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0:42 – Coming up with ideas for marketing strategies
2:03 – Taking ideas from my clients’ stories: Bridget & Obama comic books
2:44 – Bridget meets Julia Gillard, gets Barack Obama’s signature
4:08 – Bridget: ‘I had to step outside my comfort zone!’
4:48 – How Bridget took it one step further and got official documentation
5:46 – How I can leverage Bridget’s story?
Hi, my name is Fiona Soutter from Super Savvy Business with this week’s Business Word of the Week update.
I have just come off the back end of the first Savvy Mastermind weekend intensive workshop where all of my members flew from across Australia to spend three days with me in Sydney. We covered a lot of different topics through workshops and training, social media, business systemisation, accounting, e-mail marketing, and content marketing and many other topics as well as productisation, branding, all of these sorts of things.
00:42 – Coming up with ideas for marketing strategies
But for today’s video what I really wanted to cover was how you can come up with idea for your content marketing strategy. One of the ideas I shared with my group was going to networking events.
When you go to networking events, always have your ears tuned in to the sorts of conversations that you have with people. Listen to their biggest fears, their frustrations, their problems they are looking for solutions to. When you come back from those networking events, sometimes what I suggest you can do is actually create content around that, whether that would be a video or an article or a blog content and then e-mail it to the person or the people you were speaking to and say things like:
‘Hi (such&such),
It was really great to meet you today at [XYZ] network event! I remember that we spoke about your frustration around [whatever the problem was] and I’ve created some content that you might find useful. Here’s the link [_____]; let me know what you think about it!’
So here you are, actually providing massive value to that person and do you think that maybe that person might really appreciate that you have been quite personal in your response to meeting them and that might be a good relationship that you can continue to develop?
2:03 – Taking ideas from my clients’ stories: Bridget & Obama comic books
The other thing that I talk about in regards to coming up with ideas for content on your website is to be aware – once again – to be listening to the sorts of conversations you have with local meet-ups with your clients or business meetings with your clients.
In fact, this actually happened live when we were having dinner with the Savvy Mastermind crew on the Saturday evening on our three-day event.
One of my members, Bridget, was telling me that she recently bought some marvel comics which featured Barack Obama in them. And she was extremely fortunate recently to be at an event where Julia Gillard and Barack Obama were attending.
2:44 – Bridget meets Julia Gillard, gets Barack Obama’s signature
On Saturday night Bridget was telling me that she had this dream of actually getting Barack Obama to sign these comics, but she had no idea about how she was going to go about doing it. So here she was, in the crowd, and as you can imagine there were a lot of people wanting to get in the front, a lot of people wanting to get at Julia but most important a lot of people wanting to have that opportunity to meet president Obama.
What Bridget actually managed to do despite how scared she was, despite how uncomfortable she was, she managed to find her way to the front of the people to meet Julia Gillard. When she met her she said, ‘Excuse me, Ma’am, I have these comics and I would really, really love president Obama to be able to sign them. So you think you can help me?’ – to which Mrs Gillard replied, ‘I have no idea; let me see what I can do’. She passed the comics over to her and Mrs Gillard said to her, ‘How will I find you again?’. Bridget said, ‘Well, I’ll go down the end and wait for you’.
So this is exactly what happened and at this point of Bridget telling me the story I was thinking ‘Oh, my Gosh, I can’t believe you had the courage to do that!’.
So off Julia Gillard went and so did Bridget right down to the end of the line and when Mrs Gillard got to the end of the line, guess what she did: she actually passed the comic books back to Bridget. Signed by Barack Obama.
4:08 – Bridget: ‘I had to step outside my comfort zone!’
Now, I was just listening to this story, I was just blown away, and I said to Bridget, ‘How did you feel doing that?’.
And Bridget said to me, ‘I was SO scared!’.
I said, ‘Did you have to step outside your comfort zone?’, and she said, ‘Oh, Fiona, totally! I had to step outside my comfort zone!’.
This is where I said to Bridget, ‘So what do we take from this? Going into your business?’ – because at the moment Bridget is in the moment of setting up her own online business – and she looked at me and just said, ‘Fe, I need to be able to step outside my comfort zone in order to reap the rewards!’.
It was an amazing story! But do you know the next part of the story…?
4:48 – How Bridget took it one step further and got official documentation
In order for those comic books to be worth any money and to have value with having Barack Obama’s signature on them , they need to be documented that they are actually original signatures. So then Bridget had to actually e-mail Julia Gillard to ask her if she would confirm that it was in fact president Obama’s signature on those comic books.
And guess what? She did it!
Julia Gillard actually e-mailed back with a formal letter to state that yes, the signatures were president Obama’s signatures.
Lesson number two: don’t be afraid of stepping up and actually asking for something. Because too often I think we tend to fall into that trap of thinking, ‘Little old me, why would anyone want to listen to me?’. But don’t be afraid to put your hand up and say, ‘Yes! I can do that!’. So step outside your comfort zone and don’t be afraid to step up and ask for something that you really, really want.
5:46 – How I can leverage Bridget’s story
The third part to this business tip is that I am actually now demonstrating to Bridget and to you, my listeners, my community, that I actually practice what I preach. Here I am, at a local meetup, an event with my clients, listening to the conversation and now I can create a piece of content out of it.
I hope this video shows you and gives you some inspiration not just about stepping outside your comfort zone but how you can actually implement getting content ideas around hanging out with your clients or even going to networking events.
My name is Fiona Soutter. I hope you got a lot of value out of this week’s Business Word of the Week and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week!