Sick Of Twitter And Facebook Yet?

by angela.booth on December 16, 2011

Someone told you your business needs a social media presence. You can see the sense of that yourself. What’s not to like about engaging your customers one-on-one?

All that tweeting and posting gets to be tiring however, not to mention expensive. If you’re paying someone $60 an hour, and they spend two hours a day on social media, you need to justify that spending.

If you can’t, it’s likely you’ll get sick of it, and will decide that “social media marketing doesn’t work for our business”.

Here’s the solution: get more from your social media marketing by making it part of an overall marketing plan.

Twitter and Facebook postings are ephemeral: their effect lasts an hour or two, no longer. You need to get more value from social media, by making it a part of your overall marketing, specifically, part of your content marketing. At the very least, this will enhance your search engine rankings.

Start by creating and maintaining a social media hub: a blog.

As Heidi Cohen suggests in this blog post, 21 Point Social Media And Mobile Checklist [Research]:

“Develop a social media home base. Since social media is driven by new content, establish a main outpost. ACTIONABLE MARKETING TIP: Use a blog because it’s social media and search friendly. Further, it’s a easy-to-use content management system (aka CMS)”

(Read the entire post, it’s excellent advice.)

Create social media marketing campaigns, focused on your blog

The search engines love blogs, and posts are quickly indexed.

A tweet or Facebook posting is ephemeral. You may pique interest, but unless you give your leads more information, that interest flickers and dies.

Maintain the interest, with appropriate blog posts, then funnel the traffic to wherever you want it to go.

Social media marketing is powerful, but only if you create campaigns, so that in addition to attracting and arousing interest in your leads, you get them to take action.

Celebrate. It’s the Merry Christmas Treasure Bundle!

christmas2011

Happy Holidays, dear Writer…

It’s time to present our Christmas goodies again, to ensure that you get the treats which will make 2012 your best writing year ever.

I’ve chosen your guides carefully: create the income you want, and work the hours you want… from your kitchen table, or your living room sofa.

Explore the Merry Christmas Treasure Bundle, for a wonderful 2012.

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After The Sale: How To Stand Out

by angela.booth on December 15, 2011

The holiday season is upon us, and you’re shopping, shopping, shopping… this is a wonderful time of the year to do a little market research.

Make notes on what retailers do well, and what they do badly.

Here’s what sellers to both consumers and businesses do badly: they forget about the customer once the sale’s been made. If you focus on the after-sales experience, not only will you sell more, but you’ll also gain a loyal repeat customer. It’s a great way for you to stand out.

Consider developing post-sales content for your site, and/ or blog.

Here’s some great advice. 5 Opportunities to Deliver Targeted Content Marketing | Heidi Cohen suggests you create:

“Post-purchase content. After-sale content supports the purchase process by showing customers how to utilize your products better. Offer practical advice such as showing customers how to put products together, giving them recipes or patterns or showing them how to use your products better.”

Also consider:

* Capturing email addresses so that you can follow up with customers. I haven’t seen any figures on this, but few businesses USE the customer contact details they capture. If they do maintain contact after the sale, they send out one or two messages, and then let the relationship die.

This is such a waste. Recently a copywriting client asked me to develop a social media strategy. Great idea. Then I discovered that the business had a huge mailing list — an absolute gold mine. I was thrilled because it made creating a strategy much easier, but was shocked that they had never sent out even one mailing to this list.

* Creating some content to send to the customer immediately after the sale, or to include with the product.

I love Apple’s products, and am always amazed at the though that’s gone into the product packaging. However, even Apple falls down here. There’s skimpy product documentation. Heaven knows it’s not difficult to include a little something with the product.

Consider sending or including some advice on how the customer can get the most from his purchase.

If you’re thinking “this will cost money”, perish the thought. You don’t have to shell out anything for printing costs — that’s what your website is for. Just include a link to an appropriate area on your site, after you’ve commissioned your writer to create some wonderful content for you.

This is the season to be jolly, and if you consider what happens after the sale, you’re laying the foundation of jolly profits in the new year.

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Twitter for Marketers: Two Essential Elements You Need

December 14, 2011

Are you marketing on Twitter? The good news is that Twitter is easy to use; you can delegate tweeting to a staffer and go about your business. The bad news is that Twitter will be woefully ineffective if you don’t pay attention to your setup. To set up Twitter effectively, you need to devote thought [...]

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Brand You: Be Memorable, Create Your Own Bio

December 14, 2011

When I’m guiding new copywriters I’ve found that they have more difficulty with creating bios than with anything else. They can’t see their own worth. This is probably why the branding services I offer, at Freelance Resume Copywriter | Executive Bio Writer | Professional Resumes, Biographies and Company Histories are so popular. I help you [...]

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Overcome Twitter Guilt With Buffer

December 13, 2011

I love Twitter, but it’s also a prime source of guilt. I tend to read more than I tweet, especially on Flipboard. Although I’ve used apps which schedule tweets, I’ve been less than thrilled with them. Everything I tried was cumbersome and boring, until I discovered Buffer. Buffer takes tweet scheduling, and as this post [...]

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Content: Do MORE With What You Have

December 12, 2011

It will be 2012 before we know it. It’s time for your annual website content review. You have great high-traffic pages, but you also have duds. You may be tempted to delete them… don’t. Remember that every content page is a gateway to your site, and you need all the gateways you can get. As [...]

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Page Titles: If Your Home Page’s Title Is “Home” — Ouch!

December 9, 2011

Want to laugh? Here you go… In this blog post, Copywriter: Hiring the Web Copywriting Services You Need | Angela Booth’s Creativity Factory, I said: “If you want to smile, go to a search engine and enter “home” into the search query field. There are four billion results in Google — four billion pages, all [...]

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Write a Book: Traditional, or Self-Publishing?

November 10, 2011

You’re writing a book. Perhaps you’re shopping around for a literary agent. If you are, stop doing that. Consider self-publishing. Not only will you get paid faster, you’ll also keep more of your money. This article, Meet The A-List Authors Of E-Book Self Publishing | paidContent, reports: “By contrast, when Eisler self publishes, he earns [...]

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Info Products Publisher: Make Money From Your Kitchen Table

November 9, 2011

If you want to make money online, info product creation offers huge opportunities. You can start your new business at your kitchen table. Create, promote, and sell — there’s little more to it. I’ve been creating and selling info products for a decade, and for most of that decade ebooks have been predicted as the [...]

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Kindle Ebooks: Visually Gorgeous, New Format Coming Soon

November 4, 2011

Kindle Publishing will soon have a new format: goodbye MOBI, and hello to Kindle Format 8 (KF8). Amazon says: KF8 enables publishers to create great-looking books in categories that require rich formatting and design such as children’s picture books, comics & graphic novels, technical & engineering books and cookbooks. Updates to Kindle Gen and Kindle [...]

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