The Right Tools & Mindset For Success
Healthy Envy
You envy intentional people and you should. People who live their lives with intention know what they want and achieve it because they follow a process.
1. Stop letting distractions distract
2. Write down your dreams/goals
3. Write down steps to reach them
4. Stop often to check your progress on reaching your dreams/goals
5. (Rinse and repeat) [Read more…]
The biggest difference between networking 15 years ago and networking today is scale. Sometime over the last few weeks I reached the 1,000 followers mark on Twitter. Do I know all of those people? No. Am I connected to them? Yes. Our networks are scalable because the internet doesn’t care where you are as long as you’re connected. If you were good at networking before LinkedIn or Twitter started you’ll be good at networking now. Social networks are built to connect people and their ideas. That is not a new idea.
The connections are valid
Those who think the new networking creates less valid connections are focusing on the ease of the tools instead of the depth of the connections the tools provide. It is true that most things worth doing are more difficult. Thanks to the internet connecting is the easy.
Even if you’ve never met
Progressing beyond a connection into a relationship is where lives change and the world becomes a better place to live. The internet can help you go deeper in your relationships if you want to. My children live 17 hours from my parents but they see each other through Skype anytime. My mom watches out family YouTube channel (http://www.YouTube.com/Traubfamily) to experience the daily highlights my kids produce. Cliff Ravenscraft and I have done 81 episodes of our podcast Business Tech Weekly over skype. I’ve never met Cliff in person.
Scale the results too
Facebook is measured by the number of friends you have. Relationships are measured by the change they bring; joy, commerce, knowledge, encouragement, wisdom. I think you should ignore the number of friends and connections you have on the digital networks. Focus on the fruit of those relationships. If you use the tools the internet provides us you can not only scale the amount of connections you have, you can scale what those relationships produce.
Today I had the honor of spending some time with Jeff Hayzlett and Jeff Pulver. Since they both have their own Wikipedia pages they’re famous enough that you might know who they are. Hayzlett has worked at Kodak for many years and now has a book out and a television deal. He has his own consulting company now and he’s a local boy (we both live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and despite the media’s misinformation he doesn’t live on a ranch). Jeff Pulver has a fascinating history with technology, from working with ham radios at age 9, making VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) the technology it is today, investing in Twitter to founding and running the movement that is the 140 Conferences.
We had a small a great Tweetup organized by Hugh Weber who is as close as you come to a social media guru (and a genuinely nice guy as well). I put together a video from the notes I took at the event because frankly it felt like it was too important not to document. Here’s a preview of the video…it’s not about the technology, it’s about people’s lives changing through connectivity. If you attended the Tweetup I’d appreciate you sharing what you took away from the event. I know we all learned something significant.
I’m a faithful Mailchimp subscriber and it’s the best email marketing company in existence today. They put together a lengthy but fully entertaining video of how not to market through email. If you’ve got an email newsletter list or you are considering building one then please watch this video for the sake of those on your list and your own education.
Learn more about Mailchimp HERE
Oh yeah, if you’d like to be on my enewsletter list you can sign up HERE
Audio version of this post:[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/andytraub/5tipstoberemarkable.mp3]
This picture took 34 months to make. It’s not a serious of pictures though. It’s one picture. You’re actually seeing the destruction and construction of a building as taken by Michael Wesely in 2001. A snapshot is forgettable. An image taken over three years is memorable and remarkable. So here’s the question, “Is your marketing plan forgettable or remarkable?”
Old Spice had a marketing campaign a few weeks ago and the critics are already saying that it wasn’t a success because Old Spice hasn’t seen an immediate jump in sales. Were they really expecting people to run to the drug store and buy Old Spice? I think they’re trying to build something remarkable and they’re off to a great start (see the videos here). Instead of looking at your social media plan or your web traffic as a 3 month or one year campaign why not look at it from a different perspective. Will is be perceived as remarkable?
Remarkable is hard work and most people actually think social media marketing is less work than traditional marketing. In fact social media marketing is more difficult because it requires transparency in a way that traditional ads do not. No one ever expected the Ronald McDonald to create personal videos for kids and post them on the internet. It’s easier to just create a packaged message and let it run. Old Spice created something remarkable b/c they took part in conversations with real people. [Read more…]
