Personal Branding - The Social Media Professor

The Fire Funnel Process by John Lee Dumas at Youpreneur Summit

November 11, 2017 by Niklas Myhr 8 Comments

The opening keynote speaker at the inaugural Youpreneur Summit John Lee Dumas, founder of the popular Entrepreneur on Fire Podcast, shared his Fire Funnel process for digital entrepreneurs. John started out by suggesting that you start with a “Funnel Up Process” to understand who you are going to serve before you design your sales of your “Funnel Down Funnel”.

The Funnel Up process

The Idea. What is your big idea that you want to build upon.
The Niche. Get that initial momentum is key, not easy, but once you get it, you can get things going. Then you can expand your scope. Rather than being Mr or Mrs Social Media of London, you'd be better off helping female dentists in Soho get one new client via Facebook Ads.
The Avatar. Who is that perfect customer, the listener to your podcast, the reader of your blog. Get to know that person in and out and try to identify their struggles.
The Medium of Choice. Blogging, podcasting, video, etc. Which one should you focus on?
The Content Creation. You need a system to setup to make sure you have a process to create great content on a regular basis.
The Repurpose. Once you have a good platform you can find content that can be used on other platforms as well. John uses Repurpose.io to get his podcast episodes elsewhere.
The Growth. How can you help others discover you.
The Audience Engagement. He gets millions of listens of his podcast each month which is absolutely absurd to him but he doesn't want to forget about doing things that don't scale. Don't be scared of having a one-on-one conversation. Yes, they can be time-consuming but that is where the gold is. You can learn about what works and doesn't and develop relationships.
The Solution. How can you help solve their problem and serve them. If you keep this in mind from the start, you will focus on generating the right leads and nurture them from the start.

The Funnel Down Process

Once you have gone through the Funnel Up process, you better know how you can help your audience and then you can design your Funnel Down Process to serve them.

Your lead generation. Now you know who to target.
Your Call to Action. Have a specific thing you want them to do.
Your Audience's Email Exchange.
Your Solution Delivery.
Your Audience Consumes.
Your Next CTA.
Live Training. Here John Lee Dumas emphasized the power of live webinars which is where he has made millions.
Live Q&A. Perhaps there is just one remaining obstacle remaining for someone to buy and if you make yourself available live, you can have it resolved right then and there.
Offer. Provide an offer that is supremely valuable for your audience.
Monetize.

The Fire Funnel by EO Fire

Finally, John Lee Dumas shared how he built an empire around daily podcasts with interviews of entrepreneurs. Check out Entrepreneurs on Fire or EO Fire and enjoy the show! John's final perspective he shared that sums up much of his perspective was a quote by Albert Einstein: “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”

My Snapchat Misadventures

March 2, 2017 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Congratulations to the founders of and the early investors in Snapchat or Snap Inc. on their successful initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange today. Shares apparently rose 44% on day one and we can expect the luxury car dealerships around Venice Beach here in Southern California where the company is located to have some good weeks ahead of them.

I will not speculate about whether the stock price represents a fair evaluation or not. However, I can speak about my own experience as a user of Snapchat. In short, it has been a struggle. I have persisted over the last year to try to figure out the benefits and use cases of this platform as I enjoy keeping an open mind to new things. Still, I now find it difficult to even remember to check the app on a daily basis.

Snapchat User Interface

Immediately, I was struck by how unintuitive the user interface felt to me as I didn't really recognize established patterns of how social networks were “supposed to” look look like. For example, fluent users swipe the screen up and down or right and left when I was used to click on menus and buttons.

Then I realized that this is exactly why they have appealed to a much younger demographic as they were not interested in yet another social network trying to mimic Facebook. For younger users, the user interface made perfect sense and then I realized that this app has been designed with a mobile-first perspective as opposed to a social network like Facebook that was designed for a desktop experience first only to be adapted to to a mobile interface at a later point. Looking back, I now remember how Facebook was both slow and not very apt at figuring out their transition to a mobile experience.

Reverse Mentoring

When my daughter Selma overheard me being interviewed over the phone by NBC News about social media trends last year, she said “dad, you are not allowed to talk about Snapchat anymore unless you learn how to use it!” Lo and behold, she sat me down and gave me a one-hour crash course to get started and this form of “reverse mentoring” is something I discussed in my TEDxUmeå talk. I think it is healthy to swallow your pride and accept the fact that young folks can teach you things just as you hope to share something of value with them at times.

This way, I was able to start experimenting some by starting follow people and share updates. I certainly had some good experiences and laughs along the way. I also noted that more people in my demographic, albeit heavily biased toward other marketing professionals, appeared on the platform and began using it for business and as a part of their “content marketing strategies.”

Snapchat niklasmyhr — Add me on Snapchat 🙂

Snapchat Stories

My frustration over the fact that updates would disappear was alleviated when Selma taught me how to save my updates and even save a whole day's worth of updates in so-called Snapchat Stories. I began obsessively saving everything I did thinking that I may want to repurpose that content later on other platforms or simply have them on my phone to be later exported to my trusted desktop experience.

Then Instagram “stole” the concept when they launched Instagram Stories. My daughter was quite upset about the unfairness of the whole situation. I tried to respect her frustration by not jumping over completely at least not right away. Still, I soon recognized that many more of my friends were on Instagram and the engagement I got from my Instagram Stories quickly dwarfed the response I saw on Snapchat. Hence, I began using Instagram more and Snapchat only sporadically.

My Future with or without Snapchat

My reduced usage of Snapchat may have less to do with the platform per se and more to do with the social network of people I have and where they hang out. Not so much on Snapchat or perhaps I have not looked carefully enough. I believe I will keep using it and recently, Selma and I achieved a new milestone with a 5-day streak of snapping each other. Who knows, perhaps, I will go all Gary Vaynerchuk on the platform one day and give it another chance but I have my doubts and don't expect to take the platform too seriously for my personal use.

That doesn't necessarily mean that I am dissing the future prospects of Snapchat even if I like many others see that they have a formidable foe in the Facebook/Instagram combo that doesn't seem to have any qualms about adopting the best features Snapchat come out with. At least Selma, 13 years old, still spends (too much…) time using Snapchat and have streaks with her friends going on in the 200+ days range. However, she isn't too impressed by the “Spectacles” sunglasses the company is pushing.

What about your experiences with Snapchat? Am I missing out? Will you be my snap buddy?

If you'd like to check out my TEDxUmeå TEDx talk in which I talk about my reverse mentorship experience with Selma and Snapchat, have a go at it and let me know what you think!

My TEDx Talk on The Modern Specialist

January 5, 2017 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Define yourself in terms of who you serve, not in terms of what you do.

I am very pleased to announce that my TEDx Talk on the role of the Modern Specialist has been published. In this talk, I share some perspectives that at times run counter to some popularly held beliefs on how to set yourself up for career success such as focusing on one thing and become really good at that. While I can see the potential benefits of such an approach, the question is what you do if you don’t know what to focus on, what your passion is, or if there is no demand for your services? Those are some of the concerns that I address and I also present an alternative perspective that I at times advice my students to embrace, the one of “The Modern Specialist.” This perspective is partially developed as a result of my summer internship in New York with Gary Vaynerchuk at Vayner Media and my talk also builds on my previous TEDx Talk at TEDxUmea.

This talk was recorded during a very special day at TEDxMissionViejo superbly managed by Stephanie Paul and where I got to engage with a very dynamic group of people composed of other speakers, audience members, and volunteers. I was proud to share the stage with my social entrepreneur student John Cefalu who spoke on making an impact in Africa and was also very pleased to see my Chapman University students volunteering and helping make the event run very smoothly to make it a tremendous experience for the audience and everyone involved! Special mentions go out to Venice Gell, Laurisa Sanchez, and Taylor Myers and the whole TedXMissionViejo Team and to Noel Witcosky and Annika Streng for helping me with research.

Lawyer and Social Media Expert Mitch Jackson honored me by attending.

TEDxMissionViejoMakeup — Getting ready, makeup time!

TEDxMissionViejo Niklas Myhr — Shot captured by my intern Annika Streng!

Social Networking in Real Life

March 18, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Steve Farber, Martin Shervington, Niklas Myhr, Derek Coburn, Chris Brogan, and Marla Schulman at Social Media Marketing World 2014

At last year's Social Media Marketing World, I had the honor of meeting up with many masterful networkers such as Steve Farber, Martin Shervington, Derek Coburn, Chris Brogan, and Marla Schulman, all of whom effectively use both on and offline means to build and nurture their networks.

Even if I am enthusiastic about the opportunities for online networking, I never dismiss the value of meeting people in real life. By contrast, I not only encourage students and professionals to take advantage of varied sets of offline networking opportunities as the bond that you can achieve face-to-face usually is stronger than the one you can develop online only. It doesn't have to be at expensive conferences but can also be during free events in your local area.

I find that on and offline interaction can build on top of each other. Networking with people online actually makes offline encounters both more fruitful and less awkward as you have already broken the ice and gotten to know a little bit about each other beforehand.

Similarly, the online interactions that you have with someone after having met the person face-to-face can be more meaningful and natural as well. Not only have you gotten an opportunity to better learn the interests and personality of the other party, but also you may have gotten a sense of how they usually prefer to communicate whether it be on or offline. Sometimes the best way to learn this is to simply ask where they prefer to communicate.

Even in cases when you have not directly communicated with someone online before you meet in person, you may still have an easier way to take your face-to-face interaction to a higher level if you know a little bit about the other party from following their online activities and public postings. It could obviously turn creepy if you reveal that you know almost too much about the other person.

Still, in most cases, I think such preparatory work helps you form a bond quicker as you can more readily find common ground. Also, most people would be pleased and flattered to learn that someone have read or viewed their updates.

Good luck in your own experimentations on how to achieve the ideal mix between on and offline networking and let me know if I can expect to see you at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego March 25-27. If you can't make it, I highly recommend you get the Virtual Pass to gain access to all the sessions from your home.

Disclosure: Some of the links on this website are so-called “affiliate links” but please note that I only recommend products or services that I either use to satisfaction personally or am confident will add value to my readers based on endorsements by people I trust.

Denying the World a Taste of Your Personality

March 15, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Today, it happened again. I was yet again dishing out a cautionary note of guidance to a student in an email missive about the risk of not showing enough in terms of her personality online as she strives to establish “a more mature professional image.” I understand where she is coming from, though, and “mature” is also a relative term. For example, it is reasonable that she doesn't want her middle school MySpace pictures prominently featured on first search engine results page.

Her approach, like for many other college students, is to separate their personal and professional sides into different sets of accounts or social networks. Specifically, on Twitter, she had one open account for professional appearance and a closed, personal one for interactions with friends. On Snapchat, she only had a personal presence with select and approved friends. On LinkedIn, she was present but considers it an extended resume and professional networking tool and “not for social use.”

Again, I understand what she means but my sense is that today's college students have an overly dry interpretation of what “professional” interaction implies. In short, I believe most professionals like to have social and human relationships as they conduct business. Or, do you think that I overreact?