Raise Your Brand Awareness and Put Money in Your Pocket!

An idea sparked from a conversation that I participated in on a group Mastermind call, raising brand awareness is going to require action – conversations. From just starting-up small businesses, to well established businesses, this idea will create connections and profits online, (and off line as well) in any economy or market. This idea also alerted me to the fact that a lot of people online are on autopilot (No, I won’t name names!) and this includes several of the big guru’s in the social media arena.

By autopilot I mean using automation to respond, and even worse, the same canned predictable answers to many of their followers. Snooze! How boring can you get? How can you get off auto-pilot if you are stuck on using automated or canned answers, and if you aren’t creating a true and lasting connection or able to make any money with your time spent on social media? Read on.
Conversations = Brand Awareness

I encourage you to join this challenge and to stop hiding your power and stop doing the same old, same old—where you respond and reply like a robot. Instead, become present, make thoughtful and considerate comments and suggestions suited to each particular person, rather than making vague comments that you repeat to each person, regardless of their situation. Your attention to detail will not go unnoticed. . Take “we” and ‘I” out of the conversations that you are having and adding “you” when speaking to people.

Find 100 new people to talk to online, and then pick up the phone and have a voice to voice conversation with them.

This is a lot of work (I know firsthand as I have done the 100 conversations voice to voice challenge). And unlike the usual voice to voice conversations from salespeople, it doesn’t (necessarily) produce immediate sales. So is the payoff worth the effort?
Conversations Pay Big

An email to personally selected people and friends that I chose on Facebook had over a 57% response rate to continue the conversation, and one of the longest and heartfelt messages sent back that I have ever received. They had never received a message like the one that I sent and they want to talk to me on the phone, before I could ask them (And yes, I would have done the challenge again). Quick! Go back to that 57% number. This means that I had over a 50% return on my emails messages. Even my online marketing strategist has never heard of a return like this. Now, while generating sales directly wasn’t the goal, many of these new friends made purchases that would never have been made otherwise. And the great news is that they will keep coming back for more!

I have a passion for big thinking – and connections through social media. Some of the guru’s are heavy hitters on Twitter with mega followers and might have said to use this strategy on Twitter. I decided to go for deeper and lasting relationships and did the personal challenge on Facebook. The bigger thinking was being able to send a more intimate and inviting message that took me out of the equation and focused on my audience. This meant ‘low cost’ promotion for the challenge, as compared to old-school media advertising — with results just as good or even better. Now here is the big question: What could you do with this idea?

Can you come up with some top people that you would like a deeper connection with on Facebook for instance? Or make up a list of thought leaders that you would like to get in front of? You could aim to build and leverage your social media profile? Or would you rather just keep doing the same old, same old? Hmm. (By the way, ‘thank you’ to all the amazing and out