Tag Archives | Kindra Cotton

How to Make the Most of Social Media Marketing

By on June 14, 2011 in Become Your Own Boss Tips, Branding & Marketing, Customer Service, Grow Your Business, Social Media
social networking

Image taken from Google Images

Leveraging the power of social media to market your brand in the Web 2.0 world is imperative to remaining viable as a business owner.  Having social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn aren’t enough to take advantage of the marketing opportunities that new media environment has created.  You need to adopt a comprehensive strategy to deliver the results that you want.

Here are five (5) key strategies to insure that you make the most out of your social media marketing efforts:

Have a Plan and Set Objectives: As an entrepreneur, the temptation might be to just jump in and start using various social media platforms to promote your brand and products, but before doing so, you need a clear understanding of how you’re using social media to augment your core marketing efforts to generate leads and convert them to sales.  Social media alone can’t be the “be-all, end-all” of your company’s plan, so having a Social Media Marketing Plan that specifically shows how social media outlets will be used to promote your brand is key.

Know Your Niche: In a world where Facebook has over 500 million registered users and Twitter sees 155,000,000 tweets a day from any of its 200,000,000+ tweeters, your message can be easily lost in the “noise” being created in the social media space.  Targeting your market and knowing the best places to reach key members of your audience is the best way to insure better returns for your efforts.

Encourage Conversation and Dialogue: If you run a blog, enable your comments and allow visitors to contribute their opinion and provide a sense of community around the content you’re providing.  If you visit other blogs regularly, leave useful comments (i.e. relevant to the topic at hand and not just a standard “Great Post!”) and provide your contact/blog information within your comments profile (if possible).  Encouraging conversation and dialogue among the people who already find your content compelling is a great way to learn what makes them tick and ensure that you can keep providing what they need to keep them coming back to you.

Be Easy to Contact: It may seem like a “no-brainer”, but you’d be amazed at how many websites, blogs, and Facebook pages provide absolutely no way to get in touch with the people behind them.  If your goal is to facilitate a relationship with your customers using social media, you have to be available to them. This can be done by providing easy ways for your customers and future customers to get in touch with you by providing online forms on your websites and blogs, giving email addresses and phone numbers (if you check them regularly and intend to respond), and even providing your Skype ID (if you use the service).  Making it easy for people to contact you will provide one more way that you can hear what your audience wants.

Monitor Your Progress: Any Social Media Marketing effort is dead in the water without assessment.  Be sure to manage and tweak Social Media Marketing Plan to determine if you’re meeting the long and short-term objectives you’ve set for your company.

What other strategies have you used to maximize the return on investment

of your social media marketing efforts?

Kindra CottonKindra C. Cotton is a Serial Entrepreneur, Technology & Social Media Specialist who runs a  small business consulting practice specializing in brand marketing, market research, and strategic information consultancy.  Her flagship brand “SSS for Success (Small Business Survival Specialists)” specializes in preparing small and medium-sized organizations to take advantage of the free and low-cost marketing avenues that exist online.

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4 Tips for Listening to Your Audience Online

By on May 24, 2011 in Grow Your Business, Social Media, Your Small Business

One of the first pieces of advice you’ll find about using social media for your small business is to “listen to your audience“.  By creating a listening strategy you’ll find out what conversations are happening among your customers (or potential customers), before you dive in and try to become part of the conversation and ultimately sell your wares.

A good Social Media Marketing Strategy starts with an active monitoring and listening plan that helps you learn what’s going on in your industry, as well as what people have to say about your brand.  It allows you to plan exactly how you’ll enter the conversation and what valuable content you’ll use to make yourself a valued asset and not just another person shouting about their brand in the already overcrowded social media space.

The following 4 tips will help you formulate a listening strategy to hear what your audience is saying and find out what you can bring to the conversation:

1.    Use Google Alerts:  Google Alerts lets you get email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on the topics of your choice, where you can choose your topic and have the results delivered via email or RSS feed at the time you specify.  The great thing about Google Alerts is that you can set up multiple alerts for your name, company name, competitors’ names, and relevant keywords or search terms for your industry to keep up with the information that you need.  This intelligence will be delivered to you regularly, instead of heading to a search engine and running queries yourself.

2.    Try Social Mention:  Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services.  It’s like Google Alerts, but for social media platforms.  It works similar to Google Alerts, where you can set it up and monitor your brand and competition in the social media space.

3.    Search Twitter:  With over 200,000,000 million users, tweeting 155,000,000 tweets a day, Twitter has become a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about topics you’re interested in.  Searching Twitter is a great way to find out what people are talking about NOW, and using a Saved Twitter Search is the best way to monitor topics relevant to your brand and industry.

4.    Create Surveys:  Regularly polling your customers and prospects is a great way to find out what topics are of interest to them, and what kinds of products and services will meet their needs.  Services like Survey Monkey make it easy to gather information from your customers first hand by asking them what you want to know.  For the cash-strapped entrepreneur, Survey Monkey offers a basic plan that lets you have up to 100 responses on a 10-question survey, thus providing an excellent tool to learn more about your stakeholders.

 

Have you tried any other listening strategies that have brought you success in the online realm?

 

Kindra CottonKindra C. Cotton, Serial Entrepreneur, Technology & Social Media Specialist, and Jill of All Trades (and a Master of Two), channels her energies into her small business consulting enterprises specializing in brand marketing, market research, and strategic information consultancy.  A transplanted Nashvillian with years of expertise with the Internet and web-based technologies, she channels her passion for entrepreneurship, information technology, and social media into being an excellent resource for online marketers and people looking to promote their brand on the web as Examiner.com’s National Online Marketing Examiner.  Her flagship brand “SSS for Success (Small Business Survival Specialists)” specializes in preparing small and medium-sized organizations to take advantage of the free and low-cost marketing avenues that exist in the online arena.

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Do You Have a Social Media Plan?

By on April 12, 2011 in Guest Articles, Social Media, Technology

“Social Media” is the latest hot button topic.  It’s the buzz word on everyone’s lips, and now that there are several verified stories of how it’s being used to grow businesses and forge new era of engagement among organizations and their stakeholders, it’s now at the top of everyone’s list as they seek to improve their bottom lines.

Many small business owners turn their heads in the direction of Social Media, not just because it’s useful marketing tool, but because the term “FREE” is often juxtaposed to it, thereby helping it fit perfectly on a tight budget.  One of the first things that entrepreneurs do when they want to capitalize on the “Social Media Wave” is set up a Twitter or Facebook account (or Fan Page) and then they feel that they now are a part of “the party”.  But I contend that in order for a Social Media Marketing Campaign to truly be effective, you have to plan how social media outlets will be used within your overall marketing plan to promote your products and services.

To that end, I like to help my clients navigate the Web 2.0 environment and integrate Social Media into their business by mapping out a Social Media Marketing Plan that fits squarely within the overall marketing plan of a company.  Specifically, I create a Social Media Marketing Plan that highlights how social media outlets will be utilized to:

1)    Drive traffic to a company’s website or blog,

2)    Generate interest in the site’s content,

3)    Generate sales or leads for new customers, and

4)    Provide ways of keeping existing customers actively engaged in the company’s brand through its website, blog, or other social media outlets. Continue Reading →

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How To Develop a Marketing Plan for Your Small Business

By on September 9, 2010 in Q & A Interviews, SmallBizChat

Each week as @Smallbizlady, I conduct interviews with small business experts on my weekly Twitter talk show #SmallBizChat. This is excerpted from my #SmallBizChat interview with @KindraCotton Kindra Cotton owns SSS for Success (EASY Brand Marketing Specialists), a company that promotes Small Business Survival through EASY Sales using the specially designed EASY Brand Marketing Program.  She is also the creator of The MiniMarketing Survey, and she channels her energy into multiple activities that are geared towards helping small business grow.  Visit her website at: KindraCotton.com.  If you’re a small business owner, please help Kindra with her own market research efforts and fill out this brief survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SVSC7M2

 

Smallbizlady: How do you get started with a marketing plan for a small business?

 

Kindra Cotton: First, know your audience or “target market” and understand their needs. Second, position yourself to meet those needs with a solution-oriented marketing plan. Decide on how you’ll connect to customers and begin developing your brand.

 

Smallbizlady: What is the best way to learn your audience or “target market”?

Kindra Cotton: You must conduct market research: both primary and secondary research. Primary research is research you do yourself.  It’s a good way to learn more about your specific market. Secondary research is research such as statistics and information from other sources like libraries, Chambers of Commerce, local and federal government publications, etc.  This is best for getting a general overall view of the market or industry you’ll be operating within.

 

Smallbizlady: What is the best way to conduct market research?

 

Kindra Cotton: You can conduct primary research by reaching out to current, former, or even potential customers and asking them pertinent questions about their needs via surveys, focus groups, or in-person interviews.  If your budget allows, you might consider hiring a market research firm who might conduct telephone polls and focus groups. Secondary research (the least expensive of the two) can be conducted by visiting libraries, internet searches on sites of the U.S. Census, Department of Commerce, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Small Business Administration, Chambers of Commerce, and local governments.

Smallbizlady: Once a business owner knows their target market, and how to meet their needs, what should be the next step in the development of the marketing plan?

Kindra Cotton: Defining your brand and tailoring your products and services to your target audience are the next steps. This includes developing your brand’s vision, mission, and company message in ways that are meaningful to your core audience, and this includes branding your company’s insignia on logos and creating websites. Armed with what you learned from your market research, tailor your product and service offerings catalog to meet the stated needs of your target market.

Smallbizlady: With a defined brand, targeted market, and products or services ready to sell, how do I put my marketing plan into action steps?

 

Kindra Cotton: Start by clearly stating your goals (e.g. attracting new customers, retaining old customers, encouraging repeat business).  Prioritize long and short-term goals (set time limits and stick to them). When describing how you plan to achieve your goals.  Be specific; break it down by activity (branding, promotion and sales strategy, email marketing, affiliate marketing, networking, etc.).  Create monthly and weekly sales goals and activities to execute your strategic marketing plan and achieve your revenue goals.

Smallbizlady: What is the best way to execute my action plan?

Kindra Cotton: Start by reviewing your priorities and the timelines you’ve set, and address each priority in order of importance.

Smallbizlady: How can I implement a small business marketing plan on a limited budget?

 

Kindra Cotton: Maximize your dollars spent and look for creative ways to implement marketing steps that don’t cost money (e.g. social media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), blogging, podcasting, video blogging). When hiring someone for marketing help, use your hourly rate and time saved as the litmus test and price threshold for what you’re willing to pay.  For example, if you charge $100/Hour as a Consultant and you estimate it will take about 10 hours for you to review your customer records, could you find someone to effectively do the work for you for $1000? If so, then it’s definitely worth it to use them, since it will free up your time and you can continue running your business and servicing your customers.

 

Smallbizlady: If my number #1 priority is getting new customers, how can I do that?

 

Kindra Cotton: To attract new customers, you could offer an incentive or free giveaway for them to sign-up for your newsletter (e.g. 10% off first purchase, special report, or free sample.) Then use the newsletter to keep in touch by providing helpful information and informing them on new products and services. Use a blog and/podcast series with topics of interest to your core audience. You could also begin an affiliate marketing program with a complimentary business that refers business in exchange for a commission of sales.

Smallbizlady: What are some other ways that I can creatively market to my business?

 

Kindra Cotton: Contact the media to pitch stories about your business or your customers who have been successful using your product or service; Offer to speak for free at local speaking events (e.g. Rotary Clubs, Chambers of Commerce, Women’s groups etc.); Start a community for your core customers on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Smallbizlady: What are some of the big mistakes entrepreneurs make in small business marketing?

 

Kindra Cotton: Be sure to track marketing efforts.  Make note of where customers learned about you and how they found you. Conduct ongoing primary market research by asking for customer feedback; Use surveys as another marketing tool in your arsenal (e.g. The MiniMarketing Survey). Be sure to offer customers an incentive to complete surveys (e.g. Free item/service). Use feedback to help shape future marketing efforts.

 

Smallbizlady: What’s the most important thing to remember in small business marketing?

Kindra Cotton: Be flexible and adaptive; Continue to tweak your strategic marketing plan so that it stays responsive to your market and industry.

If you found this interview helpful, join us on Wednesdays 8-9pm ET follow @SmallBizChat on Twitter.

For more tips on how start or grow your small business subscribe to Melinda Emerson’s blog http://www.succeedasyourownboss.com.

Melinda F. Emerson, known to many as SmallBizLady is one of America’s leading small business experts. As a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker, and small business coach, she develops audio, video and written content to fulfill her mission to end small business failure.  As CEO of MFE Consulting LLC, Melinda educates entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies on subjects including small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. Forbes Magazine recently named her one of the Top 20 women for entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. She hosts #SmallBizChat Wednesdays on Twitter 8-9pm ET for emerging entrepreneurs. She also publishes a resource blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com Melinda is also the author of the national bestseller Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works. (Adams Media 2010)

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Look Who’s Coming up on #Smallbizchat in September

By on August 27, 2010 in SmallBizChat

SmallBizChat is the Wednesday weekly Twitter chat – focused on everything that small business owners need to know about running and sustaining their business. Hosted by Melinda Emerson, The Small Biz Lady; follow @smallbizchat for updates via Twitter.  How to participate in #SmallBizChat: http://bit.ly/S797e

Sept. 1, 2010 How to network online and offline for your small business Kevin Knebl @KevinKnebl Kevin Knebl is the owner of Knebl Communications, Inc., a Colorado-based company specializing in effective Online and Offline Networking skills and Social Media training. He is also professional speaker, trainer and coach who presents to small, medium and Fortune 500 companies.  He is an in-demand Online and Offline Networking keynote speaker and trainer and considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on networking using LinkedIn.

Sept. 8, 2010 How to write a marketing plan Kindra Cotton @kindracotton Kindra Cotton owns SSS for Success, a company that promotes Small Business Survival through the EASY Brand Marketing Program.  She is also the creator of The MiniMarketing Survey, and she channels her energy into multiple activities that are geared towards helping small business grow.

Sept. 15, 2010 How to hire the right employees for your small business Dr. Janice Presser @DrJanice Dr. Janice Presser is Chief Executive Officer of The Gabriel Institute, and (with Dr. Jack Gerber) an originator of Role-Based Assessment (RBA). She is a recognized Thought Leader in talent development and measuring quality of hires in a business setting. Dr. Presser has served on SHRM’s Human Capital Assessment/Metrics Special Expertise Panel.

Sept. 22, 2010 Understanding the ins and outs of partnership agreements Nina Kaufman @NinaKaufman Nina Kaufman is an award-winning business attorney, columnist and blogger for Entrepreneur online, and author of The Entrepreneur’s Prenup: How to Choose a Business Partner Who Won’t [BLEEP] You, she demystifies legal mumbo-jumbo in business partnerships so you save time, money and aggravation.

Sept. 29, 2010 Could a franchise be the right model for your business? Mary Tomzack @FranchiseHelp Mary Tomzack is author of “Tips & Traps When Buying a Franchise,” and one of the industry’s most respected franchising experts.  A former writer for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Mary has been cited by The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Franchise World, and has spoken on the topic of franchising at such institutions as Harvard Business School.

Melinda F. Emerson, known to many as SmallBizLady is one of America’s leading small business experts. As a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker, and small business coach, she develops audio, video and written content to fulfill her mission to end small business failure.  As CEO of MFE Consulting LLC, Melinda educates entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies on subjects including small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. She has been featured on NBC Nightly News, the Tavis Smiley Radio Show, in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur and Black Enterprise Magazine. She hosts #SmallBizChat weekly on Twitter for emerging entrepreneurs and publishes a resource blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com.  Melinda is also the author of the national bestseller Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works. (Adams Media 2010)

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