Your 2017 social media marketing campaign: The time is now
When I talk to small business owners, they often tell me that they are “doing” social media marketing. I’m glad they are, but the way they explain what their process is, tells me that they don’t have the kind of focus they need and that only comes when you define a social media marketing campaign. Imagine a general going to war and sending his troops out on the battlefield willy-nilly, just striking out at whatever is close at hand. Generals wage “campaigns” and what makes this different is that a campaign has a clearly defined goal. Aiming your social media marketing campaign Without a goal to shoot for, how can you ever know if you have hit your target? Some common goals are Get more followers Create interest in a specific product or service Heighten brand awareness Increase sharing You may launch 2017 social media marketing campaigns that shoot for more than one of these goals, or other goals that you come up with on your own. Once you set your goal(s), you need to decide: Which social media platforms to use, What kind of content to create, and How to measure results. Measuring your campaign Let’s look at measuring results for a moment. If you have a specific product or service that you want to get prospects interested in, results might be measured by the traffic you drive to a web page, for example. If you feel you have enough followers, but they aren’t sharing your posts as much as you would like, you can use various analytics to rank your shared posts and see what performs best for you. Another good approach for your 2017 social media marketing campaign(s) is to build it around a theme. This could be captured in a hashtag or you might use a contest as the “fuel” to get your campaign off the ground. (About midway through 2016 Aaron Agius did a nice “best of 2016 so far” rundown of social media marketing campaigns and I like the variety of campaigns he included. Check it out for inspiration.) Finally, you can wage more than one campaign at a time; the goals aren’t always mutually exclusive. You can be building your following while you’re trying to drive traffic to a specific page on your website, for example. Planning your year Further, now that I have you thinking a bit more strategically about what you want to accomplish with your social media marketing, take the time to sit down with a calendar and plan the year. It might make sense for you to launch some campaigns that center on holidays or seasons. If that’s the case, think about how much lead time you need to build into these campaigns. Don’t wait until the last minute and then try to generate some creative posts and graphics. Farm the work out well ahead of time. And, while I’m thinking about it, here’s something you might try to cash in on: August 21, 2017 is going to be the “Great American Total Solar Eclipse.” When you’re planning your 2017 social media marketing campaigns, that might be one big event where you don’t want to be left out in the dark…at least regarding your social media...
read more4 new entrepreneur problems you’re going to face and how to road-map them
There are common new entrepreneur problems that are almost universally faced no matter what industry you start your business in. There’s an old saying that “Forewarned is forearmed,” so I want to help you go into your new enterprise with your eyes wide open and have a few tips on how to prepare yourself. 1. Money The fact that you’re likely to face money problems as a new entrepreneur probably isn’t a shocking revelation, but let’s break it down to specifics so you get the big picture. Living funds. The enormity of this problem varies with new entrepreneurs. If you’re single the problem may not be so difficult, if you’re married with a family, the landscape changes. Neil Patel wrote a lively piece for Forbes arguing that entrepreneurs should live with their parents. It’s certainly an option. As I said, if others are involved, such as a spouse and children, you need to understand that the decision isn’t yours alone. Don’t let your passion become a set of blinders. Be prepared financially and be certain that those involved know the risks and the hardships – including financial and personal. Operating funds. There are many tried-and-true ways to get the money to fund your startup, including saving, holding down a second job, borrowing, selling assets, and more. Crowdfunding will payoff for some. I’m encouraged that a possible easing of Dodd-Frank will help loosen up bank loans for small businesses. Bumps in the road. Whatever your spreadsheet says you’ll need, double it. And track your expenditures to see if your burn rate is matching your expectations. If you’re outpacing your spending plans, you need to make quick adjustments. 2. Defining your niche Defining a niche for the new entrepreneur is a process of: Deciding what you want to do, your passion, Getting a feel for the competition, and Finding your target prospect. I’ll assume that number one from the list above isn’t a new entrepreneur problem you’re facing right now. If you’ve made it this far in my article, you must have some basic idea of what you want to do. Now you need to spend some time researching the competition so you understand the playing field better than anyone else out there. If you’re planning a local business, I describe how to use a great free online tool to evaluate nearby competition in this article. Lilach Bulloch has a good rundown of tools over on her website as well. But with all of this information under your belt, you still have the most difficult task ahead of you: Defining why anyone should choose to do business with you over the competitors you have found. To be successful at this not only do you have to have a good answer to that question, you need to know how you will reach these prospects. 3. Reacting to change The first steam-powered machine was built in 1698. The first effective gasoline engine was developed in 1859. The speed of technological change is quite a bit quicker today and you have to expect it. Not only can you expect some fundamental technological changes in your marketplace, there may be technological changes that affect the way you do business. In other words, a competitor who starts later than you might start with better technology and...
read moreHow good branding runs deeper than graphics and typography
Have you seen what Amazon is doing for Goodwill? You take an old Amazon box, fill it with items you want to donate to Goodwill, print out a label via the Amazon website, slap it on the box, and take your donation to the post office for mailing to the charity. This is a convenience for folks who don’t live near a Goodwill outlet and it also saves you from breaking down the cardboard box and having it take up space in your recycling. There’s one more thing it does: It builds Amazon’s brand image. We tend to consider branding in terms of logos, fonts, colors, social media posts, taglines, marketing, and advertising, but it really goes much further: You need to think about your public image. To broaden your vision of branding and improve it overall, consider these areas. Community and professional outreach. This includes programs like the one Amazon is doing with Goodwill, but it also includes traditional networking. The simple question to ask yourself is: “How involved am I in my community and professional organizations?” Your participation with these associations will help build and define your brand. You will gather a reputation and be known by it. When you’re the president of a chapter for a professional organization, that gets noticed. It gets reported in the press. You can hang the plaque on your wall. When you sponsor a pee-wee football team, or a float in the local parade, it gets noticed. I encourage you to put these activities on your website as well. When people click to your “About Us” page, they want to get a personal feeling for who you are and what your company stands for. These kinds of involvements are ideal for that purpose. The “face” and tone of your company. Do you train everyone on your team in the manner you want them to deal with the public and vendors? How many times does the phone have to ring before someone picks it up? Is the greeting always consistent and pleasant? How about your email correspondence? Is it professional, well laid out, grammatically correct with no spelling errors? People pick up on these things and they all are pieces of the puzzle that make up the image of your brand. Your facilities. If you’re a local business, what is the feeling people get when they walk through your door? Is it pleasant? Excuse me for asking, but how does it smell? You need to keep your premises tidy and organized. Failing to do so sends a bad message to everyone who visits your location and that message will inform their image of your brand. This also includes the deportment of your employees. They need to be regarded as professional, trustworthy, authoritative, pleasant, approachable, and more depending on your specific enterprise. If a prospect walks into your business and finds disinterested employees, that will mar your brand. Everything I’ve talked about here starts with you. If you don’t set the tone and the example in these important real-life branding areas, you have no right to expect more from your employees. In fact, you should expect them to detract from your branding. Further, as you demonstrate exemplary habits in these areas, train your team, and put systems in place to make sure that...
read moreThis week in small business: Tips from a BMOC, 2017 predictions, boost your reading speed and more
I predict that the 2017 business trend forecasts won’t stop being published until we all break the habit of writing 2016 on our checks. But that’s okay, we found a few good ones this week, along with a lot of advice for entrepreneurs and those managing startups. Leadership, management, and productivity Kelsey Clark gets the secrets to career success from her five favorite female bosses – a quick and good read to start 2017. Is your home office holding your back? S. Tia Brown delivers the entrepreneur how-to information you need to upgrade from home office to business space. How are you doing on your New Year’s resolutions? In this PCWorld article from Intel, you’ll learn how to train your brain for success in 2017. Ian Altman gets brave and predicts the top 10 business trends for 2017 in his Forbes piece. The most successful people tend to be voracious readers. If you really want to get up to speed (boost your words per minute), Tom Bilyeu offers some great tips and strategies. Marketing and sales Have a new product ready to launch? How will you promote it? According to Matt Lawton’s article, a survey of 730 senior marketers points to social media as your best bet. Here’s some more crystal ball gazing: 4 top SEO trends for 2017. If you’ve been focusing on GenXers and Millennials, you need to check out Connor Blakley’s ideas for marketing to Generation Z. Vicci Ricci must be a BMOC. After all, the college student’s social media reach is something like 250 million. Steve Young captures Ricci’s influencer marketing tips. Does getting 25,000 subscribers in 30 days and then monetizing them sound good? Cheryl Conner gives us the story of one young entrepreneur who went that route. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Isaac Asimov wrote the classic I, Robot. If he were writing today, he might write I, Digital Assistant Bot. Check out what Nicholas Badminton has to say about artificial intelligence and the economy in TechCrunch. I’m a major proponent of instilling business savvy in our children, so I appreciated Deep Patel’s Entrepreneur article, “5 Life Lessons You Kid Will Learn as a Young Entrepreneur.” Pricing is always a popular topic and we’ve heard a lot about the “freemium” model in recent years. Here’s why Courtney Williams rejected it for his...
read moreDigital Marketing Glossary: Must-know Technical Terms
You can’t tell the players without a scorecard and you can’t understand what’s going on in digital marketing unless you know the lingo. Here are the most important and frequently used terms you will encounter in the digital marketing world. 301 Redirect. A permanent redirect from one URL to another URL. 301 redirects are often used SEO purposes and in affiliate marketing. 302 Redirect. A temporary redirect from one URL to another URL. 404. An error message when a page cannot be found on a website. A/B Testing. A way to test two versions of a web page or item on a web page against each other for effectiveness. Ad Unit. A size-and-format specification for an ad. Aggregator. A tool or website that collects content from various websites. Many popular news websites are aggregators. Alexa Rank. A measure of a website’s popularity or traffic. A lower number reflects more traffic. Algorithm. A coded formula used to rank websites in search results. The most well known is the Google Search Algorithm. ALT Attribute. A line of text assigned to an image that is displayed when the user hovers over the image or the image does not load. ALT Text. See ALT Attribute. Anchor Text. The clickable text of a link. Authority. The more popular a website is (the more traffic it receives), the more authority it has. Avatar. An image or illustration used to represent a real person. Backlink. When one website links to your website. Black hat SEO. Tactics designed to improve a website’s SERP by leveraging loopholes in Google’s algorithm. Bot. See Crawler. Bounce Rate. The percentage of visitors who exit your site without viewing any additional pages. Breadcrumbs. A navigation trail on a website that shows visitors the pages they have clicked through to get to the current page they are looking at. Broken Link. A link that goes to a page or other website resource that no longer exists or has moved. Cache. Stored static versions of dynamic web pages. Using a cache improves load speed of a web page. Canonical. A “rel” tag that tells a search engine which is the original or preferred web page when the same page or content is repeated on a website. This prevents the page authority of that page from being diluted. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). A web language or system used to apply styles to web elements such as font size, color, background, and alignment in order to create visual design consistency. Click-through Rate (CTR). The percentage of clicks from users who have seen your offer: Clicks divided by impressions. Conversion. When a user takes the desired action, such as signing up for an email list or buying a product. Conversion Pixel. A 1×1 transparent image pixel placed on a web page whenever a conversion occurs. It is used for tracking and analytical purposes. Cookie. A text file stored on a website visitor’s browser that holds information about the user. Cost per Acquisition (CPA). The cost of acquiring one customer: Cost of advertising divided by the number of customers acquired. Cost per Click (CPC). How much you pay for each click on your ad. Cost per Lead (CPL). How much you pay for each click on your ad that results in a lead. Cost per Thousand (CPM). How...
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