Drew McLellan, Author at McLellan Marketing Group

Be the $10,000 buyer!

September 9, 2007

Less than 2 months ago, 103 hopeful authors and two neophyte publishers (yours truly and the always brilliant Gavin Heaton) launched Age of Conversation.

Our goals were pretty simple:

Get exposure for all the authors
Provide quality content
Explore what the "age of conversation" meant
Do something together that would eclipse what any of us would do alone

and the biggie — raise money for Variety, the Children's Charity. We set $10,000 as our first target for funds raised.

<60 days later….we have sold 1,274 books and raised $9,997.60. WHO will put us over the top? Can we get to our $10,000 goal before September 16th, the 2 month anniversary of the launch?

Whoever buys a book (e-mail me the receipt) between now and September 16th will be profiled on the Age of Conversation blog and no doubt, will get plenty of link love from the authors.

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A quick trip around the blogosphere (9/9/07)

September 9, 2007

Mike Sansone of Converstations introduces us to what he calls our blog’s baseball card, a new tool called Xinu that lets you check all your web stats at a glance.

Josh Spaulding put together an extensive list of on-line tools and resources. My favorite — GahooYoogle.com which allows you to search both google and yahoo at the same time and see the results in a split screen.

WebLiberation Army is holding a contest. You could win a free video to promote your business on the web. Hat tip to Freaking Marketing, where I first read about the contest.

Arun Rajagopal conducted a 10-hour social media tour. Wonder what social media actually means and what it might mean to your life or business? Let Arun take you on a guided tour.

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Do blogs make e-newsletters obsolete?

September 7, 2007

Here's the question. Now that we have blogs, should we still have e-newsletters?

My friend Dawud Miracle raised the question and paints a picture that suggests that e-newsletters are really thinly veiled tricks to capture e-mail addresses and sell products. Blogs on the other hand, according to his initial post, are less intrusive and give the reader more control. He's generated quite an interesting collection of responses.

Here's mine.

With all due respect, who died and made us King? That is so 1980’s. We are not in charge anymore. The consumer is.

My agency has had a e-newsletter since 1999 and we have thousands of subscribers. They seem to like it.

I have had a blog for less than a year. Have a good number of subscribers but certainly not the thousands that the e-newsletter has. The blog subscribers seem to like it.

Some of the e-newsletter subscribers have opted to also sign up for the blog and visa versa. (I try not to use the same content).

If we have learned anything in this era of citizen marketing — we don’t get to decide. We offer up value in a variety of media and let the consumer choose which option works for them.

And if we think that e-newsletters are more sales driven — we are crazy. I have seen blatant blog posts that practically begged for work. I’m not saying that is bad…but I saying we are deluding ourselves to think of one as a sales tool and the other as an educational vehicle. Both…can be both.

As long as we have subscribers to either vehicle, I will keep writing them.

So what do you think? Are they mutually exclusive tools? Does one replace the other? Is one medium more geared towards a sales pitch?

Do we or should we choose for our readers/prospects/customers?

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Don’t leave THIS out of your media releases!

September 7, 2007

In today's age of the digital media release, I find this statistic from BusinessWire amazing.

Less than 1% of press releases submitted contain hyperlinks.

Adding a hyperlink does several things for you:

It adds valuable links back to your website or blog
The links are SEO juice
You shift your media release to a useful, connective tool for consumers
It allows you to enhance the story with background or related information
It opens the opportunity to communicate with your audience

Make a rule for yourself right now. You will not send out a media release without at least 2 outbound links. But don't overdue. Anything more than 1 link per 100 words runs the risk of being labeled as link spam.

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Is this the future of everyone’s personal brand?

September 6, 2007

Dan Schawbel is 23. He has a full-time job. A blog. And a personal brand (Rob Cuesta's take).

(In comparison, when I was 23, I had a dog.)

Dan has embraced personal branding an d has expended a significant amount of energy to mastering it. His blog is all about it. He's created a magazine focused on it. By the way, Donald Trump graces the cover of the first issue and thinker/doer Guy Kawasaki penned an article.

Oh yeah…and he's built his digital personal brand site. A site dedicated to 360 degrees of Dan. His professional life, personal life, ambitions and creations. All in one spot.

What do you think? Will everyone have one of these? What would you put on your personal branding site? Where would you draw the line? Or isn't there one any more?

P.S. If you didn't think owning yourname.com was important — ask Dan what he thinks about it.

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Need a little marketing BS?

September 5, 2007

Next time you are looking for that million dollar phrase to really impress the pants off someone, turn to the handy-dandy Marketing Bull%$#* Generator.

Here are some of my favorites from the site:

aggregate interactive users

incentivize world-class niches

benchmark turn-key convergence

benchmark plug-and-play paradigms

The really scary part of this fun little toy is that we all know someone who actually talks this way!

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Write for real people

September 5, 2007

Whether you are writing a brochure, a radio spot or a blog post – you are writing to a specific audience. And in reality, in most cases, multiple audiences. The more clear you can be on who you're talking to, the more clear you can be in your language, examples and tone.

Here's one of my favorite "tricks of the trade" when it comes to writing. I create my audience from a composite from bits and pieces of the real people who engage with the product or service. From those seemingly random facts, I concoct a 3-D, multi-faceted person.

I literally can picture them in my head. I know enough about their job and their lives to be able to relate to them.

Think of this as the poor man's persona.

Here's how you do it. Let's take this blog as the example. When I sit down to write every day, who am I writing for?

I know that I have several sub audiences here and have detailed personas (too long for this post) for each. But, let me introduce you to them.

CMO/Director of Marketing at a medium sized company: Ian is either on his own or has a small staff. He's inside a B-to-B company and is pretty savvy in terms of basic marketing. But he needs help creating solid strategy, staying on course and executing the marketing plan.

Odds are, branding is less familiar territory for him. He gets it but has no idea how to create it in a meaningful way that has depth, meaning and sticking power with his internal and external audiences. He needs a partner here who can walk them through the process and execution.

He also needs to be inspired some days. He has to champion everything inside his company and sometimes the CFO can be a real prig. Because Ian is so immersed in the day-to-day world of his job, he also looks to me to keep him current on trends and fresh creative.

Blogging is a some day for Ian. He knows he needs to get his company there but he doesn't feel as though he can sell it yet. It's too fringe still. He checks out my feed a couple times a week and then reads what's of interest to him. His typical comment is a question or clarification, which I love.

Small Business Owner: Poor Erin has to do it all. Her business is successful but she views marketing and advertising as a necessary evil. She's pretty savvy but still gets "sold" by a slick media sales person now and then. Everything sounds like a good idea, so how does she choose the best ones? It's not that she resents investing the time or money, but she wants to do it wisely.

She's the one that branding could actually make the most difference to, if she got it. With her limited budget and knowledge, differentiating herself from her competitors in a real, user (both internal and external) experience sort of way would generate incredible word of mouth, which will not only stretch her budget but also deepen the love Erin's customers have for her entity.

She is stretched so thin she could scream. She doesn't have time to read all the magazines, business books and keep up on the trends. So she's looking for quick reads that will teach her all the nuances she doesn't know and remind her of the ones she does.

She also needs to be reminded now and then that despite the long hours and frustrations, she worked hard to be able to have this life and there's a lot right with it.

She isn't quite brave enough to comment yet. But she shows up almost every day.

Branding/marketing Pros: Blogging or not, Patrick either works in an agency, consultancy, or at a high-level client side job. He loves marketing and branding. Loves to talk about it, loves to create it, loves to read about it and loves to surround himself with other people who share his passion.

He comes to my blog not so much to learn something new but instead, to share common experiences, poke and pull on fresh ideas and to tell war stories. He views us as kindred spirits and nods his head a fair amount as he reads what I've written. He's a frequent commenter and always adds value to the conversation.

What he hopes to find when he shows up at the blog is a topic to discuss or share ideas around. Patrick likes to talk about the industry and where it's going. He finds the blogosphere a way he can keep very current, so he can guide his clients better.

So now that I know who I am writing for – how does that influence my prose?

Whenever I have an idea for a post, I think about Ian, Erin and Patrick. I wonder if it will interest them. And I keep a mental tally. If I've written a couple pieces that week that I know are more up Patrick's alley, then I go out of my way to make sure I offer up something that Ian and Erin will particularly value.

I try to position my questions to entice them all to comment, even though I know Erin's a long shot. I figure even if she doesn't answer me on the blog, hopefully she's answering the question in her own head and that's helping her clarify her thoughts around the topic. I use my experiences with MMG clients to explore what might really be a hot button for Ian.

When I want to write something but it doesn't seem to really be something any of them would care that much about, I re-think writing it.

Understanding my audience helps me keep this blog (or a brochure, website, ad etc.) on the straight and narrow. It forces me to justify any detour that I'm thinking about taking. And, I think in the end it means I deliver my message in a way that keeps Ian, Erin and Patrick coming back for more.

Which is sort of the point.

Related posts:

Ease into the conversation – be a drip

No one is a demographic

Effective or stupid?

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The next generation of social media specialists

September 3, 2007

…are already in training. Sure, there’s MySpace and Facebook, but look out because here comes SugarLoot.com.

This teen-driven site hosts contests that encourage the kids to:

Upload videos
Upload photos
Participate on their blog
Create relationships that support mutual votes and “fan” rankings

The traffic numbers are staggering. Not only is this site attracting kids by the boatload, but it is also attracting advertisers. Prizes for the contests come from companies like Petco (cutest pets), Apple, Westin, M&Ms, American Express, JVC, Dell and others.

It’s also being used to hype upcoming movies. The Clique is a book series aimed at teen-aged girls. Through SugarLoot, they are running a contest where the grand prize winners will get to audition for a role in the movie adaptation of the books.

One of the contestants has over 18,000 views of her audition.

We McLellans were late to the party, but in just a couple days, my daughter’s audition has over 100 views. And we hadn’t even e-mailed the grandparents yet!

My point? If you think your business doesn’t need to pay attention to social media – think again. Tomorrow’s customers are learning it today. You’d better do the same.

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What goes around…

September 3, 2007

I've always believed that if you give first, without worrying about what you will receive — you always get more than you expected.

I explore this notion in a guest post over at Emerging Customer. The two authors of that blog, Michelle Lamar and Christine Wright have given me the perfect example of this theory.

They heard about Age of Conversation and our goal to raise money for Variety, The Children's Charity as well as creating exposure to the ideas of 103 authors. They came up with an amazingly generous offer. Any (or all) 103 Age of Conversation authors have been invited to be a guest author on their blog.

Michelle and Christine made the offer, asking for nothing in return. But according to my theory…very good things will happen to them. The first being that the readers of this blog will check out Emerging Customer and enjoy its content enough to subscribe.

Thanks again to Michelle and Christine for helping tell the world about Age of Conversation and giving all 103 authors an opportunity to introduce themselves to EC's readers!

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Blogtipping — September 2007

September 2, 2007

I am joining with my fellow bloggers in celebrating some new blogs that I enjoyed this past month.

As is the blogtipping tradition, (created by Easton Ellsworth) I'll offer a few reasons why I like the blog and one suggestion for improvement.

This month's nods go to….

Loyalty Marketing Blog is Jonathan Treiber's "industry watch" on loyalty marketing.

Things I love:

The depth of information.

That you don't stop at just giving us the facts, you also give us your insight.

Lots of great current case studies in the posts.

Suggestion:

You don't seem to link out to other bloggers within your posts. I think that would make you much more findable and add even more depth to your analysis.

SpinningSilk Multi Media is a tightly woven blend of tips, stories and recommendations. Patrick and Heather Greer have grown their business from a moonlighting gig to a full-time thriving business.

Things I love:

The diversity of your posts.

How you share your own experiences and hard learned lessons.

Your natural, engaging style of writing.

Suggestion:

How about some visuals to illustrate more of your posts?

A relatively new blog on the scene, IowaBiz.com is a small business owner's dream come true. 12 experts, each with expertise in a different arena, offering their best counsel for building and growing a successful business.

There are some bloggers you'll recognize and some you should get to know. Every day, a new business insight in a different area. Chock full of smarts.

Things I love:

Clean, simple design. Easy to navigate and explore.

Love all the different blog authors and their varying styles.

Every day, a practical tip or insight. What's not to love?

Suggestion:

Get rid of that McLellan guy!

There you have it discerning readers…until next month's blogtipping adventure!

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