The YouTube Checklist goes through the steps for you to take to set up your YouTube Channel most efficiently.
I don’t know about you, but my mind has been consumed with planning for 2018! Specifically, I have been asking myself “how I can grow my business in the new year?” The biggest question I have been asking myself is “What are the activities that I need to be involved in to grow the business and how can I tell if those activities will work and are working?” Almost like kismet, I stumbled over the SMART acronym while surfing social media. While it is not a new idea, it is definitely a timely one!
If you are not familiar with the SMART acronym, here is how it breaks down as it applies to business and goal setting:
S – Specific (make your goal is clear and not ambiguous)
M – Measurable (how will you measure your results to ensure you have reached your goal?)
A – Attainable (make sure the goal is something realistic, something you can achieve)
R – Relevant (does the goal make sense for your business and your business plan?)
T – Time-Bound (how long will it take you to achieve your goal or what deadline did you assign to this goal?)
This acronym is a favorite as it reminds me to be laser focused when planning my goals for 2018. Each goal I set for 2018 will need to be SMART. Each letter of the acronym will be filled out in order for it to be considered a serious goal for 2018. To do that, I created a 2018 SMART planner that I am excited to share with you! You can download the planner and complete SMART for each goal you plan to achieve in 2018.
To get your SMART planner, click HERE.
Christmas is the season of giving. Most people are looking for the perfect gift for their family, friends and loved ones. Many of them turn to social media for gift ideas. This provides a great opportunity for you to promote your products and grow your business.
You need to have strong social media marketing campaign in place if you want to generate more sales. Remember, social media can have a significant influence on a consumer’s purchasing decision.
Use these tips to boost your holiday sales.
Schedule posts in advance
To capitalize on this growing opportunity, you need to start your preparations early. At this point, you should have written your blogs, social media posts and planned your social media calendar. If you haven’t already done so, then you’re too late.
Take time to schedule your posts in advance. Not only will it help you save time, it also gives you enough room to handle real-time engagement when the rush of the holiday is upon you. Stay ahead of the game by planning your social media campaign early.
Create stand out content
Time spent on social media starts to increase by October. It reaches its peak by New Year’s Eve. Because of this, social media is aflutter with holiday buying cheer during this time of the year.
With so many businesses vying for the attention of consumers, you need to find a way to stand out. One of the best ways of doing this is by creating interesting, unique, and informative content. It is also a good idea to create content that activates a high-arousal emotion as it has the potential to go viral.
Feature user-generated content
Instead of bombarding your audience with ads, why not encourage them to share how they like to use your products. Or better yet, ask them to create a story on Snapchat or Instagram showing how they like to celebrate the holidays. Starbucks seem to have mastered the art of user-generated content. They even hold the red cup contest every year.
Encouraging your audience to get creative with your products can be beneficial for your business. Not only will it help boost your social media engagement, your brand will come across as real and personable. Remember, feeling connected is a huge part of what drives social media success.
Get reviews
Most people would read reviews or get recommendations from friends before buying something. If you want to boost your sales this holiday season, encourage your customers to write reviews.
Customer reviews are very influential. In fact, they are more effective than a paid marketing ad in increasing your sales. Having legitimate product reviews can mean the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart. They can persuade new or casual browsers to take action and make their own purchase.
Fun and Festival Holiday Marketing Ideas
Christmas is just around the corner. With the competition getting tougher than ever, most businesses are already plotting their first move. If you haven’t started your holiday marketing yet, then you’re already too late. But don’t worry. We’re here to help.
It’s time for you to start pulling together some marketing ideas and get stocked and ready for the holiday rush. Here are some fun and festive marketing ideas you should implement this holiday season.
Send holiday emails
You have probably heard that email marketing is on the verge of death, and sending emails to your target audience is just a waste of time and effort. That’s not true. In fact, email marketing is alive and well. It’s very beneficial for businesses, big or small.
Email marketing provides a very personalized and intimate way to communicate with your audience. It allows you to build better relationship with them. This holiday season, make sure that you keep in touch with your audience and let them know about your upcoming deals. This will give them a sense of exclusivity.
Send a unique gift catalog to loyal customers
People have crazy schedules these days. Many of them are looking to buy their presents online because it is the most convenient option.
Everyone is in shopping mode during this time of the year. Make it easier for your loyal customers to shop for their Christmas presents by sending them a gift catalog. Now that you have provided them with a convenient way to shop and gift suggestions, they will no longer have to look elsewhere.
Feature upcoming deals in social media
Most people visit social media sites a few times a day. Use this as an opportunity to reach as much peole as possible and let them know about your upcoming deals.
By now, you probably know which social media platform your target audience frequent. If most of your audience are using Instagram, then focus your marketing efforts there. But don’t forget to promote across different platforms as well.
Create limited offers
Any company or retailer with a product or service to sell can benefit from creating limited offers. Adding urgency to your offer will help generate interest and compel people to buy right away.
For this to work, you need to define your offer dates and let people know about it. The whole point of limited-time offers is to get people to act fast. If they know that they can still avail the product or service for the same price next week or next month, they may not even show interest. Call to actions such as today only, last day, and ends at midnight creates a higher level of urgency and pushes your audience to buy now.
Content is King… When you know which topics you should be writing about.
This video is an excerpt from our NEW COURSE: Secrets to Effectively Blog For Your Business (which is included in the membership for our paying members).
In this video, we take a look at 3 of the ways you can find topics to blog about for your business:
1. A personal brainstorm
2. Your competitors
3. Industry and Trade Journals
And how you can utilize these topics to create a content calendar for your business.
As you tune in, be sure to have a pen and paper handy to start your brainstorm process.
Working your Instagram strategy can be timely and overwhelming for most business owners. This download covers our tested process to easily write Instagram Posts and Share them to Instagram.
Our team uses this strategy to manage hundreds of Instagram posts per month and it will truly transform your ability create a successful Instagram Community.
Apps We Use:
- Trello – Trello.com
- Canva – Canva.com
The Normal Process for Instagram Management:
The typically process followed for businesses managing Instagram goes like this:
- Take photo on phone or email image from computer to yourself to save to phone
- Open Instagram and find image that was saved to photo roll
- Adjust filters
- Add description
- Think of potential Hashtags you could use, have spelling autocorrect turn hashtags into 2+ words, give up after 2-3 hashtags have been added
- Forget to add a location
- Click post and start randomly following people
- 30 minutes later realize you are still on Instagram and running late for a meeting
The purpose of establishing a process for managing social media is to ensure that you can actually spend your energy on the core aspects of your business.
What you Should be Doing for Instagram Management
Rather than trying to type and create Instagram posts on your phone, we recommend pre-writing and creating posts utilizing apps and tools to make the process easier and more streamlined.
It all starts on Trello.
Have your social media channels hit a plateau? Does it seem like people aren’t engaging as much as they used to? PSSST! It could be your content. If you are posting the same type of content day after day, it may become a little, well…boring to your followers.
A good, diverse social media channel includes a variety of posts. Some of the more popular social media accounts do a good job of mixing up their content. There tends to be a good blend of:
- Clean, clear, crisp images
- Quotables
- Micro video posts – short “snackable” videos that are easy to consume
- Live video content
- Continuously looped video
- Time-lapsed video
- Episodic video
Including a mixture of all of the posts listed above helps to:
- Keep your news feed fresh and exciting
- Encourage engagement and increase likes, shares, and comments
- Give your followers a reason to come back to your social accounts day after day
Take the time to learn and discover how to create exciting and engaging posts for your social accounts.
One final thought…Did you see a trend in the types of content you should be posting? For the most part, they were all about different types of video. That speaks volumes about what we can expect to see as social media trends in 2018.
It goes without saying that apps are a Social Media Manager’s BFF! They help us plan, analyze, stay creative, efficient, productive, curate content and SO MUCH MORE! One thing is for sure, we couldn’t survive without them!
When challenged to share our favorite 5, it was tough to choose! There are so many quality apps available today and new ones are emerging every day! Below are 5 of our favorite go-to apps that you will want to get your hands on right away! To grab these apps, head over to your devices app store to snag them.
Get Creative with These Apps
As a Social Media Manager or anyone who manages a brand’s social content, you need to be creative. One of the goals of the content you post is to “Stop The Scroll”. This requires interesting and engaging posts.
- Adobe Spark Post!
Why We Love It:
This app is great for creating anything from a social media post graphic to posters, and custom sizes. Not only does this app have loads of size options available, its library of free stock photos is HUGE! Not only does Adobe Spark Post make amazing images, it also animates images. Fun Alert! Once you start with Spark, you may not be able to stop!
- Animoto
Do you have a bunch of pictures that tell a story about your brand, service or product? Let’s face it, sometimes static images just won’t do the job. Our solution…Animoto! Animoto is a great resource for turning images into animated video. Not only does it create a great video but it also has amazing stock music to help you hit the right vibe.
- Typorama
A good Social Media Manager knows that you can’t just have one resource for creating social media graphics. If you only use one tool, your posts become predictable, and, well…boring. To create a wide variety of post types, you need to have a wide variety of apps. We love Typorama because it has a large selection of font styles you can use for your graphic posts.
Pro Tip: Check you Typorama’s sister app, Videorama. This is a super cool app that has a large selection of stock video for you to use. Get creative with Videorama by adding text overlays, music, and filters to your videos.
Get efficient and save time with these apps.
4 & 5. Yes, we said “these”.
There are two time-saving apps we adore which wouldn’t allow us to choose just one. Here’s why…Social Media Managers are a busy lot! We are always creating content, posting and tracking the engagement of our posts. In order to be effective at all of those things simultaneously, we need a tool to help us.
So, numbers 4 & 5 on our list are Buffer and Hootsuite. Both of these apps have web-based and mobile device platforms which are designed to help you schedule the posts you create.
We love Buffer for its ease of use when it comes to scheduling posts on multiple accounts. Hootsuite rocks when it comes to monitoring the social conversation surrounding your posts. Both have similar functions. We encourage you to dive into each to decide which is the best fit for you or maybe it is a combination of the two!
Honorable Mentions
Yup! It was hard to pick just 5 favorites. We couldn’t leave these out because they help to keep your posts and feeds uber interesting! Make sure you check out:
- Boomerang for repetitive, looped animation. Try it once and you’ll be hooked!
- Ripl – Great for animated video
- Hyperlapse – Speed up a long video using this time-lapsed video app. Great for instructional type videos
- Vont – Edit and trim videos right on your smartphone with this easy to use video editor
Pro Tip: One of the best things you can do for your social media accounts is to keep them fresh and exciting. Take the time to get to know new and different apps to help you achieve this.
Have fun and stay social!
Canva is a great tool for business owners to use, to create those eye-grabbing images for social media. It is an easy to use platform, that allows you to be super creative and make amazing images without being a graphic designer and having to pay a fortune for images. Canva is great for creating your branded images, marketing materials, presentations, menus and so much more! Sometimes you will see an image as you scroll through social media and say WOW that is an awesome image! You may think to yourself “how did they do that?” Now you know! Create images that STOP THE SCROLL as we say! Enjoy!
Each business should have a list of core values, your core values are what makes your business run. What type of people you want to hire, or work with. This is the foundation of your business.
We will learn in 5 simples steps how to figure out what your core values are.
Download your FREE Core Values Checklist Here
You’ve heard you need to have identified core values for your brand and business, but what does this actually need?
We recently posted a video about how your core values are a set of standards for your business and how values drive how people perceive your business. Now it is time to take a look at translating this into the content you create. Here, we are going to be taking a look at a few different facets of your marketing:
- How to use your values to identify your target market
- How to use your values to create content that will move your brand forward
- How to use your values to understand ways you can react to both positive and negative reviews online.
Your brand and your mission need to flow through every aspect of your business and online, content is one of the main ways prospects can get a sense of who you are and what it would be like to work with you (or purchase your products). Do your personalities align or do they clash? Do you focus your attention on the same details your clients care about? How can you put your best foot forward online?
Let’s start with utilizing your values to identify your target market.
I’m sure you’ve been told that we work with people that we know, like, and trust. I must tell people this every single day. When your core values flow through your business, people with those same values will tend to be more attracted to working with you. They can help you really connect with those individuals who can then turn into raving fans.
A process to identify your target market that starts with your values.
Unlike most exercises that drive you towards creating a description of your target market, I invite you to think first about your values. More and more business experts are discussing how your employees should encompass your brand values, especially if they want to be more fulfilled, so why not bring this same notion to your consumers? Rather than focusing most heavily on the demographics of your target market, take a look at the psychographics. This includes the more personal characteristics of a person, including:
- Values
- Personality
- Lifestyles
- Attitudes
- Behavior
- Interests/hobbies
Think about how your product or service actually fits into your target consumer’s lifestyle, how will the product be used?
By going through this exercise, you open yourself up to thinking beyond just age, income, and location. You allow yourself to better understand what actually drives your consumers and what matters to them. Where do your business values come in? Well, ideally, your consumer’s values align with those of your business.
The next piece of your brand values is to use them to create content that moves your brand forward.
Here we will discuss possible topics that your business can write about that will better position your brand.
There are many different ways to come up with topics to discuss in your blog, so, just as a disclaimer, here I’m really only discussing one element of creating your content strategy. Your content strategy should be diverse, but there are ways to make sure within your strategy, your brand messaging and values come across loud and clear.
Actually discuss your values
We recommend sitting down once a quarter, or at least once per year, and actually write a blog about your values. This may seem strange the first few times, but provide examples about how your values have dictated what products and services you offer. Or create a blog emphasizing your attention to detail and customer relationships that also highlights testimonials from your clients. There are a lot of different ways to highlight your values in a blog post, but one thing I do want to emphasize is how important it is to try and relate these articles back to the benefit for your clients.
Nobody wants to read something only about you, but how interesting would a story be of how you found your supplier because of their fair trade employee salaries or how you came to be a life coach because of the struggles you had before you started living aligned with your values. These are things people can relate to, and topics that can help you form a real connection with your market.
Understand who you are writing for – and use words that convey your values
Okay, so this really ties into the first part of the blog where we look at psychographics to identify your target market. By understanding the values of your market, you can use language that they will relate to more clearly. Let’s say you are a winter sports company who is marketing ski helmets to parents. The language you should use should highlight the safety and comfort of their children. However, let’s say the company is edgy and markets to the park-rat. Do you think they should focus on comfort and safety?
No! Their target market wants to look cool and may care about being connected to their devices. They want a way to easily show off the sick tricks they are throwing in the half pipe while jamming out. Everything from the imagery the company would use to the verbiage would have to shift.
The same is true for your business. Who are those different consumers you are trying to work with? Do you find that you are intuitive when you work with clients or are you very process driven? Work to find what words you can use in your marketing that conveys your brand values.
Lastly, we are going to take a look at how to use your values to understand ways you can react to both positive and negative reviews online.
Creating a process to respond to reviews online
Far too frequently, businesses with high integrity receive negative reviews online. Often times we actually see this for our clients’ when they work with individuals with conflicting values to the business, but here we really should focus on what you do after you receive a review.
First, visualize that you have just received a notification of a 1 star review. What is your gut reaction? You’ve worked years to build a reputable business and now everyone will see this negative review, who wouldn’t be upset?!
Before you do anything, STOP. Think about your values – how do you want to be perceived?
Most business values include some sort of idea around integrity or relationships, so you want to make sure that how you respond also projects this. Unless you are a business like Shinesty or Cards Against Humanity, where you embrace an ‘in the face’ brand presence, we recommend the following:
- How would you respond if the reviewer was speaking to you directly?
- Was this an issue that you had tried to resolve and were aware of?
- Is the customer actually right? Often times with negative reviews, the customer just can’t get over something (or maybe even be a competitor posting as an irate customer), but other times we can actually learn from legitimate negative reviews.
- Think about what else could be going on in the individual’s life. If you truly think you did everything you could and that you bent over backwards, perhaps this individual is having the worst week of their life. Changing perspective can help you to calm your nerves and think more clearly about a situation.
- Draft a reply comment in a word document that explains that you are sorry they are disappointed with your service, that you take pride in X,Y,Z, and that you are available to speak offline via phone or email.
- Sit back an hour and reread your draft response. Check it for any spelling or grammatical errors, then copy and paste it as a reply to the review.
Following these steps will make sure you aren’t jumping in with your gut reaction, but rather that you are allowing your values to dictate how you will treat others online.
Positive reviews are easier to respond to, but many businesses fail to actually write back each and every time they receive a review. Again, think about your values. Let’s say Community is a brand value, what better way to showcase this by taking the time to thank each reviewer and reestablish your invitation to them into the community that you are building.
In this post we’ve taken a look at how to use your values to find your target market, how to write content that exemplifies your brand values, and how to respond to reviews in a value-driven way. Just remember in every aspect of your marketing and service to clients, your values can and should act as your compass.