8 Simon Sinek Quotes That Will Change The Way You Do Business Posted on March 27, 2017September 16, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick If you’re not familiar with Simon Sinek, you should drop what you’re doing to watch his famous TED Talk: “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” In his talk, he explores what made people like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Wright Brothers become the leaders they were. And his infamous TED Talk is just a sample of his work. Sinek has dedicated his career to studying leaders of all fields to find patterns in their successes and to make that knowledge accessible to everyone who aspires to become a champion in their field. Here are just a few slices of Sinek’s wisdom that will hopefully inspire you to innovate, improve and change your business to achieve better results. 1) “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” Many companies are focused on selling the features and benefits of their products. In reality, the what motivates people the most is your mission and vision of what you’re hoping to achieve with your business. [Tweet “”People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” @SimonSinek @Hatchbuck”] Apple isn’t about selling personal computers, it’s about ‘thinking different’ and challenging the status quo. Airbnb isn’t about short-term rentals. It’s about connecting people so that you can belong anywhere. 2) “Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them.” An ideal candidate is someone with an excellent attitude and a broad skillset. But in reality, you don’t always find these people and you have to choose between skills and attitude. And, that’s where most companies get it wrong. They go for the skill. A leader, however, realizes a skill is something you can teach, but attitude won’t change. [Tweet “”A leader realizes a skill is something you can teach, but attitude won’t change.” -@JonathanHerrick”] In reality, positive attitude and the right culture fit is much, much harder to find. Those are the people you want on your team. 3) “Let us all be the leaders we wish we had.” This one is self-explanatory, isn’t it? As a small business owner, your team looks to you for guidance. Make sure you’re setting an example you’re proud of. [Tweet “.@SimonSinek: “Let us all be the leaders we wish we had.” | Read more @Hatchbuck”] 4) “Henry Ford summed it up best. ‘If I had asked people what they wanted,’ he said, ‘they would have said a faster horse.’” It’s fair to say this actually isn’t Simon Sinek’s quote but Henry Ford’s. Too many companies try to determine their product direction or create marketing messages based strictly on customer input. With that mindset, you’ll never become a leader. When asked, most customers will only offer you a variation of something they already know. In his book, Nail It Then Scale It, Stanford Professor Nathan Furr states that “entrepreneurs innovate, customers validate.” Ask customers about their pain points but come up with a solution yourself. Don’t ask them what to do. Execute, get feedback, listen and adjust. 5) “When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.” When you follow and react to your competition, you’re effectively a follower. Jeff Bezos of Amazon had more solid advice topic: ‘If we can keep our competitors focused on us while we stay focused on our customer, effectively we’ll turn out alright.’ In other words, if you’re focused on your mission and your ‘why,’ you’re an innovator. If you’re truly innovating, you don’t have to worry about what your competitors do. 6) “The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.” In other words, if you’ll try to please everybody, you’ll please nobody. Great companies know exactly who their ideal buyer is and focus on doing business with them. If you know who your ideal customers are, you’ll get much further than merely targeting a faceless mainstream audience. Airbnb founder Brian Chesky said, ‘It’s better to have 1000 customers love you, than millions kind of like you.” If you can find people who will love what you have to offer, they will effectively become an advocate of your brand. It’s not surprising that companies like Uber or Airbnb got over 50% of their early growth solely from referrals. 7) “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” Your employees are your greatest asset. They’re the soul of your small business and their attitudes translate into the product, customer service and marketing messages. [Tweet “”Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” – @SimonSinek @Hatchbuck”] As the popular saying goes, ‘If you don’t love yourself, who else is going to?’ Employees are the company and if your small business doesn’t love itself, no one else will either. 8) “If you can clearly articulate the dream or the goal, start.” Your customers will love you for your mission and your values. But you must be able to effectively communicate them first. [Tweet “”If you can clearly articulate the dream or goal, start.” | Stellar advice from @SimonSinek!”] No matter how noble and inspiring your values and your mission are, if you can’t communicate them well, they won’t win you any customers.
7 Simple Ways to Lose a Lead Posted on March 24, 2017 by Jessica Lunk Attracting leads isn’t easy. Building an effective sales and marketing funnel will likely cost your small business substantial time and effort early on. You’ll need to work hard to successfully take a prospect through all the stages of your conversion funnel. The last thing you want to do is lose leads over a silly mistake. Your small business needs an optimized website and well-executed marketing strategy to attract leads. But in order to convert those leads into customers, you need to spend time nurturing them. At the end of the day, there are countless competitors vying for the same leads you are. So, unless you’re trying to clear out your sales funnel (which we highly doubt), make sure you avoid the following lead-killing mistakes. Take Value Instead of Providing it Converting a lead is a lot like having a bank account. In order to get something out of it, you first need to put capital into it. [Tweet “Converting a lead is like a bank account. To get something out of it, you need to put capital in.”] According to Marketing Donut, 63% of people requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least three months – and 20% will take more than 12 months to buy. Immediately asking for a sale, or taking any action that serves your business first (rather than the prospective customer), is taking money out of the account. Providing leads with a valuable content, or resources that help them and their business, is the equivalent of putting capital into it. In other words, you need to first offer value to receive it. If you don’t, your leads will simply lose interest, lose respect for your brand and lapse. Send Generic Emails All leads aren’t created equal. We’re all individuals with different reasons for making purchasing decisions, and we’re all seeking different benefits from each product we buy. When you treat each customer the same, you simply won’t appeal to their individual needs. Your outreach or sales process will make them feel undervalued or misunderstood. That’s where personalization comes in. Manually personalizing each individual email is a daunting task (and one you shouldn’t waste your time on). The use of CRM and marketing automation allows you to track prospect behavior and properly segment your lists to send the right emails to the right people with very little time spent on your part. Aberdeen reports that personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10% – so it’s well worth the time and investment to segment your list and send relevant emails. Ignore Them A supportive and educated sales team is necessary for a strong sales funnel. Before selling to a prospect, your sales team needs to have an understanding of their business and how your product and service meets their needs. Scripted reports that 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up, and yet, Marketing Donut shows that 80% of sales require 5 follow-up phone calls after the meeting. If you aren’t engaging with your leads, you’re leaving them out in the cold. [Tweet “If you aren’t engaging with your leads, you’re leaving them out in the cold.”] Your team should be readily available to engage with potential clients, answer their questions and successfully guide them through your conversion funnel. Not responding promptly to a prospect’s inquiries or treating each potential customer as a number rather than an individual is guaranteed to lose leads. Don’t Follow Up Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads, according to Demand Gen Report. Prospects only convert into leads when they’ve reached a certain level of interest in your business. Beyond that point, their interest will only decline unless you continue nurturing those leads. Lead nurturing means staying in touch and providing your leads with more of the value that made them convert. If you don’t follow up with leads on a regular basis, they’ll absolutely never convert into customers. Bombard Them With Too Many Emails At the other end of the follow-up spectrum is over-communication. We’ve all encountered the overzealous salesperson firebombing our inboxes with generic emails. It’s not a pleasant experience. Sending too many emails is off-putting and unprofessional. Desperation is a red flag for most prospects that usually results in an unsubscribe. Overpromise and Underdeliver One of the surest ways to lose a lead forever is to overpromise and underdeliver. What does that mean in real practice? Well, let’s take lead magnets for example. [Tweet “”One of the surest ways to lose a lead forever is to overpromise and underdeliver.” @JessicaLunk”] Several weeks ago, I downloaded an ebook promising small business financial tips from top money managers. I provided my email and took the time to download the resource only to find that it was full of advertising with no tips at all. Naturally, I felt tricked and have no desire to interact with that company again. Be upfront with your offerings. Never exaggerate your capabilities. Selling products under false pretenses will not only win you an unhappy, short-term customer, but it will do irreparable damage to your business’s reputation. Don’t Plan Failing to plan is the quickest path to failure. Converting leads requires a well-designed plan to take them through each stage of your conversion funnel. SiriusDecisions reports that B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three-year revenue growth, and 27% faster three-year profit growth. So if you’re not focused on achieving a watertight sales and marketing funnel, you’re missing out on growth. You won’t perfect your funnel right off the bat. You may run in to leaks or reasons that leads are falling through the cracks. Test, test, test. Your CRM and analytics tools are the easiest way to see where your leads are slipping away. Your lead generation and nurturing processes need to be based on more than just chance. If you’re not actively planning and testing your strategy to improve your funnel, you’re most likely letting leads fall through the cracks. Or worse, you’re repelling them.
The Importance of Hiring the Right Team for Your Small Business (And How to Do It) Posted on March 23, 2017 by Erin Posey Even if your leadership skills are top-notch, it’s mission-critical to find the right team for your small business. People who are naturally motivated to contribute and serve your customers well will be a lot easier to lead than those who have no interest in delivering rock-star performance. Many small business owners are on the hunt for talent that will help them grow their businesses. Thirty-six percent of owners projected that the number of jobs at their company would increase a little or a lot over the next 12 months in the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index released in December 2016. That was the highest reading in the survey’s 13-year history. If you’re among them, there’s a lot you can do to build the right team—even if your budget is tight. Here are some strategies that will help. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Try to experience your business the way customers and prospects do. Call the main phone number from a number your team won’t recognize. Does the person who greets you sound happy and professional before you identify yourself the as person who is calling? Leave a message on the company voice mail. Does someone on your team play it and return it the same day? Send a message through the contact box on your website. Does it get returned? If you’re in retail or the food business, ask a few friends to visit your business as mystery shoppers and report back to you. What is their experience like? The point isn’t to spy on your employees or play gotcha. It’s to get an objective look at how they are treating customers. If you find gaps in the customer experience, offer your team more training, or, if no one the team is suited for a particular role, like sales, look for a hire who fills in the gaps on your team. Another way to do a reality check is to use customer surveys. Use SurveyMonkey or another free survey software to design a survey and send it to customers after a purchase. Ask them about what their experience was like. Or use the Net Promoter Score survey, inquiring whether customers would be likely to refer to you to a friend or family member. If your scores need major improvement, you may need to help your team buff up their performance at work or replace those who are seriously underperforming with new hires who are better at keeping customers happy. Keep recruiting top of mind. The time to find great hires isn’t when you’re desperate because someone has quit the day before. It’s when you don’t need help. Try to find ways every week to look for people you might add to your talent pool. If, for instance, you volunteer in a community organization, play in an amateur sports league or take classes in the evening, mention your business to the friends you meet and ask if they know anyone who might be a good fit, should you need to hire someone in the future. Reach out to the contacts they suggest and invite them for a cup of coffee on a day when you’re not busy to get to know them long before you need to hire. Look beyond the obvious talent pools. In some instances, it pays to look for people who fit a certain profile when you hire. If you own a running shoe store, hiring people who are runners—whether serious marathoners or recreational joggers—may help your sales. They will have a natural enthusiasm for what they are selling and will be able to share their knowledge with customers. However, many small business owners miss out on great hires because they have created too narrow a picture of who is right for a job. For instance, a software company may only send open jobs to new graduates with little experience, thinking that no one else will accept the job. In reality, there may be many other applicants who would be interested in the role in a part-time or freelance capacity. Thinking about job openings in a different way can open your talent pool and allow you to find someone who complement the qualities of the other people on your team and won’t be as sensitive to whether you pay the highest wages or not. Focus on culture and character. Skills can always be taught – and even the most seasoned professionals are learning new things every day. Tougher to instill in your team is character. Hiring people who show up every day on time with an enthusiasm to grow will be an asset to your business no matter what their skill-set is. In addition to character, hiring a culture-fit is a must for small businesses. When it comes to small teams, a new addition can instantly change the group dynamic. It’s important that new hires mesh with your culture – whether your business values quirkiness and the ability to think outside the box, or values driven type-A perfectionists who never miss a beat. Hiring intentionally means that you get the right people in the door to scale and accelerate your small business.
5 Reasons To Jump On The Video Marketing Bandwagon In 2017 Posted on March 22, 2017December 15, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Video consumption has been growing steadily over the past few years, and if you’re not taking advantage of video in your marketing strategy, you’re missing out big on potential engagement and customers. Video’s popularity is evident based on the current social media landscape. Snapchat has over 100 million daily active users and just announced an IPO. Periscope has reached well over 200 million broadcasts to date. Then there’s Facebook and Instagram. Both platforms have made a dramatic shift toward video content. And it’s paying off. There’s a reason why marketers love video. It delivers results. And reach, conversions and engagement are just a few of the benefits marketers can capture from video marketing. Video Is The Key To Social Media Performance According to findings from Moz, Facebook is now a real contender with YouTube as the top video platform for brands. It’s not surprising. Research by BuzzSumo shows that video content outperforms all other content on Facebook by a notable margin. Other popular social platforms are making the move to video and LIVE video as well. Both Instagram and Pinterest introduced new video features at the end of the last year. Emails Are Better With Video Testing has shown that the use of video in email campaigns has a direct impact on click-through rates, sharing and forwarding. Another study by Forrester found that when marketers included a marketing or explainer video in an email, the click-through rate increased by 200% to 300%. Video Can (Actually) Boost Your Revenue Content marketing generates leads. But we all know that a lead alone isn’t a guaranteed customer. You need to nurture and convert that lead first. Webinars (live or recorded) are a useful tool in a lead nurturing strategy. Marketing whiz Neil Patel used 77 webinars to make approximately $1,638,000 in revenue for Kissmetrics. While that’s not a common outcome, he does have really great advice on optimizing conversion from webinars. On top of that, webinars deliver the second best ROI of any content marketing tactic for B2B marketers, according to eMarketer. Image Courtesy of eMarketer.com Interactive Video Is The Next Frontier Interactive video is a relatively new term in the marketing world. It basically incorporates interactive components such as question and answer functionality. The greatest thing about it? It delivers engagement. That’s a great advantage for marketers as numerous reports confirm that brand engagement is plummeting in the recent years. For example, in advertising interactive videos have a 1000% higher CTR than traditional video ads, according to an older study from Forrester Research. And another report by Demand Metric and Brightcove shows 20% better conversion rates. Video Helps You Sell More Over 100 million internet users watch online video every day. According to comScore, 90% of online shoppers find video helpful in making shopping and buying decisions. And it’s not just valuable for B2C and retail marketinvideobrewery.com/…/18-video-marketing-statisticsg. A study by Forbes shows that 50% of surveyed executives watch business-related videos on YouTube and 65% visit the marketer’s website after viewing it. So rather than simply writing about your product or service or posting a picture of your team at work to showcase your company culture, think about bringing video into your marketing strategy. There are plenty of low-cost, DIY solutions (Video Brewery, Wistia, Animoto and more) out there that are perfect for smaller businesses.
Photo Series Part 2: Photo Editing Tools & Tips for Non-Creatives Posted on March 21, 2017 by Jeanna Barrett If you’ve attempted to take professional photos for your small business but they’re just not cutting it, you’re probably missing out on the world of iPhone editing. The iPhone is known for its ability to capture high-quality photography because of the technology behind the phone and its apps. Some of the best photographers in the world shoot using only an iPhone and editing apps. But the great news for you is that it doesn’t take a professional photographer to master the world of iPhone editing. All you need is a great photo editing app and the right tools, and you too can create professional photos. I’ve gathered some of my favorite iPhone photography apps that are on my personal iPhone, and included some tips on how to utilize common photo editing tools. This is the second part in a three-part photo series. If you missed the first part, you can read it here: How to Take Professional Quality Photos with Your iPhone. Choose Your Favorite Photo Editing Apps The most important tool in a photography toolbox is the right editing app. We mentioned a few in our last post, but the good news is that the amount of iPhone photo editing apps is endless. Some photographers use a combination of several different apps to alter their photos, but that’s not necessary for all businesses. Depending on the level of sophistication you’re looking for, here are a few of our favorite editing apps: Camera+: I mentioned this one in part one of our series as a great app to take professional photos, but it’s also one of the best apps to edit your photos because of the different filter and photo adjustment options in their Lab. One of our favorite features is the Photo Flashlight which allows you to use your iPhone’s flash as a continuous fill light to improve photo quality so your photos won’t turn out too dark or grainy. For a one-time fee of $2.99, you can have all of these features and more on your iPhone with Camera+. Snapseed: This is one of the most popular editing apps on the market today, and it’s free. It was developed by Google so you better believe it has a ton of basic features, strong advanced features and a bevy of beautiful filters. You can convert photos to black and white, blur the photo and add text within seconds. If you’re a photo editing beginner, this should be at the top of your list. Prisma: You’ve likely seen the popularity of Prisma take over your friends’ Instagram feed. Prisma takes a regular photo and “turns it into a work of art” by changing the photo to appear as if it’s a Picasso painting. Canva: Canva is an awesome photo editing tool to create photos for your brand. They have both a desktop and mobile application that makes editing your small business photos super easy. You can use different fonts, filters, graphics, stickers and shapes to create custom images for social media or other content. And they have hundreds of templates to use and tweak. A Color Story: A Color Story, created by the founders of popular lifestyle blog A Beautiful Mess, is a fantastic iPhone photo editing app that allows you to bring intense color and life to your photos. They have a wide selection of lense flares and bold filters, and you can use your favorite combos as a custom saved filter. The best part? All of the beautiful components of this tool are 100% free. Diptic: This is our favorite collage tool for iPhone. If you want to create a photo composition to tell a story or document an event, Diptic is a great app to help you stitch them together. They also recently added video collaging capabilities which makes video creation and styling seamless. The app will cost you $0.99, but it’s well worth the tiny fee to be able to create more advanced visuals. Take Advantage of the Photo Editing Settings While each iPhone photography editing app has its own particular functionality, most of the popular apps offer the same basic editing options. These tools allow you to change nearly everything about your photo. Even a low-quality, dark photo can morph into a beautiful, professional photo with the right editing manipulation (in most cases). Here are a few common editing settings and how to utilize them: Rotate & Flip or Straighten: If your photo composition doesn’t look quite right or you took the photo upside down, backwards or crooked, you can change the orientation of the photo with the simple rotate, flip and straighten tools. Tint: The tint editing feature will allow you to play around with the color of your photos. In some editing apps, this is referred to simply as “color.” If you’d like your photo to have a green hue or a blue hue, you can play around with tint effects. Duotone: This editing tool can produce really interesting photos where your subjects are in only two colors. This can be a great tool to use for marketing materials so that photos have an overlay to match your brand colors. Soft Focus: Just like its name suggests, this type of photo editing tool allows you to add a soft focus or light to your photos for a gentler effect. Film Grain: Similarly to Soft Focus, this photo editing tool will add a film grain to your photo to give the effect of old time photos. Sharpen: The Sharpen photo editing tool allows you to make your photos appear crisper. If your photo is too blurry, apply the sharpen tool to get details to pop. This can be great to use with food photography. Blur: The Blur photo editing tool is a more intense version of Soft Focus, applying a deep blur to your photos for a more artistic effect. Saturation: If you want colors to stand out more in your photo, increase the saturation a bit to intensify the colors. The greens will be more green, the yellows more yellow… but don’t take it too far or everything will look unnatural. Temperature: If your photo appears to be too gold or too blue, use the Temperature photo editing tool to adjust the color temperature in your photo to make it more neutral. Exposure: Sometimes your photos come out overexposed (too light) or underexposed (too dark). The exposure tool helps you adjust the lighting in your photo to make bad photos better. Brightness & Contrast: Just like the name suggests, these tools allow you to adjust how bright your photo is and intensify or calm the contrast of colors and light. Use these correctly, and they might be the only tools you need to make your photos post-worthy. Highlights & Shadows: Sometimes a subject’s face might be too dark or you took a photo with the sunshine behind a subject. You can try playing around with highlights and shadows to fix a subject that is overly light or dark. Vignette: Vignette adds an intriguing dark border or frame to your photo that is more of a stylistic choice versus using this filter to fix a bad photo. Tilt Shift: This is one of my favorite photo editing tools — Tilt Shift allows you to add a radial or vertical focus in your photo and blurs out everything else. If your photos feature a lot of background distractions, you can easy pull the focus in on one aspect using Tilt Shift. Now that we’ve covered the basics of composition, iPhone camera tools and professional iPhone photography apps and tricks, you should feel close to being an iPhone photography pro. Stay tuned for our final part to this three-part series: How to Crop Your Photos Into Eye-Catching Images.
A Step-By-Step Guide To Marketing Your Small Business On Instagram Posted on March 20, 2017August 5, 2022 by Allie Wolff Quick facts about Instagram: 600 million active users; 400 million daily active users; 80 million daily active users in the US alone. Plus, it’s still one of the fastest growing social media platforms. Instagram is a powerful social media platform that enables small businesses to market themselves for FREE. If done well, Instagram marketing can build your brand, generate leads and boost your revenue. However, you can’t use the same strategy on Instagram that you do on your other social platforms. It’s not enough to just have a profile and throw some hashtags around – that’s what everyone else is doing. To make your small business stand out and grow your Instagram following and results, you need to market yourself the right way. Here’s how to get started: Zero In On Your Goals and Strategy A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder. – Thomas Carlyle. The same applies to your Instagram account (and your entire marketing strategy). An over-arching goal for your Instagram strategy is essential to measuring success. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, it doesn’t make sense to measure success only on the number of leads you get from your Instagram account. So, lock in on your top goal for the channel and align your strategy to it. Here are some examples of how to meet your goals on Instagram: Goal – Build Brand Awareness Grow your Instagram followers Increase engagement on Instagram Cross promote on other marketing channels Goal – Generate Leads Promote opt-in CTAs in your profile bio Run Instagram ad campaigns to potential customers Leverage Influencers to tap into new audiences Goal – Boost Sales Promote products and services Feature customers Run sale promotions Without specific goals, your Instagram account is in danger of turning into a miscellaneous compilation of haphazard posts. Target Your Best Audience With your goals and strategy outlined, you’ll want to know exactly who you are targeting on Instagram. Remember, that he who tries to please everybody, pleases nobody. Focus is key. While you may have developed your marketing personas in past, it’s worth taking another look and comparing your personas to the demographics of people using Instagram. This can give you a better picture of the type of buyer you can expect to reach through the channel. For example, female millennials who earn between $50,000 and $74,999 and live in urban areas are using Instagram more than any other demographic. So, if you’re an employee engagement software company that has two personas – Molly, the 27-year-old HR assistant, and Harold, the 65-year-old HR director, your time is better spent creating your profile and content to appeal to and attract Molly. You can find more valuable Instagram demographic data in this article by Hootsuite. Nail Your Profile Great Instagram brands start with an awesome profile. A compelling bio and relevant links are essential to turning eyes into followers and leads. You need to include a memorable profile picture and high-quality photos that are visually appealing and consistent with your brand guidelines. One of the intricacies of Instagram is that you cannot include links in your posts. So, it’s extra important to include any CTA links in your bio. Many brands will even say “see link in bio” in their Instagram posts to drive their followers to take action. Your profile page is often the first encounter potential followers will have with your brand on Instagram. Make sure that your photo and video collection is engaging at first glance and entices your audience to hit the follow button. Post Amazing Content Your Instagram content is going to be one of the biggest drivers in helping you reach your goals. First, you want to define your style. This includes a color palette, fonts, filters, captions, and hashtags. A consistent look and feel will help your business stand out from the crowd and boost recognition in a crowded feed. Then, align your content with your goals. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might promote your company culture and show pictures and videos of your employees, office life, and company initiatives and events. Likewise, if it’s to grow sales, customer testimonial videos or quotes might be the way to go. When it comes to types of content to share, go for video, photo content and if times allows, share ‘stories’ as well. If your small business marketing strategy is heavily Instagram-focused, it may be worth it to invest in a good camera. If not, a trusty iPhone (with a few awesome apps) can absolutely do the trick. Finally, if need a creativity boost, check out these eleven small business Instagram accounts to follow for inspiration. Identify Key Accounts and Hashtags Now that you’ve nailed the basics, you need to start building your audience. The easiest place to start is by identifying competitors in your space that have already begun building their Instagram following. Look through the types of people following them and try to engage with that audience or a similar one. You don’t have to build your audience all on your own. Influencers in your market can be a key tool in tapping into relevant audiences and growing your following. See if there’s an easy way to get an influencer’s attention (like tagging them in pictures or hashtagging their company name). As you build a relationship with them, look for opportunities to cross-promote each other’s content to gain new exposure for both of your brands. Influencer Matt Crump, for example, has a huge Instagram following and often promotes Cheetos – giving Cheetos access to a whole new audience and attracting more people to his own Instagram account: You can also analyze the hashtags influencers are using for industry-related content and tap into the most effective ones. Since hashtags are the way that most people find new content, you want to be clear on your core hashtag groups, rather than throwing whatever you think may work for your posts. If you want to grow your audience even faster, you can invest in an Instagram ad campaign through Facebook, allowing you to target a specific audience on Instagram. Skyrocket Engagement Following people who fit your buyer persona or leaving comments below their posts can get you their attention and perhaps a few follows as well. But let’s be honest…commenting on 1,000 different pictures per day is not a feasible strategy. To start with, you can automate this sort of engagement using Instagram automation tools like Instagress. While this isn’t necessarily an ideal long-term strategy, it’s a simple way to build an initial following if you’re starting from scratch. Leverage Marketing Campaigns At this point, it’s time to run some serious marketing campaigns. There are several ways to go about it, but here are a few of the foolproof strategies to market your small business. Influencers: As we mentioned, reaching out to influencers in your market can earn you a lot of followers. There are many ways to work with influencers including affiliate deals where they get a share of the sales, doing a cross-promotion of content, or even paying them to run ads for your account in their feed. Contests + Giveaways: Another great way to promote yourself is to run contests where you ask your followers to tag friends or like your content. Ads: With Instagram’s excellent targeting features, ads are a very efficient way to both grow your audience as well as directly sell your product. Tools to Use As with every aspect of your small business marketing strategy, you want to focus on the tools that generate the best results. For everything else, there are plenty of automation tools you can use to maximize your results and minimize the time required to run your campaigns. There are tools like Buffer that help you schedule your posts, Whalar to find influencers for your campaigns or Canva to help you create beautiful pictures with quotations. Using all of these tactics, you can create a simple and effective Instagram account for your small business in no time. Just be sure that it aligns with the rest of your marketing efforts so you’re offering a consistent customer experience across platforms.
Avoid The Hump Day Blues: 4 Simple Ways To Boost Workplace Engagement Posted on March 16, 2017September 2, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick Memes abound on Wednesdays. Hump day can be one of the toughest days of the week for most employees. Most likely you have a lot on your plate and your next glorious weekend break is still days away. So how can you set up your work space so you and your employees can make the hump day blues a thing of the past? Read on for easy, inexpensive tips to give your workplace culture a much needed mid-week boost. Make Time For The Team Most companies bring employees together sporadically or during the traditional company meeting setting. Or even possibly at the mandatory happy hour that occurs after hours or on Fridays at 5. However, why wait till the monthly company meeting or an after work event to make time for your team? Instead, try moving your employee events to mid week. Look for ways to celebrate team successes and give your people a reason to push through to the weekend. If you are dead set on happy hour activities, think about scheduling an afternoon event instead. Most likely you will have better attendance and employees won’t feel like they’re sacrificing family, personal, and weekend time to hang together with their co-workers. Instead of the typical Monday company “state of the union” address, try changing things up a bit. Cater in lunch and use the company meeting time as a way for employees to connect with one another while covering important company initiatives. Gathering on a Wednesday to break up the week a bit for your employees is a great way to keep them motivated and engaged. We’ve written about the importance of team lunches, and they’re a fantastic way to bring your team together to fight mid-week repetition together. Take a Breather Mindfulness in the form of meditation and gentle yoga can reap copious benefits for your company, while also helping your employees to battle that mid-week slump. According to Forbes, one company implemented a 10-week program of meditation and gentle yoga and found after doing so that their employees were more productive while also feeling far less stressed. Meditation works to stop the constant thoughts and noise in one’s head as you’re focusing just on your breaths as well as a mantra, or just focusing on nothing at all while breathing in and out. If you have the ability to do so in your office, create a meditation or yoga room with dim lights and soft throw pillows that your employees can use to sit and meditate. A great meditation app to try is Headspace, which talks the user through how to meditate and gets them started. Let There Be Light Research has found that employees with exposure to natural light feel better and are more productive than their coworkers who are only exposed to artificial light in the office. If your office space has windows, don’t put heavy drapes or blinds over them. Let the light in so they can get a good old dose of Vitamin D. If your office space isn’t full of natural light, you can try holding mid-week meetings outdoors or creating an outdoor area for employees to congregate for meals or to work solo. Either way make sure you and your employees take a mid-week break to get outside and soak in the natural light. Take a Stand We’ve all read about the terrifying results of a sedentary lifestyle. Give your employees the option to stand by purchasing or building (if you’re feeling all HGTV) a few shared standing desks. Most people don’t want to stand all day every day, but it’s a nice option when desk life gets tedious throughout the week. By implementing one or all of these office additions, your employees may even look forward to these mid-week rituals, instead of counting down the hours until Friday.
Follow These Steps For Successful Website Forms Posted on March 15, 2017July 12, 2018 by Jessica Lunk You’ve spent dozens of hours and hundreds of dollars on building (or paying someone else to build) a new website, multi-platform advertising and product design. People are noticing. They’re visiting your site. They want to get in touch. But can they? When you think of your business that way, web forms become arguably the most important element of your website design. They facilitate a critical moment when a visitor decides they want something from you. A smooth, digestible web form can increase conversion rates, make user interaction with your site easier and seamlessly capture contact information from your audience. Web forms, really, are the connective tissue that bonds you with your most engaged audience. A well-designed form can reassure viewers that your brand is reliable and responsive. That said, few people give forms the attention they deserve. To make things easier on you, we’re going to lay out the keys to successful website forms. 1. Don’t Make Them Longer Than They Need to Be Keep your forms as short as possible by only asking for the most important information. This serves two purposes: first, it makes the filling-out process as straightforward as possible; second, it gives confidence to users. If my postal code isn’t relevant, why should I offer it? You’ll find forms have a significantly higher conversion rate when they’re simplified, attractive and concise. Spotify’s sign up form is a great example. They use white space for clarity and specific colors to guide users toward other login options (a big blue Facebook CTA, or Spotify’s green hyperlink text for pre-existing users). There’s also a clear opt-in for anyone who wants to make their information available to Spotify’s partners, implying your information will otherwise be kept securely within Spotify’s own database. The font is clean and the spacing is comfortable. 2. Communicate Information Clearly Since when did asterisks become universal symbols for “required information?” Most computer-literate users will know what an asterisk indicates, but don’t assume everyone will. If something is required, write it out, or indicate clearly at the top that asterisks denote required fields. If you require passwords to have at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter and one number, don’t let users find that out after they’ve typed it in—tell them upfront. Burger King’s customer satisfaction survey is clear, on brand and fun to use, with dropdowns and a fluid character count that explains exactly how many characters you have to write out your comment. One problem there: the asterisk clarification is written below the first asterisk. When I was filling it out to use as an example, I actually skipped the star rating to fill out the required parts, and only later got a red error message that I hadn’t given them a star ranking. That kind of illogical flow disrupts an otherwise smooth experience. 3. Focus on Flow and Logic There’s an adage among web designers that forms should always be single columns. This is a good rule of thumb, but it’s worth noting that sometimes you can break that rule—related fields such as address, city and postal code could be laid out laterally, for example. But in those exceptional instances, the information should still flow intuitively. But with the constant rise in mobile users, single columns remain the best option, particularly because introducing a second column might only confuse things. Would you read left-to-right across a row, or finish reading down one column and then move onto the next? Consider this example, from Canadian videogame retailer EB Games. While aspects of this form work well—they spell out their password requirements at the bottom, and the mandatory fields are marked by a disclaimer at the top—one would be forgiven for completing the left column before moving on to the right. There isn’t a clear flow, which clutters the screen and makes things possibly confusing. Another aspect that trips up the flow is simply copy editing. Web designers have done the research, and found that using title casing—Making Every Word Start Capitalized—actually slows readers down. This works for article headlines, but you don’t want users tripping over your forms. Worse still, as in the above EB Games example, is inconsistent grammar and spelling (“E-Mail address” right beside “Repeat Email Address”). It would be easier to have written “Email address,” or even simply “Email,” since the word “address” is implied here. Why bog down your own form? 4. Offer Clarity and Transparency People are concerned about privacy, and for good reason. You can stand out from your competition by reassuring visitors about why you’re asking for certain sensitive information, and emphasizing your security measures—or linking to a page that does. On Spotify’s signup form above, they clarify that users have the option to opt in to partner marketing emails. That creates an implicit sense of security. If you’re asking for credit card information, it’s worth adding a line to reassure customers what they’re in for. This old form from MobileMe (a precursor to iCloud) offers a few reassuring words before asking for specific credit card information. 5. Make Error Messages Clear Question: If you’re color blind, how would you know if a font turns red? Answer: It’s a trick question; you shouldn’t be relying on one subtle change to inform users of an error. Consider using bold font, highlights or outlines in addition to classic bright red error. As the folks at the Nielsen Norman Group have written, “The guidelines for creating effective error messages have been the same for 20 years.” Web form error messages should be unmistakably clear, instantly understandable, polite and constructive. People want to immediately want to know what they did wrong and how to fix it. The worst feeling is filling out a survey form for 10 minutes, only to realize that one answer is wrong and you now have to find where it is. Make it obvious. If you can, do as much work for the user as possible. If their chosen password has no numbers and needs at least one, it’s far better to write “Your password must include at least one number” rather than “Your password does not comply with our guidelines” and make them guess why. Web forms have come so far (and are so easy to create) that bad design is no longer an excuse. If anyone wants to get in touch with you—or pay you, or fill out a survey of yours, or anything—they should be able to as easily as possible, so you can focus on working off those leads as efficiently as possible.
Photo Series Part 1: How to Take Professional Quality Photos with Your iPhone Posted on March 14, 2017February 27, 2024 by Jeanna Barrett Professional, high-quality images are critical to your small business marketing and branding strategy. When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. If a relevant image is paired with that same information, however, people retained 65% of the information three days later. From content marketing to social media and website graphics, killer photography should be a pillar of your brand strategy. But don’t assume you have to hire an expensive photographer to get product shots. With the technology built into iPhone cameras and editing apps, you can achieve professional looking photos by just using your phone. I’ve put together a three-part series on how you can shoot awesome brand photography with your iPhone. In this three part series, I’ll cover: How to Take Professional Looking Photos with Your iPhone Photo Editing Tips/Tools for Non-Creatives (3/21) How to Crop Your Photos Into Eye-Catching Images (3/28) Why Photos are Important to Your Brand Photos are not just important for information retention, as mentioned earlier. There has been a lot of research conducted around how marketing and communication performs when paired with an image. Here are some important visual marketing statistics to help drive home why photography is important: 67 percent of consumers consider clear, detailed images to be very important. (source) Researchers found that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80 percent (source) Content with relevant images gets 94 percent more views than content without relevant images. (source) Visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. (source) Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images. (source) Using Your iPhone to Take Professional Business Photos Now that you understand how important photos are to your business strategy, I’ve pulled together some tips on how you can become a professional iPhone photographer in no time: Purchase a Professional Photography iPhone App A number of great photography apps exist with features that allow you to get a more professional photo than what can be taken with just the Camera app on your iPhone. Here are a few top-rated ones to download and try out: Camera + ($0.99): Personally, this is my favorite iPhone photography app — I always get questions on what I use to edit my photos. You can use it to take your photos, or take your photos in Camera and then use Camera+ to edit because they have a great set of photo filters to make any photo look professional. It has a ton of features to edit sharpness, saturation, exposure and more. Just their Clarity filter will do wonders for your photos. VSCO (Free + In-app Purchases): VSCO has a ton of advanced camera controls, a wealth of filters and the ability to connect with their community of iPhone photographers, which just might inspire your next professional shot. Instasize (free + premium option for $4.99 a month): True to its name, Instasize is one of the best apps for resizing your photos. Its one-tap resize feature ensures that your content is always optimized for your social media platform of choice. On top of that, you get a library of professional-grade filters and effects that can instantly transform your photos. For more focused edits, the app’s slider tool allows you to make precise adjustments to lighting, color, and more. Pro HDR ($1.99): This app let’s you take auto HDR photos and adjust light and color tones by tapping the screen. You can also adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth and tint after taking your photo. Utilize iPhone Photography Features The iPhone has a number of top-notch photography features that allow you to hone into the perfect shot, but you need to know how to use them properly. Here are a few tips to utilize iPhone features in a professional manner: Lens: The lens is the most important piece to taking a good photo. Carrying your phone in your pocket or purse often leaves the screen grimy with fingerprints, sand, food, etc. Be sure to wipe your lens off before taking a photo. Grid: The Camera app has a grid that will allow you to align photo elements and ensure you’re getting a straight photo. It will also help you play with the well-known photography “Rule of Thirds,” which says that photos should be broken down into thirds both horizontally and vertically. This will give you a nine-square grid that you should use to place the most important visual elements such as a photography subject. To turn on the grid, go into your Settings app and scroll to Photos & Camera. Within there you will see a slider button to turn the grid on. Focus & Exposure: The iPhone has an autofocus feature, but sometimes technology fails. You can always tap the screen where you want the camera to focus. To lock in your focus, press and hold it and AE/AF LOCK will appear on the screen. Burst: If you have a moving subject and want to get the perfect shot, hold down the button to take a photo and your iPhone will enter burst mode and take multiple shots in a row. You can then scroll through this set of shots later, select the perfect one and discard the rest. iPhone Flash: The iPhone flash can be quite harsh and leave light spots or off-balanced light in your photos. To err on the side of caution, always attempt to take your professional photos in natural light. Pay Attention to Your Composition Use a Simple Subject: Don’t overcomplicate your photo and include a ton of subjects and detail. Focus on one subject and surround that subject with an interesting background and empty space. Play with Angles: Most everyone takes a photo looking straight at a subject. If you want to create a professional feel to your photos with the suave of a photographer, play with angles. Stand on a chair and shoot a subject from the top down, or get on your hands and knees and shoot your subject from below. Both will give a more dramatic, professional feel to your photos. Improve Photos with Filters: Filters are the #1 thing that will change a boring iPhone photo to an award-winning, Instagram-worthy shot. Most professional iPhone photography apps will include a slew of filters to play around with. Just don’t over filter and use too many, making your photo look unrealistic. Pro tip: If you want to enhance your iPhone videos and give them a unique and coherent look, then this package of professional color-grading iPhone LUTs will be especially helpful. Play Around with Reflections, Silhouettes & Shadows: These types of technique add drama and quality to a photo. Use a reflection on the water to show your subject in two dramatic ways, take your photo in high contrast lighting so a subject is a silhouette or shoot your subject when the sun is low, creating dramatic shadows. Do you have any iPhone photography tips to create professional photos for a business? We’d love to hear them on Twitter @hatchbuck. And be sure to stay tuned for our second installment of this three-part series: Photo Editing Tips/Tools for Non-Creatives.