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Dec 11 2016

How to Take a Vacation From Your Marketing

As a business owner, the most important thing you can do for yourself is take a break. It also happens to be the hardest thing to do if you are trying to run your business because the moment you go silent on the marketing front you will lose audience interest.

With the holidays right around the corner, it is the perfect time to take a breather from 24/7 entrepreneur brain. Taking both a physical and a mental break from your business (even if it’s a staycation) will help you avoid burn out.

If you’re looking to take some time off this holiday season, don’t let your marketing efforts suffer. Here are a few things to consider to keep that momentum going throughout your time away.

Blog early: You should have a regular posting schedule for your blogs so your audience can come to expect content at a certain time. Keep that schedule going while you are away by writing your blogs ahead of time. Most blogging platforms will allow you to schedule each blog to go live at a specific day or time.
Automation is your best friend: This requires a bit of planning, but if you work ahead of time, you can schedule content to go out while you are away. Work with a program like Hootsuite, Buffer, Mailchimp, etc. Try to stay away from the bots that automatically like and comment on posts as those can seem too contrived.
Delegate tasks: If you already have a team in place, make sure you put someone in charge while you are away. Empower them to make decisions without you, but let them know that you are available for emergencies. If you are a solopreneur, hire someone you trust to look after things while you are gone. Start working with them at least a few weeks in advance so they are fully comfortable while you are away.
Prioritize tasks: Not everything has to be done right now. Have a look through your to do list and rank everything by due dates. If there are things that need to get done before you leave, then get them done. If you have tasks with no due date or ones with later due dates, leave those to get done when you get back.

After taking some time for yourself, you will find that you return more refreshed, which usually leads to more energy to put into your business. Taking time away from your business will allow you to approach your business from a new perspective. It will make you a better business owner – and your marketing strategy doesn’t have to suffer.

Candace Huntly is the Founder and Principal at SongBird Marketing Communications, an award-winning agency working to take organizational and individual brands to the next level. With a passion for all things related to creativity and strategy, she specializes in business intelligence, marketing & branding, content strategy & development, media & influencer relations, and social media. Basically, if you need to put your brand, product, or cause in the public eye, she will find a way to do it, while making the approach unique to you.

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Jun 28 2015

Don’t Feel Overwhelmed By Your Social Media Networks

As a business owner, engaging on social media can often feel quite overwhelming. With continuously changing newsfeeds, tweets and posts, and so little time to go through everything, it is very easy to feel frustrated with real-time online content.

Quite honestly, we’d rather forget about this part of online marketing too. I mean, there’s nothing better than looking out a window, instead of having your eyes glued to a (small) electronic screen. Unfortunately, our ideal job as a professional window gazer will have to wait for now.

Seeing as this is no longer the 20th century, social media networks have significantly changed how we as people communicate and do business. Whether we like it or not, social media is here to stay. No matter how uncomfortable or overwhelming it might make us feel, we have to use it to further maximize our business potential.

So, here are three easy steps to lower your social media anxiety:

Master One Social Media Platform At a Time

Each platform is going to have its challenges, limitations and advantages. It is important to take the time to understand each platform’s functions, as well as the company’s ability to integrate new features to better suit market demands. For instance, did you know that because Facebook is currently gaining ground on Youtube video posts it is ready to promote your video posts over you picture posts? Or did you know that Instagram users are 58 times more likely to like, comment, or share a brand’s post than Facebook users, and 120 times more likely than Twitter users?

Really mastering how to use a social media platform, and understanding its significant tech changes, is important to the well-being of you, your business and your clients. Don’t rush into it, take your time and learn through observation and research.

Scheduling is Your Best Friend

Quality content is Queen when it comes to social media. Have thousands of followers doesn’t guarantee engagement, especially if your content is not relevant, hard to read or outdated. This is why you should take a time or day a week to sit down and research trends, events or news related to your sector or field of business. Combine this with your company’s latest product events and promotions, and you should more than enough material to start scheduling posts for the following week.

By using tools such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social or Buffer, your life will be a whole lot easier. Schedule the time and day for your posts (and in some cases even the perfect target market), and forget about the days when you wondered if you have the time to post online.

Make Time to Engage with Your Followers

Social media is called ‘social’ for a reason. That’s why I like to recommend clients to set time aside to engage with their followers. Retweet, share or repost followers’ interesting, relevant posts. Interact, connect, follow-back and ask for feedback whenever possible. By doing so, you’re actively building brand-recognition and working towards customer loyalty and trust.

Most importantly, be respectful and have fun while engaging with others online. Give your business that unique voice that only you can give it.

Written by Marisol and Silvia Fornoni, Founders of JDC.

JDC supports socially conscious organizations with finding sustainable ways to tell their stories using visual design, engaging content and non-traditional media. We help you with anything from organizing fundraising campaigns to web design and social media management.

http://www.joint-development.com

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Dec 16 2014

How to unplug from social media for the holidays

The holidays are just around the corner and hopefully you’re planning some well deserved time off. Yet if you’re a small business owner it can be difficult to take the time you need to rest and rejuvenate for the New Year. Emails, phone calls and the ping of social media notifications can be hard to ignore. You also worry that your online presence might suffer from your absence. But it’s important to know how and when to unplug, without losing your spot on the social media hierarchy.

Schedule content ahead of time

If you’re not already using a social media dashboard such as Hootsuite or Buffer, now is the time to look into one. Dashboards make scheduling content easy and can act as an inbox for all those notifications. Schedule a tweet or post a day. That’s enough to stay alive online, but not so much that the responses become unmanageable.

Set a time limit

Set aside ten minutes a day to check the accounts; then shut it down and walk away. By setting a time limit you can reassure yourself that all is well, without taking up too much of your personal time. Check to make sure there are no emergencies but then shut off the notifications. If you use Hootsuite you can actually create “quiet time” where your notifications go silent. Better yet, turn off the phone.

Only answer urgent inquiries

Be smart about what you respond to. Is that question urgent? Is that issue an emergency? It’s easy to want to answer everything right away, but many of the queries you receive can wait a few days until you’re back at work. Only answer those questions that are truly urgent.

Allow yourself to let go

Too often we get caught up in the details. While one negative tweet might seem catastrophic at the time, in the overall big picture it’s not worth much worry. The same goes for checking the Facebook page and sending out that tweet. If you go silent for a few days, nothing terrible will happen. Your business will not fail and your customers will not desert you. In fact they’re probably not online either.

My past experience as a social media manager for a large charity taught me the importance of work-life balance when it comes to managing your online communications. While being online and listening is important, having the courage to turn it off and take time for yourself and your family is just as, if not more, important.

So this holiday, turn off the phone and enjoy the season. I promise your followers will still be there in January.

Happy Holidays.

Evelyn Senyi is the owner and chief marketer for Recurve Marketing, a Toronto-based digital marketing agency that offers creative, effective and affordable marketing strategies for Canadian small businesses and non-profit organizations. Follow Recurve on Twitter @recurve_ca and on Facebook www.facebook.com/recurvemarketing.ca.

Mar 04 2014

Maintaining A Professional Presence On Social Media

Social media has become a staple in both our personal and professional lives. It is a public platform for sharing our skills, views and expertise. But like all tools and inventions that help us it is not without its faults. Maintaining an online presence through social media is essential as it allows professionals to connect with clients, potential employers, and prospective customers.It is important to understand how to manage your digital identity, as web content is often permanent once posted.

Here are a few tips for maintaining your professional presence online :

1. Put your best face forward
Choosing an appropriate profile photo is essential to creating your professional brand online and solidifying your digital identity. Think about what style and image you want to portray through your photo.

When choosing a profile photo for social media profiles bearing your name, choose a clear and recognizable photo that shows your face. For profiles bearing the name of your business choose a photo that clearly identifies your company name or logo. Picture quality and sharpness should also be considered. It’s a good idea to invest in a professional photo shoot to get some head shots and other photos to use on social media.

2. Share content that is relevant to your industry
Social media is great for keeping in touch with friends and family but your professional profiles should showcase your skills and expertise. The best way to do this is by sharing content that is specific to your own industry or specialty, be it your own blog and website content or that of other industry specific publications.

3. Say Thank You
Your online presence wouldn’t count for much without people to read your content so don’t take your supporters for granted. As a professional you should always acknowledge and thank your followers. If you manage a Facebook page make it a point to thank your supporters and those who like your page. If you use twitter acknowledge new followers as soon as possible and thank them for joining you on twitter.

4. Keep it positive
Avoid posting any negative, offensive or derogatory content. It’s always better to stay positive on social media and avoid conflicts or disputes. Posting derogatory or controversial content and engaging in online fights can malign your digital identity and portray you in a negative light.

5. Be consistent
Consistency is key when managing your online presence. It’s best to come up with a social media schedule for updating your profiles and content. Don’t neglect your online presence as followers and supporters will notice your absence, and once lost followers can be difficult to win back. You can manage and schedule your updates and content using social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer. Both of these tools allow you to schedule updates weeks in advance.

Updates containing photos can be tricky to schedule and although Hootsuite allows you to add photos, Buffer is a better tool for scheduling content with photos as it posts the photo directly unlike Hootsuite which diverts users to the application’s page containing the photo.

6. Differentiate content between social media profiles
With tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite it’s easy to schedule the same update across many different social media platforms, however differentiation is important.

Organize your post content according to your target audience or followers on each platform. Do not link all your profiles together, although it may be tempting pairing your Twitter and LinkedIn updates is not a good idea. Try to come up with different content for each platform, so followers can be more engaged. Varying content amongst platforms will help you increase your reach as followers will have to tune in to all your social media profiles in order to get the full picture.

7. Don’t get too personal
Although social media allows you to interact with clients and employers, your professional presence should remain professional. Avoid posting any content that contains profanity, is controversial or is overly personal on your professional profiles.

It’s a good idea to have two separate profiles one for personal content and one that’s strictly professional. Your professional profiles should also be readily accessible by clients, customers and employers, but your personal profiles should be more guarded. As a rule of thumb do not post any content that you wouldn’t want the world to see. Before posting anything on either personal or professional profiles ask yourself : would I be alright with this content being up on a billboard? If your answer is no then don’t post it!

Praveeni Perera is the CEO and co-founder of Professional Edge Consulting a corporate training company based in Ottawa offering training and coaching services to clients around the world. She can be reached via Website, Twitter, Facebook or her Blog.

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