Work Better, Not Harder

You've just finished editing (and proofing!) your latest blog post. You pause for a mental happy dance, then you click Publish. Ahh. And now the rest of the work starts. Because, of course, you need to let people know about this new useful and interesting article you've just laboured over. You'll want to share your new article out on your social media feeds multiple times, especially when it's new, and then tapering off over the coming months. And to be efficient about it, you'll want to schedule all of those posts now. So let's start writing the text for those social media posts. What will tease people into clicking and reading? (I'm not talking about lying; teasing is good marketing.) You can write your teaser from scratch. But the fastest thing is to do is to copy text snippets directly from your blog post. That is usually what I do for my own posts. And it's often when I realize I could have done a better writing job. I could have writ...

Isn't it amazing that it's now so easy to keep in touch with people we met years ago? Social media has allowed me to reconnect with old friends and work colleagues from long before social media existed. (Yes, I'm that old.) It has also allowed me to stay connected with people I've met along my small business journey. Many people have come and gone but I remember the ones I'm connected with because I "see" them sometimes on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. But I don't see them all and I don't see all their posts. My life gets in the way and sometimes days or even weeks may go by with me paying little attention to social media. I bet this happens to you too. Then there are the people I remember well, those who come to mind when I stumble upon an opportunity that might suit them. Those people are actively staying in touch with me in a way I can't ignore - by email. And I open my emailbox every single day... many times. There is huge value...

You might think your website FAQ page is the best place to answer questions but I would argue that your blog is even better. In fact, I suggest your FAQ page should list the questions, and perhaps short answers, with links to blog posts for more detailed answers. If your answers to frequently asked questions are individual blog posts, that content is ultimately more shareable via social media, email or chatbot. It's also a great way to make use of common keyword phrases, boosting your SEO. The Question The question you're answering might serve well as your post title or you might include it in your first paragraph. If it makes sense, you might also add some context which gives information about who the answer is for. For example, I might mention that I get asked this question often when networking with other small business owners. The Answer Generally, there are two types of answers. Facts and/or opinions: In this case, the question might start with something...

One of the best things I ever did was to take Anita Kirkbride 's advice when she told me I should post daily enewsletter tips on social media. It was a very specific and fairly easy task to do. I ended up with an Excel spreadsheet with about 350 short tips... all prefaced with #enewsletter. I joked that when I got to 365 tips, I'd make a calendar. Now I didn't sit down and spend several days making up this list - ugh! But I started it and then every time I wrote a blog post that included a tip, I copied it into my spreadsheet along with the post link. This started back when Twitter allowed only 140 characters so I finagled words a lot. You can see in the graph below that it had an almost immediate effect on blog traffic - note the big jump in readership SEPT 2012. This was tedious work. I spent many hours copy/pasting and scheduling individual messages in Hootsuite, a month at a time, for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Eventually, I started uploading...

(Guest post by Mike Tanner) I recently (like, earlier today) had the pleasure of speaking to a room full of close to 50 people on a topic near and dear to my heart: podcasting. Now I’m not going to sit here and give you a recap of that talk. If you want the VERY basic details you can find them on my website but you’ll never recapture the magic that we all shared in that room that day... Instead, I’d like to talk about three questions that I was asked during the talk and how they relate to running your own business, podcasting or otherwise. How Much Do You Charge Someone To Sponsor a Podcast? Pricing is complicated. It’s a fact. Ask anyone who does consulting or coaching or training or anything where there’s not a defined cost or supply and demand issue, and they will tell you that pricing is one of the most difficult things to figure out. Whether you’re trying to figure out how to price your course or how much to charge for web copy or how much to charge a sponsor to be a...

Guest post by Anita Kirkbride Have you ever noticed how being overwhelmed by something tends to make it suck the time right out of your day? The more overwhelmed you feel, the longer it takes to get it done? All entrepreneurs get that feeling about something and many have learned tactics to deal with it and get things done more efficiently. Ben Franklin famously said, “ For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned ,” and it has never been truer than for planning your social media marketing! If your paralysis stems from social media, the best way to get moving is to create a social media strategy and plan out what you need to be doing. Here are three ways doing so will save you time: Knowing what to post Simply having a plan for what you need to post each day cuts the time you spend trying to figure that out. If you’ve ever stared blankly at your screen, wondering what to post on Facebook, you know what I mean. Taking the time to plan your content in adva...

Guest post by Frances Leary Every business of every size needs a platform that gives it a voice. Social media is just that. It gives every organization, large and small, a voice to share its information, inspiration, products, and services with the world. However, if businesses are only listening to their own voices, it’s like giving a sermon. People can only listen to a sermon for so long. Eventually, they don’t want to listen anymore. Imagine this scenario: You’ve been told you need to “be on social media.” So, you find some content to post and you use an automation tool to get it out there consistently. And then to yourself, you say, “Whew, that’s done. Now I don’t have to deal with social media for a while.” The result? There you are, standing behind your online lectern, giving an unending sermon to an audience of your very-soon-to-be-disengaged potential customers and clients. You just keep on talking. Eventually, they stop listening. It’s like giving a ...

You know that feeling when you're talking to a group of people, quite passionate about the topic, and suddenly your brain resets? You have no idea what you were about to say. Total blank. Especially when it happens in front of a class or on a live broadcast, you feel an immediate flush of embarrassment and confusion. I know it well. What to do? Own up and share your predicament. Everyone messes up at one time or another. What you'll discover is that people will rush to help you recover, to rescue you. (Dare I say Canadians are particularly good at this?) Suddenly, whatever you were talking about has become a shared experience , not just a discussion. I was reminded of this embarrassment factor while watching a Facebook Live where my friend and colleague, Anita Kirkbride, momentarily lost her focus... and gracefully recovered. Later in the discussion, she talked about how the fear of embarrassment shouldn't keep us from doing our own social media marketing. Embarra...

(guest post by Mike Tanner) To suggest that I’m a big fan of podcasts would be… a bit of an understatement. In addition to being the host of 3.5 podcasts (it’s a long story), I provide podcasting consulting, speak on podcasting panels and once had a dream that I was the host of a potato chip podcast called “Chip Off The Old Block” (That podcast should be coming out in the fall.) I started podcasting because I enjoyed it. But what I’ve discovered about podcasting as it relates to business has left me realizing that I made the absolute right decision when I decided to start broadcasting my thoughts on an audio medium. So here are three reasons why businesses should be podcasting. Passive Advertising I am a big fan of social media advertising. The targeting options available on major platforms are outstanding and things like analytics and retargeting make it a no-brainer to use social to promote your business, whether that’s through the use of paid ads or just a solid soc...

photo credit @onceadaley on Instagram If you attended Social Media Day Halifax 2018  on Friday, I sure hope you enjoyed yourself and learned lots. I know I did! And not all my learning was from the presenters and sessions. Here are a few examples from the event organizing side of things. 1. It doesn't matter how many lists you make or how prepared you are, tech will give you a tummy ache at some point. Anything last minute that needs tech, also needs a backup plan. (Big thanks to my sister for helping me print conference nametags at 11pm the night before!) Note: If you buy labels or cardstock items at a Staples store, don't expect that their Copy & Print shop will print them for you. 2. Test things that can be tested. And not just tech things. When a vendor's website says one item goes with another, that doesn't mean it's so. For example, 4"x3" nametags do not fit into 4"x3" nametag holders. 3. Automate as much as humanly poss...

Having a discussion with a friend recently about  Messenger chatbots for delivering newsletters , she was perturbed there would be no way to download a list of subscribers. My response was, "Why would you want to?" These contacts have only opted in to receive communication via Messenger. By downloading them, all you'd have is a spreadsheet. (Which is OK, if you like spreadsheets.) As a small business owner, how many times have you been chided to have a database, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) app, even a spreadsheet, with all of your contacts in one place ? Now, imagine the colossal task of putting all of your contacts into one place. I'm talking ALL of your contacts - email contacts, phone contacts, Twitter fans, LinkedIn contacts, Messenger subscribers, and so on. And what would you do with them when they're all nicely entered? I sure won't be adding my 4500 Twitter followers to my email list. (Can you imagine the response?!) Engage peop...

If you've been in a classroom with me or even chatted over coffee, you'll have heard me say something like, "You just have to start somewhere and then it'll be easier to keep going and trying new things." Of course, I'd be talking about some aspect of online marketing - likely newsletters, blogging or social media. It was a rude awakening to realize I haven't been doing that myself lately. I've gotten into a rut with my own marketing. And that's sooo not good. Complacency snuck up on me. When I give advice to others, I have to be an example too, so I'm super conscious of maintaining a somewhat regular blogging schedule and showing up in inboxes and on social media consistently. Occasionally I pat myself on the back for doing a good job. The problem is, I haven't changed the platforms I'm using in a long time. Platforms are tools in the marketing world to help us achieve our goals . They can get stale or the tactics for using th...

Last fall I remember feeling disappointed that I never seem to have much time for learning anymore. I was thinking the small business people taking my courses were smart to commit a half day a week to learn key marketing skills. I learn while I'm teaching, but it's not skills related to my business development. Then in November, along came Anita Kirkbride with her plans for the Social Media Day Halifax 2018 Conference . While I knew enough about social media marketing to do a good job for my own business and help a couple of clients, I quickly discovered there's a whole lot I didn't know until I started working closely with Anita and Tina Capalbo on the Conference. Since January I've been prodded to record video, participate in Facebook Live sessions, and learn things about Instagram and chatbots and ... too many other things to list here. Often I've been surprised at how much I don't know about social media - strategy, tactics, apps and tools, best p...

If you aren't looking at statistics at all, how do you know if your online marketing efforts are paying off? You don't need to have a complex Google Analytics set-up to keep an eye on trends. Yes, hard numbers are good to know but trends give you strategic information. Anita Kirkbride and I used a similar chart to the one above when we presented at BlogJam 2015  - back then the top line was 9,000 pageviews per month instead of 20,000. I can tell you exactly what I changed at key points (at Anita's urging) which had a direct effect on my blog readership: June 2011 - I started using social media. September 2012 - I started blogging more and sharing posts more frequently on Twitter, in particular; results were obvious by December . December 2013 - I started posting daily enewsletter tips on Twitter and LinkedIn. 2nd half of 2016 - I started posting daily newsletter tips on Google+. I've tried lots of other tactics, too - some have contributed in little ways...

Wouldn't you like to be getting a dozen new subscribers every day? I've been doing small business email marketing for a lot of years and have a pretty good idea of what will work and won't. I'm rarely surprised but this week has been the exception - building a list from zero to 68 in five days using social media almost exclusively (no paid advertising). This is even more surprising because the Facebook and Twitter accounts started at zero, too. Now I didn't do this on my own; in fact my part was quite small. I've got two partners, Anita of Twirp Communications and Tina of Lift Communication, and we're launching the Social Media Day Halifax 2018 marketing conference. Here are the success factors that have gained us this great momentum: Synergy : The social media networks that each of us have been building for our businesses and ourselves have paid off in spades when we all started promoting at once.  Messaging and Visual : Taking time to craft c...

For the first time, Halifax will be celebrating Social Media Day in grand style this year. I'm proud to be one of the organizers of the first Social Media Day Halifax 2018 conference taking place on June 22nd. The conference is for entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals working in social media roles for companies and organizations. Sessions and workshops are for anyone and everyone who wants and needs to improve their social media communications and marketing. Since Social Media Day Halifax is all about increasing marketing expertise on the east coast, recruiting presenters who are both subject matter experts AND excellent training facilitators is key to the success of the conference. Ideally, we’ll find social media professionals who want to help encourage, inspire, train and motivate colleagues in the local marketing community. If you're on the east coast of Canada and do social media marketing, you don't want to miss this conference and the chance ...

Why do we want our blogs to be more interactive? I googled that question and didn't find any kind of consensus or a clear answer to share. This seems a little odd with everyone talking about engagement (and lead magnets and sales funnels ). As soon as a reader takes some action (often a click), they are much more inclined to take a second action, and a third, and so on. It's exponential, and it's what engagement is. If we know we want our readers to keep taking actions, we need to give them encouragement to do so... but not all at the same time. Here are a few ways to make your business blog more interactive. #1. Use a link strategy within your posts to move readers along to more relevant content. #2. Conduct a one question poll . Link to your poll in an app like SurveyMonkey which allows you to show results after someone answers. This poll could be legitimate research or a fun distraction. You can even publish the results in a future blog post. #3. Includ...

(guest post by Alison Knott) Nailing it down with a pin! Now that you’ve spent some time getting up close and personal with other brands in Part 1 , it’s time to find those patterns on Pinterest! You know 30 ways to look for ‘healthy snack recipes’ (who am I kidding, I’m married to Frito-Lay), so I know you’ll be set to start searching on Pinterest. But don’t stop at the obvious keywords like ‘bespoke logo’ or ‘life coach brand’. Branch out to of all kinds of brand application. Parrot Party: our new venture For this exercise, let's pretend you're starting an online store and forum called Parrot Party - a site for all the things parrot owners want and need. Most parrot-owner related websites are just breeders with old websites, and you want something that's going to appeal to parrot owners. Fresh, vibrant and speaks to owners ready to spend big bucks and share their knowledge on owning these birds. They choose to live with loud, colourful pets that live for 30+...

(guest post by Natasha Marchewka) Life is good as a freelancer or small business owner. No one to answer to, but our own clients, of course. No one breathing down our necks to make sure we’ve done THEIR job correctly. We get to “do it all” ourselves. Autonomy. It’s a freedom we’ve longed for... And now, we get to “do it all” ourselves. Sales, inbound and outbound marketing, bookkeeping, client management, admin, social media... oh, and that part about providing a product or service... We have to do what we do best and a bunch of stuff we, maybe, don’t do that well. So, we hire out when possible. (Thank you @daleyprogress!) In the process of putting the pieces together of my own business as a voice actor , I’ve managed to figure out how to do a lot of things on my own. On top of it all, I work at documenting everything because I happen to be a list maker. And as I dig deeper and deeper to give back to the world, I’ve discovered not everyone IS a list maker , and most p...

Rocket Science Version The sizing of images for the various social marketing platforms, post types, and headers is becoming a bit complex. In fact, it would be a very practical way to teach equivalent fractions and geometry in Grade 9. But if you're long out of school and want all the details, get them on Twirp's Cheat Sheet: The ONLY social media image sizes you need to know . Squares and Rectangles The diagram below shows a very simplified rule of thumb for matching image shapes to social media posts on common platforms. Size Matters While bigger is better, it often means a larger file size and then icky compression stuff happens and... well, you've probably seen it on other people's feeds. I suggest your squares be a minimum of 600px by 600px; and 1200px by 1200px is about the largest you'll need. For rectangles, use minimum 600px by 300px, or maximum 1200px by 600px. originally published in Work Better, Not Harder newsletter August 31, 2017 Clic...