Social Marketing
105: Leverage LinkedIn and Network Your Way to New Connections with Mike Shelah
LinkedIn master Mike Shelah talks to us about the ABC's of LinkedIn: Always Be Connecting, Always Be Cultivating, and Always Be Customizing. Use the LinkedIn social network to find your dream job or get an "in" with whatever joint venture you want to achieve.
Mike Shelah: Robert, things are wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Robert Plank: I'm glad to have you, and the big reason is because ... I mean, this site called "LinkedIn." Maybe I should get logged in right now. LinkedIn. I have an account. I filled stuff out. I've made a group. I've done a couple different things, but I really don't get it, so I'm hoping that you could clear a bunch of things up about it today.
Mike Shelah: Yeah. I am happy to do so. Because of people like you, I have a career, so I am grateful for that.
Robert Plank: Nice, so tell us about it.
Mike Shelah: The first thing that I like to say is what LinkedIn is not, and it's not Facebook. A lot of people are very familiar with Facebook. They enjoy it, and they engage on it on a regular basis, and then they look at their LinkedIn profile almost next to never. They occasionally log in to see if they have new invitation requests. They'll use it rather heavily if they're looking for a job, and sales professionals to some extent are better at using it, but even most sales professionals really use LinkedIn incorrectly.
Here's what I mean by that. Over the years, I've developed what I call the "ABCs of LinkedIn," and I don't mean always be closing. Most people think of Alec Baldwin in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross where he goes, "Always be closing. Coffee is for closers." I think that might be one of the most despicable things that's ever happened to sales because people really look at sales that way that you have to beat people over the head with a hammer in order to get them to buy your product, or you have to trick them, or you have to manipulate them, and that's not what sales is.
The most important piece of sales is if you imagine the products and services that your company offers as a circle, and then you imagine your customers' needs as another circle, and then you imagine your competitors' needs as a third circle.
Robert Plank: Okay.
Mike Shelah: There's a spot where all three of those circles lay over each other, and specifically, there's a spot where your circle lays over your customers' circle and your competition's circle doesn't, and that's the value edge. That's the differentiator that makes you the preferred vendor over your competition, and LinkedIn can do such an effective job of helping people sell. When I say sell, I like to remind people that looking for a job is temporary sales. Very rarely are salespeople out of a job for a long time because they're used to selling themselves, and most people that are not in the sales world, they don't embrace the sales mentality because they don't want to be viewed as salesy, and I can appreciate that.
Robert Plank: Got you.
Mike Shelah: There's a lot of horrible examples, but LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool to find clients and to find your dream job, and I'll start with the first ABC which is "Always Be Connecting." I did a speaking engagement for the Baltimore Business Journal here in Maryland a couple weeks ago. I had a great audience, and when I began speaking, I told the audience, "I want you to look to your left. I want you to look to your right, and what you should have seen are people."
Human nature inclines us to sit next to people we already know, and if you do that, you're doing networking wrong. The whole idea of networking is to sit next to people you don't know and strike up a conversation. It doesn't have to be a sales pitch, and it doesn't have to be deeply probing, but let people know that you're not a stalker, and that you're friendly, and that you're human, and that's the connection. That's the first piece.
What I tell my audience is, "You go to that event. You collect 10, 15 business cards, people you never met before, and the first thing you should do when you go home is send them connection requests on LinkedIn to say, ‘Hey, Patrick. It was great meeting you at the event last night. I hope we have the opportunity to do some business together this year.'" What I just touched on there were the other 2 ABCs which are "Always Be Cultivating" and "Always Be Customizing."
Here's what I mean by "Always Be Customizing." LinkedIn has all these generic responses. For example, if you send a connection request, it says, "I would like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." If the person you're trying to connect with has any level of stature, meaning they're not regular people like you and me, but they're an executive level, they're not going to accept that connection unless you're higher on the totem pole than them.
For example, if you're Dale Carnegie and you send a connection request to a C-level executive, C-level executives probably are going to accept that connection request from Dale Carnegie if you're still alive because he's a step above the totem pole. Anybody below you on the totem pole, you're not accepting from. You're just not, unless you're introduced to that person or that person sent you a message that had a direct value to you and your company.
Robert Plank: Could you explain that a little bit because like one of the first things you said here was that LinkedIn is not like Facebook? When I go on LinkedIn like I had a profile to fill out, I ... and other people to like I guess friend request or connect, but then I've noticed this too like some people I'm connected like 2 connections away or something, and there's some kind of a link for the person in between us to do this introduction thing.
Mike Shelah: Introductions are probably the most valuable piece of LinkedIn. It's what they call the "second degree connection" because my network is valuable to me. My network is probably more valuable to you because it's potential. It's the potential to do great things, and the way I explain this is ... Again, this can work for a salesperson. It can work for a person in a job market. Come up with your top 5 accounts you want to go after or the top 5 companies you'd like to work for.
You could do that just as a general search right at the top of LinkedIn, and then you search the job title. It could be a hiring manager. If you're in finance, you would probably work for a controller or a CFO. If you're in technology, you might work for a director of IT or you might work for a CIO. Depending on your industry, what's the title of the person that you would report to? Then, do a search for that title. The nice thing about LinkedIn is if you type in "CFO," it will also pull up everyone that says, "Chief Financial Officer." It knows certain abbreviations like that, the more common ones.
Robert Plank: Cool.
Mike Shelah: You've got that ... Go ahead.
Robert Plank: Go ahead. I was going to say like ... This is all new to me because to be honest like from what I had seen of LinkedIn, I honestly didn't even know until right this second that there were jobs ... There were actually like real-world jobs on LinkedIn like this was new to me. All I thought that was that you could fill out your own basically resume. You could make like a blog post on there. You can make your connections.
As you were saying that, I just searched ... I was searching in the search bar like Google and Dropbox, and it shows me all of the job openings, and then there are a lot of tiny things like there's a thing that shows me who ... Like people who went to the same college as me who also work at that company. That's huge, and even as far as what you're talking about as far as like the middleman basically like the people making the introduction, so now, if I really wanted to work at a certain company, I really wanted a certain job, now I know who I can maybe talk to about that.
Mike Shelah: Absolutely, and you bring up a great point. You have to leverage your tribe. Seth Godin, famous writer, wrote a book called "Purple Cow," wrote a book called, "Linchpin," and he wrote a book called "Tribes." In that, he talks about how we are naturally comfortable of other people that we perceive to be the same or similar to us, and my favorite example of that is sports. Patrick, you're a sports fan?
Robert Plank: My name is Robert, and no. I like a little baseball, maybe a tiny bit basketball, but that's where it ends.
Mike Shelah: Okay, so not a sports fan, but let's talk about baseball just for a second then.
Robert Plank: Okay.
Mike Shelah: You know people that are crazy about baseball, right?
Robert Plank: Yeah, like fanatics.
Mike Shelah: Sure, and if you are from a certain area ... I live in Maryland. I'm an Orioles fan. If I'm out of town, I'm in North Carolina, I'm in Florida, I'm in California, and I see someone wearing an Orioles t-shirt, or an Orioles hat, or an Orioles jersey, the likelihood of me walking up to this total stranger and saying hello has gone up 800%, right?
Robert Plank: Right.
Mike Shelah: Think about your favorite musical band. It works the same way, something that you're passionate about. You're a comic book fan, if somebody has on a Superman t-shirt. Whatever your passion is, you identify with that group even though the person is a total stranger, and colleges are a great tribe. The bonding that comes from that, even if somebody went to the school 20 years before you or 20 years after you.
Robert Plank: It's still something.
Mike Shelah: Yeah. I got a meeting last summer with the CIO of a pretty big real estate company here in Maryland because when I looked him up on LinkedIn, I saw that he was a graduate of UMBC, which we referred to as the "Retrievers." That's our mascot, and so when I sent him a message, the message I sent to him didn't have a title about, "Bob, I'd like to tell you about my business." It didn't have any of that. The title of it said, "Go Retrievers."
Robert Plank: Nice.
Mike Shelah: Right there, I had that little something that 99% of the other salespeople didn't think to put in front of them, and I got the meeting, and I got the opportunity. When you think about leveraging relationships that way, think about getting a job. How much easier is it if you have the secret handshake, if the person sitting behind the counter went to the same college as you, went to the same high school as you, likes the same football team as you? The list is endless, and the best thing about LinkedIn is it gives you that ammunition ahead of time, and if you just have a mutual connection with them, that's my favorite because if it's somebody that you know well and they know well, you're practically guaranteed to win the opportunity.
Robert Plank: Cool, so about LinkedIn and all the stuff. What kind of big mistake other than these couple of ABCs like the lack of customizing and lack of being personal, what's like a huge, huge mistake you're seeing all over the place with other people on LinkedIn?
Mike Shelah: The 3 big ones are, they are not having a complete profile. For example, there's a section that you can add that's called "Advice for Contact." Why on earth wouldn't you add that? Put a phone number in there. Put an email in there. Make it easy for people to engage you, and I've had some people say to me "Mike, I don't want my personal information out there," and my response to that is, "Well, first of all, it's probably out there. If somebody really wants it, they can find it."
If you're uncomfortable, and I appreciate that, it's very easy to set up an alternate email just for LinkedIn. You could do that through Google, Yahoo. Any number of platforms will give you a free email that you can create just for your LinkedIn account, and you can get a Google Voice number to pair with your cellphone. If you go to my profile, the number on there is my personal cellphone. I don't have any problem sharing that, and I think I can count on 1 hand how many times somebody has actually called me that I didn't know already.
If you want that extra layer of protection, just go to Google Voice, sign up for your phone number, and the best thing is you can get that number from any part of the country. If you are in Maryland and you want a California number, you want a Los Angeles number, you can pull that from the dropdown menu on Google Voice and it will give you a Los Angeles number. The nice thing is you could turn it on and off. You could do a customized greeting. Whenever anybody calls you, before you accept the call, it gives you an announcement of who it is calling and gives you the choice to accept the call or send it to voicemail, so that's one of the first things.
Robert Plank: That's pretty powerful stuff so far.
Mike Shelah: That's the first piece is make sure your profile is full and complete. Put in your volunteer experience. Put in your interests because interests act as keywords and can help people find you through a keyword search. In addition to ...
Robert Plank: I like that, and even, I'm looking at ... I'm on LinkedIn right now for the first time in a couple of years, and I'm looking at my profile, and there's like some pop-up where you can check off like, "Do you care about these certain causes?" like, "Do you care about animal welfare? Do you care about disaster relief?" That's cool because it seems like with LinkedIn like the more information, the more stuff that's indexed, the better because then, like you're saying, if you're making some new connection with someone for whatever reason ... Even if you haven't gone to the same school, even if you can't find any music, or sports, or location in common, then maybe you have the ... like education, or human rights, or politics in common. Like there's all these different things it seems now that they have listed where you can find something in common with someone.
Mike Shelah: Yeah. I'll share a quick story with you about that. About a year and a half ago, I was working with a director of IT for a transport company here in Maryland. They had the big armored trucks that take the money from the retail stores to the bank. One of those companies.
Robert Plank: Yeah.
Mike Shelah: I got a call set up with the director of IT, and it's her and me, and I'm waiting for my manager and my sales engineer to join the call. While waiting, I said, "Mary, I just have to ask you. I looked at your LinkedIn profile and it says under interests that you play Guitar Hero." I said, "Tell me more about that." I said, "I'm a huge Guitar Hero fan," and we spent the next 20 minutes talking about Guitar Hero.
Robert Plank: Awesome.
Mike Shelah: She had played it at work one day as a goof, and she loved it so much, she ended up buying it for her grandkids, and they have the guitars, and the drums, and they sing together. I said, "Oh, what's your favorite song?" She said, "Oh, I do Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi," I never met her before, and we had that connection, and I ... gave me something to fuel the fire even though we had never met before. After the call, my manager says to me, "I was on the call for about 15 minutes, but I kept silent because I was listening to you engage the customer."
Robert Plank: That's cool.
Mike Shelah: Yeah. It's just another great little piece about LinkedIn. The other 2 things that people really want to be aware of and be proactive about is keywords. What I mean by that is you want to create your profile for the job that you want or the client you are seeking, and I'll give you a couple of examples of that. I worked with a lot of college students, and they will tell me, "Well, Mike, my degree is engineering, but I don't have any experience in engineering." I'm like, "You absolutely have experience in engineering. You have 4 years of school." He said, "But that's not real-life experience."
Here's the thing. You have the skills. You have the certifications. You have the accreditation. You were to put those terms throughout your profile. You want them in your summary section. You want them in your headline at the top of the page. You want them in your school experience. You want them all over your profile because that will move you up the link in search rankings, and it will move you ahead of the other people that want that job.
In addition to that, even though you don't have experience working as an engineer, you have plenty of valuable work experience. Most college students at one point or another worked in a restaurant. They either bus tables, or they're a waiter or a waitress, or they're a bartender, or they're a cook, and you want to talk about a high-pace environment with extreme pressure, and working as a team, and collaborating. It's some of the best experience in the world.
When you can convey that, when you could convey that you're promoted from just being a waiter to being a shift leader, that you were promoted from being a bartender to an assistant general manager, when you could show those leadership skills in your profile, companies want to hire that. They want to hire people that can think and can lead in addition to having the technical expertise to fill the specifics of the job.
Robert Plank: It sounds like there's all those little tidbits to look better than all of your other competitors trying to get that same job?
Mike Shelah: Yeah, the better job you do of completing that profile and putting your best foot forward. LinkedIn has search algorithms built in to it, and if somebody searches keywords ... For example, nobody searches for telecom salesperson. They don't do that. They look for the things that the telecom salesperson could sell them, and if you have those keywords in your profile enough, then you will move higher than the person whose profile says they're a telecom salesperson.
Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense.
Mike Shelah: Then, the last piece is the profile picture. The short version of this is, again, this is not Facebook. It should not be a picture of you with your spouse, you with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you with your kids, you leaning on a car, you drinking an alcoholic beverage, you at a party, you in a bathing suit. It shouldn't be any of those things. It should be a clear, up-close picture that shows you from about the shoulders up, and you should be in professional attire, and preferably, it should be taken by a professional. That's usually about a $100 to $120 investment.
For people that are on a budget, what I say is, "Find a wall with a neutral background that's well-lit. Have somebody take a fairly close-up picture." Don't make it a selfie. Do not do that. Have somebody else take the photo, and use that until you can get a professional to take your photo. If you're on a budget, there are a couple of ways to get your photo less expensively. Here in Maryland, the Baltimore Business Journal does an expo, a business expo twice a year, and once of the things that they offer is there's a vendor right by the front door that is set up there that does photos all day long, and they do them for roughly half price. They do them about $50 or $60. That's one way to get it less expensively.
Last year, LinkedIn actually had a tour bus that went around the country. I think it made 12 stops across the United States. The big ones, New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angeles. You could register ahead of time to get a free LinkedIn profile photo on the LinkedIn photo bus.
Robert Plank: That's awesome. Just think, once we figure out drone technology, you could just say, "Fly a drone over to me," and it will come, and hover over to you, and snap your picture, right?
Mike Shelah: There you go. Someday.
Robert Plank: Cool. I think that I'm starting to get LinkedIn. It seems to me like ... You keep saying that it's different than Facebook, and I think that just from what I'm hearing, it's like ... There's a lot of times when Facebook is inappropriate, and a lot of times when like you don't really know someone. Like you said, like there's the time when you talked to the woman about Guitar Hero, and it's like you're going in and trying to find a job. We're going in for a job interview like you're not going to go and add someone on Facebook. That's almost creepy, but it seems like with LinkedIn, it doesn't have the creepiness of Facebook or the ... Like you said, the party or the extra weirdness of Facebook that might turn people off or disqualify you, but it has all these little details, and things, and more like stories about you. Things that break the ice, I guess.
I really like everything you shared with us today, Mike. I really liked about the ABCs of LinkedIn, "Always Be Connecting," "Always Be Cultivating," "Always Be Customizing." I like how you told us to have a complete profile and put an email address in there. If you're afraid of sharing your email address, get a forwarder. If you're afraid of sharing your phone number, get a Google Voice number. Put some keywords in there for the job you want, and for different skills and things you have, and put a profile picture.
Even earlier in this call, I was ... As I said, I logged in to LinkedIn for a minute, and I noticed that there were a couple of people that I'd known from college like in the list, when I searched for like jobs or places that will be cool to work, and near the bottom, there were a couple of people who I knew but didn't have a profile picture. They filled out a couple of things, but no picture, so guess what? There were at the very bottom of the search results. Even them, like I didn't ... I wasn't compelled to even go and talk to them and say hi because I'm thinking, "Man, if they don't have a profile picture, they must not even be using this. If I send them a message, there's going to be no one there to even see it because they haven't even spent the 10 seconds to put a picture on there."
Mike Shelah: Yeah. There's a lot of truth to how human nature makes us perceive that sort of thing. We trust the face. You really ...
Robert Plank: Yeah, because ... Yeah. You're on a website, you're on a computer, and you see someone's profile without a face or a picture, it's just like, "Oh, it's a machine right there. It's a computer." You see the face, "Okay. Now, it's a real person." Man, I really like all the stuff you've been talking about us with LinkedIn, Mike, so could you tell us where people can find out more about you and get more of your LinkedIn training?
Mike Shelah: Absolutely. Thank you, Robert. I tell people I'm very "googleable." I'm very easy to find once you know how to spell my name, Mike Shelah, which is S-H-E-L-A-H. You could go to my website, which is mikeshelah.com. You will find me on LinkedIn naturally. You will find me on Twitter, @Mikeshelah. You'll find me on Instagram, @Mikeshelah. You'll find me on Facebook, Mike Shelah Consulting, and for your listeners today, 2 things. Anybody listening to the show can go to my website right now, mikeshelah.com, and they could sign up to get a free 3-page review of their profile where I customize it, I review their profile, and I give them my top 12 items for enhancing their profile as well as my 5 tips and tricks for really getting the most value out of LinkedIn. That's first. That's for anybody listening to the show.
In addition to that, I do one-on-one coaching sessions with people. I could do them in person or I could do via Skype, and those sessions are 90 minutes for $500. The first 3 people from your show that send me a connection request on LinkedIn and say, "Hey, Mike. I heard you on Robert Plank Show. I loved it. I want you to coach me," they get that first session half price for just $250.
Robert Plank: Awesome, so where can they go to get that, that specific offer?
Mike Shelah: They go to www.mikeshelah.com.
Robert Plank: Okay, and they can get to the coaching offer and all that from that page?
Mike Shelah: Yeah. All they have to do is when they connect with me on LinkedIn and say, "Mike, I heard you on Robert Plank Show," and they will get the 50% discount.
Robert Plank: Awesome. Cool. Lots of golden nuggets about LinkedIn, Mike, and thanks for being on the show and sharing everything you have to share with us.
Mike Shelah: Robert, thank you for having me on the show tonight. It's been a lot of fun.
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Zapier: Automate Content Marketing and Social Media Using Triggers
This is how I automate my posting of social media... I can post an entry to my blog and it cross-posts to my Facebook fan page... but THEN replicates to Twitter, my other Facebook fan pages, and my personal Facebook wall. I also have triggers that go off when I upload a YouTube video:
You can connect all kinds of cool stuff. For example, send me a text message reminder at the same time every day, or populate a Google spreadsheet when I add a file to Dropbox, and more:
Membership Site Challenges, Engagement and Retention: How to Earn Online Income (This is Better Than Drip Content)
As usual, most people are hung up because they're focusing on the wrong things and asking the wrong questions when trying to get their membership sites online and making money.
A big focus problem: stressing out about retention (keeping payment members in your site) when you should "set it and forget it" and focus all your energies on getting new people in the door.
Look, you don't need to drip out videos in tiny pieces, run a call center, or offer trials or discounts to get people to rejoin. Here's what you'll use to get people to join your sites, take action, and complete that course you offer:
- Auto-subscribe everyone who buys into your membership site into an email autoresponder sublist with a follow-up email sequence
- Match up your follow-up sequence to either your drip content, or just schedule your emails at a REASONABLE PACE for someone to not just consume the content, but take action
- Important: don't send JUST ONE email per post... send at least 2-3 emails almost HOUNDING people over time to watch this video, make sure you watch this video, did you watch this video (this is the big one)
Just set those three things up and forget all about it. That alone will double your membership site retention whether it's monthly forever, a fixed term payment plan or even a single payment site – yes, I still follow-up with single payment buyers to make sure they take action.
Now, a reactivation page. Create a folder in your site called "invite" – such as, "http://www.webinarcrusher.com/invite" – this is the folder where you will store your reactivation pages.
Let's say Ray Edwards is a member of Webinar Crusher, and it's a 5 month program ($497 upfront or 5 payments of $99.95 spaced 31 days apart). He makes three payments and then cancels.
Don't jump to conclusions! The number 1 reason people cancel from our membership sites is due to credit card expiration... the average credit card only lasts 3 years and some even expire after 1 year! (Plus, for a long time, PayPal had a bug where, if someone updates with credit card information, it would CANCEL all recurring subscriptions!)
Ray has made three payments, and has two left, so we create a new payment button for two payments of $99.95 spaced 31 days apart, name the file "REdwards.html" (short for Ray Edwards). Add this as the headline, "Webinar Crusher: Reactivation Button." Add this as the subheadline: "For Ray Edwards Only!"
For the sub-sub-headline: "This Link Will Be Removed On (Deadline 7 Days From Now, i.e. January 1, 2015)." Add this as the text, "After clicking the reactivation payment button below, do NOT re-register. Instead, check out and then click the -- Existing members, login here – link." Then the button re-activate.
That's it! Adding that button, and nothing else, gets 50% of our drop-outs to sign back up into our membership sites. No bribe or incentive to rejoin, no discount or trial, no special video or gift... just the button to sign up and pay off the remaining payments and that's it!
Now, can I share my BEST strategy for taking membership retention through the roof? Hint: this is the same technique we've used in sites like Membership Cube where we had an 89% success rate (in an industry where even 10 or 20 percent is good) and the average person in our class setup three membership websites.
It's called: membership site challenges. It happens in three parts...
- Part #1: You explain and show your module in a 60-90 minute video session
- Part #2: Tell them at the end of that session (video in a blog post) to fill in the challenge or assignment (but don't call it "homework") – a very quick task, for example, create a 3-minute video and publish it online
- Part #3: Ask four questions to get people to micro-commit to performing that task, including a deadline – they post a comment answering the four questions
- Part #4: They go out and do the small assignment they were supposed to do, then come back and post "I AM DONE!" as a comment.
For example, let's say that Webinar Crusher is a 4-module course (it is). In the first module, we show you how to plan and promote a 20-minute webinar to a live audience. It's one thing to talk about it, another thing to show it, yet another thing for US to do it, but then we want YOU to do it too!
At the end of that video (it's a live paid webinar session but we record it) we send you over to that challenge within the membership site. It's just a blog post that says something like this...
Answer the following questions:
- What is the title of your webinar?
- What product will you review?
- Where will you post your recording?
- What time and date will your 20-minute webinar be?
When you are finished, come back and type "I AM DONE" in the comments.
Here's the formula for "challenge" posts...
- The first is usually the NAME of some kind, as in, what's the name of the video you'll create or the product you'll create.
- The second question is some sort of minor detail, such as the product you're reviewing or how long the video you're about to record will be
- The third question is a proof element, usually where your completed task will end up online
- The fourth and final question (don't ask more than four) is the exact time and date you'll finish and be completely done and online
This works WAY WAY better than a quiz or a "pay as you go" course.
You post this, you COMMAND people to fill in the challenge, right there in the video and during your live training, you fill this challenge in yourself.
Have a membership site, and run these challenges, build in some complementary software, systems, tools, and templates... email on a sequence several times per week when there are new posts and challenges... and now you don't have to worry about drip content or all these "crazy tricks" to hide from your buyers or fool them into paying you money.
Is this something you are ALREADY using, or WILL be using in your membership site?
Traffic Secrets: How to Get All The Subscribers and Sales You’ll Ever Need Using Facebook Advertising and Search Engine Optimization
Can I tell you why you're not a multi-multi-millionaire yet? Why you can't buy that 2nd home or yacht with one single payment? Why your internet business hasn't taken off? Why you haven't retired to the beach yet?
It's the lack of TRAFFIC!
This is the reason why SEO services, backlink services, courses on paid ad networks sell so well. Everyone knows the internet is literally flooded with traffic from all sides. The only problem is tapping into that traffic.
If you only had a million visitors to your site every single day, and you sold a $7 report that only converted at 1%... that's $70K a day or $25 million per year.
This is where most "internet marketers" start when they first come online. They don't want to create a real brand, setup a followup sequence, a blog or articles. "That all sounds like work, I just want to exploit the loophole!"
You thought, I'll be an anonymous traffic broker.
I'll find an underused site with lots of traffic and build a list. I'll decide I want to teach people how to start an internet business and make money online, even though I haven't done it. I'll look up the 10 best ways to make money online.
I'll give away a free report detailing a few of the ways, and ask for a name and email address in exchange for that report...
I'll find an affiliate program for each step of the process (web hosting affiliate link, payment processor affiliate link, affiliate link for required software and reports) and put together a 30-day email followup sequence "reporting" or "reviewing" each and every one. I'll create a squeeze page (forced opt-in page) sending all this massive traffic to it, some of it will convert, and I'll become a multi-millionaire.
Once that's done, I'll decide "weight loss" is also a pretty desperate market. I'll look up the top 10 weight loss methods or products, get affiliate links, assemble a follow-up sequence, send banner ad traffic. Next, how about dating? Top 10, affiliate links, follow-ups, create ads on sites like PlentyOfFish, wait for the money to roll in.
A Few Problems Here...
First, I've known REAL "traffic brokers", basically affiliates on steroids, who game the pay-per-click networks who try to buy out all the Facebook traffic or stay at the #1 paid spot on Google. Guess what? They have to remain on TOP of any and all search engine news, change and tweak their ads daily, and sometimes spend five to six figures per day just to outbid and outspend any competition. If that sounds to you like a combination of day trading and gambling, you're right! And there's no way you'd keep up. Any loophole or arbitrage you discover, running an ad on this ad network into that affiliate product, is going to change on you and probably close up quickly.
Second, when you try to create a business like that, you're forgetting that at least 100 other people have had that exact same "genius" idea as you just within the last 60 minutes. Try to rank in the top 1000 for dating, gambling, weight loss, or making money. Good luck! This alone will tell you that you'll have to go for something less mass-market, more long-tail (i.e. "fat loss for high school reunion"), and more unique so you can carve out your own little niche in the process.
Third, if I do find you through the masses of traffic and land on your site, maybe even signup to your email list, why should I buy from you instead of your thousands of competitors? Even if I like YOU and trust YOU personally, why should I buy your PRODUCT instead of all the other ones?
As much as your insecurities are holding you back (sorry if that's a little harsh) the first thing you need in place is a REAL product (membership site holding a fixed-term training course is the best), a real brand, and your own name selling that membership site on a sales letter. THEN create an opt-in page giving away a free gift (a free audio with a transcript as a report is great, a free software product is better), and use your e-mail follow-up sequence to sell them into the course.
When you create your own membership-based course, you now differentiate yourself from everyone else. You can explain why exercise doesn't work, diets don't work, pills don't work, and how your personal 30-day diet plan is better than that.
If your personal "thing" is how to play guitar, how to learn a new language, how to save your relationship, conquer panic attacks, even better. Less competition. I sell WordPress plugins myself and teach "technology" such as how to setup membership sites, run webinars, record videos, and more.
If you make your niche something you already enjoy doing, then it's easy to add your personality into it, and you're no longer "that person" who randomly decided to teach dating one day.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get traffic to your website... here's what you might have tried...
Option #1: Mass Traffic (Don't Do It!)
The most dangerous question you could ask about your business, "Who wouldn't want it?" You've decided to create a weight loss product because... almost 100% of the population wants to lose weight. The only problem? You're not unique. You don't have your own hooks, your own spin OR your own personality in the game and you're just like everyone else.
You want to sell an internet marketing product and your attitude is, "My target market is anyone with money, or anyone who wants money." That's a big problem.
Instead, if your niche was Facebook traffic... you're targeting people who (probably) have an established online business, and are already convinced that they need to use Facebook for traffic. Smaller crowd, but you can actually have a message, and they'll actually buy from you!
Plus: narrow yourself one step further into a sub-niche and create your own unique system that's better than the alternatives, that no one can copy. And even if people copy you, absorb their updates and move on.
Option #2: Targeted Facebook Traffic
(Great Once You Get it Optimized)
We said that mass traffic won't get you anywhere, so we need to create TARGETED Facebook traffic. Paid traffic is a great way to get 1000 or more eyeballs onto your optin page or sales letter in a hurry. The "old" way to advertise pay per click was on search engines like Google.
You can advertise for a keyphrase such as "stomach fat loss" or "wordpress backup plugin." You adjust your bid to control how expensive your ads cost, and how high you rank, and you can narrow down based on geographic location, but that's about it!
Facebook is a completely different story. Not better or worse, just different. The problem with advertising on Facebook is that not everyone is in a buying mood – they're probably in a socializing, sharing, surfing mood.
The good things about Facebook: first of all, the average Facebook user is online at least once per day. With search engine advertising, you basically have one shot to get someone to your website. With Facebook ads, your prospects aren't going anywhere. You can bid a little less than the average person, so your ad only appears once per day for 30 days, and THEN someone might click and you get your sale.
The way most people advertise on Facebook (the wrong way): they target a keyword. They target anyone who's entered "fat loss" as one of their interests, or "wordpress" as one of their interests. Chea traffic, lots of traffic, but it's nonresponsive and doesn't convert.
The secret to targeted Facebook advertising: target celebrities and competitors in your niche that already have a huge following.
Hobby Niche vs. A Real Businesses
You know those courses that promise 100,000 fans overnight? I'll tell you how to do it:
- Create a Facebook fan page called "Fans of Eminem" and create an ad targeting anyone who has listed Eminem as an interest on their profile, or has liked the official "Eminem" page (he has 66 million fans already)
- Create a Facebook fan page called "Fans of The Simpsons" and create an ad targeting anyone who has "The Simpsons" listed in their profile (11 million), "The Simpsons" official fan page (88 million) and "The Simpsons" franchise page (60 million)
- Create a Facebook fan page called "Fans of Gun Rights" and create an ad targeting people who have liked the "National Rifle Association" fan page (4 million), The Second Amendment (2 millon), Glock (1.7 million), AK-47, M1911, MP5, AR15, Uzi, and now you're marketing to millions of gun nuts
- Create a Facebook fan page called "Fans of Weight Loss" and run an ad targeting Jillian Michaels (3.8 million fans), Weight Watchers (3.6 million fans), The Biggest Loser (2.6 million fans), Jenny Craig (1 million fans), Bob Harper (1 million fans), Suzanne Somers, any other weight loss system or weight loss celebrity you can think of
- Create a Facebook fan page called "Fans of Jimi Hendrix" and run an ad targeting not just Jimi Hendrix, but The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Gibson Guitar, Martin Guitars
Limit your ad to only show to people who have NOT liked your fan page (that way you stop advertising to that person once they've "liked" your fan page), only advertise to people age 20 and up, and limit your country targeting to the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
I guarantee that if you advertise your fan page to 20 million plus people who have already liked a similar fan page, you can easily get lots and lost of likes to that fan page. There are other things I don't have time to get into where you basically "split test" your demographics and ad copy to narrow down your cheapest traffic, and then advertise to friends of people who have already liked your fan page, but let's get back to the point...
If you build up that fan page of fans of a sports team, or weight loss, or fans of a musician, what do you sell them? The answer is usually affiliate links and Amazon links. You'll make "some" money, but you've just built a HUGE list that you can't monetize.
What will actually improve your business?
Create a fan page about your company or your "flagship" product. Then target your competitors in ads. For example, I sell a WordPress plugin in the internet marketing space. I target other WordPress themes and plugins like OptimizePress, ThemeForest, WooThemes, Sucuri, WP Engine, and so on.
I'm only advertising to a few THOUSAND people now, so my fan page base grows slower, but they're people who will actually buy my product... get it? And once they've "liked" the fan page, they've in a way subscribed to my list, but it's a 1-click subscribe on Facebook instead of over email.
The next time I have something to say to those people, I can post it right on the fan page instead of paying for every single click.
You should definitely have a "flagship" fan page, and if you have a hobby fan page that works alongside that (fans of guitars, fans of organic gardening) then you should use both.
Option #3: Free Traffic (Slow and Steady)
And finally, many people discount free traffic like SEO, article marketing and social media as being too much work or too slow for their purposes, but you need to have at least "some" free traffic.
The answer to free traffic is basically: create a lot of content that people want.
Here's what I mean:
- Write 10 articles and schedule them to your blog as blog posts, one per month
- Install a social media plugin for your WordPress blog (I use Jetpack's Social Sharing) and retweet it, Facebook it, Google+ it, promote that Facebook post for $7, and repost every blog post to your fan page every time you create a new piece of content
- Pay an article rewriter on Fiverr or oDesk to take your 10 article, deconstruct them, and rewrite them so you have unique articles to post onto article sites like EzineArticles
- Take the three best posts from your blog and compile them into a single PDF (using Google Drive you can just create a new document, paste in your articles, then save to PDF... no software required!) Signup to an email autoresponder service like Aweber and place the download link to this free PDF report behind a forced optin page – with a link to your blog or sales letter at the bottom
- Think of 10 easy things you can explain about your niche in video, with a call to action pointing back to your website URL. If you HAVE to explain these things using a live-action iPhone camera, fine. If you can explain it on your computer screen using screen capture software like Camtasia (paid) or Screencast-O-Matic (free), even better. Record these ten 3-to-5-minute tutorial videos and post them to YouTube
- Like and share those YouTube videos, then post them back on your blog as additional content, like and share those blog posts as well
- Send whatever email subscriber list you've built, and whatever Facebook following you have, back to every single blog entry you've posted (sometimes with multiple followups) to encourage comments... which equals even more comments for you
- Take those 10 best things you've ever said (at this point from your articles, blog posts, and videos) and organize those into ten 20-minute audio podcasts. Install a podcasting plugin, post the podcast episodes, and submit your blog's feed to iTunes for even more backlinks
- Get your podcast episodes transcribed on oDesk into PDFs for additional blog comments and ethical bribes for your forced opt-in pages
- Contact 10 other marketers in your niche and use a tool like TimeTrade.com to schedule a time to meet on Skype, record those 20-minute interviews on Skype and post them to your podcast or blog
- Take the best content from your blog, format it into a Word document, get a cover made on Fiverr and upload to CreateSpace to create a print book. Also upload that Word document to Kindle to create a digital book hosted on Amazon, and run a free "KDP Select" promotion to give away free copies and drive up sales
- Find a few good discussion boards in your niche by searching "(your niche name) forum" and only register for the ones where you see posters who have signature links going back to their websites. Register, create your signature link and then respond to 10 forum threads per day contributing to the discussion and solving peoples' problems, without drawing attention to your signature link
- Login to your cPanel and checkout your Awstats "search keyphrases", then search those keyphrases in Google to find out your top-ranked keywords, and create more content along those lines
- Find other blogs in your niche that are hurting for content, and offer to write guest blog posts for them, and deliver this 100% unique content with a link back to your blog, or even better, your product with that blog owner registered as an affiliate
- Register your sites with a retargeting service such as AdRoll so your ads can follow your visitors around the internet until they buy
There are lots of free traffic sources that are hit-or-miss such as traffic exchanges, classified ads, press releases, social bookmarking sites, blog networks like WordPress.com, that I won't get into.
I know that seems like a lot, but if you just choose one of the 15 free traffic methods to apply every day, that will add up to a LOT of free traffic in the long-term.
Basically:
- You need traffic (a lot of it)
- You need to see where your traffic comes from
- You need to pay for TARGETED traffic and tweak your campaigns every couple of weeks
- You need to create lots of content that solves the problems of the prospects that eventually come to your website and buy
- You need to have something for sale, using your OWN personality, and have your own optin pages and followup sequence in page to build a list and keep in contact with your customers until they buy
- Affiliate marketing is fine as long as you have your own product(s), and your own BASE SYSTEM in place to solve peoples' problems
That's the real way to market and make money online. Instead of being a full-blown "internet marketer" you are a business owner who happens to market on the internet. I hope that makes sense, I hope that course-corrected your business and I know that if you apply even a fraction of what I've shown you today, you'll have all the traffic you'll ever need to convert your prospects into subscribers and buyers.
009: Setup Your Own Podcast and Get Your Radio Show Published on iTunes
I have a quick question. What if you could pick up a telephone and in just a few minutes broadcast your message to thousands of people or more? What if you could partner with Apple iTunes and publish your very own Internet radio show or podcast 100 percent for free?
"How to Setup Your Own Podcast" FREE Report
Pay close attention right now to discover how to create your own podcast and make more money in the process. Close down all windows and turn your speakers up for today's exciting installment of the Robert Plank Show.
Topics covered:
- Why you need to be everywhere and how you can get everywhere on the internet (mostly for free)
- Why trying to get rich selling $7 e-books is a surefire recipe for failure (and what to do instead)
- The exact strategy of using "iTunes SEO" to multiply your traffic
- How to sell without selling on a podcast
- ID3 tags, PowerPress, iTunes, LibSyn, WordPress
- How using Facebook plus a one-time $10 purchase keep your podcasting traffic growing steadily
Click Here to Join Podcast Crusher
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:22 — 25.1MB) | Embed
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5 Elements of Social Proof to Explode Your Business
There are many things that I do on a daily basis that almost are not worth my time – things like maintaining a free blog or submitting free articles or posting on forums or even updating my Twitter status.
None of those things directly make me as much money as landing a new joint venture, as writing a sales letter, sending out emails or running a webinar course.
Why do I do them? Because they demonstrate social proof. If someone is thinking about buying from me and they look me up, they'll find hundreds of articles, hundreds of blog posts, and thousands of forum posts.
What will I find when I look you up? Will I find lots of social proof or will I find negative social proof? I'll find a lot of good things about you if you follow these 5 steps.
Element #1: Blog Comment Scarcity Or Blog Responses
You probably do have a blog, right? If I go to it, will I find it's being constantly updated or it has not been updated in the last several years? Are there lots of posts or only 1 or 2? And out of those posts, are lots of people commenting? I decided very early on that when I created my blog, I wanted to have lots and lots of comments.
Otherwise, it would look like I was talking and no one was listening.
When I make blog posts and I get dozens, if not hundreds, of comments for every post, everyone can see how much of an authority I am. When you have the same thing, people can see how much of an authority you are. I got a lot of comments on my blog at first by limiting posts to only 10 comments.
I told people that if I got 10 comments on my blog, then I look at either the post content, otherwise I would stop.
Eventually, I escalated this to saying after I had 10 comments, I would close comments completely and now I have this at 100 comments per post and that's how and why you should have blog comment scarcity and blog responses.
Send traffic to your list, to your latest blog post, but have some kind of deal either that you will turn off comments or stop writing unless you get a certain number of responses because people read but they don't like to respond.
Element #2: Price Scarcity
How do you show that what you're offering has lots and lots of value but still get people to buy when you are first launching it and don't have a huge list? If you're entering a new niche or at first building a list, offer your product at a low price but set a deadline for when you will increase that price and then actually increase it.
This way, if people are buying your product for $20 but you are about to increase it to $50, people realize that the regular prize is $50. Don't run a discount because that will anger your early adopters, but this way, you will reward your fast action-takers and early adaptors by letting them buy low, and then once you have a proven selling record and you have testimonials, now you can increase the price at the time and date you said you would.
Element #3: Webinar Replay Scarcity
Are you starting to see a pattern where I'm talking about social proof?
People can be trained to give you a certain reaction. When you make a blog post, you train them to leave comments. When you are increasing the price, you train them to buy. The same should be true for your live instructions. When I run a webinar, I want the maximum number of people to show up live. When somebody shows up live, they're kind of a captive audience.
They can't fast-forward, they're usually not multicasting and they're sure as heck can't pause your presentation either. It's as close to real life as possible.
That's why you shouldn't always offer a replay of your webinar. Maybe you're not going to offer any kind of replay of your webinar or you're going to offer a replay only available for the next 48 hours or even you're only going to offer a replay inside of your paid membership site.
Either of these 3 strategies will motivate people to attend your webinars live and even if they don't believe you now, they will believe you after you stick to your guns and do what you said you will time and time again.
Element #4: Testimonial Follow-Up
The number one problem I see with sales letters is a lack of proof – why should I buy from you, why should I trust you if you can't show me anyone else who has benefitted from your training? That's why the easiest form of social proof is the testimonial.
Ask your buyers what they thought of the product they just bought from you. What I like to do is add this message as an autoresponder follow-up in my autoresponder sequence. This means that when someone buys from me and joins my list after 7 days, which is enough time to look at whatever product they just bought, I will ask them what they thought of it and have them directly reply to me and then I will use their testimonial on my sales letter.
It's important though to ask not for a testimonial but for an honest review, good or bad.
Element #5: Feedback Survey
I told you a little bit about getting testimonials and training people not just to read your emails but reply to them as well. I use this in many of my pre-launches when I ask people things like "do you want to see this product, do you want to see me explain programming?"
And then the next day, I will tell people how many responses I got. This does many things. First of all, it shows everyone that there is a high demand for what I am about to offer and it makes people part of the process. It makes them know that they have an interactive role in my marketing. When they respond to me, their "yes" answer goes into the total number of yesses I receive over email.
If you take any of those 5 elements of social proof, blog responses, price scarcity, replay scarcity, testimonial follow-ups, or feedback surveys, you should notice a slight increase in sales, a slight increase in response, and a slight increase in popularity.
Are you using any of these 5 elements yet? And which one?
If you're not using any of the 5, which one do you plan on using within the next week? Please leave me a blog comment below with your speedy response.
How to Automate Twitter
Here is how to automate Twitter with auto follow, auto unfollow, and auto reply with Tweetlater... plus cell phone SMS integration.
Do you Twitter? What's your username there? Do you use any of these techniques to get more done and save time?
Barack Obama Follows Robert Plank on Twitter!
You know you're popular when one of two Presidential candidates personally goes out of his way to add you as a friend on Twitter...
Okay, just kidding. Senator Obama is following 70,000 people on Twitter including me... his account automatically subscribes to YOUR updates when you subscribe to his.
Twitter is a social networking site where you can provide brief, up-to-the-minute updates about yourself -- you are limited to 140 characters so that people who subscribe to you can receive updates via text message.
It sounds like a big waste of time if you use it incorrectly (just like anything else)... and lots of people leave updates like:
(8:35 am) Went to the bathroom.
(9:36 am) Waiting in line at McDonald's...
(10:59 am) Leaving to do errands...
No one cares about that but people do care if you have a relevant discussion going, if you're launching a new product they would like, you have a new blog post, you're going to a seminar, or have a quick question... Twitter is a nice and easy way to build a (non-email) list.
Just about every day his Twitter update says: "In Albuquerque, New Mexico. Discussing the need for equal pay. Watch this discussion live at (url to watch the streaming video)" ... The city, state, and topic change.
That's perfect. You know what he's doing every day but there aren't a ton of annoying promotional messages, and there aren't any useless messages either.
My question to you:
Do you use Twitter?
Is it a waste of time?
Will spammers ruin Twitter?
What's your BEST Twitter marketing tip?
Please! Take 27 seconds to leave your comment below so I can get the ten comments I need to keep updating this blog...
