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volution Business, Tech and More
#WorldClassEntrepreneur
John O’Keefe CEO of ITelagen
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volution Business, Tech and More
Published By Evolve Media Group Inc. Evolve MEdia Group Inc. DARNELL G DAVIS - CEO Editor In Chief DONNIE BRYANT Photography EVOLUTION MAGAZINE Staff Editors DONNIE BRYANT Graphic Designer EVOLVE MEDIA TEAM Evolution Contributors DONNIE BRYANT KATRINA STARZHYNSKAYA KEVIN WILSON SLYVIA BROWDER KAREN JETT CESAR RAMERO
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featured articles
08 18 32 36 John O’keefe a #WorldClass Entrepreneur
27 social media experts share their #1 facebook page management tip
No Small victories a #Worldclass interview with
lead yourself with karen jett
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from the publisher
So it is the end of another networking event and you begin to take an accounting of your evening. New Bowtie - $45.00 Entry fee $15.00 Realizing that what promised to provide leads for new business was a time-wasting event that resulted in little more than a pocketful of business cards you don't want: Priceless! Let’s be honest here, you have been bombarded with networking meetings that meet weekly, and some that meet monthly, and it is getting old. You stop work to attend and find yourself in a room with either the sad pitch man or woman, the angry guest that was dragged along with the crowd. Speaking at the top of the hour is the organizer that seem to be cheerleaders for their brand and enforce rules that keep the group's momentum going but they are often so stringent the business owner must attend or have the threat of being canceled. It just gets OLD! However, every now and again you run into a group that has massive energy and momentum that you are seeking. It is seems as if these groups bring out the best in everyone that attends and everyone is truly interested in assisting everyone in reaching their success goals. They are more than willing to share value and not just push to receive it.
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Wasting Time With Networking? In this world of social media, referrals and review, everyone could benefit from a little networking. The problem is that most never truly understand how to make the most of EVERY event they attend and allow their network create value and maintain it. To be honest networking is not just about getting to the event and talking with a few people in hopes of closing your next deal, rather, it should be a little bit more strategic and purposeful. Networking will never be a waste of time AGAIN if you follow the following keys to unlocking your networking success. 4 Keys for Successful Value Based Networking Determine your goals: What do you want to get out of networking? New business, new connections, new directions? Be quantitative as well as qualitative. Are you looking for a mentor? Sales leads? Or becoming known for being an expert in your field? Time commitment: How much time do you have or are realistically willing to commit? Daily, weekly, monthly? If you have a lot of time, you might be interested in the in-person, weekly meetings that are held by organizations such as BNI or CEO Space. I am a firm believer in you can build mutually benifitial value driven relationships by joining online networking groups on LinkedIN or Google+. So if your time is tight and it's difficult to commit scheduled time, consider joining networking groups on one of the many social sites. Many of the Linked In groups are national. The networking is done through conversation threads and introductions.
Deliver value FIRST:The reality is that most participants' motives are to 'get something' through networking. Makes sense, right? You might be job seeking, looking to increase your sales pipeline, there are more people out there who are looking to 'get' more than 'give'. A value based networker is armed to do both. Before you get involved, think about what kind of value you can bring to the group. What does your company or expertise bring to the party? Effort equals results:No quick fix here. Effective value based networking will take effort. As with anything in life, the level of effort you put in generally equals the outcome. This doesn't mean that a huge time commitment equals success. It does suggest that for every hour of time used in this way, make it concentrated and powerful. Maximize your time spent and make sure you are doing more than gathering business cards and staying on the surface level of the tool.
Get in there and make it work!
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editorial
Do People Enjoy “Being Sold?”
Somebody Sell Me Something, Please!
Donnie Bryant Editor-In- Chief
“People hate to be sold.”
You've probably heard that statement more times than you can count. And it seems to make sense. The quote may be helpful, but it isn't entirely accurate. It's really just an oversimplification used to illustrate a point. Think about it: do shoe aficionados hate hearing about the new Air Jordans? Crowds gather outside Foot Locker's door hours before store opening, each person hoping to be one of the first to buy a pair. It's true that people generally dislike being pressured to do anything. When we don't know what we want, we don't like to be sold. When we don't trust the salesperson's intentions, we don't like to be sold. But when we do know what we want (and we can afford to get it), we end up practically begging someone to help us relieve the tension of pent-up desire.
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Video game fans can't wait until the next PlayStation console is announced, right? You may be thinking to yourself, Nike and Sony aren't "selling." I disagree. Selling is, as I see it, any effort to get someone to take a defined course of action. Nike isn't making commercials just for the fun of burning through millions of dollars. They want customers to buy stuff. And their customers WANT to buy stuff, too.
What Does This Mean For You?
How can you practically utilize this information as you attempt to connect with your customers and should-be customers? Focus on Customer Identity Runners, musicians, gamers, weight lifters, mothers of newborns, et. al, LOVE to buy stuff to enhance their lifestyles and display who they are to others. They love to pursue their passion and embark on the newest adventures (often through products and programs they can purchase). They're practically obsessed. They LIKE being sold stuff that augments their personality, like the athletes in the video linked to above. You may have heard me tell the story about a manager I had years ago who kindly informed me that "every man should have a Rolex." In his mind, a fancy timepiece is part of what defined masculinity. • You have to know your audience. Perhaps that means going after customers in an audience that's already been defined, like Rush Limbaugh listeners or subscribers to wine magazines. Tailor your offerings and messaging to appeal to their perceptions of themselves and the things they've indicated they like to do and buy.
• Gather your own "tribe." Be vocal and courageous about what you stand for and/or against to rally other like-minded people. Make ambiguous concepts concrete. Make technical concepts easy to grasp. Give them unique names to develop a common language. (One of my favorite examples of this is Dan Sullivan's "ceiling of complexity." Look it up.)
promises and puts buyers in a better place to buy from you again in the future.
Foster Loyalty People are going to be loyal to the companies who continually help them get what they want. Businesses that come across as self-serving make selling harder than it already is. Demonstrate your desire to add value to Make the Benefits Impressive your customer's life. Your marketing and sales messages Blow your customers' minds with the value you deliver, should always address "what's in it for me?" from the the wonderful way you treat them and the risk you perspective of the potential buyer. absorb on their behalf. Never settle for giving the bare minimum. Don't try to be "competitive." Do what no If you have a loyalty program, please do better than all one else in your industry is willing or able to do for your the companies whose loyalty cards are stashed in your customers. wallet. They are more concerned with collecting data than winning hearts. A loyalty program can, and should, Referring again to Road Runner Sports, imagine giving do both. customers a 90-day guarantee on athletic shoes (which is one of the benefits of their VIP Family Membership What kind of special treatment can you offer your best program), then sending reminder emails to your clients? Consider how much their loyalty and referrals customers to get out and run! will mean to you and decide accordingly. This is a fantastic example of making it easy to buy from you and building trust in the process.Also consider offering a done-for-you service if appropriate. That eliminates risk, proves that you can back up your www.EvoMag.co
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John O’Keefe John O’Keefe is the CEO of ITelagen, which he founded in 2005. His primary roles in the company center on sales and strategy. He has a degree in Civil and Structural Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. After graduation, John worked as an engineer for about 10 months before working has a technical analyst, writing reviews for software and platforms. Soon afterward, he started his first business. His early years were spent in the heyday of the dot. com industry. His focus was on support automation, which used specific software licensed to ISPs to reduce the number of support calls and increased efficiency in providing support. At its heart, ITelagen is still an IT company that leverages value in its service to make providing support better, faster, and cheaper. It brings enterprise-level support to medical practices. 8 Evolution Magazine | #WorldClass Special Edition
Today, ITelagen focuses on healthcare, electronic medical records (EMR), and data center facilities, essentially becoming the IT department for medical practices. Unlike other sectors that enjoyed a gradual transition into technology, recent government drivers for EMR have slammed the healthcare industry into the 21st Century. This suddenly created a huge market demand for sophistication from an IT perspective to manage infrastructure and EMR. Approximately 15% of ITelagen’s clientele consists of small to medium-sized traditional businesses. However, the lion’s share of work and new contracts is dedicated to healthcare. When asked what makes the support team at ITelagen so successful, Mr. O’Keefe believes it is due to a couple of things: support automation and the employees. Clients often say, “The infrastructure available is what makes us
successful.” Mr. O’Keefe firmly believes the key to the company’s service is the employees. He emphasized that quality is vital and the company tries to create an enjoyable and happy environment for the staff, stating, “We pride ourselves on very low employee attrition and turnover.” O’Keefe’s vision for the future of ITelagen is promising due to the focus on organic growth and acquisitions. ITelagen had its first round of acquisitions in 2012, with another set for 2015. Specifically, O’Keefe’s team will look at the verticals in the EMR base and diversifying those platforms. The future of the medicine hinges on adaptation to implementing technology while letting go of the decades-old administrative practices. In terms of what can change in the next 10 to 15 years, Mr. O’Keefe
explains that part of the challenge is generational. The majority of physicians practicing today didn’t start off with computers. In fact, healthcare is often the last industry to adopt technology. Seasoned physicians still prefer the tools like Dragon dictation software because it harkens to the past practices of relying on administrative assistants. It is now common in the legal and financial sectors for professionals to type their own letters, bypassing the need for administrative support. However, today’s medical school graduates embrace the current technology and have little trouble with adaptation to current regulatory standards. In turn, this acceptance of technology trends will make it easier to foster future innovation.
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Author
M.J
Domet The Pursuit Of Happiness And The Life Of An Entrepreneur. It Is Not All Black And White...
Living An Empowered Life www.EvoMag.co
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Many of us have had situations in life that have caused us to develop a victom mentality. Often times this comes as a result things happening in our lives that push us off the mark and we find ourselves feeling hopeless and powerless. Our guest M.J Domet has dedicated her life to sharing her gift with the world and educating people on how to release the victim mentality and walk through this life EMPOWERED.
Evolution: How do you help people get from a victimized mentality to taking charge of their lives? M J: Reiki is one and that’s pretty familiar to most people, and that’s more or less where I started. I teach three different modalities of Reiki, so the Usui Reiki which is the most popular form of Reiki and then two advanced, the Comeo and the Karuna Reiki as well. That is removing energy blocks from the body, so if there is anything stuck in the energy – and it can be at a
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physical, an emotional, a spiritual or even a mental level – practitioners use their hands and move the blocks, so the energy is more free-flowing. With that, the emotional, spiritual, mental and physical issues are resolved. I do another one called deep cellular healing. That one is a little bit more pinpointed. With Reiki, the energy goes where it needs to go, you don’t really have to put your mind on anything as to where it should go, it just free-flows.
The Deep Cellular Healing is more direct and it is done by using what I call ‘muscle response.’ People call it muscle testing but to me it’s not testing the muscles, it’s your body’s muscles responding to the questions and to the environment. With that, the client goes into a deep level of healing and it actually pin-points the exact cause… it could be abandonment as a child which comes up, or perception of abandonment. That comes up quite often. I am helping people understand that just
because they felt abandoned as a child, that didn’t necessarily mean that it had anything to do with them. I help them move from that feeling of victimization into a strength that comes with the idea that they are able to work through that experience, and to see it in a new perspective. Evolution: Some of us have low selfworth and low self-esteem. How do we change that? M J: First of all, I would get a muscle response as to where that occurred.
What age did that occur at? What was the situation? Who was involved in this situation? Most of the time, people know where it started, but for some reason they don’t want to bring it into their conscious mind. Once they bring it into their consciousness and see it differently, then the whole experience changes and it’s like, ‘It really didn’t have anything to do with me. It was just my perception that I was abandoned, or it was my perception that it had anything to do with me when my mother had to go to the hospital. Even though, as an adult, we look at www.EvoMag.co
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that and say, ‘Why would that bother me? I know that things happen in life and it doesn’t necessarily create those feelings of abandonment.’ But as a small child, if we internalize it as abandonment, then that is what our subconscious sees it as. Evolution: How a person can find her purpose? M J: Your passion is what you could do all day long and not tire of it. What can I do that brings me joy? It doesn’t matter what it is; like sometimes people think your passion has to be some big, amazing thing to everyone, but it only has to be amazing to you. I believe that you can have more than one passion, as well. I think my passion has always been teaching which is why I am still teaching. Then I did find out that my passion was also writing. I had started writing when I was younger but
I set that aside while raising my family. I think we do that especially as women. We tend to set our passions aside for our family, and there is really nothing wrong with that. But if we can keep a little bit of that passion in our lives no matter what we are doing, then we will feel all the better for it; we will have more joy in our lives and a feeling of purpose. Evolution: What is the name of your book? What is it about? M J: The book is called Waves of Blue Light Heal the Heart and Free the Soul and it is about healing. Everything that I have spoken about here is in the book. It’s helping people to look at their experiences from a different perspective and define their experiences and find out maybe why they had those experiences but that’s not really that important.
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Many people to begin with want to know ‘Why?’ Why did I have that experience? That’s not always something that you need to know. All you need to know is that you have that experience and how do you come out stronger from that experience?
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Leveraging amazing you Your biggest strength often lies within yourself
Vanessa Codorniu This question keeps popping up, so I just had to write about it! Danielle LaPorte’s “Spark Kit” asks: “What do you think your form of genius is?” “What are you amazing at?” Many respond: “my courage, my kindness, my caring, my personality, my sense of hu- mor” and then scratch their head… “but how do I leverage these qualities in my business?”
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More often than not, our best strengths are not necessarily skills or special talents but just our PRESENCE. When people feel comfortable around you, expressing affinity towards you... we tend to overlook that great strength. Sometimes we take our natural gifts for granted or do not view them as strengths and forget them when in pursuit of our worldly career expression/expansion. The question becomes, “How do I use ME in my business?” First, let’s take a step back and recog- nize…PASSION. Yes, those people with the gleam in their eye and I’m not talking the greedy gleam of $$$$. I’m talking about those
people who are SO passionate about what they do that you can barely keep your eyes off them. Whether they are public relations profes- sionals, performers, light workers, teachers, artists, healers, leaders...It doesn’t matter WHAT they do, it’s HOW they do it that makes them magnetic. Have you ever noticed that by just being in their “presence” can affect you positively? Or consider the flip side, people with tons of negativity. The negativity can translate into increased anxiety and fatigue when you are around them. People vibrating a certain tone, energy or quality just seem to “uplift, energize, galva- nize, heal, soothe” you or others. That’s why walking your talk and living your truth is so important. When you are living what is in your heart, you are unstoppable. You are plugged into the Source, the purest emanation and others will seek you out. By loving yourself with all you’ve got, with all your mind/body/spirit, you will be the lighthouse that brings those ships (clients) home to themselves, to their love, their light. I know that my presence heals, soothes, and inspires without saying a word. People have told me. I feel it. It’s because of the energy I am bringing to the table. Like at- tracts Like. Frankly, that’s why I am involved in certain activities and groups. I want to be surrounded by people on their purpose and in their passion emanating what I am cultivating in my own life and what I am evolving my life to be.
Every time I read a post from my support- ing communities, it makes my heart sing & my soul expand...I am at the right place, with all the right people, gathering power for each person to shine forth their passionate purpose in their own lives and for the world. Cultivate your own love, your own self- care, live your truth, fall off the wagon & get back on...this will draw those that are meant to work with you. Don’t feel you have to be perfect to be a teacher, coach, salesman, police officer... NO SUCH THING. We are perfectly imperfect. Those things we often think are imperfections hold the nuggets of soul lessons & wisdom we need to learn and dare I say...teach? They say that we teach what we need to learn, and I believe it. It took several years for me to become an expert, plus some more to stand up without fear and say that I am one! It is my deep conviction that we are born with everything we need for what we are meant to do. That means that we have the right vehicle (body) the right amount of hu- mor and capacity for growth. Now, what we do with what we are given is up to us. Everything you need is WITHIN you already. Life draws people, circumstances, and situations that allow for the growth of our organic soul seeds, for the development of our truest nature. l
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Success is in all
women
Sometimes, the alternate route is the smoothest Vanessa Codorniu
Your biggest strength often lies within yourself. I know that my presence heals, soothes and inspires without saying a word. Jeanmarie Bills and Elena J Forbes life throws a curve ball to all of us at one time or another. We get excited about something in our life, make big plans asto how we are going to achieve it or what our life will be like when we find success and then comes the curve ball, the unplanned, the unexpected. True entrepreneurial success is in all women; it’s in finding an alternate route or plan. There is always an alternate route it just may not be so obvious. Life has lessons for us all, and the alternate route may in the end be the perfect route for you. It just may be a bumpier ride. My niece is a perfect example of this. After graduating from college she was
full of excitement. Life was going just as she planned. She was starting to work as a schoolteacher, had gotten married to her high school sweet heart, and was pregnant. Life was perfect. Then came the curve ball. She was on a field trip with her class when she developed a terrible headache and collapsed. She was rushed to the nearest emergency room and then helicoptered two hours away to the University Hospital in San Francisco. She had a blood vessel in her brain that had ruptured and was taken into emergency surgery to repair it. We were very fortunate that surgery had gone well. That was two years ago and tomorrow morning I will be driving to San Francisco to be with her during surgery. Surgery number 10 on her
brain. Something I can do because I am an entre- preneur, but that’s a different story. I share her story because my niece had no idea when she graduated from college how very different her life was about to be. But she has stayed true to her goals and dreams and is finding her “alternate route.” She plans on the day that she can return to being a schoolteacher. She feels it is her true calling and that this past two years that she has been ill has been a life lesson that she is still learning from. She knows that her purpose in life is ex- panding and that this is her story that she will someday be able to share so that other people will benefit. The entire lesson is not clear yet but we know in time it will be.
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Social Media
Experts Give You Their #1 Practical
Tip
For Managing a
Page
Is your business struggling to see results on Facebook? Does it feel like not enough people are seeing the content or engaging with your Facebook page? With so much information out there it can often be tough to decide what to follow or who to listen to. That is why I believe one of the best ways to learn and grow your business is to listen to those who have already achieved success using Facebook marketing. So to help you out I have gathered a great list of social media experts who have all experienced success with their Facebook pages to reveal their #1 practical tip for managing a Facebook page. So get your pen and paper ready or open up that blank word document and get ready to be inspired! www.EvoMag.co
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1. Vanessa Lewis, Social Catapult Get into the minds, and hearts, of your target audience. Put yourself in their shoes… what do they want and need in terms of relevant information, ideas, inspiration and entertainment? Notice what they respond to and tailor your content accordingly. Be social and make relationships! It’s only by doing all of these things that you establish trust, and in turn yours will be the first business they turn to when they have a need you can fulfill.
2. Andrea Vahl, Andreavahl.com Managing a Facebook page happens best when you participate both on your Page and on the Pages of others. Make sure you are replying to comments or at least acknowledging comments with a Like. Then also watching the Pages of your community members. Tag them in a post, post a comment on their posts, or participate on Pages where they are participating. Widening your community space to include other Pages will help your visibility as well. You can use tools like AgoraPulse to show you your Top Users to help you keep track of.
3. Mark Schaefer, Businessesgrow.com Consider “engagement” strategically. It is not a goal in and of itself but a tactic that leads to awareness, connection and eventually loyalty. Engagement comes at a cost, both in terms of time, attention and content creation resources so consider that engagement needs to support a metric for the business. Engagement is not necessarily the metric that matters.
4. Emeric Ernoult, Agora Pulse My number 1 tip for managing a Facebook page is to understand that this will require the same amount of time and efforts as it takes to build and nurture a “real life” network: – it will not be great overnight – you’ll have to give a lot first before you can expect to receive – you have to invest in maintaining the relationship alive. People forget you quickly when they don’t hear about you for a while – some people will give back after 2 weeks, some after 2 years. But you’ll have to treat them all the same (i.e., very well!) – people will come and go, don’t get mad, that’s normal. – when you care about your people, have their problems at heart and think about them before you think about yourself, it always pays off, always! 5. Scott Ayres, Postplanner My #1 tip for managing a Facebook page is to be human.No one likes to follow a page that never responds or responds with a regurgitated answer over and over.Call people by their first name and give them the respect they deserve. Make sure you tag every comment with your name so people know who they are talking to and they are reminded there is a human behind the brand.Part of being human also means to not delete negative comments or posts just because it makes you look bad. Own up to it and respond. You’ll get more traction and respect from doing that than simply deleting/ hiding the comment.
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6. Robert Caruso, Bundle Post If you’re not paying to play there’s little to manage.
7. Aaron Lee, PostPlanner Sometimes it’s easy to forget to post daily. The way we do it for our Facebook page is we plan and schedule our content calendar with a variety of content 2-3 weeks in advance. By doing so it helps us to save time, focus on building quality content and most importantly focus on getting social and building an authentic relationship with our fans.
8. Joshua Parkinson, PostPlanner The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said “No man steps in the same river twice” — referring to the fact that every time you dip your foot in a river, the river has changed. So it is with your Facebook community. You never really post in the same community twice — because (1) The community is constantly evolving (fans are coming and going) and (2) A different subset of that evolving community sees each post. This is why you MUST continue re-posting your evergreen blog content on your Facebook page. Each time you re-post an evergreen article, it’s reaching fans who’ve never seen it before — and thus sending new traffic to your website. So that’s my #1 tip for managing a Facebook community — to not be afraid of posting the same content multiple times on your page.
9. Christian Karasiewicz, Christiankonline.com When building a community on Facebook, one of the best ways to do this is to engage with your audience. You can do this a number of ways: Respond to posts and messages from fans Respond to comments Tag fans in posts, photos, and videos Share quality content Ask your fans what they want to see Building a community on Facebook isn’t a one-way street. By taking the time to connect with your audience through discussions on posts or engaging with them to find out why they came to your page and how you can help them. You can start to build a loyal following and strong community presence on Facebook.
10.Francisco Roles, SocialMouths Use Audience Insights to learn more about your own community I think the best way to manage a Facebook page is to start by learning more about who its members are. I mean, beyond the demographic data. This might sound a little “basic” but you’d be surprised to see how many community managers fail to take the necessary time to understand who they’re talking to. Page Insights and Graph Search can help you get started, but the new Audience Insights will take you even deeper to learn things like other interests, occupations, purchasing behaviours, and Facebook activities among other things that were not available before. Once you have a good understanding of who’s behind your community, you’ll be able to create a better strategy to SERVE them.
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11. Mike Gingerich, Tabsite
Jay Baer says that people use the Internet for 2 reasons… To solve a problem, or To be entertained I think he’s pretty much right on! So if you want to do well on Facebook you need to understand that most people are not there to solve a problem. They want to be entertained. Your Facebook page content needs to connect with them. It is a social network! To do this your posts must create an emotional connection and that connection will then be associated with your brand. Posts that prompt a laugh or a even tear can do this. And what communicates that way? Stories. How can your posts tell a story? Imagery. That’s why images continue to win and that’s why Pinterest and Instagram (and tools like Canva) are on the rise! Let’s put it another way. Author John Maxwell notes that, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” It’s about the connection! Companies on Facebook need to keep this in mind. It’s critical and underlines the importance of connecting emotionally with your community. You can’t be all “selly sell” (Chris Brogan speak) on Facebook. Users are on Facebook mostly to be entertained. So to connect with them you must entertain. The more you connect, the more they engage, the more they will see your other posts that click through to your website and apps, and the more likely they will be to click through and go! Do NOT overlook the need to connect and entertain on Facebook. It’s the gateway!
12. Ian Cleary, Razor Social Pay for advertising on Facebook. We pay our email marketing tool provider to email our email subscribers; we pay Google if we don’t rank organically for content so we should pay Facebook for increased reach of our posts. Provide content that is only relevant to your target audience and promote the most relevant content through paid advertising. If you deliver great content relevant to your brand you will increase trust of your audience but if they don’t see your content you won’t build that trust.
13. Michael Todd, xeeme.com/michaelqtodd Talk regularly on the pages of other businesses in your niche and/or locality. This will put your brand in front of the people you want to connect with and be seen by and you will only be a click away from getting new business. Be fun, friendly and educational and you will have great success with this strategy.
14. Hugh Briss, Social Identities The power of social media is not in selling directly but in inspiring and motivating others to do it for you. That doesn’t mean you only need to post content your fans and followers will share but first and foremost, you need a quality product they can believe in and a solid brand behind it. When you have that, your followers will create their own content There’s only so much any of us can do with a few social pages but once you have hundreds or even thousands of brand advocates, that’s when you’ll see the true power of social media.
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15. Jenny Brennan, Virtual office Worx Running a Facebook page is a full time job. Like any other community you need a strong leader who understands the needs of the fans. Define a vision for your community and you will find it easier to create and curate amazing content that people will want to engage with and find value in! Having committed fans is the key to your success but you don’t need hundreds of thousands to be successful. Attracting the right fan that believes in and can be part of your vision is your ultimate goal!
16. Pam Moore, Marketing Nutz Always focus on the needs of your community. It is what happens “after the like” that matters most. Inspire them to connect with you with a goal of helping them achieve their goals. When you help your fans achieve their goals, you achieve yours by default. Inspire, connect, achieve. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.
17. Kim Garst, Boom Social The #1 tip for managing my Facebook page starts with a solid content plan. The key to a content plan is to develop a list of types of content that you think your ideal customer will relate to. For me, this includes social media and business tips, related blog posts, inspiration and motivation, personal or brand stories, humour and, of course, my marketing message. I recommend an 80/20 split on your content. Eighty percent of your content should be useful and value based to your ideal customer and the remaining twenty percent can be used to weave in your marketing message. Once you have a content plan in place, consistency is critical. I post relatable content that ties back into my content plan, 6-8 times a day; sometimes more. This content strategy has helped me build a great community of engaged fans! 18. Dennis Yu, BlitzMetrics Change your setting to be fully open in terms of letting people comment, tag, reply, and so forth. Unless you are absolutely vilified, you’re opening yourself to a lot more growth and positive feedback. If you have a large email list, you can invite them (up to 5,000) people and run custom audiences.
19. Blake Jamieson, Pool Supply World Facebook changes so often – and the changes are entirely out of the page manager’s control. It’s important to stay up-to-date with platform changes, but even more important to diversify your points of contact with your fans. Leverage your Facebook page to grow your other social media channels, as well as email list. On the PoolSupplyWorld page I manage, we offer a coupon to our fans, but collect an email address before sending them use a coupon. This gives us the opportunity to stay in touch, even when Facebook throws us a curve ball.
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20. Brian Carter, Briancartergroup.com My number one tip would be to really get + know who your audience is by keeping track of the engagement rate you get when you post to them. Divide the likes by the reach. You should get at least 1%, then try for 3-5% and I have some pages now where we’re trying to hit 6-9% regularly. It’s painstaking but each month, look at the list of posts and their engagement rates, then sort them so you can see which posts got the most and which got the least. What do the least engaged with have in common? Avoid doing that in the future. What do the most engaging post have in common? Try more of that. Every audience is different. Make sure you’re really talking to who your unique audience is. Also, use graph search to find out what other interests and pages they like- that can be a great way to start!
21. Liz Azyan, Liz Azyan’s guide to engagement online & research There are so many things we could do to really excite our Facebook communities. We can share valuable information, recognise our community members creatively by putting the spotlight on our members, run contests and interact with them on a daily basis. But the main common thread that runs through any successful Facebook community is their ability to create unique and memorable experiences for their members. Understanding their connection is not only with you, but with each other and the wider Facebook community. The core of it all lies in NOT what type of post they like, or comment on or share. It’s what type of post makes them FEEL happy, sad, excited, awesome, motivated, inspired and most of all what makes them FEEL connected and have a sense of belonging to your community. So ask yourself, how did you make your Facebook community FEEL today? If you can answer this question, you’re on your way to creating a Facebook community that is one of a kind. 22. Juan Felix, Felix Relationship Marketing My number one tip for managing a Facebook page would be to spend some time to use the right visuals for your content. You know, as social visual communication is becoming more important, you need to search for high quality content and visuals at the same time. So spend enough time to find the appropriate visual before you share an update on your Page. By doing that consistently you develop a sense of what type of content resonates with your Facebook community. Plus you can check your stats to see if you were right or not! And to find the right visuals you need to think out of the box and use your imagination. To give you an example: you could use an image of a delicious dish with fresh Thai food and add a text overlay that says something like ”Six key ingredients to create the perfect Post”. It makes total sense to use the image of colorful Thai food in this context and it will ignite emotional reactions. So, spend some time to curate high quality images that move people emotionally and tell your story 23. Zsusa Kecsmar, Antavo Promotion Builde We see that our customers use contests and sweepstakes successfully to build a vibrant community on Facebook. They deeply involve fans with a photo contest, or run a lighthearted sweepstakes where fans can enter with a single click. A good Facebook contest has multiple, lower value prizes (so the chance of winning is higher), allows public voting (so those people who don’t upload their own entry can participate), and promoted well (unless no one shows up).
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24. Alex Houg, BlitzMetrics Let the community do the work for you. Promote trusted members to admin, share their statuses, and elevate them. Public praise and encouragement shows you have a true twoway community. And nobody is going to do a better job in demonstrating expertise or passion than your best fans. So recognize them!
25. Rosh Khan, SocialRankMedia.com
As many brands have seen on Facebook, there has been a dip in organic reach. It’s also no secret that FB has moved more towards the “pay to play” model. And in an attempt to ‘stay connected’ with their Facebook communities, many brands spend a lot more on promoting their posts. However… My social media agency has had the unique opportunity to test a variety of strategies for our client and we’ve found that you need to be STRATEGIC about the TYPE of content that gets promoted (either through “Boosts”and/ or Page Post Engagement ads). For us, the trick is to determine if your content falls under one of two categories — it’s either ENGAGING or it’s for BRAND AWARENESS. An engaging post will fuel conversation, increase reach, and drive up your overall EdgeRank. This also has a direct effect on your organic posts — if Facebook’s algorithm notices that a certain amount of folks have engaged with your post, they will serve the next post to more people. Also, by having huge engagement, your post will show up on more peoples’ newsfeeds. A brand awareness post will display products, testimonial graphics, and/or a direct product/service promotion. This assists with “immediate ROI”. (After all, you’re running a business and it’s always great to see some direct measurable “return on investment”.) So once your post is either ENGAGING or for BRAND AWARENESS, it’s worthy of being promoted. The basic premise here is to ensure that you get the “most bang for your buck” by being strategic. How much you spend per post will depend on our budget, your current audience size, and the potential reach you’d like to hit. At the end of it all, study the stats and modify the plan accordingly — the numbers don’t lie.
26. Jon Loomer, JonLoomer.com Experiment with publishing at non-peak times! I’m finding that I get the most reach and (most importantly) engagement from posts that are published in the middle of the night my time. I will schedule posts for 2:15am and wake up to a flurry of activity. While I have an international audience, the number of fans online during that time is only 70% of peak times, yet I get far more engagement when I publish late at night. My theory is that due to less competition, my content is less likely to get filtered out, resulting in reaching more people. And since it gets early engagement, that could be momentum to help it be seen when people on the East Coast in the US wake up (thanks to Story Bumping). This won’t necessarily work for everyone, but my main point is that you should experiment with publishing times!
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27. Keri Jaheing, Idea Girl Focus On Your Target Market This may sound so simple. We all imagine our ideal customer reading our posts and loving (liking) what we send out into their Facebook news feed. Don’t we? For big brands it is fairly easy to grab the attention of their target market on Facebook, as they already have brand recognition and a large base of brand ambassadors willing to interact with them online. But for the small to medium sized brand, it is a bit more difficult. And even harder still for the start up and solo entrepreneur. It takes investment of time and money to attract your ideal target market to your Facebook Page! As you’re personally networking on social platforms and socializing our brand pages on Facebook, it is quite easy to fall into a friendly pattern of marketing to our competition. The liking, sharing, collaborating – Of course you will see your friends and colleagues. It is natural to want to extend goodwill and cooperate. However, these actions alone can leave your marketing efforts fruitless. And, unfortunately, I see this all too often.
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Avoid that scenario by: * Networking – Online and….Offline! Live handshakes keep it real – Especially with those most likely to purchase your product or service. * Attending Facebook Friday Parties Strategically – Not every week, and vary your visits at different online gatherings. * Advertising – Even a small budget for promoted content can attract your target market to your business on Facebook. * Finding Collaborators – Identify and nurture working relationships that are in your industry and in a complimentary niche (rather than competing). Eventually you can be supporting each other with referrals. Until then, you can team up to combine efforts where it fits, and also to reduce some promotional expenses. * Putting A Facebook Like Box On Your Blog – Your content is what magnetizes your target market to your website. Capitalize on this traffic by placing a “Like Box” on your blog’s side bar. This encourages your ideal customer to click the Like button. In turn, they will see your content in their Facebook news feed will be more likely to interact with you at your Facebook Page community. From there, you can warm up your relationship so they move into your sales funnel. There are indeed more ways to focus on your target market at your Facebook Page. The above five ways will get you started in the right direction.
Jump
the Gun:
Selling
Your New Idea
Derrick Jones www.presidentspilotsentrepreneurs.com
S
eth Godin once said the time to start selling your book is three years before writing it. Most writers and aspiring entrepreneurs come up with an idea, leap into the project, and try to figure out how to sell it after the fact. A far better approach is to build a platform of interest in advance and put out samples or snippets to get your fans salivating. Then, release the final product to large fanfare. “Build it and they will come” only works in Hollywood folks. Henry Ford’s biggest problem with his first attempt at the automobile was spending all of his time on the engineering and mechanics of his new idea, while ignoring the need for marketing. Sound familiar? He failed because the general public was not ready for his approach. By the time he made his third attempt, he had primed the public. A group of investors swooped in at the crucial moment to keep the Ford Motor Company afloat. The rest, as they say, is history. More than 100 years later, entrepreneurs continue to make the same mistake. Some even keep their projects secret on purpose. Ask a new
entrepreneur why the secrecy and they often respond, “But what if someone steals my idea?” Sigh.
finally paying off. Had he opted to keep it all to himself, he would still be at his kitchen table struggling.
No One Wants to Steal Your Idea
Spend your time getting feedback from potential investors, those in your market and other influencers. This is not the time to get the opinion of friends and relatives who do not understand your market. Instead, interact with potential competitors and local business organizations. This is the opposite extreme of keeping everything to yourself.
This may come as a shock to many of you, but most ideas are crap. Why risk stealing a bad idea? Still, buried in this heap is a gem or two. If you have a genuinely good idea, you may not be the only one thinking about it. Secrecy stops you from receiving much-needed feedback. While you come up with new ways to protect your gem, another innovator may be across town talking up his or her own version.
Identify Weak Ideas Early
One of the benefits of sharing your idea is the feedback you’ll receive. You may discover you are attempting to solve a problem that does not exist. Or, like my buddy James Oliver(@JamesOliver) over at WeMontage, you may receive validation that you are indeed on to something. Far from keeping his baby all to himself, Oliver is everywhere talking about WeMontage, and his efforts are
Those Who Matter
Most importantly, create a strong network for a product before introducing it. If you insist on building your wiz bang widget in an undisclosed location, do not be surprised when the world ignores you as you emerge triumphant from your cave.
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Acupressure Yoga mats provide all the benefits of acupressure including increased blo od circulation, improved mo od, stress relieve, Magazine | #WorldClass Special Edition 30 Evolution muscle relaxation, weight loss, and overall feeling of well-being.
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Steps To Discovering Your Ideal Audience
Have you ever felt like you’re wasting your time writing articles that don’t appeal to your audience? Build exposure, increase credibility, and create value for yourself by writing articles your existing audience needs to read and share. Sounds reasonable, right? Use these tips to realize who your audience is and how you can easily extend your influence by expanding the people it reaches. Who is Your Audience Already? From family to customers, friends to clients, identify each division of your current audience. Who do You Want? Identify new divisions that you ideally want to add to your current audience. Consider what obstacles prevent this ideal audience from deepening its involvement with your platform. Examine their needs as a group and how your platform can help to address those needs. Create Profiles. Create a persona for each of your ideal audience divisions. Survey each division’s demographics, hobbies, professions, wants, troubles, knowledge, perceptions, and common goals, and identify which of these value(s) you are able to tailor best within each division. Find the Hard Truths Find out what attracts your
current audience to your platform and why. What’s holding your ideal audience back from your business? What makes your ideal audience different from your current audience? What opportunities is your ideal audience passing up by not knowing what you do? What opportunities are you giving up as a result?
Uncover Search Terms
Join Your Audience Research, network, and subscribe. Gain a strong footing in your niche by understanding how others in your niche are engaging with those who follow them. Identify the buzz they create, what they write about, and how they engage with their audience (e.g., social networks, newsletters, tweets of recently published articles, etc.).
Knowing the above seven tips will help you strategically plan all aspects of your platform, not just article writing. Consider who you are, how you create unique value for each segment of your audience, and what informative solutions you can offer for their benefit.
Engage, Engage, Engage! Start engaging, commenting, and writing useful content that solves problems, answers questions, and provides interesting topics that are being sought out by your audience.
Use your 5 Traffic Search Terms to find out how your current audience is searching for you as well as how new audience members find you. Continue refining these terms to write new articles as you work to find and refine your audience. Knowledge is Power
Empower your efforts with these tips in order to deepen your current audience’s involvement, increase and diversify their participation, foster their loyalty, and open the door to new audiences.
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NO Small
Victories Jacqueline Williams-Hines
#WorldClass Advocate A #WORLDCLASS INTERVIEW KATRINA STARZHYNSKAYA
Katrina:You’ve done so much for kids with autism. Tell us how you came up with the idea to create No Small Victories. Jacqueline:I think it was out of necessity – and being a mom. I wanted to be able to help my son have relationships. Children on the autism spectrum have a hard time reading social cues, so they have a difficult time making relationships with their peers. As a mom, it breaks your heart when your child feels so isolated and other children just don’t know how to reach him. So I started reaching out to the children in my neighborhood. I was explained some of the things they were seeing in my son at the time. Children are so flexible and accepting when they really understand what
they are seeing. That paved the way for me to help advocate for other children to have inclusive relationships.
to be able to speak with some type of authority. Pairing with a larger organization has given me time to learn how to make No Small Victories a sustainable Katrina:Tell us a little bit more organization. about the organization. How does it help kids and families? We do a lot of community education. African-Americans Jacqueline:No Small Victories are experiencing almost a is a grassroots organization two year disparity in getting a located in Springfield, diagnosis. So they’re missing Massachusetts. We’re currently a lot of the educational support under the principal sponsorship that could help their children. of a larger organization called the Martin Luther King Junior Family There are a lot of cultural Services in Springfield. I thought influences that make parents it was important to partner with reticent to actively advocate for another established organization a diagnosis. We want to educate in our community, just to give the community so it becomes its me time to build that foundation. support system for parents. I’m currently studying towards a Masters in Autism and Applied Behavior Analysis. I wanted www.EvoMag.co
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Autism can feel really isolating for parents. We feel judged, we feel that people are looking at our parenting skills and not looking at the diagnosis. As a result, sometimes parents will, in an effort to protect their children, become isolated, and I really want to do as much community education as possible so that these parents feel supported in their community. Katrina: You have written several books. Can you tell us more about them? Jacqueline: Initially, my books were for my children’s peers. I wanted them to be able to identify some of the things that they see with autism. When children don’t understand something, it becomes strange to them and they will selfsegregate from what’s not familiar. But once you teach them, it’s not a big deal. I have four children’s books and they all deal with different aspects of autism in a picture book format. That was a way of educating children in a way that they can understand. But as I see more and more classrooms becoming inclusive, it’s really important that we help educate teachers as well. I think the books are wonderful for extended family members. Sometimes family members simply aren’t equipped to be that support system that’s so crucial. I really don’t know that there is anyone who couldn’t benefit from the series.
Katrina: What would be the first steps for parents whose child has just been diagnosed? Jacqueline: Understand that it’s nothing that you did wrong. As parents we internalize so much guilt that you become immobilized.
guilt. We wonder, ‘What did I do wrong? Did I eat something? Did I not take my vitamins? Did I not rest enough?’ It can be hard because we do feel that no one has been able to definitively tell us why autism happens.
There is so much going on so quickly. People will start talking about time schedules for you. If your child is two years old, early intervention may cease on their third birthday, so you have to hit the ground running and advocating.
Try to surround yourself with a support system. If it’s not family, then look out into your community. Are there community support groups or parents on the spectrum?
Understand that, as a parent, you have needs as well. Do not neglect your needs as a care provider. Understand that you are going to need emotional support. Oftentimes, what I see with autism is it polarizes family members. You may see the wife go into overdrive and become this superadvocate and she’s trying to take on everything and learn everything, where the father may go into denial mode. Autism affects our boys five times as much as our girls, so sometimes I think that our fathers can’t identify that with their child. The sports figure Rodney Peete wrote a book titled Not My Son. That was his expressing to fathers that ‘I get it;’ we don’t want to accept that there is something wrong with our son because we identify that with ourselves. Mothers are already verwhelmed, and sometimes we carry a lot of
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Educate yourself. Look at what’s happening in the autism community, but take some of it with a grain of salt. There are certain things that have been said over the years that other things have come out to totally negate what was said prior. It’s still relatively new as far as research. If you are having a hard time navigating the special education system, look for an educational advocate to help you with that. There is so much to it and no one person can do it all. I don’t think there is one definitive blueprint for each parent to say ‘Ok, you do this first, this first, this first.’ We all go through the process a little differently. Seek out other parents. Sometimes you find that other parents are such a wealth knowledge; once they cross that bridge, most parents are eager to share that information to make that process easier for you.
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Lead Yourself We are all leaders – regardless of whether we run our own business, work for someone else, or are unemployed. That is because leadership is about influence and true leadership starts with leading yourself.
to be self-reflective. This activity is what enables a leader to truly understand herself, identify what she values and make informed leadership decisions that guide or lead her behaviors.
Harry Kraemer, professor of management and strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, asserts that the number one task for all leaders is
When was the last time you spent time quietly reflecting on your beliefs? Was it for longer than five minutes? I know, this is challenging to put into the calendar. And it doesn’t feel much like work, let alone important work. And yet, it is critically important.
I’m going to keep this article briefer than most. I’d like to encourage you to take the time you would have used to read a longer post and pause for a moment of self-reflection. If it’s early in the day, think about what is most important to accomplish. And then think about why it’s important to you. What is the lasting impact that this is going to create in the world - or in your personal world? If your day is mostly over, think about the tasks you accomplished today. What impact will they have in the future? Did you place your priorities in the right places? What would you do differently if you had the chance?
Mr. Kraemer likes to do his self-reflection at the end of the day. During this time he reviews his day to see what went well and what didn’t. He thinks about both what he would Now shhhhhhhh! Enjoy your quiet do again, in the same way, and what reflection and have a great day! he would do differently the next time. He also thinks about what he didn’t accomplish that he would like to have completed. Why is that task important to him?
Karen Jett Red Knight Consulting www.redknight.com 38 Evolution Magazine | #WorldClass Special Edition
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Innovative Marketing Solutions To EVOLVE Your Business
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e路volve- to develop gradually, especially from a simple to a more complex form. 40 Evolution Magazine | #WorldClass Special Edition