Becky Robinson's Blog, page 36

What’s New in Social Media: IGTV

Instagram has had its sights set on SnapChat for a while — now the platform is gunning for YouTube with the unveiling of IGTV, which will allow creators to upload videos up to one hour in length. IGTV will be available within Instagram, but it will also have a stand-alone app (iOS and Android).

Highlights of IGTV

It features vertical video-optimized for your phone and how you use it.
Anyone will be able to share long-form videos on the platform, not just celebrities and influencers.
IGTV will be available to most accounts very quickly. Those with new accounts or small followings will be among the last to get access.
Instagram will highlight videos, much the way the platform highlights stories now, and give priority to longer-form videos.
Users will be alerted when people they follow upload new IGTV material.
Creators will be able to insert clickable links in their IGTV posts.
There is no advertising on the platform right now, but it will come later.

So what does that mean for you? It means a platform that now attracts one-billion users per month has created a new path for you to grow your following and connect with new audiences. Video content is the highest performing type of content on all social media; and according to Instagram, by 2021, video will account for 78% of mobile data traffic. It’s important to start exploring the world of video content.

Here are some important things to keep in mind:

Videos can be shot on your mobile phone, but quality is paramount.
Good lighting is important.
You’ll need to invest in a separate microphone for quality audio.
A tripod and remote start will be your best friends.

As long as you focus on quality, content is wide open. Tutorials and humorous videos rule YouTube right now, and they’ll likely do very well on IGTV, too. But there’s still a place for the thought leader.

Ideas to Consider

Move your webinars to IGTV.
Launch book promotion videos on the platform.
Repurpose video content from other sources for IGTV.
Shoot an introduction video.
Launch a free content/learning series.
Hold a regular Q&A session with your followers.

While IGTV and YouTube have much in common, YouTube is often more a place to watch, than a place to engage. IGTV will put an emphasis on engagement, too. A win-win for thought leaders.

Are you ready to start sharing videos on IGTV?

Your Website Mid-Year Checkup

We all know the world of the internet moves fast . . . to say the least. In the past, we’ve written about when your website requires an upgrade (generally 2-3 years). But even if your site is fairly fresh, say 6 months old, you should still be doing regular checkups to make sure your site is healthy and is accomplishing your goals.

Introducing Your 6-Month Checkup Checklist

Make sure your plugins are all up-to-date, and check to be sure you have a plugin installed for regular backups. We like UpdraftPlus, a free WordPress plugin that you can configure to do daily backups onto your server or hard drive.
Refresh any outdated static content. This could include your staff bios/descriptions, services, contact information, or any of the other static content on your site that may have become incorrect/irrelevant.
Make sure you are getting the most out of your SEO. SEO is a world in and of itself, but anyone can make sure they are using healthy SEO practices by installing an SEO plugin (we like Yoast), and making sure that the headers and snippets are active and filled out for each page, as well as for each blog post.
Do a quick run-through to make sure all links on your site are still working. Links should open in a new tab — you don’t want to direct people away from your site when they are in the middle of reading about you.
Re-evaluate your blog. Are you posting at least 2x per month? If not, you may want to re-evaluate whether you really need a blog. A blog that is not active is sometimes worse than no blog at all. If you are posting regularly, make sure the topics are in line with your goals for your website and get some honest feedback from peers about the effectiveness of your content.

Need Some Additional Help?

The Weaving Influence web department is at your service! We can help you with:

New fully designed and developed custom websites (we specialize in websites for authors and thought leaders).
Templated websites for your book page, business, and more.
Strategic advice about your website’s effectiveness, direction, and content.
Blog curation, posting, and writing.

Interested in learning more about our web offerings? Be in touch with us at web@weavinginfluence.com.

Cheers!

Why Your Content Strategy Needs to Include Curated Content

There are many different ways to create success on social media. If you’re reading our blog, you are likely trying to create a niche for yourself as a thought leader. You have probably also either followed or read about brands that are successful in social. You may have even considered trying to crack their code for your channels. That’s not the best path for thought leader social media success.

Brands are after attention, even negative attention, which can often lift a brand on social media. Take Wendy’s, for instance. It’s not a warm, fuzzy account to follow. If anything, the account becomes snarkier everyday, with an active strategy around attacking its competitors with often pointed, and some might say mean-spirited, humor.

A thought leader, on the other hand, needs to inform, inspire, and even entertain in a professional and positive manner. Your social strategy is quite different from a brand strategy. The goal of a thought leader is to become the top social destination for people interested in information, inspiration, and thought leadership around your area of expertise. In some ways, you become an aggregator of powerful thinking. That means sharing your own content, and it means sharing great content from other people.

When I share this approach, I often hear: “why would I share someone else’s content?”

The answer is simple: social media is about creating conversations. Think of it as a round-table, not a bully pulpit for your work — at least, not if you want to be successful.  Sharing other’s work that aligns with your thinking, and sharing work that you consider thought-provoking, is a value to your followers. You want your content to always offer value.

The next question I get is: “how do I find content to share?” 

There are a few ways to find create third-party curated content, and a few tools that can be very helpful. Here are some we recommend.

Your Social Feeds

This is the least predictable source for content, but it can deliver some real gems. As you scroll through your personal or professional feeds, you’ll see great articles pop up. Grab the link and save it in your spreadsheet, or share it immediately to your professional profiles if the articles are especially timely.

Google Alerts

Google allows you to set up alerts around your name, a competitor’s name, keywords, and more. When those words are mentioned in an article, you’ll receive an email. Just be careful: if you use very general keywords, you’ll be inundated with updates with little value. We recommend keeping an ongoing alert around your name and your book’s title primarily. Learn more here.

BuzzSumo

This tool has a free article search (with some limits) that allows you to look for news coverage on specific keywords and topics. I use this tool regularly to locate curated content. I’ll set aside some time each day to search around certain keywords and put the links in my content library for future use. I’ve found great articles that I didn’t unearth using the same keywords in a Google news search. Try it here.

Feedly

This tool helps you set up RSS feeds around keywords, blogs URL’s, and specific topics. Additionally, Feedly allows you to mark content to read later and allows you to organize content into boards, eliminating the need for a spreadsheet. You can create up to 100 feeds with the free edition. Set it up here.

Dedicating an hour a week, or a few minutes a morning, will help you create a library of strong third-party content. This approach will deepen your thought leadership, but streamline the amount of time you need to dedicate to delivering value to your audiences. And isn’t that what we’re all seeking— more value and less time commitment?

Which tool are you going to try?

 

3 Ways Social Media Metrics Can Improve Your Marketing Efforts

A basic rule of marketing is measure everything. As content marketers, we rely very heavily on data and analytics; but if you are managing your own social media, you may skim over those oftentimes confusing numbers.

Here’s why we recommend you don’t skim, and instead dive in: these numbers are the breadcrumbs to success. They let you know what your audience likes and what they don’t like. Based on this information, you can adjust your content marketing strategy to reach and engage more people, with less time and effort.

Figuring out where to begin is where overwhelm can set it. Each social media and content marketing platform has data available and often they have multiple data points. You can literally track thousands of numbers, but there is no need to track everything.

We recommend identifying your goals first: Are you trying to increase your audience size?  Do you want to engage people? Are you promoting or selling a product? Once you know what you’re trying to do with your content marketing, then you can begin to monitor the metrics that reflect on your progress.

Here are three of the data points we track, plus how we use this information to drive results.

Social Channel Growth

Clients often come to us with social platforms they want to grow, email lists they want to build, or website traffic they hope to increase. Growing platforms is a top goal and one of the easiest to monitor. In fact, I bet you’re keeping track of your growth metrics right now.

We recommend creating a spreadsheet and comparing your audience numbers, platform to platform, every month. This will help you chart growth and also determine if you see an increase or a slowdown, if there are cyclical trends, or if big news events impact your channels. For instance, we know that growth slows every summer starting around July 4th for our American clients and it picks up again in September. Web traffic drops then, too. We see an increase in growth every January. These are cyclical rhythms we’ve observed by monitoring client growth over time.

This knowledge helps us plan content marketing initiatives or content experiments. For example, if we have a new lead magnet, we likely won’t unveil it in July or August; but if we want to experiment with a new type of content, these slower months may provide the perfect soft launch platform.

Social Engagement

Having a large platform is helpful, but it’s more important to have a connected and engaged platform. I often cite the example of a large consumer brand I once consulted for — the brand had more than one-million Facebook fans, but the fans didn’t feel any loyalty or connection with the brand and responded negatively to content, if they responded. Fans were not engaged, because the brand wasn’t sharing content relevant to their customers. Follower numbers painted a rosy picture, but engagement gave us the real story. That’s why engagement matters.

Engagement can be tracked across social platforms and at the post/tweet level. That spreadsheet you created to track growth — add a column for engagement and see how it’s trending for you. If you see a dip or an spike, it’s worth diving deeper. Your content-sharing cadence, the time of the year, the time of the post, and other variables can impact engagement, and often you’ll notice patterns.

If your text-only content gets poor engagement while your graphics do well — you have some actionable data. You might also notice that content shared at certain times of the day normally performs well or not so well. Adjust your posting accordingly.

The most important step you can take is to find out what really gets your audience excited and share more content like that! By checking post/tweet level engagement, you’ll know exactly what your audience wants to see from you.

Social Actions

You can dive even deeper into engagement and take a look at the actions people are taking on your content.

Retweets and shares are the most valuable social actions because they expose your content to a wider audience, plus it creates social proof that you can be trusted, that your content has impact.

Comments are also important. You want to create conversation. Comments show whether you have succeeded here. One note — we’ve seen a big drop in comments on blog posts. That doesn’t mean your post isn’t successful. In this instance, we’re seeing more people sharing blog comments on social media instead of posting on a website. You can track this activity in your mentions across platforms.

Likes and favorites are nice, but they are the low-hanging fruit of social actions.

If you have content that’s really sparking action, take a good look at it and try to determine what is igniting conversation and sharing. Then, try to create more of that content for the future.

The numbers don’t lie. They can help you create a content strategy that engages and excites interest, or they can reveal some painful truths about your efforts. Either way, that information is powerful to help you refine your message, your delivery, your format, and your timing. Without it, you’re driving with your eyes closed and that’s never a good idea.

Tell us, what have you learned from your social metrics?  

Confident ROi: Discover the Right Tools to Transform Your Company

For business owners and executives, the bottom line is what counts; and there is no shortage of business books, systems, and consultants that claim they can improve it. Some magazines haphazardly throw books and resources at readers, and others offer a new direction or concept in every issue. There is no map for knowing where to start, and how to continue improving. There is no consistency — and thus, no confidence in any of the recommendations.

But if business leaders are going to spend time and money implementing a business concept to grow their business, they want to be confident they will generate a return on that investment.  That’s the focus of a new magazine launching this week, which empower leaders to advance their company whether they own it, lead it, or work in it.

Confident ROi

Confident ROi magazine, started by company turnaround specialist Alex Vorobieff, interviews business leaders to hear their stories of what concepts worked and didn’t work, and focuses on providing concrete how-to’s. It also explores costs, time, and effort levels (i.e., brain strain) to implement tools leaders can use to turn around their companies. It is devoted to bringing you the tools and concepts to build the company you envision, along with the insights other leaders discovered when they tried to implement them. With this information, you can confidently select the right tool to generate a return on your company’s time and money.

According to Alex: “There are countless concepts with claims to fix all the problems facing business leaders and media outlets, that throw every concept at them. Besides trying to have one solution to all issues, they often start at the wrong end. Confident ROi ‘maps’ out the proper sequence from starting point through the end, offering real-world stories on what worked—and what didn’t—to let readers confidently choose the right concept to maximize their own ROI.”

Consistently reading this magazine will give fresh perspective on the business improvement universe, and how it relates to your business, so you can confidently select the next project concept to implement. Confident ROi will start with two issues a year, offered both digitally and through the mail, but Alex hopes to eventually transition to producing quarterly regional issues and organizing conferences.

Meet the Editor

Alex Vorobieff is the founder and CEO of The Vorobieff Company, a premier business-consulting organization. A highly sought-after speaker, business alignment coach, and the author of Transform Your Company, Alex has helped scores of business owners and successful companies replace chaos with clarity and finally attain the success they’ve always imagined. His methods eliminate the real source of their frustration using business alignment tools (a term he coined after years of working with and investigating different business systems).

After years working with companies, Alex realized the financial and accounting issues he would clean up were always a symptom of a bigger issue: people within the companies were not on the same page to the answers to essential questions and would inevitably end up working against each other. It took time to articulate the root cause, where to start and what could prevent a transformation, but removing the frustration changes a company for sucking the energy from its people and into a source of energy and satisfaction.

In addition to solving thorny business problems, Alex enjoys pursuing his hobby of photography. He lives in Newport Beach, California, with his wife of more than seventeen years, Christine; their daughter, Kate; and their two horses.

Learn More

Visit the website to learn more about the magazine, and sign up for your own copy.
Subscribe to the podcast to learn directly from business leaders about what works and what doesn’t.

It’s June—Time for a Business Reality Check

The temperatures are heating up and the days are getting longer. Summer’s just around the corner, and many business leaders view this as a time to take it easy. But many smart business leaders view it as a time to take stock in the last half of the year in a mid-year business review.

There are many reasons to do so. It gives you more time to recalibrate on things that aren’t working, rather than waiting until December when more damage could be done. It can give you a leg up on the competition that may be slowing down over the summer months. And it can be a great time to re-energize yourself and your people with fresh goals and challenges.

But how do you do a mid-year review? Here are 7 tips.

1. Mark some time off.

While you’re scheduling that family beach vacation, go ahead and schedule a half day for yourself to go somewhere peaceful to reflect. It could be while you’re on break at the beach, or at a park, or a coffee shop. Just be sure there are no distractions. Then start asking yourself some questions.

2. Take stock.

Now is a great time to think about how far you’ve come in the past six months. What are you grateful for? Where have you and your business grown? What new cool clients are you working with?

3. Glance at those 2018 goals.

How are you doing with them? Have you sold as many books or gained as many new clients as you wanted? Are they still relevant? Maybe you’re off mark because of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that will pay off in the long run. If so, time to push a reset. What are your priorities now?

4. Look at those numbers.

This is likely most people’s least favorite part—but it’s necessary, because looking at numbers now could save you a lot of heartache six months down the road.

Review what money has come in, gone out, what your tax situation is, what’s making money and what’s eating it up, what expenses aren’t necessary, who still needs to pay you, how your rates stack up to your competition, and what opportunities (like a new client, speaking gig, or project) exist to ramp up your cash flow. 

5. Do a systems check.

Many times, we embark on a new collaboration or launch a new strategy hoping it will make our lives easier but the opposite happens. What’s creating headaches in your daily life? Is your project management system too clunky? Is that new collaboration draining time and money? Is your assistant not completing necessary tasks on time? Once you pinpoint what’s making your life harder instead of easier, brainstorm alternatives.

6. Review your marketing.

Whether you’re trying to sell books, get new clients, or land speaking gigs, chances are you’re putting yourself out there. Look at your marketing materials and activities like your social media and media relations activity, website, and brochures and advertising collateral. What’s paying off and what’s not? Do you need a refresh of your content? Are you resonating with your audiences? Are you spending too much or too little time and money on your marketing efforts?

7. Look at those clients.

Check to see if your client/customer portfolio is balanced. Do you need more long-term clients? Are there clients that are draining your resources rather than replenishing them? Think about what may need to be cut to free up space for collaborations that will benefit you and your business.

Finally, pat yourself on the back. You’ve already done more than most people. Celebrate what you’ve achieved so far. And, if you’re not on mark, don’t beat yourself up. Now you have the time to create an action plan so that 2018 is still on track to be your best yet.

What other mid-year evaluations do you recommend?

 

Celebrating Six Years of Weaving Influence

It’s a rather well-known statistic that around 80% of startups fail in the first 18 months, and 50% of fail in their first five years. Thankfully, Weaving Influence has made it past both of those milestones — we’ll hit 6 years on June 1 — and we’re still going strong. What’s made the difference?

Diverse Culture & Strong Values

Weaving Influence has a diverse team with remote workers all across the globe. We have team members everywhere from the local office in Michigan, to California, Wyoming, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and even Jerusalem, Israel! Juggling multiple time zones with a team full of remote workers can be tricky, but we communicate well — and often — with each other and with our clients, and work hard to be clear and concise in both internal and external communications.

We are committed to cultivating an environment where people can do the work they love, create opportunities, and grow in relationships. Our team members are passionate about providing excellence and practicing our core values. We practice responsiveness in communicating both individually and as a company, flexibility in assigning or helping with projects, generosity in lending both time and expertise whenever possible, integrity in doing what we promise (both to clients and to each other), partnership in sharing each other’s struggles and successes, and growth in always looking for ways to improve as individuals and as a company.

Like our founder, Becky Robinson, has written previously: “While metrics matter, it’s the people who motivate me to work toward achieving results so that my company will thrive in the next five years and beyond.”

Unique Value & Proven Expertise

After six years of book launches and digital marketing, we know what we’re doing — and yet, we’re always learning more. Our team is committed to experimenting and developing the best strategies and most up-to-date approaches for a variety of online and offline platforms. We’ve been around a few years: we’ve seen online platforms flourish or die, social trends thrive or diminish, popular strategies succeed or fail. Through it all, we’ve uncovered the timeless marketing principles that effect real, lasting success . . . and we share those ideas freely with clients, blog readers, and other audiences.

Whatever you need to connect your real-world experience with online audiences — as a thought leader, published author, regular blogger, or keynote speaker — we’ve got you covered. We bring fresh creativity and talented experience to the table, whether through our book launch experts, web development team, graphic designers, public relations team, book production services, or social media specialists.

A Variety of Helpful Networks

Weaving Influence has grown from a simple focus on promoting book launches, to a network of online communities that work together to support and provide valuable content for companies, leaders, authors, and professionals interested in growth and networking. Those communities include:

Weaving Influence — our umbrella brand with 116 book launch celebrations, 90+ webinars, dozens of websites, and hundreds of clients served overall
Weaving Influence Lab — an online learning platform for authors at any level, and our new DIY Book Marketing Action Guide
Hometown Reads — featuring over 100 locations, with over 5,000 books and 2,700 authors, and a brand new #ReadLocal shop
Author & Speaker Showcase — featuring over 40 thought leaders involved in inspiring change across the globe
Corporate Champions — our program for corporate readers offering access to business and leadership books for use within their organizations
Team Buzz Builder — our network of over 300 leadership coaches, managers, and bloggers who play an integral part in our book launch strategy
Lead Change Group — our globally-recognized leadership media destination written for and by top leadership and business professionals

As someone who’s been part of the Weaving Influence team for over 5 years, I’m thrilled to see the evolution and growth of our company from a small startup to a thriving network of leadership and marketing communities. It’s been an exciting ride, and I’m eager to see where the road goes next!

How has Weaving Influence touched your life in the past six years?

Conversations Worth Having: How to Fuel Meaningful Engagement

This week we’re excited to launch the #1 New Release in Amazon’s Communication & Social Skills category, a book that will help you learn how to effectively and consistently use your conversations and inquiries to help people, organizations, and communities flourish.

Our conversations lie at the core of how we interact with each other. They can be critical and destructive, or they can be generative and productive. But how can you guarantee you will avoid the first and accomplish the second?

Conversations Worth Having

Conversations are at the heart of everything we do. They are key to effective leadership, high performing teams, and strong relationships. We all know that they influence us, but we rarely stop to think about how much they affect our well-being and our ability to thrive. Our conversations directly influence our present moment and possible futures.

Using real life stories, this book teaches you two simple practices for creating conversations worth having and shares five principles to help everyone communicate better and flourish in all areas of their lives.

The practices and principles originate from the work of David Cooperrider on Appreciative Inquiry, one of the most widely used approaches for fostering positive change in organizations and communities. The two practices — positive framing and asking generative questions — can to turn any conversation into one worth having. Through real-life stories, you will discover how people are using Appreciative Inquiry and these practices at work, in communities, and in their personal lives. You will learn to use appreciative inquiry-based conversations to help you:

Discover the best in people, organizations, and the world
Value all voices and inspire generativity, creativity, and possibilities thinking
Challenge the status quo and open a world of opportunity
Fuel productive and meaningful engagement
Inspire new options for better living
Help everyone communicate better and flourish in all areas of their lives

Meet the Authors

Jackie Stavros is Professor at College of Management, Lawrence Technological University, Appreciative Inquiry Strategic Advisor at Flourishing Leadership Institute, and Associate at Taos Institute. She works across all sectors and in a variety of industries in leadership development, strategic planning, organization development, and change using Appreciative Inquiry and SOAR. She has presented her research and work “in over 25 countries.

Cheri Torres is a Partner at Innovation Partners International, a Senior Consultant at NextMove.is, and an Associate at the Taos Institute. She works with organizations in every sector to support effective leadership and team excellence. She facilitates AI Summits for strategic planning and has trained thousands of trainers and teachers in the use and practice of Appreciative Inquiry and Appreciative Facilitation.

Jackie and Cheri have been friends, colleagues, and co-authors since 2004, when they were brought together by a passion for the positive effect Appreciative Inquiry was having on their lives and their clients. They co-authored their first book, Dynamic Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Appreciative Inquiry in Daily Living, in 2005; and have since delivered workshops, keynote addresses, and webinars to thousands of people around the world.

Praise from Readers Like You

“This book is a gem. I’m already using it to transform the conversations I have with clients, my family and myself. It provides an accessible framework and informative examples. Whether or not you’re familiar with Appreciative Inquiry, you’ll come away with tools that you can use immediately, as well as inspiration for habits that will support conversations worth having.”

— Nancy Davis, 5-star Amazon review

“The book has a ton of practical components that allow you to better understand the concepts and put them to work right away. When I read books like this, for me, having practical tips and resources as well as examples helps me to internalize the concepts. I love being able to see right away how I can use the information, and this book definitely allowed me to do just that!”

— Dad of Divas, 5-star Amazon review

“This book is for everyone, from the manager striving to lead a team more effectively, to the parent who is trying to cultivate better conversations with their children. With real-life, practical examples, Stavros and Torres help illustrate the simple, yet powerful truth of how appreciation combined with inquiry can enhance relationships and lead to better performance in organizations.”

— Lindsey Godwin, 5-star Amazon review

“This book is so well organized and is loaded with a nice blend of motivation/inspiration to ask more powerful questions AND the practical tools to make it happen. If you get through the first chapter or two and aren’t a better leader and human being afterwards, you might have been reading with your eyes closed.”

— We and Me, Inc., 5-star Amazon review

“This is a must read for leaders of all kinds, leaders of organizations large and small, communities and families. If you could only read one book to improve your skill as a leader, this is the one!”

— Scot L, 5-star Amazon review

Learn More

Visit the website to learn more about the book and download a free excerpt.
Buy a copy of the book for yourself or share your review of it on Amazon.
Join the webinar on June 5 to learn more about powerful conversations.

Theory U: Principles For Creating A Better Future

Our capacity to pay attention co-shapes the world. What prevents us from attending to situations more effectively is that we aren’t fully aware of that interior condition from which our attention and actions originate. Best-selling author Otto Scharmer calls this lack of awareness our blind spot. He illuminates the blind spot in leadership today and offers hands-on methods to help change makers overcome it through the process, principles, and practices of Theory U, a framework for updating the “operating systems” of our educational institutions, our economies, and our democracies.

Ten years ago, when Theory U was first published, Scharmer invited us to see the world in new ways and, in so doing, discover a revolutionary approach to leadership that keeps inspiring innovators and communities of leaders from around the world. But at over 500 pages, that book was a bit daunting. Now Scharmer has created a concise guide to its key concepts and applications, making his vital work and its methods and tools accessible to a wider audience.

The Essentials of Theory U

The Essentials of Theory U is a useful pocket guide for practitioners that distills all of the research and materials found in Otto Scharmer’s seminal texts Theory U and Leading from the Emerging Future. It enables leaders and organizations in all industries and sectors to shift awareness, connect with the highest future possibilities, and strengthen the capacity to co-shape the future.

Part I explores the framework and main ideas of Theory U. It illuminates the blind spot in leadership today: the “interior condition” from which we operate. Part II describes the process, principles, and practices of Theory U, showcasing hands-on methods and tools for change makers. The focus is on building the collective capacity to shift the inner place from which we operate. Part III outlines a framework for updating the “operating systems” of our educational institutions, our economies, and our democracies. This framework applies awareness-based systems change to the much needed transformation of capitalism.

Meet the Author

Otto Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer at MIT and co-founder of the Presencing Institute. He chairs the MIT IDEAS program for cross-sector innovation that helps leaders from business, government, and civil society to innovate at the level of the whole system. He is author of Theory U (translated into 20 languages) and co-author of Leading from the Emerging Future, which outlines eight acupuncture points of transforming capitalism. In 2015, he co-founded the MITx u.lab platform that attracted over 100,000 registered users within the first three years.

Otto earned his diploma (with distinction) and Ph.D. (summa cum laude) from Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. He received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching at MIT (2015) and the EU Leonardo Corporate Learning Award for the contributions of Theory U to the future of management (2016). In 2017, he was ranked #1 of the world’s top 30 education professionals by Global Gurus. For additional information visit presencing.org.

Praise from Readers Like You

“If you want to expand your capacity for awareness of yourself and others, discerning potential opportunity, and creative, effective action, Essentials of Theory U provides a framework that can be learned and practiced.”

—LEADistics, 5-star Amazon review

“Having made Theory U the central framework for my work in recent years, I am delighted to have such a tight précis both to read and to share. I find that neither the style nor substance has been sacrificed; it retains many of the best features of the original – a theoretical foundation that interweaves multiple disciplines and sources of inspiration, powerful & widely applicable practices, and an autobiographical style that brings the work to life.”

—Eva Pomeroy, 5-star Amazon review

“As the name suggests, this version boils down the essential material into a practical and useable piece of work. This coupled with the idea of Presencing . . . is the best material I have found on using reflective practices, especially for emerging thought.”

—Joe Dager, 5-star Amazon review

“ A great and timely book. It brings hope and provides a step by step approach to transforming the way we interact & work together. “

—Cecile FR, 5-star Amazon review 

Learn More

Visit the book site to learn more, download a sample chapter, and find beautiful graphics to share with your networks.
Buy a copy of the book for yourself or a friend, or share your review of it, on Amazon.
Watch the recent webinar to learn more about implementing awareness-based change in your organization.

How to Boost Engagement in Your Facebook Group

I’ve been a member of many Facebook groups in recent years. Facebook groups for new moms, for freelancers, for Americans living in Israel, for female entrepreneurs, for healthy recipes, and more. The truth is, if I don’t get significant value and entertainment from a group, I leave. The last thing I need is endless notifications from groups that don’t really enrich my life in any way!

And after running the Book Marketing Facebook group, a growing community of authors interested in successfully marketing their own books, I have learned a lot about what makes people join, and what keeps them engaged over time.

Why People Join Facebook Groups

The main reason people go on Facebook is to be entertained, not to do hardcore learning, and definitely not to be sold to — so anything you post in your group should be, first and foremost, fun and engaging. One of my favorite groups is a humorous group for Jewish women run by a good friend of mine. This group is full of funny, cute, and relatable posts by others in the same demographic as me, and has grown organically to almost 15K members in the past three years!

Jenna got her group down pat, and you can do the same by keeping in mind some basic but important points.

Create the right “vibe”

Whether you are running a Facebook group to promote something specific, such as a book or consulting business, or to build community around an idea or topic, the main thing you want to focus on is providing value to your group members and encouraging positive conversations.

Be very intentional about the purpose of your group and make sure to communicate that with people joining. A great way to do this is by putting your “mission statement” of sorts in the group description and the pinned post at the top of the page. Keep the energy positive and encouraging, and don’t be afraid to remove members who are overly negative or rude.

Deliver engaging content regularly

Consider creating a content calendar and scheduling posts in advance using a tool such as Buffer or HootSuite. That way, you can make sure to include different types of content on a regular basis, such as quizzes, valuable/fun articles, inspirational quotes/stories, etc.
Post often — at least once a day — to keep the momentum going. Posting more often is also fine.
Aim for at least 1 livestream a week — ask your group members regularly what they need help with and DELIVER.
Acknowledge your members who are regular contributors.
Run fun polls that encourage engagement.
Ask your audience questions get to know them.
Provide regular prompts to encourage engagement.

Keep growing

The more relevant members you can add to your group, the better! One great way to encourage sign-ups is by adding your Facebook group to your email signature. Be sure to focus on the benefits your audience will receive, such as: “P.S. Are you an author? Join my Book Marketing Facebook Group to get support from me and other book marketers and authors who are committed to helping YOU DIY your book marketing successfully.”

A Facebook group can be a great way to build momentum around your messages, but make sure to always make the group about them, the members, so they don’t click that “leave group” button before getting the value that you know you can offer!

What are some stand-out features of your favorite Facebook groups?