Back in the 90′s Anthony Parinello came out with a great sales book called Selling to VITO (Very Important Top Officer). It’s still an excellent book that offers some effective strategies for getting the attention of real decision makers in any company.
One strategy however, you won’t find in that book is one that Alec Brownstein recently implemented to get his new job. Alec purchased 5 Google Adwords with the keywords being top company officers he wanted to interview with.
Out of those 5, Alec landed 4 interviews, with 2 being job offers. Total cost for him – $30 in Google Adwords.
In their classic marketing book Positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout taught us that that the easiest way to get in the consumers mind is to be first. After all, no one remembers #2 right?
Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic. Who was the second to cross it? Sir Edmond Hillary was the first to reach the top of Mount Everest. Who was the second to reach the summit? People rarely remember 2nd place.
It’s good to be first when you have a great idea or product; but being first with a stupid idea is just stupid. RJ Reynolds proved this when they introduced us to the smokeless cigarette years ago. Their strategy was simple- come up with a new product that targets non-smokers. It took over $325 million going up in smoke before they realized that non-smokers don’t buy cigarettes.
There are a number a products that fit that “what were they thinking” list. Remember Sony BetaMax? New Coke? The Ford Edsel? And what about FrostyPaws? Yes, that’s right, ice cream for dogs. Huh?
Being first cannot can’t shield you from lousy market research.
Time to face reality. The days of getting found with optimized title tags, meta tags and a few carefully placed keywords throughout your pages are over. Your site is now competing with video, images, news, and more. And now comes social media. In their attempt to get in on the social networking action, Google has introduced Google Social Search and added yet another spoke in the wheel of search engine marketing.
No need to worry about getting hit with search results from every Tom, Dick and Harry out there who make a twitter post. Google Social Search s will only bring up posts from people within your social network.
So how do you get optimized for Social Search? Just setup a Google profile that includes information about you. This would include links to not only websites you want to promote but also links to social network profiles on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube etc.
One thing that will increase the chances of getting found is to get as many Gmail chat contacts as you can. They’ll certainly boost your exposure in Google Social Search. And don’t forget also, that it’s not just your contacts who will find you in Social Search, but also friends of your contacts as well – connects of your own connections. Social Media is no fad. Get used to it, and learn to implement it into your own marketing strategy.
According to research from Compete, Facebook became the most visited website this January, passing other popular sites like Yahoo and Google. All of this popularity has a down side though. More employers are now using it to screen potential employees. A recent survey showed that 30% of employers are using Facebook to research job candidates. [...]
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For the few days I’ve been humming Dave Carroll’s song in my head – “Uniiited ….you broke my Taylor guitar”. If you haven’t seen the video, you need to take a look. Why I like the song so much is not so much for the tune alone, but the story behind it. You can see [...]
