I guess I’m an ice cream daredevil.  When I go to the ice cream parlor, I never ask for a pink spoon taste.  I just go ahead and order what seems good — if it isn’t absolutely scrumptious — it is a risk I’m willing to take (besides I don’t really need to be eating ice cream anyway!!)

Buying an ice cream cone don’t require a huge upfront investment of time or money.  Investing in your business is usually a bigger commitment.  How do you know which product or service is the right fit for you?  On the flip side, how to you convince your customers that you are a wise investment.  Enter the pink spoon.  The pink spoon is a simply delicious taste of your services that you give away for free to potential customers.

The concept of the pink spoon is not new in the online marketing community.  Most websites with a mailing list offer you a “free report and newsletter cock full of invaluable tips (worth $97!).    That’s great — and sometimes enough to give people a taste.   But, people have widely differing learning styles and preferences for taking in information.  For example, I actually hate videos — I usually have them play in a different tab in my computer and just listen.  Some people really hate to read.  What if you offered your pink spoon in a variety of flavors (like video and transcript)  to allow you to connect with potential clients with differing learning styles.   My pink spoon  - a video on coming up with your USP offers a video and worksheet exercises.  The exercises can be used by themselves and you can get a lot from the video without working through the exercises.

Some other easy ways of increasing the number of flavors available to your “taste testers”:

Add interactivity.  In my experience, one of the best ways to build up a strong list is to hold a monthly free teleseminar and promote it like crazy.  My clients hesitate on this because they believe that having free teleseminars devalues their paid events. I have found the opposite is true.  Clients with regular free event build up an engaged following that is willing to pay more for their offerings.  Other ways to add interactivity are specifically continuing conversation from your teleseminars using social media  (see this video on how one guru uses his facebook wall to build community).

Record your content These days it is very easy to create audio content. know you better. Potential clients love to hear your voice and get to  One of the easiest ways is to just record your blog posts into audio segments.  AudioAcrobat makes recording audio as simple as picking up the phone and talking (you can also record your teleseminars to use as a freebie later).  If you have an iphone AudioBoo makes it dead simple to make quick recordings and distribute them via Twitter.  Video recording is also easy enough.  You can record your webinar or use Jing to record quick videos from your computer screen or a Kodak zi8 to record quick “talking head” videos”.

Have something to read Sometimes, when I am in stealth mode (watching TV with my family while working on the computer) – I don’t really appreciate audio and video.  It is easy enough to create something to read. You can have your last teleseminar transcribed (not as expensive as you would think), or you can create companion worksheets that give much of the same information – possibly with the addition of some do at home exercises.

What is your current pink spoon?  How can you increase the number of “flavors” it comes in?  Chime in below and let me know.

I admit I was enthralled with the possibility of being able to get serious client work done from my iphone while waiting for my daughter to finish ice skating, gymnastics, whatever…  Lack of iphone tethering is one of the greatest banes of my existence so morphing my  business to do things that didn’t require a full laptop intrigued me….

I don’t usually buy the products being promoted in these big “so simple a monkey can do it” launches – but I wanted to learn more about social media marketing so I went ahead and purchased Let’s Get Social for a mere $97. (note I am NOT an affiliate — I’m doing this review just to let you know what I think about the course.).

Let’s Get Social is a joint venture between Ryan Deiss (very famous) and Kate Buck (pink haired social media rising star).  Over the past year and a half, Kate has built herself a burgeoning business as a social media virtual assistant (or social media manager – depending on what circles you travel in).  The super-hypey launch materials intimate that if you purchase the course — you too could very quickly be making a full time professional income from your iphone.

Is that true?  Nah… but Kate and Ryan admit that in the first module.  I also suspect that Kate’s phenomenal success is due mostly to Kate’s vivacious personality, ability to teach. business savvy and a good bit of luck.

Is the course worth $97.  Yep.

Let’s get social provides a wealth of information for a very reasonable price.  There are six modules which cover everything from “what the heck is a social media manager” to branding yourself (Kate explains this especially well), finding clients, doing the work and setting up your business.  You also get rights to us the logo — but since self-branding is important – I don’t see this as a huge bonus.  The course also includes a ton of demo videos, checklists, resource links, etc.

To me, the biggest value is the client checklist and suggested packages.  Having a value-added social media package with specific tasks was worth the course price to me.  The demo videos on how to create profiles on the different platforms (twitter, facebook, linked in, and youtube)  were also very helpful.   I am going to incorporate much of this into my service offerings.

I get the feeling though that it might be tough for a beginner to take this course and immediately start a successful social media management business. For someone already doing something similar, this course is a bargain.  I am going to start using the checklists with my current clients tomorrow  – and will make back the $97 this week.

If this were my course — I might split it up even more and do an in depth video module on each platform and then one on how to link them all together.  There are 8 or 9 how to videos within the “doing the work” module — but they seem sort of hidden.  I expected the main focus of the course to be “how to” rather than promotion.

Also, I would include a forum in the membership site section of the course.  It would be great to brainstorm and connect with other soon-to-be social media managers.

I feel lucky to have “met” Kate  signed up for this class in the beginning — I am sure it will be offered again at a higher price point.  I would recommend it to virtual assistants who want to expand their service offerings or to people who are already a little tech savvy.

Has anyone else signed up for Let’s Get Social?  What did you think of it?  What is your favorite training class for aspiring social media assistants?