Show Summary

In a previous episode we had a great, inspiring, guest Dr. Joyce. She’s called the dream maker because she makes dreams come true. We had to have her back because she does much more than that. We want to continue the conversation but get her involvement on Twitter.

Twitter

Dr. Joyce works Twitter. She looks for interesting things to put up there. She puts up positive things that people like such as art, photography, food, travel, music and nature. People don’t know how to use Twitter. People post negative things, blatantly try to sell to you, do direct marketing and even show naked pictures which is just wrong and some of it isn’t pretty.

Followers

Dr. Joyce has over a million followers on Twitter. That sounds unbelievable but it’s not when you think about how hard she works. A lot of people are lazy and don’t want to take the time to go find an interesting article, put it in a bitly and put it up so people can go to it and read it.

You have to get involved on all the social networks. On LinkedIn you have to write articles and people will comment on them. That’s how you get to know people, by messaging back and forth. Dr. Joyce doesn’t do messages on Twitter because you can’t possibly direct message a million people. She sends them to her website and tells them to message her if they want her to answer them.

Finding the time

A lot of entrepreneurs don’t have enough time to go find interesting articles, not related to their business, and Tweet them to share themselves. What you do is re-tweet. If you put up an article and I liked it I would re-tweet.

Dr. Joyce helps people get followers by following them on their behalf for a small monthly fee. That has worked wonders because she has taken people from 7,000 to 30,000 followers. She doesn’t get fake followers, 99 percent of them are real. So when she follows someone they get higher numbers because she is giving them people she worked hard to get.

Dr. Joyce has a very busy schedule too. What she does is get up an hour earlier every morning and stay up an hour later at night just to do Twitter. You don’t have to not be busy to do Twitter. In fact with Twitter you will be busier because people will find you. Dr. Joyce has received offers to speak at organizations around the world for high fees and these offers came from Twitter.

Quick tips

Put what you find out people are interested in. If someone you’re following is a photographer then he’s interested in what other photographers are doing. So you go to photographer on the top and you search and you follow those people. You figure out which ones they might be interested in and put up a tweet just for them.

Instead of the amount of followers it’s the amount of good followers you have. On Twitter you could take away 50-70 percent. They aren’t real. They signed up, put up one Tweet and disappeared. You want to get to the percentage that are real, that have a message to give that you like.

Contacting Dr. Joyce

Dr. Joyce website is www.DrJoyceNudson.com

 

Show Summary

One of the best things you can do in marketing is blogging. You can do it through writing content or even through short audio or video podcasts. Today we’re going to talk about writing content. Blogging is a low cost form of marketing. If you aren’t blogging you are missing out. Today I want to share with you some of the benefits of blogging. Don’t let the word blogging scare you. It doesn’t have to be a lot of work.

Why you should be blogging

Blogging is not only a low cost form of marketing; it’s a subtle form of advertising. You’re going to share all kinds of information so it’s a chance to do a soft sell. People come looking for information on whatever it is you do and you’re going to guide them. Think back to what you didn’t know before you got started. That is who your clients are. By sharing information your soft selling but it also positions you as an expert in your field so you’re accomplishing a lot.

Blogging has to be on your own site. I’m going to defer guest blogging to a later episode. You want to blog on your site and later we’re going to take some of that content, repurpose it and use it to bring traffic to your site.

SEO

If you write a blog on your own site and follow the rules and learn how to do it the biggest thing that’s happening is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). When people Google questions search engines are going to find you and show your blog as the answers to those questions. Google is going to help bring you visitors and that’s huge.

Hashtags

You don’t have to use hashtags in blogging. Google is going to look at the entire article, what words we use the most and the title. It is looking for keywords.

What’s the question?

When you write a blog you want to start with what’s the question? What are the top problems your audience has? How can you help them? In doing that and writing those articles you’re going to flood them with information and when those questions come up they will find you. You will get different audiences based on the questions they asked.

Influence marketing

In marketing today there is what’s called influence marketing. Advertisers find people who blog about a certain subject and pay them to blog about their products.

Empowerment marketing

We can’t push one single item or we will be a commercial. When you share from knowledge you’re guiding the person. I call that empowerment marketing. You are empowering the consumer to make the decision that’s right for them. At the end if should be obvious it’s you but you have helped them gain the knowledge. You’ve positioned yourself as an expert in the field, you have humanized the brand, you have engaged the person and they found you. Those things alone level the playing field.

Blog length

A good rule of thumb is 600 to 1,000 words. Nobody is going to sit there and read a ten page article. You are writing something that everyone wants to get the information out of quickly.

 

Show Summary

As an entrepreneur, I must admit my days sometime get bogged down with some of the most tedious things in the world. They frustrate me because I don’t want to do them and they aren’t the things I’m the best at. You may not be in a position to hire someone full time yet; maybe you don’t have a whole team supporting you yet, so I’m going to tell you the best thing you can do. Your first hire should be a VA.

What is a VA?

A VA is a virtual assistant. It’s easy to say “hire someone full time” but when you’re building a business you don’t have the budget. It takes a lot of work to find the right person and a lot of things go with hiring somebody. Hiring a virtual assistant does so many things.

The biggest thing I can tell you as an entrepreneur who is building their business is focus on what you do best and delegate the rest. Make a list of all the tedious things you have to do every day. Write down everything you could use a virtual assistant for. It might be answering phones, handling your inbox, helping set up the SEO, proof reading, booking appointments, creating spreadsheets etc.

It doesn’t have to be one VA. You can do it on an hourly basis or a task basis etc. A VA doesn’t mean the person is across town and I have to interview them. I actually have a team of people across the globe that work with me every day.

Fiverr

Transcription is something we need a lot, but not every day. I went to a website, found someone I love and locked them in and use them all the time (I actually have two of them that do it). The website is Fiverr.com. Everything on there is five dollars. You can get graphics done; have someone touch up your SEO, etc. A lot of them don’t have much experience but some of them have college degrees. A lot of them are in other countries so five dollars is a lot more to them than it is to us. Someone in Jamaica does my transcription and I pay five dollars for every ten minutes of audio. For an hour long show for twenty or thirty dollars you can have somebody transcribe it perfectly.

Upworks.com

Another great one is upworks.com. I found someone there who is phenomenal. You can find something in almost every category in any country. You might want a publicist or someone who is good with package design. You can find people to do video voice over’s, people to record videos for you, people to do testimonials, people to visit your website and get the likes up. The key with upworks is because someone is working remotely you start worrying about how can I control them? If I hire an employee 40 hours a week I have to take care of all the taxes etc and with these services I don’t have to. I also don’t have to keep them busy. They are on a clock to do a project. You can do flat rate per project or ongoing.

 

Show Summary

Today we’re going to talk about some of the types of Facebook posts you can do quickly to get the most engagement out of them and get the most out of being on social media. You might have a lot of followers but they aren’t all interactive. The same applies even on your personal page with your friends. You can have a lot of friends but you aren’t going to see all their posts because on Facebook they look to see who is interactive. The more someone likes and comments the more it’s going to show up in additional newsfeeds of your friends or followers and grow organically.

Five Types of Facebook Posts

* Humorous or inspirational quotes. Have a lot of these stored in a word document so you can copy and paste when you’re in a hurry. These are the easiest thing to post because they bring a smile to people’s faces and they like that.

* Questions. For example “I’m going to the beach this weekend, what are you doing?” Your followers just learned a little about you and they can share what they are doing too.Ask yes or no questions. If you are launching a new product or anything you can post “do you like A or B better?” You will get interaction as well as great feedback from your customers.No matter what people post if nobody comments or likes it Facebook says it’s not that important and we’re not going to show it to that many people. You will often see questions or comments where people will say do you like this or that? It’s hot out here today, is it cold where you are? Everytime people respond and comment the interactions go way up. If they just like it it’s rated at one level, comments go even further and if they share it on their page it’s even stronger.

* A picture is worth a thousand words but on Facebook it’s worth a million. You can use different sites to create a lot of graphics. I use one called Canva. In seconds I can create an image and hit a button and it will automatically resize it to fit all the different social media. Don’t go to Google and steal images. You want images you took or have the rights to. On our website we list a couple places where you can download some for free and some for $1.00 a piece. Don’t steal other people’s images or you can get in trouble. Imprint your logo (subtly) at the bottom of the picture.

* Videos are another quick one. Do some demos of your product, some heartfelt videos of you describing you what you do, your elevator pitch or share tips. Keep them in the 1-3 minute range (1-2 is preferred).

* Hold contests (such as a Trivia question) where people can get some kind of benefit from answering.Call to action. We talk often about 80 percent of the time being engaging and 20 percent selling. What do you want the person who is following you to do next? The key is to be engaging and have fun.

Show Summary

We have an inspiring guest today, Dr. Joyce Knudsen. She’s an entrepreneur who changes people’s lives. They call her the dream maker because she makes people’s dreams come true.

About Dr. Joyce

The main thing Dr. Joyce does is inspire people to do things they don’t think they can then walk them through the process of how to do that.

Example

Dr. Joyce helped a professor at Vanderbilt who was smart and had everything except she didn’t have the right look. She looked more like someone going to the store on a Sunday in her slippers than a professor at Vanderbilt. Dr. Joyce helped her with her outside appearance by taking her to a beauty shop and taking her shopping. She also taught her things to say and do in the communication world that would get her even further than she already was. When Dr. Joyce was invited to be on a talk show in Nashville she invited her to come with her. It was great; she was beaming and had so much more confidence.

Aha moment

Dr. Joyce’s “aha” moment started when she was a little girl. She came from a poor family with seven children. They were not given opportunities. She learned that sometimes the things we can’t change end up changing us. She decided she wanted to become someone who could help people look and feel great so they could accomplish what they wanted by getting that other stuff out of the way.

Biggest obstacle

The biggest obstacle for Dr. Joyce was money. Her parents sent her to beauty school because there wasn’t money for college. She would work a year and go to school for a year and did this until she graduated. She didn’t get her PHD until she was 52. She wasn’t going to stop. She kept going and learning because that’s what you need to do if you want to keep being successful.

Advice

You need to connect with the people that you’re talking to. People like Dr. Joyce because she connects with them, she cares about them and she wants to help them. Everyone else is either trying to sell you something or trying to talk you into something they are doing. She doesn’t do any of that. Everything she says is about trying to sell her. When people like you they will buy from you. The first thing is you have to form that relationship so they will like you, otherwise they don’t even know you. Just be real and be who you are and people will like that person.

Fear

Dr. Joyce is vision impaired so she’s not supposed to be doing anything she is doing. She’s been doing it since she was two and hasn’t stopped. What good does it do to feel sorry for yourself? Around 80 percent or more people don’t have good self esteem. A lot of people let the negative or fear of how they will be perceived get in their way and they just need to overcome that. No one is going to come to you and change things; you have to make the change yourself.

Contacting Dr. Joyce

Dr. Joyce website is www.DrJoyceNudson.com

 

Show Summary

Social media is critical to building your business, but there are so many mistakes people are making without realizing how they are harming their business.

Five Social Media Mistakes

* Don’t disappear from your social media. Don’t ignore social media. If you can’t do all the social networks then don’t be on them. Get on the ones where your ideal customer is and then be active and have fun on a couple of the networks. You don’t have to be everything to everybody.There is no point in setting up a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever networks you choose to be on if you’re not going to be active. On Facebook you do not see something from every single friend in the newsfeed, there is no way you could. Facebook will only show posts from someone who is interacting with you. If you stop posting on your business page and come back after a few months it’s going to take awhile to build up that interaction again.

* Don’t always be selling. Everybody in business gets so caught up in trying to sell. People on social media don’t follow you because they want to buy from you; they follow you to learn something from you. When you’re posting your engaging them and teaching them new ways to use your product. They come for the social aspect, not to see an ad. If you’re going to constantly promote and try to sell you are going to lose followers faster than you got them. Don’t constantly sell. 80 percent of what you post should be engaging and fun and 20 percent should be selling.

* Publishing boring content. Don’t bore people with too many selfies. Your family might want to see them now and then but in general they are going to be boring after you have seen a couple of them. If you want to post a picture do something funny. If you make it fun people are going to be more interested. They say a picture is worth a thousand words but in social media it’s worth a million.

* Don’t be too corporate. Don’t try to be too formal. It’s a social network. In the old days if you were an entrepreneur you always wanted to sound big business so people would want to do business with you. Today it is reversed. You want to be personal. People don’t want to do business with big companies anymore; they want to do business with people they can relate to.

* Not replying and responding. When someone makes a comment on one of your posts, like it and let them know you saw it and that you appreciate them. You might want to make a comment now and then. You don’t have to comment on every single one, that takes a lot of time, but a simple click takes seconds.

Final word of advice

When you’re in a hurry say thank you or hit a like but now and then go out of your way to those who are dedicated to you. How would you feel if it were the other way around? Interact with your follows and clients and when posting check the grammar and spelling.

 

Show Summary

Today I want to share with you how to get started with Pinterest. You might think of Pinterest as a fun place to go for recipes and looking at different DIY’s but it is one of the greatest places to go to get new clients and get them engaged with you and convert them to actual customers who buy your product or service. Each of the social networks has their reason for being but Pinterest is one of my favorites for converting to actual purchases.

87 percent of the Pinterest audience is female. Women make most of the buying decisions. Women trust Pinterest more than the users of Twitter and Facebook. 47 percent act on Pinterest offers versus 33 percent with Facebook and 31 percent with Twitter. While you still get a great response on Facebook it’s significantly higher on Pinterest.

How to get started

* Go to business.pinterest.com, follow through the questions and set up your business

* It will ask for a user name so pick one that’s close to your website name or business name. It’s limited to 15 characters so you may have to abbreviate it.

* Use the elevator pitch in the about section like we’ve talked about in other segments.

* Put your website address and links to your other social media accounts so when people come to your Pinterest page they can quickly link over.

* Get an 800x800 graphic pixel size cover. It’s like a billboard so put the benefits of your company. Visit our website for ways to get that done. You want professional graphics.

Boards

When someone goes to Pinterest they will see your billboard across the top and underneath that they will see five boards. A board is like a wall on Facebook. You can create five different boards, each one with a different topic. You can have many boards but when someone comes to your page they will see five across their horizontally and have to scroll down to see others. So these are the five most important ones.

Five board suggestions:

* About you. This is where you put anything that shows off your personality and fun things about you that let people connect with you on a personal level such as quotes, hobbies, etc.

* Things of interest. These are things you have found on Pinterest that you think might be of interest to your clients.

* Around town. If you’re a local business this is perfect. Start posting things regarding local businesses, restaurants, charities, fun things to do and events.

* Tips, fun ways or benefits of using your product or service. This is just different fun ways of whatever it is that you do. Give different tips on how they can get the most out of it.

* Business side. This is where you put the products or services you offer.

Tips

* The Pinterest graphic has to be beautiful, eye catching and professional.

* Write a description under the graphic

* Start with a benefit, grab their attention.

* Use hash tags and keywords they will be searching for

* Link the pin to your website.

* Start getting followers. Email your database email system and let them know you are on Pinterest. Announce it in the newsfeed on Facebook.

 

Show Summary

Twitter may not be one of the social media networks you’re on. When people mention social networks they often think of Facebook or Instagram but Twitter is great for business to business, expanding your audience and reaching out. Not being on Twitter is a mistake. I invite you to get on Twitter if you don’t have an account yet. I’ll admit it’s hard to follow but get on there and you’re going to have a blast in no time.

Go to Twitter.com and register your company. Go through the steps and set up your company. It will ask for a user name and you want to choose on that’s similar to your domain name or your business. You do have a limited number of characters so you may have to abbreviate a little or play around with the name.

Graphics

Create your graphics and make them look professional. There are two graphics here:

* Profile picture. It’s a 400 x 400 pixel. Every time you tweet that’s what people will see.You want it to be associated with you and branded with you but don’t just use your logo. If you put your logo it looks too corporate. Create a graphic that has you in it. You might also include your logo in there or a banner or bar with colors that tie into your website.

* Cover picture: This is a 1500 x 500 pixel. When people click on your profile picture it will take them to the top of your Twitter page. This is your cover or main banner across the top. That’s where you want to put more information about your company, different awards or whatever will show who your company is.

Setting up a Twitter page

* Fill out information about your company

* Use the elevator pitch we created in a previous segment

* Make sure to list your website URL so people can link over to your website

Building followers

* Post inspirational quotes that are related to your business and that will inspire people.

* Continue tweeting. It doesn’t have to be every day but don’t go weeks without it.

* A website called Tweet Juke Box can be set up to post an endless supply of great quotes

* Use the right hash tags and don’t get crazy with them. Use hash tags people are looking for. The website ritetag.com lets you check different words and see how they are doing in the hash tags.

* When people follow you, follow them back. This is common courtesy and it helps you get more followers. If you don’t like what they post or they don’t post often you can always unfollow them later.

* See who is following your competitors and the influencers in your field. Go through that list and start following those people. You will find a lot of them will start following you back. A great website that helps with that is crowdfire.com. They will help you find influencers in your field so you can start following people.

 

Show Summary

Our guest today is Andrea Donsky. She is a dear friend of Lisa Davis and co-host with her on Naturally Savvy Radio. She’s the creator of the fantastic websites naturallysavvy.com and thehealthyshopper.ca

About Andrea

Andrea runs two companies in a natural and organic world. The first one is www.thehealthyshopper.ca which is a coupon book for natural and organic products based in Canada. They give them out in health food stores across the country.

She also runs www.naturallysavvy.com which targets the U.S market. They educate people on how to live a healthier lifestyle. It’s about making better choices and finding products that have cleaner ingredients.

Andrea’s “aha” moment

Andrea went to school to become a nutritionist because she was having a lot of stomach issues. She started thinking that she was doing so much research and reading she could not get her hands on enough information to really change her life. She decided if she was going to back to school and change her life why not help others as well and look at the bigger picture? She realized it wasn’t about her. It was about everyone around her that were eating foods everyday that they could be making better decisions about.

Book

Andrea has a book Unjunk your Junk Food: Healthy Alternatives to Conventional Snacks

Biggest challenge

When they started their coupon book 16 years ago in the year 2000 it was a new industry and no one was really couponing yet. It was a big challenge teaching companies that they needed to offer coupons for organic and natural products, especially because products are very expensive in Canada. They also had the challenge of educating retailers, the health food stores who carried the coupon books. Getting the word out about the coupon book was an additional challenge.

Advice

Andrea has a note on the back of an old torn up business card of her husband’s from 16 years ago. When she started her company 16 years ago a woman passed the mantra along to her and said “don’t give up, this is your passion, this is meant to be, do it.”

The mantra is “My glorious future my heart is open to you. Please come sit in my heart and ____. Thank you for ____.”

For the first two years Andrea carried that card with her and said that mantra every day. It helped ground her and bring her back into the present. It helped to remind her why she was doing what she was doing.

Goals

They are a media company that is about getting the word out and educating people. They are an online company and are now also going into the TV realm across the U.S and Canada. Their goals are to keep growing the TV part and the media part and continuing to educate people on living a healthy lifestyle.

Contacting Andrea

Andrea’s website is www.naturallysavvy.com and they are naturallysavvy on all the social media.

 

Show Summary

Today we’re going to talk about setting up a business page on Facebook. You probably already have a personal page but it’s important to set up a business page. A lot of people aren’t comfortable sharing business on their personal page and probably shouldn’t anyway. You don’t want people getting personal information you don’t want them to have.

Setting up a business page

* Log into your Facebook account and click on the little icon or lock in the top right corner.

* Follow the steps as it walks you through setting up the page.

* When it asks you to select a category choose brand or product. Usually they will let you pick your website address at that moment (facebook.com/pagename). If you choose some of the other categories it might not let you name it until you have 25 followers.

* Pick a name that’s easy for people to remember and one that’s similar to your business or website address.

Graphics

There are two graphics that are critical:

* Profile: This is the small icon that everyone is familiar with. Use a picture of yourself so people get to know you. You can also have a graphic created with a bar above and below with the name of the company or something about your product.

* Cover: This is more of a graphic that’s going to support the page. People see it at the top so treat it like a billboard. Don’t just put a product shot, put some information. Put some of the benefits of why they should want your product up there. Use professional graphics. Often people take any picture and put it up and it will show it’s an amateur site.

Looking professional

There are several ways to look professional. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. Here are two sites we love.

* Fiverr: you can find almost anything you want for $5.00.

* Canva: you can upload pictures and they have predone designs. If you aren’t a graphic artist you can do professional designs perfect size and professional looking.

Fill out all the blanks Facebook gives you and don’t forget the about page. This is where people will learn about your company and this is where you want to put your elevator pitch.

Make sure to include your website address, phone number and anything else so they can contact you.

Start posting a few things. When you start asking people to come to the page who is going to want to look at a blank page?

80/20 rule

Follow the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of the time be engaging, don’t sell; provide tips for your users. 20 percent of the time post something related to sales like a special promotion you’re doing.

Getting followers

* Go to your friend list and invite everyone to like your page.

* Go to your closest friends and send them a private message and ask them to like it and share it on their pages.

* Continue posting on the newsfeed. People will share them on their pages. You can put at the bottom of the post “if you like this share it”. The more likes and shares the more it goes viral into the various news feeds.

* You have an email list for your business. Take that and send out an announcement that we’re now on Facebook and put a link to it. Offer a special prize or discount to those who come like your page.