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We’ve hit 50! Welcome and thanks for joining us on this journey. In today’s podcast we take a look at how to simplify your online marketing efforts. If anything, the overwhelm for people is just getting worse with so many new things coming out each week. So how do you cut through everything and do what will work the best for your business? We will cover 3 basic steps in order of importance that if you stick with them, you will see results.
What have Andrew and Heather learnt this week?
Heather found a tool called SocialBro.com which is to help businesses use Twitter to grow their business. One thing she loves is that it allows you to target influencers on Twitter and keep track easily of those conversations. If you’ve doubted whether you should use Twitter in your business, check out the video on their site.
Andrew has been taking a look at using Facebook Voice Messages for your business. You can only use it from your mobile or messenger app using your personal profile (not on your desktop). You can leave a voice message of up to 60 seconds. Practical uses could include leaving a voice message thanking new followers or recording answers to questions that you frequently get asked.
Simplify Your Online Marketing
There are 3 basic steps;
1. Have a website that you are in control of
This means you know how to update it yourself including adding regular blog posts. You’ve heard us speak about WordPress before; this is a nice simple platform that you can use that is easy for you to update yourself and has multiple functions available. Some examples we have of when people are not in control include; relying on a developer to change simple details, not knowing how to use the website and having to pay for every change!
We recommend that you get onto WordPress if you aren’t already. You can easily have someone copy the content of your current site onto the WordPress platform. If you look on an outsourcing site such as Elance or ODesk there are a number of WordPress developers available. We would suggest you choose someone from close to your own part of the world if communication or time zone differences may be a problem. If you have WordPress already but don’t know how to access it, make sure you get the login details so you can take ownership. There are a number of tutorial videos out there (just check out YouTube!) that can show you how to do different things on your WordPress site.
2. Blog at least once per week
This ensures that you have good fresh content going up and is helpful for attracting visitors and ranking better on search engines. If your latest post was a year ago people may click away thinking that your site is not in use anymore. Regular quality content also helps to set you up as an authority in your niche.
3. Build your funnel
This is essentially where people opt-in on your website and then get followed up with autoresponder emails. The first thing you need to do here is come up with something free to give away. This is to entice people to share their details with you in exchange for that item. Need ideas? Here are some;
- “Top 10 …” – people like small chunks of information and are more likely to read them over longer eBooks.
- A short report or white paper.
- Develop something from the most frequently asked question in your business.
Now you need an opt-in form on your website and an email program such as Mailchimp set up to gather people’s details. We also recommend you have a squeeze or landing page rather than sending people to your home page. We love to use Leadpages to create good-looking landing pages which convert well. To see an example of this, check out AYBGuide.com.
Once you have this set up, you next step is to come up with a series of autoresponder emails to go out to anyone who opts-in with you. You may want to talk about what else you do, services or products your offer, tips, tricks or tools they could use, a link to one of your blog posts and basically anything that will add value to your target audience. Don’t worry too much at this stage about ‘crafting perfect subject lines’ or anything like that which you’ve been told you ‘must’ do. Just talk to people in your own voice. The rule of thumb is to email them every couple of days for the first two weeks after they’ve signed up.
Traffic Generation
There are different types of traffic you will hear about;
- Organic – meaning people who have just happened to find you while searching around. Content is the big buzz talked about now, this is what helps you get found and get shared with others. We suggest you stick with something and get good at it – you don’t have to do everything! Consistency is the key to getting results.
- Paid traffic – traffic generated through paid ads such as Google Adwords, banner ads, Facebook or Twitter ads. We think Facebook is the easiest to go through if you’re starting out. It is a cheap way of creating very targeted advertising. For help you could start with the Facebook Ad site or do a search on YouTube.
All of these things talked about are really your foundation. Of course there are more advanced things you can get into and learn about but if you don’t have these things right first you are less likely to be successful.
Finally, thank you for your ongoing support! November was our biggest month for listeners ever and we are now being played in 68 countries!