Jay Abraham Interview on "I Love Marketing" podcast

http://ilovemarketing.com/jay-abraham-interview-on-marketing-and-copywriting/

•  "The other is, there could be such really quality deserving people that have such a superior product, service, concern, commitment, integrated value proposition, but they do now know how to differentiate. They do not know how to communicate. They do not know how to delineate. They do not know how to demonstrate..." 
•  "most people don’t even think about how do I create the trust that lets the prospect know that I have their best interest at heart"

Notes from speaking to experienced consultants

I was speaking to a far more successful consultant than myself a few weeks ago.

By successful I mean:

• charges more
• more shorter term gigs
• higher paid, higher profile gigs
• higher profile in the industry
• contacted by ‘budget holders’ and ‘management’ as well as ‘practitioners’

Now, he has worked for this and deserves the success.

• put himself ‘out there’ far more and far longer than myself
• built his brand
• experimented more

And there is a lot that I can reverse engineer from looking at his public profile but I thought I’d take the opportunity to ask for tips:

On pricing

• negotiate principle of least regret - price so that:
  • If they accept, I would regret taking at that price for it is too low
  • If they walk away, would I regret because I priced too high
• never drop your price after a quote
• discuss money early in the ‘can you work for us’ ‘can you come speak to us’

I think I do points one and two, so I’ve added point three into my repertoire.

I also asked about how he manages to make his travel schedule so profitable:

• put schedule online

I have now put my schedule online, and I’ve also put my current availability online on my website and on linkedin, in the hope that this leads to a sense of scarcity and as a prospecting filter to stop enquiries for “can you come work with us full time for 6 months on this low level role”.

I had thought about doing this before, but after speaking to him and seeing how much he credited gaining work from it, I added this a few days after our talk.

One thing that became clear when speaking though was that he has a much clearer idea of the benefit and value that he brings to the role. And that allows him to communicate it in a clearer and more succinct way than I do.

So I need to work on that.

Also he provided tips on creating talks and content that can attract more sales:

• talk titles based on ‘what do I think would be a good benefit’
• what 3 things would I want to talk about - simplify ‘what’ not the how - models are the how

I still have work to do on my personal marketing and branding. Hopefully this helps.

I previously asked other consultants and the advice was generally “charge more”. I think the advice above, when followed will help develop the positioning to allow charging more.

Jay Abraham on How to 10X Your Business with Lewis Howes - Massive Amounts of Free Sales And Marketing Training Material

I’ve taken value from Jay Abraham’s work in the past - particularly his book “Getting Everything You Can out of All You’ve Got” - and it is one of the books I’ve just started to re-read and revisit (again).
I was pleased to see that Lewis Howes interviewed Jay Abrahams for his “School of Greatness” Podcase.

• http://lewishowes.com/podcast/jay-abraham/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bi4X4KY1DQ&t=577s

Jay offers some really good advice on referals and repurposing and I’ll need to revisit the video again to crib some of the great sales copy ideas at the start.
And there was a really useful story about his work on Entrepreneur magazine:

• repurposed archives into ‘startup manuals’ with ‘boilerplate’ - how to recruit, how to do X
• you are the solution to someone else’s problem who doesn’t know it

At the end of the video I learned something I was completely unaware of - Jay Abraham has released most of his material for free now:

• An unbelievable amount of material in his 50 Shades of Jay section
  • http://www.abraham.com/50shades/
  • this will take a long time to work through
• Read Archives of his email newsletter
  • http://www.abraham.com/category/50-shades/
• You need to register for this… but you get access to an immense amount of training and recorded talks
  • http://www.abraham.com/radio-opportunity/
  • including the book “Getting Everything out of All You’ve Got” - which I have a paperback and CD version, and was just about to work through again.
  • and the book “The Sticking Point Solution”
  • … it just goes on

I suspect I’ll be studying this material for quite some time to come.

GMail Based CRM and GMail Linkedin Plugin

I’m still trying to figure out what I need from a CRM.

I needed to create a homegrown adhoc solution to see how I prefer to work rather than have my process dictated to me by software.

Homegrown Solution

I created a quick CRM in a Google sheet.
I have a front page which summarizes:

• contact
• when last contacted
• what to do next
• state of lead

And then each contact has a sheet with their details and a log of contacts - that seems OK but requires maintenance outside of Google.

Alternatives

Then I stumbled over this blog post from Neil Patel, "10 GMail plugins all marketing professionals should consider"

As A result, I’ve installed the Rapportive chrome extension, which augments any homegrown CMS.

And looking through the features of the other tools mentioned it seemed as though Streak provided a lot of power and seemed to offer much of the functionality of followup.cc and boomerang

I’ve installed Streak to try it out.

I still have to evaluate FullContact which I think could augment Streak as well.

And if Streak doesn’t work out then I’ll have a look at ActiveInboxHQ

Streak seems to have a lot of power and I’m slowly working through the functionality but the delayed send and boxing seem quite useful so far.

How to create Presentation slides using markdown

Simple solutions for using markdown to create presentations exist e.g. Marp, Deskset, DeckTape.

I use markdown all the time

I use markdown all the time for writing.

• blog posts, I draft in markdown, convert to HTML (e.g. dillinger.io) then paste HTML into blogging tool
• client reports - I write quickly in markdown then format in different styles using Pandoc

I write all my daily notes in markdown because it is easy to read, and if I need to, then it is easy for me to convert to a ‘presentable format’ using Pandoc or Dillinger.io

I create a ‘checklist’ and wanted to convert it into a presentation to upload to slideshare for marketing purposes. I didn’t fancy recreating the checklist into Powerpoint manually, so I started looking for a markdown based ‘slide’ solution.

Pandoc can do this as well, but it looked like a clunky approach.

A markdown based ‘slide’ solution

The first markdown based ‘slide’ tool I found was Marp:

• https://yhatt.github.io/marp/

The only changes I had to make to my checklist was the addition of --- to create slide breaks - when these are rendered in the checklist document they are horizontal lines, and don’t really detract from the on page checklist:

Within a few minutes:

• I had a slidedeck, in pdf format, that I could upload to slideshare.
• I could generate the slide deck from the same markdown document as the checklist document

Only one document to maintain going forward, but increased the marketing reach of the material.

Win.

And the next day I wanted Powerpoint or ODP

I started looking around for ways to convert the markdown into a ‘normal’ presentation format like powerpoint or ODP. I tried pasting the generated HTML presentation tools but that didn’t work as I wanted. I found odpdown, but haven’t tried it yet: (This might be useful for converting markdown to odp format)

• https://github.com/thorstenb/odpdown

Other Markdown Tools for HTML

As I searched the web I found a few other tools mentioned for markdown to HTML:

• https://github.com/jldec/pub-server
  • mentioned in https://www.parallella.org/2015/08/14/no-more-powerpoint/

There are also a bunch of tools that let you embed your markdown in an HTML document and render it that way:

• https://github.com/munen/p_slides/
• https://github.com/gnab/remark
• https://github.com/puppetlabs/showoff (doesn’t seem ‘simple’ enough for my needs)

More professional additions

DeckTape is an open source tool that offers a PDF and image exporting functionality

• https://github.com/astefanutti/decktape

Deskset is a commercial tool that supports more features, but only runs on Mac - cheap at only $29

• http://www.decksetapp.com

Summary

I haven’t had time to evaluate all the tools above. At the moment, the simple pdf that Marp generates is good enough for the type of material that I’m currently kicking out.

Since all the tools seem to use a similar approach, I’m going to continue to draft slides with Marp and when I want something ‘professional’ I’m going to evaluate Deskset.

I know that at some point I’m going to want to combine slides and longer form text and I think that DeckTape will help me do that.

References
These two ycombinator pages had useful links and information:

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12079671
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11839560

What kind of LinkedIn posts to create?

I already blog, and I create quite a lot of content that way.

Where will I find the time to create new content for LinkedIn?

Well, I won't.

I'll re-purpose content.

My current LinkedIn post strategy is 'executive summary'.

• I write a bunch of posts on my normal blogs
• I summarise them and draw 'management conclusions' for LinkedIn

The LinkedIn audience that I'm trying to target is one that will invest in consultancy, that is a different audience than the practitioners I target on my blog.

My first post I forgot to tweet and promote!

Now, when I create a LinkedIn post:

- mention it as a Company update
- 'share' the company update through my linkedin profile
- tweet the linkedin post

The LinkedIn reciprocal Visit Strategy update.

Thousands. I've automatically visited thousands of profiles.

How many you ask?

2747, I reply

Wow, that must have massively increased your profile views, you say.

Eh, not really.

To make this 'scientific' I made sure this was the only strategy I employed for 2 weeks.

And, not really much of a boost,

When I didn't employ these strategies and did nothing I was getting about 30 - 40 views a week. Some weeks up to 70, some weeks as low as 20.

With this strategy I had a 40 week, and a 48 week. Which is well within 'normal tolerance'.

Looking at the people who did view my profile... none, were in the list of visited people.

I'm going to conclude that this strategy is 'LinkedIn Guru' hyperbole and let it lie.

So what to do instead?

Well, the one thing it was good for, was seeing what LinkedIn groups my target market was part of.

And I have joined as many of those groups as would let me in.

I have also created more updates and started using the LinkedIn 'post an article' and this week I'm up to 55 views.

Now, I also have to try 'engaging in the groups'

Summary

I conclude that 'content' is a better strategy for 'profile views' than visiting.

But 'visiting' is the best (and only) strategy to find out what groups your target market visit.

Going forward I will:

• Create posts
• Post more regular updates
• Engage in group discussions where I can

And see how that goes

LinkedIn Ads Update

Two weeks ago I wrote that:

• One of my ads has achieved 49 impressions over 30 days, with no clicks, at a cost of $0.00
• The other ad has achieved 9576 impressions, with 1 click, at a cost of $2, over 32 days.
• I chose “Cost per Click” model.
• LinkedIn suggests that other advertisers are paying $6 - $10 per click. Whereas I decided to target the long tail and see how long the budget would last, so I went for the minimum $2 per click.
• I have just increased the cost Per Click to $4 and will see what happens

So after 14 days, what has happened.

• The ad has been clicked 6 times, so that is 5 more clicks
• Average click through at $3.0
• The ad has 74,409 impressions

If I earned money from impressions that would be great.

It is possible that people are trained not to look at ads. I'm pretty sure I am.

I've decided to end my 'ad' experiment and I probably won't repeat it.

I think 'content' serves my business better than ads.

LinkedIn has limits on everything! - number of pending group requests

As part of my 'try to use linkedin' better strategy. I've been looking at the profiles for people in roles I probably want to connect with to get work.

And when I do that, I've been looking to see what groups they are members of.

Then I apply to join those groups that seem relevant.

Strategy:

• view prospect profile
• scan groups
• join potentially beneficial groups

And then LinkedIn says:

"You've already requested to join too many groups. Withdraw pending requests before joining this group."

I think I had about 6 requests pending.

As a result of this my strategy is now:

• view prospect profile
• scan groups
• make a list of potentially beneficial groups
• join groups in my list

Otherwise, I'll forget the good groups.

And since LinkedIn allows you to join about 100 groups I'm working through my list now.

PS:

Remember to edit your profile so that you only show groups in your profile that augment your sales message. 

LinkedIn Connection Oddness

I've often wondered how I received so many connection requests prior to posting my email address on my profile, and why no-one gives a reason why they want to connect.

But I've only just realised that on the "People you may know" view, under "My Network". I can click 'connect' on any of those people and I don't have to provide how I know them, nor do I have the opportunity to say why I would like to connect.

If I open their profile and try to connect, then I have to give a reason.

Strangely inconsistent methinks.

How to make blogger more responsive

This blog is hosted on Blogger.com - primarily for expediency.

• I don’t like the HTML it generates
• And I don’t like the templates (i.e. how it looks)

But other than that, it is fine.
For a while I’ve been wanting to make the blog more ‘responsive’.

• I don’t particularly like the fixed sizing
• and I don’t like the small screen formatting

I had a quick look around are responsive templates for blogger.
But:

• I didn’t really trust them
• I thought I would have to reconstruct my sidebar etc.
• It all seemed too much work

I tried using the Advanced editing on the template to add some CSS but:

• The custom CSS is added into the HTML before the Template CSS
• So the template CSS overrides your custom CSS

So, I bit the bullet:

• visit the site
• use dev tools to find the ‘key’ areas to influence
• hack around with the CSS

And I came up with this:

---

/* Minimal Hack to make blogger more responsive
     Added in the Template HTML Template Skin Section
     At the bottom
     20160902
*/

.content-outer{
     min-width:none;
     max-width:1400px;
     margin: auto;
}

img#Header1_headerimg{
     margin:auto;
}

/* push sidebar to the bottom - content break, not device break*/
@media only screen and (max-width: 900px){

.content-outer{
     min-width:0;
     max-width:auto;
     margin: auto;
}

.column-center-outer{
     width:100%;
}
.main-inner .column-right-outer{
     width:100%;
     margin-right:0px;
}
.main-inner .fauxcolumn-right-outer{
     width:100%;
}
.main-inner .fauxcolumn-center-outer{
     width:100%;
}
.main-inner .columns{
     padding-right:0;
}

img#Header1_headerimg{
     max-width:100%;
     height:auto;  
}
body{
     min-width:0;
}
}

/* End of minimal hack to make blogger more responsive
    20160902
*/

---

It isn’t pretty.
But it basically says. If the screen is bigger than 900 pixels then allow it to resize.
If it is below 900 pixels then move the side bar to the bottom of the screen and make everything fit the width.
Oh, and resize the header image to fit the screen (if I add one to this blog).
Why 900? Because.
I chose a content break, rather than a device break. And on some of my other blogs, choosing 900 seemed like the right choice.
In blogger I have to:

• go to the blog dashboard
• choose ‘Template’
• Edit HTML
• Expand <b:template-skin> ...</b:template-skin> in the editor
• and right at the bottom of this section, above the ]]> I add my ‘hack’ CSS

Just in case anyone else is still on Blogger, and wants to make their blog a little more responsive.
Feel free to adjust the max-width in the media query for your own personal preferences.

Does LinkedIn Advertising and Sponsored Update work?

I have never clicked on an advert on LinkedIn, or knowingly clicked or shared a sponsored update.

But I have taken advantage of the LinkedIn promotions wehre they give you £20 or £30 to try running ads or sponsored updates.

I tried advertising & sponsored updates.

Sponsored Updates burn through cash

I burned through the ‘free’ cash on the sponsored update in a day or so. Suspecting that this might be successful, I paid to increase the ad budget.

A few days later the cap was reached.

Result.

• A few shares. A few clicks.
• But no upsell.

Perhaps I picked the wrong update to sponsor?

Certainly it got in front of people, but I had less interaction with the sponsored update, than I do on a normal update.

So I probably will not try this again.

Text Ads

I created two text ads.

I thought two might give me an A/B test, and feel kind of scientific.

One of my ads has achieved 49 impressions over 30 days, with no clicks, at a cost of $0.00

The other ad has achieved 9576 impressions, with 1 click, at a cost of $2, over 32 days.

I chose “Cost per Click” model.

LinkedIn suggests that other advertisers are paying $6 - $10 per click. Whereas I decided to target the long tail and see how long the budget would last, so I went for the minimum $2 per click.

I have just increased the cost Per Click to $4 and will see what happens.

At the moment Ads seem like a way of putting text on people’s screen that they don’t click on. But it doesn’t cost much.

And you can cap the daily spend - so provided you remember to check the ads section of LinkedIn periodically you might not end up too much out of pocket.

Does this work?

Again, I’m not convinced of the efficacy of this advertising approach.

I suspect that quality updates and posts might have a better impact.

Are Linkedin Groups Still Useful for Marketing?

Are Linkedin Groups Useful?

I still read in posts from Linkedin ‘experts’ and various social media sites that LinkedIn Groups are one of the best ways to get in front of prospects and demonstrate your expertise.

Unfortunately LinkedIn groups seem dead to me.

I dropped out of LinkedIn groups a few years ago because, while they were active with discussion the discussion was:

• of very poor quality
• highly opinionated without justification
• incredibly argumentative without ‘listening’ to the other side

And I just became tired of reading it, and being on the receiving end of “that won’t work” opinions’ despite posting factual success experiences.
But, since I’m trying to figure out how to use LinkedIn for marketing I’ve gone back through the groups I subscribe to.

I evaluated my groups for value

I adopted the following strategy to evaluate linkedin groups:

• for each group I am in:
  • does it give value to me? i.e. looking over the last 50 or so posts, did they add value?
  • are my prospects in this group?

If they answer to either is “No” then leave the group.

Most were full of spam posts and no discussion

Most of the groups were filled with ‘peers’ rather than ‘prospects’ and so many of the groups were actually filled with the same ‘posts’. I went from group to group seeing the same promotional posts from people in each group.
Perhaps that marketing strategy works - publish the same post in each group, regardless of its relevance to the group. But to me it seems like spam.

• I could find no group that had any real discussion.
• I could find no group that had ‘prospects’ in it.
• I left many of the groups I was subscribed to.

How to find new groups?

I’m going to start searching for ‘prospects’ and seeing what groups they have joined.
And then, once I gain access to the groups, I can evaluate them using the ‘value’ strategy I listed above.
I remain to be convinced if LinkedIn groups will add value to my marketing strategy.

Linkedin Marketing Strategy - The Reciprocal Visit - Who’s Viewed Your Profile

One LinkedIn marketing strategy that I’ve seen mentioned on a variety of blogs is “The Reciprocal Visit” (or at least that is what I call it). How do we use that for marketing?

What is the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” feature?

LinkedIn has the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile" feature. You can see it on the ‘Profile’ drop down. And it shows you who has recently viewed your profile.

• if you have a free plan you will see the last few people who have visited
• if you have a paid plan you will see the last few weeks (or months)

If the person has made their profile public, or not viewed in private mode then you’ll be able to see information about them.

Why?

• you could send them a connection request, after all they visited your profile, they might be interested in what you sell
• they might be a potential client waiting to happen, you could research them and build a tailored ‘hi there’ approach
• it might give you an idea of the current target market your profile is written towards
• it might help you build a set of ‘personnas’ that your profile is drawn to, to create custom marketing approaches for each profile
• you might want to join some of the groups for that person, posting there might get you in front of that person organically without a connect
• there might be a shared connection who can introduce you

What is the “Reciprocal Visit” strategy?

If you visit someone’s profile then YOU will appear in their list of “Who’s viewed your profile”.
They might visit you back.
That might mean they are interested in what you have to sell if:

• your ‘professional headline’ description accurately reflects what you want to sell

Now your ‘Professional Headline’ is actually acting as a headline. And you want to use it as a ‘click through’ and read the article.
And the article now, is your “Summary”, and your “Summary” now becomes a sales page.
If you include your connection details on your sales page (sorry, “Summary”) , then they might actually find it easier to connect with you, and initiate a sales conversation.

Automating This

There are tools to help with the “Reciprocal Visit” strategy.
But be careful.
You can have your account locked for this.

• if you are on a free plan then this will be viewed as commercial use, and you’ll have to very quickly upgrade your plan (after about 50 or so views)
• if you misuse this, then your account might be locked (if you’re lucky then it will reset the next day)
• if you are on a paid linkedin plan then it advertises itself as “Unlimited Profile Views”, but it doesn’t mean that. I think you get about 800 or so before you see the “Linked in is momentarily unavailable” message

I’m still experimenting with this strategy. And to be honest, I’m technical enough that I can automate it myself, so I’ll never know what the tools are like.
I can’t say for sure that the strategy does work yet, as I’ve only just started using it.

Initial results:

I’ve only been using this strategy for 2 days, so it is really too early to say. But…
Started experimenting with it on 27th - 28th August, which was a Weekend, then 29th August (which was a bank holiday) - so not the best of days to try it. But in 2 days I have 18 profile views and my Wednesday email was busier with connection requests and emails from recruiters.
I managed to lock my account on Tuesday by clicking on too many profiles!
But my access came back on Wednesday. Phew.
I take this to mean that it is:

• worth experimenting with.
• And I need to amend my profile to reduce the number of recruiters that contact me.

Note:

• Update: And for the 2nd time. I've had my linkedin search functionality downgraded on linkedin. This time. After performing one search, and clicking 'next page' about 30 - 40 times.
• I'm not sure this is a viable strategy in any automated way.
• I'm not quite sure how recruiters are able to rely on LinkedIn because if I was a recruiter I'd be doing a lot of searching and paging, and my account would get locked.
• Currently I'm on an evaluation of the Business Plus plan which would set me back £29.99 a month. IT seems to have the same limits on searches (i.e. none - unlimited) as the executive plan at £49.99 a month. 
• And given that it is possible to avoid some linkedin search limits by using tools such as http://recruitmentgeek.com/tools/linkedin/ 
• I need to find a compelling reason to pay the cash in the next 3 weeks.
• I'll see if the 'post cool stuff to groups your prospects' are on strategy works out next

Related Links:

• Who’s Viewed Your Profile FAQ
• Difference Between Basic and Premium
• How to use the WVMP Feature
• Utilizing WVMP Feature

Marketing in Moderation for Maximum Impact

You'll want to compete. You'll want to improve.

But as with everything, you have to work in moderation:

• You have a finite amount of time
• You have a finite monetary budget for advertising

The parteo principle is a useful thing to keep in mind, they 80/20 rule:

80% of the success comes from 20% of the effort

i.e.

• get biggest bang for the buck
• repurpose your content
• get your content in front of more people

Some of this comes from skill:

• learn to write fast
• learn to plan fast
• learn to automate some processes

Some of this comes from courage:

• your first draft is good enough, don't edit, hit publish
• if you learned something its good enough, it will help someone else, hit publish
• if it reminded you of something important, even if it was obvious, its important enough, hit publish

You'll only see benefits when you go live, and you implement.

Danger zone of competitor analysis

The danger of doing competitor analysis is that you could become complacent.

If your website ever becomes 'good' and 'better than' your competitors, you might stop improving.

If your social media strategy ever becomes 'better than' your competitors, then you might stop improving.

To avoid this, also add into your 'competitor' list some big hitters. Identify and add individuals who are so high profile you could never hope to compete. Add companies with an advertising budget that you could never hope to match.

Keep improving, so that you edge towards competing with them.

If you'll never reach their level that is fine, you'll keep improving.

Use Ongoing Competitor Analysis to improve your marketing

One way I improve my marketing and web sites is by analyzing what my competitors do.

And by competitor I mean:

• direct competitors who do exactly the same
• direct competitors who sell similar products as I do
• small consultancy companies who do a similar thing to me
• consultants, who look successful, even if they do different things to me
• small consultancies and agencies who look successful

I prioritize direct competitors and consultancies, but I will analyse the work that anyone does and see what strategies and approaches I see that I'm not using.

After all, we want to be seen as 'bigger than we are' and the easiest way of doing that is by looking to see what people 'bigger than you' actually do.

Lessons learned from marketing with a guest webinar

As part of marketing and self-promotion I took the opportunity to run a webinar. This was part of a series that a tools vendor runs (They hold one or two webinars a month, since they have a bigger mailing list than I do, it was a good opportunity to get my name/face/attitude/brand out there to more people).

I've presented webinars for other companies before, this was the first one that was paid for - the money doesn't cover the time to prep the webinar but it was better than nothing. I've been asked to present 'paid' webinars before but previously the recording has always been behind a pay wall. I figure if it is going behind a pay wall then its going to be my paywall. The recording for this webinar is behind free registration wall - which I'm comfortable with.

I'm becoming more sales and marketing savvy so I negotiated some additional marketing requirements. The contract had to be amended to include these so I assume they don't normally do this.

I made sure that we had in writing, an agreement that:

• I would receive a recording of the webinar and I could use it in my own marketing (they originally wanted sole copyright of the recording)
• I would receive a list of the emails for the people who registered for the webinar
• I was allowed to send an email to everyone who registered, after the webinar with a link to sign up for my own mailing list
• I was allowed to include upsell links to discounted products in the email and during the webinar

The webinar was run through on24, which is a good, but expensive webinar software. To present the webinar we had to use the phone line. I normally use a mic connected to my PC which has great sound quality. I was a little concerned about the audio quality over the phone, but it was their request so I went along with it.

As part of the webinar I made sure that I recorded it locally on my irig mic, and also recorded a webcam session from my laptop. So I could later splice these together and create a 'high quality' replay of the webinar live stream. I created this by editing in Camtasia Studio on Windows.

For my email marketing I use Mailchimp. But Mailchimp doesn't like sending bulk emails to people who haven't double opted in. Neither do I. So I needed to find a bulk mail tool.

I don't trust email applications that would sendout bulk emails with bcc, I've received too many emails from agencies where my email address has bled out to other particpants through the agencies inability to use the email software properly - I didnt' want to take the risk of doing that.

After looking at a whole bunch, I found that Mozilla Thunderbird has a MailMerge plugin. That would allow me to setup the email list as a csv, and iterate over each email address sending an email using the MailMerge.

After a few test runs to my gmail account using 'plus' addressing. I clicked 'send' onthe mail merge that would iterate out over 1000+ emails.

In the MailMerge (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/thunderbird/addon/mail-merge/) I used 'send later' so that I could review the emails before sending and could start and stop the email sending by using the "Send Unsent Messages" feature. 

After sending 600 or so emails, my web host blocked my IP address. I couldn't send emails, nor could I access my web site. I had to phone them to unblock my IP Address. But I still have 600 or so emails to send out.

I started up my trusty VPN and every 100 emails I stopped the mail client, changed VPN to a different IP address, and then re-started the email sending.

I suspect that if I do this again that I will investigate the Amazon bulk email service https://aws.amazon.com/ses

LinkedIn Tip: Images for company posts

In order to improve my marketing on LinkedIn, I conducted a bit of a 'competitor review'.

I looked at the company pages for other consultants and consultancies.

I learned more from the 'bigger' consultancies than the consultants - as you'd hope since they have marketing departments.

One observation I acted on immediately was based on one particular consultancy. For each of their posts they had an image - which is a normal social media strategy 'add an image to each post' (which I don't do here at the moment since this is a 'notes' blog rather than a traffic generation or marketing blog.

And all their images had a common theme: a photo of someone in the org, a logo, a title, etc.

And then I realised, or thought, that those images actually look like powerpoint slides.

So that's what I do now, for each company update. I have a LibreOffice presentation, and I add a new slide - because it is easy to collate multiple images, and add text etc. Plus when I export the slide it is at the correct proportions for LinkedIn thumbnails - perhaps due to their integration with slideshare?

But this makes it easy to create an image for the post, and starts to add a 'corporate' feel to my 'non-corporate' and slightly adhoc approach to marketing.

LinkedIn Tip: How to share updates from your company page and product pages

I've been trying to use my Company Page more on linked in.

I've created the main company page and pages for some of my products.

But I couldn't figure out how to share those updates through my profile.

And the answer is:

• Follow your own company
• Follow your product pages
• Use the "Interests" menu on linkedin
• Look at "Companies"
• then you can 'like' or even better 'share' the posts on your personal feed - after all 'you' probably have more followers than your company, but you do want to have people follow your company as well since that is your business.

Marketing via content and getting it in front of people

One hard part of being a consultant is that 'you are the business' therefore you are your own marketing department.

Given this, I want to get my content in front of as many people as possible.

I could pay for this via advertising, but much of my content is 'value add' i.e. it doesn't sell me, it builds up authority through the authority of the content.

I would rather see it spread 'socially', i.e. people like the content and retweet it or mention it online via social media etc. But that requires that they see the content in the first place.

Therefore I have started looking for aggregation sites to feed my blog content through.

There seem to be two types of aggregation:

- we share anything in the rss feed
- curated where the moderator chooses what to show

I subscribe to many of the 'we share anything' feeds and I do put my content through those. As a reader I occasionally find it useful because I stumble across a blog I haven't read before, but there is usually a lot of low quality noise as well.

I value more the moderated feeds. And I have just submitted my blogs to a moderated feed. With the first of my posts being 'accepted' into their feed.

The statistics for that were surprising. There is a page count on most aggregated feeds. And page counts or view counts are not all created equal, so they can't be trusted, but... the page count difference between the aggregated version any my blog version were large.

At the time of writing:

- post on my site 114 views after 6 days
- aggregated version 1135 views after 2 days

It is too early to know if people are reading the article fully, or if it actually drives more traffic to my other sites, or if it will lead to increased product sales. But, it is early enough for me to look for more moderated syndication sites to feed into.

I'm doing this first before 'guest posts' or 'articles' on other sites simply because this allows me to build on work I'm already doing. I haven't considered 'guest posts' or articles on other sites yet. But clearly that is a future option for me to explore and when I do, I can compare the impact.

Take Action Now:

- Identify blog aggregation sites for your specialism and add your blog feeds to them
- Identify moderated blog aggregation sites for your specialism and if you like the moderated content that they show, then submit your site
- Look at the 'successful' posts on the moderated aggregation sites and analyse why you think they succeeded and 'spice' up your posts with those ingredients.

On hiring people to build your website, or just start with a blog

I attended a training course a couple of days ago. While I took a lot of value from it, I will not recommend it to others.

We received a lot of 'advice' on the course that did not gel with my experience.

One piece of advice was to hire someone to build your website.

While that advice will prove useful long term. It does not help you get started.

When you are starting and building your profile you should try and build content rather than gloss.

And to get started with content you can:

1. buy a domain name
2. sign up to a blogging tool
3. associated the blogging tool with your domain
4. create content

This way you build up your intellectual capital, and your profile, instantly.

You can 'gloss' it up later, if you need/want to.

On this particular course we were introduced to a web company that designs websites for small buisness to help them improve their profile. I had a look through their portfolio and lo and behold, many of the sites were simply Wordpress sites that had a custom theme and design.

Had those businesses been given the above advice, with point two replaced with 'sign up to Wordpress.com' then they could have started building their profile on a default theme. And later, hired a design team to 'skin' the website on a custom host and migrate the content.

I have one site that is entirely custom built, because I can program, and I started that site prior to the existence of blogging tools.

I also have:

1. one site on a custom hosted Wordpress instance, where I have extra 'functionality' on the server in folders under the top level domain. But I could have hosted my main site on Wordpress.com and used subdomains to point to 'other' functionality hosted on other sites
2. two sites with a front page hosted on a custom host, and the main content in blogger under a subdomain. This gives me flexibility to change the front page to whatever I want, but is a tad more hassle than it needs to be.
3. several sites as 'anonymous' blogger sites, without a custom domain, just for building content.

I've seen businesses build their brand, and indeed host their entire websites on blogger.com, and on wordpress.com.

Essentially hosted blogging platforms that allow posts, and pages.

Use these tools to:

• build content
• refine your message
• create your products and packages

Add gloss later. 

Do not start by paying people for gloss, when you have no content to glossify.


Bonus

I had a quick look online for 'how to make a professional site/blog on blogger', and found a bunch of links for templates and information:

• http://designscrazed.org/category/website-templates/blogger/
• http://www.cssauthor.com/blogger/
• http://www.templateism.com/
• http://www.blogcrowds.com/resources/blogger-templates/
• http://www.oddthemes.com/

Keep a firm grip on your business

I read Richardson's "The Power of Advertising" recently. Written in 1910, it still stands up as a valid guide to advertising and marketing.

Pages 30 and 31 particularly stood out for me, since this is a lesson that I've had to deal with several times, but only now think I have a handle on it.

These pages are an appeal to businesses to keep the control of their product in their hands for as much as possible, and only give the retailer the ability to sell on your behalf. They can add additional value through advertising, marketing and service on top, but the core has to come from you, and the core reward has to go to you.

"To achieve this result calls for hard fighting... Weak-kneed methods are not very much good when the retailer has to be dealt with; on the contrary they usually result in making him master of the situation. He demands and gets, his own name on your goods, the trade becomes his trade, the public recognizes him, and then he starts cutting down profits."

"The goods may be yours, but so long as the brand is his, he can get them made up where he likes - he controls the price, the quality, the sales."

"Put your own brand on everything you manufacture and use the modern method of advertising to make the public acquainted with that brand and what it stands for."

"Every time the manufacturer yields to the retailer's demand for private brands he gives birth to a competitor for his own business."

"Keep a firm grip on your business; show confidence in your goods by trade-marking them with your own brands; keep the trade in your own hands in such a way that you will derive the full benefit of the demand you create."

Now, obviously I have to interpret this for the year 2016.

When I sell online courses, I am now:

• Using the platforms as sale platforms only
• I do not attempt to white label the pages:
• that puts my url in the retailer's hands
• that makes me reliant on their html and page layouts
• that means I rely on their landing pages
• I want to use them as final sales page and checkout process 
• I build landing pages on my own sites
• I build FAQ pages on my own sites
• I have multiple retailers - as long as I rely on a single retailer I am at their mercy, I maintain my courses on multiple sites so that I can switch between them if T&Cs change in ways I don't like.
• I have a single 'preferred' retailer that I link to for the check out process, and that is behind a short url that I can edit quickly to switch between vendors

I'm breaking my rules slightly by blogging on blogger. This is clearly not my own platform, and I am to some extent at Google's mercy.

I have my books on multiple sites and link to them as necessary.

I opt out of 'platforms' sales and special offers, e.g. Udemy discount every course down to $9 every week as a 'quick act now sale', I do not take part in those sales, and I use them only as an 'organic' sales source rather than my main retail channel.

I've spent the last few days, pulling more content and landing pages on to my sites and moving away from vendor sites as much as possible to give me more control over the messaging and allow me to switch between retailers more easily.

There were many other lessons in this advertising book from 1910. I recommend it.

• A. Richardson's "The Power of Advertising" on Archive.org