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I adore creating practical parenting and pregnancy resources. The educator in me gets such fulfillment from helping parents find success with their children. On Making Motherhood Matter, I share my passion for parenting, as I am also a mama to two little ones. Through blogging, I have found the perfect creative outlet to blend my affection for teaching, parenting, and writing.
The final installment in our social media marketing series is YouTube. YouTube is a fantastic channel for reaching your audience when your products require demonstrations, step-by-step instructions, or detailed explanations. YouTube is also great when you want to create personal connections with your audience or if you enjoy using video content. Your videos might feature a tailored message, a product demo, or a behind-the-scenes view of your workshop and process.
If your business involves building your personal brand to grow your business, Twitter can help you do that. Twitter is often compared to a giant cocktail party and that analogy is correct. Many users are talking about many topics in a single place. Twitter allows you to find and interact with your audience and people who want to listen to your message. You can share articles, courses, webinars, and other information that's curated for your audience. On Twitter, you can also share images of your 'behind-the-scenes' like you might on Instagram. Use the platform to share the same information that you would share in a regular conversation with a real person.
Wendy Manganaro, Founder of Social Abundance Marketing, helps frustrated heart-centered entrepreneurs attract, resonate, and engage with their social media community so that they can feel more productive and stress-free. Before Wendy started coaching she was the social media strategist for such companies as Baby’s Badass Burgers and Source4Teachers. Currently, she enjoys working with entrepreneurs and businesses nationally and internationally. As a natural problem-solver and people connector, Wendy's clients can expect a fresh perspective on their social media strategy and implementation.
If you have a visual brand, it's hard to overstate the importance of Instagram. No other platform gives you the same opportunity to highlight the intricate details of your product's high-quality stitching or the atmosphere in your physical location. Even if you have a service brand, Instagram can be a powerful tool to interact directly with your audience. You can use short videos to capture the customer experience or quotes and inspirational phrases to motivate your audience to action.
Like most social media platforms, Instagram works best when you know how your audience uses it and create consistent images and messages that speak directly to them.
The second social media platform that we cover in this series is Pinterest. We consider Pinterest to be an incredibly valuable platform. Why is it so important? Because people look to Pinterest as a source of information and as a source of products. Your potential customers are more likely to buy your products as a result of seeing them on Pinterest than any other social media platform. Pinterest is also very valuable as a platform for bloggers to share content.
The first platform that we're going to cover in our social media marketing series is Facebook. This content portion is broken into two parts - one for service businesses and one for products companies. However, some things are universal between both service and product providers. No matter what kind of business you run, you'll probably want to create a page for your business and use it to share helpful information with your potential customers. You'll also need to identify who your audience is and determine how they use FB. Do they participate in groups? Do they follow brands? Or do they just check their feed for the latest posts from their friends and family? Once you understand how your ideal customer uses Facebook, you can create your platform strategy.
For the next few weeks, we'll run a series of posts that offer some basics for your social media marketing. If you follow along, you should be able to build a basic strategy for your overall social media marketing and pick up a few best practices and tactics for each of the platforms that we cover. This week, we cover how to choose the right platforms for your business. Starting next week, we'll go through a few of the platforms one-by-one and provide a few tips that will help you get the most out of each of your social accounts.
When you're selecting social media platforms for your account, it's important to consider three major factors.
Tell me a little about you and your company.
My name is Zona Garrett and I am a world traveler, who builds business communities where ever I am located. Genuinely amazed by the things people come up with, Plan to Succeed allows me to have a front row seat as people discover who they are and how that makes a difference in the world around them and supports a lifestyle for them to love.
How long have you owned your own business?
I have owned my business from its conception June 2014.
Your customers and potential customers are a fantastic source of information about your business. Your customer surveys can help you measure customer satisfaction and learn how your clients and customers feel about your business and the experiences they have with you and your team. If you take the time to ask them, they will provide you with valuable feedback that you can use to make improvements to your entire business, from product and offerings to customer service and after-sales care.
When you start a new business, it's important to plan ahead. It may seem like an overwhelming task to create a business plan, but if you take the time to do so, you might be surprised by what you learn. Even if you do not need a business plan to secure funding for your company, it's helpful to think about the finances, marketing, and logistics involved in creating your new brand. When you create your business plan, it will be easier to determine whether you have a viable business idea and where you might be able to improve your idea to create a more profitable business.
Tell me a little about you and your company.
Originally from the awesome state of Minnesota for 40 years. Married with a 10 year-old son, going on 15. Started company as a side line business when I was part of another startup which was still in the development.
How long have you owned your own business?
4 1/2 years
Do you ever feel like you are screaming into a wind tunnel? No matter what market your brand and business are in, consumers are inundated with so many messages every day that it can be difficult to stand out. Even if your market isn't highly competitive, your customers are still seeing tons of messages from the many brands who sell them other products and services. You want your brand to be remembered. You want your audience to hear or see your messages and think, "Yeah, that's me! That product could really help me."
Your customer should be at the center of your business and your marketing messages. If you take the time to identify your customer and create a customer profile (also called an avatar) that embodies your ideal customers or clients, you can create more directed messages that speak to that specific customer group.
Consistency is more than doing or saying the same thing again and again. It's also showing up where and when your potential customers expect to find you. If you create consistency in your messages, presence (both online and off), and schedule, you can form long-term relationships with your clients and customers that will generate incremental business over time.
Consistency should start with your branding. Your message should be present throughout and solidified within your website and any physical presence that you have. Your topics and individual articles can branch a bit further with the messages that you create and share through your email communication and your other customer outreach, but the underlying message should be the same across all channels and customer touchpoints.
Tell me a little about you and your company.
We are two sisters who grew up in a tight-knit family. Like many moms juggling a career and family, we strive to maintain a balance between our busy schedules and healthy lifestyles for our families. As avid supporters of the swaddling method, we both quickly realized we needed a way to keep our babies swaddled while in the car. Within a year of swaddling our little ones and finding nothing like we were looking for on the market, we began development for our own Car Seat Swaddle. This idea has opened the door to our Drool baby bib line and other innovative baby products for the future.
This month, I closed up shop on my ready-to-build arts and crafts business, Twined. I truly enjoyed the work that I did on Twined, but ultimately, I could not keep up with the demands of running two companies. The decision to close my business was incredibly difficult and it took months before I was finally ready to let it go.
It took almost eight months from the time I decided to close the business until I finally took down the website. It was a lengthy process, but I was determined to leave our stakeholders with the best possible impression of the company in the closing process. I've watched other companies close and leave open questions, outstanding bills, and pending orders. I wanted Twined to go out on the best note possible and leave our customers with the understanding that we valued their business and cared about them personally.
At Silver Shade Group, we help our clients with all different kinds of marketing solutions. Sometimes we edit or create print collateral, sometimes we write digital content, and sometimes we create brand or product launch strategies. In every case, the work comes down to the same basic concepts and questions. Who is my customer? What do they want to buy? How can I get my products in front of them at the right time? How do I price my products and services so that those customers will make a purchase? If you can answer these questions, you're on the path to a successful product launch, brand refresh, website update, or strategy session.
Tell me a little about you and your company.
Hei! My name is Ieva, I am a freelance web designer + strategist, working and traveling as a digital nomad. For now, I am located in Croatia although originally I am from the capital city of beautiful Latvia. All my offers, creative activities as well as traveling experiences & design/business/blogging advice can be found on www.therandomp.com.
I've been freelancing for several years and recently I decided to come up with a help for all new freelancers out there. That is how my online course "Ready... Set... Start freelancing!'' was made.
A couple of months ago, we talked about how to do keyword research. That post explains how to find your keywords yourself within the Google Keyword Planner. If you prefer, there are other tools available that will provide you with a list of basic keywords for your website for a fee. You enter your business into their tool and they provide a list of keywords that you can use on your site to increase overall traffic.
