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Lisa Orrell, The Promote U Guru 
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Posts Tagged ‘lead generation’Tips for Using Instragram to Grow Your Small BusinessMarch 04th, 2014Hi All! With social media ruling the roost in business promotion, it’s hard to ignore any social networking platform these days, and Instagram is no exception. What started as an iPhone only app has expanded into one of the fastest growing and most vibrant social media networks; Instagram for business is a great marketing tool, especially those targeting younger audiences. With over 150 million users already, Instagram is the ultimate visual marketing tool to showcase to your prospective customers your social and human side. Instagram is all about pictures and videos, and thus is a great marketing tool for your business. After all, pictures directly appeal to emotions, increase interaction rate, and strike a chord with prospects, thus making your brand visible to a larger audience. Here are a few tips for using Instagram for building your brand, increasing sales, and growing your small business: Introduce your employees You may not know but most of your followers are keen on knowing the people associated with your brand, especially those who keep your company going. By introducing your team through Instagram photos, you humanize your brand, thus building a connection with prospects and customers while enhancing their experience. Cultivate a following It’s easier than ever to increase your following on Instagram for business by linking it with your Facebook account. Connect specific brand images to your Facebook business page with a relevant, popular hashtag that aligns with your brand image or marketing campaign. This is a necessary step to show to your Facebook fans that you’re on Instagram. Use relevant hashtags (#yourbrandhere) to increase your brand exposure and reach out to a wider audience for leads while helping people find your account. Be polite to follow Do not forget to follow your followers on Instagram. It’s a good idea to follow other brands that relate to your specific brand so as to create strategic relationships on the platform. Give your followers a sneak peek into an upcoming event or a news feature often can help keep them hooked to your page. Not only this, make your loyal followers feel special by sending them updates about an upcoming product, the latest launch, or new releases. This is one of the easiest tips for using Instagram for business – helping build anticipation in prospects and keeping them coming back for more. Don’t be content with static As a multimedia platform, Instagram now allows you to upload 15 second video clips. So why remain static when you can use the visual feature to upload behind-the-scenes peeks at different business activities. A few businesses even use this video feature for customer testimonials and product demos, helping prospects see your human side. Further, you may wish to embed Instagram video in your website or blog to reach a larger community and boost your business exposure. Share positive emotion more often When using Instagram for business, carefully curate your photos considering the likes and dislikes of your target audience. Figure out what kind of photos they would be more interested in. It is human nature to like smiling faces more than sad ones. You may use a serious post occasionally to make an impact, but prefer to share positive emotion more often. Let the powerful imagery in the images evoke emotions that words often fail to express. Encourage followers to share their story with you to build a relationship and show them that you care, unlike most other businesses that merely focus on self promotion.  Simple Strategies to Get More Business on FacebookJanuary 13th, 2013Hi All! Social Media is an area that I not only conduct workshops and seminars on for small business owners, speakers and authors, but one that I provide private consultation on with every single client who hires me. Now, I realize that to some of you Social Media may not be a mystery for building your brand, lead generation and increased sales, however I will tell you it IS a huge mystery to most anyone who contacts me. The common questions I hear are: How can I get more followers on Twitter and attract customers? I have a Facebook Business (Fan) Page but how do I use for marketing to get more clients? I have no idea how to use LinkedIn, Pinterest or YouTube for business, so what should I be doing? How can I use social media for book or product marketing? And on and on and on…I’m not exaggerating when I say those types of questions are posed to me several times a week. Obviously each one of those inquiries could each be the topic of its own book (and many have been!), so I’ll narrow this down to ONE of those topics and tackle the others in future posts I write. Today I’d like to share an excerpt from an informative article written by Angela Stringfellow, a Business Writer who just had this article published on American Express’s awesome website for Small Business Owners and entrepreneurs, OpenForum.com. Her article is entitled: “10 Tips for Using Facebook to Boost Business”. To avoid copyright issues, here are just the first three tips she shares and then you can click on the link to read the final seven: Here are some innovative ways small businesses can use Facebook and capitalize on the power of this social giant. 1. Integrate Facebook connect buttons into your company website. Website visitors can easily connect to Facebook with the click of a button, enabling small business owners to maintain contact with potential customers even if they never return to the website. 2. Be responsive. Josh Grossman of e-Coupon service SavingStar says his company uses Facebook to communicate with customers and makes a point to respond to every question and comment promptly. Small businesses often thrive on personal interaction, and Facebook is a useful tool. 3. Make it easy to share content. Grossman explains, “Every coupon we post on SavingStar has a Facebook like button. Each coupon gets dozens or even hundreds of likes, helping to spread the word with users’ Facebook friends. All of our blog posts also have Facebook like and send buttons, and we use the Facebook comments plugin to make it easy for users to comment and share those comments with their Facebook friends.” The tips that Angela shares in her article are dead on, so I highly recommend CLICKING HERE to read the other seven! Cheers & Happy Marketing! Lisa 5 Key Strategies for Effective Facebook Advertising CampaignsApril 24th, 2012Hi All! I came across this extremely helpful article written by Melinda Emerson, The Small Biz Lady. Melinda always provides great content and info so you should follower her on Twitter @SmallBizLady and read her blog posts. Many clients come to me either confused about Facebook Advertising, or have never even considered running Facebook Ads. And I typically find most of them think Facebook Ads are probably really expensive. But, that’s NOT true! Not only can you choose the exact audience you want your ad to appear on the pages of, BUT you can also control how long it runs and how much you spend. Also, ads are great for promoting your events! You can run a Facebook Ad campaign leading up to your event and then stop the campaign once it’s over. Cool stuff! Again, you’re in total control of your campaigns and budget. For more info on all the general stuff about “how” to run ads, visit the Facebook Ads page. Okay…back to the purpose of this article! I’d like to share 5 tips Melinda offers once you’ve decided to run ads. “5 Areas to Focus on When Setting Up Facebook Ads” by Melinda Emerson. Please note this is just an excerpt from the entire article she wrote, so click here to read the whole thing! User Destination: Figure out where you want to send the users that click on your ad. There is a strong benefit to sending people to a Facebook Business Page, as well as sending them to a company website. It all depends on the marketing goal you are hoping to achieve. Costs per click will also vary based on where you direct people to go. A CPC landing page can make or break an ad campaign, but the landing page doesn’t necessarily need to be offsite. Facebook Business Pages allow for creative opportunities for landing pages including a contact form or a Facebook store among other options. Ad Type: Determining which ad type to choose can directly impact the success of a campaign. Facebook Ads are a common ad type that is structured most similarly to traditional CPC ads. Sponsored stories, event, post, and application ads can also be successful for brands but focus on more specific content. There is a strong social advantage for running ads that highlight a brand’s status update or event because they show “likes” and shares associated with that post. These ad types often see increased click through rates because of the social association. Targeting: You not only have the opportunity to target your current demographic, but can also connect with an audience that you would like to target as customers. Facebook allows you to target users based on every profile feature that they enter. Likes and interests are a feature that businesses need to take advantage of. If a business sells fitness products they have the opportunity to show their ads to anyone that “likes” fitness, health, working out, yoga, etc. The specific targeting allows for leads from a very qualified user group, which makes the Facebook Ad conversion rates much higher than traditional CPC campaigns. Reporting: In addition to the basic reporting that Facebook offers, there are other ways to track your user’s activity after they click on your ad. You can setup goals and conversion tracking in Google Analytics that can assist in determining the success of the ad campaign. Optimization: Continuously managing your ad campaign is vital to its success but knowing how to optimize it is what can really drive results. Knowing which ads are performing and why is what you’ll need to know to carry that success to the other ad campaigns. I hope her tips take some of the mystery out of Facebook Ad campaigns for you! Regardless of whether you’re a small business owner, coach, consultant, entertainer, book author or speaker, Facebook Ads are a great way to generate traffic to your Fan Page (Business Page), website, events, products and BRAND…and it’s highly targeted and cost-effective for lead generation! Cheers & Happy Marketing! Lisa How To Sell More With The Power Of StoriesJune 30th, 2010Hi All! The following article is a guest blog courtesy of Patrick Jobin at Storagepipe Solutions. And although they target larger companies, the strategy he shares in this article can be used by a business of any size, and it’s very cost-effective! How To Sell More With The Power Of Stories Here’s an interesting technique that can be used to explain complex value propositions in a very simple way. For example, an IT manager might want to hire you for a major project, but the VP of Finance will need proper justification before writing the check. For this to happen, clear communications have to take place between IT, your company and the Finance VP. This is a common scenario faced by Storagepipe Solutions, a provider of online backup and archiving services for larger businesses. They’ve developed a unique method of communicating their message – in a clear, non-technical way that everyone can understand- through the use of stories. Take a look at this video EXAMPLE to see what I mean. This video explains the benefits of our Email Archiving services… but does it in a clear and non-technical way. We use video stories and visual examples to build curiosity and interest. Rather than talking about our company or our solutions, we only talks about the customer’s pain points. If you’d like to create a video of your own in this style, you can do so easily and inexpensively. First, you’ll need to lay out a storyline. Since your customers can use your product in many different ways, you’ll need to focus on just one “use scenario” per video. Write out a short script that’s no more than 2 minutes long. (So your viewers don’t get bored) Then, record the audio as a WAV or MP3 file. If you don’t currently have audio recording software installed on your machine, you can download Audacity for free. Once the audio script is recorded, draw out all of the scenes on paper, and scan them into your computer. Try to make at least 1 picture for every 10 seconds of audio. Keep the drawings (or images) simple! You don’t have the be a professional artist. Next, you can simply join everything together using Windows Movie Maker. This is a free program that comes with your Windows system. (If you’re a Mac user, there are also a number of video editing options available to you). In Windows Movie Maker, simply align all of the images so that they synch with your audio track, and export the movie. If you have a YouTube account, you can also upload your movie to get some viral traffic. Yes, it’s really that simple! In just a few hours, you can make your own high-quality, sales-generating video case studies without spending a cent. This is much more effective than simply handing over a stale brochure with boring features and benefits. Try creating your own videos and posting them in this blog’s comments below. We’d love to see what you’ve come up with! About The Author: Storagepipe Solutions provides world-class corporate data protection solutions, including online backup and recovery, electronic archiving and business continuity. Thanks, Patrick, for this contribution! I’m sure my readers will find this helpful for their marketing, sales, lead generation and brand building efforts. Cheers & Happy Marketing! Lisa How Do I Find My Target Audience on Twitter & Get Them to Follow Me?April 18th, 2010Hi All! Many of my clients, and audience members in my seminars and workshops, ask this question: How do I find and get the target audience that I WANT to attract to follow ME on Twitter? As business owners, professional speakers, authors, consultants, coaches, etc. (whatever your business is), it doesn’t do you much good to have thousands of followers if most of them are people who would never have interest in your services, products, etc. I’m a firm believer that it’s all about quality and NOT quantity. But that’s a very hard concept for many people to grasp…everyone gets so hung up on “how many” Fan Page fans they have, how many Twitter followers they have, etc. But I can tell you that Twitter benefited me in many ways even when I only had around 100 followers…why? Because I had the “right” followers. I started building relationships with other experts (who followed me) who I am now doing strategic partnering with, online events with, etc. So even though some of my followers are not potential clients of mine, they will refer clients to me and we’ll generate revenue together by doing paid events together. And this may shock you, but a recent marketing report answered this question: How many Twitter Followers does it take to affect lead generation? Answer: At least 100. NOT 1,000! NOT 10,000! NOT 1 million! 100. Read the article with details by clicking here. However, as I was saying before that tangent, is that it IS possible to find the people you want to target for business on Twitter…the people who CAN become your clients or buy your products! Here are (3) ways that will enable you to find them: 1.) http://search.twitter.com : Type in keywords that describe the people you’d like to reach (example: Event Planners) and search results will come up. 2.) http://www.twellow.com: Twellow describes its service as a “directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you”. And it’s FREE! 3.) http://listorious.com: Listorious describes its service as “…makes it easy to find who matters on any topic with the best Twitter people search on the web. We empower thousands of people to curate Twitter by allowing them to tag their list in our Twitter list directory.” And here’s the basic benefit: You can find lists that other Tweeps have created that are of your target audience. So you may be asking yourself, “Great. I’ll find a ton of people to follow who I really want to follow me. But how do I get them to follow ME?” Short answer: Begin to follow them, and over time (if you retweet them a lot and send good content vs random junk), you have a good chance of them following you. And if they post questions or comments, reply to them. It’s all about being “social”! And I’d like to say “Thanks!” to Mirna Bard, Social Media Expert, for sharing the Listorious.com tip with me 🙂 OKAY! You have 3 ways to get you started on finding YOUR target audience on Twitter. Get movin’! Cheers & Happy Marketing! Lisa Why Having Social “Me”dia Syndrome Will Cause You to SufferApril 08th, 2010Hi All! As a Marketing Consultant and Business Coach, I speak with clients, colleagues, or audiences everyday who ask me why their Social Media efforts are dismal. To which I reply: “Have you taken the word ‘Social’ out of Social Media?” To which many respond with, “What do you mean?” People who approach Social Media as Social “Me”dia, struggle. So what DO I mean? Well, see how you answer these questions to see if you’re suffering from Social “Me”dia Syndrome: 1. If you have a blog, do you follow other peoples’ blogs and make (good) comments? Or do you just expect people to follow your blog and show interest in yours? 2. Do you really participate in the Facebook Fan Pages or Groups you’ve joined? Or do you expect everyone just to flock to yours? 3. Do you answer questions or provide solutions to people you follow on Twitter? 4. Do you re-tweet their tweets? 5. Do you thank people for re-tweeting you or following you? 6. Do you take the time to participate in #FollowFriday #FF on Twitter and give props to tweeps you really like so your followers will then know about them, too? 7. If you have a Facebook Fan Page, do you actually go there, daily, and post questions or helpful info that your Fans can respond to? 8. If you have a blog, do you invite Guest Bloggers to write posts and then source them clearly? 9. Do you reach out to people on LinkedIn, participate in Group Discussions, offer advice when questions are asked? 10. On your Facebook Fan Page, do you post interesting questions on the Discussion Board, let your Fans know, encourage them to answer the questions, and/or post new questions? If you answered “No” to more than 3 of these questions, you are suffering from Social “Me”dia Syndrome. You’ve taken the word “Social” out of Social Media and you’ve focused too much on the “Me” in Media. This means your branding, marketing, sales and lead generation efforts will suffer. And this means you and your business will suffer! Take 2 aspirin, shift your perspective, reassess your goals and efforts, and contact me in the morning. Chances are within a few weeks you’ll be feeling much better about your Social Media efforts…and the RESULTS!!! Cheers! Lisa |
