“The greater your goals, the more you’ll need to change people’s hearts, minds and actions. If you need to enchant people, you’re doing something meaningful.” – Guy Kawasaki
SheCon 2011 featured many enchanting expert presenters - including Guy Kawasaki, our Friday morning keynote presenter, focused his presentation on the very art of enchantment - as it applies to businesses, bloggers, and professionals.
Among the highlights from Guy's presentation, he offered some tips for enchanting audiences that have beneficial implications for marketers interested in pitching media pros, like our bloggers - both online and offline:
Achieve Likeability: Have a great smile (specifically, a Duchenne smile that includes the eyes), a firm handshake, and dress in a way that fits in with your peers. Overdressing implicates an attitude of superiority; underdressing indicates a lack of respect.
Achieve Trustworthiness: You must trust others before they will trust you. This can be especially true in marketing/PR, when asking bloggers to trust the information you are sending about products/services.
Make It Short, Sweet, and Swallowable: Keep campaigns, tags, slogans, and materials simple and easy to digest. Don't clutter or overcomplicate correspondence.
Default to Yes: Always ask yourself, "How can I help others?" Many times in our day to day, we're forced to turn down media requests - for product samples, for interviews, for press access. Finding an opportunity to "default to yes," offering to include a blogger for future press opportunities, sending canned Q&A information, or offering access to another event or opportunity will leave bloggers feeling positive about their interactions with you - even if you weren't able to accommodate their initial request.
Use Technology: Remove speedbumps. Guy says, "The purpose of Captcha is to reduce the number of customers who register for your website." While marketers don't always use Captcha - there are many speedbumps that we implement in our promotions and blogger outreach campaigns that can limit the amount of coverage we receive.
Engage: The easiest way to be enchanting in social media? Answer emails, DMs, and @messages within 48 hours. As a marketer, if you've set up a portal for communication (email, Facebook, Twitter, etc), your customers, bloggers, and influencers/fans will expect to be able to engage you using those platforms. Further - know your social media platforms. Guy points out that Twitter is a "push" platform for sharing links and information, whereas Facebook is an interactive platform for sharing photos/multimedia and gathering feedback through comments. Most importantly - regardless of the platform - ALWAYS provide value. Offer information, insight, and/or assistance through social media.
Sell The Dream: Steve jobs doesn’t say, “you’re buying $188 worth of parts and a contract for one of the worst carrier services.” He says, “there’s an app for that!”
Get Enchanted! Want to learn more about how to enchant? Check out the slides from his SheCon keynote presentation.
Enter To Win! Five random BlogWire customers this month will be selected to win copies of Guy's latest book, The Art of Enchantment, along with The Everything Blogging Book, written by Aliza Sherman (a fellow SheCon keynoter whose presentation and tips we'll be sharing later this week!).
