A Retro Look At An Awesome Interview With Mari Smith at Blogworld

A year and a half ago  I had the privilege of attending Blogworld, Los Angeles and watched some of my favorites in the Social Media landscape speak on their strengths. During the event, I asked some of my wonderful friends if they had any questions for two of my favorite social media experts, Mari Smith and Michael Stelzner.

Mari Smith is one of the top Facebook and Relationship Marketing Experts around.

In 2008, FastCompany.com dubbed Mari “the Pied Piper of the Online World.” 

Michael Stelzner is the founder of Socialmediaexaminer.com.Â

In less than 5 months, Social Media Examiner was declared the #1 small business blog in the world by Technorati, added more than 40,000 email subscribers, brought nearly 250,000 people a month to the site and is ranked as one of the top 4200 websites in all of America by Alexa.

We answered two questions that were narrowed down.  One from Carol “The How2Girl” Dodsley and Keith”Ask The Tipster” Everett for Mari Smith.

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Carol’s question was: 

“With all the noise and information overload in the social media arena right now – what advice would you give Mari,  to newcomers that will enable them to cut out the noise?“

Mari:

“Ok, well hello Carol.  First of all I think there is something huge to be said for being a Personal Brand, and I am assuming you are!  (In being a personal brand),  look to see what makes you unique and play your strengths.  Less is more.  Better to say fewer things that are high quality and relevant.  Scale it back.  Don’t be a contributor to the noise.  Quality over Quantity.  Focus on the quality and the quantity comes. ”

Keith’s questions was:

“My question to Mari is, what is her most successful traffic technique she uses to get people to opt into her list?“

Mari:

“Oh, I have my Ninja tricks.  I offer free Webinars.  I look for timely topics.  Back in Feburary teaching my 7 point strategy system for success on Facebook, we had 7500 opt ins.  30% coming in is pretty good and that is what we had.  About 2k live.  We could have had 3k to 4k if we had the right technology.  That was one of my most successful opt ins.  Then you can’t just go do a free webinar and say, “Ok thanks guys, bye, we’ll see ya later”.  As a marketer you need to think strategically.  When you have live people tuning in, make an offer; an irresistible offer; send them to a link.  Make it really obvious.  Give them the link and have maybe a discount code for the offer if they sign up by a certain time.  Make it totally authentic and for real without any kind of shenanigans.

Me:

“Thanks Mari, I am so excited that you said that because I am very into Webinars, in fact I created an Webinar Software.  So thank you Mari Smith, proof is in the pudding!”

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I had such a great experience talking to Mari and many other experts in their respective fields at Blogworld.

Two things ring out in this interview! Less is more or Quality over Quantity…and of course Webinars (online events).

I want to break these 2 thing down very quickly.

Video quite simply = Quality

Not to say that your video needs to be awesome production value.  When we say Quality we are referring to the value of content that is given.

When talking about great content I am reminded of the 4 video types that I use for my front end lead generation.  They are Interviews, Presentations, How to Videos, Vlog Style videos.  All of these video types combined creates perfect lead funnel.  The name of the game is not only finding the traffic but bringing that traffic in to become leads and sales.

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Cheers! Casey