The Ultimate Digital Marketing Bundle

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As an entrepreneur or business owner you probably know that you need to be online, but getting online with a consistent plan is sometimes easier said then done. Or maybe you don’t have all the necessary tools needed to fully implement your digital marketing plan? When you don’t have the tools and plans in place for social media and digital marketing, you can begin to doubt the importance of even being online.

Three big reasons you need a digital marketing plan:

1. Reach potential customers easier: For example, if someone is looking to purchase shoes they are more than likely going to Google shoe stores. If your shoe store does not have a website or online presence, then they may be overlooked by a shoe store who does have an online presence. Being online is your best chance to be discovered by a new client!

2. Showcase your products and services to a wider audience: Social media makes showcasing your products and services easier than ever before! With visual social platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest as well as the visual additions of Facebook and Twitter, posting pictures and even videos of new and featured products has never been so engaging and exciting!
    
3. Engage and build relationships with clients: Whether it is through exclusive offers to just your newsletter subscribers or contests only for your Facebook fans, digital marketing not only makes it easier to engage with your clients, but the ability to quickly respond to queries and ask questions directly to your audience also makes building relationships easier.

All of the benefits of digital marketing make it very appealing, but for some, it can appear too time consuming. It is for this reason that I created the ultimate digital marketing bundle to get you started. It contains a wide array of tools an entrepreneur or business owners needs to create engaging content on a consistent basis – on their website, through their social media channels, and in a regular newsletter.

What's included in the Digital Marketing Bundle:

• 7-day Business Planning Challenge – This eBook will help make sure that you’re ready to tackle 2016 with the right business plans in place.
• Simple Start Basic – This eBook is a step-by-step process for figuring out what kind of content you should be sharing online on channels like Facebook and Twitter.
• Monthly planner – Use this worksheet to plan your online content on a monthly basis.
• Blog planning worksheet – Do you have a blog or are you planning on starting one? What is its purpose and what kind of content will you be sharing? This worksheet will get you thinking about that.
• Email marketing worksheet – Are you planning to send email to your audience? This worksheet will help make sure you’re thinking through the kind of content and what platform makes the most sense.
• Editorial calendar template – Plan out your content ahead of time in this excel spreadsheet so you know what you’re going to say and when.
• Analytics template – Keep track of your numbers on a monthly basis to see what’s working and what needs tweaking.
• Daily social media checklist - when you're online, what are some of the things you can be doing to make the most of your time?

So, what are you waiting for? Get started with digital marketing with this value packed digital marketing bundle - it's only $27! To get started – click here.

Is the timing of your emails asking for an automatic DELETE?

One of the very first things I do every morning is check my email. (In fact, I do it while I’m still lying in bed.)

What do I always find? An enormous amount of emails!

Then I start deleting

When I first check my email and see 30+ new emails I delete everything in one mass sweep that isn’t from someone I know or isn’t a personal email. Anything that looks like a mass mailer, whether I signed up for it or not, gets deleted. I’m betting there are 50+ that meet the same fate on a Monday morning.

When I have that much new mail I just want to get through it, not take the time to read articles or find out about specials. And there’s no point in thinking I’ll get back to it later, because I know I just won’t.

First thing isn’t when they want to hear from you

Many businesses schedule their emails for 7am or earlier so that they’ll catch their audience first thing in the morning. The idea is that they’re fresh and that people spend time reading and catching up on things first thing in the morning.

And they might, but often not their emails. You’re better off skipping that mass email crunch time and waiting until later. When they check their email at 10:30 while they’re topping up their coffee and they only have a few emails waiting and they’re ready for a break for example.

There are no hard and fast rules

There really isn’t ever a rule that can apply to every audience so you need to play around with this. If you’ve been sending your emails first thing in the morning, try a couple at different times. My suggestion is Tuesday – Thursday between 10 and 3. Try one in the morning and one in the afternoon and then compare your stats.

Are you getting better open rates during one time over another? Or better click through rates? You can find out so much about your audience from analytics.

Leave a comment below and let me know if you find one time frame works better than others for your audience.

You've been reminded of your Facebook.com email; here's how to forget it again

Facebook often does things with personal data that irks people. Usually, they’re sharing it in ways that make people uncomfortable. But this week Facebook decided to hide data that some of us wanted to be front and center for the use of friends - our email address.

Whether you realized it or not, if you have a Facebook account, you’ve had facebook.com email for a couple of years now. This was rolled out as part of Facebook’s plan for world Web domination.

Within a few minutes seconds after Facebook launched this floptastic killer feature, we all promptly forgot it existed.

Earlier this year, Facebook decided we needed to be reminded of this valuable tool. That was nice of them, wasn’t it?

Now that you’ve got this handy dandy email address that you don’t want to use showing in Facebook, just how do you get your handy dandy, totally useful email address that you actually check to show up again?

How to hide your facebook.com email address (and restore your own)

1) On your Timeline and click on the About section under your avatar.

2) Scroll down to the Contact Info and Edit.

3) Use the drop-down menu next to the @facebook.com email address to change it to “Hidden From Timeline”.

4) For the email(s) you want to show on your timeline, use the drop-down menu to highlight “Shown On Timeline”.

Once that’s done, you should be good to go. 

Why did Facebook do this? There is no end to the speculation, but it’s surely not the last we’re going to hear about this. They wouldn’t drop this after such a bold move.

What are the implications for businesses?

Generally, this isn’t going to be an issue for your business unless of course you want your business address to show on your timeline as I do. There is a difference in the way Facebook messages are received when sent via email and conceivably you could have subscribers elect to use their facebook.com address for your newsletter. That’s where you might run into some problems with delivery.

Is Facebook up to evil, sneaky tricks? Not necessarily, but they are making changes that we need to be aware of all the time. 

Do you have bigger concerns about the email switch this week?

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Group Coaching Online - BETA Release!

Be a part of our brand new coaching group online at a fantastic introductory price -  increase your comfort level using the tools that can help you effectively promote and grow your business! Sign up for three months and receive:

• Support through a members only Facebook group to ask questions and learn from others.
• Once a month - One hour group conference call.
• Weekly tips and suggestions for moving your social presence forward.
• Monthly emails with suggested readings, exercises and assignments.
• Encouragement and accountability.
• A library of tools and resources.
• Exclusive access to new products first and at a discounted rate.

The first group starts July 1st - Register here today!

Blogs: Why you should have one

For many, the thought of creating a blog seems time consuming and more work than it’s worth.  We agree that if you won’t maintain it, you shouldn’t start it.  But we also really believe you SHOULD have a blog (and keep updating it).

Here are a just a few reasons why we think it’s time for you to take the leap:

1) Blogging is an opportunity to establish yourself as a leader in your field.

Blogging is a great way to share your knowledge with others. If you’re a professional organizer, show people how well you organize and tell them how they could organize themselves.  If you’re a physiotherapist tell them how to prevent injuries while doing sports or what the best ways to treat sore body parts are.  If you’re a restaurant, share recipes and show off photos of the amazing food and events that happen in your space. The opportunities to show off what you know and what you do are endless with a blog!

2) Blogging gives you regular fresh content to draw visitors to your site.

Why should people come back to your site? Do you have a reason to suggest that they do? With a blog you have a great excuse to keep sending people back - whether it be with links from different social networks or an email newsletter. Once they are on your site, you can lead them to other parts of your site. Your web site is your home base and ultimately where you want people to visit.

3) Blogging is great for search engine optimization (SEO).

Search engines are constantly trolling the web for new content. If your site is stagnant you get lost in the shuffle. Make sure you use key words in your posts; the kind you’d want people to search and find you with. The more new content you have, the more likely you will start ranking higher in searches.

When will you start your blog? If you already have one, please share the link in the comments - we’d love to visit!

5 reasons a newsletter is still a great tool

I often find that when I ask people if they have a newsletter I get a lot of squirmy faces and responses like

“people hate being inundated with emails and newsletters”

“*I* just ignore all the newsletters in my inbox”

“I don’t want people to feel like I’m spamming them”

My response is always that a newsletter is still an incredibly valuable tool for your business and here are 5 reasons why:

1) It comes to them

People are busy.  Just because they don’t have time to check out your blog posts or your Facebook page doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in what you’re doing, they just haven’t remembered to make the time to go and visit.  A newsletter puts you right into their inbox as a reminder to take the time.

2) Not everyone uses social media

Is your audience entirely made up of people who are ACTIVE social media users? Not everyone checks Facebook daily, not everyone reads blogs, and very few people go back to a web site without a good reason.  Those people will appreciate some news coming to them about what you’re doing.

3) You can make them feel special

Put something in your newsletter that can’t be found on your blog or web site, or put it in your newsletter before you put it online.  A special discount just for newsletter subscribers,  access to content before anyone else or newsletter only content not only makes people feel like they’re getting value out of the newsletter, it’s an incentive for people to subscribe.

4) You pick the timing

Relying on people to come to your site or to the other channels you promote your content on to “find” what you’ve written is less reliable than sending it to their email which more people check regularly.  If you are having a special promotion, an event, or any kind of time-sensitive topic that you’d like to share, sending it at a specific time can be a real bonus.

5) They’re more likely to see it

When relying on tools like Twitter, Facebook or Google+ to get your information out, you risk things streaming by or never appearing in their feeds.  Even though they may not open your newsletter, they WILL see it come through their inbox and decide whether or not to take the time to read it.

Here is a link to my first newsletter. In my newsletters I will recap the top posts of the month, talk about upcoming events and workshops I’m offering, and give a special discount for one of my services that can only be found in the newsletter.  I’d love it if you would sign up!

What about you - do you have a newsletter?