Powerful Online Tools to Market Your Business
In February 26, 2013, I was joined by Award-winning Author and professional speaker, Stephanie Chandler, on my radio show Money 2.0 on 105.5FM. Stephanie’s expertise lies in sales and marketing techniques for small business, particularly online techniques. Throughout the program she shares what strategies have worked both for her successful publishing company, Authority Publishing, and personally is an Author of 9 books.
Stephanie identifies the lost opportunities small business owners have in not taking full advantage of “content marketing” and social media as business strategies. She shares a number of tips from her latest book Own Your Niche. She explains how “owning your niche” is about employing the tools to become an expert in your field.
Stephanie goes into detail about what content marketing is and how it can generate revenue for your business. Primarily, content marketing should be focused on giving your target audience/target customers information they need, and not mere sales content about buying your product or services. Content marketing can grow your audience, who will potentially become your paying customers. Content marketing also establishes you as an authority in your field, which again can yield you paying customers.
Content marketing is a perfect fit with social media. There are a variety of essentially free platforms that you can post your messages out with. Stephanie explains that small business owners can manage their various social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, etc.) in as little as 30 minutes a day with a good strategy and third-party tools such as Hootsuite.com.
Stephanie says social media is evolving and believes over the next few years it will likely look quite different from what it does currently. She notes that it is important to have a monitoring system in place when using social media to drive traffic to your business website. One such tool is Google Analytics, which allows you to compare month to month the amount of traffic your website has been getting and where that traffic came from. The latter gives you knowledge on what is working in your social media strategy. For an example, you may learn that you hardly drive any traffic from your Google Plus account, but fair well in driving traffic from your Twitter messages. That will allow you to make educated decisions on allocating your time investment on your social media channels.
Stephanie also discusses at length how authoring a book can help small business owners build an audience and create more opportunities. She says it further proves your authority over a given subject and gives you an incredible calling card. She quips that it’s one thing to attend a convention or networking event and hand out branded mugs and squishy balls, whereas handing out copies of your book can relay an expert reputation.
Stephanie also speaks highly of blogging and sending out monthly newsletters as part of sending out your content marketing messages. She says the key to attracting new customers and generating revenue for your business is engagement, not just sales pitches. She briefly notes that joining or establishing LinkedIn groups and networking events through sites like Meetup.com have been quite helpful in her business.
Another interesting marketing endeavor Stephanie talks about is her annual online convention, the Nonfiction Writers Conference, which attracted and featured high profile speakers in 2013, such as Author Guy Kawasaki and Smashwords Founder Mark Coker.
If you would like to hear my conversation with Stephanie, please click here.
