If you’ve ever read my blog, you know that I like to share tips on how you can improve your online marketing strategies and be more successful online. The following story outlines the social media journey that I took over the past year. I share it with you now in the hopes that you will be able to take some of the lessons I learned and implement them in your own business.

I attended BOLO2011 on a bit of a whim. After meeting with the team at agencyside on business unrelated to this event, I decided that it made sense for me to attend and convinced my agency to send me. It was one of the best decisions of my career. And now that I have just attended my last keynote of BOLO2012, I felt it worth telling my story.

Let’s start with just a little about who I am, just to put things into perspective. I currently work with MediaWhiz, a digital media agency in New York. My role at this agency is that of new accounts acquisitions. That’s a fancy way of saying that I’m in sales. The main thing I sell is link building for SEO purposes. Confession: my main goal at BOLO2011 was to create relationships with agencies that needed back end SEO support, specifically when it comes to links.

Did I achieve that goal? Sure. I ended up doing business with several of the contacts I made. But that is really NOT what this story is about. This story is more about my personal journey and how BOLO2011 impacted me on a much bigger level.

In addition to the role I play selling link building services, I also write this blog. In October 2011, it had a handful of posts about general internet marketing strategies. I had the blog for two reasons. First, I had been an internet marketing trainer of yellow pages reps in 2009 and it was a great way to teach them more about internet marketing. Also, I found it helpful for overcoming objections and answering questions I would get from clients without having to constantly repeat myself. Example: “Are links really that important?” Answer: “Yes. Take a look at this article I wrote about how backlinks are like references on your resume.” Lazy? Nah. Efficient. Yep.

Along comes BOLO2011. I attend with all hopes being that I can find some future clients. One attendee even referred to me as a “conference leach” when I told her what I did. Ouch, but kinda true.

The thing is, I got so much more out of BOLO2011 than a few prospects and clients.

The most important thing I learned (from new friend and mentor Michael Gass) was that I should start blogging regularly, that great content would make me an authority on my given subject and that being that authority would bring me business. Okay, that’s pretty basic stuff, right? I should have known that already, but I was so focused on making sales, that it had gotten by me.

The next big light bulb moment was that I should GIVE AWAY all my best knowledge and that by doing so, I would gain trust, exposure and customers. Now that is not something I had ever considered. Give away my strategies? Give away my expertise? That’s actually counter to what we’ve all been taught. But I was promised that if I gave away my expertise, the people who really needed my services would pay for them, rather than try to do it themselves. I was a little skeptical, but willing to give it a shot. I’ll tell you what happened in a second.

The third thing I learned was that social media wasn’t just a place where people wasted time and it wasn’t just people talking about themselves to inflate their own egos. Yes, I once thought this. One of my favorite stats to quote was one that said something like “over half of all tweets are about twitter.” No, that’s not an exact quote and it’s probably not even accurate by a long shot. But I was under the impression that most social media was self-serving and egocentric. [Just for fun: Infographic about how Twitter will end the world] BOLO2011 taught me that I should take it more seriously, to use the channels, engage other users and to listen to the conversations taking place in social media channels. I decided that even a SEARCH guy could play nice with Social Media.

Armed with this new information, I went home and started implementing my lessons. I started blogging nearly once a week about all things related to link building (and a few things not related to link building, but interesting to me.) Between BOLO2011 and BOLO2012, I posted 60 new articles of which less than five were guest blog posts or content from other sites that I just had to share. I’m proud and a little embarrassed to say that I probably have the best high level content on link building for users who are new to the topic. Too bad there aren’t more people interested in a hot topic like link building. Ha!

The next thing I did was to build myself a “professional” facebook presence. (Aside: I just couldn’t bring myself to open up my personal facebook page to the rest of the world as I had a bad experience with someone who called himself a friend abusing my personal information.) So my professional facebook page became the place where I would share my thoughts and articles related to link building and internet marketing. I don’t have a million fans, but I have a pretty decent amount considering it’s been a year and the fans come very organically without much promotion. I get some comments and likes and shares, so I know that the page isn’t sitting there in the ether of cyberspace collecting dust.

I also started making better use of twitter. Of course, I would tweet when I posted a blog article, but I would also follow thought leaders so I was always up to date on the most relevant data in my field. I would re-tweet the best stuff and I engaged with others on twitter. There’s rarely a day that goes by that I don’t get new followers. Twitter has become a place where I create great relationships and some of those relationships turn into advocates of my services and some turn into clients. Old way of thinking, zero. New BOLO improved way of thinking, two.

Of course, this got me engaged in other social media like Google+ and Linkedin which I probably don’t use to their full extend… okay I don’t, no probably about it, but I’m working on it. I do, however, keep an open mind about social media in a way I didn’t before. I think that’s the lesson I needed.

I also created a newsletter. I send my best content to my site visitors who sign up to receive the newsletter and to those that I meet in person. Metrics show pretty impressive open and read numbers, but I think the fact that I don’t get very many unsubscribes is also a good indicator that it’s successful. Best of all is when I see someone on my mailing list that I haven’t seen in months and they mention something they read in my newsletter. “Hey David, you’re really into infographics these days, aren’t you?” That’s kinda cool and maybe even a little flattering.

I really have gained so much from taking these kinds of actions. Take a look:

  • Traffic to my site is a billion times higher than it was. (Of course, it could only go up, being practically non-existent. Ha!)
  • I have a great presence on facebook where my friends and fans interact with me.
  • I have a lot more twitter followers, and more important, twitter relationships.
  • I get calls from people who want to learn more about link building and these calls often turn into clients.
  • I get calls from people who have read enough about my products and services that they have already made a buying decision.
  • I get booked on speaking engagements.
  • Clients who find me through other channels, skeptical that I’m just trying to make a sale, have a much greater amount of respect for me when they’ve read my blog. Here’s a direct quote from a client after an initial talk about my services and then a look at my blog, “Okay, you’re clearly the guy who knows about link building and penguin. I’m a fan.”

BOLO2011 had an impact on how I now live online, a very positive impact in my opinion. Having just spent two days soaking in all the great presentations at BOLO2012 and creating more awesome relationships with thought leaders and gurus, I know that I’m walking away with more great nuggets that will continue to grow my site, my sales, my clients, my relationships and more.

Thank you agencyside for a great event. BOLO is my favorite show and I am grateful to your team, your speakers and your attendees.

Thanks for reading,

David McBee

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