Dear LinkedIn, I’ve Lost That Loving Feeling. Posted on February 14, 2017November 16, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a day filled with love, happy feelings and connecting with those that you care about most. Unfortunately, over the past several months, our Hatchbuck hearts have been crushed. And not by a customer or partner. By LinkedIn. A lot of sad ‘80s ballads come to mind when I think about what was once a valuable networking platform. Instead of a social soulmate, LinkedIn now more closely resembles an emotional, insecure, dramatic high school sweetheart: stuck in the past and not sure what the future holds. And on this day of love, I’m taking a stand once and for all and putting an end to this social saga. Viral personal stories We’ve all seen them. The incredibly sad/funny/inspirational/infuriating stories on our feed updates such as Beth who works at “Groceries to Go” but has decided to trade in her routine job to start up her own business as an architect. (Which by the way somehow garners millions of likes, comments, and shares.) This is confusing because I thought LinkedIn was supposed to be a networking and hiring platform? If these types of posts don’t make you doubt the validity and value of a “professional” tool, then you’ve unfortunately fallen into the sob story trap. While this “realtor” got a great sample size for her “survey,” posts like this should not be included in professional feeds. This makes me doubt that LinkedIn is doing any sort of curation or review of the content they’re pushing out. (By the way, it looks like picture #3 won the vote.) 2. Fake Accounts: Ever been Catfished? I have. Exhibit A: “Josephine Humphrey” who claims to be a Senior Manager at Black & Decker. That’s funny because the last time I checked, the real “Josephine” is actually Hatchbuck’s friend and partner, Mandy, of Mod Girl Marketing: If we didn’t work with her on a regular basis, I would have had no idea. I have a sneaking suspicion that this happens on a regular basis. I can’t think of any reason that a professional adult would create a fake networking profile on LinkedIn other than to run a phishing scam. If LinkedIn wants to win our hearts back, clamp down on the spam accounts and expel the undesirables who are using the tool for shady reasons. 3. People Don’t Understand What They Should Be Sharing I think we can all agree, that we’d prefer to get our breaking news from credible sources (see: any national news site, Twitter, literally anywhere else). But LinkedIn hasn’t clearly defined their value proposition so people don’t really know what to use the site for. Should they be posting daily about their feelings? Should they be letting people know when they go to the grocery store? Should they be sharing news stories about murders? (Just to clarify: the answer to all of the questions above is no.) 4 . Completely irrelevant “trending topics” Do I need to explain this one? Big fans of Pride and Prejudice over here, and who DOESN’T want to know how to scientifically make someone fall in love with them? But why would this article be trending in the computer software industry? (Spoiler alert: The article had absolutely nothing to do with technology.) 5. Sales Spammers I’m sure “Arun” will be a valuable connection for me and my business. But how do I know who he works for? Or why he would be connecting with me? Just kidding. This is the classic case of a sales spammer. You know – the ones who add you on LinkedIn and then incessantly send sales pitches via InMail with terrible grammar and irrelevant products. I’ll just go ahead and “Ignore” this request to save us both from the emotional rollercoaster. So do you understand the heartbreak yet? Five glaring reasons should be more than enough, but if you’re looking for more, I’m happy to take a deep dive into the reasons I don’t love the new UI and don’t have the warm and fuzzies for LinkedIn’s advertising tools. I hope that someday LinkedIn will grow into the mature Valentine networking platform I’m looking for in a social media soulmate. Until then, I’ll just plan to visit when I need a good laugh or want a blast from the past.
DANGER: Email Marketing Mistakes Ahead Posted on February 13, 2017July 12, 2018 by Jessica Lunk Even seasoned email marketers have room for improvement – which is we we recommend constantly A/B testing your emails. But if you’ve been at it for a while, your emails can start to get stale, you can forget to optimize the old stand-bys you use week after week, and your email marketing game can slip. So, if you’re feeling uninspired or think your emails could use a refresh, get back to basics and check to be sure you’re not committing one of these 11 unforgivable email mistakes: Mistake #1: You’re Not Optimizing for Different Platforms and Mobile Not everyone uses Gmail or Outlook to read their emails. There are many different browsers and operating systems that people use to read their emails on, and each renders an email differently. But even more importantly, the majority of people today read their emails on mobile devices. If your emails aren’t optimized for mobile, you’re losing a ton of potential customers. Tools like Litmus and Email on Acid can show you how emails render across a variety of email clients and web browsers – mobile included. Testing your emails in advance can help you pinpoint problem areas so you can get an optimal response in the inbox. Mistake #2: Your CTA Doesn’t Lead to a Landing Page The goal of your email is to convert. If a prospect takes action and clicks your CTA button, you’re 80% there. Now imagine that CTA leads to a homepage…what do they do now? Every step in your conversion funnel should be crystal clear and easy to get through. That’s what landing pages are for. They make it ridiculously easy for your prospects to complete the desired action as soon as they click your CTA. Mistake #3: You’re Sending From ‘Noreply’ People like to deal with people, not robots. You should never use a generic email “from” name, such as “admin” or “noreply.” It’s impersonal and let’s them know they’re just an email address to you. Instead, send out emails from a department head, or at least from a friendlier name like “marketing” or “hello.” Mistake #4: You Fail to Segment As your business grows, your customer base becomes more diverse. Segmentation allows you to send personalized messages most relevant to each of your customer groups. Sending a generic email to everyone can seriously hinder your results. Mistake #5: Your Links Are Broken Yeah, we agree….duh. Believe it or not, this happens quite often, even to the best of us. A marketer puts all their effort into lead generation, segmenting, newsletter design, and copywriting and then provides a broken CTA link. If your CTA doesn’t work, you can’t convert your prospects. Search for bugs aggressively. Test your emails multiple times and all of your links in particular. Mistake #6: You Don’t Have a Clear CTA Email marketing isn’t the time to be subtle. Your CTA should be clear and stand out. It’s a clear call to perform an action (being clicked), and it should feel, look like, and behave as such. Try testing a link, an image, or a button to see what drives the most clicks. Arguably, it’s the most important element of your email. Without a clear CTA, you won’t get your best conversion rates. Mistake #7: Your Subject Line Is Deceptive Often, marketers are tempted to use deceptive subject lines to boost their open rates. Somehow, they believe they can trick users and make them forgive them. What actually happens is that you not only annoy your users, you’ll lose their trust – and earn a one-way ticket to the spam folder. Without trust, there are no sales. Mistake #8: Your Email Is Riddled With Bad Copy Bad copy is poorly formatted, includes useless words, doesn’t flow, or provides no value. A big mistake many marketers make is writing copy that talks about the product, not the prospect. Nobody cares about you. They care about themselves and their problem. Other copywriting mistakes include poor grammar, not selling, overselling, or terrible fonts (we’re looking at you, Comic Sans). Mistake #9: You Require A Login to Unsubscribe What is the purpose of this? It’s a terrible mistake. We get it – you never want a recipient to unsubscribe, but it’s going to happen no matter what. Nothing is more frustrating for email recipients than making it difficult to unsubscribe. Adding this extra step will most likely drive people to mark your emails as spam (which is much, much worse than an unsubscribe). Mistake #10: You’re Sending Email Too Frequently (Or Infrequently) Sending daily emails is sure to annoy your subscribers – even weekly emails can get stale fast. On the other end of the spectrum, irregular or infrequent emails will make them forget about who you are. In both cases, you’ll end up getting your emails marked as spam. Test to find a regular cadence that works for your customers and your conversion rates. Mistake #11: You’re Not Sending Emails at All If you’ve been tempted to ditch email marketing for social media, we’ve got to stop you. Email has one of the best ROIs of all marketing channels out there. If you’re not using it, you’re leaving some serious money on the table.
Read These 10 Financial Blogs To Help Your Small Business Succeed Posted on February 10, 2017 by Erin Posey Can’t seem to finish the business bestsellers on your nightstand? Don’t sweat it. Reading blogs (on a variety of different topics) can be a great way to stay in touch with what the most interesting minds in business are discussing now—and it takes a lot less time. Here are 10 popular blogs that touch on small business financial matters—a topic that can help you keep your business growing in 2017 and beyond. A VC Well-known venture capitalist Fred Wilson, co-founder of Union Square Ventures, has been investing in entrepreneurial companies since 2003. In this daily blog, he offers his take on financial matters that will interest many small business owners, as in “What is going to happen in 2017,” his predictions for the Trump administration’s first 100 days and beyond. AllBusiness.com Chock full of articles on topics like financing, insurance, and small business borrowing, this blog can save you hours of research time. AllBusiness.com’s annual roundup of the most popular articles of the year is like the mini-executive education course you don’t have time to take. American Express OPEN Forum You may have heard of a little company called American Express. Unlike much of their other content, OPEN Forum is written for and contributed to by small business owners and entrepreneurs. The content can help you tackle many of the financial tasks that small business owners face. Their blog covers many different topics, but their forte is understandably in the “Managing Money” channel. Recent topics include 10 questions to ask before hiring your small business accountant, five ways business owners can help repair business credit and how to set an annual budget for any company. Blog Maverick Billionaire Mark Cuban weighs in on big topics that affect business owners on his colorful weblog. Clearly he’s doing something right in the entrepreneurship department, and we can all benefit from the fresh perspectives his blog offers. A recent post, for instance, offers Cuban’s take on how the new administration should handle infrastructure spending. Hint: It’s not on replacing bridges and highways. CB Insights If you’re scaling a business and hope to attract outside financing or just trying to figure out how to stay competitive, this research firm’s often edgy blog should be on your must-read list. It’ll keep you abreast of the hot startup sectors attracting funding—from pet tech to artificial intelligence—and the ones that have gotten too crowded or fizzled out. Evergreen Small Business The right accounting practices can help your small business keep more of what you earn. This blog, written by CPA Stephen L. Nelson, covers topics ranging from whether you should pay taxes as an S-Corp to why you should raise your prices for inflation. It’ll give you some good talking points for your next conversation with your own accountant. Forbes Entrepreneurs With a small army of bloggers and business owners sharing their views on small business trends, this frequently updated publication is full of posts that will help you meet your financial goals. Recent topics include how your small business can raise money from the community, trends affecting small business lending and how to qualify for a small business loan. Small Business Brief Wondering why people leave your website without converting into customers? Struggling to generate your first ecommerce sale—but not sure how to do that? This long-running blog offers frequent posts that will help you overcome challenges like these so you can generate more revenue. Small Business Labs If you’re looking to stay on top of trends that are fueling small business growth, you won’t want to miss this blog by Emergent Research, a firm that covers the key social, technology and business developments influencing small business. Recent issues have covered the “conscious coziness” trend, rural and small-town entrepreneurship and forecasts for the gig economy. Smart Passive Income Any small business owner looking for new revenue streams will come away with ideas from this blog. Don’t miss author Pat Flynn’s monthly income report. It offers a candid window into how he generates the revenue in his business—which brought in $1.7 million the past 12 months, with nearly $1.3 million of that in profit. Learning from other businesses can be a great crash course in how to grow your own in the coming year. So next time you find a few minutes to make a minimal dent in your 300-page self-help book, turn to one of these blogs for fresh takes on what’s in store for your small business in 2017 and beyond.
Benefit From CRM Automation Without Losing The Human Touch Posted on February 9, 2017July 12, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick CRM automation is exploding as a way for businesses to foster better relationships and fuel growth more efficiently. In fact Gartner predicts that by 2020, 85% of customers will manage their relationships without talking to a human. With the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, that prediction may not be too far off. But for many businesses who hear the words “CRM automation,” the first thought that comes to mind is a lack of a personal touch. Fortunately, it’s completely the opposite. In this era of hyper-personalization, a CRM is instrumental in gathering rich data and triggering personalized automations to your prospects and customers. But in today’s world, CRM automation alone can’t propel the “Human Side” of doing business with your customers. The intrinsic value in automating your CRM comes from the unique insights your CRM delivers–enabling you to provide a one-to-one experience with your audience. Here are 3 ways CRM automation can strengthen relationships without losing that human touch. Filling in Knowledge Gaps CRM is invaluable when it comes to collecting data. In many ways, that’s the easy part. But the human element comes in when you begin mapping holes in your knowledge of your customers and your business. Factors such as who your best customers are, what stages of the sales process your prospects are in, and what products/services buyers are interested in are just a few of the insights a CRM can provide you. The key is to use that data to propel new sales and customer relationships forward. For instance: Does your sales team get real time updates from your CRM when prospects are ready to have a sales conversation? Are they notified when your top customer is having an issue with your product or service before they make a reference call into them? By filling in the holes in your customer lifecycle, you have the opportunity to engage in more personalized conversations that truly move the relationship down the path to sales success. Talking to an Audience of One Marketing today has changed, and personalization is king. No longer does a one size fits all message work with today’s digital consumer. In fact nearly 75% of online consumers get frustrated with websites when offers, emails and ads are not personalized to their interests. With the power of CRM automation, businesses can automatically segment and communicate with each and every person based on their unique needs. So instead of mass emailing every contact the same newsletter like a robot, your business can send targeted specific emails and offers–whether they’re a visitor just checking out your website or a lifelong customer who is ready for an upsell. Planning For Tomorrow, Today One of the best ways CRM automation drives the human experience is through analytics and reporting. As your CRM continues to capture valuable user data, customer data, and industry data, your business can monitor and measure what is working and what isn’t. For instance, lead source reports can be automatically generated to give you insights into which marketing channels are driving the most customers and where you should invest future resources. Sales intel can be automatically pulled from within your CRM to help you make critical business decisions and prepare more accurate forecasts for your business. A CRM is also useful for analyzing customer trends and buying patterns when figuring out what the next “big solution” should be for your target market. When your business leverages CRM automation to intimately understand who its ideal customers are and what products or services they desire, you will be in a much better position to attract and keep the right customers as well as ensure growth for your business in the future. By using CRM automation to tailor marketing communications, fill in knowledge gaps, and enhance your future planning, you will be in a better position to tap into the human side of business.
Employee Engagement Tips That Will Help You Crush Your Productivity Goals Posted on February 8, 2017September 2, 2022 by Guest Author A guest post by Claire Holland, Director of Marketing Communications at agencyEA. The term ‘employee engagement’ has been used more frequently in recent years, but it’s not always clear what defines employee engagement within a workplace. Are employees engaged when they regularly show up for work every day? Or is it referring to “engagement” in terms of going above and beyond a strict interpretation of a job description? Generally speaking, the term describes a deeper sense of commitment on employees’ parts — namely, their willingness to invest energy and skills on their employer’s behalf because they truly care about doing a great job. How many employees on your current team fit that definition? What statistics say about engagement — or the lack thereof According to a recent Gallup study, the level of employee engagement in U.S. businesses is far from impressive. Fewer than 30 percent of employees feel “actively engaged” in their jobs, with more than half feeling “not engaged” at all, and 17 percent feeling “actively disengaged.” The Payoff to Employee Engagement from agencyEA By contrast, statistics relating to “engaged workforces” demonstrate some clear-cut benefits for employers: Highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147 percent in earnings per share. Companies with engaged employees experience 10-15 percent higher profit growth. Businesses that successfully engage both customers and employees see a whopping 240 percent gain in performance-related business outcomes. Whatever definition of “employee engagement” you apply, research strongly indicates that such employees deliver perhaps the most important business element of all — higher quality customer service. This, in turn, generates greater customer satisfaction, leading to higher sales and higher profit margins, resulting in greater shareholder returns. In short, a win-win all around. So how do you build engagement in your workforce? When looking for ways to boost engagement among your employees and in turn benefiting from their enthusiasm and dedicated involvement with your business, there are some key elements to keep in mind: Hire wisely. Recruiting the best job candidates is a challenge for every business, but when they take a shortcut and hire someone who ostensibly “checks off” certain boxes, actual engagement in the job seems unlikely. By contrast, taking the time and resources needed to actively recruit the right individuals — not just for a laundry list of job qualifications, but for other key qualities as well — usually results in a genuine payoff for the business. What are those “key qualities?” In most cases, qualified job seekers with an enthusiastic, dynamic personality are prime candidates for future engagement, as are those who demonstrate an inclination toward teamwork and collaboration. Require managers and leaders to “walk the walk.” Intentionally or not, many employees look to their boss (and the company’s senior management) as examples or role models for appropriate workplace conduct. Managers and others who lead by intimidation or who are visibly detached from the work environment send exactly the wrong message to employees. On the other hand, managers, CEOs and business owners who encourage employee feedback and professional development help cultivate a “culture of engagement” that can prove irresistible to many employees. Offer opportunities to learn and advance. Men and women putting in 40 or more hours a week on the job generally don’t want to get stuck doing the same things (for the same paycheck) over and over again. Professional development offers a path toward career advancement, and businesses that promote learning generally see higher levels of employee engagement. If you hire talented, ambitious individuals, be sure to offer learning opportunities through work-related workshops, seminars, webinars, company-held conferences, etc. Yes, this requires additional expenses and resources, but when employees expand the range of their knowledge and skills, they often feel a stronger connection to their employer — and their enhanced abilities usually translates into greater productivity on the job. Challenge employees to do more. Are you getting the most out of your current crop of employee rock stars? These unique individuals hunger for more of a challenge in their jobs, so it’s your responsibility to give them new projects or initiatives to tackle — either on their own or by leading a small group of co-workers. Doing so builds confidence and leadership skills, qualities that virtually every business finds essential to continued growth. Explore opportunities to promote teamwork. Employees who aren’t engaged with their jobs often feel isolated from co-workers. When you offer opportunities for individuals to collaborate as a team and achieve work-related results that wouldn’t be possible on their own, employees bond with one another and feel a stronger connection to the business in general. Team-building activities don’t have to be strictly job-related. Look for occasions where employees can gather in an informal setting from time to time, just to “hang out” and get to know each other better. Give people a sense of where they “fit in” with your company’s future. Again, disengaged employees lack any sense that what they do has genuine bearing on their employer’s future success or failure. Rather than leaving people feeling like they’re of little significance to the overall business success, take time to highlight the value they provide both to your business and your customers. When people know they play a vital role within an organization (large or small), they understand that others rely on them to be engaged with their jobs and that, by outperforming expectations, they’re actively contributing to the company’s growth. Along with this engagement comes a sense of pride in one’s work and a feeling that “we’re all in this together.” There’s a reason businesses are actively pursuing the goal of enhanced employee engagement. No business can succeed without a talented and dedicated cadre of employees, so it’s more critical than ever to cultivate their talents, treat them humanely and encourage them to grow along with your business. About the Author Claire Holland is Director of Marketing Communications at agencyEA in Chicago, a brand experience agency specializing in experiential, digital and traditional engagement. She guides the strategic vision of the company’s brand, messaging and voice, while supporting and evolving brand strategies for clients. Holland also oversees agencyEA’s internal and external marketing communications, including digital marketing and public relations.
7 Indispensable Subscription Services For Small Business Owners Posted on February 7, 2017February 16, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick Running a business is a time-consuming endeavor—but you’ll be surprised at how many hours you can preserve every week if you invest in time-saving, inexpensive subscription services to lighten your load. Long gone are the days of Excel spreadsheets, manually deleting unwanted emails one-by-one and sending paper contracts via snail mail if you take advantage of the best online subscription services. Although some of these services will cost you a small recurring monthly or annual fee, the best ones will help you free up hours of your life (in and outside of the office) every week. Boomerang One of the joys of running your own business is working the hours that suit you best. But if you tend to gravitate to late night or early morning hours, you may find that you’re saving a lot of emails in your “draft” folder so you can send them during normal business hours—and then forgetting about them. Save yourself the clutter and use Boomerang for Gmail or Outlook to send your emails at a future time you set. When you’re sending time-sensitive emails like invoices, getting them out at the exact time you want can be mission-critical. Boomerang starts at $4.99 per month for the personal plan and comes in a premium version that offers features like the ability to “expire” messages at a certain interval. Image Credit: Boomerang FreshBooks It’s easy to make accounting mistakes if you don’t use online accounting software. FreshBooks, designed with creative professionals and other non-financial types in mind, makes it easy to keep the records you need. Even a novice can use FreshBooks to do things like determining the average days it takes a particular client to pay or come up with an instant P&L Statement. FreshBooks Lite, which covers you for up to 15 active clients, costs $15 a month, while the most robust premium plan is $50 per month. Image Credit: FreshBooks QuickBooks If your business has grown to the point that you need to record payroll, a very robust accounting software like QuickBooks may be the best fit for you. There are many time-saving apps you can connect to QuickBooks to do things like record your auto mileage, saving you considerable time over the course of a year. An entry-level plan for independent contractors starts at $5 a month. For small businesses, plans begin at $10 per month. Image Credit: QuickBooks Docusign Need a convenient way for you and your clients to sign contracts? A monthly subscription to Docusign will enable you to send documents for electronic signature. The basic plan, starting at $10 per month, will allow you to send up to five documents per month. Image Credit: Docusign Mailstrom Inundated by so much email that you can’t find the important messages in your inbox? A subscription to Mailstrom could be a great time saver. It makes mass-deleting and mass-filing emails much easier than it normally is using the features that come with your email service. The basic plan—covering up to three inboxes with up to 100,000 emails, costs $4.95 per month or $49.95 per year. Use it in conjunction with Unroll.me, a free service that helps you unsubscribe from email lists in a daily swoop, and you’ll be that much further ahead. Calendly If you’ve been thinking of hiring an administrative assistant to schedule your meetings, think again. This handy app allows you to mark the hours you are available for appointments on a public calendar you can share with business contacts, via an emailable link, so they can select a time that is convenient for them—without endless emailing back and forth. If you book a lot of meetings, the app can easily save you two or three hours a week, not to mention a lot of email clutter. The basic plan is free, but if you’re looking for customizable reporting or integrations, you’ll most likely want to level up to the Premium plan which starts at $8 per month. Buffer Social can be a great way to build brand awareness and connect with your target audience. But it is also super easy to get sucked into the trap of spending all day on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Before you know, it your day is shot. Using social tools like Buffer will not only put hours back in your day, but also help you pull in relevant content, automate your future posts, and manage your social media calendar so it doesn’t get out of control. It also gives you great analytics to show you what posts are working best (driving traffic and impressions) and which topics you need to stay away from. You can get started right away with a free account, and their customer support is stellar. If you decide to upgrade to their “Awesome Package,” you’ll get 10 social accounts and up to 100 posts per profile for just $10 per month. Image Credit: Buffer To avoid paying for services you don’t use, be sure to do a review every six months or every year to see which ones are paying for themselves in time saved or convenience and drop the rest. Even if you opt for just one or two of these subscription services, you’ll be surprised at how much your productivity soars when you’re not burdened with menial tasks.
7 Must-Have Tools For Starting A Blog Posted on February 6, 2017July 12, 2018 by Allie Wolff Thanks to marketing masters like Gary Vaynerchuk, you already know you should be blogging for the good of your company. But you’ve got a business to run, too. That means you can’t turn your blog into a second full-time job. The good news is that with each year, blogging gets easier and easier, thanks to a variety of free and low-cost tools. Here are some that will help you start and run your blog easily and efficiently—so you’ll stick with it. WordPress WordPress—the OG of free blogging platforms—is easy enough to master to help you get your website up and running in a single day, even if you have no web development experience. Because WordPress is an open source platform, people all over the world are constantly contributing improvements to it—including themes and plugins that will help you customize your site. And if you run into any challenges you can’t solve, it’s easy to find help through online forums or from a developer who is familiar with WordPress. Grammarly Can’t afford to hire a copy editor to peruse your blogs before you post them? Grammarly, a free grammar checker, can save you from egregious errors. Use it in combination with your spell checker, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how many typos you avoid. If you rely on freelance bloggers to help you write your blog you may want to spring for the premium version of Grammarly, which has a tool to catch plagiarism. Pexels Choosing the right images for your blog is essential. Many people respond to photos more quickly than to a headline. Alas, hunting down the perfect stock photo for a blog can take a long time—and using paid sites that offer them can get pricey. Enter Pexels, which offers a wide variety of free stock photos for commercial use. Whether you run a gym, an agency or a medical office, you’re likely to find plenty of photos on this handy site. Canva Want to create great graphics for your site—but can’t afford to hire a web designer? Then you’ll love Canva, which is aimed at the DIY crowd. The site will allow you to perform tasks such as designing graphics, editing photos and incorporating creative fonts into your designs. Not sure where to begin? Check out the site’s “Design School,” which offers modules on topics such as banner designs, design layout, and infographic design. Google Analytics A blog is only useful to your business if people actually read it. Google’s free tool will help you keep tabs on which posts are pulling in readers so you can keep building on what works and avoid what doesn’t. The data you get through Google Analytics will give you important insight into who you’re attracting to your site, from demographic characteristics to information about the technology they are using to access your site. That’s information that can be invaluable to your marketing. Social Jukebox If your readers don’t spot the posts you Tweet when you first share then, they may miss them altogether. Social Jukebox, a free tool, will help you avoid that scenario. You can use the tool to program tweets on Twitter to repeat at specific intervals and within a certain date range so your followers don’t miss them. If you want to attract more clicks, you can upload a photo with your tweets. Hatchbuck An effective way to drive traffic to your blog is with an email newsletter. Hatchbuck’s easy-to-use email marketing tool allow you to build clean, optimized emails, grow your email list and convert subscribers into paying customers. Sure, a newsletter takes a little extra time. But if you’re spending part of your week writing great posts or hiring someone to do it for you, building a regular following of readers through an e-newsletter can ensure they don’t miss a single one (and will make blogging worth your time).
The Quick Guide to Influencer Marketing For Your Small Business Posted on February 3, 2017April 26, 2023 by Jeanna Barrett If you’re looking for extra ways to drive traffic to your website in the coming year, there might be one important marketing tool you’re not considering. You’ve likely tried pay-per-click advertising with Google, social media advertising and perhaps content marketing through blogging and guest posting. But, have you considered influencer marketing? This is one channel that can offer a big bang of traffic to your site. People trust word-of-mouth recommendations more than brands — 92 percent of people actually, according to Nielsen. Here’s how you can leverage influencers to grow your small business this year. What is Influencer Marketing? Influencer marketing is the act of connecting your brand with online influencers. An online influencer is anyone who has a big social following — usually concentrated to one or two platforms, and usually in a niche market. These platforms are used by these people so they can promote the products and the services of the businesses they represent. They do this so they can make money as influencers with their ability to persuade potential customers to buy the things they are selling on the market. For example, there are a number of nutrition influencers who connect online with people who want to be more fit. Kayla Itsines, Natalie Jill and Cody Sattler are three examples of nutrition experts and trainers utilizing Instagram to build an influential audience. Influencers can also be mommy bloggers such as Dooce or The Pioneer Woman, YouTube celebrities catering to millennials such as Jenna Marbles, or even celebrities such as the Kardashians, catering to those obsessed with their clan. Influencer marketing is the reason we see celebrities posting photos of themselves drinking fit tea and using teeth whitening services that come in the mail. While that approach might work for business-to-consumer products, B2B companies can leverage a different strategy to build influencer relationships. Here’s how to pull off an effective influencer marketing strategy to build your website traffic: Build Relationships With Influencers Through Five Stages You would not just walk into your next door neighbor’s apartment and ask to borrow a hammer without introducing yourself first. The same goes for online influencers — you must engage in a “song and dance” with them that provides value to their personal brand before you begin to see value for your brand. Focus on establishing a friendship and relationship with the influencer and moving them through the five stages of influencer marketing: Unaware – Assert Your Presence: Follow & subscribe to their content. Share their content with your community. Connect with those who influence the influencers. Get your influencers to respond or follow you back. Aware – Establish Rapport: Curate useful content. Link back to their content, comment on their posts and get your influencers to acknowledge your content. And maybe even send them a unique gift that will keep your brand top of mind. Interested – Create Value: Offer access to people & insights, and feature them in your content. Build personal rapport through conversation. Get your influencers to mention you spontaneously. Engaged – Activate with Initiatives: Invite participation with your brand, co-create content together, sponsor their initiatives and get your influencers to activate awareness of your brand with others. Advocate – Formalize Relationship: Send them business. Let them impact your company. Promote them on your channels. Figure Out Your Subcategories & How to Connect with Each Influencer Your influencers could be hiding out in a number of different corners of the web, and could be engaged in a number of different types of mediums. Create a map of the influencers you want to connect with, and how you’re going to connect with each. There are plenty of ways to connect with influencers — from creating content with them to offering them to participate in an affiliate program. Don’t forget your micro-influencer either. They usually have a smaller audience than the big guns, but chances are they’d be more willing to work with you because they’re not inundated with requests. And if it comes to a paying relationship, they’re cheaper too. As an example, here are eight different types of influencers we might reach out to at Hatchbuck and how we would work with each of them: Traditional Media: Social Listening, News & PR – Pitches, Invite to Exclusive Events, Content Co-creation, Give Exclusive Content & Data Small Business Owners Nationwide: Social Listening, Connect, Comment & Share, Invite to Exclusive Events (panel invites), Content Interviews Hatchbuck Customers: Small Business Brands: Social Listening, Invite to Exclusive Events, Content Interviews, Custom Program such as user-generated content campaigns Small Business Brands: Social Listening, Connect, Comment & Share, Invite to Exclusive Events (co-host), Content Co-creation, Affiliate Programs (Backlinks) Social Influencers & Content Creators: Social Listening, Connect, Comment & Share, Invite to Exclusive Events (co-host), Content Co-creation, Interviews, Give Exclusive Content & Data, Product Sneak Peeks, Custom Program, Paid Opps (Case by Case basis) Associations & Nonprofits: Social Listening, Connect, Comment & Share, Invite to Exclusive Events (co-host), Content Co-creation, Affiliate Programs (Backlinks) Bloggers: Social Listening, Connect, Comment & Share, Invite to Exclusive Events (co-host), Content Co-creation, Give Exclusive Content & Data, Product Sneak Peeks, Paid Opps (Case by Case basis) Competitor Influencers: Social Listening Still confused how you might leverage influencers to work with your brand and build your small business? Here’s a roundup of seven “best” influencer campaigns of 2016, which might help spark some inspiration for your business.
5 Tried & True Tools To Amp Up Your Marketing Productivity Posted on February 2, 2017 by Guest Author A guest post by Joanne Torres, marketer at Typeform. Marketing teams come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re a one-person army or an enterprise-level team, there’s one thing we all have in common: the need to be productive all week. Everyday there’s a new app, tool, or product that promises to ‘boost your productivity’. What’s the drawback? They don’t always deliver on this promise, and nobody cares enough to keep up with all of the tools. Here’s a list of the tools that have added the most value to our marketing team at Typeform and the ones you should keep up with. Trello: Organize Your Week In some companies, teams work on dozens of projects at a time. Whether it’s engineering, marketing, or people operations; there’s always lots to be done. Organizing the day-to-day might go beyond planning a meeting and setting a date on the calendar. What can you do when managing all those projects begins to feel overwhelming? Turn to Trello. It’ll allow you to collaborate more on projects and get more work done in a simple way. Hootsuite: Automate Outreach on Twitter Scheduling tweets is time consuming. That’s why my favorite feature on Hootsuite is bulk uploads. Just download a template and personalize your messages on a spreadsheet. That way you can send tweets to a large group of people in only one upload. Gmail Meter: Make Your Inbox Data-Driven I’m an analytics enthusiast. You can call me data driven or data informed if you will. I track everything I do. From workouts to workload. Even my email. So you’ll understand my excitement when I found an extension that tracks and analyzes my activity in Gmail. That’s GmailMeter. It allows you to create weekly reports with detailed statistics based on your Gmail use. This includes automated reports of email usage, response times, and overall email traffic. StayFocsd: Stay Focused, Literally Spiraling into the Internet rabbit hole of distraction is something we all know to happen. At one moment you’re googling examples of successful marketing campaigns, then a few clicks later you’re reading about advertising in the 60s. We’ve all been there. And it’s okay. The key is eliminating the amount of time spent on websites that don’t provide enough value to your work. Not saying that advertising in the 60s doesn’t have value, but it’s important to StayFocsd. This stern extension helps you limit your procrastination time by restricting it. The most attractive feature of this tool is how customizable it is, you can even add websites that trigger procrastination to a blacklist. Asana: Track All of Your Tasks in One Place Having a holistic overview of my personal or professional to-do tasks is one of the most important steps in my personal productivity routine. Why? Because being able to keep all of my tasks in one place helps with time management. Where do I keep them? In Asana. It works great for teams and individuals alike. It also has great integrations that will help you or your team improve your workflow. What now? Now comes the time to put these tools to work. Introducing new tools to your daily routine might sound daunting, but with this list you’ll be able to focus on your team’s productivity first. About the Author Joanne Torres is an online and outreach marketer at Typeform. Typeform creates beautiful forms from Net Promoter Score to Lead Generation. Compared to the industry average, Typeform has 4x higher completion rates due to their human-first design approach—keeping people’s attention from start to submit. Find Joanne on Twitter @possiblyjoanne or on LinkedIn.