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Soulati-'TUDE!

The Happy Friday Series: Be The Biggest Fan of Another

09/13/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Credit: Jayme Soulati

Happy Friday! This is an essay on how to weave business in to social communication.

  • What if rather than writing a blog entirely focused on you, and sharing links on your Facebook page directing fans to your blog.
  • What if rather than using Twitter as a platform to pontificate.
  • What if rather than using Instagram to share pictures of your product.
  • What if rather than spending the majority of your time on social media trying to figure out the best way to get people to pay attention to your business.
  • What if you turned everything around?

It is interesting to note that when you spend all your time talking about yourself and how wonderful you are, you are essentially telling people that you are your own biggest fan!

And, that is embarrassing.

No Cares About You

The truth is, no one cares about you or what you have to say about yourself in a business or marketing context.

If this sums up your social efforts to this point: Please stop. Just stop.

Unfortunately you are more likely to become one of those people who “gave social media a shot” but claims “it didn’t work for me” than to see any level of success.

Consider this:

  • What if you took every last minute you have been using to promote your business socially and instead you became another’s biggest fan? Just think about that for a minute… what would this look like for you?
  • What if you wrote a blog post that featured a local business professional who had a complimentary product to yours?
  • What if your Facebook wall, Twitter timeline and Instagram feeds were flooded with endorsements for quality local businesses?
  • What if at every opportunity you tried to make someone else look good instead of shamelessly promoting yourself?

from Soulati.com takes every Friday to feature a new blogger or contributor in something she calls “The Happy Friday Series.” The whole goal is to offer her platform to another in an attempt to broaden their social reach. What a great idea!

A Story From Personal Experience

I “joined the conversation” in 2010 and began my social media experience by listening to conversations on Twitter for months before engaging.

In that time, I identified 2 things:

  • The people I liked following the most were those who added value to my timeline. They engaged with other local people, they shared information and were generally just all around approachable people.
  • The people I really didn’t like were the people who spammed my timeline with self-promoting garbage.

My initial engagement strategy was to follow my city’s hashtag and engage with at least two new people each day.

Then it came, the tweet that would get me hooked on social media for business:

“Hey, I am new to #YQR, can anyone please recommend a place where I can buy Italian Syrups for my coffees #HELP!

As a man who is passionate about his coffee, I knew just the place.

“Absolutely, you have to go to Ambassador Coffee, the owner is a great guy, they will take good care of you”

I then sent along a Google map, followed her on twitter, she followed me and that was that. Two days later, she hits me with:

“Thanks so much for your help, I went to Ambassador, they were great, really appreciate it”

I replied with a “no problem” and out.

Now why is that exciting?

Well, as a mortgage broker, the DM I received 2 weeks later was social proof that being a nice guy actually makes for good business strategy.

“Hey, my husband and I aren’t ready to buy a house now, but when we are, can you help us arrange our mortgage”?

How do you like that? Never once did I mention mortgages or business or anything else sales-y. She obviously read my twitter bio or clicked through to my website from my profile.

Six months later, I closed their [substantial] mortgage simply because I answered a tweet and recommended a local business.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that there is no value in content marketing. Actually I believe wholeheartedly that content marketing is the future of business communication.

Further to that… if good business communication is all about “people should do business with people they know, like and trust”. Ask yourself:

How are people getting to know, like and trust me?

Before you start throwing your own content out there, what if you developed an audience that actually wanted to hear what you had to say?

What if your social business strategy was to become a trusted source of information on every local business EXCEPT your own?

About The Author

is the principal broker for in Saskatchewan, Canada and the executive editor of the Jackson has a passion for marketing and carries weight in the Canadian mortgage and real estate industry. Jackson is a serial entrepreneur who is always looking for better ways to do things. His twitter bio reads: @kiltedbroker – I am wearing a kilt right now. I have consumed coffee today. Family Man. Innovator.

Related articles
  • The Happy Friday Series: Generosity As A Strategy
  • Thoughts About Love In Business
  • The Happy Friday Series: My Happy Place
  • Use List.ly For Gifts And Curation
  • The Happy Friday Series: Alternately Abled, Passionately Happy

Filed Under: Public Relations Tagged With: Facebook, Instagram, Jackson, Jayme Soulati, LinkedIn, Saskatchewan, Social Media, The Happy Friday Series, Twitter

The Happy Friday Series: Generosity As A Strategy

08/30/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Generosity in Theory

Helping your fellow man is one of the most rewarding things you can do. Unlike traditional monetary exchanges, both parties leave the transaction richer. A Win Win.

It feels as good to give as it does to receive.

Generosity is cultural. We mirror the behaviour of those around us. Generous acts are contagious. Generosity is infectious. Kindness begets more kindness.

Keith Ferrazzi argues not to keep score in his best seller “Never Eat Alone”. It’s so true. To be truly generous it can require you to be less rigorous on how you filter – we need to let more ideas and options into our world so you can be more generous. Not every transaction is designed to bring immediate value. We don’t know who people know, or where a single new connection may lead. Generosity has a lens all of its own. Generosity is a growth strategy, but you need to be committed to generosity for the long haul – don’t expect quick returns.

Ted Rubin has it right with his Return on Relationship #ROR mantra. Investing in relationships pays dividends.

Whilst we should not keep score, we all ultimately have to place some limits on our generosity. We can’t all be generous all day long. We have to somehow choose how and where and why we are generous. We all need to make generosity a strategy. We need to be conscious about how we invest.

Generosity in Action

This week something really special happened that we just had to share.

If you follow our blog, you’ll know we recently created the “content audit” and have since completed audits for 100 top blogs. We have plans to do many more audits, with 30+ requests for audits outstanding (We’ve been offering a free audit for anyone that likes and comments on this slidedeck.

Well, this week I got into a dialog with Jackson Middleton of a kilt wearing Canadian Mortgage Broker from Regina. He had some technical questions about the image customization.

Screen-Shot-2013-08-19-at-5.21.50-PM-300x196

The photo hides the fact that Jackson is a fervent wearer of kilts.

 

 

 

Here’s what’s not shown in the picture above. I think that’s pretty cool!

Jackson-middleton-kilt-generosity

I apologized that his audit was not ready yet. He was being very complimentary about our content audit project and offered to help complete some audits.

It’s funny, but when people offer, you often don’t take them up on their generosity (we often think people don’t really mean what they say – or we don’t want to feel obliged). I didn’t disbelieve Jackson for one minute, I just didn’t quite get the full force of his intent.

2 minutes later, he reiterated his offer and so I accepted. I dropped what I was doing and shared a batch of blogs and the instructions to complete an audit.

I was truly appreciative and he was only too happy to help. Win-Win.

What happened next was unexpected, intriguing and really rather charming.

Jayme Soulati noticed the list he’d made to audit her blog and wrote a post title “Use List.ly For Gifts And Curation” about how it was a gift.

Jayme-Soulati.jpg

I know Soulati via social media and I know Jackson via Listly and prior exchanges., but they didn’t know each other. They got into an exchange. In social there is nothing better than connecting your customers.

@kiltedbroker Good Morning! Did you do this @list.ly List.ly about my content?

— Jayme Soulati (@Soulati) August 15, 2013

@Soulati good morning Jayme. I had a great time looking through your last 25 blog posts helping @NickKellet with your Content Card.

— Jackson Middleton (@KiltedBroker) August 15, 2013

It’s funny how it happened as it wasn’t my intent, but connecting customer and cultivating community amongst Listly users is high on my agenda..

This dialog was not planned, and yet this is what social networking is all about – you have to let serendipity into the building. You have to give chance a chance.

Very shortly after, I noticed Merlin Ward was in a dialog with Jackson too. It turns out Jackson’s audit list of Merlin’s posts was Merlin’s top referral source for the day. I’ve know Merlin for ages, but Merlin and Jackson had not previously connected.

MerlinuWard.jpg

@KiltedBroker Jackson, thanks for curating my blog on @listly. You’re in my top 10 referrers today!

— Merlin U Ward (@MerlinUWard) August 15, 2013

@kiltedbroker I’m flattered and appreciate your support!

— Merlin U Ward (@MerlinUWard) August 15, 2013

There’s a trend happening here. It turns out that auditing people’s content is social. Both these connections came about because of a generous act.

Creating engagement is hard and yet here was Jackson making it look like child’s play. Generosity creates more generosity.

I also found the result of creating the audit to be highly social too. It created a lot of engagement and I deepened many of my existing connections, whilst making many new ones too.

What kind of study could you perform for your niche? Do you have a target list of people you’d like to get to know. Have you thought of ways of getting into a dialog with them?

The content audit does a good job of creating engagement and it’s universally applicable in an age where content is king. Would you like to create an audit of 20 bloggers in your domain, city, niche etc.

We all want to discover ways to enhance our content creation machine. The best feedback I’ve heard about the Content Audit is that it’s highly actionable. It makes it easy to see your content gaps and take action to fill them.

What Does This Mean for You?

You could:

  • Take it local e.g. Canadian Bloggers or San Fran Bloggers
    Take it vertical /niche e.g. Compare the content of 20 top email marketing providers (pick a segment relevant to your business)
    Take it local and Vetical/niche e.g. Denver Travel Blogs

This post, revised from its first publishing, originally appeared on the List.ly blog by Nick Kellet.

Nick-Kellet.jpg

Nick Kellet, someone impressive you should know. Woah.

About the Author

Nick Kellet plays with the future and it plays back. He’s a creator and curator of ideas. Nick believes that passion in the company of friends and community is an unstoppable force. He’s always been an innovator with heartfelt enthusiasm for every new project he touches. As co-founder of List.ly, Nick is actively shaping how people think, feel and experience curation. He believes curation should be as much about listening and engaging as it is about publishing and the tools themselves.

Related articles
  • Thoughts About Love In Business
  • The Happy Friday Series: My Happy Place
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Filed Under: Happy Friday Series Tagged With: Audit, generosity, Jackson, Jackson Middleton, Jayme Soulati, Keith Ferrazzi, LinkedIn, List.ly, Nick Kellet, Social Media

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