Successful Blog

Break the Grip of the Rip

by

This little stretch of beach occasionally has dangerous rip currents.

The sandbars strung along our part of the coast create strong, narrow currents that run perpendicular to the shore. Unsuspecting swimmers can quickly get pulled far from the beach. If they don’t know what to do, they require emergency rescue to avoid drowning.

avoid the rip current

Marketers can get sucked into the grip of a rip current too.

“You need to post 20x per day on Twitter.”
“You have to have 50,000 Facebook fans.”
“The audience will only read short posts.”
“The audience will only read long posts.”
“We need to strip every link out of our blog posts because Google might blacklist us.”

These rip currents pop up, suck lots of unsuspecting swimmers out to sea, and then dissipate.

How to Break Free of a Marketing Rip Current

Keep your feet planted on the ocean floor

  • Find resources and publications that aren’t trendy. That means more reading Harvard Business Review blogs and less Buzzfeed.
  • Be sure you have someone on your team who will help you focus on your mission when you’re tempted to chase after the latest shiny object.

Remain calm if you get caught

  • If you notice that you’ve gotten sidetracked and sucked into a marketing rip current, don’t just start trashing everything. Go back to your marketing plan, your goals, and your strategy, and remove anything that’s not feeding into them.
  • If you need to take corrective action, do it systematically once you’ve figured out how to proceed.
  • Sometimes it’s hard to remain calm in the face of danger. If you suddenly lose half of your website traffic, or a major client decides to leave, be sure you have a trusted advisor or mentor who can help you navigate the issue. Don’t try to go it alone.

Try to regain your footing and call for help immediately

  • Come up with a plan of action for recovery. If the rip current meant that you suddenly found yourself on page 10 of Google search results, put together a detailed strategy to regain your position.
  • You can iterate and test. Your strategy doesn’t have to be “all or nothing.” Learn about how to do simple A/B testing.
  • Use your data. Numbers don’t panic; use the analytical tools at your disposal to help you sort things out.
  • Don’t try to “wing it,” if you’ve got a problem that needs professional assistance. Consider hiring a consultant or contractor who specializes in the issue (an SEO, a digital marketer, a web designer, a PR pro).

Swim parallel to shore to escape the current

  • When you realize you’ve been pulled out to sea, it’s tempting to swim like crazy, straight for shore. Instead, try a path that makes the most sense for your situation. Rip currents aren’t very wide, so if you swim sideways for a bit, you can return to shore safely.
Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

How to Handle Recent LinkedIn Company Page Changes

by

On April 14, 2014, LinkedIn removed the separate Products & Services page associated with all Company Pages.

zen garden

If you had been trying to build a credible presence on LinkedIn, this change may have removed some valuable information from your Company Page. You’ll need to remain calm, and take some action in order to rebuild your corporate profile.

According to HubSpot, LinkedIn is the best social network for lead generation, so you should definitely have an active Company Page.

Recover Your Product Recommendations

This LinkedIn update had the effect of “disappearing” all accumulated product and service recommendations across the board. But don’t freak out yet. Until May 30, 2014, you can still request the contents of any recommendations that were on the site as of March 4, 2014.

If you plan to repurpose any of those old recommendations (in other web pages or in print), be sure to get permission from the person who wrote it.

Rebuild Your Product Information

The good news is that LinkedIn now has Showcase pages, where you can highlight individual products or services within your company page.

To add a Showcase page:

  • Go to your company page and click the down arrow next to the blue Edit button.
  • Select Create a Showcase Page.
  • Enter a page name and assign administrators for the Showcase Page.
  • Click Create.

Showcase pages contain a single large image across the top, and can include specific status update content. LinkedIn users can follow Showcase pages specifically, if they choose. LinkedIn also provides separate analytics data for Showcase pages, which makes it easier for you to find out which campaigns or products are stirring up interest.

What to Do Now

Now that the LinkedIn Company Page is more tightly focused, all of the attention is on status updates. Make sure that your LinkedIn company updates include a variety of content, including text and links to a website, image, SlideShare presentation, or YouTube/Vimeo video. Make sure your content is valuable to your existing customers and prospects.

Consider sharing or commenting on your customers’ status updates as your Company Page. Remember to reciprocate when they follow your page as well.

It’s also a good idea to commit to a routine of updates, so that your company shows up in the news feed on a regular basis.

The upshot is that you can no longer get away with a “set it and forget it” mentality on LinkedIn (or any other social network). You need to maintain and update your corporate profiles, and stay on top of platform changes.

Have you responded to the LinkedIn changes already? Have you done anything creative with your Company Page on LinkedIn?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: melolou via Compfight cc

5 Pitches You Must Have Up Your Sleeve

by

Scheherazade had 1001 stories, but you only need five key stories in order to pitch your business effectively in most situations.

arabian nights

If you have these stories at-the-ready, you’ll be more prepared than 90% of your competitors.

1. Grocery Line

This pitch is your standard response to a stranger’s question, “what do you do?” The nuance here is that it should be understandable by anyone. No jargon, no need to use a silly title like “Chief Cat Wrangler.” This pitch must be super-brief, and ideally will end with you asking a question about the other person.

“I’m a media coach. What do you do?”

2. Business Reception

This is the scenario where you’re standing up, cradling a mini quiche in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. It’s a business function, and you’re chatting up the person who was behind you in the buffet line. Since it’s a business environment, you can be a bit more detailed. You may have the chance to extend the conversation for a few minutes, so you don’t have to cram everything into one sentence. Find an opportunity to ask the other person a question immediately. And when they speak, listen intently.

“I’m a small business media coach. I take the fear out of dealing with reporters. What brings you to this event?”

3. Sit Down Business Meeting

In this situation, you’re spending a significant amount of time sitting with other professionals (for example, at a workshop). They’re going around the table and everyone is supposed to say “what they do” to the rest of the group. Your goal here is to say something memorable and engaging.

“I help small business owners make a polished impression during media interviews. My specialty is analyzing body language…so everyone uncross your arms right now.”

4. Prospect Call

You did it. You got the prospect on the phone to hear about your services. Of course, you started by asking them to describe their key requirements, and then they said, “can you give us a high level overview of your business?”

“My firm, Dazzling Media Coaching, has been helping small businesses like XYZ Realty polish their media skills for more than 10 years. My background is as a television journalist, which gives me a unique perspective on media training. I use body language, mock interview techniques, and speech pattern analysis to help my clients knock it out of the park. Do you have an upcoming media appearance you’d like help with?”

5. Client Shareable

This one is tricky. Basically it’s a very pithy, memorable phrase you can implant in your clients’ minds so that when someone uses the trigger words, they will refer you.

We all like to categorize each other into “buckets” in our brains, so that we can easily recall appropriate contacts when we need them. This pitch is more like a tagline. What category do you want to be remembered for?

“The go-to media coach for small business.”

I strongly recommend taking some time to craft responses for these 5 common situations. Tell your story with passion, wit, and creativity, and like Scheherazade, your business will live to see another day!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Beware the Social Media Cockroaches

by

He came to the house every month on Wednesday. Armed with powerful chemicals, he made sure that no “Palmetto bugs” found their way inside. While he made the house safe for scaredy cats like me, we would banter about business.

social media cockroaches

His long-term plan was to go out on his own, and once he found out what I did for a living, he had a million questions.

“I already bought a ready-made website from XYZ hosting company, and I have business cards. How can I use Facebook to get more customers?” (Because when I use the word Internet in any conversation with a civilian, they immediately envision me as a Facebook expert.)

I struggled with my answer, mostly because you can’t answer that question in the 10 minute space of time it takes for pest control to occur in a two story home, but also because there is no easy answer.

Anyone who says, “just go get a Facebook page” is being short-sighted. And anyone who prescribes any “social media” solution without doing a lot of listening first is selling snake oil.

My take was that pest control is a highly referral-based business, and he needed to ensure that a) his customers have an easy way to spread the word to their friends, and b) he shows up when people who live in my local area search online for “pest control.”

Ultimately, my advice was to ignore social media until he defined who his target market was, where they lived, and how they shopped for pest control.

Could he use social media to help his business? Absolutely.

He could start regularly blogging to create a content resource that might move him up in the Google search results. He could make a series of funny Vine videos. He could use Twitter advanced search to find local people Tweeting about bug problems. There are hundreds of avenues he could take. Sure, he could even start a Facebook page.

But good marketing advice isn’t like a “hot stock tip” you overhear in the elevator. There’s no one-size-fits-all.

And if you’re working with someone who offers to “set up a Facebook page” as a first step, before learning your business, don’t walk away. Run.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: James Niland via Compfight cc

Yes, You Can Improve Your Marketing ROI

by

By Michelle Rebecca

When it comes to making an investment, we all want to get what we pay for. Nowhere is this more true than in the world of marketing. Your return on investment (ROI) is an important metric for helping you to appraise the effectiveness of your campaign and for making changes as they’re needed. Here are some ideas to help you improve both your ROI and your bottom line.

Choose the Right Landing Page

Sending prospective customers to the wrong landing page after they’ve clicked on one of your links is a little bit like letting department store customers off the elevator onto the wrong floor. Don’t make them do any more work than they have to. In other words, it’s about eliminating as many barriers as you possibly can between them and conversion.

When your customers click on a link to get more information about a particular sale or product, make sure they’re taken directly to what they’re looking for. It’s a simple fix to implement, and it can make all the difference in the world.

Understand How Buying Actually Works

We’re all consumers in one way or another, so we’re all familiar with the different stages of the purchasing funnel, which include awareness, comparison (or research) and, eventually, the buying stage. Knowing where your customers are in the process is important for improving your ROI.

What you need to do is understand and leverage the connection between your marketing efforts and the sales process. Part of this process comes down to targeting serious buyers, rather than browsers, by enticing them with keywords that focus on conversion, such as “Buy Now,” “Purchase” or “Place Order.”

Engage in “Social Listening” with Multiple Accounts

There are many possible roads that lead toward creating constructive discussions about your product or brand. On all of them, fans are left with the impression that their favorite companies genuinely value their input and want to create a dialogue with them.

One thing you might consider is setting up multiple social media accounts: one for general marketing, and another that you can use to engage in more personal conversations with customers. Find out what they like, what they don’t like and what they’d change if they had the chance.

Recognize the Important of Budgeting

Budgets can be fluid, most particularly in online marketing campaigns. Your budget should reflect the particular needs and performance of each of your campaigns on an individual basis. Also make sure you’re constantly researching advertising costs across mediums to ensure that you’re putting your money into the right place.

You’ll want to prioritize the more successful campaigns; pumping more cash into ineffective marketing techniques is going to do you no favors. If you’re seeing stale results, consider switching things up. Often businesses get stuck in one medium of advertising without realizing the new avenues that are constantly popping up on the web. Have you been focused solely on SEO for the past three years? Maybe you should try your hand at content marketing.

Know What’s Going On

One thing you can do to help you zero in on an appropriate budget and campaign strategy is to use valuable tools like Google Alerts, Talkwalker, SocialMention, or Topsy to help you identify popular search terms or trending topics. Knowing which brand terms are being used across the web can help you to shape your campaign appropriately.

Make Conversion Easy

There’s a whole branch of marketing science dedicated to uncovering what types of barriers get in the way of customer conversion. Cart abandonment and bounce back are measurable metrics, but what can you do to help ease customers toward conversion?

It could be as simple as making your site easy to navigate. Place calls-to-action on each page in such a way that they can’t be missed but also won’t get in the way. In this way, you can create the sense that the customer is working toward a goal as they navigate your site.

Use A/B Testing to Guide Your Campaign

One of the most important things you can do to improve your ROI is to experiment with different marketing tactics. Doing simple A/B testing with different ad copy or campaign placement can help struggling campaigns find their footing and illuminate areas where you have the opportunity to improve. You may be surprised to find that even small changes like font size and color could have a significant impact on customer engagement.

Know Your Target Market

We saved this one for last, but it may actually be one of the most important things to remember as you craft your online campaigns. Knowing who your audience is will save you from spending a lot of money on poorly placed ads.

There are plenty of studies available that can help you to better understand the types of people who use various websites. For example: knowing who uses Pinterest can help you decide if taking the time to pin your company’s products is going to be a worthy use of your time.

We all travel in different circles, so pinpointing where your customers are going to be is pretty difficult. Focus instead on making an informed guess on where they are likely to be, and you’ll be on your way toward creating a brilliantly targeted campaign.

Hopefully this has helped to demystify ROI, its challenges and what it means for your business. By making just a few simple changes, you’ll rest easier knowing that your money has been well spent.

Author’s Bio: Michelle is a blogger and freelancer with a passion for social media and blogging. She loves how social media connects people across the globe, and appreciates that blogging gives her the opportunity to voice her thoughts and share advice with an unlimited audience. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.

How To Get Over Your Fear of Sales

by

Twenty thousand bees were swarming just on the other side of the wall.

They were honeybees, and no real threat to our family, but it was pretty much my worst nightmare come true. As the beekeeper came and scooped them off into a cardboard box, his little boy stood next to him, completely unconcerned.

(This is an actual picture of the actual swarm of bees.)

face your fear of sales

Many business owners and entrepreneurs feel the same way about sales that I do about bees. They approach it with stark, abject terror, or they try to get someone else to handle it. “I’m no good at sales.”

First, Understand that Your Fear Isn’t Rational

The most effective sales person is someone who is knowledgeable and passionate about the thing being sold. Guess what? That’s you!

If you have the privilege of sharing your service or product with someone, remember that you’re helping them. You’re only going to gain them as a customer if you provide them with something they need. You don’t need to be apologetic, you don’t need to fret over your pricing, and you don’t need to worry that you’re “bothering” them if you follow up.

Don’t Learn Sales, Learn to Connect with People

One reason why entrepreneurs or consultants fear sales is because it seems to be mysterious and difficult. It’s no mystery. It’s all about uncovering a human connection with the potential buyer.

Yes, you need to be able to articulate your unique value proposition, but it doesn’t need to be a fancy, memorized pitch. Just ask them for their story, and then you get permission to share your story.

Enlist some Technology Tools

If sales isn’t your primary function, it can be daunting to keep track of the contact information, background notes, and requirements of your prospects. Fortunately, there are a lot of inexpensive sales and CRM tools out there that suit the small business owner. Nimble is fantastic for keeping up social networking connections with your contacts, Nutshell has very good pipeline reporting, and OnePageCRM is a one-stop-shop for the sales process. Check them out and find the one that supports your organization’s personality.

Get out of your comfort zone, and stop telling yourself that sales is scary. The next time a sales-related task comes up, use this visualization: you’ve just cooked a delicious meal, and the prospect is a hungry friend.

How would that visualization change the way you approach a “sales” call?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee