Archive for the Success Stories

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The Hand Shake

John Lynch of Cripple Creek Barbeque likens social media to shaking hands. He combined the cutting-edge technology of social media with an old-fashioned approach three months after launching his barbecue sauces and spice rubs in July 2009.

“When I talked to my Mom about growing up in the ‘30s and ‘40s, she would tell me about how her father and mother would deal with local store owners with a hand shake and honesty,” Lynch says. “The people knew each other and trusted one another. This is how social media is working now.”

Whether it’s a literal handshake or a symbolic one online, that gesture leads to friendship and trust — key ingredients that Lynch believes are essential to growing a business.

Getting Into Social Media

John wanted to get the message out that his company truly cares what people think. “We wanted people to get to know us as people first and as a company second,” he says.

Instead of blogging or tweeting about his products, he initiates conversation with people who share his interests and typically are relevant to his products. “Hard sell doesn’t work on most people,” he says.

He plunged into Twitter, set up a Facebook Fans page and a Tumblr blog page, and posted cooking videos on various platforms with embedded videos on the Fans and blog pages.

All of these establish links that drive traffic back to his Web site where he sells his products. As his fans and followers grew, so did the offers from companies to carry his products. As of January 2010, Lynch attributed 90 percent of his sales directly to his social media campaign, gaining three times the amount compared to traditional sales avenues.

John’s Advice

…find people who are relevant to your interests and relationship build with them!  He searches topics on Twitter such as BBQ sauce, barbeque, cooking, foodies and Seattle Mariners. He answers questions that people post on Twitter, blogs about his passions and has found the power of the retweet (i.e. those who tweet his tweet) to be “astronomical.”

Lynch encourages other businesses not to waste time jumping into social media. He points out that online sales grew in 2009, despite the recession. “The image of the Internet right now in the brick-and-mortar world is that it’s just for those Website stores or geeks with time on their hands,” he says. But the future of businesses is in the hands of the 20- and 30-something year-old consumers who are immersed online.

Dianne Gubin is President, Tech Exec Partners Inc.

What was your introduction to LinkedIn?

I’ve been using LinkedIn, an online business networking tool, for about two years.  LinkedIn allows me to stay connected to other professionals in a highly interactive way.  I receive regular updates when anyone changes their profile.  This means that people in my network are constantly at the forefront of my mind.  And, should I update my information, my 500 plus contacts receive notice of this on a network email update blast.

What is your goal for using LinkedIn?

As the president of an executive search agency, I use LinkedIn all day long for business development and recruiting.  It’s easy to expand my network and access both corporate decision makers and candidates.  LinkedIn makes my work faster and easier.

What are some of the activities you used to build your network/success?

The best way to use LinkedIn is to join as many groups as are of interest to you.  You will immediately expand your network of contacts both locally, nationally and internationally.  LinkedIn is a great way to join conversations, find answers to questions posted on the group boards, and it’s not unusual for many of the groups to take their meetings off-line and meet in person.

Considering your success, how can you leverage the power of LinkedIn in future endeavors?

LinkedIn is a great way to find people or find a job.  If you’re working on a project and need a resource, LinkedIn is an excellent tool.  Most important, it’s a great way to stay in touch with people you wouldn’t normally see on a regular basis, or bump into at an event.

What are your top 3 tips to help someone else build their success on LinkedIn?

1. If you’re looking for a job, LinkedIn is being used by more and more recruiters.  Fill in as much of your resume as appropriate using as many key words as possible.  Recruiters will find you.

2. To maximize LinkedIn, join as many groups as you can and watch the updates.  Joining groups allows you to connect to larger pools of people.

3. Use it.  Invite people to join and when you’re invited, just say yes.  You’ll quickly expand your connections which will allow you greater access to people one or two removed from you in your network.

Dianne Gubin is an executive who knows the dynamics of creating success. Her commitment is to help others make well-informed, educated choices that power their career and business development from ordinary to extraordinary.

As president of Tech Exec Partners, Inc., a corporate staffing and consulting firm, Dianne Gubin has accelerated thousands of career successes by opening doorways to life-changing opportunities within Fortune 500 corporations including Amgen, Countrywide, Disney, AIG Sun America, Qualcomm, and 20th Century Fox, as well as fast-growth companies.

Dianne engages industry leaders in conversations on hot-button business issues and gives you power tools for success on Dianne Gubin Talks Business her Internet radio show. Definitely not business as usual.

Dianne is an excellent public speaker and a member of the National Speakers Association. View her demo reel here

A graduate of the University of Connecticut, Dianne lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their three children.

Visit Dianne on LinkedIn here

Yesterday we shared the first part of a very exciting LinkedIn Success Story. Here is part 2…

You have some exciting business opportunities you are working on.  Can you share those in the context of how you’ve been able to leverage the power of LinkedIn?

As one of my main business objectives is to provide medical marketing coaching, I started developing a training program to help junior medical marketers excel in their careers.  As I am a strong believer in the power of being surrounded by brilliant and highly skilled professionals, I decided to assemble an advisory board comprised of pharmaceutical sales and marketing experts.  The role of this advisory board is to provide me with input and guidance throughout the development process of the training program.  I decided to send a request for volunteers to join my advisory board via several LinkedIn groups with a focus on pharmaceutical marketing.  As my business is in the start-up phase, I was not able to offer a salary or an honorarium for this role.  Instead, I offered a free copy of the final product to those who would be ‘active participants’ in the ad board.  I also promised that whoever would be actively involved in the project, that they would be acknowledged as a member of the advisory board on the final product.

I was expecting a handful of people to respond to my request, and I was going to be happy if I had 5 to 10 members as part of the advisory board.  To my utter disbelief, over 70 highly skilled pharmaceutical professionals from around the world asked to join my advisory board.  Their profiles were all so impressive.  It was so exciting to have so many talented people share the same passion as me and want to help me with this project.  I would have liked to include everybody that applied as part of the group but I felt it would be very difficult to manage, so I selected 25 members to be part of the Pharmaceutical Marketing Coach Advisory Board. From my investigation, I am confident that this is the first international pharmaceutical marketing training group comprised of individuals from various companies, including the client and the agency side.  As the ad board was officially launched in January 2009, we are just starting to work on our project.  We have an exciting journey ahead of us and I am thrilled to have the support and guidance from all those who are members of the advisory board!

What are 3 actionable tips you would suggest to help someone increase their success on LinkedIn?

For those using LinkedIn for business purposes, I would recommend that they join groups that are related to their industry, participate in the discussions (start discussions, respond to questions and don’t forget to share resources and tips that might be of value to your network even if they don’t generate direct business for you), and send personalized notes to people that you would like to get to know better.  I have found that the LinkedIn members are generous in sharing their ideas and are accepting of multiple perspectives and opinions.  There is so much to learn from one another, and LinkedIn makes it easy to do so.

About Nat Bourre

Nat Bourre is a pharmaceutical marketing consultant and coach and founder of the ‘Pharmaceutical Marketing Coach’

She can be found on the following social networks;

• LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/marketing4health
• Twitter http://www.twitter.com/pharmacoach
• FaceBook http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1118902798&ref=profile

Feel free to send her a note or invite her to join your network.

Recently we had the privilege of getting introduced to Natalie Bourre and discussing LinkedIn & social networking with her.  She has only been on LinkedIn for a few months and clearly shows what being strategically focused & being active can achieve!  We were so impressed by her success that we wanted to interview her and share it with you on this blog.

What was your introduction to LinkedIn?

I signed up for LinkedIn in June 2008.  It was at this time that I decided to start my medical marketing consulting and coaching business, Marketing 4 Health Inc., and started to build my website http://www.pharmaceutical-marketing-coach.com.  Some of my colleagues suggested that I join LinkedIn as a way to post my profile in order to network with other professionals within the industry.  I must admit that I had no idea what to expect.  In fact, I did not expect much at all.  My experience with social media up to that point had been very limited and more of a personal nature.  Upon signing up for LinkedIn, I sent a few invitations to people that I knew in the pharmaceutical industry, and did not see the professional benefits of the site until I noticed somebody within my network had joined a pharma group on LinkedIn.  This caught my attention right away and that’s when I started using LinkedIn strategically to expand my network within the medical marketing arena.

What is your goal for using LinkedIn?

My goal for using LinkedIn is to find prospective clients for my medical marketing consulting and coaching services.    In order to improve the probability of finding potential clients, I am focused on developing a large targeted network of professionals who are involved or interested in the pharmaceutical / biotech / medical industry.  On the flip side, it is also helpful to have a large network in case I ever require to sub-contract some business to skilled experts within the industry.  And yes, I definitely plan on growing my business to the point of requiring an extra hand or two in the next couple of years!

Since you have built such an impressive LinkedIn network so rapidly, can you share some of your activities?

In the beginning, I invited all the people that I found on LinkedIn whom I used to work with, either directly or indirectly (service providers such as marketing agencies).  It helps to look at the connections of the people that you used to work with to see if they might have a contact that you might have missed, as it is quite likely that you have a lot of work colleagues in common.

By the time this list was exhausted, I was starting to become familiar with LinkedIn.  That is when I noticed a colleague joined a pharma group on LinkedIn.  Always one to take as many opportunities to socialize as possible, in person and online, I joined as many pharmaceutical / biotech related groups as I could find.  I immediately became an active participant in these forums;  I started discussions, made comments, and contacted some people who I felt wrote very insightful comments.  Once a contact has been made through the group discussions, if the other person is in agreement, I invite them to join my LinkedIn network.  I regularly share resources and tips that I have found online with my LinkedIn groups by posting these as new discussions.  Sometimes these resources come from my website, but oftentimes they are not linked to my business at all.  I am just sharing something that might add value to my network.  As a member of 48 groups, it takes a long time to post the same information on all groups, but I do it because I feel sharing information that might be perceived as valuable by my network is an important part of online social networking.  If you want others to provide you with suggestions and insights to your discussion topics, you have to give them something as well, either through comments or sharing.  Plus, this helps build a personal brand that others might start recognizing.  For example, when I post a resource on the web, I usually get a couple of people who comment on the fact that this is something that I do on a regular basis.

I have also had success in generating invitations to join others’ networks by posting a request for others to send me invitations.  I try not to do this too often because I feel it is not as personalized as other network expansion methods.  I do not get to know my new contacts as well as I would via the other methods that I just described.  Nonetheless, it is an effective way of getting a quick boost in your network volume.  As long as you are part of a network that is targeted to your industry, chances are that those who will respond to your post will be involved in the same industry as you, either directly or indirectly.

Finally, I post my LinkedIn public profile address on my other social network profiles and on various pages throughout my website.

About Nat Bourre

Nat Bourre is a pharmaceutical marketing consultant and coach and founder of the ‘Pharmaceutical Marketing Coach’

She can be found on the following social networks;

• LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/marketing4health
• Twitter http://www.twitter.com/pharmacoach
• FaceBook http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1118902798&ref=profile