We are in unprecedented times right now amidst the COVID-19 public health crisis, and a lot of us self-employed business owners are finding ourselves forced out of work, or waiting for the economy to pick up and the customers to flood back in.

It’s important to take a minute, take a deep breath and focus on what you CAN do right now, while you are staying inside to #flattenthecurve. In this video, I talk about how you can take advantage of the extra time in your business right now and get productive while you prepare for after the dust settles from all this.

Here’s what we discuss in this video:

• Audit Your Marketing: Website, Social Media, Emails, etc.
• Audit Your Messaging for Audience Focus
• Organize your Database and Prepare Email Marketing
• Do a SWOT Analysis on Your Business
• Create Helpful Content for Your Audience

Take advantage of this extra time you’ve always been waiting for. The world is sort of in a state of “PAUSE” right now and you can talk this as an opportunity to get organize, re-evaluate, and create some amazing content to take your business forward! Stay safe and good luck!

HERE’S MORE CONTENT FROM LEARN IT – DO IT:

FREE MINI-COURSE “How To Present A Proposal” : https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/how-to-present-a-proposal

LEARN IT – DO IT PODCAST: https://learnit-doit.com/podcast/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/learnit_doit/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/learnitdoitedu

The post What Should I Be Doing for My Business During COVID-19 Crisis? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In this video, I outline some content ideas you can be making right now, amidst all this COVID-19 chaos. Now is not necessarily the time to solicit business from your customers, but now is a great opportunity to build credibility, lend a helping hand, and stay memorable in the eyes of your clients.

Here’s what types of content we discuss in this video:

• DIY Video Content Ideas
• Email Content You Can Create
• Social Media Messaging

It’s important to avoid being tone-deaf and simply talking about yourself right now. Think of ways you can be helpful and inform or entertain your potential and current customers right now and you’ll stay top of mind in a positive way through this unprecedented time in our history. Stay in and Let’s DO IT!

HERE’S MORE CONTENT FROM LEARN IT – DO IT:

FREE MINI-COURSE “How To Present A Proposal” : https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/how-to-present-a-proposal

LEARN IT – DO IT PODCAST: https://learnit-doit.com/podcast/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/learnit_doit/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/learnitdoitedu

The post Content You Should Be Making Right Now appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Let’s Define Social Media

By now most of us are accustomed to using social media (at least personally) and we know that it seems important to be on there in some capacity.  We see it everywhere, we hear about it, read about it, and we certainly know that it’s here to stay, but almost all of us have zero ideas on what to do or even where to start.  

These are all frequent questions that we are asked during consulting meetings:

• Should I get a Facebook Page? 
• What about Twitter? 
• How do I get immediate business from Instagram? 
• I set up some accounts but that’s basically it. Now what? 
• Should I have a Linkedin because it’s about business?

Before we get into any of this, I want you to understand a realistic perspective that you should have about social media and what it can do for you as a self-employed business owner. 

What Social Media is.

It’s a tool that is used to engage with people. 

That’s it. Think of this as a tool and only a tool. 

It creates top of mind awareness among your customer base.  

Word of mouth referrals happen because of top of mind awareness.  When the timing is right for someone to need your product or service, they will probably talk to someone about how they are looking for “X Product/Service.”  Your followers will be more likely to refer you and your business because they are seeing your regularly posted content, which allows them to recall who you are, what you offer, and why you’d be a good solution for their friend in need.  It’s all about “Top of Mind Awareness.” If you and your business are at the top of their mind, they are MUCH more likely to refer/hire you.

For Example – You own a chiropractic business.  Your patient Jody loves your service and follows you on your social accounts.  You post about your practice and general body health regularly. Jody has a friend Taryn who was mentioning over a luncheon that her sciatic nerve has been bothering her and she needs to find someone to do some bodywork on her.  Jody will most certainly recommend you and your services and she’ll remember to do so because you were at the top of her mind.

It is a resource of information for prospective customers. 

When people go to look up a company, brand, product or service they usually type it into google and look for RELEVANT and RECENT information.  This is incredibly important to understand. You’re creating your own database for your brand. You get the opportunity to educate your clients about who you are, why you do what you do, why they’d want to work with you, and what overall solutions you can provide them. People like to use social feeds to see how legitimate a brand seems before reaching out.

It creates a brand voice and a perceived brand value.

Your brand voice is what will turn casual followers into fans.  People want to be educated and entertained and you get to choose how you present yourself via your messaging.  Perceived brand value comes when people believe something is valuable based on the way that it’s presented and understood.  We all know that a pair of gas station sunglasses cost $5 and we’re totally okay with the fact that a pair of Rayban Sunglasses can cost upwards of $200.  That’s brand value and it begins when people assume value and are 100% excited to be a customer.

It helps create brand fans and convert them into customers.

This is your chance to build a relationship with your customers and fan base through conversations.  The more you engage with your audience, the more meaningful of a relationship you create with them. When your audience becomes champions for your brand, you’ll certainly begin to see a lot of word of mouth (WOM) referrals and repeat business.

What Social Media is not.

It is not a gauge of your success

Do not use followers or likes as a business thermometer. We’ve seen it hundreds of times where our clients will wonder what they’re doing wrong in their business because they’re not amassing followers like they thought they would.  The internet is a busy place and it takes a lot of time and money to grow a social account. On the plus side, there are a lot of people there too, so be sure to regularly post valuable content and you’ll start to see followers convert to customers over time.

It is not the be-all-end-all of your business

Do not put all of your stock into social platforms.  You do not own your accounts and you can’t control what happens to algorithm changes, ad revenues, etc. A lot of people think that likes, followers, fans, and re-tweets are a measure of success and that is simply not true.  So much of these “metrics” are meaningless and the statistics hold no weight for your business. It’s much better to have meaningful conversations with a smaller number of followers than to have an inflated following of random people with little to no engagement.

It is not an immediate ROI

It takes a lot, I mean A LOT, of time and energy to successfully build and run a social account.  It will be extremely beneficial and valuable to your business, but not immediately. Again, initially, we’re looking for the top of mind awareness among our followers and we’re posting as an informational resource for prospective followers to read up on you and your brand.

It’s not worth stressing or obsessing over

Just know that you should be posting regularly and don’t worry about likes, engagements, stats or metrics.  To be clear, we’re not looking to post our valued content into the void of the internet for no one to see it.  You should be posting once a day or once every other day in order to keep your brand current and relevant. Regardless, it’s important to not beat yourself up about a lack of engagement or viewership on what you post.  Just focus on the goals and keep sharing valuable content for those that do see it…it will all work itself out over time.

Mindset

We often lose sight of why we’re on these social platforms in the first place.  The endgame with social media is to create more customers. That’s it. 

The problem that arises is that our ego takes over and we begin to seek external validation.  While doing this we begin to compare ourselves to everyone else, and it’s really easy to fall into the trap of envy and comparison. Likes and follows are not a metric that should be driving your business strategy.  Genuine conversations in comments or groups, email subscribers, and direct messages are how you can get the most “ROI” from social platforms.  

Unless you are a 100% Social Media brand and putting in 100% effort daily, it’s not worth the constant let down, especially while you’re in grow-mode.

That said, it is extremely important to have a social media strategy.  If you do not plan your content, implement a content creation strategy and distribution workflow, you WILL get BURNT OUT VERY QUICKLY!  If you think that you just need to sit down each day and write a quick post, I’m here to tell you that it’s much harder and more time-consuming than that.  You should be able to write out a month’s worth of content in one writing session and then use a scheduler to ensure that you’re not chasing your tail each day trying to keep up with your daily posts.

Even if you don’t have many followers at the beginning, it’s easy to overlook the people who are constantly interacting with you.  Don’t write them off, they are actually the people that matter the most. Each person that is a fan of your business is connected to at least 200 people.  Just remember that there is value in each and every person who supports your business. Stop worrying about who isn’t there yet and nurture those who show support.

The moral of the story.

Understand that this is a long game of creating a brand voice, brand value, and loyal fans of your brand.  Having an active social media account does matter in today’s landscape, but it should supplement what you’re doing offline and you shouldn’t get caught up in chasing likes or getting let down when your accounts don’t grow as fast as you thought they would. Keep yourself focused on providing value and getting new customers, both online and offline, and you’ll begin to see your business grow to new heights.

The post As a Self-Employed Business Owner – What’s Your Social Media Mindset? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In episode two, we talk with Alison and Toni of BlueLion, LLC an HR consulting firm from New Hampshire, about different ways to get more meetings with potential clients.  We dive deep into various sales and marketing strategies to help lead potential clients down the sales funnel. We tackle how to work around being a reactive service and advise on how to provide value and education to help potential audiences be proactive with their human resource needs.

Guest Bio – [from their website] “BlueLion, LLC is a human resource and operations consulting company. We partner with small to midsize companies in the New England area to assist them with their HR and Operational outsourcing and training needs. We pride ourselves on becoming strategic partners in an organization’s growth. We work to create streamlined processes, ensure compliance with all federal and state-mandated regulations, and give time back to key employees to focus on what is important to them in their business!

Alison and Toni founded BlueLion to be able to make an impact on small organizations in a BIG way! With over 20 years combined experience in HR and Operations their passion and goal was to bring BIG knowledge to small to midsize companies to help them grow, and have an impact on their future success.”

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.

Episode 2 Topic Summary

• Use language that speaks to the client’s perspective
• Always use solution and transformation based language
• 7 touches of sales and sales funnels
• Reactive vs. proactive services
• Content and Pillar campaigns
• Utilizing marketing content to help save you time and energy
• Email etiquette when you’re list building
• How to use email [properly] for sales
• Effectiveness of email vs. social media
• Auditing marketing and messaging

The Challenge & The Next 3 Steps

Alison and Toni do a great job of closing their prospective clients, but they’re struggling with getting a volume of sales meetings and are simply looking to have more meetings that lead to sales meetings.  In order to help them solve this roadblock, we created these next 3 steps to help them hit the ground running.

1. List all of the solutions and tangible benefits that you provide to your clients.  Put yourself in your client’s shoes and write this list from their perspective – how does your solution benefit them directly?
2. Using some of the solutions and language from step 1 – write a 1-2 min quick pitch video script that you can use to share with your referral networks and prospective clients. You can simply record this video using a tripod and a cell phone. And if you want to know how to up your game check out our course on “How to Write, Shoot, Edit and Share Videos for your Marketing”
3. Audit your current marketing.  Set aside a few hours where you can do a formal SWOT Analysis on your website, social content, print marketing and any other forms of marketing that are currently being used.  Once you have a list of your weaknesses and threats, you can make a game plan to fix them.   

Recommended Resources 

BlueLion, LLC Website – www.BlueLionLLC.com

“How to Write, Shoot, Edit & Share Videos for your Marketing” – https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/write-shoot-edit-share-video-content

SWOT Analysis Worksheet – https://learnit-doit.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=d9e305b3e7ab615f40dc49f64&id=eb58752b69

The post Episode 2 – How to Nurture your Pipeline to get more Sales Meetings appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Why did we decide to write our first course on “How to Write, Shoot, Edit & Share Videos for your Marketing?”  

The answer is pretty simple.  Professional video is pretty expensive — however, extremely beneficial.  A lot of business owners see the price of video production and immediately dismiss it — completely ignoring how effective it can be for their business.

In addition, every single one of us has the means to create effective video content with the device that is in our pocket right now.  By now, we all know the statistics that video marketing far outweighs plain text and graphics — but still, tons of business owners drag their feet when it comes to creating video content for their marketing.

IN-HOUSE TRAINING

For over a decade now, we’ve been producing professional video content for small businesses.  During this time we’ve also been hired to train marketing teams and employees how to create effective videos.  Most of those companies had us come in and teach the basics of how to produce a video in a four-hour training session.  By the end of the session, our students were able to film and edit a quick video for social sharing on their own.  

Once we knew it would work, we decided that we’d not only teach people how to film a video, but we’d focus on how to write and plan a video.  You’ve never watched a video just for its quality, right? You usually watch it because of its content. So we took our 4-hour, in-person video training outline, and wrote an entire course on how to write, shoot, edit, and share videos for your marketing.

We want everyone to be able to use video to help their business grow.  Why? Because we know how valuable it will be for you. There are numerous applications [testimonials, sales, promotions, training, reviews, etc] for video, and most importantly, it allows you to engage with your audience in a way that other media can’t.

CASE STUDY 1

During our Beta-Test group for the course, we sent the course to a friend of ours who is the head of marketing at her company.  Since her company was trying to incorporate more video content into their marketing plans, she asked if she could share the course with her team members, to see if they could learn exactly what they needed in order to make quality video content for the company on their own.  

After taking the course this is what one of her team members had to say.

“This course covers most, if not all, of the information I spent weeks going over in college classes that were very expensive. Pair this material with some practice making your own videos and you will have a recipe for success. – Liam M.”

Just a week after finishing the course, her team member Liam was able to create and fully produce a Team Member Spotlight video with interviews, B-roll, and basic animation that they were able to share socially and on their website blog!

Now the team can produce their own in-house videos for their daily social sharing and they’re seeing their social post engagement grow.  In addition, their C-Suite is very excited to jump into regular video production both in-house and professionally produced. That’s a Win-Win.

CASE STUDY 2

Another member of our Beta-Test group is a self-employed business owner who provides IT consulting for local businesses.  He took the course thinking that he could use it to help train his internal team and save himself some time repeating certain processes over and over.  While taking the course, a client of his needed to know how to set something up on their computer for a new employee. Rather than packing up and heading to their office, he decided to give video content a try!  Using what he learned in this course, he recorded his screen and walked the client through each step of the process and sent it over via email. The client was instantly able to see how to do the process on their own and now will always have that video as a reference when this particular need arises again.  This saves the business owner time and it saves their client money. Another Win-Win!

WHO IS THIS FOR?

Whether you are a self-employed business owner, a small business owner, or you’re in charge of a marketing department — you will benefit from this course.

We’ve broken our entire creative process apart into bite-sized pieces so that you can learn how to come up with ideas and organize your script and plans, all the way to how to edit and upload your video to different sharing platforms.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How to come up with good ideas for video content
• How to write a script
• How to plan your shoot
• What gear you need to be successful
• How to get good shots
• How to load and organize your footage
• How to edit your story
• How to prep your video for sharing

WHAT ARE THE DETAILS?

This course is entirely self-paced, meaning you can go through it as quickly or slowly as you would like.  Once you purchase the course, you will always have access to it, so you are free to take your time with the material and come back to it for reference at any time.

This course is filled with video explanations, written lessons, PDF downloadable worksheets, helpful visuals, and sample videos that peel back the curtain on every step of the video-making process.  By the time you finish the course, you won’t only have learned how to make a video for your marketing, you will have already made your first video!  This is why throughout the course we created DO IT assignments that walk you through each step of the video-making process with examples, visuals, and hands-on worksheets.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?

Our course, “How to Write, Shoot, Edit, and Share Video Content for your Marketing” is available on our website at www.LearnIt-DoIt.com/courses for $499.  This price includes forever-access to the course, and a 20-minute, ideas consult call with us, where we can help you generate video content ideas for your specific business to help you get started on your video making journey!

The post Enhance Your Brand’s Visibility with Video appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Did you know that:

• 72% of people would rather use video to learn about a product or service, compared to text
• Viewers are 95% more likely to remember a call to action after watching a video, compared to 10 percent when reading it in text format

Video can help you connect, engage, entertain, and inform. It can help you save time, make more money, connect with your audience, and engage your clients. Over the last 10 years, video content has become more and more popular and accessible, but often times we find that people struggle to come up with ways that video could help their business.

Have no fear, Learn It – Do It is here…okay, sorry for the cheese. But honestly, we are totally here to help you come up with ways to use video in order to help you and your business succeed. Below we’ve outlined 6 ways that video can help your business that we know you’ll love.

1. Provide Training for Your Team

Using videos for training can be incredibly effective and convenient. Video is GREAT for training because it showcases a clear visual, as well as a verbal explanation that makes learning easier and faster. If you have a training process that you’ve had to repeat more than once, think about ways you could make that a video and save yourself time, energy, and money!  

Recently, we’ve even utilized videos for small training purposes. Have you ever tried to explain something to a subcontractor or employee and thought “It’d be quicker to do this myself than to explain it?” This is a common problem for small business owners, but missing the opportunity to make this training process replicable and passive is a HUGE mistake. When we find ourselves in this position, we pull out our cameras or screen-capture program and rather than just doing the work, we record ourselves doing it and explaining the process. By the time we’ve completed the task, we already have a “HOW TO” training video ready to go for the next time this task is needed.

Think of all the time you’d save yourself (not to mention the more money you’d make if you weren’t wasting your valuable time repeating yourself) if you leveraged video to train your team!  

2.  Promote Your Products/Service/Events

This one certainly seems obvious, but definitely should not be overlooked. When you consider that videos increase people’s understanding of your product/service by 74% and adding a video to your landing page can increase conversions by 80%, there is NO reason to not have video content about your products and services.

Think about the details of your products and services. Outline why your products/services are special and create a short video showcasing each of them. Remember to focus on the features and benefits your products/services offer to your clients. This will make your potential customers more comfortable with your offerings, improve their trust in your company, and give them enough information to make a more confident buying decision.

3.  Educate Your Audience

In addition to giving your audience information about your products/services, you can provide them valuable education related to your industry to help build credibility and trust. For example, if you offer plumbing services, you might showcase an educational video on how to spot a problem with your toilet or a photographer might offer a video about how to choose the right outfits for your family photo session. This educational content will provide value to your potential clients and build trust with you and your company.  Think of ways you can showcase yourself as an expert in your industry and create video content that features your knowledge in an accessible way.

4.  Improve Client Process/Experience

This is one of my FAVORITE ways to utilize video. Your client experience and process are so important, and video can better prepare your clients and potential clients for a smooth and pleasurable transaction with you. As a business owner, it’s easy to think that everyone knows what to expect when they hire you, but the truth is, few people do.  

If you can create a video on what your process is, your potential clients will be more comfortable with you and more likely to hire you. Think about your client process or the process you follow when completing your product/service and make a video to explain that to your client. Go through each step and show what you’re talking about, so your client knows what it’s like to work with you. This will create a better experience for your client and build more trust with your potential customers.

If you want more information on how to improve your client process, check out our previous blog post here:

In addition to showcasing your process, you could also use video to prepare your clients. As a photographer, you could make a video to walk your clients through the sales process or select their photos from the session. If you work in the trades, you could create a video to prepare your clients for the day of the service; showing them how to ready their home and what will happen throughout the day.

Think of the processes you employ in your company and create videos to share this information with your customers and potential clients.

5.  Introduce Yourself! Connect with Your Audience on a Personal Level

You can’t be everywhere at once, but being on video camera is the next best thing to seeing someone in person. Create a video that introduces you and your company to your audience so they can get to know you, see your personality, hear your story, and learn more about why YOU are the right person and company for them.  

People want to do business with real people. Not a logo. Not a voice recording on an answering machine. Not an automated robot response in a chat window. A real person. Create a video that showcases who you are and why you are passionate about what you do for your customers. This is an incredibly powerful way to connect with your audience and stand out above your competitors. After all, no one can be you better than YOU!

6.  Client Testimonials

Lastly, but certainly not the least important: video client testimonials. Capturing a happy customer on camera is going to say SO MUCH MORE than any bit of text you could say about your product/service/company. We like to send out digital questionnaires to our clients to get their feedback and then select the best ones to reach out to and ask if we can grab a video testimonial from them. Most people, especially a happy customer who loves you and what you did for them, are more than happy to share their story and help you by recording a testimonial. You can either ask your client to film a testimonial and send it to you, or you can ask them to come to you (or you could go to them) and film the testimonial for them. This always works best if you make it super convenient for the client, and take the heavy lifting off their shoulders.  Sending a questionnaire beforehand helps them plan what they are going to say/what you are hoping they can help you convey.  

Bonus Application: If you plan on making this a part of your marketing strategy, you could always make a “HOW TO” video for your clients on how to make their own Testimonial videos for you! Oh yeah! Already applying two of these ideas <high fives>!!!!

So there you have it! There are many more ways you can use video to improve your business, make more money and save time, but these are a few to get you started. If you start implementing video content into your business we’re sure you’ll see a difference in your audience engagement, client experience, and bottom-line.

Now that you have some ideas on how video can help your business, it’s time to TAKE ACTION! Video doesn’t have to be expensive or daunting. In fact, you probably already have everything you need to make great video content for your business, you just don’t know where to begin. If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide to making your own video content, check out our comprehensive, self-paced online course “How to Write, Shoot, Edit & Share Video Content for your Marketing” and take your business to the next level!

What are other ways you’ve considered using video for your business? Stuck on ways videos could help your specific business? Drop us a comment below and let’s see what we can come up with together!

The post 6 Ways Video Content Can Help Your Business appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Organization is Key — Introducing Content Campaigns

We organize everything we create into content campaigns.

What are content campaigns?

Content campaigns are topically-focused streams of content that are distributed throughout your proper marketing channels. In other words, we like to categorize what we can talk about, write the content, make the designs, and then distribute it based on our overall marketing plan.

Sharing is Caring

Once you have your content campaigns, you need to let the world know about them.

Where do I share my content campaigns?

When creating a content campaign you should look to use this content across the following channels:

• All social media accounts [Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In, SnapChat]
• Email Newsletters
• Your Blog

What Should I Say?

Believe it or not, this is where it gets fun provided you have a plan to generate good content.

We suggest that you have yourself an old fashion brainstorm session geared around the following pain points and questions:

• List your services, products, skills.
• What are some questions your clients or potential clients may have about you?
• Describe the process of becoming your client.  Break this down and use it to educate your audience.
• List the industries that your clients or customers interact with regularly.
• List any industries that may be related to your company.
• What are some things that you could take pictures of that you do?
• What are some trivia questions your company could use to encourage interaction?
• What are some other things your clients could be interested in besides your product/service?
• Are there any contests or giveaways you could plan?
• What’s happening in the news or pop culture that relates to you and your industry?
• What’s happening seasonally that you could post about?

Take these lists and use them as inspiration to begin writing some posts. ALWAYS keep your audience in mind.

Remember: This content is NOT for you, it only exists to help your potential clients solve a problem, or maybe to engage them with laughter, knowledge, information or a fresh perspective.

Group Topics into Categories

Each category will then become a campaign. Each campaign should stand on its own, and you should try to run 3-5 different campaigns at any given time. These campaigns should be outlined and written with your specific audience demographics in mind.  

If you need help discovering your audience, download our Audience Profile Worksheet and get started now!

Examples of Campaign Categories

• Company Brand & Mission – Here you’d write all of your posts to highlight specific details about who you are and what you stand for while keeping your audience in mind.
• Product/service – You would highlight all unique selling points of what you’re offering while keeping in mind that the purpose of your product or service is to solve a problem.  Make sure that you aren’t just shouting about your product. Cater your posts to help your audience solve their pain points.
• Testimonials – Leverage the positive feedback that you’ve received by breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and share it!
• Event or Contest Promotion – If you have a time-specific launch for a promotion or event coming up, make sure that you create a content stream that reaches your audience on all platforms and engages with them about the event or contest.
• Blog or Newsletter – If you write a blog or newsletter for your business, you re-use the content that you’ve already prepared by breaking it down to targeted bite-sized posts.

These are just a few ideas to get your brain juices flowing. Once you get started, you’ll find that you may write down too many ideas or have too many categories. It’s never a bad thing to come up with too many ideas. If this happens, welcome all of the ideas and write them down. Once you’ve got them down you can refocus and start working on the most pertinent 3-5 campaigns that are the closest aligned to your current goals.

Make sure to keep the rest of your ideas handy because before you know it, it’ll be time to write some more content.

Broadcast Your Content in Your Brand “Voice”

In order to understand what your brand voice needs to be, you need to understand your customers and clients. You need to know who they are, what they are looking for, what obstacles they face and what would help them. Once you know these things about who you’re trying to market to, you need to write simple messaging directly to them.

Remember, messaging is not about what you want to say or want to hear, it’s about what your ideal customer needs to hear. You want to think about your voice as if you were having a conversation with your audience. Don’t shout your message on the screen, think about how you would say it in person and create a brand voice that really speaks to your audience. Consider the words you use, whether you are formal or casual, and what would your audience really want to engage with.

Again, it’s not about you. It’s about your audience. Write directly to your audience. And no, your audience cannot be everyone. Ever.  

If you need help discovering your audience download our Audience Profile Worksheet and get started now!

Pro Tip

I always write out what I think each post should say in an outline or spreadsheet before I work on any design. Sometimes if you start with design, you will realize that as you were focused on making things look cool, your message may have been ignored. Messaging is always 100% more important than fancy design.

Create Designs & Media

Video and images get far more traction than text posts, so it is silly to just post a plain text post. Go ahead and scroll any social feed right now and you’ll quickly notice that it’s an extremely visual place. This ultimately means that you, too, need to have visuals to coincide with your posts to encourage engagement. We are a visual society, and if you are going to go through all the energy of creating content, you should definitely try and make it as effective as possible by adding some sort of visual.

Pro Tip

We use Canva for all of our social campaign designs. It’s a brilliant, easy-to-use, web application that allows you to create custom or templated designs and resize them for multiple social media formats with just a click of a button. If you’re not using it, start!

Total lifesaver.

Create a Schedule

What do you do now that you’ve created the content for five social campaigns?

Schedule them, of course!

You should not be manually posting to social accounts daily unless you are posting about something that is happening relevant to a live event. There are so many online services, websites, and WordPress plugins that allow you to schedule posts for all of your social accounts from one dashboard. There are almost too many to name, so I’ll let you find the one that best suits you.

How to know what to schedule and when?  

You can Google search your demographic in terms of when they use the internet, social accounts, and email so that you can determine the best time for you to post your content.  

Remember that each post will natively receive less than 4% organic reach [without paying for ads], so never assume that “everyone saw the post and it’s all washed up now.”

You can (and should) certainly recycle posts, especially across different social platforms.  Just make sure when reposting content that you change the publish time and day of the week so that you can potentially reach a whole new audience.  

I know it can seem like a lot at first, but after you’ve done it once, you can set up an organization system that works for you and start churning out content!  

Pro Tip

We like to sit down a few times a year and organize our campaigns from our master ideas list, which makes posting consistent content a little less daunting and A LOT more effective than randomly posting when we remember to do so. Ultimately, the campaigns keep your messaging focused and working towards your marketing goals, rather than sporadic and inconsistent.

It’s time to get a coherent message for your marketing with social media campaigns that are easy to create and fun to implement.

Now, let’s get social!

The post Best Practices for Creating Social Media Campaigns appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

It’s Impossible to target everybody

We’ve heard people say it a million times before “Everyone is my target audience” but in reality, this just can’t be true.  It could be true that anyone could benefit from your product (although unlikely), but you cannot target “everyone”.

The word target is very specific.  

Think about it: If you are using a bow and arrow and let that arrow fly, and your target is “everywhere” how do you really know if you succeed when it lands?  

Could that arrow ever land everywhere? Of course not.

Marketing is the same way. This is why it’s important to remember that you cannot directly market to everyone.  Not everyone has the same interests, budget, needs, or desires. We are all individual people with individual thoughts. Luckily for you and your marketing, there are many commonalities among people that create niche audiences that are easy to market to.  If you outline who your potential audiences are with separate profiles, your message will be much more effective.

Your audience is the specific person or group of people that would be interested in your product or services.  

In some cases, you may be targeting your marketing to multiple audiences. In any case, in order to have an effective marketing campaign that is sending the right message, it is essential to know who you are marketing to. The easiest way to cater your message to the right audience is to create audience profiles for each specific type of customer you may have.

An Audience Profile is a fictitious character created to represent a buyer demographic for marketing purposes.  

This audience profile or character you’ve created allows you to think of your marketing material as a real conversation that will engage that target audience.  You should have an audience profile for each target audience you are trying to reach.

Who is your best customer?

Think about who has been your best customer, and not just in terms of profit.  Who is an easy sale? Who is your most pleasant customer to deal with? If you could get 100 of the same client, who would it be?  Think about all the reasons why you like them so much and why they’re great for your business. If you find that there are two or three clients that you’d like to include, but for slightly different reasons…great!  You should have multiple categories of “great clients”.

Details to include in your Audience Profile:

• Age
• Gender
• Geographic Location
• Ethnicity
• Values
• Interests/Hobbies
• Occupation
• Economic Status/Income Level
• Social Status
• Wants/Desires/Needs

The more detailed you can be in creating your audience profiles, the better off you will be.  It is sometimes helpful to assign names to each profile so that you can regard them as real people who you are targeting your marketing efforts to.  

Think about creating a conversation with these personas so that you are able to personalize the experience for your customers. The more you understand about your target audience, the more you can cater your content to suit their needs/wants/desires and solve their problems.

Now that we’re focused on who’s best for our businesses, let’s go make some quality content!

It’s Time to Take Action and Outline Your Audience.

The post Who Are We Marketing To? How to Find Your Audience. appeared first on Learn It - Do It.