Video Marketing Musts

Video Marketing Musts Video Marketing is often underrated and overlooked. But the video content you post is a crucial part of your brand’s strategy. Video is a powerful tool to use to tell your company’s story and to drive calls to action. Did we mention that YouTube is the number-2-ranked search engine? But you can’t just throw up any ole video and expect to have positive results. In order to successfully market via video and YouTube, your videos must be meaningful. How can they be meaningful? Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating your video.   …

How to: Pinterest Marketing

How to: Pinterest Marketing Pinterest marketing is something often overlooked. Pinterest can be used for more than DIY birthday gifts and nifty holiday desserts. If you’ve been using the site already for pinning ideas you think are interesting, you might be surprised to know that marketing with Pinterest doesn’t take much extra. Like other social networks—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—Pinterest gives you the ability to share things you like. And for a business, it allows for free exposure. Pinterest is all about networking, sharing things, and linking to content, which makes it ideal for driving new customers to your product or service. …

Should I “Like” My Own Facebook Posts?

Answer:  YES!!!! The Facebook algorithm is designed to show the most relevant and interesting posts to followers.  The rationale is that there is so much content being posted, it would be overwhelming to show us everything.  True, this is quite a “big brother” philosophy, but alas something over which none of us has control. So are some of the characteristics that Facebook determines make an interesting post: Number of likes a post receives (and how quickly it receives them) Multi-media content (video, images) Number of comments a post receives (and how quickly) Facebook also runs a test to see how …

Should I Use A Business Or Personal Facebook Page for my business?

If your account is setup like most, you have a Facebook business page that is part of your Facebook personal account.  When followers like your Facebook page, they do not see the connection to your personal account and vice versa.  If you are using your personal page as a business page, you do run the risk of Facebook suppressing it at some point and undoing all of that good work you have done to promote it. Having a Facebook page provides your business the following benefits: Access to tabs to provide more information about your business The ability to run …

Facebook Ad Acceptability Test

Facebook uses a grid tool to determine if a post has 20% text or less in order to be accepted as a boosted ad.  Note that the same amount of text positioned slighter higher or lower could cause it to cover more than one area of the grid, thus exceeding the 20%.  See example below:   The recommended image size is 1200 x 628 pixels.  Keep in mind that on the event page the date and image title will overwrite the image so it is best to leave that space blank or as an image that will support superimposed white …

What Are Best Practices When Designing Your Website?

While this topic could easily be a book, there are some key considerations when designing your website: Mobile friendly – more than 50% of searches today are from a mobile device. Your website layout should change to an easy-to-read column when viewed from a mobile device. If you need to stretch it to see it, then your website is not mobile-friendly. We only want to scroll with our thumbs! Above the fold – prime real estate for a website is that area that shows up on a desktop device when the home page first loads, prior to scrolling. This area …

Small Business Mission: Managing As A Map, Not A GPS

A clear mission for a small business is like looking at a map rather than the tiny screen of the GPS on your mobile device.  On a GPS, we typically enter an address where we’d like to go, and it gives us turn by turn directions.  You know where you are, and you know your next turn, but you can’t quite see your ultimate destination.  With a map on the other hand, you get a bird’s eye view of where you are, your destination, and how you will get from one to the other.  You predict the turns along the …

What Small Business Owners Can Learn From Big Business About Marketing

For 26 years I worked in corporate consulting, helping Fortune 500 companies with customer segmentation, customer treatment strategies for marketing & operations, and how to improve their long term customer relationships.  What I learned is as applicable for the single entrepreneur as it is for the corporation seeking to improve its stock price. Marketing isn’t sales, it is a part of every client transaction Having a client isn’t about making the sale.  It’s about forging a relationship that will endure from the sale, to the delivery and support, to the cross-sell, up-sell and the referral of new clients.  The business …

Recipe For “Brand Chocolate”: How To Be Irresistible

How do some brands seem to have that irresistible quality that creates a loyal following of happy clients who talk about them and refer others?  How do some brands seem to be found while others disappear? To explain, I like to use the analogy of a chocolate shop.  The chocolatier’s dilemma is that she has this amazing ingredient to work with that so many people will enjoy once they experience it but there are other chocolate shops on her block, so many ways she could prepare her chocolate, and so many different customers she could serve.  So how does she …