Archives for February 2017

Social media can become one of your best friends and the most powerful tools that will grow your business and personal brand, but only if used right. Okay, so you know that your potential customers are on social media. You just need to get in front of their eyes in a way that’s not pushy, but grabs attention and aims at forming a genuine relationship with them.

Unlike what many companies are doing, social media marketing is a long-term strategy. So forget about setting up an account and automating it. Instead, prepare to invest a lot of time on each specific channel where your target audience hangs out. It will take weeks and even months before you see results in terms of new customers, subscribers and users.

Here are some things to keep in mind to leverage the power of social media for your business:

1. Be authentic.

Don’t make your products sound better than they are, don’t overdo it when talking about yourself or your mission, don’t buy followers and don’t keep posting about or asking for money. On social media, it works better if you’re real. If not, people will simply stop following you and go check out a more interesting profile of one of your competitors.

What does it mean to be authentic online?

Start by posting inspirational content but adding a personal touch to it, like a description under the post where you share a story that taught you a life lesson. Create and post behind-the-scenes photos and videos to show the funny side of the work, to make people familiar with what’s going on in the office and/or during meetings, or just upload photos from daily life that you find interesting to show  that you’re more than a brand. People connect with people.

2. Engagement is one of the key metrics.

The number of followers you have isn’t that important. Some have hundreds of thousands of them but only a tiny percent of these are commenting, liking or visiting the website. Engagement is what you should be aiming for.

It can happen by creating quality content, posting consistently, asking questions, personally contacting some users or like-minded business owners or potential partners to thank them, also sharing the things you read that other people have written, or products and tools you find useful that hep you get a lot done.

Use hashtags on Instagram, follow people in the same niche on Twitter, pay for targeted ads on Facebook, and include all the important information about who you are and what you do on LinkedIn – all these will help you find the right people.

3. Add value.

Before you start expecting many followers to visit your profile and like what you have to offer, you’ll need to put something on the table, for free. and build a name for yourself. Giving comes before getting anything out of it. So leave the financial goals behind and focus on creating, sharing and providing value now.

In your profile, mention a few words about yourself and your business but also how it helps people. Share the solution, not the product or service.

Create motivational image quotes yourself, or have someone do it for you. Make them original, add your logo, and share them with the world without expecting anything in return.

Run contests with giveaways. Let the prize be one of your products, a free consultation or chat with you, or using your software free for the first few months. That’s how you get people interested and still make your products and services more popular.

And share the links on social media. Even send a message individually to the people who are most engaged with your content and who you know will like your posts.

Social media can be fun if you do it right, and measure results all the time so you know what works best.

Make sure you diversift your time and efforts, though, but over time do focus more on the channels that lead to more followers, relationships or customers.

When an Internet user is looking for advice on a certain topic, wants to buy something, or has another need that your services can answer, they go online and search for information. But because at least tens of thousands of results come up, and there’s literally no time and energy to go through even the top ones and find what they’re looking for, they need to check out only the source they trust the most.

That usually happens by visiting the most popular site in the niche, or following an influencer and the tips and suggestions they share. So if you want to get in front of your potential customers, you need to radiate trust before they pay attention to you and your business, and long before you even start building a more personal relationship with them.

But how do you become the so-called expert on a particular topic? How do you stand out from the crowd when so many others are talking about the same thing, have more experience and have already created their products?

It will take time, sure, but you can take the steps below, and strategize before you get to work. Here’s where to start:

1. Stay up to date.

Things change every day in the world of online business. New marketing channels, social media platforms, influencers, trends, hashtags, optimization tricks, news, etc. are being discussed all the time. If you miss something closely related to your niche, you’ll be left behind.

So it must become your habit to follow the latest trends in your field, and have access to relevant information the moment it goes live. That too is a skill which takes time to be developed as you will consume a lot of unnecessary information in the beginning, until you find the right resources and the most comfortable and practical mediums that will save you time and give you only what you need.

2. Write a lot of content.

Find your voice and start sharing what’s on your mind. Be authentic and dedicate time to creating long-form content that your target audience will find useful.

That’s one of the surest ways to be taken seriously even by other professionals in your niche. It can also turn your website into a place where people go before they take a decision related to a product you’re selling, or just to get the right advice.

Content creation is a long-term strategy, and although it’s one of the most valuable ways to build a connection with your readers and touch them, still so many businesses aren’t investing enough time and resources in it.

You should write content as crazy, so don’t just plan to do it once a week or so. You can hire people too to take care of that, or just to edit, polish and publish your words, as that part also takes too much of your time. But you should be putting something of value out there every single day.

3. Build your network.

They say that your network is your net worth. Start by connecting with influencers on social media, go to networking events, leave insightful comments under the new posts of the biggest names in your industry.

If you stay in the game long enough and keep doing what you do and are with the right attitude, you will get noticed.

Over time, important people will start paying attention to you and the work you do, contacting you and making you tempting offers to do business together, inviting you to events, and introducing you to others. Each of these relationships can turn into something big.

4. Bring something new to the table.

To be remembered, you should change the game completely. That will make people interested in you, and even if they question your status quo, it’s about how you say it and what your goal is.

• Talk about the things in your industry that no one else dares to discuss.
• Combine two seemingly unrelated subjects and share life lessons with that.
• Visit forums and write long answers to people’s questions.
• Share a lot about your personal life, especially the extraordinary parts of it.
• Market your products in a completely different way.
• Set prices that no one else in your field has.
• Give more freebies to your readers and subscribers than anyone else.
• Write the longest guide on a popular topic and put make it available for free. Mention other influencers in your niche and then contact them personally to give them a link to it, hoping they’ll share it with their social media followers.

These 4 steps should be enough to get you started to becoming someone known to be an authority in their niche.

Simply creating an Instagram account and waiting for people to follow you and engage with the content you post every now and then won’t work.

A strategy must be created, a content and marketing plan should be prepared in advance, and then you can get to work and start building your audience.

But social media is often unpredictable, and the things that work can surprise even the most experienced business owner.

That’s why it’s worth taking a look at some popular Instagram accounts to see what they are doing right. When it comes to getting attention on a social media channel, other than monitoring engagement and tracking all other important metrics, the best marketing research is to try what your competitors are doing and see how successful it is for your audience and business.

But there are a few key features that all good Instagrammers have in common. These are elements of your overall strategy that you simply cannot go without. So instead of wasting time finding each yourself as a result of trial and error, keep them in mind now and make them part of your Instagram game from day one.

1. Great content.

Don’t skip this important step because you’re too busy to be creating content for yet another platform. And don’t think re-posting or quick photos or quotes can do the job just as good.

People want to be inspired, their attention can be grabbed by originality, and if they are to read a quote, it must be something they haven’t seen on all other accounts they are following. This is why Womeneur’s founder is hell bent on posting a lot of her own original quotes. So give people exactly that if you want to stand out.

The guys from Foundr Magazine know how to do that. And that’s why they have close to a million happy followers who engage with their content.

This means having different types of posts, but creating each one yourself and making sure it adds up to the overall value you provide with your profile.

So, make interesting videos, create Instagram stories every few days, use cool free apps to make your images professional and to add quotes to them. When presenting your products, do it right, not aggressively.

2. Give people something from the start.

If you want someone to follow you instead of the hundreds of other accounts and businesses that promise the same things as yours, you need to provide value and make that clear from the very beginning of your relationship.

The easiest way to do this is to offer freebies on your website and include the direct url to one of these in your description on Instagram.

From then on, the value you’ll be providing will be with every post you publish on a daily basis that will inspire your followers or give them some practical tips.

The folks from SumoMe, for example, are linking to an extensive guide about the tools you should use to grow your website traffic. They’ve invested tons of hours in creating it, and are giving it away. That helps people build trust and know they can expect only quality and useful information from them in the future too.

3. Be authentic, be bold in your statements.

Gary Vaynerchuk is probably one of the greatest examples of that, together with turning your name into a successful brand.

He’s crushing it with his Instagram account – and his online presence on every social media platform, really – because he’s being himself, talking about the things he’s passionate about, holding nothing back, and showing people how to do business, make things happen and do the work it takes.

If you’re looking to build a huge audience on Instagram, and even turn it into a new source of leads and income, take it seriously and make your profile anything else but average.

And if you need some cool tips and an Instagram strategy, check out our Instagram Content Calendar + 19 Killer Tips.