Archives for January 2015
How to Get People Talking About You on Social Media
By now, most people understand the kinds of benefits that an effective social media marketing campaign can have for their company. They also have an understanding of the kinds of content that they should be sharing on their pages to reach out to their customers.
Where companies often have problems, however, is actually building up a significant amount of buzz surrounding their social media platforms to the point where theyâre actually seeing substantial growth in followers.
Here are a few tips that could help you to build that buzz to more effective levels:
⢠Give instructions. If you want your followers to tweet using a hashtag, just tell them to do it! If you want them to send in pictures of a specific item or selfies with your product, post a
Facebook status directing them to do so. It sounds overly simple, and yet there are a lot of businesses that arenât taking advantage of this easy way of increasing engagement.
⢠Promote your account. Facebook and Twitter offer promotion options that allow you to pay a fee for a certain level of promotion. This could be a good way to get an initial boost in your followers that will help in getting the word out about your presence on social media.
⢠Stay timely. If thereâs a big pop culture phenomenon or news item thatâs trending on social media, join in the discussion using appropriate terms or hashtags to ensure youâll be noticed. Of course, resist the urge to comment on inappropriate news items, and always try to maintain some link between the trending topic and your brand.
⢠Use pictures and video. Studies have shown that people are more likely to comment, share or âlikeâ/retweet a post that has an attached image or video than a simple text update. Therefore, whenever possible, use pictures and video to get your posts noticed on peopleâs newsfeeds.
⢠Run contests. A great way to get people involved on your social media is to run quizzes or contests, where you offer the winner some sort of prize. A common example is a restaurant offering a free meal to the first person to correctly answer a trivia question related to the company. People love free stuff, and their comments on your posts will show up in their friendsâ news-feeds.
Looking for more ways to expand your social media reach and buzz? Work with us at Viral Solutions!
Copyright 2015 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 100âs 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.
What Else Can You Do for Your Customers?
âAsk not what products or services you can make for your customers, but what else can you do for your customers,â this year when shaping your customer relationship management strategy. Perhaps, itâs the History Channel and Harvard Business Review articles that Iâve read over the weekend, but thought reminds me of a poignant time in history, in which, people need to come together and work towards creating long-term value. That can also transcend within the field of marketing management. Â That being said, the remainder of this post will discuss Dr. Niraj Dawarâs TILT philosophy to creating a customer driven competitive advantage.
You require and deserve the best tools available to achieve your goals and find success for your business. You deserve to work with a company that will not compromise your professional or personal ethics and integrity. Simply put, you have a right to the best business advice available, and we have a duty to provide that to you.
Shifting Strategic Perspective. Dawar (2013) discussed that most organizations focus organizational strategy around upstream activities dealing with product or production aspects of their organization, and miss the opportunity of strategizing using downstream activities that are engaging and meaningful to the customer. Not to say that one is more important than the other, but rather neglecting one more than the other is not an effective approach to building long-term customer value that aligns with organizational growth. The idea is that instead of focusing most of strategic perspective to sourcing, production, logistics, and innovation, to shift the perspective with a combined approach that also harnesses shaping customer perception, innovation, and building accumulative advantage (Dawar, 2013).
Shaping Customer Perception. Here, the approach is focus on building a strategy that is consistent with shaping the customer perception your organization desires. Perception can make or break organizational strategy, let alone profoundly impact organizational sustainability. So, the key is to identify what makes your unique, competitive, and desired by the customers in comparison to competing firms in your market. What is it about the way you do business, provide service, or make life easier for the customer? How does those actions translate into factors that impact purchase criteria? Does it? Furthermore, does your firm build trust? How do you know? Likewise, how can you not know this?
Innovation. Â The concept of innovation within the TILT, the customer is the center of gravity framework, the idea is to be proactively engaged to provide meaningful innovation that yields greater enjoyment of consumption from customers. Whether youâre a product or service provider, the key is to identify areas in which your product or service could be consumed, used, or needed to fit different circumstances your customers experience. Rather than changing the product or service altogether, what about offering a variety of options that correspond to the specific circumstances or situation for the customer? To be creatively tackling how or when your product could be used to make life easier for your customer? Likewise, to do so in a manner that doesnât break the bank or nickle and dime the customer. This kind of innovation, illustrates your commitment to to your customers, by making your product or service versatile and aligning with change needs and circumstances. Furthermore, this also provides organizations and management with ability to truly understand essential criteria that customers want and need, and tailoring their product or service to those segments via customized target and positioning strategies that yield to delightful competitive advantages. Which in turn aids to shaping customer perception and building trust – ah, yet another competitive advantage.
Building Accumulative Advantage. This happens as a result of creating, identifying, analyzing, and putting to good use customer data. Your customer is your source of income and sustainability. Why not focus on what you can do to learn about what makes the customer tick, buy your product, stay, leave, and so on? This information is vital to strategy. You may already be collecting data, but are you using it, or better yet, are you collecting the right kind of data that can help you to become more innovative, shape your perception, and really distributes the advantages of doing business with you? This is where it may be helpful to create internal and external data mining campaigns that can help you, help your customer. Which in turn, will help you even more! This in turn aids in establishing and maintaining a network effect that strengthens the perception as to why your target market is willing and wants to do business with you.
In essence, the center of gravity within an organization is the customer. Without the customer, there is no organization. No product or service to be shared. There is nothing. A system, products and services are essential, however, the customer pays for those things. So, without customers, it wouldnât matter if you had the best product or system, you would have no sales to support the cost of such systems (that is of course, unless you have unlimited resources at your disposal). So, âask not what products or services should I provide to my customer, but rather, what else can I do for my customers,â? Doing so, provides you with the opportunity to shift strategy around your organizational center of gravity.
Reference: Dawar, N. (2013). When Marketing is Strategy. Harvard Business Review. December 2013.
Copyright Viral Solutions llc Š 2015. All Rights Reserved
by Katie Doseck, Ph.D.
Chief Visionary and Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve | Viral Solutions LLC
Katie Doseck, PhD MBA | Chief Visionary & Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve. I catapulted my experience with extensive education, trainings, and personal coaching; earning a PhD in Organizational Management with a specialization in Human Resource Management, MBA in Organizational Leadership, and BA in Law & Liberal Arts. Subject Matter Expert (SME) areas: Human Resource Management, Employment Law, Organizational Change, Change Management, Resource Planning, Strategic Planning, Talent Management, Selling & Sales Management, Training & Development, Decision Making Models, Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Motivation. Dr. Doseck is based out of Logan, Utah.
The Nuts & Bolts of Upstream & Downstream Marketers
Marketing is a like a river. The river is swift, moving, and ever changing. Like our markets. The marketers are the keen fishermen that purposefully craft strategic and operational activities to research, identify, create, launch, promote, and sustain longevity. Like fishing, marketing activities can be broken down to upstream and downstream. The remainder of this post will discuss each and serve to aid you in crafting your upstream and downstream marketing actions within your firm.
Upstream. Is the market as it is before you enter it. It is beautiful to observe, explore, and analyze. As with fishing, you research and learn more about the river, i.e. the market. Doing so, helps you to evaluate your market, segment your market, position to your market, and get your gear 
ready to make a more predictive, tailored cast. In marketing, such activities: market research, market analysis, market segmentation, market positioning, product or service design, pricing, and distribution channels. This is basically, getting to know the who, what, where, when, why, and how aspects of understanding your market. The same is true with fishing, understanding the demographics and psychographics of your fish helps you to equip yourself with the best tools and strategies to aid in catching more fish and rocking out that fishing hole that others may try so hard to catch. This also reminds me of the strategic planning side of marketing where much of what happens is research, analysis, and crafting initiatives. There is no fishing tales with the right strategy, only fish or in marketing lingo greater ROI or ROAS.
Downstream. Is all of the activities that you need to do to enter the market or within the context of fishing, all the steps and actions that you need to do to get your cast where you want it on the river with the objective of catching the fish that youâve set your gear to catch. Whereas. upstream is more along the scope of planning, downstream entails the doing of that planning. So, when it comes to marketing, downstream is all of the activities and/or teams required to produce, distribute, promote, and establish meaningful relationships or brand value. Here, youâre in the river, your cast may even be floating along the casts of other comp
etitors, but your preparation and purposeful action will ideally aid in the fish liking your approach better. This is because youâve learned about the demographics and psychographics of your fish. You understand the angles, flies, and behaviors of what you fish bites, and as such, you have more bites compared to the fisherman that randomly baits up and doesnât care enough to learn about the market, let alone real people in the market, and hopes that someone will get it simply because of the need or want. So, here, key activities such as public relations, advertisements, demonstrations, workshops, and trainings aid marketers to connect with customers, and customers to connect with the product or service being provided.
As with fishing, one should avoid getting caught up too much in one of these areas to the point that it interferes or limits the overall productivity. Which calls to address the importance of balance and proactive involvement of up and downstream activities. As rivers change, so do markets. Likewise the strategies to enter, compete, and grow change. Perhaps, some bait for thought, is to think about the balance between your upstream and downstream activities. Would you say that youâre activities are balanced, reviewed, and updated accordingly? Is one side focused more than the other? How do you think that may be impacting your overall market strategy?
Happy Fishing!!!
 I leave you with a wonderful quote to ponder…
“To him, all good things – trout as well as eternal salvation- come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.”
~ Norman Maclean from the book “A River Runs Through It”
Copyright Viral Solutions llc Š 2015. All Rights Reserved
by Katie Doseck, Ph.D.
Chief Visionary and Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve | Viral Solutions LLC
Katie Doseck, PhD MBA | Chief Visionary & Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve. I catapulted my experience with extensive education, trainings, and personal coaching; earning a PhD in Organizational Management with a specialization in Human Resource Management, MBA in Organizational Leadership, and BA in Law & Liberal Arts. Subject Matter Expert (SME) areas: Human Resource Management, Employment Law, Organizational Change, Change Management, Resource Planning, Strategic Planning, Talent Management, Selling & Sales Management, Training & Development, Decision Making Models, Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Motivation. Dr. Doseck is based out of Logan, Utah.
Getting Press for Your Small Business
Once youâve got your small business established, itâs good to get the word out through as many avenues as possible. However, itâs not as simple as sending off a few email blasts to news outlets and waiting for them to come and publicize you. It takes a proactive approach to advertising and an understanding of the effectiveness of the methods available to you to find success in this area.
Here are some ways that will make it easier for you to reach out and connect with the press:
⢠Make sure youâre presenting the right message. You need to have one clear, understandable message about who you are as a company and what makes your business worth paying 
attention to. Not only will this make media companies more likely to pick up your story, but it will also create stronger communication with the general public. Then connect with those leaders in your field, hear their message, make it known you can add value – then deliver.
⢠Write press releases. Drafting press releases allows you to make broad announcements about specific newsworthy pieces of information relating to your business. There are a number of press release distribution services that will take your release and blast them out to media outlets across the nation or simply to local sources. Itâs a simple way of making sure you spread out your message. However, remember this, press releases are easy to overuse and to use sources that are not legitimate. Do you research!
⢠Run a blog. While a blog wonât initially help you to get noticed by journalists, it will in the long run so long as you stick with it. The more content you build up on your blog and the larger the readership you gain, the more likely it is that journalists will be attracted to your website to see the kind of expertise you have and realize that your business really has a story to tell. Having a blog is also a way to demonstrate that you are great at communicating a message or story, which is something most journalists are looking for.
⢠Connect with journalists on social media. Whether itâs through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or otherwise, you can find most journalists on social media sites. Follow them, interact with them and build a relationship in that way. This could result in them covering you at some point down the road.
⢠Familiarize yourself with the work of journalists. If you know a journalistâs body of work and believe that your business is a good fit for their typical style of story, you can make a better pitch for why they should cover you.
Keep these tips in mind, and connect with Viral Solutions for more content marketing ideas and assistance.
Copyright 2015 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 100âs 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.
4 Steps to Overcoming Self-Doubt | Self-Doubt Sabotage – Getting a Grip, Before Losing It
Have you ever felt like doing nothing when there is so many things that actually need to get done? Have you ever froze at the thought of starting a project or just doing something totally not relevant to what you need to accomplish? I experienced this personally today. I had this anxiety set over me about all of the things on my âto do listâ and as fast as that anxiety was there, I decided to do things that werenât a priority. Then 20 minutes later, I was like âwhy are you doing this, this is silly, you need to stop right now, and start working on those things that freak you outâ.
The next thing that popped in my head was a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, âyou must do what you fear you cannot do,â. Such a profound quote that really hits home toward overcoming self-doubt that can sabotage a person. To aid in overcoming self-doubt, weâre going to explore 4 instant steps that you can use today, in fact, this very moment to overcome your self-doubt.
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- Remember that this day matters. Let that sink in. What you today, right now, in this very moment matters. You matter. Whatever it is that you do today impacts today. Choosing not to do something that you know needs to be done is choosing an action that impacts this day. Donât be fooled with the internal derailing thoughts that it can be put off for another day. That thought process creates a behavior that accepts or justifies not doing something. Life can be overcoming at times, however, avoiding or putting off something simply because you feel like you can handle it today is silly. Just do it. Your actions today matter, even if those actions are small in comparison to the mountain of things that you need to do today.
- Ask what you can do right now. Â Perhaps, self-doubt can be inspired by the emotions associated with everything that needs to get done. What if you shift those thoughts from the
âOMG, how will I get this all doneâ to âwhat can I do right now, that will make a difference,â. Â Rather than getting caught up or feeding the stress and anxiety associated with the situation that is triggering your self-doubt, recognize the emotions that youâre experiencing. How do they make you feel? Not good. Then stop with those emotions. Breathe. Think about what you can do right now in this moment that can aid you in what you want to achieve. - Re-focus on what matters and why. Weâre all different. That being said, our levels of self-doubt vary. The triggers that causes that doubt vary. The reasoning we use to avoid doing what must be done, vary. Whatever it is, you need to give yourself a reality check. This needs to include the identification, acknowledgement, and confidence that can move forward. That you have been successful at overcoming this similar situation, behavior, or whatever it is that is the instigator to your self-doubt. Re-focus your thoughts, energy, and attitude toward it. Perhaps, you may visualize a time in which you knocked the ball out of the ballpark on something you thought you couldnât do, but did. Use that same level of excitement to ignite the focus of what you need to do and why. This level of energy can help you to see why the self-doubt, it is simply that, and that you can do it. You can do what it is that you fear, you have done it in the past, and you excelled at it, and even times when you didnât, you learned from those lessons, and those lessons can serve you to re-focus.
- Create movement that matters. Just as today matters, so does movement. Use the attitude and energy that you created through refocusing. Breathe. Identify the key actions that need to happen that will create the momentum to aid you in starting, maintaining, and finishing what it is that you earlier didnât want to do. For example, if youâve been avoiding starting a new project because the project itself is missing pieces of key information. Movement in this situation may include reaching out to key project stakeholders that you need the information by XYZ date to move forward with the ABC direction of the project, and in the meantime, you setup the framework of things that you can do with what you have available. You identify what those actions are and you create movement that aids you in completing those actions, today. Movement can really be anything that proactively aligns you with what it is that you need to get done, and will vary person to person and situation to situation. The key is to identify, do, and continue to move toward whatever it is that you need to do, and whatever it is that you fear to do, you must.
So, in summary, we all at times experience self-doubt. Our self-doubt may vary, but the paralysis that self-doubt carries is relatively similar. The key is recognizing that today does matter and you matter. The actions and inactions that you choose to do matter. That whatever trigger caused you to lose sight in you, a situation, or whatever it was that manifested self-doubt, was simply a trigger. It is not you. It is not who you are or what you will become. It is an emotional indicator that is designed to direct or indirect pain toward something. You are in the driverâs seat of that emotion. By recognizing what you can do, refocusing your thoughts to affirm that action, and then moving toward that action helps you to not only get a grip on self-doubt, but to overcome it whenever it show itâs narly face.
Cheers to YOU and all of the amazing things that you fear to do, that you MUST do.
Copyright Viral Solutions llc Š 2015. All Rights Reserved
by Katie Doseck, Ph.D.
Chief Visionary and Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve | Viral Solutions LLC
Katie Doseck, PhD MBA | Chief Visionary & Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve. I catapulted my experience with extensive education, trainings, and personal coaching; earning a PhD in Organizational Management with a specialization in Human Resource Management, MBA in Organizational Leadership, and BA in Law & Liberal Arts. Subject Matter Expert (SME) areas: Human Resource Management, Employment Law, Organizational Change, Change Management, Resource Planning, Strategic Planning, Talent Management, Selling & Sales Management, Training & Development, Decision Making Models, Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Motivation. Dr. Doseck is based out of Logan, Utah.