Bestselling author, award winning brand marketing and social media pro, Cindy Ratzlaff, creates sales driving campaigns for authors, books and publishers.
by Cindy Ratzlaff
Facebook is rolling out the new threaded replies feature today on an opt-in basis. This is a feature brands should find useful for directly responding to comments to create a more personal, meaningful conversation on their business pages. The new feature is called Replies or Reply Links. This feature will allow a page, especially in a very active conversation, to reply right under a particular comment rather than farther down the thread.
Every entrepreneur should have binders full of women (and men) who are resources, teachers, strategists, leaders, contacts and potential partners. Social media provides the digital version of a binder through Facebook Interest Lists and Twitter Lists. G+ has circles and Pinterest Boards. We’ve got Evernote to capture and save links, sites and notes and digital contact lists on our mobile devices that act as simple Customer Relations Management, or CRM, tools.
The resources, education and support I’ve gleaned from my Binders Full of Women = priceless.
Here’s a peek inside just one of my personal “binder,” my Top 18 Top Women to Follow for Business Advice. Each of these women share their expertise, advice, resources and opinions so freely that you’ll feel like you’re getting a mini-MBA just by adding them to your stream. These are in no particular order and every one is provides such valuable information, guidance and inspiration, I recommend you take time to visit their websites and see if what they talk about will help you grow your business.
Entrepreneurs are people who have a great concept or product and a passion to bring it to market. But they may not be trained in all the areas necessary to survive and thrive in the start-up phase of a business. Not many people come to their own business with experience in sales, marketing, human resources, web design and development, supply chain management, graphic design, copy writing, creating a content marketing calendar and accounting.
Ranking through search engines like Google, Bing, YouTube and others should be one of your goals. After all, if people don’t find what you’ve written, you’re a diarist, not a teacher, coach or business blogger. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re creating products, services and content as a business and want to increase your search ranking and help new clients discover you, there are a few visibility and ranking strategies to keep in mind.
A strategic alliance is a relationship between two (or more) parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need while remaining separate businesses or entities. Partnering with people or companies who have a similar customer base must benefit both parties equally and have full commitment buy-in from each partner. When planned and executed properly, a strategic alliance can exponentially increase the success of a campaign or launch.
A consulting client recently confessed to me that his Facebook news stream is overwhelming him and he’s ready to give up on the brand visibility strategy we’ve outlined for building his personal brand through social media. I asked him to make a list of the top 25 people he’d most like to do business with, be on stage with or have as a strategic partner. He was able to make that list in just minutes, of course, because when he focused on his business goal, it was easy to identify those people most likely to be a part of that goal. This social media strategy technique saves him time daily.
I showed him how to put each of those top 25 influencers into a Facebook Interest List, which we called A-List Influencers. Now he can filter his news stream each morning and quickly scan the posts of the people he most wants to connect with and add to their conversations, comment, compliment, create value and in general develop a relationship with these highly desirable contacts. Facebook will always revert back to the standard news feed view but any time he wants to check in on his A-List Influencers, he can do so with just a click.
The promise of social media as the top of a profitable funnel can be the shiny object of marketing tools. Converting “Likes” to leads, however, requires a strategic use of social media rather than thinking of social media simply as a broadcasting tool.
A conversion focused social media strategy should bring a lead into the marketing funnel, capture the lead, create the opportunity and incentives to convert the lead (through either a sale or a partnership or a request for further information), engage that new partner/client and motivate the partner/client to transform into a brand evangelizer by providing them with the tools and incentives to recreate the cycle.
Social Media is a massive permission based marketing opportunity for entrepreneurs.
Social media platforms are where a large pool of potential clients spend their discretionary time. Developing a brand messaging strategy to engage with these potential customers requires understanding the language spoken on each social platform and integrating the social campaign with off-line campaign.
*Editor’s Note: The video you feature must be hosted on YouTube.
YouTube quietly added a new feature to the platform that will help small businesses, cash strapped start-ups, entrepreneurs, authors, speakers and coaches promote their brands, in just a few simple steps, across all of their YouTube videos.
InVideo Programming allows users to insert a branded logo or even another video into the corner of all currently uploaded videos on an individual’s YouTube Channel, all at once.
Imagine that as a small business owner you are creating short informational videos and posting them to YouTube. Next you share them through e-mail or through Facebook and even your business website* (your video must be hosted on YouTube, even if it’s featured on your website). Now with InVideo Programming, you’ll be able to embed another video into the corner of your informational video–say an announcement about a big launch, sale or special event–and ever consumer facing touch point for the original informational video now becomes an invitation to view the special announcement video in just one click.
We’ve been told that selling through social media is a no-no and that at best we should keep it to the 80/20 rule; 80% engagement and 20% sales. Heck, I’ve even said that in the past. Now I’m proposing we rethink the concept of sales altogether and throw the 80/20 rule out the window.
In the early phase of building a social media platform for any brand, personal or business, we focus on likes, follows, friends, fans and subscribers as a metric for measuring whether or not a brand message is hitting an eager audience. That’s still a valid thing to measure and a brand that can’t gather a tribe in a pool of more than a billion social media users simply may not have a marketable idea.
Take a deep breath. On NBC-TV’s The Today Show, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced sweeping redesign to the Twitter platform with a focus on the look of Profile pages and a significant update to the mobile and iPad apps.
The Profile Look: Profile’s will feature a large Header Photo on the right hand side that might remind some users of the look and feel of Facebook.
