Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World Continued

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START WITH WOW

Create a Compelling Product

There are two critical parts of success: a compelling product (the what) and a significant platform (the who).

David Ogilvy, once wrote, “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.”

Sadly, we don’t often start with a lofty vision. Instead, we are content with mediocrity; we aim low and execute even lower. If you create outstanding products, everything else becomes much easier.

Bake in the Wow

Every wow experience has some combination of the following ten elements:

Surprise. A wow experience always exceeds our expectations. It creates delight, amazement, wonder, or awe.
Anticipation. Anticipating a wow experience is almost as good as the experience itself.
Resonance. A wow experience touches the heart. It resonates at a deep level.
Transcendence. A wow experience connects you to something transcendent. In that moment, you experience purpose, meaning, or even God.
Clarity. A wow experience creates a moment when you see things with more clarity than ever before. You suddenly “get it” in a new way.
Presence. A wow experience creates timelessness. You aren’t thinking about the past. You’re not even thinking about the future.
Universality. A true wow experience is nearly universal. Almost everyone will experience it in a similar way.
Evangelism. A wow experience has to be shared. You can’t contain it.
Longevity. The shine never wears off a wow experience. You can experience it again and again without growing tired of it.
Privilege. A wow experience makes you proud in a good way. You’re glad to be associated with it.

This the foundation to building a significant platform.

Market Expectations

Here’s the bottom line: you must exceed the customer’s current expectations.

How do you make your vision of wow become a reality? This is what separates the great products from the merely good. It is also what sets you up to build a powerful platform.

Beware of the Obstacles

Hyatt notes that there are at least five obstacles to creating wow experiences:

We simply run out of time. The deadline looms. We are scrambling to get the product out the door.
We don’t have enough resources. We’d like to do a better job. We sincerely want to take it to the next level.
We don’t have sufficient experience. We just don’t know how to do what we know needs to be done. Our vision exceeds our know-how.
Too often, we acquiesce to the committee. Perhaps we are a little unsure of ourselves. “Everyone else seems to like it,” we say to ourselves.
But the biggest obstacle of all is fear. In fact, this is the primary obstacle. If we are honest, we must admit that the previous four items are only excuses.

Don’t Settle for Less than Great

You start out with one thing in mind and then, without consciously intending to do so, end up in an entirely different location. It is the power of the drift.

Here are six ways to find the courage you need to make “wow” happen.

Take a stand for greatness. Like many important things in life, creating a wow experience begins with making a commitment.
Connect with the original vision. King Solomon once said, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” This is also true for wow.
Remind yourself what is at stake. I have found that the best way to do this is to ask, “Why is this so important?” When I was writing my first book, I had a list of seven reasons why I needed to write the book.
Listen to your heart. Most of us have spent a lifetime ignoring—or even suppressing—our intuition.
Speak up. This is the crucial step. You must give voice to your heart and go on the record to defend your wow ideas.
Be stubborn. This is perhaps the toughest part of all. We all want to be liked.

But if you want to create truly wow experiences— and if you want to build your platform—then it is going to require courage. Are you willing to be brave?

Give Your Product a Memorable Name

Coming up with compelling names for products, services, blogs, and blog headlines is arduous, time-consuming work. Yet nothing in the marketing mix is more important than a strong title. The most important component for anything you offer is the title.

Great titles are PINC (pronounced “pink”). They do at least one of the following: make a promise, create intrigue, identify a need, or simply state the content.

The bottom line is the right title for your product, service, website, or blog can make you or break you.

Wrap the Wow in Style

While people shouldn’t judge a book or any other product by its cover, they do. This is why it is so critical that you spend the time and money to get the packaging on your product right.

Here are ten tips for developing eye-popping packaging and thus increasing your chances of sales success:

Know your audience. It’s not about you. It’s about your audience. What would they find compelling?
Consider your brand. You have to strike a balance between reaching your audience and representing who you are—or want to become.
Review the best-seller lists. What seems to be working? Review the top one hundred products and take notes.
Make the investment necessary. You won’t get a second chance to make a first impression.
Don’t provide too much direction—at least initially. Don’t limit the imagination of your designers.
Insist on several comps. Tell designers up front that you will want to see several comps (short for “comprehensive layouts”). You want to be able to pick and choose from various alternatives.
Be careful with design metaphors. By this I mean the illustration or photo you use to represent your message or story.
Don’t let the design get in the way. Hyatt’s favorite designs are those that are simple and elegant.
Evaluate the packaging in context. Once you are close to a final design, you need to evaluate it in the various merchandising environments in which your product will appear. For example, will the packaging “pop” on a shelf with similar items?
Ask your fans. If you already have a blog, Twitter, or Facebook following, you can test various design options with your best prospects—the people who already want to hear what you have to say. You can use a service like SurveyMonkey1 to display cover options and then let your fans vote.

A compelling product plus a significant platform equals a big win for you.

PREPARE TO LAUNCH

Accept Personal Responsibility

Are you prepared to take full personal responsibility for building your own platform? Here are four primary reasons you should:

No one knows your product better than you do. Even if you are fortunate enough to have a company that markets your products, or you can afford to hire a marketing firm, they will never have the nuts-and-bolts knowledge of your product or service that you do.
No one is more passionate about your product than you are. Do you really think anyone could care about your offering more than you?
No one has more skin in the game than you do.
No one is likely to do it if you don’t.

Think Bigger . . . No, Bigger!

Hyatt explained, “On my blog I wrote once about how the mind-set of successful creatives—authors, speakers, musicians, and so on—differ from less successful ones. I listed thinking big as the number one characteristic.”

Here are seven steps to thinking big:

Imagine the possibilities. Give yourself permission to dream.
Write down your dream. This is the act that transforms a dream into a goal. Wonderful things happen when you commit something to writing.
Connect with what is at stake. This is your rationale. Unfortunately, it is a crucial step that people often omit. Before you can find your way, you must discover your why.
Outline what would have to be true. Rather than merely asking how to get from where you are to where you want to go (strategy), ask what would have to be true for your dream to become a reality.
Decide what you can do to affect the outcome. This is where you transition from the big picture to daily actions. You will never see the full path. The important thing is to do the next right thing.
Determine when this will happen. Someone once said a goal is simply a dream with a deadline.
Review your goals daily. Hyatt notes, “When I was writing my first book, I reviewed my goals daily. I prayed over them. I determined what I needed to do today to make them a reality.”

Define Your Platform Goals

Here are five reasons you should commit your platform goals to writing:

Because it will force you to clarify what you want.
Because it will motivate you to take action. Writing your platform goals down is only the beginning. You must execute on your goals. You have to take action.
Because it will provide a filter for other opportunities. The more successful you become, the more you will be deluged with opportunities.
Because it will help you overcome resistance. Every meaningful intention encounters resistance. From the moment you set a goal, you will begin to feel it.
Because it will enable you to see—and celebrate—your progress. Life is hard when you aren’t seeing progress.

Create an Elevator Pitch

An Elevator Pitch is a short summary of your product offering, including your target market (the people most likely to become your customers) and your value proposition (what you have to offer those customers). It should be delivered in approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.

Most people’s focused attention span—the kind that is a short-term response to stimulus—is very brief, with a maximum span, without any lapse at all, as short as eight seconds. When you don’t have an exciting and concise elevator speech, you will fail to connect with your potential customers and you will lose business.

People with successful platforms have often spent hours honing and practicing their elevator pitches.

Why do you need an elevator pitch?

It forces you to achieve clarity yourself. You simply must be able to succinctly state what your product does, what your service provides, or what your seminar teaches.
It helps you understand your customers’ perspective. If you are going to connect with your potential customers, you must see your offering from their perspective.
It provides a tool for enrolling strategic partners. In order to be successful in launching anything significant, you need help. You can’t do it all yourself.

An elevator pitch for an information product should consist of four components:

Your product name and category
The problem you are attempting to solve
Your proposed solution
The key benefit of your solution

Set Up Your Branding Tools

Here are five basic personal branding tools:

E-mail Address.
E-mail Signature. Your e-mail signature is an opportunity to create another branding impression.
Business Cards. This is another way to create a powerful branding impression and also pass along important information.
Website. This is undoubtedly the single most important branding tool you can have.
Social Media Profiles. Once you have a look for your blog or web page, incorporate as many elements of the theme as you can into your social media profiles.

These five tools can go a long way toward creating a positive first or second impression. Don’t think of them in isolation, but rather as part of your overall brand-management and platform-building program.

Assemble Your Pit Crew

Literary Agent. This is a must-have for authors. You generally can’t get in the publishing door without one. Why? Because traditional publishers use agents as filters to separate the wheat from the chaff. It also provides the clout you need in the contract negotiation process.
Booking Agent. This is a must-have for speakers or other entertainers. A good booking agent can give you access to event planners you wouldn’t have otherwise. He can generally get you a higher fee than you would on your own.
Publicity Agent. Regardless of whether you are an author, comedian, speaker, or some other kind of creative, you will likely need a publicist at some point. This is especially true when you are launching a new product.

If you are serious about getting your work out, you need to begin building a pit crew. Why? Because it provides three benefits:

1. Access to contacts you don’t have.

2. Leverage that maximizes your impact.

3. Freedom to focus on what you do best.

Secure Raving Endorsements

You must try to get endorsements for every product or service you create. How do you get endorsements? Here are five steps:

Create a great product. People who matter are not going to endorse a mediocre product. You must be committed to excellence. (Note: Hyatt did not say perfection. You do the best you can, then launch.)
Make a prospect list.
Leverage one endorsement for more.
Ask for the endorsement. Hyatt always asks for speaking endorsements (and he always asks for them) right after the engagement, while it is fresh on their minds and before they get too distracted with everything else.
Provide guidance, samples, and a deadline.

Bottom line: endorsements can make a huge difference in whether or not your product gets noticed by the gatekeepers, trendsetters, and your target market. Take the time to get them. It is worth it.

Get a Great Head Shot

Here are nine suggestions:

Hire a professional.
Negotiate for all rights. You don’t want to pay a licensing fee every time you use the photo in a different context.
Don’t shoot in a studio.
Wear something appropriate.
Take lots of photos.
Look into the lens. You want to make a personal connection.
Smile—with your whole face. A natural smile with your mouth and your eyes. You want to look likable. This is more important than looking professional.
Crop the photo tightly. Ask the photographer to blur the background slightly
Pick one main photo. Use this on your products, on your website, and as an avatar on all your social media profiles. Get your head shots redone every few years.

Develop an Online Media Kit

Include the following eight components:

Headline.
Navigation. Provide a table of contents.
Contact Information. Make it easy on the media, event planners, and your fans. Also provide links to your social media profiles, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.
Product Information. Provide all the basic product information in one place. Don’t make your readers hunt. Product formats. Product photos. Provide more than one photo, preferably from different angles and in 3-D. Hyatt uses a program called Box Shot 3D. Provide a short product teaser (one hundred words) and a longer one (three to five hundred words). Provide several head shots of yourself, in several sizes that include formal, casual, and action shots.
Promotion Information. Live appearances (e.g., speaking events, concerts, presentations) and media appearances (e.g., radio, television, live online chat, blog tour) will be relevant to both professionals and fans. Provide a list of your upcoming speaking or concert dates.
Interviewer Resources. You want to make it easy for producers to book you, so provide bio talking points. This is similar to your bio, but in a talking points format instead of a narrative. Ninety-five percent of interviewers have probably not used your product or read your book or heard you speak. Again, in the spirit of making it easy for producers to book you, provide a list of interview topics and angles. Also, provide sample interview questions. This is the single most important thing you can do to get more, high-quality interviews. Develop a list of seven to ten interview questions. This allows both you and the interviewer to look smart.
Fan Resources. It’s great to have fans. It is even better to turn fans into evangelists. Provide Twitter post samples. Make it easy. Give your followers ten to thirty sample tweets. Suggest a hashtag. Banner ads. Commission the design of banner ads that your fans can put on their own blogs or websites. These are cheaper than you think. Just search Google for “cheap banner ad design.”
Media Reactions. This is basically a “wall of fame.” Include your best product reviews, customer reviews, Twitter comments, and Facebook comments.

BUILD YOUR HOME BASE

Understand the Model

Chris Brogan (coauthor of Trust Agents and a columnist with Entrepreneur magazine) once gave a lecture in New York on social media when he introduced the concept of a “simple presence framework.” Several months later, Jon Dale, a consultant to Thomas Nelson, where Hyatt was CEO at the time, introduced a similar concept. He called it a “social media framework.”

A good social media strategy has three components.

A Home Base. This is a digital property you own and control. It is where your loyal fans gather. It can be as simple as a blog or a web-site or as complex as a self-hosted community.
Embassies. These are places you don’t own, but where you have a registered profile. Examples include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or even other blogs you follow.
Outposts. These are places you don’t own nor do you have a regular presence.

Focus Your Efforts Online

For an online strategy to work, you need to create a site that makes people want to come back for more—and bring a few of their friends with them.

Beware of Self-Proclaimed Social Media Experts

Use these three rules:

Make sure the expert’s claims are backed up by his numbers.
Make sure he has been where you want to go.
Make sure he knows how to replicate his success.

Start a Blog (or Restart One)

Use these eight steps:

Determine a theme. This is not your design theme, but your content. Before you begin, ask yourself these two vital questions: Can you generate high-quality content on a regular basis? Will your content attract a loyal and growing audience?
Select a service. Hyatt uses WordPress.org (the self-hosted version).
Set up your blog. Most of the blogging services make this a very simple process. Determine the colors, number of columns, and the overall look and feel of your blog.
Write your first post. If you haven’t done a lot of writing, this may prove to be the most difficult part. Keep your posts short if you don’t have a lot of experience (less than five hundred words). Develop momentum.
Consider using an off-line blogging client.
Add the bells and whistles.
Publicize your blog.
Write regularly.

Setting up a blog is the easy part; actual blogging is the hard part.

While Facebook and Twitter can be effective in driving people to your blog, it is your blog itself with which you will primarily build your platform. Take it seriously, and it will serve you well!

Create the Content Yourself

Social media only works well if the communication is personal, authentic, and near immediate. All of this requires your personal participation. You can’t hire it done.

Use a Blog Post Template

Hyatt’s blog post template consists of five components:

Lead Paragraph. This is key. If you take too long on the windup, you will lose readers.
Relevant Image. 90 percent of mine from iStockPhoto.com.
Personal Experience. Hyatt always shares a personal experience. The more honest and transparent you can be, the better.
Main Body. Everything to this point has been an introduction.
Discussion Question. For the past few years, Hyatt has ended every post with a question.

Here are the overall rules Hyatt follows when writing his posts:

Make the posts short. Aim for five hundred words.
Use short paragraphs. Try to stick to three to four sentences per paragraph.
Keep sentences short.
Use simple words.
Provide internal links. You can’t say everything in one post, so link to other posts where you have developed a thought in more detail.

Maintain a List of Post Ideas

You need idea starters. Here are thirteen of them:

Tell a personal story. This almost always works, because you harness the power of your own personal narrative.
Describe a historical event.
Review a book, movie, or software program.
Comment on a powerful quote.
Let a great photograph inspire you. Behind every great photo is a story.
Comment on something in the news. This can be something global or something that is specific to your industry.
Report on an interesting conversation.
Provide a step-by-step explanation for how to do something. When you provide five steps to this, or four strategies for that, people gobble it up.
Provide a list of resources.
Answer your readers’ questions.
Make a seemingly overwhelming task simple.
Explain the rationale behind a decision. Intelligent people want to know why you do what you do.
Write a guide to something popular.

Write Posts Faster

Eleven tricks Hyatt uses to write more efficiently include:

Start the night before.
Use downtime to think.
Go off-line.
Turn on some music.
Set a timer.
Use a template. Hyatt starts with an Evernote template and then actually does the writing in ByWord,
Create an outline.
Write without editing.
Now edit and format. Once you have a first draft, begin the editing process.
Add graphics, links, and metadata.
Publish a draft.

Don’t Hire a Proofreader

Should you hire someone to proofread your blog posts? Hyatt does not think so for the following reasons:

It will delay “shipping.”
Blogs are not books.
Even proofreaders don’t catch every typo.

A better approach is to stay focused on your writing and your output. Churn out the posts. The more you write, the better you will get.

Protect Your Intellectual Property

If you are successful as a blogger, people are going to steal your content, otherwise known as intellectual property. Protect your intellectual property online.

Understand copyright law. Your post is protected from the moment you create it.

Avoid Common Blogging Mistakes

Top ten traffic killers:

You don’t post often enough. There is a direct correlation between frequency and traffic. The more you post—within reason—the greater your traffic.
You post too often. Yes, this is possible too. People don’t need to hear from anyone more than once a day.
Your post is too long. Seth Godin is the master of the short, pithy post. His are usually in the two- to four-hundred-word range. Hyatt shoots for less than five hundred words.
You don’t invite engagement. When Hyatt talks about engagement, he is referring to a combination of page views, reader comments, and social media mentions.
You don’t participate in the conversation.
You don’t make your content accessible.
You don’t create catchy headlines. According to Brian Clark, who runs the must-read site CopyBlogger, “on average, eight out of ten people will read headline copy, but only two out of ten will read the rest.” This means your headlines are the most important thing you write.
Your first paragraph is weak. This is critical.
Your post is off-brand. Hyatt narrows his focus to four areas: leadership, productivity, social media, and publishing.
Your post is about you. Unless you are a mega-celebrity, readers don’t care about you.

Create a Better About Page

To Hyatt’s surprise, his “About” page is always among the top ten most visited pages. Here are some suggestions:

Write in the first person. Blogs are personal; make your About page personal.
Write in a conversational style. People should get a sense of your “voice.”
Start with the reader’s priorities. Most About pages are written upside down. By this, Hyatt means that the blogger starts with his or her bio, moves on to personal interests, and then (sometimes) gets to what may interest the reader.
Tell them about yourself. This is the first thing a reader wants to know.
Tell them about your blog. What is your blog about? Try to narrow it down to a theme. For example, Hyatt’s theme is intentional leadership.
Set their expectations. Tell them how often you post.
Invite them to subscribe. In my opinion, this is the most important call to action.
Point them to your top posts. This is an opportunity to invite them to “sample the brew.” Draw them further into your content.
Provide a full biography. Some of your readers will be more interested in your full bio. This is the place to provide it.
Tell them how to contact you. Why hide this? Make it easy.
Include a photo or video.
Add a colophon. Publishers used to add these at the end of books to describe details about the fonts and paper used. You can use it to describe the technologies you are using in your blog (e.g., blogging system, themes, hosting service, and so on), along with design notes about type fonts, photography, and anything else you deem noteworthy.
Consider a disclaimer. This is especially important if you work for someone else. You don’t want your readers to confuse your blog posts with your company or organization’s official position.
Finally, you must keep your About page current. Hyatt updates his about every three months or so.

Develop Your Landing Pages

If you are launching a new product, service, or cause, you need a landing page that delivers results. This is essential if you are going to convert readers to customers and, from there, to tribe members.

Build a Speaking Page

Consider public speaking as part of building your platform. Here are nine action items to create an effective public speaker’s landing page.

Decide on a call to action. In other words, what do you want the reader to do after reviewing your page? Hyatt used to invite readers to book him (as in “call my booking agents and schedule me for your event”). Following the lead of some other speakers, he now invites them to check his availability.
Create a one-minute welcome video. Don’t make this complicated. Hyatt and his wife, Gail, shot his in his study at home.
Provide an overview of the page. Arrange the sections in the order that make the most sense to you. What You Can Expect; A Little Bit About Me; My Video Clips; My Most Requested Topics; What Others Are Saying; My Upcoming Engagements; and My Previous Engagements. The Next Step: Create a list of the subheads and then hyperlink them to the actual sections.
Write a specialized biography. Start with your speaking experience. Next present your credentials, including your career history and the scope of your social media platform.
Assemble a collection of video clips. This may be the most important section. Event sponsors want to know how you come across in front of a live audience.
Compile a list of your most requested topics.
Collect endorsements from previous sponsors. As a matter of procedure, always ask sponsors to provide an endorsement immediately after you speak.
Insert a calendar of upcoming events. As a speaker, the busier your calendar is the better.
Include a picture of you speaking.

Forget About Metrics (for Now)

In the past, Hyatt has pointed out that he blogs for five reasons:

1) to raise his organization’s visibility;

2) to articulate his organization’s vision;

3) to network with people who can help him;

4) to be alert to what his constituents are saying; and

5) to mentor the next generation of leaders.

But the more he has thought about it, Hyatt concluded these are really the benefits of blogging, not the reasons. The reality is, he blogs in order to clarify his thinking and archive his best ideas. In short, Hyatt says, “I blog for me.”

If you are writing, you are achieving greater clarity about your life, your work, and what matters most. That’s enough. And more than most people have.

EXPAND YOUR REACH

Kiss Marketing Good-Bye

Marketing is no longer about shouting in a crowded marketplace; it is about participating in a dialogue with fellow travelers. Marketing is no longer about generating transactions; it is about building relationships.

In his groundbreaking book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Seth Godin defines a tribe as “a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.” Godin says that a tribe only has two requirements: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

How do you build a tribe? Here are four ways:

Discover your passion. Marketing is the act of sharing what you are passionate about. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Volunteer to lead. This is everything. Without a leader, you don’t have a tribe. You only have a crowd.
Be generous. The old marketing was about taking from people. As it turns out, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” is a brilliant marketing strategy. When you lead by serving and by giving, people follow.
Provide a way to communicate. People need a way to communicate. They need a way to share their stories.

Generate More Blog Traffic

Consider what actions you can take to significantly grow your blog traffic. Hyatt came up with a list of four:

Increase blogging frequency.
Write shorter posts, shorter paragraphs, and shorter sentences. This came from a post at CopyBlogger called “Shorter Is Better.”
Improve your SEO metadata. Hyatt started using Scribe, a WordPress plug–in that analyzes your posts and gives you a score, based on how Google will rank it.
Become more engaged in comments. Hyatt changed his commenting system from native WordPress to Disqus.

Finally, be patient. Building traffic takes time. Like anything else, the ones who win are the ones who stay at it after everyone else has quit.

Build Your Subscriber List

You need to concentrate on growing your subscriber list. Why? Because this list represents your hard-core followers—the ones who are most likely to recruit other readers. Strategies Hyatt used to grow his e-mail subscriber list included:

Generate content worth reading.
Use a dedicated list subscription system.
Make your sign-up form highly visible. At the very least, it should be “above the fold” (on the upper half of the page) preferably in the right-hand sidebar.
Offer an incentive for subscribing.
Insert a sign-up form at the bottom of each post. This serves as a reminder once they have finished reading the post.

Promote Your Older Posts

To give your older posts new life:

Identify your most popular posts. You can use your blogging software’s statistics feature or Google Analytics.
Make sure each post is still relevant. Quickly review each post.
Move your post date to the bottom of the post. Sadly, many readers will dismiss something as irrelevant just because you wrote it last year.
Write a Twitter post for each blog post.
Include your top ten blog posts on your About page.
Create a sidebar list of your most popular posts.

Write Guest Posts

Blogging is communal, and those who participate in the community win. If the blogger is local (or a traveler), try meeting up with him for coffee. The best blogging relationships are birthed out of relationship. The most elite bloggers on the Internet have grown their blog readerships through this simple, but effective strategy of guest posting. And you can grow your blog by doing the same.

Give Stuff Away

Ten quick idea starters to make free work for you:

Offer free samples of your product to potential customers.
Offer an e-book or special report in exchange for newsletter subscriptions. HubSpot is a master at this.
Offer a free copy of your product to bloggers in exchange for an honest review on their blog.
Offer multiple free copies of your product to bigger bloggers.
Offer your time for free to people who buy various quantities of your products.
Offer a free copy of the product in another format to customers who buy in your main format.
Offer a free ticket to anyone who gets two of his friends to buy a ticket.
Offer free bonuses (e.g., workbook, group discussion guide, video course) to anyone who buys your main product.
Offer a free membership in your paid forum or club to anyone who buys your main product.
Offer a free seminar or performance and then sell your products at the event.

Watch These Metrics

In order to get accurate blog stats, you should sign up for a free Google Analytics. Six stats that most people fluent in social media deem relevant:

Unique Visitors per Month. This is the number of unique individuals who have visited your blog in the last thirty days.
Page Views per Month. This is the number of pages on your site that visitors have viewed in the last month.
Percent Change in the Last Twelve Months.
Average Number of Comments per Post. Not all commenting systems keep track of this stat.
Total Number of Blog Subscribers.
Total Number of Twitter Followers or Facebook Fans.

Embrace Twitter

Tweeting requires very little time. For starters, you can only enter 140 characters at a time. Since Twitter only allows you to post 140 characters at a time, you are forced to be concise.

When Hyatt began tweeting, he noticed a 30 percent uptick in his blog traffic in thirty days.

Twitter can help build your personal brand. When people hear your name, what comes to mind?

Understand Twitter Basics

For all practical purposes, privacy is dead. Via Google, people can find out more about you in ten minutes than was possible in a lifetime ten years ago. You might as well intelligently feed the Google search engines with what you want people to know about you. You need to be smart about it, but you are in control.

Devote Thirty Minutes a Day

Twitter offers an unparalleled opportunity for brand building, social networking, and customer engagement. The key is to be intentional and not allow it to become a huge time suck.

Get More Twitter Followers

Why would you want more followers? Three reasons:

More followers provide social authority. Like any other ranking system, the higher your follower count, the more people assume you are an expert—or at least someone interesting.
More followers extend your influence.
More followers lead to more sales. You’re likely on Twitter for one of three reasons: to be entertained, to network with others, or to sell your stuff.

Attracting followers will take time and effort.

Hyatt has built his follower count to more than 115,000 followers in three and a half years.

Show your face. Make sure you have uploaded a photo to your Twitter profile.
Create an interesting bio.
Use a custom About page. Consider creating a custom About page on your blog and linking to it from your short Twitter bio. Then, when a prospective follower clicks on that link, he or she will find a page you have created just for Twitter users.
Make your Twitter presence visible.
Share valuable content. This is probably my most important piece of advice.
Post frequently, but don’t flood your followers.
Keep your posts short enough to retweet. Retweets are the only way to get noticed by people who don’t follow you.
Practice strategic following. Follow people in your industry, people who use certain keywords in their bio, or even people who follow the people you follow.
Be generous in linking and retweeting others. Twitter fosters a culture of sharing.
Avoid too much promotion.
Don’t use an auto-responder.

Like most things in life, slow and steady wins the race. Don’t underestimate the power of incremental growth over time. Hyatt didn’t build his following overnight and neither will you.

Keep from Getting Unfollowed

Seven mistakes to avoid:

Using a Difficult-to-Remember User Name. A real name communicates authenticity and accessibility.
Posting More than 120 Characters.
Tweeting Too Little—or Too Much. Be wise and develop a strategy and be intentional about the number of messages you post.
Asking for More than You Give.
Posting when You Are Frustrated or Angry. Twitter is so immediate it is easy to post something in a moment of frustration that you later regret.
Not Creating a Good Profile Page. Your profile page is the first thing potential followers check. I even link to a custom About page on my blog that acknowledges the reader got there via Twitter and goes into more depth for those who are interested.
Failing to Engage in the Conversation.

Use Twitter to Promote Your Product

Eight ways to ensure you get the full benefit of Twitter for your marketing campaign.

Make sure the product has a title short enough to tweet. One-word titles are perfect
Use a hashtag so you can collect the buzz. A hashtag is used to mark keyword or topics within tweets.
Make sure the product’s Twitter user name is relatively short.
Decide on a landing page. Where do you want to direct your followers for more information?
Use a URL shortener. Hyatt uses bit.ly, but he has mapped a custom domain to it, so he gets the value of branding.
Determine how long your tweet can be. How long can it be? To figure this out, deduct the length of the title, author name, hashtag, and landing page from one hundred forty (the maximum length of a tweet).
Identify a series of tweetable messages.
Automate the delivery of your tweets.

Set Up a Facebook Fan Page

Hyatt created a fan page for everyone else who wants to connect with him. As he notes, “For the record, I dislike the term fan page. It makes me very uncomfortable. Instead, I wish Facebook would use the term public pages for fan pages and private pages for profiles.”

Key lessons: You have to understand the difference between friends, acquaintances, and fans. If you try to be everyone’s friend, you will be no one’s friend. You must be deliberate and selective.

In this crazy world of social media, remain thoughtful and flexible about how you connect online, drawing clear distinctions between public and private.

Employ Consistent Branding

Four elements you want to include on a consistent basis across all platforms:

Your Name.
Your Logo.
An Avatar.
A Branding Statement. This could be a slogan, a sell-line, or even the name of the product or service for which you are known—or would like to be known.

A consistent brand is vital for a strong platform. It’s something Hyatt has worked hard to develop, and it should be one of your top priorities.

Be Prepared for Traditional Media

With his first book, in the course of eighteen months, Hyatt conducted over twelve hundred interviews. Ten tips for improving your interview skills:

Prepare thoroughly for the interview.
Remember that the show is not about you, it’s about the audience. Your job is to keep them interested in the topic, so they don’t change the dial.
Understand the audience. You can’t help the audience get what they want unless you understand them.
Don’t expect the interviewer to have done his homework. Make the host look smart by providing the producer with a list of questions to ask. Nine times out of ten, you will be asked these exact questions. That has the bonus of making you look smart too!
Be able to explain what you have to offer in a few sentences. Many people cannot do this. They have never crafted an elevator pitch.
Listen carefully to the questions.
Keep your answers brief and to the point.
Be energetic and authentic. From the interviewer’s perspective, there is nothing worse than a low-energy, superficial interview.
Don’t become defensive. Don’t expect the interviewer to throw you softballs.
Refer listeners back to your offering.

Creating your wow offering is half the job. The other half is embracing your role as the chief spokesperson. If you do this well, you have a chance of creating a long and successful career.

ENGAGE YOUR TRIBE

Get More Blog Comments

Seven strategies Hyatt has found helpful:

End your posts with a question.
Use a threaded comment system. This allows your readers to comment in-line and reply to other readers. Hyatt’s blog uses Disqus for this.
Display your comment count prominently.
Make it easy to comment. Yes, comment spam is a problem. But most modern blog systems catch this without making it difficult for your readers to comment. (If you are using WordPress, you can simply install the Akismet plugin.)
Participate in the conversation.
Reward your best commenters. You can list your top commenters in your sidebar and recognize them publicly.
Don’t overreact to criticism.

Don’t Respond to Every Comment

A blog conversation is like a dinner party. As the host, you don’t have to respond to every comment. In fact, at a real dinner party, it would seem downright weird. It would draw too much attention to you.

You should be present and add value as appropriate.

Though this isn’t scientific, Hyatt tends to respond to about 20 percent. You may want to do more or less. Hyatt explains, “For me—for right now—this seems about right.”

Keep the Conversations Civil

How do you keep the conversation on your blog healthy and constructive? How do you make it safe for people to disagree without becoming disagreeable? Here are five tips:

Use an industrial-strength spam blocker, like Akismet.
Create an official comments policy.
Participate in the conversation. This is the most important tip. It’s your party; people expect you to participate.
Make your own comments stand out. Hyatt highlights his own comments in a different color. This is easy to do if you are using self-hosted WordPress.
Be consistent with enforcement.

Develop a Comments Policy

Hyatt’s Comments Policy is as follows:

“As you know, Web 2.0 is all about the conversation. But without a few simple ground rules, that conversation can turn into a shouting match that discourages others from entering into the fray. So here is my comments policy. By posting on my blog, you agree to the following:

You may comment without registering. You can log in via Disqus, OpenID, Twitter, Facebook—or not at all. It’s up to you.
You may post anonymously. I don’t recommend this, but you may do so if you wish. I may change this rule if it is abused.
You may post follow-up questions. If you have a question, chances are you are not alone. Others are likely thinking similarly. Therefore, I would rather receive your comments on my blog than via e-mail. It is a better use of my time to address everyone at once rather than answer several similar e-mails.
You may disagree with me. I welcome debate. However, I ask that if you disagree with me—or anyone else, for that matter— do so in a way that is respectful. In my opinion, there is way too much shouting in the public square to tolerate it here.
I reserve the right to delete your comments. This is my blog. I don’t have an obligation to publish your comments. The First Amendment gives you the right to express your opinions on your blog, not mine. Specifically, I will delete your comments if you post something that is, in my sole opinion, (a) snarky; (b) off-topic; (c) libelous, defamatory, abusive, harassing, threatening, profane, pornographic, offensive, false, misleading, or which otherwise violates or encourages others to violate my sense of decorum and civility or any law, including intellectual property laws; or (d) “spam,” i.e., an attempt to advertise, solicit, or otherwise promote goods and services. You may, however, post a link to your site or your most recent blog post.
You retain ownership of your comments. I do not own them and I expressly disclaim any and all liability that may result from them. By commenting on my site, you agree that you retain all ownership rights in what you post here and that you will relieve me from any and all liability that may result from those postings.
You grant me a license to post your comments. This license is worldwide, irrevocable, nonexclusive, and royalty free. You grant me the right to store, use, transmit, display, publish, reproduce, and distribute your comments in any format, including but not limited to a blog, in a book, a video, or presentation.

In short, my goal is to host interesting conversations with caring, honest, and respectful people. I believe this simple comment policy will facilitate this.”

Practice the 20-to-1 Rule

Social media rewards generosity, other-centeredness, and helpfulness.

The 20-to-1 rule represents a ratio. It means that you have to make twenty relational deposits for every marketing withdrawal.

If you just keep asking people to do something—buy your book, come to your conference, sign up for your cause—without making adequate deposits, they will begin ignoring you.

Monitor Your Brand

Here are the specific actions that you, as an individual or organization, can take to monitor your brand online:

Sign up for Google Alerts. It’s fast and super easy. Best of all, it’s free. Once you do so, you can enter the names of those you want to monitor. Start with your personal name and its variations.
Use Twitter search.
Engage in the conversation. If someone says something positive, you may want to thank him. If someone says something negative, you definitely want to respond.
Solve the problem. You will get some credit for listening.

Defend Your Brand

Seven suggestions for defending your brand in the digital age:

Build an online presence.
Monitor the conversation. You must use online tools to monitor what is being said about your company and your brands.
Respond quickly to criticism. Like the old ad says, “Speed kills.” If you don’t respond quickly, you lose control of the conversation.
Admit your mistakes. Why is this so difficult? When you mess up, the only acceptable response is to take full ownership.
Understand the lifetime value of the customer. Hyatt first heard this concept in Carl Sewell’s excellent book Customers for Life.
Empower your employees—or yourself—to solve problems. Be willing to spend whatever time and/or money necessary (within reason) to rectify a problem.
Exceed your customers’ expectations. Every customer problem is an opportunity to create a wow experience.

Don’t Feed the Trolls

Let’s be honest: criticism hurts. Distinguish between three types of critics:

True Friends. Not all criticism is bad. Heaven forbid that we should turn a deaf ear to everyone who disagrees with us.
Honest Critics. We need to allow for a diversity of opinion. Besides, you might learn something from it. It enriches the conversation.
Unhealthy Trolls. These people have an agenda. They are out to hurt you—or at least use you for their own ends. They want to lure you into a fight. They taunt and mock you. They are unreasonable. If you engage them, they will only distract you and deplete your resources. The best thing you can do is ignore them. As someone once said, “Resistance only makes them stronger.”

Assume that everyone is a friend or an honest critic until he or she proves otherwise.

Monetize Your Blog

Hyatt makes several thousand dollars a month using a combination of these three methods:

Sell advertising. When his traffic got to about forty thousand page views a month, Hyatt applied to the Beacon Ad Network. It is an online service that manages your ad sales. You can charge whatever you want per ad, but they take a 30 percent commission. They specialize in the Christian marketplace. Their sister-company, BuySellAds.com, handles the general market.
Promote affiliates. Here again, Hyatt started small. He signed up as an Amazon Associate and started using his affiliate code in his links to books and other products.
Sell products.

These methods are just the direct methods you can use to monetize your blog. You can also use your blog to generate leads for speaking, coaching, or consulting services—something Hyatt also does.

Take the First Step

The key is to start. Once you take the first step everything else will take care of itself.