#AuthenticallyAwesome – An Authentic Branding Strategy

As a small business owner, you already understand the value of branding. If you’ve been following my blog, you’re also aware of the importance of personal branding. Now that you have the fundamentals, let’s talk about where many people go wrong with branding. We spend so much time putting together our strategy and our content that occasionally authenticity gets lost.
Have you ever come across any of the following?
  •      A brand that didn’t ring true to its own messaging?
  •      A business owner whose message felt forced?
  •      Content that didn’t seem to match up with the projected brand?
  •      Inconsistency or lack of clarity in a brand’s content?
  •      Drastic swings in message without a proper re-branding strategy?
I’m sure at some point, you’ve witnessed at least one of the above scenarios. It happens. Just because you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, doesn’t mean that you are a branding expert.
Authenticity
The path to authenticity lies in taking the time to discover who you really are. What does your company provide, what pain points does it solve, and how do you provide solutions to problems? What is your message? How do you want to present it to the world? These are the questions that have to be answered because, without this knowledge, you are not able to be authentic in your marketing.
“Authentic companies don’t try to be something they’re not, but instead recognize what they are, what they do best, and what customers value most about them.” 
Vision Critical

Consistency  
Where many businesses miss the boat is failing to remain consistent. Consistency is a vital aspect of branding. Your company, and your team, must live your brand story every day. It needs to be shared, in a variety of ways, as often as possible with your target audience. A clear, concise, consistent message will make a bigger impact than just throwing whatever out there and hoping for the best result. Understand your brand, understand your message and then develop a process where you are sharing high-quality, authentic contentwith your followers.
Brand Loyalty
Authenticity has a powerful return on investment. Honesty, integrity, and candor are highly sought after and valued. Opening up a window, allowing yourself to be a bit exposed and vulnerable, breeds trust within your audience. That trust converts into brand loyalty. Loyal brand ambassadors are the best, FREE, marketing strategy a company can have. Your tribe will not only follow and engage with you – those who trust your message will share it, whenever and wherever they can. This is the real return on being authentic in your marketing.

Don’t be afraid to shine. You have to put yourself out there. Toss aside the masks you tend to use for protection when you face the world and have faith that your authentic message will draw the right clients to your doorstep. This is a fundamental foundation to #BeAwesome with your branding.

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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.

#EducationMatters – Educate Your Clients on All Your Services

Are you educating your clients on all of your services? You can’t assume a person will know everything your company offers based on a quick description on your social media pages (if they even read that). You also shouldn’t assume your clients know everything about you. It’s just not realistic.
Don’t rush out and flood your mailing list and social media platforms with a flood of updates, or one long unending message about what you do. That will likely frustrate your clients and make your reputation suffer. So how do you educate your clients without being spammy about it?
Here are some suggestions that will help you educate your clients AND get them intrigued about your services. You don’t have to do all of them, but consider one or two.
  • Update your site. Consolidate all your services into one informative page. Make sure it’s easy to read and understand. Break down each service into a three sentence (or less) description. ProTip: It’s also a good idea to develop a FAQ that covers common regular questions and any you receive about services. If you have one, make sure you link the FAQ on this information page.
  • Each service you provide should have a more detailed explanation. Whether you do this by individual web pages or as expanded tabs on your information page is completely up to you, but it needs to be there.
  • Create a blog postabout your services. Be informative, and explain how you help the client with each service. It can be as detailed as you like, but you can easily keep it as brief as the site update suggestion from above. Then, post your blog post link on all your social media sites. Make sure your title is eye-catching and the first three sentences are intriguing. Future questions can be directed at either this blog post or the information page you make.
  • Do you have two or more services that are normally purchased together? If so, why not combine them into a package that clients can purchase at a discount? This promotion can also be a great way to mention other services you provide. This one is excellent for mailing lists, by the way.
  • Choose a day of the week to inform your clients on all social media accounts about your business. Then, select one aspect of your business and talk about that. It helps to have an image to go with your post. That image should be easy to read and understand. One of my clients uses a definition image where they list a service they provide and then write out that two to three sentence description. Make the background eye catching. You should know that white text with a black outline can go on any background, so you should use that for consistency and viewing ease from mobile devices.
These are just some ways to inform your clients of your services. One thing to keep in mind: your audience for Twitter isn’t the same as Facebook. Nor is your mailing list the same as your Instagram. Expect that your clients aren’t all aware of the same information. Repurpose your content instead of setting up an information page on one social media site (like Facebook) and using that link to give your clients information.
One other thing, and this is important. Don’t just share your own stuff. Talk about other things, places, events, ideas, and more. If you are constantly trying to sell your services, you’ll come off looking cheap and shady. To #BeAwesome in social media you will need to take into consideration the type of content your audience wants and provide that regularly.

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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.

#TimeManagement – Planning for Social Media by Developing an Editorial Calendar


It’s 5 p.m. after a long work day and you sit in front of your computer or mobile device primed and ready to write a promotional post for your company, product, service, etc. for your favorite social media platform. And yet you stare, unable to come up with content. Or worse yet, you can’t remember if there was a meme, challenge, hashtag, or event you were supposed to mention or use today. Does this seem familiar?
How about this? As you’re going through your social media accounts you realize you haven’t posted on your blog or Instagram in days or even weeks. Now you know, based on several studies, that you should have at least two blog posts a week and consistent posts on Instagram to keep people engaged. Worse yet, when you go to your Facebook page, you realize you posted four or five of the same kind of content or pitch in a row.
Wait, there’s more. What if your twitter account is lively, but there are messages you haven’t responded to just sitting there?!?
While social media can be fun, it can also be mentally draining. You’ve made decisions all day long, sometimes into the weekend, and there are thousands more coming. Trying to keep track of it all may seem like an impossible dream.
It’s not.
You, my friend, need an editorial calendar.
What is an editorial calendar and how is this different from a regular calendar? I’m so glad you asked. An editorial calendar is a visual layout of your future social media posts. It gives you a single snapshot of upcoming content, tracks your previous posts, and best of all, becomes an anchor in the sea of social media analytics. Did you have a theme that did particularly well? How about a heartfelt post that drove interaction up? What triggered your sudden spike in Facebook likes?
As it is typical for your team to have access to the editorial calendar, you’ll want it keep it social media focused. Does your blog count as social media? Some say yes, others say no. If you end up sharing it or pressing it to social media upon publishing the post, then I say it definitely counts and should be included.
So how do you set up a social media calendar?
Whether you hand write it on a paper calendar, planner, use Google calendar, Evernote, a word processing document, or spreadsheet, there are many ways to get your calendar started.
First, you want to set up a regular posting schedule. It can be as intense or laid back as you like. Some prefer to set up daily posts and others prefer to make a list at the beginning of the week or month. It makes no difference how you set it up. Try a few things out and see what works best for you. Pay attention to your peak times – those times of day where followers or viewers tend to visit your pages the most. That’s when you are going to want to schedule your posts.
Second, make sure your schedule is doable and not full of wishes. Time is money. You’ve heard that phrase. How long does it take you to write a blog post? Hunt down quotes? Build images for your twitter feed? Keep a mental picture of the time involved in your mind as this may be a talking point later on if you discover your time is worth more elsewhere and want to bring in help.
Third, schedule your content. Prescheduling is your friend in this case. Facebook and most blogging platforms allow it, but others, like Twitter and Instagram, require a third party software for scheduling. If you’d rather post daily, set up your posts ahead of time either in a document or excel sheet. Prep your hashtags ahead of time and make sure your links are properly shortened for twitter. That way, on the day of your post, you can copy and paste it straight to your preferred platform. It cuts down on decision fatigue and keeps you focused on what really matters: providing the best experience for your potential clients, customers, and associates.
And before we forget, here’s the fourth: keep track of how you do and be willing to adjust what isn’t working. Each of the social platforms has their own analyticstools. Schedule half an hour once a month to look into what is or isn’t working with your social media so that you can adapt, edit and get better traction.
Want some extra insight into building your calendar? Here are some links that might help:

Know you need a great editorial calendar but simply don’t have time to sit down and plot out the strategy on your own? Contact the Social Media Advisor for an audit of your current social platforms and help developing your own content calendar. We love helping businesses #BeAwesome with your presence online!

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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.

#DevelopStrategy – Return on Investment in Social Media



As part of our series on Developing Your Marketing Strategy (#DevelopStrategy), we’re covering how to receive a Return on Investment (ROI) in social media.

Unlike a cost-benefit analysis, an ROI cannot be estimated beforehand. This is extremely important to understand when you develop your strategy. Also, ROI is difficult to measure without an investment in advertising since paid ads usually give a considerable amount of analytics, but don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

The first step in developing your ROI marketing strategy involves setting goals for your social media. These goals will need to align with your mission statement. The primary goal needs to state what you hope to accomplish. Beneath that is a set of smaller goals that align with the primary.

Let’s say your primary goal is to build your mailing list full of loyal fans who are excited about your products/services.

Your smaller goals must be S.M.A.R.T. goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time Bound. I like to keep the scope to no more than three smaller goals since your marketing strategy will develop from this. For this article, we’ll create one example: increase social media conversion by 10% in the third quarter.

Note: You can give specific numbers. Gain 10k followers by x date, for instance. These goals are unique to your business model. 

It’s time to develop your strategy. For our 10% social media conversion increase example, we’re going to have a three-pronged attack. 

1. Create a lead magnet. This can be as simple as a discount coupon or as complicated as generating a comprehensive ebook to help your potential clients/customers deal with a real-world problem. 

2. Create buzz using a hashtag campaign that our influencers will be willing to share and participate in. 

3. Share theme-related content on all social media channels that generates buzz for new product or service.


Keep in mind that your strategy may need to be adjusted based on your business and goals.

Now that you have a primary goal, a set of smaller S.M.A.R.T goals and a marketing strategy in place, you’ll need to track your conversions (ROI). You do this through Reach, Traffic, Leads, Customers, and Conversion Rates. Reach includes fans, likes, followers, etc. that you have. The more reach you have, the greater your conversion rates, and is usually trackable inside the social media platform.

Traffic to your site or other URL mentioned in your campaign is another great way to measure ROI. Leads are the number of sign ups you gain through this campaign. Customers are the number of individuals who actually convert from potential to become paying clients. Conversion rates involve tracking the percentage of visitors based on social media platform or promotion campaigns. This tells you which part of your campaign is working and which isn’t.

It’s true that it can be difficult to track ROI when it comes to social media but not impossible. Most of the social media platforms have their own analytics tracking system that will deliver valuable information on what is and isn’t working for you with social.

Take time to develop a winning strategy, keep track of your metrics, and be willing to adapt. These are the keystones to a quality ROI. If you need help working on your social media marketing strategy, the team here at The Social Media Advisor is here for you. Our goal, as always, is to help you #BeAwesome as a business.


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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.

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