Doug McIsaac

Marketing has changed - Have you changed your marketing?

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There are very few people I know who are as knowledgeable about strategic business planning as Doug McIsaac. He's a very talented, "under the radar" expert who has a natural knack for finding simple strategies to dramatically increase your profits. Doug is my go to guy for innovative Internet Marketing ideas and I think he's crazy for sharing all of his secrets.

Ron Douglas
TrafficSage.com
RecipeSecrets.Net"

 

 

Analysis of an Award Winning Campaign

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A couple of days ago I mentioned that I had worked on award winning direct mail campaigns and had someone PM me asking for the link to prove it. I figured I might as well share a video that I did a couple of years ago about a campaign I did that won a PoDi award and more importantly  had a 37.07% response rate and well over a 25x return per dollar.

There are some nuggets in this video about proper list selection and the value of a unique multi-channel campaign.

Let me know what you think about the campaign in the comment section

Facebook Rant #2 — The 5,000 Facebook Friends Fallacy

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This is icon for social networking website. Th...
Image via Wikipedia

Aren’t you tired of people using at the number of friends they have on Facebook or followers they have on Twitter to justify their experience or value as a social media “expert”?

Listen, do you really want to know how easy it is to get 5,000 friends on Facebook. Here’s the “secret” that’s been used and is still being touted by some of the so called Facebook gurus:

  1. Send blind friend requests 30-40 people a day. Why is 30 -40 the secret number you ask? It’s because Facebook realized that real people don’t friend 100+ people in a day.  So they will ban your account if you send too many.
  2. 30 – 40% of them will accept your requests.
  3. In 4-6 month’s you’ll have 5,000 friends.
  4. Or if you’re really “smart” you’ll go to Odesk or Elance and hire someone for $2 an hour to do it for you. You figure 1-2 hours a day for 180 days $320 – $640 to make yourself an expert.

Wow wasn’t that easy.

Here’s the deal, social media is not about the number of connections it’s about the quality of those connections. Now let me explain the dos and don’ts of friend requests.

Don’t send Blind Friend Requests

A blind friend request is any friend request sent without a reason why you are want to be their friend. I have 59 friend requests waiting right. 50 of them are blind friend requests. Several of those friend requests are from people who have social media consultant, strategist or expert in their profile…really. Is this what they teach their clients? The friend request is your first impression and we never get a chance to make another first impression.

Do send real Friend Requests

When you send a friend request you should take the time to explain why you want to be connected. If you aren’t willing to take 30 seconds to say why you want to be connected then you obviously don’t care about the connection.

When I send a friend request it’s because I met someone in person or read a good comment or post of there’s. There is usually a reason, you should have a reason as well. You should tell them the reason in the friend request:

“Dave it was nice meeting you, I look forward working together in the future…”

“Becky I couldn’t agree more on your comment on Jonathan’s post today. I think you’re someone I need to follow.”

Here’s a great friend request from Nancy Bain. Nancy “gets it” She listens, she learns and she passes her knowledge on to her clients. She’s someone worth paying attention to as well.

Nancy Bain

Nancy’s request was sent after a webinar I did with my friend and business partner Jonathan Rivera, the Real-TechGuy. She had a reason to listen to me and she told me what that was. That’s how a friend request should be sent.

Facebook Rant #1 – Facebook Profiles aren’t for Businesses

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Epic Fail

Facebook profiles are for people and pages are for businesses, organizations etc. Does that mean someone can’t say what they do on their profile. Of course not, but what it does mean is that you shouldn’t have several profiles for different businesses or different aspects of your business you need to have business pages set up.  I’ll address dos and don’ts of using your profile to build your online presence without being spammy or breaking Facebook’s Terms of Service in another post.

I see people making the profile mistake all of the time. It’s an amateur mistake and I can understand a person who’s learning Facebook and just trying to get something started making that it. BUT when I see people who are touting themselves as marketing or social media experts building profiles for people it frankly just pisses me off.  This is 101 stuff that no one who’s been doing business on Facebook should be doing.

Why is it a bad idea? Because it’s against Facebook’s Terms of Service. Right, I know, they let you build the profile with a business name. Yes, you managed to slip it through. Yes, you’ve built up a couple of hundred or maybe even a couple of thousand friends.  But that still doesn’t make it a good idea. It’s kind of like speeding or driving without insurance or cheating on your taxes. Yes you haven’t been caught, but sooner or later…you will.

Here’s the info from FB:

Profiles represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook. You may only create Facebook Pages to represent real organizations of which you are an authorized representative.

In addition, Pages are managed by admins who have personal Facebook profiles. Pages are not separate Facebook accounts and do not have separate login information from your profile. They are merely different entities on our site, similar to how Groups and Events function. Once you have set up a Page within your profile, you may add other admins to help you manage this Page. People who choose to connect to your Page won’t be able to see that you are the Page admin or have any access to your personal account.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=904

If you don’t want to have a personal profile you can set up a business account. I don’t recommend them because you can’t add any applications to the page.

Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts. Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests.

Here are the terms and the pieces that you are violating if you have a bus

http://www.facebook.com/terms.php#!/terms.php?ref=pf

Section 3
1. You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.

Section 4
2. You will not create more than one personal profile.

All in all, you can do what you want, but I think it’s foolish to violate the terms of service because sooner or later Facebook will notice and they will delete the accounts that are violating their terms.

Doug

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My Jim Rohn Story

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Jim-rohn-PASSES-AWAYWhen I was at Tony Robbin’s Unleash the Power Within™ seminar in 2002 he talked about Jim Rohn and the effect that he had on his life. For those that don’t know, Tony went to a Jim Rohn seminar when he was 17 and started working for him immediately after that. In Tony’s book’s he talks about being very successful at a young age and then losing it all.

He was successful when he was running an office for Jim, but lost it all when he allowed his ego to get in the way. He ended up destroying his business by allowing himself to go down a negative spiral and chasing away his customers and employees. He ultimately ended up in a little one bedroom apartment feeling sorry for himself until a friend came and drug him out of the house.

After hearing about Jim I went online to see what I could find out about him.  I found his email list and signed up, I bought a couple of his books and cd series and amazingly I found a seminar only a couple of hours away in Big Sky, Montana that he was supposed to be speaking at and the tickets were only $300.  I think the seminar was called, “Secrets of the Mountain.” I immediately signed up and also bought a ticket for my girlfriend. She kept asking me what the seminar was all about and my only answer was Jim Rohn was going to speaking so we needed to go.

The day the weekend seminar was starting we loaded up and headed to Big Sky. When we got there we noticed that the event was at a pretty small guest ranch and it didn’t seem too crowded. As we were getting checked in we chatted with a nice gentleman named Jim, no not that Jim, but he had worked for that Jim. Over the course of several conversations I found out that this was Jim Britt, the guy that pulled Tony Robbins out of his apartment. I was beginning to get impressed with this event.

Then we got checked in and headed down to the first session. That’s when we found out there were only 25-30 people there. Which I thought was going to be pretty cool. Then I found out that there were going to be several speakers over the weekend in addition to Jim. That was fine and to be honest it was one of the best groups of speakers I’ve ever heard.

That night we ended up at dinner sitting across from Jim Rohn and listened to him and Bill Bailey swap stories. My girlfriend was in Mary Kay. Jim and Bill had worked with Mary Kay Ash, I believe when they were all with Earl Schoef so they talked about her for a while. Then they talked about all sorts of things and I just soaked it up. In fact after dinner we sat in the bar and listened to them swap stories for hours. It was really a great time.

Saturday morning we started our sessions and found that Jim was speaking Sunday morning. I wish I could remember all of the speakers names, but I can tell you it was an amazing line up and that it began to seem like my girlfriend and I were the only people who weren’t speaking, but I didn’t care it was great stuff. I took pages and pages of notes and I noticed that Jim Rohn was actively listening, taking notes and learning from every speaker. I see that as one of the hallmarks of his greatness. He didn’t let any opportunity to learn pass him by. He always had his journal and he was always taking notes.

He also spent a great deal of time answering questions that people were peppering him with. He calmly paid attention to everyone and gave everyone the attention that they craved. I learned many lessons from watching him that weekend.

Saturday night was a repeat of Friday with a kicker. My girlfriend had gone into town and grabbed a birthday card for me because it was my birthday. She had all of the people sign it including Jim Rohn and Bill Bailey. It was an amazing gift. We then sat around and swapped stories for hours again.

As a side note by Saturday night I had come to realize that we had lucked out in getting a ticket to this event. The wealth of knowledge at the small event was unbelievable. Most of the crowd were multi-millionaires and many of them were professional public speakers who charged thousands for an appearance. In fact my girlfriend kept asking me how I found the event. It was a blessing.

Sunday morning Jim spoke and I took dozens of pages of notes. His wisdom and delivery were unparalleled. I’ll never forget one of the things he said “This stuff is hard work; listen to what I say, but don’t watch me too close” But I can tell you from watching him over the previous day and a half that you could learn a lot from simply watching Jim “too close.” He was truly a man who walked his talk.

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