Doug McIsaac › Comments

"I agree John, Social media is a powerful tool to use in building relationships with your local customers. But too many businesses are approaching social media wrong. They need to understand the mindset shift. It's not just another way to advertise their specials to their customers. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I'm with you in this one Chris. December is shaping up to be one of the best months I've ever had for new business. If you're working in social media and know what you're doing, the world is your oyster right now. Virtually every company in the US is now realizing that they need to be doing something with social media. 2010 is going to be an incredible year. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"There's a firefox addin that will notify you when there are changes to a Wave https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US...... I'm pretty sure there's a plug in for Google Chrome too. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I couldn't agree more. Face to face is where real relationships are made. Online tools help us keep relationships warm, but it's face to face where real business takes place. Doug As an aside: I find it ironic how many of the people who sell "make money in your pajamas" types of products actually make the majority of their income by speaking at conferences and the joint ventures they develop there." - Doug McIsaac

"I've been on LinkedIn for several years and only recently started to use it. So ar I've received speaking opportunities and client recommendations. It's a great tool for B2B Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I agree, to be successful you need to be willing to accelerate into the crossroads and accept the fact that now and then you will crash. The majority of successful entrepreneurs have experienced failures in their lives, but don't allow that to keep them from stepping on the gas when they see a crossroad ahead. The ones that allow one or two crashes to make them slam on the brakes are never truly successful. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Bradley, You have won me over to come back. What I learned is what I already expected. Gary V is a true entrepreneur. For true entrepreneurs it's not about ego or the stuff you can accumulate. True entrepreneurs relish the "work" as much as the achieving. If you get a chance interview Mike Michalowicz, the" Toilet Paper Entrepreneur." He is another true entrepreneur. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Rants definitely work, my poor neglected blog get's most of it's search traffic from a rant I did about an annoying guy who interrupted me on Facebook. I chuckle every time I look at my keyword stats. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Bradley, Very insightful interview. Great job digging in and helping us learn more about Gary V the man and what makes him tick instead of just learning more about Gary V message. There's a lot to learn in both pieces. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Great presentation, I'm always impressed by your ability to drive a point home. I agree that "Every business should be in the content business" With the glut of information available we are going to look for experts to listen to in every product/service/interest. The ones who produce content that speaks o us will get our business. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Learning to say thank you without letting it go to your head. Now that can be tough. It takes a lot of strength of character to simply say thank you when others are heaping praise on you. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"We need to focus on what we can control and the only thing we can control is ourselves. Too many people forget that Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I watched it and that was fun, thanks for starting my day off with a chuckle. Now I'm going to have "jacko lantern, jack o lantern...." going through my head. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I agree Jonathan, it's amazing what people will do say or do online that they would never consider doing in"real life" But most people quickly forget that they are dealing with a real person because of the anonymity is we are allowed online. This code of ethics should be required reading for anyone who wants to get involved in social media marketing. Too many of the people out the are really teaching people to become "Social Spammers" These are the core components to successfully building real relationships through social media. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Absolutely Neil, the typical new social marketer makes all of the same mistakes. Unfortunately that's what most of the course out there are selling. Quantity over quality because that's easier to teach people. Creating quality relationships takes work, but in the long run is the only way to go. Since I first read this post I've changed my methods online and am deleting people and only adding people who I want to truly communicate with online. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I can't agree more with you Jonathan. This is one of those posts that should be re-read every couple of months to serve as a compass for all of our online activities. If we just stopped to ask ourselves is this improving my personal brand before we did an action online we would all be better for it., Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"It's amazing what can be done in only 5,000 days. Learning how to survive and thrive in the new web 3.0 world is going to be scary for most businesses. For far too long they have lived in a world of one-way communication and now they are discovering that their customers not only have an opinion, but they expect it to be heard Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Thanks for this list it makes me want to go back and review my notes from the book again. One of the biggest thing I learned from the book is something that I alread knew, funny how that works some times. It's that having a structured plan and strategy is where most people drop the ball. They see the different sites and think all they need to do is build a profile and "poof" the magic will begin. Then they get no results from their profile and tell everyone that social media doesn't work. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Thank you for sharing, we share many of the same inspirations. One of the great parts of living today is that we can learn from thought leaders every day. All we have to do is add them to our feed readers and review what they have to share. What an amazing time we live in. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"This contest is going to fun and there's a lot of money on the line. May the best team win! Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"You have two problems, the time to manage a promotion and the time to provide the prize if you are the prize. I think you can spread the most goodwill without spreading yourself too thin by running a contest with a consulting strategy session with you as the top prize. Perhaps the group that sends you the most screen shots of receipts, -- actually that would be a bit of a nightmare to track. Here's an idea: Have a contest for the most books sold by a particular charity. Here's a way you could do it: Set up a special affiliate link, with sub affiliate links for each charity so you can easily track the number of sales each charity makes. All of the affiliate proceeds go to the charities and the winner gets a session with you. You could probably get lots of us to offer other prizes too, but once again that could become a nightmare to manage. Limit it to the first 5 charities. Allow people to write comments explaining why everyone should purchase through their charities link. It will..." - Doug McIsaac

"Great idea and sounds like a great book. I've ordered them through your link and will forward you a copy of the receipt. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"It's funny, I was writing my response and realized that for me it really comes down to who it is and if I'm expecting a response from them or how quickly I need an answer. My default is email, it is by far my favorite method of communication. If I feel that an issue needs more intense discussion then I schedule a phone call. Like you, the reality of my life is that I am rarely able to answer my phone and unscheduled calls just become a game of voicemail tag which annoys everyone. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I agree that the quality of your views is much more important than the quantity, especially for local businesses. It's nice to see smaller communities and groups stretching and doing creative things like this. Though coming from Billings, Montana we don't look at Nashville as being all that small. I think Nashville has almost as many people as our entire state. :-) Having the guts to try something different and stepping outside of the box is a great way for smaller businesses and groups to get free publicity and go viral. I met with a client today who is a bail bondsman about doing some out of the box things, while we won;t see him doing a rendition of Fame anytime soon, he understands that there are many creative ways to build your brand and create name recognition. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I agree that the quality of your views is much more important than the quantity, especially for local businesses. It's nice to see smaller communities and groups stretching and doing creative things like this. Though coming from Billings, Montana we don't look at Nashville as being all that small. I think Nashville has almost as many people as our entire state. :-) Having the guts to try something different and stepping outside of the box is a great way for smaller businesses and groups to get free publicity and go viral. I met with a client today who is a bail bondsman about doing some out of the box things, while we won;t see him doing a rendition of Fame anytime soon, he understands that there are many creative ways to build your brand and create name recognition. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"I agree that the quality of your views is much more important than the quantity, especially for local businesses. It's nice to see smaller communities and groups stretching and doing creative things like this. Though coming from Billings, Montana we don't look at Nashville as being all that small. I think Nashville has almost as many people as our entire state. :-) Having the guts to try something different and stepping outside of the box is a great way for smaller businesses and groups to get free publicity and go viral. I met with a client today who is a bail bondsman about doing some out of the box things, while we won;t see him doing a rendition of Fame anytime soon, he understands that there are many creative ways to build your brand and create name recognition. Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"There are several pieces to this service puzzle that would make it better: Better attitude on the employees part: yep I agree, when I served my time in the service business ( I think everyone should) it didn't matter if I was up all night, dead tired, just got yelled at by someone or didn't want to talk to another soul, I still turned it on and smiled and made sure that my customers had a good time. Because it was my job to make their night memorable. Even today when I'm consulting, teaching or speaking, my audience could care less what happened to me before I step up to speak to them they expect and deserve to get 100% of everything I can deliver. Better training on the manager's part: Yep management should provide an environment where people want to have fun and enjoy their job, even if it's minimum wage. They need to show their employees that they care about them and train them to enjoy their jobs as much as humanly possible. If the employees feel supported and that management..." - Doug McIsaac

"One of the biggest questions I get when I'm teaching or consulting a group is "how much time should I spend?" My response is always "What are your goals?" and "how will you know if you are meeting those goals?" Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"Chris, That is a great story! Thank you for sharing. I read Tim's book several years ago and have tried to follow his "give first" philosophy, but I know that I and in fact probably all of us get caught up in the "what can I do for you so you'll do something for me" game way too often. Even when we consiously think that we're creating an equitable exchange so often we aren't. The best we can do is to follow his example and do our research and approach people with specific ways that we can help them without expecting anyything in return. That will always get us further and help us build relationships where people WANT to help us in return without us having to ask. Now I need to go find my copy of the book and re-read it, Thanks, Doug" - Doug McIsaac

"The idea of sharing data by opt in is intriguing. I could think of some areas where it would be nice and I would be willing to share information. That's the ultimate goal of smart marketers, only delivering messages to people that want those messages when they are ready to buy. Doug" - Doug McIsaac