Check out the article at The Atlantic blog:       Be Better at Twitter

It seems we don’t always mind being ‘sold to’ in a gentle and humorous way but we don’t want to know ALL your personal information.

Generally it is better to be positive and not whining about stuff – common sense really?

It’s very interesting reading and very useful for those of us who like to tweet and continue to gain followers.

Enjoy!

David Lomas
P.S. If you need some twitter help please contact us!

We can now use this same phrase as a way of describing the value that we can add to our business when using ‘Inbound marketing’ methods to market our businesses.

Inbound marketing is becoming much more effective than outbound marketing nowadays and by providing prospective customers with ‘interesting’ articles about issues that face THEM, we can gain or attract their attention far better.

So in effect, we are ‘earning their interest’ instead of trying to buy it through traditional outbound advertising methods such as radio, TV and newspapers etc.

The advantage of this type of ‘attraction marketing’, is that customers nowadays are more often choosing to search for help, information or advice and are not wanting to be ‘sold to’.

The customer therefore feels more comfortable in this environment and can be led into a more advanced state of ‘readiness to purchase’.

If you can also provide an opportunity for the customer to interact with your business and receive more information about your products and/or services – without any perceived ‘sales pressure’, you are well on the way to turning this potential customer into a ‘sale’.

What you need to do…

A simple system – built into your digital and social media marketing strategy is what is required to start earning the interest of your target customer.

Here are the things you will need:

• A steady supply of unique, well-written content – about ‘customer issues and solutions’
• A digital platform to publish them which can be linked to Social Media distribution.
• A mechanism to offer further information to interested customers
• A system for turning any enquiries into qualified leads

Get writing and good luck!

If you operate in either the Commercial Property and Construction sector or in the HR Sector, please contact me to learn about our sector-specific digital marketing solutions.

For more info visit www.propertyaspectsmanchester.co.uk or www.hr-aspects.co.uk

Don’t get me wrong, some of this activity is valuable, but some of it could be replaced by some, shall we say less strenuous activity – like drinking tea…

Do you, like me, feel that you are sometimes personally contributing to the entire Middle East economy more than your own when you look at the price of petrol?
Nowadays, the pump racks up £50 very easily and when it happens sometimes a couple of times a week, it can really start to hurt your business.

When we had bad weather prior to Xmas last year, I decided to focus on how to acquire new customers in a more cost-effective manner –  whilst sitting in front of my PC!

It worked! And, as you can imagine, I ended up drinking more tea than my car drank in petrol over that particular winter period.

I succeeded in adding over 1100 new frontline contacts to my Linkedin account and attracting and making a considerable number of new client appointments – without leaving my desk.
I have since devised  a programme that could be used by more or less any business to achieve similar results.
In fact, I believe that it is possible to replicate 90% of the efforts of a sales person with this digital programme that finds, attracts, educates and then cleverly converts targeted customers into qualified enquiries.

As someone that has worked in sales for 35 years, I don’t say this lightheartedly, but I do understand the things that would help improve the performance of a salesperson to achieve better results.

Have your attractive ‘offer’ message ready
I set out to replicate the efforts that I was making in the ‘real’ world in a ‘digital’ environment. Replicating the behaviour that I was presenting to prospects on a face-to-face basis.
This had been working effectively through my networking efforts but was very time-intensive and becoming extremely repetitive. If I’ve stood up once at various networking events to explain what I do, I’m sure I’ve done it a hundred times.

The problem is that this method of finding targeted customers is not exactly ‘targeted’

I wanted to reach a more targeted prospect and nurture those people until they were ready to want to buy from me, but I now do all this from my desk

I looked into how to identify businesses that were ideal clients and ones that may even transact business over the telephone.  Not all of us have a product or service that can accommodate this strategy – but we all need to consider what business we can do online or by phone.

I then created a digital strategy that completed the whole sequence!

The strategy helps to FIND  the customer, gain their attention and then by designing a trail for him or her to follow leads to you making a sale.

If anyone wants a summary of my digital sales conversion programme, please let me know.

The internet actually makes it much easier for us all to communicate. The issue with a lot of people is that they don’t understand the new-fangled tools that make it all work!

We had the same issues with fax machines (well some of us, I’m sure), computers and more recently, mobile phones.

Once we got over the confusion and reticence to learn new things (because they seemed complicated at the time), we now use them without thinking.

However, some business sectors are maybe a bit slower to adopt these new changes in the way they communicate.

If you are in that bracket, a Social media expert could help you to be equally confident with your understanding of Linkedin or your confidence on twitter!

They may be able to help you use social media to really make a difference to your business!
Do I need to understand social media to make it work for me?

You don’t need to understand ALL of it – just the bit that will work best for you or your business.

I have created a clever social media marketing programme for the Property and Construction sector. Check out Property Aspects Magazine to see the calibre of the content.

It helps businesses working in that sector to really get the maximum benefit out of minimal social media activity and shows them how it can link their simple social media efforts to their sales process. It allows them to take much more advantage of the internet in a way that helps them boost their business profile and more importantly, their influence within certain sectors.

So for people who haven’t yet discovered how to generate business from social media – this could put them at the top of the class!

David Lomas M3 Media Publishing can be contacted on 08450 519374 

Mark Downham from Eddisons Chartered Surveyors made an intelligent point about using Social Media, saying that it was similar to ‘throwing pebbles into a pool and creating ripples’.

He is right, the social media environment we all sit in is in fact a really huge pool.

Well actually, Social Media is effectively many pools that are all linked together throughout which our ‘ripples’ can continue to spread.

Keeping that ‘ripple’ or marketing message moving is one very important factor when you are marketing – we all must continue to transmit our brand story…

We all want to push out our marketing message to everyone.

Or do we?

It is actually more important that we throw our pebbles into the RIGHT pool…

Choose where to throw your pebbles.

Surely we want to have a more targeted approach when marketing don’t we?

For example, I see so many people who go out networking to any and every type of networking event they can get to. They interact with lots of business people.

But in so many cases, the vast majority of those people that they meet are NOT in a position to refer anyone of quality to them,  to significantly influence others  for them and not able to actually buy anything from them.

So they may be throwing their pebbles into lots of water, but the ripples will be very unlikely to have any lasting and beneficial effect.

Maybe we  all need to adopt the same attitude of ‘choosing the right pool’ to all our marketing efforts?

Your marketing message must be relevant to each sector

You need to ensure that your marketing message reaches your ideal target audience. In fact you should have a different message for each sector in which you operate. Different customers have individual sector-specific issues and will respond to different headlines and messages from you.

By working on influencing one sector, you can also save time and money because you have a tighter audience to reach and you can narrow the focus of your approach.

This also means that any messages or stories that you spread will tend to hit other potential customers within the same sector.

Thus, the ripples that you can all make will end up having a far stronger effect on your carefully-targeted audience.

At M3 Media Publishing we specialise in using Social media to spread stories about clients. If you are ready to throw your pebbles into our pool, please contact me, David Lomas on 08450 519374 or via david@m3publishing.co.uk

It is vital that we respond to these new rules if we want to raise our business profile effectively and in turn, the efforts that we make within this social media environment will be successful in attracting new customers.

At M3 Media Publishing we have created a ready-made Social media solution for solving the issue of ‘increasing your digital footprint’ or ‘sending out a positive message about your business’.

We now publish a number of ‘blogzines’, one of them is  Property Aspects Magazine which is an independent online magazine, containing professionally-written articles from the property and construction sector across the North West.

Also HR Aspects Magazine - which is aimed at anyone looking to find advice and information on any aspect of HR, Recruitment or people management.

The carefully-targeted audiences for both these online publications are attracted by using well-proven internet marketing and social media techniques and as such, these readers are already searching for either HR or property solutions.

This puts you ahead of the game straight away.

Hasn’t this got to be better than trawling around numerous and sometimes ‘not relevant’ networking events trying to find a potential customer? That can be VERY time-consuming and non-productive.

Don’t get me wrong, some networking is vital, but you need to pick and choose which events work for you and focus on those.
With the incredible social communications we all have access to nowadays, you don’t need to be meeting up with the same people face to face every week or two!
This is why we have Linkedin and twitter!

A good, well-focused example of a networking event is The Curry Club run by Steve Kettle. It provides an ideal target audience for anyone operating within the Property, Finance and Construction sector and is held once a month in Manchester.

How would you like your prospects to have heard your story in advance of any sales discussion?

Our magazines are designed to be informative and NOT to be ‘selling’ to the readers.
We give out positive messages that can be very valuable when lodged firmly in the minds of your prospects before you walk into that sales meeting.

In fact many of the articles that we write deal with the issues facing the customer and provide links to case studies for them.

These stories can be sent out to many many people using clever social media techniques and this can differentiate YOU from the competition in advance.

We also offer our readers further information from our selected business partners in return for details of their specific requirements. Thus generating what are effectively qualified leads for our business partners.

Property Aspects Magazine provides articles, news and information about a wide range of subjects across the Property, Finance and Construction sectors.

Our aim is to illustrate the high level of expertise and the depth of knowledge and experience that we have on offer in the Property, Finance and Construction sector across the North West

Recent Comments

“M3 Media Publishing have created these clever online blogzines as powerful social media tools, which can be used by any business”

“We all need to start using social media to get our message to the customer ahead of the competition and this fits the bill perfectly. Property Aspects Magazine is the perfect way of attracting and educating prospects in the present environment”.

M3 Media Publishing have created a simple starter package for businesses to get themselves noticed on the internet and have some very effective ideas to keep their clients visible to what could be a totally new and targeted audience.

Learn how you can raise the profile of your business in a really cost effective way on one of their ‘Interview filming’ days.

This is a very cost-effective first step for any business that understands the importance of using video images to attract visitors to their website.

Contact David@m3publishing.co.uk or call 08450 519374

If you have a specific area of expertise, then focus on that and maybe explain the issue (or more importantly, the solution to that issue) in three different ways within the one article.

This allows you to insert a few, more-focused keywords into your article.

But it also makes your article more memorable to the reader than an article which contains six different topics. (It is much easier for us to remember ONE thing when it is told to us in any presentation than when we hear several).

If you have shown ‘depth of knowledge’ in the one area of your business, your reader is very likely presume that you are competent in other areas.

Finally, make sure you tailor your article specifically to your particular client sector.

Most businesses stick with one message that they send to all their prospective clients with the expectation that they will respond..

It would be better to alter your message depending on the individual type of customer you are targeting.
Maybe change your headline to suit each sector – A headline that is relevant to your target has a much greater chance of catching their attention.

Internet businesses use a wide variety of techniques, such as social bookmarking, pay-per-click and search engine optimization, in order to really spread the word on their products and services across the web. When it comes to almost guaranteeing a degree of success online, you can count on the reliable traffic generation technique that is article marketing.

A lot of internet business owners use article marketing to spread the word, and attract customers to their companies. Article marketing remains to be very effective as a traffic generation technique, however it is still a little daunting for newbies, especially if no prior experience in article writing is acquired.

In order to fully understand what is article marketing, we have to ask ourselves how are things done online, and how does this function with article marketing as a whole?

Pre selling products and services to potential customers is the premise of article marketing. When it comes to marketing a business to the prospective customers, this form of online marketing is by far the best way forward.

This style of marketing online comes with plenty of benefits. Perhaps the best thing about this traffic technique is that it’s a source of free traffic for pre-sales. Of course, this makes the traffic incredibly valuable and worthwhile of an investment.

It is commonplace for new written content that is published to the web to be focused on particular keywords, in a bid to be well optimized for the search engine results pages. When it comes to understanding online marketing, this is something that online businesses have grown to appreciate, as it is a reliable marketing opportunity to make a success of yourself on the web.

If you ever stop to think to yourself, what is article marketing, and you are serious about becoming a success online, then you really should make the most out of this technique.

Property Aspects Magazine is a ‘blogzine’ – effectively, a combination of an online blog which is designed as a magazine and contains information and news across the commercial property, finance and construction sector in Manchester.
However, the innovative concept which encompasses the blogzine has a great deal more to offer any business working in the commercial property and construction sector.

For businesses that work within the property, finance and construction sector, the opportunity to grab a slice of this cleverly-devised project could be very attractive…

The concept embraces and responds to many of the rules of internet marketing and social media which are defined by the likes of google, twitter and facebook. It also focuses on how to generate business by using good-quality, unique and relevant content.

Well-written and ‘unique’ content is the most valuable thing on the internet’ right now – and it will continue to be so! Businesses should be taking advantage of this to attract new customers. Property Aspects Magazine’s marketing programme will take care of this for your business, very effectively.

Converting visitors into sales

The other efforts we should all make in our marketing, from ensuring our website attracts customers and how we should handle and convert those visitors into customers, to tying the process into our offline marketing strategy are all dealt with in a very simple programme.

The great advantage of the programme is that there is very little to do from the participants as all the content and articles are written by copywriters who talk with them on a monthly basis to understand what messages they want to communicate to their audience.

The readership of the magazine is cleverly targeted and is therefore already interested in your products and services beforehand. This programme practically drops them in your lap at exactly the time they are ready to buy!

Powerful Strategic Property Alliance

Alongside the magazine, a strategic alliance of businesses is formed by the participants who all work within the property and construction sector in the Manchester area (more regions are to follow).

These strategic partners will get together on a regular basis to learn how they can collectively benefit from this strategic alliance.

As they only allow ONE partner in each category, this presents each partner with a superb opportunity to generate some good-quality business from what can become a powerful and influential strategic property group.

If you work in a Commercial Property, finance or construction related business in the Manchester area, please contact me for more details.

David Lomas
M3 Publishing
david@m3publishing.co.uk
Direct: 01260 289007
Mobile:07886 900802