WebEx: Ideas in Motion

Guy Kawasaki Part Four: Using Twitter and Google to Fill Your Sales Funnel

On May 12th, Guy Kawasaki presented an amazing discussion via WebEx about social media and there was a lot of good content. This presentation was offered in conjunction with our new free beta, WebEx Meet - which is our first step into turning online meetings into social media (you can get it here).
 

Part One: The Power of Twitter Search for Brand Monitoring
Part Two: Engagement Critical for Twitter Success
Part Three: Sell like DellOutlet and Kogi BBQ. Use Twitter!                                                           

Now truly, the rubber meets the road when using Twitter as a marketing platform when you try to sell things.

Let's suppose you are a camera store and you think, "Ah, this is great; I'll search for everybody who has the word 'photography' in the tweet." You will see thousands of people talking about photography.

If you are B&H and you have an international footprint probably every one of these people are a legitimate sales prospect. So that might work for B&H where you're a mail order and you sell all over the place.

But let's say you're a smaller organization.

Instead of just doing "photography" you would like to search "photography near Anaheim", where your store is located. So now you just do an advanced search: photography near the Anaheim zip code (92802), within 25 miles (e.g. try dropping those details in the advanced search window and see if you get this). Now you can see all the people who are talking about photography in your area. 

Think of the possibilities here: how else could you find people that are interested in your particular kind of product within 25 miles of your business?

Google has a great integration with Twitter right now.

You can go to Google and search in people's user names or real names for the word photographer. Let me show you that search.

I did a Google search with the operator "in title" looking for the word "photographer" on "Twitter" (example here). And all these people have self-identified themselves as photographers in their bio. Think about it – how cool is that? These people have basically told you that they are photographers. And if you were a photography supply store I would think that it can't get much better than this.

What Google is searching is people's Twitter profile information. For example, if you look for the title "fire hose" you would find me. This profile information is where people have said, "I am a wedding photographer, I am a nature photographer, I'm a professional photographer." That's a powerful Google search that will allow you to target your prospecting efforts.

If you're an entrepreneur or in business, think of all the people you're trying to identify. It's another way you could find SEO people: look at all the people who identify themselves as SEO experts! What if you're in HR? Find all the people who say they're in HR. What if you are looking for a PHP engineer? So look for people who, in their bios, say they're PHP.

This is a great way to find people by their occupation. A very useful, very powerful Google search.

This concludes part four and we are going to keep it coming! Next week he'll focus on getting more followers on Twitter (and why that's important). And don't forget to try the new WebEx Meet beta.

Why Kids are Smarter than Adults: They Just Do It! WebEx Meet Goes to Farmville

All I had to do was tell my daughter she could use our new WebEx Meet beta.

Of course, she rarely sweats the price of anything but since this was free, it had my endorsement and frankly, I wanted to see if she could do it without my help.

The answer was yes, she could. So could her friends.

She's still a little on the young side - fifth grade - but we (parents) have let the kids get on Facebook in a very controlled context and they all play Farmville. Along the way, they figured out Facebook chat and that seemed to delight them - even though most of them can't type worth a darn.

But when I let her fire up the WebEx Meet beta,  and turn on the webcams, the fun began. You have no idea how much these kids wanted to see each other and show off their "farms" from their point of view (apparently different from when you are simply visiting to fertilize their crops).

Within minutes they were "passing the ball" (assigning control to different participants) and sharing their computer desktops to see corn, horses, chickens and mystery boxes.

Okay - so it wasn't the first application we considered for the new beta, but it is definitely a fun one! And it makes the point for anyone new to online meetings. Listen to the kids; just do it.

WebEx Meet is easy to use.

We've worked to make the new WebEx Meet intuitive, accessible and you can't beat the price. It's free for up to four people plus you! If you are a little nervous, you can try doing a meeting "solo" without anyone in attendance. You can also follow our five easy steps for getting started.

So give it a try. You can use it to do anything - visit with the family, conduct business or - and we promise we won't tell - share you farm!

Get the WebEx Meet beta here.
   

Guy Kawasaki Part Three: Sell like DellOutlet and Kogi BBQ. Use Twitter!

On May 12th, Guy Kawasaki presented an amazing discussion via WebEx about social media. This presentation was offered in conjunction with our new free beta, WebEx Meet - which is our first step into turning online meetings into social media (you can get it here).                                                         

Part One: The Power of Twitter Search for Brand Monitoring
Part Two: Engagement Critical for Twitter Success    

Guy: A good example of selling is Dell Outlet. @DellOutlet has 1.6 million followers. And what they do is announce specials, such as 15% off any Dell Outlet laptop or desktop. They have a special coupon code so they'll know which tweet you are seeing.

@DellOutlet also points you to a specific web page. Coupon coming here [e.g. look at the tweets on their page and you'll see code and links]. It is also providing a little bit of interaction [e.g. see examples of DellOutlet chatting with tweeters].

The key here is that Dell is now selling refurbished Dell Outlet equipment through Twitter. And if you think about it, what could they have done with this before? I suppose they could have called their ad agency, designed an ad, submitted it to legal, bought media, place it in Wired and other places.

Four weeks later they'd be running a different ad to sell something else. Today they can write out a little 140 character promotion, can give a specific landing page and a specific coupon code so they know which tweets people are responding to. And in less than five minutes they are tweeting out a promotion. I think that's very powerful use of Twitter.                                                                 

This is Twitter sales.

An interesting side point here on Dell: if you look at the number of followers, I don't have these numbers exactly right, but I was told that when they started Dell Outlet they had 2,500 followers and they sold something like half a million dollars worth of equipment. Then they got on the suggested user list of Twitter and they got to 1.6 million followers and they sell about $2 million worth of equipment.

You would think when you went from 2,500 to 1.6 million, in a perfect world it would be that order of magnitude increase of business, but it only tripled or quadrupled their business. One ke lesson to learn here - particularly for selling - it's really not the number of followers, it's the number of followers who are really interested in what you're selling.

It's more important that you had 2,500 people who really cared about discount Dell equipment than getting another 1.6 million people who have no clue what you're doing and didn't know they were even following you.

An even more clever use of Twitter selling is @KogiBBQ.

Kogi BBQ is a seafood vendor in Los Angeles and what it does is tell people where how to find them. Kogi has 63,000 followers some of whom want to know Kogi will be at a location from 9:30 to 12:30 – like the coffee gallery in Altadena on Lake Avenue. And when the Kogi BBQ truck shows up, there are 50 to 100 people waiting to buy their Mexican-Korean mash-up food.

I think this is a fascinating use. I mean consider the alternatives for Kogi BBQ: we have 12 trucks in Los Angeles; could it run an ad in The LA Times to announce their locations? I doubt it.

Let's think about what that would involve. You are a seafood vendor and you want to tell people you're going to be on a certain street corner from 9:30 to 12:30 – could you run an ad in The LA Times? Let's say The LA Times has six million subscribers. What percentage are going to be reading The LA Times at a time when they want to get in their car and go to that corner and buy a taco? The answer is zero. And think about what that ad would cost and where would that ad be? The Food Section? Sports Section? Who knows?

This is a great example of a small business using Twitter to drive traffic to a particular street corner to buy tacos. It doesn't get much better than that.

The poster child for customer support is Frank Eliason over at Comcast.

He runs a Twitter account called @ComcastCares. What he's doing is constantly searching for people who have issues with Comcast. For example here he's telling @RModel that a new router is on its way to him, talking about receiving their email. So he's providing tech support. And he has about 10 people now that help him with this, and they constantly monitor issues with Comcast so they can be the frontline for Comcast desk support.

This a very good example – they're engaged, they're providing tech support, they're pre-empting problems.

I think now most major brands have a Twitter presence, and major brands are very, very cognizant of their image on Twitter – perhaps too cognizant. I've had issues with some hotels in how they handled shipping and receiving of packages, and I tweeted out my issues and the national headquarters contacted me. I've had issues with some car brands, and I've tweeted out my issues with them and they've contacted me.

Now it is true that it helps that I have 230,000 followers, but I don't think that's the sole reason. I think basically they are monitoring their brands.

This concludes part three. Come back on Wednesday to get the next section of his talk on prospecting with Twitter! And don't forget to try the new WebEx Meet beta.
  

Guy Kawasaki Part Two: Engagement Critical for Twitter Success

On May 12th, Guy Kawasaki presented an amazing discussion via WebEx about social media. This presentation was offered in conjunction with our new free beta, WebEx Meet - which is our first step into turning online meetings into social media (you can get it here). We hope you enjoy both the WebEx Meet beta and the blog posts!

Part One: The Power of Twitter Search for Brand Monitoring

Guy: The next stage of Twitter is engagement.

Virgin America has a very good example of this. Virgin America uses this account to talk about what their features are on a plane, such as Wi-Fi but they also about their mileage program, Elevate, about radio, about downtime with their reservation system. I've seen them also talk about new routes that they put in when added San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale. They announced it on Twitter.

There's an apocryphal story that someone was on a Virgin America flight - and Virgin America has Wi-Fi on every plane - and the person didn't get his meal delivered. He tweeted that he was on a Virgin America flight and the flight attendant had not delivered the meal. And the story goes that Virgin America on the ground saw the tweet, radioed the pilot, the pilot talked to the flight attendant and the flight attendant delivered his meal.

I think that's a great story. I hope it's true.

So of course, after hearing that story I tried it when I was on a Virgin America flight. I tweeted, "@VirginAmerica: if you're so good, have the flight attendant bring me a Coke; I'm in seat 2A." Shortly thereafter Virgin America tweeted back to me and said, "Guy, why don't you just ask the flight attendant for a Coke." I view that as a success that clearly they were monitoring and engaging.

Another great example is Clever Accounts.

What Clever Accounts does - it's a guy at Twitter - he is always looking for how people are using Twitter in interesting ways and he posts what he finds. This is a very good filter. This person is purposefully looking for innovative, engaging uses of Twitter. You can look at his tweets and say, "Oh, so let's see how the FDA is using Twitter. And let's see how lawmakers are using it. And let's see how Hugo Chavez is using it."

This is a very good account to follow just to see how people are using Twitter to engage. Let him be the filter; let him find the interesting things.

This concludes part two. Come back on Monday to get the next section of his talk on "selling"! And don't forget to try the new WebEx Meet beta.
  

WebEx Meet beta: Five Fast Steps to "Doing It" Online (and its free!)

If you have considered doing an online meeting but have stopped because you just didn't want to spend the money, now's your chance. We are rolling out our beta version of the new WebEx Meet and it's absolutely free.

This is a great chance to give online meetings and try. And if you are new to "doing it" - here are five fast steps (I promise) to get you started.

1. Subscribe.
Easy peasy. Click this link and sign up.

2. Schedule.
You can go rogue and do an Instant Meeting or Schedule a Meeting for a future date/time. All you need to invite someone is their email address or you can do one by yourself just to try it out.

3. Connect audio.
You have some choices here. You can call the WebEx bridge (telephone) or use VoIP (computer). Both necessary if you want to record the meeting (yep, you can do that too!). Or, if you want to just call direct person-to-person, go ahead - you just can't record the conversation because it's not happening via WebEx.

4. Share Your Desktop.
Possibly the coolest part of any online meeting - letting the person you are meeting with see what you are doing. Every click, as you do it. Just hit the big fat Share Desktop button and start sharing. Important note, VERY important note, don't forget that you are sharing. Should you decide to multitask, do email, start Tweeting, whatever, your meeting mate will see everything you are doing!

5. Pass the Ball.
On the list of meeting attendees, move that green/blue ball to someone else's name and they can share their desktop; or control the meeting. And now you are officially in "the club" because you now know what Passing the Ball means: handing over control to someone else. It's kind of nice to let go!

That's it! Five easy steps to help you get started. Let us know how it works out!
  

Guy Kawasaki Part One: The Power of Twitter Search for Brand Monitoring

On May 12th, Guy Kawasaki presented an amazing discussion via WebEx about social media. What follows is the first in a series of blogs featuring an edited transcript of his presentation. This presentation was offered in conjunction with our new free beta, WebEx Meet - which is our first step into turning online meetings into social media (you can get it here). We hope you enjoy both the WebEx Meet beta and the blog posts!

Guy: I'm going to focus primarily on Twitter as a marketing weapon. I want to show people how you can use Twitter to go far beyond just using it as a social platform. I think it's vastly underused as a marketing platform, so I want to show how I use it, what people can do to use it, and how to really kick butt with Twitter.

Viewing his desktop via WebEx: Let me share my desktop here. I am sitting in my home office in Atherton, California. And the first thing I have to say is just love [WebEx] technology. I give about 50 to 75 keynotes a year and most involve flying someplace. I go to sleep, I wake up, I speak and I leave – sort of takes two days out of my life. I love this technology; I wish I could give every presentation this way. So thank you WebEx – I love this.

[Script site provide by Guy; you might want to open it alongside this blog to see the links he uses. I will drop in links in the copy where his example matches his commentary.]

Guy: The scenario is that you are an entrepreneur, a small-business person, a marketing person, product management person and you want to use Twitter as a marketing weapon – social media as a marketing weapon. I fully realize there's this other thing called Facebook, I happen to focus most of my efforts on Twitter.

I think that Facebook is very good if you have such compelling content that you can pull people to your Facebook page. But I think Twitter is more useful as a push mechanism, where you want to push things to them, rather than trying to compel them to come to you. And so I focus most of my efforts on Twitter.

I'm going to walk you through what I do with Twitter as an example.

I have to admit that I started on Twitter in September 2007, at the request – actually the sort of pounding on me by Dave Winer and Laura Fitton. And if it were not for them I would not be on Twitter, and I think like many people, when I first saw Twitter I went to the Twitter.com home page and my first reaction is, "What kind of crap is this?" like, "Why do I care if Lonelyboy15's cat rolled over?" and "Why do I care if Amanda21 is a long line of Starbucks?" This is the worst thing in the world.

I think of it as an IQ test: if your first reaction to Twitter is that it's the dumbest thing you ever saw, you pass the IQ test. And it took me a good three or four weeks to sort of "Come to Jesus" with Twitter. Let me step you through my process.

The first reaction is to that public timeline, where you see a bunch of crap – from people you don't care about. So my initial reaction was Twitter is for people with nothing to say, tweeting to people with nothing to do.

But then I figured out search. Let's use this example of you are working for Nikon or Canon. You're in the camera business and you want to use social media as a marketing weapon. The first thing you do is probably monitor your own brand. If you're Nikon you look at everything that people are saying about Nikon in real time.

This is when the light went on for me because of course the first thing I did was typed in my name. I wanted to see what people were saying about me. Now this is always a dangerous thing for me to do this real time search [he puts in his name for fun, then switches to Nikon. Here's the link.] You can see what everybody's saying about your brand and then you quickly think, "Well, I need to figure out what people are saying about my brand as well as my competitor's brand, Canon."

Do a search that's Nikon or Canon and the key mechanism here is this word, "OR." And this "OR" has to be in caps [example link]. So you could also do, if you think you compete with Kodak you would do Nikon OR Canon OR Kodak. And now you're searching all three.

This is where the power of Twitter starts kicking in because essentially you are searching the world of sentiment in real time for free whenever you want to. It's kind of like being George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, except you're doing it legally. You can see what everybody's talking about. So "Nikon OR Canon OR Kodak" is a very powerful kind of search.  

To go beyond monitoring, let's say that you're Canon. And you want to see what people are saying to your competition Nikon. You want to see what your competition is saying back to them. So there's a way of doing a search that is all the messages that are from NikonUSA and to NikonUSA.

This is a very powerful way to monitor what's being said to your competition and what your competition is saying back. [Example here] that's how you would do this search.

Those are three powerful methods of monitoring. Look at your own brand, look at your brand and your competition, or look at what's being said to your competition and what your competition is saying back.

That covers monitoring.

Okay gang, this concludes part one! Come back on Wednesday to get the next section of his talk on "engagement"! And don't forget to try the new WebEx Meet beta - grab it here.
  

"Stop the Inanity!" A Moderator's Perspective of Guy Kawasaki on WebEx

Today's blog was written by David Goad, moderator for the Guy Kawasaki event we held via WebEx on May 12th. If you missed the event, shame on you! The good news, the WebEx recording is available here. David is a Cisco marketeer, web conferencing veteran, social media enthusiast and blogger… roughly in that order. Read his Short Stories with a Point here.

No, that’s not a typo in the title.

I’m talking about the inane commentary that initially turned me off to Twitter. Why does anyone care if you blew out a tire and fell off your bike? Well, if you’re Lance Armstrong, there are lots of people who care. Some high school daredevil… not so much. As with most communication channels, you get the bad with the good.

The trick is being able to filter, sort and extract what you want.

I experienced a new interest in Twitter when I moderated the WebEx with Guy Kawasaki. He let loose with a fire hose of facts and advice on how Twitter can be used effectively in marketing, and I fired questions at him from the online audience of over 2,000 attendees.

While I was doing my moderator thing, I was also watching the twitterstream we set up at #meet@webex. Guy was sharing the desktop from his Mac via WebEx, and throwing out really cool bits of advice. I noticed on Twitter how certain phrases caught on with the audience and were instantaneously re-tweeted.

Like an army of reporters typing in the time with a drummer, they tweeted

·         “Twitter is fast, free, and ubiquitous.“

·         “Social Media today is what the internet was 15 year ago."

·         "Critical mass for using Twitter as a marketing platform is probably 5000 followers."

·         “It’s not the number of followers you have; it's the number who are engaged with what you have to say."

·         “Anybody who claims to be a social media expert is not a social media expert.”

·         "If you're not pissing off a few people everyday you're not using it right!"

It’s cool to see what others in the audience are thinking in real time. Guy himself joined the Twitter conversation after the event, sharing more of his advice on How To Be Fascinating.

The point is this… what’s happening with Twitter is not inane at all. I think the focus on foolishness is subsiding, and there are real benefits emerging from it and other social media channels. You can tap into a rich storehouse of up-to-date knowledge delivered by fascinating people if you know how to find it.

It also dawned on me that a digitally captured conversation or meeting has a lot of value. That's our thinking behind our new, free WebEx Meet beta - the first step toward taking your online meetings social. (Get the free beta now, use it when you're ready!)

Many in the audience were begging for a link to the WebEx recording so they could drink what they missed from the fire hose the first time, as well as share it with their own social networks. We agree that a recorded meeting is a valuable chunk of media that is worth saving, sharing and talking about - and you can get Guy's recording (along with others from this series) here.

A note from the WebEx team: we'll be blogging about Guy's event starting next week. If you listened, you know he provided a ton of information in a short amount of time. We are transcribing the event and will start publishing his words (!) starting next week in this blog.
  

Incredibly Useful: New WebEx Meet is Perfect for Small Biz People Like Me (and its Free)

I think I might be one of the few that have logged the most hours beta testing the new WebEx Meet. I am actually a consultant working for WebEx on a variety of projects and I don't have access to their enterprise products. So when WebEx Meet came along, it was awesome - I am their target market  - a small business owner who scrambles to do it all with little infrastructure and no tech support.

That's why I am loving WebEx Meet.

I'll write more in other blogs about other features, but today I wanted to focus on one simple thing my business partner and I have been doing that you can do too - immediately. And it's absolutely free. Here it is:

Lynn and I will be on a call with each other, talking through a project and then, thanks to WebEx Meet, I will immediately turn on a WebEx session that lets us start sharing our desktops, look at documents, see websites, and watch each other make edits - super fast and easy. You can use WebEx to host the call, but most of the time we are already talking when we realize we both need to look at something at the same time.

Here's how you can do it:

1. Subscribe to WebEx Meet - it's a web app that will send you to your home page after you sign up (it will look like the image above).
   
2. Then you can do one of two things:
   
3. • Start an instant meeting - which is super easy and asks you for the email of other people you want to invite (the free version has a limit), or 
     
   • Schedule a meeting - which is my choice because then you can name your meeting which is really helpful when you go back and look at all the meetings you have had. To "schedule" and instant meeting, just put in the time plus one minute (e.g. if it's 10:43am, start the meeting at 10:44am). When you come back to the home page, hit start meeting and you are on! (See the second image.)

Once you and your invited guest arrive, you can share your desktop by hitting the "share desktop" button right in the middle of the screen. You can choose to stay on your existing call or use WebEx audio (we just stay on the phone) and you can "pass the ball" to your guests so they can share their desktop by just moving that little blue/green ball to different people's names on the guest list.

I honestly can't believe how often I am "opening a WebEx" now when I am talking on the phone. It's like having this wonderful backchannel to improve our ad hoc phone conversations.

Give it a try - see what you think. And then send me a comment - here or on Facebook. I can't be the only one that thinks this is super slick.
  

Question: Why Would Guy Kawasaki Like WebEx Meet (Our New Beta)?

Answer: Because it's all about making the meeting a social media event.

Our new WebEx Meet beta is now publicly available and is free to use with up to four other people (get it now). It's our first step toward creating an online meeting solution aimed at helping you do more, faster. From getting people together, to having all your meetings in one place - you can do it right now with the WebEx Meet beta.

But we think the future of meetings is about so much more. And that's where Guy Kawasaki comes in. We are hosting an event with the master of social media this Wednesday at 10am PT. He's going to share his secrets - and disasters - for successfully using social media. And he'll do it via WebEx.

Register here.

If you are a social media user, you know the heartbeat behind the tools is content. From great articles to status updates about Mother's Day to a WebEx meeting, it's all about the content. You want to share, push, "like", comment and see what your friends are doing. For us risk takers, it includes more than our friends, it also includes the people we work with.

And that's where WebEx Meet comes in.

Meetings can be media. They are content. Whether you choose to share them internally - with your work mates - or actually record them knowing you will be making it publically available. WebEx Meet can help. Jump on the beta and record your meeting. Share your desktop, smile on your webcam. And then share the recording with the world.

That's our plan with the Guy Kawasaki WebEx.

If you can't make it live, you can catch the recording. You won't miss a thing (except maybe the cool back-channel Tweeting we'll be doing during the event at #meet@webex).

So register to join to Guy via WebEx this Wednesday.

Get the free WebEx Meet beta.

And start thinking about your online meetings in a whole new way.
   

Behind the Scenes with Alice Waters – She Won't Use a Microwave, but She Will Use WebEx!

[Today's blog was written by Janine Pelosi, head of the market growth team that is responsible for putting on our terrific events. WebEx insiders know the Alice Waters event had a secret champion, our resident gourmet, Janine! Of course, she high-tailed it to Berkeley to meet Alice in person. ]

I have a confession to make. I love food - the smell, the taste, cooking it. And I love Alice Waters. I think the work that she has done over the past few decades is truly inspiring. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to meet her, sit in her kitchen and watch her talk with you via WebEx while she cleaned salad greens.

Not everyone was fortunate enough to sit at her kitchen table as an onlooker, but if you attended the WebEx live or have watched the recording, you are bound to have noticed a few of the same things I did.

To start, she looked amazing. One light, a window, and a single web cam was all she needed.

She popped into her kitchen about 20 minutes before the WebEx was scheduled to start. A few strawberries, a glass of water, and a touch up of lipstick and we were ready to go….a far cry from a New York City interview.

Headset in place (so she could hear the host), she appeared incredibly comfortable; it seemed that the technology made things very easy and actually provided a sense of intimacy as she talked to the audience.

It’s interesting how, as we all learned, Alice is quite simple when it comes to the technology she uses in the kitchen; no microwave, no food processor, no fancy gadgets. And yet she was very comfortable in this online meeting.

She said she actually enjoyed knowing she was reaching people from her own kitchen. It reminded me of playing a sport with home field advantage and the sense of confidence that comes along with it. And I think we as the onlookers  via WebEx - or from her kitchen table - truly benefit from this format.

Simple elegance: the master at her craft and us.

And yes, after the WebEx she sliced an apple into the salad, pulled out a thin pizza from Chez Panisse (made of Swiss chard and kalamata olives) and we all ate lunch standing around that huge island in her kitchen.

Do you have ideas for other events we should host? Let us know! Comment here, on Facebook or send us a Tweet! And don't miss our next big event: Guy Kawasaki ! Learn more here or register today!