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

When Will the Social Media Losers Emerge?

Today, social media is like a soccer league for seven year-olds: everyone gets a trophy. The vast majority of press coverage and conversations around social media centers around the fact that businesses are DOING social media, not necessarily doing it EFFECTIVELY. Do you know why every article or blog post with even a scintilla of [...]

Continue Reading

Destroying the 7 Myths of B2B Social Media

B2B social media is one of the most nettlesome of all social media marketing topics. There are plenty of half-truths and misunderstandings about what, where, why, and how B2B social media works (or doesn’t). I tried to dispel the most common B2B social media myths in this Webinar for Genius.com and Focus. Destroying the 7 [...]

Continue Reading

5 Step Process for Social Media Success

Social media makes big companies feel small again, and gives small companies a natural advantage because they are closer to their customers. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you have interesting stories to tell. Finding and sharing them is the first step toward social media success. What is your process for harvesting stories within [...]

Continue Reading

11 Whys I’m a Social Media Addict

Connectivity Social media brings me closer to people with whom I ordinarily would seldom interact. Family, friends, colleagues. As my co-author Amber Naslund put it once “with social media, my relationships aren’t bound by geography or circumstance.” Exactly. Humanity People always slam Twitter for people talking about “what they had for lunch” but the blending [...]

Continue Reading

Are You Treating Your Fans Like Cattle

Email ain’t dead yet. When they wake up, 59% of consumers check their email account before anything else online, according to new research from ExactTarget (disclosure: client), in a sweeping survey of 400+ Americans. (play with the data in the super cool interactive tool below) This correlates well with a similar, but far less statistically [...]

Continue Reading

3 Ways Infomercials Can Inspire Your Social Media

I know, I know. You’re thinking that I’m crazy. But, I’m not. I’ve been in marketing or advertising (online or otherwise) for 20 years. I’ve been thinking lately about why I got involved in social media. What was the attraction? I’ve realized it’s THE TRUTH. That’s something sorely missing from a lot of traditional advertising, [...]

Continue Reading

Why You’re the Key to Social Media Success

The biggest obstacle standing in the way of companies’ embrace of social media isn’t the tools, or measurement confusion, or even being able to make the time to do it day-to-day. The biggest obstacle is corporate culture. New research from White Horse of 104 companies found that in 86% of companies, executives are not using [...]

Continue Reading

18 Social Media Quotes My Wife Is Sick of Hearing Me Say

In my ongoing quest to have chicken served in every conceivable way, courtesy of banquet chefs at events from sea to shining sea, I’ve fallen into the habit of repeating myself. While my social media speaking engagements vary enough that I alter my material quite a bit from event to event, there is definitely a [...]

Continue Reading

Is Social Media Too Big For Its Britches?

Maybe what we need is a little deconstruction. At Monday’s Social Fresh conference in St. Louis, I was delighted to join Sarah Evans, Jason Falls, Amber Naslund, and Zena Weist on the closing panel discussion. During the session, an audience question got me fired up (no surprise, as the Social Fresh attendees were a very [...]

Continue Reading

Nobody Said Social Media Was Easy

Social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s different expensive. In the QA portion of recent speeches, I’ve frequently been asked “this is great, but doesn’t it seem like it will take a lot of time?” Yes. It. Will. Succeeding on the social Web requires daily participation. Whether it’s brand reputation management, PR and influencer outreach, customer service [...]

Continue Reading