According to eMarketer.com, on average, 38% of all types of bloggers (hobbyists, professional part-time, professional full-time, corporate, entrepreneur) blog about brands that they love or hate. Even more influential is that 68% of bloggers are influenced by what they read on other blogs.

Did you hear that?

68% of bloggers are influenced by the 38% of blog posts written about YOUR brand, service or product!

The obvious next question is, are you aware of what’s being said about you and your brand online?

Here’s a graphic that details more about blogs, bloggers and brand influences:

The articles makes  a compelling case that bloggers should not be ignored. In fact, they should be courted. I think this offers a paradigm shift that is, and will be slow to adopt in today’s commerce.

As bloggers continue to grow in influence, their coverage of brands and their interactions with brands’ products, services and employees will be of greater interest to companies. Brand representatives who connect with bloggers must be sure to work with these writers to keep the relationships thriving.

via How Blogs Influence Purchases and Recommendations – eMarketer.

What do you think?

[updated August 17, 2011]

Writing a strong marketing proposal is key to winning new business. It is the point of reference that both you and your client will reference when there is a need to establish expectations, objectives and successes.

Over the years, I have written a lot of proposals. Some were really bad and some were great. In the past year or so, I’ve begun to hone in on what I believe to be a strong marketing proposal template. Since this is one of the keys to success, I thought I would share with you all how I write marketing proposals for my prospect clients.

Note: At the bottom of this post, you will find a Word template that you can download for your own use.

Step 1: The Overview

This purpose of the overview is to show your client that you understand the opportunity at-hand, the market conditions they are facing, and how you and/or your company can help them achieve the goals and objectives. Be careful to keep this section about the client, not you.

Step 2: Your Idea(s)

The next step is to write a summary about your campaign idea(s). You want to be careful to not reveal so much detail that they run with your idea and never hire you. You want them to see that you’ve given it some thought and you have a plan when they hire you.

Step 3: Prove Your Idea

In step three, provide the prospect client with statistics and research that backs up why you think your ideas are viable. In some cases, you may be able to provide insight into an area of opportunity that they never thought of, thus giving you a competitive edge.

Step 4: Objectives *

In step four, list out the objectives that you plan to achieve and when. For example:

• Complete the 2011 marketing strategy and schedule within 30 days

This gives your client a list of deliverables and sets the expectations and benchmarks for success. It also empowers your client to keep you accountable for what you say you’ll deliver.

Step 5: Measurement of Results

In step five, you establish how you and the client will measure success. Be as specific as possible. For example:

• Increase the number of unique visitors at the website by 10% within 90 days of the campaign launch

The temptation is not to be specific because nothing is guaranteed. However, establishing measurable results will build confidence in your client and give you and your team a scoreboard in which you can measure your own success.

Step 6: The Value to [Client Name]

In step six, you establish credibility with your clients. This is where you talk about your previous successes, your technological advances, best-practices and current and/or previous client accomplishments.

Step 7: Timing

In step seven, you estimate how long it will take for you to plan, execute and provide proper analysis of the idea(s) and when you can start on the project.

Step 8: Methodology & Options

One of the keys to a marketing proposal is providing options to your client. If you only give them one, they will see your proposal as take-it-or-leave-it proposal. That will leave you clientless in a heartbeat. However, providing them options empowers them to decide how they will use you based on their needs, not yours. Here are the options that I generally provide to my clients:

1. Advisory – In this role, you typically serve in a short-term capacity. Perhaps, three to six months. Your aim is to establish the campaign plan, strategy and analytics, then empower their team to execute.
2. Consultative – In this option, you do everything that you would have done in the advisory role, but you work with the staff individually to make sure they are trained to do the job well. You also help with the initial execution of the campaign, but leave the day-to-day details to them. The timing of this option could range from three to nine months.
3. Collaborative – In this option, you do all of the above PLUS you work in the day-to-day. The estimated time of involvement will depend on the complexity of the project.

Step 9: Terms & Conditions

In step nine, you present the following:

• financial fees for each of the above options
• payment terms (how much you need upfront to start the contract; discount if contract is paid in full upfront, etc)
• expense terms
• any other conditions you want to put on the proposal

As a general rule, it’s a good idea to keep your terms and conditions minimal, especially with corporate clients. If you opt for the long detailed versions, expect delays due to legal involvement. It’s best to offer the minimal conditions and let their legal team take lead if they decide that your proposal needs legal involvement.

Step 10: Acceptance

In step ten, your client checks their desired option, signs and dates. Don’t forget to provide an easy way for them to send the contract back to you.

In Conclusion

While this process may seem long and drawn out, you’re right it is. The proposal is where we make our money. What keeps your clients coming back are results. Those results are determined by what objectives and measurements you provide within your proposal.

For your convenience, I’ve provided a Word template you can download to get started on.

———————————–

Step 4-10 of my proposal template was modeled and adapted from the book, Million Dollar Consulting Toolkit (affiliate link) by Alan Weiss; a book I highly recommend. Here’s a quick summary of the book:

This useful guide provides specific checklists, guidelines, templates, and actual examples for every step of the consulting process. It covers marketing, sales, meetings, implementation, follow-up, invoicing, practice management, insurance, equipment, subcontracting, and scores of other elements. Thousands of people have bought Weiss’s Million Dollar Consulting and started their own consultancy. Now, this handy resource goes hand-in-hand to provide all the tools new consultants need to enact all the recommendations and ideas in Million Dollar Consulting. (src: www.wiley.com)

Today, I joined a couple hundred of my new closest socmed Charlotte friends for an all day conference called Social Fresh. Established and ran by former Charlottean, Jason Keath, this six-session event was packed full of topics that ranged from community development to corporate social policy.

I really enjoyed the conference, mainly because it was small and intimate. I met a lot of new people like @jakrose, @yarby, @benjamingetz, @CaseyLBrewton, @MCDolphens, @GenevieveJooste, @Mysticle, @arsbars, @RichTucker, @waynesutton and many, many more. The size of this conference makes it one of the most approachable, memorable and fun conferences I’ve attended in a long time. If you get a chance to attend a Social Fresh event in the future, do yourself a favor and go.

As I mentioned, a lot was talked about during the event, but I walked away with eight key takeaways that I thought I would share with you.

• Remember “You don’t need a social media strategy. You need a brand strategy that leverages social media.” —Chris Kirubi, Chairman of Coca Cola Nairobi
• You/me, we need to be paying much more attention to #LinkedIn
• Being there before the sale is marketing…at the sale is sales…after the sale is service. —@gregcangialosi
• Social media is a beast. The beast must be fed and it’s food is content. —@gregcangialosi (One of my favorite quotes of the day)
• Communicate internal social media policies frequently. Make it precise, efficient & frequent —@DavidBThomas
• Marketing in the socmed space requires more people than you think. —@bwdumars
• Quality, (story and creative) is more important with web video because it stands alone and has to be good enough to get noticed.
  and finally…
• Seriously, bacon gum balls are the best thing I never want to eat again. Thanks @masstransmit

To top it off, here are some new online resources that I found out about today:

• glassdoor.com —an inside look at what companies are paying their employees
• socialmediagovernance.com —A fantastic source for guiding social media use within your company
• Radian6.com – listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web

Did you go to Social Fresh or have you been to a social media conference lately? If so, what was one thing you learned? Leave you thoughts in the comments below.

If you are a business in Nashville looking for ways to contribute to the relief from to the #nashvillefloods this past weekend, the new geolocation social networking app, Foursquare, may be an easy way to facilitate your contributions.

What is Foursquare?

Foursquare is a relatively new social networking tool that gives people the ability to “check-in” at all kinds of places: cafes, bars, restaurants, parks, homes, offices—you name it. Think of it as an easy way of telling other users where you are.

As a local business owner, Foursquare provides you the ability to reward loyalty. Marketing says that it’s far easier and cheaper to market to your existing customer than it is a new one. So, Foursquare now provides you the opportunity to identify and reward returning customers by offering them “Specials,” which are  discounts and prizes you can offer your loyal customers when they check-in at your venue. Each venue also has a Mayor—someone who has checked into your business the most in the past 60 days. (I’ve provided a full list of “specials” that Foursquare provides below.)

There are lots of benefits of using Foursquare, but the biggest is the ability that the app brings of putting a name and a face with your contribution. Not for marketing reasons per se, but because it helps you, the business, connect with the people who are in need.

Example

Let’s say that Merridee’s in downtown Franklin, TN wants to give away a 500 loaves of bread during the month of May. One way to facilitate this would be to set up a “Check-in Special” with Foursquare so that every time someone check’s in, they are notified of the offer and are given the opportunity to get, or give away, their free loaf of bread. It’s as easy as that.

The Benefits

There are two main reasons why Merridee’s, the business, could benefit from using Foursquare to facilitate their donation:

1. They leverage the power of social networking to spread the word, thus, lowering cost of time and resources used in their efforts
2. Using Foursquare’s robust analytics, they would be able to see impact of the effort, both from a reach and loyalty standpoint

The Risk

The reality is, Foursquare is relatively new and not a lot of people or businesses are aware or are using it yet. You may end up answering more questions about Foursquare, than giving away bread.

The Benefit

Beyond the goal of distributing 500 loaves of bread into a community that desperately needs assistance, you’ve taken the first step towards identifying and rewarding those people who love and support your business.

My Recommendation

If you’re up for new ways to connect with your loyal customers, you can’t go wrong with this approach. It makes sense on so many levels. As more and more business grab a hold of the power and potential of Foursquare, there will be a momentum and, eventually, an expectation that you’ll be a participant in this space.

In the end, Foursquare is a fast and effective way to reward real-time loyalty. Furthermore, it will help you personalize your service, know your customers better and continue to reward them, again and again, for being patrons of your business.

• Mayor Specials: unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue. Who’s the Mayor? It’s your single most loyal customer.
• Check-in Specials: unlocked when a user checks in to your venue a certain number of times.
• Frequency-based Specials: are unlocked every X check-ins.
  Example: Foursquare users get 20% off any entree every 5th check-in!
• Wildcard Specials: always unlocked, but your staff has to verify some extra conditions before awarding the Special.
  Example: Show us your foursquare Swarm badge and get a free drink!

In my new job, I do a lot of research specifically on the 18-34 “Millennial” demographic. If you’re targeting the same demographic, you are well aware the social media is playing a strong roll in your strategies. The good news is, social media isn’t waning one bit. In fact, it’s on the rise. The question isn’t should you market in the social space, but how? eMarketer.com recently release an article that offered their 10 best practices for social media success. These are so good that I wanted to share them with you. My thoughts are [italicized]:

1. Don’t think social media, think social marketing. – Social marketing is more about empowering, organizing and training select staff members to engage on social platforms—and building a corporate social presence—than it is about paid media placements.
2. Know your objectives first—then develop your social strategy. – Broadly speaking, the most important objectives relate to creating deeper relationships with customers and branding.
3. Recognize the secret ingredient: trust – Clearly, marketers see an opportunity to leverage this peer-to-peer trust factor by participating in and influencing social conversations taking place on the Web. But the way in which they do that is critical. The first step toward earning trust with consumers, as in any relationship, is to listen. [If you haven't read Chris Brogan's Trust Agents yet, do it soon.]
4. Listening comes first. [When @ComcastCares entered the Twitter space, they did so by listening first. It wasn't until they understood the medium and how their customers were using it, that they actually went public. Planning and preparation are key to success in the social space.]
5. Don’t just barge into a conversation: Add value. [In fact, nothing will get you ignored faster.]
6. Be authentic, transparent and humble. [Social media is about conversation. It's not a platform.]
7. Recruit from your core: the brand enthusiasts who already love you. – Digital communities allow marketers to both find these coveted consumers (through listening) and empower them to share a brand story with many others.
8. Target the coveted influentials. – Some consumers have more clout than others. These so-called influentials, representing about 10% of the population, according to Keller Fay Group, have an undue influence on others because of their extensive digital networks and perceived expertise in particular areas. Keller Fay believes that influentials are 130% more likely than others to talk about brands on any given day.
9. Adopt a long-term/real-time approach. As blogger and social media expert Joe Jaffe has frequently said, “[Social media] marketing is not campaign; it’s a commitment.”
10. Integrate social media with other online and offline communications. Social media represents another stream of touchpoints for the marketer, but they are most valuable when integrated with other consumer activities, from search and e-mail to watching videos and reading news online.

Whether you are a brand, or someone trying to figure out how to engage with people inside the social media sphere, this is a great list to go by.

What are your social media best practices?

Last week I had the privilege of sitting in four days worth of focus groups to have random people within a pre-defined set of variables, watch and dialogue about some of the Halogen content that we’ve created. Let’s just say, it was very interesting.

As you can guess, you can’t please everyone and our content proved to be no exception to the rule. Here are a couple of the memorable quotes from the week:

• Each participant was asked to rate each show on a scale from 1-10. One of the participants wrote down a 1 and the moderator began to ask this person questions. After a minute of bashing the show, the moderator asked, “Why didn’t you rate it a zero?” He quickly replied, “I didn’t know it was an option.” – Ah snap.
• In describing another show, one girl said, “My time is very valuable and I don’t have time to watch shows that are milquetoast.” – Yeah, I had to look that one up.

Overall, it seems that our demographic wants drama and a lot of it. Oh, and sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. I kid you not. I heard that a lot during the four days.

However the biggest takeaway didn’t come from what I heard, but what I realized. My perspective is not the perspective. Sure, I knew that, but these focus groups proved to be a very real reminder that we all see things differently and if we live in a vacuum, life will end up sucking. So how do we avoid this? Good question. Here are three ways to avoid living life in a vacuum:

• Find your Simon Cowell – We all have those friends who will tell you like it is, no matter how painful it is. Hold them closely and rely on them for honest feedback. Most likely, they hold the exact insight you need.
• Ask your “friends” – The beauty of social networking is that we have more friends today that we know what to do with. Ask them to review and respond. Everybody loves to be heard. Give them a chance.
• Create your own focus group – Find people from a diverse age span, gender, ethnicity, location and worldview and invite them to be part of your virtual focus group. Incentivize them with something worth their time and start asking for feedback.

I just posted this over at the Halogen blog, but I thought I would tap into my readers here too. I could really use your input.

What does that mean anyway? If you’ve wondering the same, you’re not alone.

After sitting with this tag line for the past year or so, I’ve determined that it’s too difficult and confusing. It’s not that people can’t figure it out, they always do, but it doesn’t provide a clear indication as to what you can expect from Halogen.

So, I have a new tag line that I want to throw out to you, for your feedback:

Halogen: TV that makes a difference.

Love it? Hate it? Have your own suggestion? I want to hear from you.

In case you aren’t familiar, here’s a description of the network:

Halogen is a socially conscious television network and website that targets and activates an emerging generation who are willing and ready to give back. Using film, documentary, episodic and other formats, Halogen features a wide variety of lifestyle programming that empowers viewers to leave their mark and make the world a better place to live.

Recently, Seth Godin wrote the following post:

So, if it’s true that to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, the really useful question is, “what sort of hammer do you have?”

At big TV networks, they have a TV hammer. At a surgeon’s office, they have the scalpel hammer. A drug counselor has the talk hammer, while a judge probably has the jail hammer.

Maybe it’s time for a new hammer…

One study found that when confronted with a patient with back pain, surgeons prescribed surgery, physical therapists thought that therapy was indicated and yes, acupuncturists were sure needles were the answer. Across the entire universe of patients, the single largest indicator of treatment wasn’t symptoms or patient background, it was the background of the doctor.

When the market changes, you may be seeing all the new opportunities and problems the wrong way because of the solutions you’re used to. The reason so many organizations have trouble using social media is that they are using precisely the wrong hammer. And odds are, they will continue to do so until their organization fails. PR firms try to use the new tools to send press releases, because, you guessed it, that’s their hammer.

It’s not just about new vs. old. Inveterate community-focused social media mavens often bring that particular hammer to other venues. So they crowdsource keynote speeches or restaurants or board meetings and can’t figure out why they don’t have the impact others do.

The best way to find the right tool for the job is to learn to be good at switching hammers.

He refers to them as hammers, I refer to them as filters. The reality is, our experience dictates our perspective. The only way you can change your perspective is to challenge your own experiences. Since most of us live and die based on them, the very essence of challenging who we are becomes so uncomfortable that we can’t; in fact, we won’t, so we don’t. A great reminder to never get too comfortable in our own skin. Easier said than done, right!

What do you think?

Yesterday, I had the spontaneous opportunity to attend the Author’s Way event and see social media “typist” Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) talk about his perspective and approach on all things social media. He also dived into the heart of his new book, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (Amazon link).

A lot was said over the course of four hours and I took about six pages of notes. However, there were five things that I walked away with that have brought a paradigm shift in my thinking of social media.

Prepare to have your mind changed:

1) The more things you can create and giveaway, the more you will get back in rewards
Seth Godin says that value comes in execution, not in your ideas. It’s a loud call to stop hording and start giving. Chris said that he posts 98% of his ideas and thoughts online. The other 2% are unique to his clients. Furthermore, he stated that 75% of his leads, ie: income, come from something he’s said online.

2) To increase your Twitter influence, be helpful
Chris suggested that you utilize a 12:1 tweet ratio; for every 12 times you retweet, promote, talk about, or push someone else, talk about yourself once. How do you do that? Http://search.twitter.com is the best place to get started. Identify your interest, find what people are saying about it and enter the conversation. In return you’ll create trust which gives you social capital which increases your value and influence.

3) Twitter is a business winning tool
This is for the naysayer business owners and CEO’s. Being active on Twitter is like sharing a meal, playing 18 holes or a face-to-face meeting. Not one of those functions will seal the deal by themselves, but when used together you’ll create a winning outcome. Chris gave the example of Frank, an employee at Comcast who started @comcastcares on Twitter. One year later, Frank now manages a team of ten people who are dedicated to servicing Comcast customers on Twitter alone. Personally, I’ve used this team on at least four times. On two of those occasions, we troubleshooted and scheduled an appointment via Twitter. I never had to call or email. Now that’s a way to keep my business.

4) Think like they do
It’s not good enough to throw your thoughts out there, you have to find out what people are saying, what words they are saying it with and look for those conversations. Chris brought up an example of a hosting company that wanted to find new clients online. Rather than searching for “hosting” or “web hosting” they looked for phrases like “server is down.” Whenever that phrase was used, the company would reply with an offer for three free months of web hosting. New clients came rolling in.

5) Winning is table stakes for the next game
This is a point that I felt like Chris couldn’t stress enough. The implications were multi-fold: A) Never start from nothing. B) Build off of and on previous successes. Why is this important? If you don’t connect with your followers on a personal level, they won’t care to follow you when you move on to the next game.

Finally, I’d like to leave you with some things he said that stood out and were helpful:

• Why don’t kids use Twitter? They already have a social life.
• Be everywhere—create and maintain bonds
• If you sit still in business, you’ll get stuck in business
• Structure yourself to always be in front of opportunities so you can give them away

There were so many other great things said. If you want to hear it all, I encourage you to buy the DVD and his book. Between the two, you’ll be set.

Thanks Chris for coming to Nashville. This was very helpful!

Did any of the above change your social media paradigm?

All three, right?

If I was a real estate agent and someone contacted me with interest to list, I would pursue them like I would the sale of their house: prompt to reply, looking for opportunities to explore, readily available and like I always do, make people tell me no, twice. I would show this prospect client that I’m serious about selling their house. Creativity, attentiveness and persistence are the keys to sales, so when opportunity knocks, it’s show time. It’s time to show them that I am the guy for the job.

Makes sense, right?

If you are a real estate agent in the Nashville area and you want to sell my house, I invite you inquire within. Sell me on your selling ability, don’t just tell me about your template marketing plan.

For the three other agents I recently contacted, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. It’s not because I wouldn’t have hired you, it’s because you didn’t bother to ask.