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Neal is the author of tons of amazing marketing books (and speaker of 3 languages), this guy is really a jack of all trades. He knows it all. We are SO lucky to have him here today to give us some more ways we can try to use social strategies and social media to grow and connect with our audience. 

Word of Mouth

One of the best forms of marketing (because it’s free!), word of mouth has shown to be insanely powerful in drawing in people to check out your product or service. People are more inclined to investigate a brand when they have other people encouraging them and telling them how great you are. It’s extremely powerful, but could be harder to ignite than you may think. 

How do you get people to tell their friends about your product, more than just the “check out blah blah blah” you’re used to putting at the end of every video or social post? One word:

Collaboration.

As Neil puts it, “If you want to utilize social media marketing not as paid media, but you truly want to insight word of mouth marketing which is the original intent of it. You have to collaborate with people”.

The more people you collaborate with, the farther reach you have to people who may have not been aware of you before. Easy peasy!

Influential Influencers

In today’s highly social world, followers and subscribers hold massive value. The more followers a person has, the greater their influence and the more people their messages can reach. This is extremely important for businesses, where their main goal is trying to be seen by as many people as possible. 

Being more influential than your competition will make other people with a high amount of followers want to work with you, over someone with a very small following and low engagement. 

Confused? Neal explains, “If you want to work with an influential business, you need to become more influential, because influencers want to work with other influencers. I would much rather work with Coca Cola than some beverage company I’ve never heard of. It’s credibility and social proof as an influencer”. Make sense now? 

The more followers you are able to attract, plus the more you focus on boosting up your engagement, the more influential you become and thus the more sought after you seem. Even though we may not like to admit it, having followers and getting lots of likes makes you seem important. Which is why it is so important for brands to focus on making their social media platforms as polished as possible. 

I’ll leave you with one amazing quote from Neil that ties both word of mouth marketing and influence together: “If you want to insight word of mouth marketing, where does word of mouth come from? It comes from your customers. Why don’t we treat your customers like influencers and find ways of encouraging them to help spread that word of mouth, which very few companies do.”

But hey, if you want to hear more of the greatness he shared, go ahead and listen to his episode of Lately Live here: https://bit.ly/3dCaeRt

More About Neal Schaffer

Neal has been helping both professionals and businesses utilize everything they can to reach maximum success for years and years. You can learn more about him and all his awesomeness here on his website: https://nealschaffer.com/social-media-speaker-neal-schaffer/. Also you can take a look at the 5 amazing books he’s released here: https://www.amazon.com/Neal-Schaffer/e/B002R440WQ/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1.

Chances are, the answer is HECK YES.

In fact some experts say that bad writing costs businesses nearly $400 billion each year.

Why? Let’s do a quick run-through of the skills you need to run a successful business – project management, financial know-how, sales, marketing… You know, stuff folks get degrees in.

But writing? That’s something everybody can do, right? It’s one of those ‘soft’ skills people talk about. I mean… English majors? What a joke!

Erm, except that this joke’s on you :-).

Because good writing is faaaaaaaar from easy. But it’s also the one skill that every single employee needs to do well – not only to do his or her job well, but so that others can do theirs well, too.

It’s all about communication. And these days, communication mostly happens in the form of good ole writing (texting included).

Which means that whether you’re communicating internally to colleagues or externally to customers, being understood and getting people to do what you want them to do, is critical.

Then why are so many people so bad at writing?

The good news: you’re NOT alone. Companies spend more than $3.1 billion each year on remedial writing training for employees. Obviously, that’s also the very bad news.

Because that’s just the basics. Forget the crafty, purpose-driven, high-quality writing required for marketing and sales teams to be even remotely effective.

Whether it’s basic writing or advanced, overwhelmingly, folks just plain HATE doing it.

Partly because we’re all a wee bit lazy. Writing takes time. It takes work. You have to practice at it.

But also, writing is hard. English language grammar rules are exceedingly unclear, with so many exceptions that one wonders why there are any rules at all. And as technology has morphed the way we communicate and the way we write, the rules have evolved in practice but in a way that no one actually teaches.

Then there are emojis. Love them, admittedly. But let’s be frank… Thanks to emojis, the majority of our communications have been reduced to a one tap, pictorial “grunt,” which often boils down to:

1. patronizing dismissal (thumbs-up = no thoughtful response required),
2. disingenuous expression of affection (c’mon, who doesn’t “heart” everything?) or
3. over exaggerated reaction (really, are you really crying with laughter?).

3 Ways to Improve Your Writing Right Now

1. Do Unto Others

For gosh sakes, have a little compassion. Remember that the person on the other end of that email or Slack thread is busy, like you. They don’t want to spend a long time reading and trying to figure out what you’re really saying.

Take, for example, meeting scheduling convos with team members in other time zones… Do them a favor:

WRITE THE TIME IN BOTH THEIR ZONE AND YOURS.

Save them the confusion of calculating (c’mon, we’re all crap at math, too). Even better, preempt their response and prevent additional back-and-forth. Chances are, they’ll accept. Like so:

Hey Jim! Would 12 PM Eastern/9 AM Pacific work for you? I’m sending along a calendar invite now. If that doesn’t work, let me know what does and thanks!

2. Don’t Bury the Lede

In school, we a were all taught to warm folks up with a long preamble, setting the stage for what would come next.

STOP THAT.

Because the more time peeps have to spend reading, the less time they’re spending doing work.

Get to the point faster by merciless editing. Start by writing as you normally would. Then, go back, read everything you just wrote and identify the extraneous. Hack the fluff. Get ruthless! You can do it.

#ProTip: Look for passive voice and rejigger to active, i.e., “The bone of the dog” becomes “the dog’s bone.”

See?

3. Write with Your Eyeballs

The same way we eat with our eyes, we read with our eyes; it’s a visual experience. Which means how what you write looks, matters.

Think spacing. Think, bold, italics, all caps. Think numbers, exclamation marks, question marks, percent signs, semicolons, colons, en and em dashes, parenthesis, ellipses – and yes, even emojis. Anything that stands out from the norm, that breaks up the text… that shizzle is your friend!

Make smart use of this tool kit. Because how you arrange your words can make what you’re trying to communicate more, erm, digestible.

For example, see all of the above :-).

Most importantly, loose the jargon. Acronyms, cliches, biz blab… BLEH. That stuff is a communication killer. Your readers will thank you.