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Must Read Books for Business Owners

What books have you read recently?

Business owners benefit from reading great business books, here is my list of business books to be sure to read. (Please note, this blog contains affiliate links).

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Author: Stephen R. Covey

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for 25 years. It has transformed the lives of Presidents and CEOs, educators and parents— in short, millions of people of all ages and occupations.

4.5 of 5 Stars (4,534 Reviews)

Read more about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

2. From Good to Great

Author: Jim Collins

The Challenge:

Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice.

The Study:

For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

4.5 of 5 Stars (2,128 Reviews)

Read more about Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t

3. Rich Dad Poor Dad

Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki

Rich Dad Poor Dad, the #1 Personal Finance book of all time, tells the story of Robert Kiyosaki and his two dads—his real father and the father of his best friend, his rich dad—and the ways in which both men shaped his thoughts about money and investing. The book explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich and explains the difference between working for money and having your money work for you.

4.5 of 5 Stars (6,013 Reviews)

Read more about Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

4. Raving Fans

Author: Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles

“Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.”

This, in a nutshell, is the advice given to a new Area Manager on his first day–in an extraordinary business book that will help everyone, in every kind of organization or business, deliver stunning customer service and achieve miraculous bottom-line results.

4.5 of 5 Stars (368 Reviews)

Read more about Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service

5. Built to Last

Author: Jim Collins & Jerry Porras

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day — as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: “What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the comparison companies and what were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?”

4.5 of 5 Stars (359 Reviews)

Read more about Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials)

6. The 4-Hour Workweek

Author: Timothy Ferriss

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, or earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches:

  • How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week
  • How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
  • How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
  • How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
  • How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”

4.5 of 5 Stars (4,818 Reviews)

Read more about The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

7. Speak and Get Results

Author: Sandy Linver

We’ve all known the “naturals”– people who can get up to speak in any business situation and make something happen. They get the budget approved, win the big account, get the group’s support at the weekly staff meeting. When the “naturals” finish speaking people believe– and act.

Now fully revised and updated, “Speak and Get Results” helps you to be a natural– helps you to get the results you want, by teaching you how to:

  • motivate your listeners to reach your result
  • choose an opening that targets your ideas
  • design visuals that support you, not sabotage you
  • use your body and your voice to express your energy, authority, and commitment
  • handle tough Q & A sessions, audience resistance, and even surprise media encounters

4.7 of 5 Stars (6 Reviews)

Read more about Speak and Get Results: Complete Guide to Speeches & Presentations Work Bus

Must Read Business Book - What books have you read recently? Business owners benefit from reading great business books, here is my list of business books to be sure to read.

*Article contains affiliate links.

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How to Use LinkedIn for Your Business

LinkedIn is one of my favorite places to share content. Of Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn is the best social network for lead generation with a conversion rate of 2.74%.* It also tends to direct the most traffic to B2B (and B2C) websites even though there is fewer interactions with specific posts.

I recommend using LinkedIn a few different ways for your business.

Add:

Add connections who are prospects AND referral partners. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your dream connections, just be sure to write a personal note about why you would like to connect with them.

Join:

Join groups that include your prospects AND those made of folks within your industry.

Share:

Share your blog posts to your personal profile, your business profile, groups you are a part of, and as an Article.

Ask:

Ask questions of folks within your industry. Many people are afraid this will make them look inexperienced, but why not learn from someone who has already been through the same or a similar experience!

Export:

Export your connections and invite them to join your email list. You can also add these emails to a custom audience in Facebook ads as a way to broaden your reach.

While you are using LinkedIn, think of it like a networking group or coworking space. You want to put your best foot forward and still be authentic. Sharing, commenting, and asking questions can help you to stand out as an influencer in your industry.

LinkedIn is also a space where you can connect with the “untouchables”.

Brainstorm a list of the top 5 to 10 individuals that you admire or have changed your industry and put together a personal note for each of them.

For these messages, start by explaining how you found them and what you have in common. It is okay if you are straightforward and say you were doing research and came across their profile. Then lead into why you would like to connect. By being transparent you can overcome many initial apprehensions an individual may have. Lastly, ask for the connection or the next step.

As long as you get to the point quickly for why you are writing and don’t expect someone to give, give, give, without knowing you or getting anything in return, we’ve had great success building networks on LinkedIn with the big game changers in industries.

How to stand out on LinkedIn: Of Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn is the best social network for lead generation with a conversion rate of 2.74%.* It also tends to direct the most traffic to B2B (and B2C) websites even though there is fewer interactions with specific posts.

*Hubspot

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Never Join a Leads Group

Are you a part of a networking group? How did you decide on which one to join? 

I personally hate the concept of networking groups because of the notion that you attend these meetings to sell yourself and your services. Too frequently I’ve arrived at a leads group with one too many sales guy personas – you know the type, leans back in their chair, disregards your needs, and goes on about how they are the best of the best? Yea, I see one of those and run for the hills. 

How do you find a group that focuses on relationships? 

If you have the time and personality, absolutely start one yourself. Build your tribe from the ground up while focusing on the success of others. Or, if you are more of an introvert, set out to attend different groups in your area until you find one that feels right. 

A client first introduced me to the BNI group I’ve taken leadership roles in and immediately I got the sense that this group was different.  From the conscious disregard of some BNI policies to the personal friendships that have blossomed, this networking group has turned into one of the lifelines of my business! 

Other groups I’ve been a part of didn’t quite feel authentic or never lead to true business being passed.

What does it take to get business from a RELATIONSHIP networking group?

Commitment. Hands down being committed to your networking group is the way to get business. For members within the group I share as much information as each individual needs (within reason) to excel at their marketing. Through doing this, some folks have jumped right into their social media profiles while other take one look at me and ask how much it will be for BIMS to manage their accounts.

The main goal of networking should be gaining access to members’ networks.

Within our group, typically 75% of the business passed is to outside referrals, which means we are introducing each other to people not in the group. Though many of the members have hired our team, we currently have a handful of 4th tier referrals (e.g. a referral from a member, passed a referral, who then introduced us to another business). Rather than the small project from the first referral being the end all be all, our team strives to exceed expectations so that our clients want to introduce us to the other business owners they know!

Have you started your own networking or MeetUp group or have you been constantly let down by groups filled with the typical salesman? I’d love to hear your experiences below!

Never join a networking group Are you a part of a networking group? How did you decide on which one to join?

P.S. If you are in Boulder, CO, come join us, Boulder BNI R.A.I.S.E., at 8:30 am on Thursdays!

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Can you use that image?

As a small business owner, the last thing you want to be caught up in is a legal battle and additional expense for an image you, at the time, didn’t think twice about using. Even though it is alright to share posts others have made on social media in most circumstances (typically because sharing a post gives credit to the source and links directly back to the original post), you should not assume that every image you find online is okay to use for marketing or on your website.

Watch out, you could be sued.

How to Find Appropriate Images (For Free)

Luckily, there are a handful of sites with tremendous databases of high-quality, “royalty free” images. Additionally, Google has a search feature to sift through search results to find images that have been marked for commercial use. As long as you are grabbing the images from one of the below sites and giving credit where asked for, you should be in the clear!

Can you use that image? The top sources to find free images that are labeled for commercial reuse, free tools to edit images, and what to do if you get sued for using a copyright image online.

Pixabay

pixabay for free images

With over 920,00 free stock photos, illustrations, vectors, and VIDEOS, Pixabay comes in at the top of our list. Even for commercial applications, attribution isn’t required.

FoodiesFeed

FoodiesFeed top database for free images of food and beverages.

Food Blogger? Nutritionist? Just like food? This is the free image directory for you. With new images added frequently, FoodiesFeed offers a great selection of, you guessed it, food and beverage oriented photography.

Iso Republic

Iso Republic - Another great database of images offers images of architecture, food/drink, nature, people, urban, technology, textures, and other images. The wide variety is easy to sort and updated frequently.

Another great database of images offers images of architecture, food/drink, nature, people, urban, technology, textures, and other images. The wide variety is easy to sort and updated frequently.

Stokpic

Stokpic uploads new pictures every 2 weeks with a focus on lifestyle photography. These images are perfect for blogs and social media and the site is easy to navigate.

Stokpic uploads new pictures every 2 weeks with a focus on lifestyle photography. These images are perfect for blogs and social media and the site is easy to navigate.

Superfamous

The Superfamous database of images offers a vast variety of nature, landscape, and abstract images. These images are free to use for both personal and commercial purposes.

The Superfamous database of images offers a vast variety of nature, landscape, and abstract images. These images are free to use for both personal and commercial purposes.

Pin now and read later!

What Tools Can You Use to Add Text?

Adding text to images can also help make them pop. I used to tend to make templates in Adobe Photoshop, however, this was a little overkill for most situations. Now I use free tools that are available to anyone online. My go-t0 tools include:

Canva

Canva - empowering the world to design

Canva allows you to make streams for different image templates allowing you to easy copy a previous image to then adjust the background and text. Additionally, with Canva you have the ability to upload new fonts if your brand font isn’t a present and select your brand colors so you are sure to stay on point. Additionally, beyond social media sized images, you can create banners for blogs, ebooks, infographics, and more. Canva comes with free images, text layouts, and icons, but does offer the option to purchase some premium ones for $1.

Pablo by Buffer

Pablo by Buffer - An easy to use interface for creating image with text overlay and publishing directly through Buffer.

Buffer created Pablo as a way to make it easier to create images with text overlay. They offer a variety of different options you can control, such as filters and sizes, though much fewer than Canva. Pablo has free images you can use as backgrounds and various fonts preloaded. We use Buffer to schedule social media posts, so Pablo is a go-to choice for images with quotes that we wish to load directly to the client’s account.

What Happens When You Get an Email or Letter from Getty Images?

The goal should be to always use images that are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons, but at times everyone makes a mistake and overlooks using one image vs another. You may wake up one day to an email from Getty Images, for example, stating you owe $800+ for the use of a single image. My best advice here is Do Not ignore this notice.

Reach out to the sender and explain that you thought the image was royalty free and are incredibly sorry for utilizing it. Inform them that you have already removed it from the site (delete it from your image directory not just from the page it appears) and ask as politely as possible for them to work with you on the price of the violation.

Often they will come down in price depending on the number of copyright violations you have had. Just make sure you pay quickly and are more careful in the future!

The top sources to find free images that are labeled for commercial reuse, free tools to edit images, and what to do if you get sued for using a copyright image online.

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Interview: Joe, Owner of Pebble+Oak, Storyteller Extraordinaire

This interview with Joe, the owner of Pebble+Oak, discusses the importance of speaking to your audience in both blog posts and on your website. We don’t expect our in-house team to be able to write coherently on every topic nor get the voice of all of our clients, so we rely on other writers to step up and fill in the void. Joe at Pebble+Oak is one of our go to copywriters who’s able to understand the vision of a business and articulate the unique selling points and their competitive advantage of their service.

interview with pebble and oak

BIMS: So Joe, how did you get into the biz?

Joe: I have always had a passion for writing, and after spending 10 years and the technology sector I saw the opportunity to begin working with clients to discover their own voice in an online world.

BIMS: When you write for your clients how do you ensure that you are capturing their voice not your own?

Joe: At the end of the day, writing is simply telling a story. Before I put anything down on paper for a client, I spend some time getting to know them, their company, who they’re trying to serve, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. I find that these conversations are incredibly insightful in terms of identifying and interpreting their voice and their message.

BIMS: How important do you feel it is for business owners to concentrate on SEO in the blogs and articles that they are writing?

Joe: Is SEO important? Yes. But, I found when business owners and writers concentrate too much on specific keywords, the message they are trying to convey gets lost. When this happens the connection with prospects and customers suffers.

I recommend coming up with a topic and outlining your article, then writing it without necessarily thinking about the keywords. If you need to, you can always add these in afterwards to make it a little more clear for search engines. Often, however, just the process of creating an outline for your article will innately highlight your intended topics.

BIMS: If we aren’t necessarily focusing on keywords in articles, what can we do to make sure that we are getting a big bang for our buck when we are writing blog posts?

Joe: There are a few tips that I highly recommend. First, make sure you or your IT person correctly knows how to load a blog or article onto a website. This means utilizing header tags and adding alt tags to your images. It’s great if you can break up the long content utilizing bullet points or numbers! Within your blog post don’t hesitate to add links to other blogs on similar topics or pages on your website that relate to the blog post itself.

Second, always make sure that you are sharing your article to external sources. My favorites are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, digg, delicious, StumbleUpon, and reddit. (In other words, the Internet….)

And third, I always recommend finding external websites to write articles for rather than just your own site. Common examples include LinkedIn articles and Medium.com. Often, however, online publications and niche trade journals have the option for experts to contribute articles and content, as well. Contributing articles to these sources not only increases your reach beyond your current network, but it also helps to position you as an expert in the field. Above all, these articles create backlinks to your website!

BIMS: I know you are very busy, so thank you for your time! I’m sure you will be back for more interviews in the future. Before we sign off, do you have any closing remarks that could benefit new and old businesses alike?

Joe: There are a lot of buzzwords and “Flavors of the Week” when it comes to marketing your business online. It is easy to get lost in the noise and think “I should be doing that!” While many of these new ideas have merit, don’t lose sight of your values and your brand. Trends will come and go, but the companies who are consistent with who they are the ones that last.

60 blogs in 60 days challenge

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Are You Spending Too Long on Your Headline?

Do you find that you spend hours rethinking and rewording your headlines? What if there was a way to speed up the time it takes to write a compelling article title, email subject, or ad header that actually gets clicked?

Have you ever wondered if more people would read your blogs is they had a different title? Probably! The most important step to writing is taking the time to understand your customers’ wants and needs.

So how do you write a winning headline that  will get you heard?

The following “formulas” from Mike Samuels of the McMethod are proven to get your read!

1. A Question…

Ask the most pressing question in your niche.

Example: What is the best software for webinars?

2. How-to …

How to X (try to use numbers in your X)

Example: How to make $5,000 in 2 weeks.

3. Liar, Liar

X Lies About Y. Here the goal is to induce fear. Your goal is to invert a typical relationship of trust.

Example: 7 Lies your marketing director told you about measuring social ROI

4. The Promise …

Make a big promise about results client’s can see.

Example: Get 1,000 subscribers to your blog in 3 days.

5. A Comparison

Why X [is better than, instead of, rather than] y. This works well if the comparison dispels major myths in your industry.

Example: Why you should be building relationships with referral partners not end consumers.

And my favorite quick formula for writing winning headlines:

End Result Customer Wants + Specific Period of Time + Address the Objections

Example: Make $100 in your first week while working only 1 hour per day.

Why do these headlines work?

Following formulas like the ones above increase clicks because they are specific, client-centric, and give actionable tactics that lead to real results. As long as your blog ties into the headline that you write, your readers will thank you. Most importantly, these formulas keep you from being vague.

As you are writing the headline, also make sure you know exactly what your client wants. McMethod gives the example of not saying “Lose 10 Pounds” if your client actually wants to “get ripped”. This obviously ties into being specific and client-centric, but can often be overlooked!

Have you worked on transforming your headlines and titles? How have you seen your open and click rates change using these formulas?

Write a killed headline in a quarter of the time

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3 Tips to Increase Productivity as a Work from Home Mom

As a mom of a one year old it is incredibly important that when I am working I know exactly what needs to be accomplished and I have a framework for completing the tasks at hand. I’ve always been fairly good at not procrastinating, but I won’t say excellent, at prioritizing the things I need to get done. However, working from home with my daughter has proven to be quite challenging over the course of the year! For one, you never know if the nap is going to go longer or shorter than expected. Then there is the constant distraction of her learning new skills and growing to be more independent. Many of our clients, may second guess our decision to have Mary Catherine home while I work, however one of our big goals was that she would not have to be in daycare for the first year. Trust me, now that she is 12.5 months old, we are now looking at other options!

I have found the following steps to be essential to getting high caliber work done on time.

Tip one: First prioritize your day.

The night before I always create a list of the things that need to be accomplished the following day. From this list I know what are the top priority tasks. This helps me figure out those top three things that my business would not function without and what I could potentially hand off to one of our contractors. One way to prioritize your tasks is through the Bullet Journal technique. While I haven’t implemented this, folks I know who have found it to be incredibly helpful!

Tip two: Keep track of filler tasks.

In addition to the tasks that I know need to get done on a specific day, I also know the tasks that are outstanding but don’t need to be tackled immediately. There are additionally things that need to be done every week, but the day doesn’t really matter quite as much. These items I call my filler tasks. Filler tasks work wonderfully if Mary Catherine sleeps later than expected or is happy playing by herself, but still needs me to check in on her every once in a while.

Tip three: Structure around naps.

This next tip is combining the tasks above. My day is structured where my goal during Mary Catherine’s nap  is to complete as many of the top priorities as possible. When she sleeps longer I can fill the time with filler tasks. Additionally, during other parts of the day when I can concentrate on multiple items at once, I do these filler tasks, as well.

However, at times if Mary Catherine’s naps are much shorter than usual, I’ll need to tackle my list once my husband gets home from work and finish up the top priorities from the day. The worst, as I’m sure many of you have experience, is when you have multiple days of short naps and it feels like nothing ever gets done! During these days I put away my computer and just focus on Mary Catherine and the dog – hello work on weekends!

3 tips to increase productivity as a working mom

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Let’s Talk About Pricing

We are often chatting with new business owners about their pricing. No, this doesn’t necessarily relate directly to marketing, however, it is important to make sure that your business aligns with the market rates and what you’re worth.

In business school we learned about various models to formulate your pricing, however in real life this can be a lot simpler then how the large corporations do it.

There are three, techniques that we often see businesses use. These include using your cost plus a margin, setting prices at the competitive rate, and just choosing a random value. Let’s look at each of these more closely to see how your business can benefit from utilizing them.

Your cost plus a margin

The process here is to figure out the costs of all components of your product or service and add a percent margin over this cost. if you are a dropship store or retail store this is often figured out for you. The wholesale business will often tell you a MAP pricing or minimal pricing that you can sell the product at or the typical MRSP.

If you have a product take a look at the sourcing costs, packaging costs, shipping costs, and admin costs. Add these all up and then increase the price to have a margin of between 30% and 50%.

For a service-based business, you can use a similar frame of thought. Except, rather than adding up the cost of the product, you’ll be adding up the time that it takes to complete all of the different requirements with in a proposal and multiply by your hourly rate. The first step here is to write a list of everything, and I mean everything, that you do for a given client with in that package. When we double checked our calculations for packages this way, we include things ranging from adding the SEO to a blog post, to adding Twitter followers, and costs that we incur with advertising expenses. Our team even built a tool that we utilize that takes into consideration the other pricing models, as well. For any new client, we build the proposal off at this template.

We are currently in the process of building this tool for other service based businesses as well! Please contact me if you are interested in learning more.

The next obvious question here is how do you figure out your hourly rate. You will want to calculate this a few ways. First is figuring out how much you’d like to make every year and how many “billable” hours you expect (or would like) to work each week. How does that hourly rate look? A little high? What about all the other hours you will work prospecting, marketing, and in business development?

If the hourly rate number is within your industry standards or low, rethink the assumptions that you made. Do you really want to set your goal that low? We also always recommend brainstorming other ways that you can bring income into your business that doesn’t require your time and energy.

Competitive pricing

Competitive pricing is taking the same prices that your competitors use for their business. It’s often an easy way to get started, however, it can also tie you down. Before you simply choose the same price as your competitor, think about your brand. Do you want to be the lowest cost alternative and maybe get more volume? Or do you want to be seen as a luxury good or service?

The same product can be sold at many very different price points depending on how you position your marketing and your brand. Being mindful of this when you first roll out a service will help you with optimizing your marketing strategy and type of client.

Before simply researching what rate the others are charging, first decide if you want to position yourself as low-end or high-end.

Choosing a Random Number

You know your industry, so you may have a gut reaction or sense of what you should charge for your product or service. While I don’t recommend choosing a random number without doing research to back up your decision, often times you will be in the right ballpark. Just work your way back through to make sure you won’t be losing money in the long run!

What’s Missing?

None of these methods include the value You bring to the table. Sure you can build that into any of the techniques, but it often is overlooked. We once were hired to fill out keywords, meta titles, and meta descriptions for a site with over 40,000 listings that needed to be cataloged. I was to create the initial batch and teach their intern how to complete the remaining 39,900. The page content was all in a spreadsheet, so I created a variety of IF functions and a legend to combine different characteristics of the page to automatically create the SEO information directly on the sheet. An hour getting the formulas working properly and teaching the intern how to replicate the functions saved the company an estimated 100+ hours. In hindsight, I should have learned more about their project and charged based on the value I was bringing to the table.

How did you decide to set your pricing structure?

setting your pricing for business

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Finding Your Target Market Online

As a marketing professional, it is imperative to be able to find our client’s prospects online. Our clients often ask us how we make sure that the folks we are targeting fit their ideal customer persona, so I assume this is a common question for business owners. I wanted to lay out the steps we take so you can follow them for your own business.

Though many of us have accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, SnapChat, Tumblr, etc, we can assume there are only one or two networks where we focus most of our online activity. Luckily, numerous agencies share data freely about the types of individuals that are found on each network and network growth over time.

For example, take a look at this chart from Smart Insights. 16-34 year olds dominate most networks, but if your market is 55-64 year olds (green marker), I would highly consider targeting LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. SnapChat wouldn’t be a valuable network for this age group.

social media demographics

Additionally, though it is common to hear that Facebook is on its way out, this is still the largest network of users. Twitter on the other hand has remained fairly stagnant over the past few years.

Data like this may sway where you want to put your attention on social media.

Exercise:
Write a description of your ideal customer. How old are they, what job do they hold, what do they do in their free time?

Look at the statistics of the social media networks, is there somewhere this person is most likely to be found (and active)?

Now work backwards. Make a list of each social media network. What type of customer have you had that would use this network? Now write what type of post they would be interested in seeing on that network (yes, you should tailor your social media posts to the market they are getting in front of)

Beyond data, our team also analyses what works for your competition. We often hear a client raving about how well Business X uses Facebook, for example, but when we actually take a look, their posts aren’t receiving any traction or they only are posting once per month. This leads to a conversation about what our client’s are viewing as a success.

By “spying” on competition, you can learn what has worked well, what seems to be a waste of time, and they types of graphics and posts your target market is used to seeing on each social media network.

Exercise:
Brainstorm a list of your competitors and other businesses that sell to your target market. Then find them on social media. Gather notes on their network size, average number of likes, shares, RT’s, and comments on their posts, the topics they post about, and if there is one network that seems to garner most of their attention. You can also use Fanpage Karma – http://www.fanpagekarma.com/ – to gather insights.

You don’t need to necessarily present this research in any specific way unless you are proposing it to a board or others at your organization. I use this research as a gut check and to establish expectations for clients. I do believe that if you are 100% devoted to a particular network, you can find results, so don’t necessarily cross off SnapChat, for example, if your competition hasn’t jumped on board yet.

My recommendation is to use this research from “spying” on your competition to gain a better understanding of the online landscape within your industry.

Know Yourself

Lastly, take a moment to reflect on your own interests. We’ve already looked at the overall trends for social media networks and seeing how your competition uses social media, but how do YOU use and interact with social media. Is there one network you absolutely love?

No matter what the research says, if you are passionate about a specific social media network, start there. Even though there are few 65+ individuals using SnapChat, you can still work to capture a portion of these individuals if you commit to working SnapChat.

If you are just jumping in, take a moment to consider where you would like to spend your time marketing your business. Use this as a starting point. You can always add more social media networks once you are confident in the process of marketing your business online.

Finding Your Target Market Online

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