1. What do you do that’s remarkable? Begin by identifying the things people are amazed by, the things you get asked questions about, the things that capture their attention.
2. What’s the “human story” behind that value? Take what you do that’s remarkable and explain how it changes people’s lives.  Describe the emotional impact of your product or service.
3. How can you tell that human story in a visual way? There are different types of content: text, audio, photos and video.  Which is most viral?  You guessed it: photos and video!
4. How can you get your customers to tell that human story? Content can come from two places: you or your customers.  Which is most viral?  Right again: content from your customers!
5. How can you incentivize your customers to tell more stories?  Incentives, incentives, and more incentives.  If you give people a reason to be creative, you’ll be amazed at what you get back.

There are dozens of examples of companies that have held contests to inspire their customers to create dynamic content promoting their business.  Take the Australian Tourism Board and their 2009 “Best Job in the World” campaign.  By offering a lavish compensation package and requiring a 1-minute video to apply, they ended up with almost 35,000 videos that other people created, all espousing the beauty of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

About the author: Patrick Schwerdtfeger is the author of Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed (2011, Wiley) and the founder of the Entrepreneur & Small Business Academy, one of the nation’s largest entrepreneur clubs.  He has spent most of his life starting and building small business ventures and is a regular speaker for Bloomberg TV.

However, do you carry this social awareness to your corporate site?  Do you allow your visitors to make deeper connections with you, your product, or your thoughts?

If your corporate site has a blog, most likely you allow your readers to leave comments.  Comments are fabulous, especially if you are an active participant.  (Future article to come on this topic.)  But more than that, you need to leave a simple way for your readers to engage.  In a world where people are used to sending their deepest thoughts in 140 characters or less, leaving a comment may seem like a difficult chore.

So, make it easier for your readers.  Make sure you have simple ways for your readers to express their delight with your writing.  A Facebook Like or Tweet This button provides the easiest way possible to express your pleasure with an article and share it with others.  Yes, through one click, your readers will promote your article for you!

Some of you may be reading this and thinking, That’s so 2009.  The truth is that there are plenty of online properties that don’t give their readers an easy way to respond.  If you’re one of them, you’ve received your orders:  Be social.

About the author: Michele Pesula Kuegler is founder and CEO of Wasabi Media Group.

Many companies have department or employee blogs linked to their corporate sites.  The benefit to these blogs is that visitors feel like they know the company on a personal level, which can help with sales or return visits.

If you want to share the viewpoint of various employees, then adding writers from different departments is a good source.  However, it is important to remember that editing is key.  Even though a person expresses herself well does not mean that she is a good writer.  Plus, the information that is shared should be viewed prior to publishing to avoid any “uh-oh” situations.

Even adding a regularly published column by the CEO can help to create a stronger relationship between the company and its customers.  This column can provide a personal touch to a site that is focused on promoting your business, giving customers a deeper connection to your company.

Whatever way you decide to add content to your corporate site, make sure it is well written and appropriate for your audience.  With those two criteria, you should begin to build a stronger relationship with your customers.

About the author: Michele Pesula Kuegler is founder and CEO of Wasabi Media Group.

The problem with this philosophy is the hunger for money is in your underlying tone.  You can’t help but convey you are strictly calling to make money.  So instead of encouraging a clientele, you will instead be turning them away.

I find the better approach is to make the same calls with the thought, “Let’s update one another to find out what’s new.” In the friendly approach of continuing to build relationships, my associates are always happy to update me and hear my news, too.  The conversation is relaxed and usually motivates us to actually find ways to help one another.

And when you can laugh together, a true bond is formed.  The human connection will generate more sales or the right job far more frequently than just playing the numbers game.

As job seekers and entrepreneurs, we have so many choices in front of us that sometimes deciding what to do next can be overwhelming. This is when it’s best to find quiet time to reflect on what it is you truly desire. Next, honestly answer whether you wish to pursue everything required to make your new path a success, because success must be in your thoughts prior to undertaking anything.

No one can dictate how you will be happiest. Reflection and vision will provide you the answers. Remaining true to these will enable you to remain true to your brand. And as your brand becomes apparent to everyone, you attract more prospects, clients, and the right job.

Attracting what you desire is what I refer to as the Smooth Sale!

About the author: Elinor Stutz, CEO of Smooth Sale, LLC authored the International Best-Selling book, “Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results”and “HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On. Interviews.” She has an upcoming Business Retreat in early May of 2011 — click for more information.

For my money, I have to say that I don’t mind being a commodity to these companies.  I don’t give out more information than I choose to on the internet, so I am not really worried about identity theft issues or other security concerns.  I understand that if I want to look at quality content for free on the internet then I will be bombarded with ads; I’d much rather the ads be relevant to myself than keep seeing the same headlines about how to whiten my teeth and eliminate my varicose veins.

In fact, Google and Facebook are not the only ones who are doing this.  Countless online businesses currently engage in the very same practice to varying extents.  Many employ tracking cookies to monitor browsing habits so that they can then tool their own web pages to your interests, thus increasing the odds that you’ll find something to buy from them.  Privacy-conscious users have lots of different choices of programs that have been specifically designed to remove these tracking cookies (my favorite being Hitman Pro).

These tracking cookies, which are installed on your computer the moment you visit most websites, represent a much more insidious version of what Google and Facebook are doing.  When a user creates a Gmail or Facebook account they understand (or should understand) that the business providing these valuable services for free can afford to do so because they are going to dump a certain amount of ads on their screen.  We sign agreements to this effect, although nobody actually reads these.

But what about the tracking cookies?  To a certain extent, they are harmless.  We need to remember that even if every company knew everything about everyone that this would be an absolutely ridiculous amount of information.  We are not as significant as we think we are.  To a company that is monitoring the internet surfing habits of all its clients we are not people — we are numbers with a list of interests attached that they use to make an educated guess about our identity.

Still, the attitude that companies have the right to track their clients’ other activities on the internet (or with their smartphones) without asking first is presumptuous at best; unethical at worst.  The growing number of privacy concerns voiced about Facebook and Google these days is evidence of the fact that people are getting weary of just how much these companies know about us and what they are doing with that information.  People use these services because they trust them.  If that trust evaporates then so will the use and in turn the profit.

A wise man once said that the best asset his company had was its name and all the positive connotations that come with it.  In accounting terms this is called “goodwill” and it is an estimation of how much value is added to a company by its reputation. Often this number will actually exceed the physical assets of the company by a considerable margin, which should give you a good idea of what a precious thing your business’ reputation is.

Of course we know what happens to businesses that are obviously unethical.  Look at Enron for a great case study.  Those at the top may have reaped huge profits temporarily, but where are they now?  Google and Facebook must know that a similar fate awaits them if they betray their users’ trust, for even if they don’t do anything illegal they could easily fall from grace in the fickle world of online business.

It may be tempting to try and gather as much information about your website’s visitors any way you can.  After all, you need to have some basic information.  If you’re not running any analytics then you’re putting yourself at a tremendous disadvantage.  But people are not idiots, and fewer and fewer people these days are technologically illiterate.  Employing concealed trackers or other similar devices on your website may help you in the short term but will likely be met with opposition in the long run.

If you really want to learn more about your visitors, perhaps the best way to do it is to ask them.  Facebook allows you to close ads that users do not like and provide a reason so that they can choose better ads in the future.  Google allows you to click a link entitled “About these ads” at the top of your Gmail browser.  In short: they let people know what they are doing and invite them to participate.

Allowing people to choose whether or not they want to be profiled and targeted for specific advertisements is the best way to let those who care about their privacy keep it and those who want a more specific array of ads on their browser to get it.  Technology allows people to have a more personal experience when they go online, but that doesn’t mean you should force it on them.  This kind of arrogance will be seen as a focus not on the consumer but on profit, and that is a dangerous perception in the business world.

John J. Walters is a freelance associate with WasabiVentures

I spent last week in southern California visiting family for the holidays.  To get myself in the spirit I decided to read the corporate history of In-N-Out Burger, the legendary hamburger chain that has become a veritable emblem of Los Angeles culture.  There’s Hollywood, and then there’s In-N-Out.

An entrepreneur can learn a lot from this family-owned business, which has been slowly growing to its iconic status since 1948.  Here are the three biggest lessons I took from the book:

1) Do one thing; do it right. When Harry and Esther Snyder started In-N-Out they weren’t reinventing the wheel (although they did invent the drive-thru) — they simply decided to do what a lot of other people were doing, but better.  Their business model was simple: provide the best possible burgers at reasonable prices.  True, they happened to get into the fast-food game at a time and in a place of enormous growth, but if they hadn’t had this commitment to quality they would have been swallowed up by one of the larger chains like so many of their competitors.

2) Keep your focus. Keeping their focus on something they felt passionate about allowed the Snyders to stay successful through the tumultuous explosion of the fast-food industry.  In-N-Out was started as place that served the best burgers and so it stayed throughout its history.  While other chains were finding ways to expand as rapidly as possible (and sacrificing quality and service to do it), they kept their rollout slow and steady while maintaining a close watch over the standards that had made them a cult sensation.

3) No marketing department, no problem. While a lot of companies (especially startups) look to get noticed as quickly as possible, the Snyders recognized that the best publicity is word-of-mouth from satisfied customers.  It was a long time before In-N-Out started advertising, even modestly.  The fact that customers didn’t feel hustled by the business meant that they trusted the company more, and consequently felt more loyalty towards it.  This allowed In-N-Out to attract enormous crowds to new store openings, despite the fact that they almost never advertised them.  Grassroots marketing at its finest.

The “slow and steady” business model adopted by In-N-Out might not suit your business, but it’s hard to argue with the estimated $300 million in sales the company was generating in 2004 (when the corporate history ends).  Not bad for a family business that began life as two-person operation 56 years before in a small California suburb.

Last week’s post actually turned out to be more of a success than I thought it would be, so I decided to keep talking about how much I love Twitter for at least one more week.  I thought it might be useful to expand on the idea I brought up before about how “the best marketing is marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing” and perhaps give some examples from my own experience, if you will indulge me.

But let’s back things up a bit.  We must remember that Twitter is more than a utility that teenagers use to brag about how they’re not paying attention in class or to share funny pictures of cats.  If you craft your twitter feed right by following certain people and organizations, you can actually get a lot of news and updates on your twitter feed before they even make it onto the Big League sites.  You can even sort those you follow into lists by category so that you can stay on top of the latest updates in particular domains with ease.

Okay, hopefully you knew that already.  If not, you do now.  Now let’s take this a step further: if you know this, then your average Twitter user knows it too, and they’ve probably already done it — if they’re not doing it right now!  What can we do with the knowledge that there are millions upon millions of users out there who are using Twitter to keep abreast of the news, pass the time, and provide a little entertainment once in a while?

The obvious answer: get your company on their radar screen.  That’s where the “marketing that doesn’t look like marketing” comes into play.  People choose who they follow by the content provided, so once you start a Twitter feed for your company you need to keep it updated, regularly, with interesting and compelling content that is “worth a click.”  You need to remind them you exist, make them interested in you, and not insult their intelligence by hustling them constantly as if they’re at a monster truck rally.  This is a delicate balancing act.

My three tips:

• Keep to a schedule that provides quality updates at predictable times by using a post scheduler.
• Don’t lump your updates by posting a lot of random stuff each time you sign on!  This looks like spam, and we all know how easy it is to ignore spam.
• Use #HashTags and @UserNames in your post whenever possible to connect your posts with related content and build your network.

The trick is, you need to get followers somehow, and while I firmly believe the best way to get “good” followers (by this I mean people who don’t just follow you and then immediately forget about your existence) is to provide them with relevant, interesting, and unique content on a regular basis, I must admit it certainly does take some time.

And so I open up the blog post to discussion.  Anyone have any tips for recruiting a vast legion of loyal followers right out of the gate, besides by being a celebrity already?  IdeaOffer seems to be doing alright with their feed.  What can we learn from them?  What can we learn from the success of others?  Feel free to respond with a tweet.

I have to admit it: if you had told me last year that my business life would revolve around Twitter, I wouldn’t have believed you.  Of course, one year ago I didn’t know how useful a service Twitter could be for marketing and for gathering information.  I used to check sites like LifeHacker everyday to get my fill of interesting links and informative articles.  Then I discovered that Twitter is basically a more up-to-the-minute version of these conglomerate news sites that users get to build for themselves.  And so it climbed into my top-visited sites almost instantly.

When I wanted to take a short break from work, I often found myself on sites like YouTube or Break.com.  These sites (and others like them) may be fun diversions, but they do little to move me closer to my goal of becoming a successful entrepreneur.  Instead of wasting time, Twitter allows me to find recent articles and blog posts on whatever I feel like learning about at that particular moment.  Take, for example, these three articles that I found this morning:

• Richard Branson talking about how to make good use of failure when starting a business.
• Meetup’s founder breaking what he learned during his startup process into five points.
• A professor at Babson College explaining how taking no risks is the greatest risk of all (among other things).

Granted, I use Twitter for more than just my own entertainment and edification.  Part of my job entails unearthing interesting content from Wasabi’s vast network of portfolio companies and publishing it to the Wasabi Ventures feed.  In fact, I do the same thing for my other job, except the MD Policy feed is all about local politics.  It’s actually a great type of marketing: it gets the companies out there in the public sphere on a regular basis at almost no cost.  It’s advertising, true, but as long as you’re giving people something worth clicking and not just hustling them with slogans it doesn’t really feel like it.

Grassroots marketers discovered long ago that the best marketing is marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing.  Things like viral videos and funny stories that generate buzz for an organization outside of the normal channels easily fall into this category.  People are wary of advertisements, but they are more likely to trust an idea that they feel is their own.  When a company constantly tells people that their products are the best, people feel the need to investigate.  If, on the other hand, a person’s interest in a company’s products stems from his own fascination with the company (for example, through following their Twitter feed), it’s easy to think positively about that company without reservation.

About the Author:

Susan wrote a note to our community asking for help.  She is quite the professional, normally teaching others how to attract the perfect customer or find the right job for one’s personality.  Yet Susan was having some difficulty herself.

Her plea for help had me laughing out loud.  You see, she wants to teach a webinar on the subject of procrastination.  Many people she knows said they need or want the information, yet no one has yet registered for the class.

As a bystander it was easier for me to critically examine what was happening. Susan did find her perfect prospects but that is her double-edged sword.  They are procrastinators – why would she ever believe they would register early for her class?  In fact, there is a good likelihood that they are such procrastinators they may never register!

I counseled Susan that she may want to re-think who her ideal prospects and clients are.  It’s important to know in as much detail the profile of the people with whom you work best.  Once you have this clearly defined, you are better able to go after your desired job or market to your preferred clientele.

In your marketing-communication efforts, be sure to speak to your audience’s challenges, needs, wants and deep-seated desires.  This strategic planning is what will enable you to attract a better clientele and make it easier to build relationships.  The same is true for searching out the best company with which to interview.

When you have all of the strategy pieces in place, business development is no longer a huge effort — and you will enjoy the Smooth Sale!

Last week I wrote a short list of 11 things my boss has taught me during the past year.  Today I thought I’d write another list, this time about the various bits of advice I’ve received from people in the Wasabi Ventures circuit that I’ve asked for advice on the beta launch of my first company (which is happening pretty much right now, by the way).

1.) You never feel like you’re ready.  Just go for it anyway.  Be sure to put time, effort, and polish into your project, but don’t get paralyzed by perfection.  No matter how long you spend tweaking something there will always be improvements to be made.

2.) Make use of your personal network.  You have friends and family that believe in you, right?  Well ask them to try out your product or service and get some preliminary opinions!  It may not be as honest (or painful) as what you would get from outsiders, but it’s a start.

3.) Ask strangers.  This is the single most “cringe-worthy” piece of advice I was given.  I can’t bring myself to ask strangers at coffee bars to try out my web service, but I can get it reviewed by people on the internet who enjoy (or get paid) to do it.  There are plenty of sites out there that review startups.  Find them and use them.

4.) People don’t need you.  In fact, you need them.  But the only way to get people on your side is to prove to them that you can help them with something.  So don’t demand that people try (and like) your product.  Really listen and understand your target market’s needs.

5.) Reach out and touch someone.  Not literally.  But make an effort to talk to other people who may be doing something similar.  In general, you’ll find other startups or even people in your industry willing to help out if you make the effort to connect with them.

6.) Blog, and be consistent about it.  Get some content on your site and keep at it at least once a week.  There’s a lot of dead space on the web.  What’s to stop a casual browser from dismissing your site as another failed startup from the ‘90s if he doesn’t see any new content?  Make an effort to put up quality content regularly, and to finding (and contacting) others who are doing the same thing.  Help each other out.

7.) Listen to people.  Okay, so you’ve made some good connections and gotten some decent feedback.  Don’t ignore it!  Listen to what people say about your product and don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board with what doesn’t work.  Remember: people don’t need you — you need them.

8.) Give stuff away.  Often times, the only way you will get new people to give your product/service a chance at all is to let them try it for free or to find another way to make it worth their while.  Bribery may be wrong in politics, but it’s a fine way to get customers.

9.) Get some analytics on your site.  How visitors to your site find out about you is important.  Installing analytics on your site is a pretty painless process (and one that I must admit I have been putting off for far too long) and can help you figure out which avenues are most successful and which aren’t.

10.) Learn about search engine optimization.  I’ve read up on this and it is both confusing and a little bit like voodoo, but a little time spent figuring out what your site keywords should be could go a long way.

11.) Be persistent.  Starting a new business takes so much persistence that you need to be passionate about what you’re doing.  Like what you do and work hard at it.  Don’t give up too soon.

So there’s another 11 little gems that I’ve heard over the past few weeks as I work on getting MeetingCaptain off the ground.  I’ll admit that I’m guilty of disregarding more than a couple of them.  It’s difficult even to get past that first one — and even harder to find the confidence to ask people to review your work.  But it needs to be done eventually.