balance

Social Media Success Requires Consistency!

Whether you are in social media or any kind of business one of the most important traits you can demonstrate is consistency!

Consistency is defined as being marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity and free from variation or contradiction; showing steady conformity to character, profession, belief, or custom. Doesn’t that also sound like a great rule of thumb for a social media practice?

Humans tend to be attracted to balance and consistency.  A person can only be as successful in their life’s endeavors as they are consistent in their life’s behaviors. In other words you have to “walk the talk.” This is true on the “online or offline world.”

This means that as a leader, your actions (what you say, what you do, where you spend your time, what you deem as being important, the decisions you make etc) must be consistent… day in and day out.  That way, the people who follow what you say and do – will see consistency in your actions and behaviors.

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How Duct Tape Marketing legend John Jantsch uses social media

You probably already know John Jantsch from his wildly (and still) popular book Duct Tape Marketing. The book, and the movement it spawned, is based upon simple, back-to-the-basics, marketing systems any business owner to apply TODAY to grow business. John’s taking things a step further in his new book, Referral Engine. He’s a kindred spirit: he starts with a working definition of marketing and then builds a process based upon it.

I especially appreciate where he places social media in the process. Too many of us present social media like it’s a cure-all or the ultimate marketing toolkit. Many have even gone so far as to proclaim the death of direct mail, death of print, death of newspapers, all listing the killer agent as social media.

John has a gorgeously balanced approach. He says, “While the notion of community-building online has become a very commonplace practice, the opportunity for community-building offline is richer than ever.…The converged business [the business blending John’s balance] uses every advance in technology as an opportunity to forge a deeper, more personal relationship with its customers.”

Marketing is a series of decisions and actions. John says, “For the converged, high-tech, high-touch business, the primary decision filter for every marketing process, customer touch point, and tactic is how technology can make the customer experience more fun, more convenient, more engaging, and more frequent.”

Bravo. It’s not about tools or tactics or even policies and profits. It’s about using everything possible to create something for someone ELSE.

John is as delightful in person as you’d imagine he would be. It was fun to grab a few minutes to talk with him on camera while we were together at Conquer & Grow, hosted by InfusionSoft.

Trey Pennington

Balance between New Technology and Social Etiquette?

What is going on these days? It seems that every place I go— countless people are looking down towards the ground (i.e. their phones, IPODs, mobile devices etc). For example, I have seen couples who are out on “dates” and although they are sitting across from each other—they are not listening or engaged in the conversation to each other- but instead are focused on browsing the web or texting someone else. If we are not careful we going to have a generation of people with strained necks from spending so much time looking down at such devices.

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