How your business can benefit from good content

If you believe as I do that prospects turn into customers as they follow the Know, Like, Trust stream that you adopt into your business marketing strategy, than having good content is a big part of how you educate and provide value.

Creating Awareness

Creating awareness via your website is where you can offer great content and is a great strategy for your business.   By writing articles that your prospects will find value in reading is a big part of your strategy.  Additionally you can create training video’s or downloadable reports are all part of your content strategy aimed at providing value.  Remember, prospects found you and will continue to follow you as long as you provide them solutions to their problems, so share your expertise in helpful ways that can be easily implemented this will make you a rock star among your followers.

Subscribe To Your Email List

Everyone should be capturing names for an email list by setting up an offer on your website.  The offer you make in exchange for a name and email address should offer the prospect some good content that they can benefit from.  Once you have received a name and email you should covet these people and treat them with respect.  Offering your email subscribers a mix of great content and offers should be your goal.  Your content can be a mix of valuable resources, tips, video and/or audio content.

Mix Up Your Content

Mixing up your content provides your reader a variety of interesting content and also increases your SEO opportunties.  By optimizing your blog posts, video uploaded to You Tube, images, articles in directories and podcasts with your key words not only are you offering benefit to your readers but adding more value to your online exposure with added optimization.

{Tweet This} “Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

Are you placing a priority on educating your audience?  Remember, your prospect only cares about what’s in it for them, so how will your deliver?

The most effective way to communicate with your audience is through story

In marketing, the message you communicate to your ideal audience must be compelling and relatable. You want to connect with your audience on a level that makes them say “Oh I resonate with her or her story.” Telling a story is the best way to make a human connection.

Storytelling is not only the easiest but often the most effective form of persuasion

If you are willing to share your story your are more likely to attract and retain targeted followers who connect with you.  You’ve all probably said at one time or another “You get me” – well that applies in all scenarios including business.  If someone believes that you have a shared experience and get where they are coming from the more likely you are to gain a customer.  Simple as that, so what’s holding you back from letting your story out?

The know, like, trust factor

What you have built through your story telling is the like and trust factor.  It is a fact that we all do business with people we know, like and trust which equates to this following formula I learned from copy writer, Kevin Rogers;

• Know – is revealing yourself in a relatable way
• Like – wins you respect through authenticity
• Trust – by sharing your struggles & secrets as to how you overcame something, you gain trust

How will you tell your story?

Video is a great way to communicate your story. For example, create a welcome video for your website with these four components to the video

1. Introduce yourself and what you do
2. Briefly state a struggle you had that your current audience will relate to and communicate it
3. Tell them what you discovered while you were overcoming your struggle
4. and finally convey the result you got from the solution

If you aren’t telling your story, your really are missing the proverbial boat.  No matter what size your company, telling a story – something deeper and more meaningful that will resonate with your audience will make all the difference in attracting and keeping loyal followers.  WHAT”S YOUR STORY?

Have you had success communicating your story to your audience?  Please leave me a comment below and share how you turned a struggle you once had into helping others.  (I’d love to hear your story!)

P.S.  One of my favorite non-profit companies here in the US who is known for story telling is STORY CORPS. They believe in the power of story as a legacy and that stories should be shared.  Check them out when you have a little time to browse their site.

Tracking metrics on all of our online marketing activities is critical to your growth.  This article I speak to email marketing and tracking open rates.

If you are not tracking your open rates on your email list, how do you know what is working?

All email marketing programs offer reporting features to track the performance of your emails.  I recommend you review the reports for each email that you you send including the links within your email that your email recipients click on.  This way you can determine what your audience is clicking on so you can give them more of that!

So how is your list stacking up?

According to statistics that I have seen from many various sources, the average open rate is somewhere between 18-25%, this will give you a metric to find out how your list is performing as an industry average.  Obviously, you want your list to perform above the average because it increases your opportunities to stay top of mind with your audience and share your offers.

Tips for emails that get opened

• Write a short compelling headline
• Make your content short and relevant to your audience
• Capitalize on current events, news stories and anything new in your niche
• Always have a call to action in your emails – what do you want your reader to take away or do next?
• Keep images to a minimum

So how is your email list performing?  What are your challenges?  If you leave your comments below I will try to address as many challenges as I can.

LinkedIn is an important social media platform to have in your tool kit because it truly highlights your professional expertise. When LinkedIn revised the skills and endorsements section last year, I found that many people forgot about asking for recommendations.

Why should you obtain recommendations vs endorsements?

By obtaining a recommendation from a trusted source can really speak to the specifics of what you want to be recognized for. As an example, if you want to highlight your sales skills, than ask specifically for a recommendation that speaks to the growth in numbers that you gained in the execution of your job.

Recommendations set you apart

It is important to remember when someone is viewing your profile as a prospect they are reading your recommendations. If you have equal qualifications to another individual, it is often the glowing recommendations that can set you apart!

Update your recommendations

You can control what recommendations are shown on your profile and thus it is a good idea to keep current recommendations and not show ones that may be out of date or no longer quite as relevant to your current position.  In other words, don’t set it and forget it, always keep asking for fresh recommendations.

How many should you get?

I am often asked how many recommendations should you have on your profile and my advice is to shoot for at least 10 glowing recommendations that share a broad testimonial of your skills and what you want to be known for.

Some last thoughts I have on this subject…in marketing sometimes we forget that we are always marketing ourselves and I want to remind you that relationships are built on the know, like, trust formula. Having at least 10 professional recommendations that speak to the trust factor from those who do business with us can easily make the difference in getting a job or losing it to a competitor.

Have your recommendations made a difference in your business?  Please share your comments below.

Are you making these top 4 mistakes when networking?

There is so much business networking going on in any given city from week to week that to insure you make the best use of your time, it is important to know why you are networking and if you are networking with the right people. I re-evaluate my networking efforts every year to discover if there was a monetary return on my investment in time and money. I drop all activities that have no proven ROI.

I have found there are several mistakes people make and thus do not gain results.

1st mistake is not knowing your intention for attending a networking event

To gain the most from networking it is imperative that you know ahead of time what your intention is for attending. An example would be to make connections with 4 people who might be a good referral partner for your business.

2nd mistake is not knowing who a good referral partner is

Think about the various professions that work with the same client but offer different products or services than you.  This keeps you focused on your networking goals and is an opportunity to ask around if anyone you meet can introduce you to one person in the types of professions that would make good referral partners.

3rd mistake is not having a compelling introduction

Unfortunately in many networking situations most people always begin a conversation with “So, what do you do?” There are so many other ways to begin a conversation, but Okay to answer the what do you do question, I encourage you to create a simple sentence that says who you help.  The statement should be compelling enough that people will want to know more and thus ask you to learn more.

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You probably have heard the buzz about Facebook’s new feature called GRAPH SEARCH that will be rolling out in the U.S. the first part of 2013. Basically Graph Search is a search engine that is focused on your page “Likes” and your connections.  The upside of graph search is for business pages who now have a bigger opportunity of being found and engaging with new people.

Here is what you should know about Facebook Graph Search and how it will benefit your business

1. How Facebook Social Graph Works

Graph Search is all about being found and because it is a search engine what you include in your profile matters and remember it is just another way to be found.
As an example when someone “likes” your page on Facebook, and  friends can search for “friends who like <insert your type of business here>,” their connections’ “likes” will appear in the Graph Search results. “What the end user will see are results and suggestions based on the business’s association with their wider Facebook social network. For example, the results for a restaurant will be prioritized by whether a user’s friends have visited or “like” the business, instead of sorted by overall number of likes according to Marketing Consultant Mark Hayward.”

2. It’s time to update your pages

If you are new and don’t have a business page yet, create a name that is searchable in terms of including the city where your business is located.  This is especially important if you have a brick & mortar business location that people can use the Facebook “Check-in” feature.  The first word in the page title is what comes up first in a search.  If you do have this type of business, be sure you set your page up with the “local business or place category” and list your physical location.

3. What are you about?

Be sure that you About section includes your web address and a description of what you do? Have you included important keywords that search engines will like? You can also add additional key words in the Mission and Description sections.  In the description section this is your chance to put in all the details of your business including when you started and the evolution of the business & services you provide.

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Facebook is making the transition with the new Timeline design which is being rolled out to to people now.  It actually reminds me of how it looked a few years ago.  It is sleeker  with two columns with your friends on the left and your status updates on the right. There is an easy navigation bar on the top under your cover image. As always, this is a good time to check your setting, particularly your security settings and update!

NAVIGATION BAR DIRECTLY UNDER THE COVER IMAGE:

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Consistently keeping our readers interested and engaged requires lots of content and the biggest challenge that I hear most frequently is that you don’t know what to write about.

  First, it is important to remember people are following you in the first place because they believe you are offering content in an area they want to learn more about and they value your expertise.  To keep our readers loyal and coming back for more requires you provide value.  If you always keep in mind “What’s in it for them” and “How can I solve my readers problems” then there is a never ending stream of content all around us.

I know for example, that you read my content because you want to learn how to gain more exposure easily and learn in a way that is easy to understand and implement.  So I provide the content that helps you with ideas and steps you can take to grow your business and be heard in this noisy online world.

So, how do you create a steady stream of valuable content?

Totally understanding your target audience and the types of problems they incur is  key to providing content they want to consume, here are some ideas:

1.) Periodically poll your readers if you have an active email list with 2-3 questions that will tell you more about what they want.

2.) Write articles on the most frequently asked questions you get from working with people in your niche.  Each FAQ could be a headline of a blog post.

3.) Join LinkedIn groups where your target audience is most likely to be participating. By engaging in the conversations, being helpful and courteous and not spammy you will learn more about what your target audience wants to learn and then  get involved in the conversation, write about the discussion.

4.) Curate content from other sites that you can share on your site and via social media channels. All the content you provide to your followers does not have to be authored by you to provide value. If your followers look to you as a go to person in your niche, they will be grateful you shared good content regardless of where it came from.

5.) Set up a google alerts  account using key words, this allows you to monitor interesting topics that you may wish to share with your readers and it is delivered right to your email account! 

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