trey pennington | marketing coach

Ellen McGirt is THE traditional media writer who has been covering social media since long before everyone jumped on the band wagon. Her April 2008 FastCompany cover story on the Obama campaign’s use of social media was the first story of its kind. She wrote it before Obama established a lead in the presidential primary.

Ellen was in Greenville to take part in Brains on Fire’s annual conference and took time to be a part of our Social Media Club Greenville monthly meeting.

“I set as the goal the maximum capacity that people have—I settle for no less. I make myself a relentless architect of the possibilities of human beings.” Benjamin Zander, conductor, Boston Philharmonic as quoted by Tom Peters in Circle of Innovation, page 144.

Marketer. Educator. Speaker. Social media practitioner. Seasoned business growth advisor.

My MBA gave me a solid understanding of fundamentals of what makes business work, and my Masters in Education helped me understand how people receive, process, retain, and use information.

But at the center of over two decades of experiencing growing organizations and people, you’ll find the heart of what motivates me is this: I get a thrill out of helping people discover their potential, their dreams, pulling their passions and dreams out of them, putting specific words and actionable deliverables to them, and seeing them become reality by doing what it takes to connect that passion for their business, product or services with other people that would care about it.

Everyone wants to be heard and understood, to know that they matter, that they are significant and that they count. I believe companies truly succeed when they start with that premise, and I’ve spent my career working with the consistent willingness and desire to connect people, get them to care about one another, and help them work together to make something significant happen.

That’s what drives me, and my heart goes out to so many incredibly brilliant CEO’s and entrepreneurs I’ve met who genuinely try hard but ultimately ‘miss it’ in connecting people. There’s a human side of marketing, with human factors that influence human behavior. When companies learn to tap into that dynamic…I believe that’s where dream building begins.

My coaching model is The Player Coach, a coach who not only encourages from the sidelines, but also gets in the game to make a difference. The Player Coach instructs, models, does; all effort directed towards victory for the team now AND towards increasing the capacity for victory in the future.

That’s why I must keep increasing my capacity, learning, all the time, and that’s the reason for this web site. Though I’ve crafted many digital strategies, storyboards, sitemaps, and wireframes, I haven’t built many web sites with my own hands. This project is not only for me to learn how to code web sites, its also designed to enable me to show small business owners how they can build and maintain their own sites when they can’t afford to hire professionals to craft a web presence for them.

Therefore, this is a work in progress. It’s fun. It’s not glamorous. It is worthwhile. The jury’s still out, though, on whether or not a business owner should attempt to build her own site! That time would probably be better spent on growing the business (even if she had to spend $10,000 to $25,000 to get the site going).

Just read a painful blog. Really painful because it was written by an ad agency (you know, those folks who get paid big money to write and create the stuff they say will get people to send you money). Why so painful? It was LONG. Long wouldn’t be bad if it were helpful. (As Uncle Herschel used to say, “It weren’t much helpful.”) Long, in this case, was particularly painful because the author clearly had the tone, “I know what is best.” It made me wonder, “Just how long should a blog post be?” Stuart Brown gives a good answer here. Mike Busson adds more helpful advice on writing for the web here.Bottom line: Write enough to make your point. Stop.   

Talk radio is fun! You can be a star (at least for a little while). Don’t let an opportunity to be heard on-the-air pass you by. Here are 9 tips that’ll get you ready to be remembered:

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Asking: A 59-Minute Guide to Everything Board Members, Volunteers, and Staff Must Know to Secure the Gift by Jerold Panas (105 pages)

If you need a pep talk on fundraising, sprinkled with golden nuggets of wisdom, Asking is a good start. If you want to encourage your board or volunteers to get involved in fundraising, give them a copy of this book. It’s also a great book on meaningfully connecting with other people (an essential element for effective communication, i.e., marketing too!)

Panas is a humble sage who loves fundraising. His quiet, confident passion ties the short chapters of Asking together into an inspirational essay that’ll make you smile. More importantly, it’ll inspire you to pick up the phone and make a call.

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Ron Huff shows you how to deliver a compelling message in six minutes or less in his book Say It In Six. Milo O. Frank can do it in thirty second or less.

Frank’s background is in advertising and the world of the sound bite. No doubt his concepts work well for those who craft radio or TV spots. With my emphasis on the human side of communication, though, I wondered if his book would be meaningful for real communication. I discovered his principles are sound for every communication.

Here’s what he says: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an intriguing thought for business-to-business companies. Social media is quite good for business-to-business marketers. 

Imagine a world where speakers got to their point and made their case all within six minutes! Just think of what you could do with all that extra time. No more setting through 60 minutes of nothing but wind (and sometimes fury, signifying nothing). Not only would you save a massive amount of time, everyone would get more done because people with a point to make would make it and people who cared about it would get it. Everyone would be happy.It’s not just a fantasy. It’s well within the reach of every speaker. Ron Huff tells us how in his short book Say It In Six. Read the rest of this entry »