Stay active daily

The algorithm of social media platforms like Instagram is designed to prefer active users. Some people don’t actually care about the regular activity which is an incautious mistake. Since you have signed up on Instagram, you should spend at least a few while regularly. Note that it takes time and constant activities to grow an Instagram profile.

Have a schedule for posting

What is a noteworthy difference between you and an influencer? Perhaps, the content calendar. You might be still struggling for inspiration to post on Instagram where an influencer already has a massive content calendar. He knows what and when he is going to post. You can draft a content calendar on a weekly, monthly, even yearly basis. After filling up the calendar with posts, also be careful about the posting time. A posting schedule will make your followers accustomed to peeking on your profile at a certain time. 

Design content idea

Lack of a content idea is a common and distasteful experience for most Instagram users. Some users frequently upload images but don’t get sufficient engagement. It is because their followers find that content boring. Before you start your Instagram journey, you need to generate precise content ideas for subsequent posting. For instance, if you are a fitness enthusiast, you can ask a workout topical question, or post a tutorial video a few often. Again, you can post images on a trending topic for better engagement. 

Follow others to grow followers

The number of followers is usually considered the key to success on social media platforms. You can grow your followers in several ways. If you are in a hurry or need to grow a highly targeted audience, you can buy Instagram followers through a paid campaign. However, you can grow followers organically as well. You should start following targeted people on Instagram to get follow back from them. Though this is an ancient strategy, it seems to be working fine yet. 

Add blog or landing page URL in bio

Does Instagram have any downside? Yes, they have. You cannot add a website URL or link to each post like all other social platforms. Instagram users are allowed to add URLs in the bio section only. It may seem harsh to online marketers, but the Instagram authority did it to prevent excessive spamming on the platform. What to do then? Well, you have to follow a different strategy. You can add your desired URL in bio and mention it on your image caption to influence followers for clicking. 

Find the best hashtags in your niche

Without hashtags, Instagram posts are like ships without a captain. Hashtags help you to reach your targeted people as well as audiences to find the right post among millions of them. According to many influencers, discovering the right hashtags is the secret of their success. Fortunately, there are both paid and free tools to find out the best hashtags for your Instagram posts. You can use a tool, follow others and brainstorm to figure out the best hashtags for your niche. 

Use brand hashtag

If you have opened a business profile, the best way is to make a branded hashtag for followers to find you easily. For instance, brands like Google and Apple have their own branded hashtags like #Google and #Apple. This strategy is quite effective because their followers find their posts simply by typing these branded hashtags. 

Tag others

Tagging another profile handle on Instagram is a killer strategy for high engagement. People as well as businesses like to be tagged by others. Anyone likes it when someone mentions him or talks about him. When you are sharing others’ stories, don’t forget to tag them on your post. If you do it constantly, they will start noticing. Finally, chances are they will tag you too or follow you.

Use special fonts and emojis

Instagram is a highly active social platform. Users all over the world post more than 300 million images on this platform each day. So, anyone is hovering thousands of posts in a day. As a result, it is quite easy to lose attention from an essential post. This is too bad if they accidentally miss your post anyway. Well, there are a few strategies to grab followers’ attention among this massive number of posts. You can use fancy fonts and emojis to make your post more visible. Though they catch people’s eyes, overdoing them may spoil your attempts too. So, be careful while using them. 

Engage with followers

The main purpose of social networks is to create engagement among people. Unfortunately, some of us are too lazy to do it, others keep their egos high. Notice the successful profiles. They are constantly posting interesting images, replying to comments, liking others posts, and mentioning each other. If you want to grow your profile and become popular, you must engage with your followers. Highly engaging profiles are also prioritized by Instagram. Note that if you ignore people, they will do the same. 

Track your progress

Whatever you do, progress tracking is essential to know if you are going on the right path. Instagram has an excellent default analytical tool to monitor user’s engagement and activities. If you truly want to roar on Instagram, you have to understand what your audiences are fond of. Notice like an eagle what is going on and what is really working for your progress. If you can catch the point, repeat your trump card, again and again, to be successful on Instagram.

Finally, consistency is the key to success on any digital platform. Always care about your followers and post highly engaging content accordingly.

The post Tips And Tricks For Instagram appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

While on the other hand, there are other customers who don’t waste time searching for offers or deals. They simply subscribe to the coupon alerts and newsletters. Promo codes happen to be convincing for the customers. For customers, coupons aren’t just a mode of saving extra money but they also help customers to get free offers.

As a matter of fact, promo codes are strategic and are easy to notice. When a customer starts browsing an online store, the promo codes pop up. This noticeable feature of promo codes lets customers get hold of multiple offers when making a move for the purchase. In addition to being noticeable, promo codes are shareable over the Internet.

Customers have a habit of sharing coupon deals to their near and dear ones. This lets the store acquire more traffic and conversations as well. To make a safer attempt of using the promo codes wisely here’s presenting the tips that might guarantee to increase your sales through promo codes and coupons in 2019.

• Get Familiar with the Type of Audience

Distributing your promo codes or coupons sans identifying the target market would not be a fair idea. Instead, one must start to employ the ‘Personalization Tactic’. One can also send customized promo codes to the specific customers, more specifically the ones who aim at celebrating their birthdays or other anniversaries. In such a scenario, collecting their personal data for the newsletters would be a safer decision. Alternatively, reviewing customers’ past transactions and sending them offers would also be justifiable.

• Timing is the Ultimate Key

Getting double sales isn’t a piece of cake, it, in fact, requires a lot of hard work and effort. Offers such as buy-one-get-one-free can encourage customers during the off seasons. In this way, the sales can get higher, and there would be more customers to continue their shopping. Contrarily, during the high seasons, one can also provide customers with offers such as free shipping. This will encourage them to buy more products concurrently. Festive seasons should also come with special offers too.

• Promoting the Coupons is Necessary

When coupons are offered, they are meant to reach the right queue of folks. One can do this in on way, and that is by posting the coupons in order to target the dedicated shoppers. Customers often visit a particular shopping site in order to get hold of discounted deals. Another method of increasing sales is by promoting the coupons with the help of newsletters. One can also send the offers through emails. Alternatively, one can also use the promo codes on particular blogs or sites.

• Usage of Promo Codes and Coupons to Sale Other Items Effectively

Using promo codes or coupons for one product in order to promote other product is a good way for increasing sales. Instantly, when a customer is asked to sign in for an account in order to receive a particular coupon, he or she can also get directed to other sites with discounted products. As a matter of fact, promo codes generate traffic. When landing pages have relevant products, doubling the sales becomes a piece of cake.

• Provoking the Customers for the Purchase

Missing the important deals wouldn’t be something that a smart customer would want. So, the easiest way to provoke them for the purchase is by using some simple tricks. One can add phrases like ‘offer ending tomorrow’. ‘a few hours left’, ‘expiring midnight’, or ‘for today’. This will make the smart customers order the respective products.

• Utilizing the Referral Technique

A shopping site gets popular only with the help of its long-term customers. An age-old customer can only bring the newer queue of customers. Friends of friends and family members are more convincing than the site itself. Hence, using smart referral methods will increase the sales convincingly.

• Coupons aren’t meant to be exposed to everyone

Using the plugins for hiding coupons or promo codes might be a safer idea. As a matter of fact, customers who already made the purchase don’t necessarily need to get notified for the availability of the product. Alternatively, one can even segment the email list and subscription in order to be aware of who exactly has gone for the purchase.

There are possibilities how one can double or triple the sales with the help of coupons or promo codes. One just requires getting hold of proven strategies in order to get best returns on the investments.

The post How to double your sales with coupons and promo codes in 2019 appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

How is everyone feeling?

For me, my level of energy and interest came into question a few times last week. The incidents ran the gambit: From remember-the-good-ole-days when we all shared everything on Twitter, (now we don’t in fear of giving something away); to a couple blog posts I read that essentially yelled, “Uncle!” The authors say they’ve had enough and can’t keep up. Are we just worn out?

The problem gets worse for business owners. They’re dumb-fangled by the newest job titles floating around — social coordinator, community manager and such. Who are you firing or replacing in order to afford these new position? What are you going to stop doing in order to sustain Social? You can’t do it all.

Most of the angst is coming from small business folks who were way ahead of the social curve and were early adopters of the new tools and techniques, and the today-unemployed, tomorrow social media consultant set. We are far enough into the game and evolution of social marketing that it is beyond a single proprietor shop to be really effective for business, and those early adopters that were doing it all themselves truly are worn out.

Chris Penn touches on this topic a bit as well in his post titled “Is that Social Network a Ghost Town.” Part of the issue here is that not every social tool, platform and technique is adaptable or appropriate for every business:

Recently, a few folks have asked if (insert name here) social network is a ghost town. Let’s be clear to start: any place with more than a million people in it is by default not a ghost town. If Twitter/Facebook/Google+ had under a million people in it, then I think you could make the claim that it’s a ghost town in social network terms with reasonable credibility. But none of these networks could accurately be called that. Numerically, Twitter is around the 8th largest country in the world, Facebook the 3rd. Google+ is in the vicinity of 4th or 5th. Any place that sports more population than significantly-sized real world nations is not a ghost town.

 What’s at the heart of the claims that X social network is a ghost town is this: the network is not delivering the results you’re looking for. I made this claim for me about Google+, and it’s a claim I continue to stand by. For me, for how I use social networks, for the limited time and resources I have available per day to devote to any one network, Google+ simply does not deliver the same bottom-line results that other networks do because the way I use it doesn’t work well with the service.

Many of the early adaptors who jumped in on the social media wave are struggling to keep pace. Social Media has become a big business. With big business come defined results. The folks writing the checks have gained some social media savvy and started to evolve. They are past the fad stage. They are demanding certain business results, one of which is lower marketing costs.

Businesses also need to digest what they will stop doing as they dive deeper into social outreach. If new media, or whatever label you choose to attach to it really works, then you no longer need to do something else. Accurately assessing the Something Else will be a vital part of your social success and perhaps a great starting point to relieve the “fatigue.”

So are you just tired of social media marketing? Have you hit a wall? Ponder and ask yourself why. Then see if it’s because you’ve added work, but not removed other work to make this all happen. Assess from there and see if you can improve.

Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Related articles

• Your Social Network is a Ghost Town(marketingovercoffee.com)

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The post Are We Worn Out appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Must Do

One of our Must Do Exercises with our companies that we own and operate is to create a new value curve. We spend a lot of time on the following four questions:

A New Value Curve

1. Reduce – Which factors should be reduced well below the industry standard
2. Create – Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered
3. Raise – Which factors should be raised well above the industry standard
4. Eliminate – Which of the factors that the industry take for granted should be eliminated

Create Your Niche

Getting really clear with the above four questions has helped us carve out niche businesses. Many times the things that separate one company or business from another are not large single items, but a series of small, but radically different, things. A great place to start is your policy and procedure manual. It is likely slam full of stuff that no longer applies or never worked well from the get-go.

Have You Answered Why?

This is a tricky one, we tend to race to What we do. That is much easier to identify. We gravitate to How we do it. The question of Why we do it only gets answered by the remarkable brands. If we reverse the order, and start with why we are doing this and keep that at the core center of our culture, we are heads above the rest.

Why People Buy

People buy from companies because of why they do, not what they do. That is one of the explanations as to why great brands exponentially lead the pack. Many times their competitors actually have a better product. Many times the competition is better capitalized. Yet the company who best identifies what motivates them, and why they are doing what they are doing run circles around the pack.

We suggest that you take some time to identify the Why, way before you get to the What and the How. Your result will be diametrically different.

For more inspiration on the same topic, check out Simon Sinek’s awesome TED Talk:

The post People Buy The Why, Not What appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

We don’t like customer service. Said differently, we do not like the cost associated with customer service. Heck, take that a bit further, how many of our operating budgets have a line item for customer service. In smaller businesses, they typically don’t.

As a business owners, we have this fantasy that we are doing everything right, so there isn’t a cost for customer service as long as we are all doing our jobs. Our staff will perform consistently and fairly and they will do everything right. Although I am exaggerating, how many of you really do set a side a budget for things that go wrong? How many business actually allow the front line to “fix the problem?” Sure, there are a few companies that have set aside front-line allowances, but most of us want to have input on just how the problem gets solved, all in an effort to reduce the cost of solving it.

Follow the Money, It Doesn’t lead to Customer Service

We spend way to much time talking about customer service and too little time solving the issue, for good. Think about that! Most problems that cross our desk get solved, meaning they stop reoccurring. Yet this pesky “Customer Service” hangs around like a bad cough, and just doesn’t go away. If we could just get everyone on the same page it wouldn’t occur. Really, that is a sorry thought. Things do go wrong, everyday.

Does Customer Service Scale

Even though I have thought about the topic for some time, even marveled at companies like Zappo’s who claim to have Customer Service at the center of their culture, it never occurred to me how they actually do that, until I recently heard the phrase “A Scalable Way to Delight” Seth Godin recently penned a thought provoking post titled “Speaking when they care (reorganizing the economics and attitude of customer service)”

“Advertisers struggle to be heard through the noise. Customer service reps, on the other hand, can whisper.

 A few organizations have figured out how to turn customer service into a marketing opportunity and thus a profit center. They figure if they’ve got your attention, if they’re talking to you at a moment when you care a great deal, they can turn that into an opportunity to delight. And being delighted is remarkable and worth talking about. That means that if your organization has a stall, deny and avoid policy when it comes to customer interaction, you will almost certainly be defeated if a competitor comes up with a scalable way to delight.”

Is Customer Service Your Priority? 

What is your story, have you solved the Customer Service Problem, or is it just another useless cliché on your brochures or posted in your lobby. That said, if you have made progress, real meaningful progress, what type of costs have you allocated to those line items? Is it even really feasible to solve the problem? Before the Customer Services reps fledge an attack, this is more than a little training, is it really part of your DNA?

Have You Registered For Explore Nashville?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. H&R Block’s Scott Gulbransen, The Now Revolution co-author Amber Naslund, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Return on Influence author Mark Schaefer, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, Friday, April 13 in Nashville, Tennessee! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

The post Customer Service: A Scalable Way to Delight appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

What is your Plan for this Disruption? 

Disruption is rampant, from print to digital marketing, book and magazine publishing, music distribution and more. In the midst of this we still need to provide viable marketing direction to our clients.  Not always an easy or straightforward task. Everyone is a publisher today. Gatekeepers no longer have much if any real control and are becoming less and less every day.

I read a Seth Godin interview this week titled Godin to Authors; You have no right to make money anymore.  While it may not speak exactly to marketers, most of it applies, as the Abundance Economy is upon us. ”Amateurs” are everywhere now, and they are taking part of what used to be your work.

This probably isn’t the kind of message that most authors (or creative professionals of any kind) want to hear, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The rise of the amateur, powered by the democratization of distribution provided by the Web and social media, is something that is disrupting virtually every form of content that can be converted into bits. To take just two examples, the news industry is struggling to adapt to an era where anyone can commit “random acts of journalism” with a blog or smartphone — and where sources of news have the ability to publish their own content instead of having to go through a middleman — and photography has been battling the rise of the amateur for years now.

The Gatekeepers are Extinct 

Marketing studios used to control the gate keys to an array of things that they no longer make money from, or at least a much lower percentage. What are you doing to replace that revenue and compete with “good enough?” And to be clear, when we refer to good enough, it really is good enough. The sooner we understand that, the better.

As media theorist Clay Shirky has pointed out before, abundance breaks a lot of content-related business models that were built on scarcity, and that includes the ones that have supported the book-publishing industry for so long. That’s why publishers have been scrambling to try and lock down their content — including jacking up the prices that libraries pay for e-books — and it’s why authors who have a built-in audience are using the web to connect directly with that audience. Godin’s message may not be a popular one, but it is the way that content works now.

Marketing certainly isn’t dead. To really reach today’s consumers, companies and brands will need to build relationships with them rather than simply grabbing their attention or utilizing disruptions as an advertising tool. In other words, marketers should be progressive rather than aggressive, adding a fifth “P” — Participation — to the traditional marketing mix of Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Are you up for the long haul?

The post Your Business is Being Disrupted. What Are You Doing About It? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

While that conclusion is certainly not always the case, what else explains the vast amounts of money that companies spend year-in and year-out on “improvements,” “education” and the next “new thing” only to keep doing things the way they always have? It is frustrating to work for a company, collect fees from them, get accolades all along the way, measure and track significant improvement, then two years later get fired and watch them revert to their old ways and habits in six months or less. Perhaps I am a bad consultant that gets fired a lot, which could be the case. However I watched this same movie over and over while in corporate America. Our company CEO, an extremely bright guy would hire and fire consultants every few years, we would all go through the drill almost like a cycle.  In conversing about this very topic with my friend Jay Ehret this week from The Marketing Spot, a consultant himself, summed it up as “Companies are just being who they are.”

Watching so many businesses that could be so much more has me thinking about branding. It seems that many times the things that set great brands apart were always subtly there for anyone else to grab; it just took someone to “see” it differently, and then to actually implement and execute. Those uncontested waters contain great stories of profitable growth.

It is conventionally believed that companies can either create grater value to customers at a higher cost or create reasonable value at a lower cost.  That said, many companies strategy is seen as making a choice between differentiation and low cost. But what happens when you achieve differentiation and lower cost simultaneously?

 Value innovation is created when a companies action favorably affect both the cost structure and the value proposition. Eliminating and reducing the factors that an industry competes on create cost savings. It is in this space that uncontested markets are created, making the competition irrelevant.

Value innovation embraces a strategy that encompasses the entire system of a company’s activity.  It requires companies to orient the whole system toward achieving an exponential leap in value for both the customer and the business. Align the whole system of your firm’s activities in pursuit of differentiation and low cost.

The companies that do it really well have made that exercise part of the fabric of their business, and have pushed past the fear, or whatever else was holding them back. It truly is much more fun to create the rules as opposed to following them. Is your business doing this? Mediocrity eventually erodes profits, and isn’t as safe of a space as you may think.

The post Businesses Love Affair With Mediocrity appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Small businesses aren’t very good at increasing their Facebook fan base. So even though they may be following all of the “rules of the Facebook road,” they aren’t seeing much if any return on their effort.

A Bigger Fan Base is Better

Ultralinx posted an article titled The Importance of Having a Fan Base, which included a cool infograph illustrating their point.

With the explosion of Social Media, businesses and brands have found a new way to advertise. Advertising through Social Media has a lot better ROI than most other types of advertising and can help build relationships between businesses and their customers. Building relationships with people fosters loyalty, as a result, loyalty has the potential to increase profit.

According to Ultralinx, the benefits of having a fan base include:

• 50% of small business owners reported that they gained new customers through social media.
• Ning, a social network platform, found that it only takes 20 people to create an online community.
• 64% of Twitter users say they are more likely to buy from a brand if they already follow it. 51% said the same on Facebook.

So, one would think that investing time and money building such a digital platform is the proper direction. And, as with your checkbook balance, bigger is better right?

Wait, Only 1% of Facebook Fans Engage with Brands

Just as we were  convinced to start ramping up our digital assault, we read a contradicting article, this from AdAge, that Not Many Fans Are Engaging; What are we to believe?

 For a few years now, brands have been touting frothy Facebook “like” numbers as evidence of their social-media acumen. But how many of those fans are actually bothering to take part in conversation with brands?

Not too many, as it turns out.

Slightly more than 1% of fans of the biggest brands on Facebook are actually engaging with the brands, according to a study from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, an Australia-based marketing think tank that counts Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and other major advertisers as its supporters

Is Facebook for Business Overrated  

The point here is that  you can find a blog, an article, a video and multiple consultants to support either side of the equation. What is best for your business? It wasn’t long ago that I too was a bit skeptical and thought that Facebook for Business is Overrated. I have changed my mind, but with a qualification, only after you have built a Fan Base large enough to matter. If you aren’t willing to do what it takes to create a space for a “community” to gather around your brand, and grow that to a size large enough to matter then leave your Facebook chips at home. Size really does matter.

We have since placed a disproportionate amount of our marketing resources on that bet and Doubled Down on our Facebook Fan Page for our boutique apartment business. I am glad we did, as it is producing a steady stream of rental leads for us. However, not much of anything happened until we got close to 10,000 Fans. Prior to that, we were mostly talking to ourselves.

That raises another question, What is the Optimal Facebook Fan Base size to see a return?

It has taken some time to build a hearty, Hyper Local Fan Base, and a lot of work, trial and error. Patience was required. And, we didn’t know what the right size was either, until finally we started to experience a sharing of “Likes” and engagement. It has sort of been an obsession around our office for the last 24 months or so, but it looks like it is beginning to create a nice return.

What are your experiences — Especially those of you in small businesses? How many fans did you have before you began to see responses, leads and even sales or conversions? Where was your double down point? Let us know in the comments.

The post Double Down on Facebook Marketing appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

By the time I was driving, the first “self-serve” gas station came to town. One-by-one the “filling stations” disappeared and were replaced by the modern day convenience store. This approach greatly increased the transactions-per-customer and gas station owners got richer if they adjusted with the times. No one asked any of us if that was OK, it just changed. I think things are changing again.

We Learned As We Went Along the Way

I have been doing a lot of research lately on Google + for our small business, which led me to draft this post. I am worried that the landscape of search will vastly change in the ensuing months. It occurred to me how much things have changed in just the last few of years. When we first started a local neighborhood blog with inbound links back to our apartment web site, we had no idea what that did. We stumbled upon the concept of inbound marketing by sheer chance.  The issue then was that there really wasn’t an efficient way to share or validate your ideas. There were some blogs then, but nothing like today, and many bloggers had yet to establish their turf.

We experimented with this newfound phenomena by writing more articles when we needed more leasing leads and sure enough, the more content we produced, the more web traffic we got and the more prospects walked in the door. It was magic! Today we no longer need to wonder about our assumptions, there is lightening-fast data within a few keystrokes and people are sharing things they are learning at every turn.

The Floor is Moving Again

“Times they are a changing,” is a somewhat worn out phrase, but they are. Jon Mitchell penned a disturbing article titled Google + Is Going to Mess Up the Internet, over at ReadWriteWeb.  The premise of the article is that “shared” content may wind up ranking higher than original content. While that isn’t completely confirmed, the pundits-at-large and in-the-know seem to agree that Google + will have a huge impact on search.

Rohn Jay Miller from Social Media Today sums things up in an article titled Welcome to Web 3.0; The Contextual Web:

The lesson we each wished we knew back in 2002 was “it’s all about the eyeballs.” Engage the eyeballs or direct them to where they should be engaged do it on a massive scale, and the rewards are billions and billions of dollars.  If I’d only known I wouldn’t have sold the Apple stock and I wouldn’t have scoffed at GOOG at $500 a share.

Now in 2012 it feels like we’re on the middle of a massive transition on the Internet.  We see the order of power changing, but it’s not quite clear why.  Things are happening—smartphones, apps, the Internet of Things, and of course social networks.

Does That Mean the Biggest Sharer Wins?

Unlike producing more content to create a greater search result to sell more stuff, sharing and getting someone else to share your stuff is much more challenging. It is more real. You have to be real. We have hardly convinced our clients that producing quality content is the answer and now they have to share too and be real?

It is a basket-load of work to get your employees to share and to interact on line, yet that may be the only real answer to this coming change. We all know that the few automated tools we have used to skip a step, such as posting to multiple platforms at the same time with the same message only retard the outcome. People aren’t tricked, they know, and click through rates subside with automation.

What are you doing to get in front of the sharing curve?

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, February 17 in Dallas, Texas! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! The first 100 to do so get an incredible discount! Reserve your seat today!

The post Sharing Is More Real appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

As with many women, Kim admires Pandora jewelry, which offers a plethora of unique jewelry intended to complement each woman’s individuality. Versatility and an extraordinary design thread distinguish this Danish line apart from the rest of the jewelry world. With a wide array of charms and beads, women around the globe now have the opportunity to be their own designer and personalize their jewelry selections according to their individual styles and moods. But that is just marketing stuff and isn’t the best part of the brand’s brilliance.

So a Pandora bracelet and a handful of their charms were in order for Kim’s birthday earlier this year. It was a great gift; I spent less than $500 for a cool bracelet and some charms, which she had already picked out. She loved it. Prefect right? What unfolded though, is fascinating.  It isn’t really a $500 bracelet; it is a $2,000 bracelet, made up by four to five more $200 visits to the jewelry store over time for more charms.

It is brilliant marketing. I would likely never purchase a $2,000 bracelet. I did, but it doesn’t “feel” that way because of the smaller purchases over time. Pandora reinvented the space they play in, and successfully persuaded folks to extend their spend, even in a down economic market.

Where Are the Animals? 

Is there really anything new under the sun? Probably not, but as marketers we continue to strive to find new ideas and ways to break from the pack of mediocrity. New ideas break out everywhere, and while this isn’t a new idea or even a new company, the story of Cirque Du Soleil is another great example of a company reinventing their space.

Initially named Les Échassiers, Cirque toured Quebec in 1980 as a performing troupe. In 1984, after securing a second year of funding, the troupe hired Guy Caron from the National Circus School to re-create it as a “proper circus.” Caron built it with no ring and no animals and in doing so reinvented what a circus was. They reinvented the space that they play in by effectively identifying which factors in their industry are routinely taken for granted that should be eliminated.

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

Marketers must drill down into the things in your client’s or oganization’s industry that are routinely taken for granted that should be eliminated. These ideas are there for anyone to see, and are usually pretty evident when you begin to think about your industry from a different light. When you eliminate extraneous ones, you create your own market … one that is not so crowded and where you can flourish.

The problem with this type of disruptive thinking is your staff and employees cling to what they know, even if it has little to no real value anymore. At our own small business, it is our greatest challenge to get our staff to change, to think differently about what we do, and how we shape the brands we represent.

So, as you stare down the barrel of 2012, think about what things are routinely taken for granted that should be eliminated in your industry. Conversely, what things should be added? Reinvent the space you play in and create your own market. It is much more fun, and profitable.

The post Reinvent the Space You Play In appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Certain businesses and their products are a natural. They are cool and worthy of talking about. Think Apple. They just make products that people love to talk about, and they even get folks who don’t like their product to talk about them. But what about the other 99% of the products that fall closer to mediocrity? They are solid offerings, but they just aren’t sexy … or at least we don’t think so.

You Have to Ask for the Referral 

Small business marketing expert John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing has devised a whole system of Referral Marketing, which is really just a planned approach to help you start to get your customers talking about you and your product offering.

“The power of glitzy advertising and elaborate marketing campaigns is on the wane; word- of-mouth referrals are what drive business today. People trust the recommendation of a friend, family member, colleague, or even stranger with similar tastes over anything thrust at them by a faceless company.

 Most business owners believe that whether customers refer them is entirely out of their hands. But science shows that people can’t help recommending products and services to their friends—it’s an instinct wired deep in the brain. And smart businesses can tap into that hardwired desire.”

John’s point is spot on, and although asking for a referral is awkward for many business owners and their front line staffing, it can pay big dividends. People love to talk about their purchases, and share their favorable experiences, and when given a subtle nudge become excellent brand evangelists.

The Hidden Benefits of Asking

One of our clients, a local furniture retailer with seven locations in Metro Detroit, has experienced remarkable ROI by adding a bit of Word of Mouth and Referral Marketing to their arsenal. Originally designed to help build a strong Facebook fan base, Gardner White Furniture added some branded content to the delivery paperwork when the customers furniture is delivered that encourages the customer to snap a picture and share it on the Gardner White Facebook Fan Page. What happened was a bit of a surprise. Not only did customers become Fans (with fairly strong engagement and pictures of their new furniture) they also added testimonials of their shopping experience to each Facebook post.

We repackaged the content to stream on the company web site, as well as an iFrame application back to their Facebook Page so that the testimonials were all grouped together. All in, they have received about (250) detailed reviews and just under (7,500) Facebook Fans!

So, the moral of the story is, don’t be afraid to ask for a referral, and if executed in a planned and meaningful way, your happy customers are more than willing to talk about their experience with you and your company.

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Yes, business is and has always been about the numbers, and bigger is always better. Many of my retail friends are running their businesses by the numbers and are all focused on turning more inventory faster. Are they also good at relationships? Of course. You don’t stay in business long if you aren’t. The social media pundits did not invent customer relations. Even though some businesses have forgotten the importance, profitable ones certainly have not. But the most successful businesses — not just social media businesses — relentlessly focus on growing the numbers.

Listening First is a Flawed Approach

Social media consultants have somewhat tripped business owners up by getting them tangled in the “listen first” saga. And while we aren’t suggesting that businesses ignore this process, it shouldn’t always be a top priority. Unless you are a big brand, there really aren’t all that many people talking about you. In fact, for the majority of small businesses, no one is.

Jay Ehret penned a post this week titled Why Listening is Too Little

There is nothing wrong with listening to your customers and understanding what they want. It’s just that there’s very little of this conversation going on. Take a look at your personal Facebook news feed right now. What are people talking about? You? Other businesses? Rarely. Except for your marketing geek and business owner friends, you will find very little brand related conversation. There will be a lot of  “LOL” pictures, famous quotes, and harmless status updates like “Coffee in hand, ready to fight the day!” The point is that most people don’t join social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to talk about your business.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

A lot has been written surrounding the plethora of Facebook changes. But few are talking about the impact that brands and businesses will experience from the new metric around the “Talking About This” feature. Facebook administrators are now more naked than ever as to the effectiveness of their Facebook marketing … or lack thereof. Just posting “interesting links” will no longer cut the mustard. Brands and businesses must start to show up in ways we haven’t seen.

At my company, we have said for some time now that the numbers always matter. By numbers, we are referring to Fans, Followers and Likes. Folks like to push the whole “Engagement” argument, touting that it isn’t about the size of the Fan Base, it is about the conversations created. But your Facebook page is similar to your bank account. A larger one is typically better than a smaller one, and one with pennies as opposed to dollars may not be worth keeping.

Our submission to you is that if your Facebook Fan Page isn’t generating a lot of “Talking About This” you may want to evaluate your direction because if it isn’t, not one there is listening.

Your thoughts? The comments are yours.

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