SEO virtuoso, CEO @Sachs Marketing Group. Focused on being of service to business owners - helping to better position them in the eyes of their audiences.
Facebook Messenger is a separate application that allows users, both personal and business, to send messages back and forth without using the original Facebook application. Many businesses are adding it to their marketing strategy simply because more than 1 billion people have adopted the platform as their primary communication channel. It’s not just the people who have downloaded the app but the number of people who regularly use the platform to talk to their friends, family, and business connections.
Mark Zuckerberg announced bots for the messenger platform back in April 2016 which allows businesses to build custom bots to form deeper connections with customers through contextual interactions. While there are more than 11,000 bots on the platform, here’s everything you need to know to decide if you want to create your own to build stronger customer relationships.
What is a Chatbot?
A chatbot, or in this case a Facebook Messenger bot is a live messaging tool that used through Facebook Messenger is platform. It’s designed to help answer questions or provide information to people with automation.By using a Facebook Messenger bot, your automating conversations which can range from confirming reservations, to sending receipts.
Messenger bots have three core capabilities:
Send/Receive API: This is the ability to send and receive texts, images, and call to action. The way “Request a ride” pops up when you mention Uber in conversation is an example of a CTA bubble.
Generic Message Templates: This is the feature that allows people to top buttons and other visuals to interact with the bot instead of relying on programming language.
Welcome Screen and CTAs: These are the tools that Facebook gives you to customize the customer experience. It begins with the welcome screen which includes your messenger greeting and a call to action to get started.
Messenger bots have natural language assistance. Bots can turn your user’s natural language into actionable data. This means you can create conversational bots that understand what your users are saying. This feature is available courtesy of the Wit.ai bot engine, which is still in beta. The platform allows the bots to predict the next actions they should take.
More recently, Facebook announced new features for the bots which allow them to Now respond using audio, video, and GIFs to enhance the user experience.
Benefits of Chatbots
Chatbots really help the e-commerce industry because they provide functionality in management, security, monitoring, and customer engagement. Self-service and automation is the wave of the future as by 2020,85% of the customer experience will take place without ever speaking to a human.
One major plus the messenger bot feature is the “Message Us” option allows you to take the customer service experience to a one-on-one private channel, rather than relying on the public nature of posts and comments on your page.
It also provides a certain level of consistency because messaging is a real-time and continuous process. The real-time chat with a customer support staff member is recorded so the history can be seen later. This allows you to keep that our customer service records, and gives you potential training material for future customer service representatives.
Developing Your Chatbot Strategy
Before you decide to create a bot for your business, first define the experience you want to build for your customers. Consider your social media goals. Are you creating a bot that will be useful to your audience, or do you want to create the bot for entertainment purposes? through understanding what you are aiming to accomplish, you can create the best possible experience for users interacting with the bot.
Consider what action you want people to take. Is your process simple, or are there multiple tasks you need them to complete? How are things done outside of the messenger platform? Use that to assist with the creation of your messenger bot. Do you want them to be able to place orders? Do you want them to be able to get customer support? Do you want to provide receipts and shipment tracking information?
Remember, engagement doesn’t have to stop when the user completes the desired action. Think about various ways you can keep that interaction going comma but keep your focus limited so you don’t do too much. Trying to do too much can dilute overall customer experience and lead to confusion.
Which Brands are Making Chat Bots Work for Them?
Whole Foods: Whole Foods uses the Facebook messenger chat bot to allow users to search for recipes. The bot Begins the conversation with a short explanation of how it works. Users can either search for something specific or browse through the recipe database by the type of dish, cuisine, or special dietary restriction.Whole Foods enhances the customer experience by allowing them to mix-and-match emojis and text. You can enter a word using text or choose the corresponding emoji that matches the food item you’re searching for.In the future, we can expect to see additional features, such as the ability to link the chatbot to your personal Whole Foods account to save recipes and sign up for coupons.
CNN: CNN uses Messenger to share news. it also allows people to chat directly with them to get breaking news. Finding CNN a message with the keyword also allows users to get personalized and specific stories. for instance, if someone wants to learn more about The recent Snapchat IPO, they can send a Facebook message with Snapchat in the body. The chatbot will then respond with the latest news regarding the social media app.
Uber: Facebook now includes a transportation component within messenger. It allows people to request a ride from Uber without downloading the app. Using the word Uber in your messages prompts you to request a ride.
Burger King: If you love Burger King, you now can order it with Facebook Messenger. The fast food franchise is trying an order ahead feature integrated with the messenger app.
1-800-FLOWERS: 1-800 Flowers was an early adopter of the Messenger bot. With it, users can order flowers or speak to a customer service representative. Users who are placing an order our first asked to give the delivery address. Then they are given a carousel of floral arrangements to choose from. The bot strategy has worked well for the company as president Chris McCann says more than 70% of the company’s bot orders come from new customers.
Setting Up Your Own Chatbot
Building a chatbot can be fairly complex if you don’t understand development. If you don’t have the budget to hire a Facebook developer to build the chatbot4u, there are a number of tools you can use to create your chatbot without the use of complex programming.
Botisfy: Botisfy is an easy to use bot designer that includes media support, platform Integrations, and more. The free plan includes one chat bot with up to 100 bot users and unlimited messaging. The basic plan, priced at $10 a month includes up to three chatbots with up to 1,000 bot users. For $30 a month, you can get up to five chatbots with up to 5,000 bot users; and for $50 a month, you can get unlimited chat bot with up to 10,000 bot users so as your business grows, you can adjust your plan accordingly.
Chatfuel: Chatfuel is a free platform. If you anticipate having more than 500,000 monthly active users, a cost may be incurred. The information is not publicly posted as users are advised to email the company directly for more information. If you are a larger brand with limited time, the company will also develop your bot for you.
OnSequel: OnSequel is a messenger bot creation platform that works to help you build bots for Messenger, Telegram, Kik, and Viber. It includes a number of templates, such as: publisher, personal, story, chatter, and game. No coding knowledge is required, and the platform uses a drag and drop interface. It is possible to get started for free, but no pricing information is publicly listed on the website.
For the sake of simplicity, I will walk you through the creation of a simple chatbot with the Chatfuel service.
Create your account over at chat Fuel and then login with your Facebook account. Click the + sign to start building a new chat bot.
Choose a template to edit or create a blank chat bot. Name the chat bot and click the red “Create a chatbot” button to create it.
Next, click connect to Facebook. From there, you’ll choose the Facebook business page, or create a new page, where you want the bot to operate.
From here, you will begin building the chatbot, beginning with the welcome message.Edit it as you wish, adding buttons to make it possible for your user to take the next action, as designated by your chatbot strategy.
When you’re finished, you can click test the chatbot to save your work.
At this point, you will view it on messenger.com to test it out.
Reach out to trusted colleagues or friends to have them test the bot using a desktop, smartphone, and tablet. Have them make note of anything that doesn’t work as expected. Search the chat fuel help or contact support to get assistance with anything you cannot figure out on your own.
Promoting the Chatbot to Customers
Though conversations will take place in messenger, customers who find you on other parts of the web can discover your bot thanks to Facebook’s promotional options.Facebook allows you to promote your messenger but in a number of ways. You can choose to use messenger codes, which are similar to Snapchat codes, messenger usernames, messenger links, and web plug-ins.
Web plugins allow you to build awareness by letting people know your business is on messenger. There are two plugins that you can add to your website and emails.
The first bot, “Send to Messenger” lets you start a conversation in messenger with the person who clicked. This allows people to receive information from you and is a good choice for bots that are designed to send transactional notifications.
The second option, “Message Us”, takes the person who clicked directly to messenger and allows them to begin a conversation with you by sending the first message. Make sure your bot is set up to introduce yourself whenever someone reaches out.
Plugins work on both desktop and mobile web. When using a desktop device, the person will be sent to messenger.com. On mobile, they’ll be sent directly to the native messenger app. It’s a good idea to add some text near the plug-in to explain what happens when it’s clicked so you can set expectations about the experience.
The customer matching feature allows you to reach people in messenger if you have their phone number as well as their consent to be contacted. Any conversation you initiate this way is received as a message request, allowing people to be reached by the bots they want to interact with.
Messenger codes and links can be added anywhere on your website to invite people to begin a conversation with you. Messenger codes allow people to use the camera on their phone to scan the image and find you on messenger. Messenger links are shortened URLs that people can click to instantly send you a message.
Even though messenger bots are gaining ground, not all of your customers will be familiar with how to use them or what to expect out of the experience. Once they find you, you can use tools that are built into Messenger to help you explain your experience, how it works, and why people should use it – your messenger greeting, the getting started button, and the welcome message.
Chatbots Can Help Your Business Succeed
Chatbots are working for lots of businesses – and can work for yours too. It’s important to remember that building a bot won’t mean you don’t have to check your page’s Facebook messages anymore, but it can assist you in keeping track with what’s going on when you’re not actively available to respond.
Have you come in contact with a brand using a Messenger chatbot? What has your experience been like? Tell me in the comments below.
When you think of online videos, what’s the first thing you think of? YouTube, right? While it may be the most popular video distribution platform, that’s not to say it’s the only option. And while YouTube could easily be considered the second most popular option behind Google, if it were a search engine anyway, there’s more to video than throwing it up on YouTube and hoping for the best. With a bit of work, you can make a real impact on your ranking.
Define Your Goals Before You Start
To provide a decent return on investment, your videos must align with your overall SEO and content strategies. If you don’t take the time to define your goals ahead of time, you could cost yourself a great deal of money – and that money could have been spent in other areas that are more effective for marketing or SEO improvement.
If you want the videos to increase the inbound links to your website to help boost ranking – what else are you hoping to accomplish? Do you want them to increase conversions? Increase targeted traffic that is more likely to convert to a paying customer? Or are you fine with it just helping with off-page SEO? This helps craft the content strategy you’ll use in your videos – and ensures you’re not wasting money, or focusing on the wrong benefit.
Write an Awesome Description
If you’re hosting your videos on a service like YouTube – the text in the description helps determine whether or not it will show up in the search results for the keywords you’re hoping for. If you’re hosting on your own website, the description can help users decided if the video content is really what they are looking for, and whether or not they want to watch it.
On YouTube, you’ll have 5,000 characters to write a description of your video. That’s a lot of space, so you’ll have plenty of room to write as much as possible about your video. You can also use that space to ask people to share, embed, and thumbs up the video. This will help influence your rankings not only in YouTube, but in Google as well.
Put Those Headline Writing Skills to Good Use
On YouTube, you only have 99 characters to optimize your title text, so you definitely need to first consider your target keywords, and any other related keywords you’re trying to rank for. But, of course you want to think about your users – who really want to know what the video is about – not just the keywords you’re trying to rank for. Make sure you weave the keywords into the headline naturally – so it’s engaging enough to encourage clicks without completely neglecting SEO.
Make Sure Your Videos Provide Value
Part of ranking focuses on the amount of time people spend watching your videos, just like the amount of time someone spends on your website. That means whatever your video is about, it must provide real value – to keep your audience engaged and paying attention. If you’re just churning out videos for the sake of getting content on your channel – it’s not going to serve you as well as taking your time and creating one absolutely stellar video would.
Use your video to show your audience how to do something – because tutorials are always valuable. Check out your competition and see if they’re using video in their strategy. If you find they are, take a close look at whatever they’re doing – and make a plan for how you can do it better.
If you can’t solve a problem – provide new information. Film white boarding sessions. Interview an expert. There’s always something you can do.
Include Transcriptions
Including transcriptions is helpful in a number of ways. First, when you want to catch someone who’s on the go – it’s not always possible for the to watch your video with the sound on. The transcriptions allow them to follow along with the video when they’re in an environment where it’s hard to hear, or would otherwise disturb people who are nearby.
But beyond usability, the transcription can also help videos get indexed. In an experiment, adding a transcript to a video caused it to go from unranked, to ranking on the first page, in Bing and Yahoo, anyway, within three weeks. YouTube recently included the ability to add transcriptions, but if you’re hosting on your own domain – more on that below – you can include the video transcriptions directly in the HTML of the pages where your videos are hosted.
And, you know I’m a huge proponent of repurposing content, just because it is not only useful for your audience, but also a major time saver for you. Transcriptions are great starting point for creating additional content – such as the basis for a blog post that you can link back to your video.
Host on Your Own Domain if Possible
Sure, video hosting platforms like YouTube and Vimeo have a place – but in terms of SEO value, there’s nothing better you can do but host the videos on your own domain. Why? Because when you use a dedicated hosting service like YouTube, you’re giving them the traffic. You can always embed the video to your site with the embed code, but it’s still getting all the credit.
When you host on your own platform, you’ll want to focus on accessibility, media RSS, and making it available in multiple formats – HTML 5, Silverlight, iTunes/iPad/iPod-friendly video formats, etc. to ensure that as many people as possible can watch the videos on their preferred devices.
Make sure your player code is optimized – it should be no different than the code on any other page on your website in that respect. Focus on delivering a stellar user experience, especially for the visitors coming to you from organic search.
Encourage your users to share the content, but to avoid theft, watermark the videos with your logo.
If for any reason, you can’t host the videos on your own platform, remember there are three things that YouTube looks at when it determines how to display their search results. It looks at the text in your titles and descriptions – hence the first two tips I wrote about – and the ratings.
Create a Video Sitemap
Use an online video platform that will create a video sitemap on a subdomain of your domain – like videos.yourdomain.com.
When you build that video sitemap, make sure it’s configured correctly. Each entry needs to link to a landing page for a video. You don’t have to include metadata, but it’s highly recommended. It’s best to use a video platform that will automate this process for you, or you will have to spend time updating the sitemap each time you add new video content. You can use a video sitemap even if you’re hosting on another platform, too, to ensure they’re indexed in the search engines. It all comes down to the data you provide with schema.
Use YouTube Wisely
If you’re not hosting your full videos on YouTube, it doesn’t mean you can’t still benefit from the popularity of that platform. Instead, treat it as a quick stop on the way to the final destination – your website. To take advantage of the awareness YouTube offers, while still benefiting your video SEO, upload shorter video previews, with annotations in the video that include a call to action to drive people back to your website’s video library. Your preview video should be a separate piece of content – with a different title and description or summary, and maybe even a different thumbnail. Think about whatever the view needs to be motivated to click through. This will ensure you avoid duplicate content, but still create a good user experience.
Video views aren’t added on YouTube until the video is watched for at least eight seconds, so you’ll want to make sure the beginning of your video is enticing enough to keep people watching that long.
Make it Possible for Others to Embed Your Videos
As you build a library of videos, make it possible for others to include it in their work. When you make it simple for others to embed your videos on their website, you’re more than likely going to see an increase in inbound links, which is a clear boost to your SEO efforts.
Include Interactive Elements
When someone is watching your video, there’s a chance to guide them to another step with a call to action. You have several options such as quizzes, surveys, and forms, and even in-video links. This can help your viewers go to your website, app, or another destination to help move them through the funnel.
Promote, Promote, Promote
When you have your videos ready to go and want to start driving traffic to them, it’s time to promote the heck out of them. Share them on your social media channels. Submit them to video search engines. Include them in social bookmarking. If you have a budget, consider using PPC to drive traffic that way.
Share your videos to your existing customers – if they are relevant, of course – in your email marketing messages. Reach out to influencers who would collaborate with you, either in a video, or through content. Write and distribute a press release to announce the development of your video library or new YouTube channel. Promote your video channels in your company’s printed materials.Develop a promotional campaign for your videos.
Video is Part of an Overall Content Strategy
Video is a vital part of content strategy, but it’s not the only thing you need to be paying attention to. Think about how it fits into the rest of your strategy, and take time to regularly evaluate how video is meeting your predefined goals. Don’t be afraid to switch gears or experiment when something’s not working out like you want it to.
What’s been your experience in video optimization? Tell me in the comments below.
Creating a cohesive brand identity is deceptively complex. On the surface, it may appear to be as simple as hiring someone to create an eye-catching logo and engaging content that can then be distributed to consumers. In reality, the process of creating effective branding begins with deep introspection about the core values the brand represents and an examination of the ideal client they are trying to reach. From there, it is possible to identify the colors, fonts, stylistic elements, and types of imagery that will best represent the brand and resonate with the customer.
Core Values
One of the most important things a company can do when developing their branding procedures is to identify their core values. For businesses with only one or two founders, these values will closely reflect their personal core values. Businesses that have decided to rebrand typically benefit from bringing their upper-level management into the discussion.
The core values of Build-A-Bear are “reach, learn, di-bear-sity, colla-bear-ate, give, and cele-bear-ate”. These values are clearly demonstrated in every store, advertisement, social media interaction, and new design the company creates.The workshops are built to facilitate learning, collaboration, and celebration and the bears reflect diversity. The workers give customers any assistance they need and the company encourages others to reach for the stars.
The core values of Whole Foods Market are more complex but equally compelling. They include:
We Satisfy, Delight, and Nourish our Customers
We Serve and Support our Local and Global Communities
We Promote the Health of Our Stakeholders Through Healthy Eating Education
Anyone walking into a Whole Foods Store would immediately be able to see evidence of these core values. They offer extraordinary customer service as well as gorgeous store environments with a wealth of educational opportunities for guests.
They support local communities with donations to food banks and hold community-giving days several times a year where 5 percent the net sales from that store are donated to a local organization. Globally, they have created several organizations to give assistance in targeted ways.
The company actively promotes healthy lifestyles through education efforts within their stores, informative advertisements and displays, offering healthy recipes and articles on their website and social media channels.
The important thing to remember when choosing the core values of a company is, these values will not appeal to everyone. They are not meant to be relatable to all potential customers. They are meant to resonate with those who build the company and their ideal customers.
Ideal Customer
The next step in creating cohesive branding is to know exactly who your brand wishes to attract. Once the core values have been firmly established, it is far easier to discern who the target market should be. With that information, it is possible to attract the right customers by creating more effectively targeted copy, designs, and content.
The ideal customer is not a set of demographic facts or statistics. The more detailed a brand is able to get about exactly who they want to reach, the greater their success. Anthropologie is an excellent case study. They do not make an effort to reach every female in the market; they know exactly the type of women who will resonate with their branding and they cultivate a shopping experience specifically designed to speak to her.
To do this effectively, it is important to ask very specific questions about the potential client and to carefully think about the answers. You can take it one step further and create a fully fleshed out character to represent your target market and then speak directly to him or her in every single piece of content created going forward.
Why does this person resonate with the core values the company has developed? Where do they live and vacation? How old are they? Are they married, single, or divorced? What is their household income, educational background, and ethnicity? How do they spend their time? What books, movies, magazines, and television shows are they drawn to? What experiences helped to make them who they are?
Yes, this does take a significant amount of effort to fully develop. However, the benefits of doing so are immeasurable. Imagine creating a brand that felt so on point that customers felt it was created specifically for them. This can create rabid fans who will loyally proclaim the virtues of doing business with a particular brand to the rest of their network, which are likely to share many of the same traits and to feel the same connection.
It will also repel those customers who are not a natural fit for the products or services the company provides. This may feel initially intimidating to those who are afraid of losing a sales opportunity. But if they aren’t the type of person to resonate with what you are offering, it is a waste of time and resources to create any type of content that will appeal to them. Growth can only be achieved when a company can effectively and efficiently reach out to those who are willing to engage with them on a consistent basis.
Consistent Colors
Traditional branding advice focuses on the design elements of the brand. These include creating a color palette that will be utilized in all visual elements. The types of colors one chooses should be based on the emotions one wants to evoke in the predetermined ideal customer. For example, a company that had core values centered around environmentalism and an outdoor lifestyle would likely stay away from neon colors. Similarly, one with an ideal customer who was a single male in his 40s living in the city with an income in excess of $100k a year probably wouldn’t feel a connection with branding in a pastel palette.
Two ways to narrow down color options are to examine the competition and to consider the psychological associations linked to specific colors. Once a niche has been determined, it is easy to find competitors catering to the same ideal client. You can use their existing color schemes as both inspiration and an indicator of what to avoid to prevent confusion. Newer companies may want to evoke a similar feeling as a lateral brand and could choose different tones within the same color family. If there are no existing brands that offer adequate inspiration, consider the core values again and look for colors that resonate on a psychological level with those values. Blue creates a feeling of trust and stability, purple indicates innovation or wisdom, green tends to represent growth or health.
In order to create branding that uses the same colors consistently it is best to limit the selection to three; a dominant color, secondary color, and accent color. They should then be used according to the 60-30-10 rule. Approximately 60 percent of branding efforts should feature the dominant color, 30 percent the secondary color, and 10 percent the accent color.
Ultimately, the key to creating a remarkable brand is intentionality in every step of the process. This is true for the creation process involved in selecting the core values as the foundation of the company and the colors which will represent those values going forward. It is not enough to simply choose colors that are trendy, as trends are mercurial. Nor is it sufficient to make the selection simply based on personal preference. It is important to research options and ensure they clearly resonate with the desired image of the brand.
Limited Fonts
Fonts are the newest candy in the design confectionery store. This is somewhat surprising considering the history of digital fonts. For decades it was painstaking work to create a new font and the ability to put it in front of people who may be interested in applying it was difficult. As with everything else in the digital age, the process has become much more streamlined. There are now tutorials to teach people to create their own fonts. This is where fonts turn into candy.
It is tempting to spend days browsing through the catalogs of fonts available. Each one looks more stunning, artistic, creative, and compelling than the last. Eventually, one may even decide the only solution is to hire someone to take the best features of several fonts and create something of an amalgamation that will be as unique to the brand one is creating as the golden arches of McDonald’s or the flourish used in Coke’s marketing.
While that may be an excellent idea when creating a logo, it is less than ideal for creating branded material. The problem is, not all fonts are easily read by all systems. For the past several decades, it was necessary to choose a web safe font if one wanted to ensure everyone would be able to read any content which was posted online.
Google Fonts has compiled a list of more than 800 fonts that are visible in all of the most popular browsers and across operating systems. They continue to update the list and add to it as more fonts are created. Using a combination of these fonts in all printed and digital marketing helps to solidify the brand’s image over time.
Even though there are more viable options than ever before, it is best to choose no more than two. A primary font for the majority of content with a secondary accent or impact font for calls to action or greater emphasis.
Stylistic Elements
Stylistic elements are the icing atop the branding cake. These are the little details which will be largely unnoticed on a conscious level by those that see them. The use of a specific shape throughout the website and other branded materials can be embedded intentionally to create a cohesive design style that does not rely heavily on obvious branding techniques.
The logo is an obvious stylistic element. When creating the logo keep in mind the core values, ideal customer, and brand fonts. Successful logos can be as simple as the name of the company or a design that effectively represents it. Whatever is chosen, it is important to ensure the impact of the design remains the same when it is scaled up for larger signs or scaled down for business cards. An intricate logo may be more difficult to scale either way even if the imagery is particularly powerful in the original size.
Choosing the Perfect Images
All brands benefit from social media engagement and one of the most powerful tools to facilitate growth in this area are images that have been carefully selected and edited to speak to your ideal customer. The images one chooses to post need to utilize all of the branding elements the company has selected.
They should contain similar colors, editing, and photography styles. The images should speak to the desires of the ideal client and should reflect the brand’s core values. They fonts used in the editing process should be those used throughout other promotional materials. There is room for creative flare, but only within the confines of the branding rules which have been carefully chosen.
An easy way to ensure the colors are similar is to apply the same filter or set of filters to any images which are chosen. Over time, this helps make the images recognizable as part of the brand identity. There are many tools for creating stellar social media images, once you find one you like add it to your style guide and use it consistently.
Cultivation of a Brand Identity
Once these elements have been fully fleshed out, it is possible to create a cohesive brand identity that can be systematically leveraged in all areas. To do so most effectively, create templates in as many areas as possible to ensure consistency is maintained even as new team members are added. A comprehensive brand guide should also be created, the components of which should be implemented in all internal and external content creation.
CRM refers to customer relationship management. It’s a type of software that allows you to develop a database of all your customers or clients, and keep track of information about how and when they interact with your company. While many companies operate without a CRM in place, actively avoiding using one can be harmful in a number of ways.
You Can’t Remember Everything
Running a business means lots of details to keep up with. And even if you write everything down or otherwise document it somehow, there’s a lot of potential for information to slip through the cracks – especially if it must go through multiple hands, or several people have to contribute to the document. It’s easy to keep up with things when you only have a handful of clients to keep track of, but as you expand, that won’t be the case anymore.
A CRM lets you keep track of what’s going on with each customer, giving them statuses so your sales team can see at a glance who’s ready for follow up, and who needs a bit more nurturing. This makes the entire process more efficient for sales and marketing.
Some CRMs even include project management and task management features, so you can keep track of nearly everything to run your business. What’s even better is you can attach tasks and events to the customers, leads, companies, or deals that they are associated with. This way you can track the history of your relationships with everyone your business has ever come into contact with.
Email Threads Can Get Ridiculously Long
If it’s been emailed, there’s a record of it, right? So there’s no need to worry about documenting it anywhere else…That line of thought works to a certain degree. But when you’ve exchanged 57 emails in single thread to keep up with everything, or worse yet, changed subjects as required and now have 6 threads with nearly 10 email exchanges in them – not to mention the number of people that must be CC’d or BCC’d on each message – or have the messages forwarded to them – it gets too hectic. And like point number one – you can’t possibly remember everything.
CRM makes it easy to keep track of history with each customer/client, and even interdepartmental conversions – because when each person makes notes in the file about the conversations that have taken place, or the actions taken on the account, the next person who needs the information can easily see it and add to it. And with integrations, it’s possible to attach emails to records, so you have verifiable proof of what happened – without having to keep up with each email, cluttering your inbox.
Customer Service Will Suffer
Having a high quality standard for customer service is an essential component of customer retention. Considering customer retention is more cost effective than customer acquisition, and that 44% of customers will leave a business as a result of a negative customer service experience, you want to do everything you can to keep them happy.
Using a CRM helps your customer service team see when the last time someone called or emailed about an issue was – and what was done to resolve the issue before. This way, they can give a more personalized experience to the customer, and save time since the customer doesn’t have to explain the entire scenario over again.
You can use the information in the file to provide a personalized greeting to each customer, based on information you have on file about them. For instance, if Debbie calls you, you can greet her with, “Hi Debbie, thank you for being a valued customer since XXX. I see the last purchase you made was a X. Is this what you’re calling in regards to today?”
Data-Driven Decisions Matter
Your CRM is a great source of data about what your customers are doing, and can even give you insight into what they need. If you notice there are a lot of calls regarding a particular product, maybe that means you need to add more information about it on your website. Maybe you need a clearer product manual. If you notice that there seem to be a lot of people buying one product, but not many buying another – it may be time to either adjust your marketing strategy, or to cut that product from your offerings. If you notice there are a lot of customer service complaints that all tie back to a single agent, then it could signal it is time to replace that agent.
Think about it. Can you easily determine how many successful projects you’ve had over the past month? The past quarter? Do you know your conversion rate, with certainty? Do you know the best way to reach your customers? Yeah, you could probably figure it out with some complex Excel spreadsheet with formulas and calculations, but who has time for that? Ditch the spreadsheet and let the CRM do the heavy lifting for you.
Looking at the data from your CRM and other sources can help you make decisions that will help your business grow. This way, you’re not playing a guessing game, trying random approaches to see what works for your business. That data can also help you predict your future, so you know when you need to scale up your operations to keep up with demand, among other things.
Organization Can Make or Break You
Keeping everything in your business organized is paramount to your success. A CRM can play a major role in ensuring everything remains organized. I’m sure you think that email, calendars, and other task management systems are keeping you organized enough, but those systems will only work in the short term. The reality is those workflows are not scalable as you grow – and you want something that can easily grow with you. The more organized you are from the start, the better off you’ll be. You’ll never see a business fail because it was highly organized.
You Could Be Losing Money
Because a CRM helps make your workflow more efficient, you’re saving time – which we all know is money. Your team can spend less time on paperwork, save paper (and the environment) by printing fewer pages, which makes them more productive because they can spend more time on closing deals. Plus, every time you lose track of a contact from the old way of doing things, you could be losing out on a huge deal.
Choosing the Right CRM for Your Business
There are an overwhelming number of CRM options available on the market today. When the wrong system is selected, or the program isn’t implemented correctly with your other systems, it can spell disaster. That’s why you should take plenty of time to research the choices out there before committing to one for your business.
Some questions to ask when evaluating a CRM for use in your business:
Is it easy to use? You’ll have to train everyone on how to use it, so if it takes too long to get everyone used to using it, it can defeat the purpose. Look for something that’s simple, yet still has all the features you need.
How quickly can we get it up and running? You want something that’s easy to deploy, so that you don’t have to invest in a lot of equipment, or hire an IT team to install and manage it for you. Cloud-based solutions are a good option because not only are they easy to get up and running, but it keeps the data accessible from anywhere there’s an internet connection. Many of them also include a mobile app, making it possible to access the data from your smartphone or tablet.
Does it integrate with other applications the business is already using? Since part of the point of a CRM is to centralize as much data as possible – and streamline data entry – you don’t want to have to enter the same information in 15 places. As such, you should opt for a solution that integrates with other applications you’re already using such as Gmail, Mailchimp, and more. You don’t want have to change your entire workflow to accommodate the CRM – or you will be setting yourself and your team up for chaos.
An Overview of Popular CRMs
Insightly: This cloud-based CRM offers a mobile app, social CRM, business reports, and integrations with many of the apps you’re already using, such as Dropbox, Google Apps, and more. There’s a free trial, as well as a free version for up to two users. Pricing starts at $12/month/user when billed annually.
Freshsales: This is another cloud-based CRM that offers contact management, lead management, and interaction tracking. It lacks email marketing and marketing automation features you’ll find in Insightly, and doesn’t have a mobile app. However, their free plan accommodates up to 10 users. Their paid plans start at $12/month/user when billed annually.
Marketing 360: Marketing 360 offers a basic CRM solution with both a free version, and a free trial of paid versions. You can track leads and customers, adding as many team members and custom fields as you need. It offers a cloud-based and mobile app version, so you can use it whenever you need. Pricing information is not released until you contact the company for more information.
Zoho CRM: Zoho CRM offers a cloud-based solution that can be accessed from the web or via their mobile apps. There’s a free version, and a 15-day free trial of paid versions. Pricing starts at $12/month/user. It integrates with email, social media, and telephone to make it easy to track what your customers are doing and see sales signals.
HubSpot: HubSpot is known for their marketing software, and the CRM is a relatively new feature. Pricing starts at $55/month/user, so it is one of the more expensive solutions out there. But, it can automate everything from end-to-end, and includes the ability to create custom workflows so you can set it up in the way that works best for your business.
Infusionsoft: Infusionsoft is well known for their email marketing platform. Their CRM offers four editions at varying pricing, with pricing starting at $299/month. You can run it from the cloud and on the web. At this time, there are no mobile apps. It is an all-in-one sales and marketing automation solution.
When’s the Right Time to Implement a CRM?
Waiting too long to find and implement a CRM solution means you’ll waste time and lose productivity. Each day you’re not using one is another day where you risk not properly serving a customer, or spending hours tracking down critical information for someone on your team. It’s best to implement a CRM before you start to experience a lot of growing pains. This way, you have workflows in place for collaboration and communication so you can more effectively scale your growth.
Does your company use CRM? Why or why not? If so, how well does your company leverage it? How has it helped you? Share your thoughts in the comments.
This guide assumes you’ve done all your homework in terms of market research. You’ve developed and tested the idea, built the prototype, gone through beta testing, and now you’re ready to launch your new baby into the world. Your strategy can make or break your success, so it’s critical to go into everything with a plan.
You’ll need to first define your sales objectives – and the more research you do in this stage, the more successful you can be. You’ll also want to schedule a launch date, so you can develop the appropriate timeline for everything in your product launch checklist. With it, you can also start to allocate the launch responsibilities to others on your team, to avoid overloading a single person with too many tasks. Whatever the deadline is, it’s critical to your success to stick to it. Once you announce it to the public, if you have to delay it, you’re doing damage to your reputation. If you can’t come through on the first promise you make, why should your potential customers believe you’d come through on anything else? Once you commit to that fixed date, you must launch, no matter what.
Design and Optimize Your Landing Page
Whenever you’re launching a new product, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to learn more about, and then purchase, whatever it is you’re selling. Creating a landing page is the way to do it. Your landing page should include everything about the product or service you’re selling, and the link to buy it in one place.
Then, through all your marketing efforts – social medial, email marketing, TV advertising, and so on, you lead everyone to that page – and nowhere else. It may seem like it makes sense to send everyone to your homepage, but the truth is, that leaves people having to dig around the website for the information they’re looking for. And the truth is, most people aren’t going to take the time to do that. Some will, but you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re making people work for it.
Develop Your Email Marketing Strategy
The money is in your list – so if you’re not focusing on building it up, it’s time to re-evaluate your approach. Your email list deserves the best possible content – whether it’s news roundups, informative and entertaining blog posts, or videos. You should deliver this content consistently, about once a week or so, in advance of your product’s launch date. This way, when you’re ready to launch, you have an entire community of people who are familiar with your emails, and invested in your brand.
Once you’ve built that list, it’s imperative that you not abuse the power during the prelaunch phase. I get it, you’re excited about it, and you want to sell, sell, sell. But your subscribers don’t want to be sold to – so sending too many salesy emails will turn them off, and get you kicked out of their inbox. It’ll pay you a lot more in the end to keep the emails helpful and subtlety related to making sales than to blast them and piss them off.
It’s okay to mention the launch in your series of emails and keep your content related to it, so long as it remains of the same high quality you were sending out before the launch. Tease what you’re launching in the email – keeping it limited to just a few sentences at the end of the email. Include a link to your landing page, so they can find out more information if they want to.
Build Up the Hype with Your Blog
Blogs allow you to appeal to your audience on a human level – where your audience expects (and is okay with) getting a bit personal. You can connect with them on a deeper level – while also encouraging them to sign up for your email list.
For instance, let’s say you’re launching a service with streaming workout videos to make it easy for people to workout at home – with a limited budget and equipment. Then, your website, email, and social media channels would take about getting healthy, and how much happier this will make you… while also discussing the advantages of using your system compared to the hundreds of alternatives out there.
On your blog, you could could about why you’re launching the service. Whether it’s because you struggled with being overweight your whole life, or because you just couldn’t stand the idea of fitting going to the gym into your regular routine of other errands… all that matters is you link to your landing page somewhere in the blog post, so that those who want to find out more, can do so with ease.
Build Community with Social Media
Before you can isolate the social media strategy you can use around your launch, you should take a look at all the content you’re creating for your blog, your email marketing campaign, and your landing page. Is there anything from there you can pull to promote across all your social channels?
When you use what you already have, it makes it easier to think about the kinds and the volume of unique content you’ll create just for your social platforms. You can create polls, memes, quote cards, and more, specifically for use across social media.
To keep yourself organized, create an editorial calendar. This will let you see what kind of content you need to create, and where you intend to distribute it. Some content will be shared on all of your platforms, while others will only be for email, only for social, and only for the blog.
At first, it’ll seem chaotic, but once it starts coming together – you’ll be able to make it work and rock it out.
Think About Your Advertising Plan
You’ve got countless advertising options – from television, radio, newspaper, magazines, trade publications, and outdoor billboards – to online marketing and outreach. Depending on the nature of your product or service and your budget, more traditional forms of advertising like TV and radio may not be necessary, or could be out of reach entirely.
Know where you want to advertise, and why. Allocate a portion of your advertising budget to each channel. Be ready to make adjustments to the budget and allocations after the campaign starts, if you see something that’s under performing.
Design and Print Promotional Literature
If you don’t have the right promotional literature in place to support your product launch, you’ll struggle to capitalize on interest people are showing in it. If you don’t have anything to give them when you talk to them in person, they’re less likely to remember you. Or worse, they’ll remember they were interested, but didn’t have the chance to get more information, and can’t remember your company name.
At the least, have a brochure or a business card ready to give to anyone you connect with in person – especially if you’ll be at any kind of networking event or trade show where you’re connecting with people face-to-face.
Research Trade Shows and Conferences
There are a lot of trade Shows and conferences hosted all over the world, in every industry and niche. No matter who you’re trying to reach, there’s a tradeshow you can get a booth for, or a conference you can sponsor. If your budget doesn’t allow you to do anything more than attend, make sure you’re not in violation of the rules by promoting your own products or services without being an official sponsor.
A tradeshow can be a great place to launch a product, but because most companies know this, you should be prepared to face a lot of competition. CES, for instance, is a tradeshow where a lot of new products are announced and demonstrated… but there’s hefty competition.
If you want to find events where you can expect to find your target market, simply google terms like “[niche tradeshows]” or “[niche conferences]”. It can give you a good place to start. But, for extra research, check out the Events in America trade show directory and All Conferences directory.
If you choose to sponsor an event, you’ll want to look into promotional items you can give to the attendees, in additional to the promotional literature you’ll want to include to support your product launch. It’s a good way to connect with potential influencers, so you may also want to consider giving away free product or service credit, or maybe even some advanced copies of the product, so they generate some buzz about your product or service ahead of the official launch date.
Public Relations
You should use PR alongside your advertising and marketing efforts for your launch. Work to establish a PR campaign before the launch, so you can build trust in your prospects’ minds. Use a press kit to connect with bloggers and journalists who may be interested in picking up your story. They’re more likely to cover you if you include more than just information about the new product or service itself – but also product images, videos, company information including bios, and more.
Your Product Launch Schedule
Pre-Launch: During this stage, you should make sure all ads and press releases are written, approved, and ready to go. If you’re doing any kind of direct mailing, or sending samples to influencers, those also need to be approved and ready to go. At this point, you’re gauging interest in the buying public, so you can make sure you’re ready to meet demand when the product or service launches.
Product Launch: At this point, you’re introducing your new product to the world. The point of your event is to go beyond exposure and getting your message to as many people as possible. You want to share the news with those who are most likely to be interested in buying your product. You can tell a room of toddlers all about a new toy that’s coming out, and sure, they may go home and tell their parents, but they aren’t the ones with the buying power – so they’re not the ones you’re selling to. Connect with and get the word out to the parents. You want to hold a product launch event, which you can do at your own office, a local meeting space/restaurant, or a trade show, conference, or other networking event/seminar.
Post-Launch: The launch is just the beginning. You didn’t reach all your potential customers at the launch, and new customers will be coming a long for a while – for years to come, we hope. Share news and testimonials about your product to keep the momentum going. Keep getting the word out in industry publications and at trade shows, through bloggers and journalists, whatever it takes. Plan several releases of more information over the course of the next year, so people get reminded of your product or service.
Stick to the Plan
Things happen, and plans change, but for a successful product launch, you should stick as closely as possible to the original plan. This helps save you money and keeps your time use efficient. Changes can compromise the timeline and thus delay the launch, with a slew of ramifications. Pay close attention to any modifications, and act in anticipation of things that could hinder progress.
A 2013 survey showed 2/3 of customers have used a company’s social media website for customer service purposes. And younger consumers, between the ages of 18 and 29 are more likely to use a brands’ social media presence for service interactions than they are for marketing. Another study revealed 33% of customers would rather go to social media than reach out to a company on the telephone.
That means businesses must provide customer service through their social media channels, and while some of them are doing a great job (read: Netflix, JetBlue, and Starbucks), others aren’t doing much of anything to address what their customers are asking for. Research shows 1/3 of customer complaints are never answered, and most of those come from social media. This may not seem like a big deal, but not answering a compliant can decrease customer advocacy by as much as 50% – ouch! But, taking the time to answer it can help increase advocacy by as much as 25%.
1. Focus on Response Time
In customer service, your response time matters, but it definitely matters when it comes to social media. While the average response time from businesses is five hours, 40% of customers who complain on social media expect a reply within an hour. And in terms of email, businesses take an average of 44 hours – or nearly two days – to reply. That’s just too long, which makes customers feel like they’re being ignored, even when they’re not.
The speed of response time remains the most important factor in customer satisfaction. It is more important than friendliness, accuracy, or even truthfulness. Yes, people are more okay with being lied to by an agent (not that it’s okay) than they are a long wait time. As long as you’re fast, they’ll be more forgiving.
How do you increase that response time? Make someone on your team accountable for finding the social media complaints or issues – more on how to make that process efficient below –and making sure they’re handled. It’s easy to accidentally ignored customers if someone’s not in charge of making sure the issues are funneled to the appropriate customer service agents.
Remember, the bulk of customer complains will fall into a select few situations that recur often. Because of this, you can role play with other staff to develop a plan for the most common complaints and questions you deal with. If you notice the same questions and issues coming up again and again, consider reviewing your FAQs and other help documentation. It may be time to update it to ensure you have solid self-help options for your customers.
2. Use Social Listening Tools
Social media listening tools, also called social media monitoring tools, make it easier for you to keep track of who is saying what about your brand, and when.
Hootsuite: This free tool helps you listen across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, and more. Though it’s best known for its social media management features, the tool can help you track mentions of your brand’s social media handles. The free plan allows management of three social media profiles along with scheduling. There is a pro version, which starts at $19.99/month when billed annually. The paid plans allow for additional profiles, as well as the ability to schedule updates, RSS integrations, analytics, and more. Some paid plans also include the ability to schedule content in bulk, and to assign tasks to team members.
Google Alerts: This helps you find out if websites and blogs are talking about your company, more than it helps you monitor customer service as inquiries come in. You can schedule alerts to come in as they happen, or to have them come in once a day, or once a week. You can also choose to receive all results, or only the best results. Since you want to keep response time quick, and you want to see as much as possible, it’s best to get all results, as they happen. Deliver them to a central email account that all customer service agents have access to, and setup a protocol for how to handle them. Even positive comments deserve acknowledgement.
Social Mention: This tool allows you to get real-time social media search and analysis for anything. You can search across everything, or choose to find mentions only in blogs, videos, microblogs, images, bookmarks, and questions. The platform monitors more than 80 social media websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Digg, and more. You can see more about the reach, passion, sentiment, keywords, hashtags, and the sites in the analysis results.
Reputology: Managing your online reputation is important for your business – and that’s part of what social listening tools help you do. This is a review management and monitoring platform, which can help you if any social customer service issues were accidentally overlooked or ignored before the new protocols were implemented. It’s also particularly helpful if your business has multiple locations that must be managed. Pricing starts at $29.00/month when billed annually for a single location. If you have more than one location, or are interested in an agency or re-seller plan, you must contact for pricing and more information. If you have a Hootsuite account, you can integrate this service with it.
Brandwatch: Brandwatch offers deep social listening capabilities, and provides analytics. With that analytics data, you can make better business decisions to ensure you’re serving your customers to the best of your ability. It gives you access to insights from more than 70 million traffic sources all over the web, including social media, blogs, news sites, review sites, and more. This is a paid service, but pricing information is not publicly listed. You must call and schedule a demo to learn more about the product. If you have a Hootsuite Enterprise level account, you can integrate it there, too.
Addictomatic: This tool is an ideal choice for getting an overall view of your brand. You’ll see what your brand looks like on Flickr, YouTube, Bing News, YouTube, Ask.com, Google, and more. Once you’ve created your brand’s custom page with your search, you can bookmark it and come back to it again and again to monitor changes.
3. Be Human
People don’t want to be treated like a number. When you humanize your brand and take the time to address your customers by name, and go above and beyond to keep them happy, it will show. When something is your fault, admit it. Don’t use jargon or other techniques to hide behind a corporate wall, or to avoid admitting where the company took a misstep. Always respond with concern and empathy.
Take for example, the story of DiGornio Pizza. Years ago, they jumped on the #WhyIStayed hashtag trend, without realizing it was a hashtag meant for people to share their emotional stories of abusive relationships. When they realized what they’d done, they went beyond simply deleting the tweets, and came forward with a heartfelt apology.
Taco Bell takes social media to the human level by going above and beyond, “New menu launches this weekend!” type tweets. They engage in banter with their customers, and will even dish out comebacks to their haters – in a lighthearted and humorous way. Their customers know they can be heard, which helps the overall brand image.
4. Provide a Style Guide and Training to Reps
Regardless of whether you’ve got one person or 250 people handling your customer service efforts on and off social media, there should be a consistent tone and voice used. That’s why it is important to provide training, that includes a style guide with a list of acceptable responses. You don’t want everything to be canned, of course, but you want reps to know what could be constituted as crossing a line. You want all your customers to feel like they’ve been treated with respect whether John or Nancy is the one answering them.
While you always want to address the issue publicly, there are certain situations where the issue must be taken offline to resolve completely. Your agents should know what these situations are, and what the possible solutions are.
Issues should always be taken offline when there are many back and forth replies required to address the concern. They should always be taken offline when any sensitive data is required, such as email address, account number, passwords, or financial data. Simply apologize to the customer and ask them to email/private message/call with the sensitive information so the agent can take a closer look.
For example:
“Customer, apologies for the inconvenience. Check the “Other” folder on your Facebook Messenger. I’ve reached out to you there. – Rep Initials”
“Customer, so sorry you’re experiencing this. Can you please follow and DM with your order #? – Rep Initials”
“Customer, my apologies for the trouble. If your need help with your email settings, don’t hestitate to LiveChat us [bitly link] – Rep Initials”
Under what circumstances are they allowed to give a refund for the product or service? Under what circumstances should they offer a discount on future orders, or offer free shipping, or free bonus product? At what point should an issue be escalated to a supervisor? When they know the rules about what they can and cannot do and when, they have more freedom to come up with the solution that will keep the company the happiest.
5. Learn from Customers
Listen carefully to what your customers are saying. They’re telling you exactly what you can do to make your business better for them. And when you help them with a customer service issue, do what you can to get their feedback. Only when ask when you can, and when it’s appropriate to do so. You can use those social listening tools to monitor what people are saying about your customer service efforts, too, so the more information you get, the more you’ll begin to see potential areas for improvement.
6. Use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
If you’re not already using CRM to gather and keep track of customer data, the fact that it can help you improve your customer service and customer satisfaction. You can make notes in the customer’s record about the reason they contacted you, and how the issue was resolved. That way, if the customer has to reach out again in the future, or if the issue is taken off social media and escalated, the next agent can know what’s going on. This keeps the customer from having to repeat the same story over and over, which saves time – and helps the experience go better.
For instance, if Jane spoke to Tracy on Monday, and reaches on social media on Thursday, this time talking to Sarah, Sarah can make reference to the fact that she knows Jane talked to Tracy, and can go directly to the next step to resolve the issue.
What is Great Social Media Customer Service?
Great social media customer service is great customer service. No matter the channel or method, a quality response should correctly identify the customer’s issue, give them (or provide links to) more information, close the issue – even after a customer says thank you – and includes a personal touch. It should also be consistent across the organization in terms of response time and tone. You can do this whether a customer calls in on the phone, emails, shows up in person, or contacts you on social media. Don’t strive to make your social media customer service the best – strive to make your entire customer service department the best – across all channels in your organization.
What tips and tricks do you have for ensuring everyone gets stellar customer service from your company? Share them below.
By 2020, 85% of the customer relationship will be managed without ever speaking to a person. Why is that? Well, it’s at least in part due to the fact that businesses are recognizing how much their customers hate dealing with customer service. In fact, 1/3 of people would rather scrub a toilet than talk on the phone to an agent. While that means agents need to be available on other channels, like live chat, email, and social media, it also suggests customers are interested in self-help options that allow them to solve their problems without dealing without customer service at all.
And why should your company embrace it? Customers who can help themselves 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year will reduce the load on your customer support team, which helps bring down your overall costs. While a service phone call costs about $33, an email dealing with the same issue costs you about $10. Great savings, right? But when a customer helps themselves? The cost to you is about $1.
But, customers can’t help themselves unless you give them everything they need to do it, and make it easy for them to find and understand. You do this by creating a series of self-help options, in a variety of formats.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Adding a FAQ page can save you time and money, when it’s properly written and organized. When your site visitors can read it and get the answers to their questions, they’re not bugging you about getting a solution, which frees up more of your time to focus on other aspects of your business.
If you’re dealing with a brand new product or service, start with the questions you think will be most common among your customers. It does not have to be an extensive effort at first, because you can adjust – adding, removing, and changing questions and answers as you see patterns from your customers, and make improvements to your offerings.
If you’ve been in business a while, you no doubt have a fairly decent idea of the most common issues that customers are asking about. Use that information to develop your initial round of FAQs and answers, or if you already have a dedicated page on your website, review the content for accuracy. Add more questions if necessary. Edit questions and answers for clarity when possible.
Watch and see how customer service requests are changing. If people stop asking those questions, then your FAQ page is doing a good job. But just because they’ve stopped asking those questions doesn’t mean they won’t have more. Keep track of all the questions they’re asking. And if you’ve got the answer somewhere else on your website – in a video, in technical documentation, in the manual, and so on – use the FAQ space to point them to the resource where they will find the most comprehensive solution.
Include a disclaimer in your FAQ, to show that as far as you know, the information presented in the FAQ is accurate, or was at the time of the posting, but that you won’t be held liable for any inconvenience as as result of following the instructions or using the information. Consult with an an attorney for more information, because surprise – here’s my disclaimer – I’m not a lawyer and can’t give you official legal advice.
Community Forums
While this isn’t necessarily an option for all niches, if you’ve considered including a community forum on your website, dedicate a section of it to help and support. This way, other users can help each other out, and you can keep a close eye on the common issues. This allows you to make improvements to your documentation, knowledgebase, and FAQs.
Community forums are a common occurrence in the tech, and web design and development niches, especially. Look at WordPress.org, Theme.co, and Dell for examples of robust and active community support forums.
To boost activity in the forum, you’ll want to spend time there yourself – especially in the beginning. Your users need to feel like they get something valuable for spending their time in your community. Until you get top contributors, and gain enough traction to bring on moderators, you must be present to answer questions, or you’ll lose the community before you even build it. You can’t scale this approach effectively, but it’s a necessary part of boostrapping.
Leave part of the community dedicated to chit-chat – so users can get to know one another without clogging the support threads.
When you find highly dedicated users in your community, promote them to special positions, like moderators, so you can reward their behavior and loyalty with community recognition.
Knowledgebase
A knowledgebase, or collection of support and help articles, needs to contain a lot of information. But, before you start writing content for it, you must first understand what your customers need from you. Think about the questions they’re most frequently asking, and where there are issues your customers can take care of themselves without needing help from one of your customer support agents. Then, place a priority on these topics over others.
Instead of writing a bunch of articles aimed at solving customer issues and manually attempting to organize them in the most logical manner, it’s best for you to use some kind of knowledgebase software solution on your website to handle that for you. Many platforms will allow you to create articles right from your help desk’s support ticket, with the help of other assets you’ve created, like technical guides and documentation, instruction manuals, and demonstration videos.
Some common knowledgebase/help center solutions include:
You’ll need to decide what to document, and then work to create that documentation. It’s going to take a tremendous amount of time and effort to get the documentation perfected, but this one-time major effort will build a solid foundation for efficiency with customers and staff over the overall course of business operations.
Videos
Videos can help demonstrate exactly how to do something, which is highly helpful when people are looking to solve a problem. If you can’t afford to hire a professional to film it for you, at least make sure you’re using professional quality recording and sound equipment. You can get away with using a DSLR on a tripod, if you have proper lighting, and can ensure the video looks professional. You may be able to pull off a smartphone video for your friends, but your brand image is at stake here.
Keep the message clear and simple. If you’re explaining a complex or lengthy process, break it down into multiple videos. You can create a playlist or otherwise link the videos together to keep everyone on the right track. It’s much easier to keep a person’s attention through multiple short videos than it is through one long one.
Start your support video with a script. Writing out your script ahead of time will ensure you explain the process clearly and concisely, without skipping over anything that you need to cover.
If you’re recording a screencast, rather than a physical demonstration, then it’s a good idea to record your voice over before you shoot the screencast. It will make it easier to follow your audio cues.
When you record the voiceover, split the script into manageable chunks to make it easier to move through the recording session and keep track of your time along the way. Before recording the screencast, listen to it a few times, so you can learn the timing of the steps.
Don’t neglect your SEO. Adding keywords in the title and description, along with uploading a transcript can help users find you from your videos.
And, don’t forget branding. Though you’ll embed these videos on your website, a little branding never hurts.
Manuals
Manuals can be fairly complex, so it’s important to invest the appropriate amount of time into getting them right. First, you’ll need to create the appropriate user documentation, which means going back to make sure you’ve decided everything you need to document, and made a plan for how and when to get it done.
Before you can write a user manual, you need a clear picture of who the user is, and where users will be when they are using the guide. This helps determine the content and the style of the manual. You’ll also need to consider how much experience they have with the product and others like it.
Write the content in a manner your users will understand. If they’re not a highly technical audience, then it’s obvious you should skip the highly technical industry jargon.
Make sure you have a place to reference any related documents… such as a “How to Use This Guide” in the preface. If your manual is longer than 10 pages, include a table of contents so it’s easier for people to find the information they are looking for. Use appropriate graphics to support your points and instructions as needed throughout the manual.
You can do tutorials in several formats – blog posts, videos, and even an eBook with a series of tutorials. When you write tutorials, include screenshots where appropriate so your readers can make sure they are in the right place.
Just like with your videos, you want to define the topic and scope so you don’t try to do too much at once. You can always create additional tutorials and link them together.
Tutorials can be used for everything from how to install your product or service, to how to use certain features. Think about Adobe’s Creative Suite. There are countless things you can do with these programs, and the learning curve is quite steep. Not only are there countless books published on each of the programs, there are a number of independent websites dedicated to tutorials. And of course, Adobe does their own right. You can search their tutorial library to find what you’re looking for, and you can sort them by beginner or experienced. Learn how to do everything from finding and buying stock photos with Adobe Stock, to retouch photos and more.
Self-Help Should Never Be the Only Option
No matter how comprehensive your self-service options are, customers should always have the choice to escalate their issue to a customer service agent. If they can’t find the answer to their problems, but they still can’t get the help they need from your website, they should have the option to go elsewhere. Whether they want to start with an email, go to social media, or make a telephone call is up to them, but the option has to be there. If it’s not, you’ll just frustrate your customers and potentially send them running to the competition. It’s never safe to assume that you’ve covered every possible question or issue that a customer could run into while using your product or service – so always leave another door open for them.
What kinds of self-service options do you have in place for your customers?
Anyone with an internet connection can create and share content – visual or otherwise. This translates to a vast array of professional and amateur content, and a crowded environment. To stand out in any content marketing campaign, you must have quality, of course, but visual content can set you apart from the crowd.
Why visual content? 90% of the information the brain processes is visual. 65% of people are visual learners. And, when people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. But, when that information is paired with a relevant visual, the three-day memory retention rate increases to 65%.
If you want people to remember your message, visual content is key. Creating a variety of visual content assets ensures you can reach a wide audience.
Photos and Images
Whether you take the photos yourself or get them from stock photo sites, images can break up the monotony of large blocks of text. The old saying goes, “A picture is worth 1,000 words” and it rings true, especially in the world of online content. Articles that include images get 94% more views than those that don’t – so you’re not doing yourself any favors by skipping them in your blog posts.
Where can you get high quality images for use in your projects?
The first three websites offer free photos under creative commons licensing. Depending on the terms of the license, you may be able to include the photo without attribution. The last three sites are premium photo repositories, where credit may or may not be required depending on the terms of the licensing and the way the photo is to be used. Most of the time, you can get the photos you need without having to pay for them, but you should never simply Google and take images from the results. If you’re not sure what the licensing requires, always provide credit to be safe. When looking for photos under creative commons licensing, if you’re using them for your business blog or any other related projects, you must make sure those images are safe for commercial use. If not, you are violating the licensing terms.
Slideshows or Presentations
If you’ve got something that would work great in a Powerpoint type format – then you can make it a valuable content asset for your brand. Thanks to platforms like Slideshare, it’s now possible to share those presentations with the world, making it even easier to connect with your audience. Research shows that presenters who make use of visual aids are 43% more effective when it comes to persuading audience members than presenters who do not make use of visuals.
Videos
According to a 2015 study, four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. 25% of customers lose interest in a company that doesn’t have video. Customers are nearly 50% more likely to read emails that include links to video. And 80% of customers say a video that demonstrates how a product or service works is important.
You don’t have to have fancy video equipment, or be a professional actor to do well with online video. You can use a smartphone or DSLR camera with a tripod as long as you’re in a decently lit area. It’s even possible to use screen capture software like Camtasia Studio or Screenflow to record video straight from your computer screen. Then you can use something like iMovie or Movie Maker to handle the editing. When you grow and can to invest more into video creation, then it’s okay to upgrade your equipment.
According to The Next Web, the ideal length varies depending on the type of video you’re creating, but you want to keep it as short as possible.
Tutorials/Explanations: 45-90 seconds
Creative Commercials: 15-59 seconds
Crowdfunding: Average 2:30 minutes. This time should be used to create credibility for the project and provide depth about it.
Testimonials: 60-119 seconds
Infographics
Infographics are a wonderful way to visualize data that’s boring when delivered in a standard text format. It helps to make the information more appealing, which reduces boredom and helps keep people interested. It’s easy to relay information in this format, and makes it more memorable and persuasive.
When is the best time to use an infographic? If you have data that you want to share with the public, but it is best explained with graphs and pictures, then that’s the perfect opportunity. We’ve done a few infographics here at Sach’s Marketing Group, to help simplify long processes, like the Ultimate Social Media Launch Guide.
You don’t have to be a graphic pro to have a successful infographic. It helps to know one, but there are various tools online to help you build one on a budget. Take a look at Canva, Picktochart, and Vizualize for places to start.
If you’ve got a bit more freedom, consider using a platform like Fiverr or UpWork to hire a top-notch graphic designer to build it for you. You can write the script and include the sources, or hire a writer to handle that part for you.
When your infographic is ready, host it on your website or with a third party hosting platform, like Dropbox, Photobucket, or OneDrive. Include the embed code, which is the HTML code people can copy and paste into their own blog posts to share the graphic with their audience. This helps with distribution, and each time it’s embedded, there’s a link back to your website, which helps boost your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. If you want to learn more, take a look at my post about infographic distribution.
Screenshots
Screenshots, also known as screen captures, are an excellent visual to add to any tutorials or anything that is technical in nature. It’s nothing more than an image of something on your computer screen. There are many ways to take screenshots – the simplest being using the print screen button on your keyboard, and then pasting into a Paint doc. This only works in Windows, but what that button does is “copy” the screen image.
If you’re doing a blog post about the installation process for your product, then it’s a good idea to include screenshots of what each step looks like, so people can make sure they’re on the right track. Keep in mind, however, that if you update your software in anyway that changes the screen appearance dramatically, you should update the screenshots in the article accordingly to avoid confusion.
You can also use screenshots to document a timestamp.
net – free online screenshot capture and editor. There’s also a desktop version, and app in the Google Play store.
Quote Cards
Do you have a favorite quote? I have several…. And I’m willing to bet you do, too. Whether inspirational, motivational, or related to your niche, there’s a quote (or two, or 10) that you could find to share with your audience on social media. But simply typing out the quote with credit? Why be that boring when you could use a tool like Canva to create a stunning visualization that matches your brand colors?
You can tailor the quote your message, adjusting things like your color palate and typography to reach your audience and connect with them in a new way, leaving quite an impact. Plus, these images are highly sharable like memes. They’re easy to create, and have viral potential.
Memes
Meme was a term first coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins. The word was used to describe the phenomenon of an idea’s capacity to replicate itself into different meanings from person to person. Today’s definition describes images featuring humorous captions, and you can find thousands of them. If you can’t find one you’re looking for, you can use a meme generator to make one.
Though they began primarily as a way for college students to entertain themselves, memes are wildly shared across social media today, and have become an integral part of content marketing simply because it’s a quick and easy way to create visual content.
A word of caution: memes are not appropriate for every niche. When used correctly, however, they can set you apart from the competition and evoke positive emotion. If your brand is targeting a younger audience, then it’s fairly safe to say memes should be a part of your strategy. You can create a number of memes with jokes about your industry, to foster community while making people laugh.
You can find funny memes for any number of niches out there, but here are a few of my favorites from the realm of internet marketing.
Visualizations Make All the Difference in Content Marketing
The internet isn’t going to run out of content any time soon. And the written word will always have its place here, but adding visuals makes it a bit more fun and enjoyable, not only for the content creators, but for the readers, too.
Take a few minutes to think about your current content marketing strategy. Where are you already using visual content? What types of visual content are you using? How is your audience responding? Use the answers to these questions to determine what other kinds of visual content you could add to your next campaign. Test a number of different memes or quote cards to see what they respond to best before spending a lot of time and effort in asset creation. Try one infographic before investing resources into a full series.
If you’ve already got a killer visual content strategy, that’s great – but there’s always room for improvement. Share some ideas about how you’ll make your next one better. Tell me what kinds of visual content you’re using and how it’s working out for you in the comments below.
If you’ve got an idea you think would make you rich – you could be right. Or, you could be wrong. It’s important to test the validity of your idea before pouring tons of time, energy, and money into something. Yeah, you can be excited about it, but just because you are doesn’t mean the rest of the world will be. Why waste those resources if you’re not going to be able to turn a profit?
Check out these eight ways to find out if there’s a market for what you’re thinking about introducing.
Generating Workable Ideas
If you know you need to come up with something new, but you’re not sure where you should start, begin with the problem itself, rather than a certain solution. This problem should be something either you, or someone else experiences regularly, and something that can be simplified into a single statement.
Next, work through that list of ideas, and determine if is it a main problem – one of the top three problems your potential customers are trying to solve. If it’s not, you’re moving into “maybe will purchase” territory, because it’s a problem they’d like to solve, but not necessarily one they consider a priority. It doesn’t matter that you could have the best product on the market for the problem, with the best pricing, and the best support. The reality is they’ll be so focused on their top three issues they won’t have the time or the budget to look at your solution.
How do you find out if it’s a main problem your audience is looking to solve? Start with a general profile of who would typically buy your product. Then, research and find a list of 20 to 50 prospects who meet your criteria.
Send them a message that looks a little something like this.
Hi [name],
I’m/We’re looking to spend 15 minutes on a call with [who they are/CEOs/Moms] who are experiencing [problem]. We’re doing research, and don’t have anything to sell. Would you be available for a quick call [date and time]?
Keep the email concise – don’t waste time.
Including a specific date and time for each call will reduce the amount of back and forth email between the two of you.
Send emails to about three times the number of people you actually want to speak to. This way, you have a certain number of “nos” built into your plan, and won’t be scrambling to find additional people to fill in the gaps.
Before the first call, come up with a list of questions to ask them – keep it limited. Remember, you only asked for 15 minutes. You want to make sure they experience the problem, and see how much of a problem it is. You also want to find out how they’re solving the problem now, and whether or not they’d be willing to pay for a solution.
Keep all the answers in a document of your choice. Once all the calls are done, look for patterns. You’ll start to see whether or not this really a big problem, or a nice to have issue.
Next, you’ll look at all the existing solutions customers say they use to solve the problem. They may outsource it. They may create their own workflow with a combination of several tools. You’ll want to go into a market where someone else is already seeking to solve the problem – competition isn’t a bad thing. If you’re not finding anyone who’s trying to solve the same problem, then you’re likely best suited to switch courses.
Now, look at the pains in existing solutions. You want your product or service to be better, so think about how you can make yours better. What do people not like about it? What features is it missing? What could be added to get the job done faster or easier?
Finally, verify your potential customers have a budget for your solution. You don’t need to ask them specifics of pricing, but follow up with some of your prospects about pricing. Ask their thoughts about pricing if you were to build something to solve the problem. Some will tell you they won’t pay for it, some will not commit to paying, but won’t directly oppose the idea, and some will say they’d refuse to pay for it.
If you can, dig to find out why they wouldn’t pay for it. You need at least half of the prospects you speak to to commit to pricing – not a price itself, but the idea of paying for your product or service when you’re ready to launch.
This process validates your idea and creates the bare-bones map for the creation process.
Market Research
What you did in the gathering ideas stage is a form of market research. It works backwards, with a problem to find the solution. You can do market research with a solution in mind – and there are a number of ways to do it.
Ask friends and family: Get a group of people together, and ask their thoughts. The closer they match your ideal customer, the better. Your mom and dad are likely going to tell you your idea is awesome, just because it’s yours. Go to people you know you can trust to be honest with you – brutally honest.
Run a survey: Use something like Google Forms to run your own survey for nothing. This relies on making sure you have the people to take it, though, so if you’ve got a bit of a budget, switch to Google Surveys or SurveyMonkey, where they’ll find people that match your demographics to send the survey to.
Hire a focus group: This is an expensive way to do market research, but you’ll get valuable insights from a group of people who are exposed to your product/service or concept. The best way to do this to enlist the help of an outside service. I recommend contacting three to five companies that specialize in focus groups, so you can make sure you’re getting the best possible deal for your money.
Look into secondary sources: The majority of your research will fall into this category. This is research that’s already been done, industry association reports that include market statistics, census reports, local chamber of commerce data, and more. Don’t reinvent the wheel here – make use of the data that’s already widely available for free or cheap on the Internet. Only purchase market research reports when it makes sense to do so.
Find the Competition
Take a look at what the companies that already out there are doing. If you can find a product like yours before you spend the resources to create it, that means someone else spent their resources validating the idea for you.
Coming in later may seem like a disadvantage, but it means you know there’s a market for your idea, and you can see where improvements need to be made – and then make sure your product or service has those improvements.
You should always give people want they want, but to convince people to leave the competition for your offering, you need to give them something better than what they’re already getting. When do you do that, and combine it with stellar customer service, you’re well on your way to building customer loyalty.
Beta Testing
This approach works best with software and app based products. Create a basic version of the product you’re selling, and give away free copies to those who are interested, in exchange for their feedback. During the beta testing, you can get insights on everything from bugs and glitches, to layout and feel, colors, features, and function. You can make the adjustments you feel are most necessary based on feedback before launching a full product. As a bonus for your beta testers – you can give them a free version of the full product. It should help generate buzz for the product when you’re hitting the market.
Give Away Prototypes
Make a few of your product – and ask for feedback in exchange. You can also do this if you’re planning on selling digital products. Send review copies to trusted colleagues, or people who’ve expressed interest in your product. Then, pay close attention to their feedback and make adjustments as necessary before the final official launch.
Launch Small Scale Sales with a Third-Party Platform
If you’re selling a physical product, one way to test the idea is to manufacture a limited number of the product, and then rely on third party platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy (if it’s a handmade product, of course) to sell for you. You’re going to lose some money to commissions, but the advantage of using platforms like this is, you’ll be able to get wider exposure than if you were running everything from your own store.
Nobody will know who you are if you start from scratch with your own right away – and you won’t have to invest time in building (or hiring someone to build) your own website and store right away. With the right kind of pay-per-click ads and digital marketing, you can drive traffic to your third party stores. Pay attention to how well the products are selling there – if demand is so high you can’t keep up, it’s time to scale and go for broke.
If demand is low, even with the right marketing behind it – it may be time to scrap the idea and move onto something else.
Launch a Mini-Version of Your Product First
Thinking about starting a restaurant? Open a food truck first. It’s less financial risk, and gives you a way to make money while you’re testing your concept with your audience. Of course, you’ll have to do a considerable amount of market research to make sure your area is receptive to the idea of a food truck like yours before you begin – but if you get a killer response from the truck? It may be time to go full-on restaurant. Gypsy Queen, an Eastern Mediterranean restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina, began as a food truck. The truck still runs on occasion, and is usual for off-site catering events. Want to test a new menu? Run a special each night of the week – and see which ones sell the most. When your customers ask for it again, or you sell out fast, it’s a good indication it would do well on your regular menu.
Thinking about launching an online course? Start with an eBook. It won’t take you as long as a full course, and it can help you gauge interest in a more in-depth solution. Plus, you can sell the eBook later, at a lower cost, for people who would be interested in your course, but don’t have the time or the money to take it.
Rinse and Repeat
Go through this process with each new product or service idea you have. Once you get established with your first one, your customers will become a valuable source of information for additional expansion products and services.
How do you test and validate your ideas? Tell me in a comment below.
For years, the PR industry has been changing. The increased use of the internet and social media lends itself to a decrease in traditional media readership. It also means more brands are taking control of their reputation online, which in some cases is great PR, and in others, creates a nightmare.
PR, according to the Public Relations Society of America, or PRSA, is “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Essentially, PR is the art and practice of building relationships. Relationships matter in personal and professional life – they can make or break you. It deals with the sector of earned media – or content that relies on external outlet – such as guest posts or bylined articles.
Content marketing is, according to the Content Marketing Institute, or CMI, “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” Basically, content marketing is the art and practice of telling stories about your brand in such a way that promotes conversions, without overtly pitching the sale all the time. It deals in owned media – or content that you have complete control over, with the exception of user-generated comments and the like. Your blog posts, email marketing, and website copy are all owned media.
In my experience, PR and content marketing affect one another – and while content marketing is certainly alive and well, it doesn’t mean PR is dead. Many digital marketing strategies can do well through integrating PR and content marketing. The two go hand-in-hand, and the best strategies include both. Your audience comes because of the earned media from PR, but stays for the owned media created for content marketing purposes.
Let’s take a closer look at how your brand can seamlessly integrate the two – to not only provide valuable content to your customers, but to maintain your online reputation and generate buzz for your company.
Brands are Publishers
Content marketing has turned well known brands into publishers. These days, we’re seeing popular brands like Red Bull, General Mills, and American Express become large content hubs, publishing content on their own platforms to draw in their audience.
Red Bull creates captivating content that focuses on adventure sports and gaming – things you need energy for. They’ve devoted their entire website to acting as the publication, whereas other brands have created a separate hub for the content. Rather than relying on their official website to sell the product – they’re allowing their official website to engage their customers with the published content – making selling the product less of a focus.
General Mills uses a slightly different approach, creating a separate web property to serve as their content hub. Tablespoon is a recipe hub, where you can register to keep track of your favorite recipes and get coupons and other special offers for their brands. Find recipes for appetizers and snacks, lunch, dinner, dessert, holidays and parties. Hone your skills in the kitchen with a number of how-tos, ranging from how to make Jell-O shots, to how to grind your own meat for burgers, sauces you can make in the blender, and more.
American Express follows a hybrid approach with the Open Forum community. It’s housed on their official website, but could easily be considered separately. It’s targeted at small business owners, who want to know more about financing their businesses, through growth, slow times, and more. But more than about the money side of running a business – it focuses on being a resource business owners can use when they need advice on anything related to it. You’ll find articles on productivity, keeping your employees happy, expanding into global markets, and reaching more customers.
YouMoz is an extension of the popular search engine and marketing focused website, Moz. This second of the site features only user-generated content, from industry experts. The Moz community ones of the most engaged digital marketing communities out there, so opening the platform to members just makes sense. Any member can publish content to the platform, but strict editorial guidelines mean that only the best content that adds real value makes the cut.
Williams Sonoma’s website features an extensive blog content hub. Branded “Taste“, the blog features a variety of content to help readers learn a number of cooking skills, and a vast array of recipes. These lessons and recipes all feature the high-end products from Williams Sonoma, and focus on fostering the luxury the brand stands for. There’s also advice for party planning, including guidance for entertaining your guests, and drinks to serve alongside your meals.
Makeup.com is a content hub for well known brand, L’Oreal. Whether readers are casual makeup users or a die hard makeup lovers, there’s something for everyone. Keep up with the trends with a variety of the hottest looks. Learn about the products used on face, lips, hair, and nails. Get tips and tutorials for everything from how to contour, how to select the right drugstore foundation, when to use which blending sponges, how to take care of your fingernails, and more. Plus, there is of course a section of the site dedicated to product picks, so readers can know exactly how to achieve the look they’re going for.
You’re a brand – so you are a publisher. This strategy can be used in nearly any niche and industry. Think about how you’re going to make it work for you… you’re probably already publishing content on your blog, and for many brands, that’s enough. But, you can go further and create a library of content outside of that, if you want. Each piece of owned media can become a useful brand asset, that can be repurposed and adjusted in any number of ways to suit your marketing goals.
Even if you don’t own the generic domain for your product like L’Oreal does with Makeup.com, you can still mimic their strategy with your niche. If you’re selling pet products and services, create a library for owners with everything from how to choose the right breed for your lifestyle, to proper grooming.
Publishers are Marketers
This isn’t always the case, but today, we’re seeing more big name publications like Forbes in the marketing role, with the introduction of native advertisements and sponsored content. Forbes uses their BrandVoice platform to allow you to post content right within the same results as the Forbes editorial content. It allows the opportunity to work with a team of marketing experts to make the most of your content, and gives you the chance to even be published in the print version of Forbes magazine. It however, comes at a steep price, starting at $75,000 per month.
Native advertising isn’t the same thing as content marketing. To be featured, you’re paying the publisher to deliver your content in such as way that the user-experience isn’t disrupted – hence the term native. No matter the platform, the native ad looks and feels like the surrounding content. In 2016, native ad spend represented 56% of all US display ad revenue, and it is expected to represented 74% by 2021.
You, as a publisher, have the option to be a marketer, too. When your content hub gets large enough, like Tablespoon, it could stand on its own as a viable advertising vehicle, bringing in additional revenue for your brand.
Optimize Content for Customers and Journalists
You’re already segmenting your customer data to create profiles for each set of behaviors, so why not approach your content this way, too? Of course it’s written to show your customers something – but it can also be useful to the reporters, analysts and journalists who are researching. It’s no different than using search engine optimization (SEO) to catch your customers who are looking for a solution – except you’re targeting writers in need of a source.
Don’t be afraid to use platforms like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) to volunteer yourself, or your content as a source for a story you’re working on. It’s how many PR professionals connect with journalists in hope of getting some kind of coverage for their clients. Something to keep in mind though is, many journalists use this when they weren’t able to get all the quotes they thought they would, and are on a tight deadline a lot of the time. This means you must be ready to go quickly, if you want to increase your chances of being quoted.
Content Makes the World Go Round
Okay, maybethat’s a bit of a stretch. But, in marketing and PR, content is the core of the business. Everything from press releases to blog posts, white papers, newsletters, and even social media content plays a role in your business marketing strategy. PR professionals are skilled content planners, and know what it takes to promote said content. PR professionals use the relationships they’ve built to create and promote content, to position a brand positively among customers.
Content marketing fits right into that – you must plan your content, and know where to publish it to get the most benefit. It’s not just the content creation that matters – it’s much more than that. Yes, you must have stellar quality content that not only educates, but entertains and inspires the audience, but it’s getting that content in front of the eyes that need to see it – to position the brand positively among customers.
It means creating content in a variety of formats, repurposing content, and measuring the results and effectiveness on each piece. It means having a plan for each piece of content’s creation and distribution.
Think of your brand as a publisher and a marketer. When you create content both your customers and journalists will receive value from – you’ve integrated PR and content marketing. This approach helps you amplify your content, ensures brand message consistency, and could help in building relationships with influencers for influencer marketing campaigns.
When you look at your overall digital marketing approach, how integrated are your PR and content marketing efforts? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Gene: The Challenge Assumption’s podcast is brought to you by Dolphin Consulting – your source for the latest sales and marketing techniques and training in any industry. Visit DolphinConsulting.org today.
Eric Sachs: I just happened to run into a guy who was complaining that he was losing his business. I asked him why and he said, “Well, no one can find my website.” When I realized that maybe there was a business here, maybe I can do this for a living instead the jobs I was applying for that I really didn’t want, the biggest rewards in life are often realized by people willing to take the biggest risks. To me it was a risk.
Gene: I think it’s the number one cause of divorce, actually, is what they say.
Greg Davis: The Lexus helped, probably…oh, that was me.
Announcer: Coming to you live from the Americana Studio [indiscernible] [00:00:43].
Gene: We’re not live. This is a podcast. They’ll listen to this weeks later. Can you try it again?
Announcer: All right.Coming to you from Americana Studio is Austin, Texas. This is Challenge Assumptions, helping you build your committed tribe and grow your company, with your host, bestselling author, Greg Davis.
Greg: Wow, Gene’s joined in. Welcome to Challenge Assumptions Radio. He’s challenging the assumption of who’s the host and who’s not.
Gene: How you doin’, Greg?
Greg: Good. Entertaining sales. This is radio where we take your ideas and content seriously, but not ourselves. You bastard, you’ve never done that. What’s up with you today? Did you have your coffee again?
Gene: I had some coffee today.
Greg: That’s excellent. That always makes for more fun…lots of “coffee” as a stimulant apparently. I’m not sure what it is.
Gene: Hey, now.
Greg: Hey now, yes. We’ve got a great guest on today who’ll be joining us in a moment.You mean I chime in? I may chime in early. We’ll see. Eric Sachs, with Sachs Marketing Group, or SMG. Very cool. Very cool.
Gene: Very cool. Very cool.
Greg: [overlapping] [00:01:47] These guys claim number one in SEO, I think. It’s the NCO company. What I find interesting for a major company like them – [indiscernible] [00:01:55] 5000 company – is they actively promote searching out business for any range of business, any size of business, which you find that’s unique among your larger companies.
They’ve advertised in Time’s Square, again, [indiscernible] [00:02:09] 5000, and have some really interesting promotional efforts. I’m going to play you one. This is going to be very romantic. I think you’ll like this.
Gene: All right. Let’s see.
Greg: Here we go.
Woman: Help. Help. I’ve spent so much money for SEO and digital marketing services and my product still can’t be found online.
Announcer: Well, this sounds like a job for SMG guy.
Greg: SMG guy.
Gene [chuckles] [00:02:36] Welcome to the show, Eric. How you doing today?
Eric Sachs: I’m doing great, thanks. How are you?
Greg: Good. Are you the SMG guy super hero?
EricSach: I guess, yeah. We call him our avatar.
Greg: Okay. Have you worn spandex before?
Eric: I have not, but one of my employees dressed up as the SMG guy one year for Halloween.
Greg: Excellent. Did you actually make that a sort of promotional effort, where…?
Eric: Oh yeah, it was on Instagram and Social. It’s actually a girl, she had kind of a sexy SMG thing going on.
Gene: Usually the mascot…the gender never matches, it doesn’t matter, right?
Eric: Yeah, I don’t…[overlapping] [00:03:03].
Gene: [overlapping] [00:03:08] college mascots, or whatever.
Greg: [overlapping] [00:03:08]
Gene: You’re out of California, Southern California?
Eric: We are, yeah. Southern California, specifically West Lake Village, kind of a suburb of Southern California, north of the main downtown Los Angeles area.
Gene: So I think…what…our eighth person from Southern California in the room?
Greg: I guess so. I don’t know. [laughs] [00:03:30]
Greg: Apparently all the business is happening in Southern California.
Gene: Is business good in Southern California? How the hell could it be with the very high taxes?
Eric: It’s definitely an expensive place to run a business.
Greg: Basically you grew up there so that’s why you’re there, right?
Eric: I did, yeah. I was born and raised in Hollywood and then I moved out to the suburbs when I got married and my first child, and been here ever since.
Greg: What first interested you in marketing? How did that evolve in you?
Eric: I was in the mortgage space for about 12 years, and then late 2006, or early 2007, the mortgage space was in turmoil and the writing was really on the wall that I probably wasn’t going to be able to make the income that I was used to for very much longer. So I started, sort of in a panic, reaching out for something to supplement my income.
I was still employed in the wholesale lending space, but I really needed something to supplement my income and I needed something that I thought would be passive, because I was still working. So I sort of self-taught myself SEO, and Lite WebDesign, and I became what’s called a publisher and affiliate marketer.
I signed up with Amazon and a couple different affiliate networks. The approach was build a couple websites, do some SEO, get them to the first page of Google, and when people found my sites and clicked through they’d be redirected to Amazon, and if they bought the product, I’d get a check for $.25 or something. That’s really how I got my start.
Greg: Doing your own websites, then?
Eric: Yeah. That was right around the time we were switching to Blu-ray from disc – from CD to Blu-ray. Blu-ray was all the rage and there was a lot of different Blu-ray players that were being purchased. I just bought up a bunch of domains for Panasonic Blu-ray players and built various small little WordPress sites.
Then, when people searched for that specific Blu-ray player, they’d find my site on the first page of Google because of the SEO work I was doing – anywhere they clicked on my site, they’d go to Amazon. If they bought the player, I’d get a percentage of the sale.
That’s sort of Affiliate Marketing 101 and that’s, really, how I got my start and started building my skill set in the space.
Greg: How did you hear about that potential, that opportunity – you were in mortgages, so that doesn’t seem like the SEO world.
Eric: Just searching around for ways to make money on the Web. It was clear to me at the time that no one really went to the phonebook anymore for services or products, so I knew that the Web was where it was at. I bought a $99 teach-yourself-SEO program, at the time, and studied, and listened to the tapes, and watched the videos, and taught myself how to do some WordPress. That’s what started it off.
I think at the pinnacle I was maybe making $1000 a month off my sites, but it was passive, and I was able to still continue to work in the mortgage space until the bottom finally fell out.
Greg: That’s an interesting lesson to meet anyone out there…that you were able to find something new, not that many years ago, really. What do you think, about 10 years, roughly?
Eric: About ’07.
Greg: If you were to be in that similar position now, what do you think there is out there that’s similar for an opportunity?
Eric: Again, it’s going to be something web-based. There’s a lot of people that learn some web-based skill, whether that’s web design, or conversion optimization, or maybe graphics design, or copywriting. Whatever floats your boat, you can usually make some money at it on the Web.
Greg: I was going to say big data, possibly. I don’t know. Does that work, Gene? Does that make sense to you?
Gene: Well, big data implies big, so unless you’re going to buy up a whole bunch of computing power and process data through databases, it’s probably not going to be a sideline passive business to get an extra $1000 [overlapping] [00:07:37]
Greg: So small data would be a better approach?
Gene: Yes, Greg, small versus big.
[overlapping] [00:07:45]
Greg: Probably selling like a product manufactured in China via, like, Facebook ads would probably work.
Gene: That’s actually a much better idea than big data.
Greg: Okay. [overlapping] [00:07:53]
Eric: [overlapping] [00:07:543] Sure, finding a product and maybe drop-shipping, that would work.
Greg: For you that evolved, though, into something much bigger. How did that take place?
Eric: It’s an interesting story. As I mentioned, the most I was making was maybe $1000 a month. Then the mortgage industry continued to decline, and ultimately I found myself, through really no fault of my own, unemployed and unemployable in the mortgage space because all of the big lenders were filing for bankruptcy.
With a resume that said mortgage lender for 12 years, I really had nowhere to go. I was at an all-time low in life. We were hiding our car from the repo man. I was writing bad checks at the market for diapers and formula for the baby, and negotiating with my landlord to not evict my family and I, and on Government aid. It was really bad.
I just happened to run into a guy who was complaining that he was losing his business and I asked him why. He said, “Well, no one can find my website.” I said, “I can do that, I know how to do that.” He said, “Could you do it for me?” I said, “Sure. Would you pay me?” He said, “Yeah, sure. Why don’t you do a proposal?”
So I went home a had no idea what to put down on a proposal, I just sort of winged it. I had no idea what to charge. I didn’t want to charge too much and take the chance of them saying, “No.” I didn’t want to undervalue the service, so I thought $1000 sounded reasonable.
Did a proposal, created a PDF, sent it to him in an email. He called and said, “Come get a check.” He became my first client. Again, I was not building a business, I was surviving. My wife and I went to the market and we bought some groceries and I was continuing to work on my resume and interviewed for jobs during the day that I really didn’t want, but I needed something.
I had my wife in my ear saying, “You need a job. You need stability. You need insurance,” and at night I’d work on his SEO.
Gene: I think we’ve all had those wives.
Eric: Yeah. [chuckles][00:10:02] I actually still have her, so it worked out.
Gene: We don’t.
Greg: Yeah, we don’t.
[laughter] [00:10:07]
Eric: Long story short, he got great results and he was really happy and he salvaged his business. He ended up not having to file for bankruptcy. He referred me to someone else, and that person referred me to someone else.
Greg: And his name was Jeff Bezos with Amazon. No?
Eric: No. Not quite that a success story, but he is still in business, and, interestingly, he’s still our client seven years later.
Greg: Very good.
Eric: It was at some point, I think around three or four clients that I realized that maybe there was a business here. Maybe I can do this for a living instead of the jobs that I was applying for that I really didn’t want. Again, the wife chimed up and said, “No, no, you need stable employment. You need insurance.” But, I wanted to take a chance.
There’s a quote that’s helped me in the past in similar situations, that goes something like, “The biggest rewards in life are often realized by people willing to take the biggest risks.” To me it was a risk to invest 100% of my time in this, but I was willing to take the risk.
Slowly, but surely, got my first office. Got too busy, got my first employee…
Greg: You talked about taking that risk and there was some difference of opinion between you and your wife. Did you ever contemplate that it might lead to the end of your marriage? Did you sense that the risk might be that involved?
Eric: Yeah, absolutely. At that time my marriage was rocky anyway because financial instability tends to wreak havoc on relationships – or at least it did mine.
Gene: I think it’s the number one cause of divorce, actually.
Greg: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. So she wasn’t real thrilled with what was going on to begin with, and then to try to get her buy-in on, “Well, I’m just going to work on my computer for a living,” was really a hard sell. What helped me was by pointing out that the stability that she was seeking in a “job” was not very stable, as evidenced by me losing my job in the mortgage space.
I had that stability and the rug got pulled out from under me, so maybe this was an opportunity for me to create my own stability. With that, ultimately… I don’t know if she ever, officially, bought into it, but she’s, in hindsight, sure happy now that she did.
Greg: The Lexus helped, probably. Oh, that was me. Gene’s fired a lot of people over his career…
Gene: Yeah.
Greg: …from industries in a similar fashion, where they’re sort of forced out of an environment that they’re in. A lot of times they often come out the other end much stronger and more committed to something else that’s a better fit.
Gene: I think that’s true for a lot, certainly not all people. Some people were in jobs that they got lucky to get into and so when they lose that job they are not going to replace that with anything better.
I think for most people who are talented and who have ambition in life, they, quite often, end up in a job – and this does not sound like this is the case when the whole industry turns down – quite often people end up in jobs that are not an ideal match for them.
In those scenarios they may not want to take on the risk of quitting and trying to find something else, but if they’re working in a job they’re not very well suited for, there’s certainly a much higher chance they’re going to be let go.
But, when they are let go, it is an opportunity for them to find a job that’s a lot more suitable to where their talents and their interests lies. When they do, it quite often ends up being much better for them. I think the story I’ve told…a couple years back I was visiting Dallas and I had lunch with one guy that I fired from one company, and then dinner with a different guy I fired from a different company.And they were both happy to meet up with me and chit-chat with no ill feelings, because they were both in better situations a year later than they were in the time when I had to fire them.
Greg: What I found interesting in your earlier answer, Eric, is that your perspective now is really fully committed to opportunities on the Web, so there must be something that’s a great fit about that for you because you’ve not gone back to mortgages and said, “Let’s figure out how to make the mortgage industry change by changing it to fit the Internet,” or whatever may be.
You’re really focused on this area in your life. Why do you think it’s a good fit for you?
Eric: I heard early on that the average number of careers in a person’s lifetime is three. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but in my case it absolutely has been true. Mortgage was my second career, this is my third.
What I really enjoy about what I do now is how intricate it is, and how fluid it is, and how ever-changing it is, because we’re at the very cusp of evolution as things change, as Google refines their algorithms, and so forth, and what worked a month ago, six weeks ago, and what were considered best practices in digital marketing then have evolved and are different today.
My job is, really, to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on now and to make adjustments accordingly on behalf of our many clients that put their faith into us. I really get a kick out of doing something with my computer and having it benefit my client.
So, that when someone searches for a service or a product in Google and my client is on the first page, at the very top of the page, and they’re growing their business as a direct results of our efforts, that’s really rewarding.
Gene: I find that interesting that you said you actually like the changes in your particular industry because it’s engaging. Have you considered that those changes, the Google constantly updating their algorithms, do you think that makes your industry more successful? Because things are constantly changing, so people need to update and adapt to those changes.
Eric: I become more necessary, right? Ours is a recession-proof industry because the Web is where it’s at, no one’s going to phone books anymore to find their local barber, or a plumber, or a restaurant, it’s all web-based. As a business, you either have an online presence or you have a failing business, so we’ve become extremely necessary.
As evidence, it’s an interesting side note, one of our clients recently had a bit of a fall-out internally and they lost 90%…the way that they were generating their revenue was lost. I actually they were going to cancel our service. Instead, they doubled down, which I thought was really brave and forward-thinking of them.
They actually increased their campaign in light of the financial downturn that they had and so I think that’s representative of what a lot of businesses think – is that we have to invest in the Web. What’s the alternative?
Certainly, you could buy a billboard, but I think the Web is really where it’s at.
Gene: I have a…I guess it’s a must-ask question, because you’re the guy for that topic. Bing versus Google – why is Bing still around – and are they worth advertising on?
Eric: I would say, to answer the last question first, there’s certainly some value in advertising on Bing. Google obviously has market share by a long shot. When we optimize for our clients, we optimize for Google exclusively, and whatever happens with Bing and Yahoo is just sort of icing on the cake.
There’s still an audience for Bing and Yahoo, but it tends to be – I hope I don’t get myself in trouble here – but it tends to somewhat generational.
Gene: I was going to ask about that. Maybe it’s actually a benefit because you can say that ads targeting people in their 60s all go to Bing, predominantly because it’s where [overlapping] [00:18:35]
Eric: I wouldn’t say all of them, but yeah, a larger portion of them. If you were targeting Millenials you’d be on Google and, moreover, Snapchat, as opposed to Facebook. So there is a generational component to this stuff.
Greg: I found it interesting that you said that things are changing every six weeks, because we probably, about six weeks ago, had an SEO company on, as well. It’s been awhile. There are, definitely, some things you’re doing differently.
We’re going to go to break now, but when we come back we’re going to find out what makes Sachs Marketing Group one of the leading SEO companies in America.
Announcer: This segment is brought to you by the Sales Builder System, the innovative 12-part system for improving your company’s sales process. Check out SalesBuilderSystem.com for more information.
Greg: We’re back with Sachs Marketing Group, with Eric Sachs. We were talking earlier about being on the Internet and the fact that no one’s using the phone. I got the phonebook delivered yesterday, by the way. Do you still get that?
Eric: I probably take it from wherever it’s in – the little bag – and put it directly in the recycled bin.
Greg: That’s what I did, too.
Eric: I’m not sure that’s a worthwhile investment for anybody.
Greg: Unbelievable.
Gene: Do they have to keep making them? I mean, shouldn’t there be an opt-out of the thing, or something?
Greg: I don’t know.
Gene: I’ve thrown away for the last, at least 10 years without looking at it.
Greg: We could save the environment if we would stop…
Gene: Whatever. Somebody’s obviously making money on this so they’re still doing it, but…
Eric: That’s the thing. People are buying ads, so as long as people buy ads, they’ll keep printing them? Who looks at the phonebook?
Greg: Of all the audience out there, we’re definitely not on the leading edge to say, “Bad idea – yellow page’s ads.”
Gene: I think it’s been a bad idea for at least 10, maybe 15 years.
Eric: Unless you’re advertising for your retirement community. People who are in that age demographic might still [overlapping] [00:20:31].
Gene: I suppose if…
Greg: Does your mom?
Gene: Yeah, I can’t imagine.
Eric: No, I…
Gene: His mom’s like our age, dude.
Greg: His mom is not our age.
Gene: Well, close. At least 10 years.
[laughter] [00:20:43]
Gene: You’re not that young, Greg.
Greg: [laughs] [00:20:44] Maybe I should ask my parents if they use the phonebook. What is the newest thing in SEO, though, Eric? What are you guys doing now that’s unique?
Eric: WiFi enabled vehicles, with ads, in cars. You’re going to be driving along and you’re going to pass a Subway sandwich shop and something’s going to pop up on your screen for $4 off for a foot-long sub.
Gene: I’ve had that happen. That is so annoying. But, I have totally had that happen.
Greg: They’re also going to advertise free yoga mats because that’s what they make their bread out of, so you get them both at the same time. Not a sponsor at this point.
Gene: We’re going to sued for that.
Greg: At one point there was a yoga mat chemical, but I’m sure it’s changed.
Gene: A yoga mat chemical.
Greg: In the bread in the Subway buns.
Gene: What?
Greg: The yoga mat chemical was in the…
Gene: What is the yoga chemical? How do they make a chemical out of yoga mats?
Greg: No, the chemical used to make yoga mats…
Gene: There are a lot of chemicals used to make yoga mats.
Greg: …should I be needed to clarify…
Gene: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Eric: I think we’re getting off subject, guys.
Greg: Yeah. So you’re driving along in your car, Eric, and you get an advertisement for a yoga mat…I mean a Subway sandwich.
Gene: Oh my God. [overlapping] [00:21:58]
Eric: We’re becoming more mobile. Everyone’s got a Smartphone, everyone’s got a tablet, and now cars… So, that’s kind of where we’re headed. There’ll always be desktop computers, certainly, but Google, not long ago implemented a mobile-friendly algorithm, and now if you’re website is not optimized for every screen size, you’re not going to be found very much. That’s kind of where we’re headed.
You asked two questions, one was what are we doing different, or I think it was, maybe, how are we differentiating ourselves, but certainly where we’re headed is very much mobile-based.
Gene: That makes a lot of sense. Does that affect your overall strategy, or does that affect the specific segment of the market that you’re strategizing for? Is mobile something…I guess my question is is there anything the people aren’t using for mobile for forsearching?
Eric: We could have another conversation about generation because there is certainly a generation that’s not using mobile, but if you’re under, gosh, I don’t know, 50ish, you’re probably using some mobile device, whether it’s your phone or you bought a new car that’s WiFi-enabled. You may not intentionally use it, but it just sort of happens.
Like someone said that an ad kept popping up and it was annoying. You didn’t intend to do that. It’s just the wave of the future.
There’s new technology now for…have you seen the VR goggles, virtual reality goggles?
Gene: Yes.
Eric: Not just as a gaming system, but you can now shop at Nordstrom from home using your VR goggles and, figuratively, walk around the store and pick up items and decide to purchase them from your house. It’s getting kind of crazy.
Greg: That’s an interesting step, because I’ve always seen the online space as lacking that, so if you add in the virtual reality component…I guess you could add in music. Smell may be the last thing to come across.
Gene: Taste.
Greg: Well, smell and taste [overlapping] [00:24:16]
Eric: I wouldn’t be surprised[overlapping] [00:24:18], you know?
Gene: Very attractive sales assistants.
Greg: They could be in the VR, right?
Eric: It’s [overlapping] [00:24:22].
Greg: That’s what I mean.
Gene: Oh, so they would all be very attractive.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I mean, because you only use one set of people for the whole country [overlapping] [00:24:30] Nordstrom.
Gene: One attractive set of people.
Greg: It might be the same person.
Gene: That’s what I mean. I set of…
Greg: Cameron Dias would be serving you all the…I’m a very old to be saying Cameron Dias.
Gene: Yeah, you are an old man if you…
Greg: Like, Brittany…no, not Brittany Spears. Nothing against Cameron Dias. Let’s not insult anybody now.
[overlapping] [00:24:45]
Greg: I still like her, still a lot.It used to be Madonna. I had the Madonna poster in college.
Eric: Ahh.
Gene: Yeah, I don’t know who that is.
Greg: She’s the Mother of Jesus.
Gene: Brittany’s grandmother? That’s awesome.
Greg: Madonna’s the Mother of Jesus, don’t insult her, please.
The VR experience is pretty neat that it allows that… I guess we’re off topic there.
Gene: Let me talk about something other than SEO. Your company is a marketing agency. Do you do phone marketing, do you just do SEO, and how big are you guys?
Eric: We do. We handle anything under the digital umbrella, whether that’s search engine optimization, SEO, SEM – which is search engine marketing, which refers to Google AdWords, and paid ads, social media development, as well as web design.
If you come to us as a business just starting out and you need a website, and you need full social media, and branding, and SEO, we can handle anything that’s digital.
In terms of how large we are – we’ve been around just under seven years. Large by employee size, by revenue…? I’m not sure how to answer that.
Gene: Whatever you would consider size [overlapping] [00:26:04].
Greg: Gene does a lot of company audits, so he would love for you to just reveal everything in your books now.We’ll go over operating capital, and…
Eric: We’re growing exponentially year after year. The Inc5000 thing was last year and they measure growth rate. We’re a few million dollar a year company, from one employee working in my house at night to now…I think we’re at 19 or 20 employees – and about $3 million annually in gross revenue.
Greg: You make a big case for the fact that you do not outsource offshore at all…all your employees…You even have the American flag on the – Gene might appreciate this – the American flag on one of your cartoony ads on the web site.
Eric: The digital marketing space is largely outsourced to other countries. Not to knock outsourcing…
Gene: Oh, feel free.
Eric: I’ll try to tell you a little anecdotal story. I hope I don’t take too much time. About two-and-a-half years into the business… Keep in mind I didn’t have a business plan, a marketing plan, I had no idea. I was just doing it to survive and then it sort of evolved. I didn’t plan it out very well. I just made decisions that I thought made the most sense.
To me it made sense if someone was going to pay me to do some work, it made sense for me to do that work. I didn’t even think to send it somewhere else to be done. I just thought I need to do it. If I’m too busy to do it, I need to hire someone to help me do it. That was my mindset going in.
About two-and-a-half years into the business we were contacted by our merchant provider who runs all of our American Express, and Visa, and so forth. He said, “Eric, aren’t you a SEO firm?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “But you’ve never had a charge back,” meaning none of my clients had ever disputed a charge.
Gene: Wow. Very unusual
Greg: That’s incredible.
Eric: I didn’t think it’s that big a deal. I thought it just made…yeah, isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? He said, “Yeah, that’s great, but we have a ton of other SEO firms on our books and all of them, without exception, regularly charge back month-after-month, so what are you doing different?” Honestly, I didn’t know. I had no idea.
But, I wanted to find out so I started doing research. I did a lot of competitive analysis and I met a lot of people, and I found that there’s a kind of standard… Certainly not all of my competitors, I don’t mean to disparage all SEO firms, but there is a real common approach in the digital marketing space that’s based largely on client acquisition.
There’s usually a call center, and you bring clients in, the pitch is “Hey, we’ll get you to the first page of Google in 90 days.” Then you outsource the work to another country like Pakistan, India, or Philippines, where the economy’s so different – it’s pennies on the dollar – so it’s a very profitable model. Then, if they leave after 90 days, that’s fine. You’re just going to replace them with new people that you promised 90 days to. So, it’s about a 90 day retention based on client acquisition kind of a model, and it’s really profitable because of the outsourcing.
Ours is completely different, not because I wanted to be different, but because I had no idea that model existed. It’s probably a good thing, because that’s probably what I would have done had I known.
So instead, I did the work myself. I hired people to help me; I was really transparent and honest, and set very realistic expectations. I would never tell a client 90 days because I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know what’s going to happen in 90 days.
We, to this day, don’t have a call center or a sales guy. All of our clients come through me, the CEO, and we just do really good work. We don’t require contracts with our clients, so they can leave at any time.
Gene: That’s interesting and one that I’ve never heard of, that I can think of, at least companies I work with or talk to. Do you mean even on month one…like someone could just say, “Give me a month, and I’ll see what I think of the work you do.”
Eric: Yeah. It’s never happened. But, yeah, technically they could leave at any time.
Gene: You’ve never heard of this Greg?
Greg: No one I’ve talk to that offered SEO, or that I’ve used SEO…
Eric: Our first client ever, that guy seven years ago [overlapping] [00:30:19].
Gene: Oh, SEO. I was going to say… I’m chiming in because that’s essentially what I do for my consulting.
Greg: I’m not talking about all business in the world. I’m not to saving I go to 7-Eleven and buy milk and they’re, like, “Thanks for signing the contract. You going to buy milk here every day for the next six months?” I just mean in terms of SEO companies, it’s definitely very common.
I get it. There’s some amount of time it takes, maybe it’s 30 days, maybe it’s 90, but what protection does a… The first company to do the website– I say company loosely – dude… Dude I met that did the website for Dolphin, I didn’t have the option a month in to say, “Well, your work sucks,” but that was, maybe, my conclusion.
It’s not that you should expect results in 30 days, by any means, but at least that’s giving someone an opportunity to say, “Okay, I’ve seen the work you’ve done in the first 30 days and here’s what I think of it. I’m continuing, or not.”
Eric: I think it’s really important. I don’t want to lock somebody in contractually to pay us month-after-month if they’re not happy and if they’re not experiencing return. I’m confident enough in what we offer because we’re not outsourcing, because we’re doing the work in-house, under our roof, we have complete control of the quality of work that’s being done.
I know that we’re good at what we do and that our clients grow their business as a result of our efforts, so it makes sense that they’ve stayed with us as long as they have.
Here we are at year seven. Still, we’ve not had a single charge back. We don’t have a single negative review on any online [indiscernible] [00:31:58]. You can’t find anything bad about us and it’s because we really bend over backwards to service our clients and make sure that they’re growing their business. It’s a formula that’s working.
Gene; So, you’re not doing reputation management to delete all the bad publicity.
Eric: No, you know…
Greg: They offer that service, apparently, but they may have done their own.
Eric: It’s a really good point because our online reputation is almost suspect, I would offer, because there is not anything negative. It looks a little good to be true. I almost want somebody to go on Yelp and say that I took two hours to return their call, or something negative, because I get it. I know that it looks like we’re developing online reputation fictitiously, but that’s absolutely not the case.
What we’ve done is we’ve partnered with, for example…Trustpilotis sort of industry standard for online reputation because it’s really, really difficult to do a fake review on Trustpilot. If you get a negative review on Trustpilot, there’s no way to remove it. We’ve decided to use Trustpilot as our main review aggregate or source, to show that we really do have…
To prospective new clients we’ll give phone numbers. You’re welcome to call our existing past clients and so it’s actually true. It’s not smoke and mirrors.
Greg: I want to get into some of the mechanics of what it is that you do. I found it interesting on your site – on the very first page…I guess what I would assume is the call-to-action button… Of course it says award-winning SEO company for any size business, but I guess the call-to-action is “Be Happy.”
Eric: Yeah. It’s a little experiment that we’re running. If you read the “Be Happy” section, it’s really just an overview of how we got started.
Greg: I’m clicking now. I’ve decided I want to be happy…actually just decided. Go ahead.
Eric: In a nutshell, it just tells a story. One day I met a guy who was complaining that no one could find his website and he wasn’t happy. I told him I could help him and I did, and he was happy. Then he referred me to people, and then they were happy. If you want to be happy, give us your name and your number and we’ll call you.
It’s a really simple message, and I think it’s kind of cute artwork, somewhat reminiscent to TheGiving Tree, if you guys are familiar with that book. We sort of patterned the artwork after that.
Gene: Absolutely. That’s terrific.
Greg: No idea. Gene, of course…
Gene: Yeah, of course. Greg doesn’t really read.
Greg: Oh my God, I do read. I do read some things.
Gene: Sports Illustrated, baby.
Greg: No, I don’t read that. There’s nothing to read. It’s called “Illustrated,” Sports Illustrated. What’s there to read?
Eric: Aaaand, we’re off the rails again.
Gene: I only read things that are online, because I’m a new-ageMillineal-era person.
Greg: That’s right.
Gene: I read the phonebook, myself. But that’s just me.
Greg: That’s kind of a test, but certainly the use of an emotional word, that must be consistent with some strategies that you guys use in other campaigns or with other companies.
Eric: Yeah, down to the colors. Nothing is a guess. There’s color theory that goes into web design. That burnt orange color that you see is the best converting color on the web. If you look at PayPal, or Amazon, or any other major e-commerce site you’ll see that same color.
There’s a method to the madness, if you will. Because we don’t have a sales staff, we don’t do any outbound, we, literally, wait for our phone to ring, and it does. It rings off the hook. It rings because we get a lot of referral business and because our website generates a lot of business for us.
Greg: So that’s a good sign if an SEO company uses SEO to get business. How do you find the clients that aren’t in Los Angeles?
Eric: They don’t visit us, first of all, so that’s one of our differentiators. Because we have an office, and because we have people here doing the work, we love hosting meetings with our clients to come in and see us, and meet us, and see what we’re doing. Generally, the clients that we have on the East coast, or Virginia – we have several clients there – we have some clients, really, all across the Nation, but they typically don’t show up in our office. That’s really the difference.
Greg: You also have an area on your website entitled Social Media Development. I guess that’s doing social media work. I’m [indiscernible] [00:36:21] about the word “development.” What are you doing in social media work? This is the age-ending question we’re always asking. Where does social media work and where does it not?
Eric: What we do is a bunch of different stuff. We do very traditional social media development which involves us managing our clients social channels – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, in some cases, LinkedIn – really, whatever is applicable for their particular market, or their product, or their service.
We’re building their brand on social channels. We’re building their fan base. Getting people to like their page or follow them on Twitter, or on Instagram, or link up with them on LinkedIn. Then we’re putting content in front of their audience that would resonate with their audience in an effort to drive revenue for our clients.
That’s really traditional social media development. Build the brand, build the fan base, engage with your audience via social channels. Then we do some outside-the-box social media development, as well.
We work with what we call influencers. Influencers are people that have an existing audience that’s attentive to the content that they share on their social channels. If we have a restaurant, for example, that sells, let’s say, Vegan food, here locally, and we can connect with, and collaborate with an online influencer in the food space who has an existing audience that’s attentive, we can leverage that to drive his or her audience into our client’s restaurant.
Greg: How do you convince the influencer to work with you?
Eric: A bunch of different ways. Certainly we’re not above “paying to play,” so money does change hands. In some instances the influencer is smitten by the product or the service and they’re willing to do it gratis.
In some cases we make our own influencers from [indiscernible] [00-38:24]. Ninety-ish percent of what you see on the Web is maybe not exactly what it seems. So that person that you’re communicating with is saying you should try out this particular product or service, may not be a real person, may be managed by a team.
Greg: I think you’re being generous with 90%.
Gene: Because your cynical.Let me ask you a question that is a little more challenging assumptions, I guess. What do you guys…
Greg: That was a pretty good one, by the way. He just unveiled…took the covers off.
Gene: That was, actually, pretty good.
Greg: Now you want the panties off, too?
Gene: That’s right. What do you guys not do? If somebody comes to you and they want to do a lot of marketing, what do you either outsource or what do you recommend somebody else for them to go use?
Eric: We wouldn’t outsource anything. If it’s not in our wheelhouse, we would suggest they find somebody else. It’s anything offline. We’re not a PR firm, we’re not arranging trunk shows for people, we’re not arranging speaking events, we don’t do any type of offline public relations related work.
Greg: Some businesses are a better fit for that?
Eric: I would say yes.
Greg: What would that be?
Eric: Clothing lines, they need to get Carrie Underwood to wear their blouse and walk around at a party and take pictures of her. We’re not going to call Carrie’s people. That would be an offline effort.
Gene: Okay. Presumably, the same thing with traditional media – TV ads, radio ads, that kind of thing?
Eric: That’s not in our wheelhouse. You’re absolutely…radio, TV, billboards, bus stop advertising. If it’s on the Web, we’re the resource for it, and if it’s not on the Web, we would try to fit you with somebody else that would be better suited to help.
Gene: Do you have partners that you typically work with on that, or do you just not get to ask those questions very often?
Eric: Yeah, on a case-by-case, but the vast majority of the people that come to us really come to us for digital. It’s clear that’s what we do. Sometimes there’s some crossover. A client maybe designed a new product and there’s first to market, so they’ve got the burden of education to let people know this product exists.
So we’re doing our best in terms of the website and the social media, building the audience, building brand awareness on the Web.But maybe they need some additional, like an infomercial, or maybe a billboard. It’s really not our area of expertise.
Gene: Right. The video aspect opens up another question, which is if it is online, so you’re going to want videos for…whether it’s YouTube, for the SEO in YouTube, or their website in general, do you guys do video production, or do you also recommend somebody else for them to do that?
Eric: I have two partnerships in place. I guess you could call that outsourcing, but not really because they’re local. I have one partnership in place for what we call “explainer videos,” which are oftentimes either cartoons or a whiteboard-type of video where someone’s drawing as there’s a voice-over. We do those.
We also do actual video where a film crew shows up and you’ve got a script, you’ve got sound, you’ve got lighting, and so forth. There are both types of videos on our website. We have resources for that, but we don’t actually do them ourselves.
Greg: For people out there that are looking for what marketing works well, if you could give an avatar, if you want to call it that, give me a couple examples of a type of company – even a specific example – of a company that’s good for SEO versus good for social media versus video marketing, or something like that.
Eric: I would say if it’s good for SEO, then it’s going to be good for social media and video marketing, because it’s all sort of the Web. If the company is a good match for web-based marketing, then that’s going to encompass both SEO and social media.
There’s a crossover that exists today between what happens on social media and what happens in search results that didn’t always exist. It’s relatively new. There’s a concept that if your friends like something, there’s a good chance you might like it, too.
If you’re connected to people on social channels and your activity may actually influence what they see when they search for stuff in Google, believe it or not.
Greg: How does that connection, then? Are you saying…which influences the other?
Eric: Let’s say you and I are friends on Facebook and Twitter, and we follow each other on Instagram, and we’re in each other’s Google Plus Circles, and I’m shopping for, let’s say, a classic car and I find a website that I really like and I share it on my social channel, like people typically do.
Six months from now you decide to look for a car and you do a search, there’s a good chance, assuming you’re logged in and we’re connected, that the website I shared today will be on your search results a few months from now when you do a search.
It’s a function of how social media has really bled into the SEO space.
Greg: That’s not a bleed from an organic result, that’s a bleed of some sort of data connection, right?
Eric: Yeah, it’s the fact that you’re logged in – and keep in mind, you have to be logged into your Google account. A lot of people are when they do searches. If you use Chrome as a browser, for example, most people will be logged into their Gmail account, and if we’re connected through Google Plus, then that’s how that connection occurs. I guess you’d call it somewhat organic.
We’ve sort of strayed from the question. My point is that if someone is a good fit for us, they are a good fit for social media development, as well, and video, as well. In terms of what types of companies, gosh, I would say almost every type of company that either sells a product or offers a service.
We will work with pretty much any company. There’s a couple markets that we won’t work in – gambling and the adult entertainment industry – is not somewhere where we’ll go as a firm. Other than that…
We have some niches that we’ve developed, sort of organically. We didn’t necessarily intend to specialize in a particular market, but we have a ton of clients in the drug/alcohol treatment space, maybe because of our proximity to Malibu and a lot of them are in Malibu. I’m not really sure how that happened.
Greg: [laughs] [00:45:14] Well, okay.
Eric: And some others – some home improvement, we have some attorneys, doctors. Our book of business is pretty representative of a ton of different types of industries…shipping companies. The list goes on.
Greg: Again, one thing I’d say that I thought was unique at the top is that you guys at least advertise that you…any sort of size company…you guys are interested in and work with those types of companies. How low does that price get? If someone’s like a solopreneur – one person company – or a very small company, is there a price range for them, too, or is there a limit to that?
Eric: Yes there’s a price range, and yes there’s a limit. That’s evolved. When we started out it was “Gosh, we need business. We’ll take anybody.” As we become more successful, we become a little bit more selective about the clients that we’ll work with.
At the same time, I try not to turn anyone away. At the point I’m turning someone away, it’s because their budget is such that I know that I’m going to need more resources to be able to be successful for them. They’re offering $200 a month, let’s say, and I know that it’s just going to cost more than that.
So rather than take their $200 a month, knowing they’re going to cancel in 90 days because they’re upset with me, I’d rather just have them a little irritated that I’m turning them away now, than angry with me 90 days from now when they’ve spent $600, now, and they haven’t gotten anything for that money.
Greg: What do you think the biggest mistake people make when they look at doing SEO for their company is? Or doing social media for their company, for that matter.
Eric: There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. We sort of alluded to that when I was talking about the standard approach to help marketing companies market their services. There’s a lot of deception and lies and misrepresentations. I would say the mistake that people make is not fully vetting, or fully making sure that the company that they’re going to be partnering with is really able to do what they say they can do. It’s just really unfortunate.
It’s been my goal, and if you follow me on any of my social channels, or follow our blog, there’s a common thread, and that’s to try to bring some integrity to this space that’s so lacking that. I can’t do it all on my own. I do the best I can.
Gene: I think your growth is a testament to your doing it. [chuckle] [00:47:49]
Greg: That’s a problem we see. It’s bold and brave of you to say, “I’m in an industry that lacks integrity and doing the best I can in that space,” and passionate for it.
Eric, it’s been great having you on and learning about, really, how companies can better evaluate what they’re doing in Internet and digital marketing, and thanks again for being on the show.
Eric: Thanks for having me, guys. It was a great time and thanks for listening to the story. I really appreciate it.
Greg: Thanks so much. That was Challenge Assumptions.
Announcer: As always, the Challenge Assumptions podcast has been brought to you by Dolphin Consulting. Whether you need to improve your operation’s efficiency, or grow your revenue, visit DolphinConsulting.org today.
Please don’t forget to subscribe to the show via iTunes and like us on Facebook. Until next time, remember to challenge assumptions.
Across different industries, email marketing has proven to be an effective strategy in online marketing. Smart marketers have embraced it already: A survey report by an online technology reviews firm revealed that out of 200 marketers surveyed 97% of them are using email marketing software.
If you’re already using email marketing, you need to take it a step further to begin to see dramatic results.
Email marketing segmentation is the art of splitting your list into different groups. These groups – or segments – consist of people with similar characteristics. Segments can then be emailed reflecting the content and timing appropriate to them. So far, so good; emailing to groups.
You need to segment your list, because your leads are at different stages in the funnel or sales cycle. Typical results from an email segmentation include 39% higher open rate, 28% lower unsubscribe rates, and 24% better deliverability and increased sales leads.
Despite these benefits of email marketing, it’s still not a bed of roses. You’ve succeeded in getting a visitor to subscribe to your email list, Bravo! But, it doesn’t end there.
Here’s why: Sending general messages that are not personalized to your new subscriber’s inbox, will not only make them angry but also cause them to lose interest your emails, and unsubscribe.
Since your contacts are of different behaviors, they probably have different needs – which you should address when building relationships with them at the conversion funnel.
Do you want to cut through the noise and get your customer’s attention with relevant messages delivered at the right time? Let’s explore the seven ideas that you can use to segment your email list so that you can maximize your email profits in record time.
1. Leverage on first time customers
Don’t treat everyone on your list the same. Therefore, applying simple email segmentation trick will make a great impact.
There are some customers that recently made a purchase from you – these are your first time customers. It’s your responsibility to nurture these customers, because they’re likely to come back, or give up on your brand.
The popular saying that “first impression matters” is not a fancy phrase, but a fact. We all feel accepted when we move into a new arena, where everybody is friendly and kind. Same applies when your customer is shown love and treated well.
In case you don’t know, 82% of customers have left a company as a result of poor support.
And not only that, even a case study report published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, revealed how waiters increased tips they received by 23% with the influence of personalization.
When it comes to email marketing, reports have shown that emails with personalized product recommendation is likely to generate up to 20% increase in revenue.
This means that if you leverage on your first time customers, you can personalize their experiences, by crafting email content that appeals to them as individuals (and not as a group).
Use this idea of your first time customers to segment your email list. You’ll begin to see a lot of email improvements at every level.
2. Replenishable Customers
This idea of email segmentation is best for companies that deal with consumable products (i.e., products that need to be replaced/refilled).
For instance, a company that deals on perfume, knowing that the content your customer bought, will be exhausted in approximately one month, you can strategize on how to send compelling email to be delivered at the right time to such a customer, thereby motivating them to place an order.
Customers who use these replaceable products need to be handled and treated like Kings (because they truly are). You want to sustain the relationship that you’ve already established, and persuade them to buy from you again and again.
Following these people up with your emails to keep them abreast of new stocks is important. These types of emails are proven to increase customer’s intent to click.
As you can see, segmenting these customers according to what their consumption period for a particular product, will help you to ignite their desire to buy, especially when you create a campaign at the end of their consumption period.
3. Low Value Customers
This is another group of customers that are segmented based on their order value which are most often, less than $25. Every company has low value customers.
This group of customers are very complicated to handle, because they often tend to abandon shopping cart. Reluctantly, they can buy the cheapest products which might not be commensurate with the time, and resources spent on them.
But despite that, they’re still important for your business’ growth. This doesn’t call for discrimination, because it can contribute to 68% loss of customers by your company.
And coupled with the fact that 5% increase in customer retention leads to 75% in profit making for any company.
You should create and deliver emails that will nurture and engage these group of customers. Trust me, this is a great way to increase your chances of getting more sales.
4. High Value Customers
This group of customers is very important for the growth and survival of every business, thus, this makes them the optimum concern of any marketer/brand.
They require extra care and attention, because losing them is more like a company losing its competitive edge.
Since the rate of acquiring new customers is higher than retaining existing ones, you need to provide more value for high-value customers (as a segment of your email list).
Instead of sending the same broadcast email to all your subscribers, why not use email segmentation to keep this high-value customers appreciated and engaged? This way, you’ll be able to communicate with them directly, personalize your emails, and nudge them into buying your high-ticket products.
Even if you don’t do anything other than personalizing their (high-value customers) experiences, you’ll improve your email performances by a great margin.
5. Very Important People (VIPs)
At a glance, you can tell that these group of customers are the lifeblood of your business. They’re elite, and should be respected. They’re loyal customers — and this has defined your relationship with them already, isn’t it?
VIP customers that are on your email list have been with your brand for a long period of time, and still buys from you. Aside from buying products, they have also supported your cause at some point.
As a rule of thumb, you need to have a segment for these people.
Note: Don’t make the mistake of sending the same product they have purchased in the past. It could send a wrong signal and a huge percentage of them will likely unsubscribe.
6. Defecting Customers
You need this group of customers on your email segment. This group of customers are usually placed at the top of the conversion funnel, because they’re more likely to abandon your brand at any moment. For this reason, you need to take extra measure in order to win their loyalty.
Majority of these customers have been inactive for over a period of time, on your email list. You’ll notice that most of them have switched over to another brand. But all hope is not lost. You can use retargeting campaigns to win them back.
A report by Androit Digital found that 30% of customers will respond positively to retargeting ads.
If you segment your email list well, you’ll be able to detect different types of customers — and you’ll gain insights on how to win them back.
7. Purchase Cycle
It’s very important to know what and how you communicate with a customer, via email, in the sales funnel. Why? Because, whatever you say or recommend could either excite or discourage them. It all depends on the stage they’re at in the sales cycle.
To get better email results, it’s important to segment this group of customers based on the extent they got on the purchase journey. When this is being taken care of, you can then start the necessary email campaign suitable for such group of customers.
For example, a visitor gets to your product page from a link you place on another blog, click on one of your product, spend some time there, but leaves without adding the product to cart.
More than likely, an average marketer could conclude that such a customer won’t return. But how true is that? Studies have shown that 75% of them are more likely to return.
There are a lot of reasons why a customer will abandon a product page or shopping cart. One of such is when they don’t have enough information about your product that will help them make informed decisions.
If you’ve succeeded in capture their email address (it’s important you do that), then sending series of emails to enlighten the customer on the great value of your product can inspire them to come back.
Better yet, you can throw in a great deal, a trial package, discount, or bonus to sweeten the experience.
Conclusion
Make no mistakes about it, email segmentation is vital if you want to record significant improvements in both marketing and sales.
All in all, get to know and understand your contacts/customers. Because when you segment your email list based on the knowledge you have about your customers, you’ll have built a solid email marketing strategy that will grow your business.
Through email segmentation, you have the opportunity to detect active and inactive customers, and follow them up with the necessary emails – to build a stronger relationship.
Creating and executing a social media marketing (SMM) campaign is complex business – with a number of variants along the way. You have to think about what networks you’re wanting to include, what your end goals are, and how you think current and prospective fans will respond.
Nothing really ever guarantees campaign success, but one of the best ways to swing the odds in your favor is to actively involve your fans, somehow. The options are practically limitless, but you’ll of course need to factor in your niche, budget, and other considerations before you determine the best way to do it.
Do Your Fans Have Reasons to be a Fan?
Social media is clearly all about engagement and interaction. Many brands out there are using it to promote their products and services, without considering the fact that social is a two-way street. Before you launch any kind of SMM campaign, especially one you hope fans will be involved in, you must be sure your fans have a real reason to be a fan.
Your fans will not become brand advocates unless they believe in what you have to offer, and the mission behind your company. It’s when they promote your brand without even thinking about it that they become advocates. They love what you’re offering so much they’ve integrated your products or services into their lives.
You can give them reason by providing a quality product, doing something that adds real value to their lives, and encouraging them to share their story with you. The key is to find a problem your target audience is dealing with – and use your product or service to solve it.
Don’t Know What to Do?
If you don’t know where to start with your SMM campaign, take a deep breath. Look into your social media analytics on all the channels you want to involve – to find out as much as you can about the existing fan base.
Facebook Insights will tell you all about the reach of your posts, the engagement on the posts, the demographic breakdown of your fans, the number of page likes you have and where those likes came from, the number of people who are talking about your page, and check-in data if you have a physical location people can check-in to.
You can get more detailed data by exporting it. From the data export screen, choose “page data”, then your date range. You’ll get a seemingly overwhelming amount of data that contains key metrics, daily like sources, and more.
Twitter Analytics will tell you everything from high level statistics to metrics for each tweet. You’ll see how many people have seen, retweeted, and replied to each of them. Beyond that, you’ll get audience insights to help you see more about the people who follow you on Twitter, including growth over time, demographics, and interests.
But beyond the analytics data from your social platforms, you can also make use of surveys and polls to get feedback directly from your fans. Use that feedback to shape your campaign in a way they’ll enjoy.
Make it Fun
Dominos, in an effort to be different from the other pizza chains, while also actively involving their fans in social media, allows customers to order pizza through Twitter with an emoji. The tweet-to-order features is only available in the United States, but aims to be a convenience factor for customers. It links the customers’ Twitter handle to their easy order profile, and automatically sends the easy order to the customer for confirmation.
Dominos says nearly 50% of their orders are coming in digitally, and they have no plans to stop using social media to connect with their customers. They plan to explore other social platforms where they know their customers are, including Facebook and Instagram.
Outside of social media, the Dominos app allows you to voice order pizza. You can also order pizza from your Samsung SmartTV, certain smartphones, and Ford’s SYNC applink. The brand is ahead of the competition – where you can only order by phone, online, or with an app. It’s about keeping it fun and engaging for their customers.
Help a Cause
Cause marketing, also known as cause-related marketing, combines the efforts of a non-profit organization with a for-profit company, for mutual benefit. And considering a 2011 study showed 94% of people would switch brands to support a cause, it’s good business.
But, it can’t just be any cause. To be effective at helping your business grow, it must be a cause that aligns with your company’s goals. If you’re a tobacco company, supporting a charity against childhood smoking isn’t a good idea, because consumers aren’t going to buy it. If you’re an “unhealthy” food brand, don’t support causes related to fighting childhood obesity.
Lush, a mostly natural and mostly vegan, handmade cosmetics company, sources their ingredients ethically, and supports causes related to environmental and human rights. Those causes are important to people, but also align with the company’s brand values of taking care of the planet and the people who inhabit it.
In May 2015, TOMS launched their #withoutshoes Instagram campaign. They donated a pair of shoes for every person who took a picture of their bare feet and shared it on Instagram. It gave customers a chance to show their philanthropic side, and help spread the word about the TOMS brand – which is known for donating a pair of shoes to someone in need, for each pair purchased. The campaign has received so much response, it’s become an annual Day Without Shoes – and will launch again in May 2017.
Even if your brand cannot afford to give away free product on behalf of everyone who posts about you on a social media channel, you can still make an effort to tie your products and services to the greater good.
Given the current political climate, we see brands stepping up to help a number of causes. For instance, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg has donated $1 million to Planned Parenthood, in support of women. Lyft and Google are making donations to the ACLU.
Even though these donations aren’t directly part of a social media campaign, you can bet they’re going to affect fan relationships. People are watching and listening all the time. They are paying attention to what companies do in response to various situations. They want to engage with brands that support the same causes they do.
Invite users to share their stories – about their connection to the cause, about their experience with your company, whatever they feel compelled to share. This helps build your relationship with them, and gives insight about your audience you can use in future campaigns.
Let Them Contribute
User-generated content, authentic media, earned media – regardless of the name it goes by, is a powerful force in marketing. When a customer becomes so invested in your brand they’re sharing it with their networks – they are your best marketer. And what better way to get them invested than by asking them to help make something for your brand?
According a study cited by eConsultancy, conducted by Reevoo, 70% of consumers place recommendations and reviews from peers above professional written content. You’ll of course always need professionally written content because you can’t depend on your customers to say everything that needs to be said.
Since 1997, Starbucks has used the iconic red cup to celebrate the holidays. After seeing customers doodle on their cups – red and white alike – they launched an Instagram contest in 2015. Customers were invited to share their designs on Instagram. That year, winners were presented in an online gallery.
In 2016, the contest rose again, this time with a twist. Of 1,200 submissions, a small group of customers were asked to mail in the cup for an evaluation for production. 13 customer designs were selected, and cups were presented for sale in more than 25,000 stores across 75 countries.
Lay’s Do Us a Flavor is becoming an annual contest where customers can submit their own ideas for flavors. In years past, the campaign allowed users to pitch their ideas directly on Facebook. And though users can still post their ideas there, they must be officially pitched at the Lay’s website for the 2017 contest. The winner gets $1 million and their flavor goes to production.
For 10 years, ending in 2016 with Super bowl 50, Doritos ran a Crash the Superbowl contest. Entrants submitted videos and the top three were chosen for voting. The winner was aired during the big game, and the person who submitted the idea won $1 million. The campaign evolved alongside social media, with the most visited website at the time of original creation being MySpace. Now, Doritos says a change in demographic means there will need to be a different approach. However, they still plan on allowing fans to create content for them throughout the year. Considering a 30-second ad spot during the super bowl has reached an all-time high of an estimated $5 million, it’s easy to see why Doritos is changing their approach a bit.
Word-of-mouth remains important. Even though it’s not limited to phone and face-to-face conversation anymore, you must still rely on it to spread your message. If you want your fans to talk about your brand, you must first build a relationship with them. Build that relationship by taking the time to answer questions, educate them, and ultimately, entertain them with your content. This helps you pull in more fans who are interesting in joining the conversation.
When your fans get to contribute something to your brand – whether it’s a cup design, a chip flavor, a commercial idea, or something else entirely, they’re going to be excited about it, and talk about it.
Quality SMM Campaigns Take Time
It can be tempting to push content at your customers, but building an online community – which you should be aiming to do – won’t happen overnight. Your campaigns will fail again and again if you don’t take the time to build useful content and build relationships with fan engagement.
Implementing these tips will make it easier for you to plan a fan-centric campaign. While you definitely want to promote whatever it is your company is offering, you’ll get far better results if you focus on the people – that’s the real reason your business will be successful.
How are you working to get your fans actively involved in your marketing campaigns? I’d love to hear your ideas.
Blogging is hard work. It takes consistent effort, time, and dedication to get it done right. Your blog isn’t going to take off overnight, and thus it can be discouraging. In fact, it may even be tempting to trash it in favor or something else – more pressing activities. But, I’m here to tell you, blogging is worth it – especially for your business.
But, whether you’ve been blogging for a month, six months, or six years, there are many common mistakes you can make. And I’m here to show you what they are, and what you can do to avoid them – so your blog can be pure awesome.
1. Not Collecting Emails
Start out with an email capture form – even if it’s just to subscribe people to a weekly update that features all your posts. The money is and always will be in your list. You can use the email list to nurture your leads and prospects and promote certain events. It’s much easier to track, and reach, your readership via email.
Depending on the type of business you run, you may also want to offer special promotions. One of the best ways to do this is to offer exclusive promotions to the people who’ve signed up for your email list.
Each subscriber you gain is a potential future customer, and if you get started now, it’s easier to focus on treating each person as though they’re special. Because they are – they are the key to growing a successful business, and without them, you have nothing. You may have to ask for those emails – many people won’t give them to you unless you do.
When you ask for those emails, don’t just say, “You’ll get free updates!” Tell them what they get in exchange for that email address. If you don’t know what you’re offering in return, it’s time to think about creating something to offer.
Also known as a lead magnet, create a free gift – an eBook, report, video course, audio series, worksheet/workbook – that can be delivered immediately after someone joins your list. You can change it up from time to time, to keep things interesting and see how each one affects your subscriber base. When there’s something “tangible” people get in return, you’re much more likely to see your list grow.
2. Writing Poorly – In More Ways Than One
The internet and texting have given the English language some leeway in terms of what’s considered acceptable. The flexibility means you don’t have to know every single grammar rule and follow them all the time. But, you must be able to write in a way your readers will understand. If your grammar is lacking to the point where comprehension is lost, you’ll have a hard, if not impossible time building an audience. And considering how many people are out there blogging, there’s definitely another blog out there similar to yours where they can go find what they are looking for.
That said, you can write with stellar grammar and smooth, easy, comprehension, and still write poorly. If you’re not taking the time to put a little personality into your words, then you’re struggling to create a voice for yourself and brand. If your business blog is a collaboration between multiple authors – allow them the flexibility to bring their own personalities into the writing to build their own followings, or develop a style guide to ensure all ghost writers maintain the right voice – one that reflects your brand’s personality.
Write content that’s not only informative, but fun too, to help your customers learn more about your business, let them see what you’re about, and separate yourself from the competition. Customers want to see the people behind the business – to build a connection with you. And the more personal you can make your business, the easier it is to make your business a success.
Since your actual personality can affect your writing, understanding your personality type may help you understand your strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to become a better writer. For example, the INFJ finds writing to be an isolated activity, and focuses on the audience. They’re motivated by assignments that relate to personal matters, and write quickly, which often means their first drafts lack mechanical correctness. They’re also prone to start writing before they complete their research.
3. Writing Without Considering SEO
As a business owner, unless you’re in the SEO industry, chances are you’re too busy with other tasks to even think about SEO – let alone take the time to study, learn, and implement a strategy all on your own. But that’s not an excuse. You need SEO to help your clients see your stuff, and there’s no point to having a blog if no one reads it, or worse, no one can even find it.
Think of a term or two you want to rank for. For instance, if you’re an interior designer in Charlotte, North Carolina, a phrase may be, “interior design Charlotte.” Check your content titles, image descriptions, headers, and the body of each blog post. If you don’t have that phrase anywhere, you’re definitely not going to rank for it, are you? If you want to rank for a certain term, without paying an SEO expert to help you, you should at least make sure the best phrases to describe your business are featured prominently on your website.
4. Writing to Sell – All.The.Time.
A blog is a vital part of of your online presence today, and of course, should be used as a selling tool. But, rather than writing posts about your products and services all the time – essentially doing nothing but tooting your own horn, you should consider your blog as an educational tool for anyone who is interested about your products and services. Provide relevant information, without overtly selling whatever it is you offer. Just because you’re trying to make money doesn’t mean all your posts should sell something. Consumers are constantly inundated with advertisements, and constantly throwing ads at them or screaming, “BUY MY STUFF BECAUSE IT’S THE BEST” will quickly turn them off.
You’ll see here on the Sach’s Marketing Group blog, I focus mostly on providing you with material related to marketing and online presence – which is precisely for the reason for this blog post about the mistakes you should avoid while blogging for your business. But you’ll also occasionally see posts about what’s going on in the company itself – like when we moved to the new office in November. If you haven’t read that, give it a click. You can a see a video walkthrough of the new office.
5. Keeping Things Too Broad
Of course you want to build the biggest audience possible, right? Sometimes, a smaller audience of more targeted readers is much better for your bottom line. Fight the temptation to cover every single topic under the sun, because with each topic comes additional competition. The more your blog covers, the harder it will be to find, and the more likely it will be hidden by another blog. Plus, if you cover too much, you could be attracting an audience who is confused, or worse yet, not the ideal one for your brand. Carve out your niche – stick to a handful of topics and cover them well. Aim to be the number one resource on the net for the niche, in everything you do.
6. Posting Inconsistently
I get it. It’s hard to come up with stuff to write about. And sometimes, it’s even harder to find the time to write the posts. But, your audience needs consistency. How else are you supposed to stay in the front of their minds?
Sure, it can be hard to determine the kind of consistency you have time for at first, but you should try to commit to at least one post per week. The more content you get on your blog, the more you’re putting out there to make it easier for people to find you. But, don’t slap together content for the sake of content – make each and every piece worthy of its place on your blog.
The good thing about WordPress is, you can sit down once a week and write the content you need, and schedule it out for the following week. When you have a bit of extra time, you can write a few more posts, so you’re always staying ahead. Which brings me to my next point…
7. Failing to Promote Your Posts
While you want to write your posts with SEO in mind, you can’t expect the search engines to do all the promotion work for you. Make it easier for people to find your posts and engage with you. Promote them on social media and social bookmarking websites.
When you’re working from a schedule, and you know exactly which posts are going live and when, you know what you’re promoting and when. This makes it easier to get your social media calendar together – scheduling your tweets, Facebook posts, and so on in advance, too. Of course you don’t want to leave your entire social media accounts on autopilot, but it can help get the bulk of it done. This way, you can take a few minutes a day to focus on being live and present for your audience, for engagement purposes.
8. Failing to Engage Your Readership
If you think your job is done when the post goes live – you’re wrong. You must be available to your readership to interact with them. They can leave comments on your blog posts – which you should respond to, especially if they’re asking you a questions about something in the material. They can share your content on social media, which you should thank them for. People want to know you’re paying attention, so keep an eye on everything, and respond accordingly.
Committing These Mistakes? Fix Them Today!
If you’ve read through this list and realized you’re committing at least one if not more, of these mistakes, fear not. There’s time to fix them. Take a few steps back and see what you can do to improve. It can be as simple as starting an email list, hiring a freelance writer to edit and improve upon your existing content before adding new content to the site, and developing a list of places to promote your content.
Just because you’ve messed up in the past doesn’t mean you have to continue to do so. Chances are you didn’t mess up overnight, and you won’t be an overnight success either. Take it one step at a time.
How do you feel about business blogging? What other mistakes would you add to this list?
If you’re constantly feeling overwhelmed and like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get through everything you possibly need to do, it’s time to evaluate your time management skills. It’s time to take a look at what’s really taking up your time during the day, and become more aware of the things that are killing your work productivity.
Whether you work in a standard office like me, or work from home like many of the people I know, I am willing to bet there’s at least one, if not more of the things on the list below that are zapping your work productivity. One study shows 89% of employees admit to wasting at least some amount of time every day at work – 31% say they waste 30 minutes a day, while another 31% claim they waste about an hour a day. Those labor expenses add up.
Facebook and Other Social Media Platforms
This one is really hard if you’re a social media professional of any kind – whether you’re managing your social accounts for your business, or working to manage social media for clients. It’s super easy to log on to Facebook to check an ad campaign, and then find yourself scrolling through your friends’ updates, countless kitten photos, and recipe videos. I’ve fallen victim to this a time or two – I’m sure we all have.
And it’s not just Facebook. How many times have you hopped on Twitter for a chat, only to find yourself chatting with friends, in the name of networking, when you’re supposed to be working on something else?
So, what can you do to keep it from being such a time suck, when you need to use it for work? Here are a few ideas:
Create and stick to your business social media plan. Once you have it mapped out, you’ll have a much better idea of what you need to do when you spend time on social media – making it easier to get in, get it done, and get out.
Use scheduling tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Oktopost, to schedule your posts once a week. Then, set a time limit every day to check in and post live to each network. Set a timer and stick to it. If you find that it’s not enough time to respond to everything, increase it in five minute increments. Start with no more than 10 to 15 minutes. Use the timer on your phone if nothing else.
Eliminate distractions – cough, Facebook chat, cough. Turn it off when you’re using it during business hours, and encourage co-workers to communicate with you via another channel. Turn off any other non-vital notifications. Do you really need to know every single time someone tweets you?
If you’re feeling brave, go one step further and remove social media apps from your phone. It’s a good option if you find yourself constantly checking your phone, and can help you break free of the habit.
Your Phone
Let’s face it – whether it’s your smartphone dinging with those social media notifications, or the office phone that won’t stop ringing, the phone can be a problem. Resolve to limit all phone conversations to a certain time limit unless you’ve scheduled a meeting for a longer phone call. Avoid looking at your phone except during lunch breaks, and turn off those social media notifications.
Set a certain amount of time every day, say 30 minutes to an hour at the end of your work day, to return phone calls you received while working on something else. If something can be accomplished via a face-to-face meeting easier than it can be on the phone, do what you can to schedule a meeting in place of that phone call. If distance is an issue, turn to a Skype or Google Hangout video chat to demonstrate what you would in person.
Meetings
Sometimes meetings are necessary, but the reality is, most businesses are scheduling way too many of them. While meetings may seem like a good idea because they get everyone together at once to discuss whatever issues – the act of getting to and participating in the meeting pulls everyone’s brain power from other tasks.
Accomplish what you can without having a formal meeting – chat in your Slack channel, or spend time with each employee – five minutes or less, to catch up. If you absolutely must hold a meeting, schedule it to end about 10 minutes before the hour. This can help keep everyone on track, and help avoid the inevitable domino effect if the meeting runs behind. Meetings are a big distraction, and if that meeting calls for five people, and lasts an hour, you’ve just cost the business five hours of work productivity. Use that as a metric when you decide if a meeting is truly needed. There’s no such thing as a one-hour meeting… unless you’re the only one there for an hour, and then it’s not a meeting, is it?
Email
Email is a huge time-suck, mostly because we feel compelled to respond almost immediately after receiving a message. And all that time adds up, with the average white collar worker spending 4.1 hours each day, r 20.5 hours a week (more than half their time on the clock) answering emails.
If you want to get an idea of how much time you’re spending over the course of your career answering emails, take a look at this calculator. Start with how old you were when you started working and the age you are expected to retire. Then put in the number of times you interrupt t what you’re doing to check your email every day.
If you start working at age 21, retire at age 67, and only interrupt your day twice, you’ll spend 47,150 hours over the course of your career on email – and 8,816.7 hours distracted by email interruptions. To put things in perspective for you, that’s more than five years of your career focused on email alone. Scary, huh?
Transition Rituals
There’s nothing wrong with taking breaks throughout your workday. In fact, taking breaks is more conducive to productive than it sounds like it would be. But, it’s those transition rituals – taking the 10 minutes after you’ve finished a task, but before a meeting starts, to get engrossed in something other than work that can derail your progress.
Yes, decompression is important, but the simple fact is, we build a lot of it into our days, to help ease us into and out of the next work related tasks. Instead of using these bumpers, take breaks throughout the day… and build a larger chunk of decompression time into your day toward the end, so you can relax and get some good rest. Working too much won’t increase your output – but getting enough sleep can.
Chatting with Co-Workers
Even if you’re not physically near your co-workers, technology makes it easy to talk to them. Whether through GChat, Facebook Messenger, or another instant messaging platform, it’s easy to get caught up in conversation with friends and coworkers over the course of your workday.
You think it’s no big deal because you’re already at the computer working anyway, and it’s different than if you were to get up and walk away to talk on the phone or chat in person. But, switching back and forth from chat window to chat window and to your work tasks can be distracting. This makes it harder to focus on the task at hand, and even though it may get done, it will definitely take you longer than it would if you were not chatting the entire time you were working on it.
Multi-Tasking
It sounds good in theory, right? Look at me getting so much done. I started the laundry, the dishwasher, and put dinner in the slow cooker in 20 minutes. Now, I’m free to work on the really important stuff. it’s easy to get a lot done at once – if it’s passive. But, when you’re answering the phone and emails at the same time – it’s suddenly not as easy, is it? You’ll either find yourself typing the words you’re saying out loud, not the ones you need to, or completely zoning out on the phone conversation as you focus on the email.
If you’re trying to do too much at once, then it slows down the progress on all the tasks, and possibly even the quality of work, too. Multitasking makes you feel more productive, but studies show only 2% of the population can actually multitask successfully.
If you find yourself only able to work in 15 minute spurts on each task – then do that, as long as you’re devoting the full 15 minutes to the task before switching to something else. It doesn’t have to be 15 minutes – it can be any size chunk of time, as long as you’re focusing solely on that task and nothing else. One study shows the most productive people work for a period of 52 minutes, and then take a break for 17. Sure it’s random, but give it a try and see how it works for you – without multi-tasking.
How Many of These Do You Commit Regularly?
If you’re being 100% honest with yourself, how many of these time sucks are you dealing with on a daily basis? How much time do you think they’re costing you?
I challenge you to install something like RescueTime on your computer. It runs on both your computer and mobile devices, in the background, so you can track the time you spend in various applications and websites, allowing to you see how you really spend the time. You’ll even get detailed reports and data based on your activity.
Before you start using it, estimate how much time you’re spending on all the common places you visit over the day – for work and for play. Run the program for a day or two, maybe even a week, so you can get an accurate picture of how much time you’re spending (wasting) everywhere throughout your day. At the end of the experimental period, look at the data and see how correct you were.
Once you’ve identified how much time you’ve wasted, create a plan to reclaim it. Reclaim it at work and home. Did you really need to spend five minutes every hour replying to email, or could you do it in 30 minutes at the end of the day? Do you really need that 30 minute Facebook game binge to wind down after work? Or, could that 30 minutes be better spent reading a book before bed? Or out to dinner with a friend?
Now, once you have your plan to reclaim it in place, run RescueTime for another week and see how you did – not only in terms of sticking to your plan, but how much more productive you’ve been. You didn’t get anymore hours in the day – but you got more done, didn’t you? (If you didn’t, that’s okay, too. Try again next week.)
How do you deal with these inevitable time sucks? Tell me in the comments below.
Did you know, YouTube on mobile alone reaches more 18 to 49 year olds than any cable network in the United States? That’s pretty impressive, and incredibly telling about our media consumption habits. If you’re marketing to anyone in that age group and you’re not engaging in YouTube marketing, you’re missing out.
Just as with anything else in online marketing, you shouldn’t start without a plan. Randomly grabbing your cell phone and recording a video from your living room could work, but it won’t necessarily. Save that kind of thing for Facebook Live or Periscope.
Ready to dig in your heels and get started? Great.
Do Your Research
When you started your blog, you did research. When you started your content marketing strategy, you did research. Now, you’ve got to do more so you know how to fit your YouTube channel into the rest of your content marketing.
Is your competition already marketing on YouTube? If so, what are they doing in terms of content? How is the audience responding? What could you do differently? What could you do better?
If they’re not – you’re moving into uncharted territory. Is it because there’s not really a market for your audience there? Is it because they just haven’t thought to make it part of their strategy yet? Being a step or two ahead of the competition isn’t always a bad thing, you know.
Bonus points for taking notes throughout your research.
Decide on Your Angle
What approach will you take with your videos? Base your decision on what you see the competition doing. You don’t want to copy them exactly, because you need to put your own spin on the content – so you stand out from them. But you don’t want to deviate too far from what they’re doing, because you may not be able to pull the audience from them over to you.
For example, take a look at the Tampax YouTube channel, and the Bodyform YouTube Channel. I chose these because feminine hygiene products are a necessary part of life, but they’re not exactly glamorous to market.
Both channels focus on living an active and healthy life even during a cycle, and education about the cycle and proper use of products. But, a few years ago, Bodyform had a video go viral, in response to a Facebook comment from a man. Called, “Bodyform Responds: The Truth,” it injected a bit of humor into how and why the products are presented the way they are. This humor sets them apart from the competition.
As you work on this aspect of your strategy, you’ll also want to consider whether or not you’ll appear in front of the camera. If you’re camera shy, or don’t like public speaking, it may be a better idea to have someone else appear for you. The person in the Bodyform video above, isn’t actually the CEO, but you have to decide if you’re okay with having someone else be the “face” of your company, so it’s not a decision you should take lightly. In Bodyform’s case, it was a one-off video – so it made sense to keep the real CEO off camera. In yours, it may not.
But, there is one way around that – if your niche allows for this sort of thing. Screencasts and slideshow presentations. Instead of showing your face and surrounding environment, you simply record your computer screen, and narrate it along the way.
Take a look at WPBeginner channel. It’s full of nothing but screencasts because it’s a WordPress tutorial channel. It works well for the niche. You wouldn’t expect to see someone sitting in front of you talking about how to do something on WordPress, without actually showing you, would you?
Make a List of Video Topics
Now that you’ve got an idea of what you’re going to cover and how you’re going to do it, it’s time to start planning things with a bit more detail. Start with a list of broad topics you’ll cover on the channel.
These can be similar to your blog categories. If I were creating a channel to begin YouTube marketing – I’d start with the topics I’m covering on my blog: Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, SEO, Social Media, and Outreach. I’d let these core topics be the basis for all the content that comes from my channel, just like they are the basis for everything posted on the blog.
When you approach things this way, you’ll find it easier to come up with the quality content you need to complement the rest of your strategy.
Build Your Content Calendar and Decide Posting Frequency
At this point, you know roughly what you’ll be creating, but you’re reaching the point where you’ve got to answer the tough question that stops many people from being successful with YouTube.
What resources do you have available to make this work? Not just in terms of budget and equipment, but in terms of time. Two of the pillars of YouTube success are volume and consistency.
Use a spreadsheet or editorial calendar planning tool to help you figure out what videos you are going to post and when. It’s okay if you start slow and post only once a week, but the more often you post, the faster you’ll be able to build momentum. However, if you commit to more than that, stick to it. If you can’t consistently deliver the content, you’ll have a harder time building audience loyalty.
Set the tone and audience expectations from the beginning. Your first video should be an introduction to your channel. Let your viewers know what kind of content you’re planning on publishing, and how often they can expect to see it. Whatever you set for yourself, stick to it. Don’t promise your audience you’ll post a new video every day, and then fall back to posting once a month.
Invest in the Right Video Equipment
You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on studio quality equipment, but at the least, you may want to invest in a tripod. This way you can put your cell phone or other camera on it and keep the video steady during recording.
Other than a cell phone, you can use a handheld video camera, a web cam, or a DSLR camera. While a DSLR camera will require a more expensive investment, the resulting video will be near professional quality.
If this is the minimum equipment you’ll be using, you should pay extra attention to the recording environment, to make sure the lighting is appropriate and your voice is audible.
It’s possible to invest in a number of cheap microphones, and the right one for you will depend on whether or not you’ll be recording with others in person, or over the phone.
If you’ll be interviewing other people in the same room with you, you’ll want to invest in an omnidirectional mic so it can pick up the sound from you and the guest with relative ease.
You’ll also need to make sure you have something to edit your videos with – like Movie Maker for Windows or iMovie for Mac – both free. These are necessary if you want to add intros, transitions, and outros, or music to your videos.
Market Your Channel on Your Website and Social Media Platforms
Once you’ve got your introduction video up, start promoting your channel on Facebook, Twitter, and any other network you’re already established on. Let your followers there know they can find you on YouTube, according to whatever schedule you’ve set up for yourself. Link back to your videos on your website – embedding them in your blog posts when possible.
Optimize Titles and Descriptions
Your video titles should be written to get people to click on your videos, to tell the YouTube algorithm that your videos are related to one another, and to attempt to get higher ranks for a keyword.
You should always use descriptions and tags on your videos, too. The description should be at least three sentences, and placed before anything else. The description and tags should focus on one keyword. Use no more than 10 to 12 tags that are related to the keyword, but also include four to six generic tags that are related to your show and channel.
Add Subtitles to All Your Videos
Though it hasn’t always been possible, YouTube (and Facebook, too!) now make it easy for you to include subtitles to all your videos. I know you’re thinking, “Big deal. I hate subtitles.” But really, think about how many times you’ve been sitting around, in public, bored – waiting on the doctor to come in for your appointment, waiting on your friend to get to the restaurant so you can eat lunch, and so on… A lot of people turn to video to keep themselves occupied, without the sound on, so they don’t disrupt the people near them. If you can’t hear what someone’s saying in the video, why bother watching, right?
Adding subtitles to your videos allows people to watch without the sound on, which bypasses that barrier to entry, allowing people to enjoy your videos with or without sound. Plus, it’s an awesome feature you should be including for the deaf and hard of hearing, anyway.
And, subtitles can help bring traffic, because they make it easier for people to search for your videos. If you’re targeting a wider audience that speaks more than one language, subtitle it in more than just English. You should also use subtitles if you have an accent that makes it hard to clearly understand what you’re saying.
Use YouTube’s auto-captioning feature at your own risk because of inaccuracies. Try training a program like Dragon Naturally Speaking to transcribe your content, or hire someone to transcribe videos for you. And to show you just how awesome adding your content to YouTube can be – I found this video of a demo of video transcription with Dragon, when I was searching for a source to include in this paragraph. Why tell when you can show? Granted the video is from 2012, but the basics should be the same.
Create Custom Thumbnails
Custom thumbnails can help encourage people to click on your videos. You must keep the thumbnail and title match the video closely. Because if they’re misleading or irrelevant, people will click away from the video, which harms your average view duration and the chances of showing up in the suggested videos. You can use Canva to create high quality images even if you’re not a graphic design pro.
Collaborate with Other YouTubers
If you’re just starting out on social media and don’t have a fan base you can bring over to YouTube, one of the best things you can do to build your audience is through collaboration with other YouTubers.
Not only is this a good alternative to buying ads, the organic nature of collaborations can help you build your own credibility. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the bigger and more well-known channels, because many of them are open to working with other channels. Just reach out to them with an idea and let them know what you would need from then to make it happen – then make it happen, together.
Rinse and Repeat
Though it may take some time to gain traction, keep at it. Each video you create adds a content asset to your library – a new pathway to connect and engage with potential customers. GoPro – which you may want to invest in if you need to have videos with a lot of action – is one of the brands that rose to fame thanks to YouTube. Once customers got the camera in their hands, they began uploading content to YouTube, featuring GoPro in the title – which lead to the creation of the GoPro Network. With persistence, your brand could be the next one to rise to fame courtesy of the video sharing platform.
Are you on YouTube? Drop your channel below – I’d love to check it out!
If you’re cold pitching – you’re pitching your story (or your product) to someone you don’t already have a connection with, with the hope that they’ll run your story, or buy your product. Maybe you don’t want them to buy your product right this second, but you want them to attend a webinar or schedule a demo, so you can try to sell them later.
These days, it seems everywhere you look, there’s someone bashing the cold call or pitch. But, I’m here to tell you – it’s not dead. Just like with anything else in marketing, it won’t work if you don’t do it right. It’s the art of good communication that’s keeping it alive.
Let’s take a look at how you can make the cold pitch part of your approach and get those leads rolling in.
It Still Works
Don’t believe me? A survey from DisoverOrg revealed 75% of decision-makers in a business will attend events or take appointment from an unexpected sales call or email. While outbound marketing may be more expensive than inbound, it’s certainly worth considering as part of your strategy.
How to Make Cold Pitching Work for You
Know Who You’re Pitching
Don’t just write a generalized email or phone script and use it for every person you write or call. Take the time to figure out who the best person to speak to is – an editor or a decision-maker in the business is usually your best bet. Use LinkedIn to find their contact information. Spending a bit of time on research allows you to be better prepared – increasing the likelihood that you’ll get a response from the person you’re pitching.
Prepare Yourself
Now’s the time to write that email or phone script.
If you’re writing an email, keep your copy clean, short, and to the point. Skip the industry jargon – and definitely avoid attachments. Despite the fact that many email providers now include automatic virus scanners on all attachments, lessons of the past have taught us not to trust attachments from people we don’t know. Keep the email fairly generalized for template purposes, so it’s easy to edit and personalize for each recipient. If grammar and spelling aren’t your strong suits, have someone proofread the email copy for you before sending it out to a single person.
If you’re writing a phone script, you want to write something that’s easy for you to read in a conversational tone, without sounding like you’re reading from a script once you’re on the phone or leaving a voicemail for someone. Leave room in the script to have a conversation with the person on the other end, because you’re not just an advertisement. Prepare responses for their possible rejections, so you’re not left wondering what to say next, or fumbling over your words. Prepare responses for when they accept your pitch, and prepare messages for when you don’t get an answer. Rehearse it a few times before each call, if necessary.
Find the People You Need
Instead of finding one person at a time, build out a database of the important people who may be interested it what it is you have to offer. Options include:
Attending networking events – exchange those business cards and follow up! Face-to-face networking is still important. There’s something about physically being able to connect a name to a face, read body language, and hear one another’s voices that makes it easier to connect. Even if you’re the more introverted type who would rather make connections online first, and meet face-to-face later, I encourage you to find at least one relevant industry event to attend this year, and see what you can make happen.
If you’re not sure where to find events worth attending, start with Google. Search phrases like: “[city] business networking”, “[city] networking events”. You can also search Facebook for events, and ask your friends there if they know of any relevant events that may be worth attending.
Beyond this, dig through sites like MeetUp, NetParty, EventBrite, and Eventful. You can find all kinds of lesser advertised events in these places – making them a great option if you want to avoid large crowds.
Consider not only events where you’d find people in your industry, but the events where you’d most likely find your target audience. If you want to connect with bloggers and social media influencers across a number of niches, then conferences like Type A-Parent and BlogHer would be worth investigating.
Looking through phone and business directories. Thanks to websites like WhitePages and YellowPages, there’s no need to go looking for a phone book. (Do they even make those things anymore?) But if you want to go beyond phone directories, there are plenty of other places you can look, such as:
Harnessing the power of the Twitter search. Twitter has some fairly advanced search features you can use to target just about any user you want. You can search for specific tweets, accounts, and even in ongoing conversations.
Type your search into the box at the top of the page. You’ll be given a lot of results, including tweets, photos, and accounts. You can filter those results by clicking through your choice of “Top,” “Latest,” “Accounts,” “Photos,” or “Videos.”
Clicking on the “More options” drop down will give you those options in addition to “News.” You can pick and choose to see results from all Twitter users, or from only users you follow. You can also choose to search tweets from everywhere, or only those near you. This is particularly helpful if you’re interested in working with local users.
To make things easier for the next time you’re looking for people, you can save your Twitter searches. Just enter your search in the search box, and then click “More options.” Then choose “Save this search.” The next time you click the search box, a menu will pop-up with all your saved searches. This is especially great for seeing the latest activity on a hashtag.
Looking through your competitor’s social media followers. Pick your top three to five competitors and look at their Twitter accounts. You can use a tool like Crowdfire to see people you follow, but aren’t following back. But, another awesome thing it can do is allow you to copy followers from any user name. And, if you’ve already followed someone, you can hide those usernames, if you upgrade to a paid account. This approach lets you grow your following with targeted followers. A word of caution, however, manually look through the followers a bit to make sure they are the kind you want on your account before you copy followers en mass.
No matter how many of these methods you use, do it frequently as contacts often change. You want to keep everything as up to date as possible to save time and make the most of your efforts.
While your first instinct may be to use a spreadsheet, I’m begging you not to. It may seem like it’s the easiest option at first, and maybe it really is. I mean, sure, it only takes opening a file and typing a few things in columns. But, as you scale your database and include more contacts, it’s going to become more complex and harder to manage with just a spreadsheet – even if you have multiple sheets within a single workbook.
I recommend you use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform – there are many out there to choose from, like Insightly, Zoho CRM, Freshsales and Marketing 360. Why? Because not only does it make it easier to keep track of contacts, but it also makes it incredibly easy to do the next step, too. I’m a fan of efficiency, so killing two birds with one stone? Give me some of that. Simply create an account with the CRM of your choice, and enter all the contacts into the system before you get started with the pitches. This way, you already have the bulk of the work done before starting the pitch process, and can come back to add more (or delete) contacts each time you update your database.
Pitch
Here comes the fun part – sending the emails or actually picking up the phone and making the call. Personalize the scripts you prepared, based on what you know about the person you’re pitching. Have a list of phone numbers ready to go so you can make several calls at once.
Be prepared to spend a bit of time on the phone with someone who expresses interest right away. But, if the conversation gets to be too long, invite them to schedule a time to talk more in-depth, so they can get on with the other things they have to accomplish for the day, and you can move on to your next call.
Follow Up
A few days after the pitch, follow up with anyone who didn’t return your call or email. See if you can schedule a time to speak with them in more detail about the product or service you’re offering. If after the first follow up, you still don’t hear anything, move on – for now. You can circle back around with them in a few months, if you so choose, but you don’t want to bother them too much. If you do, you’ll never be able to close the sale.
Track Your Results
This way you’re not calling the same person 15 times to no avail, but you can keep track of whom you’ve called and left messages for, how many of those people have returned your calls, and how many you need to follow up with again.
You can totally use a spreadsheet here, too, but if you’ve taken the initial time to setup that CRM, all you have to do is make a note in each contact with the date and details of what happened. You can keep details of conversations, so if Jane asks you to call back in two weeks at 2 pm, you can leave yourself a note to do just that – and refresh her memory of the conversation when it’s time to speak again.
Don’t Give Up
Obviously, you’re not going to be able to close every single person you reach out to. Some will outright ignore you – they are busy people and they don’t know who you are. Some will take a few follow ups. The point is, you shouldn’t get discouraged. Keep at it, and you’ll eventually find someone who’s interested in what you have to say.
Practice makes perfect, so keep fine-tuning those scripts and emails based on feedback you get. Over time, you may find small improvements make a big difference in the positive responses you get.
Outbound May Get a Bad Rap, But… It Doesn’t Have To
It’s not exactly easy to start cold pitching complete strangers – and for many people who are doing it ineffectively, it’s much simpler to completely abandon outbound marketing in favor of something with more “guaranteed” odds of working. But with the right research and approach, outbound marketing can bring in a decent number of leads to help boost your profits.
Do you use cold pitching of any sort? Why or why not? Share your thoughts below.
Brand marketing is an absolutely essential part of your online marketing strategy. You need to monitor your brand – and your competition, too.
You may have SEO locked down so people can easily find the relevant content your company produces, but if they are not satisfied with the product, service, or customer service experience, they may be making that displeasure widely known throughout social media channels.
But it’s not enough to pay attention to what they’re saying about you. By keeping a close watch on what people are saying about the competition you can learn from both their mistakes and their successes.
Check out this list of tools that can help make monitoring your brand easier.
Adobe Marketing Cloud
Adobe is perhaps one of the most recognized names in the field of technology due to their many design and marketing applications. They offer brands the ability to monitor mobile marketing, customer experience, cross-channel marketing, programmatic advertising, and social platforms. The amount of data the various applications are able to collect make it possible to create detailed customer views and predictive models. The self-assessment helps brands identify strengths and weaknesses and provides prioritization advice.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a backlink and SEO champion. In addition to checking SEO keywords and being used as a powerful research tool, it is also a rank tracker. The Domain Comparison feature is especially useful when monitoring competing brands. The tool shows a breakdown of domain ranking, social media engagement, referring domains, backlinks, referring pages, crawled pages, and more.
BirdEye
BirdEye is focused on revealing customer engagement and satisfaction. In addition to giving brand’s insight into what customers are saying on social media channels, it is also possible to monitor reviews on sites such as Google and Yelp. They also offer a service that solicits reviews from companies via email, text message, Facebook, website, and mobile kiosks.
Brands Eye
Brands Eye constantly scours the internet to find any mentions of the brand based on the predefined metrics selected by the customer. This can include social, broadcast, print, and online media sources. The algorithm then processes the data to ensure relevancy and accuracy. The processed data is sent to a group of real people to make sure the data is contextually relevant before being visually processed for the brand to review.
Brand Watch
Brand Watch has three different services;Brandwatch Analytics, the Vizia Platform, and Brandwatch Audiences. The Analytics service uses 70 million sources to create a comprehensive overview of your brand’s image. It shows exactly where individual mentions are found and the type of social reach they experienced.
The site delivers a substantial amount of data to sort through but the company makes it more manageable by providing several visualization methods. There is also an option to customize your dashboard to make it easier to track your brand in comparison with targeted competitors.
Buzzsumo
Most people use Buzzsumo to generate content ideas and to make sure they are choosing topics people are interested in. However, it can also be effectively used to track mentions of your brand as well as mentions involving competing brands. Instead of setting up alerts for the latest trends it is possible to input your brand name, or that of a competitor, and receive alerts for mentions in real time.
Cyfe
One of the biggest issues facing those who are responsible for tracking metrics across multiple channels is that each one tracks data in a slightly different way. Cyfe helps to streamline the process. The website allows users to create a customized dashboard that is capable of tracking only those metrics that are specifically desired for each brand.
Widgets are available for most social networking platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. It also has the ability to evaluate SEO, marketing platforms, and email marketing efforts.
Glassdoor
Glassdoor is an effective way to find out exactly what current and past employees are saying about your company. This tool can also give valuable insight into how employees feel about competing brands and what you can do to ensure your company culture is evolving to meet the needs of employees. There is even a place for reviewers to give feed back on company CEOs and interviewing procedures.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts was one of the original monitoring tools available. Because it is a Google tool it is easy to use, but as one of the first of its kind it has fewer features than some of the other options. However, for those familiar and comfortable with the reporting style of Google applications this is an intuitive and useful option.
Google Analytics
Google is often regarded as the king of the internet for good reason, the company offers valuable insights into virtually every aspect of internet use. Their Analytics tool allows brands to find out exactly how well the chatter taking place online is translating into conversions.
Google Trends
Google Trends does several powerful things for those interested in monitoring their brand’s image. When you first look at it,you’ll immediately see what topics are trending across Google searches at the moment and over the past 24-hour period. By searching a particular website, it is possible to see how much traffic they have received and from which regions. It is also possible to compare interest over time and by region between two or more brand websites.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a familiar tool for those who are scheduling their social media posts but it can also be effectively used to keep track of how often your brand is being mentioned across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
How Sociable
How Sociable monitors brand reputation across a total of 36 social media networks, including YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, EBay, Etsy, and Instagram. It has a broad scope and breaks down the information into intuitive magnitude scores that range from 0-10 to quickly show users the level of activity their brand experienced on specific channels. The site also has a feature that allows users to compare their magnitude score with that of brands of similar size and niche.
HubSpot
HubSpot allows brands to monitor their entire funnel with detailed metrics that analyze marketing materials, your contacts database, and website traffic. Individual customer profiles show companies exactly how well their brand is being received on an individual level but it is also possible to analyze broader population segments based on specific marketing parameters.
IBM Cognos
Cognos has several product lines; Analytics, Express, and Financial Performance Management. This is another robust tool that will provide potentially more information than smaller companies truly need, but for larger brands the level of insight would be invaluable. It is able to automate and integrate data across computing environments and provides collaboration capabilities, modeling, reports, and data analysis. The company prides itself on giving brands the information they need to make informed decisions based on data.
IFTTT
IFTTT offers a great number of ‘if this, then that’ actions that utilize and combine the functionality of other apps to help you monitor your brand and the competition. When actions are put together they are called recipes. There is a bit of a learning curve but the functionality and remarkable amount of customization available make it worth the effort. To make it easier you can use recipes for marketers that were created by other people.
Klout
The stated purpose of Klout is to ensure brands are known for what they love. Specifically, it helps pinpoint brand or individual influence so that it can be leveraged effectively. It is an excellent resource for discovering who the top influencers are in a specific niche and who those people are talking about.
Mention
Mention is a very easy to understand tool that has free and paid accounts. They offer social media monitoring, brand tracking, and web monitoring. The brand tracking feature has a dashboard that also facilitates tracking competing brands and keeping their information in an easy to access location. They are especially strong in monitoring trending topics and the company has a mobile app to make accessing data even easier.
Oracle’s Eloqua
Eloqua is a comprehensive option that offers a depth of monitoring that may not be relevant to all brands. The company will integrate all data from web, social, email, and any other sales pipelines to create reports and dashboards that clearly show response trends, ROI, campaign success, and performance analytics based on geography, product line, or sales team. This tool will monitor virtually every aspect of your brand.
Pinterest Analytics
Pinterest has an analytics feature that makes it easy to begin looking for specific brand data points right at the source. Some of the metrics you can follow include the number of people pinning directly from your company blog or website and how many people see pins from your site and click through. It is possible to analyze specific time frames to better understand engagement trends and focus on what is working and what needs to be revised. Finally, it is possible to monitor how engagement differs depending on the device users are accessing with.
SEMrush
SEMrush helps find mentions of a brand in blog and social media comments. This is different from finding direct mentions in blog or social media posts, which is also useful. However, locating what is said in the comments sections can be much more challenging. This is especially true when the comments thread is filled with thousands of remarks. This tool cuts through all of that noise to locate specific mentions of your brand.
It has the added functionality of tracking competitors easily. You can set it up to look for specific keywords they are using and how well they are ranking with those words in organic and paid search.
Spark Central
Spark Central is fantastic for monitoring customer support efficacy. Specifically, it was designed to help brands monitor request for customer support across social media platforms. It has the ability to track chats, tweets, and Facebook posts in real-time and forward them to the brand’s customer support team. This gives a company the ability to engage with customers who may initially be reporting a frustration and flip the situation into an opportunity to solve a problem quickly and improve the brand’s reputation at the same time.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another social media tool that has the ability to help brands schedule their social sharing and also monitor engagement with users. It is possible to pull statistics from several platforms and share the information in report form with team members in order to keep everyone on board with how well received their efforts have been.
Tweet Binder
Tweet Binder helps take Twitter analysis to the next level. It makes it easy to search for specific hashtags your brand, or a competitor, is promoting and then turns the data into an easy to understand report. It also allows companies to learn more about individual tweets that are related to your query or learn more in depth information about targeted Twitter profiles.
Twitter Analytics
The analytics platform for Twitter makes it extremely easy to monitor engagement with your brand on the site. There are options to follow retweets, links clicked, and impressions.
Twitter Counter
Twitter Counter markets themselves as the place to be for companies who want actionable stats. Not only will it track exactly what users are doing but it also offers a number of tools which can be added to websites, blogs, and social profiles to show real time Twitter stats. As for comparing the competition, the site lets you monitor how well your brand is doing against individual competitors.
So Many Options – So Little Time
With so many monitoring tools available, it is possible to find the perfect one to fulfill the needs of your brand. These range in price from free to several hundred dollars each month and in complexity from basic to comprehensive. For most brands it will be necessary to use several tools to create the most accurate image of a brand’s reputation across multiple channels and a detailed understanding of targeted competitors.
When first starting to build a social media presence for your brand, it’s important to avoid certain activities, while focusing your efforts on attracting followers. Not just any followers will do, however. Without targeted fans, you won’t get the results you’re looking for.
But, building a Facebook audience isn’t just about what you post on the page, and how often you post. Yes, those things play a role, but there are certain things you can to turn an audience away, even as you try to attract them.
Let’s take a look at what you should and shouldn’t do as you look to start or grow your Facebook following.
Do: Have a Plan for Content in Advance
As tempting as it may be to create a page for your brand and go to town, that’/s not the way you want to handle it. Think before you post. Before you post any status updates, ask yourself about the purpose it serves.
It’s a good idea to create a social content calendar – something similar to a blog editorial calendar, that you use for all the content on your social media channels. This way you can be sure you have a good balance of promotional content, with informational and useful content for your fans.
The more you plan out in advance, the less you have to worry about running into a time where there is little to no content available to post – but, if you plan too much out in advance, you may not be able to take advantage of current events that are important for your industry. And, you don’t want your audience thinking you’re running everything on autopilot, because they want to know you’ll respond to them when they need you to.
Don’t: Broadcast Promotional Material All the Time
According to a survey from Sprout Social, 46% of people say they will unfollow a brand on social media for posting too many promotional messages. While you want to get sales and bring leads from social over to your website, there is a certain way to go about it without upsetting your audience. They expect some promoti0onal material, because they wouldn’t follow your brand if they weren’t interested in what you have to offer. But, too much promotion and you will lose fans.
Follow the social media 80/20 rule. Out of every 10 posts you share on social media, only two of them should be about your business – and the other eight should be information that’s relevant to your audience, and the products you sell or the services you offer.
Headphone brand Skullcandy has an active Facebook page. They share status updates about their products, like this one:
But they also share music news and information, because they know their fans want to see that, too. That way, everything they share is somewhat related to the product they sell, without blatantly selling it.
Tiny Prints is another brand that knows how to do Facebook right. Here’s a promotional post:
And here’s another, but it’s not as blatant because it features a discount code – valid for one day only.
This post shows an example of how you can use TinyPrints products in your overall décor. This is an example nursery a customer used. It highlights the product, without saying “buy me!”
Do: Invest in Targeted Advertising to Grow Your Fan Base
Relying on completely organic fan growth is both difficult and time consuming. Facebook makes it easy to advertise your page to a highly specific group of people. You can choose based on a number of demographics, including: gender, marital status, geographic location, salary range, and hobbies and interests.
The catch is, you don’t want to go so targeted you narrow yourself down to a small section of users, because the cost per fan will be way too high. But, you don’t want to be too loose, and get a bunch of likes that aren’t as targeted as you’d like them to be. You should aim to keep your cost per fan as low as possible, but certain niches will cost more than others – and the more targeted you get, generally the more expensive each fan will become. It’s up to you to set the budget, but you should run the campaign for at least a week. Keep in mind that Facebook doesn’t set an end date, so if you’re not careful, you can end up with more fans than you expected – but spending way more money than you intended to.
If you’ve already got an established customer base, you can upload their email addresses or import your contacts from many popular email eservices. This will send them a suggestion to like your page on Facebook. While there’s no certainty they’ll follow through and click “like”, it helps get you started on the right foot.
Don’t: Buy Facebook Fans
There are a lot of websites out there advertising that they can get you targeted fans. Not only is Facebook against the practice, it’s just not a good idea. These likes, no matter how “targeted” they claim to be, won’t do anything to help you. You’ll get inflated numbers, sure, but those “fans” won’t be liking and commenting on your page. They won’t share your content. Many times, they are fake accounts, made for the purpose of getting paid to “like” the page.
This may not seem like a big deal, because you want to increase the perception of your page being well-liked. But, it has long-term negative effects on your page. Facebook considers the page engagement rate when the algorithms decide when (and where) to serve your page’s content, including your ads. So, if your page is inflated with fake likes, you’re shooting yourself in the foot, making it more difficult, and more costly to reach people in your target audience.
Do: Take Time to Reply to Messages
Nearly half of people, or 42%, expect a response from a brand on social media within one hour. 32% of them expect to get a response within 30 minutes. And, 57% of them have that same expectation time even outside of normal business hours. 25.1% of people say they following a brand to communicate with them. That’s what social is about – communication.
Facebook displays the page’s response metric as a badge for viewers to see. If you want your page to show “Very responsive to messages” You must have a response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes over the last seven days.
Your response rate is the percentage of new messages to your page that get an initial response back from you on the same time. Response time is the average time it takes you to send those initial messages on that day.
The times are only based on the first reply in a conversation. Follow up messages sent within the same day are not counted. If you need to go away on vacation, set the page’s status to “away” so the response time is not negatively affected. The response time for those messages will be calculated once you set your page to available again. The use of Instant Replies and any messages marked as spam will not count toward response rate or time.
Don’t: Ignore When Fans Reach Out to You
The survey revealed 15.3% of people will unfollow a brand on social media when they don’t get a response to their messages. It’s hard to be available all the time, but you should aim to reply to all messages that come through on your Facebook page, and other social media channels as well.
Do: Inject Personality in Your Posts
Fans love it when you have some personality in your posts. Make sure the personality you put forward goes along with the brand image you are trying to project to your audience. The survey indicated 34.7% of people will unfollow your brand on social media for failing to have personality on your accounts – not just your Facebook page.
Don’t: Try Too Hard to Be Funny
If you’re trying to be funny and you’re not – you’re not going to get anywhere with you fans. This is especially true if humor is not appropriate for your brand. The survey showed 32.3% of people will unfollow a page for this reason. Of course, you’re free to experiment – it’s always worth it to see if something works. But, if you see that it’s not – stop trying it and move onto something else.
Do: Keep Things Relevant
Since you shouldn’t be constantly promoting your business all the time, but you must keep your profile active with updates, it’s important to share information that’s relevant to both your audience and your business. For instance, if you’re a kitchen and bathroom designer, you can post articles about how to choose the best paint colors, small renovations that can bring a big ROI when it comes time to sell your home, lighting, eco-friendly options, etc.
Don’t: Use Jargon and Slang
Your fans don’t like it when you use jargon and slang they can’t understand. In fact, 38.4% of people say they will unfollow a brand on social media for that reason. Don’t try so hard to get in touch with the Millennial market that you just make them mad. Just write with normal words and phrases – and talk to them with personality.
Do: Post Consistently
Post at least once a day on all the social media platforms you’re active on. The ideal posting schedule will vary from network to network, and the ideal posting frequency will vary from niche to niche. Obviously, brands covering news and current events will be expected to post more often than those that don’t.
Don’t: Get Too Quiet
If you don’t post often enough, you risk people unfollowing your brand on social media. 17.9% of survey respondents say they will stop following the brand. You don’t want to post all the time, because you could easily take up too much room in their feeds, but don’t go days or weeks without posting. And if you do, for any reason, don’t start posting again by flooding the feeds with posts in an attempt to compensate.
Keep the Social in Social Media
Social media should be considered a social tool, meant for two-way communication first and foremost. The social aspect should remain priority and promotions should always be secondary in your strategy. When you have the active engagement on your Facebook page, you’re fostering brand loyalty, creating brand ambassadors, who are out there championing for you with their friends and family.
When you make sales and promotion the priority, and make social interaction and engagement secondary, you’re falling into many of the habits that make people unfollow your page. The more you do this, the more audience you risk losing. And even if they haven’t bought from your company in the past, you can bet they’ll still share their experience with friends and family. It may or may not prevent people from becoming your customers in the long run, but it certainly starts you at a disadvantage.
Your Facebook page won’t go from a few fans today, to thousands of fans tomorrow, unless you’ve got a massive advertising budget. And even if you do have that kind of money behind an ad campaign, it’s not really the number of fans you want to focus on. You want to build engagement – post likes, comments, and shares. This kind of organic growth takes time. Don’t get frustrated or set expectations too high in the beginning.
How long have you had a Facebook page for your business? What goals are you working toward? Share your experience with me in the comments below.
Looking for some email marketing tips for more subscribers? A few ways to increase email subscribers include creating compelling lead magnets, optimizing sign-up forms for user experience, leveraging social media platforms, and offering exclusive content. Personalizing emails, segmenting lists for targeted messaging, and using engaging subject lines are key. Regular testing and analyzing subscriber behavior for insights also contribute to growing an email list effectively.
Email marketing is important because it remains one of the most effective ways to communicate with prospects and customers. The average open rate varies from industry to industry, with those in the hobbies industry getting the highest open rate of 28.85%, and the highest click-through rate of 5.41%. Perhaps not so shockingly, daily deals and e-coupon emails get the lowest open rate of 13.87%, and the lowest click-through rate of 1.81%.
The point is, that some industries do better with email marketing than others, just due to the nature of the business. But no matter which niche you’re serving and the size of your subscription base, you should focus on creating quality emails – they too, are content just like your blog posts, eBooks, infographics, and videos.
If you’re aiming to get 100% of your subscribers opening 100% of your emails, you’re going to be disappointed. The fact is, people are constantly inundated with email, and not every message you send out will interest them. And even if it does, there’s a chance they won’t even see it.
You’d think that because of how much email we get, as more than 205 billion are sent and received each day, email marketing wouldn’t be worth it anymore, but the data shows otherwise. The Direct Marketing Association says email marketing yields an estimated 4,300% ROI. Every dollar you spend on email marketing offers a return of $44. You should keep sending emails because email marketing remains nearly 40 times more effective than social media when it comes to acquiring customers.
Take a look at these tips to help improve your email marketing strategy so you can get more subscribers.
1. Your Subject Lines Matter
Your subject line is your only chance to grab your subscriber’s attention.1/3 of recipients open emails based on the subject alone. 2/3 of them report email as spam based on subject line (whether they’re subscribed or not.)
There are all kinds of stats out there about the best words to use, the words you should avoid – the best length to use… but in all honesty, none of these really matter. They can help you with general guidelines, but those stats are based on small samples from one company, or a global average, with a relatively small sample compared to all email accounts.
Emails with personalized subject lines – such as using the subscriber’s first name, are 26% more likely to be opened. When you consider that personalized emails provide an overall boost to all industries email open rates, but certain industries, like travel and consumer products see above average rates (40.8 and 41.8% respectively), while others like media and entertainment and business products and services see below average rates (1.1% and 13.3% respectively), it’s hard to say exactly what the impact will have for you and your business. Plus, not all brands are personalizing their subject lines – and this can skew the data.
The best thing you can do is you own testing, specific to your audience – and you can do it each time you start a new venture, because no two audiences will be exactly the same. Do this by gathering a set of your email subscribers and splitting them into two even groups.
Send one half of the list an email with one subject line – then the other half of the list with another. 24 hours after the messages are sent, use your email marketing platform to determine which messages are opened, and which ones are not.
Test again and again as desired to find the words and phrases your audience responds to, for each type of message you send.
2. Subscribe to Your Own Lists
You know what your messages will say, of course, but you need to be a subscriber on your own list so you can make sure your messages are going out when you expect them to, and look the way they are supposed to. If you can’t find your own messages, or notice they’re going to your spam filter, then you can spot issues and fix them before they start to negatively affect your list. If you’re segmenting – more on that below – make sure your email address is included in all the segments so you can see what each email looks like – not just the ones to the general list.
3. Subscribe to Lists of Experts in Your Niche
This is an excellent way to do a competitive analysis of sorts. You can see what other industry experts are doing, and see how well what you’re doing matches it. If they’re wildly popular with an audience that’s similar to yours, you can mimic their approach. Don’t copy exactly what they’re doing, of course, but you can make adjustments to your strategy to improve your efforts.
4. Harness the Power of Segmentation
Nearly half of email marketers are sending everyone the same message. When you consider that not everyone needs to hear the same message – some people on your list have made purchases from you, while others maybe haven’t yet – this is not the ideal approach. Personalization goes a long way, not only in those subject lines, but in conversion, too.
How you choose to segment your customers is up to you, and a lot of it will depend on your strategy. Some options include segmentation based on:
Location/geography
Gender
Age
Job function
Persona
Buying frequency
Change in buying behavior
Past purchases
Purchase interests
Purchase cycle
Stage in the sales cycle
Industry
Education level
Organization type
Seniority level
Interest level
Content topic
Content format
Change in level of content engagement
Satisfaction index
Customers who’ve referred others to you
Customers who haven’t left reviews of your business/products
Customers who’ve abandoned their shopping carts
Customers who’ve abandoned forms on your website
Customer usage – helpful for services/apps
Event attendance
Page views
Calls-to-action clicks
Research provides proof of the benefits of list segmentation. On a global level, across all segmented campaigns, compared to their non-segmented counterparts:
Opens: 63% higher
Unique Opens: 82% higher
Clicks: 27% higher
Bounces: 36% lower
Abuse Reports: 7% lower
Unsubscribes: 36% lower
Segmentation can be considered part of personalization – as each person receives an email that’s more relevant to their experience with your brand. A 2013 study from Experian showed that personalized promotional emails increased transaction rates and revenue per email 600% compared to non-personalized emails. It also showed personalized promotional emails had 29% higher open rates and 41% more unique click through rates. Another source indicates personalized emails increase conversion rates by 10%, while yet another says segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue.
5. Format for Mobile
Yes, some people still check their emails from a desktop computer. But, as mobile has overtaken desktop for internet usage, more and more people are turning to mobile devices to check their email, too. An estimated 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices, but 75% of Gmail’s 900 million accounts are accessed via mobile. If your messages are not displaying correctly, then you’re going to have a hard time convincing people to read and click through, let along open any future messages from you.
It’s also worth mentioning that Gmail is the most-used mail client online. As such, make sure you’re formatted to look great there. Plus, do what you can to land in the “primary” tab, so your messages are more likely to be seen.
6. Stop Wasting Time
Shorter emails have the highest open and click rates. That’s not to say you can’t and won’t have success with longer emails. But, generally speaking, people prefer it when you get straight to the point. It saves time for you, because you’re not having to write as much in each email, and it saves time for them because it doesn’t take as long to scan, or read.
Try to limit your emails to just a couple of paragraphs or less. If it needs to be longer, put the information in a blog post, and then include a link to the blog post in the email. There’s no guarantee people will click through to the blog post and read it, but then again, there’s no real guarantee they’d read the entirety of the email, either. It’s a gamble either way, so you may as well do your best to make it convenient for your readership.
7. It’s Not About the Sales Pitch
Yes, the point of email marketing is to grow your list so you can make more money. But, email marketing is just like social media. You don’t, or you shouldn’t, promote your business with every single post on Facebook or Twitter. And every email you send out shouldn’t be a sales pitch for something you’re offering.
When you’re running a sale, it’s one thing to send an email to let people know. But, when every single email you send out has something directly to do with selling your products, it becomes a hassle for your subscribers. They want information about your company, and want to stay connected to you, but when you’re constantly pitching them for money – they’ll stop reading. Your emails will be deleted, or possibly reported as spam. And the worst possible reaction? They unsubscribe from your list.
8. Speak as if You’re Writing to a Friend
When you write your emails, write as though you’re speaking directly to the persona like the two of you are friends. This helps build an emotional connection with the reader, and ensures you’re not using a bunch of industry jargon. When someone is on your email list, they need to feel like they are part of an exclusive club of people – compared to the people who may be your customers, but aren’t part of your list.
9. Make it Easy for People to Sign Up
If you want more subscribers, don’t make them hunt for the form. Keep it on the sidebar of the home page. Include it as a call to action on your blog posts. For instance, something like, “Like what you see here? Get more by signing up for our email list below.”
Other quick and easy ways to boost your subscriber count include:
Include a link to your opt-in page on your Facebook page, or pin a Facebook post to the top of your page. You can also add a sign up button as a call to action button on Facebook.
Add the link to your Twitter bio, too. If you don’t like that idea, you can pin a tweet to your landing page or email magnet.
Add your opt-in link to your email signature. This way every business email you send gives the potential for a new subscriber.
Test an exit-intent popup – giving users one more chance to sign up before they go. It’ll only popup for people who haven’t subscribed already. If there’s a negative response, then you can always remove it later. Try split-testing it to see what happens, as certain audiences will respond better to it than others.
10. Practice Makes Perfect
The more you write emails to your list, the better you’ll become at it. Of course, the more you segment your list, the more emails you’ll have to write. But, because each of these emails can be written in a friendly manner, speaking directly to that audience segment, it should be easier to write each message. And because you want to keep them as short as possible out of respect for the reader’s time (and yours), it shouldn’t take you too long to get into the habit of cranking out those messages when you need to. Plus, many messages, like the shopping cart abandonment or request for review email can be written once and sent out to whomever, as needed.
What other tips do you have to improve your email marketing? What have you found to be successful for your business? Tell me in the comments below.
Whether you’re blogging for personal reasons with the intention of monetizing and turning it into a business in the future, or you’re blogging as a means of lead generation for your business, there is always room for improvement. With tens of thousands of blogs created on just WordPress.com alone, every single day, the competition is always fierce. Granted, many of these blogs are soon abandoned, but with persistent effort and dedication, you can become a better blogger.
Check out these tips to help you get started.
Read Other Blogs
One of the best ways to learn is through reading other blogs. Choose a few of the top blogs in your niche, and see what those are doing. Watching the competition can help you see what your audience is most likely to respond to.
Does this mean copying what they’re doing? No, not at all. You are unique – and so is your voice. Can you cover the same topics? Yes, of course, but if competitor A just wrote about a topic yesterday, you don’t want to cover it today. (There are some exceptions to this rule, like when the topic or subject matter is time sensitive and must be addressed quickly. If you’re a news blog, then clearly you don’t want to wait too long before breaking or covering a story.)
Keep Up with the Industry
Blogging, and internet marketing in general, are constantly changing. What worked five years ago, doesn’t work now. And what worked even a year ago, may or may not pack the same punch as it used to. It’s important to read industry news and blogs to keep up to date with the latest changes in Google’s search engine algorithm changes, and to stay up to date with the latest trends in blogging.
Add these to your RSS reader so you can stay in the loop.
Copyblogger: This is an excellent blog, focused on helping you create the best quality content you can to use in content marketing, so you can develop a killer content strategy. Beyond that, you’ll learn about the craft of writing, editing (which is great if you don’t have your own editor on staff), and more.
Problogger: This a blog completely dedicated to helping you learn how to make money with your blog. There are a wide variety of blog posts and podcasts to help you learn. You’ll find everything from advice on how to start a blog, creating the killer content you need, finding reader, building a community, making money blogging, improving your productivity, understanding the technology, and even using your blog to get work.
Content Marketing institute: A blog dedicated to all things content marketing. There’s even a section for research, broken down for the B2C and B2B markets, to help you adjust your strategy according to the segment you’re trying to reach.
Search Engine Journal: SEJ is a website dedicated to all things search engine optimization related. It also covers social media, content marketing, internet marketing news, and paid search.
Moz Blog: This blog is dedicated to SEO and online marketing. Posts come from some of the industry’s best experts, so you’re always going to learn something.
Marketing Land: This blog covers everything from email, retail, to social media, SEO, and more. It’s run by the same people who do Search Engine Land.
Search Engine Land: This is a great blog that stays on top of the latest trends and news in SEO, search engine marketing (SEM), mobile search, local search, social, retail, Google, and Bing. No matter what you’re looking for, you can expect to find the latest research, case studies, and information to help you fine tune your marketing approach.
Create an Editorial Calendar
An editorial calendar will help you keep track of the ideas you’re going to write about over the course of the week, month, or year. It gives you a place to write down everything from the title to the keywords you’re going to use, and even a description of the post. You can keep track of sources you want to link to, and the image you want to use, if you so wish. If nothing else, it’ll keep you on track, but if your blog grows to the point where you want to add additional writers, it can help make sure everyone is on the same page.
Post Consistently
If you want to post one day a week, fine. Just make sure you post one day a week, every week. And do your best to make it the same day every week. If you want to post every day, that’s fine too, but you must be consistent. Many bloggers find they bite off more than they can chew – so it’s better to start small and make sure you can handle the consistency, adding more as you feel comfortable, than it is to start out hammering out five to seven posts a week. Less is more – as long as the content quality is there.
You, and your audience are far better served by one piece of well written, researched, and valuable content than they are by five sloppy pieces of content churned out for the sake of a higher number of blog posts each week.
Plan on spending at least a couple of hours on each post you write – from the research and writing to the image creation. This doesn’t even include promotional activity, which should be separate from the creation process.
If you can’t a decent chunk of time to the development of each post from start to finish, start with one post a week and work your way up.
If you want to build an audience, and you say you’ll be posting once a week, but then go weeks without posting at all, you’ll ruin your consistency. Eventually people will stop coming to the blog to see if you’ve posted anything.
One way to circumvent this issue is to use the scheduling feature in WordPress to schedule your posts to go live even when you’re not there to push the button. Designate one day a week to writing and scheduling the posts for the next week. This way, even if something comes up, you’ve got content ready to go for your audience.
Keep a Running List of Post Ideas
You never know when inspiration will strike. Keep a notebook around you so whenever an idea hits, you’ll be able to write it down before you forget. You may not b able to work it into your editorial calendar right away, but you can refer to this list whenever you’re feeling like you’ve got nothing to write about.
Feeling stuck for ideas? Inspiration is everywhere – magazines, other blogs, TV shows, movies… news stories… you can always find something. And if you can’t – take a look at my post on content hacks you can use to break through writer’s block.
Promote Your Content
You could have the absolute best blog post on the internet, but it won’t do any good unless people know about it. Share your posts on social media. If you’re a member of any groups that share link love, put your best work forward in those groups to gain some traction there. If you’re particularly proud of a post, you may want to consider running some social media ads to drive traffic to it.
There are countless ways to promote your content, so don’t be afraid to get a little creative.
Promote Other Bloggers
Success in blogging comes, in part, from networking with other bloggers. You build relationships with them, and promote work that your audience will also find valuable. Then, when the blogger discovers you shared their work with your audience, they may be willing to do the same for you. Blogging is a part of the social media world, which is build upon theories of reciprocity. Promote others selflessly – however. Never expect them to return the favor. Some will, some won’t. If you don’t come into it with any expectations, then you will be pleasantly surprised when your content is shared with another audience.
Write Killer Headlines
According to Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will only read the headline. Only two or so will go on to read your entire post. So, that headline becomes your first, and quite possibly the only chance you have to make a positive impression on your reader.
The good news for you is that even if you suck at headlines, there are plenty of tools on the internet to help you take a basic title concept and turn it into something more compelling.
CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer: Enter your title and you’ll get a grade. It looks at the number of words, types of words, and sentiment to make sure you’ve got a winning combination.
Inbound Now’s Blog Title Idea Generator: Get some basic templates to throw your keywords into – like “Back to [Keyword] Basics” or “This Method is Helping [Blank] to [Blank]
Tweak Your Biz Title Generator: Simply enter your keyword and press submit. You’ll get hundreds of titles. You’ll get a variety of options, including motivational, listicles, and more broad title suggestions.
Thrive’s Headline Optimizer: This one’s not free, and must be installed on your WordPress website as a plugin. But, it does give you an advantage – allowing you to split test titles to see which ones your audience responds to the best. Spent $67 for a single site, $97 for a five license pack, or $147 for a 15 license pack.
What I like to do, when I’m feeling a little less than inspired is to take ideas from the blog title generator tools, and then test them in the analyzer tools, tweaking until I get the results I am the happiest with.
A note about headlines: People know a clickbait title when they see it. Don’t write a headline like, “She was about to give up… and you wouldn’t believe what happened next!” unless you can for sure deliver on that promise.
Your headline should always be written to entice people to click on it, but it should also always deliver. If it doesn’t, you may get people reading your content the one time – with no desire to come back. To build a strong audience for your blog posts, you must capture readers who will come back to your blog again and again.
Experiment with Different Types of Content
The standard blog post, with text and a photo or some kind of image is what you see the most of. It’s because it’s often the easiest kind of content to produce. But, it’s not the only thing that will grab readers attention. If you have the budget and means to do it, explore using different kinds of content – like videos, infographics, quizzes, and the like.
If you’re not too keen on the idea of getting in front a camera, there’s always the option of doing a screencast video, to demonstrate how to do something, or to share a presentation. If you’re not a graphic designer, you can find one to work with on a freelance basis to help put an infographic together, Plus, with tools like Canva and Visual.ly, you can put together a decent quality graphic with relative ease, if you are on a budget.
Always Strive for Progress
Applying some of these tactics can make you a better blogger almost instantly. Others, will take time before you will see the results. What matters is that you keep working to be better – and you keep trying. If something doesn’t work the way you expected, that’s not an excuse to give up. Keep experimenting with different types of content and promotional options. You’ll eventually find what works best for your audience. If you’re struggling to figure out what readers want – just ask. Conduct a survey with something like Survey Monkey, or a poll or on Facebook.
What are some things that have helped you become a better blogger?
An editorial calendar for your blog helps you keep up with what needs to be written and published and when. It’s a good idea to put one together for the month, if not for the year, at the beginning of the year. It helps you plan your blog’s content around marketing campaigns, holidays, and other events, too. Knowing what you’ve got coming up ensures your content and other assets are always ready to go ahead of time off and sick days. Plus, if you’ve got a team of people working on the blog, the editorial calendar keeps everyone working from the same page – saving time and potential frustration from duplicated efforts.
Step One: Determine Your Categories
If you’re working with a brand new blog, you’ll need to determine the categories you’ll use. If you have an existing blog, it’s a good time to do an audit. What are the broad topics you cover on your blog? Those are good places to start with your categories.
If you’ve already got categories, take a look at where you placed posts in the past year. Are there any categories you’re not using? Are there any categories you could combine into one? Are there any new categories you should add based on a new direction you’re taking with your blog this year?
Step Two: Post Frequency
How often are you going to post on your blog? Nothing says you have to post every day, but whatever schedule you’re going to follow, it’s a good idea to keep it consistently, for the sake of your audience.
If you’re not sure what you can commit to, start small with one to three posts a week. As you get more comfortable with it, you can decide whether or not you want to increase it, or add another writer or two to your team.
Step Three: Spreadsheet or in Your Blog?
For most people, the spreadsheet seems to be the easy answer. But, the older your blog gets, or the more people you have involved in the topic selection and post approval process, the harder it can be to manage.
If You Opt for a Spreadsheet:
If the spreadsheet seems to be the easiest thing for you to do, make sure you have columns for the following information.
Post Date
Author – if you’re part of a multi-author blog
Working Title – at least just the topic you want to cover
Post Description – this can be something to remind you what you want to cover, or it can be a meta description, if you want. If it’s a basic description of what you want to cover, it can help you when it comes time to write the meta description for SEO purposes.
Status – draft, written, scheduled, published, hold
Category
Tags and Keywords
Calls to Action
Notes/Resources
This will help you keep track of what you need to write and publish and when. If you need to share it with others, use something like Google Sheets or add it to a shared folder in Dropbox or OneDrive.
WordPress Plugins to Help You
If a spreadsheet seems like it will be too much work to keep up with as things scale, you can keep an editorial calendar right within your blog, using a plugin.
Editorial Calendar: This is a free, no-frills option, which works wonderfully for a single blogger. It presents a calendar format where you can create a new post, which automatically places one in draft on that date. If you change your mind and want to move it, simply click and drag it over to the new date. As your blog grows, this one will continue to do you well. However, you may find it becomes less effective if you bring on additional authors to contribute.
CoSchedule: This is a premium plugin that will run you $10/month. But, for many, it’s worth it simply because of the additional features it offers compares to free plugins. It’s a great option for people who are working as part of a team, because it makes it easy for everyone to leave notes and comments for each other. Plus, you can add tasks to each post, and assign those tasks and posts to anyone on the team. You can make the tasks anything you want – so it can be as simple as “research for X post” or “image creation” or something completely different and unrelated. One reason people like CoSchedule is the fact that you can manage your social media promotion from the calendar, crafting and scheduling social media updates to go along with each post. And, your blog posts aren’t the only thing you can add to the social media calendar.
EditFlow: This is a free plugin that works well for teams. It’s a lot like the Editorial Calendar plugin, but has additional features like editorial comments, custom post statuses, and user groups, so you as the blog owner can more easily collaborate with your writing team, and even on a post-by-post basis. The idea is to reduce the number of emails that go back and forth between the writer and editor, and by keeping the notes for each post in a central place, you save time and effort. Custom statuses make it easier for you to create the workflow that works best for you, and allows you to focus solely on posts in each status group. For instance, if you have “needs edits” you can sit down and work with all the writers on posts that need editing before they can move to “ready for scheduling”. Then, you can look at all the posts in that category and schedule them out as needed to fit with your posting frequency.
Step Four: Plan for Guest Posts and Roundups
You don’t have to have something to fill every single part of the calendar on the days you intend to publish. You can leave room for curated link round ups, and guest posts from other bloggers, too. And until you gain enough traction to get people submitting guest posts to you, you can use networks to help you.
My Blog Guest: This is a free website for guest bloggers. You can sign up and offer guest blog content to other bloggers, and also let bloggers know you’re open to receiving and publishing guest posts from them. You can use the platform to network with other bloggers and build relationships, too.
Blogger LinkUp: This website is a list of resources for bloggers, but part of the website is dedicated to connecting bloggers and guest posters. You can submit requests for the type of posts you’re looking for, and other people can reach out to submit posts that fit those guidelines.
Becoming a part of these two sites can help you fill your editorial calendar with quality content without having to write every single thing yourself. As far as roundups go, you can host your own, or use them to promote your content on other blogs.
There’s some debate as to whether guest posts are a viable part of an SEO strategy anymore. In fact, Matt Cutts, a Google employee, said himself that guest blogging is no longer effective for SEO in January 2014. He says it’s gotten too spammy, and just doesn’t carry the same weight as it used to.
Others argue the practice isn’t dead – the statement from Cutts just meant the low quality fluff wasn’t going to pass anymore. Focus on quality, and the rest will fall into place. That’s why we’re still talking about guest blogging/posting years later. If you’re a good writer (or hire a good one to ghost for you) and can provide quality and value with each of your posts – whether they’re going on your blog, another blog, or a major publishing platform – then that’s all that really matters.
Step Five: Start Filling Everything In
The beauty of an editorial calendar is the flexibility that’s built into it. As ideas start coming to you, start filling in as many details as much as possible. You’ll only be locked in to certain topics for certain times of the year – such as holiday topics around those days – but everything else you can move around as you see fit.
It’s up to you how much work you want to do at this stage – simply coming up with basic topic ideas could be enough, or, you may want to go more in-depth here, to make the actual writing stage simpler when the time comes.
What I like to do is come up with as many ideas as possible, place them on my calendar, and then when I’m finished there, I focus on the week at hand with more detail – finding keywords, images, and some basic links for research. Once I write a couple posts for the week, I’ll go back add more details to the topics for the rest of the month, so I can sit down and just write, for the most part.
That’s what works for me, but I realize that workflow won’t work for everyone. The beauty of the calendar is you can setup a workflow that works well for you. You may choose to batch your topics, batch your images… or write full post outlines, working only one week at a time for the whole year. Play around with it until you find the most efficient workflow that makes sense for you.
Step Six: Write and Schedule
Even if you don’t get the whole thing filled in right away, start writing and scheduling the first posts you have on tap for at least the first week, if not the first week or two. You don’t want to get too far ahead if your topics rely on timeliness, but you want to be far enough ahead to where you can take an unexpected day off without throwing off your entire blogging schedule.
I like to sit down once a week and write the posts for the week, going back to my editorial calendar to see what’s on tap. Some weeks, when I know I have more going on than usual, I will write less. But, the weeks when I know I have time, I will write a few more, just to make sure I have a steady flow of content ready to be published.
Step Seven: Consider What and How You Can Repurpose
Just because you’ve written a blog post on a topic doesn’t mean you can’t use that post or topic again. I’ve written about all the ways you can repurpose content, to help you get those creative juices flowing.
Keep Yourself On Track with Your Calendar
Blogging is hard work, and since consistency is the key to making it work for your business, your editorial calendar is a critical tool for your success. It should keep you from running out of things to blog about, and give you what you need to write ahead of time when you have extra time to devote to your blog.
What kind of editorial calendar do you use? Do you keep it with your social media calendar, or separate from it? Tell me in the comments below.
Whether you’re a business owner or marketer, you know the value of traffic to your website. One of the best ways to build traffic and links is through a link roundup. And, if you choose to host your own, you’ll get a piece of curated content to post on your blog. In this guide, I’ll explain what a link round up is, and how to include them in your content strategy to build relationships with other bloggers.
What is a Link Roundup?
A link round up is basically a blog posts that features links to other people’s blog posts. Usually, you’ll find them on a weekly or monthly basis, and they are themed around a topic related to the blog that’s hosting it. You can find them in virtually any niche, too.
The idea behind them is to share content with your readers from other sources – which is what professional social media marketers call curating content for our social media channels. Chances are, if you’re blogging, you’re also taking the time to read other people’s blogs. (If you’re not, what’s with that? Read and connect!) This can help you find content from other sources your audience would enjoy.
Finding the Right Link Roundup to Participate In
So, you’re ready to participate in a link roundup, but where? When? How often? Well, obviously, you want to participate often, and consistently, but you don’t need to pimp out every single blog post you publish. Save it for the really good ones, the ones you’ve put a lot of effort into, and the ones you want some extra help promoting.
Now, turn to Google and start searching:
Niche + link roundup
Niche + best of roundup
Niche + link up
Niche + link love
Niche + linky love
You can find a decent number of places to start with these phrases, but there are also other variants to try, like “best of” “Wednesday link up” (where you can sub any day of the week) and so on. Add the “intitle:” search operator and Google will only search for the words in the title, making it even easier to find the linkups you’re looking for.
For instance, if you were looking for recipe round ups, you’d find this resource, with a full list of link ups that are hosted every day of the week. The problem with some of them, however, is they may no longer be active, so you’ll have to do a bit more digging to make sure it’s still active.
Just click on the link and check to see the most recent post – usually you’ll be linked to the host blog, where you can see an archive of the link up posts. If there’s a recent date, then it’s a good sign it’s still active.
To make things a little easier for you, here’s a list of marketing related link round ups to check out.
Though the list is small, as of the time of this writing in January 2017, these are still active. Several others exist, but haven’t been updated since September 2016 or earlier.
Getting Featured in Roundups
There’s no secret magic formula for getting featured in a link round up. It helps to have a relationship with the host blogger, but if you don’t, that’s not an excuse to give up. You’ll of course, first need absolutely stellar content. If it’s just like the same old stuff that’s out there, or doesn’t provide anything of value, you can’t expect anyone to really mention it.
When you network with other bloggers, it’s critical to establish real relationships with them. One of the most effective ways to stay off their radar is to approach them for the first time and ask them if they’d mind mentioning your posts.
Some bloggers put together their own roundups of what they find interesting, so to increase your chances of getting featured, always make sure you’re putting your best foot forward, and working on your own to promote your work. People have to see it before it gets included, after all.
If you come across a roundup where it’s possible to add the link yourself, you can always do that. You’ll at least get the backlink to your website, if nothing else.
Do you want to pitch a blogger to include your work in their round up? Here’s a sample script you can adjust to your needs and use. Shoot the email over a week or so before the next roundup goes live.
Hi [Name of Blog Owner],
My name is [your name] and I’m a blogger at [your site/domain name.]
I was looking for some link round ups and I found yours. I was hoping I could submit some articles for your consideration. I’ve listed them below, broken down by category, with a full title and description so you can include any of them that you think will be a good fit for next week’s round up.
Only include this next part if it’s true…Because if you’re not actually going to write one of those posts and feature them, that’s not a nice thing to say. You want to build a rapport, and not following through on your words is a good way not to do that.
I’m going to be writing a post featuring all the blogs that host links ups, so I’d love to feature you, as well.
Thanks for your consideration. Have a great day!
List of articles with title, description, and link to post.
A word of advice, though – lurk on the blog for a while, reading various posts and leaving thoughtful comments before sending your pitch. You’ll likely have a better success rate that way.
Publishing Your Own Link Roundups
If you want to build more traffic to your website, consider publishing your own link roundup. If you’re generously mentioning other blogs in yours, it can pay off greatly. It may not make sense to link out to other blogs and expect it to bring traffic back to your website, but it can, and often does.
There’s a good chance the bloggers you link out to will stop by your post and leave a comment to thank you. Then, they’ll likely share it with their own audience because it helps them when they can show they were featured elsewhere. When they do, you get traffic and exposure.
You’ll get on these bloggers radars – they’ll know who you are, which translates to building relationships and networking. Plus, they may start including your blog posts in their own roundups – bringing you even more traffic and exposure – and an entirely new audience.
Your readers will get valuable content, and because you’re publishing a roundup, it’s one less blog topic you’ll have to worry about, whether it’s for the week, or for the month.
In the beginning, until your link roundup starts gaining traction and people know to look for it, you’ll likely have to do everything manually so there’s a decent amount of content for the post.
Use content curation tools to help you find link-worthy content:
It: The free account limits you to curating content for a single topic with two keywords, and up to 10 scoops per day. Then you can share your scoops to your social media accounts. Managing your own scoops makes it easy for you to promote your own content and build your expertise in a niche. But, beyond this aspect, you can also find content from other scoopers to share in a roundup on or social media. The paid plan begins at $11/month (when paid annually) and allows you to curate content for up to five topic pages, with five keyword groups per topic page, and up to five social accounts with unlimited scoops per day.
Feedly: With Feedly, you can subscribe to multiple RSS feeds, and categorize them however you want. Then, you can read through various blog posts from a single location, and decide if you want to share it to your social media channels or keep it for your roundup post. The pro version of Feedly allows it to integrate with automation services like Buffer and Zapier, and costs $5 and month, but you can make it work with the completely free version, too.,
Pocket: This is like a digital filing cabinet for anything you see online that you want to save for later. You can place articles, videos, whatever you want in your “pocket.” You can save directly from your browser, or using apps like Flipboard and Twitter. It’s completely free, and great for beginners who are just getting started with content curation. When you’re ready to write your round up post, you can go back to everything you saved over the course of the week to decide what you want to include the most.
ContentGems: The free version of this platform allows you to monitor two interests, along with a single Twitter account, 20 custom RSS source,, and gives you daily content suggestions. Paid plans start at $9/month, and include up to 10 interests, two twitter accounts, 100 custom RSS sources, real-time content suggestions, automated RSS feeds, and share to RSS feed. The platform, whether you’re on a free or paid plan, monitors more than 200,000 news sources and makes it easy to share your own commentary, should you decide to share the content on your social media networks, or use it with automation tools like Buffer and Hootsuite.
After you’ve gained some ground, you can choose to continue doing it manually, or you can turn to any of these tools to make it easier for you:
SimplyLinked: Create a free account. Then create a linky and easily manage your participants. Copy and paste some code to insert the widget into your blog post, and everything is integrated without new windows, or requiring people to leave your site to add their links to your link up.
LinkyTools: Create a free account. Create a linky. Put the linky on your blog. Others can add their links to it, gradually creating a roundup blog post for you.
Linky: Similar to LinkyTools, you create a free account, then create your linky. From there, you’ll insert the code into your blog post. Users will be able to add their own submissions.
Of course, you don’t have to do a blog post round up – you could do your own variation of round up with your favorite tweets, Facebook posts, pins, or Instagram photos or videos. Or you could do a round up of each – curating content for each, and filling your editorial calendar with a number of posts for the month so it becomes less to worry about.
Great for Traffic, SEO, and Relationship Building
Whether you host your own link round up or not, submitting your content to roundups is a wonderful way to boost your traffic, get backlinks to help with SEO, and build relationships with other bloggers in your niche.
Have you ever submitted your content to a link round up? Have you ever hosted your own? Any tips to share with my audience? Throw ’em at me below.
The ultimate social media launch involves defining clear goals, understanding the target audience, and choosing the right platforms. Creating a content calendar, engaging with the audience, and consistent branding are crucial. Utilizing analytics for insights and adapting strategy based on performance is key. Integrating paid ads can also boost visibility during the launch.
When you’re a brand new company, you know social media is an essential part of your success, but getting started can be incredibly overwhelming. There are so many social media platforms out there to choose from, and there’s this idea floating around that to be successful, you must be everywhere.
The truth is, you should only be where your customers are. If you’re not targeting a primarily Millennial audience, then there’s not much point in being on Snapchat. If you don’t have the equipment to do YouTube videos right now, don’t launch that channel yet.
The most important thing to do is research and plan. Give yourself ample time to craft a strategy before you start, and then adjust as activity takes place.
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Defining Objectives and Goals: The first step involves clearly defining what you want to achieve with the social media launch. This could be increasing brand awareness, generating leads, driving traffic to a website, or boosting sales. Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals is essential.
Understanding Your Target Audience: Identify and understand your target audience, including their demographics, interests, and online behavior. This helps in tailoring the content and choosing the right social media platforms where your audience is most active.
Choosing the Right Platforms: Not all social media platforms will be suitable for every launch. Select platforms based on where your target audience spends their time and the nature of your product or service. For instance, LinkedIn is great for B2B, while Instagram and TikTok might be better for B2C and younger audiences.
Creating a Content Strategy: Develop a content plan that resonates with your audience. This includes deciding on the type of content (e.g., videos, blogs, infographics), tone of voice, and messaging. The content should align with your brand values and launch objectives.
Content Calendar and Scheduling: Organize your content using a calendar to ensure consistent posting. Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Sprout Social can help schedule posts in advance, saving time and maintaining a steady content flow.
Building Anticipation: Before the launch, create buzz and excitement. This can be done through teasers, countdowns, sneak peeks, and pre-launch offers. Engaging with your audience through polls, stories, or live sessions can also build anticipation.
Influencer Partnerships: Collaborating with influencers can amplify your reach. Choose influencers who align with your brand values and have an engaged following that matches your target audience.
Utilizing Paid Advertising: To extend reach beyond your existing audience, consider using paid social media advertising. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer targeted advertising options to reach specific demographics.
Engagement and Interaction: Actively engage with your audience by responding to comments, messages, and mentions. Engagement increases the visibility of your posts and helps in building a community around your brand.
Monitoring and Analytics: Use analytics tools provided by social media platforms to track the performance of your launch. Metrics like engagement rate, reach, click-through rate, and conversion rate provide insights into what works and what doesn’t, allowing for real-time adjustments.
Post-Launch Strategy: After the launch, continue to engage with your audience and keep the momentum going. Regularly post relevant content, offer post-launch promotions, and gather feedback for future improvements.
Crisis Management Plan: Be prepared to handle any negative feedback or crisis situation. Having a crisis management plan ensures you can respond quickly and appropriately to maintain your brand reputation.
The ultimate social media launch guide is about meticulous planning, understanding your audience, engaging content, and agile management of the campaign. It’s a mix of creativity, strategic planning, and data-driven decision-making.
Today’s consumer belongs to an average of 13.4 loyalty programs, but are only active in 6.7. More than half of brands (57%) say they’ll increase loyalty program budgets in 2017. Why? The simple fact is it costs more to sell to a brand new customer than it does to sell to an existing one. It makes good business sense to reward the people who are loyal to your company, to keep them coming back for more, and convert them to brand ambassadors who are out there championing for you.
But, unfortunately for marketers, it’s not just slapping together any old program and seeing results. To see a return on investment (ROI) on your program, it’s critical to lay the necessary groundwork to foster success once it launches to your customer base. Want to make sure you build a program that fits into that active 6.7?
Developing the Right Loyalty Program for Your Business
Mine Your Data
A 2014 poll revealed 67% of customers would be willing to give information to businesses in exchange for better products and services. Though it is limited to rather basic information like name and demographics, 34% are willing to provide contact information to get more personalized offerings.
Take a look at the customer data you have on hand and see if you can identify any patterns. What products are most popular? Least popular? What’s the average order value? What percentage of your customer base is new vs. returning? How many times have your most loyal customers shopped with you? How many people are using promotional codes to save money?
This information can help you decide what kind of structure you need to develop your program with, as well as provide insights into what rewards would likely perform the best with your audience.
Choose Your Goals
What do you want to accomplish with the program? Of course you want to increase your customer base and profits, but what else is there? Do you want to drive engagement? Whatever your goals may be, make sure you program aligns with it.
Also make sure you have a clear goal for your customers to shoot for – a free product or discount is usually the right answer.
Keep the Structure Simple
The more complex a loyalty program structure becomes, the harder it is for your employees to keep up with, and the less likely customers are to participate. Your program should be simple, like a punch card – buy X products, get 1 free. Or, if you want to go a bit more sophisticated, earn X points per $1 spent. Get rewards at X points. Create tiered rewards to encourage people to spend more and save their reward points.
Dell, for instance, has an incredibly simple program. Their Advantage Rewards program gives 10% of your purchase price back to you in the form of an electronic gift card, if you pay for your purchase with a Dell Preferred Financing account. You have 90 days to use the card after issuance. Plus, you’ll automatically get free two-shipping on your order just for being a member. Members get monthly discount offers, and access to partner offers from FedEx, Sprint, SocialShield, and Iolo Technologies. It doesn’t matter how you pay to get those benefits.
Kohl’s Yes to You Rewards offers a reward program to all shoppers, regardless of payment method used. Earn a point for every dollar spent over the course of a month. Every 100 points translates to $5 in Kohl’s cash. Plus, you’ll get eight offers a year, and $10 Kohl’s Cash for your birthday.
Ford’s Owner Advantage Rewards program allows customers to earn 5% back in credit on parts and service purchases, regardless of a vehicle’s make or model. When you’re ready to redeem, you can apply all, or a portion of your rewards balance to your purchase.
Each program is unique in the benefits it offers to customers, but they all keep it easy to earn and redeem rewards. And, because sign up is simple, participation is likely higher than if it required a complex process. The majority of customers (70%) will not sign up for a program if they think the registration process is inconvenient and time-consuming.
Choose Awesome Rewards (You Can Afford)
Of course the rewards should serve as an incentive for your customers to want to redeem them, but they also need to be something you can afford to give without cutting too deeply into your profit margin. This is why free product credit is usually the default reward.
The Starbucks Rewards program used to be based on the number of times you visited over the span of a year. Now, to increase participation, they’ve switched the program to earning two stars for every dollar spend. In the past, customers had to visit 12 times (transactions) to earn “Gold” status, which earned them a free food or drink item. The company said customers were asking baristas to ring up items separately to get more stars, making everything take longer. Now, customers have to earn 125 stars to hit that reward. At $5 visit, that’s still about 12 visits.
About one in six customers is a member of the program, and those members spend an average of three times more than a non-member customer.
Will There Be a Membership Fee?
This really depends on your industry, current customer base, and what the competition is doing. A lot of the time, charging a fee is not the answer. While it does do a bit to guarantee people will actually use the program, it may turn some customers off.
Amazon Prime is the perfect example of a loyalty program with a membership fee. You don’t earn rewards like you do with programs I’ve already mentioned, but the membership comes with a number of perks. For $99/year, subscribers get:
Free two-day shipping on eligible products
Free same day delivery in eligible zip codes
Free two-hour delivery or scheduled delivery on eligible items in eligible zip codes
Restaurant delivery in eligible zip codes.
Free release-date delivery on eligible pre-ordered items
Unlimited streaming in Prime Video
Unlimited ad-free streaming in Prime Music
Unlimited photo storage in Prime Photos
Access to Prime Pantry where members can get low-priced grocery and household items for a flat rate of $5.99 shipped.
Access to Amazon Elements, a line of every day products
Access to Amazon Dash buttons
Prime Early Access: 30-minute early access to lightening deals
Kindle Owners’ Lending Library
Prime Reading
Membership sharing
And more
It offers value to people who place a lot of online orders because of the free shipping, but if that’s the only benefit you’re able to use, or you don’t order much, it doesn’t make much sense to join.
2014 data suggests about 45% of Amazon’s customers are Prime members, and those members spend an average of $1,500 a year, compared to non-Prime members spending an average of $625 a year.
Barnes & Noble also charges a fee to participate in their loyalty program. For $25/year, members get more than $50 in bonus coupons when they join. Over the course of the year, members get special savings throughout the year, and free one to three-day shipping on all online orders.
Use the Program to Stay in Touch with Your Customers
Your customers are likely already signed up to receive emails from you, but there should be a segment of your list specifically for the people who are members of your program. This way you can send them exclusive offers and give extra thanks for their participation in the program. Plus, if you’re ever looking for feedback on the program, you can reach out to them direction.
Market, Market, and Market Some More
The program isn’t going to do a bit of good unless people know about it. You need to make sure your existing customers know about the program, and can sign up easily the next time the shop with you, either online or in-store.
Run ad campaigns on social media to notify your current and prospective fans about the program. Write and distribute a press release to spread the word. Include information about the program and how to join in your email newsletter sent to current subscribers.
Go With the Flow
You must be able to analyze the results of the program after launch, and see how well it’s working. If people aren’t responding the way you anticipated, conduct a survey to get feedback about it. Watch how patterns in shopping are changing. Try adjusting the program to make it more enticing based on available data insights.
Depending on what feedback indicates you could:
Simplify the signup process
Remove the need for a physical card
Lower the reward thresholds
Increase the value of the rewards
Add bonuses for referring new members to the program
Decrease membership fee
The Benefits of a Customer Loyalty Program
Increased Customer Retention
Keep your existing customer base making purchases from you longer and more often. And, a loyalty program can help you find the customers you lost, and find ways to try to win them back. You’ll over time learn who your best customers are, so you can make sure they are treated well. You’ll start to notice patterns in their buying behavior, which you can use to create better products and services and tailor your marketing campaigns accordingly.
Gather More Data
Not only do you get to see what’s selling, you can see who’s buying it. This allows you to send more personalized offers, which customers appreciate. The more data you have on your customers and how they’re interacting with your business, the better your marketing efforts can be.
Increased Sales – and Profit
When customers have incentive to shop with you more often, they usually will. As such, you should see an increase in overall sales – either in the form of additional transactions, higher AOV, or a combination of the two. And with more sales, comes more profit. Plus, your loyalty program may entice new customers to shop with you, adding to the benefit.
Why Customer Loyalty Programs Work
Rewards programs work mainly based on the psychological principles of ego, and the fact that humans are competitive by nature. One study showed people love collecting points, even when the points have no monetary value. Even though you can’t exchange points for tangible benefits, people will still spend a lot of time accumulating the points just to beat others, or to compete with themselves. If you really want to cash in on this phenomenon, add tiers to your program like Starbucks, to encourage people to keep going to get the higher level rewards.
Do you have a customer loyalty program? Why, or why not? If you do, what have you found to be the most effective? Has the ROI been worth it? Tell me all about it in the comments.
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