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social media

How to do Social Media the Right Way

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When you think about posting on your business social media pages, do you start to panic, feel overwhelmed, and just feel all around uncertainty about what the heck you are even doing? Don’t worry, you aren’t alone. The funny thing is, social media for personal use can be fun, informative, and doesn’t require much effort or deep thought – for the most part. See a lost dog post, share it. See a post looking for recommendations for a plumber – put the info for Joe’s Plumbing because you wouldn’t think of calling anyone else.

When it comes to using social media for business, it seems like there are so many rules and the information can be conflicting. But doing social media the right way can be very simple, straightforward, and dare I say – rewarding and fun. When you start to get more followers and increased engagement, you’ll agree on the last two!

Here’s some simple and easy tips to help you get your business social off on the right foot or to improve what you are doing now:

  1. Pick the right channels. The easiest way to get overwhelmed is to try to post on every single social media channel out there. And yes, I purposely used the word try. Because unless posting on social is your full-time job, it’s almost impossible to keep up with every platform. Choose the platforms that your ideal clients are on. For example, if you cater to women in the 35-55 range, yes you should be on Facebook, Pinterest, and even Instagram.
  2. Be consistent. Posting 2x a day for 2 weeks is great, but it’s not going to help you if you come to a screeching halt and stop posting for 6 months. Find a cadence that you can keep up with. 3x a week – great, start there. If you can increase to 1x a day, even better. But start small and work your way up as you get more comfortable.
  3. Plan ahead. If you post daily at 1 pm, don’t wait until 12:45 to figure out what you want to post. Use a spreadsheet and create your content in advance. Use Hootsuite or other scheduling platforms to set up all your content at least a week ahead so that you don’t have to panic at the last minute.
  4. Engage. Social is meant to be social. Engage with other people, pages, and groups. If you are a florist and you see a post in a group asking about the best plant food for roses, feel free to chime in and share your knowledge and how you know so much (because you are a local florist) and if they have any other questions, here’s how to reach you. You are being helpful, but also noting your business. If you want people to engage with you, you have to engage with them. If people comment on your posts, make sure you engage back with them. Serve not Sell.
  5. Follow others. A little quid pro quo is par for the course when it comes to social media. Want to increase your follows, start following others. If you want to keep an eye on the competition, don’t follow them from your business page, use your personal. But otherwise, follow any associations, chambers, and complementary businesses that make sense. If you are a florist, following a bridal boutique, wedding venue, and catering companies just makes sense.
  6. Always look at your metrics. I know, I get it. The metrics can be confusing and well, boring for many to look at, but trust me, you won’t know if you are successful unless you look at your metrics. How many new followers did you get? What topics got the best engagement? What timing got the best engagement? You get the idea. Does video or pictures or text get more engagement? You can look at so much data!

Hopefully, you made it this far and didn’t get stressed out. These rules are meant as a guideline. Start small and take them one at a time. Rome wasn’t built in a day so don’t expect to get 500k followers in a week. And don’t forget to have fun with it!

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website

How do I know if I need a website makeover?

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Truth be told, no one wants to hear that their website sucks. It can be a very awkward conversation especially if a business owner is in love with their current site and is in denial. What may have been cutting edge 5, 10, or even 15 years ago is just no longer going to cut it today. #TruthBomb

We get it, having your website created probably took a lot of time, decision making, and money, but if your website just isn’t converting anymore or it’s very clunky for your viewers to use – then it’s time for an overhaul.

The goal of any website is to convert visitors into customers and if your site design and/or structure is a barrier in that, it needs to be fixed. Identifying the problems that hinder your site from being conducive to conversion and visitor engagement is an important step in the right direction.

Below are a few reasons why a redesign should become a priority for your company\’s web presence and some negative effects you could face by not taking action now.

  1. Your bounce rate is too high. Every website should have Google Analytics installed so that you can review your bounce rate – this the percentage of visitors that only visit a single page on your website during their session. The average bounce rate is about 40% to 55%. Anything higher suggests that your visitors are having a poor user experience.
  2. Long load times. Is there anything more frustrating than when a website takes FOR-EV-ER to load! There are several tools, like pingdom.com, that can help you figure out your load time. If it takes longer than 3 seconds, you should make some updates to speed it up.
  3. No on-page SEO. In order for your website to rank on search engines like Google and Bing, your website needs to have on-page Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Each page should have its own unique keywords and title tag or H1 tag. Search engines use these tags and keywords to create listings and how your customize these can affect how and how often your website is displayed when someone searches your keywords. There are other ways to increase your SEO as well including adding links, meta descriptions, alt tags, etc.
  4. Stale content. Yes, adding fresh content to your website matters – without it you will struggle to attract and retain new visitors. Fresh content increases your site’s exposure in search results – one of the easiest ways to add content is a blog!
  5. It’s still an HTTP. You need to have a secure site and upgrade to an HTTPS site – this lets visitors know that your site is secured by an encrypted network communication protocol. An HTTPS scrambles the data transmitted to and from your site to prevent unauthorized users from reading it.
  6. It’s not mobile responsive. This is a big one! 3 in 5 users will visit your site on a tablet or mobile device. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, visitors may abandon your website. A mobile responsive website means that not only does your website look good and function great on a desktop, but it’s compatible on a mobile device – the design uses proportional units of measure rather than fixed so it can adapt to the device it’s viewed on.
  7. It’s clunky aka hard to navigate. Visitors should be able to easily find the content they are looking for on your site. Whether you put the information on your homepage or in your menu, visitors shouldn’t have to look hard to find what they came for. Navigation can affect every aspect of your website performance!
  8. It doesn’t match your brand. You already know how important branding is to us here at Red Barn. Your website is a direct reflection of your brand, your colors, logo, styling, pictures, and even font should all match your brand.
  9. You aren’t using CTAs. A Call to Action tells your visitor what to do next. It can be something simple like read this article, download this whitepaper, click here to email or call, etc. it gives them direction on what they need to do next to get information or to work with you.
  10. You have bad links or 404 errors. Having broken links or links to pages that are no longer available can really affect a user’s experience on your website. It can also slow down your site’s speed and performance. If you don’t want to check every link page by page, a great resource is com.

In addition to the list above, you should also make it very easy for people to find your contact information and social media profiles – make it easy for them to contact you and follow you. It’s also important to note that if you are in an industry like banking, you may be required to have an ADA compliant website – that’s a whole different animal, but you can read a previous blog about it here.

Don’t look at upgrading and updating your website as an expense – it’s all part of your marketing strategy which should be seen as an investment. After all, marketing is designed to bring in leads that convert to sales. If your website is crappy and outdated, odds are you aren’t making the best first impression to your prospects and could be losing sales and not even know it. Need an honest assessment of your website or thinking of giving it an overhaul, give us a call!

How do I know if I need a website makeover? Read More »

size doesn't matter content

Size…Really Doesn’t Matter

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What size should my content be? How long should a Blog be – what about White Papers?

How long should my email copy be?  How often should I send them?

The answer is – there isn’t an answer.  Size and quantity IMHO don’t matter – QUALITY does.

My email subscribers get at a minimum of 2 emails per week.  Sometimes more depending on what is going on.  The length of those emails ranges from 250 words to over 1000 – to be honest I never look at the word count because I don’t care.

What I care about is the content.  Is it engaging?  Is it relevant?  Is it entertaining?

You will NEVER nail this for everyone – because everyone is different.  What is engaging to one may be boring as all hell to another.  What is relevant to one will be obsolete for another what is entertaining for one will ghastly for another.

My advice to content writers is to be authentic (you can read more on that there), be transparent and know your audience.  Write for the majority, write from your soul – write as if you are sitting down and drinking a glass of wine or coffee with someone face to face.  Write as you would speak.

How do you know if you are engaging, relevant and entertaining?  Look at your metrics.  What are your open rates on your emails?  Dive into your Google Analytics to see who’s reading your blogs (PS don’t forget to share them on social – that’s where we get our biggest engagement).  If your numbers aren’t where you want them to be – review your content.  Something is off – chances are you aren’t writing to your audience.  Take a step back are dive deep into your Target Client Profile – who are they REALLY?  Then regroup.  It may take you several iterations to nail it – so don’t give up!

Consistency wins each and every time.

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Social Media – Quality vs. Quantity

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Does even thinking about posting to social media stress you out? How many times to post, what to post, when to post, etc.? Are you putting content out just for the sake of putting content out on social media? Are your followers just not engaging and your audience isn’t growing? When it comes to social media posts, quality beats quantity every time.

The norm has always been that consumers expect companies to have content readily available to consume – blogs, social media, enewsletters, downloadable ebooks, white papers, etc. They still look for this type of content, however just having a large library of stuff isn’t enough – consumers want quality of resources from companies they do business with – not just fluff.

First, we need to back up and define what quality means to consumers – it’s targeted, more personalized, highly creative messaging. Content that is focused on better understanding and interacting with your clients. Even small brands can easily produce content that looks just as good as the big dogs.

When a prospect is looking to learn more about your company, yes, they will Google you and visit your website, but they will also look to see what social media channels you are on, the type of content that you post, and how long ago you posted. Just throwing posts up that your customers and prospects don’t care about is not going to help you engage with them. However, one good quality post on Facebook can do way better than five poor quality posts.

Some tips to posting high quality content are:

  • Photos – they don’t need to be done professionally, but make sure they are well lit, not blurred or grainy.
  • Videos – also need good lighting and good sound.
  • Sharing Blogs – need to be interesting and relevant topics but also have good spelling, punctuation and grammar. It should be around 500 words or more to keep readers on your website for longer which is a good SEO signal to Google.
  • Sharing 3rd Party Content – share content from reputable sources that don’t require signing up for memberships. Articles from newspapers, magazines, etc. are usually good sources
  • Your content – only 20% of your content should be around your business – if you are constantly pushing a sale people will unfollow you

I get asked a lot about the best times to post on social media. There is no concrete answer to this. You need to post when and where your audience is going to see your posts. Why post on Twitter if your audience is on Facebook? If your audience primarily engages in the mornings, don’t wait to post until the afternoon.

Don’t get hung up on the numbers. Many people will engage in campaigns to buy likes or followers. This might seem great in the short term, but these people are most likely not your ideal clients and will never engage with you. At the end of the day, your goal is to be seen as an expert, a trusted advisor, and of course to get traffic to your website as that is where the sale is. If your engagement is low, then ask yourself if it is the quality of the post or is that the content isn’t resonating with your audience.

When it comes to social media posts quality will always beat quantity. You aren’t Gary V or Jenna Kutcher – you don’t need to keep up with the quantity of posts that they put out daily – they have teams of people who do this for them. For the DIYers – just focus on the quality. That’s all you need to do.

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Email in Her Forties and Going Strong

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In 2018, marketing email celebrated a 40 year anniversary – crazy to think this was happening when I was in high school – but it was!  The first mass email was sent in 1978 by Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation to 400 potential clients. Mr. Thuerk claims that email resulted in $13 million worth of sales – more importantly it was an AHA moment.  Email marketing worked and well – the rest is history.

I’ve heard email marketing is dead.  For the 1000th time (or more) I’ll say “Nope, still relevant and effective” to the naysayers.

I’ll also tell people – the more the merrier.  I get looks, gasps, and OMG I can’t spam my clients with email.

If the content is GREAT, you aren’t spamming – you are bringing value. 

Not everyone on your list will read every email you send out.

Yes, some will go to spam.

Yes, some firewalls will block you.

Yes, you will get some opt-outs  Who cares?

How do you win?

  1.  Sanitize your lists. If they haven’t opened an email in 90 days – remove them.  They aren’t interested.
  2. Let them Opt in. We’ve all added folks to our email lists, and I’ve known more than one company who has bought lists.  The BEST ROI from your email marketing will come from an opted in list or lists.  If someone opts in – they want to get information from you.  It’s really that simple.
  3. People DON’T want to be sold to. People do want opportunities, they do want to solve pain points, they do want to add value and pleasure to their life. THEY want to make that decision based on information they’ve garnered and digested.  If you are constantly asking for the sale and offering no value in return – you will get deleted.  Go back and look at the emails you’ve read AND ones that you’ve taken action from.  WHY did you do it?  Your customers are no different.
  4. Tell a story. Your email marketing should be conversational.  People want to feel like they are sitting across a table from you at the little coffee shop on the corner, or sipping a scotch at the local country club – whatever that vibe is – they need to FEEL it when they are reading your emails.  The best brands make you FEEL, they pull you in, and they are masters at FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) as in OMG if I don’t have this I won’t be part of the inner circle or my life will never be the same.  Seems crazy – but FOMO has worked for as long as humans have walked the earth.
  5. Be Authentic. Damn if I haven’t preached this for decades… but I’ll say it again.  You can’t fake it – be authentic. Show your true colors, not the colors of your competitors – you can’t be a copy cat and win.  Just be yourself – you will attract the right clients and the right time and the right place.  Trust me on this one – just be you and let your team be them.

 Happy 41st Birthday Email Marketing – Damn we love you lots and wish you a long long life.

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authenticity

Marketing 101 – Why Authenticity wins the game every time

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Whether you are offering a service or selling a product, at the end of the day your buyers don’t want to be “marketed to”, they don’t want to be told what they should buy.  What they want is an emotional relationship that makes them feel good about the decisions they are making.

If you want to create brand evangelists versus just transactional “buyers” the one thing you need to rock is…

AUTHENTICITY

How does one be “Authentic” in a world of crazy chaos and “fake news” – how can you show your prospective customers the real you?  And yes, you do need to show them the real you – the real authentic you.

Here are my rules of engagement.

  1. Your personal brand is NOT different than your professional brand. I am not a “formal conservative person”, therefore my company website is fun and loud, my bio is very conversational on my website – and I am an open book on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  Love me or hate me – I am who I am.  I attract clients who match my vibe, who understand me and well…. like me!
  2. Educate. Educate. Give your customers something that means something to them.  Give them what they want, not what you think they need.  Well, most of the time.  80% of your content should be what your customers will want to read, something they will find value in.  In many cases, your customers may not know they have a problem until you enlighten them – that’s when the 20% comes in. That’s when you identify the pain and show your solution.  Once you show that you understand them, and you have given them something of value over and over again – they will consider buying from you.
  3. Talk to them!  The best content is conversational.  Use email campaigns to “talk” with your prospects and customers, use video, chatbots.  And yes, even have IRL (in real life) conversations with them.  Remember – this isn’t about selling, it’s about showing the real you, and connecting with them on an emotional level.
  4. Know what you and your Brand stand for. So many people shy away from taking a social stand – I don’t – at all. If someone doesn’t agree with the fact that I’m a liberal that’s ok.  I’m not for everyone.  What do you stand for?  What does your brand stand for?  WHY are you in business – and why does it matter to your clients and prospects?  Being transparent is critical.  Be raw, be open and share personal stories.
  5. The Sword is mighty. If you or your brand makes a mistake – and it’s tossed out on social media, address it publicly.  Apologize and make it right.  Be respectful.  You will be amazed how you can turn an angry prospect or client into a brand evangelist.  Validate their pain – because it is REAL.  Take it offline to work out the details.  This holds true for any unhappy customer – remember this is focused on emotions.  Put yourself in their shoes – how would you feel?  More importantly, how would you like to be treated?  Yes, the Golden rule applies here.

I, like many business owners, was afraid to show my true colors until I said screw it, tossed the marketing 101 old school shit in the garbage and just went for it.  The result was magical.  I no longer work with clients that I don’t like, that don’t appreciate me, and that don’t – well, mesh with my brand.  I also have a sense of freedom around my brand.  The funny thing is, I’m raw, I’m open, I tend to swear just a little bit in my copy and so many of my loyal tribe are what you would deem conservative – in that they have c-level jobs in conservative industries.

One day we won’t have to say – Don’t judge a book by its cover – because the cover will be who the people really are.  Times are changing in corporate America and I LOVE IT.

If you want to see more of the real me – sign up for my Thursday morning missives – they are 100% raw, authentic and transparent Cindy.  They come out weekly – on Thursdays at 6 am.  To be honest – it’s my journal that I share with the world.  No secrets.  Just me.

Cindy

PS – one of the #1 ways I get new clients is from that Thursday email – and I rarely talk about Marketing, Sales or Biz Ops.  Go figure!

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You’ve started your Facebook group – Now what?

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You’ve set up your Facebook Business Page, and you are ready to create your Facebook Group – but: What should I call it? How do you get members? What do you post about? Should the group be public, closed, or secret? How do you prevent trolls? Should I set rules or questions to join the group? All great questions, and things you need to consider before you get your Group off the ground.

Before you launch your Facebook Group – you should determine what the primary goal of your group is. Yes, the ultimate goal is to increase sales for your business, but people won’t join your group if they think it’s just a continuous sales pitch. Many businesses create Facebook Groups as a place to share some free advice and tips and tricks. It’s a place where you can be seen as an expert so that eventually the group becomes a feeder for your sales pipeline. SO, choose a name that conveys what your group is about. No one will join a group that is the name of your business. Name it something that relates to the topic or theme of what you want your group to be. You can incorporate the company name if it makes sense, but it doesn’t have to be included. Once you determine what you want the look and feel to be, pick a cover photo, create your description, etc.[/cs_text][cs_text]You also want to determine if your group will be public and anyone can join, they need to request to join, or it’s by invite only. Public groups are great for certain things, but if you only want your ideal clients or target audience in the group – I’d suggest a private group where you must manually accept requestors. There are a few instances where secret groups make sense – but those are usually part of a paid membership offering.

Many private Facebook Groups require members to answer a few questions before they can join. This is a great way to learn more about your members. Some sample questions may be: How did you hear about this Group? Have you viewed our free training or downloaded our Free XXX workbook? This helps you weed our spammers or trolls as well. They typically won’t take the time to fill out questions. BUT it allows you to get some insight into how much your audience knows about you, if they’ve viewed any of your lead magnets (free downloads or trainings) or any other info you want to gather.
[/cs_text][cs_text]It’s important to set the stage from the launch on the Group expectations. Create a pinned post at the top of the page so that the first thing new members see are the rules and expectations of the group. A few good housekeeping rules to post are 1. Keep things courteous – be respectful to others in the group. 2. No spam or plugging your business. (You will get trolls who try to join every group and post about what they are selling.) 3. This is your group too, please engage, ask questions, etc. 4. Give value – post things relevant to the group and its members. 5. Be open and share your own personal experiences, struggles, suggestions, etc. If you come across a troll or all around rude person, it’s ok to delete them.

Gaining a following in your Group can take time. Don’t get discouraged and give up. It’s important to get the word out about your group. Some easy ways are inviting people you are already connected to who might find interest it in. You can also send out an email to your list of contacts to see if they have any interest in joining. Why not add a link in your email signature or on your website as well? If people don’t know about your group – they can’t join!

Lastly, and probably most importantly, is posting engaging content. Get the engagement started with some posts of your own related to the Group topic. Don’t post salesy stuff about your own business. Share some of your own wins or loses, ask questions around areas that you may have personally struggled with. Share some 3rd party articles you found interesting or infographics. Once you get the ball rolling, others should follow.

As your group grows you may want to enlist others that you know to help moderate the page by making them an admin. It’s important that someone is always watching the group, letting in the right people, and encouraging participation.

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Prospecting with Email Marketing

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Email is 40 times more effective at getting new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. — McKinsey. We do a ton of email marketing for clients and Red Barn – some of it is thought leadership focused like my Thursday morning Tribe Mail. (sign up here), but much of it is done primarily for prospecting.

So how do we get consistent above average open rates and click through rates AND conversion with our email marketing?Consistency, Great Content, and yep – a lot of trial and error with subject lines.

Consistency. They don’t call them “Drip Email Campaigns” because you just do it once. Effective email campaigns do just that – drip like a leaky faucet until someone takes notice and takes action. AHA moment – you immediately thought annoying leaky faucet. But think deeper – most sales people give up after 1 or 2 connections yet people don’t take action until after 10-12 touch points.

For thought leadership emails, I’m a fan of weekly. Same time, same place. No visuals – just great content that spurs thinking. It’s all about building your personal brand and connecting it with your company brand. Having people see you in a different light – you know, showing off your secret sauce.

For Drip Campaigns, you need multiple touches weekly and they run over several MONTHS. Visuals happen when they take action – so going to a landing page or your website, otherwise I keep them text only. WHY? One word: mobile.

Content.  Once someone clicks on your email – you need to give your prospect something valuable to read!  Remember people buy from people they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST – in that order.  So, if you are prospecting to a cold list – don’t go in for the kill immediately.  Let them get to know you and like you first – this can happen all in one email or it can get built up over time.  Why should someone take the time to know you or even like you?

I’m a fan of giving something to get something.  Offer a free download, give them some “tool” for free or some free insight into what you offer.  Again – you need to build up to the Trust phase before they will buy.  Toss in some testimonials, send them back to read a blog you’ve written.  Give them something valuable.

Subject lines. Depending on what stats you look at – up to 50% of people will decide to open or not open an email based on the subject line. More daunting, subject lines can also toss you in a SPAM folder depending on what you write and to whom you are sending it to! In the end – it takes some A/B testing depending on your Target Client Profile. Here are some quick stats from our friends at Hubspot:

  • Emails that contain the word \”you\” in the subject line are opened 5% less often than those without.
  • Emails that contain the word \”tomorrow\” in the subject line are opened 10% more often than those without.
  • Emails with subject lines containing 30 or fewer characters have the best open rates.
  • Emails with personalized subject lines are more than 20% more likely to get opened.
  • Emails with the word “Meeting” in the subject line were opened 7% less than those without.
  • Emails with the word “Newsletter” in the subject line had a 18.7% lower open rate than those with out
  • Use the word “Alert” – and see 61.8% higher open rate
  • The top 5 subject lines in recent studies all included “Re:”

Of course, these are some general observations – you need to try and see what works for you!

Email marketing works.

Prospecting with Email Marketing Read More »

Be an Innovator – please.

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Well so-and-so is doing this, shouldn’t I? I hear this a lot. Everything from ABC company wrote a blog on this topic to XYZ company’s website has this – shouldn’t we do the same.

Just because someone else – or a bunch of someone else’s (is that even grammatically correct?) is doing something that doesn’t mean it’s working. Plus – do you really want to be like everyone else? Where is your unique value prop if you are just like ABC and/or XYZ company?

Let’s back up.

Every piece of content you put out there should have purpose. Meaning it should serve YOUR purpose. It should serve your WHY (go read Simon Sinek’s book –Start with WHY. Go ahead – buy it now, read it tonight) What may serve someone else’s purpose may not serve yours.

It’s ok to be different, in fact we encourage you to be different. Will some folks in your industry raise an eyebrow and say, “What are they thinking?” – perhaps. But isn’t that what people said about Walt Disney, Einstein and Henry Ford? Yes, the masses thought these three were off their proverbial rockers.

When it comes to marketing – dare to be different. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t test your copy, do some market research. We all know some big marketing fails – where people tried to be innovators and it was just a nasty mess. Here’s some epic ones if you want a good chuckle – or perhaps you’ll just cringe and feel bad for the CMO or Marketing firm that got fired. There needs to be some filter – and some testing! Most of these fails weren’t really market tested – well that’s my gut. If they were, the obvious would have slapped them in the face.

Take baby steps. Maybe it’s doing weekly emails vs. monthly. Or diving into Instagram Live or being really transparent about your team and what happens behind the scenes! Innovate! Trust me – marketing is all about getting noticed. Innovators get noticed. Test it out – if it’s working, expand upon it. If it isn’t – pull back.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

How do we know it’s ok to innovate? We kind of live that model here at the Red Barn. We are always trying new stuff. What’s the worst that could happen? We need a do-over? Our goal is to tell our client’s stories, to make them stand out from their competition. We have to innovate or else we can’t accomplish our goal. We may follow some best practices – like having processes and procedures, following what Google wants today – but the rest is always a new idea and a new day!

Hogwash ABC and XYZ company – we’re doing it our way and we won’t end up on the top marketing fails list in the process!

Cheers!
CD

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