Archives for March 2014
5 Social Media Tips for Busy Business Owners
As a busy business owner, getting involved in social media may seem like yet one more responsibility that pulls you away from your primary purpose. However, connecting with customers remains essential, and today’s customers are hanging out on social media. Thus, you need to hang out there, too. But who has the time? Though social media may seem like a time-consuming, it doesn’t have to be. Use the tips below to create an efficient social media strategy.
1. Plan – A good plan will serve you well in virtually any endeavor you undertake, including social media. Spend some time up front planning your approach and you’ll be more focused, better organized, and more efficient. Consider which social media sites are the most appropriate for your business, what types of customers you want to reach, what you will share on social media, and how much time you will devote to it. While you’re at it, develop goals, categories, and a social media content calendar so that you always know what you need to do.
2. Develop a process – Once you have a plan, develop a process that you can easily follow. For example, your process might involve: publishing a blog post, tweeting a link to that post, and creating a Facebook conversation around that post. It’s a 1-2-3 process that you can 
replicate every time you publish a blog post. By developing and documenting simple processes, you can also teach others to take over when the time comes to get help with social media.
3. Outsource – Some small businesses successfully hand over their social media marketing to outside consultants. If you simply do not have the time, desire, or technical skills to deal with social media, consider getting professional help. Make sure your social media consultant understands your business and what you want to accomplish. Even if you know from the beginning that you would prefer to outsource social media, you should still develop goals and be involved in the planning process.
4. Automate – Next, consider which social media tasks you can automate? For example, did you know that you can pre-schedule Facebook posts and Twitter tweets? Consider pre-scheduling some universal posts throughout the month so that you have a steady stream of activity on a regular basis. Similarly, you could set up your blog to automatically push links to new posts to Twitter or Facebook. You can also use RSS feeds to monitor relevant news items in real-time. Should something of interest to your audience come to your attention, you could quickly and easily compose a post around it.
5. Advertise – Building a social media following can be a slow process. If you want to jump right in and start connecting with prospects on social media, consider using Facebook ads and sponsored posts to get more followers and generate more interest in your social media profiles.
If you’re new to social media, and busy running your business, these five tips can give you a jump start on social media.
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Place Your Focus on Your Prospects' Problems
You may be familiar with the concept of an elevator speech, the type of speech you give to someone in just a couple minutes that sums up who you are, what you do, what your ambitions and goals are and what you offer others as a company or employee. For most websites and small business owners, their elevator speech is all about themselves. This is understandable, because that's how most of us are taught to create our elevator speech. But the truth is that when giving this speech to a customer, most of the time the customer couldn't care less about you.
Before a customer decides to purchase a product or service, he or she doesn't want to hear what's great about you or your business. They want to know that you get their problems, issues, concerns and points of pain. They want to know that you can empathize with their situation. They want to know that you have a solution. They want to know what your plan is to solve their problems. They want to hear it from you as if you do this everyday. Most of the time, then, and not until then, do they want to know about your credentials.
With this in mind, your elevator speech with prospective customers should always focus on your solutions and benefits, not your tactics or features. Keep the focus on the customer at all times and show them how you will solve their problems, rather than just telling them that you can. It's about them, not about you. It's about their needs first, not your tactics and resources. At most, it's about why you do this for their advancement.
Following this practice will, in turn, give you additional benefits including:
- Greater likelihood of sales conversions. When people feel that you can relate to their needs and that you do so with passion, compassion and empathy; they're going to be much more likely to purchase it. Secondary, is when they know how a product or service benefits
them and that it will solve their problems. Unless what you offer is a commodity, this is the reality behind your offer.
- Greater customer loyalty. In today's world, trust is harder than ever to come by. Once you overcome objections the second and beyond sales or transaction as never been easier to come by. Loyalty then is all about execution and delivery. Customers want to feel as though they're the only thing that matters in the eyes of the company. The more focus you keep on the customers' needs, the more they'll keep coming back.
- More word-of-mouth advertising. A lot of research indicates that people trust personal recommendations from friends and family more than they trust commercials or celebrity endorsements. By creating greater customer loyalty, you also increase the chances that your customers will go out and recommend your brand to people that they know.
Take a good look at your elevator speech. How much of it focuses only on you as an individual or organization? If the answer is “too much,” then it's time to make some changes and place more focus on your prospective customer.
Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer | Viral Solutions LLC
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Place Your Focus on Your Prospects’ Problems
You may be familiar with the concept of an elevator speech, the type of speech you give to someone in just a couple minutes that sums up who you are, what you do, what your ambitions and goals are and what you offer others as a company or employee. For most websites and small business owners, their elevator speech is all about themselves. This is understandable, because that's how most of us are taught to create our elevator speech. But the truth is that when giving this speech to a customer, most of the time the customer couldn't care less about you.
Before a customer decides to purchase a product or service, he or she doesn't want to hear what's great about you or your business. They want to know that you get their problems, issues, concerns and points of pain. They want to know that you can empathize with their situation. They want to know that you have a solution. They want to know what your plan is to solve their problems. They want to hear it from you as if you do this everyday. Most of the time, then, and not until then, do they want to know about your credentials.
With this in mind, your elevator speech with prospective customers should always focus on your solutions and benefits, not your tactics or features. Keep the focus on the customer at all times and show them how you will solve their problems, rather than just telling them that you can. It's about them, not about you. It's about their needs first, not your tactics and resources. At most, it's about why you do this for their advancement.
Following this practice will, in turn, give you additional benefits including:
- Greater likelihood of sales conversions. When people feel that you can relate to their needs and that you do so with passion, compassion and empathy; they're going to be much more likely to purchase it. Secondary, is when they know how a product or service benefits them and that it will solve their problems. Unless what you offer is a commodity, this is the reality behind your offer.
- Greater customer loyalty. In today's world, trust is harder than ever to come by. Once you overcome objections the second and beyond sales or transaction as never been easier to come by. Loyalty then is all about execution and delivery. Customers want to feel as though they're the only thing that matters in the eyes of the company. The more focus you keep on the customers' needs, the more they'll keep coming back.
- More word-of-mouth advertising. A lot of research indicates that people trust personal recommendations from friends and family more than they trust commercials or celebrity endorsements. By creating greater customer loyalty, you also increase the chances that your customers will go out and recommend your brand to people that they know.
Take a good look at your elevator speech. How much of it focuses only on you as an individual or organization? If the answer is “too much,” then it's time to make some changes and place more focus on your prospective customer.
Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer | Viral Solutions LLC
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Interacting on Facebook: Where to Start
It’s one thing to finally get your business on Facebook, it’s another to start interacting with your community. After all, if Facebook is new to you, you may not know where to start. Use the tips below to get started.
1. Post photos of your business. Your customers will enjoy seeing what goes on behind the scenes. You can also post photos of your products, employees, or customers enjoying themselves. However, if you do use images of real people, make sure to get permission in the form of a model release.
2. Ask a question. This gives your fans the opportunity to speak their minds, show their expertise, or have a little fun. You can also ask for feedback about an upcoming product you’re considering adding to your product line.
3. Hold a contest. Facebook contests are a fun way to grow your community and get people involved with your brand. You’ll need to follow Facebook’s promotional guidelines or use a third-party solution to host a contest. A great example of a Facebook contest is a photo contest. For example, if you run a pet grooming business, you could have a cutest pet photo contest. Each contestant would need to submit photos of their pets and then share their entries on social media in order to get the most votes. A contest like this where contestants must share their photos is a great way to get your business in front of other Facebook users. Those users may even “like” your page after seeing their friends’ entries.
4. Respond to messages and comments. Make sure that you have your Facebook notifications set up to alert you whenever a comment or message is posted to your page. This allows you to respond as quickly as possible. 
5. Hold an event. You can use Facebook events in conjunction with real events at your business. For example, if you’re holding a special sidewalk sale, why not create an event in Facebook and invite your fans?
6. Encourage fans to share, like, or comment on your content. The more users interact with your Facebook account, the more likely it is that your content will appear in their news feeds. Thus, you’ll want to share content that is worthy of clicking the thumbs-up icon, making a comment, or sharing with others. Photos, videos, and cartoons often prompt others to share or like. You can also prompt users to like something by adding a phrase such as, “Click like if you agree.” Getting comments can be as simple as asking a question such as “What do you think?”
7. Comment on related pages. You can follow other business pages on Facebook as well as post comments as your business page. When you do so, your business page’s name and profile appear. This is a good way to interact with others and potentially direct them back to your own Facebook page. For example, if you belong to your city’s chamber of commerce, get involved in conversations taking place on its Facebook page. Others will take notice, and some will be curious enough to click through to your page. Some may even be prospective customers.
These are just a few ways that you can start interacting with others on Facebook once you’ve set up a business page on Facebook. Have fun!
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Let Your Strengths Influence Your Strategy
Spending the time to craft a position statement can truly guide your business to new heights. The problem is that many businesses spend most of their time on their tactics to attract and retain customers rather than the position that they have taken a stance on. Your stance tells your audience, your perfect prospective customer what you can do for them. What is it that you help people do? Why do you do that? What is it that fuels your passion for what you do? Tell your audience, take a stand, state your position and let it be known without subtleties why you do what you do.
Warning, you might upset someone in your audience by taking a strong position of why you do what you do, and that's a good thing. Why is it a good thing? Because you want to weed out the detractors from the future ambassadors. Let's talk about the fuel for your position statement, which will feed your strategy. Again, your strategy will tell you what your tactics will be to attract new business. Strategy feeds tactics. Strategy tells you where to find your audience. Now, identify your strategy that gets customers and take a position based on that strategy.
Here are the steps you should take before you start to find new ways of attracting and retaining customers:
- Define why you do what you do. People follow ideas, concepts and beliefs of those they can easily relate to and connect with. People do business with people. Your perfect prospective customer buys your why and not your what. Your why is your passion, your beliefs and the reason you're confident you can solve their problem in a sustainable manner.
- Define what you do best. Every company has several greatest strengths that they can bank on. Are you great with customer service? Do you have a particular niche to which you cater your products or services? Do you solve a specific problem better than anyone else? Analyze what you do best and let that influence the strategies you take. The key here is to make these points with bold statements.
- Define who needs what you do. This is where the idea of a niche becomes truly important. The best way for a new business to find success is to bust into a niche market that does not have nearly as much competition. If you can fulfill the needs of that niche better than anyone else, you'll be well on your way to success. The narrower the niche, the better off you are.
- Define how you differ from the competition. Why should people choose your company over a different, more well-known organization? You need to be extremely clear about the problems that you can help your customer overcome, and how you can fulfill their needs better than your competitors. Your differentiating factors likely have to do with what you do best and who needs what you do.
Once you have taken all four of these steps, you are significantly closer to organizing your growth strategy. Then you can finally go into more detail when it comes to finding the correct tactics to reach out to new customers and hang on to your existing ones. The answers to the above will tell you what tactics to use, because you'll know where they tend to hangout.
For more assistance, feel free to reach out to us today at Viral Solutions!
Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer | Viral Solutions LLC
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.