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Lisa Orrell, The Promote U Guru 
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Posts Tagged ‘products’Powerful Pinterest Tips to Help Grow Your Small BusinessDecember 11th, 2013Hi All! As the third most popular social media network after Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest has over 48.7 million users, recording more than 25 million monthly visitors. And it has become a powerful social media platform for product-based businesses, bringing in more traffic than Yahoo and Bing. Plus, statistics show that prospects are likely to spend 70% more money with you when they are driven to your website from Pinterest. That alone makes it all the more important to take this newer social media platform seriously! That said, here are a few tips for using Pinterest effectively to grow your small business and increase your sales: 1. Increase Your Brand Awareness Provide useful, educational information to your followers. Your purpose is to become a reliable source of the most accurate, valuable information; not just to promote your products and business. This will ensure that your followers see you as an authority in your industry and look to you as the go-to place for all relevant information about your niche. Done right, you’ll inspire interest and build trust online, and that can lead to increased customer loyalty, greater audience reach, and referrals from others. 2. Expand Your Reach Other social media networks have given small businesses amazing tools to expand reach and grow business, and Pinterest does, too. Using the group board feature on Pinterest and collaborating with popular pinners, you can easily expose your brand to a greater audience and expand your reach. Make each board theme specific, with a catchy title and keyword-focused relevant content. As the audience follows the focused boards, your follower numbers will tend to spike. 3. Make Your Business Site Pinnable The best way to spread the word about your business is to make your Pinterest site visual. You may use Flickr, Shutterstock, Photo Pin, iStockPhoto, or Fotolia to find unique, interesting, exciting, and pinnable photos on a regular basis. However, don’t forget to check the copyright of images. Be sure to give credit where it’s due. The most successful pins are a combination of valuable content and great images. 4. Add Pinterest Logo to Your Website Adding a Pinterest logo to your business website will help increase your fan following and remind site visitors to pin your content. Also, to ensure a positive brand image, send messages that express the real identity (the voice) of your business. So plan out your boards accordingly, keep your content organized across different boards, and clearly outline the information you want to share with your fans. 5. Engage with People Engage with your audience to better understand what they want to generate better boards that they’ll like. Use the Repin option to stay current with what is trending on Pinterest by examining the pins of the most popular Pinterest users and keep your pins sharp, current, and targeted. Also, be sure to keep an eye on your competition to see what they are doing to attract traffic and create engagement. These tips may seem like common sense to some of you, but they’re NOT common practice with many pinners! I constantly hear from people who ask me, “I’m on Pinterest (or Facebook, or YouTube, or LinkedIn, or Twitter)…but what should I be doing there?” That’s more proof that opening an account on a social media platform doesn’t immediately make you a marketing expert. Learn the basics of Pinterest, get comfortable with using it, and then start experimenting with more tools and features they offer. It can work for you as long as you’re persistent and consistent!  Why Not Understanding Social Media Etiquette is Impacting Your EffortsJanuary 11th, 2012Hi All! Back in 2012 I wrote a blog post entitled “Do You Suffer from Social ‘Me’dia Syndrome?”. It was picked up by tons of other blogs and also led to my being asked to write variations of it for several online business communities and magazines. I bring this up because yesterday I spoke to a good friend of mine who was asking me about Social Media tips. After my chat with her I realized that it was a good time to revisit this topic in 2012. Why? Because MANY people are still clueless about proper Social Media etiquette! Here’s the deal…you have to participate to make it work for you. If you make it all “about you”, you’ve lost the entire essence of what Social Media is about! I find that many new clients who come to me are not getting much out of their Social Media and online marketing efforts because they’ve forgotten ONE little detail…they forgot about the word “social” in their Social Media strategy. Here are a few tips that will quickly illustrate my point: 1. Comment on other peoples’ blog posts. If you have a blog and want people to comment on your posts, you have to comment on OTHER peoples’ blog posts to start generating traffic to yours. It’s simple: If you read a blog post you like or have an opinion on, don’t just “keep it to yourself”. POST A COMMENT! 2. Retweet other peoples’ tweets: If you like a tweet from someone else, take a split second to click on the retweet button to share it with your followers. That’s why the retweet icon exists! To SHARE info with everyone and help cross-promote each other to help increase awareness for other people. It’s amazing how much more tweet-love and traffic you’ll get if you retweet, reply and comment on other peoples’ tweets. AGAIN…it’s part of being “social” in tweet-ville…and it’s part of Social Media etiquette! 3. Comment or Like other peoples’ posts on Facebook or in LinkedIn Groups: If you want more people to comment and/or click on the “like” button on your Fan Page or Profile posts, then do it more for other people! It takes less than one second to click “like” under someone’s post and sometimes just a couple of seconds to write a comment. Again, if you see a post that you like or find interesting, rather than just THINK to yourself, “That’s funny!” or “That’s cool!” or “That’s interesting!” or “That’s really helpful info!”, move your cursor up to the word “like” under it and simply click. Or type a short comment to acknowledge what that person posted! This may all sounds like common sense BUT it’s NOT common practice…which is why millions of social media hobbyists and small business owners are involved in Social Media but frustrated with it. They constantly just focus on posting stuff about THEM, their businesses, their products or events, their books, their families, their vacations, their kids, the songs they like, food they like to eat, etc., but they rarely take the time to acknowledge what other people post and share online. So…here’s my challenge to YOU: If any of this describes how YOU participate in the world of Social Media, make “improve my Social Media etiquette in 2012” one of YOUR resolutions in the new year! You’ll be pleased with the results and will truly be participating the way the world of Social Media was intended! Cheers & Happy Marketing! Lisa Teleseminars: Are They a Wise Business Choice?June 09th, 2010Hi All! The following post is courtesy of Kathleen Gage, (hugely successful) Online Business Building Expert, and she is a teleseminar pro. Truly. Here are some great insights from her to get you started, or to think about if you’re already doing teleseminars… Teleseminars: Are They a Wise Business Choice? By Kathleen Gage Teleseminars are one of the most incredible ways to build customer loyalty, provide incredible value, position yourself as an expert and make fantastic revenues. The fact is, there are many experts for which teleseminars are the cornerstone of their business and marketing model. To optimize your effectiveness (and revenues) with teleseminars, or any aspect of your product or service offerings, you not only need to know how to develop a great teleseminar you also need to know who is interested in your information, how to market your offerings and how you will sell. Let’s begin with foundation. In virtually any marketing course, a primary area of discussion is defining your target market. Without knowing specifically who your market is, it is difficult to develop products and services your customers will be interested in and be willing to pay for. Here are a few considerations.
A consideration many people never take into account is, “Who do you ideally want to do business with?” Start from the space of, “Where are qualities I look for in my clients that will enhance our working relationship.” After all, you will be putting time, energy and effort into any working relationship. Why not make them the most enjoyable relationships you can? This is just the beginning. The challenge many professionals have is they have not taken the time to identify who wants and needs what they have to offer, but who they ideally want to work with. Without knowing this you may drastically miss the mark. Take time up front to do your homework so that you will benefit your market over the long run and have a great time doing so. To learn more about effectively using the Internet to generate great revenues go to http://www.streetsmartsmarketing.com/free-ebook.htm to access the FREE ebook The Truth About Making Money on the Internet.Thanks, Kathleen! Cheers & Happy Marketing! Lisa |
