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  • How to successfully market your small business using Facebook

    You know you have to be on Facebook. There’s no question about that. The problem you and thousands, probably tens of thousands, of business owners face is, “I’m on Facebook. Now, what do I do?”

    Profiles are for individuals. Pages are for companies and other organizations.


    Since you have a small business, you’ll want to create a page by going to the main Facebook Pages page and clicking on Create Your Own in the upper right. The only cases in which I recommend only using a Facebook Profile are when you’re a public figure of some sort like a politician, celebrity, or sports star. In those cases, you can just allow people to subscribe to the updates you post publicly on your profile, and this way, you don’t have to bother splitting your attention and time between a profile and a page.

    Interact with Your Fans through Asking Questions

    For you to attract and maintain friends and customers on Facebook, you have to give them an experience that they 1) value and 2) can’t get anywhere else. Sadly, most small businesses think they can just post pictures of the latest products or bits of information about what happened recently at the company, and people will love that. The truth is that posting about products often makes people feel like you’re just asking them to by and that the goings on in your office, store, or whatever else have to be really exciting. Otherwise, your posts are just noise.

    Let’s say you run a showroom that sells bath furnishings. Your customers are people remodeling, or building, their own bathrooms and their contractors. When one of them comes into your showroom, pick up on what they really like. Then, after they leave, see if they like you on Facebook…hopefully, you asked them to before they left though. Post a picture of something you think they might like and mention the person with something like, “We thought that Lin Wormley might love this for his new bathroom. What do you think, Lin?”

    When you mention one person by name, it’s common for others to take notice, so you might get some likes or even comments from other people. I worked on some things like this with a coffee shop once. Frequently, we would post a beautiful looking latte or even a new odd creation from a barista, and we would tag a customer, whose name we had just learned. The thing that we had to ask for from the staff was, “Give us a customer’s name, talk to them while you’re making their drink so that you learn about what interests them, and then tell them that we’ll give them a shout out on our page the next time we have something they’ll like.”

    Post Interesting Content

    As a Facebook marketer, you need to attract friends, start a conversation, and keep it going. Conversation pieces need to be selected carefully and should be of public interest. Make sure that what you post or share in terms of videos, photos, audio, or ideas is interesting and will keep people talking about it. Be vigilant about the content you post on your Facebook page, keeping it fresh and up to date.

    One of the best ways to figure out what’s working for you is to set a schedule where you have a content type – video, audio, trivia, news, etc – combined with a message type – question, statement, customer call out, humor, etc. Put together a schedule where you cycle through every possible combination of these and then see which ones got the most response. For bonus points, you can also track this by time of day and day of week to really see what works for you and your audience. Once you find out, focus on the things that give you the best return.

    Facebook Insights will give you a lot of information on what’s working, but my preference is to use something like PageLever or Edgerank Checker because these and other similar services do almost all of the measurement work for you.

    Have Contests to Promote Fan Building

     

    We all love to win things, and we love the thrill of knowing that we just might be picked for a contest or competition. It makes us feel special. You need to create this feeling for your fans. If you’re a local furniture shop, hold a contest where everyone that likes your page and gives you their email address will be entered to win a certain piece of furniture or a $100 gift card. If you’re a plumber, give away an hour’s worth of work anytime that person wants it.

    One of the keys here is to not just get people to like your page and give you their email address (hello email marketing), but also to make sure that your page is worth liking whether you were to give away something or not. Having a page that posts engaging, interesting, and compelling content ensures that your new fans will not just unlike you as soon as the contest ends.

    Conclusion

    While social media is great and Facebook can do a lot for you, don’t forget that you don’t ultimately control your Facebook page like you do your store or website or email list. If Facebook decides to make a change to how it works tomorrow, you can’t do anything about it. As a result, you should cultivate the best page you can, but remember to motivate your fans to sign up for email, give you a call, or connect to you through as many other channels as you have so that, if anything ever does happen to your Facebook page, you’ll have another channel to connect to your customers through.

  • EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey

    Who?

    Anyone interested in leadership or growing a team or business.

    When?

    Put it in your queue.

    Why?

    This is a well-written book from a passionate and experienced entrepreneur/writer/speaker/trainer.

    Best Quote

    Zig Ziglar says, “People say motivation doesn’t last, well neither does bathing, that is why we recommend both daily.”

    Review

    I didn’t want to like this book. Dave Ramsey seems like a great guy, but for some reason, I want to find something to disagree with him about. Unfortunately, he has written a book that demonstrates passion, focus, dedication, and his own his ethics, and I find that difficult to question.

    In EntreLeadership, Dave Ramsey talks through his trials and tribulations as a real estate agent and leadership and management trainer and speaker over 20 years in business. Whether you agree with his conservative, Christian values or not, they shine through bright and clear and help you to see that Dave Ramsey advocates that leaders build employees that are not clock punchers or seat fillers, but rather entrepreneurs and leaders in their own right. He conveys this through discussing management techniques that he has developed and problems that he has handled in the past.

    Last Word

    I was impressed by EntreLeadership mostly Dave Ramsey seems to have put so much of himself into it that you come away feeling like he’s been right there guiding you the whole time. Reading EntreLeadership is like having Dave Ramsey there giving a private training, so while I wouldn’t say that you should run out right now to get this book, I do recommend that you put EntreLeadership on your reading list and get to it soon.

  • Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath

    Who?

    Anyone that needs their ideas to affect others – teachers, managers, entrepreneurs, preachers, parents, activists, etc.

    When?

    Put it in your queue. If it takes you a long time to go through your reading list, move Made to Stick to the top.

    Why?

    Made to Stick is a great examination of why some ideas stick and others do not. This is immensely valuable for anyone that works in an idea or attention business.

    Best Quote

    The Curse of Knowledge: when we are given knowledge, it is impossible to imagine what it’s like to LACK that knowledge.

    Review

    The best thing that you can learn from this book is that less is more. As a person that lives and dies by their ability to effectively share an idea, taking the lessons of Made to Stick to heart will take you leaps and bounds ahead of those around you. When you need to make a sale, leave your audience wanting more. Need to raise money? Make your pitch as simple as possible. Lecturing your teen? Shorten your lecture. People don’t want to hear you talk. They want to hear themselves talk.

    The worst thing you can do is ignore the curse of knowledge. Chip and Dan’s book gives example after example of why we have such a hard time believing that everyone will see it our way if we just give them enough information. Coming away from this book, you will hopefully be able to persuade your audience using an elevator pitch rather than a speech.

    Last Word

    Knowledge can be a curse when you’re in the idea business. You get blinded by what you know and take for granted that not everyone shares the same knowledge set or relates to it in the same way, and as a result, you do your best to give enough information to persuade your audience with facts and grand arguments and plenty of background. When in reality, shortening and narrowing your idea is often more effective.

  • How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good Communication by Larry King

    Who?

    Anyone interested in increasing self-confidence, meeting more people, and improving their personal or professional relationships.

    When?

    As soon as you realize that face-to-face communication is important for your life.

    Why?

    How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere is so short, written by a very experienced and confident conversationalist, and to the point that it’s a shame not to take the little bit of time you need to breeze through it.

    Best Quote

    You cannot talk to people successfully if they think you are not interested in what they have to say or you have no respect for them.

    Review

    Like How to Win Friends and Influence People, How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere really seems like feel-good self-help book that will tell you just to be nice, and if you do it well, good things will come to. It’s not. Yes, there are lessons in Larry King’s book that deal with being nice, smiling, and acting like you’re interested in others, but there is much more to it than that.

    Larry King is one of the best interviewers around. He knows how to get information out of the most belligerent, reserved, or weird people you can find. How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere teaches you how to:

    1. More effectively start conversations.
    2. Listen for key points of pain, need, sympathies, wants, and more in others.
    3. Give a speech that sticks with your audience.

    Last Word

    How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere is a short, fast read from one of the most seasoned and experienced people in the field of, well, talking. The lessons Larry King imparts are simple, but if you apply them to your life, I guarantee that you will find yourself getting ahead faster than ever.

  • Management Tips: The 4 worst words to hear

    “Whatever you say, boss.”

    Okay, they don’t have to be those exact words, but you know that, as a manager, you have problems as soon as you start to hear anything like that.

    Which of your conversations are crucial?

    I read a great book not long ago on the topic of crucial conversations. One of the big things that stuck with me was the idea of Fight or Flight.

    When we have personal conflicts that we are not willing to discuss or deal with, the most frequent responses are Fight and Flight. In Fight, we try to justify, tell the other person why they’re wrong, and otherwise make a disagreement worse by being aggressive, uncooperative, or attacking. In Flight, we don’t deal with the problem. Instead, we ignore it or just give in.

    If you can’t think of a time when you’ve experienced Flight, just recall anytime that you didn’t agree with someone’s choice, and when things went badly, you said, “Hey, I didn’t make that decision.” If you just let the person make the decision without talking with them about your thoughts. You were in Flight mode. If you tried to talk to them, but ended up arguing instead of really communicating, you were in Fight mode.

    Building a cohesive team
    via dnak

    Building a cohesive team

    For years, you’ve been told about the importance of building a strong team with a unique culture and people that share a vision. The thing that baffles me is the headstrong managers that think this means just getting everyone to go along with their vision. It’s like some of us tell ourselves, “If everyone says yes, I’ve done my job.”

    In most cases, no. No, you haven’t.

    Getting people to agree with you has little to do with them saying yes and a lot to do with them feeling yes. Think about it. How many times have you disagreed with someone and eventually said, “Alright, whatever you want. Do it your way”? That is flight, and that kills teams.

    Your people are not unthinking objects.

    I read once that people with autism have a difficult time viewing others as more than objects in their environment – no different from a pen or a door. If the other person does not explicitly say what they are thinking or what they want, the man (or woman) with autism can’t interpret what is left unsaid, and stay with me here, this is where managers go wrong. The worst managers in this respect are high energy and high passion. They do a bad job reading their people because they are so busy and so fast moving that they don’t take the time to notice what their employees are really saying when they say, “Whatever you say, boss.”

    So, while high energy and passion work well on the individual level, they can often be team killers.

    Often, consensus is not necessary, but when you say you value it and that it’s important to your team moving forward, don’t be stupid and just stop at yes. You have to know that your team actually believes in the direction you move them. Otherwise, you end up with a lot of yesses and little, to no, actual support. Going down that path leads you to a team of disheartened, unthinking, uncaring employees lead by a clueless leader with a false sense of Team.

    Answer to your problems
    via UMBRELLA SHOT

    The answer

    Every time you communicate with your people from today onward get to a shared yes, and don’t force agreement. Teams don’t succeed as a result of one person, but they do fail as a result of one person – You, the boss. So, if you can’t get to a shared yes when it’s necessary, step back and begin a conversation. Don’t force your views. Don’t justify. Don’t argue, and don’t deal with any of that from your people.

    Require and expect genuine, thoughtful conversation, and accept that while you won’t always get it, you are also not always right – whether your people say, “Whatever you say, boss,” or not.

  • How to effectively optimize your email newsletter for a higher conversion rate

    Regardless of the studies you read, somewhere north of 90% of all internet users check email. Roughly the same percentage use search engines, so you can’t afford to ignore either. The thing is that there is a major difference between email and search engine optimization.

    Search engine optimization is great for building awareness and acquiring new customers while email is best at retaining and upgrading existing customers.

    Your marketing plans should include search, social, PPC, and other awareness building channels to get new sales and email sign ups, but once you have those sales and sign ups, optimizing your email campaigns can result in increased revenue per customer and in greater overall profitability. Just as an example, one email campaign that I helped to optimize just last year resulted in enough revenue to pay for an entire year’s worth of a full digital marketing program.

    Know Your Audience

    Know your audience
    Sometimes, the only thing you’ll get with an email sign up is an email address. When this is the case, send a “Getting to Know You” email, where you offer something like a 10% discount for the person to fill out a survey in which you conveniently ask for more information like their location, gender, interests, and more. Alternatively, you can use a service like Qwerly or Rapleaf to get information on almost any email address. This information should be appended to your master database and used in your marketing.

    By knowing more about your audience, you can send special offers only to those that haven’t bought in a while, use calls-to-action that appeal more to men or women or people in certain parts of the country, design different versions of your email to go to people that love sports or gaming or anything else. The more that you can increase the relevance of your email to the recipient, the greater chance you will have of them responding.

    Provide Incentives

    Provide incentives
    You need to provide your email newsletter subscribers something that they can’t otherwise obtain. There are many other businesses providing similar products and services such as yours, and you therefore have to give your subscribers a reason as to why they should sign up with you. Give good and relevant content, yes, but then?

    Create an incentive by offering a sign-up bonus, weekly or monthly bonuses, discounts or bonuses on every purchase your subscribers make, giving them access to very relevant information about your business and affiliates, among other freebies. Reward your customers with a coupon if they like your posts on your social media pages, or enter them into a jackpot when they refer their friends to your website.

    WARNING – Do not overuse incentives though. You don’t want to become like American car dealers that can’t sell anything unless it’s severely discounted, and you don’t want to be one of those services that always sends a 10% off coupon after I abandon my cart. Use incentives only to move you toward your goal and only when they are highly relevant to the recipient.

    Promote

    Promote
    Social media pages for your business allow you to cross-promote. Promote your Twitter and Facebook pages in your email newsletters, and promote your email newsletters on your Twitter and Facebook pages. When you share content only within one channel, you give your constituents a reason to jump channels. For example, let’s say you’re a florist. If you share a video on how to keep flowers alive for longer within your email list and then you tweet that I can get that video if I sign up, there’s a good chance that I will sign up.

    Conversely, you can put in your email newsletter that people that like your Facebook page sometimes get access to deals no one else sees. If I receive your emails, what do you think I’m going to do when you tell me that?

    Use Creativity

    Use creativity
    No customer will read through a boring newsletter all the way to the end. Make your newsletter captivating, full of fun, and entertaining so that your customers can not only read through it all, but are also left eagerly awaiting your next newsletter. Your headlines have the ability to capture the attention of your readers, so keep them short, sweet, complete and specific.

    However much you write unique and interesting content though, no one will read it if the headline is boring and flat. You can test the creativity of your newsletter by reading it and honestly gauging if you would read through it all if you were a customer. Another way to test subject lines, headlines, and other parts of your marketing is to use PPC to see which headlines get clicked on more, split test your email sends to see which subject lines get opened more, or even email a few of your subscribers and say, “If we wrote about X or Y, which would be more interesting to you?”

    Implement a Mobile Version

    Implement a mobile version
    Many people read their emails on their mobile devices, and you can benefit from this also. Organize your email newsletters into formats that can be easily read on both computer monitors and mobile devices. Avoid jam-packing too much information into each email newsletter that will affect navigation and readability. There are several free plug-ins and themes that can be used to format your newsletters to suit your mobile device customers. Make your e-newsletters mobile friendly and more subscribers are likely to read them.

    When I design emails, I generally try to keep them to 480 pixels in width. This ensures that they fit easily on iPhones and most Android devices, and it’s typically not so narrow that it looks odd in Outlook, Hotmal, Gmail, and other email providers.

  • The lie of the social media conversation

    Over 10 years ago, The Cluetrain Manifesto gave us the phrase “markets are conversations,” and with the advent of social media, we stretched that to imply that both individuals and brands should be conversing, but despite well-worn examples of some brands conversing with their customers, I’m not convinced there really is a social media conversation for brands.

    Brands don’t want to converse with their clients. They want to sell more stuff. For every @ComcastCares, Zappos, or Microsoft help channel, how companies completely ignore online engagement opportunities? I, myself, have written about Comcast, Logitech, Men’s Wearhouse, and Sandals customer service only to have not one of them even acknowledge the posts, and in the case of Men’s Wearhouse, I was praising them, which would have been a softball for any of their customer service representatives monitoring blogs.

    Social media is complicated
    via wizgd

    Individuals engaging in social media feels normal. It’s a lot like talking to friends, or at least people you have something in common with. Brands engaging in social media feels odd, but we want it to be right. If brands can talk to you through social media, they should. Shouldn’t they?

    Valuing social media is really hard.

    The problem is that we expect brands to respond to tweets, Facebook Page complaints, blog posts, and more, but they don’t want to, and they have to justify spending time on paying attention to you in social media, which is hard to value properly, rather than a plethora of competing channels that are significantly easier to value:

    • On-site.
    • Telephone.
    • Email.
    • Website.
    • Advertising.
    • Broadcast.
    • And more.

    I worked specifically on social media measurement for 2 years of my career and have spent a large portion of the following 3 years continuing to work in this space, and while social media is measurable, it is difficult because we don’t always have comparable cross-channel metrics and sometimes have to set company-specific conversions or valuations. For example, in every social media channel, you can value activity partially by the users driven from those channels into your website, phone system, or other more traditional channels. If X spend $X in salaries, tools, or vendors on Twitter and Y number of twitterers visit your website and buy products or service worth $Z, you have an easy ROI calculation.

    BUT that’s not everything. How much is customer service on Twitter worth? Well, if you spend $A answering questions that help B number of twitterers that do not call in and use up employee time answering their questions individually, just look at how much money you spent answering those questions on Twitter and how much you saved by not answering them individually.

    Now, how about the branding, awareness, goodwill, and all of those other fuzzy things?

    Cat got your tongue
    via BarelyFitz

    Cat got your tongue?

    Thought so.

    You get buzz metrics from social media, but that doesn’t make branding, awareness, or goodwill any more measurable. Rather, it just means that we get tough-to-measure metrics paired with still-somewhat-foreign media, and that equals out to a reluctance to budget marketing dollars toward these channels.

    And, so it comes back to markets.

    Whether you like it or not, brands value markets they can measure first, markets they understand second, and only then markets they’re told are supposed to be valuable third, and social media in most cases falls into that third category.

    So, next time Frigidaire, or Dairy Queen, or your local dry cleaner does not pay attention to your social media praise or hatred, don’t be shocked. You have been sold the lie of the social media conversation, and they make decisions based on dollars.

  • Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

    Who?

    Anyone that has the remotest interest in business, management, entrepreneurship, self-improvement, Apple, Steve Jobs, etc.

    When?

    Reasonably soon.

    Why?

    It was a very good book.

    Best Quote

    I hate it when people call themselves “entrepreneurs” when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on.

    Review

    My dad and I listened to this book on a cross country drive. My dad is a smart and curious guy, but he’s not a business man per se (despite being an entrepreneur) nor is he particularly interested in business. That being said, he found Steve Jobs to be very interesting as did I.

    Isaacson has written a compelling, complete, and sometimes biting biography of one of recent history’s most influence businessmen. While many people wear their What Would Steve Do bracelets and seemingly bow at the Jobs alter, I have yet to meet a person that has read this book that says they would want to work with him, and that is one of the strongest aspects of Isaacson’s story. He seems to have been so true to the reality of Jobs and his life that readers really get a sense of what kind of person he was.

    Last Word

    On one hand, there is a lot to learn about business from this book, but on the other, Steve Jobs is purely a curiosity read. It’s so entertaining and engaging, and you might just come away from it with a few ideas for your business, so go out and get your copy soon.

  • The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

    Who?

    Read The 4-Hour Workweek if you are interested in productivity, efficiency, or entrepreneur.

    When?

    Don’t rush.

    Why?

    It’s a good book, but not everyone loves it.

    Best Quote

    For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.

    Review

    When I first read this book in 2010, I was very impressed. Some of The 4-Hour Workweek comes across like a get rich quick sales pitch from a young guy with far too much bravado. Once you get past that though, it’s easy to see that Tim Ferriss’ book is packed full of strategies and tactics that really can help you do a better job in your current position, make yourself more efficient, and help you to progress faster in a lot of different situations.

    The most important aspect of the book is actually its structure:

    1. Define – Define your objectives. What is important to you?
    2. Eliminate – Eliminate distractions and inefficiencies.
    3. Automate – Automate your cash flow byt building something that requires as little of you as possible.
    4. Liberate – Liberate yourself from everything that you don’t want to be. Don’t want to work 9-5? Don’t. Don’t want to work in an office? Don’t. This is the step where you really start reaching your goals.

    Last Word

    Although I prefer audiobooks, I highly recommend that you get the paper or ebook version of the expanded and updated 4-Hour Workweek because this book is much easier to digest when you’re actually reading it, and the expanded and updated version has actual case studies from Tim Ferriss’ readers demonstrating the viability of his approach in many other circumstances.

  • Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout

    Who?

    Anyone that has never taken a marketing class should read this book.

    When?

    As soon as you begin doing any marketing or product development work.

    Why?

    Positioning is a great Marketing 101 explanation of branding, extending, and even developing a product.

    Best Quote

    Today’s marketplace is no longer responsive to the strategies that worked in the past. There are just too many products, too many companies, and too much marketing noise.

    Review

    If you studied marketing and/or work in it, you can probably skip this book, but if you do read it, you’ll probably enjoy it. I found the stories and examples rather simple, but the person that said I must read it, and isn’t a marketer by the way, thought it was amazing. The thing that marketers will enjoy in this book is all of the solid stories about how large brands tackled their problems.

    Some main points that really stick out:

    1. Your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what your customers say it is.
    2. People are inundated with information and attempts at communication. Forcing your way into someone’s life will almost always not work.
    3. Change minds by simplifying your message.
    4. If you can’t win in your category, create a new one. For a more recent example than the book gives, this is what Tim Ferriss did when he made up “lifestyle design.”
    5. 80% of learning and sensing is done visually, so make your product visually attractive. I don’t know if this had a name when Positioning was written, but I recommend researching sensation transference.

    Last Word

    Even though you might find yourself thinking, “Yeah, I know this already,” Positioning is a great reference book to have on your bookshelf. I will recommend it to young marketers I work with in the future, and I recommend it to you.

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