Having spent the last month running training sessions with you lovely lot, we've planned a whole lot more! You told us that you'd like a few hours working with us on your website, on email marketing, on building great collaborations and on blogging. Someone also asked us for a session on running your own life but that is definitely 'outside our area of expertise' :)
For the topics that we do know about, we've just put together a schedule for the rest of the spring (yes, we decided that spring has actually started). Come and join us at our office in Danderyd if you would like to know lots about the following topics: Wed 10th May - 12:30-2:30pm (4 spaces), Wed 10th May - 8pm-10pm (5 spaces), Thur 18th May - 12:30-2:30pm (5 spaces), Thur 18th May - 8pm-10pm (5 spaces) Thur 20th April - 12:30-2:30pm (5 spaces), Thur 20th April - 8-10pm (3 spaces), Thur 27th April - 8-10pm (4 spaces) Wed 26th April - 8-10pm (4 spaces), Thur 27th April - 12:30-2:30pm (3 spaces), Wed 3rd May - 12:30-2:30pm (4 spaces), Tue 23rd May - 12:30-2:30pm (4 spaces), Tue 23rd May - 8-10pm (4 spaces), Thur 8th June - 12:30-2:30pm (4 spaces), Thur 8th June - 8-10pm (4 spaces) Thur 4th May - 12:30-2:30pm (3 spaces), Thur 4th May - 8pm-10pm (2 spaces), Wed 17th May - 12:30-2:30pm (5 spaces), Wed 17th May - 8pm-10pm (5 spaces) Wed 19th April - 12:30-2:30pm (5 spaces), Wed 19th April - 8pm-10pm (3 spaces) Wed 26th April - 12:30-2:30pm (5 spaces) All the sessions are two hours long and cost 250kr in advance (preferably by SWISH). For more information, click here or get in touch with us. If you want to join us but can't make the dates listed, let us know and we'll see what we can do. I had an amazing opportunity a few weeks ago to work with six small and hobby business owners on getting more clients using social media. Ahead of the next sessions that are tomorrow, I want to share with you some key ideas: 1. How many times does a potential client need to come into contact with your product/business/message before they decide to buy something from you? What do you think of this answer? As a huge generalisation because, of course, all businesses are different, general marketing theory goes with the rule of seven – your message should be seen seven times before a potential customer will buy. Google apparently says this is now more like ten times because consumers use the internet to search for corroborating evidence that you and your product are as great as you say they are. This means that your message needs to reach the SAME PERSON ten times. That every potential customer needs to see your message ten times. At least. Whichever number you think truly fits your business and your target customers, it takes time and marketing energy to achieve that many contacts with each person. What can you do about this? 2. Cheat! Wait, what? No. Talk. The best way to skip a few of those contact steps is to talk to your potential clients – not AT them mind you but TO them. Pick a few and have a chat. By starting a connection, you build a bridge between your business and your potential customer that hugely increases the likelihood that they make it through the seven, ten or even twenty contacts they need to go through to buy. Yes, I am away that this takes time and energy. I know that, I do it for our businesses. That is how I know for sure that it works! You are in business for the long-haul, right? How does this fit in with all the photos you are putting on Instagram, the blog posts that you are sure you are supposed to be writing, the Facebook page you have but isn’t doing a lot by itself? All of that comes under ‘content marketing’ – a very effective way of using social media BUT for it to work, you have to get people to look at your page/profile/posts… 3. Is there anybody out there?Honestly, no, probably not. At least, not hanging out on your Facebook page waiting for you to post something. You have to go and find them.
We cover everything you need to know about ‘content marketing’ in our sessions starting next week (click here for details) – including what, how and when to post. In the meantime, get talking. Or if you are stuck, join us at this session tomorrow! Here is our eBook on the topic too, from our sister company, My Own Marketing Coach: Instagram has just rolled out a new feature - you can now add up to 10 photos and video in one post.
To get the update, you might need to reinstall the app (we did). Then, when you want to upload to your Instagram feed: 1. Click to add a photo/video 2. Click on 'select multiple' 3. Tap or hold to change the order 4. Add filters if you want 5. You can like or comment on each photo just like Facebook 6. When you now see the blue buttons on the bottom of an image appear this means you can scroll to see all the images/video. We'll be working on it for Life in Danderyd tomorrow (www.instagram.com/LifeinDanderyd). How will you use it for your business? Let us know so we can check it out when you have! You told us that you'd like a few hours with us, working on getting clients by using social media. Repeatedly in some cases (you know who you are!). So, very happily, we are running two 2-hour sessions this coming Thursday in Danderyd.
You can expect the sessions to provide:
For more information, click here or get in touch with us. If you want to join us but can't make it this Thursday, let us know and we'll see what we can do. My Own Marketing Coach! Our sister service provides marketing coaching to small businesses. Write in Danderyd's own Zen Holmgren is working alongside fellow marketing coach Annelies Bommeljé on this project. Their focus is on making marketing coaching affordable to small businesses that are up and running and need/want help to bring in customers. While My Own Marketing Coach guides and encourages, Write in Danderyd is here to continue setting up, running and building marketing programmes for local and international businesses. Check out My Own Marketing Coach here: www.myownmarketingcoach.com This topic comes up more and more at the moment. It is perhaps because social media has changed the marketing landscape back into a personal connection between buyer and seller and well away from the advertising model of reaching, impersonally, many-with-one message.
So, let's look at where we came from, to see what we can apply again now:
The change to this way of doing business came much earlier than you may think - with the start of printing in the mid-1400s! This took us into the era of mass marketing which remains still today in the form of websites. We aren't suggesting you shouldn't have a website - of course they have such an important role in business but let's now look at where social media has brought us:
There is plenty of evidence to show that social media has a huge influence on our shopping patterns but I wanted to point out the fundamental point. People buy people. Not literally, what we mean is that human nature drives us to buy things from people that we trust and 'understand'. If you remember this when planning any marketing, it will help you make it a success.
Did you see what we added to the title of this blog post to make it come up when someone searches online for local businesses? Yes, we wrote the word 'Danderyd'. We do that a lot. It is also in our name (if you hadn't already noticed that).
If you want to be found online as a local business, create local content.
You have two main choices here:
1. Writing about what you do in the context of your location and/or 2. Your opinion of things going on in your local area. Whichever you choose, be sure to mention the location a couple of times at least, to let the search engines know where you are. Don't overdo it though, more than 5 could be too many and will make your post hard to read by your human readers.
1. Start with the facts - blogging works. Blogging hugely increases a website's popularity with search engines, tells potential customers that their are real people actively working in the business and increases the likelihood of a customer choosing to buy. Be specific to your business/department and show exactly what blogging contributes. 'It delivers X so we need it.'
2. Talk your colleagues through how a potential customer behaves, making sure to show how vital the blog is. Try 'Potential customer type W does X then Y then Z then buys.' 3. Highlight your ideal situation from the customer's perspective - interested in A, looking for B, found information C, case study D and blog post E, buys. 4. Explain why them. This point is crucial. Show them what it is that they know that potential customers want to read about. A bit of flattery at this point is probably necessary :) Examples are: Sales people on how they help customers Research and development on what’s coming up in new products The CEO on the latest developments within the company or, even better, in the industry Customer service reps to answer common customer questions Experts on the latest developments within their areas in the business and in the industry 5. Give them a detailed brief to help guide their writing and help them feel confident to start. Include a topic or a question to answer, length and deadline. 6. Support your writers. Give them specific tips, such as how to write a great headline and offer to edit their posts. Additional tools: - Show them what your competitors are doing well and badly (be specific, show blog posts). - Make it mandatory. Careful with this one! Get managers on board to help enforce. - Make it competitive. Careful with this one too. Show stats for blog post shares, hits etc. Add in a prize. - Give them stats. Even if you don't make it competitive, make the stats highly visable. - Get as many contributors as possible. It takes the pressure off you and your experts. Let us know how you get on! |
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|