Do people know what they can buy from you?

"Don't be too salesy." 

"Give your audience value."

"It's not all about you, it's about them."

These are the messages that you hear over and over about your content and they are true. You don't want to sound like a sales pitch, but you also have to make sure that you don't end up being the opposite (this is something we've struggled with ourselves).

While you don't want to constantly sell things to your audience, you also have to make sure that you're making it clear to your audience what they can buy when they're ready.

What do you sell?

How easy is it to find things that people can buy on your website? What are the things you want people to buy? Make sure that you have a list of several options that you can promote to people in your blog, on Facebook, in your newsletter, etc.  Keep in mind that the easier you make things for people the better. Whenever possible, instead of telling someone to get in touch to buy something, have a "buy now" button next to the product because people don't like taking extra steps.

For a long time we simply told people we could help them with social media and waited for them to decide how. It turns out it really helps to have tangible products that people can buy (like the newsletter course or the Simple Start program.)

How often should you promote your products?

You need to be careful about ONLY trying to sell things. What you want is a blend of valuable content (this should be the majority of your content) without forgetting to promote yourself too. While giving specific numbers for this kind of thing can be hard because it depends on your audience (as with everything) and what you're selling, a safe zone would be that 10-25% of your content can be purely self promotional. This doesn't mean that 25% of the time you're specifically trying to sell them something (though it could), but it could mean linking to newsletter sign ups, asking your audience for input or linking to your testimonials page.

Nobody engages

When you post links to your content that's for sale, people aren't going to be inclined to 'like' or comment or even share that content. That makes analytics particularly important. I had a client who was convinced that she shouldn't be posting links to her products, but when we went into her Facebook insights, the posts with the products were among the most clicked on content she had. While she was worrying that people weren't interested and that she was bothering them, her audience were rushing over to her website to find out more. Check your numbers to see how your audience is reacting to your content.

Give it a try

This week, promote some of your products on some of your social channels and let us know how it goes. You may be surprised at how easily people will buy something when simply given the opportunity.

Watching YouTubers doing it right

I may have a bit of an obsession with YouTube. It's a hobby and I love it, and I can chalk it all up as business research now that I'm writing this blog post!

In the year or so that I've found a lot of the big name YouTubers (those are the ones who make substantial livings off their YouTube fame) time and time again I've seen that most of them are doing a lot of what we advise our clients to do and slowly but surely it has turned into Internet fame.

I'm not promising internet fame here, but let's pull out the important pieces:

Great content

Good YouTubers figure out what their audiences want and they provide it. It also needs to be in line with what they want at the same time for it to be successful and for them to want to keep doing it.

Music covers are one my favourite things to watch on YouTube. High quality covers of recent popular songs are gold for a musician making videos (I make no apologies for loving Taylor Swift's new song. I even like the original!).

I could post examples of great YouTube content all day from comedy to musicians to cooking shows, but that would be too distracting so I'll just share one more. I made this meal and it was amazing and now I can't get enough of all the Sorted Food videos.

Consistent schedule

Most YouTubers have a schedule they stick to. Grace Helbig of It's Grace made a video Monday through Friday for years and has only recently gone down to three videos a week.  

Hank and John Green (the vlogbrothers) post a video every Tuesday and Friday.

Fans expect the content and if they go to the channel on those days and there aren't videos they are disappointed.

It's not fast

A lot of these people have had YouTube channels for years. It's take awhile to get to the point where they now make enough money to make YouTube (and all that it's brought them) their career, but slow and steady wins the race.

Opportunities come knocking

While a lot of YouTubers make money on their content alone, they also make money from advertising and from companies, such as Patreon and Subbable that have popped up to help content creators find ways to make money online. For example, Walk off the Earth gets a dollar from me every time they make a new video through Patreon. In addition to this, there are also lots of opportunities that pop up as a result of their internet success, including:

Book deals:

Opportunities to be on Broadway and Tours

TV show deals

Consistent quality content aimed at your audience is what helps grow your reputation online. Whether you're creating content to help business owners learn to use social media or you're just out to entertain, it always come back to quality content.

Leave a comment and let me know if you've seen anyone online slowly grow to huge success with the delivery of consistent valuable content. And also let me know if you have any favourite YouTube channels because I'm always looking to check out more!

Building relationships online - an interview with Rebecca Stanisic

I've been trying to do a lot more video this year and this week I tried a new type - the interview video!  

Rebecca Stanisic, from A Little Bit of Momsense and RebeccaStanisic.com agreed to let me ask her about how she has successfully built relationships online.

Rebecca started online with a personal blog and has since not only successfully monetized her blog, she also acts as a brand ambassador for several companies and helps other companies manage their social media.

As someone I have personally witnessed have so much success building relationships online, she was the perfect person to sit down and chat with.

If you enjoyed this video, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and to like the video, as well as leave a comment here or on the video! Let us know what you have found works well for building relationships online.

Is the #ALSIceBucketChallenge a case of slacktivism?

If you’re online you have surely seen people pouring ice water on their heads over the last couple of weeks. It’s one of the most viral trends I have ever witnessed and that alone makes it worth talking about.

What is the #ALSicebucketchallenge

Simply put, the ice bucket challenge is a challenge where people pour a bucket of ice water over their head and then challenge three friends to do the same within 24 hours.  If they don’t pour the ice water over their heads they need to donate $100 to XYZ charity. Friends of Pete Frates turned the ice bucket challenge into an ALS cause. Check out this video if you want to find out more about how it happened.  

Is this slacktivism?

The challenge states that you don’t have to donate if you pour ice water over your head. That means that you’re getting OUT of donating by doing this. Because of this, and the fact that there are definitely many people who are taking part in the challenge and not donating, many have started complaining about this challenge, suggesting that this challenge was a case of slacktivism - making it seem like you’re doing something for a charity without doing anything at all.

However, it quickly became clear to me that this was more than just slacktivism because slacktivism doesn’t raise money.  Since July 2014 millions of dollars have been raised for ALS. The numbers are so big and growing so fast that I can’t even keep up with them.

When I looked on Friday night ALS Canada was about to hit three million dollars in donations. On Tuesday afternoon, they were over eight million dollars. Pouring ice water on your head HAS helped - enormously.

Isn’t it a waste of water?

I admit, this argument bothers me. Especially here in Canada, we have no lack of fresh water. Do other people lack it? Yes, of course. But we can’t send the bucket of ice water to the people who need it, so, in my opinion, using it to help a different cause is a great thing to do. In places where they have less water (like California) people are being discouraged to take the challenge.

My favourite response with regards to water is from Matt Damon who I think does a great job of making serious issues fun with his organization water.org. He did the ice bucket challenge by using water from the toilets in his house. His toilet water is cleaner than a lot of drinking water is in other countries, making the clean water message come through without sounding bitter, all while doing the ALS challenge.

What made this so successful?

This is one of the most successful fundraising campaigns ever, and the reason for that is because it wasn’t started by a charity, it was started by people. People decided to do this and they challenged their friends. They combined this with something that is fun to watch (videos of people dousing themselves in ice water are funny) and easy to do (we all have access to water and ice). It’s a story, it’s personal, and it doesn’t feel like it’s driven by someone just asking for money.

I doubt this will be reproducible for ALS, but for now, they are getting more money in donations than they ever have before and if they can keep even a small percentage of their new donors engaged to give again in the future, this is a HUGE win for them.

What I would love to see is the world getting behind causes like this on a regular basis. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if influencers with as much of an audience as Mark Zuckerberg and Will Smith got behind a charity on a yearly basis? I have no idea what the next funny challenge will be or if we’ll ever see something like this again, but it has been fascinating to witness and speaks volumes about the amazing potential that the internet and social media has for doing good.

My turn!

I could hardly write a post about this without doing it myself so I took the challenge on with two of my kids. We also made a donation. Here’s the video!

Your turn! Leave a comment and let me know if you’ve done the ice bucket challenge, if you’ve donated to ALS and if you think this is a worthwhile cause.

Post by Lara Wellman.

Using social media for good

We have all read or experienced the negative side of social media: the bullying, the trolls and the negative publicity, but in recent months we have noticed the good side of social media. In particular, organizations such as Kindness Canada and Thank You Ninjas have shown us a more compassionate side. It’s easy for people to hide behind a computer screen and criticize companies or individuals, but what about the good things those same companies or individuals have done?

Compliment don’t complain

When we are angry at a department store or airline, it is easy to take to our social networks with our hundreds or thousands of followers and complain about them, but how often do you do that when a company goes out of their way to do something great? For every complaint that you tweet, why not send out two compliments? 

Become a part of the social media good

Submit a story to Kindness Canada. They promote kindness by asking their audience to submit something kind they did or that they know someone else did. By sharing stories of kindness they hope to inspire others to be kind. How nice. 

You could also send an anonymous “thank you” postcard to someone using Thank You Ninjas. It can be for something as small as holding a door open or as large as a kind paramedic who helped you out during a car accident. Thank You Ninjas believe that the more thank yous people send the better the world will be. They even list ideas on their website as to how people can secretly thank someone: http://thankyouninjas.com/be-a-ninja/

Think before you tweet

Before hitting “tweet” or hitting enter on that Facebook status, ask yourself if what you are sending out to the world is nice. Ask yourself if there is anyone that might be hurt by the message. If so, you might want to think twice about hitting that button.

Instead of using social media to broadcast a negative experience, use it to promote something good as well. Share the good things in life and respond to others who do the same. We all know there are bad things going on in the world and on social media, but there is a lot of good too.

If you are attending this year’s Social Capital Conference, you can start participating in social media for good by helping the Thank You Ninjas secretly thank people throughout the day. For more information on that check out the SoCap blog post about hem: http://socialcapitalconference.com/become-a-thank-you-ninja-at-social-capital-2014/

Do you know of any other social media accounts or websites that are designed to do good in the world? Leave a comment below and let us know.