Let’s Get Some Tips and Fast Facts From the REAL Instagram Experts (hint: not me!)
I am not an Instagram expert nor do I play one online. 😊 Good thing I know some serious, REAL Instagram experts to turn to for Instagram marketing help. And since you now know me, you can get access to those experts too!
Look, I love gorgeous images and great photography – I photography books on my coffee table and my bookshelf, have taken classes of/off for 30+ years, and have bins full of cameras in my office that say I need to get out and shoot more. But that’s just it – I like using my real cameras, and then processing, and maybe sharing the best. Ok, I love my iPhone camera too, when I can get a well-composed shot.
But I mostly use Instagram to share food, wine, and travel pics. Not business-related pics. It didn’t make sense as a business tool for me in my library consulting and training business, and not sure it makes sense for Mighty Marketing Mojo either.
BUT I get it! I get the appeal. And like I said, I DO know research and the right experts to connect us to for Instagram help.
Hootsuite reports on how a lot of big brands are shifting to Instagram (they were already there, but are strengthening and concentrating efforts) for even more visual content and communications. And they are seeing some BIG numbers in engagement. Instagram skews younger (majority under 30) and really brand conscious (54% of users follow brands on Instagram) – so if that matches your demographics, start planning ways to amp up your Instagram efforts.
Thanks to my very plugged in, Instagram-expert pal, Ken – I’ve known for a while that Jenn Herman is a serious go-to guru in social media, especially Instagram. Look for her at Jenn’s Trends, and also read her other Instagram marketing articles at SME So it’s great she’s featured on Social Media Examiner (another site I love) explaining how to use Instagram Type Mode in Instagram Stories. Until reading this story I had no idea you could create a text-only story in Instagram!
I’m a fan of this post from Buffer with at least 8 actionable tips for Instagram marketing based on more than 20 studies of Instagram marketing efforts from a lot of smart sources and brands. Plus, they analyzed a lot of top, popular Instagram accounts and posts to see what’s really working. Great! Our research is already done. check out Tip #2 – reinforcing that earlier advice I gave you that consistency matters more on social media than quantity.
Another research-driven social media and marketing guru I’ve followed for years and frequently read is Neil Patel. So if he says he’s derived “10 powerful Instagram marketing tips (that actually work)”, then I’m definitely going to check those out.
It is important to do your homework and research hashtags first, and then keep a list of common tags for topics your biz to frequently post on. [Tip: I have a photographer pal who keeps a list of common photography hashtags and tags for our local area in a Notes file on his phone, easy to copy&paste into Instagram.]
I mention a few hashtag research options in my Top 10 Fave Social Media Tools guide – you can get your copy free here if you don’t have it already.
Plus check out these hashtag tools:
#tagdef – run a search on a hashtag or a phrase, see what’s popular, what’s trending
Trendsmap – find the hashtags trending in your local area (particularly for Twitter, but can try using for Instagram tags in your area too).
I’d love to hear more about how you’ve incorporated Instagram into a solid marketing strategy for your service-based business. Drop me a line and share what you’ve learned about Instagram – or drop a note in the comments.
Fellow Solopreneurs, It May Be Past Time to Consider a Social Media Profile Makeover
Years ago, before I actually owned a home and realized how much work it was, I loved watching those house makeover shows. I adored Trading Spaces (coming back!!!). I bet some of you are fans of HGTV and all the new wave of remodeling shows. But when was the last time you gave your social media profiles or accounts more than just a dusting, and considered a real makeover? It may be past time to makeover our social media looks for even smarter marketing.
I’m not talking about slapping a fancy, funny frame on an old profile pic. And by the way, you are using a good quality, well-lit, professional looking photo in your profile pics for your business’ social media profiles, aren’t you?
Uhoh …
Get a Good Photo!!
Sidenote: ok, we don’t all have professional photographer friends who’ll take photos of us whenever we need it (thanks Chorus Photography outside Philadelphia!). But c’mon, cameras in your phones now have portrait modes or fancy apps, and if you get a friend to hold it nice and steady in some good light with a clean, uncluttered background, you’ll be better off than most I’ve seen online.
Time out – you’re not are using a cartoon character are you? No good unless you’re a children’s book author or a graphic novelist. Please tell me you’re not still the generic avatar! You also don’t want a photo more than 2 years old, even slightly blurry or pixelated, or a pic that shows you in a t-shirt (when you’re not a t-shirt designer), or was cropped out of a photo of you and a pal at a bar, or anything other than seriously good looking
If any of this applies to you and the profile you use for your solopreneur biz on social media … STOPright now and arrange to get a new, REAL photo. If you can’t get a pro headshot, see my notes above, oh and go put on clothes that make you feel good and look good. Get a non-blurry, non-pixelated, well-lit picture. And if you can, have a proper photo taken by a pro – even if it’s a pro at a mall camera place.
Done?
Ok, consider that the first step in your social media makeover. 😉
Seriously, that is the first thing you need to check and make over.
Social Make-over Step #1: Good Photo
Always use use a clear, friendly, high-quality, professional-looking image as your profile pic on ALL the social media accounts you use for your solopreneur biz. Twitter, your Facebook Page, your LinkedIn profile and Instagram especially! You can show your personality and still have a polished pic.
Hey, I get it … maybe you’re camera shy, or really private, or think you’ve never taken a good photo. I used a cartoon avatar (branded, pretty well-designed, but still a cartoon) as my Twitter profile for several years. But as I did more public speaking, more client work away from the computer, I needed to show ME. The real me, and not a cartoon. As soon as I made the switch I got a LOT more followers, more positive feedback, more engagement – because I was a real person and folks could see that online. And when we met IRL (in real life), they felt like they already knew me. So be like the newer me, not the old cartoon me.
Social Make-over Step #2is super easy – use the right size profile
Make sure the image is the right size for each social platform. Yes, they change things all the time -but look for templates on sizing like this one and or the always updated ‘ultimate social media size guide’ from Social Media Today – you’re good to go. [E.g. 180x180px for Facebook profiles, 200x200px for Twitter, 150x150px for Instagram, 400x400px on LinkedIn]
When and wherever possible use the same name, same variation of your brand or business name, as the handle or name on all the social media channels where you have a business presence. Not always easy when you have a common name, like Jennifer. 😉 Or your business name is also common and was taken early. But do what you can.
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Social Make-over Step #4: Add relevant, targeted keywords to your social media bio or About section.
Fill in as much of that bio as space allows and use relevant keywords and phrases. For Twitter it might mean just keywords, one or two #hashtags. And don’t forget to include a link to your website where allowed. For LinkedIn, your About and Summary should NOT be a giant keyword-stuffing exercise. But should be up to date and include variations of words or phrases your ideal customer might search on.
Hootsuite wrote a post just on how to boost your LinkedIn profile and give your business a makeover for that platform. While I’m not on LinkedIn as often as maybe I should be, so I probably need this makeover too!
Does your summary or your About Us section answer these questions:
Who are you?
Where are you based?
What do you offer?
What are your values?
What is your brand voice?
How can people contact you to learn more?
Example LinkedIn About Us section from Shopify
Especially if you’re a solopreneur working in the B2B space, a service biz, your clients are on LinkedIn. Follow the tips in this post to give your business a more client-attracting presence on LinkedIn.
Did you know Facebook lets you add multiple links to the website field when you build a profile? Use it to include your other social channels. Consider adding your Facebook Business Page as the URL for website on Twitter if your actual website is a work-in-progress. Cross promote your social accounts whenever and wherever you can.
Don’t forget to include your social profiles in your email signature, as an option to ‘follow me on…’ at the bottom of your email newsletters, add your handle on the first slide or two of presentations, and even put your most-used social profile on your printed business cards.
Giving Yourself a Social Makeover is Easier and Quicker than a Home Remodel!
I bet those 5 steps will take you less than an hour. Schedule a social media check-in for refreshing every quarter, and a time to evaluate for a full makeover at least once a year. Now excuse me while I go update my Twitter headers and fix my Facebook covers too!
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Social media isn’t just a tool for promoting your solopreneur work – it’s a way to connect with your customers, offer customer service, and it is a great marketing research tool.
Social Media for Market Research PLUS Marketing
You can find out a lot about your niche, your target audience, and how your prospective customers think and act by doing some social listening. But it can seem time consuming, after all, there are so many platforms and the conversations move FAST!
There are tools for that …
Just like all other areas of marketing these days, there are a wide range of tools to help with social media monitoring or social listening research. Some have free versions, others lock some of the most powerful features behind the paid doors, and others – well, they’re just too big and pricey for the likes of us solopreneurs. (I might mention them from time to time, because you could grow into one of those tools, or a larger client with deeper pockets may need it – and you look like a hero for telling them you know all about AgoraPulse or Meltwater for example.)
There are specific tools per social media type, but there are also tools that work across different types of accounts to help you find out what the buzz is, know what type of buzz to create, and how to make the most of what’s happening on social media. Remember – there’s really no such thing as ‘social media marketing’ – social media is just one more tool we put in our kits and our marketing plans.
Social Monitoring or Social Listening Tools
Google alerts – Get specific search results delivered to your inbox via Google Alerts. Enter a search term and how you want the information delivered, and monitor the buzz about yourself and your business all over the entire net.
TalkWalker Alerts– a free alternative to Google – because honestly, Alerts doesn’t get a lot of love, updating, or fixing from Google and has seemed close to the Google Graveyard for past few years. (I’ve replaced my old Google Alerts with TalkWalker alerts). For TalkWalker Social Search you need to create a free account first, which gives you unlimited searching over the last 7 days of social platforms, blogs, news, and forum sites. Use keywords, then narrow by country, media, engagement, reach, demographics, etc. See results in a timeline, or change the layout to display engagement, date published, potential post reach, etc. [rest of Talkwalker tools are $$ pricey]
Socialmention.com – This is a lot like Google Alerts but focused only on mentions in social media. Type in the keywords that you want to watch, like your business name or products and services, and see with who and where they’re being mentioned. You can even get a widget to put on your website to display the results live. You can select specific social media to search or all.
PinAlerts – a simple tracking tool that tells you if someone Pins something from your website. Free tool. [Now a part of Tailwind, a major player in social tools, especially for larger businesses. Tailwind also offers Instagram scheduling and analytics. Tailwind tools start at $9.99/month]
TweetBinder – for researching hashtags on Twitter, Instagram. See the reach, likes, comments, user rankings, how often people use a given tag, and what influencers are sharing.
Tagboard– search hashtags from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and more. See what else others are saying around hashtags you are using or interested in – double check before you use that tag in your post to make sure it means what you think it does! You can filter results by network, and you can save your results.
Klout.com – You can sign in with either Twitter of Facebook, and then you can find out how influential you are. Join and engage with other influential people to build more klout earning perks. Recognize influencers in your business and life by giving them Klout. Then, use Klout data to improve. [Fair warning – I haven’t used Klout as a measure of my social reach in years.]
Mention – (not to be confused with Social Mention). This alterative to Google Alerts makes sure you don’t miss any instance of your brand or organization being talked about online. Track keywords, get instant updates so you react quickly. Robust view. [Free for 1 alert, 9.99/mo for 2]
Brand24 – social media monitoring, track mentions of brand name or keywords; also available via mobile apps
BuzzStream – track or manage influencer outreach campaigns. Find relevant influencers in your niche, find their blogs, manage emails to news outlets and PR sources. [paid only, limited-time free trial]
TweetReach.com – Want to know how far your tweet traveled, or simply research a phrase, #hashtag or keyword for future efforts via Twitter? You have to authorize the app, but once you do the research possibilities are truly endless. Lite plan starts at $23/month.
Instagram anlaytics from Minter.io – one of the tougher social platforms to optimize cleanly for business use and to see your performance, this tool offers insights on followers and your pictures.
LikeAlyzer– a simple, FREE, Facebook metrics tool that lets you check ANY Facebook page’s metrics (not need authorization, just link to page). It grades out of 100 and compares to competitor’s pages, or ones with the same industry tags. The reports include suggestions for improvement [tool is from Meltwater].
Facebook page analysis for top nonprofit
Simply Measured– offers 4 different Facebook reports. Insights repurposes data direct from FB into better looking graphs; Competitive Analysis report – compare yours to up to 10 other fan pages and get visual metrics; Fan Page Report – more depth on engagement, community, content metrics; Content Analysis report – engagement, post types, common keywords. One of the ‘Big Biz Toys.’ [4 FREE reports, main data suite is PRICEY at $500/mo – NOT a solopreneur, small biz tool]
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Audiense– this one seems like a ‘Big Biz Tool’ – but its free version is incredibly robust in the data it offers! I LOVE how much I can get for free. The free version does have limits on the number of social platforms and accounts you can monitor, or how far back certain data goes – but the depth and breadth of the data makes up for it. Want to know when the best time to Tweet is for YOUR audience of followers (yeah you do – so you can make those scheduling tools like Hootsuite and Buffer work better!)? Want to know more about your followers, their demographics and interests, how much influence they have? You can get it – free.
Best time for me to Tweet
My Audiense Twitter Stats Data
Don’t Forget the Analytics Built-in to Social Platforms
Facebook Insights – Via Facebook Insights you can get a lot of information about your reach, who is engaged with your content, and even the viral potentiality of your posts. Find the demographic and geographic breakdowns of readers of your page’s posts. Likes analysis lets you sort organic vs promoted posts engagement. You can also see the potential reach of your posts if your “likes” shared what you posted via the “friends of fans” potential.
Twitter Analytics – don’t forget the built-in analytics on offer from Twitter. You should be looking beyond just your Follower numbers, and you can here – with impressions, clicks, engagement rate as well as standard stats like RTs, Likes, or mentions.
Analytics snapshot for @TheInfoHound
Pinterest Analytics – yes, you can -and should- measure your performance on Pinterest if you are using it for your business! And naturally Pinterest has a built-in tool for that.
Social Management Tools Have Metrics and Social Monitoring Too
TweetDeck.com– This is more of a social media management tool than a “monitoring” tool, but it enables you to do both. You will be able to filter what you see to be most relevant to how you want to use Twitter. Not only that, it also works to connect with other social media too like Facebook, LinkedIn and others. This can save tons of time and frustration. [once a stand-alone tool, now owned by Twitter]
HootSuite – Of course, no social media monitoring article can leave out HootSuite.com. This social media management and monitoring tool offers you to view, use and monitor all types of social media under one browser, or one excellent mobile app. It’s easy to save searches or save a #hashtag in Hootsuite for easy monitoring. Hootsuite offers free and paid plans. The free version may be perfectly fine for most solopreneurs with limited social media accounts to manage, and if you aren’t trying to bulk schedule many posts in advance [since late 2017 free plans are limited to 30 advance posts]. The paid plans start at $19/month, which is not expensive and can be very useful to business owners who use multiple types of social media. You may need nothing else if you have this tool. [Caveat: I use Hootsuite, Buffer, AND a few other tools to help me schedule and promote.]
AgoraPulse – a tool for social management, monitoring, and distribution. You can schedule, push content on all channels, look at your metrics, see per post analytics to help get more engagement from audience and on each platform, look at it all in nice charts, and more. Plus run quizzes, sweeps, and contests. AgoraPulse offers some free tools (Facebook Page stats, Twitter stats, Timeline contests) and then paid plans start $49/mo Another free tool is AgoraPulse Barometer – free access to 8 competitive analysis stats for Facebook.
AgoraPulse Competitive Analysis sampleAgora Pulse social data heat map
However, with everything it offers, the price could be worth it for a business that is actively and consistently engaged on all the major social platforms and is serious about managing and monitoring all their social media under one service. Chances are, that’s not you or I, solopreneurs!
Social Monitoring Needs to Be in Your Solopreneur Skills and Toolkit
It’s clear that monitoring social media is an important component of doing business on the web today. Just like tracking your own metrics, you need to have a plan and know what you’re looking for and what you will do with the data you unearth. Don’t search or monitor blindly! Even if you have a bricks and mortar store, it is imperative that you’re the one creating the buzz for your business and (if needed) redirecting buzz leading in the wrong direction. With these tools you can be back in control.
Add social media monitoring or social listening to your skill set and part of your solopreneur business routine.
Want more advice on how to get even smarter about social media research (like social monitoring) or how to use social media successfully while not being online 24/7? Click below and check out special new training Smarter Social Media Success!
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You’ve read my posts about all the facts on why video is hot, hot, hot. You’ve heard it from other coaches and solopreneur leaders, marketing experts, and umpteen online courses or emails. So you have a YouTube channel and you’re making some videos. Great! Now here are 10 easy ways to fix your YouTube marketing and make it work even harder and smarter for your solopreneur biz.
Keep your video short.
People generally have small attention spans and the percentage of viewers that are going to stick around for your big finale – and link information – after even 5 minutes is pretty slim. Ty and keep your information brief and to the point. Use your YouTube channel as a method of enticing viewers to view your other content, and give them more information when they get to that point.
Don’t forget about your mobile audience.
A growing number of people are using their phones to access YouTube and watch videos. Bear that in mind when you’re including text – it has to be easily viewable on a small screen.
Watermark your content.
Keep your information secure and not easily reproduced by others by adding a watermark to your video. Just make sure it’s not so overpowering that it distracts from your content. Or, add your logo or URL to lower-thirds graphics that appear at key points during your video.
Spread the word.
Having a consistent level of communication between your YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts will do wonders for your flow of traffic. As soon as you’ve produced a new video, get it out there and let everyone in your network know about it. It will automatically post to your Google+ account since you’ll already have your Google and YouTube accounts linked. Just like for all good marketing content – promotion or sharing is just as important as creating.
Focus on SEO.
Add captions, tag your content, add a succinct description, think hard about your title and make sure your video file name is relevant, (dog-chases-car as opposed to 10-10-13), keep a list of relevant tags you should add to all your videos. These are all great methods of making sure your content gets viewed.
Think about Audio.
You want to make sure your audience is engaged… but not overwhelmed. Good quality audio that is crisp and clear is maybe more important than the images and video itself! If they can’t hear you, they’re clicking away – quick! Use a decent mic please. If you have spoken audio, it’s also nice to include intro and outro music to the video. It helps set the tone and polishes it off. YouTube has some fantastic (free!) audio options to choose from.
Prepare your videos.
Use the best quality video and audio equipment as you can afford right now. You can make a really nice video with the high-def camera in your smartphone – with a few extra tips. Get a mic, a tripod, and some even lighting and you’re good to go. Keep shaky camera movements to a minimum and plan the video before you shoot it – think about writing a script and practice first!
Link.
Make sure you take good advantage of the fact that someone is viewing your content – give them a link to the rest of your content or relevant content, and make it easily accessible in both the annotations and the video description.
Do something different.
Never has ‘thinking outside of the box’ been so important. You’re up against a lot of competition and the more you stand out, the better. Here are at least 8 video ideas to help get your creative juices flowing.
Go beyond YouTube.
Once you’ve created your video content there are plenty of other video sharing sites online where you can post it and increase your audience. Check out: Vimeo, DailyMotion, Vube, Twitch, or UStream.tv.
See, it’s not that hard to get started on improving your use of video for marketing via the largest video site in the world.
The Key to Great Content:
Become an Authority in Your Niche
Know. Like. And Trust = the keys (to CM and your biz)
Those words and core concepts are the keys to avoiding those big, huge mistakes in marketing and to producing meaningful content that your audience, whomever they are, wants. Really, really wants. Eagerly awaits even.
To create that kind of content and build those 3 Magic Words you need to do 2 things:
listen to your audience …
And then listen some more.
Yes. That is exactly what you do.
You may have been marketing to a broad audience. For example, if you were a small business coach then your content may have been directed at all small business owners. But once you’ve been in business a while, talking to clients, helping them, and really listening – you’ve learned a lot I bet. Now you have an idea of who you prefer to work with and what types of customers are the best for your business. You are NOT a coach to all small businesses. You probably don’t have equal preferences for working with small clothing boutiques, cupcake makers, and personal trainers for women over 40. You know who you’ve had the most success with, who responds to your message – and who lights YOU up. Listen to more of THOSE clients.
But the 2nd item is:
Build yourself into an authorityon yourspecial topic.
You now have the opportunity to create an ideal customer profile using marketing segmentation tools, and you have the ability to take your marketing to the next level and create unique messages for various market segments. Are you marketing to your ideal customer? Are you making the most of your analytics to craft targeted messages to your audience? Marketing segmentation is an essential aspect of a content marketing strategy.
No matter how many skills you have and services you offer, you do have a core focus. You have particular skills and interests. You’ve seen success with more of one type of client vs. another. So, you have a niche. Right??!! [Ok, if you’re worried about this – we can get into Unique Value Propositions together – or see this resource on creating one from marketing expert Peter Sandeen]
Tell Your Story – yes, your audience DOES want to hear it
As your business has grown you may have strengthened your brand identity or you may have veered away from it. Revisit your business plan. Review your vision and mission. Are you on track? Has anything changed? One of the best ways to cultivate a following is to create a strong brand. Identify your brand promise. What do you stand for and why? Then make sure that promise is instilled in every piece of content you create.
The irony in marketing is that part of becoming, or being seen as, an ‘authority’ is getting known, liked and then trusted. <sigh> And how you do that, is create valuable content. It’s getting circular, I know.
But the point remains that in today’s world of overflowing information – those who make people’s lives easier, make them feel smarter, solve a problem for them, or show them a new path to try are the ones who will ‘win’. Actually, everyone wins in this new ‘game’.
Producing and sharing high value, educational, informative, WANTED content is a key way to gain those key factors and become an authority in your niche. If you have knowledge to share that can help a specific audience, you are, or can be, an expert. As an expert in your niche you will get a certain amount of respect, which leads to more traffic due to your perceived expertise.
But, in order to become an expert you must start at the beginning.
Starting at the beginning!
No, not all the way back THAT far.
Not really at the complete beginning of your business or organization’s life either.
It does help if you’ve earned your expertise through years of study, informally or formally. If you’ve read more, attended more classes, researched more and generally studied up more on a specific topic than any average person – chances are, you’re already and expert. It could be via grad school or a MOOC or books or endless webinars.
Or maybe it’s from the ‘school of hard knocks.’
Perhaps your expertise comes from lots of hard work and hard-earned real world experience – the positive and negative kinds. Maybe it comes from lots of listening, talking and even collaborating with other experts. Learning from the ‘feet of the masters’.
Or maybe you ‘know just enough to be dangerous.’ No matter …
One of the best ways to take all that stored up knowledge and really become an expert is to juststart.
Start writing or talking or presenting at events. Start shooting videos or making screen captures. Start with only 7 seconds on Vine [RIP dear old Vine]. Or 15 on Instagram.
Just start creating. Start sharing.
But where specifically to start in building authority?
Start with a Blog – and Write Often
A quick way to make you really dig down deep on your niche topic is to write … A LOT.
What if you could put new blog posts on your own site twenty times per month. Wow. That’s a lot! A post per weekday.
[Full disclosure – I don’t do that. It’s not even a current goal. It’s HARD – especially since I have others aspects to my business besides writing + blogging! But it’s an admirable goal and # for some to shoot for – even if each post is only 250 words – you’re writing. And learning.]
You could use this blogging as a journey to showcase first a beginner’s perspective and your trek over the next year to a more advanced perspective. Keep it focused, on topic and short-n-sweet [only way to get out that many posts]! You’ll have to research and brainstorm to keep coming up with fresh content that stays on topic. Then you’ll have those skills in your toolkit now too! You’ll be learning more, digging deeper and expanding your opinion and views on your core topics as you go.
Also, guest blog strategically on websites that market to your audience. This helps you refine your writing and be more polished, as you’d be writing for a more public audience. It’s also still a legit way to earn traffic back to your site –if you only target and write for legit sites in your niche.
Blogging often is one of the top ways to get traffic to your website. It’s really a foundation of content marketing. And something we’ll cover in lots more depth here in coming weeks and months.
Write Meatier Articles
Take the research you’ve done for your blog posts and expand that into a full article. Keep in mind the golden rule of writing about what your audience is interested in. Then get that article in the places your audience reads. Find online and offline magazines in which to contribute as an expert in your niche. There are tons of specialized, niche magazines, e-zines, sites, local news places and publications that match up against almost any specialized topic out there.
If you submit a compelling, well-written, engaging article, there’s a good chance your submissions will be used (especially if you’re targeting smaller, niche publications). Whether online or offline, this type of content helps establish you as an expert to the public.
Become a Trusted Resource
Let the local and national press know that you’re a resource they can call on when they need a quote about your niche.
You can do this in a variety of ways, such as sending email to reporters when they write about your niche, making blog comments, connecting with journalists for niche topics via social media, and using a service like HARO (Help a Reporter Out). HARO is a way that you can sign up to be a source to qualified reporters on any topic you choose.
There are a number of other free and paid services to connect you with media pros who need a good source. SourceBottle is a searchable directory of media professionals. ProfNet is a paid, email-based service that connects business sources to major, mainstream publications and top bloggers and is well trusted. My LocalReporter is a reverse of HARO and ProfNet as business owners use it to target local media for coverage in specific niches.
Note – I’m NOT saying to start sending messages and requests for media attention to any journalist you come across in your niche. That’s just spam. This isn’t even about carefully targeted pitches. It’s about giving your expertise as a resource – and if you get a little extra media attention from a nice link or ‘shout out’ – great. Then you can post links to that article, interview, video or news nugget on your site.
Set Up Consistent Profiles
No matter whether it’s your Facebook Page, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or your blog, your profiles should be consistent. You want to be very careful about contradicting who you are across accounts. Use the same, or similar, graphics, colors, logos, photos and style for your profiles and cover photo areas. Be sure to be professional and have good quality photos. If your brand image is fun and snarky – and that’s what your audience wants and expects – then by all means keep it up. And keep it consistent across the platforms –as suited to each one and your audience. [If you want to read more tips on social media make-overs check this new post]
Ensure that you’re consistent in what you say about your topic on each social media account, but in different ways based on the type of social media account. For instance, LinkedIn is business and buttoned up, while Facebook is more social – more like an after-hours business event. Twitter is fast, social and of course prone to snark. Just remember to be businesslike and professional on all accounts.
Don’t stop working on yourself and your knowledge
Learning never ends. Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book, Outliers: The Story of Success, posited that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert on any topic. There’s disagreement now as to whether that number is legit – but it IS true that continuous learning and self-improvement is just a generally good plan!
It probably won’t take 10,000 hours to know a topic well enough to start helping others on it; nor will it take that long before you can start presenting yourself as an expert.
But you do have to start!
If you follow these tips I’ve collected on building your authority, you CAN do it and it won’t take as long as you fear. Let me know how you’re going to get started on becoming an expert in your special area today.
[Ed: this post was originally shared in 2014 but has been updated Nov. 2017]
Check Out 9 Ways You Can Keep Up with the Latest Marketing Trends
Staying on top of the latest marketing trends can present quite a challenge. With that being said, there are a few ways that you can stay on top of the game and make sure you are using the most up-to-date methods of marketing your business.
As a business, it is essential to make your presence known. Keeping a professional website is the first step in making sure that is done. Your website is the “storefront” for your business and this is what actually sets the tone for those that express an interest by visiting your website. Make sure your website is search engine optimized. Having a perfectly optimized website is awesome, but make sure you gain the exposure you need in order see the success you are hoping for.
But having an awesome and optimal website isn’t enough. You need to do your homework to stay on top of the latest and greatest marketing opportunities available for you and your business. But hey, I’ve done the homework for you! Check out these trend tips:
9 tactics that can keep your solopreneur marketing one step ahead:
Visit Internet/Digital Marketing Blogs
Interact with others in the community by visiting forums and read posts by others regarding marketing methods they have tried or those they intend to try. If you see a new opportunity that arises, take advantage of it. Few of my favorite marketing blogs to recommend (other than my own here!):
Duct Tape Marketing – from author and small business marketing expert, John Jantsch
Marketing Profs – articles, training, strategies, conferences for both marketing departments and individual marketers
Content Marketing Institute – want to know more about the world of Content Marketing, this is THE place and they do awesome yearly benchmarking research on B2C, B2B and nonprofit CM.
Chris Brogan’s Blog – speaker, author, consultant, marketing guru with a focus on entrepreneurs; personable, approachable style.
WebInkNow – blog from best-selling marketing book author, David Meerman Scott
HubSpot – they are the ultimate model of content marketing – they teach it, live it, help other businesses execute it properly. It’s well worth giving them your email address in exchange for some of the fantastic guides, planners, spreadsheets and tools they offer as lead magnets.
Participate in Conferences
This will allow you to meet other people, many of whom are right on top of the game. This is a great way to gain useful insight and information that will prove to be invaluable for you and your business. This might mean planning for 1 conference a year that’s not in your clients’ fields, nor your own professional association, but a marketing-centric meeting or conference. Look for ones with other small, solo businesses so you can pick up tips from others facing similar challenges. It doesn’t help to learn about tools that only the really BIG girls and boys can afford.
Networking
Take time to network with other business marketers. It’s good for more than building your contact list, it can build your knowledge too if you ask interesting questions and listen a lot! Share information with others and gather information from those who are trying to do the same thing you are. This allows you to stay on top of the latest marketing trends, and extract information from others as to their experiences with certain methods.
Research
You know this is one of the most important actions you can take that will help you gain knowledge about current marketing trends. Put your research skills to use and find information about the newest marketing trends. If anything in life is certain, it’s the fact that marketing trends are always changing. Keeping up-to-date can really be like a rat race if you don’t do your homework and commit time and effort in keeping up with the changes presented into today’s marketing world.
Subscribe to Alerts
You can use Google Alerts and get an email any time Google finds new results anywhere that matches your topic(s). Use it for tracking your competitors, key influencers in your niche, tracking the main industries of your clients, and of course keeping up on specific marketing topics. Note: Google Alerts has been buggy and not 100% reliable for a little while.
Alternatives to Google Alerts:
Talkwalker Alerts [FREE] – simple, bare-bones style, sends alerts to your inbox or an RSS feed reader.
SocialMention [free again] – especially good at monitoring blogs, social networking, videos and the comments sections for your selected keywords/topics.
Mention – probably most powerful monitoring tool – you pay for power and reliability though! [Free trial, solo plan starts at $29/mo]
Meltwater News – [paid] big time, industry level online media monitoring (a good tool for info pros to know of for their own work – if you have it, don’t forget to use it to monitor YOUR brand and how to boost your own biz)
Subscribe to Blogs and News Sites
You can subscribe individually to many blogs and get the latest posts emailed to you automatically (check the sidebar to the right and sign up for posts from me, The InfoHound). Or you can grab the RSS feed of a blog.
The RSS feed is NOT dead – and with many new magazine style apps out there for mobile, there are more ways to read and keep up with your favorite blogs (like this one!) and news sites. Basically, an RSS feed talks to the feed reader (aggregator) and every time something new hits a site you’ve subscribed to, it’s sent to the feed reader and it’s ready, waiting for you.
I personally love Feedly (Web-based version – I only use for making some adjustments and doing a lot of content curating to Hootsuite; I use the Feedly app on phone + tablet DAILY!) and have TONS of sites feeding in, organized by various topics. I can keep News and Politics separate if I want (hard to do in life!) and I have ‘folders’ for Marketing, Tech, Photography, Libraries, etc. It’s simple to set up and you don’t have to know anything about RSS feeds really, you just tell it the URL of a site you want to have added to your ‘feed’.
Feedly RSS Feed Reader – Keep your content filled up
I also use a similar app called Flipboard that pulls my preferred topics from an assortment of news sites and blogs. It shows all the images as well as original text and is easy to read on mobile devices.
Get Social
Besides reading forums and blogs, go join some LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Groups, or start a list in Twitter. Ask questions in those marketing related groups about what others are seeing as emerging trends, hot trends, trends that don’t really matter, and their best practices. Create a list on Twitter of influential people, who post regularly with helpful Tweets, on the marketing for small or solo businesses [Here’s a few I like: Melissa Galt, Edmund Lee, Ken Watson, Barbara Schenck, Viveka Von Rosen, Berrak Sarikaya, Melinda Emerson, SCORE Mentors (do find your local SCORE chapter too!) and Ian Brodie]. Add a few who are overall marketing luminaries (like Guy Kawasaki, Ann Handley, Jay Baer, Chris Brogan, and John Jantsch) and see what they’re talking about. You can even create a hidden or secret list of your competitors and monitor and learn from them in real time too – maybe see what NOT to do!
Be Ok with Change
Make yourself readily available for change. Be resilient and flexible. Don’t forget what the main goals of your business really are. Think outside the box. Those are all ways of motivating yourself to entire ownership of the actions you take in marketing your business.
Never Stop Learning
Sign up for 1-2 courses, workshops, online training or webinars every 3-6 months. The world moves fast, technology changes, best practices in marketing shift around – so stay on top and keep learning. Professional development and education expands your business mind, keeps you up to date, gives you new tools and insights to help clients with, and makes sure you stay on top of your game. HEY – maybe you want to check out new offerings from me, The InfoHound!
Your success really is based on your efforts in putting your business name right in front of your intended audience. Using the information given will give you the insight and knowledge you need in order to help you keep up with the latest marketing trends for your business. So will reading the blog here with me, The InfoHound, and signing up for classes, webinars and the training I offer especially for small, solo info-preneur businesses like yours (and my own!).
You’ve done some brainstorming and you are coming up with new ideas to write, blog, or create videos on for your audience. But now you’re really working on the actual writing, sweating out creating the work. You’re looking for things to add, examples or data, a case study to highlight for your community, or just new ways to approach those topics. Great!
Where do you usually head first?
Yeah, probably Google.
Ok. Google is a good starting point. But you can’t stop there!
Use Google to find sources of reliable info and other sites to check rather than just accepting the first result that comes up. But you know that already, right? You’re not new to the search game! So consider this a friendly reminder.
So where might that Google search lead? What is your content research plan beyond Google?
How about some national associations? – professional groups, trade groups, educational orgs – all with a focus on a specific topic and often with a research mandate. Often some of THE most authoritative sites for original research on a niche topic. Do keep in mind that some of the trade associations and such are pushing their industry’s agenda, but many may partner with educational institutions and such to create more open, unbiased research so they are taken seriously.
What about online communities? Forums? Discussion groups? Email lists? Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, G+ Circles and even Reddit. Try Boardreader.com and its Trendy tool, OMGILI or Comment Sniper to search forums, message boards and more.
Where are your people hanging out, talking to each other, asking questions? Go there! Yes, right now!
Ok, you’re back from checking out a few? Found great fodder and inspiration I bet! They have questions, they ask the community and sometimes they get good answers.
But what if you can provide even better answers? Wouldn’t that be really helpful? Wouldn’t your audience probably love you for that? So go write up some of those answers and give them tools and resources for the specific question you saw popping up a lot. Then go back to the community and post a link to your post, ebook, report or video with the awesome answer you crafted.
Social Media – it’s not just for talking about Game of Thrones or your friends’ kid pictures!
Do research on SM platforms where your audience hangs out. What are the trending topics, most used hashtags, most RT’d accounts or posts? Who are the influencers that you follow – or should be.
Check out social media monitoring tools or sites such as:
BuzzSumo– specifically a ‘content’ analysis tool – so it monitors websites, blogs and beyond social media
Bottlenose– mostly a paid tool for ‘social intelligence’ because you can create a dashboard and one-stop-shop for monitoring, tracking, analyzing
IceRocket – may win the coolest name for a tool! A ‘brand monitoring’ tool with easy-to-read results
Topsy – [UPDATE: Topsy is no more. 🙁 ] limited free searching of real time and archival Twitter, G+ searching; search on KWs, hashtags; filter to only tweets, photos, videos, etc; paid ‘pro’ accounts
Tweepz.com – Want to see who is Tweeting on any topic, location or skill set? Try using Tweepz. You can get inspiration if you’re lacking sufficient information about any topic. It’s also a great way to find movers and shakers to follow on Twitter.
Social Mention– Use this tool to find out who is mentioning you on social media (or your competitors, industry trends, keywords or products). Nicely broad coverage of social platforms and good metrics on strengths, reach, sentiment. You can follow the buzz about any topic which can also help you come up with content for your niche.
Netvibes.com – free and paid versions; mostly for monitoring brands or larger companies
Twilert.com– ‘real time alerts via email when brand names, keywords or hashtags are mentioned’
Issuu– free and paid plans; more a publishing or content aggregating tool than a monitoring tool
There are somany tools for social monitoring or listening I can’t keep track or list them all – but thankfully sites like Social Media Today , KissMetrics (itself a monitoring and analytics tool) and Social Media Examiner have already created lists. Go read their lists and find a few tools you like and will use regularly.
I’ve created an updated list of my favorite marketing tools that I use and recommend –
check out fave tools here.
Ask your own questions of your audience on social media – a quick poll or quiz or just a ‘pulse check’. But, don’t give them too many choices. It should be more like when you get your child ready for school – give them two choices: this or that? Give your audience a choice between two different videos you can create or webinars that you will host. Then, ask them to vote or decide.
Content Aggregators –aka RSS feed readers or ezine collectors. Try tools such as Feedly to collect blog posts and RSS feeds on topics you’re interested in, or AllTop and select from their lists of blogs or topics to follow. Use apps like Pulse, Zite, Prismatic, Longreads or FlipBoard to collect articles from multiple news sources all in one place on a variety of topics. You can curate or share that content as-is, or use it to dig a little deeper on topics and find additional info sources.
There are so many tools available that there’s no reason not to do a little more research and monitoring so you can find the current topics, trends and news that is affecting your audience. Be a hero and share that with them and show them how to make sense of it all.
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Start with a Blog – and Write Often
