I'm delighted to announce that Your Marketing Specialist has been awarded funding to provide a 6 month programme of digital marketing support to businesses in North Yorkshire.
When I set up my business I wanted to be my own boss. To work when I want, where I want, with who I want, even wearing what I want. But the real story is:
Now, more than ever I'm seeing a need for one-to-one personalised marketing support for small businesses.
The internet is flooded with training courses, digital products, group programmes and masterminds. But when you have a specific question or challenge that's unique to your business circumstances you want to speak to a real human being about it, pre-recoded generic advice just isn't going to cut it.
Can your customers (or prospective customers) find you online?
The answer might depend on what they are searching for. There's typically 3 ways someone might search for you online:
• by your name/business name
• by your services
• by looking for an answer to a problem/question
And you might think that just because you have a website with your business name in the url and a page that lists your services that your website will magically appear on Google. Or you might know that SEO is a dark art and that your website is buried somewhere on page 10, but no one knows because no one gets that far. In fact 75% of people never scroll past the first page.
But don't despair, all is not lost Let me tell you about my very first self-employed SEO project.
I’m so over new year’s resolutions. Every year since 2015 I've set myself a word for the year. Sometime's I'll even have a focus word for the quarter to support what's going on in my life or business at the time. In the past this has included Strength, Elevate, Consistency and Outstanding!
This year I’m doing things a little differently. I’m going with Progress as a theme and making it more of an intention. Because it's not just about making progress, it's also about how I make that progress.
Are you using polls in your Instagram stories? They are a great way to engage with your follower community, and a quick, easy way to get feedback.
I was in a Clubhouse room yesterday and the host mentioned that it was a shame there wasn’t a poll feature to be able to ask the audience questions. But CH profiles link to IG, so a workaround is to ask the poll on your story!
If you are new to Instagram or usually have a team manage the account for you and you need to create content on the fly, then this tutorial will show you how to create a story poll in less than a minute.
Learn how to create a Poll in your Instagram Story
Poll Stories are a great way to engage with your follower community. And can be a quick tool to use when hosting a Clubhouse room and want to get some feedback on the fly.
From your profile you can click on the blue plus button on your profile photo if you haven’t already published a story today. Or go to the plus next to your username in the top right. This will bring up the create menu and you can click on story. That will open up in selfie mode, so really quickly you want to tap on create to give you a blank screen. Here we have a blank canvas and we want to click on the sticker icon up at the top in the middle. And now it does what it says on the tin we want to click on the poll option and now you can type in your question. You can also change the answer from yes or no to put in your own answers.
If you want to change the background colour, look for the circle on the top row and click on it to get pink and again to get a bluey purple, and my favourite is the orange. You can also drag the poll with your finger and click and drag into the middle if you wanted it to sit there. And you can also add your hashtags and other stickers as required.
The Maximise Your Instagram training will take you through the tools and features available to businesses to increase your digital presence, attract customers and make sales.
You'll learn:
● What makes a good Instagram profile
● The different types of posts you can use
● What hashtags are
● How to get more followers
● How to create engagement
● How to nurture followers into buyers
Kind isn’t often a word used to describe marketing. And yet it was the concept of businesses being kinder in their marketing that inspired me to start a podcast exactly 2 years ago today.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I can make a positive contribution to the Corona situation. I have massive respect for anyone who has volunteered as a support worker in the community, accepted the recall and gone back to work in a front line role, or joined the ranks of essential workers in supermarkets, on farms or as delivery drivers.
I am fortunate that my business functions remotely, that I work with a company who has switched their production to make essential products in the fight against the virus. And I am working with many businesses to maintain their visibility, build their pipelines and prepare a strong foundation to leverage from post-Corona.
We can’t all be Dyson and start manufacturing ventilators, and although we’ve got gin distilleries and perfumeries producing hand sanitiser, fashion houses making hospital gowns and masks and cosmetics companies creating medical grade disinfectants. We can’t all shift to Corona related products or services.
But we can all work on our marketing. Even if our business is closed.
