Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

Build Your Network and Business Using LinkedIn – Stephanie Sammons

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Stephanie SammonsToo many small businesses focus their online marketing and communications on Facebook and Twitter, almost ignoring LinkedIn.

Yet LinkedIn can be the most powerful platform for networking, prospecting, and engaging your ideal customer online. 

In today’s episode, we turn to LinkedIn expert Stephanie Sammons, who has used LinkedIn to grow her own practice, and help her consulting clients grow theirs.

We talk about creating an irresistible profile, how to get found in LinkedIn search, the power of groups, and whether or not you should invest in the paid version of LinkedIn to help grow your network.

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Big Ideas:

How did you first discover LinkedIn and how it would grow your own business?

  • A lot of Stephanie’s target market is on LinkedIn.
  • One of the only allowed social media outlets for financial advisors.
  • Pitched an article about LinkedIn to the Social Media Examiner and they liked it.

What do you say to people that think LinkedIn isn’t as valued a social media venue?

  • It’s a deeper, richer experience for connections and therefore a better opportunity to build influence.
  • You can learn a lot about a person from their profiles and networks.

Recommendations for making an effective profile on LinkedIn?

  • It’s the place to be if you want to build influence for your profession or personal brand.
  • Build your brand on LinkedIn regardless of your target market.
  • It’s your default professional identity online. It ranks well in Google searches.
  • Make sure it’s well written and professional.
  • Summary headline + photo are two most important elements to your profile.
  • Make your summary relevant. It’s your default online bio.
  • Important to make sure you use target market language.

6 billion people searches last year!

Advice on Connections

  • Make as many good connections on LinkedIn as possible. 
  • You still have an ability to stand out with your 1st degree network.
  • You can mention connections in your network in your posts.
  • Think outside of only potential clients in your network.
  • Focus on quality over quantity.
  • Always personalize notes when connecting and start dialogue.

Should we join LI groups, or create our own?

  • Do both.
  • Stick to well managed groups.
  • Be diligent about who you let into your own groups.
  • Groups are a great source of lead generation and to establish credibility and build trust.
  • Join local groups, targeted groups.

How much time is required to manage our own groups?

  • Ask and answer questions to engage authentically in discussions.
  • Link to a relevant blog post within a discussion.
  • Spend about an hour a week max to manage.

One of the biggest benefits to running your own group is the ability to send out weekly emails to the group.

What ways can you get people talking in your group?

  • Best way is to use the email message feature to get engagement.
  • Ask thought provoking questions to start discussion.

How can small businesses use the company page feature?

  • Important because it’s an extension of your brand.
  • Need a couple hundred followers to get some traction.
  • Do grass roots promotion to get followers for your business.
  • Update the page at least one page a day.
  • Access to sponsored updates with company page.

How to use sponsored posts:

  • Can target by geo location, job title, industry.
  • The sponsored post needs a call to action with a consistent and relevant landing page with value.

Thoughts on LinkedIn ads:

  • Not much success with these ads.
  • Follow company page ads get more visibility make it an attractive reason to follow your page.
  • Used to drive people to your page.

Should we get a Premium account?

  • Benefit is the expanded search visibility and to identify people in your target markets.
  • Can see who’s viewed your profile.
  • More info in regards to profile stats.
  • Can send more inmails (can be used to get on top influencers’ radar, ask for advice)
  • Use inmails to gain influence in your networks, make inroads with someone who wouldn’t normally be in your network.

What one thing would you change about LinkedIn?

  • More ability to build in calls to action on profile because Activity builds visibility.

How can we integrate LinkedIn into our websites?

  • Blog sidebar follow button.
  • Use LinkedIn social share button.
  • Company page URL in emails, biz cards, anywhere relevant.
  • Cross promotions with groups with Twitter and Facebook.

Juicy Links:

Rich Brooks
Connect with me on LinkedIn

How to Measure Social Media with Nichole Kelly

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Nichole KellyMeasuring your social media ROI (return on investment) is critical to the success of any digital marketing campaign…so why do so few small businesses do it?

Do you know how to measure your social media activity, and see if it’s all worth it?

If not, you’re not alone. Many small businesses have no idea how to set goals and measure the time and results they get from social media. That’s why we asked Nichole Kelly, author of How to Measure Social Media and CEO of Social Media Explorer, to show us how, in this week’s episode of The Marketing Agents Podcast.

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Big Ideas:

  • How can small businesses get started with measuring social media?
    • Install Google Analytics and set up goals.
    • Add Google URL parameters to links to track everything.
    • Use Google URL builder (source, medium, campaign parameters) 
  • How can small biz determine what their goals should be on social media?
    • Brand awareness
    • Revenue generation (can you get them to spend more money more often?)
    • Customer service (look for cost deflection – more customers for less money)
  • How do you align social media with sales funnels?
    • If you do a good job, people will come and sales will result
    • If so, then track it!
    • Develop information content: ebooks, blog posts
    • Decision making content: made to tell if someone is making a decision at a specific point. Helps identify who to follow up with with more sales info.
  • How do you develop a listening station for social media?
    • Start with Google Alerts then go to more powerful tools.
    • Use HootSuite or Sprout Social (free or inexpensive)
    • NetBase, Sysomos, Radian6 (more expensive, enterprise level)
  • How do you measure social media leads?
    • Determine hard vs. soft leads
    • Soft leads: give contact info for information content. Follow up in different way – send more content but with decision making content. If they follow through, they become a hard lead.
    • Hard leads: downloads decision making content. Pass off to sales or direct follow-up.
  • How do you optimize the path to conversion?
    • Make it “stupid easy” to buy on social media. – custom tab or custom form.
    • When you arrive at a blog, how hard is it to buy? Is info capture method obvious?
    • A blog can be a customized landing page for sales.
  • How do you deal with negative feedback/comments?
    • Apologize. “So sorry for your experience.”
    • Acknowledge their complaint. It diffuses tension.
    • Act: how to resolve issue for client/customer
    • Be personally accountable for next steps.
    • Two types of negative customer:
      • Complain and then can be pacified.
      • Complain and keep on complaining.

Juicy Links:

Rich Brooks
Always Be Measuring

How Social Media Saved the Saco Drive-In

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Ry RussellThe Saco Drive-In was at risk of going out of business. New movies were being released in digital format, requiring a nearly $100,000 investment in a digital projector.

However, Honda’s Project Drive-In was going to provide the needed projectors to five drive-ins around the country. Ry Russell, one of the owners of the Saco Drive-In went to work, leveraging social media to get the word out.

Hear how he used social media to save New England’s oldest drive-in in this episode of The Marketing Agents Podcast.

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Big Ideas:

  • To save the Saco Drive-In, Ry needed to win a popularity contest by leveraging social media.
  • Honda was donating 5 digital projectors to drive-ins across country with contest.
  • The Saco Drive-In had 19,000 fans on Facebook, but the competition could pull from a bigger population compared to Saco, Maine.
  • In 4 weeks, the drive-in added 8,000 fans. The also alerted people through a regular dose of reminder posts, calls to votes, and asked people to just share the message to save New England’s oldest drive-in.
  • Ry also gave away free drive-in schwag, and added 250-500 shares per post. Each post reached 35-85k people!
  • To build up the fan base and list quickly, Ry spent $20-$40 on promoted posts on Facebook. Those promoted posts showed up in fans’ news feeds. It’s critical to get into the news feed, and spending money to get there was required.
  • When thinking of ads, promote your message and think of the Facebook news feed. It’s easy for fans to click “like” or share message. The drive-in asked people to share and contribute to “making history.” Shares skyrocketed because of this approach.
  • Many Facebook users see promotions as just part of regular news feed without standing out or being pushy.
  • Ry had to make it easy for people to access info for campaign. Got new website up and running and drove traffic with social media chatter. Had a sales page that encouraged a “partner” status for fans. They also mixed online with offline strategies.
  • Every marketing strategy should build commitment and open dialogue with fans/customer base.

Juicy Links:

Rich Brooks
I Want to Hear Your Success Story!

Real Life Success Stories: David Pride of “I Love Christmas”

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David A. PrideHow do you build a community on Facebook? 

In a new feature on The Marketing Agents Podcast, we’re gathering “real life” success stories from some of our listeners. (And non-listeners, too; we’re not going to discriminate.)

The idea came about when my friend David Pride approached me at a Social Media Breakfast here in Maine to share with me some success he had building a community around his Facebook page for I Love Christmas.

I don’t know about you, but I get very inspired by hearing about other people’s success using search, social or mobile marketing to reach their audience, engage their fans and generate more leads and revenue. (Makes me think I can do it, too!)

By the way, if you’ve got your own success story about how YOU used search, social or mobile to help accomplish your business goals, we’d love to hear it.

Head on over to our Success Stories form and let us know your story. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next success story we feature on The Marketing Agents Podcast!

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Big Ideas:

  • Pick a subject you’re passionate about. David loves Christmas, so creating regular content about the topic is easy for him.
  • Create a community. Engage your audience with ongoing, regular content and get them to like, commend on, and share that content.
  • Turbocharge your page with advertising. You don’t have to spend much; David spends about $75/month in Facebook ads and quickly grew to 2,300 fans. (When I checked today he was up to 3,337!) That’s some great ROI.
  • Ask your community what’s OK. Whether it was a newsletter or an Amazon affiliate program, David asked permission first.

Juicy Links:

Rich Brooks
What’s Your Success Story?

Pinterest for Business with Cynthia Sanchez

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Cynthia Sanchez: Pinterest for BusinessPinterest is the 2nd biggest driver of social traffic, and it’s users are more likely to buy and to spend more money per transaction.

Even if you’re not selling product from your website, Pinterest’s interests continue to expand, with plenty of service, marketing, and B2B companies joining the channel.

But maybe you’ve been hesitant to get involved. “Not another social media site,” you think. Or maybe you just don’t understand the landscape and how to get started. Or you feel that your business wouldn’t be a good fit for Pinterest because of your target audience.

In this week’s episode we have Cynthia Sanchez of Oh So Pinteresting who is going to share with us how any business can get started and build a following on Pinterest. She’s got some sound advice for beginners and some expert tips for those of you who are already making use of this powerful channel.

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Big Ideas:

  • No pinner is an island. Pin (share) other peoples images to become part of the bigger Pinterest community, which increases the chances they’ll pin your content. Lowe’s is a good example. They don’t pin Home Depot’s stuff, but do pin home projects from DIY bloggers.
  • Repinning raises your profile. When you repin, the original pinner gets an email, which helps promote your name and brand to them.
  • There’s no one size fits all on the time you need to invest. Don’t be too rigid on how much time each day should be included. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Spread out your pins, don’t do pinning marathons. 
  • Create pinnable images. Use tall photos to get your content pinned more often. 300 wide, 450 tall works best for Cynthia. Even if you don’t want to be pinning yourself, creating pinnable images and adding a “pin this” button can help deliver more qualified traffic.
  • Search within Pinterest can help drive traffic. While you’re dealing with the stream similar to twitter, it also relies heavily on search. That means you should give your image file names keyword rich names (i.e., grilled-lobster.jpg and not IMG_4523.jpg.) Use hashtags and keywords in your description, too.
  • Pinterest can help with search, too. “Google and Pinterest are dating.” Pin boards can rank well in Google searches, so make sure you’re creating boards that focus on your core products and services that you want to rank well for.
  • Use Pinterest contests to build your list. New rules limit what you can do. Incentivize your contests with prizes that would only attract your target audience. (Not an iPad, for instance, which would attract everyone, not just your target audience.)
  • Be purposeful with your boards. You need to tie your boards into your business. Don’t just throw up a recipes board if it doesn’t fit with your brand.

Juicy Links:

  • Tailwind (formerly Pinly): Lots of great information on who’s pinning and sharing your content.
  • Canva: A simple graphic design tool for creating pinnable images.
  • PicMonkey: Online image editor for creating great, pinnable images.
  • Oh So Pinteresting: Cynthia’s blog & podcast about everything Pinterest!
  • Cynthia Pins: Cynthia’s boards on Pinterest.
  • The Marketing Agents’ Pins: Don’t make fun…we’re just getting started.
  • The Marketing Agents Podcast: Subscribe, rate & review. Please take a moment to let me know what we’re doing right and what we can do to improve. Thanks!

Rich Brooks
Amateur Pinner