Facebook Business Page vs. a Profile

Facebook business page vs. a profile - I ran across someone recently on LinkedIn who said they weren't getting the results they wanted on Facebook. To follow up, I went to their Facebook page and realized they were doing quite a few things wrong, so I thought I would share in order to help those who want Facebook marketing, but don't know how to start. His first mistake was he was using a personal profile as a business page. This is not a good idea for many reasons! First and foremost, if Facebook gets wind of it, they can shut your page down, as it violates Facebook policies, and think of all the content and following you lose if they shut you down. Everything will be lost.

Another problem with having a personal profile as a business page is you lose out on all the valuable insights Facebook provides, which is analytics for you to determine if your marketing is effective. Facebook will actually tell you how many people saw your post and how many people engaged with it. You can see where your followers are geographically and exactly what your reach is. There are other insights provided as well, but all you need to know is that Facebook provides valuable information to business page owners to show you in black and white how effective your marketing campaigns are. 

If you have questions about a social media campaign, let's chat! Shoestring Mktg is a marketing company based out of Lenexa, KS that serves small business owners with marketing help that goes beyond social media.

Become A Happiness Ambassador @ HappyNate.com

Join the movement and become a Happiness Ambassador @ HappyNate.com while helping Dan & Kimberly Wilkinson win a contest! All you have to do is register for a FREE happy site at HappyNate.com. This is a FREE site, and you won't be persuaded to buy anything! IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO WIN a prize basket worth over $200, read about the contest for you in the last paragraph!

At your Happiness Ambassador site you can also learn science based applicable steps to choose happiness and connect with like-minded individuals. Now you can actually put into practice what you learn and be a catalyst for change! You can individually take responsibility to collectively change the world with the ripple effect. Throw a little pebble and watch the ripple grow.

Sign up in 2 Easy Steps:
• Go to HappyNate.com
• Register for your free site

Sign up for your FREE site before 11/15/13.

As you probably know, Dan & Kimberly Wilkinson sell Nerium, the age defying 1 step skin care that so many people are talking about. If you would like more information on a 1 step skin care product that is formulated to improve the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, discoloration, uneven skin texture, enlarged pores and aging or loose skin, call or email today! Dan & Kimberly will set you up with a 1 week FREE trial!

If you are interested in entering a contest yourself, simply email Kimberly your name, cell number, & your MyLiveHappy URL address (ex. YourUsername.MyLiveHappy.com) and Kimberly will send you a trackable video that is linked to you. The person with the most unique views wins. This is NOT a sales video, so you can send to your family and friends without guilt. The more unique viewers that watch your video, the more likely you are to win! It won't help you if 1 person watches your video 50 times. It needs to be unique views. Contest winner will be announced 11/15/13 at 5pm at Facebook.com/1StepSkinCare so stop by and like their page so you get the updates! We have a prize basket worth over $200! Good luck!

If you have any trouble registering, contact Kimberly at silverchic@gmail.com for help. 

Facebook Marketing

Facebook marketing is not just as easy as putting a status up everyday. Clients won't pour in just because you post a status that says, "Hi everybody!" Just as you wouldn't expect to walk into a room and say hello, then make the sale, so the same should not be assumed about marketing your business on Facebook. Think through what people your business is connected to want to hear about or read about. Try different kind of posts and look at the engagement received to leverage your posts going forward.

Be thoughtful, pithy and humorous. Some people's strategy is to bombard customers with sales and product information. That's not always what your customers want. People don't want to be constantly sold to. Think about how much you like junk mail in your mailbox, and that's pretty much how your customers feel about your constant ads in their Facebook stream. Try engaging your customers and actually have a conversation with them. Consider making them laugh and feel good about reading your posts. Stop selling people, and be social! It's called social media for a reason!

Creating graphics are a good idea for Facebook posts. Facts are great, especially industry related facts that your followers will find interesting. Recent algorithm changes to Facebook give more stream time to graphics, so instead of just posting the fact, try creating a graphic that gives the reader something to look at. Remember, Facebook is an opt-in type marketing, which means if you shove content in their faces that they don't want, they simple click unfollow. Gone are the days that marketers can dictate what the consumer sees. Today's advertising and marketing is all about finessing the message so your customer wants to receive it. The Google Chrome graphic in this post was created for the Shoestring Mktg Facebook page to relay a fact. The nice thing about creating graphics is you can put your logo in the slide which will reinforce your brand, and set your business apart as experts. By choosing facts related to your industry, you've now set the tone for your company being the authority over certain subjects. 

Here are some Facebook marketing do's and don'ts. Don't post random boring things about your personal life. Do put thought into what you say. Don't oversell your followers. Do let followers guide you on the marketing content you put out. Don't be negative in your Facebook posts or comments. Do create visual content for your followers.

Shoestring Mktg is a marketing company in Lenexa, KS that helps small businesses in the Kansas City metro area grow their business and develop new leads. Writing content and posting Facebook marketing messages is one of the ways Shoestring Mktg assists clients. If you have questions about social media marketing, feel free to drop us a comment, or contact us at http://bit.ly/SSMcontact.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is important for businesses. Did you know that YouTube is the #2 search engine behind Google? Many people don't even realize that YouTube is considered a search engine, but in fact, people do search YouTube to find out all sorts of information they want to learn. For instance, this video in this post is an informational video by Shoestring Mktg to help small business owners learn "How To Build a Social Media Campaign", because if business owners are searching topics on how to do this, now they can watch an informational video with advice on how to do so.

Google also now owns YouTube, which means that often times if you are searching Google for information on a topic, you very well might see video options on first page results. Most business owners know that getting first page organic search results is a coveted spot to be.  This is important, because it's possible that with video marketing, you can get your company information on first page, simply by putting a video out that covers that topic. Plus, Google is very strait forward that content is king. Videos put out content that can be considered relevant if it's on the topic your potential client is searching for. 

If you decide that you want to try video marketing, there are some do's and don'ts. Don't put a video out that is grainy or hard to hear. You just can't beat professional sound on a video. Do think about what your clients or potential clients want to learn about. Don't record long drawn out videos, because unless you're doing a teaching series, most people don't want to watch a long video. Keep them 2-3 minutes at most. Don't be nervous. Talk in a conversational tone. These are just a few of the tips recommended.

Shoestring Mktg is a Lenexa, KS based company that helps small businesses grow. If you have questions about making videos or how video marketing could help your business grow, feel free to contact us at http://bit.ly/SSMcontact.

Marketing Humor

Marketing humor is a great way to keep your brand at the top of your client's conscious mind while giving your company a positive brand image. When people laugh, endorphins are released into their brain that make them feel good, and marketing humor exploits that feeling in association with your brand. You should want those good feelings in your customers mind associated with anything you sell. Humor is a great tactic in your Facebook marketing or other social media campaigns.

Marketing humor also keeps people wondering what you will say next and so they watch your blog, social media or whatever medium they connect with you. This is a good thing! The next time you slip in a sale or nugget of information about a product, they are more likely to look at what you're saying because they have fun when they look at your promotional material. Some people will make a concerted effort to come to your page regularly just to see what you've posted, share it on their walls for others to laugh at, or bring people to your page in order to show them the funny themselves. Extending your reach with that kind of viral-ness is priceless! Think about Superbowl. People actually tune in to watch commercials because there are so many good ones. They talk about them for weeks! You should want this for your business, with few exceptions.

Sometimes it's not appropriate to use humor in your marketing.Take the funeral example. Though it might make people laugh, it also might turn their stomachs. If your products are of a sensitive nature, you should probably refrain from being too jokey as you don't want to offend your customers or potential customers. You want a positive brand image, but joking about sensitive material can actually have the adverse effect desired, so use common sense when creating your campaigns. If your mom or grandmother would be offended, then you should probably reconsider your campaign. Ultimately, you need ads that will appeal to your customer not turn them off to your goods and services. Remember who you are marketing to, what you are selling and keep your advertising and marketing campaigns appropriate. When possible, try to incorporate humor and keep those customers happy. It will reflect well on you, your business and your brand.

If you would like to check out more humorous ads put out by Shoestring Mktg, follow us on Facebook.

Social Media Made Easy

Do you need social media made easy? Well, start with one or 2 of the big social media sites and learn everything you can about them. Start your profile on one of the major sites (ie Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and learn how to use it thoroughly. After you understand all the nuances of the social media platform you choose, then build your following. You can search by your importing email address book to the site, checking out other connections friends list or by looking through friend suggestions.

Next, determine your online marketing campaign, and be sure to track your results so you know what is effective and what isn't. It does you no good to put out content, if you keep putting out ineffective content that your followers don't want. This is why having an online marketing campaign mapped out ahead of time is important. In advance, you should determine what kind of message you will putting out, and you will want to advertise to people what to expect when they follow you and then deliver that content. If you tell people they can learn all about your weekly product specials and then never post a special discount, your followers will feel duped.

Order a free crash course on Social Media Made Easy here or click and watch our video "Social Media Made Easy".  Shoestring Mktg is a marketing company out of Lenexa, KS and serves the greater Kansas City metropolitan area. Feel free to ask for marketing questions here no matter where your business is based.

Social Media Marketing Is Word Of Mouth Marketing

Social media marketing is word of mouth marketing in the digital age of today. An effective social media marketing campaign results in earned media rather than paid media, which is the advertising of the old days. There is currently an audience of over 1 billion people on Facebook waiting to soak in information which could include your marketing messages. Basically, social media is a message communicator that builds relationships between your customers or potential customers and your brand. Best of all, social media does all this for FREE!

Don't just jump into social media marketing without a plan or learning how to use it effectively. You need to understand how to act and engage with each site's followers. There are certain faux paus you won't want to make. What content do your followers want? Well, ask yourself, "why are they following me?" Don't sell your followers, but rather engage them. Don't ignore or erase negative feedback either, but instead use it to show the integrity of your business. Your company has to have a level of transparency on social media, so if you like to hide things from your customers, then social media is probably not a good marketing tool for you. If you have questions regarding social media or marketing, drop us an email here.

Shoestring Mktg is a marketing company in Lenexa, KS and works with clients all over the Kansas City metro area. Follow Shoestring Mktg on Facebook.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing can be good, but like all marketing tools, you have to actually use it effectively. If you make a profile and let it sit looking like a ghost town, what do you think a perspective client will think about your company if they land on your page? It won't seem professional, and might actually have a negative effect on your brand, which is the exact opposite of why you started your page. If you are going to start a Facebook business page or open a Twitter account, then use it. If you are not going to use it, then delete the account or hide the page.

Also, if you open an account and begin to use it, be sure to put out professional user driven content. Your customers don't care what you eat for breakfast, unless you run a health food store, or something of the like. Put out content that your clients want to read, not drivel that comes to mind. Creating content for social media can be difficult for some small business owners, especially when they don't have a lot of time to sit around and dream up fresh new content. If you have this problem, spend a little time educating yourself on how to write good content for social media sites. You can Google "How To Write Good Content For Social Media" and see what comes up. Try reading blogs, taking classes or even perusing tips from the social media site you are on. Social media can be a powerful tool to give out industry related information to clients or potential clients as well as keep you at the top of people's minds that might refer you.

Basic Marketing. Shoestring Budget. Quantifiable Results.

Making Nice With Competition

Talking shop with marketing guru, Joe Rossini.

Why do some people get so uptight instead of making nice with competition? I truly believe that you can sit with someone in your same field and not only learn a lot (iron sharpens iron) but also potentially make a connection conducive towards working together in the future. There are some definite advantages to talking shop with another business owner in your field. You can swap tips, trade secrets and even talk pricing. I assure you, unless you are in a podunk one-horse town, there is enough business to go around for everyone. If you are good at what you do and lead a fine-tuned organization, then trading a few secrets about your business is not going to put you under.

I was lucky enough to have coffee this week with another marketing guru. He too designs websites, handles social media for small business owners and provides them with some of the same marketing resources that  Shoestring Mktg provides, however we don't do all the same things. We had a great time together, laughing, drinking coffee and talking shop while getting to know each other. After enjoying each other's company for a while, we talked about how fun it would be to try to work together to provide services from each other that our own companies don't do on their own. See, a relationship was born that grew a sense of trust quickly. That's chemistry. By the end of our coffee, we were talking about meeting again to further develop strategies for how we could work together and capitalize on each others customer base to make more money for us both. This will be discussed at our next coffee. Sometimes if you get too caught up in protecting yourself and your business, you miss out on building profitable relationships.

Unsolicited Google+ Email Notifications

Have you found yourself in the position that you have joined Google+ and  people keep sending you unsolicited Google+ email notifications into your inbox? Pretty annoying, to say the least, however it could be due to the persons lack of knowledge about Google+ or their inexperience at marketing. You are allowed to click the SPAM button and report the email as such. This is actually an illegal practice and Google frowns upon spamming others.

Just because Google+ has an integrated email system that allows you to send your posts to different circles via email, doesn't mean that everyone in every circle wants to hear your ramblings about whatever you're pushing that day. Sending an automated email message should be regarded with the same rules as with email marketing. Would you compose a daily or hourly email and then send it to literally everyone in your address book? Probably not, because you understand that not everyone wants to hear from you constantly about whatever idea, sale, or industry fact happens to cross your mind at any given moment.

My suggestion when being spammed constantly is to alert that person to the fact that they are spamming you, and request to be put on a list that does not get email communication from them. If they persist, then report them as spam. Remember people, it is a good idea, before sending people email notifications, that you have content that you think they will truly be interested in before exercising your ability to put it in their inbox. It's not good email marketing, and it's not good manners to shove unwanted information constantly into people's email.

If you found this post helpful, click the +1 below to recommend it o Google, then click the icon "add to your circles" to the right, but don't spam me!

Tracking Your Marketing

Tracking your marketing is extremely important. Small business owners can find ease in tracking click throughs of their marketing efforts by using trackable links, like Bitly links. Once you enter your URL into Bitly, it generates a new, customizeable link that you will use to promote your marketing strategies. It's perfect for social media posts like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+. Anytime someone clicks on the link, it will be tracked in your account. You will be able to see what day they clicked on it, and where it was generated from, for the most part.

Trackable links are great if you want to see what content people find particularly interesting. For instance, I was talking to a client recently who wants to know what reasons people are most likely to contact his company. This is easy to do with content marketing and trackable links. Using Bitly, trackable links can be generated for content distributed through a variety of channels, like social media, blogs etc. Each link will have a separate page on the company's website with relevant content for testing. Using a variety of marketing mediums, we will begin testing the content to see which pages not only get the most links, but also generate the highest conversion rates.

Here are a few of my Bitly links. Feel free to click through and like my profiles!

Facebook:   http://on.fb.me/FB_SSM

Twitter:  http://bit.ly/SSMtwt

Website:  http://bit.ly/SSMsite

If you found this post helpful, please give me a +1 below. Thanks!

Valentine's Day Gift = Marketing Strategy

Last year, I received the best Valentine's Day gift ever from my husband. He ordered a mail order Valentine's gift from Box of Beans, probably because he can do it from his desk over lunch hour instead of fighting crowds at the store. It was a bunch little tubes of jelly beans (think Jelly Belly's) arranged into a picture of 4 different hearts. It was so cool, because it had 5 different flavors of jelly beans that made up the design of the picture of his choosing. Of course, as a marketing person, I immediately tasted marketing strategy in every tube that I gobbled down. If Box of Beans can put pictures into their mail order gifts, maybe they could spell company names or marketing messages as well.

I was pleasantly surprised when I went to the Box of Beans website and found they already were marketing to corporate accounts by allowing you to customize your order with your name, logo or monogram. Edible gifts are great marketing tools, because it combines the thoughtfulness of a well-planned marketing tool with the satisfying happiness of your tummy. You've heard the saying, "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach." I don't think this concept holds true only with men, otherwise, why would men give candy to their women at Valentine's Day? If you are wooing a new account, or keeping an old one happy, Box of Beans is a unique corporate gift idea you should check out!

Social Media Person

I'm a Social Media person, and I've written about lots of blog posts about different social media mediums, but the new one I've been into is Empire Avenue. Empire Avenue mixes the elements of Facebook, Twitter, the NYSE and Klout all into one fun social media site. The premise is you are trying to accumulate wealth by buying and selling stock in other Empire Avenue participants, but some of the stock price is also predicated on how effective you are at social media.

Now there are parts of the game that I haven't quite figured out yet, like the purpose of "Eaves" or the missions that are created by players offering Eaves as an incentive for what they want, like Facebook likes, Twitter retweets or YouTube likes to name a few, but all in all it is actually quite fun. Empire Avenue also creates a network of friends that all have the same goal in mind, which is to increase each other's wealth and/or stock price, so there is a certain level of commraderie that is missing in Klout.

Like I said before, I'm not quite sure exactly what I'm doing, but I've had a fun time playing around, an apparently I must be doing something right, because my stock price keeps going up, and I've had multiple people buy my stock and post on my wall that they are buying because I'm a top performer. Though that is nice to hear, ultimately, I've met some Empire Avenue investors that have engaged with me over a multitude of social media mediums, which is invaluable on many levels. If you haven't heard of the site, I recommend you start a profile, and buy stock in Chuck444. As I said, I'm making my investors money, so people keep telling me.

If you would like to contact me, fill out a contact form. 
 
Follow Shoestring Mktg on Facebook or LinkedIn and you can help my Empire Avenue score go up while getting great marketing tips and facts on a regular basis. Thanks for connecting! 

Inbound Marketing

Because of search engines, inbound marketing became easier for the average small business owner in middle America. No longer are expensive newspaper ads or yellow page listings imparitive to attracting new customers. In today's business world, all you simply need is a website and you have the potential to be found by customers online.

Keywords are vital to your SEO strategy, and though you should research your keywords based on volume of searches and competition, you should also research them on a continual ongoing basis. It does no good to use wrong keywords in all your digital marketing copy and the internet is fluid and constantly changing, so if you did keyword research a year ago, you should consider examining the numbers again. You need words that many of your potential customers are using that apply to what you do or sell that don't have 5 million other companies out there vying for the same keywords. It's all about being found in the search engine's after all and that's hard to do if you have keywords with a high volume of competition using the same words you are.

Google will actually give you the data on how many people searched for what terms on a national level for the previous month. You will want to pick terms that have a lot of hits and little competition. Pick several good terms and use them as a foundation of your digital marketing strategy. This can be an important piece to the puzzle of how people find you online in the search engines.

Keeping Up with Facebook

Keeping up with Facebook can be a chore. It's practically a full time job for me, and I do social media for a living! Here's some of the new features that I like:

• Promote
• Highlight
• Edited

The promote function on Facebook allows you to pay to get your post seen by more people. I can only assume this is because Zuckerberg is spinning his wheels to bring in capital in response to the dismal stock performance of last year. Last August, the stock plummeted to about half of its IPO valuation of $38 a share. The stock is currently hovering around $30 a share, which it finally hit shortly after the first week in January 2013. The cost to promote your post depends on several factors, including geographic location and how many people you're reaching. Simply click the "Promote" link found underneath your post to see how much your post will cost you exactly. Ultimately, if you want to pay for views, you will get more, so make sure you have good user content.

The Highlight function on Facebook, takes something you post on your timeline, and literally highlights it across the whole page, instead of only on half the page, like most timeline posts. You have control over this and it is free. To use this function, hover in the upper right hand corner of the post on your timeline, and click on the star that appears. Once you click this, the post will expand across your timeline.

The "Edited" function is interesting. Here is Facebook's Quick Tip for known issues on Facebook:

"You can now edit a comment immediately after posting it. If you click the delete button within several seconds of posting, the text will be editable again. Keep in mind that if another person comments before you click the delete button, this edit option is no longer available."

If you see an "Edited" link under a post, click on it to see what it used to say...and keep in mind if you edit something people can see what you had said, so keep it clean people!

For more marketing tips and strategies, subscribe to this blog. Fore more information on Caylon Huckabay or Shoestring Mktg visit our web page or visit us on Facebook to interact with us.