch time.

Online Advertising

Facebook advertising campaigns can fit any budget. Authors and publishers can set a daily or a lifetime cap to the dollar amount of the campaign. If an author already has several thousand fans, Facebook’s sponsored stories ads display an image of the author’s fan page to friends of that author’s fans with a subtle visual that implies “Your friends like this page. You should too.” Authors and publishers can try different types of ads, different images and different creative messages until they find one that drives new fans to press “like.” Facebook ads can also be created to redirect Facebook users to the author’s blog or website. Again, even a budget of $100 to $200 can have an impact, not just in new fans or readers, but in author and book visibility. Hundreds of thousands of impressions can be achieved for a very modest budget. This is a digital marketing strategy that is often overlooked because publishers and authors think advertising is expensive or that it’s difficult to measure the ROI. With Facebook advertising, daily metrics will tell the tale of these ad campaign affects.

These are just a few of the digital marketing strategies authors and publishers can implement for little or no monetary outlay. Are you using digital marketing strategies effectively? We’d love to hear your ideas and success stories.

Social Media Marketing Tools and Tactics | The Virtuous Circle

By Cindy Ratzlaff April 29, 2011

Using a variety of social media marketing tools and tactics strategically, even businesses on a budget can dramatically increase online visibility and search engine ranking.
Small businesses and entrepreneurs have heard the drums, heeded the call and jumped on the Facebook bandwagon, setting up a fan page for their businesses and even dipping their toes into the Twitter pool. But many are struggling to build a following and beginning to wonder about the R.O.I. of their time in using this social media platform.

The virtuous marketing circle engages multiple learning styles to reach more potential clients and customers.

Although Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are free, the valuable resource of one’s time is required to actively engage, update and promote a brand message. And, time is expensive. Making the content business create work harder and across multiple platforms is a good way to produce a virtuous marketing circle and increase the ROI of content creation. This tactic can help users create a wider circle of influence by spreading their brand message to an exponentially larger audience; reaching consumers wherever they spend the majority of their time online.

Below is an example of a virtuous marketing circle. The small business owner creates the circle in the follow way.

1. A blog post on his or her blogsite or website.

2. Using a Facebook application such as Notes or Networked Blogs, our business owner automatically pulls that blog post onto his Facebook Fan page, which represents his business. Having set his application controls once, he never thinks about this again. His page is automatically updated with his new blog post each and every time he posts.

3. The title and a link back to our business owner’s Facebook Page is automatically posted to her Twitter account, moments after it hits her Facebook page because she has set up an application called the Facebook Twitter App. So now that single blog post has now been seen on three different platforms and potentially by three different audiences with some minor overlap.

4. Once or twice a month, our business owner chooses a particularly informative blog post and posts it to an e-zine articles site that accepts and syndicates articles with valuable information. Articles on e-zine sites can be picked up by other publications or blogs and helps our business owner reach a new audience with content he or she has already created. Additionally, Google and other search engines will index the articles which helps bring our business owner and brand higher up the search engine rankings.

5. Occasionally our business owner chooses one of his or her blog posts and records it as a podcast, saves it as an MP3, posts it to a Podcast site, itunes and perhaps to a special Podcast tab on the original website. Producing the same messages in multiple formats helps engage different learning styles in potential customers.

6. Just as our business owner was able to rework the original blog into a podcast, so she does so again, in a short how-to video about a particularly post. This video is posted to YouTube, then brought into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and again, back to the original blog.

With the virtuous marketing circle, one blog post reaches six or seven unique readerships and our business owner has created mutiple touchpoints from which to engage with clients, exponentially increasing the chances of being seen and heard. The original content he or she created has now been broadcast throughout the virtuous marketing circle.

How do you reuse, rework, re-introduce your ideas and messages to reach a wider crowd. Let’s share ideas.

4 Rules Every Social Media Marketer Can Learn from Improv

By Cindy Ratzlaff April 11, 2011

Many of you know I began my career as an improvisational actress. I’ve shared the stage with or taught classes to Bruce Willis, Kathy Kinney, John Leguizamo, radio and voice over personality Buzz Brainard, directors Bob Koherr and Peggy Rajski and even casting legend, David Rubin. What most people don’t know is that improvisation looks like free form conversational style theater, but in fact, it’s a structured technique that employs just four clear, crisp rules. The rules of improvisation are surprisingly similar to those for using social media platforms as a marketing vehicle.

Everything I know about Social Media Marketing, I learned in improv.

The four rules of improv can be summarized as:

who and what
when and where
yes, and
don’t deny

Who and What

Who you are to one another and what you’re doing are essential elements to establishing an interesting improvisational scene. They’re also key to establishing trust and social proof when engaging with others online. Establishing who you are and what you offer helps you attract potential clients who may be interested in your products or services. Demonstrate your expertise and provide social proof through actively sharing advise or strategies in your field. An improv actor might start a scene by saying, “Hello Nanny, it’s been a long semester and I’m delighted to see you again. Let me help you with those toys.” The audience will instantly know the relationship, and what they are doing. An entrepreneur might say, “When Forbes called me a “must follow” on Twitter, I realized I needed to share my techniques with others. My new webinar starts on Friday.”

When and Where

The when and where of an improv scene helps give the players clues as to how to communicate during the scene. The object of establishing a strong when and where is to help the players and the audience envision a scene with no props. On social media platforms, we’re using very few props other that words and the occasional video, photo or audio file. We need to establish help the consumer visualize our brand, our offering, our service. The actor in our scene above might say, “My playroom looks the same as it did when I was five. Even though I’m almost grown, I still have trouble sharing these toys with my little sister, Nanny.” Now the audience has a strong sense of the scene, the players and way they’ll interact with one another. To establish a clear when and where, the entrepreneur in our scenario above might say, “I’m thrilled to be offering this webinar, free of charge, this week right on my Facebook page, using LiveStream. Join me!”

Yes, And

In improvisation, a sacred rule is to listen to your fellow actor speak, then silently say to yourself, “Yes, and…” then add information. If one actor says, “I love your beautiful dress,” and the next actor says “I think I’ll walk the dog,” the audience and the actors suddenly seem confused. But if the answer to the first statement is “Why thank you. I bought it with the money you generously sent me in my birthday card, ” now we have a scene and a deeper relationship between the two characters. So our entrepreneur above needs to listen to his or her fans and followers to see how they responds to the LiveStream news, silently say “yes, and” and add more information. Example: “Will the event be recorded so I can listen later if I miss it live?” (Yes, and) “It will be recorded, Joyce, and I’ll be answering questions all week on my Facebook fan page.”

Don’t Deny
Denying someone’s statement in improv is tricky and can bring a scene to a halt, causing. If the first actor says, “What a beautiful, sunny day,” and the second actor says “No it’s not, it’s raining,” the next several moments will be a battle of wills to see who defines the scene, creating chaos onstage. In our entrepreneurial world, think about keeping the flow of ideas and questions coming and encouraging conversation to build relationships. Our entrepreneur above would be struggling to keep clients if he kept denying their needs or the way they receive his products. How would their future relationship go if our entrepreneur said, “You didn’t do the things I recommended, so you can’t expect the results I promised.” While that might be true, a more productive way to move this relationship forward might be, “I understand that you’re not ready to move forward on my original list of suggestions. Let me come back to you with some new ideas to see if we can overcome your concerns and still produce the result you’re hoping for.”

Every entrepreneur is really an improvisational artist. He or she works with new clients or customers and new situations all the time. Entrepreneurs need to be quick on their feet, flexible in their ideas and creative in their leadership. Everything I know about social media marketing, I learned from improv. All the web is a social stage, and remembering the four rules of improv can improve our social interactions.

How are you employing the rules of improv in your business? I’d love to hear ways in which you’ve set the scene, communicated clearly, turned a negative into a positive and added information. If you enjoyed this post, I’d very much appreciate it if you’d leave a comment.

6 Entrepreneurial Lessons from Secret Millionaires | Brand Marketing Tips

By Cindy Ratzlaff March 29, 2011

A new ABC television production hit airwaves nationwide this month and is creating more than high ratings. Secret Millionaire features a number of high profile people whose business model is helping others create financial stability, and even wealth, both online and off. What lessons might entrepreneurs emulate to create their own secret, or not so secret,millionaire success story? Let’s look at four of the secret millionaires to identify replicable patterns.

Secret Millionaire stars share some common practices entrepreneurs can adopt to create their own success.

Dani Johnson was homeless at 21 and a millionaire at 23. She now speaks, writes and conducts virtual home study courses and live events designed to help people get out of debt. Her story is compelling and inspirational. The tone of her communications is all about having experienced the fear and frustration of financial debt herself. By sharing her personal story, helping people identify with her, then modeling a success route, Dani acts as a mentor, cheerleader and coach to those who follow her program.

James Malinchak is a speaker, consultant and internet marketer who models hard work and reward. He is everywhere, all the time, with boundless energy and a message that you can create the life you want if you just have the will. He’s a mindset coach and people aspire to the life he has created for himself through relentless hard work and strategically brilliant marketing. Among other things, he coaches people on becoming paid speakers, something he is very good at doing himself. He understands creating ambient awareness and brand connections. His newest offering is called the Millionaire Apprentice Program, which piggy backs his programs SEO nicely with the buzz Secret Millionaire is garnering, and authentically ties in by teaching the techniques that helped him become a millionaire.

Gary and Diane Heavin are the founders of Curves, the fitness franchise for women. They have a different model. They’re not internet marketers. The majority of their work is hands on, with people who buy a Curves franchise. They model the in the trenches, “do it with you,” style of business. Even though they’ve created the largest women’s fitness franchise in history and have become very wealthy in the processes, they still operate like entrepreneurs. Gary’s philosophy is “Entrepreneurs don’t get paid on effort. They get paid on results.” He and Diane believe “success is not about who runs the fastest but rather who gets up the fastest after they fall.” This year they’ve teamed up with Zumba to create a new Curves Circuit with Zumba Fitness class to add to club offerings and are in the process of adding a diet counselor certification program through the Cleveland Clinic so clubs can provide better diet counseling to their members.

Ali Brown is a high profile coach for women entrepreneurs. She’s offers a tiered system of coaching programs that go from free webinars all the way through a very elite high priced personal coaching program and she has clients lined up to work with her. Her personal story of leaving corporate America and struggling as she launched her own business helps entrepreneurs identify with her and her “my gamble paid off and yours can too” mantra is appealing. She models success, glamour and adventure. And, she works hard. From that first business in her living room, Ali has expanded her brand into a magazine, an online style boutique, women’s retreats, info-products and more.

So what lessons can other entrepreneurs learn from these successful self-made millionaires?

Poverty is a strong motivator in each of their success stories. A driving passion to improve your life can be a powerful influencer.
Creating a business from the ground up takes more hard work than anything you’ve ever done before. Persistence is the key.
Continued success lies in continued reinvention. Successful people never stop innovating.
Financial freedom is a strong motivator and there are millions of people who want and need the information you may have on how to create financial security. A down economic climate may be the ideal time to launch a business that solves a problem.
Sharing your personal journey helps others envision themselves as potentially successful. People want to do business with successful people and modeling success can produce powerful results.
A great career or business is less about making the next sale and more about building lasting relationships.

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