We have had the opportunity to work with a team of people who wrote a book called The Art Of The Nudge. Their leadership communication framework, TATN, is used in a variety of ways to help inspire business executives and their business associates to actions that deliver results in a variety of ways. While working with them, I have seen a difference in my own business by making small changes or better described as nudges.
When Paul Fair, with Paul Fair Associates LLC, met with me the first time, he had an adequate website but it wasn’t producing the traffic he was looking to reach. He also had an email engagement in place but was lacking in the engagement part of it. His social media presence was nonexistent.
With out a doubt, every time I teach a class, there is always someone in the class who asks me, “What is a hashtag?” I then explain what it is and does to fine tune searches for your specific event, product, phrase, or business. Let's look at how it works.
We’ve all visited eCommerce sites. But what are scommerce sites? Believe it or not, some of the largest scommerce sites are Amazon and Groupon. Now, all sizes of companies can sell through these means, but if you've ever worked with them you know there is a very small margin of profitability.
What if a business wants to take their own ecommerce site and control their own scommerce on the Internet, and not lose a piece of their profit margin to the goliaths like Amazon and Groupon?
We have a client who has been on YouTube for more than two years with a YouTube channel complete with playlists. Along with his monthly market updates, he uses it to share news about other local businesses.
The interest to visiting his channel has been, well, pathetic. Oh, we've received views by sharing links from Facebook to YouTube, but certainly not what we hope to have.
Most people would think a person who teaches Social Media Mastery and provides businesses with daily posting to their business page would be on social networks all day. That is not the case at all. If all my clients were located in other states, yes, then you would find me online for hours at a time but that, too, is not the case.
Having experienced a cold harsh winter like we just experienced, I welcome spring and the opportunity to work in my garden and dig in the dirt. I find it amazing to think what you can yield from one, single seed. With the proper planning, planting, watering, and harvesting, one seedling from a green bean can provide a meal, maybe two, for a family of four. Plant a whole row of seeds and you'll be canning and freezing beans to eat well into 2016.
If video is the wave of the future on Social Networks, how do you go about creating a quality video with your smartphone? Well, first and foremost, there is no replacement to working with a professional videographer to create a quality profile for your company. Yet, there will be those times when you are in a setting where you need to react in the moment and want to take advantage of the opportunity to create a brief video to upload on YouTube, Vimeo or directly to Facebook.
As I was preparing for this month's column, I thought it would be a great idea to share what is being said by other Social Media Experts throughout the cybersphere.
When teaching Social Media Mastery to my classes, I have a few rules I share with them that have been my practice in building and maintaining LinkedIn. It's also important to note, if your clients are businesses and not consumers, you want to concentrate on LinkedIn as your social network of choice. With that said, these are four rules to build and manage a successful LinkedIn network.
They are the magic that can make the difference for your site to be found on the tenth page of a Google search or the first page. Blogs are the most powerful tool to building a site found on Google.
Ok. So, you’ve spent all this time setting up Facebook, Instagram, or whatever platform you’re on. You have all the relevant information about your business on your page. Now what?
You need to think about what message you want to convey and how you go about it. Yes, you want to let people what your business, but no one wants to be sold to all the time. If all you are doing is trying to sell, you’re probably not seeing a lot of engagement on your social media. You want to give them the answer to “why” they should be doing business with you.
When creating a logo specifically for your business, it is very important that you brand your logo to be able to stand alone and reflect the mission and vision of your business. If you haven’t worked on the mission and vision of your company, that needs to be worked on first. Once you have the mission and vision, it’s a matter of visualizing what your logo should represent because a logo speaks for you when there aren’t any words to tell them about your business.
It is important that your Instagram account is set up as a business profile. With that you will have access to Insights, a tool to help you understand your audience and the effectiveness of your posts. That information will help you grow.
Check out your Insights to see how your posts are preforming. Here are some things you can see there:
What is IGTV? IGTV is an app associated with Instagram that allows you to create a channel for posting and sharing long form videos. Think of it as YouTube for Instagram. There are several different ways to promote your business on IGTV. This is helpful if your ideal customer is primarily on Instagram.
IGTV can be used to recycle previously published video content, like material that you have already used on other platforms. Videos should be vertical as they are geared toward mobile devices. If your content is horizontal, you will need to convert it.
You can’t make a plan for the future without an understanding of where you are right now. Before you put together your strategy for the New Year, let me give you some quick audit tips. Then, you will have a better understanding of where you need to focus your efforts.
Some things that you need to look at across all accounts.
Do you have a social media plan for the holidays? Now is the time to plan and schedule it. Pull out a calendar and decide what dates are important to your holiday sales strategy. Some dates that you may want to include are Black Friday- 11/23, Small Business Saturday-11/24, and Cyber Monday- 11/26. What other information might you want your customers to know? Do you have special hours and holiday shipping deadlines?
You are probably wondering why I am saying “Change Your Password!” instead of, “You want me to change my passwords? Really?”
The reason for this month’s column is to encourage you to get into the habit of changing your passwords on all your accounts. Why? There are a multitude of reasons which run the gamut of malware, ransomware, spam, hackers, and the list goes on and on.
