Karen Skidmore's Kick-Ass Blog | CanDoCanBe

Is facebook really going to help grow your business?

There are now more than 63 Million active users on facebook with an average of 250,00 new registrations happening every day!
 
It is currently ranked No 7 in Alexa top ranked websites and every other headline seems to refer to facebook in some context.
But what about you?
 
Is facebook really going to help grow your business?
 
Having launched myself into facebook in September last year, I must admit even I swing back and forth on whether facebook can seriously contribute to the growth of small businesses.
 
One week, several hours are spent proactively visiting groups and adding to the discussions and the next I am lucky to get a chance to click through on the email notifications that arrive in the inbox.
 
But over the past few months, I believe that there are several points that someone needs to consider before deciding to use facebook as a promotional tool.  As I am sure anyone who has experienced facebook will agree, it can be an absolute time-waster!
 
6 Points you need to consider before launching yourself in to facebook
 
Think quality NOT quantity - facebook is only one of many social networking sites out there.  And online networking is only one of many promotional tools to use for your business.  Having a presence on facebook is desirable but not critical to your business success.  Trying to do everything, all of the time usually means you end up with nothing (as well feeling a little insane at the same time!)
 
Keep Focused - It is too easy to waste hours on facebook.  The widgets, the virtual drink buying, the ranking of how hot your friends are.  Remember that facebook wastes millions of employee hours, which is fine when you are on PAYE.  But when you are self-employed, no one is going to pay you for the time you waste on facebook.  Know what it is you want to do and get out!
 
Contribute, don't SPAM - There is nothing worse that having someone at a networking event thrusting business cards in to everyone's hands and talking about nothing but themselves.  It is boring and downright rude, so there is no need to do it online either
 
Have a website with a purpose - Many people use facebook to drive traffic to their website, which to be honest is a pretty good objective to have.  But before you start leaving your web address everywhere for all to see, what is your website offering to your visitors?  Is your headline compelling enough to encourage visitors to stick around?  And is your call to action strong enough to encourage visitors to take the first step to become a possible customer? 

There is nothing more frustrating for you than having a website with high traffic for it just to bounce straight out again, never to return.  What a waste of good social networking.
 
Balance your personal life with your business persona - Remember that facebook was originally designed for college students and that many members are there to gossip, have a bit of fun, post photos and arrange parties.  Many of facebook's widgets and wall postings reflect this.  Will the photos that you posted from that night out be seen by your customers?  Will that video posted on your wall be watched by an interested client?
 
Introduce yourself when inviting a friend - You wouldn't go round at a networking event poking people in the back, leaving your business card in their back pocket.  If you wanted to meet someone at an event, you would introduce yourself and explain how you came to learn of them, wouldn't you? 

Leave poking to the college students and take the time to explain in your friend request why you would like to be friends and how you have come across their details.  You will build a far stronger online network by taking a little time out and consider relationship building rather than "collecting" friends.

If you are on facebook and you would like to be my friend  visit my profile and send me an invite.  I would love to "meet" you:   http://profile.to/KarenSkidmore/

How to write sparkling website copy

Nicky Parker of www.BangConsulting.co.uk gave a fabulous talk at the Farnham Women’s Network last night.  Her experience as a marketing consultant has meant many of her clients asking her to re-vamp their websites and come up with copy that helps promote them better online.

Nicky shared some effective, yet simple tips to ensure that you can all improve the words on your website.  After all, it takes less than 3 seconds for someone to decide whether to stick around and read more on your site.

3 seconds is not long is it?

If you weren’t able to attend, here is Nicky’s checklist on how to write sparkling website copy.

Building blog subscribers in a market place of non-bloggers

Building Karen’s Kick-Ass Blog subscribers has been a little mission of mine since the start of the year.  I know that many of the women I connect with and work with don’t even know exactly what a blog is, let alone how to subscribe to one.

Many people stop in and visit my blog.  I get an average of 20 visitors a day and around the days that my newsletter goes out that can reach up to 100.

But I have just let out a little cheer in my office just now as my blog subscribers have just hit 51!  My magic 50 target has been reached.

For most professional bloggers who have subscribers in the thousands, this is tiny.  But in a market place of non-bloggers, this is quite an achievement, I believe.  These 51 subscribers have made an active decision to subscribe and are more likely to contribute to the discussions (A big thank you to all 51 of you ) and ultimately become customers or recommend others to become customers.

And this just proves to me that with the right encouragement and the right wording, you can use a blog to build your brand – even when your customers are not blog readers.

How and what have I done?

1. Email newsletters – every weekly article gets posted on to my blog and gets used an archive and library for new subscribers
2. Encourage comments – I have always enjoyed a number of personal emails responding to each newsletter article.  Each has a valuable contribution to make which I knew other readers would benefit from reading.  By asking my newsletter readers to comment with their thoughts on each article, it encourages more blog readers to come back and subscribe.
3. Give specific instructions on how to subscribe – In each newsletter I now explain how to subscribe and use the RSS feed.  And I also recommend the feed reader that I use: www.Google.com/Reader
4. Engage in conversation – both with personal emails to those who have contributed and adding my own comments to the comments added

Blogs are here to stay and they will only continue to grow in popularity.  Blogs are becoming to be an essential marketing and conversation tool for many businesses.  So if you are in a market place that attracts customers who are not already reading blogs, how can you start to engage with them and use blogs in your business?

How do you maintain the momentum when having a bad day?

Having a home business and working from home can mean that you may not see any one for days on end, especially if you work with clients by email or phone.

There is no coffee room talk or quick catch-ups by the photocopying machine that you used to have in PAYE world.  And sometimes it can be just darn lonely being your own boss.

Planning your business and getting motivated to get on with your marketing is one thing, but what happens when you have a bad day?

You all get them, don't you?  A client who cancels a meeting at the last minute.  5 rejections on your follow up phone calls, one after another.  A laptop that decides to stop working when you have a proposal that needs doing.

If you are lucky enough to have a supportive partner or a good friend who understands what it is you are trying to achieve, then it makes it easier.  But many of you I know don't.  There may even be people around you who don't really believe that you will succeed in your plans and possibly don't even want you to, for what ever reason.

This is why it is good to have a couple of simple strategies up your sleeve that will allow you to pick yourself after a bad day and get back on the straight and narrow.

Taster Sessions work - even for equine therapists!

Julie Todd sent in a great story in response to the last newsletter article “6 Common Mistakes Made when Marketing Events & Workshops” and has kindly given permission for me to share with you.

“In your article you talk about giving tasters - well I have an excellent example which I came across just yesterday and thought you might be interested. 

“I was grooming for a friend at a dressage competition.  We'd just unloaded Victor (the horse that is - and he did come 3rd in his large class so he was victorious!) and this man came up and introduced himself. 

“He was an equine therapist/masseur and offered us a pre or post competition free 15 minute massage.  Well we took him up on his offer and Victor loved it.  Whilst massaging he talked about his service, clients he worked for, etc. 

“I remarked that I thought this was an excellent marketing initiative and he said he goes to shows about once a month and his hit rate is 1 in10 which I think is great.   So another example of samples leading to business.”

Archiving your email newsletters - the easy way

Archiving email newsletters and making them available for subscribers to read past editions, is a good way of building a library of resources, as well as building content for your website.

In the past, one way to do this was to create a new page on your website for each newsletter, either as a PDF file, or copy and paste the article in to HTML code.  Pretty cumbersome and lengthy process, especially if you were having to pay your webmaster a fee for each new update.

Today, archiving is a lot easier. Constant Contact, which a great web-based email newsletter system to use, now offers an archive facility which gives you an unique web address which you can use in your newsletters or add as a link on your website.  It keeps the HTML “prettiness” to it BUT it does cost you extra and it doesn’t help your website with its’ SEO and key words.

This is why a blog works very well with your email newsletter.  A blog is very, very easy to use, especially if you use Blogger or Typepad, and a simple cut, paste & publish and your newsletter article is online.

By hosting your own archived newsletters on your own blog, you will also start attracting focused internet visitors on the key words that you use, as well as driving present subscribers to a website that helps build their trust in you (and ultimately spend money with you!).

If you want to start your own email newsletter, but not sure how – you are most welcome to check out the free teleclasses on offer later this month.  Visit www.CanDoCanBe.com/FreeTeleClasses for more information 

 

Blog feeds can sprout like mushrooms once you realise how!

Today, being Friday, I have had several hours catching up with some well overdue blog reading and online forum cruising.  And one thing I have realised over the past few weeks is that with each of online profiles I have set up in various different social networks, each one comes up with a lovely RSS feed.

What does this mean?  I can add the feed of this blog to each of my profiles.

I have fairly active profiles on Facebook, Ecademy, Linked In and Giant Potential.  And as I post every working day (if not twice a day when I have something interesting to share with you, like this bit of info) this means that every one of my social networking profiles gets updated with fresh content.

Talk about multi-tasking!  One action creates a multitude of activity, which only goes to prove to me even more that blogging is one huge, powerful marketing tool for small businesses!

FREE! teleclasses this month - will you join me?

In preparation for the start of the next Email Newsletter Bootcamp, I am very excited to announce two special FREE! teleclasses.

You can dial in and join a session called “Email Newsletters for Technophobes” where I will demonstrating how easy email newsletters are and how you don’t need to be an IT guru to work the systems.

You can then join in for a second session called “Will Email Newsletters work for your business” where I will be sharing, warts and all, the pros and cons to running email newsletters.  I can give you some questions to ask yourself to work out whether email newsletters are really right for you and your customers.

For more information and to register for the events, click here.

And if you can’t make it live on the day, register any way as you will receive a copy of the teleclass recording automatically after each event.  How cool is that?

Look forward to speaking to you live on the call.

6 Common Mistakes Made When Marketing Events & Workshops

Adding workshops and training events to your business mix can be an excellent way of increasing your revenue as well as raising your profile in your local market place.

Workshops can be run at plush hotels, coffee bars, online, through conference calls - in fact when you let your imagination run wild, events can be as big or small as you want them to be.

But there is nothing worse than spending your precious time designing an event, booking a venue and marketing it only to have more trainers than delegates!  And I am sure this is why so many people are put off by running events.

It's the thought "but what happens if no one comes?"

There are several common mistakes that many people make running live events.  Read on to find out how you can avoid them and make sure your events are filled successfully.

Mistake No 1: Offer events that people need - not what they want.  It is too easy to spot a gap in the market and decide to share your expertise on a subject that you just know is needed.  But if there is no desire for what you are offering, it makes selling your event incredibly hard work. After all, it is not just money someone is investing in a live event - it is their time as well.

Find out what your market place really wants before deciding on your agenda.  If you don't believe me, try offering a time management workshop and just see how many people pay you money to attend :)

Mistake No 2: Think advertising not marketing.  "How do I advertise my events?" is often one of the first questions people ask.  Advertising costs can eat in to your profit incredibly quickly and to be frank, will not work if you are offering an event "cold".  Unless you have a strong brand presence in your market, you need to build people's trust in you.  You need to design a marketing plan that builds a conversation with potential delegates.

Mistake No 3: Start marketing with no database.  The larger the database of interested customers you have, the more likely you are to fill your event.  If you have a database of 100 people and you are trying to market an event that you need 7 to break even and 20 to make your target profit, the maths just don't add up.  Your conversion rate needs to be 20% which will only work if you have a very desirable topic and those people all happen to be free on the same day. 

Mistake No 4: Offer the whole cake rather than a taster.  The reason that stall holders at Farmers' Markets offer a morsel to taste is that they want to tempt you to buy the whole cake.  If you want to offer taster sessions to test the market place, consider breaking down your offerings to morsels. It makes it much easier to charge the true value of the event once you start marketing it commercially.

Mistake No 5: Discount heavily as desperation sets in.  Your workshop is in 5 days and you need another 4 or 5 people to really make it work.  You start discounting and offering BOGOFFs (buy one, get one free!).  But how do you think this makes the people, who have already committed to you, feel?  It's like going on holiday, only to find that the person in the room next door got the exact same holiday for half the price because they booked on teletext the week before.

Offer early bird discounts and reward the people who book in advance. If you really need to increase the numbers at short notice, it is far better PR by offering a few free places to your favourite customers as a thank you for their loyalty to you.

Mistake No 6:  Have no follow on events.  One event does not make a business.  Always have something else to offer to people who genuinely can't attend the day of the workshop, but are interested in what you are offering.  (at the very least offer an email newsletter to keep in touch with them!) 

You may find that it takes 4 or 5 months to build up awareness for your events.  It seems a long time, but believe me it will then make filling workshop 3 and 4 far easier (and a lot more fun for you!)

What's my biggest mistake?  Not to double check the day that I had booked a training room.  I found out the day before 15 ladies where expecting to drive to Guildford from across the South East that I wasn't due until the day after!  We had a fun workshop in the staff training room, complete with mops and buckets, which actually added to the day :)

What's yours?  I am sure there are other mistakes that people make and I would love to them.  Drop me an email and tell me your story – or be brave and leave a comment

Comments Rock!

Just had to say a huge thank you to all of you who have contributed with your comments over the past few months.

I was just having a quick check of my blog stats and since I started this blog in October 2006 I have posted 205 articles and my comments have just hit the 200 mark.

Thank you, thank you!  I appreciate them all.  There are almost more comments than postings. 

It has taken a while, to be honest, to start to see the comments appear and in fact I had a coffee with fellow blogger Fiona Humberstone who was asking me how long it took to start seeing lots of comments come through.

I have had a think and realised that comments started happening when I increased my blogging to every week day back in September last year.  And the number of comments have steadily and slowly snowballed.

I think having an email newsletter that refers back to my blog in every edition helps, too which is one of the reasons why I believe a blog and an email newsletter work so well together. 

So, for those of you who have started your own blogs and may be getting a little disillusioned by the lack of comments being made, just keep the faith.  Keep writing great posts, write regularly and over time you will build regular readers who feel compelled to add their thoughts and comments.  And if you have an email newsletter, make sure you are including links to your articles on your blog too.