Real Life Success Stories: David Pride of “I Love Christmas”

By Rich Brooks 10/09/2013

How do you build a community on Facebook?

In a new feature on The Marketing Agents Podcast, we’re gathering “real life” success stories from some of our listeners. (And non-listeners, too; we’re not going to discriminate.)

The idea came about when my friend David Pride approached me at a Social Media Breakfast here in Maine to share with me some success he had building a community around his Facebook page for I Love Christmas.

I don’t know about you, but I get very inspired by hearing about other people’s success using search, social or mobile marketing to reach their audience, engage their fans and generate more leads and revenue. (Makes me think I can do it, too!)

By the way, if you’ve got your own success story about how YOU used search, social or mobile to help accomplish your business goals, we’d love to hear it.

Head on over to our Success Stories form and let us know your story. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next success story we feature on The Marketing Agents Podcast!

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Big Ideas:

Pick a subject you’re passionate about. David loves Christmas, so creating regular content about the topic is easy for him.
Create a community. Engage your audience with ongoing, regular content and get them to like, commend on, and share that content.
Turbocharge your page with advertising. You don’t have to spend much; David spends about $75/month in Facebook ads and quickly grew to 2,300 fans. (When I checked today he was up to 3,337!) That’s some great ROI.
Ask your community what’s OK. Whether it was a newsletter or an Amazon affiliate program, David asked permission first.

Juicy Links:

I Love Christmas page on Facebook
David A. Pride on Facebook
The Marketing Agents Podcast: Subscribe, rate & review. Please take a moment to let me know what we’re doing right and what we can do to improve. Thanks!
Success Stories: Tell us yours!

Rich Brooks
What’s Your Success Story?

Built-In Social Media with Jeff Korhan

By Rich Brooks 09/22/2013

Social media is like secret weapon for small businesses…it allows us to build loyalty, create deeper connections with our audience, and build our business.

But for too many small business, social media is still something that seems like a foreign language. They don’t know how to make it part of their every day activity.

In this week’s episode, we bring in Jeff Korhan, author of Built In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business, to walk us through how we can use social to grow our own businesses.

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Big Ideas:

Understanding the impact of social may be more important than using it. These days, customers often have more information on our products or services than our sales force because of social.
Use social to listen. Even if you’re not sure how to participate, you can at least use social to listen to what your customers are saying.
Social has democratized media. Getting in front of your ideal customers used to be expensive…but with social media the costs have plummeted, giving small businesses new opportunities.
Be in the answer business. Find out what your ideal customers are asking, and be prepared to answer those questions through social.
Don’t get overwhelmed. Focus on your goals and plans, and use the social media tools that help you accomplish those goals.

Show Notes:

The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference: The conference itself is over, but you can still get full access to all the sessions on demand…and as a listener of The Marketing Agents Podcast, you can save $50 with the promo code “tmap.”
JeffKorhan.com: Be sure to check out Jeff’s website for more great info!
Built In Social: Grab a copy of Jeff’s book at Amazon or your local book store. (aff link)
Never miss another episode of The Marketing Agents Podcast! You can head on over to iTunes now and subscribe!

Rich Brooks
Social Media for Small Business

Create Knowledge Based Products for Leads and Profits with Denise Wakeman

By Rich Brooks 08/26/2013

There are plenty of benefits to creating knowledge based products…you can use them to establish your credibility, generate leads, and create additional streams of revenue for your business.

In this episode of The Marketing Agents Podcast, I speak with online marketing expert Denise Wakeman about two of her specialties: creating a business blog that generates leads and how to turn everyday content into knowledge-based products that people will be willing to pay for.

Whether you’ve been looking to build a powerful, lead-generating business blog, or create your first Kindle book, this episode has everything you need and more!

Please subscribe directly at iTunes so you don’t miss any future episodes! And if you’re already a subscriber, please consider giving TMAP a juicy 5 star rating and review…those reviews help us reach a wider audience and let us know you’re listening…and enjoying! Thanks. 🙂

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Big Ideas:

Start with a blog. Too often businesses feel overwhelmed where to start with social media. Denise recommends a blog because it’s your home base, and unlike social media platforms, you own it.
Determine your topics first. Topics become categories and you should have five posts ready to go in each category before you start.
Use “social” to drive traffic and build your list. While you don’t own these channels, they are critical tools to drive traffic to your blog.
Create additional streams of income with knowledge-based products. Anything you’ve written or recorded can be turned into a product. Blog posts can be turned into a Kindle book. Interviews can become audio products. Transcripts of interviews can be turned into ebooks.

Show Notes:

The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference: Whether you come to Maine or watch in the comfort of your own home or office, be sure to check out the 2nd annual conference all about search, social & mobile marketing! Save $25 on your physical or digital pass with the discount code TMAP.
Evernote: The most popular tool for keeping track of ideas for blog posts (and everything else.)
Editorial Calendar (WordPress Plugin): Great for managing multiple authors, or just keeping track of upcoming posts for your own blog.
Triberr: The network Denise uses to help promote blog posts and other topics.
Denise Wakeman: Be sure to check out Denise’s home base and sign up for her newsletter!

Rich Brooks
Digital Marketing Consultant

Can Social Media Help with B2B Lead Generation & Sales?

By Rich Brooks 01/30/2013

Social media can be used in almost any B2B (business to business) lead capture program and can increase the chances of landing the big sale. Here’s how you can improve your lead generation and close rate.

“Social media is fine for consumer brands, but it won’t work for me because we only sell to other businesses.”

Have you ever heard that before? Ever thought it yourself?

The other day I was speaking to a sales person who sold wood-burning furnaces to big institutions; he was convinced that social media couldn’t help him generate leads or land any sales. He believed that the CFOs and Heads of Maintenance (the two groups he had to convince in any organization) weren’t using social media…at least not for business.

Here are a few of the suggestions I shared with him about how he could leverage social media to increase the number of B2B sales he landed this year.

You seem like a smart man/woman/search engine bot; I’m guessing that you can extrapolate some of the ideas here into your own B2B lead generation program.

Keep reading! →