Speech Bubble – Allows for a conversation view between users. Speech bubble could be useful for businesses to converse with customers and track and manage these conversations.
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 Social media is an excellent way to find and connect with customers to grow your business. 77% of Americans have a social media profile (www.statista.com). Social media for small business does not have to be scary or too big to take on. Start with an easy tool called Social Media Listening. Social Media Listening is using the internet to learn about customers. Find out where your customers are, what they are talking about and how you can help them. Hootsuite is a great place to start your social listening, plus it is free (well.. to get the most out of it you may want to pay for the advanced version but it’s not expensive). Open a Hootsuite account here - Hootsuite Account. They will walk you through adding streams and networks. Be sure to search the following;
Hootsuite is great, but also start a spreadsheet or other tracking tool to take notes and keep track of your research. You want to find out what keywords your customers are using on the internet, what problems they have, what content they are interacting with, what platforms are they on, what competitors are doing and any information that is relevant to your business. Once you have Hootsuite set up you can use the resources below to add to your social listening.
Below is an excellent overview of the demographics on each platform if you are not sure where to start. Click here for more platform data. Think about the demographics of your business. Once you have started your social media listening you will be in a great position to develop a Social Media Marketing Strategy.  Keywords are those words a potential customer types in a search engine or social media platform to look for information. If you are a business owner you want to be at the top of the search. To do this you need to use keyword on your website and your social media platforms. To find key words Google Trends is an easy place to start. The simple process is below. Also use other free keyword sites like https://www.wordstream.com/keywords. Start a spreadsheet and keep track of all your keywords. Look for themes and words that come up over and over. These are the words you want to incorporate into your website and social media platforms.
 2. Enter search terms, click on compare to search for more than one term. 3. Use the drop down arrows across the top to narrow your search for locations, time periods, Categories and web searches. For example, if you click on the arrow next to each search term below you can make custom selections  4. You can also subscribe to get updates on events/keywords that are being searched. From the menu on the left click on subscriptions and fill in the box that looks like the one below. You can get updates sent right to your email.  Stop Waisting Time on Social Media, Find the Right Platform for You!Deciding which social media platforms are right for your business is difficult. One thing for sure is DO NOT open a social media account with no goal in mind. Be sure to understand the benefits of each platform and how they fit the goals of your business. Take the time to find the right combination that will benefit your business. Start by finding 1-2 platforms to develop, then start joining other platforms. Here is a summary of the benefits of some of the top Social Media Platforms: A short message communication tool that allows you to send out messages (tweets) up to 140 characters long to people who subscribe to you (followers). Also known as microblogging. Twitter allows you to post breaking news, important messages, announcement and other up-to-date information. Facebook is the largest social platform in the world, boasting more than 2 billion active monthly users. About 61% of users are Americans between the ages of 25 and 54. Users can post comments, share photographs and post links to news or other interesting content on the web, chat live, and watch short-form video, images to videos and textual content. Facebook works well for:
A web-based pinboard or bulletin board with greater organizational functionality. A highly underrated platform, Pinterest is a visual-based social network with more than 100 million active monthly users. People typically pin or save images they found on the web (or on Pinterest itself) to different boards (used to categorize their image collections). If you sell any type of product, Pinterest is a social network you need to be on. Promoted pins allow you to target specific types of users and link directly to your shop or product pages. According to Shopify, 90% of users plan their purchases using Pinterest. A photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook. Like Pinterest, Instagram is a graphics-heavy social network. Instagram has a younger audience. If you’re in retail, beauty, food or art, this platform will work very well for your business. YouTube Offering video-based content, YouTube is ideal for businesses that can offer DIY videos, tutorials and educational information, such as:
What advice can you give about a social media platform that can benefit a business? Or, share Pros and Cons of any platform you have used.  Always start with the why, even though must of us begin with the what or how. Simon Sinek has studied how leaders act and think. In this Ted Talk he uses that knowledge to explain what, and in what order, Entrepreneurs should think. He describes a golden circle your business should be centered around to tell WHY you are in business. Everything else follows. I believe this TALK is a must for anyone in life as we are all in the business of ourselves. This talk will help you get and stay focused. You will make more money, and attract more customers/jobs when you find out how to start with your WHY. Sign up for my email list as I am collected Simons Sinek worksheets and resources and will mail them out when I have them compiled. Contact Information Here is the link to the Ted Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action The time of year has come for final exams, project deadlines, and a need to keep ourselves or our kids focused. I started using an app called MOMENT, which monitors cell phone usage. I could not believe how much I was using my phone (I am not telling!). I also put the app on my children's phone. When they saw how much they used their phones they were shocked too. Having this data for the kids, and myself helped to set limits. The kids could see what they were doing and how long and we used this to talk about making better choices and monitoring their own usage Limits do not always work so here are some easy to use programs that can block or reduce access to social media or websites. Anti-Social: Blocks a site for as little as 15 minutes up to 8 hours. It will not let you access a site once you block it, so you are committed to staying focused. StayFocusd: This is a Chrome app that tracks time and limits access to websites. You can also block an entire site for good. SelfControl: This one is free and for Mac users. Can block access to websites. Happy monitoring and blocking! Often we marketers are overwhelmed with new ideas and strategies. Our minds are hard to slow down as information is consistently flashed in front of us. When it comes to content marketing the same is true. So many steps, templates, and strategies it can be difficult to figure out where to start, even when the answer could be simple. Take it from me as someone who has taken certification after certification and used template after template to develop content. The answer comes from looking at SOLUTIONS. Content is created to solve a problem for a customer. For those customers who are researching what their challenges are and those that are already using your product/service as a solution. Content is creating knowledge about the solution you are providing. Notice I said Solution not a product or service. The one thing you need to know about content marketing is to focus on the solution to customers problems. Break out of the current mold concentrating on a product our service and instead talk about the solution the product/service provides. Answer these questions and think of content that could support your answers. What is the customer doing when they first show symptoms of a problem? What is the customer doing when they first show signs of evaluating alternatives? What is the customer doing when they have defined their solution? It's Not About the What its About the Why! Buyer Personas Social Media is a great place to conduct research about your customers or potential customers. The research allows a business to create buyer personas. Buyer Personas are fictional representations of your customer allowing you to customize content, needs, and behaviors to different groups. Taking target marketing one step farther and the payoff is worth it, see the infographic below. Start defining Buyer Personas by researching the following about your customer. Start an excel spreadsheet to keep track of your research for each of these categories. 1. Demographics - Where do they live, age, gender 2. What are their interests 3. What are their careers, education, income? 4. Buying Motivations? 5. Buying concerns? 6. Favorite websites and platforms? 7. Competitors – Similiar Web Finding this information is simple but may take some time. You can start with googling keywords you think the customers are using, going on each platform and joining groups or following key influencers. Google trends or Google alerts also help monitor customers. I have a feedly.com account so I can keep track of the blogs, news and websites I follow in one place. Once you have some research you can group similar characteristics then describe and name similar personas. Look for similarities on who they are, what they do, why they do it and how they do it. Adding a fictional name and a picture helps you remember the persona. Below you will find an example. Remember take your time creating buyer personas and be willing to edit personas as you continue to research and learn about your customers. Share the persona you have created. Click on the link below to download the Buyer Persona Worksheet  “Don’t get caught up in all the shiny new things” is my favorite peace of social media advice. New Social Media tools pop up all the time and it can be a real time waster exploring new resources. My advice is pick one or two you think can benefit you and explore that resource. Always stay focused on getting to know the platforms you are using in your social media strategy. Start small and expand your platform and resources as you listen to where your customers engage. My favorite resources right now is the Heminway Editor. For a $19 life time member you get access to an editing tool that works from anywhere, even your phone. Social media marketing includes writing whether we like it or not. So, for non-writers out their getting some help with editing content is essential. Grammarly is a great one as well and it is free for you to down load today! What is your favorite social media resource? What advice do you have about handling all the new and shiny tools in social media?
Dr. Emrich Always Learning As Marketers, we need data. Data helps us understand our audience and the content that will resonate with them. Social Media analytics help measure how our activities are performing against objectives on different social media platforms. My 2 favorite measurements to get started with analytics are Reach and Conversion Rate. REACH is the followers (Twitter), fans (Facebook) and group members (LinkedIn) a business is able to acquire. TRAFFIC and CONVERSION RATE is how many visitors/customers you get to your website that come over from social media. These measures are easily available on each social media platform and google analytics. See website below for detailed instructions.
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-metrics-to-track-for-social-media-success/ What are some other social media analytics and tools you could use to track social media performance? This is a very interesting article on Lowes. I personally would have never expected a big company like this to have figured out social entertaining so well. How do you think Lowes is using social media to publish content and entertain customers? What can you learn from their strategy about social media marketing in general?
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