I found this great infographic about Twitter. While it’s just a bit of fun, it does have a serious point in there too.
It’s not just about stalking celebrities, and it’s vital to keep it professional – it’s a public forum and your customers are on there. You need to tweet regularly to make it work for your business and your tweets should be funny, interesting or thought-provoking most of the time.
Enjoy the quiz. What did you discover? Should you still be on twitter?
I’ve noticed a few times recently that people have said things like,”I’ve finished updating my website, now I need to go and do some proper work” or “now I’ve sent out that mailing I can get on with some real work” or “better stop tweeting and get on with my work.”
Ahem, actually, promoting your business IS proper work!
Whether it’s updating your website, designing a flyer, attending a networking event, posting photos to Facebook or tweeting, marketing what you do to the outside world is a vitally important part of running your business. It’s how you get customers. Without customers there is no business!
If you ran a large multinational business, you wouldn’t spend all your time doing the hard work – you would be planning your next moves, strategising, making new contacts, working on your next advertising campaign and developing the company. You wouldn’t feel bad about it.
Brands aren’t built overnight – you need to keep your name in the minds of your target customers. Even if you are busy now, you need to keep the business coming in the future. If you don’t keep working on your marketing, where is the next batch of work going to appear from?
So take some time to work on your business, schedule in the time to communicate with the outside world. Enjoy it. And don’t feel guilty!
Do you agree? Is marketing your business a guilty pleasure? Let me know in the comments or on twitter.
Really, you should have a marketing plan for your business. Here’s why:
1. Action. Having a written down plan (which is preferably stuck on your wall) will remind you to do something, anything, to generate the next batch of enquiries. That smug feeling from ticking off actions you have completed helps too.
2. Focus. Your plan will help you focus on doing the right promotional activities, aimed at your most profitable target markets, rather than wasting your limited time on little bits and pieces which aren’t going to have an impact or reach the right people.
3. Consistency. Having a plan which integrates all aspects of your marketing will give each activity more clout. The messages in each can be co-ordinated and planned to give them maximum effect.
4. Clarity. Having a plan prevents you from making really bad decisions or jumping to snap up too-good-to-be-true opportunities. You can evaluate each opportunity and figure out whether it is in line with your strategy or not. If it’s not… don’t do it!
5. Measurement. If you know from the start what it is you are trying to achieve, you can then measure if you actually achieved it or not. That way you can do more of the activities that worked best, and stop doing the ones that didn’t work.
What do you think? Why do you have a marketing plan?
There continues to be a lot of confusion about what you can and can’t do when it comes to emailing your prospects and customers.
There are two key points to note first:
1. There is a difference between emailing individual consumers and emailing business contacts
2. Email marketing providers (mailchimp, constant contact etc) are very strict about what they allow you to do because they need to be absolutely certain that they won’t get blacklisted by the big ISPs and email providers.
Emailing individual consumers
The UK’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations enacts the EU directive into UK law. In summary what it says is that you cannot email individual consumers without their prior consent. Prior consent means that they have actually “opted-in” to receiving emails from your company, in other words, given you permission.
The confusing part is that you can also email them, according to the UK’s information commissioner, if you have a prior relationship with them. A prior relationship means that they are already a customer for similar products or services from your company or that they have actively expressed an interest in the products and services being promoted in your email, and at the time they were given the option of opting out of receiving emails from you.
Emailing business contacts
The law doesn’t actually cover businesses, but if you are using the likes of mailchimp or other bulk emailing software, they treat all lists the same and so you need to comply with the consumer regulations. If you are emailing directly from your company email address and you are emailing a business contact at their work email address, then technically you can do what you like.
However, I strongly suggest that you follow best practice and only email people with whom who you have had a prior business relationship or contact, and ideally people who have actually given you permission to email them. Everyone receives enough “junk email”. An email is perceived as junk by the recipient if it is not relevant, useful or interesting. Think about what you are sending. If the recipient will think it is junk, don’t send it. Junk is annoying and you are never going to win business by annoying people.
Take care – partnerships are treated like individuals under the law.
In every case:
You must always include an easy way for recipients to unsubscribe from your mailing list – every time you email them.
If someone unsubscribes you must remove their details from your list and stop sending them marketing material.
You must ensure that the identity of the sender is clear and not concealed in any way
Please note that this is my interpretation of the law for general guidance only and should not be regarded as legal advice. Full details can be found at the ICO’s website.
I was a speaker at Social Media Day in Aberdeen on 23 September, part of International Social Media Week. It was a great day with an interesting variety of topics. I was speaking about Accelerating your Marketing with Social Media. This is a summary of the talk.
Marketing is all around us… we are exposed to well over 1000 promotional messages every day. We are all suffering from information overload.
According to Management Consultants, McKinsey, “Often what’s really needed to help influence consumers is a “word-of-mouth recommendation from a trusted source” which “cuts through the noise” of traditional marketing methods”
Word of mouth marketing always been the most effective method of promotion – think about how much more likely you are to try a product or service if a friend is raving about it.
A 2007 Nielsen survey discovered that 14% of people trust ads, 78% trust consumer recommendations – that’s how powerful it is.
However, Word of Mouth is a bit like an old car – it can travel a long way but you never know if it’s going to start or not. Social media is more like a Ferrari. It’s easy to start and your message can travel incredibly fast.
Online communities and social networks amplify word-of-mouth and make messages travel further and faster than ever before
So – you want recommendations; you want people to talk about you…
People talk about you because
How do you harness it?
Make them love you…
Do something to make customers feel special and they will want to talk about you
Ask for recommendations and testimonials
Find out who the Opinion formers are in that community – target them, but in an open, honest way. Offer them a trial, get to know them. If they really like what you do, they will speak about it. They have wider influence – they can get their community talking
Answer questions, be helpful – add value. Don’t be afraid to give away knowledge –it lets people know that you know your subject.
Engage with people, be friendly – after all this is just another way of networking.
If they hate you…
Listen. Monitor mentions of your company online. Address issues and complaints quickly and openly. If you handle it well, your detractors can become your biggest fans.
Ask questions – people like to have their opinion valued. Marketing is not just about promotions – it’s also about understanding your market, providing the right products and services at the right price: Social media is ideal for feedback, research, and building lasting relationships with customers.
Finally, there are new rules – social media is all about two way communication, genuine engagement, honesty and transparency. Trust is crucial. Don’t fake it, don’t spam, don’t shout about yourself all the time.
If people know, trust and like your product, and know, trust and like you, then your message is much more likely to spread.
You can see the videos of the event online.
Google is the most successful search engine because it not only searches, but it also finds
what you are looking for. Google wants your website to be found by your potential customers because if they find your site, and it’s just what they need, Google is doing its job!
There are lots of very complicated methods of optimising your website so that it is easier for search engines to find it. However, there are also some very easy and very basic changes you can make.
Firstly – your page title. The title is the first thing the search engines see, and it tells them what the page is about. Every page on your website should have a different title, based on its content. Think about (and research) what visitors will type in if they are looking for the products or services on that page. Put the most important words or phrases in your page title. The title is also what shows up in the little tabs at the top of your page, so make sure the first couple of words give an indication of the content.
Secondly – the description. This is the second thing the search engines look at. It gives a slightly more detailed summary of the page content. Again, include the key search words and phrases. The page description also helps your potential customers decide if they want to click on the link to visit your site.
This is what the search results page for “Marketing Consultancy Aberdeen” shows:
The blue line is the title of the page and the text underneath is the description. The words in the search are shown in bold.
Finally – make sure that the words you have used in the title and description also show up in the content. Google’s not stupid – it does check that they match!
These are the basics and they are very easy to do. Now there is absolutely no excuse for having a site without a title.
In running, as in life and business, you need to make sure that you are aiming for the right target. Too high and you might just give up, too easy and you have no challenge.
I competed at RunBalmoral 2011 a couple of weeks ago. For weeks before entering I worried about which race to enter. Last year I ran the 10k and was planning to try again this year. However, the weather and various other distractions, such as work and children, meant that my training was way behind schedule. So should I enter the 10k and stress about finishing in a much slower time than last year, worry about not training enough and fret about injury or should I enter the 5k which I know I can do, but won’t stretch me?
Once I made the decision to enter the 5k I felt so much more motivated. I was now training for a manageable goal but I still made it challenging by aiming for a faster time.
By changing my goal to something achievable but still challenging I increased my motivation, trained more and exceeded my target by finishing more than 2 minutes faster than my personal best!
So are your goals right? Are they challenging enough to stretch you every day and are they achievable enough to motivate you?
If they aren’t, change them.
In honour of International Women’s day I wanted to write about a subject I feel really strongly about – flexible working, or more accurately, the lack of flexible working.
The one major difference between men and women is that women have babies. Women who have worked hard and achieved success in responsible, important jobs take time off to have a child and find that they are putting the same energy and responsible attitude into bringing up their child or children. They work hard to be a good parent, to achieve success in giving their child the best possible start in life. As important jobs go, this is a biggie!
At the end of their maternity leave, they are faced with a massive decision. Do they stop investing all their energy into bringing up their child and hand part of that role over to someone else, or do they give up the career that they worked so hard for over the previous years? Most of the women I know don’t want to have to choose. They want to work, but part-time, flexibly so that they can be the best mother they can while contributing to the family’s finances and still using their pre-baby skills.
Most of the debates about working mothers versus stay-at-home-mums and the benefits or otherwise of pre-school nurseries do not seem to consider this third option. Even very young children can enjoy spending time with other children in a secure environment, but I suspect very few thrive on being in childcare full-time.
In my opinion it is the lack of flexibility in the workplace which has led to the increase in mumpreneur businesses. These are mostly home-based, sole-traders who work doing something they enjoy, at the times which suit them and their families.
These women are intelligent, educated and skilled as well as being creative, organised and highly motivated – all attributes that employers are looking for. Some become millionaires, more just chug along, making a little money for themselves, while being there when their children get home from school. All of them are making a contribution to the economy.
Big companies, with their 9 to 5, presenteeism culture, are missing out on all these hugely talented people because they need to have their staff visible and contactable, in an office, at certain times. If you think about it, the most important, highest paid executives in a company are normally the ones who nobody can get hold of, who pay other people to answer their phones, because they are always in meetings. Why then is it unacceptable for a member of their team to be unavailable at certain times because they are picking their children up from school, taking them to swimming lessons or helping with their homework?
I recently spoke to an extremely inspirational woman who lectures part-time, and has been, by all accounts, the students’ favourite lecturer for years. She was then asked to go full-time and decided that it wasn’t for her, and she now only teaches on a consultancy basis. The students are missing out on some of her lectures all through a lack of flexibility on the part of the employers.
The way I see it, many big companies are losing trained and talented people. Families and the small business sector are gaining them. I hope that one day women will not have to make the choice between their careers and their families, but in the meantime, here’s to the mumpreneurs who make work work for them.
What are your experiences? Do you agree? I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks in the comments.
I was reminded of this blog post this morning. Thought it was worth putting up again:
I went on an extremely interesting “taster” session for a leadership course a couple of days ago. The course delegates work with horses to learn more about their leadership style.
This is a surprising method but it can be very effective as horses are very intuitive creatures and their behaviour can clearly reflect the behaviour of the people working with them.
For me, there were two main lessons. Firstly, one that I firmly believe in and practise in management situations, namely that everyone is different and managers have to use the techniques which work best for each individual. There is not one management style which suits all team members – to get the best out of people you need to learn what makes them tick and manage them accordingly. This was demonstrated by the horses very effectively – one of them walked with me as soon as I held the rope and started walking. The other needed a good old tug on the rope before she would come along.
The second lesson was that to lead properly you need to know where you are going and communicate it clearly, assertively and decisively. Ask the horses if they would like to go this way, and they won’t respond. Tell them clearly that we are going this way, come along, and they are quite happy to go with you. People are the same. Give them strong leadership and direction and they will be happier, more secure and more willing to follow.
For more information have a look at www.gentleleadership.com
When it comes to thinking up new ideas there seem to be two types of people. There are those people who are always coming up with ideas, several a day. Most of them are wild, wacky and completely impractical but there is the occasional gem. Then there are the practical people – they can see why the wild and wacky ideas won’t work, and they are great at carrying out the gems and making them take shape, but they find it harder to come up with ideas of their own.
Here are some great ideas, via twitter, for coming up with great ideas:
In summary, I’d say there are three main groups here
1. talk to someone else
2. clear your head, relax
3. put yourself in your customers’ shoes
Oh yes, and if all else fails, try Twitter!
With thanks to: @wordright, @clockstudio, @oxfordproperty, @roberthempsall, @theshadecard, @melanieshearn, @developingphoto, @coachingabn, @fmats, @rorysuperscot.
