July 21, 2016

Travel planning is entirely different today than say even 10 years ago. Today’s travelers are invisible prospects to you and your marketing team, often until after they’ve made their vacation destination selection. Combine that with a consumer whose needs are more complex, stresses more numerous and media choices that have literally exploded over the last

Read More

June 30, 2016

What Is A Social Sales Force? Simply put, a social sales force is comprised of motivated, unpaid ambassadors and influencers — what we at Converse Digital call Social Agents. Social Agents introduce you to prospective visitors online through Facebook posts, Instagram pics and Twitter taunts telling everyone how much fun they’re having. And they don’t

Read More

March 31, 2016

You can’t turn around in marketing today without hearing someone or some company talking about Influencer Marketing. It seems every company wants to figure out how to leverage an influencer marketing strategy to grow their brand and sales. But from what I’ve seen, more are doing it wrong than right and new research suggests new

Read More

January 7, 2016

What if I told you I could create a 161% change in consumer perception by simply changing the background of a headshot photo? Would you believe me? Would you believe that something so small could cause such a massive improvement in your consumer marketing programs? And not just any perception, a meaningful one — the

Read More

May 13, 2015

It’s no secret that I think Twitter Chats are an excellent social selling opportunity. If you’re not sure about this social media tool, check out the simple video I created, Twitter Chat Explanation Video. Now take the power of Twitter Chats (TweetChats) and Webinars (with supporting hashtags) and Twitter Hashtags and add the new Nimble’s Smart Contacts App and you

Read More

February 17, 2015

Mardi Gras has, and continues to be, one of the most well known, interesting and misunderstood free festivals in the world. An enormous content marketing and digital marketing opportunity for brands — think brand activation, content creation, brand awareness, social media opportunities and good old fashioned sales incentives trips — Mardi Gras offers it all.

Read More

July 2, 2014

Last week while driving my six year old son to camp, he asked me an interesting question.  “Dad, how do you become famous?” I responded that you do something notable and worthy. He then went on to ask me to define worthy. Which I defined is doing something meaningful for the world. Something that made

Read More

May 13, 2014

Over the last couple of years, a few hundred members of the diabetic community came together for the world’s first, and only, virtual diabetes conference. Registration was completely free and attendees could join from a computer, smartphone or tablet. And this ability to create virtual events is what I firmly believe is the future of social

Read More

March 26, 2014

This Thursday, March 27th, I’ll be talking about the 7 keys to successfully leverage your social media strategy to drive lead generation and sales prospecting efforts. If you’ll be at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego and free at 2:15pm on Thursday, please join me in Seaport C for a great social selling session.

Read More

February 18, 2014

I miss all the conversations I used to have on Twitter. So a few weeks ago I created a Twitter Chat called #DayChat as a virtual social media water cooler where my friends and I could hang out and chat about marketing vs just sharing links with each other. I also did it as a

Read More

January 29, 2014

I’m convinced that 2014-15 will be the year we’ll finally see companies looking seriously at social media as a B2B sales tool. I’m seeing increased interest in and requests for our social sales training and I’m seeing a lot more social selling questions posted in my social media streams. So today, let’s start with the

Read More

January 15, 2014

I’ve always been a big fan of Twitter and specifically Twitter Chats as a way to engage in smart, interesting conversations around topics like marketing, social media, digital marketing and other professional interests. But alas, if you look around Twitter lately, it’s kind of broken (more on that in a later post). It seems like

Read More

January 8, 2014

Back in 2008, when I first made a serious foray into social media, I was just some a guy in New Orleans with a computer, a blog and a few ideas. I’m still just a guy with a computer, a blog, and a few ideas. But thanks to social media, I also picked up a

Read More

November 19, 2013

At a minimum, social media is the new phone. It’s both an inbound and outbound way to contact and communicate with sales prospects. Is it the best phone for all your prospects? Certainly not, but it does allow you to do more sales prospecting in a single day than you’d likely complete in a week

Read More

August 6, 2013

How do you prove the ROI of your social media efforts? For most people, social ROI is proved by measuring likes, follows, tweets, retweets and clicks because they don’t think they can link social media activity to sales conversions. And truth be told, for most of the inexpensive social media management platform options available click/follow/tweet

Read More

July 2, 2013

According to a 2012 Edison Research Study on the Podcast Listener awareness of podcasting has grown 105% since 2006 and the percentage of people indicating they have listened to an audio podcast has grown 163%. But access to a growing audience isn’t the only reason to consider adding podcasting to your social selling toolkit. Here are three key

Read More

April 23, 2013

I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally be able to tell everyone this incredible news — my first social selling book, The Invisible Sale is finally available on Amazon and B&N. A recent BtoB Magazine survey of US B2B marketers found that in 2013, 60% of respondents cited generating more leads remained their top challenge. And

Read More

April 2, 2013

Ever have a salesperson claim they don’t have time to play on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+? If you answer no, then you’re either a liar or not listening closely because it’s the most common thing social media consultants have been hearing from sales organizations for as long as social media has been around. And

Read More

January 24, 2013

Research from Google shows that now more than ever, Woody Allen was right – Showing Up is 80% of social selling success. Today’s self educating B to B buyer is increasingly turning to sources other than salespeople for information. Number Of Sources Buyers Consult Google’s ZMOT Research, released in 2011 revealed that consumer shoppers consult

Read More

November 1, 2012

Have you ever wished someone would just give you directions for how to go from wanting to leverage social media for your business-to-consumer (B2C) brand to actually leveraging social media for your brand? Do you feel like you know what you hope to accomplish but just don’t know how to begin a social media strategy

Read More

October 31, 2012

Earlier this week I had a chance to talk with a bunch of Realtors about how they might consider using Social Media and digital tools to sell more houses by leveraging social selling techniques. During the course of the talk I mentioned how social media helps them to painlessly prospect. A few seemed to take

Read More

October 25, 2012

A few years ago I participated in a panel at BlogWorld Expo in Vegas. I had the pleasure of serving on a panel with a few outstanding travel marketers,  Doug Anweiler, Leanne Jakubowski and Mike Taylor where we tried to help travel bloggers understand how to better work with brands and the agencies that represent brands. As part of

Read More

January 25, 2012

Wanna know the biggest mistake companies make with their social media and content marketing efforts? Promise you won’t tell or think less of them for this obvious oversight? Ok… come closer…shhhhhh, don’t tell but here it is….. If no one finds your content, it doesn’t matter if it is interesting. Confused? Let me clarify. There

Read More

January 17, 2012

When companies first contact me about launching a social media campaign, they usually have three big questions. First, how much will it cost. Second, how long will it take. And third, how to approach the building of a blueprint for launching the effort. A few weeks ago my friend Mack Collier posted his second annual

Read More

November 16, 2011

Tomorrow I’ll be speaking at the SoMeT — Tourism Symposium in Loudoun, VA. I’m really excited about this presentation because I’ll largely be addressing client side tourism marketers. I’m looking forward to hearing their thoughts on my hypothesis that their content calendars might actually be hampering the effectiveness of their social media and content marketing efforts. I’m

Read More

October 25, 2011

Last night I received an email from a hotel chain asking me to review a recent stay. I’m a fan of this particular chain, like their properties, and the one I stayed at wasn’t one of their best, so I thought I’d be helpful and answer this survey. Problem is, I never finished. Like to

Read More

March 30, 2011

This is a reprint of a post I originally wrote for Ad Age back in 2008. And while at the time I wrote it as the President of an ad agency, as I sit here now the owner of a Social Media Marketing agency, I realize, it’s just as valid now as it was then.

Read More

January 20, 2011

If you’re spending time in the social media space strictly for the joy of conversation, you can skip the rest of this post. BUT if you’re spending time on social networks with the goal of building a tribe of Social Agents that you can activate to grow your business, help a cause you care deeply

Read More

December 20, 2010

Is your social media program fully integrated with your traditional marketing program, or are you just bolting on “Follow me on Twitter/Facebook” to your ads and fooling yourself?The Integration QuestionIf you’re running a truly integrated program, congrats. You’re among the elite. Like the Marines, you’re part of the few, the proud, the enlightened. But for

Read More

August 31, 2010

Today I’m off to Curitiba, Brazil, a city I’d never heard of prior to being invited to come there and speak about using social media to alter brand perception for destinations and festivals. But what makes this even more interesting is what you find when you virtually visit Curitiba as I did with my kids

Read More