Do you have poor information consumption habits?

Here’s how you can tell — if you’re constantly looking for the next thing or shiny object, you’re addicted to the fast growth and short term life of weeds. Some of them are pretty. All the action is up top, yet they don’t grow strong. Small roots.

On the other end of the spectrum are trees.

All the action is underground, so you don’t really see it while it’s happening — and at least for a while. Yet, once they grow, trees could be there for decades, stretching upward and providing a welcome respite for generations.

Weeds and trees

Is a metaphor for ideas I borrowed from my friend Peter.

This special edition of links is all about theory — it’s not the size of the library that counts it’s the way it’s organized. We’re all way too docile to the “do” culture, until what you thought about doesn’t work.

Then we revert to theory. As Peter Tunjic said:

We’ve spent the last 100 years bemoaning theory as somehow esoteric -– real “men” are practical. It’s hard to tell someone that in fact that practical knowledge becomes  impractical without theory.

Theory is just another word for learning –- without it knowledge is impractical no matter what it says on the label.

I agree.

Which is why a pitch I received from a West Coast agency late last night became a one hour conversation about life, people, and meaning with a young brand manager.

Get the theory right, learn from experience, and you get the execution right.

Saturday three

The three stories that caught my eye this week are:

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A frank conversation between Dan Ariely and Malcolm Gladwell on social science. Journalist Resource reports:

What do people do with the things they read in books such as this? And my working assumption is that what they do is they talk about it. The reason people read a book like, books like ours — as opposed to novels — is that books like ours are fodder for continued thought and conversation.

[...] People are information-rich and theory-poor. If you can give them a way of organizing their experience, then their minds are wide open. Which I would not have not have necessarily thought. And if you can frame questions appropriately you can overcome all kinds of ideological — what you would have thought of — as ideological constraints.

Giving people a way of organizing their experience or a framework to think about what they do is central.

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Technology makes it too easy to keep clicking through for hours at a time. Happiness takes a little magic, writes Brian Lam, it’s the most important metric in personal tech:

The first thing I did was to take back my time. I quit all the online content that was id-provoking and knee jerk. I stopped reading the stupid hyped up news stories that are press releases or rants about things that will get fixed in a week. I stopped reading the junk and about the junk that was new, but not good. I stopped reading blogs that write stories like “top 17 photos of awesome clouds by iPhone” and “EXCLUSIVE ANGRY BIRDS COMING TO FACEBOOK ON VALENTINES DAY.” And corporate news that only affects the 1%. Most days, I feel like most internet writers and editors are engaging in the kind of vapid conversation you find at parties that is neither enlightening or entertaining, and where everyone is shouting and no one is saying anything. I don’t have time for this.

Do you? As Lam says, Get on, make the most meaningful information and connections, and then get offline. Then, live purposefully towards happiness.

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Gina Trapani tackles the flip side of having a big audience:

Having a big audience means you’re a commodity, and you get to constantly field pitches from strangers, acquaintances, former co-workers, and distant family members who you never hear from otherwise asking you to mention their new app, book, Kickstarter project, or MySpace page. People decide how important you are by your Klout score and treat you accordingly. Ad agencies look up how much your tweets are worth and recruit you to tweet on behalf of their clients for money. It’s a bizarre and sometimes awkward crash course in saying “sorry, no” to the requests that just don’t feel right (and most of them don’t).

Trapani works with a freelancer mindset. Do you think about those professionals who are actual freelancers and consultants when you work on your programs?

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Weedy ideas are in fashion. They grow so fast, compete with solid ideas, to then die in the sun and be replaced by the next weed of an idea.

Trees are another conversation altogether. There, all the action is underground, until they are no match for the weeds.

Is your program, book, talk, practice full of weeds or are you cultivating trees?

Follow the discussion over on Conversation Agent Google+ Page.

Have a great weekend everyone.

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Last week I talked about how marketers should leverage culture to promote brands. Today I would like to talk about why we also can (and should) change culture.

As I watched the video above I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Is marketing changing culture? Or is culture changing marketing?” Or in other words, are these ads changing our perception of beauty or is our perception of beauty changing the ads? I still don’t have the answer, but maybe it;s a little bit of both.

In the end it doesn’t really matter, the bottom line is that the concept of “ideal beauty” has been around for a very long time. However, that doesn’t mean that it has to continue, and as marketers we have a unique ability to make a difference. Because as marketers we, in part, define culture.

How To Change Culture With Marketing

Develop Icons – Cultures love a good icon. For example take a look at Donald Duck in Germany, they love him. A strong icon can be a powerful force with in a culture. And who creates icons? Marketers do, that’s who! If we want to change our culture’s obsession with ideal body types we need to work to develop more icons that embody realistic and diverse forms of beauty.

Change The Narrative – Maybe with the help of some of our new icons we can start telling some new stories. How about a story about a fully figured woman that men fight over. Or perhaps a movie about a funny young guy in a wheelchair that hordes of women lust after (wink). Stories shape our collective conscience and define the way we view the world. They also help define our own personal narrative, which gives us courage to be different and try new things.

Make A Profit – Remember that marketing is still all about generating wealth. With out wealth we can’t elevate icons or tell new stories. So we need to use the power of marketing to create consumer demands that redefine cultural norms. We need to start building brands that target individuals that deviate from the prevailing cultural narrative. We need fashion brands that market directly to consumers with wrinkles and body weight. We need to grow these brand’s revenue streams and make wrinkles profitable.

Quit Being Lazy – As I watched the video above I couldn’t help but think how unimaginative and uncreative the ads pictured were. Smart marketing is never easy. To redefine culture we have to be creative and try many different things and be willing to fail. Sometimes, it’s hard selling failure to our clients, which is why we need to demand and expect more courage from the companies and brands we work with. Most of you that work with large brands know that they are run by good people that want to do the right thing, they just often times lack the needed courage to do what needs to be done.

In the 21st century marketers are one of the most influential elements on our culture. We have the power to redefine ideas and conscientiousness and it’s our job to wield that power responsibly. This does not mean simply abstaining from the types of ads in the video, it also means taking an active role in the development of new trends that shape our collective identity. If we can effectively do that, we can use marketing to make the world a better place while generating wealth. And, to me that sounds beautiful.

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What if most of the business world stopped blogging tomorrow?

Would you stop as well?

No, if that happened, you’d find yourself sitting on the opportunity of a lifetime. Social networking sites would explode with likes and retweets and pins and +1s of your original content all day long.

This is why the annual “blogging is dead” claim is so dumb. Even if it were true, your continued content production would dominate the web in every way.

So, instead of worrying about the latest, hottest, trend or alarming decline of the moment, stay the course.

Original content creation is the present — and the future — of online marketing.

In this episode, Brian Clark and I discuss:

• Has blogging peaked?
• The clear future of online marketing
• What Twitter wants, and how to give it
• Is the online playing field really even?
• Why it doesn’t matter (at all) if “blogging” dies
• What even the major brands are focusing on right now

Hit the flash player below to listen now:

Other listening options:

• Click here to download the mp3 | 25.1 MB | 20:49
• Click here to subscribe via iTunes
• Click here for the RSS feed (non iTunes)
• Click here for the show archive

The Show Notes:

• Internet Marketing for Smart People Course (free)
• Content Marketing 101
• Blogging Declines Across the Inc. 500
• Why You Want To Be the Last Blog Standing
• Be Better at Twitter: The Definitive, Data-Driven Guide
• 10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing
• Do not click this link
• We left the building with Girl Talk …

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s copywriter and resident recluse.

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Many of our entrepreneur marketing coaching clients are involved in Direct Sales or MLMs. Because I was not sure I actually knew the difference (okay, I admit, I didn’t know there WAS a difference!), I thought I should get some help from an expert in the industry!

Guest post by Direct Sales Expert – Tina Kraft

There are many articles out there about direct sales versus Network Marketing (sometimes called MLM or multi level marketing). I find it interesting how varying the opinions are on this subject. First off, I have been involved in both so this comes from first hand experience. Having said that, each and every company has a different sales model and compensation plan. Every company has a different percentage of commissions.

Network Marketing Companies

Most Network Marketing Companies have an auto ship for both the customers and the distributors, and to receive your royalties as a distributor it is a minimum monthly autoship to receive your products for “wholesale” – every company is different. Network Marketing is based more on signing people up to be either a customer or distributor and have them on autoship. They are normally consumable products. You make less money on your individual sales and about the same on your downline as in direct sales, but again EVERY company is a little different.

Direct Sales Marketing Companies

Direct Sales is more relationship based and face-to-face sales. Most Direct Sales companies use the party plan module. The commission made by the distributor from their personal sales is usually very good so YOU are more in control of your income. You can also build a downline and have residual income from your downline. Most companies have incentives and bonuses for sales and recruiting and also have incentive trips you can earn for FREE! Being more of a relationship based model, you have repeat customers and hosts for your “parties” or events. This is also why it is dominated by women as we are more relationship based in business.

How To Pick A Company

So what type of company do you want to be a part of? First when picking a company you need to figure out what you are passionate about. Are you passionate about health and wellness, decorating, bling, cosmetics, fashion, coffee? The list goes on and on! Also look at the compensation plan structure, do you want to build a team and become a leader in the company? What type of support will you need?

Direct Sales and Network Marketing are great ways to become an entrepreneur. It DOES take hard work, dedication and time to build your business.

Remember that nothing in life that is worthwhile is easy!! But it is very gratifying!! Make sure you are committed to your venture and don’t become discouraged easily.

Tina M Kraft is an Accountability Coach and has built a multi million dollar team in the Direct Sales Industry. She lives in Denver with her husband of 35 years. Visit her site at tinamkraft.com, Friend Tina on Facebook, Follow her on Twitter or Connect on LinkedIn!

Entrepreneur Marketing | Direct Sales, Network Marketing, MLM

Related posts:

1. Direct Sales MLM Case Study – Green Cleaning Products
2. Features Versus Benefits Part Deux
3. Realtor Marketing – Direct Mail Postcards

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This week on The Lede …

• What really works on Twitter
• One thing social media copywriters should never do
• 9 productive social media hacks
• A reminder of the power of the original social media

If you just can’t wait for The Lede every Saturday, and you want even more practical, useable links than the seven we highlight here every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter. It’s painless. Really.

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9 Social Media Hacks You Need to Embrace Now
Mr. Baer makes a good case that though social media is inexpensive in monetary terms, it can get good and costly when it comes to spending your time and brain power. His 9 “hacks” can help keep you sane and productive in the fast, fast digital world we run in.

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100 Ways to Become a Twitter Power User
Mr. Patel is on a content tear lately, not just cranking it out, but cranking out the good stuff. The headline of his article says it all, and you’d do your Twitter efforts a service to give it the once over. From how to generate more retweets, to becoming a more interesting Twitter writer, this one is well worth an hour.

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The Basics of Pinterest for Content Marketers
Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest. It’s on the tip of many tongues these days, for good reason: it’s driving quality traffic. If you’re a content marketer with a visual bent, you should get over there and start pinning. But first check out the infographic above …

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Copywriters Should Never Try to Change the Prospect’s Mind
Remember that person you used to date, how you tolerated certain personality quirks or behaviors because you were sure you could change them … eventually? Veteran copywriter Nick Usborne shows you why it didn’t work back then, and why you shouldn’t try to do it now, in your business. Hint: It’s impossible.

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What Works on Twitter: The Definitive, Data-Driven Guide
It’s official, people on Twitter don’t care what you ate for lunch. What works? If you’ve been reading Copyblogger for any amount of time, the answer to that question won’t come as a surprise. At all. We’ve been preaching this very thing for more than six years …

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Email Newsletters are a Serious Business
Email: the original social media. By collecting and briefly analyzing a few top email newsletters publishing today, Mr. Baptiste has given us an important reminder — sexy does not always sell (best). Do you publish an email newsletter? Are you reaching out to your customers and fans on a regular schedule via email? If not, you’re leaving money on the table, and why would you want to do that?

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How to Create a Powerful Password You Can Actually Remember
The greatest plague that Social Media hath wrought? Passwords. There are a few great password management tools out there (that you should definitely be using), but xkcd brings us back to the old school in this cartoon. As always, the old school is simple, and it confuses the hell out of hackers and their big, bad hacking machines. Yeah.

Did you miss anything on Copyblogger this week?

• How to Grow Your Freelance Writing Business by Working Less
• 5 Ways Writers Can Break Out of the Tired Old Social Media Box
• 10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing
• What Zappos Can Teach You About Becoming Irresistible to Customers
• Even if Blogging Drools, Online Content Rules

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s copywriter and resident recluse.

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Technology is great. It’s allowing us to do more things faster and is taking (some) cost attrition out of them. Social networs are helping more people encounter more people and opportunities than they ever thought possible.

We also know they can be distracting, and a time suck.

Who hasn’t spent a whole two hours following links and reading about other people’s fabulous exploits and exotic places? It feels great.

And the brain cannot tell the difference between real and imagined…

… which is goodness when we can harness that capability to visualize, dream, and be expansive. It is not so helpful when we confuse the proxy of reading advice with having done and doing the work.

Or do you just lull yourself in the illusion of being that way?

Do you have actual, real relationships based on doing things for each other with kindness and generosity? Or do you take for granted that thousands, hundreds, or even dozens of people are just waiting for you to make a request to jump at it?

Do you view all your social accounts as bank accounts you open and just start withdrawing money from without putting any in? Or do you actually view them as opportunities to be human and in conversation? Here’s an example of how to write an email that stands out. To this day, a rare occurrence.

People want to help. We’re social, it’s encoded in our DNA. Busy people are the happiest helping others because they know more than anyone else how it works — things don’t happen in a vaccuum. Collaborating and supporting each other with real things is the best way to go about it.

If brands can be for Meaningful Actions, so can people.

DO the “work” in network.

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PS: I love you. Using this sentiment as your inspiration is a good rule of thumb to get it right.

A note on email. It feels like a conversation, its discontinuous nature makes it more like a letter. Tone is extremely hard to convey through one, especially if you don’t have a relationship with the person with whom you are corresponding.

Take care of each word lest it comes across as a shot you didn’t intend to take (i.e., defensive and scarcity-mindset driven).

Think like a quantum physicist — it’s possibility until your thinking precipitates it as rejection.

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I cannot believe there are no other good examples of email etiquette. When were you last impressed by a note? Have examples of or advice for successful email connections? Do share.

If this post from Conversation Agent was useful, subscribe, share and like it. Sign up for my Premium Newsletter for more in depth discussions.

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When it comes to converting your leads into sales, lead management is a crucial and powerful tool. Most of your leads will not be ready to engage with a salesperson after their first conversion, but are potentially qualified and require further nurturing and development.

Lead management gives you the tools you need to filter out your less-qualified leads and provide them with educational content through targeted lead nurturing campaigns, which will bring them closer to being ready for that sales call.

However, this is only one of many functions of lead management, which can actually benefit your marketing and sales teams in different ways. Here are seven benefits of implementing really great lead management.

1. You can determine when your leads are sales-ready. Lead scoring, which is part of good lead management, allows you to gauge your leads’ potential interest in your product or service based on factors that are important to your business, such as job titles, what forms they’ve filled out, or other criteria that is important to you. You should work with your sales team and marketing analytics to decide upon the criteria that you will use to score your leads. As you continue executing your lead management strategies, you can collect information to help you further optimize your lead scoring schema. You can compare your leads’ scores against that of your ideal customer or your sales team’s top-quality leads to help you understand when your leads are ready to be handed over to your sales team.

2. You don’t lose your unqualified leads. About 50% of B2B sales leads are not ready to buy after their first conversion, according to a Gleanster survey. Instead of wasting your sales team’s valuable time or just tossing these leads out the window altogether, you should place them in lead nurturing campaigns. By using well-timed campaigns with matching content to their original interest, you can guide your leads along the path from unqualified to qualified or determine who is permanently unqualified. Sounds a lot better than losing out on half the ROI of your lead generation efforts, doesn’t it?

3. Your sales team can operate more efficiently. Lead intelligence tools allow you to provide your sales team with various important and highly useful pieces of information, such as the level of activity of a lead, which pages of your website they have visited, what marketing emails they have received, and more. Lead scoring is another helpful tool for allowing your salespeople to prioritize their calls based on which leads are the most sales-ready (or “warmest”). Thus, effective lead management allows your sales team to work more efficiently and convert more leads to customers in less time.

4. You can position yourself as a thought leader in the industry. The main idea behind lead nurturing is that you are providing content to your unqualified leads to educate them further about your field, your company, and/or your product or service. By sharing this information with leads to help them with their decisions, especially before they ask for it, you make it more likely that they will view you as an authority in your industry. It is also likely that they will share your content with others, thereby spreading the word about your company and your offers.

5. You can get a better understanding of your leads’ needs. Lead intelligence tools can help you determine your leads’ behavior patterns on a higher level. They’ll show you which offers your leads downloaded, in what order they downloaded them, which pages of your site they visited, how many times they visited each, and so on. The trends you find in this data can be used to inform your content strategy (e.g. 23% of our highest quality leads downloaded this ebook) as well as your lead nurturing campaigns (e.g. the email send for this webinar was most effective for leads who had downloaded that whitepaper).

6. You can establish trust by building relationships with your leads. By understanding your leads’ behavior and needs, and using this with closely targeted lead nurturing campaigns, you show your leads that you know what they are looking for—and you’re ready to help them. This not only educates them about the specific topic or product in which they are interested, but also builds more trust, thereby making them more likely to convert to customers.

7. You can better measure your marketing and sales ROI. Lead management gives you the tools to track and analyze your lead metrics throughout the entire sales cycle. Even after your leads have been handed off to your sales team, you can continue to refine, score, and evaluate as needed. You should be able to identify what works (and what doesn’t work) for your business and your lead management process, and optimize accordingly to yield the highest possible ROI.

Lead management isn’t always easy. The deep understanding of your leads and their needs is not something that anyone develops before diving into lead management. Creating and refining your strategy takes time, but you will end up with a seamless lead management process that will provide you with more qualified leads in less work for your sales organization.

Sarah Goliger is an inbound marketer at HubSpot, a marketing software company based in Cambridge, MA that makes inbound marketing and lead management software.

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Podcast topics include:

• Making the Most of a Mobile Moment (with Tim Hayden of 44Doors)
• Sally Hogshead and the $500 Cup of Coffee (with author Sally Hogshead)
• Have You Killed an Innovation Today? (with author and professor David Owen)
• Calculating the ROI of Social Media (with guest Nichole Kelly)
• Unleashing Creativity, One Team at a Time (with author Alicia Adams)
• Why Humor Belongs in Marketing (with guest Tim Washer)

Visit the Marketing Smarts podcast page for a complete list of our info-packed episodes.

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Last year video went up 42.1% and it’s expected to keep in the double-digits for the next few years.

More spending, means claiming a larger share of the online ad pie. For video, it’s currently at 7.9%, just barely sneaking past Classifieds and Directories. The share is expected to rise to 15% by 2016, keeping it solidly in third place.

Add in search and banners and these three ads account for 80% of all ads sold. Search, accounting for almost half of all online ads by themselves.

The rise in video ad spending is certainly being spurred on by the rise in video consumption. Recent numbers from comScore show that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 23.2 hours of video content per viewer in December.

Video is the new TV but it’s cheaper and easier to put ads on a hit YouTube series than on a hit TV show.

If you need more proof that online video ads are on the rise, answer this. When was the last time you watched a video that didn’t have either a banner or a pre-roll ad? I can’t think of one.

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Of everything I have read, one quote summarizes it all from Wall Street Journal article. It comes from Veronica Stecker the media manager for Omaha, NE based retailer Gordmans. Simply put in just 44 words (or 255 characters including spaces according to Word’s word count function).

We still don’t have a huge correlation between Facebook fans and return on investment in an actual sales in store. Until that metric becomes a lot more solid, I don’t think our company or other brands are going to be full-fledged into Facebook advertising.

Agree? Disagree? Have an opinion? How will this observation impact Facebook as it tries to own the world?

Have a great weekend.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

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