Blog Archives - Page 5 of 111 - The Social Media Advisor

January 30, 2022
Social Media Strategy

How to Amplify Your Small Business Impact

I am so excited about the opportunities that are available to small businesses in the coming year.

Also, I’m a little nervous since the traditional marketing methods are becoming less effective.

As a result, small businesses need to be creative and strategic with their marketing efforts.

As a small business owner, you wear many hats and even more responsibilities. But with some forward thinking and strategic planning, you can have a significant impact on your community and the world.

How can your small business make a big impact in 2022? Here are some ideas:

Build a Community

The best small businesses are the ones with a community around them. They are the ones that tell a story, build trust and have a loyal following. These communities, when properly engaged and motivated, can help you make an even bigger impact as a business owner this year. Leveraging that trust in a genuine way is powerful. But, first, you have to have a community of your own to leverage.

Become an Industry Influencer

Whether you’re a health coach or an entrepreneur selling gourmet dog food online, if you’re making money online, you’re an influencer. The concept of influencers is relatively new but growing like crazy. According to an article on Forbes, there are now over 1 million influencers worldwide, and the number is growing by 10% each year.

In an age where every small business owner can be a thought leader, don’t leave potential on the table by keeping your head down and just working on projects.

Everyone loves learning new things and gaining new knowledge. If you want to become an influencer in your industry, then you will need to create great content that people want to hear about. You don’t have to be a professional writer or journalist, but you do need to be a good storyteller.

Get Active

Be active in your community – Getting involved in local charities or hosting fundraisers can help you connect with other business owners and members of your community. These connections are the fuel for the impact you want to make. Whether you already have an idea to improve your local community, or are seeking to join others who are making waves, the first step is to get out into the world and meet people. Have important discussions about local needs and possible solutions.

Here’s the thing: we all have the ability to make a bigger impact than we think. It might not be in large, overarching ways, but that doesn’t mean our voices don’t matter. In fact, even small steps often lead to big results. And if all of us work together—in our individual ways—we might just spark some serious change this year. Which means success for you AND your community!

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

January 23, 2022
Relationship Marketing

How to Amplify Your Relationship Marketing

Thanks to social media and online marketing, we’re all acutely aware of the importance of online branding. There are some great tools out there for small businesses to build a brand that spreads virally across the Internet. But most brands are missing something important: a focus on relationship marketing.

Lead generation is a strategy that focuses on getting new customers, using techniques like email, cold calls, and ads to attract new clients. Relationship marketing works differently. It focuses on building existing relationships between you and your clients so they will come back to you and evolve into brand advocates.

Changing the Focus

Instead of wasting money on print ads and TV commercials, you should focus more on relationship marketing strategies. Relationship marketing means maintaining long-term relationships with your customers so they feel comfortable buying from you over and over again. When done right, it’s a lot cheaper than traditional forms of advertising, and it’s also much more effective because real people are talking about you without having to pay them to do so.

Relationship marketing is all about building trust. No matter what kind of product or service you provide, if your customers can’t trust that they’re getting a high quality product or service at a fair price, they won’t buy from you. So it’s important to build a reputation for quality and value in the marketplace. Once you change the focus from leads and sales, to building relationships – you’ll find that your business not only retains more customers and leads to more referrals, but you’ll find the additional satisfaction that comes with building a loyal fan base as well.

Be Active, Not Passive

The key to relationship marketing is creating connections and making people feel special. When you connect with people on a personal level and help them solve their problems, they will naturally want to do business with you again. This doesn’t happen when you focus all of your energy on completing projects. You have to be intentional about building and nurturing relationships for this to work.

There are a lot of ways to build relationships with your customers. In some cases, it might be as simple as thanking them for their business or offering them suggestions based on their preferences. The point is that you need a strategy for reaching out, staying in touch, and following up with your clients and customers.

Collaboration Over Competition

In our society, we’ve gotten accustomed to competing with each other. We’re encouraged to believe that we have to be better than everyone else in order to succeed. But this mindset can end up costing you in the long run because you may find yourself feeling isolated, stressed out, and overwhelmed.

The truth is that collaboration is a much more effective strategy for marketing your business. In fact, the human brain is hardwired for cooperation. We are social creatures who thrive on connection rather than competition.

Build relationships with the vendors, companies, trade shows, and competitors in your industry. You won’t regret knowing these people when you need them and they’ll all know who to refer when someone needs what you do!

Build Your Community

Create a community. In an age where everyone has an opinion and millions of people are posting their thoughts online, it can be hard to get attention. Create a place online where people can connect, share ideas and provide valuable information. No matter what business you’re in, chances are there’s an online community of people who interact on the same topic or are interested in the same product or service you offer. If there isn’t one, why not create one? Provide valuable information and people will come.

Relationship marketing leads to higher conversion rates: Studies show that businesses who invest in relationship marketing see much higher conversion rates on their email campaigns, social media posts and other online communication efforts. People are more likely to buy from those they know, like and trust so creating relationships with customers helps convince them of your credibility and reliability. You’ll also be able to create better social media content that resonates with followers and boosts engagement on your posts.

Relationship marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing out there. It will help your business grow, provide you with new leads, and help you make a name for yourself. But it’s not easy to do. If it was, everyone would already be doing it.

The first step is to shift your focus from sales to service. I promise that if you treat your people well, like friends and family, they will be loyal and they will refer you to others. The sales will happen naturally.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

January 16, 2022
Social Media Marketing

How to Amplify Your Online Presence

These days, it’s crucial for small businesses to have an online presence. Anyone with a product, service, or message can get in front of targeted audiences. However, this is easier said than done, and it requires a lot more than just setting up a website. But how exactly do you build an online presence? I’m going to share with you tips I recommend when helping my clients build an online presence.

Your Website

The first thing any small business needs to do is build a website for their company. No website? No online presence at all. If a potential lead cannot find anything about you online, this discourages them from moving further. It’s much easier to simply look for someone else in your industry/area/expertise that has a more robust online presence instead.

Once you’ve got a great website, you need people to find it. That’s where search engine optimization comes in. SEO is the art and science of getting your site to rank higher in search results — and that’s something you need if you want more visitors to your site.

Trying to become an expert at SEO can be an exercise in frustration. There are many strategies and tactics and they’re constantly evolving. However, there are some basics that will help you get started.

1) Keyword research is a great starting point because it helps you determine the best keywords to use on your website and how to use them effectively. Choose keywords that are highly relevant to your content, but don’t overstuff pages with keywords.

2) Avoid duplicate content. Search engines punish sites that have duplicate content because it’s seen as an indication of spammy manipulation tactics. If you write content for your website but want to feature that information on someone else’s site as well, it’s best to rewrite it enough to get the same point across without just hitting copy and paste to avoid sharing duplicate content.

3) Optimize your site and content for mobile devices. More people are searching on their mobile devices than ever.

4) Create quality (unique and high-quality) content for your website, blog or ecommerce store.

5) Optimize your website for search engines. Take time to learn basic SEO (search engine optimization) best practices, and make sure your site has a unique title tag and meta description on every page. Don’t forget to include alt text on images! This will allow search engines to better understand your content, which will improve how it shows up in search results.

6) Visit Google Analytics. This free tool from Google lets you see how many people visit your site, how long they stay and what they’re looking at, among other things. It’s also a great place to start diagnosing any problems with your site. If lots of visitors arrive and almost immediately bounce, it could be that the information on your site isn’t relevant or useful enough to keep their attention.

Reputation Management

It is a good idea to get yourself some reviews on your products or services online so that you can also get your reputation going. Fantastic websites for gathering reviews are your Google My Business page, your Facebook account, and directories like Yelp. While you can post testimonials on your website, the impact of a posted review from a happy customer on one of these websites is not only great for building credibility but it does wonders for your company’s online presence!

Create Consistent Content

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to get your name out there on the web. A blog allows you to share industry insights and news, post helpful tips and guides that people can use, and share interesting content that’s relevant and specific to your brand. It’s a great way for website visitors to learn more about what you do and why. It also keeps your website fresh and current, which the search engines love.

Blogging helps your target audience find you and showcases that you are an authority in your industry. It also gives you fantastic content to repurpose and share in your newsletter an on your social media accounts.

Write good content for your blog and optimize it for search engines. Make sure each page of your site has at least 300 words of unique text — 1,500 words is even better! Google loves fresh content, so update your blog at least once a month or include a “recent posts” section on your homepage.

Connect with Influencers

If you really want to make an impact, the best way to get your content shared is through influencers. These are people who are recognized authorities in a particular niche or industry, and have a big following on social media.

The trick is to find them and encourage them to share your content with their audience. The good news is that the Internet has made doing this easier than ever. Here’s how:

Find the influencers. This can be done through a number of online sites and directories. A great place to start is BuzzSumo (https://buzzsumo.com/) which also offers free tools for discovering content that’s performing well on social media. Once you’ve identified some influencers, reach out to them individually and ask if they’d like a copy of your e-book or report, are interested in a partnership or collaboration, or if they’d like to be featured on your social media.

Having a strong online presence is imperative for small business success today. With the internet, you can reach millions of customers across the globe. But this also means that your competition is bigger, more diverse and growing all the time.

Creating and maintaining a strong online presence is easier than ever before. Gone are the days of expensive banner ads, costly newspaper advertisements and the like. Today, you can get your business in front of thousands of potential customers without spending more than you can afford. Are you ready to step up and make the most of your online presence?

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

January 9, 2022
Social Media Strategy

How to Amplify Your Social Media Marketing

The social media landscape is always changing, and it can be hard to stay on top. When it comes to your business, you need to take advantage of the opportunities social media presents in order to find success for your company. Here’s how you can amplify your social media efforts in 2022.

Change It Up

Social media is the number one platform marketers use to connect with customers. But while staying relevant on social media is essential, it’s not enough by itself. The new challenge is to figure out how to amplify your social media marketing and reach more people in a world where consumers are growing increasingly distrustful of brands. The key is to look for fresh ways to “bring value” to your customers and community through your content, products and services. An obvious first step is to provide helpful information that helps them do something better or easier. As always, be authentic. Your customers want to hear from you, so if you’re not providing them with useful information or entertaining content, then they’ll move on to someone else. The key is to provide value and encourage interaction.

Change Your Perspective

Social media is no longer a trend. It’s a way of life. Social media marketing shouldn’t be looked at as a one-off activity, but rather as the way your business is run in the 21st century. Don’t treat your Facebook page (Instagram account, LinkedIn profile, etc.) as just another layer on top of your website or blog; instead, make it unique and let it stand alone as a social destination for people who want to read or watch content from you.

Treat your social media accounts like you would treat a customer service line or sales desk. You want to help your followers feel valued and make sure they’re satisfied with the content you’re posting. It should be easy to comment and connect with others through social channels, as well as easy to find what you need when they are looking for assistance.

Transparency, authenticity, and reliability — these are the pillars of trust. When you prioritize trust in your business over everything else, you build a community that values your business. And when you value your community, they will support you on social media.

Change Your Strategy

A social media strategy will typically include the type of content that you’re going to create, how often you’re going to share it, and where you’re going to post it.

Before you can develop a successful social media strategy, you need to know what your goal is. Are you trying to attract new customers? Increase engagement with current customers? Drive leads? Each objective requires a different strategy, one that takes into account the best ways to reach your target market. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to your website, then you might consider boosting posts on Facebook advertising if your target audience spends lots of time on that platform. If your main goal is to generate leads, then you might focus more on paid advertising on LinkedIn or Twitter advertising depending on where your target audience spends time online. By identifying exactly how and where you want to reach people, you can tailor your efforts accordingly and be more effective overall.

How can you improve your social media marketing? Focus on quality over quantity, have a strong digital presence that is backed up by unique and helpful content, and use analytics to find out where your audience resides and what they are looking for.

In the end, though, it’s important to remember that today isn’t so different from the past. There’s nearly always a new technological development on the horizon. But social media marketing is still social media marketing: you still have to create content that your audience finds valuable, relevant, and suitable for sharing if you want to succeed. The new tactics might change over time, but the basic fundamentals will always apply. For now and in the future, that means always putting your customers first.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

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