The right words for the job

May 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Do you know how people see you when they meet you?  Are you serious and thorough, fun and quirky, practical and down-to-earth?  If you’re in business your company will have a personality too – and, if you’ve grown it from scratch, it’s probably a close reflection of you.

Why is this important?

Simply because if someone meets you and then visits your website, they are expecting to feel like there’s a match.  If you’re a bit off-the-wall and your website is ultra-conservative and formal, there will be a disconnect.  If you’re a practical, process-driven person and your website is very creative and highly visual your visitor is likely to feel uncomfortable.  Uncomfortable people usually go away – and most don’t bother to return.

This is where the cleft stick appears!  Here are the facts:

  • If you’ve written your own website it’s more likely to reflect your personality and style.
  • If you’ve written your own website it may not be very reader-focused as most people find it very difficult to remain objective when they’re writing about something they’re passionate about.

“Aha!” I hear you cry, “Then the answer is to get someone else to write it.”

Yes, that could be a really good idea – or a really bad idea.  I did mention the cleft stick, didn’t I?

As a professional copywriter, of course I think it’s a good idea to get your website (and all your other marketing material) written professionally.  It does make a big difference if you have a professional on board.  Here comes the ‘BUT’ – if the copywriter doesn’t match your style you’re going to run into problems.

So what’s the answer?

Check out your copywriter first.  What have they written for other clients?  Find out if they’ve done anything for anyone you know and see if it matches the site-owner’s style.  Ask them how they address the style issue – they should be able to explain how they manage this challenge.

Don’t work with a copywriter that doesn’t satisfy you that they ‘get’ who you are and what your company stands for.  When you find one that does – hang on to them – they’re worth their weight in gold!

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Visit the Treasure Chest for lots of downloadable documents that will help you to market yourself better.

Filed Under: Writing Skills Tagged With: , ,

The online marketing map

May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There are many opportunities to market your business online – and some people take advantage of as many as possible, whilst others don’t know where to start.

My advice is to start with yourself and your business:

  • What do you deliver to your customers?  In other words, how do they benefit from what you do/sell?
  • Who is your ideal customer?  You need to have at least one clearly defined niche, but you can have more than one.

With this clear the next step is to work out where your target niches gather online.  You’d do this offline – what’s the point in going to a networking event for accountants if they’re not your target clients?  The trouble is some people don’t even consider this and just ‘chatter’ all over the social media platforms in the hope that somehow, somewhere, someday the right people will, eventually hear their message.

At a simple level if you’re aiming at consumers (B2C) then Facebook might be a good place to engage with individuals – especially in some of the Facebook groups where your ideal customers ‘hang out’.  If you’re trying to reach a business audience, perhaps companies with 10 or more staff then you’d probably find LinkedIn a better bet.

You can find chat rooms online for specific groups of people – and finding these can be a good way to raise your profile in the right groups.  Just don’t try to sell at them.  Offer advice, share your knowledge, get involved and, over a period of time, your authority in your subject and ability to understand their businesses will become sufficiently evident for people to see you as the ‘go to’ person for that service.

Where have you been most successful in finding new business online?

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If you don’t know where to start with marketing online – sign up for the Step-by-Step Approach to Online Marketing course – it’s just 30 minutes a week with a hands on, work-as-you-learn process that guides you from creating a simple strategy to having an effective marketing system that’s manageable.

Filed Under: Marketing, Social media Tagged With: , ,

Getting the social media habit

April 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Many people have asked me how I manage to be so visible on social media – and still get any work done!  The answer is a combination of tools and habits.

My favourite tool is Hootsuite.com as I can manage all my Twitter activity here as well as posting into Facebook, Linked In and other social media platforms, either directly or via Ping.fm (a distribution tool that can be linked to about 30 different social media platforms).

Hootsuite gives me flexibility; I can choose whether I submit a message to Twitter only, or two my Facebook account or my Facebook business page, for instance.

I use it to share tips, information, knowledge and free documents with my followers, friends and connections.  This is automated and done weekly.  It took several months to generate all the information, but now takes about half an hour a week to upload that week’s material (and doesn’t even have to be done by me).

Then there’s the habit: 20 years ago, few of us did email daily, but we’ve developed the email ‘habit’ now, so my take on this is to add 15 minutes social media activity to your email habit.  This way you develop a system that is consistent and doesn’t get forgotten.

If you do email first thing in the morning, lunchtime and at the end of your working day then add:

  • 5 minutes looking at your Twitter activity and responding, retweeting and commenting at each email break.
  • 10 minutes reviewing your Linked In groups and adding your comments, including at least once a week reviewing the current Linked In questions and answers and aiming to help at least one person with your responses.  This works best for me around lunchtime on the grounds that business people may be browsing during their lunch break.
  • 10 minutes daily looking at your Facebook page and seeing if there are any comments or questions to respond to (I feed tips into my FB business page so sometimes people respond to these), then taking a look at the personal feed and responding, commenting and interacting here.  However, I usually ask people I don’t know (or only know for business reasons) to join my Facebook page community, rather than ‘befriending’ them on my personal account.

Pinterest is the latest tool – and it’s very popular today, so probably worth investing a little time in.  If you haven’t discovered it yet, it offers your the facility to build ‘picture boards’ and ‘pin’ images you like to them, with your description or comments.  Remember to use some of your key words and phrases in the descriptions you add to the pictures.  It’s also fun!

Then there is, of course, Google+ which is rapidly gaining ground as a new social platform – and there are many more, Ecademy, FriendFeed – the list is endless.

My advice is to explore a bit, find out where your target market and people who work with your target market hang out – then make yourself useful.  People will come back to you if you are willing to help, know your stuff and share it generously!

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You can contact us on 01245 473296 or take a look in the Treasure Chest for lots of free ‘how to’ documents.

 

 

Filed Under: Social media Tagged With: , , ,
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