Conversation marketing; get with the program

As with any product or offering from Michael A. Stelzner, the book, Launch: How to Quickly Propel your Business Beyond the Competition is a well presented, good quality guide that will help you to change your marketing style for the better and make your business more competitive in the digital age.

The techniques that he describes in this book are all fully backed up by real-world case studies. You can incorporate the much of the learning directly into your marketing strategy and change your business strategy easily as he provides easy how-to steps — all fully illustrated with examples.

Mike’s view of marketing via quality content, the building of communities surrounding it and going that extra mile to source expert advice for your audience might be quite difficult principles to grasp for marketers that are deeply entrenched in old-school hard-sell techniques.

At each stage, he challenges your preconceptions, but he also allays the natural fear that most people feel when their ways of doing things are challenged.

As a small business, actually size probably doesn’t matter, you need to adapt as the world changes around you. You have to do this to remain competitive – change can be scary, but it isn’t optional! You need to embrace change and use it to your advantage or you may just fail, or never achieve your potential.

Launch in action with the Game of Like

A friend Joe Cheray  from Wildheart Social Media invited me to the Pre-Holiday Facebook: Game of Like, I normally decline most events on Facebook but this one peaked my interest. The game was pitched as a way of getting more likes for your Facebook page and to learn something along the way. As a writer, marketer and business strategist, I was intrigued. I’m not overly keen on reciprocal linking or liking just for the numbers but having taken a closer look at Idea Girl Media and More in Media  who are co-hosting the event, it looked anything but spammy, which intrigued me even more!

It’s been quite an experience participating in the event. The Event is the essence of Launch in action. It has been fascinating reading the book alongside it (you read the book as part of the game). I have long been a devotee of running my business to “enchant my clients”, as Guy Kawasaki puts it, and Launch is certainly a roadmap that helps put this into action. The Pre-Holiday Facebook: Game of Like  is what the book describes as Nuclear Fuel – in the form of a Micro Event on Facebook (see chapter 8).

The game itself might be billed as being about getting more likes, but it is so much more than that – it teaches how to use and leverage Facebook, using conversation marketing, to get the most out of it for your business. Extremely useful for businesses just starting out with social media.

A community quickly formed – yes a community in 10 days flat. We started out as a group of strangers who quickly came together to complete challenges, provide support to each other and even to form connections for future collaborations outside of the game.

It’s the last day of the game today. There appears to be a strong sense of community as well as commitment to remain together as group to provide each other with mutual support, training and to collaborate on projects. The connections that have been formed may well lead to increased revenue for the parties involved. How, well :-

• I certainly know that I have met people that I would not hesitate to refer clients to if they need that expertise.
• I’ve connected with others who have products that I am personally interested in, and now that I know them personally, I would be more inclined to buy from them than from some faceless conglomerate.
• I’ve also come across a whole group of people from all over the world that have different worldviews and life experiences to mine – these give me the opportunity to learn and grow as a person but also provide valuable insights for my business – I hope they feel the same way!

The past 10 days have been extremely intense. Time will tell whether the community thrives as a whole, but that is not really the point. The point is that this type of event goes a long way to prove the power of conversation marketing – in this case social media and social media marketing. It is also solid proof that the theories laid out in Michael Stelzner’s book actually work – great opportunity for a white paper, someone, if you have clients who do not believe that conversation marketing is a viable proposition.

Thanks and a Final Suggestion

My thanks go out to Keri from Idea Girl Media  and Dorien   from More In Media  for hosting such a great event and to everyone that I have connected with over the last ten days. I’m looking forward to collaborating and chatting with you all for many years to come.

I would highly recommend that you read Michael A. Stelzner’s Launch: How to Quickly Propel your Business Beyond the Competition (affiliate link), but I think it would be even more powerful if read alongside Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts Minds and Actions. Happy, productive reading that if you take onboard can only lead to improvements for your business.

Update: And almost 2 years later the group is still active on and off Facebook. There have been business deals from the connections made as well as other more ephemeral, but just as important interactions. If anyone tries to tell you that the connections you make online are not real — it’s simply not true.