Social media marketing

Oh no, what to post on social media…

Jul 1, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

A number one reason why many small businesses fail with social media is because they struggle with creating a compelling, quality content. Many blame lack of time, creativity and imagination and when challenged these reasons quickly fall short.

Many small business owners simply don’t realised that they already have awesome, compelling, quality content that can be ‘recycled’ for social media.

Here are some simple things you can do immediately and boost your social media content.

Use existing content

Most small businesses will have various types of brochures, presentations, product and service descriptions etc. Check for any content that gives your readers solutions to a problem. Re-use the content or use it as starting point for new content.

Blog posts

If you run a blog (and if you don’t you really need to start doing it), check for popular blog posts, identify content that provides a solution to a problem, break the blog post in valuable smaller chunks and educate your fans about that specific problem through sequence of social media posts. Through educating your fans base you are building authority in your own niche.

Write about your products & services

Talking about your products & services doesn’t mean hard sell. By using messages that are educative, creative and ‘non-selly’ you can raise awareness about them and by that create a need for them. Provided you are talking to your actual target market, this is the best way of advertising to them. Use images, create stories around use of your products and services and how they helped resolve problems, that your fan base might be experiencing.

Talk about your business

It’s true that peoples’ favorite topic is them. However they do like to hear great stories. Social media is all about sharing. Start sharing stories about your business, how it started, what drives it, successes, awards and challenges. You’ll be surprised that people read this sort of stuff and engage more when business becomes personal. And you know any small business is a personal affair.

Post images inspiring images

People like to feel inspired and they love looking at images. By sharing what inspires you, you are building rapport and connecting with your fans. This helps you build trust, which in turn helps you make more sales. If they have a choice, people will always buy from a person they know over the one they don’t – even if that means paying more for the same service or product.

I hope this gives you some inspiration for creating content for your social media activities. Remember, the overarching rule: Keep it relevant, engaging, cut back on sales and promotion talk and be yourself. It’s the thing you know how to do the best J

I’m looking forward to hear some ideas about how you overcome ‘writer’s block’ moments. Let us know in comments below.

Until next time

Who Do You Talk To On Social Media

Feb 19, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Last time I wrote about how to identify your perfect customer and ‘build-up’ your Customer Avatar; now let’s look how this applies to social media marketing.

You’ll be relieved to know that the same rules apply in social media marketing and online marketing in general, as they do for marketing and advertising offline. The only difference, and advantage, is that online marketing is much more targeted because of the various software abilities which let you choose who you want to advertise to, e.g. gender, location, age, interests etc. You can also measure your results more tightly and tweak your campaigns accordingly.

For example; if you place an advertisement in a newspaper, you don’t know who will buy the paper and read your advertisement. You can only assume that your target audience have seen it. With online marketing tools, you can choose to whom your ad will be presented to. You can measure impressions, any click through and various other elements. You can also easily change any elements of your ads and split test various versions.

The more in-depth knowledge you have about your perfect customer, the more you can target your social media marketing campaigns. This means that it’s easier to determine what works and what doesn’t, which makes online marketing more cost effective and flexible.

So, you already know how to identify your perfect customer but what happens when your fans are not your targeted audience?

This is quite common problem when you’re starting with Facebook and other social media platforms. At the start you need to get the number of your Likes up and the easiest way to do that is to ask all your friends to like your page. While they will be engaging with you regularly and be great advocates for your brand, they might not buy anything from you. You will be spreading your reach through friends of their friends; however it might take time to finally get exposure to your targeted audience who will actually buy from you.

If you are in this position, you need to take steps to change demographics of your fan base.

How do you do that?

There are various ways but the most obvious and quick one is paid Facebook advertising. When creating ads on Facebook you can choose who to target with such precisions as to age, gender, location, interest etc. Facebook Ads (sponsored stories, promoted posts) are one of the most targeted advertising tools online and I guess they supersede any offline ads as well. Incorporate them with your email marketing campaign and you have just created possibly the most targeted audience for your business.

You know that I’m a great advocate of free traffic but you need to start making profit, so you need to change your audience as soon as possible. Setting aside a conservative budged to start with will make these changes faster. And once you are talking to your targeted audience you will see that engagement with your page will increase and so will your profits. The beauty of Facebook Ads is that you are in control of your campaign. If set up right, you will soon start making profit. Once you discover a lead generation formula that works for you, the sky will be your limit.

I know starting with paid advertising on Facebook can be a daunting experience. If you don’t know where to start or if you’ve tried it in the past but it didn’t quite work, we are here to help you.

We can either run you Facebook ad campaigns for you or coach you to create your own ads that perform.

Imagine what a good Facebook lead generation strategy will mean for your business….

Contact us to discuss your strategy

Want to Meet Your Ideal Customer

Feb 17, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Have you ever heard this saying: “You can have the best offer but if you are pitching to the wrong audience you will not make any sales”?

Knowing who your customers are is essential for any marketing campaign.

To know them means to know who they are as a person, what they like and respond to, what makes them angry, what excites them. Once you know them you will know exactly how to advertise to them, which will result in making more sales.

It sounds pretty easy, so why are many businesses still struggling?

Most business owners fail to plan their marketing and as a result they are too many things to too many people.

This means that lack of clarity and identifying who your targeted audience will result in shooting your message to potentially wrong audience or sending mixed messages. Imagine for a second, that you are selling designer women’s fashion with a high end price tag and you are advertising your products in a teen fashion magazine. You will not make many sales. Teens may grow to like your brand but are probably not in a position to buy from you yet. If you would advertise exactly the same products in a magazine that targets women with high end earnings, your sales would be skyrocketing.

How do you determine your target audience?

This is as easy as asking yourself few questions but it’s probably one of the most important tasks you need to complete as a business owner before you start any marketing campaign. In fact, it is so important that you should do that before you even start your business.

If you haven’t done so, you need to do it as soon as you stop riding this article. I cannot stress enough how important this is. Without in-depth knowledge about your target audience, you can forget about successful marketing campaign.

So, where do you start?

I’m confident that in general you know who your products or services are for. To be really effective in advertising you need to get few steps further and really get to know these people. You need to consider:

The way they think, talk, their beliefs, opinions, and how they form their opinions
What are their hobbies or interest
How they spend their leisure time
What they wear
Where they hang out
What kind of publications they read and which stations they watch or listen
etc

All these details are important and will make your marketing campaign successful. The better you know your targeted audience the better you can communicate with them. Once you have a good understanding of them then you will know exactly how to appeal to them. Makes sense?

Then once you know them you have to become them. This means that when you are creating your marketing campaigns, you need to put yourself in a position of your audience and consider your add from their perspective. You need to step in their shoes.

The easiest way to achieve this is to create you perfect customer Avatar. If this brings blue tall creatures to your mind, you are half way there. Because imagination is important part of creating your customer Avatars, you need to get ‘under their skin’

Your perfect customer Avatar is a list of traits that your ideal client portrays. It’s their inner desires, hidden fears and all the things that keeps them awake at night.

Your avatar represents a whole group of people that you identified as target audience. When you communicate with your target audience, you always talk to your Avatar. This means you always communicate in first person, like you are talking only to your Avatar. If you studied your targeted audience well, then each person will identify themselves in your Avatar.

Everything you communicate to your prospect market is designed around your Avatar and speaks directly to your Avatar, which makes it the most valuable marketing tool for your business.

Creating your Avatar might feel a bit strange at the start but it’s actually heaps of fun. They are like your marketing campaign buddies that you can turn to every time you are creating ads. Visualize yourself looking at your ads from your customer avatar perspective and take into account all relevant factors.

So now that you know the secret to successful marketing, all you need to do is get thinking and spend couple of hours considering your Avatar.

I’ve created a report for you that will take you through the process and the most common questions you need to ask yourself to create your ideal customer avatar. You can download it HERE.

Now that you know your ideally customer, keep the Avatar in mind anytime you are communicating with your target audience, whether it be via ads, blog post, videos, social media…and you will notice it’s sometimes easier to talk to one person then a big group.

I would like to know what you think about Avatars and how will you use this secret powerful marketing weapon.

Feeling Frustrated? Use Social Media to Vent – Or Better Not?

Jan 18, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Sometimes it feels that social media is just another platform for people to complain, grunt and be negative. While we all sometimes have a good reason for it and feel like it’s a good idea to use social media to vent and express our opinions, it’s important to note that what you write on your posts can be used as evidence in a court. Did I just lost you interest?

I urge you read this further as it might help you protect yourself against others or open your awareness about your own conduct. I promise I will not bore you with too many legal details. Agreed?

Ok, my marketer’s hat off, and my lawyer’s hat on.

Recently, Australian Federal Court made a decision that serves us as a reminder that individuals and businesses should exercise caution when making comments on social media and that same standards apply to social media as to other forms of advertising and marketing.

So what happened?

We all know Seafolly for their stunning beach wear collections. Recently they sued, a designer from White Sands Swimwear for engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct by posting number of statements on Facebook and in emails to several outlets indicating that Seafolly ripped off almost her entire line. To cut the long story short, the court found in favour of Seafolly and found that Ms Madden falsely represented that Seafolly had copied her designs and that Seafolly was not the creator of their designs. She also falsely represented that Seafolly used underhanded means to obtain photographs of the White Sands garments in order to copy them.

Although Ms Madden did not explicitly accuse Seafolly of copying, the statements made on her Facebook page and the emails to media representatives were understood by her audience to be assertions that Seafolly had engaged in unethical practices. That understanding was evidenced by the tones of the early media articles and comments on the issue.

So why should that worry you?

Even though these statements were made on Ms Madden’s personal Facebook profile and could be seen as expression of her opinions, the Court found that she was reckless in forming them. She took none of the steps that she should have taken to ascertain the truthfulness of her suspicions. Her intention of making these statements was not relevant – what counts is the understanding of audience to whom these statement were directed. Ms Madden was awarded to pay $25,000 for damages to Seafolly’s reputation, which the Court labelled as a ‘serious assault on Seafolly’s business integrity’, and also their costs of the proceeding.

Lessons learned

Social media is a valuable marketing and social tool. We have to remember that even though it appears informal, the unethical conduct can results in serious consequences for individuals and businesses, including payment of damages and legal costs and adverse media attention. Before you post anything on Facebook and other social media platforms, check your facts and check them again. Even thought the statements are instant and can be deleted, they can be retrieved and damaging for your business.

If you ever think that someone is violating your rights, refrain from resolving this matter on social media. Check the facts; engage with offending party off-line and/or engage lawyers if necessary.

Most of all, don’t post anything you would not say to that person or brand directly; and consider how you would feel if you were on the other side.

Have something to share? Use comments below

Why You Should Use Facebook Offers

Jan 12, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Facebook is definitely thinking hard how to monetize itself yet keep true to its original purpose. You may or may not be aware that Facebook launched another cool feature for Facebook pages called Facebook Offers. This tool is quite handy for promoting your special deals on Facebook Business Page. It will help you make sales and it will also increase your exposure and brand awareness on Facebook.

Of course there is a cost to use this tool, which is calculated based on how many people you wish to reach. But don’t panic you can start from as little as $5.

So, what are Facebook Offers?

If you own Facebook Business Page you can now offer your fans special offers, sales, discount coupons or other specials. These can them be claimed by fans on you page by clicking on your offer, which then gets emailed to them to redeem it at your store or on your website.

To set up a Facebook Offer you just click on the offer icon in your new post area and follow the prompts. You need to have at least 400 Fans to be able to use this tool.

Why should you do it?

Apart from most obvious reason, making a sale, you will get extremely good exposure of your business to wider network of people on Facebook.

How?

Let’s say you post an offer on your wall . This then appears as a post from your page in your fans’ news feeds. If your fans don’t share or comment on the offer, this is as far as it gets in reaching out.

Now, if you set up Facebook Offer and your fan claims it, the tool will posts this to their news feed, which then gets seen by friends of that fan. Sounds good?

It gets even better. When one of their friends claims the offer, this then shows in their news feed and then if their friends claim the offer….you get the picture. Now imagine how far you can expand your reach with one offer. The benefit: Your brand gets exposed to the whole new network of people.

If you need a proof that this really happens, Facebook released statistics, which show that 3 out of 4 of the most popular Facebook offers were claimed by friends of the fan who was originally targeted.

Will this work for you?

Of course, but you need to consider these things:

You have to have a good offer. There’s no point of offering something that no one wants. Really think about what value you can add to make your offer the best as you can.
You can have the best offer but if you are pitching to the wrong audience, you will not make any sales.
Test, measure, tweak your offers; only then will you know what works and what not.

Remember, Facebook is a new word of mouth and as humans we always want to have what others have, that’s what make Facebook Offers a win-win tool for businesses and users.

Now go, try them out and let us know in comments below what you think about Facebook Offers.