The Insatiable Solopreneur™

Succeeding and Surviving as a Solopreneur

Archive for the tag “Marketing”

29 Aug 2012
4 Comments

Getting Found Online: 3 Behaviors Essential to DIY SEO

Being part of the small business community as not only a solopreneur, but also as a volunteer with the local chapter of SEO DiceSCORE and my town’s Main Street organization, I know my fair share of new business owners who have websites that aren’t ranking well in online searches and who don’t know how to otherwise draw attention to their sites.

It’s frustrating for them – to say the least. When you’re getting your business off the ground, you want and NEED to be found. But most startup entrepreneurs don’t have the cash on hand to hire an SEO/SEM expert to help them drive traffic their way.

I’m certainly no SEO expert, but I’ve learned a lot and have realized some favorable results through my own experimentation with my online presence “formula.”  And there’s no reason why you can’t economically (i.e. free) make improvements to your online situation. My advice: emulate much of what web hosting and managed services provider Dynamicnet, Inc. published its blog post, Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization. 

In a nutshell, blogging and social media hold the key to making others aware of your business, your offerings and your value proposition. And there are some core behavioral practices you’ll need to make part of the equation as well:

  • Be willing to do the hard time. – Setting up your blog and social media profiles takes thought and more time than you’ll want to spend, but you’ll need to suck it up and do it. The more consistent your brand is across each and every one of your points of online presence, the better your chances of being found when prospects are looking for someone who offers the services or products that you do.
  • Keep up keeping up. – Blogging and social media require discipline and ongoing attention. You need to be consistent in your efforts to engage and interact with your audience on those marketing channels. Luckily, your blog posts can serve as content for your social media posts, so you can kill multiple proverbial birds with one stone when you publish new blog articles. And there are tools (for example: Hootsuite, Buffer, Tweetdeck and others) that automate the sharing of content on – and simultaneously across – various social media.
  • Stick with it. – DIY SEO is not for the faint of heart. You may not see results the first day, or in the first week, or in the first month. Heck, you could be looking at a year or even longer before you actually get emails and phone calls from prospects who say, “I found you on Google.”  That doesn’t mean that your blogging and social media efforts won’t be driving people to your website or generating leads sooner, but getting found via organic search results can take much longer as a multitude of variables comes into play. And remember, not everyone can be on the first page. You might indeed need to hire someone to increase your chances of ranking there.

Recognize that getting noticed on the web won’t happen overnight. But with consistent effort to cross-pollinate by blogging and staying current with your social media, you’ll steadily increase the visibility of your business online.

 

 

Your turn! If you’ve done DIY SEO, what challenges and triumphs have you experienced? What strategies and tactics have worked best for you?

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Posted in Blogging, Marketing, SEO, Social Media and tagged , , , , ,
28 Aug 2012
8 Comments

Do Hashtags Make a Difference? The Results of My Hashtag Experiment!

In an earlier post, I shared my thoughts about using hashtags on Twitter. Rather than completely dismiss their relevance Hashtag imageand effectiveness based on my own personal preferences and preconceived notions, I embarked on a little experiment to find out if they appear to make any difference at all in attracting Twitter followers.

The experiment

For 4 weeks, I proactively used hashtags in all of my tweets (Before the experiment, I only included them when retweeting people who used them in their original tweets).

The baseline

For the two months prior to starting the experiment, my net new twitter followers rang in at 52 and 51 (5.80% and 6.28% of my total followers at the time) in those two 4-week periods.

The results

After my 4 weeks of proactively using hashtags, I gained 61 net new Twitter followers (6.38% of my total followers).

The conclusion

Although I admit that my experiment was hardly scientific and possibly could have benefitted from some additional time, I have to conclude that hashtags don’t significantly impact the growth of your Twitter network.

I should note, however, that although the overall number of new followers may not be affected, it’s possible that engagement is. Twitter users who search for conversations based on hashtags might prove to be more relevant followers who will interact more readily and frequently with your tweets. But I’ll let you run and report on that particular experiment!

For now, I’m back to using hashtags only in retweets when they appear in the tweet before me – and sometimes not even then. With Twitter’s 140-character constraints, every space is prime real estate, you know!

What’s your take on hashtags? Have you found increased following or engagement when using them?

Posted in Social Media, Twitter and tagged , , , , , , ,
05 Jun 2012
2 Comments

The Essentials Every Solopreneur Needs to Track about Leads, Prospects and Clients

Solopreneurs who provide professional services know that “who they know” goes a long way in bringing in new business.Where do your clients come from? There’s no sitting around and waiting for new clients to find us; we have to make connections. And that can be done in many different ways.

But as important as making connections is, so is keeping tabs on how those connections happened and where they’ve led. Without having a handle on where leads, prospects and clients are coming from and the outcome of those inquiries, there’s no way to really know which of your marketing tactics are working the best for you.

Tracking those things doesn’t require any sort of elaborate database. A simple Excel spreadsheet will do the trick provided that you record the information that matters – and that you keep up with it!

The essentials:

  • Name of the lead/prospect/customer (Company and contact name)
  • Email address
  • Physical address
  • Phone number
  • Website and Social Media links
  • Types of services inquired about
  • How did they find you? / How did you connect with them? (e.g. Chamber mixers, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, web search, referral from a client, direct mail campaign…)
  • Date when you first connected
  • Potential assessment (e.g. general interest/no specific opportunity, specific project opportunity, potential for recurring work, etc.)
  • If applicable, date when they became your client

Easy, right? It will take you 5 minutes tops to capture this basic information when someone contacts you about your services and even less to update it when a prospect converts to a paying customer. If you devote that small bit of time to the cause, you’ll have at your fingertips a simple way to quickly see where the majority of your leads – and clients – are coming from. And with that, you can begin to focus your marketing and sales time, energy and dollars on the strategies and tactics that have shown the most promise and results.

Your turn! How do you keep track of where your leads, prospects and clients are coming from? What marketing tactics are working best for you?


Dialing 8 Project

Consider joining the Dialing 8 Project! A forum for learning, sharing & getting the most out of your social media efforts for your small business.

Free images from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Posted in Marketing, Networking and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
04 May 2012

3 Things Solopreneurs Need to Market Themselves

Overwhelming is an understatement  when describing the amount of marketing tips and best practices that are availableMarketing board online, in books, at conferences, and from consultants, colleagues and competitors. As a solopreneur, I get dizzy pouring over all the tools and techniques that I should try. If it’s working for someone else, maybe I should be doing it. And so speaks the self-criticism from my internal marketing task master voice…”Why are you not doing that?! You should be!”

But should I really? Should you be?

As good as any marketing idea may be, it’s only as good as your ability to launch and maintain it. And that requires three fundamental resources…

Time – With many free online opportunities to raise awareness of your brand, generate interest from prospective clients, and build relationships, time may arguably be the most important consideration. Do you have time to start and maintain a business presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Quora, LinkedIn, or whatever new social site seems to be the latest, greatest thing? Do you know how much time the various social networks demand in order to gain traction and see results? If, “No,” seek out others who have been using the platform for at least a year and who are generating more leads, sales, and referrals as a result. Ask them what sort of time commitment they’re putting in. That will be a pretty good “real world” way to gauge how much time you might need to devote to the cause.

Money – While some marketing endeavors require an investment of time only, others can take a chunk of change from your business’s piggy bank.

Do you need a website? Absolutely! And if you haven’t got the skills to design one yourself, you’ll need to pay someone to do it for you. Costs can vary considerably depending on who you hire to develop your site and what features and functionality you want on it. There are also the repeat costs of annual domain name registration and web hosting.

Online advertising can run up a tab, but pay-per-click options like Google Adwords can be a viable way to reach prospects who are specifically interested  in the types of products or services you’re offering. If you’re looking to get a lot of bang for your buck, Facebook ads might be worth a look with their ability to target messages at users with very specific interests and in very specific geographic locations. Another plus about online advertising in general is that you’re not left wondering how many people visited your website as a result of your ad – performance reports are automatically generated to monitor performance.

Print marketing can get steep, but having tangible, touchable collateral or ads might be an effective way to differentiate your business as more competitors focus on online efforts. Factor in design, printing, and postage (if doing direct mail) costs into the equation. And realize that you’ll need to have a strategy in place to track the success of print marketing campaigns.

And then there’s outdoor advertising, TV, radio…Sure, it would be fantastic to be able to do it all, but there’s this little thing called “a budget.”

Know-how – Different marketing initiatives require varying degrees of writing skills and technical adeptness. If you can do it all – and do it well – on your own, fantastic! But chances are you’ll need to either invest some time to learn and hone your skills, or you’ll need to find professionals who can do a great job for you. Seriously consider outsourcing some of the elements of marketing to freelancers if you don’t feel completely confident in your ability to get the right message across or to implement them technologically.

What are your biggest challenges in marketing as a solopreneur? Do you do it all on your own, or have you enlisted the help of other professionals?

 


Dialing 8 Project

Consider joining the Dialing 8 Project! A forum for learning, sharing & getting the most out of your social media efforts for your small business.

Image: KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Posted in Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment
28 Feb 2012

Don’t Blame Marketing: 3 Things It Can’t Fix

There’s a pattern of thought that I observed during my time as a corporate employee. When a company is 3 Things Marketing Can't Fixfailing to meet its business goals, the assessments often go something like these:

“We’re not getting new customers because our marketing isn’t working.”

“Product sales are down. It’s Marketing’s fault.”

As a solopreneur, don’t get caught up in that mind set! Although ineffective marketing strategies and tactics might be part of the problem, other underlying business issues are probably the root cause.

No matter how well you generate brand awareness or target messages to your audience, you’ll fail in converting prospects to clients if you don’t have some fundamental business strengths behind your marketing efforts.

3 Things that Marketing alone can’t fix if they’re broken:

1. Your product or service lacks quality or is outdated – You’ve got to walk the walk if you’re talking the talk in your marketing. Is your product or service delivering what you promised in your sales sheets, social media and on your website? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes…have you ever stuck around after you’ve ordered something that didn’t live up to your expectations? If what you’re offering is sub-standard, make it better. Spend the money and time needed to bring your products and services up to speed so they provide value and are competitive in the market.

2. You don’t follow up on leads promptly – When opportunities happen, you’ve got to move on them – and quickly. I’ve already lost a potential new client because I wasn’t available to call him back within 6 hours of when he left a phone message for me! You’ll never know what a prospect’s tolerance for waiting will be until you’ve exceeded it. Don’t take any chances. Be vigilant in responding to inquiries Stat!

3. Your pricing is way out of line – You might be successful in leading prospects to your door, but it can do more harm than good when they won’t step from the outside in because you’re too expensive. I’m not advocating that you aim to be the cheapest game in town, but do some research. Find out what the going rate is for comparable products/services and what level of pricing your target prospects will bear. If you want to charge a premium rate, you darn well better demonstrate that your products and services are in some way superior and can offer value above and beyond what your competition is providing.

So, resist the urge to automatically blame your marketing approaches for lack of business. Certainly evaluate your efforts and adjust your course if you’re not bringing in new prospects, but also realize that marketing can only do so much. Getting prospects to notice you is just half the battle. Your success in signing on new clients and earning their business depends on your ability to respond to your customers’ needs with products and services that provide value.

What examples do you have of businesses or organizations that have blamed marketing when they should have been looking at improving other areas of their businesses?


Dialing 8 Project

Consider joining the Dialing 8 Project! A forum for learning, sharing & getting the most out of your social media efforts for your small business.

Image: nuttakit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Posted in Marketing and tagged , | Leave a Comment

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