Successful Blog

How to Monetize Your Hobby

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Are you looking to make some money in the new year? Do you want to start a business but are confused on where to begin and how? Then why not start with one of your favorite pastime hobbies?

It may sound too good to be true, but many people are starting to turn their hobbies into side hustles to generate an extra stream of income. The best part of monetizing your hobby is that when you work on something you enjoy and love, it doesn’t feel like work.

It becomes fun.

Whether you’re a painter, a graphic designer, an illustrator, a calligraphy master, create DIY art pieces, an embroiderer, or make custom pieces, you can literally monetize any hobby and start generating an income.

That is why in today’s post we’ll share some tips on how you can convert your hobby into a small business that not only generates an income but gives you joy as well.

Keep on reading to know how you can start, right now!

1. Create a strategy

Whenever you start with a new venture or endeavor, it is always wise to start with a game plan on what you want to achieve, and listing down steps to get there.

When first trying to monetize your hobby, research online how other people in the same category as you are selling their products or services.

List down the steps you need to create a digital marketing strategy that includes the time, resources, cost etc it will take for you to achieve goals you’ve set.

If you have a budget, you may want to invest in Adwords Consulting to get things rolling quickly.

Make sure that you set goals that are tangible and realistic, so that you can maximize the benefits from your strategy and be on track for success.

2. Start a website

Having a website for any small business or entrepreneur is a must, even if you’re not thinking of turning your hobby into a monetary profession for the long haul. Creating a website to showcase the range of products you have or services you offer, not only makes it easier for the right customer to reach you, but has positive outcomes long term.

When you make a website and provide accurate information regarding price, contact info, shipping and delivery details, it creates credibility in the eyes of a potential customer and will help spread the word faster for more traffic. One of my favorite examples I recently found is this site profiling awesome waterfalls a family is visiting. Such a cool hobby!

3. Pitch and reach out clients

Reaching out to potential clients whether locally or online is very crucial to make your first sale. This point is especially important for people who run a food business, catering, provide supplies on a large scale, and are looking to expand their hobby to serve a company or a large gathering.

Whether your first pay check is the $5 or $500, your motivation to continue your new endeavor will be highly contingent on your first sale. In order to get potential clients, pitch yourself via email, in person, or on call to people you know can get benefit from your services or products.

Even if you’re shy of putting yourself out there, dropping emails is a great way to introduce your new business and if you can’t do that, then the follow the next point.

4. Create content for your social media account

Having a social media account even for your hobby is extremely important for exposure and gaining potential clients. Nowadays, both businesses and customers check social media accounts of businesses they want to engage with financially. Making sure you post creative content, regularly will not only increase your following but help you target potential customers as well.

The goal isn’t to go viral overnight, but to hope that one post gets viral enough to land you on the radar of your targeted business/customer for your category. And for that you need some strategies and tips to engage with your social media audience.

According to Oberlo, there are more than 3.5 billion social media users as of 2019, and the number is only increasing. Making sure you market your products the right way to the right customers will only increase your revenue and help you make profit.

And those are top 4 ways on how to monetize your hobby to generate an extra stream of income in 2021. We hope you found them useful and motivate you to start your journey today.

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Five Reputation Management Tools to Use

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Nowadays there’s a lot of personal information publicly available on the web. We all have an “online persona” which is directly related to the way people see and judge us as individuals.

Unfortunately managing your online reputation is everything but an easy task.

There are many social media channels where people can spread unbiased opinions about others, tag inappropriate photos, and otherwise mess with your reputation. As a blogger, your name stands for the quality and authenticity of your posts, apart from your personal and professional interest in having a “clean and positive” online reputation.

As Google says: “Your online identity is determined not only by what you post, but also by what others post about you – whether it is a mention in a blog post, a photo tag or a reply to a public status update.”

If you want to influence the way people see you online, it’s important to understand that there are two basic techniques for managing your online reputation.

  • Constantly monitor what people are saying about you and respond instantly when necessary.
  • Actively develop your reputation by creating “positive” content. Create a hub such as a personal landing page where people can easily find everything about you in a simple and compact format. Hiring a solid digital performance agency would be helpful here.

With those two techniques in mind, here are six simple, yet effective tools that might help you along the way to monitor what people are saying about you as well as actively develop and influence your online reputation.

1. Google Alerts

Google Alerts let you get notified whenever your name or email address gets mentioned publicly on the web. To use Me On The Web, just log into your Google dashboard and click “Set up search alerts for your data” – it’s as easy as that!

It is also a good idea to use a SERP tracker to monitor your branded search results.

2. SocialMention

As Inform Buki rightfully states, social media is the branding powerhouse, so it is only natural that you need to monitor your brand on social media.

Another brilliant tool to track your name across the web is Social Mention. It’s a social media search engine that searches blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos and micro-blogging services. You can select the sources you want to search and employ email alerts or a personalized RSS feed to stay up-to-date.

But don’t take it from me. Here’s their official description.

“SocialMention allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.”

3. WiseStamp

Easily create a HTML email signature and automatically add it to your outgoing email with WiseStamp. Email signatures are effective tools when it comes to building your personal brand and an ideal starting point for influencing your online reputation with anyone you contact via email.

Having a professional email signature is very important – it should at least contain your full name, basic contact info, and a link to your main website or personal landing page. To see it in action, here’s a detailed tutorial in how to add an email signature in Outlook.

4. Linktree

Take advantage of a clean and simple app for building awesome personal landing pages in minutes with Linktree.

Linktree sites are free, customizable, and help you manage your information all in one place like your bio, social networks links, your blog, and contact details. Once created, you can provide one simple link where people can find out everything about you and follow you around the web.

5. Knowem

Knowem helps you to secure your personal name or username on over 590 social media services and websites.

You’ll hardly use any of the services you sign up to via Knowem, but assuring that your name or pseudonym will not be related to any undesirable content on those websites is worth the effort.

I hope these tools will definitely help you to maintain your online reputation. But if you would like to grow your online reputation then here is a great resource with some proven social media marketing strategies that will help you to grow your online reputation.

Are there any reputation management tools I have missed? Please share!

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

What Is An Unscalable Hack?

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Lately, I have been seeing a lot of people talking about growth hacks. These are little tricks that you discover that launch you into the mainstream by creating a surge of user accumulation in a short time.

Plenty of businesses have been scrambling to hire on a growth hacker for their businesses ever since the term started to trend, and even I have been approached by some clients asking me about it where before they had never seemingly heard of it.

The problem – as I have explained to them – is that this method is actually, at the heart, an unscalable hack. But when I say this it usually causes more confusion than it alleviated, which sent me to Google to see what others had to say on the subject. I was shocked to discover only a couple of relevant article on the same concept, and at least two were bases around the technical design definition of the phrase.

The Definition of Unscalable Hacks

An unscalable hack is more or less a short term solution that may or may not yield results. It is usually a temporary solution to a problem that will only patch the original issue, or provide a momentary injection. Which is, to me, what growth hacking is in both theory and practice. It is a short term means of creating a growth surge before you move onto the next tactic.

The problem with this kind of solution in any context is that it is only beneficial if you truly do find that mystical strategy that makes it all worth it. The one that will be your ace in the hole, and boost you onto a new level where you can begin a whole new tactic for continued growth.

Now, I am not saying that unscalable hacks don’t have their place in a sound business strategy. Just look at the way Reddit used the gap created by Digg to sweep in, or Google+ leveraged invites to build hype (not that it helped them in the long run). These are examples of short term actions that really paid off.

All I am pointing out is that an unscalable hack (or growth hack, for that matter) mean nothing if you don’t have the juice behind it to keep things running past the point where it stops being effective – which can be a very small window of time, indeed. If you don’t see many results with that hack in the first place, it is just creating even more problems.

A Better Way To Do Things

If you manage to find that genie’s lamp, by all means, rub it.. Would LinkedIn have been successful if they hadn’t started off following a single minority elitist line within the niche? Probably not. But don’t put too much effort in thinking of wishes that you forget how many you have. The end result is going to be based on more than a good idea that launched you into the mainstream…once you get there, you have to stay there.

The best method of leveraging hacks is to apply them to already solid business and marketing models, and incorporate many sound ideas that will work alongside your genie. Don’t put everything you have behind it’s power, because it only has so much.

With that said, regardless of which growth hacks you are using, always top it off with:

What do you think about unscalable hacks? Are they worth taking the risk for the average business or site owner? Let us know in the comments.

Image by talha khalil from Pixabay

How Businesses Use Social Media Marketing

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Many businesses hear about the advantages of social media in terms of marketing their products or services, but some forget to look at other major benefits of social media beyond finding leads or making a sale.

Here are eight ways that businesses can use social media to learn more about themselves and their industry as well as get more involved with their clients and communities interested in what they have to offer.

1. Monitor Conversation About Themselves

There are many free ways to monitor what people are saying about your company through social media, including the following:

Google Alerts

Google Alerts will send you a daily digest email anytime your search terms come up in blogs, news, or other websites.

Social Mention

Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. You can have your mentions emailed to you daily.

Twitter Search

If you want to know real time what people are saying, you can setup a Twitter search in HootSuite, Tweetdeck, or just keep a RSS feed in your feed reader using Twitter search results. Include searches for your company, business owner, or unique product name.

Further reading: Set Up an Online Reputation Management Strategy That Wins You More Sales

A solid social media service could help you get the most of reputation management efforts.

2. Keep Up to Date on Their Industry

Along with keeping up with what is being said about your brand, as anyone with a business administration degree would tell you, you should also keep up to date on current events and news that affects your industry as a whole.

While there have been good company reactions to industry issues, such as pet food brands that assured their customers that their food was tested and 100% safe during the recalls and Toyota continuing to address their recalls assuring customers they are working to resolve the problems, I have seen some other fails where there was obviously no attention by the companies given to current events such as:

  • Auto warranty companies continuing their usual advertising while stories of auto warranty scams were on the rise.
  • A hotel chain in Hawaii sending out “last minute deals” about an hour before the tsunami was supposed to hit the islands.

If you’re keeping up with how the public feels about your industry, you can reformulate your next announcements and advertising to boost the confidence in your company even in the midst of a negative wave. Facebook advertising is particularly effective for that.

In the above examples:

  • The auto warranty companies could add facts to their advertisements which would prove their authenticity above the scammers so people could trust them.
  • The hotel chain could have simply sent out updates on the conditions and reassure the public once the threat was over that it was safe enough to take advantage of their special rates.

3. Give Great Customer Service

One great way to use social media is for customer service. For example, if you have a Facebook Page setup, your customers might ask specific product questions.

Answering them right on the page not only gives them the info they want right away, but shows other fans / potential clients that you are a readily available to help, as well as provide an answer to a question that other clients might want to ask.

You can also encourage phone calls from your social media channels and set up your small business phone service to turn all those calls into the leads!

4. Provide Emergency Updates

Lately, the way to find out if something is not working is to make a quick search on Twitter. The last time I couldn’t get into my Gmail, I went straight over to Twitter to see if others were having the same problem or if it was just me – it was the former, so I knew there wasn’t an account issue.

Customer service is never more important than during times of crisis.

Since many people now turn to Twitter to voice their complaints and concerns, those that respond through the same media show both their followers and others who are watching the events unfold that they are interested in helping their followers quickly. It helps add a positive light to a bad situation.

5. Gain Customer Feedback and Opinion

Social media can be a great research tool. If your company has unveiled a new product or service, maybe your customers will be talking about what they think about it in real time.

I’m sure that Coca-Cola monitors any comments on their latest drinks to see if people are enjoying it or hating it, which affects whether they will continue to produce a specific flavor or try out a new one. You can also query your followers to ask them their opinion on a future product to get their insight before it even goes into development so you can create something that you know others will be interested in.

It is also a good idea to create polls on Facebook regularly to gain insight into your audience.

6. Move Positive Information to the Top

Reputation management via social media can be a great way to boost positive information about your business to the top of search results in an attempt to get negative results off of the list.

So if your company had a negative review placed on sites such as Rip Off Report or individual blogs, the best way to counter it is to have your company website, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social profiles ranking higher than that bad entry. It only takes ten strong, positive items to bump that bad one off of the first page.

7. Drive Traffic to Their Website

Social media can certainly help boost the traffic going to your website in a variety of ways. If you have a regularly updated corporate blog, you can post your blog articles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and social bookmarking sites, which should help drive visitors to your post and then onward to your main site for products and services.

Also, you can monitor people talking about the products and services you offer and respond to them with your link if it helps answer their questions. Just recently, I mentioned migraines, and someone sent me an @mention with a link to learn more about natural homeopathic migraine remedies.

Social media is perfect for launching a new site as well as promoting an established one.

You just have to make sure that what you are sending will be absolutely helpful to the person you are replying to, and not look too much like a blatant advertisement (ie. maybe send a blog post link instead of a link to a product page unless some specifically says “I want to buy ___, where can I find it.”)

8. Create a Reference Library

Social bookmarking makes it easy to create a reference library of any news / press releases / mentions of your company.

Simply use your hashtag alerts to find the places online that talk about you, and use sites like Flipboard to bookmark them. This helps you keep track of all the talk about your company, as well as boost the article by giving it the bookmark.

More Tips on Social Media for Business

Looking for more ideas on how to use social networking for business? Check out this post on business social networking by a blogger whose focus is on helping small businesses use online marketing more efficiently and effectively.

Do you have a business that you use social media as an avenue to connect with clients? Or do you know of a business that does a great job using social media? Let us know in the comments!

How to Choose (and Use) the Best Tools for Your Business

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Tools have the power to either make your life simpler, or more complicated, depending on what you choose.

That is why making the right choice is important.

Here are my top tips on finding what tools are right for your blog or business.

Start by defining your needs.

Most people look at price or features, and just assume if the price is low and the features are numerous, they will be set. But that’s not always the case. A tool could have 1,000+ features, which is pretty awesome. But if you are only going to need three of those features, then there’s no sense in

  • A) paying for things you don’t need or
  • B) not choosing a tool that is awesome at the three features you need and instead choosing one that is so-so at a 1,000+ features.

Let’s say that you’re evaluating email marketing software. Your requirements are that it integrates well with other tools that you use, it offers a wide variety of templates that are mobile friendly, it allows you to preview emails before you send them, and it helps you create great forms and squeeze pages.

While there are tons of platforms to choose from, you’ll likely go with GetResponse because of their 100+ integrations, responsive email design, inbox preview tool, web form builder, and squeeze page generator.

Once you have defined your requirements, making a choice about what tool to go with will be much simpler.

Compare your top choice with some alternatives.

Just because you only found one tool that fits your needs, doesn’t mean it’s the only tool out there. There are great sites like TopAlternatives.com that can help you find the top tools for specific needs. For example, in their SEO category, they break down tools with specific functions.

This can help you discover a few great alternatives so that you can jump into the next step. They offer alternative tools for building a website, customer satisfaction, design, ecommerce, email marketing, mobile, optimization, SEO, social media, time management, usability, visual  marketing, and business communication.

Try before you buy.

Whether you end up trying to decide between multiple tools with the features you want, or just one that seems to be perfect, be sure to try it before you buy it. Most tools will offer some form of free trial, usually ranging from seven to thirty days. Here are my recommended free trial tips.

  • Don’t sign up for a free trial until you are ready to actually use it.
  • Set a reminder in your calendar to visit the tool each day until the trial ends.
  • Take into consideration the ease of use of the tool you are trying. If it’s difficult, you won’t want to use it on a regular basis, which will lower its value for your business.
  • Know how long you have and when/where to cancel if you decide against a particular tool (include a reminder in your calendar for the last day to cancel).
  • Plan to evaluate the results of using a particular tool the day before you need to decide to commit to it.

Remind yourself to regularly use your tools.

Once you have made the commitment to the right tools for your blog or business, don’t let them sit stagnant while they auto-debit your credit card. Set them up so you can easily remember to use them on a daily basis. If they are web applications, for example, create a folder on your bookmarks bar for your tools and put your username next to each so you can easily get to the login pages and remember how to login. Below is my list of top tools…

If there’s certain times you want to check a particular tool, such as taking a daily look at all of your dashboards in Cyfe to review your analytics, then you’ll want to set a calendar reminder to do so. What I like to do is grab a link to the first dashboard I want to view (like my ultimate social media dashboard)…

You don’t have to do these specific things, but you should make it a point to regularly use your tools.

Review, and review often.

If you find you’re not regularly using a particular tool based on difficulty or lack of usefulness, then it might be a sign you need to choose something new. Or, at the very least, time to cancel your account and save some money until you find something new.

Finding the right tool is key to business productivity.

For this, you might want to set a monthly or quarterly reminder to review all of the tools in your toolbox to see if you are still using them and still getting what you need out of them. If not, go back to the beginning of this post and start the selection process over again. This will ensure that you are always getting value from the tools you choose for your business.

How do you find great tools for your blog or business and then ensure you are always using them?

Image by free stock photos from www.picjumbo.com from Pixabay

3 Elements to Sky Rocket Your Customer Experience Mapping Success

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customer experience mapping successCEM (short for customer experience mapping) has been a popular topic for well over 6 years for big companies interested in understanding a customer’s “relationship” with their services and products. However, small to medium companies have just started to notice the importance of having this incorporated into your business process.

According to Zeemo,

An engaging user experience is ultimately the most important aspect of your website, as your customers can and will leave your site if it doesn’t meet their standards.

This is why mapping your customer experience is so important.

Not to mention startups in the “app zone”, whose breakthrough relies mostly on how early-stage users interact and feel about the product/service they are testing or using. Today, we’re going to take note on 3 elements that can be added to the mix when creating a customer experience map.

The Must Have Elements

An experience map is a detailed visualization of your customer’s journey, the opportunities that rise for both your business and products/services to meet customer needs not only on the spot, but also in the long run, and the guiding principles behind actions and behaviors. Questions that can help you understand the processes behind a user’s action, include:

  • What are the top reasons why my customers would need my product or service?
  • What are the top benefits for using my product/service?
  • How does my product/service integrate in the moment, i.e. offering my customers an improved experience online/offline/both ways?
  • Does my product/service integrate in the bigger picture, long-term? Why/Why not? If Yes, then How?
  • What are customer behavior or mindset patterns which my product/service can cover or respond to?
  • Is my customer acting based on pre-defined principles? What are those? Can these be addressed or integrated in my product/service?
  • Is my product/service sustainable? Does it allow a connection/bridge between customer experience and customer satisfaction?

You can find more about the anatomy of a customer experience map here, along with clear examples such as Rail Europe’s CEM process. Now, if you follow the best practices of CEM, you can only get so far. Here’s how to take the entire process one step forward.

#1. Monitoring Customer Satisfaction Across All Channels

Customer satisfaction is a key player in designing products or services that solve problems, create a space for customers to enjoy and use, and trigger customer loyalty in the long run. Nowadays, your social media staff and community managers play a bigger role than in the past. Here’s why: customers are humans and there is a certain emotional link between your service or product and their needs. Sometimes, as providers, we fail to completely deliver and meet expectations. And this is human, as well. That is why as businesses, we need processes and human force to handle the failure.

An angry customer will be more understanding if, for example, someone from your staff will patiently listen to his/her worries, complaints, and offer a win-win solution, in a timely manner. Knowing the key principles behind proper damage control can save your company’s future. These are: responsiveness (speed and time), reaction, damage control, patience, protocols and explanations at hand, problem solving procedures, standard and customized processes, call to action, open door policies.

And learn from other brands’ mistakes (such as Pokemon Go’s fiasco, although they managed to recover, to some extent, according to this article).

#2. Monitoring Feedback

Nothing new here, however many businesses ignore customer feedback. Just having a good survey form on your website and a competent community manager that gathers all feedback from customers isn’t enough to gain valuable insights about your products, features, and services, and the way they impact your customers’ lives. Another idea is to use a VoIP call center solution that provides robust report allowing you to see your customers’ feedback after they called your customer support team.

You shouldn’t collect customer feedback at a superficial level.

Many customers tend to forget, or do not have the time, or simply are not used to leaving feedback and stating their mind. That is why you must always pair up with a third-party service to collect more insights, and put them to better use.

Delighted, a feedback monitoring tool, has become very popular among startups, mid-sized companies and Fortune500 brands. Among these, Uber, PeoplePerHour, Tedx, Slack, and others use it to collect instant feedback and rate their products and services. The tool sends out a message to the users, asking them to rate the brand/product/service on a scale from 1 to 10, in the email body. And then opens an additional web page where the user can explain their pick. Feedback is collected and delivered in real time to the brand’s board. Delightful!

#3. Crunching User Website Data to Understand Online Patterns

The customer experience map is strongly related to your website’s functionality and the user’s activity patterns, not just to the human, personal journey aspect. Ideally, you would want to get to know and understand your audience at a deeper level. Besides having a solid website or channel that runs on usability and responsiveness across all devices/environments, you also need access to data related to the user’s online activity prior or post usage of your product or service. It’s way easier in the case of apps, for e.g., to collect user data right from the app itself, analyze it and report findings strictly related to your product. Google offers the option to export data and stats if your app is in the Google App store.

If your products/services do not come in the form of apps, then your website becomes the first environment to facilitate the contact and interaction between them and the customer. They don’t say a website is a company’s business card, for nothing!

While data extracted from your website may fail to directly address all customer experience segments, it will help in predicting certain behaviors or trends in close relation to your service or product. Pivot tables provide a simplified way to gain first hand access to customer patterns and do not require super advanced knowledge of data analysis. If you are not familiar with PowerPivot there are plenty of online articles like this one.

Takeaways

Come what may, we live in a time where businesses need to walk the extra mile to achieve success. In the business world, there is such thing as “competition”, and the only way to win a top spot is to provide something different, better, more functional, more accurate to your customers.

This means gathering data from the inside (starting with your website user data), analyzing it, finding patterns, building your product based on those patterns to meet customers’ expectations.

Remember that feedback isn’t just “active listening”, as everyone talks about, but also input collection and implementation to meet customer satisfaction. Happy customer experience mapping!

Image source: Pixabay