Business Strategy Archives

十二月 19, 2016

8 Digital Marketing Tools That Will Help You Turn 2017 Into Your Most Productive Year

十二月 19, 2016 | 由 Kristen Stack | 一个评论"＆GT;一个评论

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In December, if you snooze you lose. While some might be filling up on cookies and chugging down the eggnog, others are preparing for the year ahead. Smart marketers and entrepreneurs use this time for business planning. They lay out their entire year; or at the very least, the first quarter. They settle on initiatives and brainstorm content. If this is sounding familiar, you’re probably looking for ways to make the most out of the rest of the year.

Let me help you maximize your 2017 with these 8 easy to use tools.

Quickly create thumbnails, cover photos, blog featured images and more with Snappa.io.

In my opinion, Canva doesn’t even hold a candle to this tool. 首先, Snappa is much more user friendly. It’s easy to navigate and understand. 第二, Snappa can help you create everything from ebook covers to YouTube thumbnails.

Beginner’s Tip: Keep your social media covers cohesive. Open up several different tabs in your browser, and make your Facebook, 叽叽喳喳, YouTube的, Google 的, and LinkedIn covers all at once.

Works best for social media marketers and bloggers.

Get 700+ title and topic ideas with Title-Generator.com.

老老实实, I’m usually not looking for a genius headline generator. More often than not, I just need to bounce around some ideas. I love this website. It’s a bare bones title generator. You plug in a word, and get 700+ titles and topics to work with. 记住, these are not all relevant or grammatically correct. Use your best judgement, and at the very least, this tool will assist in the content brainstorming process. Out of every tool, this is probably my favorite.

Beginner’s Tip: Pages two and three usually have the more obscure titles. Page one will showcase a lot of headlines you could’ve come up with on your own.

Works best for copywriters and bloggers.

Decrease page load time with CompressJpeg.com.

To go back and compress all your blog images might take a bit of time; maybe more than you want to spend. That’s totally acceptable. 代替, use this tool for images in the future. It will help you greatly decrease page load time, as your images are now compressed down to the lowest possible size. This is an easy to use tool that will greatly reward your site performance in the long run.

Beginner’s Tip: To save time, upload a handful of images at once, then download all after compression.

Works best for bloggers.

使用 Biteable.com to create viral video campaigns for social media.

Before finding this tool, I didn’t even touch video. 认真地, the idea of pairing homegrown footage, 音频, 音乐, and text together was completely overwhelming. I figured I’d leave it to the professionals, which more often than not, turned into me avoiding video all together. This tool has changed the way I view video marketing.

Beginner’s Tip: Develop a storyline before jumping right in to video creation. If you have a storyboard, your video will smoothly come together.

Works best for social media marketers and content managers.

WebinarNinja.com is a video conferencing service that doesn’t overwhelm.

Current webinar software has its limits. 事实上, even the most experienced webinar hosts struggle with current webinar platforms. I stumbled across Webinar Ninja a month ago. It took me less than five minutes to figure out how to navigate my account. I had my first webinar set up and running in less than 30. Save time with the new webinar platform to beat.

Beginner’s Tip: Run a test webinar before going live. 记得, make sure each webinar has a clear purpose. This isn’t like Facebook Live, where it’s ok to rant and talk without an outlined topic.

Works best for online personalities, content managers, and industry influencers.

SlickText.com helps you embrace the new mailing list.

You can probably agree; email is becoming a bit archaic. Will we ever terminate email lists all together? 可能不会. 但, the time has come to embrace a new communication tool: 文本营销. Slick Text has dozens of easy to use features, such as text to win contests, drip campaigns, and picture messaging. 最重要的是, they offer message scheduling and drip marketing campaigns

Works best for marketers currently relying heavily on email and small business owners.

2017 is all about ClickFunnels.com.

If you would’ve asked me six months ago, the word “funnel” made me gag. It just seemed so cheesy and unprofessional. The only company doing a decent job was Infusionsoft, and their software was out of my price range and equally difficult to navigate. Enter Click Funnels. The back end takes some time to get used to, but once you understand the navigation, it’s a piece of cake.

Beginner’s Tip: Don’t create a funnel on the fly. Write down each step before even setting “foot” inside Infusionsoft.

Works best for anyone selling anything online.

Get the help you need with Upwork.com.

I resisted hiring for a long time. I tried to design my own websites, set up my own Facebook ads, manage my own schedule, 等. Let me tell you what; that gets old real quick. You get burnt out, and the quality of your work suffers. It’s not worth it. Especially when there are affordable experts out there, ready and willing to help. Get all the things that overwhelm you and hinder your business growth off your plate.

Beginner’s Tip: Look for the rising star freelancers. They are usually the most affordable, but still offer premium quality. 还, when looking to hire, get as granular as possible about what it is you actually need. 例如, if you want to build a new website, map out some ideas and share examples of what you like. The clearer you are, 更好.

Works best for product managers, team leaders, and department heads.

Don’t just cruise through the rest of the year with these work enhancing tools. 代替, kickstart 2017 with a better sense of how to rule the digital world. I will be taking every single one of these tools with me into the new year. They’ve helped me exponentially grow my online presence.

由 Kristen Stack

九月 29, 2016

所有博客经营战略社会化媒体

6 Social Boo Boos That Limit Your Personal Brand

九月 29, 2016 | 由 Kristen Stack | 2 评论"＆GT;2 评论

If you want to make a living off your personal brand, you must cultivate digital authority. 自然, you need to own the blogging and social sphere, as this is where most influencers live. 你必须 have a Facebook, 叽叽喳喳, LinkedIn, 等. You should also have a home for all your unique content (cough, cough: blog.) Failure to master these platforms will stunt your digital growth.

此外, the following social media boo boos will have you taking one step forward, three steps back. What’s the point of having a personal brand if you’re not making the most of every opportunity to engage? Run through this six point checklist, and make sure your efforts coincide.

1. 您的 ‘about me’ is comatose.

Keep it short and sweet. Be interesting, but don’t tell your life story. 记得, the thesaurus is your friend. Spice up your bio with unexpected verbiage or a tongue in cheek anecdote. 例如, instead of calling yourself a “marketing specialist,” give “marketing groupie” a try. You want your brand to stand out. If your about me is 胡说, you’ll easily get lost in the mix. The words “specialist, 教师, and consultant” are boring and overused.

2. Your profile photo is unrecognizable.

Stop trying to be someone you’re not. Here’s a great rule to follow when snapping a new profile pic. Would your friends and family immediately recognize that as you? If your mother was scrolling through Facebook, and saw that photo, would she instantly be like “There’s my son/daughter!” If your own mother thinks the photo is unrecognizable, everyone will.

Even on LinkedIn, your profile photo shouldn’t look stuffy. (Unless, for some reason, stuffy is your brand. 在这种情况下, rock the serious face.) Smile. Showcase your most natural self. 底线: make sure your mom knows it’s you. Don’t confuse your brand by using heavily filtered/altered pics.

3. You’ve got friends in low places.

If you went to my Facebook profile, and saw I was friends with one of America’s Most Wanted, you’d judge me. Don’t say you wouldn’t. In fact you might not want to do business with me — or even be my friend. Most people would avoid someone with an association like that. 和, if they’re not … might want to reconsider that friendship. 另一方面, if you’re aligning with key influencers, you’ll be considered an expert by association. Obviously it takes more than one social shout out, but if you constantly get retweeted by Seth Godin, you’re on the right track. More often than not, associate with digital thought leaders who will heighten your brand reputation.

4. You don’t know where your fans are.

Are you spending all your time on Twitter when Facebook boasts better engagement? Think carefully about how you divvy up your hours. 说实话. You can’t equally commit 8 hours a day to each social platform. 事实上, two might be pushing it. For this reason alone, know your audience. Where do they “住,” in a digital sense? 此外, find out what platform gives the best return. If thousands of your followers migrate to Instagram, but there’s no real way to quantify referral traffic or income from this source, look for an alternative. I recommend maintaining a primary social presence on one of the top platforms; and then maintaining 1-2 other sources.

5. You regurgitate content.

Do you always share blog posts that aren’t your own? Are you re-gramming like a fiend? Although it’s always good to spread the love, you still need to create your 自己 unique content. The digital world needs 您的声音. Contribute original content on a weekly basis; 最起码. Keep your content marketing efforts fresh. 最重要的是, use social media to build a marketing web of communication. Promote your email marketing list on Twitter. Run a Facebook ad to grow your text marketing list. If all your channels are working together in one uniformed fashion, your efforts to grow your digital community will offer an exponential return.

6. You don’t follow 2-3 consistent brand themes.

If people know you as a personal trainer, but you regularly post about politics … might not be the best course of action. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but if you want to build a strong brand, you need to pick content themes. No one person can be an expert on 300 different topics. Attempting this does nothing for building authority. Do some soul searching. 问问自己, “Where can I offer the most insight?” 挑 2-3 topics that showcase your talent and experience. 一般来说, make sure these topics align or connect in some way. 例如, I might pick branding, 内容营销, and entrepreneurship as my three. Each one relates to the other. Don’t be too random. 例如, if you’re trying to brand yourself as a cake decorating, oil changing, opera singing expert … you might have a hard time pulling off that trifecta.

Now here’s a question. Why social media? How do these digital platforms boost your personal brand?

You can engage in real time. 奖金: Some channels now allow you to go live with your content. This is yet another reason to use social media for brand building.
It’s like a “你” museum. Fans can get to know you at their own leisure.
The analytics are advanced. With Facebook specifically, you can see where your top followers live, how old they are, and what content they enjoy engaging with.
You can add and remove content as you please. Feel like an old post doesn’t represent you or your brand anymore? Go ahead and hit “delete.”

记得, owning the internet doesn’t have to be difficult. 但, if you’re not giving social communities a solid effort, you won’t ever build an engaged and loyal following. You’ll experience low brand interest. People won’t care about what you have to say, and your message most likely won’t be consistent. Your social community is counting on you for an above average effort; don’t let them down. Whip your social media prowess into shape by avoiding those six boo boos.

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由 Julie Ellis

一月 26, 2016

所有博客经营战略市场营销

10 Business and Productivity Tips for New Entrepreneurs + a Great Bonus List

一月 26, 2016 | 由 Julie Ellis | 一个评论"＆GT;一个评论

You’ve launched; you’re ready to “rock ‘n roll.” Having never been totally on your own and responsible for every aspect of a business can be scary but also exhilarating. There are great rewards if your business thrives and grows and also pitfalls that you want to avoid. Hopefully, this list of 10 tips will be helpful from a business/marketing and from a productivity standpoint.