Live Hands on Workshops and Webinars. Get help from the experts on how to implement social media marketing into your business:

• Generate leads and new business online
• Automate your online marketing
• Build immediate credibility to close business faster!

Our Calendar of Live Workshops and Webinars (5:30pm-7pm). Click below to sign up:

• 9/11/08 - Using Social Networks to Grow Your Business
• 9/16/08 - Blogging for Beginners
• 9/23/08 - Twitter and Other Microblogging Tools
• 9/25/08 - Podcasting for Beginners
• 10/7/08 - How to Create Videos with Social Media
• 10/14/08- Using Photos in Social Media

Upcoming Social Marketing Seminar for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs (at SkySong)

• 10/8/08 – WWN and Club E Present Social Media for Entrepreneurs SEMINAR…sign up today (4:30-6:30)

Register for the seminar at www.WorldWebinarNetwork.com

We look forward to seeing you there.

Some of my former managers used to call inbound leads “Blue Birds” and “Riding the Gravy Train”.  Now, social networks can be set up to create a constant flow of inbound, qualifies leads. This is what we now call being “The Hunted”. To be the hunted there are three significant things that need to be in place:

1. A strong network that businesses can use to hunt you down (referrals and recommendations from your network are key)
2. Well positioned profiles and syndicated content that defines you as “The Expert” and not a “jack of all trades, master of none”.
3. Making it easy for “the hunters” to get in contact with “The  Hunted”.

If you fast forward this concept of the hunted 5 or 10 years from today, it seems quite realistic that one or two top notch sales experts could replace an entire fleet of sales people by having 1 through 3 from above in place. If you hire “the hunted”, you can knowingly predict the results that this person can deliver, especially if they have worked in the same industry as your business. The hunted are essentially bringing a network that is dialed in and directly connected to your customer base and can bring immediate results from day one. It almost sounds too good to be true…but is it?

Well, to get to the level of the hunted you need to become the expert and there is no better way to do this than through social media marketing. An expert is well published in their niche market. The best way to do this is to have a blog that is set up as a publishing vehicle that syndicates this content to relevant marketing channels. A market channel is defined as a website of social network that is RSS enabled. It is all about the syndication of compelling content that is related to your niche market or area of expertise. Some of the best ways to mass market your information is through press releases, article submission, social networks, video networks and of course, search engines. Always overlooked are the profiles that you set up in social networks like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Fast Pitch!, Naymz.com, etc.

Take 5 minutes and look at one of your profiles on these networks. Cut and paste all of the content in your profile into a Word document and read it. Do you come across as the expert? Do you have the terms in your profile that make you easy to find?

This is an entirely new way to sell and one that becomes more service oriented. It goes without saying that this new sales model will enable businesses to focus more effort on managing the  business and building stronger relationships because less resources are directed at hunting for new business.

Additional resources on “The Hunted”:

- www.CompleteStrategery.com by Aaron Bare

- Setting up a Social Media Marketing Strategy to be The  Hunted by Matthew O’Brien

If you are in sales your number one goal is to bring in new business. Therefore, as a sales person, what are you doing to close new business. The options are:

1. Make cold calls (we all know this is the hard way and the long route to landing new business)

2. Networking - going to local events, meeting people, passing out business cards and giving your elevator pitch hoping you are presenting to a decision maker or someone that can get you in front of the decision maker.

3. Marketing - sending our newsletters (online and offline), promoting your services in ads (online and offline), direct mail, etc.

4. Referrals - hitting up who you know, customers and prospects to get warm leads (now we are getting close)

5. Social Networking through social media - this leverages all of the above and turns #1 from cold calls into warm leads…here is why.

People buy from who they know and trust and most often from people who they have gotten a referral from. Social media and specifically, social networking sites gives users the ability to leverage the connections and contacts of the people they know to:

1. Create warm leads

2. Establish trust quickly due to the introduction or connection from their extended network

3. Qualify prospects into customers faster than any other means of new business generation.

When you get a referral through a trusted connection, you immediately get past the who are you stage and immediately go to, can you help me grow my business, save me money or make my life easier from what you have to sell. This all makes sense but what does this have to do which social media killing our attention span? Simple, in this example of the sales person, they can use social media to connect with friends to reminisce about old times or leverage their friendship and the connections in their combined network to generate warm leads and eventually new business. Then, when the interruptions come in from social media, they can spiral one of two ways; in the right direction to generate new sales or alternatively add to the 28% of the work force being unproductive.

Let’s go one step further, social media has made it so that virtually anyone from the CEO on down is accessible. Case in point, yesterday I got a call from Michael Goodman of the AZ Sales Pros thanking me for filling in as a speaker on July 9th. As we continued talking he asked me a question about www.FastPitchNetworking.com on how he could use it for setting up a group to market and manage AZ Sales Pros network online. I was not sure of the answer so I used Fast Pitch’s instant messaging (IM) tool to contact Bill Jula, the CEO of Fast Pitch to get the answer. Not only did Bill respond but he and I engaged in a 15 minute IM session and I learned that their tool is a fit for what Michael is looking for and that there are discounts and additional benefits for associations like Michael’s group. I also got a chance to plug The World Webinar Network, a social marketing webinar company I helped start and that Bill (or someone from Fast Pitch) offered to be a speaker in one of our webinars. This all happened within 2 hours of Michael giving me a call…a social media distraction or a powerful sales and marketing tool for online businesses?

Oh, by the way, I have gotten two new customers in the last two months through Fast Pitch Networking from using their IM tool and these customers were inbound connection requests to learn more about my company.

“Things that might have not been very powerful before a recession become very powerful in a recession,” says Bob Atkins, a vice president of Mercer Management Consulting in New York.”

These comments are certainly timely, or are they? Taken from Business 2.0 in an article titled Bear Opportunities written in April 17, 2001 by Jennifer Gilbert and Jane Hodges, you would think this was written yesterday. Needless to say a great article and here is the executive summary with a Mint Social twist:

What are the marketing tools to use in a recession?
- Customer Attraction
- Customer Retention
- Invest in your Brand

In 2001, social media marketing and social networks were in a raw and yet to be defined stage of existence. However, fast forward to 2008 and we are in the midst of learning how to apply the most cost effective marketing and advertising medium to our online businesses. Well, I must admit that the last year and a half has been filled with interesting dialog and education back and forth with those that know much less than me and those that know much more.

So where are we at? Social media works and it is the greatest act now tool to get people on board today (thanks to the scare tactics and sensationalism that the media in putting on this industry…and please keep it up).

Ok, you may be saying, “I have a blog and it gets some traffic but it is not impacting my business with leads or sales. “ The answer is syndication. Have you set up marketing channels in the top social media and networking sites on the Internet to market and brand your business? If the answer is no, I completely understand why you are not seeing encouraging results.

How to you get the most from social media marketing? Great question! Think of your blog as a syndication hub for your business (like your own associated press). Then, think in terms of marketing your business in the third person. Still not getting it? Think in terms of testimonials, case studies and third party endorsements from partners, vendors and customers. Now go back to your LinkedIn account and learn how they have designed their site and get you to build your profile to market yourself. (Actually, I have found Fast Pitch Networking to be a great lead generation and new business generation tool, maybe the best online.)

Ok, I got off track so let’s get back to the marketing tools for recession:
- Customer Attraction
- Customer Retention
- Investment in the Brand

If this story from 2001 wasn’t written for social media, it is now. Social media marketing is all about branding…inexpensive branding I might add. Now let’s look at the other two, attracting customers or we call it in social networking, building your online community and lastly, customer retention. Let’s talk about this. Social media is all about giving a voice to the customer and this scares the sh*t out of businesses. However, a company with its ear to the needs of the customers is practicing the best customer retention tactics that exist.

Get going with social media marketing and please get started on the right foot by enrolling an expert to help you. The great thing about marketing in this medium (social media) is that once the system is set up right, you can enroll idle resources and low cost added resources to make this a marketing machine that will grow your business.

Take away: get started on the right foot or you will channel energy and valuable resources in a direction that is not deliver the results you want.

So…something old, something new, something Mint Green designed to help you.

1. Use boring titles in your blog posts that do not grab the interest of the potential reader like “The Sun is Hot in Summer”.

2. Talk about topic that no one is searching for like “shoe string shoe laces”.

3. Use one word keywords like “business” for tags in your post.

4. Use unpopular search terms in your title, blog post and in the tag to cut down on the organic search engine traffic and overall traffic potential (this helps you to overpay for unused server space).

5. Find content that you like online and copy it word for word in your blog post with no reference or link to the source. (Remember those school days of getting others to do your work.)

6. Talk about a topic that everyone knows about and repeat the same story details to not surprise your reader or have any element of controversy (think white bread).

7. Only talk about yourself and/or your business and only link to your own stuff (preferably one site so that Google knows you are nothing but a spam blog).

8. Buy an email list (the cheaper the better) and send some cheesy email out every day to the same list linking to your blog and company website. This will help to expedite getting blacklisted by all the online companies that matter.

9.  Buy links on spam blogs and sites associated with #8 above so you can have guilt by association from your link(s).

10. Openly bash your competition and anyone else for that matter over and over again so that you develop a predictable pattern for your posts.

OK, I have some more because I am having fun while drinking my beer (just changed from a New Belgium Skinny Dip to a PilsnerUrquell)…mmm, tasty!

11. Talk about something completely irrelevant to your blog post in the middle to throw people off track (oops I just did this one).

12. If using Wordpress, MovableType.com or other blog publishing tool that provide access to the meta data, keep these fields blank or make it different than what your post is about (like throwing in Brittney Spears).

13. Do not add images to your blog post and make your content one long continuous text block with no breaks (we all get intimidated by the novel War and Peace so why not make your blog post the same way).

14. Do not write posts on your blog and keep it empty.

15. Do not use social bookmarks like DIGG, Del.icio.us or Stumble Upon or feed your RSS into profile pages in the top social networking sites. In fact, if you have profile pages be sure to not update these or add links to your blog and company website.

I think this covers many of the top points to making your blog marketing and social media marketing efforts become search engine repellent. Have fun!

Enough with the analogies (well, one more), get your social media marketing engine revving on all cylinders and take advantage of the great content your blog is producing by getting it plugged into the top traffic sites on the Internet. More importantly, leverage the power of social media branding for your business in one of two ways; brand your company name or become synonymous with a search term relevant to your business in the top social networking sites. So the question remains, how do you do it?

1. Identify social networking sites that are relevant to your business and/or the content you have available to publish on your blog.

2. Set up profile pages in these sites and set up the profiles (write your content) to brand your company name or you specific terms related to your business. I know this may sound rudimentary but it will make a difference down the road.

3. Set up RSS feeds in these profile pages that pull from your blog or blogs. I recommend having multiple RSS feeds (multiple blogs) that feed to profiles that are specific to certain term(s) you want to get ranked for organically. For instance, you can set up a Squidoo.com lense to promote social media branding and then have blogs like this feed content to a profile page like a squidoo lense and there are numerous other profile pages on other social networking sites like FastPitchNetworking.com, Facebook.com and Plaxo.com to do this with.

4. Update these profile pages with unique content to compliment the organic ranking efforts and to differentiate each profile page from the other. This will help to build top ranking in the specific social network for the respective search term(s) and help with the organic ranking in search engines (stacked results).

5. Add video feeds, image feeds and relevant news feeds to these profile pages to make them the most relevant pages on the Internet for the terms and or brands you are promoting.

6. Add text links from your profile pages to your call to action pages you are promoting to get ranked. Remember that the home page is typically the worst page to send someone to because it forces people to think (make a choice where to go). Instead, send them to the landing page that has a call to action (buy, enter contact info, etc.).

To learn more about social media branding, email empowermint(@)mintsocial.com.

Social media marketing is the crux of what Mint Social does. A social media marketing company with an intensity for online branding and personal branding is what Mint Social says is vital to online marketing success today.

April 11, 2008 - Mint Social launches with a fresh approach to online marketing with an intense commitment to social media marketing. Stay tuned for their curiously strong online marketing solutions and a commintMint to success.

About Mint Social:

Mint Social, LLC is a privately held social media marketing and branding company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information about Mint Social, LLC please call

602-206-8089 or visit our Web sites at www.MintSocial.com.