Please credit this to the curious-engineer part of my nature rather than anything to do with creepy or stalker! And I will admit that once you are over a few hundred fans this really would be slow stalker territory, but if you really want to know, here is ‘how to’:

-         Go to your fan page.

-         Look for the fan count in the left sidebar

-         Click on the link ‘like this’ under the counter

-         The Insights page will come up

-         Over on the right, there is a little link that says ‘See Likes’. Click on it.

-         Click on the drop-down, and select ‘Pages’

-         Nice and Easy!

If you want to export the lists of people or pages (use the drop down in top left of the pop up window), there is no export button, but you can do it. It takes a couple of minutes. If anyone has a better export strategy, let me know!

-         Click and drag within the box to highlight everything (names and logos)

-         Right click on part of the highlighted text.

-         CTRL ‘C’ to copy

-         Open up a spreadsheet

-         CTRL ‘V’ to paste

Yeah, so it looks like a mess, and not even a hot mess! But it can be edited…widen the first column…delete the second column which is now full of ‘submit’ buttons…Data/Sort the first column…copy the rows with text in the to a new spreadsheet (which loses most of the icons)… right-click on each of  the remaining icons to delete them individually

Let’s do a quick refresher on supply and demand. You can check the full description Wikipedia, but here is a translation:
If you have more work and more opportunities in your pipeline than you can easily handle, then the demand exceeds the supply. You are overdue to change something. You have 3 choices:

1. Flail and fail: Continue to price your services at a point where you cannot cope with the inbound work. You will be exhausted and your customers will be disappointed because running long distance on empty does not work!
2. Increase supply: Not so easy when ‘your’ services are the primary product. Scaling up may be some people’s dream, but others (like me!!!) were happier to see the back of their employees than their bosses when they left corporate life.
3. Increase prices: Now there’s an idea! This should lower the demand to a point where you can meet it.

Assuming that your choice is to raise prices, be aware that some of the ‘opportunities’ in your pipeline will choose not to pay the new prices. And that is OK. That is, in fact, very OK It is even the whole purpose of this exercise – some will go but enough of them will choose to pay to keep you busy. Busy enough, but not too busy.

Benefits for you:
-    More time to concentrate on fewer clients.
-    Better compensation for the time you are working.
-    Choice of whether to hire more and share the benefits of your business

Benefits for your clients:
- Better service from your business
- Better quality in the services purchased
- More reliable service since the business will be more ‘available’

You know how this works on the famous little graph, right?
1. You were, at some point, producing Quantity Q1, at price P1, which satisfied the market demand, D1.
2. Demand went up to D2. Sweet! People liked your product!
3. So either you get to increase the Quantity or increase the Price, or… sell more than you can supply and flail in the gap.

If you are lucky enough to find yourself overworked and underpaid, I hope that you have the courage to cross that gap and make a change. I am. And when it comes to that famous little graph, I am excited to finally apply with my actions something that I learned with my mind decades ago and 6,000 miles away in high school. Won’t that be something?

•   Having networks:  Holiday-card lists, Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections etc.
•   Networking: spending time building relationships.
•   Network marketing: You marketing products to that network. Think Amway,  Tupperware et al. If you do it wrong,  watch out for that Facebook friend count – it may just drop.
•   Referral Marketing: Rather than marketing to your networks, you and your business network make referrals for each other.

I first ‘met’ referral marketing when I joined BNI 4 years ago. I gave and received referrals and found out that it just worked.  As a web developer, my clients ask me about services that overlap, or are just outside my expertise. So I consistently have opportunities to refer graphic designers,  photographers, videographers, PG guys, Mac guys…

That simple? It is and it is not. Just like sales closing is a skill that people train in, so is referral marketing a skill that can be learned. I went on to receive training from The Referral Institute, which I would recommend to any business owner or sales professional. Mike Macedonio, one of the people who trained was a co author of  a great book that you can purchase here.

Which is where the beginning of this post and the end of my post from last week about Pipelines and the sales process come together. I figured out the  information in ‘my’ spreadsheet on my own, but it was all highly  influenced by the training. Which is why I really encourage you to read the book or attend the training and figure it out so that it will work for you.

Harry Tinoco-Giraldo is a personal coach in South East London, England. If, like me, you are from London, you will know that ‘South East’ is a very important part of the address. He helps people, in particular at times of change in their lives.

What we really like  about Harry’s site:
- The design. The colors, fonts, photo mounting. All strong, cohesive and interesting
- The SEO. Working with Carolyn Kohler of www.effective-websites.com  we built a page and tag structure to get the site indexed
- The written content – Harry and Carolyn built some great pages
- The photo portfolio. It just works.
- The blog. And more than the existence of a blog, the fact that Harry is actually posting to it

My inner-statistician and outer-control-freak bellied up to the computer with barely concealed glee. ‘We’ opened a spreadsheet and data-dived for what we could find of my sales pipeline, drawing on those trusted resources – the in-box, to-do list, my calendar, saved voicemails and annotated business cards.

Over a year of use the spreadsheet  has shaken down into a daily ‘go to’:

-   Close ratio: The proportion (numbers or value) of deals that actually close
-   # Contacts  needed each month to reach sales goals
-   Where contacts come from
-   How busy the next couple months are likely to be
-   Overly healthy pipeline? Knuckle down and bring in more subs!
-   Light on incoming work? Need to get out to do a bit more networking.
-   There are also classic pipeline management columns.

Prospects in the sales process - not yet "Signed or Declined"

Month by Month: After Prospects have 'Signed or Declined':

The image above shows one month of data, with a close ratio of 52% (9,600/18,400) , but I can run analysis across a whole year.

So what were the benefits?

1. Close Ratio:
-   About 30% of my contacts are ‘leads’ who do not qualify as true prospects. Either my services are not right for them, or they do not have the time or budget. Most of these identify themselves on the first call. If I take 3 – 6 calls like this each month, that is fine by me – I can often refer them on to another business.
-   Over a year, my close ratio is about 50%. So I ‘lose’ about 20% of my contacts during the sales process. This is NOT fine by me  – I think more of these sales would close if I present or managed the process better.
-   If my close ratio is 50% and my sales target is $10K of business each month (“Just sayin’…” that is NOT the actual number!) then I would need an average pipeline of $20K each month.

2. Source.

This was my bonus discovery. Having a year of data for this really tells me which of my marketing is worth while. These were the sources that identified themselves:
-   BNI: Referrals from my current BNI membership and activity
-   Clients: Referrals from my current clients
-   Friends: People with no business overlap who refer business to me.
-   Local Networking: Other than BNI (Chamber of Commerce, local Web forums etc)
-   SEO: People who found me through search
-   Social Media: Prospects who contacted me because of my Social Media presence.

3. Pipeline Management
Those other columns that I do not discuss her contain the steps it takes as a contact moves from lead or referral to prospect to proposal to client.

Most of us have goals for our businesses. In addition to the overall goals, I need specific goals for my own web presence. Is anyone hearing the patter of stockinged feet? Would that be the cobblers children running out to play without any shoes on? Why yes, it would….

For my website development business, I do track the origins of every inbound prospect – whether they came from referrals, friends, clients, SEO or social media.  30% are usually ‘over’ after the first phone call, 30% fade away during the sales process and maybe 40% turn into clients. And – yes – I do know the total!

Linking these goals to my Web Presence,  I need goals for the number of prospects I expect to get from classic SEO (Wowza! SEO has become ‘classic’ in a Social Media world!?!) and goals for prospects from my Social Media Marketing activities. What’s that I hear you say? One impacts the other? Well yes it does! I take a highly subjective approach and ask the prospects when I first talk to them. If they found me ‘online’ I call it SEO and if they found me on Facebook… you figure it out!

If I don’t have goals for these activities, why would I do them? Well yes – I do enjoy the social side of social media and I do enjoy the intellectual challenge of building my SEO ranking, Up until now I have been busy enough from’100% by referral’ that working my own SEO and Social Media has not been a priority (patter, patter…). So, these are my goals for this year: sharing in public is always a good incentive for goal achievement

Q1 & Q2: At least 10% of my goal prospects / month from SEO or from Social Media Marketing
Q3 & Q4: At least 10% of my goal prospects / month from SEO AND at least 10% of my goal prospects / month from Social Media Marketing

Do you have goals for your SEO and Social Media activities?

[Edited 1/2/12 to add: Ann Evanston's initial post asked the following 3 questions:

"1-Are you developing a social media marketing strategy that is direct contact and follow-up, or advertising?
2-Are you developing your time accordingly based on that strategy?
3-If you have chosen direct contact and follow-up, as your social media marketing strategy, have you developed your strategy to include “follow up” (lead generation/relationship building) from social media?"]

So just in time for he New Year, here is the direction that I am planning to take.

Are you developing a social media marketing strategy that is direct contact and follow-up, or advertising?

Planning direct contact  through
1. Facebook – it is where the people are. Post on my own page and also post consistently on pages that are likely to refer business to me.
2. Blogging. Use Facebook to publicize the new blog posts.
3. Twitter. Need to learn more.
Open to Facebook advertizing – I see how incredibly focused it is – I know it can play Ads to people asking about building websites or following competitor pages.

Are you developing your time accordingly based on that strategy?

I’d love to think it could be done in less, but this is my expectation
2 hr/week. Develop and write 1 blog post
1 hr/wk. Plan and schedule Facebook Posts
2.5 hr/wk (30 min/day) Respond to comments on my SoMe activity and check SoMe activity by referral partners to see if I can add value.
2 hr/week. Visit the blogs of referral partners – or fellow bloggers in Blogger Monday or any other Blogger Challenge I take on – to comment on those blogs.

If you have chosen direct contact and follow-up, as your social media marketing strategy, have you developed your strategy to include “follow up” (lead generation/relationship building) from social media?

Lead Generation:
My SoMe experience so far has been contacts from people who follow my Facebook page. Once they have contacted me, they go into my whole ‘pipeline management’ process to ensure they get phone calls and further information.

Relationship building
My main products are custom websites. So I provide business services to business owners. Most clients come to me by referral, and most referrers are people whose businesses complement mine – graphic designers, Mac consultants, PC consultants, printers, SEO experts, Social Media consultants… So when I am online representing my business, I take a structured approach to building relationships with businesses who are likely to refer to me.  I put time aside to visit their pages and support them online.

Are you willing to share your answers to these 3 questions?

“The  Better is the enemy of the Good” Voltaire, French writer and philosopher.

“Good is the enemy of Great” Jim Collins, American author  and business teacher

Two great quotes, two centuries and two continents apart,  that appear to say the same thing. They only become different when a call to action is added:

“Don’t let good be the enemy of great!”

sounds so much more inspiring than

“Don’t let great be the enemy of good!”

We all want to be great, right? Overall – yes. But is ‘great’ always right in every situation? And can great ever be achieved on the first iteration?

A great wedding is not so great if it causes the  marriage to start in debt.

A great education is not so great if is in the wrong field for the individual or if the time and cost are greater than the benefits.

A great blog post is not so great if 10 good ones could have been published in the same time.

Let us not forget that  art and design – including websites – are subjective. One person’s ‘Great!’ is another’s ‘Are you kidding me?!?”

A great website and/or a great blog site are obviously desirable, but the pursuit of perfection risks becoming the pursuit of a bright shiny object. Better to respect your own budget, build and launch already, then improve the site and your whole web presence as you find out what your clients and followers really respond to.

Your web presence will thrive if it has life through blogging and other interactions. As you listen to the responses, you will learn where to edit, prune and improve your web strategy. But until you ‘put your business out there’, and start to get feedback, part of the plan is missing.

Get it done within your own budget (good!), get it launched in a timely manner(good!) and then review the opportunity for enhancements on an ongoing basis. This gives you the opportunity for Good to Grow into GREAT

So when it comes to your web strategy, especially your initial launch,  our advice is firmly in the camp of:

“Don’t let great be the enemy of good!”

What, Where, How…?

 Go to your own home page and click on ‘Messages’ in the left sidebar. Your messages pop up in the main feed, so of course you focus on them. That’s just human nature – they are bright shiny objects, so we look right at them.

 But if you do look back at the left sidebar – right under ‘messages’ is a new field ‘Other’. Now click on this.

 What you see now may be painful on a couple of levels.

 - If you are an individual who received a message / invitation / offer / update that is now expired, you lost out.

- If you are a page owner who made a legitimate fan contact, well you lost out too – your message probably did not get the person you sent it to.

 The screen print below shows what I missed. I am super irritated about this as it  damaged relationships I have, whether with people or brands or the people behind the brands.

What did you find in your ‘other’ folder or did you already know about it?

Site design, architecture, content, platform, hosting, SEO strategy, social media strategy and development are all critical.  If they could talk, each of them would be as determined and as demanding as a vociferous 3 year-old “But I am the most important factor! Nothing else would work or be worthwhile without me! Spend your time and money on me, Me, ME!” Just like dealing with 3 year-olds, we need to consider and pay attention to each of them, but we also need to take our own decisions based on the overall priorities and goals of the project.

Site Design:

The look and the feel: color palette, fonts and layout. the width of the site, colors of the background, the height of the header, the width of the sidebar, the borders of the pictures, the layout of the menu,. Hopefully you will LOVE the design of your site, and feel that it is a strong visual representation of your brand and message.

If you were building a house, the design would be the cohesion of the external appearance – the style of the building and the choice of finishes, interior and exterior, the flooring, cabinetry, drapes etc

Site Architecture – shown through the Site Map

The list of pages that you plan to put into the site, and how they fit under the menu tabs.

For a building, the list of rooms and the function of each room.

Content:

The text and pictures that you intend to put into each page. Hopefully, your content will be planned to blend in well with your design.

Like furniture and personal possessions – the content of a room can change as often as you want.

Platform

The technology that is to use to build your site. Each of these terms describe a platform: HTML, WordPress, Joomla, Hosted etc…

Choosing a platform is like choosing one building method over another – there is no universal right or wrong, but there is a right choice for your needs:  wood frame, steel frame, high rise, bungalow, office building, below ground, above ground… As a website owner,  ask enough questions of your web developer to feel confident of the platform they are advising you to build on.

Hosting

Where you are going to place your site after it is built – the code alone is just a pile of code. It needs a server that will be up 24/7.

The plot of land where your building sits.

SEO Strategy

Search Engine Optimization. Work done to and about your site to push it towards the holy grail of a Page One Google Ranking.

Onsite SEO – work done on your site to make sure that the words people search on are well represented on your site.

Offsite SEO – Links from other sites to your site.

Here are some of the most important points about SEO

1. Google uses about 200 factors in ranking a page.

2. There is no silver bullet – there is no ‘one thing’ anyone can do to improve your sites SEO but many steps, all working together.

3. SEO includes everything you can control on your site, some things you can impact off your site  and a lot that you cannot control off your site.

For a commercial building: the signage in the building explaining every room, the signage outside explaining the purpose and the links in directories and maps to help you get there. Print, Radio and TV Ads that you pay for to bring people in.

Social Media Strategy

How you plan to promote your site through Blogging, Facebook, Twitter et al.

For a company in a building – getting your company promoted through business networks, chamber of commerce, conferences, print articles, radio and TV coverage.

Site Development:

Once you and your web developer have decided on the Design, Site Map, Platform, Content, Hosting and SEO strategy, they can go off into their own tech world and build your site, already.

In building construction, this is the time that the contractors move in with their team.