UnMarketing with Scott Stratten

November 30, 2010 - Carol McBee

On November 29 we hosted the infamous Scott Stratten, President of UnMarketing, and were included as stop 29 on his 30 city North American “UnBook Tour.”  We had 200 guests from a wide range of industries attend the event that was sponsored by Merge Magazine, Sherwood Park Toyota, Barefoot Wine, Cafe Haven and the Meterra Hotel.  Scott describes UnMarketing as Viral, Social, and Authentic Marketing.  As a self proclaimed (meaning he totally made it up!) 50/50 club member (50k+ tweets, 50k+ followers) he has certainly become an expert! That’s roughly 5,000,000 characters of typing, assuming an average of 100 characters a tweet and he says it’s been worth every one of them.  Scott says it’s all about positioning yourself as a trusted expert in front of your target market, so when they have the need, they choose you.  Formerly a music industry marketer, national sales training manager and a Professor at the Sheridan College School of Business, he has been running his “UnAgency” for 8 years which has become the place companies come to when they need help guiding their way through the viral/social media and relationship marketing landscape. He now has over 73,000 people follow his daily rantings on Twitter and was voted one of the top influencers on the site with over 150 million users. It’s the only time he’s felt comfortable being compared to Ashton Kutcher, P Diddy and Justin Bieber – with comments like that, you can imagine a fun time was had by all!  Our partner network, Mom Entrepreneurs Network in Toronto also hosted Scott earlier in November.  I am personally fairly new to really using Twitter.  I secretly created an account when my daughter was just a few weeks old so that I could follow Ellen (yes, as in Degeneres) to help her reach a million followers.  Lame right!?  After that, I didn’t touch the account for more than a year.  Now, I find myself annoyed when I am trying to mention someone that doesn’t have an account!  I have people asking me what “thebossymama” (yup, that’s my twitter handle) is making for dinner.  I tweeted about a diamond gala that I attended recently and ended up having a salon glam me up for free.  When I heard about Scott tweets, I followed him, and the rest is history.  Learning how to really communicate with people and not just sell the hell out of them is a real gift and something that should be learned.  The marketing world has changed – and this goes for entrepreneurs, sales people, not for profits and more!  Desperate cold calling, using your business cards as if you are playing poker (thank you Kim Duke for that one!) and being a cheesy sales person DO NOT WORK!  I’m not sure when they did work, but I do know in this over marketed, propaganda wielding world we live in, you need to make deeper connections with people, while still staying top of mind.  Which leads me to my next point – what I love about Scott is the fact that he doesn’t need to tell us his life story and sell to us for us to know who he is and what he does.  That, is the power of twitter.

Here are some great takeaway’s from Scott during the event (thanks to @alirayne for these!)

It’s a small talk, everything doesn’t have to be epic
Every time someone asks about the ROI of Twitter a Kitten Dies
Social Media is talking.  Insert ‘talking’ everywhere social media would go
You need to treasure your lists.  A community is 10 times stronger and lasts 10 times longer than a lead
There is no neutral brand interaction.  You either raise the brand profile or lower it
The most loved are also the most loathed

Follow us on twitter and join the conversation! @thebossymama

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