YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com

Social Business Is About Actions Not Words

Update: Southwest wrote about this blog post in their in-flight magazine a couple months later. Cool! I cried a little on a plane last week. It wasn’t due to a delay, an uncomfortable seat, or peanut salt getting in my eye. It was because I saw a shining example of “social business” at work in [...]

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Are You Passionate About Social Media, Or Obsessed?

Guest post by Marjorie Clayman, resident blogger at www.margieclayman.com. She works at Clayman Advertising, Inc., her family-owned full-service marketing firm.   Passion or Obsession? No, I’m not talking Calvin Klein scents. Actually, I’m putting forth a question to you. Are you passionate about social media or are you obsessed with social media? “Passion” has become one of [...]

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The 6 Stages of Exposing Yourself with Content Marketing

In just 10 years we’ve moved from laggards pondering whether they even wanted a website, to a circumstance where “content marketing” and “corporate storytelling” are garnering serious budgetary resources. But have we let the pendulum swing too far? Is it always a net positive to create and give away content on behalf of your company? [...]

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Revealing the Secret That’s Limiting Your Potential

Within the realm of self help, Tony Robbins is U2. Known by all, beloved by many, but to some degree hamstrung by his own popularity and the accompanying expectations. Tim Ferris is Radiohead. Modern, quirky, and possessing a growing group of fans proclaiming him to be the best ever. Julien Smith is Elbow. Perhaps lesser [...]

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Marketing Automation for Everyone with Infusionsoft

We’ve known for more than a decade that relevancy drives email marketing results. Getting a message or offer that’s tailored to your needs and circumstances is much more likely to be effective than an unfocused, blanket email that’s sent to an entire database at the same time. This ability to customize email and send different [...]

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Permission is the Enemy of Speed

This week I’ve been writing about speed and response expectations for business on the social Web. Ultimately, speed wins. The companies that engage customers on Twitter and Facebook within minutes are making a none-too-subtle statement about their embrace of the social telephone and the primacy of the customer. In comparison, slow response or no response [...]

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Why Social Media Has Ruined Your Advantage

Yesterday, I wrote about real-time information and the death of news cycles. This of course creates considerable challenges for business, which typically is not yet architected for real-time communication (at least not in public). Speed matters. Requiring someone to pull off to the side in your drive-thru lane like a vehicular leper because you didn’t [...]

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We Know Faster, But Do We Know More?

We eat weird. This was the conclusion of a USA Today article last week that documented how rarely Americans eat a full meal at traditional regular breakfast, lunch, dinner time windows. In fact, just 5% of Americans eat three square meals a day. Evidently, whether it’s food or fact, calories or content, our consumption patterns [...]

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The Awesome Power of Family in Social Media Storytelling

In honor of Thanksgiving, I wanted to write a post about the power of family in social media storytelling. And as you sit down to whatever celebration you embrace, think about the videos below and what they evoke within you. But first, remember that the goal isn’t to be good at social media. The goal [...]

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How to Effectively Bottle Social Media and Product Integration

In addition to family, football, and fancy side dishes you’ll never see for another year, Thanksgiving brings an annual dilemma to the oenophile. What wine to serve for Thanksgiving is a tricky question, as the holiday table replete with savory and sweet options is an Ellis Island of tastes, making for a tough wine pairing. [...]

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