Cat's Eye Marketing Blog

Get Off the Hamster Wheel: 5 Ways to Avoid Social Media Overload

We're maxed out—all of us. We were tired before social media came tripping into our lives.

And the worst part? The guilt. We are made to feel that we're not a serious business if we don't participate in the "community."

That we'll be missing the conversation if we don't hang out online.

Of course, you need to find time to actually run your business, too. Developing project bids, meeting with prospective clients, balancing the books, returning phone calls and emails.

Oh, and fit the family in there somewhere, would you? And sleep. Guess you'd better find time for that.

I subscribe to the blog of Chris Brogan, one of today's bright minds in social media. What completely blew me away last week was his post The Shape of My Game.

He walked his readers through a normal day, practically minute-by-minute. Now granted, this is not your typical small biz owner, but it struck me how much successful people have to do just to keep up the pace.

 5 Ways to Avoid Social Media Overload

 Whether you are just starting down the social media path or consider yourself a pro, it's easy to get sucked in and pretty soon you are letting the social web rule you instead of the other way around. Here are five tips for taming the SM beast:

1. Choose a couple of platforms and focus on them. You don't have to be everywhere. Besides, it's better to produce good stuff on two sites than scattered, unfocused messaging on six. It's ideal if one is your very own (your blog or your e-newsletter) and one is an external platform. I blog, write an e-letter and participate regularly on Twitter and Biznik. Two should work fine for you, though. Or even one.

2. Decide what your goal is and stay with it. This makes a huge difference. If you don't know where you want to go, you'll never get there. For my blog, my goal is to cross-promote my e-tips and increase the number of people who see me as an expert in my field. For Twitter, it's searching out opportunities to collaborate and cross-promote with other marketers.

3. Schedule your social media time like you do other things. If you are distracted by bright, shiny objects (like that "Mentions" column on Tweetdeck that tells you every time someone is talking about you!), turn off the noise. One of my friends turns Twitter on twice a day, for 10 minutes. That keeps her in touch, but not tied to it.

4. Save sacred time for the work your business needs you for. This is the tough one. Days can be fragmented with blogging, emails, and social networking sites. I've seen people have great success by blocking out two uninterrupted hours first thing each morning for the day's priority projects. It's especially important if you need to work up momentum and then have focused time to think through a project. The key here, of course, is to turn off the phones and those irritating email pings.

5. Give yourself some 'play time.' Reward yourself with short breaks, even a walk around the block. If you are a creative like me, play is essential to your self-nurturing—and your ability to produce new ideas. I keep my juggling balls handy. My watercolor set. My paddle ball (remember those board thingies with the rubber string and little red ball?). My kaleidoscope. 10 minutes with any of those and I'm good to go for another hour.

If you are feeling social media burnout (and we all do from time to time), try a couple of these ideas. And let me know if they help. 

Good Stuff You Might Have Missed: Friday Customer Relationship Gems

Sometimes, there is so much stuff out there that good things slip right by us.

I've been blogging once a week for almost two years now. I also write a weekly marketing e-tip. Content overlaps every once in a while, but not much.

What I believe

I believe in giving stuff away, lots of stuff. I believe that trust comes with generosity.

And I don't like hidden agendas.

They say:

"Subscribe to my cool, very helpful newsletter."

They mean: "I'm going to sell you as much stuff as I can in it."

They say: "Want short, useful tips you can read in 5 minutes or less?"

They mean: "If you are a speed reader, you can read my newsletter in 5 minutes. The tip is at the very end, after all the invitations to buy my e-books and attend my paid events."

Really, I don't like hidden agendas.

My Friday gift for you. Actually, 5 Friday gifts

Here . Some free stuff on customer relationship marketing. In case you can't afford those expensive CRM programs or that $200 dollar an hour-consultant.

Now these don't substitute for in-depth consulting, but they are things you can do—practical things—to improve your marketing and your relationship \with your prospect and customers, right now.

If you find this helpful, you can always sign up for my free (and "hype"-free) Marketing Hotspots, delivered to your in-box every Tuesday.

If you don't want to subscribe, that's cool, too. But accept these gifts anyway (if you'd like):

Multi-Sensory Marketing: A Tale of Three Little Customers- Did you know that your customers respond to your marketing and advertising messages based on how they best process information: visual, auditory or tactile? Find out how to use the right marketing strategy for each of these unique customer groups. 

5 Tips for Following Prospects and Customers without Being a Stalker- Ever been hit with the hard sell moments after exchanging business cards with someone? Eew! Learn how not to be that clueless person. How to keep in touch without being obnoxious.

Cookies, Milk and Scraped Knees: 6 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew- Find out what your customer is really feeling when they are reading your marketing copy. And how to recognize and address them.

Promises, Promises: 5 Ways to Build Customer Trust with E-Marketing- There's  a lot of slimy e-marketers out there. Here's how not to be one of them. How to build the customer trust that leads to sales.

5 Steps to Finding 'Warm' Prospects: Melting the Ice- Chipping ice off the windshield is hard. But of you take some time to warm the car up first…Well, you get the idea. How to warm up your cold prospects.

Okay, that's it. Hope these tips are useful. I write them with you in mind. Every week. Sign up here for a free subscription. But only if you want to. 

Midnight Train to Portland: Playing with the 'Competition'

Okay, it wasn't midnight. And there were no competitors.

But I did ride an Amtrak train last weekend. I was traveling with my Biznik friends, some of which I had never met.

"Online social networking site" is too lame a term for what Biznik is. I call Biznik my virtual sandbox. Huge virtual sandbox.

The magical mystery—ahem, I mean Biznik—train (also known as the Amtrak 513) started way up north in Bellingham, WA and picked up Biznikers along the way. It stopped at the Tacoma station for one minute on Saturday, long enough for me to jump on.

Aside from their Biznik avatars, I knew some people only from our online conversations, forum discussions, and articles they might have written. Yet I felt I knew them well. 

Others I had hosted live workshops with or shared a lunch with at a networking event.

Some I had never had one interaction with. But here we were, sharing the same space.

Portland: a fine city for spunky entrepreneurs

Now it's kind of karma-like that we would end our train trip in Portland. People there don't exactly fit the mold. Bicycle commuters.

Vegetarians. Tree huggers. Spunky protestors fire-bombing a Starbucks. Or storming City Hall to demand that Wal-Mart pack its bags.

Portlanders have an independent streak. They don't blindly follow the crowd. It's okay to be different in Portland. A little funky. A little counter culture. Just like us. 

The train ride was amazing. Eleven entrepreneurs. Eleven unique voices.

One woman had been an undercover cop back in the days when most female officers didn't get respect from their bosses, who were usually men.

Another was a graphic designer whose heart was broken when she volunteered at an animal shelter and saw good dogs dropped off for "behavior issues. " She decided to start a second business as a dog trainer. 

I sat across from a brilliant and intuitive Bizniker who knows gobs of stuff about raw foods, long distance cycling, and using bio-energy and quantum physics to help us biz owners align with our mission and life purpose.

Whew! And that was just three of my train companions.

One train car. Two hours. A billion stories.

Why we went to Portland

Lori Richardson in Bellingham and Tshombe Brown in Portland had a crazy idea one day. What if a bunch of talented solopreneurs left the isolation of their offices and home studies for two days and came together to think about ways to collaborate?

Wait. Let's put them on a train to Portland and see what happens when they get there.

Now, some people think it a little strange to meet up with people, some of whom do the very thing you do, and think of ways to help each other. Are we insane?

Partnering. Collaborating. Community building. Sharing. Leveraging.

We know those words. We've practiced rolling them around in our mouths.

"Collaboration is so much better than competition," we say. "Let's work together. Support each other. How can I help you get what you need?"

But what does that really mean? How does it look when we do that and what happens as a result?

Café mochas, cappuccinos, and chats about collaboration

We ate and laughed and ate again. We listened to hysterical stories told from the heart. We were led on walking tours and visits to the "Saturday Farmers Market" on Sunday (more Portland quirkiness), sometimes resembling a high-energy group of distracted first graders at Disneyland. We engaged in café conversations, as Chris Brogan calls them, around just what collaboration means and whether it is even a valuable thing.

We didn't all agree. But that made it all the more fascinating.

We are living in ground-breaking times for small business. People are tired of the corporate bailouts, the huge bonuses for misbehaving executives, the absence of values and ethics. The old way of doing business hasn't really worked that well.

It's time for a new model. 

5 things I learned (actually, some of it I already knew):

1. Community building and collaboration have nothing to do with age. I've seen younger entrepreneurs with a competition mindset and 60-year-olds who place sharing and building partnerships center stage in their business practices.

2. We don't know all the ways we can share until we start talking. I got to know an awesome auctioneer and connected the dots to the director of a huge nonprofit client of mine whose gala auction is their fundraising event of the year.

3. Because someone is in the same business as me doesn't mean we can't find ways to support each other. Two copywriters. Two graphic designers. Two business coaches. But not one of us had the same strengths the same target clients, the same niches. And even if we did, we could still find ways to share our skills, learn from each other, support the value each of us brings to the table. 

4. Getting to know two people really well is better than listening to 12 people take 5 minutes each to answer the question, "What do you do?" In our whirly-twirly business lives, we don't always take time to get to know our colleagues, customers, and clients. Incredible things happen when you take the time to develop those relationships.

5. We don't always approach a problem from the same perspective. Each of us had unique observations and interesting ideas about collaboration and competition. For instance, collaboration can give us an advantage over big businesses, but healthy competition can lead to innovation and greater efficiency, and more customer choices.

And one more thing I learned:

Figuring out who owes what on dinners the brewpub put on one bill can be a nightmare. Okay, the Saturday night dinner was still a very fun experience. But I just wanted to give Tshombe, our gracious host, a big hug when it was all over. 

That's my train story. Got one of your own?

Good Karma Edition: Taking Care of Our Customers

Have you ever wondered if you are insanely naiive? That maybe your business gives too much stuff out for free? Perhaps you are too helpful?

I mean, I like to help people. I love to help people. Bob and I have this unsigned pact. If someone asks us for advice, we will give it. 

There have been times when I have thought, "I might have been able to sell this person something."

But it didn't feel right. It wasn't what they needed. There was a better solution for them, less costly, more effective.

Okay. Here it comes. My good karma story.

We have an office in Renton, Washington, just south of Seattle. Two years ago, Bob got chatting with a woman who had an office in the same building. At the time, she was helping businesses and organizations showcase their products and services at trade shows.

She wanted to find out more about creating a promotional piece to sell her services on the trade show circuit.

Bob met her for coffee two separate times and answered as many of her questions as he could. She did not have a big marketing budget so he offered suggestions and advice for some cheaper self-promotion strategies.

None of his recommendations involved hiring a marketing, graphic design and copywriting firm.(Keep in mind, that's what we are.)

She left smiling. I mean, she really left. She moved out of the building and he didn't see her again—until two years later.

That's right. Two years later.

On our website contact form, one week ago, was a request.

"Hmm, that name looks familiar." Bob squinted at the screen.

It was her. The woman. She remembered that nice guy who gave her all that great advice, no strings attached. And she remembered the name, Cat's Eye Marketing.

What goes around…

You want to know what this woman wanted, don't you?

Well, she is now the marketing director for a large Seattle area company and, hey, she just needs graphic design and copywriting for a website. Oh, yes. And support to develop a strategy for reaching a brand new audience, and the marketing materials that go with that.

Okay, this doesn't always happen. But it happens enough.

Another time, a, shall I say, "picky," client drove us nuts with his endless requests for minor design changes on a presentation folder, until Bob wanted to reach for a gun.

"Just shoot me in the head," he said.

Yet this same client called a year and a half later, from New Jersey (which as you know is quite a few miles away from Seattle). He had relocated his business, but he remembered this great designer who listened to him and gave him exactly what he wanted.

Giving outstanding customer service—listening, responding, giving till it hurts—just seems to be so much work. But the rewards can be awesome. And they say, in this recession, it's what sets us apart from our competitors.

How about you? Has providing excellent customer service paid off for you? Is it worth it in the long run? Do your customers remember? If a client is difficult but comes back for more, do you even want to work with them?

Old-Fashioned, Real-Time Networking: The Day I Ditched Web 2.0

I have a confession. I'm a recluse. A hopeless writer geek clicking away at the keyboard most days, oblivious to the world. So it makes perfect sense that I live and work on an island.

I'll never be a world-class speaker. Speech class was for me the equivalent of Chinese water torture. In fifth grade I gave my lame, over-rehearsed "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" talk to a group of rowdy, pre-hormonal 10-year-olds, including Stewart Granger, who sat in the front row and pretended to pick his nose every time I looked his way.

I had no sooner opened my mouth that day when my fidgeting fingers managed to send the erasers on the chalkboard ledge flying in a cloud of dust. I choked on my words. Literally. The classroom exploded, kids falling off their chairs, all of them laughing at me.

Over the years, things didn't exactly get better. If anything, my abilities to entertain, heck, to communicate in any kind of oral fashion, deteriorated. I kept my nose stuck in books more and more, avoiding the painful, awkward conversations. I was a geek.

But geeks have no business starting businesses. Well, maybe except for Bill of Microsoft fame. But even he knows how to speak, how to work the crowd.

To be a success in business, you have to get out there. Tell your story. Give your best 5th grader's speech— in front of the whole class.

Along Came Web 2.0

In my eyes, Web 2.0 was the most noteworthy invention since Magnetic Scrabble. I could actually take my time, think first, then carefully compose an email or blog post or forum comment. It was really still one-way communication. But it felt two-way. Write. Click send. Get an answer. Write. Click send again.

I found myself spending hours at the keyboard, connected to no other living being except my 15-pound white, odd-eyed cat. I didn't need people in real time. They could always be conjured up on the screen—as one of my favorite bloggers, Sonia Simone, says, like imaginary friends who live in the typewriter.

Take my pal in Portland. We e-mail, trade forum comments, post on each other's blogs. I know what he looks like. Well, sort of. His profile picture is an avatar, so I might not recognize him if I passed him on the street. Still, I know him. I really do. We've just never met.

The Day That Was Different

This past Wednesday, I stepped out of my virtual comfort zone. Something came over me. I had decided to not just attend, but host, a business networking event. Six people who Bob, my husband and biz partner, and I met through a business networking site —hey, that's a crowd to me— took the ferry over to the island.

We secured a large vacation rental home and the eight of us had unstructured social time (gasp), lunch, a silly game, basically a kick-back day. We chatted about the mundane, drank coffee, ate way too much salmon and pasta salad. Gorged ourselves on homemade chocolates and lemon cake.

Conversations took place in real time. I saw the grins, heard the laughs, rather than reading emoticons on a screen. Somehow it was more real, more natural than I thought it could be.

If Relationship Marketing is all about making deep, meaningful connections with people, we are all now RM experts. There is nothing like finding out through a silly game that something you did—travel to third-world West Africa to help children in need—is another person's life wish.

Or that someone you knew as a graphic designer can belt out an aria that would have brought Maria Callas to tears. Or that someone else visited Beijing but would really like to live there for a year.

One Day, Eight People, and An Island in Puget Sound

Some would say that spending the good part of the day networking with a half a dozen people is crazy, in this day of globally reaching social media. I'm not so sure. I found that the more we got to know each other, the more we found common ground.

Some of us struck up partnerships and explored collaborative projects that might never have happened. And we all left with the feeling that we knew, liked and trusted each other. Not bad for one day and eight people, on an island in Puget Sound.

Later that evening I started getting the messages. "I LOVED THE COCONUT CHOCOLATES" (online way to express excitement?) and "…add my name to the FRIBTEs…" (Folks Really Impressed By This Event), and "Great fun. = D" But somehow I wished they were still here and I could talk to them, see their faces, hear their compliments. Not a bad wish for a recluse.

Sugar, caffeine and post-conference high's: 5 ways I'm following up after bizjam (and one thing I won't do)

I'm still wound up. The ideas were zinging. The air was crackling. We were caffeine- and Wi-Fi -hyped, bouncing off the walls with creative energy, like six-year-olds who had too much Halloween candy.

Now I'm back in the office and I'm supposed to shut up, pay attention and get back to my grown-up work.

Ah. The BizJam post-conference high. I have often wondered if someone couldn't just package all that excitement and deliver it in nice little doses over the next six months.

When I first get home, I'm giddy with all the possibilities. The what-ifs. The isn't-this-a-cool-idea and never-thought-about-that-one.

What do I do? Well, first I pick up Nuz, my 15-pound, odd-eyed Turkish Van cat, who jumps out of my arms and marches off, nose in the air. He's all offended because I dared to leave him alone for two days.

Then there's the mail. I sort through, tossing all the grocery ads and "You've been selected!" invitations from VISA.

Life gets in the way. There's a suitcase to unpack, a litter box to clean, laundry to do, e-mails to answer.

I made a promise to myself that this time I would do it right. Well, it's a week now and I still haven't done everything, but I'm working my list. Here it is:

1. Re-connect with attendees and presenters. I send e-mails to attendees I want to stay in touch with, briefly saying who I am again, something specific about our conversation and one thought on how we might work together (that's called a call to action); to thank people for stopping by our booth; and to connect with presenters whose sessions were particularly helpful. I mail hand-written notes to people who I connected with on a deeper level, who are potential new partners for cross-promotions. Nothing, I mean nothing, gets noticed more than a hand-written note. My friend, marketing mentor and networking guru Ilise Benun, in her BizJam session "How Not To Network," talked about the incredible impact a hand-written note can have.

2. Work my business cards. I put the names and contact info of people I met into my networking database with a brief note to remind myself of the nature of the connection.

3. Connect friends and colleagues with each other. I look at my new connections, as well as the reconnects, to see who might benefit from getting to know each other better. Then it's just simple e-mail to one, telling them I'd like to introduce them to the other, and why.

4. Blog and comment on other blogs. I'm getting pretty good at this, but it's a must-do after a conference. There are golden opportunities to give "love links" (connections to another attendee's blog in your blog posts), which helps both you and them. Biznik, the producers of BizJam, make this easy because they include links to other bizniks' blogs on their profile pages.

5. Keep my promises. All of them. And I'm not just talking biz-related promises, either. I'm sending links to marketing resources, but also a list of my favorite books to someone who is looking for books to relax with on a cruise and loves memoirs as much as I do.

6. What I won't do? I will not add someone to our weekly marketing e-tip list just because I collected their business card and e-mail address. I am amazed at the number of people who break this cardinal rule of e-mail marketing. Your e-mail will be spam unless it is permission-based. That means someone needs to have asked for it. I send a "glad I met you" e-mail and put a link to our e-tip at the bottom, but unless they go there and sign up, they won't receive an issue, not even one.

That's my list: 5 do's and one don't. I'm curious. What ways do you have of following up after a conference?

Seattle BizJam 08 - The Second Day

BizJam rocks on. It's day number two and I am tuning into the blog, as Judy is attending some of the presentations.

Yesterday I spent my day immersed in Social Media! What an experience. The speakers opened the eyes of indie business owners throughout the day of how Social Media can help the small business. It's a great marketing avenue that is often untouched.

A few thoughts...

Dive into the Social Media sites out there. Biznik, Flickr, YouTube and so many others. Find out how other businesses are utilizing these sites to expand their brand awareness and reaching even more customers.

Take the time to check out all the great tools that Google has to offer -- free! There's Google Docs, Google Analytics, and Webmaster Tools. Go through the tutorials and take full advantage of them.

Blog. Build a blog. Comment on other blogs in your industry. Create link love. The more inbound links you get to you, that much better for the search engines.

Okay, I could go on and on. I'm sure that after BizJam I will be sharing much more info with you.

And if I can grab a few other presenters and attendees, we'll get them to share their experience as well

40 Hours and Counting to BizJam '08

I'm psyched up in a big way. Solos from here to Hoboken are chattering about BizJam '08, July 9 and 10 in Seattle. It's the premier event of the year for Biznik, the mega-popular business networking site. And it's less than two days away.

BizJam is the ultimate business conference for solopreneurs—two days to learn, be inspired, and make networking connections for a serious mid-summer biz shakeup. And it all wraps up with the much-anticipated BizJam Soirée Thursday night at The Little Red Studio.

We'll be blogging from BizJam this year. Stay tuned for more on the happenings: our up-close observations and our take on speakers and topics, from Wednesday, Social Media Madness day, through Thursday, brimful of sessions on business management, networking and marketing.
Imagine learning: Why Your Website Sucks or Shameless Bragging for the Professional Networker or How to Get Clients Without Shouting.

I'll be talking with you next from the WiFied BizJam-Office Nomads Networking Lounge.