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Part 2: Linkedin publishing with Mark Williams Should you be giving your valuable content to Linkedin or not? After revealing how to generate leads on Linkedin on the first in this Linkedin series, Mark Williams (AKA Mr Linkedin) is back to talk through the benefits and pitfalls of Linkedin Posts. And how to publish for maximum impact. Watch The Video Audio PDF Transcript Listen or Download the audio : Click button below to download PDF Transcript: Download PDF Transcript Access Part 1: How to Generate Leads on Linkedin (Includes Genius Little Tool Preview)Access Part 3: How To Post Super Engaging Linkedin Updates Check out these 5 Free Tools to help you get more impact with your audience Read The Transcript Kenny: Welcome to this second show in the LinkedIn series with Mark Williams, where we’re going to be looking at published posts. Should you be giving your valuable content to LinkedIn or not and what are the benefits of doing that? So again, thank you so much for giving us your valuable time to come in and show us more of your LinkedIn magic. Today, what I’d like to cover is these published posts and any kind of updates that we do on LinkedIn, because I think it’s all a little bit different to how Facebook works for instance. So welcome to the show, Mark. Mark: Thank you very much. I’m not getting lunch this time, Kenny. I feel like I’ve been a bit hard done by this time. Kenny: You are actually in your house, aren’t you, so I’ll see what I can send over to you. Mark: Yeah. Kenny: Yeah. I know one of your favorites is a bit of gin, so we’ll send you a bottle of gin for all your time helping us out here. Mark: Sounds good, as long as it’s decent gin though. Kenny: Yeah. Mark: Alright, yeah, so publishing, interesting isn’t it? LinkedIn has really kind of had a step change in direction with LinkedIn publishing. They did this a couple of years ago, to be honest. They started with what they call Influences, and if I had a pound or a dollar for every person that asked me how they could become an influence, I’ll be a rich man by now. The answer to that question, in case anybody’s asking, is you can’t I’m afraid, unless you’re somebody very, very famous and considered to be very influential. In the early days, they actually allowed people to apply to be influences and there are a few there who I think probably these days wouldn’t have a chance of getting in. It’s a closed window, unless actually – it’s a small point, but if you speak in French and German, they are opening up the platform to French and German speakers and it may well be that they are at the stage where they are interested in influences whose native tongue is French or German. So it might be a possibility there. But I’m sure a majority of people listed to this are English-speaking ,in which case, you haven’t got a hope unless you’re someone like Sir Alex Ferguson who recently just become an influence around LinkedIn. Kenny: Fantastic. Who’s this chap with the arrow on his head, by the way? Mark: On my screen, he hasn’t got an arrow on his head actually. Is it my mouse or something? Kenny: We can see your mouse. We’re supposed to be on publishing now. Mark: Is it right? Okay, I’ll move it right off. I can’t see that on my end. It’s not a tattoo on his head or anything. This is just a random example, to be honest with you, but I like to show it to people because people have this perception that to be a publisher on LinkedIn, then either you have to be a bona fide author or proper, professional blogger, or an influencer. You don’t. And also, the other thing about this is that the biggest excuse people give me about publishing is that, I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time to start writing massive, long articles and all that stuff. I’ve got a job to do. I’m sorry, but there are plenty of people out there with pretty big, busy jobs, who are managing to do it and they do it because they realize that it’s a very important medium and a real opportunity to reach a wider audience than perhaps you would be able to any either way. What I’ve been absolutely gobsmacked about with publishing is the take-off. There’s over a million people now actually publishing their own blogs, in effect, on LinkedIn. That’s just amazing and what they’ve really done, I think, is made blogging something that people like this who work in big corporates can do. People like that have never really blogged or just the old one here and there. But it’s mainly people like us, isn’t it, business owners looking to get their message out there, builds a following and the rest of it. Whereas now LinkedIn is saying, hold on a second, anybody can blog and you can do it on the world’s largest business networking platform so that you’ve got the potential for a massive audience. It’s just interesting how that has changed and how many people have taken up on it. People and possibly the audience here, you might be thinking, I already blog and why would I want to do it on LinkedIn? That’s what I really want to cover in this particular episode because I think that’s an interesting challenge, because we can see people in corporates doing it. Should we be doing it ourselves? Is it a relevant medium for us to be getting our message out there? The answer to that, I think obviously, is yes. But I want to go into a bit more detail as to why I think it’s a yes and go through the advantages, and also the disadvantages of putting your material, your content out on LinkedIn via a published post or indeed a status update, which I will come onto as well. Kenny: Great stuff. I will interject with a few questions, if that’s okay. Mark: Yeah, if you can stop me. Good luck. Kenny: Stop you rambling on. Mark: Yeah, exactly, as I have been known to from time-to-time. So yeah, over a million people are publishing and to say it’s all English. They’ve just opened it to Portuguese and soon opening it to French and German. But there’s a lot of people out there that are publishing. One of the first things I would say in terms of advantages of publishing is, if you can see here, it sits at the top of your profile. So when somebody comes to your profile, one of the first things they’re going to see is your last 3 posts on LinkedIn. Now if we can find that with what we were talking about last time, and things like Autopilot where you are visiting hundreds of profiles a day and getting a 20% view back rate, then you’ve got to realize that obviously you’re potentially bringing a lot of people to your profile, who then will see your posts. So you can see how that all kind of links together. It’s an important that they sit there right at the top of your profile and therefore, are likely to get attention from people and they can then potentially click on them and read them. In addition to that, publishing a post on LinkedIn – and by the way, the way you do it quite simply is if you think right at the very top of your homepage, when you’re on your homepage, you have these 3 things: share an update, upload a photo and publish a post. The one on the right-hand side, Publish a post, all you do is click on that and then it’s a fairly straightforward format. You upload a picture. You write your article and then you go. It’s a long-form post so it’s typical of a blog post, 500 to 1,000 words is probably a good length. There is an argument that says actually the editors on Pulse, which I’ll come onto in a second, prefer something slightly longer as well, so maybe even 1,000 to 2,000 words can be appropriate as well. That alludes to the other advantage. The other advantage of publishing a post is as well as the fact that it sits in your profile and your first 2 connections will be notified that you’ve done that post, but in addition to that, there is a possibility that you could attract a wider audience because it could end up in what’s called a Pulse channel. Now Pulse is the newsfeed on LinkedIn. The newsfeed on LinkedIn has channels around specific subjects. I’ll come onto and show those in a little bit more detail in a second but an advantage of publishing a post is provided it’s sufficiently optimized in the right way, which is about keywords and tagging – you’re allowed to tag a post with up to 3 tags. If you tag it in the right way and also optimize it with the right keywords especially in the headline, the algorithm may well pick it up as being appropriate to a certain channel. And then the editor of that channel, I think some of these channels are very big. They have tens and millions of followers. So they have a number of editors, but these are real people that actually read your post and decide whether they think it’s appropriate for the channel. Provided those two things happen, then you’re reaching a potentially much wider audience because as I said, people follow channels and you have millions of millions, I mean an average channel might have 5 to 10 million followers. There are channels with much higher numbers than that. These are people that you’re not connected to, not necessarily anyway, and all around the world. So when we think about blogging on LinkedIn, we need to think about it in the context of this potentially has much greater reach than I’m ever going to achieve with my own blog. Kenny: Yeah. So at this point Mark, the benefits of this are obviously we can see that these published posts go there. They possibly go on these channels. Within those published posts, you can have obviously links to your own websites, so again driving traffic to your own website. But also you can follow people, can’t you, on LinkedIn as well, which is not the same as connecting with them, is it? Mark: No. So it’s a bit of a combination of Twitter and LinkedIn in that regard. You can choose to follow somebody without connecting to them and they can

Productivity Factory Task Management System You are being bombarded by thousands of requests for your attention every day. Like it or not some of these requests will make it onto your ever growing to do list. Is it any wonder we struggle to get things done and feel overwhelmed 99% of our waking hours? This is why I created a task crunching method, we call the productivity factory at Find The Edge. Watch The Video Audio View or Embed Infographic PDF Transcript Listen or Download the audio : Share this Image On Your Site, Copy the Embed Code Below Please include attribution to FindTheEdge.com with this graphic. Click here to View the Infographic. Click button below to download PDF Transcript: Download PDF Transcript Check out these 5 Free Tools to help you win clients and influence people Read The Transcript Kenny Goodman here from FindTheEdge.com. On this show, we’re going to look at how to prioritize to-do lists the smart way. If you’re like me and you use project management or task management systems and tools, which you should be if you’re running a business right now, you probably pondered on how to prioritize your tasks. Overwhelm is probably the biggest cause of stress in business right now, whether you’re a one-man band or you have a team, it’s just overwhelm. There’s so much communication and multiple channels of communication, and information is hitting us non-stop. So we get information overload which causes our to-do lists to increase in size. Each one of those tasks on your to-do list is on red alert to be completed all the time. They’re flashing at you all the time, which is what causes this stress. So how do we work smart, prioritize and most important of all, learn to say no? Enter Find The Edge Productivity Factory, which is a simple system I use to prioritize my to-do lists. My first project management or task management tool I ever used was Basecamp. I think I started using this back in 2007. It worked perfectly well. It was great. And then I decided to move to Podio after a couple of years because Podio was being touted as being very flexible, which it was. You can create your own systems within their system, so it’s flexible, which is great. Then while I was having a meeting with my good friend Sam Hänni from SwissMadeMarketing and let’s remember, anyone who’s Swiss, they’re usually super productive that you listen to them, I saw that he was using a completely different system, a system called KanbanFlow, which is much simpler than any of these other tasks systems, and it gives you an overview. You can have a board, very similar to Trello, except with KanbanFlow, you can create swim lanes, which is why I love it. It’s really good because you can just drag tasks from to-do, to doing, to in progress or to review for someone. So it’s very, very easy and you get this global view of what’s going on in your business. I’ll do a podcast on it one day and do a video so I can show you around it. Anyway, I’ve been using this ever since, I think it’s great. But like the others that I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t tell me which tasks to prioritize and which tasks to say ‘no’ to. So I’ve had to develop my own method, which Peter, who’s head of my development team has named ‘The Productivity Factory’. Let me talk you through it and if you listen to the podcast, you can see and download a really nice infographic that Peter’s put together and see the show notes as well http://findtheedge.com/13, so show 13. When you get tasks in, you would usually put them somewhere. You might create a to-do list on a pad, on your paper. You might put them into a system like KanbanFlow or Trello or Podio, or whatever you use. You’ve then got to kind of filter those tasks. You’ve got to prioritize them. What I always do with everything I do, is I put a stopwatch on. I put Pomodoro Stopwatch for Mac. I time everything I do. So if for instance, I was sorting out all of my tasks and projects for the next month, I would give myself 45 minutes to process all of that because it does need processing and if you’re planning for the month, you need to get it all sorted out. But I don’t tend to do much monthly stuff anymore because I’m so on top of everything. So if I’m planning for the week, which is what I generally do, I give myself 15 minutes to all of my tasks. And then I put the stopwatch on and then I start prioritizing. If I’m doing that on a daily basis, I give myself 5 minutes. The reason I set a time for this is because it can become a form of procrastination actually filtering your tasks and sorting your tasks and you can become obsessive about it. It’s not about becoming obsessive, it’s about crunching through these tasks and getting them out of the way. Now, my filtration process works like this. I ask myself a question about each task and it happens so quickly now because I’m so used to it, it gets done very, very quickly. So I ask myself these following questions: does it add value and nurture relationships? If it does, then it’s a tick. It goes into the process section. Then I ask myself, does it generate money? Tick, great, process it. Does it produce a quick win? Tick, process it. So if it’s any of these, then it goes into the process. It needs to be all of these. Does it help remove an obstacle? So an obstacle might just be a mental obstacle, where it really is one of those tasks that is bugging you so much that you’re losing sleep at night and you just put it off for so long. Get it out of the way because that removes an obstacle, process task. Or it might be a bit more of a tangible obstacle that it’s blocking you from completing your project, for instance. Get it in the process list. Does it move me closer to my project completion or to a goal, or to a milestone? Tick, process the task. They’re the kind of ticks. Then I have the ones that go into the trashcan. Number 1 on that is, does it only feed my ego? We can all be egotistical at some level and I certainly can be. Sometimes, I have things on my to-do list that are just there to feed my ego and they’re not really going to add any benefit on the list I mentioned before. So delete that task, get rid of it. Does it fit my values? If it’s a no, then again, delete the task. Does it feed my procrastination? You’ve got to be careful with procrastination. It can come in through the back door and pretend that it’s something else. Like I mentioned before, just filtering all of these tasks, you can turn it into a 2-hour job when it shouldn’t be that. Does it feel like procrastination? If it does, delete the task. And is it just a noisy task, does it shout noise, the obscenities but not very important? Is it based on somebody else just wanting it done but it’s not very important to you? If it’s not and you don’t want to do it anymore, then delete the task. Say thank you, but no thank you to them and move on. There are the questions I ask within my initial filtration process. And then I ask another question. So I’ve got all the tasks that are now in for process. Then I ask myself, does it need completing soon? It’s either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer there. If it’s no, then I’ll diarize it. So I’ll defer it for another time. If it’s yes, then I ask myself another question. I ask myself, is it a recurring task or is it a one-off task. Or simply, I might as well just ask, is it referring, is it a recurring task? That’s either a yes or a no. Now I’m going to go down the ‘yes’ path and then I’ll come back and go down the ‘no’ path. In fact, I’ll go down the ‘no’ path first. Is it a recurring task? No. Then I ask myself another question. Is it a quick task of 2 or 3 minutes or less? If it’s yes, then I’d do it. If it’s no, then it goes into my optimize pile. 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Part 1: Interview with Linkedin Expert Mark Williams (AKA MR Linkedin) Linkedin is the world's biggest lead referral platform. So why are you missing out on consistent business from this network? Like most, you probably suffer from social network overwhelm and life just get's in the way of learning. In this show, I convinced my good friend and Linkedin expert Mark Williams (AKA MR Linkedin) to pop into my office to show us some quick wins on how we can generate more first rate leads using the world's top B2B Social Network, Linkedin. Watch The Video Audio PDF Transcript Listen or Download the audio : Click button below to download PDF Transcript: Download PDF Transcript Access Part 2: How to Post On Linkedin For Maximum ImpactAccess Part 3: How To Post Super Engaging Linkedin Updates Read The Transcript Kenny: LinkedIn is the world’s biggest lead referral platform. So why are you missing out on consistent business form this mammoth of a network? Like most of us, you probably suffer from social network overwhelm and life just gets in the way of learning something new. In this show, I convinced a good friend of mine, a LinkedIn expert, Mark Williams, aka Mr. LinkedIn, to pop into my office. We were just having lunch around the corner and he was telling me some quick wins with LinkedIn. So I convinced him to come to my office and show us how we can all generate more first-rate clients using the world’s top b2b social network. The sound isn’t the best quality because I used a Blue Yeti and it seems to pick up the echo in my office, which I need to look into to give a more rounded sound. The content however is fantastic, so enjoy. So we’ve recorded this. Is that okay? Mark: Yeah. No problem at all. Shall I introduce myself? Kenny: Yeah. You could do that. Mark: Mark Williams, Mr. LinkedIn, not officially Mr. LinkedIn because of course that would be not approved of by LinkedIn themselves. But I’m a LinkedIn trainer. I’ve been doing this for many years since 2008. Yeah, that’s what I do. Kenny: Your background is recruitment like me. Mark: Yeah. Before that, so I was 20 years in the recruitment industry. Kenny: So LinkedIn is a big tool for recruiters. Is that why you got into LinkedIn because of your recruitment background? Mark: Funnily enough, yes, but yes and no in a way. I actually had a guy working for me, this was way back in the day, the early days of LinkedIn, who was using it. I was a bit kind of paranoid that they’re wasting time. Social media, what’s that all about? So I wanted to almost prove to them that they were wasting time. And within 10 minutes of trying to prove that they were, I realized that they weren’t and this was actually an amazing tool. Actually, it wasn’t so much they were looking at it as a way of sourcing candidates as recruiters tend to do. And I do a lot of work with recruits as well today. They do tend to look at it as a way of filling out jobs. But I never saw it like that. From day one for me, it was a business tool. That’s what got my attention really. I thought, this is amazing. You can actually find people who you want to do business with and see who they’re connected to and make contact with them. I just couldn’t believe this thing was online. It was just like a dream come true for me. Kenny: So for me with LinkedIn, I’ve kind of done a little bit of LinkedIn advertising with a bit of success and stuff but I’ve never really focused on LinkedIn. Being an internet marketer, we’ve kind of put our eggs in Twitter, Facebook and stuff. Why is it important for my audience who are listening and watching this, who are generally service professionals, coaches, consultants, internet marketers? Mark: Well look, the bottom line is the thing that caught my attention is your customers, your prospects are there. Everybody’s on LinkedIn. I mean, who isn’t on LinkedIn these days? So they’re there. And the difference between that and the likes of Facebook is they might be on Facebook, but when they’re on Facebook, they’re there for friends, family, a lot of people will use Facebook for that reason only. So to try and broach business is more tricky, not impossible but more tricky. Whereas when they’re on LinkedIn, they’ve got their business head on. They’re there to do business. So it’s a bit like the difference between going to a party and going to a networking event. It’s difficult, often can be beneficial at the party to start talking business but also it’s, to some people, considered to be off-limits whereas LinkedIn is like going to a networking event. Everyone’s there to do business. Great. Let’s get on with it. Kenny: With Facebook, it’s about how you approach it isn’t it? You’ve got to do a little bit more under the radar, give them some kind of a value under the radar. And then on LinkedIn, you’re saying, people are in the mode for business. Mark: They’re in the mode for business. You have to be careful how you do it, that has to be said, but they’re in the mode for business. And they’re there. Now they’re not on LinkedIn as much as they’re on Facebook. That’s a definite advantage to Facebook. People are on Facebook all the time. LinkedIn would have challenges there because people visit every couple of weeks sometimes. Some of your prospects won’t be on there every day. So you have to be a bit patient in that respect. You might send someone a message and not get an immediate reply and things like that. Kenny: Yeah. So let’s get to business here. I told you I wanted you to come into the office because I looked at my LinkedIn profile and I don’t really understand LinkedIn. I’ve kind of tried to update my profile, make it look attractive and stuff but I noticed that I had 62 views of my profile in the last 90 days. Mark: I know, amazing. Kenny: And you can laugh at that, so how many have you had? Mark: I think I was at least 10 of those 62. I’m stalking you. So yeah, you’re getting 62 and without boasting, let’s flick over to mine and see what I’m getting. I’m getting 2,153 in the same time period. You said to me, what is going on? You actually saw it in the rankings, didn’t you? Kenny: Yeah. I think you were number 3. Mark: Let’s see. In this, how you rank for profile view section, you just click on the top right-hand corner once you’ve been to Who’s Viewed Your Profile. So you’re number 283 out of 885 of your connections. Top of your list is Jordan Belford of the famed… Kenny: Wolf of Wall Street. I actually know Jordan. I got a video testimonial from him. Mark: Didn’t you used to have his domain or something like that? Kenny: Yeah. Mark: And then number 2 is Brendan Burchard of car crash fame. That is him, he always tells the story about the car. And then number 3 is little old me and above other notable people as we go down the list. So that’s why you contacted me and said, what’s going on, how are you managing to do that? So I’m happy to share the secret source of how that happened. Kenny: First of all, how do people see this? Where do they go to see who viewed the profile? Mark: Yeah, so you’re going to go at the very top menu, there are a number of things across the top. The second one from the left is called Profile. And then the third one down in that menu is called Who’s Viewed My Profile. It is the most popular page on LinkedIn really, officially by a number of visits to a page, it’s the second most visited page on LinkedIn. But of course, the most visited is your homepage. You can’t avoid that so when you log in, you go to your homepage. So that’s kind of cheating. So it’s massively popular. Imagine if on Facebook you had a ‘who’s viewed your profile’. It will change people’s behavior, absolutely. So it’s completely unique to LinkedIn. It’s massively popular and that is the secret source of using LinkedIn, knowing that. Kenny: I’ll tell you what. If Facebook did that, it would turn into the new Tinder wouldn’t it? Mark: Yeah. I think someone once told me actually, I don’t know whether this was an urban myth or something, but he said that a very high percentage of people on Facebook, the first thing they do when they go to a profile is go straight to the pictures. If you think that’s how Facebook started, the reality is the kind of ‘hot or not’ angle to Facebook, which is kind of how it started, is actually still very relevant. So anyway, talking about ‘hot or not’, let’s go to your profile and have a look at it, because you asked me a little bit of feedback on your profile, to be honest. Kenny: What I’d like to cover, if that’s okay because I think the listeners would want to know first of all, what they can do to their profile to make it more attractive. First of all, how do they get more views and then secondly, how do they compel those people who view them to get in touch with them, or how do they then get in touch with them. How do they generate decent leads from this? Mark: It’s kind of the other way around though because there’s no point in doing all the clever stuff unless you’ve got a good profile, because everything revolves around the profile really. Kenny: So is it like having a leaky book in? Mark: Yeah, absolutely, and bottom line is, if I come to your profile – no offense – I just wouldn’t have a clue. There’s this bit here now… Kenny: If you can talk about it for the listeners. Mark: So underneath your name is this section called professional headline. Yours reads, ‘Founder and CEO at Find the Edge’. Kenny: Right. No benefits in there, isn’t it? Mark: So if we were meeting, the famous term they use in Silicon Valley these days for this thing is, if we were waiting for an Uber and you had 1 minute, what would you say to me to grab my attention? So it’s like the modern day version of the elevator pitch. If you said to me, ‘I’m founder and

Interview with Crystal Knows founder Drew D’Agostino Audio PDF Transcript Listen or Download the audio : Click button below to download PDF Transcript: Download PDF Transcript Check out these 5 Free Tools to help you win clients and influence people Read The Transcript Kenny: Welcome to this episode of Find the Edge. I’m Kenny Goodman and today I’m over the moon to have Drew D'Agostino of Crystal Knows app, which bills itself as the biggest improvement to email since spell check. And elsewhere, it’s described as somewhere between a Horoscope and a Myers-Briggs profile. Also, it’s been mentioned in The Guardian here in the UK as walking the line between innovative and super creepy. And it really is, it’s so accurate it kind of creeps you out. Let me give you a quick overview before we grab Drew who’s in a rush today, super busy because the business is growing faster than he can keep up with it. He is the founder of it but I’ll just give you a quick overview before we get him online. Now Crystal uses proprietary personal detection technology, so a little bit like a psychometric test from a distance. And it uses this to create unique personality profiles for every person who has an online presence. So if you’ve got a LinkedIn profile, then it’s probably creating a profile of you or if you’ve got a Twitter profile, or if you leave reviews and that type of stuff, so it probably does include you. It offers suggestions on how to speak with people, how to email them, how to work with them and also how to coach them and much more. For example, when used with Gmail, Crystal makes suggested corrections to email based on your recipient’s personality profile, by suggesting the words, phrases, style and tone you should use in order to reach your recipient in the way that they like to communicate rather than in how you like to communicate. I’ve been using it for just over a week now, I think it might have been two weeks now and I’m always looking for – it has this little button here and I’ll talk about this with Drew shortly in the show – but it has this little button that makes suggestions for you in how to change the email. It doesn’t always, sometimes it says ‘looking good’. But other times it says suggested changes. And it’s really, really powerful. This, from the outside, appears to be pretty revolutionary stuff, big disruption in the market here. So let us chat with the revolution leader now to find out how it can help you win more first rate clients. Hey Drew, welcome to the show. How are you? Drew: Doing very well, thank you. Kenny: That’s good to hear. Now before you came on the show, I gave my kind of overview of Crystal. But I’d just like to hear in your words, if you could just give us a few sentences of what Crystal does in your eyes. Drew: Yeah. So Crystal is a technology product that can tell you the best way to communicate with anybody and it does that by detecting the personality from any public information that they’ve written online. Kenny: Yeah, okay. And as I’ve said before, it kind of makes suggested corrections as well. So you can tie it into Gmail as well, can you, and it will make suggested corrections on how you should speak and communicate with that person based on the recipient’s personality profile. Drew: Yeah. So anybody can look at profiles on Crystal to see what Crystal thinks about them or somebody that they know. But really, where the value is in using that information and then applying it in your communication. So the first place we’re doing that is in Gmail and we have a Chrome extension that plugs into Gmail, kind of works like spell check as you’re writing. So it corrects for the personality of the person so you make sure you’re communicating clearly with them. Kenny: Yeah, okay. So when did all this start and how did it start? Drew: I started the project last year. It was really just an extension of kind of a practice that I’ve been trying to use in my own communication. It started out at my last company. We’re trying to hire people and recruit and manage them. And it’s pretty clear that when you’ve got a company that’s growing really fast and there’s a lot of different lines of communication happening all at once, people have very different styles and personalities. And a lot of times, if you’re communicating quickly, especially in email or text or some sort of online and written communication, you can misunderstand or even come to conflict over something with somebody, when really you’re just misunderstanding what they mean because they’ve got a different style than you. Let’s say, if I’m being very direct and to the point, somebody who has a more formal communication style might think I’m just being rude or overtly blunt. When really, this is just how I speak and vice versa. So the idea of Crystal came from trying to reconcile those differences with personality types and trying to have a good understanding of who, that me personally, I was communicating with and using that and adjusting. I realize I can have a much healthier, more productive relationship because of it. Kenny: Absolutely. I mean, I like to use brevity so I like to keep my emails short. I’ve actually upset a few of my clients because they, mainly one client and friend actually who writes super long emails. As soon as I see a super long email, my eyes glaze over and I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to go to the next email. And I like to write short and sweet emails and I’ve kind of upset this person because my responses were really short. I was trying to get her to write short emails as well, but in the end, I upset her. I suppose this is where Crystal will come in really handy because I’ve already checked that person’s profile and it kind of does say they want to see the bigger picture, they want to use emotion a lot more in communications and stuff. Whereas me, I’m kind of totally the opposite. I need to be quick, fast and exchange the information as fast as possible. So it’s really, really powerful. Drew: That’s really the idea and you’ll see that at first, people get the idea that Crystal is somehow dehumanizing communication, kind of having a robot intervene. When really, actually what it’s doing and you kind of realize this as you start to use it, it’s actually just coaching you on being a more apathetic person. So you’re thinking of the person you’re trying to communicate with rather than purely what comes naturally. Like in your case, let me just give the information to her as quickly as possible, when maybe that’s not really what she likes to hear or needs to hear in that case. So it really comes down to that pretty basic, very non-innovative but fundamental human problem. Kenny: Yeah. I happen to use it for probably over a week now, maybe two weeks and I’m kind of looking for that button that changes color if it has a suggestion for you. So I’m kind of looking for it now, so I’m kind of getting into it because it’s made so many suggestions for me so far in my communication that it is actually becoming a part of my life now. Is that how you’re going to spread the message? Do you see it as becoming quite addictive for people? Drew: Yeah, I think I wouldn’t say addictive because this is a completely new concept. It’s not like we’re replacing something that exists already because this is like a new addition, another layer to your email. So first of all, it’s very difficult to get into that process. Anyway, it’s actually very encouraging to hear that it’s become a real significant part of your communication process. But I think what you’ll find in the next few weeks is that you will start to anticipate a little more what Crystal is going to say to you based on the person. As you email the same people, you kind of get the understanding of who they are and what Crystal usually corrects you for and the types that will usually come up. You’ll find that there will be less and less corrections. They’ll still come up and we always are updating the types of things that we look for. But you’ll find that you’ll actually start typing emails that are just more effective without being corrected. So what Crystal is doing is really training you to be a better emailer. Right now, it might still feel like Crystal is kind of a slap in the face all the time because it’s correcting you. I think gradually over time, it feels more like a nudge. It’s like, alright let’s correct course here. This is not exactly the right thing to say. So you’ll find yourself, I think, using it a little less frequently because you’ll have that training behind you, but you’ll find that your quality of communication is getting better. So I won’t say you’ll be addicted to it, but it’s going to have a clear improvement in your communication and because of that, that’s where people really connect with our vision and rely on it for any new relationship that they have. So it’s not like an addiction for an existing relationship. It’s just alright, I need this because I don’t know this person that well. Kenny: Yeah. It reminds me of an app I use called Hemingway. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. It’s really good for writers. So when I’m blogging, I kind of put my blog into Hemingway and it makes suggestions to kind of shorten some sentences or certain sentences that are too difficult to understand, so make them simpler. I’m finding that I don’t get as many corrections now because I’m getting better naturally because of the nudging that Hemingway is giving me. Do you think it’s going to be the same with Crystal? Drew: I think so, although there’s a couple of different dimensions with Crystal because you’re writing to potentially hundreds of different individuals, each with a different personality type. So it’s not like there a

How to create a positioning strategy for your product, service or brand Grabbing the attention of skeptical prospects in a crowded marketplace is getting harder. So how can you be heard and standout from this noisy crowd? You can jumpstart by positioning your product, service or brand properly within your marketplace. Watch The Video Audio PDF Transcript Access Full MIT Presentation Listen or Download the audio : Click button below to download PDF Transcript: Download PDF Transcript Click the button below to access the FULL (79 min) MIT presentation video: Give Me Access to the Full MIT Presentation Read The Transcript Here’s a short excerpt video from a recent presentation I did at MIT for MIT start-ups. We’re going to cover what is great positioning, why positioning is so important and how to set the scene early on. What is positioning? A really good author on a book called Positioning – Al Reis says, “Positioning is the mind of the prospect. It’s how you differentiate your solution in their mind. It cuts through the clutter. It focuses on the perceptions of the prospect.” Positioning is the mind of your prospect - Al ReisClick To Tweet Why position yourself? If you can set the scene early on before you even have any contact with your prospects, it motivates buying. It also reduces the sales cycle. If you position with a level of authority, you already start building the important know, like and trust. It also improves buyer perception and in a lot of cases can command premium prices. If you look at Apple for example, their positioning is on the premium level. They’re rare breed because they position mass market on the premium level. Great positioning tells a memorable story. It allows you to sell value rather than time, which is really important if you are a specialist. Filter. It allows you to filter people. You can filter people in: your ideal clients. You can also out the bad fits. Dell computers do a really good job of this. They don’t want first time buyers. They will make it difficult for Granny Edna to get into their sales cycle. They don’t want six calls from her on the first day she buys her computer to find out how to switch the damn thing on. They filter them out. Depending on your product, you may want to position yourself at the high end, mid-range or at the mass-market lower end. High-Value Positioning Due to time constraints, in this example, I’m going to show you how to pre-frame high value. I sell high value products and solutions and I know this level very well. Exclusive. If you are looking to position yourself on the higher end you should communicate exclusivity. You can do this a few different ways. You can be limited to a certain number of people or available for short period of time or both. Apple do a great job at this. They conveniently run out of products on launch day and have people queuing around the block because they want to position exclusivity even though they sell mass-market products. You can position as private so not open to everyone. Invitation only. You can be selective in your positioning. If they get through, they are the “chosen ones”. Founders Card do this really well. Their card gives perks to members. You can only join Founders Card if, you are invited by another member. But it clearly says on the website, there’s only 70% chance that you will actually get through and become a member. When you do become a member, you have to pay them $600 a year for the privilege. They pre-frame exclusivity really well. To pre-frame high value, you can also communicate special. Use any differentiators you have and be significant. Communicate any niche that you might be involved in. A lot of people don’t want to niche. They want to broaden out but specializing further will command premium prices. I have various friends who run marketing businesses. Some of them are generalist marketers and some are niche marketers. The niche marketers always earn a lot more than the generalist marketers. So for example someone who specialises in marketing for dentist will generally charge more than someone who markets for all small businesses. Or someone who specialises in Facebook marketing will make more money than a “Jack of all trades” generalist marketer. Are you unusual? If so subtly tell your audience. Don’t be scared of being unusual. Is there a mystery to you or your business? Do you hold the secret? Do you hold the key that you can reveal when people join? Do something that they will remember you by as well. Unique. Are you unique? Communicate it. Lots of start-ups are so scared of saying, “Listen, I’m new.” Sometimes I have start-ups come to me and say, “Should I kind of bend the truth and say that we’ve been up and running for a while?” I’m like, “No.” The term ‘brand-new’ sells so many products and services. If you’re the only, if you’re the best, if you’re the most, just let people know. Create your own terminology or acronyms. You’ll see good marketers do this all the time. It helps people remember your message. So, how can you uniquely solve your audience’s problem? Let me just give you two examples of different values being pre-framed really, really well. The first restaurant is owned by one of the UK’s most famous Chefs – Michel Roux Jnr. Kate (My wife) and Michel co-presented a TV program together on BBC called “Food & Drink”. He was the food and she was the drink. He owns this restaurant called Le Gavroche in Mayfair in London. He pre-frames exclusivity and high-value. You have to book six months in advance to get a table. If you contrast that with McDonald’s, they don’t want to do that. They pre-frame “accessible” and “available to anyone”. They are mass-market and they’re with that. Work out what level you want to position your product or service as well. In this section, we covered what is great positioning, why positioning is so important and how to pre-frame positioning. I hope you enjoyed this extract from my recent presentation for MIT Alumni. If you’d like to get full access to the presentation, then just click the button below. Give Me Access to the Full MIT Presentation

Plus Easy Fixes to Generate Qualified Leads On Tap If you want high value clients, you need a consistent flow of qualified leads. And if you want to grow, the better they should flow. Listen to the podcast: Read The Article… When I was a recruiter many years ago, we had five ways to generate job leads. Advertising, direct mail, networking, cold calling and email. This is how most businesses generated leads back then. These days we’re lucky to have tons of new ways to generate and nurture leads. New ways come with new problems though. The biggest is attention. Grabbing attention and holding it is harder than ever due to information overload. If you become skilled at this you will hold the keys to quality leads. The Problem With Lead Generation Today & How To Fix ItClick To Tweet Over the last seven years I've dedicated myself to learning the best strategies and techniques to do this. If you grab their attention you’ll generate leads. If you hold it you will generate qualified leads. The more qualified, the easier they are to convert into ideal clients. Through trial and error I've learned what works, what doesn't and how to improve my approach. One thing I've noticed is that when small businesses mess up, we tend to do it in similar ways. Here are the 8 biggest mistakes I often see. If you want to build a pipeline of warm leads and attract high value clients, you need to avoid these errors at all costs: Don't know your audience. If you don't know your audience wants and needs then it's difficult to craft the right message and offer. Without this you cannot grab their attention or hold their attention. You also cannot compel them to take the next step and so any marketing efforts will be wasted. Research your audience. Along with their interests and demographics, identify their pains, pleasures & curiosities. Then speak to these emotional hot buttons and engage. There are some great free tools to do this. I’ve created a free special report with five of the best here. You're too general. People aren't looking to solve ‘general problems’, they're looking to solve ‘specific problems’. If you’re seen as ‘Jack Of All Trades – Master Of None’, you’ll blend into the background. If you’re too general, look at where you can specialise. You'll get referred more often and people will look you up when you specialise. You’ll also achieve higher fees as a specialist. You're positioned badly or blandly. Along with knowing your audience, you also need to know yourself and your business. This needs to be expressed in your message. Without it you will lose your true essence and you’ll be just another ‘Me Too Business’. Let your audience know what you stand for and what you stand against. Let them see the personality behind your business. What do you have, how is it special and how will it benefit your audience. Also why should they believe you? You want something for nothing. If you want your prospect to give their email or phone number, you need to give them something of value in return. If you don't, expect nothing. Create something of value to give to prospects for free. It can be anything from a hardback book you’ve authored, a special report, white paper or webinar. It should contain valuable information demonstrating your subject expertise, whilst helping your prospects. This is known as a lead magnet. I discuss lead magnets with Andrew Percey in greater detail here. You ask for too much. You wouldn't ask someone to marry you on the first date, so don't get too personal when you request details on forms. Like a date, the more you ask for early on, the lower the conversion rate. Be patient and start by getting the bare essentials. If this is their name and email, start here. Nurture your lead with more content. Once they know, like and trust you, ask for further details. You don't ask at all. If you don't ask you don't get. If you are giving them something of value, or if your offer is strong, ask for their details in return, whether that's by form or phone. Whatever your call to action is, make it easy. Put phone numbers, buttons or forms in prominent places. You don't have a referral system. Don't expect consistent referrals unless you have a system. People get asked for referrals now more than ever. That’s because referrals are warm qualified leads that don’t cost anything up front. If you want referrals you have to make it easy for people to refer. I discuss this and how to create a simple three-step referral system in an earlier post. You try to be everywhere. With so many marketers promising a pot of gold at the end of their rainbow it can be easy to follow the hype. Don't waste your time on Linkedin if your target audience is on Facebook, no matter what the Gurus tell you. Take a step back and research. Identify which platforms your prospects are on and focus your attention there. Then test, measure and adjust. Avoid These 8 Mistakes To Generate Better Leads #LeadGenerationClick To Tweet Start tying up the loose ends on these mistakes and you’ll notice a better lead flow. You will also notice how much easier they are to convert into clients. Question: Ever struggled with any of these mistakes? Share your answer on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin.

9 Simple Steps to Overcome Procrastination At Work If you don’t take action and produce, your business won't grow, will stagnate and could even fold. So why do we put off the important stuff? Audio Listen or Download the audio : Read The Article… According to Professor Joseph Ferrari some people are “avoiders”. Avoiders have a fear of failure or even success. They’re bothered about what people think. They would rather procrastinate than have people question how able they are. He say’s others are “Decisional Procrastinators” who struggle to make a decision and so do something else. What type of procrastinator are you?Click To Tweet Some like me are “Arousal Types”. I love deadlines and the adrenaline rush of leaving things to the last minute. I think this makes me look cool and rebellious. I’m ok with people thinking I lack effort rather than ability. In the past this has caused me to miss deadlines, let people down and forget to market my business. In recent years I’ve worked hard to combat this. I’ve studied the best productivity masters like David Allen, James Schramko, Ari Meisel and Leo Babauta. Once I got over some of their funny surnames I uncovered the best parts of their systems! From this I’ve created a simple productivity formula that works for me. This keeps me producing, which in line keeps my pipeline of clients flowing. If you are a fellow procrastinator follow these simple steps and thank yourself later, for reading: List your distractions. Whether that’s checking Email, Facebook and Twitter all the time or eating chocolate. Pay attention to the pain. There’s no hiding from it. These distractions cause you sorrow. Focus on the pain they cause you later, rather than the temporary instant gratification they provide now. Let go or schedule. Do you need them? If not let go. If you do, schedule them. Reward yourself for sticking to it. Have a forfeit if you don’t. Beeminder is a good app that forces you to stay on track or pay a predefined fine. Acknowledge the discomfort. When you resist the temptation to distract yourself, it will agitate at first. Sit with it and notice how the world doesn’t end. This is a big step Choose one big business goal. This can be a huge hairy ass goal because you’ve got 5 years to achieve it. Spend no more than 5 minutes thinking about this and then write it down. This may change overtime so have fun with it and don’t become attached. Break the 5-year goal down. What’s the one thing you can do this year such by doing it everything will be else easier or unnecessary? Now what’s the one thing you can do this month such by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? Now what’s the one thing you can do this week? Now what can you do today such by doing it…you get my point. This will give you focus and a place to start. I learned this powerful technique reading The One Thing by Gary Keller. Batch Tasks. Group tasks contextually. So if you have phone calls do them one after the other in one batch. If you are running errands, do these together and so on. This allows you to get into the zone and stay in it. Complete important tasks in the morning. If you had to eat a dead frog would you do it in the morning when it was freshly killed or later in the day when it has become rotten and smelly? It’s the same with important tasks. They stagnate and get smellier the longer you leave them. How do you know they’re important? They’re ugly and they smell. I learned this technique from Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. Use critical focus time (CFT). My critical focus time is fifty minutes. I set my timer for fifty minutes, turn off all distractions (including my mobile phone) and work solely on my one big task for the day. I then take a ten-minute break. If the task is incomplete I do another CFT and keep doing CFTs until the task is finished. This technique is known as the Pomodoro technique and the default CFT is twenty-five minutes on and five minutes off. Find out your CFT sweet spot and then work your tasks in CFTs. This has been the biggest game changer for me! 9-Steps To Overcome Procrastination At Work?Click To Tweet If you’re like me you will fall off the productivity wagon and land in a big pile of procrastination dung from time to time. That’s normal but if you keep using the steps above you will bounce back faster and it will become easier. Stick with it and your productivity will soar! Question: Do you have any procrastination beating tips? Or do you currently procrastinate and would like to pledge a new way of doing things? Let me know on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin.

3 Quick Tips to Remove “Referral Fear” and Boost Customer Referrals Today According to Nielsen prospects are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. So why aren't you getting a consistent flow of these liquid gold leads? The short answer is what I call “Referral Fear” Listen to the podcast: Read The Article… Referral fear occurs across the whole referral transaction: Fear in the Asker (You). If you don't ask you don't get and it's usually fear of rejection that's stopping you. I assumed if I did a great job, my clients would refer me to their network. They didn't so I had to stop pretending to be too cool for school and start asking. This is when I hit the second type of referral fear. Referrals: If you don’t ask you don’t get! – Kenny GoodmanClick To Tweet Fear in The Referrer. Although I noticed a slight bump in referrals when I created an ‘ask’ strategy, the numbers were low. This was due to a hidden reluctance, even in some of my best clients. It was only when someone asked me to vouch for and introduce them to one of my most valuable contacts that I realised the problem: If anything went wrong I could lose one of my best contacts, which caused reluctance in me. I phoned a mastermind buddy to pick his brain on how to overcome this second type of fear. He inadvertently introduced me to the third type of referral fear via a rant. Fear in The Prospect. Paraphrase – “Don't talk to me about referrals. I'm sick of people popping up on Linkedin and making contrived intros so that their mates can sell me something. It's just plain awkward and if I want to buy something I'll do it on my own terms!” He was having a bad day and I didn’t get any useful advice but his rant demonstrated fear in the prospect as well. So do you let referrals take their natural course or can you do something different, reduce fear and turn on the referral tap? I've read lots of clever sales & persuasion books & tried various strategies in this area. Some work, some don’t. Here are three steps that will guarantee fear reduction and increase referral flow: Create a Referral Toolkit. I asked Steve Gordon author of Unstoppable Referrals recently how he banishes referral fear. Like me he swears by referral lead magnets or what he likes to call referral toolkits. A referral toolkit is something of value that you give to prospects for free. It can be anything from a hardback book you've authored, a special report, white paper or webinar. It should contain valuable information demonstrating your subject expertise, whilst helping your prospects. This builds the critical “know”, “like” and “trust” they need to feel before committing further. Offering your referrer the opportunity to gift this to a prospect removes a lot of awkwardness. This reduces referral fear in both you & the referrer. It also reduces any fear in the prospect by removing any awkward introductions. It gives them the choice to act on it, or not, in their own time, on their own terms. TIP: Personally send the toolkit to the prospect whilst acknowledging the referrer. This gives you the control to ensure the toolkit gets into their hands, whilst coat tailing on the trust of the referrer. So that's fear reduction. Next, how to get the toolkit into the right hands to increase conversions. Make it super easy for the referrer. Another great tip from Steve is to do your research before asking. So instead of relying on the referrer to find good recipients of your toolkit, research prospects yourself. Look who the referrer works with on Linkedin for example. See who looks like a good fit, then ask the referrer their opinion. Sometimes they give a thumbs up and sometimes they say “No. Joe Smith is a pain in the ass. Avoid like the plague!” Either way you get well informed. TIP: Ask the referrer how they think the toolkit would benefit each individual prospect and why? This allows you to stand out from the crowd and be super targeted in your communication with each prospect. Doing this will help you quickly bond with the prospect and will increase conversion.Want to turn up the volume and infuse more motivation into your referrers? Incentivise them using The Uber Method. Rewarding referrers increases their motivation to refer. This is why affiliate marketing is so popular. Affiliates are just a bunch of people paid a commission to refer other peoples’ products or services. Unfortunately some people feel inauthentic by taking a commission or gift for referring someone. So how do you overcome this if you want to incentivise? I call it The Uber Method because their referral strategy has persuaded me to refer more people than any other service. They reward both the referrer and the recipient with a free taxi ride, making both feel special. This also gives Uber brand new customers (without any risky advertising). You have the choice to play the “referral waiting game” like I used to or you can create a consistent pipeline using just one of these tips. Make referrals dependable with one of these quick tipsClick To Tweet Add all three and you have a strong long-term formula for your referral marketing strategy. Question: What’s your best strategy for getting referrals? Share on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin.

Knowing what content will inspire & engage your audience so you can build a high performing content marketing strategy can be tricky.If you play a guessing game and get it wrong, they’ll hit the back button and you’ll lose them. Get it right and you’ll build a loyal base of raving fans and this is where Buzzsumo comes in.Watch this short extract video from a recent presentation I did at MIT for MIT Startups to see how.   wistiaEmbed = Wistia.embed("5zg0827888", { videoFoam: true }); Audio PDF Access Full Presentation Listen or Download the audio : Click button below to download PDF Transcript: Download PDF Transcript Click the button below to access the FULL (79 min) MIT presentation video: Give Me Access to the Full MIT Presentation Video Transcript One of the problems I’ve always found if I’m entering a new niche or even in my existing niche is to see what’s working for other people in terms of content engagement. So what’s getting the most shares? What’s getting the most likes, et cetera? Because if I know that, then I don’t need to waste my time providing content that they don’t want and they’re not going to get engaged with. Generally the more engagement I get, the more profits I make. Fortunately enough for us, there’s a tool that is free to use out there and it’s called BuzzSumo. When I was fortunate enough to get invited to MIT to talk to MIT tech start-ups recently, I decided to showcase BuzzSumo as part of my presentation because I just absolutely love this tool. So I’m going to share some of that presentation with you now. We’re going to look at how you can spy on your competitors to discover how to move your market emotionally. To do this, we need to understand the three hot buttons that cause your prospects to take action. 1. Pain is the biggest hot button that gets people to take action. So it’s very important that we understand your audience’s pains. What are their biggest problems? If you look at the stock market for example, stocks go up in a very gradual way. But if there’s any kind of bad news on that stock, it will drop dramatically and that’s because people are in fear. They’re scared of losing out. That’s why pain is the biggest motivator. 2. The opposite of that is pleasure. What are people’s desires? What do they want to get from life? 3. Then the third one is curiosity and curiosity is the emotional hot button that will get people to see you. It will grab their attention. I’m going to be showing you later on in the presentation some examples of this, some examples of headlines that pique people’s curiosity. So let’s show you this ninja tool to see what your prospects want and need, so that you can find the hooks, because you need hooks to grab attention. You need hooks so that you can understand what to use in your marketing to really be so ‘on message’ with your target audience. So that every time you communicate with them, the hairs on the back of the neck just stand on end, and it’s not just with your marketing. It’s designing your products as well. This will really help you design your products properly. There are lots of tools you can use. But I like this tool because it’s free and there’s a premium version as well. It’s called BuzzSumo.com. By the way, we’re going to give you a way of getting the slides the end of today. So don’t worry too much about taking those. So it’s called BuzzSumo.com and as you can see, they say it has been designed to “analyse what content performs best for any topic or competitor”. So you can actually put in a keyword or you can put in a competitor (or URL of a website that you know shares the same audience as you). So in this example today, we’re going to put in Entrepreneur.com, the home of Entrepreneur Magazine and what happens is when you put this in, what it does is it goes to Entrepreneur.com and it analyses all of their articles. On Entrepreneur.com, there are hundreds of thousands of articles. What it does is it pulls out the top performing ones. So with the free version here, you can get up to five URLs. So they’re the top five and what it does is it analyses how much engagement there has been. So how many shares on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus, et cetera? So as you can see there, the top one has had just about 130,000 shares. This is of interest to me. If Entrepreneur.com was my competitor, I would want to know what is engaging their audience. So when you click on this top article titled “Forget setting goals. Focus on this instead”. You can see that it’s – forget setting goals. Focus on systems instead. So for me, I can see a possible pain in there. I can see a possible desire in there as well. The pain I can see is they’re possibly overwhelmed with goals and the desire is to be more productive. So what I’m looking out for now is a little bit of confirmation of that. So we go over to this slide again. Go down to this one here. So that’s two out of the top four there are based around productivity. “Let go, keep it simple, move quickly: Secret to being a productive entrepreneur.” So there’s a hook straight away for productivity. This audience wants to be productive. So we go to this one here, how to become a millionaire by age 30. Can anyone see any hooks here? Raise your hand if you can see any hooks. What hook can you see there? Yeah, absolutely. So they’re looking to be rich. So I’m looking for confirmation and lo and behold, two out of the top five there. “Nine things rich people do differently every day.” So I’m assuming here that they’re probably a bit dissatisfied financially. Let’s go back to this one: There’s another hook in there. Can anyone see another hook? Yes, sir there’s definitely curiosity in there for sure. There’s also another hook. There’s an age-related hook here, so how to become a millionaire by age 30. So there might be some age sensitivity going on here with this audience. So let’s look for confirmation. Two out of the top five there. Think you’re too old to be an entrepreneur? Think again. So that gives me confirmation that there’s definitely is some age sensitivity in here. So there are a couple of hooks there. So let’s just go through those hooks, the pain that we can see just by analysing the top five. I mean you can get a premium account, analyse the top 100, top 200 and go really deep. But just through analysing the top five, we’ve got some good hooks there: Pain: unsatisfied financially, and also the age sensitivity thing there. I’m too old. And also possibly overwhelmed with goals. Desire (pleasure): they want to be productive and get financial freedom whilst they’re still young enough to do it. Then let’s have a look at some of the curiosity points. So if we look at the first one: Forget, fill in the blank… Focus on this instead. So if you were targeting this audience and you were doing a marketing campaign towards this audience, which you can do via Facebook for example, then you might want to borrow parts of these super powerful headlines that they’ve used, for your marketing campaigns. Forget, fill in the blank… Focus on this instead. How to, fill in the blank…. Nine things, fill in the blank…. or 10 things, 21 things, 21 ways, fill in the blank… Secrets to being, fill in the blank…. Think you’re, fill in the blank…. Think again. And also we notice two out of the top five there are info graphics as well. So if you market into this audience, you might want to use info graphics as well. So there are the hooks there just by analysing the top five. Imagine how deep you can go if you analyse the top hundred articles of your competitor’s website. So I hope you enjoyed that extract there from my recent presentation for MIT alumni. If you would like to get full access to the presentation, then just click the button below or if you’re listening on audio, go to FindTheEdge.com/MIT. That’s FindTheEdge.com/MIT. This is Kenny Goodman signing off from FindTheEdge.com. Give Me Access to the Full MIT Presentation .xxpowerpress_links,#xxmep_1 {display: none !important}

The King of Social Media Speaks on Find the Edge. The latest episode of the podcast sees Kenny Goodman catching up with Gary Vaynerchuk, who explains the importance of building a community, and why you need to be constantly providing your audience with true value. He also explains the importance of story telling. http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/findtheedgeuk/podcast/fte-004-gary-vaynerchuk-final-beyond-your-niche.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window Download: MP3 file Podcast Highlights 00.50 – Getting known online 01.45 – Influence 03.00 – Communities need nurturing 03.25 – Effort 04.00 – Work hard, bring value, have empathy 05.10 – Influence mistakes 05.35 – Building routines 06.23 – Tools and platforms 06.40 – Measuring results 07.50 – Influence inspirations 09.00 – Internal motivations 09.10 – Building a community – ‘single most important thing' 09.45 – Importance of personal brand 10.28 – Storytelling 11.55 – A reactive future 12.11 – Books in the pipeline 13.19 – Next contact suggestion 13.55 – All about adding value

Driving traffic is one thing but actually converting that audience into rabid buyers is another. Nathalie Nahai best selling author of Webs of Influence – The Psychology of Online Persuasion reveals the best strategies & techniques. http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/findtheedgeuk/podcast/fte-002-nathalie-nahai-web-psychology.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window Download: MP3 file (31.5MB) Podcast Highlights 02:24 – Persuasion Psychology background 03:11 – Unchartered territory 03:55 – 3 brains to target 04:58 – Story telling 05:21 – Being ‘personal' online 06:23 – Curiosity, pain & pleasure 07:12 – Coffee companies manipulating children 08:30 – Premature perspiration 09:32 – Audience research tools 10:15 – Make people tell the truth 11:43 – Colours that sell 12:54 – How to warp time 15:15 – Ethical? 17:10 – Power of scarcity 21:08 – Transparency & humility 25:11 – Big mistakes 27:19 – Watch other influencers 27:57 – Disrupting & reframing 30:08 – Measuring influence 32:04 – Final tips Learn from other influencers like Natalie

The latest Find the Edge podcast sees Kenny talking to Dr Karl Blanks – a former rocket scientist and the co-founder of www.conversion-rate-experts.com – who describes how you can hone your website to boost conversion rates and meet the needs of your customers more acutely. In an enlightening interview, Karl goes into detail about his own company's history, and shares the techniques they've used to scientifically boost the conversion rates of online behemoths like Apple, Facebook, Google, Sony and Vodafone. http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/findtheedgeuk/podcast/fte-005-karl-blanks-how-to-convert-more-buyers.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window Download: MP3 file (32.3MB) Podcast highlights 01:30 – Karl explains his background 04:00 – Purpose of web design 05:45 – What's stopping website visitors taking action? 06:40 – Using split testing for conversion rate optimisation 07:30 – Improving sites scientifically 08:31 – Importance of diagnosing problems 11:00 – What's the one key bottleneck? 11:40 – Most dramatic case study – SEOMoz 13:00 – Website should model face-to-face salesperson 16:20 – Original company goal – “to be the best in the world at conversion” 18:12 – Where should you start? 18:38 – Advantages for small businesses 18:55 – First steps to take 19:45 – Experience over theory 20:20 – Tools of the trade 21:25 – Understand problems then change them – don't be stubborn 21:50 – Usability tests 23:30 – Resources for user testing 25:20 – Articles mentioned: Understanding Your Visitors – Split-Testing 101 26:40 – Any successful company is worth studying 28:40 – Hard to criticise companies without knowing their goals 29:20 – Are you growing or shrinking the business? 31:30 – Conversion is all about human nature

Businesses involve people, whether it's business partners, team members, customers/clients, investors or suppliers. People are emotional and if you can understand this emotion you will build strong & powerful relationships with the right people. Dr. Nic Lucas reveals the best strategies & techniques. http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/findtheedgeuk/podcast/fte-003-nic-lucas-influence-powerful-relationships.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window Download: MP3 file Podcast Highlights 01:12 – Nic's ‘happy clappy' background 02:49 – Health > Happiness > Profit 03:50 – Influence = X-Factor 04:23 – Like ability 05:14 – Find authentic similarities 06:14 – Build certainty 09:01 – Know who you want to be 11:18 – Seek to understand 13:51 – Know your influencers 16:04 – Authority 18:03 – ‘Yes' needs ‘influence' 18:46 – Quality or quantity? 21:42 – Relationship mistakes 24:03 – Power of language 28:46 – Cannot escape influence 30:01 – Ethics of influence 31:18 – Best influence tools 33:21 – Nic's influencers 34:02 – Bono's example of influence 35:43 – How to approach influencers 37:14 – James Schramko relationship 39:18 – Emotional engagement Learn from other influencers like Nic

If you can build a loyal community of buyers & evangelists then your future is very secure. James Schramko knows how to do this in an ethical & sustainable way. http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/findtheedgeuk/podcast/FTE-001-james-schramko-how-to-build-a-loyal-community-that-buys.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window Download: MP3 file Podcast Highlights 01:18 – Uncut background on James 03:04 – Optimize > Innovate > Improve 03:46 – From Domain Name to 7 Figures 05:07 – James's business structure 07:20 – How to Build a Community 08:55 – How to manage a community 09:44 – James's core values 10:20 – Recurring Lifetime Model Explained 11:32 – Staff > customer- business > you 12:32 – How to develop a successful routine 13:52 – Social Media/Content Creation routine 14:46 – Essential Tools 16.43 – Advantages of Video 18:01 – Statue of David Technique 19:04 – Developing & fostering global relationships 20:01 – Pitfalls of “Partnering” 22:10 – Ezra Firestone Relationship 25:14 – Giving credit where it's due 26:11 – Final tip to become an influencer Learn from other influencers like James

After the massive response to the recent interview with Leslie Rohde we decided to hold a webinar. In this webinar Leslie answers lots of questions about SEO since Penguin and Panda including his controversial response to the Google disavow tool. He disagrees with a lot of other SEO's out there. Find out why in the part 1 Video here: ———————————————————————————————————————– Get the audio to Part 1 here: http://seobraintrust.s3.amazonaws.com/Andrea/How-To-Dominate-Google-Search-Results.mp3 MP3 Download: [Right Click Here and Save As… to download this interview] ———————————————————————————————————————— ———————————————————————————————————————— Join the Q & A in part 2 Video here: ————————————————————————————————————————- Get the audio to Part 2 here: http://seobraintrust.s3.amazonaws.com/Andrea/How-To-Dominate-Google-Search-Results-QA-Session.mp3 MP3 Download: [Right Click Here and Save As… to download this interview] ———————————————————————————————————————— There's a special offer at the end of the video, if it is still live be sure to take it up as it's an absolute bargain As usual please retweet, like, comment & share if you found this useful

How many emails have you had this week promising you millions of $$$ from a new Web Marketing or Social Media strategy? If you’re anything like me I bet it’s well over 200! Some of them will be useful but most of them will be a complete waste of your fastest depreciating asset – YOUR TIME! But if you have an internet business you either depend on these strategies (and have to take the rough with the smooth) or you feel like you are missing the boat. The internet is like a house built on moving sand and that’s why, apart from my long term lead generation business, the safest business I have is my brokering business. I’ve just interviewed Thomas Smale (the guy in the photo who looks like someone just shoved a hot poker where the sun don't shine!) – A UK based internet broker who explains why brokering websites is a no brainer for him and how he has just hit his first $1 million: Get full access here and get the step by step details of how he became a Power Broker: MP3 Download: Right Click Here and Save As… to download this interview Remember to Retweet, Facebook ‘like' it AND definitely COMMENT as Thomas will be on hand to answer any questions Get more info on Thomas here

Ed and Kenny Have you ever lost something really important and then found it again months later? This just happened to me and it feels really good. Last November I spoke at Ed Dale’s London conference and instead of getting drunk with Pete Williams and Andrew Nez after my presentation like I normally do, I managed to secure some killer interviews and the one you are about to listen to is one of them. Ed Dale who is one of the world’s most famous Internet Marketers completely spills the beans in this interview and for the last 3 months I’ve been crying myself to sleep every night because I thought it was lost forever. Shortly after the conference – my labs in Manchester got broken into and all my equipment stolen which included the ‘never to be repeated’ golden interviews and I hadn’t backed them up, but it turns out that good old Dom over in Spain had a backup all the time. Doh! This interview is pure gold – Ed discusses stuff he’s never covered before like how he had massive debts at 19, hit rock bottom and almost went bankrupt and even how he saved for 2 years just to buy his first VIC-20. If you don’t know what that is (like me) then it doesn’t affect you – it’s just really geeky stuff! He talks about how he dropped out of University, how he sold one of his first businesses for $3 million and how Market Samurai’s Eugene Ware just missed out! The interview includes his underachiever days and how he met his old business partner Frank Kern and how he was mentored by internet marketing giant Gary Halbert. He even covers how he created a massive network of sites and then sold that for millions as well. If you’ve ever felt low and thought that you couldn’t succeed then this interview covers it all: Get full access here: MP3 Download: [Right Click Here and Save As… to download this interview] Remember to give Ed some Facebook ‘like’ lovin – he deserves it after ‘baring all’ in this rare interview. Feel free to comment and I’ll try my best to get Ed to respond… Enjoy! Kenny p.s. Dom also backed up the lost interview I did with the CEO of Market Samurai Eugene Ware – this will be with you very soon and yes he also covers how he missed out in the $3 million sell-out that Ed got! PPS Update: If you'd like to find out about my latest developments with Find The Edge I was recently interviewed by Nicola Cairncross from the Business Success Factory and you can listen to it here.

Guru Bob - Robert Somerville After years of knowing GuruBob, I finally manged to get an interview with him and find out how he got into Internet Marketing and become the back bone of The Challenge alongside Ed Dale. You can listen to the full interview with Robert here: MP3 Download: [Right Click Here and Save As… to download this interview] Do you feel there is too much noise on the internet? Too many products hitting you every day? How did it get to be so bloody noisy out there? I have some answers and I've just received some very valuable advice on this subject (and more) from a smart guy called Bob and I want to share it with you. I'm sure you have been touched by Bob at some point (not in that way!) whether you know it or not, so I wanted to give you a brief background on his career so you can see where he's coming from… Bob's background is scientifically based so he naturally loves finding out how things work and he is particularly obsessed with numbers and NLP! Strange mix – I know, but bear with me… Back in the 90's he travelled the four corners of the globe working for a major oil giant and although he enjoyed the travel and lifestyle of the job he felt the need to move on and stretch his horizons. Coincidentally, oil was down to less than $10 a barrel and the whole oil industry was on it's knees but I'm sure this had nothing to do with his sudden need to move on Anyhow through various inquiries he found himself in the unknown Wealth Creation Industry which was about to boom – big time! Because of his strong analytical and business process skills, Bob quickly found himself working with some of the World's leading experts in Wealth Creation and was soon developing both Business and Real Estate seminars with 3000 attendees at $15,000 a ticket! No small change there! Anyhow Bob then met a very inspirational Internet Marketer called Ed who had just sold his Network of websites for millions and was on a mission to give something back to the Internet! Ed, who is a natural marketeer needed someone strong to run the business side of things so he could flow as the front man and he asked Bob to fill this gap and look after the back end of the business (You know I could have worded this differently to get a cheap giggle out of you don't you? Over the next 5 years they traversed the length and breadth of the Internet together swerving Google slaps & researching and testing every traffic and conversion technique known to man whilst sharing this information with the world through the most well respected free coaching course on the internet: The Challenge Throughout this time Bob (Robert Somerville) gained the nickname of GuruBob & learned some very valuable SEO, PPC, Social Media, Business lessons & of course how to list an internet marketing company on a New York stock exchange. So I thought a rare interview with him might just be an enlightening experience. I wasn't wrong and I managed to get hold of him ahead of the challenge conference in Melbourne this weekend He talks about: How the Internet is a numbers game and how you can use those numbers to your advantage Surviving Google slaps! The battle between the Faceless Algorithm of Google and the Human Opinion Model of Facebook and how this affects you His hand in the creation of Market Samurai – the world's number one Market Research Tool How to become an SEO expert How PPC is fast becoming the world of big business What it's like to work with the world famous Ed Dale How you must remove of the Noise if you are to survive on the Internet! See whether you can spot GuruBob asking me to blow his trumpet Please remember to Facebook like and comment so GuruBob can get involved and answer any questions you have

David Jenyns and Kenny Goodman I just finished an interview with the legendary website trader David Jenyns where he taught me how to trade websites like a stock market trader. Dave has a stock market background so his website trading is precision sharp and he teaches you how to NOT lose money and how to ride the winners like a seasoned pro. You can listen to the full interview with David here: http://www.kenny.co/media/kennygoodman-davidjenyns.mp3 MP3 Download: [Right Click Here and Save As… to download this interview] He explains how to find those perfect domains or websites, where to sell them and how to process the whole thing from start to finish like a total mechanical ninja. Get access To David's Buy Build Sell formula here: http://www.mybbsformula.com I just love this stuff. Let me know your thoughts and comments below. If we get enough comments Dave will be back with more website trading gold.

Majestic SEO If you care about your Search Engine Optimization and back link campaigns, then you have probably been worrying your socks off for the last 12 months at the dwindling amount of data coming back from the once reliable Yahoo Site Explorer. I mean how the hell can you measure your link building campaigns if there’s no data to go off? Well, there’s one UK based company that has come to save the day for SEO’s worldwide, and I managed to get an interview with their very busy Marketing Director, Dixon Jones. In the interview, Dixon (who’s a hard-core SEO veteran) goes into deep detail about what has happened to the Yahoo data, how useful the Googe data is, and exactly how Majestic SEO can help you with your link building campaigns. He explains how Majestic SEO and it’s army of uber geeks have climbed the ladder to be the most reliable link-data channel on the planet. *Start of shameless plug* If you’re lucky enough to be using Domainface Pro you will have noticed how it now integrates with the powerful data from Majestic SEO – and it actually shows the amount of referring domains, which gives a better indication of how good the back link base is.  *End of shameless plug* You can listen to the full interview with Dixon here: http://www.kenny.co/media/kennygoodman-majesticseo.mp3 MP3 Download: [Right Click Here and Save As… to download this interview] If you are interested in learning more about how Majestic SEO can help you, they are holding a Webinar on Friday 28th January (3:00 GMT / 10:00 AM EST / 8:00 PST.) It's titled: “What you can get for free”, and is basically what it says on the tin: A webinar explaining how to use Majestic SEO (for free). Click here to get more information on the webinar Click here to sign up for the webinar Now remember children – you will be representing Domainface so I want you on best behaviour! No throwing things at the presenter or chewing gum, and definitely no heavy petting on the back row! Enjoy! Dixon will be on hand to answer any of your comments or questions so fire away below. If you enjoyed the interview, Retweet/Facebook Like and spread the Majestic love!