Internet Strategist

Goal setting is embedded in my DNA. Because something deep inside me gets so much satisfaction from completing them, I have to be careful that the goals I set are not colossal wastes of time and energy.Not long ago I gave myself the goal of quintupling the number of connections I have. Ultimately of course, my goal was to gain more clients, do more speaking engagements, produce my own events and also just get the information I have to share, out to more of the people who need it.I started with about 2,000 connections and (geek that I am) set up an Excel spreadsheet to keep track on a monthly basis of the number of new connections I would gain across the various social networks.As of September 2011 I am officially the proud owner of more than 10,000 social connections (actually as of this writing nearly 12,000). So as not to be disingenuous, I'll be more specific. That means that across the five social tools I actively use - LinkedIn, Facebook, my email list and Twitter, 10,000 of my closest friends’ multiple personalities are following my daily habits. As I started sharing this news with a few of those friends the questions you might expect came up. How did I do it? Is this number impressive or lame? What does this actually mean for my business and my career? And how the heck does one keep up with 10,000 connections across multiple networks in a way that isn't a full time job?Since you all know I'm a wee bit of a data geek I though it would be helpful to provide some context around what my communication process looks like with that many connections going on.I get:> 1,000 emails per week 20 LinkedIn requests per week 30 Twitter followers per week 3 Facebook friends per week 20 messages per week on LinkedInThese numbers all shift up significantly when I've published a new post or I've been featured somewhere like when I was named one of the top 11 people to follow on Twitter.I also want to mention that over the years I've noticed lots of people using tools like TwitterAdder in order to rapidly gain followers. While this can be useful (large numbers by themselves can seem impressive) I made a conscious decision to grow my network "organically". Basically everyone in my network is someone I either personally know, or who I personally connected with out of a specific interest, or who requested a connection with me. I generally also disconnect with people who send me spam.My thinking has been quality over quantity. I think this strategy has helped my click through rates on twitter and Facebook which are traditionally dismal to be higher than many people's even though my content is not generally for entertainment or shocking.I Can Email You With the Next UpdateClick here to get notified of new posts to "The Internet Strategist" by Emailso you and your company won't miss a beat!(and I promise no bottomless pit of despair) How did I do it?When I started my quest, I had about 2,000 connections. I was able to build an additional 8,000 connections in just 2 years. I strongly believe this is due to a couple of really big things that may unfortunately be hard to replicate, and then a lot of really small things that are actually quite easy for you to replicate - so easy in fact that sometimes people don't believe me.Hard things to replicate:I speak. A LOT. In 2010 I spoke at nearly 100 events in a single year. If you do the math, that works out to an event every 3 days for a whole year. Over my career as an Internet Marketing consultant and speaker I estimate that I've spoken at or conducted more than 400 classes, events and workshops. I've met more than 5,000 people. When you look at it that way, having 10,000 connections may even seem small.Well, I write for Inc. That's one thing that it will be somewhat hard to replicate. But arguably Inc. just helped me to build my network a bit faster. I attribute about 40% of the new connections to this column either directly or indirectly through new subscribers, twitter followers, events I did for or through Inc. etc. There is no doubt in my mind that it really helps to have a highly visible platform for sharing information and news with people who want to hear from you (also read Blogging's Big Payoffs).4 Easy things to replicate:Work your own blog - in every post I write (at least once I came up with the idea) you will always find 4 things a link to share my content on Twittera link to follow me on Twittera link to join my email lista link to connect with me on LinkedInWork your email signature - while I don’t include every social link on the planet I do include a link to my LinkedIn profile, my Twitter feed and my Inc. column. It’s a great way to make sure people know what you’re doing without having to interrupt their day to tell them (although I do recommend that too).Work it in person - use a newsletter signup sheet if you’re speaking. Bring handouts with your social links on them and a reason to connect. Collect business cards and be sure to send those people an email inviting them to connect with you on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Consider inviting people from your professional organizations and have something to offer – provide a reason why they should connect with you (and not a “download my free whitepaper” reason, more of a “this is who I am and why I think connecting might be mutually beneficial” reason). Work the Press/Blogosphere – this is everything from getting yourself nominated for top 10 lists to exchanging articles on a new blog where you can pick up a new audience. You have to find ways to reach new people if you want to build an audience fast (then see items 1 and 3)! These things may seem small but over the 24 months of this goal, I averaged just 300 new connections per month. That doesn’t seem like a huge number but it adds up. If you market consistently those small monthly numbers over time add up to big gains in the depth and breadth of your professional network.I did begin the article with making sure the goals I set are not “colossal wastes of time,” yes?Has it been completely worth it to have all these social connections? In order to save you some time, in the next post I’ll outline exactly how I LEVERAGE these 10,00012,000 connections and both what has and has not been worthwhile. Re-Tweet, LinkIn and Follow!Click here to easily re-tweet "How Maisha Walker Built 10,000 Connections" to your fans on Twitter Click here to follow Maisha on Twitter at @maishawalker Connect with Maisha on LinkedIn Get notified of Maisha's new posts via email Read Related Articles by Maisha 6 Tools to Nurture and Engage Your Twitter FollowersBuilding Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success StudiesTop 13 Ways to Drive Blog Readership Drive Blog Loyalty – How to Get Repeat TrafficHow to Use Your LinkedIn Profile – a ChecklistMaisha's Complete Internet Marketing Archive

My first Inc. 5000 conference experience began with a 2am arrival at Washington’s Union Station to a taxi line that snaked around the corner with not a taxi in sight. But everything was uphill from there. I shared a ride with one of the Inc. 5000 winners who showed a completely endearing excitement as he pointed to the brightly labeled Inc. 5000 van stationed outside the hotel. His excitement was contagious. Ted Leonsis - does happiness matter?I was blown away by some of the day’s presenters. Ted Leonsis spoke from the heart about being happy to be successful. He shared the harrowing story of being in a near plane crash and striking a deal with God. “If you get me through this, I will give back more than I take.” He told us he’s been trying to live that ever since. I’ll be checking out his new book when I get home. His key takeaways:Be an active participant in multiple communities of interest and activate communities of interest in your company. We are human. We need to connect. Make these connections around things you care about a central part of your life and enable the same for your employees.Enable your employees and customers to have high levels of personal expression. There is a reason why blogging and social media posting have become so popular.Have personal empathy. He told a great story about making a statement that he wanted his company to be “cleaner” and then splitting the day between sitting in the stadium with President Obama and cleaning the stadium (including the women’s bathroom) with the cleaning staff so he could walk in their shoes.Give back to the community.Articulate and believe that there is a higher calling. This can be religious or can be a larger goal that you are working to attain. He talked about Groupon’s higher calling being to help get customers for small businesses and to help people to manage their budgets. Ted’s presentation really inspired me. His ending point – be in pursuit of the “double bottom line” not just profit but social responsibility and social impact – including an impact on you. I Can Email You When I Post to this BlogClick here to get notified of new posts to The Internet Strategist by Email Barbara Corcoran challenges the attendees to be courageousBarbara Corcoran was a dynamo on stage – sharing her rags to riches story starting out as a waitress in pigtails. I’m proud to say that when I met her we hugged and took an awesome photo which I’ll share with you when I get my copy from the Inc. photographer!I am now a Barbara Corcoran fan. She embodied how scrappiness, chutzpa and sheer charisma were the cornerstones of her success and encouraged small business owners, who have so much less to lose, to be more courageous and take more chances in creating a brand for themselves. My favorite quote of hers “Perception creates reality”. Time and time again, she provided examples of how her merely suggesting the reality she wanted helped other people to make it real for her. I also appreciated her reminder about the “pressure of the crowd” in sales. Creating scarcity if used wisely can be an amazing sales tactic. Tristan & Daniel talk daily deals and local marketing Lastly – at a panel in the afternoon Tristan Walker, Director of Business Development for FourSquare, Marci Weisler of Tipping Point Partners, Daniel Kim founder of Red Mango and Inc. blogger Howard Greenstein tackled the hotly controversial topic of leveraging daily deal sites and tapping into local marketing. They shared excellent advice and ideas including: Know your average sale - don’t make the mistake of not knowing how much your average sale is in advance of crafting a discount deal.Count all of your costs when thinking about the profit of a daily deal i.e. franchisees have to pay 6% of revenues even for revenues from a daily deal.Eroding value - they all were concerned that the daily deal industry may in the long run hurt service based businesses like spas by creating a culture that in a sense commoditizes these services so that customers never expect to pay full price. They did suggests trying multi-package discounts. For example - a discount on three sessions instead of one so that customers build loyalty. Another suggestion was to create a mailing list of your daily deal customers and then run your own deals with discount codes so that your business keeps all of the profit.I also loved Tristan’s story about how vendor Jimmy Chu used FourSquare to get 4,000 people chasing the Jimmy Chu brand all over London for 3 weeks and drive a 30% lift in sales. I look forward to sharing a video where I talk more about this with Tristan.The panelists were hard pressed to come up with examples of location based deals for BtoB companies. If you’re a BtoB and trying to figure this out, you’re not alone.I also had the chance to interview Tristan and Daniel to get some insights to share with you including the backstory on Jimmy Chu. When the videos are posted I will share a few links.Throughout the conference I got to speak to several attendees. I was amazed at how consistently powerful their experiences have been and how much the companies who attend love the Inc. 5000 conference. Over and over again, they talk about the ability to really connect with other business owners which can be so easy to miss in today’s Internet driven world. My thought – too many people think of social media as an alternate to face-to-face connections. In fact, social media is about creating and enabling more intimate and face-to-face connections with people you might not otherwise have met. The goal is to get beyond the simple social connection and engage.Today was my chance to be in the hot seat. I engaged with Inc. 5000 attendees by conducting live critiques and giving answers to how they could use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social tools to build powerful marketing strategies and brands and drive business online. More soon!Re-Tweet, LinkIn and Follow!Click here to easily re-tweet "Live from Inc. 5000 & meeting Barbara Corcoran" to your fans on Twitter Click here to follow Maisha on Twitter at @maishawalker Connect with Maisha on LinkedInGet notified of Maisha's new posts via email Read Related Articles by Maisha:Online Marketing's Best Kept SecretUsing Twitter to Inspire Action6 Tools to Nurture and Engage Your Twitter FollowersBuilding Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies

Over the last few months we've been working with a number of our clients on establishing and growing their email marketing strategies. We helped one client send out an email for the first time and saw conversion rates that were 2-3 times higher than their Web site conversion rates. I mean conversions from subscribers to buyers which meant real dollars in their pocket.As we start 2011 and face the hype over new tools and new ways to use "old" tools like Facebook, this is an excellent time for you to consider the importance of Connect with Maisha on LinkedIn Get notified of Maisha's new posts via email Read Related Articles by Maisha 6 Tools to Nurture and Engage Your Twitter FollowersUse Twitter to Inspire ActionShortlist of Twitter Apps for Your DesktopPick the Right Twitter Tool: Mobile Apps8 Types of People on Twitter

Over the last 3 weeks I've been part of a 5-week, 5-city speaking and book signing tour sponsored by Deluxe Corp called the Small Business Heroes tour. I'm excited about our next stop tomorrow which is Orlando and I've been thrilled to connect with and provide advice to many businesses in Denver, Portland and Austin. I was also thrilled to make my broadcast television debut with an interview on NBC news. I can never get over what a goofball I seem to be on camera but I was thankful for the opportunity and humbled by my interviewer, journalist and fellow entrepreneur Gregg Moss telling me he's a big fan of this blog! Thank you! While the Deluxe staff on the tour are giving free presentations on many topics I've spoken and written about including Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, building Web Sites and lots of others, my presentation for this tour is on "local marketing" - how you as a small business owner can easily use the Internet to *successfully* gain visibility and sales within a local area at very little cost. I am currently working on a whole series of articles around this topic and if you have a local marketing success story, I would love to feature your business here! So if you have a local marketing success story to share you can tell me about it here. One of the most successful tools to market locally is - surprise, surprise - Twitter! Small businesses all over the country are successfully using Twitter to win customers. How are they doing it? Examples abound. There's the Chicago based Domino's franchisee who sends personalized videos (think Old Spice Guy, but less naked) to people who tweet both praise and complaints about his pizzas, getting him praise on 87,000 Web sites and fierce loyalty from his customers. There's the Santa Monica Hotel lounge that got 250 people into its lounge one night (to spend $$ on lots of other things) by offering free bubbly to it's Twitter and Facebook followers for "friending" them and then accessing a secret passcode. I Can Email You With the Next UpdateClick here to get notified of new posts to "The Internet Strategist" by Email There's the San Francisco massage and wellness spa that regularly fills it's open, unused appointments by offering last-minute, deep discounts to twitter followers. The bottom line is - it works. But you have to know how it works and when it works -- Twitter isn't great for everything. How can you make Twitter work for you? All of these examples fall into the category of "remarkable" content either as: 1. An offer they can't refuse - deep discounts & free champagne sound like pretty sweet deals. So sweet that they grab your attention and make you want to patronize the business if for no other reason than to check it out. Of course it's up to the business to turn those newcomers into loyal customers but getting people in the door is far, far more than half the battle. The trick is to find an offer that is exciting, relevant to your business and affordable. 2. Content that is highly Personal and/or Strikingly Unusual - Ramon the Domino's pizza franchisee didn't have to spend a lot of money or offer deep discounts, he won loyalty with a secret weapon that is hard to copy or steal - his charm and personality. This is one of the areas that scares business owners the most - the kind of committment that Ramon shows to having a highly personal, highly communicative relationship with his customers. While this can be a home run for people who are lucky enough to have that personality, many business owners wouldn't want to go down this path. However here's another example of a business owner who uses her personality and passion in a far less overwhelming way. The Pink Cake Box makes "extreme cakes" and the business owner simply posts photos of her cakes to Flickr. But the cakes are so remarkable and she's been doing it consistently for so long (years) that she has built a Flickr following that now drives 10% of her Web site's traffic. The path you take depends on you. Yes - you! And what resources are available to you including your own passions and skills. When you think of what to offer is it your personality (very time consuming) or a great deal (more of a financial investment)? What can you do or offer? Who is it exactly that you're trying to reach and for what purpose? Getting new customers? Keeping old ones? Make sure you figure out the answers to these questions first. If you're not able to answer these questions, move on to something else. Perhaps local marketing and/or Twitter are not right for your business!Discuss These Topics LiveIf you're in Orlando on October 5th or Charlotte, North Carolina on October 12th, you can see me walk through these topics in more depth in person at noon. I've also been known to sign a few copies of my book as well as sit down one-on-one with businesses for a bit of highly personalized advice. I hope to see you there! Follow me on Twitter@maishawalker and join me at the Small Business Heroes Tour in Orlando on October 5th & Charlotte, North Carolina on October 12th. Read Related Articles by MaishaShortlist of Twitter Apps for Your DesktopPick the Right Twitter Tool: Mobile Apps8 Types of People on TwitterYour Social Media Marketing "Killer App"