Fascination: Spell Binding or Smart Business? |  |
- Fascination: Spell Binding or Smart Business?
- Brian Halligan of Hubspot: Thoughts on the Future of Social Media
- Clearing The Traffic Jam
- Like Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic, Seek New Business Markets
| Fascination: Spell Binding or Smart Business? Posted: 08 Jun 2012 11:00 AM PDT
You can make yourself do almost anything if you have to. But truly, you'll fall back on the thing that's the most natural to you. When it comes to marketing and communication, why not pay attention to your core abilities? Using what you already know can make it easier to fascinate your clients, sell your services and build a dedicated and focused team. Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers To Persuasion and Captivation, has a unique approach to understanding how we communicate. In fact, she believes that you have to be fascinating in order to be effective in today's market. Hogshead believes that:
It sounds ominous to some, but she barrels through a list of companies that do it everyday, sharing some of the findings from her fascination survey and then providing tips to help your rev up your own message. Depending on your personality and natural communication style, you can captivate attention in various ways. Boring Communication Is A No-NoYou have to engage. You have to earn the attention of your audience, team, clients, prospects, etc. To help you do this, she highlights seven different ways that you can draw people to you or your brand, including mystique, passion (lust) and alarm. To make the most of your message, here are a few fascination inspired questions to consider:
You're not talking to hear yourself speak. You want something specific to happen. A Fascinating Message Draws Us InIt captivates us and earns our full attention. Although individuals respond differently to each of her seven triggers, when effectively applied, any one of them can "heighten our physical, emotional, and intellectual focus," says Hogshead. That's our goal — to gain the undivided focus of our core audience long enough for them to see, feel, understand and want what we have to offer. Every message promotes a product that has to be sold. Even human resources (management has to sell the company standards to the team, so that they maintain them when dealing with customers). The more fascinating the message the deeper it goes, the better it's heard, the greater the impact.
From Small Business Trends |
| Brian Halligan of Hubspot: Thoughts on the Future of Social Media Posted: 08 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT Ever have a great idea that turned into something big? So big that a component of it broke The Guinness Book of World Records? Brian Halligan and the folks at HubSpot did. And they broke the world record for the largest amount of registrants and attendees at an online webinar – 33,000 to be exact. So what does a company like this think about the new and old players in the world of social media? Tune in as Brian shares his thoughts and insights on the matter with Brent Leary. * * * * *
Brian Halligan: Even the blind squirrel finds a nut. We found one and we had a very good idea as it turns out. We saw a big shift in the way humans were living, buying and shopping. The basic idea was that marketing needed to change to adjust to that, so it worked out great. It feels like we are in the second inning of the game with a lot more work to do. Small Business Trends: Do you guys get 45,000 leads each month? Brian Halligan: That is true. And 99% of them are inbound leads. We create lots of content and each piece is like a magnet that pulls in leads. It is still going incredibly well. The stuff we produced four or five years ago is still pulling in leads today. We turned our website into a hub on the internet essentially. Small Business Trends: Which webinar has driven the most registrations? Brian Halligan: We broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest webinar ever. I do not have the exact numbers, but I think we had 30K+ registrants and 20K+ attendees. I think the title was “The Science of Social Media.” Small Business Trends: When you think about where we are today, how companies are leveraging social media, is it where you thought we'd be? Brian Halligan: It is. When we first started HubSpot social media was starting to go. But it was more like Digg and Reddit and sites like that. Now it has evolved to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Pinterest. A whole new of cast of characters. But it is the way we thought. We saw this shift in behavior from all the leverage being in the vendor's hands, to the shift into the customer's hands and potential customer's hands. The customers were talking to each other and that is one thing that we did see. We certainly did not predict Twitter, we didn't predict Pinterest. But we predicted this wave of change in behavior and it happened sooner than we thought. Small Business Trends: How is Pinterest changing things? Is it along the same lines as what Facebook was like two or three years ago? Or is it a flash in the pan? Brian Halligan: The truth is, I don't have any idea. I thought I could predict this stuff. But you know, the thing that is fascinating about these social media sites is you study in business school about network effects. You would assume that a business like Facebook, where they get all of these users and the value of the system increases with the number of users. They have all of that locked in, there is no way that thing falls, but it could fall. I mean, Friendster fell, Myspace fell. Twitter came out of nowhere, and Pinterest came out of nowhere. The barriers to entry on these things are lower than we think. I have been shocked. The thing that does not shock me is the Facebook rise. The thing that shocked me was the rise of Twitter and Pinterest. Because I thought people were just doing it in Facebook. But it turns out, there is room for lots of other social networks in people's lives. It is absolutely fascinating what is going on. Small Business Trends: What do you think about Google+? Brian Halligan: My take is, I don't think Google Plus is going to make it over the long haul. What is interesting about these social networks is sometimes they cross the chasm, entering into mainstream users lives. Digg and Reddit didn't go mainstream. Facebook did. Twitter is really starting to. I just don't think Google+ is going to make that leap. It is too similar to Facebook. Whereas Twitter and Pinterest are quite different. The fascinating thing about Google+ is how Google search results are starting to really use Google+ data. Then you look at Bing search results, using Facebook and Twitter data. If Microsoft plays it's cards right, that is going to really enhance the search results of Bing. It will be interesting to see how that develops over time. Small Business Trends: What do you think about Microsoft's role in the future of social? Brian Halligan: I am not super bullish. It does not feel they have the momentum or the talent to really put a dent in the universe. It feels like a very mature business, like GE, that kicks up a lot of cash, kicks up dividends. But I am just not that bullish on them doing something really cool. Small Business Trends: What about Amazon? Brian Halligan: They just have really big, big ambitions. They are super patient and they make huge bets and they execute them so well. I think they are very, very interesting. I would not count Bezos out of any game he is so, so smart. It is a fascinating company. Small Business Trends: Recently, you held your first analyst day. Why is it time to start embracing the analyst/thought leaders/influencer community in a more formalized process? Brian Halligan: When we started HubSpot, it was about helping businesses get leads. It worked. Then our customers started saying they needed help in converting leads into customers. How do you do segmentation? Nurturing? How do you get smarter about that stuff? So we bought a company that did that really well and we just announced it a couple of weeks ago. It turns out that lead management functionality is very valuable to mid-size and larger companies. It turns out that those companies listen to analysts like you Brent. So we said, let's invite Brent and his pals from Forrester and all of the different analyst firms out to tell them about it. This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.
From Small Business Trends This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 08 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT
I do lots of charts for business cartoons. Mostly the bar and line variety (with an occasional Venn thrown in), but lately I’ve been really in to flowcharts! I think what I like most about flowcharts is that they allow you to tell a story within the story of the cartoon. It’s an opportunity to introduce this little tiny subplot. Who knew you could pack in so much into so little! From Small Business Trends |
| Like Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic, Seek New Business Markets Posted: 08 Jun 2012 02:30 AM PDT With the anticipated first flight of Virgin Galactic ahead, entrepreneur Richard Branson has inaugurated a new market for space tourism, one that has already attracted 500 customers who have made deposits for the first seats on his SpaceShipTwo. Though you may not be building your business in outer space, or even in sub-orbit, seeking out new markets can help your small business boldly go where none have gone before, finding new customers and profits on a new frontier with few competitors. Here’s more: Finding New FrontiersVirgin Galactic gets FAA clearance for test flight. British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic received a green light recently from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to test SpaceShipTwo, its six passenger space craft. The company plans to sell tickets at $200,000 per seat for future suborbital flights. What totally new markets are you exploring for your small business? Reuters Branson says new ideas come from filling a need. It may seem that new products for never before imagined markets come by magic to some entrepreneurs, but at a recent press conference launching the Virgin Strauss Water Company, Branson said sometimes the best test of whether there is a market for a new product is whether you want that product one for your home. The Independent Sir Richard touts small business. And who do those new ideas come from? It might surprise some to hear Sir Richard Branson, a billionaire tycoon on the verge of launching a space tourism industry, tout small business. However, Branson himself was an upstart entrepreneur once and recently criticized political leaders for not giving adequate support to small and medium-sized businesses, which he calls the engines of any health economy. The Guardian Tips for Seeking Your New Market NicheGet out of your rut. Get help and some new ideas, follow the leader (and then zag!), and engage with customers to find the truth. These are just a few suggestions from Internet entrepreneur Nick Loper, in a guest post about how to find a whole new way of doing business. Other advice includes taking some time off to reflect on a new direction. The Frugal Entrepreneur Develop some creativity. Whether your workplace is a small office, your living room, or the kitchen table, infusing your business with creativity is the key to innovation and new ideas. Here are some important tips that should help you and your employees to break out of your mold and get the creative juices flowing. Participating in social networks, changing your surroundings, and getting more input are all places to start. Buzz Small Business Magazine Employ the wow factor. Business consultant Paul Castain outlines one of the simple ways to turn an ordinary service into an extraordinary customer experience—a simple way to separate you from the crowd and from what any of your competitors are doing. Here Paul talks about the night he arrived at his hotel to discover he had been designated “guest of the day.” How can you make your customer’s experience similarly transcendent? Sales Playbook Look for untapped customer bases. Shashi Bellamkonda recently got a pedicure, not something that most males do, but maybe something they should. The fault, however, may lie with the nails/manicure/pedicure industry for not making more effort to target this untapped market. Check out some suggestions Shashi came up with while getting his pedicure done. Do you have an untapped customer base you haven’t explored in your business? Small Business Trends Find a fresh set of eyes. BizSugar contributor of the week Robert Peters founded his business, Fresh Eyes Consultancy, on the idea that everyone could use some help when it comes to a second opinion on their business. He helps entrepreneurs create the perfect customer profile, choose a marketing strategy that brings results, and avoid the feast and famine cash flow cycle to transform their business effectively. Who can give you a second opinion on your business? BizSugar Blog Reach a whole new audience. Martina Iring suggests that guest blogging is much more than simply a way to increase your traffic online. It can be a way of reaching a whole new audience that has never been exposed to your message or brand. Are there other ways you can think of to expose new potential customers to what you offer? There are many ways to find a new market by simply talking to a different audience. Small Business Bliss Do some research. You’ll need more than an idea to launch a business in a new market successfully. It is essential to do research to determine whether a good market exists for your business and to see if that business has room to grow. Successful new markets are discovered at the point where great ideas and in depth market research meet. You will need to seek new and profitable places for your business to expand. CorporationCentre.com From Small Business Trends |
Small Business Trends: Could you have imagined, six years ago when you started, that you would have 6,000 customers, 300+ employees, multiple acqusitions and investors like Google and Salesforce?
Whether you’re growing your business or starting a new venture, BlackBerry solutions provide you with the freedom you want and the control you need. [Series sponsor]
| You are subscribed to email updates from Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment