After a late night in roaring San Fransisco, I headed over to OMS’s Social Media Summit bright and early for a full-day of social media schooling. The 2-day event kicks-off today and dovetails with another marketing event SES San Francisco August 15-19th. You can watch the @TMMPDX twitter feed for live updates today and tomorrow and by following the conference hashtag – #OMSSF.

Today’s tracks have featured such notable speakers as the  Sr. Social Manager and Chief Blogger for LinkedIn,  Sr. Manager of Product Marketing and Social Media for Adobe  and founder of Socialmediaexaminer.com, Michael Stelzner.

By far the stand-out has been Michael’s presentation on ‘Proven Social Media Strategies to Rapidly Grow Your Business’. As a disclaimer, I have to report that I DID win a signed copy of his new book by asking a question at the end of his talk. BUT…I would have bought a copy! If the book encompasses and expands upon the points he covered, I feel it will have value for any business owner, marketing manager or social media strategist trying to maneuver in a rapidly shifting marketing environment.

As the Founder and Executive Editor of socialmediaexaminer.com, Michael reaches thousands of readers daily and has gained a near celebrity status in the social media space. Starting out as a writer of PDF’s he admits he had no social media chops before 2009. That fact makes the overwhelming success of his website that much more impressive. The sites social media assets have recruited over 30,000 Twitter followers and over 50,000 Facebook fans. Michael currently employees 3 staffers to monitor the Facebook page 24 hours per day ensuring EVERY question gets answered. No small investment but once you read about his core principles, you’ll understand why he’s made that a top priority.

So without further ado and with express permission provided of Mike himself, here are the key insights and inside info from his Kick-ass session. Thanks Mike!

Socialmediaexaminer.com – Proven Social Media Strategies: How to RAPIDLY Grow Your Business by Michael Stelzner

Change, Change, Change – everything is constantly changing. Tactics can become outdated before implementation.

One thing remains fixed: PEOPLE ARE A CONSTANT

They want:

• Great insights
• Access to great people
• Recognition

Keep marketing focused on the needs of the customers – half the battle.

Question:
what’s wrong with marketing?

1) Treating people like fish

Better bait.

2) Can’t predict when people are read to buy

3) Channel overload syndrome – too many messages, people tune out and seek refuge from the storm

4) Do people trust your business?

Trusting companies trumps good products and services

Questions:

• How can I attract quality leads without actively selling?
• How can I access influential people in my industry?
• How to Build trust?

Answer: Focus on People

• Meet the core desires of people by helping them solve their problems AT NO COST
• When you help people with smaller problems, many will look to you for their bigger issues.
• If you can multiply free assistance by hundreds, thousands, etc. you can easily grow business.

GIFTING – Provide a gift to people

Are your GIFTS really marketing messages in disguise?
*don’t be surprised when people don’t engage or reciprocate

GIFTS DO:

• Show appreciation
• Are not earned by recipient
• Have NO strings attached

TRUE GIFTS MAKE YOU VALUABLE TO PEOPLE

The formula:

‘Great content + other people – marketing messages = Growth’ ( I really love this, as it boils down his entire strategy to one simple concept.)

Instead of investing in ad space…Invest in quality content!

Primary Fuel:

• Regularly produced content
• Keeps you moving
• Core to growth
• Draws people to you
• Establishes trust

Nuclear Fuel:

• Harder to produce
• Reports, contests, etc.
• Used less frequently
• Has bigger impact
• Can drive traffic for months, years
• Gets you noticed

Focus outside of your company on OTHERS

• Shine the spotlight on experts, successful peers
• When you lift people up they’ll lift you up

CAGE YOUR MARKETING MESSAGES

• Marketing is friction for your rocket ship
• Slows you down
• The more you try to sell the more you’ll repel people
• Shift from ‘How can we sell you?’ to ‘How can we help you?’

New VS  Old

New – You give gifts, others support you
Old – Pitch and sales messages

Result:

You no longer need the hard sell
You demonstrate your expertise by the content you produce

Glowing example: Hubspot and the free tool websitegrader.com

Hubspot:

• Produce 5-7 ebooks per month that they give away
• 10 webinars per month
• Hubspot TV – interviewing folks over skype
• Inbound marketing certification – totally free

Hubspot on marketing message: ‘it’s like a drop or two for every gallon of content’

Types of content:

COMPREHENSIVE HOW TO ARTICLES

• Pick topics your readers are interested in – survey them
• Include details
• Make readable!!
• Lots of images
• Video
• Bold key points
• Use bullets

Tip: printfriendly.com WIDGET makes it easy to print or save article as PDF file.

EXPERT INTERVIEWS

• Tap the knowledge of pros
• Phone interviews – videos
• Go after experts speaking at local events
• When pros have newer books coming out they’re more open to interviews

Tip: Use Amazon to find new releases – search for a book, scroll down to find ‘HOT NEW RELEASES’.

REVIEWS

• Help your readers make decisions
• Review books, products, events
• Screen capture reviews/videos are popular
• Give your opinion – Star Rating

Tip: ScreenFlow for mac, Camtasia for PC – allows you to easily create a video of your desktop.

CASE STUDIES

• Don’t share success stories of your customers
• Share stories of businesses in your industry
• Format: Problem, Solution, Results

REPORTS BASED ON SURVEYS

• Nuclear fuel
• Survey your readers
• Create a FREE report
• Results are highly viral, SEO strength, long life

Tip: Add a retweet button in the PDF file (Socialmediaexaminer.com shows you how)

TOP 10 CONTESTS

Structure:

• Ask for nominations
• Recruit judges
• Rank sites
• Create custom badges for winners

FINAL THOUGHT:  PUT AWAY THE MARKETING MESSAGE

REMEMBER:

People want access to great insights, great people, and recognition MORE than great products!