So let’s talk a little about the power of Social Media. And then I’m going to dive right in to what of each Six Steps are; so one of the core powers of social media is that you can form one on one relationship with thousands of people at once. If you are not so familiar with social media, you might be familiar with email marketing which is a kind of a similar mode of communication where I am able to write one email that feels like a one on one communication, but I can send it out to you 50,000 people at the same time.

Social media is the same way except it’s even stronger in forming a relationship; A true relationship with your audience and with your prospects. So a lot of people will say “Ugh, social media is a huge waste of time” and social media can be a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong; if you use it in a wrong way. But I actually see it as a huge time saver because I can sign on Twitter and I can talk to 3000 people at once and I can make everyone of those 3000 people feel like I’m having a conversation with them and of course it make it really easy to facilitate actual one on one conversations with the people who follow me on Twitter. To write messages and @replies and things like that. So as far as I’m concerned I can’t think of a faster way to talk to thousands of people and a faster way to relationship build with thousands of people than social media. I mean I think it is a little bit bunk when people say it’s a time waste or if that’s how you want to use it to waste time. But I don’t want to use it to waste time; I want to use it to save time. That’s how I see it.

So the next powerful element of social media is building a community and creating connections between your followers. This is something that is really often overlooked and I don’t see a lot of social media expert, social media people talking about. If you read the book Tribes by Seth Godin which I highly recommend, and really all of this stuff that he talks about in this book is the same sort of core concepts that I’m going to talk about today.

In Tribes, Seth Godin says that you have really formed a true lasting community when it’s not just a relationship between you and the person but it is relationship forming between the people in your community. And that used to be really difficult to do because it used to be that the only way you could do that have some sort of an in-person event especially if you have a national business, where your audience and your community are all over the place. It used to be that you have events that people have to fly out to. And of course you have to come up with some creative sentences to make them actually come but now that is really easy to do.

I saw an example of this drafts with my, I taught a Twitter webinar, you could find that at Twitterwebinar.com; it is a class now that it was pre-package but was a live seminar that I taught. And it is the side effects that I noticed happened and it’s actually not even something that I consciously facilitated. But when the webinar is over; one of the people in the class said “Hey, I want to connect with all the other people that are in the class. I want to know them and talk to them because if they have the same interest in this webinar we would probably have similar interest and get along. You know we are all entrepreneurs or people who are interested in furthering our business using Twitter and using social media and so I sent out that list and see those people talking to each other on Twitter all the time.

They are people who are in my community, but now they have made their own community where they don’t need to just talk to me, they can talk to each other, but even when they are talking to each other it’s somehow furthering my branch power because I’m the one who brought them together and I am what they initially had in common if that makes sense. And they started doing that even before someone had suggested that that happen. I saw people just doing it on their own, kind of figuring that is funny because I could see the conversations on Twitter where people would be like “Are you on Laura’s webinar? I kind of figure that you might be from that Tweet I saw you send her the other day.” Then they say ‘hi’ to each other and introduce. It was so cool and that happened just as a side effect you know without me even consciously trying. So if starting consciously, trying to do that as you can imagine, you will see it happen really well and really quickly.

So the next thing I want to talk about is how social media shows people the real, the real side of you instead of a boring business bio. It is my opinion that the era of pretending that we have no life outside of our business; pretending that we’re just going to work and that’s what we all think about and talk about for our whole lives, I think it’s over. I personally want it to be over and I run my business and so it’s over and it is something I see more and more where people want to know about your whole life which makes sense because that is always the connection that we have made with people.

I mean the cliché is kind of the idea of the sales guy who has those notes on the back of his roll of decks like if anyone watched The Office recently they just had that on office where Michael, Michael has got his roll of decks where he had ‘he has a gay son’ written at the back of the card that’s kind of the sales man cliché where you know little tidbits about people’s personal lives and you say “How’s your wife? How’s your kid?” So people always connect to that way but it’s always like this thing had to be very careful with you want to reveal about a little bit about your life, but not too much.

And now with social media you can let people know you as a real person and that attract people much more powerfully to you than just knowing you as a business person and happening to know that you’re married. But they don’t know anything about that and in social media we got to see pictures of the trips people take with their families and that’s the kind of stuff that really increases that know-I- can-trust factor that really makes people feel like they are really in your world and that they are part of your world and they want to get to know you better.

The last really important thing about social media is kind of a different set now; is that it is easily and instantly trackable. So when you compare it to a traditional PR, where you’re showing up on a TV show, when you’re showing up often in a magazine, you usually have no idea if that really does anything. Because it is sort of vague, brand awareness thing someone kind of see you in a magazine and they kind of Googled your name, but you never know if those things are connected. Most of the time you have no idea of that kind of process in any effect or not and you certainly, even if you notice, maybe an increase of traffic on your website; we aren’t able to directly track it to your sales.

What is really cool about social media is that you can go nuts tracking absolutely everything. I mean I don’t do this because, I probably should, but I’m just not a huge tracking person and it’s not very fun for me. I mean if you have been a tracking person which you should be because this will be very valuable for your business; I mean you can track how many dollars every single Tweet with the link to your website brings in. That’s easy, it’s very easy to do and that makes social media, this argument I think that some people, this idea that some people have that social media is all laugh and all fun I mean it’s really easy to disprove that. You just start tracking, and either you see the traffic coming in and the money coming in and you see the opportunities coming in or you’re not. So if you think that social media is fluff, try out and track it and see because I don’t think it is fluff at all. It works pretty well for me.

Welcome! I’m Laura Roeder and you are on the Six Steps to Creating Fame for You and Your Business webinar. We are starting right at the dot at noon Pacific and I’m really, really excited that you are here with me because I haven’t really had a chance to present this information to a lot of people yet and it’s something that has been kind of stewing in my head for a long time and basically I want to tell you just a little bit of a back story before I start.

I know you might know me but there are a few new people on this webinar who don’t know me. When I started my business about 2 years ago, I did websites for small businesses but I always finding that they are asking me about marketing advice and social media advice. I have just always been involved in online communities since I was very young. Since I’m so young, I’ve been on internet since I was about the 6th grade. And during that time I’ve always built websites, built fan communities for bands that I like online back then it was web rings and guest books and stuff like that, if you remember that.

So the concept of creating online communities is not new. What’s cool is now we have some tools that we didn’t used to have that make it really, really easy to do. Here is my little Skype window, there that’s nice. And so basically I moved my business from doing web design to doing more consulting about social media and online marketing. And where I really had this big revelation for the creating fame system was through the work that I did with Brea Grant.

Brea Grant is an actress who plays Daphne, the speedster on this season of heroes, and basically I got Brea on the web. I told her I needed to create an online fan community to support her career so I showed her how to start a blog and what kind of contents she should put on the blog and how to get in Twitter and how to use all these great social media tools and the end result is that now she is truly a pioneer, and our actors using this types of tools to really further their career. And while I was working with her, I kind of started thinking, you know I think it’s seems obvious to a lot of us that you can use this type of things in Hollywood but it didn’t immediately occur to me that I might be able to use the exact same sort of concepts and strategies as well as the same tactical tools to make someone like an entrepreneur famous and because like many of us my initial thought was “Why would anyone be interested in me? Why would I have fans? I’m not famous, I’m not a celebrity.” but I kind of started using the same technique that I was using for Brea, for myself and for my own career and it worked.

That’s the short way to explain what happened, it worked, and it works from really, really well. And immediately I started seeing this huge result of things that I wanted for a long time. And immediately I started getting the kinds of speaking engagements that I wanted. I started hanging out with in connecting with some entrepreneurs that I admired from a far. And form some business partnerships with them.

My website now, I just get so many leads of people wanting to work with me through my website every single day. People that I haven’t talked to yet, and let me tell you that is awesome. It’s really awesome thing to have. It’s something that I wanted for a long time, but can’t really figure out what to do and so this is how I did it. So I want to share with you so that you can do it to.

So let’s get in to the PowerPoint now. So first I want to talk about the new model of fame versus the old model of fame. The old model was to wait for the mainstream process to discover you. If you ever tried this you know that it’s pretty difficult, it’s mostly a fluke and the process has the same few people that they like to go to over and over and over again. And if you’re not on that short list it’s basically a manner of shoomozing with the right people, really, using for the right people really, it’s the only way to get on the list. You can pay a publicist, lots of lots of money which may or may not be effective. Basically it’s a path filled with a lot of struggle and a lot of luck.

So I call the new model “discovering yourself” instead of waiting for other people to discover you because you create your own press, you create your own content, you create your own media attention. These are all totally possible to do using social media. I don’t even know if I need to tell you why being famous in your field is something that you want but in case I do. Positioning yourself as number 1 brings then tons of prospects from a lot of different angles.

Once you come up higher in search rankings and not just come up higher but you look better in search rankings especially if you are on industry where people are not on board with social media using just the most basic strategy is going to make you look incredible compared to all your competitors. I mean one your competitors might not even have a website but if they do have a website think of someone looking up you and someone looking up your competition. They look up your competition maybe they have a website, maybe it’s even like a really nice looking well designed website. And they look up you and you are not only having the website but you have videos of you showing your expertise. And you have a bunch of interview that you’ve been in. You have a bunch of articles that you’ve written. You have information maybe it is webinar, maybe it is pediask or whatever that you share. You have a community of people that are fans of yours and spreading the word about you.

It’s just no contest as far as who people want to buy from, who people want to hire. Positioning yourself as the expert on the web it just makes you the easy choice. I don’t even, it’s so obvious, I don’t even know how else to say it. You’re just going to be head and shoulders above everyone else and it’s not just for prospects. People who are considering you for book deals; people who are considering you for speaking engagements are also searching the web and seeing what comes up.

And it’s so easy to make yourself that good basically; to make you look really good using the web and using social media. And I also want to point out that self made fame can absolutely lead to media made fame. When the media has exhausted or short list of the same people that they go to over and over again and they need someone new, they ask around and but if no one knows anyone they are heading Google just like the rest of us. They don’t have some secret list that the rest of us don’t have.

I asked the other down Twitter for stories of people who have been approached totally cold by the mainstream media based on their website. And I got tons of responses. I don’t know maybe 40 responses, seriously a lot of them. And it was everything from real simple magazine and the major morning T.V shows and just the local paper, the local news. It’s really, really common for these media sources to Google and then once they see all the great stuff that comes up about you when they Google, you are going to be the one that they will call. So if you’re looking for media mainstream plus fame this is actually a good way to get that as well.

Hey! This is Laura Roeder, and this is a quick video response to a reader question. “Should I send a Facebook event invitation for my online event to everyone I know on Facebook?” Here is the answer, “No!” Now let me tell you why.

When you’re bothering people in general; there are two questions that you need to ask yourself. One is how invasive is this? And two is have they raised their hand to hear from me in some way?

So as for the first question; how invasive is this? Here is what I mean. When you invite someone to an event on Facebook, most people will receive an email on their inbox with that event invitation, I know, I do. That is what most people have on their settings. Receiving an email is way more invasive than just seeing a message on the page if that makes sense, because it’s actively coming to my inbox.

As far as the second question, I can see you saying, ok but the person has agreed to be my friend on Facebook, but I’m friends with a lot of people on Facebook that I have no interest in being a customer of their business. See what do I mean? They might be my friend. We might be able to collaborate in some way. I might be interested to create strategies with them as an entrepreneur. But if they sell horse’s that is something that I have no interest in, and will never have any interest in, then I don’t want to hear their sale pitches for buying a horse.

Maybe we’re going to talk about their marketing strategies for selling horses and trade ideas for that but I don’t really want to receive a junk from them about buying horses. So there is going to be a lot of people that you are friends with on Facebook that don’t have any interest in hearing from you from sales perspective. So as far as promoting online events on Facebook, one, I mean it’s definitely not something that is a must do; it is nice if you have a lot of people that say yes. I think that’s good for you. It shows people that are interested, other people are showing up, but I don’t think it’s something.

I would actually love to hear your opinion or your comments if you had a big success in promoting online events on Facebook. I haven’t seen it based on something that really makes or breaks online event for people. I do think they are very effective for offline events. I know that I have a lot of premium invitations and meet up and event planning and stuff, but I do via Facebook, I will check my Facebook calendar and see what kind of stuff I have signed up for, what’s coming up?

But as far as online events, you know teleseminars, webinars, and stuffs like that, not so much. It can be ok. But so if you want to invite people to your online event via Facebook, work through your form list and see who is interested. Maybe there are people that you know are on your email list for this topic or that you know that are always responsive to you about this topic.

If you want to invite those people, great; if there are people who are very targeted; if you are offering free content for florist and you have people that you know that are florists on your list it would make sense to invite them on Facebook event. But it would not make sense to invite me because I’m not a florist. And I have been on friending people lately that are sending me a ton of event invites that I have no interest in because its spam, that is what it is. So I say definitely think twice before you invite everyone to your online Facebook event, and as far as just blanketing the invitation such as everyone at your friends on Facebook, no. Don’t do it.

Laura Roeder here with a quick update for you. So Twitter has recently change over here the, what used to be called the @replace tab and then change the functionality in a really important way. And I want to make sure that you understand. So this used to say @replies meaning only people who replied to you, but now it says @ and then it says your name. For me it says @lkr.

Now let’s click on it to see the difference. So when it was @replies, you would only see the messages that started with your name like these that start with @lkr. But it used to be that you would miss messages that had your name anywhere else; such as read Tweets or people putting your name in the middle of the message.

So now, when you click @lkr, @ your name on the side bar you can see all the messages that mention your name anywhere in there. I think it’s a great change, you no longer have to do a separate search for your name just clicking on that one side bar, and you will make sure you will not miss people say to you or about you.